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The Electoral College should tell Donald Trump and his deplorable supporters to go f*ck themselves.The Electoral College convenes on December 19th to cast their votes for president. And it will only take 38 of them to cast their votes against Trump to prevent him from taking office.You see, while we have an election every year consisting of electoral votes and the popular vote, all 538 from all 50 states are constitutionally required to have the final say on who becomes president. As Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, the Electoral College is the last line of defense to choose a person who is To an eminent degree, endowed with the requisite qualifications to be President of the United States.And that is why millions of Americans are pleading with the Electoral College to exercise their power and vote against Donald Trump.Of course, Trump supporters are trying to bully and threaten the electors to make sure our country gets destroyed. In fact, an elector in Texas reports that Trump supporters threatened to rape and murder his family if he doesn t vote the way they want him to vote.Christopher Suprun shared the grisly threat with his fellow elector Art Sisneros, who shared the threat with Texas Monthly. You vote for Trump or we rape your wife and daughters with a knife before we kill you, the threat reads. Do as told or face consequences. Sisneros explained that he has also been receiving threats from Trump supporters. The Trump supporters and the people on the right thought that I absolutely had to vote for Trump, and to do otherwise was some kind of treasonous act, he said.Except that Sisneros can vote for whomever he pleases when December 19th rolled around, and that is getting easier to figure out since left-wing groups are reportedly encouraging the electors to choose anyone but Trump, even if it s not Hillary Clinton.Right-wingers and Trump supporters, on the other hand, are being downright scary and are acting like the electors are required to vote for Trump. They were far more aggressive and far more nasty, Sisneros said. I received a lot of threats. I just didn t think it would do any good to share them or make a big deal out of them. There were several nasty ones to vote for Trump, or else. Some of them were pretty vague like, We re going to hunt you down, that kind of stuff. Some were like, We re going to find out where you work and come after you. Frankly, threats like these ought to immediately disqualify Trump from office. After all, he and his supporters are the ones threatening the electors with dire consequences. This should really make it easy for the electors to reject Trump outright. He is a danger to our democracy and his cabinet picks are a threat to our government and democratic institution. Trump is even a danger to our continued survival as a free people considering Russia interfered with our election and helped Trump win so Putin can have a puppet in the White House.The Electoral College has a chance to do what they were designed to do and that is making sure that a demagogue and con artist is prevented from holding the highest office in the land. So the electors need to have courage to save our nation. Rejecting Trump is the right thing to do.Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives will adopt mandatory training on sexual harassment and discrimination, Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday after members of Congress shared stories of women being propositioned and groped in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. “Our goal is not only to raise awareness, but also make abundantly clear that harassment in any form has no place in this institution,” the Republican speaker said in a statement. Ryan announced the new policy as a first step in the House’s review of sexual harassment policies after women lawmakers related in unflinching detail accounts of harassment and intimidation by House members and staff in Congress. The Committee on House Administration held a hearing on sexual harassment policies against a backdrop of social outrage over sexual misconduct by powerful men that began with allegations by multiple women against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. He has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone. Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Alabama, has faced allegations by five women accusing him of sexual misconduct when they were teenagers. Ryan and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell have urged Moore to drop out of the race. Moore has denied the allegations. U.S. Representative Jackie Speier told the panel that two current House members, a Republican and a Democrat, had engaged in sexual harassment. She did not identify the lawmakers. She said numerous staff members, both men and women, had been subjected to inexcusable and often illegal behavior. They included “propositions such as ‘Are you going to be a good girl?’ to perpetrators exposing their genitals, to victims having their private parts grabbed on the House floor,” she said. Speier later told MSNBC: “We do know that about $15 million has been paid out by the House on behalf of harassers in the last 10 to 15 years,” including one taxpayer-funded settlement on behalf of one of the current House members. About 1,500 former congressional staffers have urged the House and Senate leadership to address the issue. The Senate passed a resolution last week to require training. Democratic U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a lead sponsor of that measure, said the next step was to make changes in how harassment complaints are handled. “You wonder why there’s only 21 women in the Senate or why there’s no women running Hollywood studios or there’s hardly any women running major businesses,” Klobuchar