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Former U. N. Ambassador John Bolton joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow live from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily. [“I’ve had the privilege to speak at CPAC for as long as I can remember,” said Bolton. “What I consistently try to talk about is the importance of a conservative foreign policy, through the vagaries of elections. The last eight years, I’ve been able to describe what’s wrong with Obama, which is very difficult in the time allotted for the main floor speeches. ” “This year, obviously, I’ll be following both Vice President Pence, who will be there tonight, and President Trump himself will be there tomorrow morning. So what I’m going to try and do is lay out some of the principles I think we have to continue to operate on — whatever people on the Hill say, whatever people in the executive branch say,” he declared. “One of the bedrock principles of conservatism — and I think they start with the belief in American exceptionalism and the notion that our national security policy has to be based on American interests. I just think it’s important to keep focused, and although I’m not in the Trump administration, I will be doing whatever I can from the outside to try and keep their attention focused as the days go forward,” he said. Marlow asked why a foreign policy that puts America first is so widely seen as a “revolutionary idea. ” “It’s because the establishment doesn’t see it that way,” Bolton replied. “You can already, in the mainstream media commentary about the president’s emerging team and the direction he’s going in, some of the themes that show how the press, the mainstream press in Washington, tries to manipulate new Republican administrations. ” “They’re filled with commentary about how wonderful it is that many of the president’s appointments are and technocratic and perhaps most important of all, not controversial — meaning that the New York Times and the Washington Post are prepared to give him a pass,” Bolton said. “Look, it’s very early days, and this is not necessarily a reflection of the truth about these individuals. It’s a reflection of how the Washington echo chamber is trying to mold them, to get them to seek the approval of their betters who write editorials on the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. ” “If they can avoid succumbing to that siren song, they’ll do fine,” he advised. “But what the media and the Democrats are trying to do now is convince them: ‘You don’t want to be controversial. You don’t want to be ideological. Things are just fine. Be a technocrat. Tinker around the edges. Don’t change much.’ That’s not what Donald Trump got elected to do. That’s the fight really on the national security front, I think, for the soul of the administration. ” Marlow confessed he had been quietly rooting for Bolton to become national security adviser, prompting Bolton to humorously observe that he might have gotten the job if Marlow had only been less quiet about supporting him. “What do you think of McMaster?” Marlow asked, referring to General H. R. McMaster, who was named national security adviser this week. “His book, Dereliction of Duty, is something, really, that anybody concerned about either the Vietnam war or relations in the United States ought to read. It’s absolutely ” Bolton replied. “I think he’s demonstrated that he’s a man of great personal courage, and he’s an original thinker. I hope that he’ll be able to demonstrate those qualities. You know, it’s an uphill struggle when you’re still on active duty, which he is. I wish him all the best. I hope he does well. I’m happy to help out, whatever way I can, from the outside. ” “Let’s hope he can help coordinate the various departments and agencies that do national security. It sounds kind of boring and bureaucratic, but I tell you, it can be fatal to an administration — again, especially a Republican administration — if it doesn’t speak with one voice,” Bolton said. John Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and presides over his own political action committee, BoltonPAC. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 0 |
It s time to stop hitting the snooze button America! This crisis is no longer on our doorstep it s here. The Democrats, corporations and the Chamber of Commerce want to give these criminals the same rights as you and me Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump deserves credit for forcing all 17 Republican candidates to talk about the social costs of illegal immigration, but it is not Trump s issue. We will be making a fatal mistake if we let the media discuss it that way.As Ann Coulter has pointed out, this is the most critical issue of the 2016 race because this is the issue that will define whether or not there will even be an American nation recognizable as the home of the free and land of the brave. But illegal immigration is not Ann Coulter s issue any more than it is Tom Tancredo s issue. It is America s issue not only because it will define America in the 21st Century but because it also defines American elections and who will be voting in elections in 2020 and beyond. It also illuminates the power of the mainstream media to keep issues off the national stage.Think of illegal immigration this way: If the liberal media can keep illegal alien crime out of the kitchen table debate, they can keep any issue out of the debate. And they will if they can get away with it. For those reasons, illegal immigration is much more than an issue of public policy; it is the poster child for media malpractice.The media s attempt to suppress public awareness over illegal alien crime and the effects of illegal immigration on American workers jobs and wages is nothing less than censorship on a massive scale. We need to start talking about it in those terms and hold the media accountable for the lack of ethical standards.The mainstream media including, sadly, major segments of the presumably conservative media, like the Wall Street Journal are working overtime to keep the American public and the American voters in the dark on the scope of illegal alien crime. The murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco exposed only the tip of a massive iceberg, and the media establishment is desperate to avoid dealing with the iceberg underneath.Let s look at a few numbers. You haven t seen them in the New York Times, Atlanta Constitution, or the Miami Herald, nor have they been featured on NBC Nightly news or CNN. So, the average American is blissfully unaware of them.Between 2008 and 2014, 40% of all murder convictions in Florida were criminal aliens. In New York it was 34% and Arizona 17.8%. During those years, criminal aliens accounted for 38% of all murder convictions in the five states of California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and New York, while illegal aliens constitute only 5.6% of the total population in those states. That 38% represents 7,085 murders out of the total of 18,643. That 5.6% figure for the average illegal alien population in those five states comes from US Census estimates. We know the real number is double that official estimate. Yet, even if it is 11%, it is still shameful that the percentage of murders by criminal aliens is more than triple the illegal population in those states.Those astounding numbers were compiled by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) using official Department of Justice data on criminal aliens in the nation s correctional system. The numbers were the basis for a presentation at a recent New Hampshire conference sponsored by the highly respected Center for Security Policy. You can view the full presentation here:The federal Bureau of Prisons category criminal aliens includes legal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes, but over 90% of incarcerated criminal aliens are illegal aliens, so it is reasonable to use these numbers as a close approximation of the extent of illegal alien crime.Similar data is available at the state level if state officials have the desire to look for it. The Texas Department of Public Safety reports that between 2008 and 2014, 35% of the all murder convictions were illegal aliens averaging 472 murders each year from 2004 to 2008.Do you know the numbers for your state? Does your congressman, Senator, or Governor know those numbers? Of course not. If you are afraid of the answer, don t ask the question.There is widespread public ignorance of illegal alien crime in every state because the mainstream media does investigate such matters. Why? Because they do not want the public to think about such things. The media, from the Associated Press down to the Main Street News, does not even allow the phrase illegal immigrant to appear in print.So, the numbers are out there in the criminal justice system and correctional institutions, waiting to be compiled and published. State attorneys general and state legislators could access the data if they were interested, and so could the media, but they don t. In fact, in Colorado in 2006, the state legislature passed a law ordering the state Attorney General to compile accurate data on the costs of incarcerating illegal aliens and send a bill for reimbursement to the federal government. The state AG sent the feds a bill for only half the real costs the cost of inmates in the state prison system and not the costs imposed on taxpayers by an equal number of inmates in county jails across the state.The US Department of Justice s Bureau of Justice Programs publishes an annual report on the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, a report that includes data on the number of criminal aliens incarcerated each state prison system and each county jail. It takes some prodigious digging to find the data, but it is there.But our mainstream media, our self-described guardians of the First Amendment, consciously avoids the effort and declines to put a public spotlight on the problem or demand public scrutiny and public accountability. Why?The answer is that public debate on the problem of illegal alien crime does not serve the progressive political agenda. The issue is swept under the rug and anyone who raises it is called a racist.This is media malpractice of historic proportions, and publishers and editors are the unindicted coconspirators in those 7,085 murders. | 1 |
As per usual, the halftime show at the Superbowl was the main attraction. This year, it featured superstar singer Beyonce, along with the wildly popular band, Coldplay. It also featured lots of .rainbows. Of course, this particular detail upset the perpetually gay sex-obsessed religious bigots. They took to twitter to decry the fact that one of the manliest sports ever would dare to include anything rainbow themed in its entertainment for any reason whatsoever. Here are just a few choice tweets from the Twitter storm that ensued after the halftime show:Forgot the halftime show was changed to a gay rights movement Keegs (@Bryan_Keegs) February 8, 2016@IngrahamAngle the homosexual promoting halftime show is over at my house. S.Gatewood (@uspatriot72) February 8, 2016Super bowl 50 halftime show is emitting homosexual tendencies@CloydRivers what has America come to? Football is being destroyed. Tyler Solomon (@TylerSolomon30) February 8, 2016I believe the message of that halftime show was "quickly, become a homosexual" Real Trent Flubbs (@RealTrentFlubbs) February 8, 2016Just because the super bowl is held near San Francisco doesn't mean we need to make it a homosexual congregation Tyler Solomon (@TylerSolomon30) February 8, 2016Since when is the super bowl halftime show a gay pride festival #HillaryForPrison (@Kovacina_Matt65) February 8, 2016All the Halftime performance did was try to promote homosexuality. #JetIsBad (@Jetisbad) February 8, 2016Basically a homo pride celebration during halftime .. And that's one reason our country has gone down CamVP(15-1)(2-0) (@Alpha_Dog_LM24) February 8, 2016Of course, what these morons missed is the fact that the rainbows had zilch to do with gay pride and everything to do with Coldplay s promotion of its upcoming album:A Head Full Of Dreams, the new album, out now.iTunes: https://t.co/9SLDz80L67Google Play: https://t.co/usisZNkHf7 pic.twitter.com/LUyFJRFPkD Coldplay (@coldplay) February 6, 2016All this ridiculous complaining does is show how obsessed these pathetic people are with the activities of those who are in no way harming them. Nobody is going to force churches to perform gay weddings, or make them attend one. Nothing about their lives has changed with legalized marriage equality. The sky has not fallen. Perhaps the most accurate and ironic assessment of this whole ridiculous situation comes from Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, who reminded everyone that these complaints come from the same people who are watching a game in which dozens of men jump on top of each other for hours before dancing and patting each other on the butt. Featured image from video screen capture via Spin | 0 |
HAVANA (Reuters) - Armando Hart, who headed the Cuban revolution s literacy campaign and served for decades as education and then culture minister under Fidel Castro, died on Sunday from respiratory failure at age 87, Cuban state media reported. Hart, a Marxist intellectual and lawyer, who fought in the urban underground and was imprisoned during the last year of the revolution against U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, was married to Haydee Santamaria until 1980, a heroine of the revolution and one of its most important female figures. They had two children, both of whom died in an automobile accident in 2008. Hart was also a member of the Communist Party Political Bureau and the Council of State for many years, the two most powerful executive bodies in Cuba. In 1997, Hart became director of the national center to preserve the memory and works of Jose Marti, the country s most venerated figure, a position he held up to his death. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House excluded several major U.S. news organizations, including some it has criticized, from an off-camera briefing held by the White House press secretary on Friday. Reporters for CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed were not allowed into the session in the office of press secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer’s off-camera briefing, or “gaggle,” replaced the usual televised daily news briefing in the White House briefing room. He did not say why those particular news organizations were excluded, a decision which drew strong protests. Reuters was included in the session, along with about 10 other news organizations, including Bloomberg and CBS. President Donald Trump has regularly attacked the media and at a gathering of conservative activists on Friday he criticized news organizations that he said provide “fake news”, calling them the “enemy” of the American people. Spicer said his team decided to have a gaggle in his office on Friday instead of a full briefing in the larger White House briefing room and argued that “we don’t need to do everything on camera every day.” Reporters at the Associated Press and Time magazine walked out of the briefing when hearing that others had been barred from the session. Off-camera gaggles are not unusual. The White House often invites handpicked outlets in for briefings, typically for specific topics. But briefings and gaggles in the White House are usually open to all outlets and they are free to ask anything. A pool reporter from Hearst Newspapers was included in the gaggle on Friday and gave full details to the entire press corps. Media outlets allowed into the gaggle also shared their audio with others. Spicer’s decision drew a sharp response from some of the media outlets that were excluded. “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said in a statement. “We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.” The White House Correspondents Association, or WHCA, also protested. “The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” said Jeff Mason, president of the association and a Reuters reporter. During the election campaign last year, Trump’s team banned a few news organizations, including The Washington Post and BuzzFeed, from covering his campaign rallies for a period of time to protest their coverage. CNN posted a Twitter message on Friday afternoon saying: “This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House. Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like. We’ll keep reporting regardless.” Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, said in a statement: “While we strongly object to the White House’s apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not like, we won’t let these latest antics distract us from continuing to cover this administration fairly and aggressively.” On Friday, Spicer said the White House plans to fight against what it says is unfair coverage. “I think we’re going to aggressively push back,” he said. “We’re just not going to sit back and let false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there.” | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. _____ 1. Funerals began for some of the 41 victims of a suicide bombing at Istanbul’s main airport on Tuesday. The airport also reopened and the city appeared determined to get back to business as usual. Turkey, which faces terrorist threats from both Islamic State militants and Kurdish groups, has endured 14 major attacks in the past year. The government blames the Islamic State for this one, although it has not claimed responsibility. _____ 2. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain returned to London from a European Union summit meeting, leaving the leaders of the other 27 member countries to discuss Britain’s decision to exit. Candidates to replace Mr. Cameron when he steps down this fall have begun to come forward, and talk of an early general election is growing. Juan Jasso, above, a who drew attention after video captured him enduring xenophobic insults in Manchester, said he was actually in favor of Britain’s leaving the E. U. _____ 3. There’s one thing Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump seem to agree on: toughening trade policies to protect American jobs. The two presidential contenders are deadlocked, according to a new poll, and each has the potential to draw voters from the opposite party. We look at how Mr. Trump has shifted his stances on issues, usually with few political consequences. _____ 4. Accusations surfaced on Wednesday that the Trump Institute, a education business to which Mr. Trump lent his name and likeness, plagiarized materials from an obscure real estate manual in 2005. (The institute’s owners were a couple accused of fraud.) The complaint comes as lawsuits from another of Mr. Trump’s forays into education, Trump University, cast a shadow over his presidential campaign. _____ 5. Mexico, Canada and the United States will use sources to generate half their electric power by 2025, their leaders announced at a summit meeting in Canada. Marketed as a gathering of the “three amigos,” the meeting of President Obama, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico also served as a farewell of sorts for Mr. Obama and a debut for Mr. Trudeau. _____ 6. The extradition of the Mexican drug kingpin known as El Chapo has stalled. A lawyer for the drug lord, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who escaped from prison twice in Mexico, said two appeals filed this week could take years to resolve. The decision to extradite Mr. Guzmán to the United States, where he faces charges in multiple jurisdictions, was made shortly after he was recaptured in January. _____ 7. Changes are coming to your Facebook news feed, and they aren’t good for publishers. (Ahem.) Expect more updates from your friends and family members, and fewer links posted by news media sites. Facebook says it’s concerned that the growth of publisher posts is making it harder for users to connect with people they know. _____ 8. Wimbledon served up a match on Wednesday, pitting Marcus Willis, who is ranked 772nd, against the Roger Federer, above right. Federer won. But Willis, who teaches tennis at a boat club in England, captured the hearts of fans and received a standing ovation from the crowd. “It was a pleasure to play against him,” Federer said. _____ 9. William Shakespeare was a social climber. Previously unknown records shed new light on the playwright’s pursuit of a coat of arms on behalf of his father, which would have cemented his own status as a gentleman. They also rebut the idea that Shakespeare wasn’t the author of the works attributed to him. _____ 10. Mermaid schools, which have been teaching girls in the United States how to swim with a tail for quite some time, are spreading to France. The teacher who began classes in that country said 500 people took her introductory course in Marseille, and she has plans to expand. Swim on, mermaids. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran seriously condemns the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and its recognition of the city as Israel s capital, read a statement on Wednesday from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried by state media. The move violates international resolutions, the statement said. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israel s security. The U.S. action will incite Muslims and inflame a new intifada and encourage extremism and violent behavior for which the responsibility will lie with (the United States) and the Zionist regime (Israel), the foreign ministry statement said. The statement also called on the international community to pressure the United States not to go through with the embassy move or the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Islamic Republic of Iran has reiterated that the most important reason for the falling apart of stability and security in the Middle East is the continued occupation and the biased and unequivocal support of the American government for the Zionist regime, the statement said. And the deprivation of the oppressed Palestinian people from their primary rights in forming an independent Palestinian government with the noble Quds as its capital, it said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem. | 0 |
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan said its environment minister has been prevented from attending an annual U.N. climate meeting even with credentials as a non-governmental participant due to pressure from China. It represents the latest case of self-ruled Taiwan not being able to take part in an international event because of opposition from China, which objects to the island it claims under its one-China stand being accorded anything akin to the status of an independent state. Environmental protection agency minister Lee Ying-yuan had hoped to attend a U.N. climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, the island s foreign ministry said in a statement late on Monday. Due to China s interventions, environmental protection minister Lee was unable to enter the UNFCCC meeting, it said, referring to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Relations between Beijing and Taipei have nosedived since Tsai Ing-wen was elected the island s president last year. China believes she wants formal independence for Taiwan, a red line for Beijing. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s democracy and security. Taiwan s foreign ministry spokesman, Andrew H.C. Lee, told a news conference in Taipei the president believed climate change was an important issue and the island would endeavor to take part in international meetings to address it. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China s position was very clear. On the matter of Taiwan participating in international events, China s position is very clear; that is, it must comply with the One China principle, Geng told reporters, without elaborating. Organizers of the event in Bonn where were not immediately available for comment. Since 2009, when Taiwan announced its intention to participate in U.N. climate change meetings, the government has helped officials get credentials for talks as non-governmental observers to attend the international meeting. Taiwan participated last year with a lower-level delegation. Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations, having lost the seat it held in China s name in 1971 when the Communist government in Beijing assumed the position. Under the previous Taiwan administration of the China-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou, Beijing let Taiwan attend some U.N.-related events, including getting observer access at the annual U.N. World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva. This year, Taiwan was shut out of the health assembly, which the island also said was due to China s coercion and threats. China has previously blamed Taiwan for its exclusion from international events, saying it is due to Taipei s refusal to accept the one China principle. Nationalist forces, defeated by the Communists, fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States would set up “interim zones of stability” to help refugees return home in the next phase of the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq. The top U.S. diplomat did not make clear where these zones were to be set up. He was addressing a meeting of 68 countries and organizations gathered in Washington to discuss accelerating the battle against Islamic State. “The United States will increase our pressure on ISIS and al Qaeda and will work to establish interim zones of stability, through ceasefires, to allow refugees to return home,” Tillerson told the gathering at the State Department, where the former oil executive was hosting his first major diplomatic event. Although it was unclear how the zones would work, creating any safe havens could ratchet up U.S. military involvement in Syria and mark a major departure from President Barack Obama’s more cautious approach. Asked about Tillerson’s remarks, coalition spokesman Colonel Joseph Scrocca said the U.S. military had not yet received direction to establish any kind of “zones”. Increased U.S. or allied air power would be required if President Donald Trump chooses to enforce ‘no fly’ restrictions, and ground forces might also be needed to protect civilians in those areas. A final statement at the end of the meeting did not mention the possibility of safe zones. Islamic State has been losing ground in both Iraq and Syria, with three separate forces, backed by the United States, Turkey and Russia, advancing on the group’s Syrian stronghold city of Raqqa. U.S. defense officials said on Wednesday the U.S.-led coalition has airlifted Syrian rebel forces in an operation near the Syrian town of Tabqa in Raqqa province. “I recognize there are many pressing challenges in the Middle East, but defeating ISIS is the United States’ number one goal in the region,” Tillerson said. “As a coalition we are not in the business of nation building or reconstruction,” he said, adding that resources should be focused on preventing the resurgence of ISIS and equipping war-torn communities to rebuild. Wednesday’s event was the first meeting of the coalition since the election of Trump, who has pledged to make the fight against Islamic State a priority. Tillerson called on coalition partners to make good on financial pledges to secure and rebuild areas where Islamic State has been pushed out. The coalition has pledged more than $2 billion in assistance for Iraq and Syria in 2017. Iraqi government forces, backed by the U.S.-led international coalition, retook several Iraqi cities from Islamic State last year and have liberated eastern Mosul. While the jihadist group is overwhelmingly outnumbered by Iraqi forces, it has been using suicide car bombs and snipers to defend its remaining strongholds. Speaking to the same meeting, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called for unity in the region to combat Islamic State and outlined Iraq’s progress in the fight. He said Iraq was now at the stage of “destroying” Islamic State, not just “containing” it. Recounting a Tuesday conversation with the Iraqi leader, Senator Lindsey Graham said Abadi believed reconstruction of Anbar province as well as Mosul in Nineveh province would cost about $50 billion. | 1 |
Looking back on the 2016 Presidential election, there was a non-stop chorus on denials by Hillary Clinton, her campaign surrogates, and the mainstream media that had not allowed any classified emails to float around her home-brew server, or onto the family of her close aids.As it turns out, Hillary Clinton was lying. A new batch of emails released by the US State Department clearly show that Anthony Weiner, convicted sex criminal and husband of Clinton s chief aid Huma Abedin, had kept classified emails pertaining to official US State Department business during Hillary Clinton s tenure as Secretary of State kept on the same laptop which Weiner used to target an underage girl and where he also kept child pornography.Among the released emails were exchanges which clearly show Hillary Clinton conspiracy with authoritarian Saudi Arabia to stop Wikileaks. The reopening of this old Clinton gaping wound is another devastating blow for the mainstream media and the Democratic Party s resistance movement, whose mission is to remove Donald Trump for office.RT International reports At least five of the 2,800 emails stored on a laptop belonging to former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner were marked confidential and involved delicate talks with Middle Eastern leaders and Hillary Clinton s top aide.On Friday, the State Department released a batch of around 2,800 work-related documents from the email account of Huma Abedin, who served as the deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.At least five of the emails found on Abedin s ex-husband s laptop were heavily redacted and marked classified and at confidential level, the third more sensitive class the US government uses below secret and top secret. The State Department applies the confidential classification level to information that the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security, according to the Government Publishing Office.While the documents were not marked as classified before they were released, some of the information recovered in the emails was considered classified. It is illegal for civilians to posses or read classified documents without a security clearance.The confidential emails, which date from 2010 to 2012, concern discussions with Middle Eastern leaders.Dishonest: despite being caught multiple times, Hillary Clinton is still in denial about mishandling classified material.One of the emails has the subject Egyptian MFA on Hamas-PLO talks, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The email is mostly redacted, only mentioning that it is a further update on Hamas-PA talks, referring to the Palestinian Authority.Another four-page email contains a completely redacted call sheet to prepare Clinton for an upcoming call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.A call sheet in another 2010 email includes notes to guide Clinton through a call she would make to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. The purpose of the call was to inform Saud about an impending WikiLeaks disclosure. This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the call sheet instructed Clinton to say.Clinton was warning the Saudis the leak could contain information related to private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and asked the Saudi s to help the US prevent WikiLeaks from undermining our mutual interests. During a congressional hearing in 2016, former FBI Director James Comey said Abedin regularly forwarded emails to Weiner for him to print out for her so she could deliver them to the secretary of state. The emails were released in response to a 2015 lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch against the State Department after it failed to respond to a Freedom of Information request (FOIA) seeking: All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non- state.gov email address. In a statement issued Friday, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the release a major victory, adding that it was no surprise there were classified documents on Weiner s computer. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin s emails on Weiner s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials, Fitton said in a statement. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton s and Huma Abedin s obvious violations of law. The emails were discovered on Weiner s laptop during an FBI investigation into allegations that he engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl. In September, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to sending obscene material to a minor.The discovery of the emails led Comey to announce that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton s use of a private email server 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. Clinton said the announcement contributed to her loss to Donald Trump See more at RTLast year, in effort to shore-up Clinton s crumbling reputation for being truthful to the public, her campaign published a bizarre 4,000-word fact sheet on the Clinton campaign website.As it turned out, Clinton s fact sheet was riddled with numerous false statements and other half-truths, including a lie that the FBI was conducting a security review when it was in fact conducting an investigation, and that she never sent or received classified information on her email account.This latest Weiner revelation is just another devastating blow to an already damaged political brand.Could Clinton mount a 2020 run?It s highly unlikely.READ MORE HILLARY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Clinton FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 0 |
Hillary Clinton tried to say everyone supporting Trump is a racist she got a huge push back from online comments and dislikes for the event-check out the comments on Youtube too: There s your poll!A sampling of the remarks: Go to youtube if you want to see or comment on the video: THIS is priceless! | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers plan to introduce their legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare after they return from next week’s break, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Thursday. Ryan did not give a specific date and added that lawmakers are waiting to see how congressional analysts “score” their proposal to reverse former Democratic President Barack Obama’s health care law. The House is scheduled to return Feb. 27. | 0 |
While some on the Right want to downplay the race angle, others on the Left suggest that the entire success of the modern GOP was premised on exploiting Southern racism. Interestingly, though, much of what both sides think we know about this trend appears to be wrong. Elections analyst Sean Trende recently argued that “while the dominant narrative continues to insist that the South began to realign toward the Republicans in the wake of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in fact, Southern loyalties had begun to weaken during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.” As evidence, Trende notes that the South voted increasingly Republican every year of FDR’s presidency, and that although Eisenhower lost Dixie, he did so by only three points. What is more, while Eisenhower was gaining support in the South, he was simultaneously pushing civil rights legislation. So why did the South become increasingly Republican starting in the 1940s? According to Trende, “Southern whites simply became wealthy enough to start voting Republican.” This, of course, flies in the face of everything we think we know about why the South became solidly Republican. This is not to suggest that race wasn’t involved in the shift that really began to reach a tipping point after the ’60s, but it does suggest that history is more complex than the Reader’s Digest (or, rather, the Mother Jones) version many of us are taught in school.
After the post—Civil Rights Act “Dixiecrat” shift, economics and air‑conditioning conspired to send American voters fleeing the Rust Belt for the Sun Belt, further eroding the power of the Northeast Republican establishment, personified by the New York governors and presidential aspirants Thomas Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller. (This is a trend that is still under way; according to the U.S. census, the city of Austin, Texas—the liberal enclave in a deeply red state—was, by far, the fastest growing city in America from 2010 to 2013.) It’s unwise to write off an entire swath of the nation, but that’s just what Barry Goldwater, who represented Arizona in the U.S. Senate, seemed to do when he declared that “sometimes I think the country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern seaboard and let it float out to sea.” The Johnson campaign turned that line into a devastating ad in which the eastern side of a U.S. map, floating in water, is literally sawed off.
Truth be told, the South’s influence came to dominate both parties. Democrats soon saw that the only way they could win would be to cut into the GOP’s base. For a while, it looked like the only path to Democratic victory was through nominating a son of the South. From Texan Lyndon Johnson to Georgia peanut farmer Jimmy Carter to Arkansas’s Bill Clinton (and even to, yes, Al Gore), seemingly only Southern Democrats could win the White House—and even that trend was not very recent; consider Virginia‑born segregationist Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman, the descendants of slaveholders and Confederate sympathizers, or even Warm Springs, Georgia, resident FDR. In the post‑Reagan years, Southerners so dominated both parties that at one point, we had a president from Arkansas (Clinton), a vice president from Tennessee (Gore), a Majority Leader from Mississippi (Trent Lott), and a House Speaker from Georgia (Newt Gingrich). The chairman of the GOP was Haley Barbour, from Mississippi. President George W. Bush of Texas, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and House Majority Leaders Dick Armey and Tom DeLay (Texans) soon followed in what was, perhaps, the apex of Southern domination of the GOP, and simultaneously, of Republican triumphalism. Talk circulated that the GOP had achieved a “permanent governing majority.”
Ronald Reagan downplayed his intellectual and cosmopolitan credentials to accentuate his everyman persona. In similar fashion, Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe and president of Columbia University, dodged questions by employing bumbling answers at press conferences. “In public he wore a costume of affability, optimism, and farm‑boy charm,” wrote David Brooks in The Road to Character. “As president, he was perfectly willing to appear stupider than he really was if it would help him perform his assigned role. He was willing to appear tongue‑tied if it would help him conceal his true designs.” Biographer Andrew Sinclair said much the same thing about the much‑maligned Warren Harding’s “mute your own horn” leadership style. In this regard, George W. Bush simply followed a long‑standing tradition—albeit with a Texas twang. Tevi Troy, the former Bush aide who authored What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted, believes that “Bush probably read more history than [Jack] Kennedy.” If that sounds absurd, it’s partly because Kennedy highlighted his intellectual credentials, while the Yale‑educated Bush downplayed his. As a result, we consider Kennedy (no dummy, but no genius, either) smarter. Is this only the result of a liberal media painting Republicans as illiterate Babbitts? Hardly. “To be fair,” Troy writes, “Bush was not blameless in acquiring a reputation for not reading.”
In 2000, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff wrote that Kent Hance believes he “helped teach Mr. Bush the need to be more folksy.” As Mr. Hance put it, “He wasn’t going to be out‑Christianed or out‑good‑old‑boyed again.” If this is true (and one suspects it is), then it’s hard to fault Bush for doing what he had to do to win. And let’s not forget that he wasn’t just trying to forge his own comeback; he was also attempting to avenge his father’s defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1992. What is more, his father, former President George H. W. Bush, had been mocked as a tax‑raiser and a preppy wimp. George W. Bush did everything possible to be the opposite of that. The adoption of the Texas persona helped, but the younger Bush overswaggered and overtwanged. But hey, he managed to win two elections, and winning is everything, right?
The problem was, although this is a bipartisan phenomenon, it just happens to have disproportionately impacted the Right. Again, Republicans are thought of as the stupid party. Both sides of the political aisle occasionally genuflect at the altar of rural superiority, even if Republicans are decidedly better at it. Although President Obama’s appeal to urbanites and minorities is obvious, he is not above the affectation of droppin’ his gs and prattlin’ on about “folks.” Likewise, prep school—bred John Kerry (“Can I get me a hunting license here?”) experimented with some downright, down‑home Forrest Gump elocution during his 2004 race. Hillary Clinton has been known to affect a Southern accent when convenient. Even less subtle was the over‑the‑top, twangy country music song “Stand With Hillary” released in late 2014—“Put your boots on and let’s smash this ceilin’ ”—where all the gs were dropped. The producer of the “Stand With Hillary” song also produced a 2008 viral mariachi video, “Viva Obama.” Nothing happens by accident in politics. Hillary’s pandering is a transparent attempt to woo the “real America.” Noting the dichotomy between Obama’s pop‑culture outreach—which featured the Will.I.Am song “Yes We Can” and Hillary’s—Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist website, observed, “The attempt to pander to the white working class voters left out by the Democratic agenda for so many years is obvious and clumsy, but also revealing, signaling their perception of what’s happened to the electorate in the course of the Obama era.”