told reporters. “Well, when you have a work environment where people can’t get ahead without having to put out, that’s what happens.” | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Monday urged President Donald Trump to release logs of visitors to the White House and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida under a policy that made public the names of nearly six million visitors to the White House during the administration of Barack Obama. If Trump continues the policy, under which visitor logs were released 90 to 120 days after they were created, the public could learn who has been visiting the Trump White House as soon as April 20, according to the lawmakers’ letter. Two of its eight signatories, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Tom Udall, received no reply to a Feb. 3 request that Trump publicize visitor lists from Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has described as the “Winter White House” and visited four times since becoming president, according to Monday’s letter. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A page on the White House website’s “Disclosures” section entitled “Visitor Access Records” says the page will post records of White House visitors on an ongoing basis, once they become available. It does not mention Mar-a-Lago. Photos taken by private guests at the Florida resort in February showed Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe conferring after North Korea conducted a ballistic missile test, prompting a Republican-led congressional oversight committee to ask the White House whether security protocols were followed. “One way to provide assurances that your Administration is listening to the voices of all Americans, not just friends and donors who have a financial self-interest to influence government policy, is to let everyone know who is meeting with you and your staff,” Monday’s letter to Trump read. The senators sent a similar letter on Monday to William Callahan, deputy director of the U.S. Secret Service, asking how the agency will conduct background checks on people who will be present during Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower in New York City, Trump’s golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, or other Trump properties where he may conduct official business. The Secret Service declined to comment. | 0 |
This is proof positive that we have a delusional leader who s got an ego the size of Texas! | 0 |
It s interesting that Trump s candidacy has exposed so many political hacks in unlikely places. | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China s air force has again flown bombers and other warplanes through two strategic channels near Taiwan and also over the disputed South China Sea during training drills, state media said on Thursday. Numerous H-6K bombers and other jets recently flew through the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines and the Miyako Strait in Japan s south, and also over the South China Sea on a combat patrol , the official Xinhua news agency said, citing Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke. Shen did not say when the drills began but said all planes had finished their patrols on Thursday, which were intended to improve maritime real combat capabilities and forge the forces battle methods . China has been increasingly asserting itself in territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. It is also worried about Taiwan, run by a government China fears is intent on independence. Beijing has never ruled out the use of force to bring proudly democratic Taiwan under its control, and has warned that any moves towards formal independence could prompt an armed response. China is in the midst of an ambitious military modernization program that includes building aircraft carriers and developing stealth fighters to give it the ability to project power far from its shores. Taiwan is well armed, mostly with U.S. weaponry, but has been pressing Washington to sell it more high-tech equipment to better deter China. | 1 |
I ll be back is not what Arnold Schwarzenegger is telling the Republican Party this year. Ever since the action movie icon became a United States citizen in 1983 he has faithfully voted for the GOP presidential candidate but not this year.Donald Trump s vulgar remarks about groping women were too much for the Terminator star, who, like other Republicans, are now jumping from a sinking ship.The Los Angeles Times reports that Arnold not only condemned Trump in a statement, but used the same statement to announce that he will not be voting Republican in November. For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for president, Schwarzenegger said in a statement posted on Twitter. Like many Americans, I ve been conflicted by this election I still haven t made up my mind about how exactly I will vote next month. I have been a proud Republican since I moved to America in 1968 and I heard Nixon s words about getting government off our backs, free trade, and defending our liberty with a strong military. That day I joined the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.But as proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that hold above all else American. So I want to take a moment today to remind my fellow Republicans that it is not only acceptable to choose your country over your party it is your duty. As proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that I hold above all else American. My full statement: pic.twitter.com/biRvY8S3aZ Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) October 8, 2016As Governor of California, Schwarzenegger was embroiled in his own scandals which included an affair he had with his housekeeper that produced a child years prior to taking office, which he has taken responsibility for, and accusations of sexual misconduct for which he has expressed remorse.So Donald Trump s behavior and words are so bad that even Schwarzenegger can t bring himself to vote Republican. That s saying something.Featured image via Wikimedia | 0 |
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey’s foreign minister called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s immediate removal on Friday, saying a transitional government must be established and voicing support for a U.S. missile strike overnight on one of his air bases. “It is necessary to oust this regime as soon as possible from the leadership of Syria,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in the southern town of Alanya in comments broadcast live. “If he doesn’t want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken,” he said. Cavusoglu said safe zones for civilians in Syria were now more important than ever. He said the coalition had been informed of the U.S. missile strike and that he had spoken by phone with the French and German foreign ministers, although he did not say when. He also said contacts had been initiated with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. | 1 |
Long may their heaves remind them of just how idiotic they are.A group of West Virginia Republicans reaped what they sowed this week after one of their own brought in some raw milk to drink in celebration of a bill they passed into law weeks ago making raw milk legal to drink across the state.According to the Food And Drug Administration:Milk and milk products provide a wealth of nutrition benefits. But raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks to you and your family. According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 1993 and 2006 more than 1500 people in the United States became sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk. In addition, CDC reported that unpasteurized milk is 150 times more likely to cause foodborne illness and results in 13 times more hospitalizations than illnesses involving pasteurized dairy products.Despite this warning, state GOP Rep. Pat McGeehan and others drank the raw milk anyway and became sick afterwards, thus making famed scientist Louis Pasteur roll over in his grave.Pasteur is the French chemist and microbiologist who discovered pasteurization to kill harmful bacteria and microorganisms that cause foodborne sicknesses. There s definitely some other colleagues that have similar symptoms that I ve been experiencing, McGeehan reported.However, like most times Republicans are wrong, McGeehan and his colleagues are in denial that the milk is the cause of their illness, even though they only began reporting feeling sick AFTER drinking the raw milk that the FDA advises people NOT to drink because it makes people sick.The ill lawmakers say that their Republican colleague Scott Cadle brought in the raw milk and McGeehan happened to be in the hallway when Cadle approached him to share a drink. [Cadle] caught me in the hallway, offered a cup to me, and you want to try to be a gentleman, McGeehan said. I had a small sip and walked away and tossed the rest of it. Gee, if raw milk isn t dangerous why toss it after a small sip, Mr. McGeehan?McGeehan claims that a stomach bug is the real cause of the lawmakers praying to the porcelain God and even made another dubious claim. I don t think it s any riskier than eating raw oysters or anything like that, McGeehan said of the raw milk.Cue yet another warning from the FDA:You can get seriously ill and even die from eating raw oysters contaminated with Vibrio vulnificus a bacterium commonly found in waters where oysters are cultivated such as the Gulf of Mexico. Vibrio vulnificus is found in higher concentrations during the summer months as water becomes warmer.Vibrio vulnificus bacteria is not a result of pollution, so although oysters should always be obtained from reputable sources, eating oysters from clean waters or in reputable restaurants with high turnover does not provide protection.Seriously, who elected these dumbasses to political office?Here s the video via WSAZ.The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources is currently investigating.Featured image via screen capture | 1 |
Why American Surrogates Are in Demand for Chinese Families Kalee Thompson, Hollywood Reporter, November 4, 2016
The first time Dianna Barindelli carried a baby that wasn’t her own was in 2012. “We were done having kids, but I still wanted to be pregnant,” says the Modesto, Calif., stay-at-home mom, whose own daughters are 6 and 9. Barindelli signed up with the Center for Surrogate Parenting in Encino, one of the most exclusive surrogacy agencies in the world. In 2014, she matched with a Chinese couple. Unlike many agencies, CSP first shows parent applications to the surrogates, rather than the other way around. “It’s little things that you’ll connect with people over,” says Barindelli, who was attracted to pictures of the couple’s extended travels and their traditional wedding photos.
The embryo transfer took place in late 2014. Barindelli emailed the mom weekly, sending updates and ultrasound pictures with WeChat, an app that offers instantaneous translation. The intended parents (IPs) planned to be there for the birth, but the baby boy arrived two weeks early, 24 hours before they arrived. Says Barindelli: “I texted and made sure [the mom] was OK with him staying in my room. I cleared everything with her. I didn’t want her to feel bad that she wasn’t there.”
Barindelli, who used her surrogacy fees to set up a college fund for her girls, is pregnant again, this time with the baby, due Feb. 1, of a Taiwanese couple. She may not be done: Her first Chinese couple emailed her recently, soon after their son’s first birthday. They still have frozen embryos and hope that Barindelli, now 40, will carry their second child.