For all the GOP’s problems, it is perhaps instructive to remember that Democrats also face their own challenges, which include struggles to win white votes—and their own gender gap with men. Putting aside politics, the notion that America should have one de facto white party and one de facto minority party strikes me as unhealthy. We should all resist this sort of racial balkanization. And, of course, just as Republicans confront regional geographic problems, the Democrats missed winning the White House in 2000, at least partly because Al Gore couldn’t deliver his home state of Tennessee. Just a dozen years ago, former senator Zell Miller, a conservative Democrat, penned a book titled A National Party No More, lamenting the fact that his beloved party had written off the South, and would continue to pay an electoral price. “Today, our national Democratic leaders look south and say, ‘I see one‑third of a nation and it can go to hell,’ ” he wrote. This is a good example of how political fortunes can quickly change. Just as Miller’s book hasn’t aged well (electorally speaking, the Democrats seem to have made the right political moves), a dozen years from now this book might seem antiquated. I won’t be at all upset if that happens. Still, almost all the long‑term trends (including demographic shifts and shifts in public opinion) seem to suggest the GOP is in trouble if it doesn’t adapt and overcome.
In the introduction of this book, I wrote about my rural background in western Maryland and the deep abiding respect I have for rural Americans who have done much to make this a great country. I don’t want to see an America where everyone is huddled into cities. In the words of Hank Williams Jr., we need Americans who still know how to “skin a buck” and “run a trotline.” But one of the many challenges confronting conservatives is that America has transitioned from the agrarian age to the industrial age to the information age. Unlike the industrial age, where the top‑down assembly line model favored liberals, the tech revolution may favor the rugged individualism embraced by libertarian‑leaning conservatives. Regardless, given these trends, it makes little sense for a movement or a party to allow the rural‑versus‑urban paradigm—and the many cultural issues tied up in that—to define and assign membership status. So long as Republicans could win this way, it made perfect sense to exploit the cleavage between city folks and “Real America.” Not only was this smart politics, but it also tapped into deep‑seated beliefs.
So where did this traditional deification of rural areas come from? Among other things, credit (or blame) the influence of religion (think the Garden of Eden versus the Tower of Babel), philosophy (Rousseau’s notion about noble savages, and later, transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson—and Walden Woods-loving Henry David Thoreau), and various ideas conceived during the time of America’s founding, such as Thomas Jefferson’s agrarianism. “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries,” Jefferson wrote Madison, “as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” This was bipartisan. Believe it or not, in the run‑up to his 1932 election, Groton‑ and Harvard‑educated Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed far more support from rural and Southern voters than with big‑city types—and painted himself not as a former Wall Street lawyer but rather as a simple “farmer.”
This brings us to a contradiction within conservatism. Much of conservatism—a belief in free markets, for instance—is premised on the dynamic notion that more people equal more ideas. But while optimistic free marketeers adhering to this Reagan and Kemp model subscribe to this theory, most populists do not. The more optimistic worldview made major strides when economists like Julian Simon and Ester Boserup took on the Malthusian catastrophe argument, which erroneously predicted that global overpopulation would lead to mass starvation, and demonstrated that more people equals more ideas, innovation, and prosperity. When you think about it, it makes sense. Rural societies tend to work on subsistence (you eat what you grow— be careful what you wish for, “local foods” advocates!), but cities, by their very nature, demand free market economic skills such as cooperation, specialization, and trade. These things make us rich. And cities are the areas where these things are appreciated and magnified. And let us not forget that great cities, after all, not only have fostered great hedge funds, but have also built great cathedrals stone by stone.
Leaders emerge during times of tragedy and crisis, and it was at this moment that Nikki Haley, the female, Indian American governor of South Carolina, who also happens to be a conservative Republican, seized the moment. “Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it is time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds,” Haley said at a press conference on June 22, 2015. “This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state.” She was flanked by Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, who is one of only two African Americans in the U.S. Senate. And, in a way, the South Carolina governor and these senators represent a changing Republican Party, as well as a changing South. Graham, the only white representative, is probably the least conservative of the three. But they bring diverse perspectives that not very long ago were absent from Republican politics in the South. “The biggest reason I asked for that flag to come down was I couldn’t look my children in the face and justify it staying there,” Haley later told CNN’s Don Lemon. “What I realized now more than ever is people were driving by and they felt hurt and pain. No one should feel pain … My father wears a turban. My mother, at the time, wore a sari. It was hard growing up in South Carolina.” | 0 |
Ann Coulter, throughout her seemingly long career, has managed to offend just above every group that is not white, male or Christian (or American), although the last one is arguable. She hates African-Americans, Muslims, women, Hispanics, Latinos, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, atheists, scientists, veterans, the LGBT community, and just about everyone else. But the other day, Coulter managed to offend another group of Americans: Asians.Appearing on MSNBC s Hardball with Chris Matthews with Joy Ann Reid, the self-described Mean spirited, bigoted conservative struck again when she referred to Asian Americans supporting Donald Trump as Mandarins. And in true Coulter fashion, she insisted that it was the correct term even after being told that is was in fact not.Here s how the exchange went:ANN: You have Mandarin Chinese people with signs for Trump, Make America Great Again, written in Mandarin whether they are Hispanic or Mandarin, the ones inside the stadium are Americans and think of themselves as Americans and want the laws enforced As I said before they have Mandarins in the audience and Hispanics in the audience. JOY: What does Mandarin mean? You mean Asian American. They re called Asian Americans, Ann, not Mandarins. ANN: It has nothing to do with demographics. JOY: It s throwback language, it s not 1913. They are called Asian Americans. ANN: Anyways, as I was saying, it has nothing to do with demographics. It has to do with if you re here legally or illegally, whether you consider yourself American, whether the laws on the books are going to be enforced. We have an invasion of people who are - JOY: If your default when discussing Asian Americans is to call them Mandarins, we are not bringing back archaic language here, Ann. Just talk about people as Americans Asian Americans. ANN: No, you are not going to police my language. They are Mandarins, it is written in Mandarin. And there it is the big bad liberal is policing the poor, innocent conservative like a big old bully. Those damn liberals, not wanting to be grossly offensive and racist! How dare they!Now some people may not wholly object to this term. But for starters, it s always important to remember that not all Asians are Mandarins, also known as Chinese. When one blanket terms an entire race of people, they dismissing the importance of other cultures, ethnicities, and people of different origin, which is in itself racist. Coulter chose to brush off the importance of these people just because they are Asian (not white), by referring to them with a slur.Second, the term Mandarin was used to describe the public officials of China s imperial government, a government that has not been in place since 1912. So Coulter referring to these supposed Trump supporters as Mandarins shows just how stupid she really is, and that she really doesn t care about non-white people or their history.But then again, do any Trump supporters?Watch Ann make a fool of herself (yet again):Featured image via Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images | 0 |
NEW YORK/SAN JUAN (Reuters) - Puerto Rico’s much-delayed audited financial statements for 2014 are expected to be finished and issued by April, the U.S. territory’s governor said in a letter to U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan on Monday. The delay in completing the statements is due to the “complexities posed by our current financial crisis,” Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said in the letter, emailed by a representative for the commonwealth. However, he added that there may be additional issues that arise that require an “adjustment to such timetable.” A draft of the financials, which cited “substantial doubt” about the government’s ability to continue as a going concern, was released last week, but did not include data from some agencies and has not been approved by auditors at KPMG. The letter follows criticism from Republicans in Congress over the delay and a perceived lack of financial transparency from Puerto Rico. The island’s leaders are hoping for legislative help from Congress in tackling its $70 billion in debt, 45 percent poverty rate and dwindling population as locals flock to the mainland United States. Ryan has called on the Republican-led House to propose legislation by the end of March aimed at addressing Puerto Rico. In Monday’s letter, Garcia Padilla gave a sense of what it might look like on the island if the government or its agencies failed to survive as going concerns — that is, became unable to meet financial obligations long term. Entities subject to going concern assessments, Garcia Padilla wrote, include not only the government itself, but PREPA, the island’s sole power utility; HTA, which operates the island’s major roads; the Metropolitan Bus Authority, which transports thousands in the San Juan area; the Puerto Rico Medical Services Administration, the island’s main hospital and trauma center; and PRIHA, which oversees Medicaid benefits for 1.6 million poor residents. Garcia Padilla also stressed that the Government Development Bank, Puerto Rico’s primary fiscal agent, may not be able to make debt payments in the last quarter of fiscal year 2016, and that the island may have to pass emergency legislation imposing a moratorium on GDB debt payments. | 0 |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A plan to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 cleared its first legislative hurdle on Wednesday, putting the state on track to become the first in the nation to commit to such a large pay hike for the working poor. The measure, incorporating a deal Governor Jerry Brown reached with labor leaders and fellow Democrats in the Legislature, was approved on a party-line vote of 12-7 by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where a previous version of the bill had stalled last summer. One Democrat, Tom Daly, joined six Republicans in opposing the measure, which now advances to the full Assembly for action as early as this week. It would then return to the Senate for a final vote. If enacted, the bill would put California, home to one of the world’s biggest economies, in the vanguard of a growing number of U.S. states and cities that have moved in recent years to surpass the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Supporters say such measures are necessary to help low-paid workers who have been slipping into poverty due to stagnant earnings and rising living expenses. Opponents say raising the mandatory wage floor puts undue strain on businesses still struggling to rebound from a prolonged U.S. economic slump. The measure would gradually raise California’s hourly minimum wage from the current level of $10 to $15 by 2022 for large businesses and by 2023 for smaller firms. It also would head off a pair of competing ballot initiatives lacking a provision to allow the governor to suspend the increases in hard economic times, a deal breaker for Brown. Raising the minimum wage has cropped up on many Democratic candidates’ agendas ahead of the November elections, and the issue could help galvanize supporters at the polls. But passage is not assured without backing from more moderate Democrats, including business-friendly Assembly members in swing districts who have recently held up bills that were priorities for the party’s progressive wing, including a plan to cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. According to the governor’s office, 2.2 million Californians earn the state minimum wage of $10 an hour. The bill would ultimately benefit 5.6 million workers, raising their wages by an average of 24 percent, according to an analysis from the University of California, Berkeley. Retail employees account for 16 percent of affected workers, and restaurant employees 15 percent. | 0 |
This letter is quite possibly the most important letter these students will ever receive throughout their entire college career. It should be adopted by every college and university in America as part of a contract the students are asked to read and accept.It s finally happened. A college president, faced with whining students who are offended by well everything, has written a letter to the entire student body. (Some of which I presume will offend some students) He reminds them they are in college and that perhaps the reason they feel bad is a little thing known as a conscience. Dr Everett Piper of Oklahoma Wesleyan University explained what their purpose and his is at the university.Here is his letter in its entirety:Dr. Everett Piper, PresidentOklahoma Wesleyan UniversityThis past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt victimized by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.I m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them feel bad about themselves, is a hater, a bigot, an oppressor, and a victimizer. I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience! An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad! It is supposed to make you feel guilty! The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization!So here s my advice:If you want the chaplain to tell you you re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.If you re more interested in playing the hater card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn t one of them.At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don t issue trigger warnings before altar calls.Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a safe place , but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!This is not a day care. This is a university!We applaud Dr Piper and wish more colleges and universities had more like him. Then again, Oklahoma Wesleyan is not Yale or Dartmouth, where the presidents are careful not to offend the spoiled brats of well-to-do parents in order to keep those tuition checks and honorariums coming in. Via: | 1 |
Meryl Streep made a white grievance queen explode on Sunday night.Donald Trump waited until the next morning to lash out at the legendary actress, but Tomi Lahren went on an hour long Twitter rage just after Streep s speech.The white supremacist favorite repeatedly insulted and threatened Streep and Hollywood celebrities in a psychotic rant that should have mental health professionals concerned.Meryl bout to get some final thoughts tomorrow. These entitled Hollywood crybabies still don t understand how out of touch they are! Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017Nearly 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, so Streep is definitely in touch with the majority.It might be warm in LA, but make no mistake it s raining snowflakes. Out of touch, whiny, overpaid SNOWFLAKES! #GoldenGlobes Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017Ironic, considering Donald Trump makes billions of dollars but doesn t pay taxes and often doesn t pay people who do work for his company. Also, has Lahren not seen Trump s Twitter feed? It s FULL of real whining.These Hollywood elites wouldn t know average, every day hard-working Americans if we bit them in the ass. #GoldenGlobes Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017Aw, Lahren thinks she s a hardworking person. That s so adorable. Must be SOOO hard to spew random bullshit on television in a studio. No need to learn lines. No need to work an 18 hour day. No need to work in some tough environments on location away from family. No need to learn new things to make a role convincing to the audience. Just show up and say whatever racist offensive thing on your narrow mind at the moment and get paid for it.Hey Meryl, your #liberalprivilege is showing. #GoldenGlobes Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017Freedom of speech is a right, not a privilege.Oh no!! What will @realDonaldTrump do without the support of the liberal Hollywood elite?! Oh I know, he will Make America Great Again. Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017He ll pout on Twitter about it.Oh and Meryl, we are just fine with watching football. Thanks. #GoldenGlobes Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017The ratings are down this year so apparently not everyone is just fine with it.You re right about 1 thing Meryl, violence does incite violence kinda like the violence the DNC paid for at Trump rallies. Kinda like that.. Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017That has been debunked for awhile now.Safeguard the truth Meryl? Like the truth in those 33k deleted emails? Or are we talking about Hillary s lies? Not sure, Meryl . Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017Still obsessing over Hillary s emails? Seriously?It sounds like Lahren is in need of anger management classes. She can take Donald Trump with her.Featured image via screenshot | 0 |
The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Wow, the Failing @nytimes said about @foxandfriends “....the most powerful T.V. show in America.” [0648 EDT] - Come on Republican Senators, you can do it on Healthcare. After 7 years, this is your chance to shine! Don’t let the American people down! [0724 EDT] - “One of the things that has been lost in the politics of this situation is that the Russians collected and spread negative information..... [0935 EDT] - ...about then candidate Trump.” Catherine Herridge @FoxNews. So why doesn’t Fake News report this? Witch Hunt! Purposely phony reporting. [0945 EDT] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) | 1 |
By Alma Causey When it comes to our health, we do everything humanly possible to maintain it. However, when it comes to our mental well-being, we often ignore our emotional extremes and mood swings.... | 0 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A country’s spending on development aid and on defense are separate items, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday, responding to German comments about NATO’s target for increasing military budgets. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had said on Thursday that it was not realistic for Germany to spend 2 percent of its economic output on defense and that other spending, such as development aid, should be taken into consideration. “Diplomacy, development aid, economic cooperation can be important to help stabilize a region,” Stoltenberg told a news conference in Brussels. “We have international targets, guidelines, for development aid, 0.7 percent of GDP and then we have a NATO agreement on moving toward 2 percent. But those are two different things, even though both are important,” he added. “It is not either development or security, it is development and security and the foundation of development is to have peace and security.” | 1 |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Republicans may have failed to overthrow Obamacare this week, but there are plenty of ways they can chip away at it. The Trump administration has already begun using its regulatory authority to water down less prominent aspects of the 2010 healthcare law. Earlier this week, newly confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price stalled the rollout of mandatory Medicare payment reform programs for heart attack treatment, bypass surgery and joint replacements finalized by the Obama administration in December. The delays offer a glimpse at how President Donald Trump can use his administrative power to undercut aspects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion that Republicans had sought to overturn. The Republicans’ failure to repeal Obamacare, at least for now, means it remains federal law. Price’s power resides in how to interpret that law, and which programs to emphasize and fund. Hospitals and physician groups have been counting on support from Medicare - the federal insurance program for the elderly and disabled - to continue driving payment reform policies built into Obamacare that reward doctors and hospitals for providing high quality care at a lower cost. The Obama Administration had committed to shifting half of all Medicare payments to these alternative payment models by 2018. Although he has voiced general support for innovative payment programs, Price has been a loud critic of mandatory federal programs that dictate how doctors should deliver healthcare. Providers such as Dr. Richard Gilfillan, chief executive of Trinity Healthcare, a $15.9 billion Catholic health system, say they will press on with these alternative payment plans with or without the government’s blessing. But they have been actively lobbying Trump officials for support, according to interviews with more than a dozen hospital executives, physicians and policy experts. Without the backing of Medicare, the biggest payer in the U.S. healthcare system which Price now oversees, the nascent payment reform movement could lose momentum, sidelining a transformation many experts believe is vital to reining in runaway U.S. healthcare spending. Price “can’t change the legislation, but of course he’s supposed to implement it. He could impact it,” said John Rother, chief executive of the National Coalition on Health Care, a broad alliance of healthcare stakeholders that has been lobbying the new administration for support of value-based care. The move Friday to pull the Republican bill only reinforces the risk to the existing law, which Trump said on Friday “will soon explode.” “It seems that the Trump Administration now faces a choice whether to actively undermine the ACA or reshape it administratively,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president at Kaiser Family Foundation, wrote on Twitter. “The ACA marketplaces weren’t collapsing, but they could be made to collapse through administrative actions,” he added. The United States spends $3 trillion a year on healthcare - more by far than 10 other wealthy countries - yet has the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rate, according to a 2013 Commonwealth Fund report. Link to Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2nkTWoC Health costs have soared thanks in part to the traditional way doctors and hospitals get paid, namely by receiving a fee for each service they provide. So the more advanced imaging tests a doctor orders or pricey procedures they perform, the more money he or she makes, regardless of whether the patient’s health improves. “We have a completely broken economy in healthcare,” said Blair Childs, senior vice president at hospital purchasing group Premier Inc. “Literally, all of the incentives in fee-for-service are for higher cost.” Alternative payment models are designed to remove incentives that reward overtreatment of patients. Private insurers are on board, with Aetna Inc, Anthem Inc, UnitedHealth Group and most Blue Cross insurers announcing plans to shift half of their reimbursement to alternative payment models to control costs. To promote the shift to alternative payments, the ACA created an incubator program at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The CMS innovation center is funded by $10 billion over 10 years to test payment schemes aimed at improving quality and cutting the cost of care. The Obama administration’s decision to make some of these payment programs mandatory has drawn the ire of Price, a former U.S. senator and orthopedic surgeon. In response to a mandatory payment program for joint replacements last September, for example, Price charged that the CMS innovation center was “experimenting with Americans’ health.” In his January 17 confirmation, Price said he was a “strong supporter of innovation,” but said he believed the CMS innovation center “has gotten a bit off track.” President Trump has already signed an executive order directing the HHS to begin unraveling Obamacare. In the early hours of his presidency, Trump directed government agencies to freeze regulations and take steps to weaken the healthcare law. The order directed departments to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of provisions that imposed fiscal burdens on states, companies or individuals. These moves were meant to minimize the costs and regulatory burdens imposed on states, private entities and individuals. David Cutler, the Harvard health economist who helped the Obama Administration shape the ACA, said Price could do all sorts of things to undermine the law. “If he wants to blow it up, he can,” Cutler said in an email. But if they do, he added, “they alone will own the failure.” | 1 |
He is alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iO8YZLwqlY | 1 |
After a shaky jobs report in April, May had a downright terrible showing, on which Republicans have already pounced as evidence of supposedly failed Democratic policy. They re busy going after both Obama and Hillary Clinton for this dismal report as hard as they can. In fact, GOP chairman Reince Priebus tweeted:Devastating jobs report showing weakest hiring in 5 yrs is sign we need to move away from failed Obama policies Clinton is promising to keep Reince Priebus (@Reince) June 3, 2016Donald Trump, never one to pass up an opportunity to pretend he knows everything, pounced, too, tweeting: Terrible jobs report just reported. Only 38,000 jobs added. Bombshell! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2016President Obama has been working hard to polish his image on the economy, and this report could very easily tarnish and dent it. That s especially true with the paradox of a falling unemployment rate paired with an abysmal jobs report. The falling unemployment rate is almost entirely due to more than 450,000 people dropping out of the labor force in May. That makes it a misleading statistic, and therefore, a black eye for Obama. Right?Wrong. There s evidence suggesting that someone else could be to blame for this, like Donald Trump and his supporters.Uneducated white people a.k.a the average Trump voter had ten times the impact on the unemployment rate that they should have, given the size of their demographic compared to the overall population. It s true that employment in this demographic has been destroyed by globalization and automation, which is why they support Trump. They like his protectionist mentality and his business credentials (if, indeed, they can be called that).While yes, exit polls during certain states primaries showed that Trump s voters may actually be better off economically than their Democratic counterparts, some of that may be due to the fact that Republican voters tend to be wealthier than Democratic voters. They also tend to turn out for primaries far more than Democratic voters.Other analyses have found that Trump s main demographic is, in fact, the poor, white, uneducated, working-class male, despite what exit polls from state primaries said. Trump solidified his hold on the GOP s nomination in May, and his job-creation rhetoric resonates heavily with this group. Could his promises of bringing jobs back be making people drop out of the labor force?The jobs report showed serious declines in both construction and manufacturing, which are two of the main industries in which these people tend to work. Trump keeps promising he ll bring their jobs back from overseas, and he ll spur all kinds of economic activity here, and these voters eat it up like candy.Dropping out of the labor force and voting Republican implies that these voters think others should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps (finish high school, get a degree, learn a new trade, etc.) but they themselves shouldn t have to. They can sit and wait until Trump is elected, and then their jobs will come flowing back, they ll be working again, and all will be right with the world.There s no way to know for sure whether this is true right now, but Trump s outsized influence over these people could easily have convinced them to drop out of the labor force and just wait for him to get elected and solve their employment woes for them.Featured image by Clyde Robinson. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Flickr | 1 |
Sixty percent of adults feel “hopeful and optimistic” about the future of the country, a Wall Street News poll released Sunday shows, while President Trump’s net approval rating is negative — for now. [When asked, “When you think about the future of the country, would you say that you are mainly hopeful and optimistic or mainly worried and pessimistic,” sixty percent of 1, 000 adults surveyed from Feb. 18 t0 Feb. 22 said they were hopeful, not pessimistic. That’s a steady upward drift from 53 percent in August, and 56 percent in December. Pollsters note the margin of error is plus or minus 3. 1 percentage points. Meanwhile, Trump himself fares slightly less well: 44 percent approve of the job he’s doing as president, while 48 percent disapprove. The surge in optimism is driven in part by Trump voters’ enthusiasm, according to what pollster Bill McInturff told the Washington Examiner: “This is a strong number being driven by very high numbers among Trump voters who express optimism across a number of measures on the poll, including higher economic confidence. ” But other groups are feeling hopeful, too. Over half, or 52 percent, of Hispanics are hopeful about the future of America, not worried. So are 65 percent of whites. (Among blacks, only 36 percent feel optimistic.) Nearly all Republicans, or 87 percent, are hopeful about the future, as well as 56 percent of independents. And so are 37 percent of Democrats. So, Trump has broad appeal with whites and Hispanics, along with a significant minority of Democrats — and a majority of independent voters. That’s solid enough of a coalition to sustain power and encourage a younger generation of Republican leaders, such as Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, to champion a populist, nationalist agenda. Trump’s approval ratings may be low at the moment, but his administration is still brand new and voters outside centers of concentrated, Democratic power are still cautiously warming to him. The losers of the globalization game were stigmatized as bigoted or hateful for protesting policies enabling cheap labor, low wages, mass immigration, communities, family disintegration, drug addiction, suicide. The years leading up to the election were marked by an incredible expansion of the labor pool and a $ wealth transfer to Wall Street. Every job created from 2000 to 2014 went to the large, population residing in the U. S. which stands at roughly 42. 4 million people. Coincidentally, morality rates “from drug poisoning, alcohol poisoning, and suicide increased by 52 percent between 2000 and 2014,” according to one university study. “Nearly half of all young white male deaths are caused by drugs, alcohol, or suicide,” wrote the author, compared to roughly a quarter of young Hispanic male deaths and 13 percent of young black deaths. The Economist found that 41 percent of white, working class men have given up looking for work. Over 47, 000 people died from deaths in 2014 alone, and heroin overdose deaths have more than tripled between 2010 and 2015. The wave of death washing over American communities elicited little notice, let alone outrage, from the political establishment and mega media outlets. Immigration also fueled this surge of : Nearly all of the heroin used in the U. S. is brought across the border by Mexican traffickers. But the globalist class plowed ahead with its agenda anyway, deepening the sense of alienation many felt, particularly those drawn to Trump. “The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes,” as one pseudonymous essayist wrote in the in the Claremont Review of Books. Many sensed they were being denied a say in the way their lives were being shaped, and in many cases, destroyed by the globalists’ preferred policies: Before Trump assumed office, 84 percent of white, voters told pollsters that U. S. government did not represent their views. “The archipelago of constituencies loyal to Democrats is small geographically. But it has lately set close to 100 percent of the agenda, and did so even in the 2016 election,” writes the Weekly Standard‘s Christopher Caldwell. “The important cultural innovations of the Obama Administration can fairly be said to have been introduced without debate, or at least in disregard of what debate had been going on,” Caldwell writes. “Gay marriage was this way, as was the complex of issues surrounding transgender bathrooms. Where did the movement Black Lives Matter come from, with its mix of street violence and campus political correctness? … Why was no one in authority talking about the heroin and opioid epidemic, even as it was killing more Americans than any drug wave in American history, more even than car accidents?” “Perhaps the main thing voters were trying to do in 2016 was to restore democratic scrutiny to actors who had long managed to evade it. We will never know, because for many years Americans have felt unable to talk about such things in public at all,” he said. And now, Trump has an opportunity to build a lasting governing coalition out of voters ignored or mocked by the globalist class. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia,” White House Chief strategist Steve Bannon said during a November interview. “The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f — ed over. ” “If we deliver, we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years,” he said. “That’s what the Democrats missed … They lost sight of what the world is about. ” | 0 |
There seems to be a definite double standard when it comes to how Republicans in Congress want to go about investigating terrible governors. When it came to investigating former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (D), Republicans like Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) were fast and furious with their requests to obtain the information they wanted in regards to a scandal surrounding Oregon s health insurance exchange. However, when it comes to going after Republican Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan over the horrendous Flint water crisis, those same Republicans so adamant at going after a Democratic governor, failed to send requests to investigate Flint.Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) is not about to let them get away with this hypocrisy whatsoever.In a letter sent by Cummings to Chaffetz, who is the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Cummings points out the clear double-standard of the committee going after Kitzhaber, but not Snyder in the same regard. And while Cummings does give them some credit for called Snyder before the Committee in March, it is clear that they are not going after Snyder with the same vigor. Cummings wrote: During our meeting last week, you explained that you had spoken directly with Governor Snyder, and you suggested that one reason not to request documents from him is because he might claim that his communications about the Flint water crisis are protected by executive privilege. Although I was not a part of your conversation with Governor Snyder, any claim of executive privilege to withhold documents from Congress would be a surprising turn of events that directly contradicts the Governor s own promises of accountability to the people of Michigan. Cummings also wrote: I believe that the Committee should apply the same standards for requesting documents to all governors, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans. By declining to send any document request at all to Governor Snyder, the Committee is creating the perception of a double-standard in which it has requested documents from a Democratic governor, but not from a Republican governor. He then goes on to give the example of former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.It is simply woefully irresponsible to so blatantly neglect going after Gov. Snyder, especially considering the Flint, Michigan water crisis is so irreversibly severe causing lifelong health issues to those affected. Not only should they be investigating Snyder to the fullest extent, but they should be pushing for his resignation, as is what happened with Kitzhaber.Cummings sums it up best when he states: The Committee has never accepted this practice as an adequate standard of investigation, and we should not do so now. Governor Snyder and his staff are central figures in the decision-making process that led to the poisoning of Flint residents, and the Committee owes it to these residents to conduct a comprehensive and bipartisan investigation. Snyder needs to be held responsible and party politics need to be checked at the door. End of story.Featured image via YouTube | 1 |
The nation s nuclear arsenal is going to be even more difficult to maintain because Donald Trump just ordered the top people at the National Nuclear Security Administration to resign immediately.Donald Trump has previously claimed that he wants to ignite a nuclear arms race and expand America s nuclear arsenal, but it looks like he s only interested in making America less safe.The National Nuclear Security Administration is charged with keeping America s nuclear weapons up to date and ready to go so that if we ever need to use them they ll be in working order.The NNSA presents a budget to Congress every year and asks for money to do their jobs. But if Trump has his way, the NNSA will not be able to do these things.In the past, presidential appointees to posts like the NNSA have traditionally been held until after the new president appoints and the Senate confirms their replacement. Such a tradition ensures that the government is still working even during a transition of power.But according to Gizmodo,Trump, however, appears determined to immediately push out everyone who was appointed by Obama, regardless of whether or not he has anyone in line for the job. Or, as our source put it: It s a shocking disregard for process and continuity of government. Just as with Obama s soon-to-be-removed international envoys, Trump has ordered Under Secretary for Nuclear Security Frank Klotz and his deputy, Madelyn Creedon both Obama appointees to leave their posts, even if it means no one is in charge of maintaining the country s nuclear weapons. According to our Energy Department source, Trump s team has yet to nominate anyone to succeed them. Since both positions require Senate confirmation, if could be months before their chairs are filled. And the vacancies may extend beyond the leadership roles.And because Klotz and Creedon are the only ones in the NNSA who can present a budget to Congress, it means the agency could end up without leadership and funding to do what it is supposed to do until Trump and the Senate do their jobs, and that could take months.An Energy Department source told Gizmodo that, I m more and more coming around to the idea that we re so very very fucked. Donald Trump is putting our nation at risk by not observing the transition traditions that keep the government working efficiently and smoothly. He is apparently obsessed with ousting anyone who disagrees with him and anyone who was hired during the Obama Administration. But Republicans should remember that if they allow Trump to do this, they have no right to whine when Democrats do the exact same thing to conservatives in four years. Because then we ll see what taking out the trash really looks like.The fact that Trump is literally willing to weaken the effectiveness of our government and endanger our national security with his pettiness is frightening. The only person who is probably happy about this news is Vladimir Putin. Once again, Trump is a useful idiot to Russia.Featured Image: Pixabay | 0 |