Commercial surrogacy is banned in most parts of the world, as well as in many U.S. states. Until recently, infertile couples, singles and gay would-be dads had a handful of options to turn to when it came to finding a surrogate, among them India, Thailand, Nepal and Mexico, where surrogacy services have cost a quarter of the $100,000 to $200,000 bill typical in the U.S. But in the past few years, those countries have started enforcing laws banning international surrogacy. Meanwhile, China–the world’s most populous country, with a growing wealthy elite and where some doctors believe infertility is more common than in the U.S.–lifted its decades-long one-child policy. The result is a soaring Chinese demand for U.S. surrogacy services, one that is flourishing particularly in California, with its culturally friendly enclaves, excellent physicians and favorable state laws that regard IPs as a baby’s legal parents even before birth, if proper court documents are filed. {snip}
{snip} Despite CSP’s Southern California location, 51 percent of its clients now are foreigners, up from 15 percent a decade ago. Rival agency Growing Generations (clients have included Sarah Jessica Parker and 30 Rock director Todd Holland) also sees half of its clients coming from overseas, as does Gifted Journeys, a boutique agency in Pasadena. At San Diego’s Expect Miracles Surrogacy, international clients account for 80 percent of IPs. And of foreigners participating in this permutation of California’s birth tourism, the number of Chinese IPs is growing the fastest, making up the most common single foreign nationality for many agencies right now.
{snip}
Most local agencies have a mix of Caucasian, Latina and African-American surrogates. “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had an Asian surrogate,” says Growing Generations’ Bergman. Multiple agency heads say Chinese IPs tend to strongly prefer a Caucasian surrogate. “People really have this fantasy because of a lot of the marketing that was done in China,” says Gifted Journey’s Wilson-Miller. “They have this picture of blond surrogates who look like movie stars carrying the baby with their traditional families.” {snip}
The concept of cross-race surrogacy can confound friends, family and associates of surrogates and IPs alike. In August, comedian GloZell Green, who is African-American, and her husband, also African-American, had a baby girl via a surrogate. “Our surrogate is a blue-eyed blonde,” the YouTube star told potential IPs gathered in a Culver City hotel in early October. People in her life “kept asking if the baby was going to be white.”
Surrogate selection aside, California has the added allure of numerous enclaves where families can be surrounded by Chinese speakers and businesses. “People from China can stay in Irvine, for example, and they have Chinese TV on their cable packages. Throughout California there are places they can go and shop and find stuff in Chinese. If they go to Kansas or Oklahoma? It’s total culture shock,” says Expect Miracles’ Anderson. {snip}
Of course, any baby born via surrogate in the U.S. has birthright citizenship. “The Chinese couples really like that because a lot of them want to come back and forth,” says Molly O’Brien, a fertility lawyer with offices in Torrance who frequently travels to China to participate in information sessions for would-be parents, often sponsored by doctors offices or assisted-reproduction agencies. “Maybe they eventually want that child to be able to go to college here.” Unlike the U.S., China forbids dual citizenship, and most American-born Chinese babies remain U.S. citizens. “Most Chinese couples just keep that American passport. It’s only if you want to use the government services that you’ve got to be Chinese,” says CSP’s Synesiou.
{snip} | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday that his search for a new FBI chief to replace the fired James Comey is moving quickly. “Moving rapidly,” Trump told reporters when asked about the process as he met in the Oval Office with the Abu Dhabi crown prince. | 0 |
At least 26 people have been killed inside a Texas church including a two-year-old child after a gunman dressed in full combat gear opened fire during the morning service before cops shot him dead.Confirmed reports are beginning to circulate that the shooter is a left-wing Antifa member, Devin Patrick Kelley (26), with military experience, acting out on behalf of the previously promoted November 4th Resistance via Antifa. Kelley is a former U.S. Air Force member who served from 2010 to 2014. He was dishonorably discharged and court-martialed in May 2014, CBS News has learned. (Via CBS) [ ] Kelley is a former U.S. Air Force member who served from 2010 to 2014. Records confirm Kelley previously served in logistics readiness in New Mexico until his discharge in 2014, Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said in a statement.Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of assault on his spouse and assault on their child, Stefanek said. He received a bad conduct discharge and confinement for 12 months. He has a residence in New Braunfels, Texas, which is about a 35-mile drive from where the attack took place in Sutherland Springs. Conservative TreehouseKelley showed off an image of a rifle on his Facebook page, calling it a bad bitch :Although gun-control advocates will use Kelley as an example of why no American should be able to legally own a gun, it s worth pointing out that, given Kelley s dishonorable discharge from the Air Force, which is a felony, he would be banned from possessing a firearm in the U.S.:If Devin Kelley was dishonorably discharged from military it would mean he couldn t have legally bought a gun. It s same as a felony pic.twitter.com/nZITFHhdzn Joe Biggs (@Rambobiggs) November 6, 2017Kelley s Facebook page has now been deleted, but you can see a screenshot of the weapon he posted above. His profile picture showed two small children, which was a chilling juxtaposition next to the semi-automatic rifle that was his cover photo. According to The Daily Beast, Kelley was married and Kelley s mother-in-law listed a P.O. box in Sutherland Springs as a mailing address. San Antonio police reportedly raided Kelley s home on Sunday evening he briefly taught at a summer Bible school. He lived about 35 miles from the shooting scene.The shooter was described as a white male in his 20s from outside San Antonio by Mike Levine, a journalist for ABC News, who reported that law enforcement had uncovered a weapon photo on Kelley s Facebook page. Authorities are now scrubbing his social media; on Facebook in recent days, he showed off an AR-15 style-looking gun, Levine wrote. Authorities said the rifle used in the massacre was similar to the one Kelley posted on Facebook, but they could not confirm it was the same weapon. HeavyKelley s Facebook page revealed that had recently shaved his beard. It s Kelley s response to a friend who asked him, Don t you have a beard? that s curious. Kelley s responded, Not anymore. Long story. Although there is no evidence so far that indicates Kelley was radicalized by Islam, it s common knowledge, that before a Muslim commits jihad, they are to be cleanly shaven.Slate magazine explains why a terrorist shaves before blowing himself up:So he s clean when he enters heaven. Traditionally, Muslims purify corpses by washing the skin and nails and sometimes by shaving the pubic hair. But suicide attackers are deprived of a proper burial since there are usually no remains. To compensate, the attackers shear themselves ahead of time, both to guarantee some level of cleanliness at the time of instant incineration and to prove extreme devotion to personal purity. Some scholars offer an alternative explanation: They believe that suicide terrorists adopted the no-hair practice from the Pashtun tribesmen of Afghanistan, who shave their bodies before going into battle.Hair removal is mentioned in Islamic law as a method of maintaining personal hygiene. In addition to nail clipping, the sunnah instructs Muslim men and women to shave or trim pubic hair regularly and to remove underarm hair. Men must also clip their mustaches. In some circumstances, Muslims are encouraged to shave their heads. For example, Al-Bukhari, a ninth-century Muslim scholar who spent years collecting hadith, quotes the prophet as saying May Allah bless those who shaved during the Hajj (pilgrimage); and the Quran states that ye shall enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, with minds secure, heads shaved, hair cut short, and without fear. Here are the FACTS we know from Texas LEO and FBI Press Conference: Largest mass shooting in state history ~ Gov. Greg Abbott [Texas] 26 dead + Shooter = Total 27 [23 inside church, 2 outside, 1 hospital death] 11:20 am Suspect was seen dressed in all black. Tactical Gear and Ballistic Vest Weapon: Ruger AR-type Rifle. Eyewitness neighbor engaged shooter with his own rifle [possibly hit the shooter in neck]. Shooter dropped a weapon and fled in the vehicle. Citizen pursued the suspect in a vehicle. Police arrived at the vehicle, shooter dead. Ages of 26 victims: 5-years old to 72-years-old.Paul Joseph Watson posted a screenshot of some of the pages and issues that Kelley was interested in:These are the Facebook likes of the shooter, as being reported by Heavy and other outlets. pic.twitter.com/Lqw1ECwnLA Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 5, 2017While Kelley was clearly interested in atheism, he also appeared to be a liberal as it relates to social issues.Interests of shooter Devin Patrick Kelley, according to his LinkedIn page. https://t.co/ZXexIM4IRm pic.twitter.com/mSZwNAmE4j Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 6, 2017Hopefully, we ll get more details about the motive behind the worst shooting massacre in Texas history, faster and more accurately, than the misinformation campaign we ve been fed by local Las Vegas and federal authorities about the worst mass shooting in US history only one month ago | 0 |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Democratic plan to end Illinois’ crippling two-year budget stalemate is poised to be enacted by the state House of Representatives on Thursday, but the nearly 2,000-page package leaves gaping financial holes unresolved. The fiscal 2018 budget plan, which has drawn both Democratic and Republican support in the legislature, does not guarantee funding for public schools to open on time next month. The plan identifies only enough funding to pay down roughly a third of the state’s record $15 billion unpaid bill backlog. In addition, no substantial progress was made to reduce Illinois’ paralyzing $130 billion unfunded pension liability. The state’s pension contribution is set to consume more than $7.8 billion of the state’s $36 billion budget in the fiscal year that began July 1. Illinois on Thursday could end its dubious status as the only state to ever go multiple years without a full operating budget if the Democratic-led legislative chamber overturns the vetoes from Republican Governor Bruce Rauner. One of the bills increases the state’s personal income tax from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent and corporate income tax from 5.25 percent to 7 percent. Moody’s Investors Service issued a warning on Wednesday that even if the House follows identical Senate action Monday and overrides Rauner’s vetoes, the nation’s fifth-largest state risks a credit rating downgrade to junk because of unaddressed fiscal woes. Moody’s said the budget plan falls short of adequately addressing pensions and the backlog of unpaid bills. “It’s not clear to me that they won’t quickly find themselves with a comparable backlog and more long-term bonded debt,” said Moody’s analyst Ted Hampton. Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a Chicago-based government finance watchdog, said the bill does not provide stability. “What rating agencies are pointing to, even with the tax increase if the General Assembly overrides the governor and with the spending plan as approved, the state still has severe financial challenges going forward,” he said. Drafters of the budget package inserted language that ties release of billions of dollars for K-12 education to enactment of a school-funding overhaul that Rauner has called a “bailout” for Chicago’s cash-strapped school system. The House and Senate have passed the funding revamp, but Rauner has threatened to veto it. If Republicans and Democrats do not reconcile their differences before the first state payment goes to schools in August, about a dozen financially struggling public school systems might not open for classes next month, said Roger Eddy, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards. “We’re talking about children that are going to be affected by this stalemate at this point. That is absolutely not an exaggeration. This is real, and it’s going to happen,” Eddy told Reuters. The budget impasse also resulted in a halt of construction projects and Illinois suspended sales of Powerball and Mega Millions tickets. In another key area—the state’s $14.7 billion backlog of unpaid bills—the plan authorizes only $6 billion of general obligation bonds, as well as $1.5 billion in borrowings and transfers from other state funds for that purpose. Sufficient money exists only to support $3 billion of $6 billion in authorized bonding, which in turn would generate $2 billion in federal matching Medicaid dollars for unpaid bills. The budget also purports to save $500 million from pension changes, although there were slim details on how those savings would be realized. “The pension reform in (the legislation) doesn’t look like it’s really revolutionary or will move the needle in any big way,” Hampton said. (This story corrects fourth paragraph to indicate House will only undertake veto override votes) | 1 |
— My Name is Fate (@Destini41) October 29, 2016
Clinton and her supporters certainly had reason to celebrate the conclusion of the case; that is, at least, until newly discovered evidence made it clear that the case wasn’t concluded.
Not surprisingly, Fallon was among those who decided Friday it wasn’t so bad to second-guess the decision of a career prosecutor. Kellyanne Conway is on MSNBC now falsely saying Hillary Clinton is "under FBI investigation." This is what Jim Comey has wrought.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) October 29, 2016
Are we back to that whole “routine security review” talking point, or is Clinton not under investigation? Because the letter Comey sent to FBI employees Friday gave that impression pretty strongly:
This morning I sent a letter to Congress in connection with the Secretary Clinton email investigation. Yesterday, the investigative team briefed me on their recommendation with respect to seeking access to emails that have recently been found in an unrelated case. Because those emails appear to be pertinent to our investigation, I agreed that we should take appropriate steps to obtain and review them.
Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.
— #NeverTrump Rob G (@NYYFan63) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon Sounds like you didn’t get the FBI memo.
— DC Dude (@DCDude1776) October 29, 2016 . @brianefallon She's right! Hillary Clinton has been, for some time now, under FBI CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. The case is STILL OPEN.
— American Elephant (@AmericnElephant) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon How is that false, Brian?
— John Riley (@jriley8832) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon You're Ma Barker's press secretary & you really think she's not under FBI investigation? You're not too good at this, are you?
— BasementDweller Zero (@jurassicpork59) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon @nielslesniewski but alas, she is. That's what the FBI does.
— Tone Loc (@ToneLocNV) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon You're right, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not Investigating. What would give someone an idea they're Investigating?
— Josh Fields (@partiallypro) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon When the Director of the FBI James Comey says they found more emails and they are going to investigate…..It means just that!
— Hillary's Speeches (@abunasir61) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon Umm. He said she was under investigation. Now go update your resume.
— Jim Levy (@TexasJew) October 29, 2016 @brianefallon Um, she is under FBI investigation. They investigate people; not things.