BELIZE CITY, Belize — One o’clock arrived. Relatives gathered at a hotel bar to watch Olympic gymnastics on television. So did the first lady of Belize and 11 contestants in the coming Miss Belize pageant, wearing their sashes and carrying tiny flags. But where was Simone Biles? The women’s individual competition had begun 4, 000 miles away on Thursday afternoon at the Rio Games. Biles, 19, was the heavy American favorite, but there was also anticipation in an unlikely place, the tiny Central American country of Belize, where she holds dual citizenship. Phone calls were made. Television channels were changed. Beauty contestants were perplexed. Still no live gymnastics. Finally, after 30 minutes, the live feed began on Caribbean television. Biles had already performed her vault routine, but the delayed start did not mute the ecstatic cheering that greeted her second gold medal at the Rio Games. There are big stories unfolding in Belize, including a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed gay rights and the cleanup from Hurricane Earl, which churned through last week. But interest in Biles also has resonated here, in the country’s economic capital, as evidenced everywhere from the prime minister’s residence to the shade of a local plum tree, painted purple and gold, where tour guides talk politics and play dominoes. “We are taking all the gold medals she is going to win,” Kim Simplis Barrow, 44, the first lady of Belize, said with a smile. Biles’s connection to Belize is as complex and ultimately elevating as the flips, jumps and windmill spins that have made her the best gymnast of her generation, perhaps ever. She was born in 1997 in Columbus, Ohio, to a mother who struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol, and to a father who was not part of her life. In 2002, Biles’s birth mother lost custody of her four children, who were placed in foster care and faced the possibility of being scattered by adoption. Instead, Simone, then 6, and her younger sister Adria, then 4, were adopted in 2003 by their maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, and his second wife, Nellie Cayetano Biles, who is from a prominent Belizean family of teachers and nurses and government officials. (Nellie is not Simone’s biological grandmother Simone’s other two biological siblings were adopted by Ron’s older sister.) Before, Ron and Nellie were known to Simone and Adria as Grandpa and Grandma. Now they are Mom and Dad. Nellie’s mother, Evarista Cayetano, was a teacher and an owner of a grocery store. Her father, Silas Cayetano, also began his career as a teacher, then became an official in Belize’s fishing and agricultural cooperatives, and, later, a senator. The original family home, at 118 Neal Penn Road, was made of wood. The family lived upstairs and the store was downstairs. It was a gathering place, where Silas Cayetano held court on weekends, settling neighborhood disputes, telling jokes, spinning stories. “It was community central, especially on Saturdays, when the chickens were fresh,” said Opal Enriquez, a cousin of Simone’s and the director of the Miss Belize pageant. The Cayetano home had opened its doors to the nine Enriquez children, whose family came to Belize City from the southern town of Punta Gorda. Silas Cayetano had skipped high school, worked at a seminary and passed his teacher’s exam at age 19, relatives said. He encouraged his nieces and nephews, as he had his own four children, telling them that education was the most reliable way to escape poverty. “Our uncle set the bar high,” Enriquez said. “Failure was never an option. He embedded in our brains that we were destined for greatness. Simone listened. We weren’t afraid to dream. ” When Ron and Nellie Biles adopted Simone and Adria, they had two sons of their own who were about to graduate from high school and leave for college. The couple wanted to travel. It would not be easy raising two young girls. But the girls needed parents, and adopting them was a “no brainer,” said Nellie, 61. “When you grow up, I firmly believe that you see what goes on in the family, what your father and mother do,” she said. “And you tend to mimic what you see. It’s innate. It wasn’t even a question. ” The extended Biles family is watching Simone compete at the Olympics across two continents and four time zones. Ron and Nellie and a dozen other relatives are in Rio. Others are in Spring, Tex. north of Houston, where the Bileses live and own a gymnastics center. Still more are scattered in Belize, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. “We’re trying to put Belize on the map as much as we can,” Nellie, a retired nurse, said. “Simone is competing for the U. S. and we’re not taking any credit away from that. But the fact that she has dual citizenship, I don’t see why we cannot celebrate her second country also. ” And Belize seems happy to celebrate Biles. Formerly known as British Honduras, it gained its independence only in 1981. Belize has never produced an Olympic champion since it began competing in the Summer Games in 1968. A small contingent of three athletes was sent to Rio to compete with modest ambitions in track and field and judo. During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Belize did have a big moment, celebrating and claiming three gold medals won in sprinting by the American Marion Jones, whose mother was born here. After winning the 200 meters, Jones held up a Belizean flag. Its coat of arms features two woodcutters, one with light brown skin carrying an ax, the other darker skinned and holding an oar, who symbolize the country’s ethnic diversity, history of slavery and its mahogany industry. Jones’s gesture brought international attention to Belize and widely endeared her to its citizens. The country later named her a sports ambassador. Though Jones’s victories were nullified and her career disgraced by doping and a scheme, which brought a prison sentence of six months, she remains popular and appreciated here. Belize’s national stadium, long being refurbished, is called the Marion Jones Sports Complex. Belize’s relationship with Simone Biles is less entrenched so far, but also less complicated. She is a bubbly teenager who has traveled here regularly to visit and to go fishing and snorkeling on vacation. Last summer, she attended the wedding of her brother here, posed for a newspaper photographer, and was spotted doing back flips off a pier. Upon arriving in Rio, she traded Olympic pins with a Belizean athlete. “Simone said, when she gets married, it’s going to be in Belize,” Nellie Biles said. Ron Biles paused as he sat on a sofa at a hotel near Rio’s Olympic Park on Monday, his 67th birthday. “It’s going to be a while longer,” he said as a group of relatives broke into laughter. “Another 16 years. ” As the Olympics approached, Simone was acknowledged by Belize’s ministry of youth and sports, interviewed on the popular Love FM radio, featured in the country’s newspaper and followed widely on social media. “People are very excited, because she has Belizean parentage, she’s a great athlete and she acknowledges her Belizean roots,” Adele Ramos, the assistant editor of Amandala, Belize’s newspaper, said of Biles. “She is the next best thing for us after Marion Jones. ” Yet some feel conflicted, not about Biles, but about the way Belize, in their view, does not fully support its homegrown athletes. Karen Vernon, the theater director of Belize’s Institute of Creative Arts and the mother of two of the country’s top cyclists, said she was happy for Biles but did not “like the fact that Belize is waiting for her to win to claim her. ” “We need to support our own athletes and artists,” Vernon said. “We have talent here. ” The Cayetano family was not athletic, Nellie Biles said the other day with a laugh, though her father did claim ornately to have been a gymnast and the source of Simone’s versatile skills. “Everybody knows that Nellie’s father was a comedian,” said Florita Avila, 59, a cousin of Simone’s. As a girl, Nellie Biles said she played tennis and did the hop, skip and jump. Ron, her husband, shook his head. “You played hopscotch,” he said. His wife did not play sports but watched them on television, Ron added, before correcting himself and saying, “You didn’t have a television. ” It is a true story, Nellie said. In 1973, at 18, she left Belize to attend nursing school at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. Until then, she said, she had never seen a television in person, used a phone or flown on a plane. “It was, needless to say, culture shock,” she said. In 1976, she met Ron, who was stationed at Randolph Air Force Base outside San Antonio. (He is retired from the military and from his career as an air traffic controller.) In 1977, they married, and they have the playful banter of a couple who has been together for 40 years. Was it love at first sight? “No, oh no,” Nellie Biles said. “It was his good luck. ” Ron replied, “She’s still here, isn’t she?” When the adoption of Simone and Adria, now 17, became official in November 2003, the Bileses returned home from meeting with a family judge outside Houston. Nellie told the girls that they could continue to call her and Ron Grandma and Grandpa, or they could call them Mom and Dad. Simone has said that she went upstairs, practiced in the mirror, then came down and said “Mom. ” Nellie remembers Simone running back upstairs, probably giggling because it seemed funny. It was Mom from then on. “I think these girls did more for us than we did for them,” Nellie Biles said. “Simone centralized us as a family. We come together and do things and go places because of Simone. ” While on a field trip, Simone became interested in gymnastics. Her relatives in Belize remember her from those days as “little Simone,” a tiny girl in perpetual motion, a “spring chicken” and “a firecracker. ” And they say she came to possess the same discipline, insistence, confidence and expectation as Nellie, the eldest sibling in her own family, who with three partners came to own 14 nursing homes in Texas before selling them last year and turning her attention to operating a gymnastics center. “She is Nellie’s child all over,” said Felix Enriquez, 47, Opal’s brother, who is scheduled to become the second in command in Belize’s ministry of defense. “A fair but stern personality. Always demanding that things be done in a proper way. A very big thinker. She doesn’t think small. ” Ron and Nellie Biles have lived in their current home in Spring, Tex. for six years. Ron, a native of Cleveland, said he had never been in the pool until he jumped in when the Cavaliers won the N. B. A. title in June, the city’s first major championship since 1964. Would he jump in the Atlantic in Rio if Simone won gold in the women’s individual all around? “I’ll probably just cry,” he said. Nellie said she would watch nervously in the arena, grabbing someone to hold onto. Here, at the hotel bar, there was little tension, only clapping and cheering except for during Simone’s wobble on the balance beam. “I was panicking at that one,” Felix Enriquez said. Not to worry. Biles had a huge lead, which she secured on the floor exercise with elegance, strength and the stunning ability to land like a dart. “Oh my God!” Simplis Barrow, Belize’s first lady, said, putting her hands to her face, pumping her fists, and photo bombing a family picture. “Woooh. ” “She has inspired us all,” Simplis Barrow said. “No matter where you come from, you can succeed. It is all right there in that small package. ” | 0 |
You have got to be kidding me! After all the times that Trump has been attacked by the Democratic side of our society for saying that we need a wall on our Mexican border to stop illegals from getting into our country and destroying our economy, Obama just pulled the most hypocritical and pointless move of his career.Obama just gave a gift of $75 MILLION to Mexico to provide material and equipment for the building of a border wall on Mexico s SOUTHERN border and to help cover the expense of training to help man the wall properly.So basically he is helping Mexico to keep out illegals from central America because Mexico doesn t want them. Yet the Mexican President, Enrique Pe a Nieto, says he will not pay for the border wall on the northern border of Mexico to keep them out of the U.S, and Obama somehow sees the logic in this?Trump has and always will be right about the wall blocking Mexico and if Obama had wanted to help a country keep illegals out then maybe he should start in the country that he is President in. Then again Obama has given trillions of dollars away to other countries while we Americans still sit here struggling to pay simple bill like mortgages, medical, food, electricity, etc.I guess he felt the need to stick it to us in a special kind of way before we unceremoniously drop him outside of the White House gates come January 2017.H/T [ Young Cons , Conservative Tribune ] | 1 |
The majority of America has been wondering who actually is supporting Donald Trump. He s been rejected in Chicago and protests have been a theme at his rallies throughout the country. Yet, he does have support as evidenced by his trouncing of other GOP hopefuls who are just as crazy as he is but are prone to show it less. So, who are Trump s supporters exactly? This video shows us who these people are and how they think:Watch video here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiFMts60ZIQ]One man believed that the government is after Trump, turning the volatile and nasty Republican candidate into a victim or even a martyr of sorts. I m for Trump cause he s being bullied by the government and they need to be together, the man said. And when asked about the frequent counter-protests against Trump, he defended the Republican candidate. I m not racist and I don t think he s racist, though he admitted Trump should have denounced the KKK.Another man believes in Trump s honesty and thinks Bernie will control his every move: I think Trump is honest. We don t need a Barack in office no more, because he s a liar. He can t be direct. Hillary Clinton is a criminal. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. He believes in taking away all our freedoms. He ll control the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we live. These remarks border on paranoia and misinformation. If these people just looked a little closer and deeper at who they re voting for, they would see a racist, a demagogue, and someone who s already done damage to this country. One can only imagine the damage he would do should he become president. Featured image via video screenshot. | 0 |
Donald Trump has so many feuds going on at the moment it can be hard to keep track of them all. One of the most potentially damaging feuds, though, is with the United Kingdom s Prime Minister David Cameron. Now, that feud continues with Trump s latest comments directed towards Cameron.Cameron has made his opinion of the guaranteed Republican presidential nomination very clear. Back in December, Cameron publicly stated that he thinks Trump s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States is stupid, divisive and wrong. Cameron s statement couldn t be more accurate, as Trump s proposal goes against the very basic principles of the United States and would be logistically impossible to enforce.During an interview with Piers Morgan, Trump spoke out against Cameron s comments, offering a sad attempt at an olive branch towards Cameron, where he insisted that he is not stupid and is a unifier. It looks like we re not going to have a very good relationship. Who knows! I hope to have a good relationship with him but it sounds like he s not willing to address the problem either, Trump said in the interview, according to the Jerusalem Post. Well, number one I m not stupid, Okay. I can tell you that, right now just the opposite. Number two, in terms of divisive: I don t think I m a divisive person. I m a unifier, unlike our president now, I m a unifier, he Trump concluded.As bizarre as it is to hear a grown man insist to another that he is in fact not stupid, Cameron never actually called Trump himself stupid. He called his policy stupid because it is. It s also nothing more than an incredibly xenophobic, racist, and ridiculous bit of fear mongering. It s one of the first policy proposals that Trump introduced. It sounded the alarm bells that Trump is more than just a buffoon looking for attention, it showed the world that he could actually be a very dangerous threat to the United States and the world if given the opportunity to seize actual political power.Featured image from (Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images) | 1 |
Hillary shouldn t be on FOX News giving interviews She should be in jail! Queen Hillary didn t quite get the same treatment from FOX News Chris Wallace as she gets when she visits MSNBC s Chris Matthews!Hillary Clinton acknowledges that Americans have a legitimate concern about her trustworthiness, particularly related to her email scandal and the Benghazi terror attacks, but criticized those who have attempted to undermine her Democratic presidential campaign and make a caricature out of her, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Sunday. I think that it s fair for Americans to have questions, Clinton said, in an interview taped Saturday. Every time I run for an office, though, oh my goodness, all of these caricatures come out of nowhere. And people begin to undermine me because when I left office as secretary of state, 66 percent of Americans approved of what I do. FOX Newshttps://youtu.be/G0XAt7aPYBsLaura Ingraham commented on Hillary Clinton s stunning interview on Fox News Sunday.Ingraham said Clinton has an astonishing ability to look into Chris Wallace s eyes and claim that FBI Director Jim Comey confirmed her statements on her email scandal were truthful. That comment earned Clinton four Pinocchios from the Washington Post s fact-checker.Ingraham said Clinton s aside about her mother loving Fox News was all well and good, but the fact of the matter is, this is about her tenure as secretary of state. If she didn t know that you couldn t put a government server in your bathroom, then what does Hillary Clinton really know about basic issues of foreign policy? Ingraham added that Clinton apparently can lie with impunity to most people in the press, other than some of the folks at Fox News. Fox News | 1 |
Subscribe My daughter and me
Yesterday was National Daughter’s Day! I know this because Facebook told me so; well, maybe not Mark Zuckerberg himself, but all my friends on Facebook were posting pictures of their daughters and celebrating National Daughter’s Day so it must be true, right?
Actually, I Googled it, and guess what??? September 24 is NOT National Daughter’s Day…According to Wikipedia , National Daughter’s Day is August 11th. This little snippet in Wikipedia also stated that National Daughter’s Day originated from the Bible. I have done some more digging, and honestly, I can’t find proof for either the day or the fact that the Bible calls for it. So it got me to thinking…
How did a day, which didn’t actually exist, go viral in just a few hours on Facebook? There has to be a need which something like this fills or else the entire Facebook population wouldn’t have jumped on it so quickly.
Then it hit me. We love our daughters! It really is that simple. We love our daughters so much that we felt we needed to tell them so publicly on Facebook. I saw some of the cutest baby pictures and some of the sweetest words of love scroll through my Facebook feed yesterday. Mothers and fathers discussing how sweet their little girls were and exclaiming pride in the women they had become. All ages were represented. It was really quite moving, and it was a wonderful change from the politics and hatred I normally see there.
My question is, why did we need to create a fictitious holiday to say these things. We all know our society is in desperate need of love, but yesterday also proved that our society is desperate to show love. It is OK to tell the world you love your daughter, or for that matter, your son, your wife, your husband, your life partner, your best friend, your ex, your mailman, your mother, your dog, or your local friendly hardware store worker. You don’t need a special occasion or an official day. We don’t have to all agree it is OK to do it on that particular day.
Just love. Show it openly. Tell the world and Facebook. Do it every day. It’s in your DNA. You need it.
I declare today National I Am Going To Post About Who I Love Day…every day.
By the way… My daughter, Mallory, is intelligent, beautiful, and compassionate, and I am blessed that she calls me Mom. Just thought I would throw that in since it is National I Am Going To Post About Who I Love Day! Now faith, hope, and love remain—these three things—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13 About Melanie Tubbs
Melanie Tubbs is a professor, pastor, mother, Mimi, and true Arkansas woman. She lives with six cats and two dogs on a quiet hill in a rural county where she pastors a church and teaches history at the local university. Her slightly addictive personality comes out in shameful Netflix binges and a massive collection of books. Vegetarian cooking, reading mountains of books for her seminary classes, and crocheting for the churches prayer shawl ministry take up most of her free time, and sharing the love of Christ forms the direction of her life. May the Peace of Christ be with You. Connect | 1 |
This story will fade quickly to back page news in the mainstream media. Two black officers supposedly physically abused a 16 year old black boy. Yawn If these police officers were white you d be seeing this story ad nauseum until those officers lives were threatened, they lost their jobs and were behind bars. Black Lives Matter terrorists and Obama s Race War Czar, Al Sharpton wouldn t be satisfied until a city was burned to the ground, the entire police force was called out for being racists and someone (preferably a white person) in the police department was fired for not preventing this from happening. AP Two officers who police Baltimore s public schools walked out of jail Wednesday pending trial for assault and misconduct after their violent confrontation with a student was recorded by another teenager.Both have checkered records, prompting parents and authorities alike to question whether enough is being done to prevent violent people from being hired to keep schoolchildren peaceful and safe.Here s the assault caught on tape:https://youtu.be/zZPX_bzka40Police said Wednesday that Saverna Bias allegedly told her fellow officer, Anthony Spence, to use force against the teen.According to a witness, she said, You need to smack him because he s got too much mouth, police said. The video shows Spence shouting profanities as he repeatedly slaps and kicks the boy, telling him to leave the school and go home.Spence was not trying to arrest the 10th grader, neither was he acting in reasonable self-defense, city police said.In the cellphone video, Spence is heard shouting while he repeatedly slaps the 16-year-old student and kicks him at REACH Partnership School, while Bias looks on.Spence s attorney Mike Davey told the Baltimore Sun on Thursday that his client believed the 16-year-old and his friend was trespassing on school grounds. Both said they were students at REACH, but Davey said they were not wearing uniforms and could not provide the principal s name when questioned.The 16-year-old was later confirmed as a student at REACH, his attorney told the newspaper. BuzzfeedAt a packed school board meeting Tuesday night, some parents and principals implored officials to keep officers in the schools for everyone s safety. Students and their advocates countered that having armed police with insufficient oversight in schools can be damaging and dangerous.Tim Martin, an administrator at the New Hope Academy, said he understands the frustration, but believes most officers show enough patience to therapeutically de-escalate students in crisis and help school personnel maintain a safe school environment. Spence, 44, and Bias, 53, turned themselves in Tuesday night and were released on bond on charges of second-degree assault and misconduct in office. Spence also is charged with second-degree child abuse. Both officers have been suspended, and Spence is being denied pay, since he faces a felony.Baltimore School Police Chief Marshall Goodwin, whose department is separate from the city s police force, also went on leave, for personal reasons, as the video began circulating a day after the March 1 confrontation. A week later, as city police and prosecutors continue investigating, Baltimore City Schools CEO Gregory Thornton has refused to explain his absence. | 1 |
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. president-elect Donald Trump offered to help solve Pakistan’s problems and praised Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as a “terrific guy” in the first call between the two men, the Pakistani leader’s office said. Historical allies in the region, Islamabad and Washington have seen relations sour in recent years over U.S. accusations that Pakistan shelters Islamist militants, a charge denied by the South Asian nation. Sharif’s office said late on Wednesday the Pakistani premier called Trump to congratulate him on his victory and issued a read out of the call. Trump’s team confirmed the two men talked and issued a brief statement. “President Trump said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif you have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way,” said the statement issued by Sharif’s office. “I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems. It will be an honor and I will personally do it.” The prime minister’s office did not elaborate on the kind of problems Trump offered to solve. The statement also did not clarify why exactly Trump was impressed with Sharif. Pakistan’s sputtering economy has rebounded since Sharif was elected in 2013 and security has vastly improved amid greater efforts by the army to tackle militants such as the Pakistani Taliban. But security remains a problem as Islamist groups continue to stage mass attacks and Islamic State radicals have sought to gain a foothold inside Pakistan, claiming responsibility for several high-profile attacks. The economy is also facing acute challenges, including energy shortages. Trump’s office said the two leaders had a “productive conversation about how the United States and Pakistan will have a strong working relationship in the future”. “President-elect Trump also noted that he is looking forward to a lasting and strong personal relationship with Prime Minister Sharif,” the statement added. Detailing the conversation, Sharif’s office added that Trump told the Pakistani premier to feel free to call him any time before he assumes office on January 20. “As I am talking to you Prime Minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long,” the statement added, paraphrasing Trump’s comments. Sharif’s office often releases read outs of his conversations with foreign heads of state but they are seldom so full of praise for the Pakistani premier, especially during calls with Western leaders. Sharif invited Trump to visit Pakistan, according to the statement, and the incoming U.S. leader agreed. “Mr Trump said that he would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people. Please convey to the Pakistani people that they are amazing and all Pakistanis I have known are exceptional people,” said the statement. Few details are known about Trump’s planned policy for South Asia but the warm words between the leaders suggests ties could be reset under Trump’s presidency and will ease concerns in Islamabad that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric in the run up to the poll will not lead to unfriendly policies towards Pakistan. At one point Trump proposed banning Muslims from the entering the United States, remarks that alarmed the predominantly Muslim nation of 190 million people. Islamabad has also been concerned about warmer ties between the United States and India, fearful that Washington is pivoting towards New Delhi at a time of heightened tensions between the nuclear armed neighbors who have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947. Trump also has business ties in India, which has stoked concerns in Pakistan that under his presidency the United States may accelerate its shift towards New Delhi. Pakistan continues to receive aid as well as military funding and training from the United States, but the U.S. Congress has recently held back some help due to frustrations about Pakistan’s unwillingness to act against elements of the Afghan Taliban. Relations hit new lows in May when a U.S. drone killed Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the leader of the Afghan Taliban movement, on Pakistani territory. | 0 |
Who knew you could be a parent and still find the time to get out and riot with your spouse? Have you ever wanted to attend a mass protest, serve on a feminist panel, or lecture an unsuspecting group of tourists about the gender spectrum only to discover that you can t get a babysitter on short notice?Well, fear not at least, fear not if you re a resident of the greater Washington, DC, area. Woke babysitting a new activism-oriented babysitting community is here to step in to care for your progressive tots while you practice social justice out in the community. Have you ever been prevented from attending a rally, protest, or emergency call to action by the lack of a babysitter?, the site reads. Woke Babysitting wants to help. The site is the hub for a Google Group, where progressive parents of tots can sign up to become a sort-of child-sharing service, watching each others kids when lawyers, legal observers, and activists may be called upon for urgent action, and don t have time to line up a neighborhood sitter.Ostensibly, while you re out rocking your pussy hat on the Washington Mall or filing emergency stays with the Supreme Court, your woke babysitter will line up age-appropriate social justice-oriented activities so that your child is raised with all the proper compassion and wokeness required of today s offspring.When you get back from the bar (or wherever else you happen have your post-protest karmic transfer Reiki meeting), your children will be waiting with Black Lives Matter signs, subversive art projects, or having heard politically correct bedtime stories.Via: HeatStreet | 1 |
Twenty Years of a Dictatorial Democracy By James Bovard
" Washington Times " - The 2016 election campaign is mortifying millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have lived in a perpetual emergency, which supposedly justifies routinely ignoring the law and Constitution. And both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that power grabs will proliferate in the next four years.
Politicians talk as if voting magically protects the rights of everyone within a 50-mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in presidential elections since 2000 did nothing to constrain the commander in chief.
President George W. Bushs declaration in 2000 that America needed a more humble foreign policy did not deter him from vowing to rid the world of evil and launching the most catastrophic war in American history. Eight years later, Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of peace and promised a new birth of freedom. But that did not stop him from bombing seven nations, claiming a right to assassinate American citizens, and championing Orwellian total surveillance.
Mr. Bush was famous for signing statements decrees that nullified hundreds of provisions of laws enacted by Congress. President Obama is renowned for unilaterally and endlessly rewriting laws such as the Affordable Care Act to postpone political backlashes against the Democratic Party and for effectively waiving federal immigration law. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama exploited the state secrets doctrine to shield their most controversial policies from the American public.
While many conservatives applauded Mr. Bushs power grabs, many liberals cheered Mr. Obamas decrees. After 16 years of Bush-Obama, the federal government is far more arbitrary and lethal. Richard Nixons maxim its not illegal if the president does it is the lodestar for commanders in chief in the new century.
There is no reason to expect the next president to be less power hungry than the last two White House occupants. Both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton can be expected to trample the First Amendment. Mr. Trump has talked of shutting down mosques and changing libel laws to make it far more perilous for the media to reveal abuses by the nations elite. Mrs. Clinton was in the forefront of an administration that broke all records for prosecuting leakers and journalists who exposed government abuses. She could smash the remnants of the Freedom of Information Act like her aides hammered her Blackberry phones to obliterate her email trail.
Neither candidate seems to recognize any limit on presidential power. Mr. Trump calls for reviving the brutal interrogation methods of the George W. Bush era. Mrs. Clinton opposes torture but believes presidents have a right to launch wars whenever they decide it is in the national interest. After Mrs. Clinton helped persuade Mr. Obama to bomb Libya in 2011, she signaled that the administration would scorn any congressional cease-and-desist order under the War Powers Act.
If Americans could be confident that either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton would be leashed by the law, there would be less dread about who wins in November. But elections are becoming simply coronations via vote counts. The president will take an oath of office on Inauguration Day, but then can do as he or she pleases.
We now have a political system which is nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian. The rule oflLaw has been defined down to finding a single federal lawyer to write a secret memo vindicating the presidents latest unpublished executive order.
By the end of the next presidential term, America will have had almost a 20-year stretch of dictatorial democracy. Our rulers disdain for the highest law of the land is torpedoing the citizenrys faith in representative government. Forty percent of registered voters have lost faith in American democracy, according to recent Survey Monkey poll.
The United States may be on the verge of the biggest legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Whoever wins on Nov. 8 will be profoundly distrusted even before being sworn in. The combination of a widely detested new president and unrestrained power almost guarantees greater crises in the coming years.
Neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton are promising to make America constitutional again. But as Thomas Jefferson declared in 1786, An elective despotism was not the government we fought for. If presidents are lawless, then voters are merely designating the most dangerous criminal in the land.
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006) and Lost Rights (St. Martins, 1994). | 1 |
When Donald Trump stood at his podium at a rally and declared, I have no friends You re my friends, he apparently wasn t kidding. A scathing new report from The New York Times tells the sad story of a Donald Trump who at nearly 70-years-old has no real friends.One of Trump s favorite things to talk about are his celebrity friends. In the past he s been chummy with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Regis Philbin, Howard Stern and he loves playing golf with athletes like Tom Brady, but the reality is, none of those people are what you and I would classify as friends. Richard LeFlak, a real estate tycoon who has known The Donald for four decades, told the Times that Trump is very gregarious and has lots of acquaintances, but people he s close to? Not so many. LeFlak isn t alone in his analysis of Trump s personal life: He doesn t really have a lot of friends, said Billy Procida, a financier and business confidant of Trump s, Pretty much all he does is work and play golf. Reverend Al Sharpton, who knew Trump before he decided to become a Republican all of a sudden, said: Out of all the political and business and entertainment circles that we ve moved in together over the years, I never really met anyone who was Trump s good friend. In fact, I ve never even met anyone who claimed to be his good friend. It may seem harsh, but that s just how Trump operates. He s an introverted narcissist who spends his time with family, presumably because he doesn t have anything to prove. That analysis fits with a statement from Trump s longtime coworker and head of acquisitions, Abe Wallach, who told the Times that Trump would practically beg coworkers to hang out with him after work: Donald would call and say, Abe, what are you doing? Marla and I are flying down to Atlantic City. You and David want to come? Wallach said. I always thought: Why me? I work with him all week. Isn t there someone else? Apparently not. There is very little that suggests that Trump is capable of forming and maintaining personal relationships with people who aren t related to him. Wallach gave the Times the reason why: Deep down, he s a very nice guy, Wallach said, but he can t let go and just be nice because he fears that people will take advantage of him. Donald is actually the most insecure man I ve ever met. He has this constant need to fill a void inside. He used to do it with deals and sex. Now he does it with publicity. Ouch. Obviously, if a man who has known Trump most of his professional career and spent time with him and his family can spout off like that and trash The Donald s social skills so easily, there must be something to it. It could be that Wallach is right; that Trump lacks the confidence and self-respect to trust that not everyone is out to screw him, or it could be far simpler. He might just be an insufferable douchebag.Whatever the issue, what we have here is just another reason Donald Trump is unfit to hold the highest office in the land. Personal relationships are certainly important in trade, foreign policy and relations across the aisle. Trump s failures as a human being will easily translate to failures as a diplomat and commander-in-chief.Featured image by Jeff Mitchell, Getty Images | 1 |
Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Sunday that her breakout performance during the last week’s debates has created a surge in support and that she can ascend to win the party nomination.
“The truth is the race has just started,” Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s game on.”
Fiorina failed to qualify for the prime-time Fox News Channel debate Thursday night for the top-10 ranked GOP candidates. So she competed with the seven others in a forum before the main event.
Still, just the exposure was key to her campaign because as a first-time presidential candidate she lacked name recognition, Fiorina said.
“It was a big night for me,” she told Fox. “Only 40 percent of Republicans had heard my name. … There’s been an uptick in financial support, in support generally.”
Nevertheless, Fiorina, the only major female candidate in the 2016 Republican field, will have a tough time breaking into the top tier or winning the nomination, considering she has consistently ranked among the last in most major polls.
And she is ranked 13th among 15 candidates with 1.3 percent of the vote, according to the most recent averaging of polls by the nonpartisan website RealClearPolitics.com
Beyond the problem of name recognition, Fiorina will continue to have to defend her tenure at Hewlett-Packard where she laid off 30,000 employees and was eventually fired.
On Sunday, Fiorina argued, as she has since the start of the campaign, that she kept the company alive in the post-9/11 and dotcom bubbles.
“Sometimes, in tough times tough calls are necessary,” she said, adding she was fired in a “board room brawl.”
Fiorina said she will continue to do what she has since the start of the race, attack the top candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, and work hard on the campaign trail.
She said Trump has "no excuse" for attacking Fox new anchor Megyn Kelly for her tough questions to him during the debate.
"There’s no excuse for this," she said. "It’s her job to ask tough questions."
Fiorina, whose platform includes cutting the size of government and economic growth through the support of small business, also said: "I’m throwing every punch. ... I’m going to keep working hard, keep doing what I’ve been doing since day one -- keep talking to people and answering their questions.” | 0 |
The Disappearing Middle: Electorate Way Less Moderate Than Past Primaries
One of the biggest stories of the election cycle is turnout (as we've reported a few times now): Republican turnout has spiked far beyond 2012 levels, and Democratic turnout has fallen off after the party's mammoth 2008.
The tone and the turnout are vastly different between Republicans and Democrats this year, but oddly enough, both sides have something crucial in common: their voters are far less moderate than they were in their last primaries.
Let's start with the Republican numbers. The below chart shows the ideological difference between the Republican electorate this year and in 2012. Each dot represents one state — so, for example, 33 percent of Vermont Republican primary voters in 2016 said they considered themselves moderate or liberal, compared to 53 percent in 2012. That puts Vermont at negative-20 for "somewhat conservative" — the most extreme result we found among the 15 GOP states for which there was sufficient exit-poll data.