— Victoria Balfour (@VickiBalfour) October 29, 2016 What would you consider it, @brianefallon ?The FBI IS investigating Hillary Clinton.FBI does not investigate items, e.g., emails, server. | 0 |
The liberal pundits are pretty frustrated by the Clinton campaign and it shows: | 0 |
by Yves Smith
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly published at New Economic Perspectives
I am writing this article late on election night in my office at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, about a mile from the home in which Tom Frank grew up just over the state line in Kansas. Beginning with his famous book, What’s the Matter with Kansas , first published in 2004, Tom Frank has been warning the Democratic Party of the increasing cost it was paying by abandoning and even attacking the working class, particularly the white working class. Some political scientists tried to savage his work, pointing to Bill Clinton’s electoral success and arguing that the disaffected members of the working class were also less likely to vote. Frank returned to the theme just in time for this election with a new book – Listen, Liberal – that documents in damning, lively narrative the New Democrats’ war on the New Deal, their disdain for organized labor, and their antipathy for what they viewed as retrograde white working class attitudes.
Frank kept showing the enormous price the working class were paying as a result of the economic policies of the Republicans and the New Democrats, and the indifference to their plight by the leaders of the New Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders consciously took up the cause of reducing surging inequality and became a hero to a broad coalition of voters, many of them fiercely opposed to the New Democrats’ embrace of Wall Street cash, policies, and arrogance. Sanders set records for small donor fundraising and generated enormous enthusiasm. Sanders knew he would face the opposition of the New Democrats, but he also found that progressive congressional Democrats would rarely support him publicly in the contest for the Party’s nomination and even union leaders sided overwhelmingly with Secretary Hillary Clinton, the New Democrats’ strongly preferred candidate.
Hillary did not simply fail to reach out to the working class voters that the New Democrats had turned their backs on for decades, she infamously attacked them as “deplorables.” This was exactly the group of potential voters that was enraged because it believed, correctly as Tom Frank keeps showing us, that the New Democrats looked down on them and adopted policies that rigged the system against the working class. Hillary’s insult confirmed their most powerful bases for their rage against her. Her insult was an early Christmas present to Trump. Her attempt to walk the insult back was doomed.
Hillary Clinton handled things so miserably that she allowed a plutocrat whose career is based on rigging the system against the working class to become the hero of the working class. That is world-class incompetence. Had she followed Tom Frank’s advice she would today be the President-elect. The real cost, however, of her failure will be enormous damage to our democracy, the safety of the world, and the damage that President Trump will do to the working class as he systematically betrays their interests.
The first test of whether the Wall Street-wing of the Democratic Party has learned any of the lessons Tom Frank tried to teach them is whether President Obama will continue with his threat to try to have the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) approved by the lame duck session of Congress. Obama, who was elected on the promise that he would stop TPP, should listen to Senators Sanders and Warren and honor his promise to the voters to stop TPP. He must begin the process of the Democrats winning back the support of the working class.
The leaders of the democratic-wing of the Democratic Party need to move forward assertively to retake control of their Party. The current head of the DNC has been exposed as part of the effort to prevent Senator Sanders from winning the nomination. She should resign tomorrow. The Clintons should cease acting as Party leaders.
A period of enormous corruption and elite fraud is coming soon as the Trump administration brings its signature characteristic – crony capitalism – to bear to control all three branches of government. Trump promises to deregulate Wall Street, appoint top supervisors chosen for their unwillingness to supervise, and appoint judges who will allow CEOs to loot with impunity. Trump promises to outdo even the savage anti-media and anti-whistleblower policies of the Obama administration. The House and Senate committee chairs will intensify their blatantly partisan use of investigations while refusing to conduct real oversight hearings revealing the elite fraud and corruption.