It's true exit polls can have a margin of error, but there's no mistaking a pattern here. In no state did the share of "moderate" and "liberal" GOP primary voters grow from 2012 to 2016. (The exit polls lumped moderate and liberal together in 2012, so they're not separated out here.)
Altogether, an NPR analysis finds that the share of "somewhat conservative" voters on the GOP side climbed by nearly 10 percentage points in 2016 over 2012's primaries. (That is, among the states with exit polling data for both years). The share who were moderate or liberal, meanwhile, fell by around 9 percentage points, and the share who were "very conservative" held relatively steady.
Something similar is at work on the Democratic side, as well:
The share of moderate and conservative Democratic voters was down — sometimes dramatically so — in most states that have voted thus far. Meanwhile, the share of people who are somewhat or very liberal is way up.
This year, around 60 percent of Democratic primary voters said they considered themselves "somewhat" or "very liberal," up from around 45 percent in 2008 (once again, among states with sufficient exit polling data for both years).
So interestingly, though voters on both sides are less moderate than in the last contests, Democrats this year have more decidedly moved toward the "very liberal" end of the spectrum. Republican voters, meanwhile, are way more "somewhat conservative" than in 2012, but don't appear to be more "very conservative."
One thing to keep in mind: Republican turnout across the board is higher this year. That means there are still a few more moderate and liberal Republican primary and caucus voters this cycle than there were in the 2012 primaries — it's just that the number of somewhat conservative Republicans shot up way more.
Likewise, Democratic turnout is down almost entirely across the board. Interestingly, even with the sharp drop off in turnout, multiplying the exit poll data by the turnout numbers suggests that the raw number of "very liberal" Democratic voters is, in fact, up slightly from 2008. However, the number of moderate and conservative voters dropped off steeply. And even though the share of "somewhat liberal" voters is up, the raw number is also down.
But anyway: all of this could mean that a bunch of moderate and conservative Democrats who voted in 2008 stayed home this year, while a lot of those somewhat and very liberal Democrats from 2008 came out again. Likewise, it could mean that the Republican wave of turnout is driven largely by a bunch of "somewhat conservative" voters who weren't there in 2012.
And looking at the results so far, there are simple explanations to why this might be happening. The very-liberal Bernie Sanders is probably driving some of the turnout among very-liberal voters. It's likewise possible that the somewhat-conservative Trump is behind the bump in somewhat conservative voters in Republican primaries (while Ted Cruz does better among very conservative voters, and John Kasich gets more votes among moderates).
But then, it might not just be candidate-driven: it's possible that lots of people have simply become more conservative or liberal than they were four or eight years ago. This is also to some degree plausible, as there is evidence that Americans are getting more polarized.
In other words, there's a chicken-egg question here, with no clear answer — chances are, they're both right. To the degree that voters are more polarized, they're gravitating toward more extreme candidates. And Sanders and Trump also both happen to be very good at energizing people to turn out and vote for them. | 1 |
NOGALES, Arizona (Reuters) - For up to 16 hours a day, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and mangoes grown in Mexico flow north through a border checkpoint into Nogales, Arizona, helping to ensure a year-round supply of fresh produce across the United States. This is a city built on cross-border trade. Each year, some 330,000 trucks and 75,000 train cars carrying $17 billion worth of goods move through Nogales, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Economists estimate trade supports nearly one in three jobs here, ranging from workers who inspect the goods to forklift operators who unload them in distribution centers. In many ways, Nogales represents the flip side of free trade deals that have battered industrial cities in the Midwest, where jobs have been outsourced and manufacturing plants shut down. The cities where Donald Trump’s promise to throttle what he calls unfair competition resonated most profoundly during the presidential campaign. It also represents potential risks that new trade barriers could pose for businesses and residents along the border. Only a tall, rusted fence separates Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales, Mexico; the cities are so intertwined that locals call them by a single name, “Ambos Nogales” or “Both Nogales.” Now in office, Trump is considering a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico, one of several ideas under review in Washington, and is promising to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. More than a dozen city officials, employers and workers interviewed here said a border tax, if enacted, could choke the flow of imports from Mexico. They described a chain of events that would harm the economy, threaten local jobs and lead to higher prices for U.S. consumers. “President Trump should take a good look at the effects of whatever he does, because he’s going to end up with a real problem,” said Nogales Mayor John Doyle, who joined other lawmakers from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas in denouncing the import tax plan in letters to U.S. lawmakers. Food, autos and electronics go both ways across the border checkpoint, sometimes more than once. Mexican mangoes and melons come north while California almonds and apples from Washington state go south. U.S. car parts sent to Mexican factories are imported back as finished vehicles. “There are hundreds of products that come back and forth through the port of entry in Nogales,” Doyle said. The Trump administration told Reuters that any tax deal would protect U.S. interests. “The American people can rest assured that any policy President Trump pursues will be designed to increase wages for American workers, reduce the U.S. trade deficit, and strengthen the economy so that it works for all,” a White House official said in an email. Since the 1994 implementation of NAFTA, trade between Mexico and the United States has risen more than six fold. Each country exported about $40 billion to the other in 1993. Last year the United States imported $294 billion in goods from Mexico and exported $231 billion back, U.S. Census data show. Nationwide, nearly 5 million jobs are now tied to trade with Mexico, from importers to jobs dependent on low-cost goods, according to a study by the non-partisan Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. In Santa Cruz County, surrounding Nogales, the produce import industry and supporting businesses account for more than 22 percent of jobs, according to a 2013 report by economists at the University of Arizona. Trade and support for factories across the border account for another 10 percent of the workforce. The report’s lead author, Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi, said a 20 percent border tax would create the strictest barriers to trade in five decades. In addition to Trump’s proposal of a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico, Republican lawmakers have put forth a plan that would cut corporate income tax to 20 percent from 35 percent, exclude export revenue from taxable income and impose a 20 percent tax on imports. The proposals have split Corporate America. A group of major exporters including Boeing Co, General Electric Co and Pfizer Inc have formed a coalition to support the import tax. At the same time, large retailers, including Target Corp and Best Buy Co Inc, have countered that such a tax would raise consumer prices and hurt their businesses. Seated in his second-floor office in a warehouse nestled in the rolling hills on the outskirts of town, produce trader Jaime Chamberlain said business with Mexico is the lifeblood of Nogales, which brings in more pounds of Mexican produce than any other U.S. border town. It’s “one of the largest industries here with the most employment and the most to lose,” said Chamberlain, a board member of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. He voted for Trump and his pro-business, socially conservative agendas, but is lobbying state leaders to oppose the tax. Chamberlain’s parents began the family business with a $1,000 loan in 1971. He and his sister now own J-C Distributing Inc, which employs about 25 people who handle 120,000 pounds of Mexican tomatoes each week for Taco Bell in addition to orders for major companies such as Kroger Co and Sysco Corp. The company warehouse is among more than six dozen such facilities on Interstate 19, just a few miles north of Nogales’ town square. In all, they bring in fruits and vegetables worth $3.3 billion a year, according to the Fresh Produce Association. Local officials, residents and economists warn that a tax could reverberate across the local economy. For example, a 20 percent border tax could put some of the $17 million in produce trade-related fees on custom brokerage, freight forwarding and truck permits at risk. “There are a lot of unintended consequences with this,” said Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors Chairman Manuel Ruiz. “There are domino effects all over. ” Many local business people expect Mexico to fight back. “A 20 percent tax could start a trade war with Mexico. I don’t see how we can impose that unilaterally,” said Ricardo Crisantes, vice president of marketing and sales at Wholesum Harvest, which is part of a Mexico-based company that has offices in Nogales and organic farms on both sides of the border. Company representatives said a border tax could drive the company to shift more farming to the United States, but it also could send import demand to other parts of Latin America that would bypass Nogales. Restaurant and store owners say the tax would make already tough times even worse. “It would be huge,” said Karla Galindo, 35, who owns Rancho Grande restaurant in Nogales with her husband. She and other local business owners said sales have already been hurt by the war of words between officials in Mexico and the United States. “People are afraid to spend their money,” Galindo said. | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s government has not yet decided what it wants from a final Brexit deal because it is still waiting to clear preliminary talks with Brussels, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Wednesday. With the clock ticking towards Britain s scheduled March 2019 exit from the European union, the government is focused at the moment on getting a green light for the negotiations on future trade relations with the EU, Hammond said. The cabinet has had general discussions about our Brexit negotiations but we haven t had a specific mandating of an end-state position, he told lawmakers in Britain s parliament. Prime Minister Theresa May s top ministers have big differences over what Brexit should mean for Britain, and over the extent of concessions that the country should offer in return for preferential access to the EU s single market. Hammond said a group of key government ministers would deal with the issue once Britain is given the go-ahead by other EU countries that it can proceed with negotiations for a new, post-Brexit trade deal. That go-ahead is on hold pending an agreement by the bloc s other 27 member states that Britain has done enough on the terms of its divorce, now stuck on differences over how open the future border between Ireland and Northern Ireland should be. We are not yet at that stage and it would have been premature to have that discussion until we reach that stage, Hammond told parliament s Treasury Committee. A spokesman for May, asked about Hammond s comments, told reporters that government ministers would discuss the preferred outcome of the Brexit talks before the end of the year. We re not into phase two (of negotiations) yet, and Brussels have been clear that they re not prepared to discuss end state , the spokesman said. Earlier on Wednesday Brexit minister David Davis inflamed critics of the government s handling of Brexit when he said he had not conducted formal sector-by-sector analyses of the effect of Brexit on the economy, arguing they were not yet necessary. Hammond has previously said he favors striking a pragmatic deal with the EU to minimize Brexit s impact on businesses and the economy, angering some Brexit supporters who favor a more definitive rupture with Brussels. On Wednesday, Hammond reiterated that Britain would leave the EU s single market and its customs union but that need not represent a big change to Britain s relationship with the bloc, if Britain replicates most of the current arrangements. Now, that would have consequences and some of our colleagues would not find that palatable, but it would be logically possible to approach it in that way, he said. May hopes to secure the launch of the second phase of the Brexit negotiations when she meets other EU leaders next week. But she suffered a setback this week when her allies in a political party from Northern Ireland objected to proposals for post-Brexit rules for the border with Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party said on Wednesday the stand-off increased the likelihood of a no deal Brexit - the nightmare scenario for many British businesses. | 0 |
21st Century Wire says Donald Trump s campaign promise to move the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could trigger a series of events pushing the region back towards serious conflict. Trump s appointment of right-wing Jewish bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman (image, left) as his ambassador to Israel is seen by many as an aggressive move to promote an ultra-Zionist agenda, as Friedman is a supporter of illegal Israeli settlement expansion in Palestine.Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem would be in direct violation of numerous other UN resolutions 11 UN Security Council resolutions have ruled that Israel s seizure of East Jerusalem is that of an occupied territory.Hussein Ibish of Foreign Policy Magazine outlines some of the context of this issue in terms of US politics: Among the many alarming ways in which President-elect Donald Trump might upend traditional American foreign policy, one of the most immediate and troubling concerns his pledge to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.Other successful presidential candidates, most notably Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, made the same promise, only, once inaugurated, to emulate all of their predecessors by invoking the executive waiver to the 1995 Congressional Mandate to relocate the embassy. According to Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and peace negotiator, said that annexing settlements in the West Bank and moving the embassy to Jerusalem might mean the destruction of the peace process as a whole. Naturally, bellicose Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu denied it would inflame any conflict, stating in December that is was great step forward to peace. Middle East advocate Camille Mansour, told Al-Monitor that the US move would be devastating to relations between Palestinians and Israel, stating: It is a clear abandonment of the corpus-separatum issue, which Jerusalem has enjoyed since before 1947, he said. A number of consulates were based in Jerusalem US, Italian, English, Turkish, Spanish, French and Belgian based on this separate recognition of the city. NOTE: Corpus-separatum refers to Jerusalem s observed neutral legal and political status, closely related to that of an independent city-state.This comes on the heals of the recent controversy over the recent UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Apparently, the UN also followed up the settlement resolution with a plan to track activities of companies doing business in the illegally occupied West Bank.Either way, this latest push by Republicans on behalf of Netanyahu and the Zionist Lobby seems to be a prelude to increased tensions in the Middle East David Smith The GuardianThree Republican senators have introduced legislation to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s official capital and move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, a plan backed by Donald Trump but likely to ignite fierce protests.After being sworn into the 115th Congress in Washington, Ted Cruz of Texas, Dean Heller of Nevada and Marco Rubio of Florida unveiled the Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act.Similar moves by Republican majorities over the past two decades have come to nought, but this time they have a sympathetic president-elect in Trump. He has repeatedly pledged to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem and nominated a US ambassador who shares that view.Critics warn that the move could unleash a wave of violence and further rattle the Israel-Palestine peace process and the future of a two-state solution.Cruz, runner-up to Trump in the Republican presidential primary, said on Tuesday: Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel. Unfortunately, the Obama administration s vendetta against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this simple truth let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate venue for the American embassy in Israel is shocking in some circles.[ ] Rubio added: Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel, and that s where America s embassy belongs. It s time for Congress and the president-elect to eliminate the loophole that has allowed presidents in both parties to ignore US law and delay our embassy s rightful relocation to Jerusalem for over two decades. The US embassy has been located on Tel Aviv s HaYarkon Street for half a century. US state department policy has long held that the status of Jerusalem will only be determined in final talks between Israel and the Palestinians Continue this story at The GuardianREAD MORE ISRAEL NEWS AT: 21WIRE Israel FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@ 21WIRE.TV | 0 |
Donald J. Trump, who said last week that a judge’s Mexican heritage should disqualify him from a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, expressed doubt on Sunday that a Muslim judge could remain neutral in the case, comments that are unlikely to ease concerns among his fellow Republicans who fear his controversial remarks could hurt the party in November. Mr. Trump’s comments, made in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” followed his criticism of Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge in California overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University. Mr. Trump said Judge Curiel had a “conflict of interest” in the case because of Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. Republicans, concerned about how his contentious statements could harm their ability to retain control of the Senate and have a detrimental effect in races, have struggled with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s language without alienating his voters. In a series of interviews on Sunday television news shows, Republicans repudiated Mr. Trump’s comments about Judge Curiel. But instead of softening his stance, Mr. Trump intensified it. Mr. Dickerson asked Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, if a Muslim judge would be similarly biased because of Mr. Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah. That would be possible. Absolutely. ” When Mr. Dickerson said there was a tradition in the United States, a nation of immigrants, against judging people based on heritage, Mr. Trump replied, “I’m not talking about tradition, I’m talking about common sense, O. K.?” In his interview with Mr. Dickerson, and in a separate discussion with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Trump refused to retreat from his comments on Judge Curiel’s background. “He is a member of a club or society, very strongly which is all fine,” Mr. Trump said. “But I say he’s got bias. I want to build a wall. I’m going to build a wall. I’m doing very well with the Latinos, with the Hispanics, with the Mexicans, I’m doing very well with them, in my opinion. ” Judge Curiel, 62, was born in East Chicago, Ind. to parents who had emigrated from Mexico. He graduated from Indiana University’s law school and worked as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of California before being appointed in 2007 to the bench in San Diego by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. President Obama nominated Judge Curiel to the federal bench in late 2011, and he was confirmed by the Senate in 2012. Mr. Trump’s broadside against Judge Curiel was one of the most overtly racial remarks he had made in the presidential race, and it exacerbated the tension between some Republicans and their nominee. White, older, voters make up a large portion of the party’s base, and Republicans need to keep the presidential campaign close in order to hold their majority in the Senate. But Mr. Trump’s remarks have offended wide blocs of voters to whom the party must appeal amid national demographic shifts. And the critiques have raised concerns about how, as president, Mr. Trump would handle the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government. That issue is sacred to conservatives, who have railed against what they see as an abuse of power by Mr. Obama. Republicans have tried to mitigate the potential damage of Mr. Trump’s language by rejecting it in one moment, but embracing his candidacy in the next. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, did not directly answer a question about whether Mr. Trump’s remark had been racist, but said he completely disagreed with it. “All of us came here from somewhere else,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to Judge Curiel’s heritage. “That’s an important part of what makes America work. ” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican whose name had been floated as a potential nominee, said on ABC’s “This Week” of Mr. Trump’s behavior, “I think that he’s going to have to change. ” And Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters, called the Curiel remarks “inexcusable” on “Fox News Sunday. ” “This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made,” said Mr. Gingrich, who has also been mentioned as a potential candidate. But none of the three men rejected Mr. Trump’s candidacy outright. Mr. Gingrich praised Mr. Trump moments later as a quick learner. Mr. Corker suggested that Mr. Trump “has an opportunity to really change the trajectory of our country, and it’s my sense that he will take advantage of that. ” Those defenses are becoming more strained as Mr. Trump has reversed his suggestions that he knows he must grow into the role of nominee. And Republicans were mostly silent after Hillary Clinton assailed Mr. Trump in a speech on Thursday about the stakes of the election. Mr. Trump led his defense on Twitter and at a rally, but his campaign and its surrogates had no uniform response. In the weeks since he vanquished his remaining two primary opponents, Mr. Trump has repeatedly turned his campaign’s focus inward — toward his businesses, the Trump University lawsuit, his fights with other Republicans — and obscured the hopes Republicans had of keeping a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton and her email controversy, or on a jobs report suggesting a slowdown in job creation. Mr. McConnell, who endorsed Mr. Trump quickly after Mr. Trump became the presumptive nominee early last month, has been vocal in his concern that the remarks on Hispanics will have a historic effect along the lines of the remarks Barry Goldwater made on the party’s ability to woo black voters after he declined to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mr. McConnell said the alternative to Mr. Trump — a second Clinton presidency — was worse. But he also urged Mr. Trump to stop focusing on the recent past and to look toward the future. “This is a good time, it seems to me, to begin to try to unify the party,” Mr. McConnell said. “And you unify the party by not settling scores and grudges against people you’ve been competing with,” he added. “We’re all behind him now. And I’d like to see him reach out and pull us all together and give us a real shot at winning this November. ” | 0 |
THIS IS MADDENING! We have a president and congress who do nothing but promote illegal entry into America TREASON! The Obama Administration has been releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens onto our streets. In just the last three years, ICE released 86,288 criminal aliens. Senator Jeff SessionsSenator Jeff Sessions questioning Thomas Homan, the Executive Associate Director, Enforcement And Removal Operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Homan admits they find illegal aliens but cannot deport them because of President Obama, whose policies protect whole classes of illegal aliens.SESSIONS DELIVERS OPENING STATEMENT ON DECLINING DEPORTATIONS AND INCREASING CRIMINAL ALIEN RELEASES WASHINGTON U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest, delivered the following statement on the Administration s actions that have resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of aliens removed from the United States over recent years, and thousands of otherwise removable aliens being released from custody: Thank you to everyone for being here today, and thank you to Senator Blumenthal for serving as ranking member.First I d like to extend my condolences to the Director of ICE, Sarah Salda a, and her family on their recent, tragic loss. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them during this difficult time.Throughout its tenure, the Obama Administration has made numerous public statements, issued multiple memoranda, and represented in testimony before Congress that it has limited resources and therefore can remove only a certain number and category of illegal aliens. Specifically, the Administration repeatedly claimed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the resources to deport only approximately 400,000 illegal aliens from the United States each year.So, their reasoning went, they were compelled to focus on criminal illegal aliens and other aliens who pose threats to the country s security. Because of this focus, the President argued he had no choice but to grant executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens which would allow them to stay in the country and obtain work permits and other federal benefits.Yet, as we will examine in today s hearing, rather than truly prioritizing the removal of certain types of illegal aliens over others, the Obama Administration has simply refused to execute the laws passed by Congress and signed into law.It has ordered immigration law enforcement officers to ignore plain law and acquiesce to the presence of millions of illegal aliens in the United States, including criminals and those who have already been ordered deported to leave the country.If the Obama Administration was truly prioritizing the removal of certain illegal aliens over others, it would be reasonable to assume that with the same or more resources, the number of deportations would remain relatively steady each year.However, the simple fact is that since these policies were implemented, deportations have plummeted particularly deportations from the interior of the country as opposed to the border and most sharply under guidelines issued by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson in November 2014.As this dramatic decline has occurred, Congress has increased funding each year for the purpose of immigration enforcement.This is not prioritization and this is not prosecutorial discretion. This is a total refusal to carry out the laws passed by Congress that the Constitution obliges the President to faithfully execute.Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has been releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens onto our streets. In just the last three years, ICE released 86,288 criminal aliens.At the same time, the Administration touts the decrease in the number of apprehensions at the border as a sign of border security. But as we will hear in testimony today, we simply do not apprehend every illegal alien who crosses the southern border. Not even close. Moreover, we are seeing near-record levels of certain categories of aliens unaccompanied alien minors and family units who face no chance of actually being deported under this Administration. This simply sends a message that anybody, anywhere in the world, if they can get into the United States across our southern border, for example, they will be allowed to stay in the country. Other than Mexico, they re allowed to stay in the country. And that is why so many are coming. It s not the law that s on the books, but the policies that are being carried out at our border. This is not how the immigration system was intended to work, it s not how the immigration system must work, this is a lawless policy and it has to be ended.So today s hearing will focus on a central claim the Obama Administration makes to excuse its lawless immigration policies namely that limited resources compelled the implementation of its lawless immigration policies. We will also assess the impact of this lawlessness on the integrity, the very moral foundation of our immigration system. If it s not properly executed and carried out, it has no integrity and it lacks morality.This Administration for too long has been trying to hide from the American people the true nature of what it has been doing. Today, we will set the record straight. Efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity are essential in this government. The taxpayers don t spend money for ICE and the border patrol to have supervisors somehow keep the officers from doing their duty. Accountability is critical. Congress has a duty to ensure accountability of the agencies it supervises, and that is what we will do today. | 1 |
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Ichiro Suzuki, the baseball pioneer who proved 15 years ago that Japanese hitters could succeed in Major League Baseball, reached a hallowed milestone Sunday when he became the 30th player to compile 3, 000 hits. Suzuki, a Miami Marlins outfielder, tripled to right field against the Colorado Rockies to join one of the most elite groups in baseball in his 16th season in the big leagues. Pete Rose, the career hits leader, is the only other player to collect his 3, 000th hit by his 16th season. Suzuki is the first player from Japan to reach 3, 000 hits and just the fourth player born outside the contiguous United States to do so. He joins Roberto Clemente, who was from Puerto Rico Rod Carew, from Panama and Rafael Palmeiro, from Cuba. Suzuki is also the first player to reach 3, 000 hits while playing for the Marlins. The hit came as the Marlins chase a playoff spot. They were entering Sunday’s game, tied for second in the National League race. Suzuki, making a rare start, pulled a pitch from Chris Rusin to right field, and the ball hit high off the wall, missing a home run by about 10 feet. For all his success hitting balls the opposite way, Suzuki also has pull power, and he reached third base standing to join Paul Molitor as the only players to triple for their 3, 000th hit. Suzuki’s teammates poured out of the dugout to congratulate him, and the fans at Coors Field gave him a standing ovation as he waved his helmet in appreciation. Suzuki came into the season needing 65 hits to reach 3, 000 and has performed above expectations, given his age, 42, and his offensive numbers over the last three seasons. A starter, he went into Sunday’s game batting . 317 with an percentage of . 388, among the Marlins’ leaders in both categories. But after he collected his 2, 998th hit on July 28, Suzuki struggled briefly, going 0 for 11 over seven games before recording his 2, 999th hit on Saturday. “It took a long time for me,” Ichiro told reporters in Denver. “Obviously I’ve been feeling this for the past two weeks, and not getting an opportunity to get in there, getting a every night, that was tough. For me, I feel like I should have gotten this two years ago. ” Suzuki recently stated that reaching the plateau as part of a winning team that is competing for a playoff spot is one of the most satisfying aspects of the accomplishment. “Are you at the end and can barely play and are just chasing this number and can barely get there?” he asked rhetorically through an interpreter last month. “Or are you part of a team trying to win ballgames, going about your business properly as you go past that number? I think that is what I want to experience, and that is what is important for me. ” Suzuki made his major league debut with the Seattle Mariners in 2001, amid considerable skepticism that he could replicate the success he had achieved as a professional player in Japan. He had a small, wiry physique, leaving some to wonder if he might be physically overwhelmed by big league pitching, and unusual batting mechanics, in which he practically sprinted out of the batter’s box as he made contact with the ball. But in his first game on April 2, 2001, he rapped out two hits. It was a prophetic debut. That season he reached 242 hits, the first of a record 10 consecutive seasons, and he batted . 350, setting the tone for a major league career that will almost surely culminate in his induction to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N. Y. where no Japanese player has yet been enshrined. Before Suzuki signed with the Mariners, the only Japanese players considered good enough to excel in the major leagues were pitchers. Suzuki almost instantly shattered the old perceptions, leading directly to the signings of several more players from Japan, including Hideki Matsui by the Yankees, Kazuo Matsui by the Mets and Kosuke Fukudome by the Chicago Cubs. But while Hideki Matsui achieved notable success in the Bronx, neither Kazuo Matsui nor Fukudome came near the statistical heights achieved by Suzuki, who has led baseball in hits in seven seasons, has a career . 314 batting average, and has 507 stolen bases. Of the players who have reached 3, 000 hits, none have done it quite like Suzuki. He did not enter the major leagues until he was 27, three years older at his debut than any of the other members of the club. Rose was 22. The oldest, outside Suzuki, was Wade Boggs, who was 24. Suzuki brought with him his unique method of preparing for games. He is a perpetual stretching machine, going through his calisthenics in the clubhouse, at his position in the outfield and sometimes in the batter’s box between pitches. He carries his select bats — made from Japanese tamo wood — in a valise, tending them much the way a concert violinist pampers an instrument. “Baseball is more than a game to him, it is a craft,” Derek Jeter said in a congratulatory statement. The last two players to reach 3, 000 hits did it with the Yankees, for whom Suzuki played from 2012 to 2014. Alex Rodriguez gained entry to the club with a home run on June 19, 2015, and Jeter did it with a homer as part of a afternoon at Yankee Stadium on July 9, 2011. Suzuki was still playing for the Mariners when Jeter reached 3, 000 but said he admired it from afar. “Don’t compare that to me,” Suzuki said with genuine modesty. Before his arrival in the United States, Suzuki had amassed 1, 278 hits for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan. Though his Japanese hits do not count toward his major league total, he now has 4, 278 hits over all. That unofficial math puts him ahead of Rose’s career record of 4, 256 hits, but Suzuki has never said that his hits in Japan should count for his major league total. He did say last year that he can envision playing another eight seasons, if his body holds up, meaning there could be many more hits to come. Suzuki’s current manager, Don Mattingly, was one of the best hitters of his era, but chronic back problems forced him to retire after 14 seasons, 847 hits shy of the mark. “That’s a lot of hits, and you have to play a long time,” Mattingly said as Suzuki closed in on 3, 000. “It says something about those guys, how they’ve worked and persevered and continue to take care of their bodies. I think it says a lot. It’s a great milestone. ” | 0 |
The toughest job in politics these days is defending Hillary Clinton, mocked brilliantly by The New York Post as the “Deleter of the Free World.”
Her beleaguered defenders, as they retreat behind the bunker door, are settling on a crude legal defense.
Their mumbo jumbo chorus -- begins with the claim that she didn’t break any laws by doing government business on her private email and ends with the insistence that everybody does it.
That’s their story, and they are sticking to it — until they are forced to find another one.
That will be soon because, while Hillary’s Helpers may have a point about fuzzy laws, their argument is ultimately futile. She’s not on trial and opponents don’t have to meet a persnickety legal standard to win their case.
She’s running for president — and she must meet a less precise but more difficult standard. It’s the test of integrity, and she’s failed it often during her 30 years in public life.
To continue reading Michael Goodwin's column in the New York Post, click here.
Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist. | 0 |
Over the past week there has been an escalating feud between the executive and judicial branches of the U. S. government. When a Federal District Court judge in Seattle, James Robart, blocked President Trump’s travel ban, Trump went on the attack, calling Robart a “ judge,” the ruling “ridiculous” and the courts “so political. ” Even “a bad high school student would understand” why his ban should stay in place, the president said. Trump’s own nominee to the Supreme Court called the president’s comments “demoralizing” and “disheartening. ” When one story on the deepening drama ran on the home page, a reader noticed that its home page headline referred to the executive branch merely as the “U. S. ” The story’s digital headline read: “Justice Department Urges Appeals Court to Reinstate Trump’s Travel Ban,” while the home page version was: “U. S. Urges Court to Revive Ban Hearing Set for Tuesday. ” The public editor’s take: That’s a good catch. I’m sympathetic to headline writers, who are constricted by space limitations as they try to convey ideas clearly and accurately. And in most usage, referring to the executive branch U. S. is appropriate. In this case, it’s misleading. Trump also continued his onslaught of the news media, claiming that it plays down coverage of terrorist attacks. The White House even released a list of 78 attacks it claimed the media undercovered. Several readers wrote in to ask The Times to push back, which the paper did, publishing a compilation of the attacks that the paper has covered thoroughly. It did so, however, to the chagrin of some other readers. The public editor’s take: I am in full agreement. Playing defense is not the position The Times wants to find itself in — not over frivolous charges, anyway. If Trump or his administration challenges the thrust of a story based on anonymous sources, The Times has an obligation to explain itself to readers. Otherwise, taking such bait is just a distraction. Trump also targeted The Times specifically this week through his favorite medium, Twitter. This prompted several readers to ask whether The Times could take legal recourse against the president. The public editor’s take: I went out looking for answers from a pair of knowledgeable legal hands, and here’s what I found: The president has broad immunity from civil claims arising from the performance of his official duties. There is a convoluted legal argument over how broad. The matter of whether a judge would classify “tweeting” as an official duty remains untested. I’m guessing no lawsuit from The Times is coming anytime soon. Nor should there be one, in my view. That would be a waste of resources and would cast the news organization in opposition to the president. Its job is to cover him, fairly and aggressively. A line in a column about Kirsten Gillibrand and the left raised the eyebrows of a couple readers for its perceived sexism. The public editor’s take: Hmmm. I’m alert to coverage with sexist overtones and I’ll be writing more in the future — so keep those letters coming. In this case, my antenna didn’t go off. I took Ginia Bellafante’s pudding reference as the wry commentary of a columnist — a category of journalist that enjoys more leeway. Several readers this week also took issue with The Times’s explanation for the rating of the film “Sophie and the Rising Sun”: “Rated R for interracial sexy time. ” We took this question to Stephanie Goodman, the film editor, for an explanation. The public editor’s take: A little levity in movie ratings? Seems like a little fun to me. Finally, a lifelong reader of The Times passed away recently, and his granddaughter wrote in to tell us how much he appreciated the paper till his final day. Perhaps some reading indoors, in memory of Shanahan’s grandfather, would help those of us in the Northeast brave the snow. Updated 11:00 a. m. February 10, to include Trump’s latest attack on The Times, earlier Friday morning. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had political dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The conversation between Papadopoulos and the diplomat, Alexander Downer, in London was a driving factor behind the FBI’s decision to open a counter-intelligence investigation of Moscow’s contacts with the Trump campaign, the Times reported. Two months after the meeting, Australian officials passed the information that came from Papadopoulos to their American counterparts when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, according to the newspaper, which cited four current and former U.S. and foreign officials. Besides the information from the Australians, the probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch, the Times said. Papadopoulos, a Chicago-based international energy lawyer, pleaded guilty on Oct. 30 to lying to FBI agents about contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials. It was the first criminal charge alleging links between the Trump campaign and Russia. The White House has played down the former aide’s campaign role, saying it was “extremely limited” and that any actions he took would have been on his own. The New York Times, however, reported that Papadopoulos helped set up a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and edited the outline of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech in April 2016. The federal investigation, which is now being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has hung over Trump’s White House since he took office almost a year ago. Some Trump allies have recently accused Mueller’s team of being biased against the Republican president. Lawyers for Papadopoulos did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment. Mueller’s office declined to comment. Trump’s White House attorney, Ty Cobb, declined to comment on the New York Times report. “Out of respect for the special counsel and his process, we are not commenting on matters such as this,” he said in a statement. Mueller has charged four Trump associates, including Papadopoulos, in his investigation. Russia has denied interfering in the U.S. election and Trump has said there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow. | 0 |
ROME (Reuters) - Italy s ruling Democratic Party (PD), hit by internal divisions and a banking scandal, is continuing to slide in opinion polls, with a new survey on Saturday putting it more than six points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The survey by the Ixe agency, commissioned by Huffington Post Italia, comes just days before parliament is expected to be dissolved to make way for elections in March. It gives the center-left PD just 22.8 percent of voter support, down almost five points in the last two months, compared with 29.0 percent for 5-Star, which has gained almost two points in the same period. Silvio Berlusconi s center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy!) is given 16.2 percent, with its right-wing allies the Northern League and Brothers of Italy on 12.1 percent and 5.0 percent respectively. This bloc is expected to win most seats at the election but not enough for an absolute majority, resulting in a hung parliament. With the PD s support eroding in virtually all opinion polls, several political commentators have speculated that its leader Matteo Renzi may choose or be forced to announce he will not be the party s candidate for prime minister at the election. Renzi has given no indication so far he will take this step. The PD has split under his leadership, with critics complaining he has dragged the traditionally center-left party to the right. Breakaway groups united this month to form a new left-wing party called Free and Equal (LeU), which now has 7.3 percent of support, according to Ixe. The PD s popularity seems to have also been hurt by a parliamentary commission looking into the collapse of 10 Italian banks in the past two years. The commission s findings have put the PD on the defensive, allowing the opposition to claim a conflict of interest involving one of Renzi s closest allies who was active in trying to save a bank where her father was a board member. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The sudden death of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act has created an opening for voices from both parties to press for fixes to the acknowledged problems in President Barack Obama’s signature health law, as lawmakers and some senior White House officials appealed for bipartisanship. But the White House, still smarting from a disastrous defeat on Friday, appeared uncertain on the path forward. President Trump predicted that “Obamacare will explode” and offered no plan to stop it, but his was not the only voice from the White House. The president “wants to make sure that people don’t get left behind” in the search for affordable, quality health care, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on “Fox News Sunday. ” “I think it’s time for our folks to come together,” Mr. Priebus said, adding that it is time to “potentially get a few moderate Democrats on board, as well” as they try to bring down premiums and stabilize insurance markets. That appeal was echoed by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who opposed the House Republicans’ health bill and has also worked with Democrats to explore changes to the Affordable Care Act without repealing it. “With the demise of the House bill, there’s a real window of opportunity for a bipartisan approach to health care,” she said. In the wake of the Republican failure to make good on the promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders find themselves at a political crossroads. They could sabotage the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets, betting that Democrats would be blamed for collapsing coverage choices and spikes in insurance premiums and would then come to the negotiating table ready to toss the law and start fresh. Or they could work with Democratic lawmakers and moderate Republicans, who for years have discussed improvements to the Affordable Care Act, which, unlike many social welfare programs, has not been significantly updated or revised. Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said he wants to move on to other issues, and indicated that Democrats would have to come to him if they want to cooperate on health care. After insisting that the health law had to be eradicated “root and branch,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has been remarkably quiet since Friday’s debacle. The messages from the White House, so far, have been mixed. “You cannot fix a broken system,” the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press. ” “You are never going to fix that. This system must be removed. ” Mr. Trump appeared to endorse the strategy on Saturday morning, saying on Twitter: “ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great health care plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” But Mr. Priebus’s softer vision gave some in Congress hope that a bipartisan approach could be found — possibly to alleviate the health law’s burdens on small business, repeal some of its more unpopular taxes, give employers more leeway on which employees they have to offer insurance to, and foster more competition among insurance companies. “I believe that there is a group of centrist Democrats who recognize that the Affordable Care Act has flaws that must be fixed,” Ms. Collins said. “Until there was a repudiation of the House bill, they felt constrained from negotiating. Now that the House bill has died, I hope they will feel free to come to the table. ” Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, also called for bipartisanship. His state has benefited from its expansion of Medicaid under the health law, and would have been punished under the House Republican bill because its high premium costs would not have been offset by larger tax credits, as they are under current law. “The reason why Obamacare failed was because it wasn’t a bipartisan bill,” Mr. Young said. Republicans, he said, made the same mistake, writing their bill without Democrats. “We were very frankly guilty of that,” he said. Democrats also sounded more conciliatory. “Until now, we haven’t talked at all about compromise on the Affordable Care Act,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado. “From the moment it passed, Republicans started their mantra of ‘repeal and replace.’ Now that repeal seems to be off the table, I think it’s in everybody’s interest to make the law work better for our constituents. ” Representative Jim Cooper, a centrist Democrat from Tennessee who has often worked with Republicans, said: “We need to fix the flaws in Obamacare. I hope Republicans are willing to do that, instead of just destroying Obamacare. ” But, he added, “before we can work with them, the Republicans have to bargain in good faith and stop sabotaging Obamacare. ” Mr. Obama’s health care law may not be imploding, as President Trump says. But in states as diverse as Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the public insurance marketplaces — a central innovation of the Affordable Care Act — are in trouble. Consumers have seen big premium increases for health plans sold by a shrinking number of insurers. “People will have to come to the bargaining table sooner rather than later,” said Chris Jacobs, a health policy analyst. Within a few weeks, insurers must decide whether they will participate in the marketplaces in 2018. Insurance markets could quickly unravel if the House wins a court case challenging the legality of subsidies paid by the government to insurers on behalf of people. “The comments by President Trump and Speaker Ryan predicting the collapse of the A. C. A. and health insurance exchanges could become a prophecy,” said Kevin J. Counihan, who was the chief executive of the federal insurance marketplace, HealthCare. gov, under Mr. Obama. Mr. Counihan said he saw a risk that some counties might not have any insurers on the exchange next year as major insurers like Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth pull back from the program. Republicans in Congress, especially those from rural areas, share that concern. The Obama administration worked hard to keep insurers in the market, and to promote during open enrollment season. Whether the Trump administration will do so is unclear. Mr. Counihan suggested several areas where Republicans and Democrats in Congress could work together. They could, he said, give insurers more discretion to charge higher premiums for older adults, reflecting their medical costs. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers can charge older adults no more than three times the rates for young adults. The House Republican bill would have allowed them to charge five times as much, or more if states wanted. A ceiling somewhere between those numbers might be appropriate, Mr. Counihan said. In addition, he said, Congress could shorten the length of “grace periods” during which insurers must provide coverage to consumers who fail to pay their premiums. Lawmakers from both parties have also expressed a desire to give states more freedom to pursue their own ideas for expanding coverage, controlling health costs, reducing premiums and stabilizing insurance markets. Giving states more flexibility is consistent with Republicans’ federalism philosophy. It also has potential appeal to Democrats because many states, including some with Republican governors, are to the left of the Trump administration on health policy. One section of the Affordable Care Act, added at the behest of Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, already allows waivers for innovations in state health policy. But states say the requirements are so stringent that the waivers are of limited use. “As Republicans, we know that works for no one and certainly did not work for the individual markets,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess of Texas, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. Lawmakers of both parties also support legislation to help small businesses get insurance. As a possible model for bipartisan cooperation, they point to a bill signed by Mr. Obama in 2015 that changed the definition of “small employer” to protect such companies against increases in health insurance premiums. The possibility of bipartisan cooperation may not last long. Some conservative Republicans like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Sean P. Duffy of Wisconsin said they would redouble their efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act. “Rip it all out by the roots!” Representative Steve King of Iowa said Friday in a Twitter post. But other Republicans said that Democrats should be involved in efforts to rewrite the law. Representative Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, opposed the House bill and said its demise could “prove to be a catalyst” for forging a consensus. “Seeming stopping points can ultimately prove to be beginning points in life,” he said. | 0 |
Federally fund democracy by federally funding all political campaigns. No private or corporate money allowed. Bye bye lobbyist influence if we close the revolving door after office. Peace just may break out. | 1 |
LOME (Reuters) - Security forces fired tear gas at hundreds of anti-government protesters carrying out a late night sit-in at an intersection in central Lome as part of a bid to force President Faure Gnassingbe to step aside, witnesses said on Thursday. The opposition chief said earlier that evening that they would remain seated on the tarmac of the Dekon crossroads until Gnassingbe, whose family has ruled for 50 years, left power. | 1 |
A secret relationship had made the two men rich: one, the head of a pharmacy, the other, an executive at a major pharmaceutical company who had promised to funnel millions of dollars to his partner in exchange for receiving millions of his own. They celebrated over email like characters in a classic western movie — with one saying that they would soon “ride into the sunset” together. Those were the details laid out in a complaint announced on Thursday by federal prosecutors, which brought that cinematic tale to an inglorious end. The prosecutors charged the two executives — Andrew Davenport, the chief executive of the pharmacy Philidor Rx Services, and Gary Tanner, an executive at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International — with multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy for what prosecutors described as a scheme to enrich themselves. The arrests represent the first charges in multiple state and federal investigations into Valeant’s business practices, including inquiries by Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the questions have mounted over the last year, shares of Valeant, a major drug maker that was once a Wall Street darling, have fallen precipitously, putting the company’s future in doubt. In a statement, Valeant noted that the company and its top executives had not been charged in the case, and said it was cooperating with the investigation. A lawyer for Mr. Davenport said his client intended to defend himself, and a lawyer for Mr. Tanner said his client’s innocence would be demonstrated at trial. Of all the questions surrounding the company, its relationship to the small pharmacy Philidor drew perhaps the most scrutiny. In October 2015, Valeant revealed that it had bought an option to acquire Philidor in 2014 but had never disclosed that detail to investors. Several media outlets reported on a host of tactics Valeant was said to have used to steer its products through Philidor and increase sales, including altering prescriptions to specify that Valeant’s drug, and not a cheaper generic, be dispensed. It cut ties to Philidor that same month. According to the complaint, filed Wednesday in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, Mr. Tanner and Mr. Davenport were at the heart of this relationship. The government said the two concealed from Valeant a secret pact they had made to promote the pharmacy’s interests inside Valeant, including persuading Valeant to buy an option to acquire Philidor. The government contends Mr. Tanner used a secret email account, under the name “Brian Wilson” to communicate with Mr. Davenport. Prosecutors said Mr. Tanner and Mr. Davenport initiated their plan while Mr. Tanner was in charge of what was known at Valeant as “alternative fulfillment,” or the practice of using pharmacies to increase prescriptions for its drugs that otherwise might have been filled by cheaper generic alternatives. As the scheme developed, prosecutors said, Mr. Tanner resisted efforts by Valeant’s senior leadership to seek out relationships with Philidor’s competitors, and his efforts were critical in leading Valeant into the agreement in December 2014. Philidor profited handsomely from the relationship — prosecutors said it grew to an enterprise with 450 employees and tens of millions of dollars in revenue at the end of 2014 from a tiny in 2013. Until Philidor was shut down in January, at least 90 percent of the drugs it dispensed were sold by Valeant, the federal complaint said. Mr. Tanner also benefited from the arrangement, the authorities said. According to the complaint, Mr. Davenport used a series of shell companies — including one called End Game — to secretly transfer a kickback payment to Mr. Tanner after the agreement went through. According to prosecutors, about $40 million from the deal between Valeant and Philidor went to Mr. Davenport, who, they said, sent about $10 million of that to Mr. Tanner. The complaint said that Valeant officials questioned Mr. Tanner several times about whether he had any financial relationship with Philidor — and that he said he did not. Howard M. Shapiro, a lawyer for Mr. Tanner, said his client had simply been doing his job. “It was Gary Tanner’s job at Valeant to grow and promote Philidor,” he said in a statement. “He performed that job exceptionally well, greatly benefiting Valeant’s shareholders, and regularly communicated to his superiors what he was doing. ” Mr. Davenport’s lawyer, Jonathan Rosen, said Mr. Davenport had worked “with full transparency” and added, “Philidor also benefited Valeant, which is why Valeant and its highly sophisticated and active management team sought to buy it. ” Mr. Tanner was forced out of Valeant in 2015. Mr. Davenport remained at Philidor until the company shut down. Regardless of whether Valeant’s top executives were aware of the arrangement between Mr. Tanner and Mr. Davenport, Valeant benefited significantly from its ties to the pharmacy, allowing it to increase sales of ailing products and obscure more significant problems with the business, said Vicki Bryan, a senior analyst with Gimme Credit, a bond research firm. She noted that Valeant paid Philidor $100 million to enter into the purchase agreement, then quickly paid it $33 million more, according to the complaint. “This is how much Valeant valued this relationship, right off the bat,” Ms. Bryan said. When Valeant disclosed its relationship to Philidor last year, it said that the pharmacy had accounted for about 7 percent of its sales in the third quarter of 2015, or about $196 million. Beyond the relationship between Mr. Davenport and Mr. Tanner, Valeant has said in public filings that the government investigations into Philidor could include looking into whether it improperly used its ties to the pharmacy to bill third parties, such as insurers. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference on Thursday that the investigation was continuing, but he declined to discuss specifics. He would not say whether his office was looking into Valeant’s accounting practices. A spokesman for Mr. Bharara said the office did not have any agreements with cooperating witnesses to make public at this time. His office has tended to make cooperation agreements public when an investigation is largely complete. The criminal complaint also refers to interviews with several unnamed former Valeant executives, but does not identify any of them as cooperating witnesses. The series of negative developments over the last year have pummeled Valeant’s stock — pushing it down to its current $17 a share from nearly $100 a share last November. Its chief executive, J. Michael Pearson, stepped down in the spring, and the problems also led to a of the board. The precipitous decline has punished a number of big hedge funds that hold large positions in Valeant — firms like Pershing Square Capital Management, Paulson Company and ValueAct Capital Management. No hedge fund may have been hurt more than Pershing Square, the $11. 6 billion firm led by the investor William A. Ackman. Mr. Ackman began buying Valeant shares in early 2015, when the stock was trading around $190, and he has remained a true believer. This year, well after concerns about Valeant’s business dealings with Philidor became apparent, he continued to argue the company had value and secured two board seats for his firm, holding one of them himself. Just last week, Mr. Ackman told his investors that he foresaw a comeback strategy for Valeant as it moved to sell off business divisions to reduce its debt obligation. He has even suggested that the company may rename itself in an effort to rebuild its reputation. Yet he has conceded that he and his firm could have done better due diligence on Valeant’s aggressive practices — another business strategy that has prompted controversy and protests from federal legislators. Mr. Ackman, in an email statement on Thursday, declined to comment on the criminal charges beyond the Valeant statement. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Here are some of the highlights of the Reuters interview with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday. “There’s a chance that we could end up having a major, major, conflict with North Korea, absolutely.” QUESTION: Is that your biggest global worry at this point? “Yes, I would say that’s true, yes. ... North Korea would be certainly that.” ON GETTING SOUTH KOREA TO PAY FOR THAAD MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM “On the THAAD system, it’s about a billion dollars. I said, ‘Why are we paying? Why are we paying a billion dollars? We’re protecting. Why are we paying a billion dollars?’ So I informed South Korea it would be appropriate if they paid. Nobody’s going to do that. Why are we paying a billion dollars? It’s a billion dollar system. It’s phenomenal. It’s the most incredible equipment you’ve ever seen - shoots missiles right out of the sky. And it protects them and I want to protect them. We’re going to protect them. But they should pay for that, and they understand that.” ON WHETHER THE WAR AGAINST ISLAMIST EXTREMISM WILL EVER END “Yours is the toughest question. Because at what point does it end? But we can’t let them come over here. I have to say, there is an end. And it has to be humiliation. There is an end. Otherwise it’s really tough. But there is an end. We are really eradicating some very bad people. When you take a look at what’s going on with the cutting off of the heads. We haven’t seen that since Medieval times. Right?” ON CHINESE PRESIDENT XI’S EFFORTS TO REIN IN NORTH KOREA “He certainly doesn’t want to see turmoil and death. He doesn’t want to see it. He’s a good man. He’s a very good man and I got to know him very well ... We’ll see how it all works out. I know he would like to be able to do something. Perhaps it’s possible that he can’t. But I think he’d like to be able to do something.” “He’s 27 years old, his father dies, took over a regime, so say what you want but that’s not easy, especially at that age. You know you have plenty of generals in there and plenty of other people that would like to do what he’s doing. So I’ve said this before and I’ve, I’m just telling you, and I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit. I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do.” “As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational.” “I get a call from Mexico yesterday, ‘We hear you’re going to terminate NAFTA.’ I said that’s right. They said, ‘Is there any way we can do something without you – without termination?’ I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He said, ‘Well, we’d like to negotiate.’ I said we’ll think about it. Then I get a call, and they call me, I get a call from Justin Trudeau and he said, ‘We’d like to see if we can work something out,’ and I said that’s fine. Because I’ve always - I’ve been very consistent. It’s much less disruptive if we can make a fair trade deal than if we terminate.” “It’s unacceptable. It’s a horrible deal made by Hillary. It’s a horrible deal. And we’re going to renegotiate that deal, or terminate it.” QUESTION: When will you announce it? “Very soon. I’m announcing it now.” “By the way, with South Korea, just so you know. They’re ready for it. Mike Pence was representing me, he was just over there, he’s told them. And we have the five-year anniversary coming up very shortly. And we thought that would be a good time to start ... It’s a great deal for South Korea. It’s a terrible deal for us.” “Frankly, Saudi Arabia has not treated us fairly, because we are losing a tremendous amount of money in defending Saudi Arabia.” “Well, my problem is that I’ve established a very good personal relationship with (Chinese) President Xi. And I really feel that he is doing everything in his power to help us with a big situation, so I wouldn’t want to be causing difficulty right now for him ... So I would certainly want to speak to him first.” “If there’s closure, there’s closure. We’ll see what happens. If there’s a shutdown. It’s the Democrats’ fault. Not our fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. Maybe they’d like to see a shutdown.” ON TRUMP’S PLAN TO GENERATE REVENUE TO OFFSET TAX CUTS “We will do trade deals that are going to make up for a tremendous amount of the deficit. We are going to be doing trade deals that are going to be much better trade deals ... “There will be other ways that we are going to raise revenues. But we are going to run the country properly, and we are going to be reimbursed when we do things. Why should we be paying for somebody else’s military?” ON MIDDLE EAST PEACE AND POSSIBLE TRIP TO ISRAEL, SAUDI ARABIA “It’s a possibility, we’re talking to both. It’s a possibility, but I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians. There is no reason there’s not peace between Israel and the Palestinians - none whatsoever. So we’re looking at that and we’re also looking at the potential of going to Saudi Arabia.” | 0 |
It’s Harder for Clinton Supporters to Respect Trump Backers Than Vice Versa John Gramlich, Pew Research, November 1, 2016 Given the rancorous tone and often highly personal nature of this year’s presidential campaign, supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump might be expected to hold similarly negative views of one another. But a new Pew Research Center survey finds that Clinton backers–particularly highly educated ones–have more difficulty respecting Trump supporters than the other way around. Nearly six-in-ten registered voters who back Clinton (58%) say they have a “hard time” respecting someone who supports Trump for president; 40% say they have “no trouble” with it. Nearly the opposite is true among Trump supporters, with 56% saying they have no trouble respecting someone who backs Clinton and 40% saying they do have trouble with it. Among Clinton supporters, those with a college degree have a harder time respecting someone who prefers Trump than those who have not graduated from college. About two-thirds (66%) of college graduates who back Clinton say they have a hard time, compared with a narrower majority (53%) among Clinton supporters who have not completed college. White women who back Clinton also are particularly likely to say they have difficulty respecting those who favor Trump: 68% say this, compared with a smaller share of white men (59%) and fewer nonwhites.
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Donald Trump s former campaign manager Paul Manafort seems likely to flip on his old boss and it s is scaring the sh*t out of the current occupant of the White House. Manafort s shady past includes owing a fuckton of money to pro-Russian entities, money laundering, working in the Ukraine while investing with a Russian oligarch, along with other dubious business practices. Manafort has very little to lose and everything to gain by flipping on Trump. It was previously revealed that his own daughters hate him because that money we have is blood money. It s now been reported that it was Manafort who alerted authorities to Donald Trump Jr s meeting with a Russian lawyer, which was also attended by Trump s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. That meeting was set up to gather damaging information on Trump s rival, Hillary Clinton.Bloomberg Politics reports:In fact, Manafort had alerted authorities to a controversial meeting on June 9, 2016, involving Trump s son Donald Jr., other campaign representatives and a Russian lawyer promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton, according to people familiar with the matter. The president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were dragged into the matter as details repeatedly emerged that contradicted the initial accounts of that meeting.Manafort s business associates also risk being engulfed by the probe.Federal agents conducted a pre-dawn raid late last month at a house owned by Manafort and now the investigation involves his financial interests. It appears that Mueller is going by the wise standard of following the money.Agents were looking for tax documents and foreign banking records when they conducted the pre-dawn raid on the morning of July 26. A spokesman for Manafort confirmed the news.Hours before the raid was conducted, Trump fired out a tweet against Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.Immediately after the news broke of the raid on Manafort s home, the National Enquirer, a tabloid which has been in cahoots with Trump for years, predictably tweeted out their latest hit-post, Donald Trump Advisor Paul Manafort Caught Up In Sick Sex Scandal! You can bookmark this: Manafort will roll over on the entire Trump crime family to save his own skin. Tick tock, it s Mueller time!Read more:Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images. | 0 |
With private cybersecurity firms linking North Korea to recent computer attacks that absconded with at least $81 million, the Treasury Department moved on Wednesday to choke off Pyongyang’s remaining access to the global financial system, designating the country a “primary” money launderer. The Treasury, employing sanctions techniques that helped pressure Iran to give up much of its nuclear program, said it would seek to impose what are known as secondary sanctions against the reclusive communist country. That means that it could cut off from the American financial system any bank or company that conducts banking transactions with Pyongyang. As a practical matter, that would largely affect Chinese banks, which facilitate North Korea’s financial transactions with Beijing, its largest trading partner. It could also affect some institutions in the nominally autonomous Chinese regions of Macau and Hong Kong, as well as in Singapore, where Pyongyang has often gone to hide the true nature of its banking activities, and to pay for missiles, nuclear fuel and the huge infrastructure it has built around those programs. The designation, officials said, was in the works long before evidence emerged linking the country’s aggressive hackers to the bank thefts, which involved stealing the credentials that banks use to access the Swift system, a global network that thousands of financial firms use to authorize payments from one account to another. In interviews, administration officials said they were still sorting through the evidence that North Korea was involved, and left open the possibility that the thieves deliberately left evidence implicating the country to throw investigators off their trail. It could be months, the officials said, before they reach any conclusions, and in the end the perpetrators of the attack may not be definitively known. Only once — in the case of North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which was promoting a movie depicting the assassination of Kim the country’s unpredictable young leader — has President Obama publicly accused another country of using computer code to wreak havoc in the United States. In this case, the sanctions were proposed most immediately because of a Treasury investigation that concluded North Korea uses hard currency to finance its nuclear and missile programs. The department invoked a section of the Patriot Act to ban banks from processing any banking transaction that runs through North Korea. It is hard to assess how much the action will hurt North Korea. Such sanctions against financial institutions doing business with Iran proved effective because Tehran had billions of dollars in monthly oil and other energy exports that could be choked off North Korea has none. Oftentimes Pyongyang deals in cash. Until a few years ago it was one of the largest counterfeiters of $100 bills. But that fraud was largely cut off by the redesign of the $100 bill. The key test will be the reaction of the Chinese. American officials will have a chance to find out next week: Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew are traveling to Beijing for the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, where the isolation of North Korea will be a major subject of discussion. China voted for the latest United Nations sanctions, but Beijing’s fears of provoking a collapse of North Korea’s government still outweigh its desire to rein in Mr. Kim’s government. Underlying the financial action was the United States’ desire to respond to North Korea’s third nuclear weapons test, conducted in January, which the country said was its first test of a hydrogen bomb. (There is no evidence that it was, in fact, a hydrogen weapon, which increases the magnitude of the blast.) More recently Pyongyang has attempted, and failed, to launch a Musudan missile. It is based on an early Soviet model, which was launched from a submarine, but the repeated failures have embarrassed Mr. Kim and undermined his effort to convince the world that his nuclear missile program is steaming ahead quickly. The bigger mystery is whether Mr. Kim is also trying to show that he can undermine the global financial system, his best way of getting back at the West and his Asian neighbors for their support of sanctions. Two cybersecurity firms identified Pyongyang as the culprit behind a series of cyberattacks against Asian banks, including the theft that spirited $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Private security researchers analyzing those thefts say that unique digital fingerprints in the attackers’ code match those of the code used in cyberattacks against Sony in 2014 and South Korean banks and broadcasting companies in 2013. The Sony hack destroyed 70 percent of the firm’s computers. South Korea has blamed North Korea for the attacks on its firms. Elements of the code in those attacks closely track some of the code found in the more recent bank thefts. Banks in the United States are already prohibited from doing business with financial institutions in North Korea. But the recommended rules would require them to perform additional due diligence to ensure they are not inadvertently transacting with North Korean financial institutions or the Pyongyang government through shell companies or other fictitious entities. The rules are the result of a monthslong effort by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to determine whether North Korea is a haven for money laundering. With that designation established, the Treasury secretary is able to take aggressive measures to cut off the country’s access to the United States financial system. Other countries have also been stepping up efforts to isolate North Korea. In March, the United Nations Security Council said its members had 90 days to sever banking relationships with North Korean financial institutions. The recent attacks on Asian banks exposed new vulnerabilities in the way banks move money around the world. North Korea’s possible involvement in those cyberattacks has raised alarms about Pyongyang’s ability to exploit Swift, the global bank messaging network. But the attack did not go to the core of the Swift system instead, it was analogous to stealing a credit card number to post a phony transaction in the Visa or MasterCard system. | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rating agency Moody s warned on Tuesday that reopening Lebanon s political vacuum after the resignation on Saturday of prime minister Saad al-Hariri would damage the tiny country s credit rating. A drawn-out political stalemate less than a month after the government passed its first budget in 12 years would undermine recent institutional improvements and expose the banking system to a loss in confidence, it said in an emailed note. Any loss of confidence in the banking system or in the stability of Lebanon s institutions leading to a significant slowdown in private sector deposit inflows or outright outflows would be credit negative, it added. Lebanon s central bank governor, finance minister and banking association head have all issued statements assuring that Lebanon s monetary and financial situation is stable. The country s fragile economy has one of the world s highest debt-to-GDP ratios and is underpinned by its banking system. Hariri resigned in a televised broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Saturday, taking Lebanon s political elite by surprise, and plunging Beirut into a political crisis. President Michel Aoun has said he will not accept Hariri s resignation until he returns to Lebanon to explain his reasons, putting off the difficult political consultations among Lebanese factions to form a new government. As the most influential politician in the Sunni community, which in Lebanon s sectarian system must fill the position of prime minister, Hariri has no obvious successor. | 1 |
The Phoenix, Arizona police department is not at all happy with Donald Trump after the GOP presidential nominee aired an ad implying they were endorsing him. They weren t and now the police department wants the ad taken off the air.The ad includes a short clip of Trump being surrounded by Phoenix police. He was seen shaking hands with one. While the ad didn t specifically say that the Phoenix PD was endorsing Trump, it was a implied and for that, the Phoenix Police Department sent Trump a cease and desist letter demanding the ad be taken down. Phoenix has not approved and will not approve the creation or use of any media bearing the faces and likenesses of its on-duty police officers in any political advertisement for any political candidate, (City Attorney Brad) Holm wrote in the letter. The officers were unaware they were photographed and videotaped, and they did not consent to the use of their on-duty images in any Trump (or any other) campaign advertisement. Source: ABC 15Holm went on to say that Trump, in his ad, unmistakably and wrongfully implied the city and its police officers endorsed Trump. Not only that, the inclusion of the uniforms violates, according to Holm, copyright laws. As owner of this intellectual property, the City of Phoenix hereby orders the Trump campaign to immediately cease and desist from your unauthorized use of Phoenix Police Department uniforms, bird emblem, police badge, police insignia patch, and all other imagery of official City of Phoenix materials and on-duty employees, Holm wrote.Here s the ad. The brief and objectionable moment comes at the :22 mark.There seems to be a bizarre war going on in normally very red Arizona. Even before the Phoenix police balked at Trump s campaign ad, the Arizona Republic newspaper gave a rousing endorsement of Hillary Clinton and a thorough takedown of Donald Trump. Trump is asking his followers to cancel their subscription to the Arizona Republic and to the other papers that are lining up against the dangerous presidential candidate.The people are really smart in cancelling subscriptions to the Dallas & Arizona papers & now USA Today will lose readers! The people get it! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016His supporters, of course, are going even further. The paper has been receiving death threats. You have to wonder if the police department will also receive death threats, or just its lawyer.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 1 |
Mind blowing incompetence and reckless disregard for the lives of these brave men and women by politically appointed leftists A new service award recently created by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for Border Patrol agents could actually put their lives at risk. The award recognizes an agent who does not use deadly force in a situation where they are confronted by an armed assailant. They want us to put ourselves in a bad tactical situation, National Border Patrol Council Vice President Shawn Moran told Breitbart Texas in an interview Friday evening. This could lead to one of our agents getting killed. The award is defined by the CBP as:The Use of Deadly Force Encounter Averted award is to recognize and employee who demonstrated clear situational awareness and courage while disarming a suspect using contact controls and verbal commands before the situation escalated to the use of deadly force. The act must demonstrate courage in the face of an armed suspect and result in no injury in accordance with agencies use of force policy. At first, I thought this was a joke, Moran told Breitbart Texas. But Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera contacted officials in the awards section of CBP and they confirmed it is true, he said. In addition to his Border Patrol duties Cabrera also serves as vice president of NBPC Local 3307 and as NBPC deputy spokesperson. This is a true indication about how the politically appointed leaders of the CBP truly feel about our agents, he said.Moran said he had not heard about the award before Cabrera brought it to his attention. I can t recall any official discussions between the union and the department over this, he explained. This is typical pandering by our executives to organizations like the ACLU and illegal alien advocates. The exacerbated leader of the NBPC which represents more than 18,000 men and women who protect our nation s borders said, They are more concerned about placating these groups than protecting Border Patrol agents. He said this is also typical for them to roll something like this out on the day before a big holiday weekend hoping no one will notice.The policy appears to put just one more thing an agent must think about when faced with a life threatening situation.The NBPC posted a copy of the award definition on its Facebook page earlier on Friday evening. Commenting on the award, the organization posted, This type of thinking will get Border Patrol agents killed. If that happens we will hold the creators of this award accountable. This is despicable. The CBP seems to be following the lead of the Los Angeles Police Department who rolled out a Preservation of Life Award. The policy was designed to recognize officers who hold their fire to avoid using deadly force, Breitbart News William Bigelow reported in November 2015.The Los Angeles Police Protective League had a similar reaction to that of the NBPC. The local police union responded that the award prioritizes the lives of suspected criminals over the lives of officers.NATO forces in Europe considered a similar idea but never implemented it, Bigelow reported. Via: Breitbart News | 0 |
The FBI announced Friday it had uncovered news emails related to its investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton‘s handling of classified information while conducting a separate investigation into the pervy sexting habits of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner of course is the estranged husband of Hillary’s closest aide, Huma Abedin who herself figures prominently in Clinton’s email scandals.
The FBI announced Friday it had uncovered news emails related to its investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton‘s handling of classified information while conducting a separate investigation into the pervy sexting habits of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner of course is the estranged husband of Hillary’s closest aide, Huma Abedin who herself figures prominently in Clinton’s email scandals.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump saw this coming from a mile away, fingering Weiner as a potential national security threat all the way back in August of 2015. “It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary’s private illegal emails,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Huma’s PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world.”
Abedin recently announced the couple’s separation after Weiner became embroiled in a new series of embarrassing online sexting scandals, including one allegedly involving an underage girl that prompted the FBI to investigate.
One month earlier, Trump said he didn’t like the thought of “Huma going home at night and telling Anthony Weiner all of these secrets.”
Trump was sounding the alarm about Weiner as early September 2013, when he wrote that Huma should “dump the sicko Weiner” because he was “a calamity who is bringing her down with him.”
Click to read more from Heat Street. | 1 |
Donald Trump is an unapologetic Islamophobic bigot. He has called for a ban on all Muslims including citizens who might be abroad entering the United States. And now, The Donald is insisting on doubling down on the lie that American soldiers killed Muslims with bullets dipped in pig s blood. This is particularly significant, because according to Islam, eating or coming into contact with pork is forbidden.During a rally on the campaign in Charleston, South Carolina, Trump rallied his army of racist supporters, and doubled down on the blatant the lie that American General John Pershing led the mass murder and added insult to injury at their time of death with the pig s blood: He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pig s blood. And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person he said You go back to your people and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years there wasn t a problem, OK? Trump had the perfect crowd to sell his hatred to, as he always does people who hate Muslims with a passion and believe them to be the doom of America. The whole point behind stoking the fires of anger at that South Carolina rally was to make sure people understood that he has as much contempt for Muslims and their faith as his bigoted followers do.This is a lie that was started during the rise of post- 9/11 Islamophobia, which Trump has happily reignited. Fact-checking site Snopes notes that the bigoted and untrue idea of subduing militant Muslims by threatening to bury them with pigs has held currency for many years. Well, despite the fact that none of this is true regarding General Pershing, the idea still persists in the scary era of the very real possibility of Bigot-in-Chief Donald Trump becoming President of the United States. This is just another reason that Trump s persistent front-runner status should terrify us all.Featured image via screen capture from AI archives | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - France’s president has not given Donald Trump an easy ride: a crunching handshake at one meeting was followed by a body swerve at another and then a public rebuke over his attitude to climate change. But now there seems to be an olive branch from Paris. The U.S. leader said on Wednesday he had accepted an invitation from Emmanuel Macron to celebrate July 14 Bastille Day celebrations and 100 years since the U.S. troops entered into World War One. Trump will likely revel in a ceremony laden with pageantry and military pomp, with U.S. soldiers marching down the Champs Elysees boulevard beside French servicemen - a welcome respite from his domestic woes. For Macron, 39, it is an opportunity to use soft diplomacy to win Trump’s confidence as he tries to establish himself as a leading global statesman at a time when decision-making in the White House has become increasingly unpredictable. “We don’t want the United States to isolate themselves,” a Macron aide said recently. “That’s what diplomacy is for. It’s not to let people sulk in their corner.” In the space of six weeks, France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, will have hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Versailles and Trump on Paris’ most iconic avenue. Macron flattered Putin in May with a meeting at the sumptuous palace of France’s former monarchy, built outside Paris by Louis XIV - the ‘Sun King’ - to symbolize absolute power. Even so, Macron pulled no punches, accusing Russian state media of “lying propaganda” during his French election campaign. A French diplomat indicated there would be frank exchanges with Trump too after Macron took a dig in English at Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord when he urged U.S. citizens to help “make this planet great again”. “On climate change it’s complicated,” the diplomat said. “But the rest is sufficiently important for him to make this historic trip on July 14.” Macron appears to be broadly aligning his foreign policy with U.S. priorities of tackling terrorism while seeking better ties with Russia. The battle against Islamic State, Syria’s civil war and Iran’s nuclear accord are likely talking points. Privately, some French diplomats have lamented the lack of a clear U.S. policy on the long-term political process in Syria and say even setting up a meeting between the French and U.S. foreign ministers is tough. A White House statement said the two leaders would “further build on the strong counter-terrorism cooperation and economic partnership between the two countries”. Past words may haunt Trump. It will be his first visit since he declared that a wave of militant attacks showed France was soft on immigration and fighting jihadists. “France is no longer France. They won’t like me for saying that but... France is no longer France and this world better be very careful and they better get very tough and very smart,” the U.S. president said in a campaign speech. In bringing Trump to Paris, Macron has stolen a march on Britain’s embattled Prime Minister Theresa May. London’s offer in February of a state visit for Trump met fierce public resistance, Britons perceiving it as a desperate act by a government in need of a trade deal as it faced tough negotiations on its exit from the European Union. A date has still not been confirmed. In Paris, public opinion appeared divided. “You can see that the way Trump’s headed isn’t going to help things and I think diplomatic channels are the best way to calm things down,” said antique dealer Florence Toussaint. Psychologist Martine Aubourg was less impressed. “Trump isn’t an honorable president,” she said. “He changes his mind all the time.” | 0 |
Donald Trump s budget is all about punishing the poor while enriching himself.The whole problem with Trump keeping his various business enterprises in his family is that he can use the presidency to only support policies that help him and his family profit financially. And forget about Trump actually doing anything that would harm his own bottom line.Millions of Americans rely on housing aid to make sure they have a roof over their heads and the heads of their children.But that doesn t matter to Trump at all.You see, while Trump s budget makes massive cuts to housing and shelter programs that are designed to help the poor and the homeless, many of whom are also veterans, it protects a federal program that provides millions of dollars in subsidies paid to private landlords.According to the Washington Post,One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.Meanwhile, Trump s budget cuts the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by $7 billion. The federal program Trump personally benefits from only got cut by a mere half a percent, about $65 million.In short, while the low-income families face eviction and homelessness, Donald Trump and his family will continue drawing millions of dollars in income from the government despite owning several lavish homes, including a Trump Tower penthouse plated in gold.On top of that, Trump s healthcare bill would take healthcare away from millions of low-income families as well, which means that poor people will not have shelter or healthcare if Trump has his way.This is disgraceful and totally unethical. Clearly, Trump is designing his budget to enrich himself and his family while disregarding the needs of millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him.Americans should be outraged by this.Featured image via Mario Tama/Getty Images | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - Youths who torched a police car and attacked the car driver with an iron bar as he fled the flames were sentenced to up to seven years in jail by a French court on Wednesday. Dozens of riot police were deployed outside the Paris courthouse where the judge announced his verdict, after a trial prompted by the most striking episode of ultra-violent street protests last year against labor law reforms. The case grabbed international attention in the run-up to this year s presidential election as politicians traded accusations of being soft on law and order - a flashpoint in a contest that far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen ultimately lost to centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron. It also made headlines due to extensive TV coverage of an incident where a group of protesters mobbed a police car, smashed its windows and threw a flare inside, forcing the car s two occupants to bail out as flames engulfed the vehicle. The driver - dubbed Kung Fu cop by French media - became a subject of fascination after taking on one of the protesters who attacked him with an iron bar. He fended off the blows with arm strokes worthy of a martial arts master. His assailant was one of five people tried. He was sentenced to three years in prison. Another protester got seven years but is on the run and believed to be in Switzerland. The incident, in May 2016, was part of a wave of protests where gangs of mostly hooded youths engaged in running battles with riot police in the capital city and cities across France. The protests were sparked by labor law changes which several labor unions and leftist politicians said would damage worker rights and make it easier for employers to fire people. Macron, a former investment banker regarded as a business-friendly centrist, has since taken over but is also introducing further labor law reforms that have put hardline unions back on the warpath, although protests have not so far been on a similar scale to 2016 s demonstrations. | 0 |
ABOARD USS RONALD REAGAN, Sea of Japan (Reuters) - The USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier, patrolled in waters east of the Korean peninsula on Thursday, in a show of sea and air power designed to warn off North Korea from any military action. The U.S. Navy s biggest warship in Asia, with a crew of 5,000 sailors, sailed around 100 miles (160.93 km), launching almost 90 F-18 Super Hornet sorties from its deck, in sight of South Korean islands. It is conducting drills with the South Korean navy involving 40 warships deployed in a line stretching from the Yellow Sea west of the peninsula into the Sea of Japan. The dangerous and aggressive behavior by North Korea concerns everybody in the world, Rear Admiral Marc Dalton, commander of the Reagan s strike group, said in the carrier s hangar as war planes taxied on the flight deck above. We have made it clear with this exercise, and many others, that we are ready to defend the Republic of Korea. The Reagan s presence in the region, coupled with recent military pressure by Washington on Pyongyang, including B1-B strategic bomber flights over the Korean peninsula, comes ahead of President Donald Trump s first official visit to Asia, set to start in Japan on Nov. 5, with South Korea to follow. North Korea has slammed the warship gathering as a rehearsal for war . It comes as senior Japanese, South Korean and U.S. diplomats meet in Seoul to discuss a diplomatic way forward backed up by U.N. sanctions. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously ratcheted up sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes since 2006. The most stringent include a ban on coal, iron ore and seafood exports that aim at halting a third of North Korea s $3 billion of annual exports. On Monday, Kim In Ryong, North Korea s deputy U.N. envoy, told a U.N. General Assembly committee the Korean peninsula situation had reached a touch-and-go point and a nuclear war could break out at any moment. A series of weapons tests by Pyongyang, including its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 and two missile launches over Japan, has stoked tension in East Asia. A Russian who returned from a visit to Pyongyang has said the regime is preparing to test a missile it believes can reach the U.S. west coast. On Sunday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said President Donald Trump had instructed him to continue diplomatic efforts to defuse tension with North Korea. Washington has not ruled out the eventual possibility of direct talks with the North to resolve the stand-off, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan said on Tuesday. | 1 |
Advocates for big government and progressive power are using the Justice Department to extort money from corporations. It s a shakedown. It s corrupt, pure and simple. Tom Fitton, Judicial WatchHere s how it works: Remember when big banks were sued by the feds for supposed mortgage abuse or discrimination? The government basically extorted money from the banks and then incentivized the banks to settle by giving the money to third-party organizations. How convenient, right? It was a way to redistribute billions to radical organizations like La Raza!So far, investigators have accounted for $3 billion paid to non-victim entities . The underlying problem with the slush funds is we don t know exactly where the money is going. Using enforcement authority to go after corporate defendants, DOJ bureaucrats are taking billions away from taxpayers to fund their pet projects overriding congressional preferences. Ted Frank, director of The Competitive Enterprise Institute Center for Class Action Fairness. Somebody out to go to prison for this! -Former Gov. Mike Huckabee sounds off on DOJ bankrolling leftist groups pic.twitter.com/Ut7u7FYD62 FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 2, 2017READ MORE: FOX NEWS | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that the government shutdown threatened by President Donald Trump is unnecessary and not wanted by lawmakers in Congress. “I don’t think anyone is interested in having a shutdown. I don’t think it is in our interests to do so,” Ryan told a news conference in Oregon. | 1 |
Despite how much the National Rifle Association (NRA) would like everyone to believe that they are doing their best to educate and protect children against gun violence, the pro-gun organization s latest stunt is pretty puzzling.NRA Family has recently released a pair of children s stories but added its very own special twist. Recreating children s fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, the NRA has taken it upon itself to rewrite the stories and give their heroes guns to defeat their enemies. After all, hasn t everyone wondered at some point or another what would have happened to Little Red Riding Hood if only her grandmother had been armed with a shotgun? Finally, this burning question has been answered.Little Red Riding Hood NRA FamilyIn the recreated version of Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun), the Big Bad Wolf finds himself out of luck because Little Red has a rifle. He gives up and tries to eat Grandma instead, but finds himself in the same predicament because she s also packing heat. Here s a snippet of what the fairy tale looks like with the NRA s special trigger-happy touch: What big teeth you have! Grandma said, as his fierce jaws came near. The better to eat you with! the wolf threatened.The wolf leaned in, jaws open wide, then stopped suddenly. Those big ears heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun s safety being clicked off. Those big eyes looked down and saw that grandma had a scattergun aimed right at him. He realized that Grandmother hadn t been backing away from him; she had been moving towards her shotgun to protect herself and her home.Hansel And Gretal NRA FamilyThe story of Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns) isn t much better. In this adapted classic, Hansel and Gretal avoid danger because their parents taught them how to use guns. Gretel is not only able to hunt down a 10-point buck, but the pair is able to rescue the children being held captive in the witch s cottage all because they re armed.These revamped children s tales certainly send the wrong message to kids, and hopefully parents will be smart enough to know that. Time and time again, we see that when guns get into the hands of children even when they have been taught how to use firearms things usually go terribly wrong.But the NRA has consistently proven that it doesn t know what s right for children and the organization just doesn t care. The gun-friendly organization continues to promote its Eddie Eagle GunSafe program, an initiative to help educate kids and prevent accidental gun deaths. It has been proven extremely ineffective several times, but the NRA refuses to actually do something that will really protect children like support gun control. The association has consistently opposed and resisted any attempt the Obama administration has tried to make toward gun reform, even as mass shootings have become more common than ever.This is an organization that does not care about America s youth, and these rewritten stories prove it. These revised tales will only make kids want to use guns MORE, and offer zero education about the dangers and seriousness of handling firearms.Featured image via NRAfamily.org | 1 |
Not only did the ancient Hopi believe their Gods inhabited the inner parts of the Earth, they also depicted mysterious Ant-like beings and flying shields thousands of years ago.
Interestingly, their legends also speak of a great flood which is a clear parallel to ancient Sumerian legends of the Great Flood .
‘Hopituh Shi-nu-mu’ is the name that one of the Native American tribes is called and means “peaceful people.”
The history of the ancient Hopi goes back thousands of years and makes them one of the oldest cultures in the world.
Unlike other mythologies of different cultures which speak of gods that descended from the heavens, in the ancient legends of the Hopi , a different story is told, speaking of mighty gods who reside in the center of the Earth.
But who were they? In a similar way, nearly all pre-Columbian cultures just like the Hopi believe that one day, not too far away, the gods who have shaped human culture will come back to Earth.
They have always lived according to the teachings that were given to them by Masauwu, the Master of the Fourth World, where ethical concepts are deeply rooted in their culture.
However, contrary to many other mythologies that are widespread around thew globe, the Hopi believe that their gods do not live in the infinite spaces of the cosmos, but live in the heart of the Earth, conveying the idea of a hollow earth existing right below our feet.
The ancient Hopi speak of their deities as ‘ant men.’ In fact, some of the petroglyphs found near Mishongnovi, Arizona, created by the ancient Hopi depict the enigmatic beings with antennas’ offering an idea of how these strange ant-men looked like.
According to the mythology of the Hopi, at the beginning of time, Taoiwa, the Creator, created Sotuknang, his nephew, giving him the task of creating nine universes or worlds: one for Taiowa, one for him and the other seven for the overabundance of life.
In a cyclical conception of time, in a similar way to Aztec mythology, these worlds would continue cyclically.
The mythology tells that story that the first three worlds, Tokpela, Tokpa, and Kuskurza have already been inhabited and subsequently destroyed due to corruption and wickedness of men.
The Hopi speak that the end of each cycle is marked by the return of the gods, and announced by the appearance of the Blue Kachina Star the sign of the ‘Day of Purification,” in which the old world is destroyed, and a new one begins.
Each time one of the worlds is destroyed, the Hopi, the faithful are saved and taken by the gods to the underground cities to escape the destruction of the planet.
In each cyclic destruction, and always according to the mythology of the Hopi, the ‘men-ant’ are crucial for human survival.
The so-called ‘First World’ (Tokpela) was apparently destroyed by the fire of global proportions, perhaps a kind of massive volcanism, or the impact of an asteroid or even a large coronal mass ejection from the Sun of catastrophic proportions.
The ‘Second World’ (Tokpa), however, was destroyed by the cold. Most likely due to a pole shift that caused a massive ice age that destroyed life on the planet.
Interestingly, in the course of these two global cataclysms, the members of the Hopi tribe were guided during the day by a cloud of strange shape and a moving star overnight, leading to the presence of the so-called ‘Ant-Man’ which the Hopi call Anu Sinom.
This creature escorted the Hopi to underground caves where they found shelter and sustenance.
Interestingly, in the ancient Sumerian language, Anum or Anu was the god of the. He is the creator of creation.
In the Hopi legend, the mysterious creature that resembled a humanoid-ant is described as a generous and hardworking creature, willing to provide food to the Hopi, and to teach them methods of food preservation so they could survive.
As you can see, like many cultures around the globe, the ancient Hopi believed in the existence of subterranean chambers, cities which are eerily similar to other theories of the Hollow Earth.
The Ancient Hopi also mention the mysterious ant-men gods who helped the ancient Hopi progress through time. However, the ancient Hopi also speak of the patuwvotas or ancient ‘ flying shields .’
According to Frank Waters , author of Mystic Mexico: The advent of the Sixth World of Consciousness (1975) it is in the ‘third world’ where the ancient Hopi introduce the concept of the Patuwvotas, or “flying shields’.
In the third cycle, it is said that humanity built a very advanced civilization, and developed the concept of “flying shields,” a sort of vehicle that can quickly travel to different places in the world and devastate entire cities on Earth.
The Third World was destroyed by Sotuknang, the nephew of the Creator, with a great flood.
Also, in this case, there is a clear parallel with the Sumerian tradition in which we talk about the great flood that destroyed all previous civilization on the planet.
This story is told in the Epic of Gilgamesh , a text which was then taken to biblical tradition in the history of the Flood and Noah’s Ark .
According to the traditions of the Hopi, the survivors of the flood are scattered in different parts of the world, under the guidance of Masauwu, the Spirit of Death and the Master of the Fourth World.
A fascinating petroglyph of the Hopi is that where Masauwu is represented piloting a wingless boat that has the shape of a dome. The similarity between the “flying shields” and what we today consider as airplanes or flying saucers, is mind boggling.
It seems evident that the flying shields or ‘ships without wings’ are something ancient cultures around the globe witnessed in the distant past.
The ancient Hopi used the term to refer to something that was capable of flying through the skies and transporting people.
Humans Are Free SOURCE | 1 |
A livestream of a pregnant giraffe at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, NY, has been removed from YouTube after being flagged for “pornographic content. ”[April the giraffe is old and is currently pregnant with a calf — park officials say that she could give birth at any time. In order to share this moment with the world, they set up a livestream on YouTube for people to watch. million views were recorded in a little over 12 hours. Unfortunately, the stream was pulled from the park’s YouTube channel for violating their “sexual content” guidelines. “For the millions of you that have been tuning in to take witness to this educational experience, a live giraffe birth, there are a handful of extremists and animal rights activists that may not agree with us, and that’s okay, but have unfortunately reported our YouTube cam as sexually explicit or nude content, which has made for its removal,” park officials claimed in a Facebook Live video. Confused viewers questioned the logic of taking the livestream down. YouTube’s guidelines state that “sexually explicit content like pornography is not allowed. Videos containing fetish content will be removed or depending on the severity of the act in question. In most cases, violent, graphic, or humiliating fetishes are not allowed to be shown on YouTube. ” One viewer asked if this meant that “the animals in the zoo had to be wearing clothes. ” Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_ or on Gab @JH. | 0 |
The 8th Democratic Debate In 100 Words (And 4 Videos)
In Miami and on Univision, the eighth Democratic debate focused heavily on issues important to Latinos. It meant Sanders and Clinton parted ways with Obama, promising to end deportations. Clinton was asked some tough questions, including whether she would suspend her campaign if she was indicted over her email issue. "It's not going to happen," Clinton said. "I'm not even answering that question." Sanders was faced with a video in which he praised Fidel Castro. He said despite all the bad, Cuba did make strides in health and education. The two sparred again on her Wall Street speeches. The highlights:
That's the quickie version of what happened in the eighth Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 race Wednesday night. The politics team has wall-to-wall coverage. | 0 |
Photos released by the Islamic State group purport to show that its jihadists are again using small unmanned drones to attack targets in the area of Mosul where IS is in the midst of a battle with the Iraqi army. [The use of drones was allegedly renewed after about a month during which the group avoided deploying them in combat. In the photos released by ISIS on the group’s Telegram account, its small unmanned aircraft can be seen attacking Shi’ite militia targets on the outskirts of Mosul (above and below). Earlier this month, a U. S. coalition airstrike reportedly struck an IS drone factory in Mosul. The U. S. international military coalition killed Islamic State foreign drone experts and destroyed a drone factory in western Mosul on Monday. The redeployment of IS drones comes as the group finds itself being pushed back toward the Old City of Mosul, a zone without many open areas where the aircraft can operate. Meanwhile, reports circulated on Iraqi social media citing Shi’ite activists saying the U. S. has supplied the Iraqi army with equipment designed to neutralize and disrupt the use of IS drones. مصادر إعلامية | تزويد #فرقة_الرد_السريع في #الموصل باسلحة تشويش تم استيرادها من #الصين لمواجهة طائرات #داعش المسيرة pic. twitter. — غريب (@2011iqbgd2017) April 14, 2017, In February, the Iraqi army claimed that it had raided a drone factory near Mosul. Also that month, the Stratfor global intelligence newsletter investigated the IS drone threat, writing, The Islamic State is taking to the skies as the fight for Mosul wears on. Over the past several weeks, the extremist group has been flaunting its use of unmanned aerial vehicles against Iraqi army and Kurdish forces in and around the city. Propaganda videos feature dramatic aerial footage of the precision attacks, and they have produced their intended effect, receiving heavy coverage in mainstream media outlets. So far, the Islamic State has deployed this technique only in Iraq and Syria. That’s likely soon to change, though, considering the attention the group’s drone attacks have been getting and the prevalence of drones in the West. Drone attacks are coming. But they do not necessarily portend death from above. Reuters last month reported on less sophisticated IS drones: For the past decade, unmanned aerial vehicles have been a cornerstone of America’s campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Greater Middle East. Predator and Reaper drones crisscross the globe firing Hellfire missiles on U. S. enemies. Other countries have operational drone fleets, but few match the might and ubiquity of America’s. But journalists on the front lines in Iraq have seen a disturbing new trend — Islamic State using retail quadcopters to drop their own munitions with surprising accuracy. Mosul is the frontline in the fight against ISIS as well as the frontline in a new arm’s race. One that pits the tiny drones of the Islamic State against the budding technology of the West. To be clear, Islamic State’s commercial quadcopters rigged with grenades and manufactured missiles is nothing compared to the power of a Predator firing off Hellfire missiles with pinpoint accuracy. But that’s cold comfort to a civilian killed by a handmade explosive dropped by a quadcopter over the streets of Mosul. | 0 |
Remember the famous moment when US NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE CHIEF James Clapper was testifying about the NSA surveillance of Americans when he let slip a sign he was not being truthful. Of course, we knew this was all a smoke and mirrors show. Clapper later said he misspoke last we checked it s pretty much the same thing as lying NOT WITTINGLY JAMES CLAPPERHere s the video below where he parses words in his testimony: Clapper took over in 2010 heading up 17 different intelligence agencies. His tenure was marked by the Edward Snowden leaks on US intelligence. He s always said he d resign at the end of Obama s presidency but we re wondering if he s jumping before Trump appointees arrive. Clapper and Gen. Mike Flynn have a history that s not so perfect:Two years ago, I was called into a meeting with the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and the director of national intelligence, and after some niceties, I was told by the USDI that I was being let go from DIA. It was definitely an uncomfortable moment (I suspect more for them than me).I asked the DNI (Gen. James Clapper) if my leadership of the agency was in question and he said it was not; had it been, he said, they would have relieved me on the spot.I knew then it had more to do with the stand I took on radical Islamism and the expansion of al Qaeda and its associated movements. I felt the intel system was way too politicized, especially in the Defense Department. After being fired, I left the meeting thinking, Here we are in the middle of a war, I had a significant amount of combat experience (nearly five years) against this determined enemy on the battlefield and served at senior levels, and here it was, the bureaucracy was letting me go. Amazing.This ll be interesting to watch. | 1 |
Hillary would like American voters to believe the alt-right media (new nickname for media who s not afraid to out her and the Clinton Crime family) is out to get her and they would be correct. Hillary and Bill have been given a pass by the mainstream media for decades. Thanks to alternative media sources, Hillary is no longer able to behave like the queen of the Clinton Crime Syndicate and get away with it. Hillary should be afraid of the alt-right boogeyman they can t be bought and won t be frightened by the Clinton Crime family. And best of all, they re not going away until every American knows the truth about #CrookedHillary #HillarysBoogeyMen #Trump #Breitbart @RealAlexJones #pepe #pickle #Brexit #Putin #Harambe https://t.co/Oj98iIxEAZ pic.twitter.com/L2pQjUmdef BenGarrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) August 29, 2016Here s Hillary interrupting her seizures, coughing fits and 3-day naps to call out the Alt-right : | 0 |
NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - After days of complaints about traffic jams at a major New York bridge in 2013, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s associate demanded to know if lane closures were political retribution, he testified on Monday. On trial over his alleged role in the “Bridgegate” scandal, Bill Baroni, Christie’s top political appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said he confronted fellow authority executive David Wildstein to ask whether the lane closures in September 2013 were an act of retribution against the Democratic mayor of a commuter town. “I said, ‘David, tell me right now, is this true?’” Baroni testified in federal court in Newark, where he is on trial on fraud charges. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Absolutely not.’” In his first day of testimony, Baroni asserted that Wildstein orchestrated the lane closures without his knowledge to punish Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, for his refusal to endorse Christie’s re-election bid. Baroni also rejected Wildstein’s contention that they discussed the scheme with Christie as it was unfolding. Christie had soared to national prominence in late 2012 for his response to Superstorm Sandy and wanted to use that spotlight, and an aura of bipartisan spirit, to catapult himself towards the White House. But the scandal hurt his image and his campaign ultimately collapsed early this year, though he has always denied involvement. Baroni’s story was entirely at odds with the narrative U.S. prosecutors have presented at trial. They have accused Baroni, Wildstein and former Christie deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly of conspiring to create the traffic jam to punish Sokolich. Kelly, on trial alongside Baroni, is also expected to testify. Wildstein has pleaded guilty and appeared as the government’s star witness earlier in the case. Baroni said he confronted Wildstein after receiving a letter from Sokolich suggesting the closures had “punitive overtones.” But during cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes pointed out that days before, Sokolich left him a voicemail asking “who’s mad at me?” “So the first time you heard from him, he was asking if someone was mad at him? It wasn’t Thursday?” Cortes asked. Baroni said he believed Wildstein’s representation that the George Washington Bridge lane closure was part of a traffic study and that he should not respond to Sokolich. “I’ve regretted it ever since,” Baroni said. Wildstein said he and Baroni invented the traffic study as a cover story. | 0 |
When Donald Trump told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview on Sunday that he didn't think the Republican Party needed to be unified behind his candidacy, it wasn't really clear what he meant.
"Does [the party] have to be unified? I'm very different than everybody else, perhaps, that's ever run for office. I actually don't think so," Trump said. "I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be -- there would be something good about it. But I don't think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense."
So how will he win? "I think I'm going to go out and I'm going to get millions of people from the Democrats," Trump said. "I'm going to get Bernie [Sanders] people to vote, because they like me on trade."
A charitable interpretation is that Trump doesn't think members of the Republican establishment need to align behind him in order for him to be successful. That was certainly true in the primaries, but it's less clear that it's true in the general. Why? For the same reason that the uncharitable interpretation of Trump's comments is so baffling: Trump very much needs Republicans to vote for him in November.
That sounds obvious, of course, but it's worth delving into. Consider, for example the relative unfavorability of Trump and Hillary Clinton within their own parties. Clinton's got the Democratic nomination essentially locked up, but is still battling Bernie Sanders and still maintaining only a small lead over him in national polling. But she is much more positively viewed by members of her own party than is Trump -- and consistently so. Trump's numbers have improved, but they're still pretty abysmal.
This is a large part of the reason that Trump's overall favorability ratings are lower than Clinton's: Republicans look at him a lot more skeptically than Democrats do Clinton. For him to be successful in November, he needs those skeptical Republicans to come out and vote for him anyway.
After all, this happens at a time when partisans have been more willing than ever to vote for the candidate their own party nominated. Even independents -- a group that largely still tends to vote on a partisan basis -- were largely loyal to the party with which they identified in 2008.
If Republicans waver on their choice but Democrats stay true to their party, Trump's in a lot of trouble. (Yes, a chunk of Bernie Sanders supporters say that they won't back Clinton in November, but when Clinton lost the nomination in 2008, the number of defections was much smaller than polling at the end of the primary suggested.)
Donald Trump will end the primary season with more votes from Republicans than any Republican in history. But he's also had the most people vote against him, as the splintered party struggled to reach consensus. The fact that prominent Republicans are reluctant to back Trump is a both a cause and side effect of that split. House Speaker Paul Ryan declining to endorse Trump won't hurt Trump among Trump's existing base of support; they don't like Ryan anyway. But if Ryan argued for Trump's candidacy -- if more moderate/establishment Republicans were to embrace and make the case for his nomination -- it's likely that wavering Republicans might be influenced. Trump needs them to be.
He waves this away by suggesting he'll find some space in the political middle. He returns to this baffling idea that he can lure Bernie Sanders's supporters to his cause -- an effort that will almost certainly fail based on the politics at play and an effort about which Sanders himself has been increasingly vocal.
There has been a repeated suggestion that Trump can lure Democrats to his cause in the way that Ronald Reagan did in 1980. (You can see the dip Reagan caused in Democratic Party loyalty on the first graph above.) But that idea is flawed for several reasons.
First of all, those Reagan Democrats -- mostly working-class white males -- have already migrated to the Republican Party. You can see the trend in data from the General Social Survey; the Reagan Democrats of 1980 are the regular-old Republicans of today. In that sense, Trump is right: His campaign hinges on those voters supporting him.
On top of that, though, white voters are a much smaller part of the electorate than they were in 1980. That year, 88 percent of the electorate was white. In 2012, the figure was 72 percent. In 1988, working-class whites made up half of the electorate, as the Atlantic's Peter Beinart noted in March. This year, they'll be only one-third. Yes, it's possible that Trump will inspire more whites to come to the polls, but there's also some evidence that he's inspiring nonwhites to turn out, too -- to vote against him.
Trump can't count on wooing a large group of Democrats to vote for him in part because most of the Democratic Party is made up of groups that view him very negatively: women, blacks, Hispanics. If he can't convince Democrats, and if Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents maintain their party loyalty, he needs every Republican vote he can get. To do that, he needs help -- the sort of help he didn't get in the primaries, leading to his earning less than 50 percent of the total votes.
It sounds macho to say he doesn't need loyalty, that he'll go it alone, with the party or without it. But a non-unified Republican Party is a Republican Party that endures four more years of a Democratic White House. | 1 |
CAIRO — In many ways, life is not so bad for Egypt’s deposed ruler, Hosni Mubarak. At the Cairo hospital he calls home, he enjoys regular deliveries of flowers, newspapers and takeout restaurant meals visits from his wife, two sons and grandchildren and a sweeping view over the Nile. To mark his 88th birthday recently, a throng of gathered at the hospital gates and sang, danced and waved his portrait. Mr. Mubarak pulled open a window and waved back. However, the one luxury Mr. Mubarak has not been afforded is the right to simply walk out of the hospital — which is something of a conundrum. In May 2015, a judge decreed that Mr. Mubarak had completed his prison sentence for corruption, in the only successful prosecution of the onetime strongman since his turbulent ouster in 2011. Technically, he was a free man. Yet Mr. Mubarak remains confined to the hospital room that has doubled as a jail cell for the past three years, with a guard posted outside his door. His legal limbo continues even as many of his former allies, men who grew fabulously rich during his three decades of rule, are quietly cutting deals with the government to overturn their own convictions. Mr. Mubarak’s longtime lawyer, Farid declined interview requests. But several of Mr. Mubarak’s friends, including those who visit him in the hospital, explain the situation as a delicate deal between him and Egypt’s powerful military. They say the military has been generally lenient toward figures since President Abdel Fattah took power in 2013, but wants to avoid the likely outcry that would accompany Mr. Mubarak’s release. So the two sides have reached a compromise: Mr. Mubarak agrees to stay in the hospital for now, and the government agrees that his two sons, Alaa, a businessman, and Gamal, once seen as his political heir, will remain free. Both were released from jail last year. “His weak point is his two sons,” said Yousri Abdelraziq, a volunteer lawyer for Mr. Mubarak. “And whenever he speaks in public, the authorities get upset. ” Mr. Abdelraziq said he had received Mr. Mubarak’s permission before speaking to a journalist and produced a cellphone picture of himself standing beside the former president, looking grumpy inside his hospital room. Security and his medical treatment are other factors in Mr. Mubarak’s hospital stay, friends say. A military spokesman declined to comment on the possibility of an arrangement with Mr. Mubarak. Mr. Mubarak’s legal limbo is a reflection of the curious place he occupies in Egyptian public life, five years after the heady protests that ended his long rule. Many Egyptians still despise him as the totemic symbol of the rampant cronyism and repression that plagued Egypt for decades. His incarceration is one of the last remaining victories for the leaders of the 2011 protests, many of whom are now languishing in Mr. Sisi’s jails. But others have started to look back on Mr. Mubarak’s rule with a twinge of bitter nostalgia, as a time of relative freedom compared with the harsh authoritarianism of Mr. Sisi’s rule. “Of course Mubarak was corrupt, but he knew how to take good advice,” said Osama Diab, an anticorruption researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a prominent rights group in Cairo. “Now it’s a disaster. Mubarak was a competent dictator Sisi is not. ” As hard feelings toward Mr. Mubarak seem to be receding, so do his legal woes. The humiliations of 2012 and 2013, when he was forced to sit in a courtroom cage, are largely over. He avoided prosecution on the most serious charges, like the deaths of protesters in 2011, and he now faces a retrial in one final case. There is little prospect of it coming to court anytime soon, lawyers say. Instead, Mr. Mubarak is whiling away his days at the Maadi Military Hospital, a towering complex overlooking the Nile. Staff members there say he lives under a permissive yet firm regimen. Security is tight, and all visitors are vetted by the Ministry of Defense, a security official said. He chats on his cellphone (he has an old Nokia model without Internet access) and occasionally receives a barber who dyes his hair. Nurses sometimes see him shuffling the halls as part of therapy for a fractured pelvis he suffered in a fall in the bathroom in 2013. Mr. Mubarak frequently receives flowers from admirers, and visits from his wife, Suzanne, his sons and his grandchildren, and a tight circle of ardent admirers. They say his mood veers from high spirits to embittered grumbling, describing a man who is scornful of the allies who abandoned him, dismissive of the young protesters who pushed him out, and largely unrepentant for his 29 years in power. “He feels betrayed,” said Hassan Ghandour, a former Republican Guard who befriended Mr. Mubarak. “When he sees critics on TV who used to suck up to him, it leaves him very irritated. ” Maadi Military Hospital has been the stage for other political dramas. In 1980, the shah of Iran died there, on the floor below Mr. Mubarak, having fled to Egypt from revolutionary Iran. The next year, Egypt’s own ruler, Anwar was rushed to the hospital after being shot by Islamist officers at a military parade. He died hours later, paving the way for Mr. Mubarak to take over. Mr. Mubarak is very conscious of his own legacy, said Mr. Abdelraziq, the lawyer, and was “very upset” to be convicted of corruption. He gently nudged his way back into the spotlight last year, giving a rare if unrevealing phone interview to a television talk show. Shortly afterward, security at his room was tightened. Since Mr. Sisi took power in 2013, the government and courts have shown great leniency toward the powerful figures of Mr. Mubarak’s era — business tycoons, ministers and cronies, now exonerated or released from jail — underscoring the sharp limits of change in Egypt since 2011. In the latest case, on May 4, an appeals court overturned a sentence for corruption against Ahmed Nazif, who served as prime minister under Mr. Mubarak from 2004 to 2011. Others are seeking to buy their freedom with cash payments. A lawyer for Hussein Salem, a billionaire businessman and Mubarak confidant who fled to Spain in 2011, has agreed to transfer 75 percent of his wealth — 5. 5 billion Egyptian pounds, or about $626 million at the official exchange rate — in exchange for the overturning of two convictions, carrying sentences of seven and 15 years. “The deal is done from our part,” said the lawyer, Mahmoud Kebaish. “Now we are waiting for the government. ” Adel of the Illicit Gains Authority, which handles such deals, said it had received more than 30 settlement requests from businessmen and former officials linked to Mr. Mubarak. Another Illicit Gains Authority official said Mr. Mubarak, too, was hoping to cut a deal, offering about $10 million in return for the quashing of his corruption conviction. That bid is unlikely to succeed soon, and few believe Mr. Mubarak will be heading to his villa in Sharm el Sheikh anytime soon. But short of a full release, he may have an eye on shaping his legacy and overturning his conviction so the state will restore his military honors and ensure a state funeral. “What matters now about Mubarak is how he goes down in history,” said Mr. Diab, the researcher. “When he dies, the fight will be over whether he was a thief or a military hero, whether he was responsible for the current chaos in Egypt, or whether he saved the country from it until he was kicked out. ” | 0 |
In a speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida on Tuesday, President Obama declared that [n]o foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland. The claim earned perfunctory applause, but a closer look at the reaction of many of the servicemen and women there made clear what they really thought about the administration s handling of national security.Obama speaks to our troops at MacDill Air Force Base about foreign terror attacks on our homeland:The President s claim which he has repeated in some form or fashion over the last few years is an obvious rhetorical attempt to gloss over the reality of the threat of radical Islamic terror on American soil. The attempt to disconnect lone wolf terrorists from the terror organizations who often inspire them does nothing to alleviate the pain of those who have suffered at the hands of jihadists and only hurts prevention efforts. Rhetorical tricks aside, the reality is that during Obama s tenure scores of innocent Americans have been murdered on U.S. soil by jihadists, most of whom were inspired by or acting under the direction of foreign terror groups, particularly the Islamic state.Below is a list of the major, verifiable radical Islamic terror attacks successfully planned and executed on U.S. soil since Obama first took office in 2009 (the first section provided by Daily Wire s Aaron Bandler): Little Rock, Arkansas, June 1, 2009. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and murdered one soldier, Army Pvt. William Andrew Long, and injured another, Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, at a military recruiting station in Little Rock. Muhammad reportedly converted to Islam in college and was on the FBI s radar after being arrested in Yemen a hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism for using a Somali passport, even though he was a U.S. citizen. In a note to an Arkansas judge, Muhammad claimed to be a member of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, the terror group s Yemen chapter.Fort Hood, Texas, November 5, 2009. Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot up a military base in Fort Hood and murdered 14 people. Hasan was in contact with al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki prior to the attack and shouted Allahu Akbar! as he fired upon the soldiers on the Fort Hood base. After being sentenced to death, Hasan requested to join ISIS while on death row. It took six years for Obama to acknowledge the shooting as a terror attack instead of workplace violence. Boston, Massachusetts, April 15, 2013. Tamerlan and Dhozkar Tsarnaev set off two bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon, killing three and injuring over 260 people. The Tsarnaev brothers later shot and murdered Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier. The Tsarnaev brothers were self-radicalized through online jihadist propaganda and through a mosque with ties to al-Qaeda.Moore, Oklahoma, September 24, 2014. Alton Nolen beheaded a woman, Colleen Huff, at a Vaughan Foods plant and stabbed and injured another person. While Nolen s motives are unclear, he appears to have been another radicalized Muslim who was obsessed with beheadings.Queens, New York, October 23, 2014. Zale Thompson, another self-radicalized Muslim, injured two police officers with a hatchet before being shot dead by other cops. Thompson reportedly indoctrinated himself with ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Shabab a Somali jihadist terror group websites and was a lone wolf attacker.Brooklyn, New York, December 20, 2014. Ismaayil Brinsley shot and murdered two police officers execution-style and his Facebook page featured jihadist postings and had ties to a terror-linked mosque.Garland, Texas, May 3, 2015. Two gunmen shot up the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, where a Mohammed cartoon contest was taking place, and were killed by a police officer. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.Chattanooga, Tennessee, July 16, 2015. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines and a sailor at a military base in Chattanooga and was believed to have been inspired by ISIS.San Bernardino, California, December 14, 2015. Two radical Islamists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, shot and murdered 14 people and injured 22 others at an office holiday party.Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016. Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire at a gay nightclub, killing 49 and injuring 53. The FBI investigated Mateen twice before his rampage, but did not take any substantive action. Officials believe Mateen was self-radicalized but he pledged fealty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before his death. The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west, Mateen posted on his Facebook page after committing his heinous act at Pulse nightclub. I pledge my alliance to (ISIS leader) abu bakr al Baghdadi..may Allah accept me, he wrote.St. Cloud, Minnesota, September 17, 2016. Dahir Ahmed Adan, a 20-year-old Somali refugee, began hacking at people with a steak knife at a Minnesota mall, injuring nine people before he was shot dead by off-duty police officer Jason Falconer. The FBI said numerous witnesses heard Adan yelling Allahu akbar! and Islam! Islam! during the rampage. He also asked potential victims if they were Muslims before inflicting wounds in their heads, necks, and chests. The FBI believe he had recently become self-radicalized. (As the Daily Wire highlighted, the Minneapolis Star Tribune attempted to blame anti-Muslim tensions for his murderous actions.)New York City/New Jersey, September 17, 2016. Ahmad Khan Rahami, a 28-year-old naturalized citizen from Afghanistan, set off multiple bombs in New York and New Jersey. In Chelsea, his bomb resulted in the injury of over 30 people. Rahami wrote in his journal that he was connected to terrorist leaders, and appears to have been heavily influenced by Sheikh Anwar, Anwar al-Awlaki, Nidal Hassan, and Osama bin Laden. I pray to the beautiful wise ALLAH, [d]o not take JIHAD away from me, Rahami wrote. You [USA Government] continue your [unintelligible] slaught[er] against the holy warriors, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Sham [Syria], Palestine Columbus, Ohio, November 28, 2016. Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an ISIS-inspired 20-year-old Somali refugee who had been granted permanent legal residence in 2014 after living in Pakistan for 7 years, attempted to run over his fellow Ohio State students on campus. After his car was stopped by a barrier, he got out of the vehicle and began hacking at people with a butcher knife before being shot dead by a campus police officer. He injured 11 people, one critically. ISIS took credit for the attack, describing Artan as their soldier. Just three minutes before his rampage, Artan posted a warning to America on Facebook that the lone wolf attacks will continue until America give[s] peace to the Muslims. He also praised deceased al-Qaeda cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki as a hero. Daily Wire | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States held Myanmar s military leadership responsible for its harsh crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority. Tillerson, however, stopped short of saying whether the United States would take any action against Myanmar s military leaders over an offensive that has driven more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country. Washington has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmar s civilian-led government led by Nobel laureate and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in the face of competition from strategic rival China. The world can t just stand idly by and be witness to the atrocities that are being reported in the area, Tillerson told Washington s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. We really hold the military leadership accountable for what s happening, said Tillerson, who said the United States was extraordinarily concerned by the situation. Forty-three U.S. lawmakers urged the Trump administration to reimpose U.S. travel bans on Myanmar s military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for the crackdown. The request, in a letter to Tillerson from Republican and Democratic members of the House of Representatives, said Myanmar authorities appear to be in denial of what has happened and called for Washington to take meaningful steps against those who have committed human rights abuses. Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar in large numbers since late August when Rohingya insurgent attacks sparked a ferocious military response, with the fleeing people accusing security forces of arson, killings and rape. Tillerson said Washington understood Myanmar had a militancy problem, but the military had to be disciplined and restrained in the way it dealt with this and to allow access to the region so that we can get a full accounting of the circumstances. Someone, if these reports are true, is going to be held to account for that, Tillerson said. And it s up to the military leadership of Burma to decide, What direction do they want to play in the future of Burma? Tillerson said Washington saw Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, as an important emerging democracy, but the Rohingya crisis was a test for the power-sharing government. He said the United States would remain engaged, including ultimately at the United Nations with the direction this takes. The European Union and the United States have been considering targeted sanctions against Myanmar s military leadership. Punitive measures aimed specifically at top generals are among a range of options that have been discussed, but they are wary of action that could hurt the wider economy or destabilize already tense ties between Suu Kyi and the army. Tillerson also said he would visit New Delhi next week as the Trump administration sought to dramatically deepen cooperation with India in response to China s challenges to international law and norms in Asia. Tillerson said the administration had began a quiet conversation with some emerging East Asian democracies about creating alternatives to Chinese infrastructure financing. | 1 |
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO (Reuters) - Puerto Rico s medical services are in critical condition in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The strongest storm to hit the island in decades has left hospitals flooded, strewn with rubble and dependent on diesel generators to keep the neediest patients alive. The precarious shape of the island s medical facilities is adding to the misery and devastation of this U.S. territory, whose 3.4 million residents are American citizens. For some, the only option is to evacuate to the United States for treatment. Among them is Cheira Ruiz and her baby girl Gabriellyz, who was born two weeks ago with a serious heart defect. The newborn was admitted to the Centro Cardiovascular de Puerto Rico in the capital shortly before Maria slammed into the island last Wednesday, but it was impossible for doctors to operate in such precarious conditions. Gabriellyz was among the first infants cleared to take a medical flight out of Puerto Rico since the storm. Her parents, who live two hours south of the capital, found out the good news Friday when emergency officials knocked on their door in the town of Guanica and told them to pack for the trip to Miami. With phone service out, the doctors had called one of the island s radio stations, which broadcast their plea for help in locating the couple. Hours before the flight was scheduled to depart, the parents learned there was only room for one of them. Mother and baby would fly alone to Miami. I m trying to be strong, Ruiz said on Saturday. In the days since the storm, the island s residents have awakened to an altered reality. Food is in short supply. The island s electrical grid is down and may remain so for months. Motorists and pedestrians queue for blocks trying to secure scarce fuel to power vehicles and generators. Cellular service, internet, and email have virtually disappeared, hurling a modern society into a bygone era; radio has become a primary source of information. For hospitals across this region, the challenges are mounting. After the power went out, back-up generators at some hospitals failed quickly. Other hospitals are running critically low on diesel. Fuel is so precious that deliveries are made by armed guards to prevent looting, according to Dr. Ivan Gonzalez Cancel, a cardiovascular surgeon and director of the heart transplant program at Centro Cardiovascular. Another hospital wants to transfer two critical patients here because they don t have electricity, Gonzalez Cancel said. We can t take them. We have the same problem. Medical staffers are also running low on gasoline for their daily commutes to work. Puerto Ricans are queuing as long as seven hours at the island s few functioning filling stations. Marilyn Rivera Morales, a nurse at the center, said she had enough petrol to drive to the hospital for two more days. How will they keep coming here if they don t have gas? Gonzalez Cancel wondered. Fuel is just the beginning. The cardiovascular center was in shambles, Gonzalez Cancel said. Without air conditioning, the walls of the operating room were dripping with condensation and floors were slippery, he said. Most patients had been discharged or evacuated to other facilities, but some patients remained because their families could not be reached by phone. On the sidewalk outside the cardiac center on Saturday, Jorge Rivera and his wife Dorca approached Gonzalez Cancel to ask about the woman s father, a patient still inside waiting for triple-bypass surgery. The couple are residents of Savannah, Georgia who were in Puerto Rico to care for their loved one. With the hospital scaling down operations and the island s infrastructure on its knees, Gonzalez Cancel estimated he would not perform another open heart surgery for a month or more. His advice to the couple: leave. I am talking to you, not as a physician, I am talking to you as a human being, he said. Get him on a plane. You can be in Miami in two and a half hours. But leaving is not simple. With the island s main airport still crippled, Gonzalez Cancel said he needed to secure a special waiver from authorities to obtain the medical evacuation flight for baby Gabriellyz. Travelers at the airport on Sunday were told that passengers who do not already have tickets may not be able to secure flights out until October 4. Officials here expect the situation at Puerto Rico s hospitals could worsen before it improves. At Centro Medico, the island s largest public hospital, the disaster medical assistance team of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is setting up makeshift hospital units. I think this might be a calm before we see an influx as other hospitals lose generators, said Commander Michael Garner, a regional coordinator for the effort. The devastation caused by Maria is similar to that wrought by hurricanes Katrina, Harvey and Irma. But Puerto Rico s remoteness, lack of communications and fragile infrastructure exacerbate the logistical challenges of recovery on a very grand scale, Garner said. U.S. Air Force Colonel Michael Valle, who arrived in Puerto Rico on Friday to help with recovery efforts, agreed. To me, this is a lot worse, because you can t drive in from other states. Everything must come by boat or by air, Valle said. Adding to the worries, a Puerto Rico dam damaged by heavy rains was in danger of failing on Sunday, posing a risk to communities along the rain-swollen Guajataca River. If the dam fails, the flooding would be life-threatening, the National Weather Service warned. Stay away or be swept away, it said. At least 10 people have died so far in Puerto Rico, where the humanitarian crisis is growing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been posting images on Twitter of U.S. responders on the ground in Puerto Rico, including the U.S. Coast Guard and FEMA search-and-rescue teams. But patience is starting to fray with the speed of the aid response. We need a massive military response, surgeon Gonzalez Cancel said. Waiting for news about his father-in-law, Rivera, the Georgia resident and a 49-year-old Iraq War veteran, said the U.S. military could only do so much. He forecast the island would take months to get back on its feet. You need God pretty much to fix every light bulb, he said. Dr. Juan Carlos Sotomonte, the medical director of the Centro Medico s cardiovascular unit, said intervention divine or otherwise is needed fast. If this is not taken care of, people are going to start dying, he said. | 1 |
An international tribunal in The Hague released a landmark decision on Tuesday in a dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea. Here are answers to six questions about the case. What is this case about? The Philippines filed a complaint in 2013 after China took control of a reef about 140 miles from the Philippine coast. It accused China of violating international law by interfering with fishing, endangering ships and failing to protect the marine environment at the reef, known as Scarborough Shoal. But the Philippines also went further, asking an international tribunal to reject China’s claim to sovereignty over waters within a “ line” that appears on official Chinese maps. The dashes encircle as much as 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area the size of Mexico that is vital to global trade and rich in natural resources, including potential oil deposits. The Philippines also accused China of violating international law by dredging sand to build artificial islands out of several reefs in the South China Sea, including one it says is in its waters. The tribunal largely agreed, declaring that there was “no legal basis” for the line and concluding that China had unlawfully built an artificial island in Philippine waters. What does international law say? The Philippines filed its complaint under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which lays out rules for the use of the world’s oceans. The treaty came into force in 1994 and has been ratified by both China and the Philippines, as well as 165 other states and the European Union. The treaty says a country has sovereignty over waters extending 12 nautical miles from its coast, and control over economic activities in waters on its continental shelf and up to 200 nautical miles from its coast, including fishing, mining, oil exploration and the construction of artificial islands. The treaty sets out detailed rules for defining these zones, what to do when two nations’ zones overlap and how to resolve disputes. China’s line includes waters beyond these zones, and Beijing has cited what it calls historical evidence to support it. But the tribunal rejected that argument, saying any historic rights that China enjoyed previously “were extinguished” by the treaty. The tribunal also said that while Chinese navigators and fishermen had historically used islands in the sea, there was no evidence Beijing had ever exercised exclusive authority over the waters or their resources. What does China say? China has boycotted the international tribunal that was set up to hear the case. It says the panel of five judges and legal experts has no jurisdiction because the sovereignty of reefs, rocks and islands in the South China Sea is disputed. The argument goes like this: If you don’t know what countries these specks of land belong to, you can’t use the treaty to draw territorial and economic zones in the waters around them. And the judges can’t decide whom the specks of land belong to because the Law of the Sea deals only with maritime disputes, not land disputes. China also says it reached a deal with the Philippines years ago to settle disputes in the South China Sea through negotiations. That agreement, it says, prohibited the Philippines from taking the case to the tribunal. Why is this case important? In addition to China and the Philippines, four states — Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam — claim parts of the South China Sea, and China’s line overlaps with the “exclusive economic zone” of a fifth country, Indonesia. Their differences sometimes escalate into skirmishes, and people are worried that an incident could erupt into a broader conflict. Tuesday’s decision is the first time an international tribunal has ruled on any of these disputes. It could set a precedent or establish principles for easing tensions. It could also alter the political dynamic in the region, restraining some countries while emboldening others. China probably has the most at stake. Since the case was filed, it has conducted enormous dredging operations to transform reefs into artificial islands with military runways and naval harbors, over the objections of countries with competing claims as well as those of the United States. The tribunal could declare some of this construction illegal, or it could leave the question unresolved. Either way, China’s response to the decision will be seen as a test of what kind of country it is becoming — a global leader committed to international law and institutions, or a superpower willing to take unilateral action against its neighbors. Why does the Chinese government care so much about the South China Sea? Chinese military strategists say China needs to control the sea to defend itself, to push the United States out of the Western Pacific and to become a naval power. China also depends on the shipping routes that go through the sea, and is eager to lay claim to oil and other resources to fuel its voracious economy. There are domestic political factors, too. Chinese schoolchildren are taught that the sea has belonged to China since ancient times, and President Xi Jinping has used the construction of artificial islands in the sea to fan nationalist sentiment and strengthen his authority over the Chinese military. What happens if the tribunal rules against China? The Chinese government has said it will not “accept, recognize or execute” the decision. While the decision is binding, the tribunal has no power to enforce it, and no one expects that China will volunteer to dismantle its artificial islands and return the sand to the ocean floor. But the United States, the region’s dominant military power, could use the decision to justify more naval patrols in the area, to recruit new allies and give more support to old ones, and to rally world opinion against Beijing’s behavior. While it will denounce the decision in public, the Chinese leadership may decide to back off and begin easing tensions with neighboring countries. It could start with the new Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, who says he wants to improve relations with China and has proposed talks on maritime cooperation. But some analysts are worried that President Xi will respond instead with defiance. Chinese diplomats have already suggested China might withdraw from the Convention on the Law of the Sea. It could also begin transforming the reef at the center of the dispute, Scarborough Shoal, into a military outpost, risking a clash with the Philippines, an American ally. And it might try to impose a new “air defense identification zone” over part of the South China Sea, asserting the right to identify, monitor and take military action against planes in the area. | 0 |
(Reuters) - At least 12 women have accused U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of sexual advances and groping. Among his accusers are a Miss Utah beauty pageant winner, a businesswoman, a reporter and a receptionist. He has denied the accusations. In a 2005 video that emerged on Oct. 7, Trump boasted about grabbing women by the genitals and kissing them without their consent. In a U.S. presidential debate on Oct. 9, he said he was embarrassed by what he called “locker-room talk” but had not engaged in the conduct he described in the video. Trump has called “absolutely false” the allegations by several women of groping and other misconduct, reported by The New York Times and other news media. At a rally this month, after two more women made accusations of groping, he denounced all the recent allegations by a series of women, calling them fabrications and calling the women “sick.” Following are some of the allegations against Trump: Jessica Leeds, 74, recounted in a video interview posted on The New York Times website on Oct. 12 that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt on a flight to New York in or around 1980 when she was a 38-year-old traveling businesswoman. In a tweet and in a later speech on Oct. 13, Trump called the Times story a total fabrication. Kristin Anderson, in a video posted on the website of The Washington Post on Oct. 14, said Trump put his hand up her skirt in a crowded New York nightclub in the early 1990s in an unwanted advance, when she had never even met him. “He did touch my vagina through my underwear, absolutely,” Anderson said in the video interview. Jill Harth, a former Trump beauty pageant business associate, filed a $125 million lawsuit in 1997 against Trump alleging that on Jan. 24, 1993, at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Trump “forcibly removed plaintiff to a bedroom, whereupon defendant subjected plaintiff to defendant’s unwanted sexual advances.” A Trump spokesperson was quoted on Oct. 7 in The New York Times as saying, “Mr. Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms. Harth.” The lawsuit was dropped in May 1997. Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, said that Trump twice kissed her on the lips in greeting while she was a contestant for the Miss USA pageant in 1997, when she was 21 years old. “What he did made me feel so uncomfortable that I ended up cutting my trip short, bought my own plane ticket, flew home and never spoke to him again,” Taggart said at an Oct. 28 press conference in Salt Lake City with her attorney, Gloria Allred. Cathy Heller said that Trump in 1997 tried to kiss her during a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-A-Lago. Heller, her husband, her three children and her in-laws attended the event. When she was introduced to Trump, “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,” she told The Guardian newspaper. She said she leaned backward to avoid him and almost lost her balance. “And he said, ‘Oh, come on.’ He was strong. And he grabbed me and went for my mouth and went for my lips.” She said she turned her head and Trump kissed her on the side of the mouth. Yoga instructor Karena Virginia, at a news conference in New York City in October, said Trump approached her outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1998. They had never met, and she was 27 years old, she said. She alleged that Trump commented on her legs and then touched her breast before she was able to get into a car and be driven away. Trump campaign spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said the accusation was a publicity-seeking attack coordinated with Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, and added: “Voters are tired of these circus-like antics and reject these fictional stories.” Mindy McGillivray was cited in an article published in The Palm Beach Post on Oct. 12 that while she was a 23-year-old photographer’s assistant at a Jan. 24, 2003, event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had grabbed her buttocks. The Palm Beach Post cited a Trump spokesperson as saying, “This allegation lacks any merit or veracity.” Rachel Crooks, formerly a receptionist at a real estate firm, told The New York Times in a report published on Oct. 12 that Trump “kissed me directly on the mouth” in 2005 at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22. In a tweet and in a later speech on Oct. 13, Trump called the Times story a total fabrication. Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter, wrote a first-person account that described Trump kissing her without her consent in December 2005 at Mar-a-Lago while she was working on an article about him and his third wife, Melania, for People magazine. In the account published by People on Oct. 12, Stoynoff said “he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.” In a tweet and in a later speech on Oct. 13, Trump said the episode described did not happen. Summer Zervos, who was a contestant on Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” in 2006, said at a news conference on Oct. 14 in Las Vegas that Trump tried to get her to lie down on a bed with him when she met him in 2007 to discuss a possible job. Zervos said she complied with a request to sit next to Trump, and, “He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast.” Trump at a rally in North Carolina denounced the allegations made by a series of women in recent days, calling them fabrications. Ninni Laaksonen, a former Miss Finland, accused Trump of groping her in 2006 when she was representing her country in the Miss Universe beauty contest. Laaksonen told the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper that he had grabbed her behind before she appeared on a television show in New York with other contestants. “He really grabbed my butt. I don’t think anybody saw it but I flinched and thought: ‘What is happening?’,” she was quoted as saying in the newspaper. Jessica Drake, an adult film actor, accused Trump of pressuring her to have sex with him 10 years ago when they met at a golf tournament. After, she said, a man, possibly Trump, called to offer her $10,000 if she would have sex with him, which she declined. Trump’s campaign said the accusations were false. | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Fourteen people had to be airlifted from a British seaside tower after a mobile observation capsule became stuck, rescue services reported. The Jurassic skyline tower in the southern resort of Weymouth offers 360-degree views of the surrounding area. Video footage shows the trapped visitors being winched to safety by rescuers dangling from a helicopter above the 53-metre tower. Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service was alerted on Tuesday afternoon after engineers failed to free the stuck capsule. The tower s operator said on twitter that the gondola had become stuck due to a mechanical issue. | 1 |
While it can be said that no one is immune from punishment, a terrific example of that fact is how a Secret Service agent who was on Mike Pence s detail just got himself arrested.Why was he arrested? For getting caught soliciting sex from a prostitute.According to CNN: a Secret Service agent on Vice President Mike Pence s detail has been suspended from official duties after meeting a prostitute at a Maryland hotel. One law enforcement source says the agent was caught after police saw him exiting the hotel. Apparently, this is how it all went down: The police responded to a call from the hotel manager who became suspicious of activity in one of the rooms. The source said this was not a sting. Now, even though the agent was off duty and wasn t currently guarding the *vice president, it is still illegal to solicit sex.CNN reports: A Secret Service spokesperson, speaking on the record, acknowledges an alleged incident occurred and says it involved an off-duty Secret Service employee and said that the matter is under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility to determine the facts.According to the spokesperson, the employee was required to surrender his weapon and official gear and was placed on administrative leave. The employee s security clearance and access to all Secret Service facilities has also been suspended. Tsk tsk. You d think someone, especially in the Secret Service, would know better. Especially considering the history of prostitutes with agents in the Secret Service.Who can forget the Colombian prostitute scandal of 2012 when nine Secret Service agents had been discovered bringing hookers back to their rooms?Mike Pence s former Secret Service agent will be disciplined, but it still doesn t look good for the entire United States Secret Service, or the *vice president for that matter. And you can only guess the big guy in the Oval Office doesn t like it. No, not Bannon, the other big guy.(*pending investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election)Featured Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Sierra Club and five other U.S. environmental groups sued a White House advisory council and the U.S. Interior Department, saying they were illegally withholding information about a review of public land designations, according to court papers. In the lawsuit filed on Thursday, the groups asked the court to compel the Interior Department and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to provide documents on the department’s review of a group of national monuments, where industrial activities like mining and oil drilling are prohibited. Interior put more than a dozen monuments under review earlier this year. Several news outlets reported the department had determined which of those it would shrink, but it has not released a formal report. U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, pledged last week to reduce the size of two monuments in Utah, according to U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch. Interior Department and White House officials referred questions about the lawsuit to the U.S. Justice Department. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The environmental groups, which also include the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society, said Interior and the White House council were not meeting appropriate deadlines under the Freedom of Information Act. That law requires government agencies to release their documents to the public upon request and lays out a timeline for doing so. “By failing to provide the requested records, Defendants are actively impeding Plaintiffs’ access to government information and blocking Plaintiffs’ ability to carry out their organizational missions,” the lawsuit said. | 1 |
Last week, Donald Trump Junior became a new focus for Senate investigators in the case against Russia regarding the 2016 election. The New York Times did a piece on Wednesday detailing the fact that Junior was scheduled to meet with them (behind closed doors, of course) the following day and, well, you know the rest.It wasn t the article, explosive though it was, that captured the internet s attention, though. It was the hilariously badly-staged photo that Don Jr. apparently staged for Todd Heisler, a photographer on the Times staff, and the image it was clearly trying and failing miserably to portray:I, too, casually arrange photographs of my 100 children to face outwards so I can only see the backs of frames pic.twitter.com/Pa0cHP5ayj Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) September 8, 2017See the problem? Obviously when they were setting up the shoot, Son of the Deal decided he needed the world to know how much he loves his five kids. So he took essentially every picture ever taken of them, put them in shiny frames, and arranged them to best be captured by the camera, dad s studious face aglow with the glare of hard work emanating from his computer monitor stern in the background.Facing away from him.It was just too good to pass up, and so Twitter did not:THE PHOTOS MUST EARN THE RIGHT TO FACE FATHER the September Son (@bagofbadgers) September 8, 2017I don't want to know what he uses those giant scissors for Sam Lloyd (@LloydWithTwoLs) September 8, 2017His photos shoots are all awkward af pic.twitter.com/LoVhqrVpyr pauisanoun (@pauisanoun) September 8, 2017Welp, he's always seemed to be somewhat genetically inferior. #BestGenes pic.twitter.com/3RTMHJJWwM TinyFingeredFuhrer (@TinyFingerTrump) September 8, 2017Where's my brother don jr pic.twitter.com/UooKJ1vInw WrongAgain (@wrongestwrong) September 9, 2017He needs the bobblehead of his father there because it's the only way he'll get him to nod "yes" to something Kristen Hernandez (@K_Hern) September 8, 2017He's only 30% sure the kids are his M.R.Scully (@Falling_Short) September 8, 2017One user made a fine point about why it may have been set up so peculiarly:Joke's on you, he can see them in the 10 ft mirror that's guaranteed to be on the other side of the room Selerax (@Selerax) September 8, 2017While this woman pointed out that the biggest of Junior s photos on the desk was actually one of himself just like his dad: pic.twitter.com/7NMhprnhGS suzanne zuppello (@suppello) September 8, 2017Here s the part I think is funny, though:This is the most painfully staged shot I have ever seen in my whole entire life, bar none, EVER. ?TheKIERHAWK (@KieranStrange) September 9, 2017A quick Google search says that Todd Heisler of the New York Times is a professional photographer with thousands of shoots under his belt, a Pulitzer Prize, and an Emmy. C mon, Todd Don t even play like you didn t know Junior looked like an idiot.For the long con, for the wait-for-it, waaaaaait-for-it troll, I salute you.Featured image via David Becker/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the derailment of a train, which sent train cars crashing onto a major highway and killed passengers, in Washington state showed the necessity of an infrastructure plan. “The train accident that just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly,” Trump said. “Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long!” | 1 |
A total of 205 Clinton Foundation donors whose corporations and foundations collectively contributed $216 million since 2009, were awarded the most coveted invitations in the nation s capital: prestigious seats at one or more White House State Dinners.At least 15 of the Clinton Foundation s corporate donors representing $47 million in contributions were able to win invitations to two or more official state dinners.Significantly, the decision makers who authorized the special invitations were not at the White House at all, but were ensconced in the Department of State s Office of Protocol. The protocol office, chosen by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is filled solely with long-time Clinton loyalists.Despite the Democratic presidential nominee s departure from the Department of State in 2013, all of the top officeholders in the protocol office throughout Obama s two terms have been senior staffers who served in either former President Bill Clinton s White House or in Hillary s Senate and 2008 presidential campaigns.Critics of the foundation worry Dennis Cheng who served as Clinton s protocol deputy chief and later went directly to the Clinton Foundation as its chief fundraiser could have walked away with valuable donor lists compiled by the office.After Cheng left the Department of State, he raised a record quarter billion dollars while at the foundation. He is now Hillary s national fundraiser, leading her presidential bid to raise $2 billion. As a result, The Daily Beast once called him, Hillary Clinton s $2 billion money man. If Cheng shared confidential information with the foundation, he may have violated a special Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the foundation and the Obama transition team in November 2008. The MOU warned of avoiding potential or actual conflict of interest. Cheng also could run afoul of a 18 USC 208, a federal statute that prohibits an executive branch employee from participating personally and substantially in a particular Government matter that will affect his own financial interests, including those of a prospective employer or a family member. How much of the mailing list and contact information Cheng got at Protocol, migrated over to the Clinton Foundation, asked Charles Ortel a Wall Street investor and an outspoken critic of the Clinton Foundation.Read more: Daily Caller | 1 |
The executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) observes that any Obamacare health care replacement plan that attempts to implement “universal coverage” will suffer the same outcome as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) since the more “coverage” that is mandated, the less actual “health care” will be available. [Orient emphasizes what has ultimately been the demise of Obamacare. Its supporters say millions more have “coverage,” i. e. insurance cards, though many can’t afford its high premiums and deductibles. “The reported success of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or ObamaCare) is based on enrollment numbers,” Orient explains. “Millions more have ‘coverage.’ Similarly, the predicted disasters from repeal have to do with loss of coverage. ” The physician continues that plans to provide universal coverage will result in “tens of thousands of deaths. ” In the fervor to keep Obamacare’s conditions provision and the push further for universal coverage, Orient asks where the data are on the ACA’s actual impact: Where are the statistics about the number of heart operations done on babies born with birth defects, the latest poster children? How about the number of babies saved by this surgery, and the number allowed to die without an attempt at surgery — before and after ACA? I haven’t seen them. Note that an insurance plan doesn’t do the operation. A doctor does. The insurer can, however, try to block it. Also missing are figures on the number of courses of cancer chemotherapy given, or not given, or the time from diagnosis to death in cancer patients before and after ACA. survival of cancer patients in the U. S. is generally better than in countries that have universal coverage, or the type of plan progressives want to import. Again, the insurance plan isn’t medicine. You can get medicine without insurance, and if you have insurance it might refuse to pay. Orient observes that, between 2014 and 2015, U. S. mortality rates increased for the first time in decades. “This primarily affected whites,” she notes. “Is Obamacare the cause? There are many factors involved, drug abuse probably being the most important. But I suspect that if repeal had happened in 2012 or 2013, it would have been blamed. ” “Medicaid expansion may have alleviated fears of medical bankruptcy, but we don’t know that more patients got treatment,” Orient continues. “In Canada, there is no fear of a medical bill. But there might not be any treatment either. ” In October of last year, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber admitted the ACA was working just as it was designed — jacking up premiums and deductibles, and limiting choices for its customers. “The main goal of Obamacare was ” Gruber, an MIT economics professor, said on CNN, continuing: One was to cover the uninsured, of which we’ve covered 20 million, the largest expansion in American history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurers could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare. “Jonathan Gruber exposed himself as not credible and simply a propaganda minister of Obamacare when he was exposed explaining the grand deception perpetrated on the American public,” Dr. Gerard Gianoli, a specialist in and skull base surgery, told Breitbart News. “To claim that Obamacare is working is almost too ridiculous to comment upon, unless the purpose of Obamacare was to drive up insurance premiums, while providing less options for health care and destroying the best medical care system in the world. ” Orient agrees, observing that experts beating the universal healthcare drum “know very well that resources are limited, and that spending (‘costs’) must be contained. ” She adds: They also understand that the burgeoning bureaucracy and its minions and retainers must be well paid. So the answer is to cut services. Some plans “incentivize” doctors to make more money by skimping on care. Others call for a “global budget” — the deliberate creation of scarcity. When the money is gone, treatment is canceled. There will be fewer beds, fewer CT scanners, fewer drugs, and fewer doctors. But all will be fair. No rationing by price, just by waiting lines, political pull — and death. There will be no medical bills to pay after a service, if you get any service. Only taxes in advance, service or no service. Dr. Kristin Held, a ophthalmologist and surgeon, explains how Obamacare obliterated medical care and that even many Republicans still refuse to embrace the free market when it comes to health care, a situation that will keep healthcare costs high: In a normal free market, people can look for a less expensive car or a different dealer. But ObamaCare outlawed the insurance products that millions of people had and were satisfied with. No more “bare bones” policies for instance. The leather seats and entertainment “option” are no longer optional. And no heading to the dealer across the street — or the state line — who’ll make you a better deal. The government has fixed the prices, the products, and the dealers. You may be shocked to hear that “ ” Republicans didn’t fix that. They’ll let you do without the car, but you can’t get a cheaper one. After all, the Obama car features are immensely popular. They are certainly popular with certain groups: Held explains that if Republicans retain the “’guaranteed rating’ features that always and everywhere send premiums into the stratosphere,” insurers can’t price their products by level of risk, and premiums will still go higher. She urges Republicans to address “the entrenched flaws that keep the costs up” in health care. “We must continuously remind ourselves that the goal is survival of our patients, not the survival of big insurance corporations, political careers, and parasites,” she asserts. “We need an ambulance not a Monster truck, and most importantly we must drain the swamp. ” | 0 |
This woman nails it! LANGUAGE ALERT! | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Wednesday accused Republican opponent Donald Trump of inciting violence with his call for gun rights activists to stop her from nominating liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices. Clinton’s comments added to a growing outcry over Trump’s remarks on Tuesday at a North Carolina rally, which some interpreted as a call for violence against his White House rival. His remarks also fueled widespread concerns about his ability to stay on track. “Words matter, my friends,” the former U.S. secretary of state, who rarely engages in direct back-and-forths with her Republican rival, said at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “And if you are running to be president or you are president of the United States, words can have tremendous consequences.” “Yesterday, we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that crossed the line,” she said, citing “his casual inciting of violence.” Trump insisted in an interview with Fox News that his remarks were a call for political, not physical, action. “There is tremendous political power to save the Second Amendment, tremendous,” the New York businessman said. “And you look at the power they have in terms of votes and that’s what I was referring to, obviously that’s what I was referring to, and everybody knows it.” The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees a right to keep and bear arms. “I can’t think of anything remotely comparable to it. No one tells a joke about the opponent getting shot. I’ve never heard it,” said Bob Shrum, a top aide for Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000 and John Kerry’s in 2004. High-profile Republicans and rank-and-file voters appeared shaken on Wednesday after a string of Trump misfires, struggling with how to best reject his divisive candidacy. Some pledged to withhold their endorsement and others backed Clinton. Some, including MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, called for party leaders to replace Trump on the ticket. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Aug. 5-8 - before Trump’s latest controversy - showed that nearly one-fifth of 396 registered Republicans said they want Trump to drop out of the race and another 10 percent said they “don’t know” whether the Republican nominee should or not. Clinton’s campaign, seeing an opening, has moved to bring disenchanted Republicans into the fold by announcing an official intraparty outreach effort on behalf of the Democratic nominee. Clinton’s campaign now has a website for Republicans and political independents to sign up to pledge their support, listing 50 prominent Republicans and independents who have endorsed her. On Monday, 50 Republican national security officials signed an open letter questioning Trump’s temperament, calling him reckless and unqualified to be president. Other top Republicans, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine this week, have disavowed Trump but said they cannot back Clinton. James Rohrscheib, 74, a registered Republican and retired U.S. Navy officer from Washington state, told Reuters the reality is the Nov. 8 election will be a “tough one.” “I’m in a quandary as to who I am going to vote for,” Rohrscheib said. Trump has dismissed the defections and criticism as an unsurprising reaction of the so-called Washington elite to his drive to change the status quo. One group that appears unswayed is Trump’s donors. Reuters interviewed nine major Trump donors on Wednesday, and not one said his Second Amendment comment had given them pause. Trump Texas fundraising co-chair Gaylord Hughey called the interpretation of his remark as condoning violence “ridiculous” and “ludicrous.” “It’s just another issue the press has really twisted to make headlines,” Hughey said. But Mike Smith, a Republican voter and Reuters/Ipsos poll respondent, said the support Trump is still receiving from Republicans “almost seems obligatory rather than voluntary.” “I’m almost at the point where I think I’m going to vote for Hillary. I don’t like her,” said Smith, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in Clearwater, Florida. “But Mr. Trump is making me very nervous.” Republican strategist and Trump supporter Ford O’Connell said Trump has “dug himself a deep hole” with voters and to win the election he will need to “make it a referendum on Hillary Clinton and the ‘rigged system.’” Trump sought to do just that by using an economic policy speech in Detroit on Monday to correct a series of missteps that included a prolonged clash with the parents of a fallen Muslim American soldier. But his remarks Tuesday undermined that effort. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” Trump said at the rally in North Carolina. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know,” he continued. A federal official familiar with the matter denied a media report that the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates threats against presidents and candidates, had formally spoken with the Trump campaign about his remark. Trump’s comment and the resulting backlash occurred as Reuters/Ipsos polling showed some 44 percent of 1,162 registered voters believe Trump should exit the race, and that as of Tuesday, Clinton led Trump by more than 7 percentage points, up from a 3-point lead late last week. Strategists and Trump detractors agreed that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to remove Trump from the Republican ticket. “It’s wishful thinking to believe the Republicans are going to replace its nominee after the convention. People are grasping at straws,” Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist unaffiliated with Trump, told Reuters. A more likely scenario would be a replay of the 1996 presidential race, when the Republican Party essentially deserted nominee Bob Dole, who was badly trailing President Bill Clinton, to focus on congressional races. | 1 |
An electrical contractor wrote to the 54-year-old host of Dirty Jobs to say that he finds it offensive when the media constantly refers to majority of the Republican nominee s supporters as uneducated white men. If the media is referring to Trump supporters who happen to be male caucasians suffering from a lack of knowledge brought about by an absence of formal or practical instruction, than I guess uneducated white men is a fair description, Rowe responded in a lengthy Facebook post. However, if the Trump supporters in question are being dubbed uneducated, simply because they didn t earn a four-year degree, I d say the media s slip is showing. Let s assume that Donald Trump is indeed popular among white men who didn t graduate from college. The first question is, so what? Is this information newsworthy? Obviously, thousands of journalists think it is. To your point, the words uneducated white men now appear in hundreds of articles about Trump. But if this is truly important information, where were these reporters four years ago? In the last election, an even greater majority of African-American males who voted for President Obama had no college on their resume. Maybe I missed it, but I don t recall any headlines or articles that delved into Obama s popularity among uneducated black men. If the media didn t care about the lack of college among black men supporting Obama, why do they care so much about the lack of college among white men supporting Trump? Moreover, when exactly did a lack of college become synonymous with a lack of education? There are many ways to become educated that don t involve the purchase of a diploma. Why would the media ignore thousands of apprenticeship programs, on-the-job-training opportunities, and all the other alternative educational options that have led so many people into so many successful careers? The answer is obvious many in the press are looking for ways to impact the election. If a biased reporter can get away with labeling Trump supporters who didn t graduate from college as uneducated, he can simultaneously imply that any ballot cast for Trump is the hallmark of an uneducated voter. It s impossible for me to have this conversation and not think of my grandfather. Pop never made it to college. In fact, he never made it out of the 7th grade. But he never stopped learning or studying. He started as an electrician s helper, became an apprentice, a journeyman, a master electrician, a contractor, and then a small business owner. Later, as an electrical inspector for the state, he was responsible for guaranteeing the safety of hundreds of buildings in Maryland, as well as all the rides on the carnival midway at the State Fair. He was a modest man of real intelligence, admired and respected by everyone who knew him. But today, he d be right there with you, Albert swelling out the ranks of uneducated white men. Closing the skills gap and making college more affordable is beyond my pay grade, but it seems like we could start by reminding the media that a college degree is not the only path to success. It s well and good to promote higher education, but it s crazy to suggest the most expensive road to enlightenment is the best path for the most people. And it s equally nuts to pressure our kids to keep borrowing vast sums of money to become educated in careers that no longer exist. The media has minimized your work, insulted your intelligence, and ignored your contribution to civilized life. Try not to take it personally. Just keep doing what you do. Run your business. Vote your conscience. Keep the lights on for the rest of us. Read more: Daily Caller | 0 |
Mitch McConnell is still making ridiculous excuses to justify what Senate Republicans did to Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.When Antonin Scalia passed away in February 2016, his body was not even cold before Republicans declared that they would refuse to hold hearings to confirm any replacement chosen by President Obama.And so, when President Obama selected a centrist judge named Merrick Garland to be the next Supreme Court Justice, Republicans immediately refused to do their job as outlined by the Constitution.Republicans tried to excuse their behavior by claiming that Democrats would have done the same thing even though Democrats have never once refused to grant a nominee a confirmation hearing. Furthermore, Republicans claimed that no Supreme Court nominee has ever been approved by the Senate in an election year.McConnell made the same claim on Sunday after Chuck Todd grilled him in response to Republican insistence that Donald Trump s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch be confirmed immediately. The tradition had been not to confirm vacancies in the middle of a presidential [election] year, McConnell said. You d have to go back 80 years to find the last time it happened. Everyone knew, including President Obama s former White House counsel, that if the shoe had been on the other foot, [Democrats] wouldn t have filled a Republican president s vacancy in the middle of a presidential election. Again, Democrats have never refused to hold a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court nominee.Also, Mitch McConnell is ignorant of Senate history.As it turns out, there have been several election year confirmations of Supreme Court nominees and we don t have to go back 80 years to find one.In fact, the last one occurred only 29 years ago when the Senate confirmed Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988 during Ronald Reagan s last year in office.It also happened in 1956 when Dwight Eisenhower nominated William Brennan. The Senate confirmed him despite it being an election year.In 1940, also an election year, Franklin Roosevelt nominated Frank Murphy to the Supreme Court and the Senate confirmed him.So contrary to what Mitch McConnell says, there is plenty of precedent in our history proving that the Senate has no such tradition of not confirming Supreme Court nominees during an election year.Todd challenged McConnell for not simply holding a confirmation hearing and giving Garland an up or down vote. Why not put him up for a vote? Todd asked. Any senator can have a rationale to not vote for a confirmation. Why not put Merrick Garland on the floor and if the rationale is, You know what? Too close to an election, then vote no? Look, we litigated that last year, a flustered McConnell replied. The American people decided that they wanted Donald Trump to make the nomination, not Hillary Clinton. Actually, the American people voted for Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.McConnell then claimed that there s no rational reason to not vote to confirm Gorsuch. But that s not true either. You see, by refusing to grant Garland a confirmation hearing, Republicans set a precedent and gave Democrats all the reasons they need to block Gorsuch at all costs.Plus, Gorsuch has a terrible record and he was nominated by Trump, which is all the more reason for Democrats to block him.If Senate Republicans had not acted like petulant children in response to Merrick Garland, perhaps Democrats would have been more open. But the way Republicans treated Garland was un-American and totally outrageous. They disgraced the Senate with their conduct and Democrats now have precedent to respond in kind.But McConnell balked when Todd challenged him to take up a resolution that says Supreme Court vacancies won t be filled during an election year. In short, McConnell knows that if a Republican had been president in 2016, Senate Republicans would have rushed any Supreme Court nomination through. Because in the end, Republicans are hypocrites.Here s the video via YouTube.There is no excuse for Democrats to not block Neil Gorsuch from becoming a Supreme Curt Justice. In fact, if Republicans somehow get him confirmed, Democrats should impeach him as soon as they take back control of the Senate. This Supreme Court seat rightfully belongs to Merrick Garland. He deserves a fair confirmation hearing before Republicans are ever able to nominate someone to the Supreme Court again. Until then, Republican nominees should be the same and worse than the way Republicans treated Merrick Garland.And Republicans only have themselves to blame.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday a dual suspension proposal to handle North Korea was still the best option, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had rejected a freeze for freeze agreement. North Korea s rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles has fueled a surge in regional tensions as United Nations-led sanctions appear to have failed to bite deeply enough to change its behavior. China and Russia have proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programs. Beijing formally calls the idea the dual suspension proposal. Speaking upon his return from Asia on Wednesday, Trump said he and Xi had agreed that they would not accept a freeze for freeze idea, which China s foreign minister announced in March. Asked how China understood Trump s remarks and whether he agreed with the characterization of what Trump said he agreed to with Xi, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said only through talks that addressed all sides legitimate security concerns could there be a peaceful resolution. We believe that the dual suspension proposal is the most feasible, fair and sensible plan in the present situation, Geng told a daily news briefing. Not only can it relieve the present tense situation, it can also resolve all parties most pressing security concerns, and provide an opportunity and create conditions to resume talks, and find a breakthrough point to get out of trouble, he added. The dual suspension is just a first step and not the end point, Geng added. We hope that all sides can conscientiously treat and proactively consider China s proposal, and at the same time we welcome relevant parties to put forward proposals that can benefit the promotion of a peaceful resolution for the peninsula nuclear issue. Asked at a regular briefing if Trump stood by his remarks as to what he had agreed with Xi, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders on Thursday replied: Both sides made their positions clear. They are different, but we agreed that there are going to be different positions and therefore it s not going to move forward. North Korea has said it needs to develop its weapons to protect itself from what it sees as U.S. military aggression. It also sees U.S.-South Korean military exercises as joint preparations for invasion. South Korea and the United States, which has about 28,000 troops based in South Korea, say their exercises are defensive in nature. | 0 |
21st Century Wire says You know that western society is approaching its final hour when animal rights activists start advocating individual animals to be able to sue humans in courts. That s exactly what has happened in the US.We can trace some of this line of thinking back to Cass Sunstein, the radical, liberal progressive technocrat and chief advisor to President Barack Obama (as well as the husband of disastrous UN Ambassador Samantha Power). According to his own writing and public declarations, Sunstein believes that activists should be able to bring a lawsuit on behalf of an animal in US courts. In his 2004 book Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, Sunstein remarked:Cass Sunstein. My simplest suggestion is that private citizens should be given the right to bring suits to prevent animals from being treated in a way that violates current law. I offer a recommendation that is theoretically modest but that should do a lot of practical good: laws designed to protect animals against cruelty and abuse should be amended and interpreted to give a private cause of action against those who violate them, so as to allow private people to supplement the efforts of public prosecutors. Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law. As one of liberal America s most influential technocrats, Sunstein argues that this legal right can be invoked on the basis of animal cruelty. While no cruelty seems to be present in the case of the Monkey Selfie (see story below), activists at PETA were no doubt emboldened by Sunstein and others who have propelled their ideological argument into the political activist discourse.While our society and our legal system are far from perfect, a move like this from a wealthy charity like PETA could throw that system into even further chaos.Surely, if animals can sue humans, then shouldn t humans be able to sue animals? As you can see, when you pursue this activist rabbit hole, reality starts to dissolve rather quickly.More on this incredible story from AP Monkey Selfie Copyright credited to David J. Slater (UK)Linda Wang APcurious monkey with a toothy grin and a knack for pressing a camera button was back in the spotlight Wednesday as a federal appeals court heard arguments on whether an animal can hold a copyright to selfie photos.A 45-minute hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco attracted crowds of law students and curious citizens who often burst into laughter. The federal judges also chuckled at times at the novelty of the case, which involves a monkey in another country that is unaware of the fuss.Andrew Dhuey, attorney for British nature photographer David Slater, said monkey see, monkey sue is not good law under any federal act.Naruto is a free-living crested macaque who snapped perfectly framed selfies in 2011 that would make even the Kardashians proud.People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] sued Slater and the San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, which published a book called Wildlife Personalities that includes the monkey selfies, for copyright infringement. It sought a court order in 2015 allowing it to administer all proceeds from the photos taken in a wildlife reserve in Sulawesi, Indonesia to benefit the monkey.Slater says the British copyright for the photos obtained by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., should be honored Continue this story at AP/Chicago TribunePictured here is a typical Indonesian Crested Black Macaque monkey (Image Credit: Lip Key Yap, Wikicommons)READ MORE FINANCIAL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Financial FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 0 |
You know how many Trump fans seem to have a sick obsession with their orange-tinged fuhrer? We may have possibly found the one who is basically the ultimate Donald Trump fanboy, in a 1940 s Germany sort of way.Meet Gene Huber. Trump pulled Huber up on stage at his first campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida which, once again, happened about a month into his presidency to address the crowd.Huber is already being compared to George W. Bush s living prop Joe The Plumber, who went on to run a functional white supremacist blog after his 15 minutes of fame faded.But who is Huber? His social media reveals that he is a typical Trump supporter in many ways (and in one hopefully not-so-typical way) right down to Trump nibbling on his ear lobe wait, what?One creepy tweet from Huber claims that Trump kissed his ear lob [sic] in 1970:@WDFx2EU7 @P0TUSTrump Let's see, liar, Thief, racist, corrupt, making fun of Americans! In 1970 Trump kissed my ear lob! #MAGA #TrumpTrain Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) October 16, 2016He also wants to lock her up @pgpfoundation Yes, Mrs. Clinton I would love to know yr plan, if I may Mrs.Clinton, my plan I see, you sitting in jail!#MAGA3X #MAGA3X #US Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) October 22, 2016@wpjenna Another brainwashed liberal! So sad, she has 2 investigations on her! I tell you what is true,Crooked Hillary going to jail! #MAGA Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) November 3, 2016@JenniferJJacobs who gives a shit, still hearing this crap! Crooked Hillary is a Criminal, Trump is not! Lock her Up! #TrumpTrain #Trump Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) October 22, 2016This is how I feel,Crooked Hillary belongs in jail, We the People will do this. Keep the message strong, it's working! #MAGA #MAGA3X #Trump pic.twitter.com/mmh9W2mcCn Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) October 22, 2016 so she can make his license plate in prison:@ronbucme Thanks Crooked Ronnie, great info.That bitch is gonna make my license plate, and eat 3 meals a day sucker! @MyTake1234 #Trump2016 Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) October 22, 2016He thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim:@modestypictures @thebestcloser What's Questionable, are you living on Fantasy island. He has done more then your Muslim president! #MAGA Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) January 18, 2017@CNN @megynkelly he is a Muslim been hearing this crap for a year and a half and Megan I'm sure we will hear it tonite Disgrace #TrumpTrain Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) October 14, 2016According to Facebook, he has visited Trump s properties (and the White House) a lot recently:It is unclear if he met with Trump during any of these visits, but he does say that Fearless Leader called him on Valentine s Day:But what truly makes him special is this totally not creepy thing he does with a cardboard cutout of The Donald. In an interview with CNN shortly after Trump christened him a star, Huber explained:He also talks to it regularly and prays either for it or to it, depending on how one interprets this:He wasn t lying, either. He has a cutout of Trump:The Best Vistor I could ever have!President Trump came to Florida to see me! Wow, never will forget [email protected] @thebestcloser pic.twitter.com/galTF85biz Gene Huber (@Squeakey6) January 9, 2017Let s face it when you confess to talking to your cardboard Donald Trump and saluting it every day, you re kinda asking for the sort of response you get on social media:@Squeakey6 @thebestcloser Talking to a cardboard cut out everyday? You are nuts. Hopelessly Chaotic (@chaos_4ever) February 19, 2017@Squeakey6 @thebestcloser .. I'm speechless. Seriously. #Independent J. Canfield (@CreativeBoulder) February 19, 2017I bet if someone shined a blacklight on that cardboard Trump it would light up like the 4th of July with #GeneHuber "samples" (@Cvinciguerra1) February 19, 2017I wish the cardboard cutout of #donaldtrump that #GeneHuber salutes every morning was president instead. I'd feel much safer #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/vsl0USJd4o dj (@dljones66) February 19, 2017@Squeakey6 Gene Huber's cardboard Dictator salutes back after he does "this & that." #TrumpRally #Melbourne #DemocracyOverFascism#NoToWWIII pic.twitter.com/ptCdrjXOHq #TheResistance ? (@ISayNoToFascism) February 19, 2017@sidnknj @Gallaecian Here is his cardboard trump pic.twitter.com/H4DHIb6LPg NORTH (@Mikeyabcdefg) February 19, 2017Find you a man that loves you as much as Gene Huber loves his 6 foot tall cardboard cutout of Donald Trump except not fuckin creepy as hell. Emma Sch tzkowski (@emmaschuetz) February 19, 2017Gene Huber's cardboard cutout of Donald Trump is more diplomatic, presidental, and legitimate of a leader than Donald Trump is. Matthew Cooper (@ILoveMorrigan) February 19, 2017I shudder to think what other things #GeneHuber does to his cardboard Trump ROH (@RealOldHouswife) February 19, 2017Gene Huber salutes a 6 ft. cardboard Donald Trump in his living room every day. Mmkay. #TrumpRally Micha (@mighty_mite14) February 19, 2017Watch Huber make the creepiest admission ever below: As an added bonus, here s him doing whatever this is:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));I Swear Back in the Eighties, I was Called Vince Neil walking down the Halls in School!!!!Posted by Gene Huber on Thursday, February 16, 2017Featured image via Twitter | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain on Tuesday welcomed a commitment by U.S. President Donald Trump to step up the military campaign against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. President Trump committed the United States to an open-ended conflict in Afghanistan on Monday night, reversing course from his campaign pledges. Britain along with other European allies pledged more troops to support Afghanistan’s military in June, with U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis saying at the time that troop numbers in the country had been reduced too rapidly. “The U.S. commitment is very welcome,” British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement. “In my call with Secretary Mattis yesterday we agreed that despite the challenges, we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to help build up its fragile democracy and reduce the terrorist threat to the West. “It’s in all our interests that Afghanistan becomes more prosperous and safer: that’s why we announced our own troop increase back in June.” | 0 |
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