The progressive Senate Democrats will have to be innovative and stalwart in these circumstances to find ways to blow the whistle repeatedly on the mounting corruption. Their challenge will be to lead despite having no real institutional power. Democrats should start by doing what they should have done in 2004 – take Tom Frank’s warnings deadly seriously. 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Overcrowded prisons strain state budgets, take people out of the work force and pull families apart more than they reduce crime or boost the U.S. economy, said an Obama administration study discussed on Monday by experts at the White House. The study, undertaken as part of President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform the criminal justice system before he leaves office, was conducted by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and focused on the costs of sentencing and incarceration policies. Despite falling crime rates, U.S. prison populations have soared in recent decades as a result of harsher federal and state-level sentencing policies, such as “three strikes” rules under which offenders much be imprisoned on their third conviction. Both conservative and liberal panelists discussing the report on Monday agreed that lighter sentences for non-violent offenders and lower barriers to job opportunities after prison would address the economic problems described in the report. “This isn’t really about the money. This is about the lives that we’re throwing away,” said Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that co-hosted the event with the liberal Brennan Center for Justice of New York University. Obama’s push for criminal justice reform has support from both ends of the political spectrum, with bipartisan legislation pending in Congress that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some low-level federal drug crimes. Those proposed reforms are backed by a Brennan Center-affiliated coalition of local law enforcement officers around the country, who agree that the default response to non-violent crimes should not be prison time, said the center’s director of justice programs, Inimai Chettiar. Panelists said the study showed that some existing criminal justice policies are counter-productive. In the arena, “far too little of what we do actually makes sense or is backed by specific evidence,” said Peter Orszag, who led the Congressional Budget Office in 2007 and 2008. There are 2.2 million Americans behind bars, a prison rate that is more than four times the world average. The Justice Department said on Monday it will expand federal programs that ensure ex-prisoners have the skills needed to find work, and that they also have access to housing, education and financial credit after release. Every federal inmate should get an individualized re-entry plan “tailored to his or her risk of recidivism and ... needs,” said a Justice Department press release. U.S. Attorneys and the Bureau of Prisons are hosting more than 570 events nationwide this week on re-entry initiatives. | 0 |
A new intelligence report commissioned by the White House says that the ISIS terror group will grow in numbers and gain ground unless it suffers significant losses in Iraq and Syria.
The findings sharply contradict previous statements by President Obama and other White House officials that the Islamic State has been "contained" by a program of U.S.-led airstrikes and the deployment of approximately 3,500 U.S. forces to train and otherwise aid moderate Syrian rebels and Kurdish fighters.
On Sunday, a U.S. official told Fox News that ISIS has been able to effectively recruit and attract affiliates despite losses on the ground, and has now supplanted Al Qaeda as the primary global jihadist threat.The official said that going forward, the entirety of the ISIS threat must be addressed, and the group's main base of operations in Syria must be “degraded.”
The findings were first reported by The Daily Beast, which said the White House asked for the assessment prior to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, in which ISIS militants killed 130 people in a series of coordinated shootings and suicide bombings.
In response to the report, The Daily Beast said President Obama had directed Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford to come up with new strategies against ISIS.
One recommendation, announced by Carter Tuesday, is a special operations cell with the ability to capture senior ISIS leaders in the hope of finding out more about their networks.
However, the Daily Beast reported that Carter's announcement took military planners by surprise, since they had yet to finalize important details, including the rules of engagement under which such raids would be carried out.
The eight-page report was compiled by a team of analysts from the CIA, NSA, and other agencies, the website reported.
"This intel report didn't tell us anything we didn't already know," an official told The Daily Beast. "It was lots of great charts showing countries highlighted across the globe, with some groups having pledged allegiance to ISIS and others leaning towards it."
The report also described how the terrorist group with aspirations of founding an extremist Islamic caliphate already has a network of groups that have pledged allegiance or are vying for membership in a dozen countries.
Click for more from The Daily Beast. | 1 |
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Turkish soldiers were not in Syria s Idlib yet, but that Free Syria Army was carrying out the operation, news channel NTV reported. Erdogan said in an earlier speech that a major military operation was underway in the Syria s northwest province of Idlib, which Free Syrian Army rebel groups said they were preparing to enter with Turkish backing. NTV reported that Erdogan told reporters after his speech that Russia was backing the operation from the air, while Turkish soldiers were supporting it from inside Turkish borders. | 0 |
Republicans who have been behind successful presidential campaigns are now speaking up on the slowly unraveling disaster that is Donald Trump s effort, and it isn t good. These long-time Republicans are now facing the very real prospect that Trump s horribly run campaign will also drag down other members of the party on the ticket and cause long-term damage which could take forever for the right to recover from.Many of them want to abandon ship.Back in 1996, the party largely gave up on nominee Bob Dole once it became clear he had little chance of winning, so it s not without precedent. Nevertheless, it s a jolting prospect now, with roughly three months still left before the Nov. 8 vote and weeks before the three presidential debates.Republicans who have devoted their professional lives to electing GOP candidates say they believe the White House already may be lost. They re exasperated by Trump s divisive politics and his insistence on running a general election campaign that mirrors his approach to the primaries. Based on his campaign record, there s no chance he s going to win, said Sara Fagen, the political director for former President George W. Bush. He s losing groups of people he can t get back. Fagen is no moderate squish. She was a right-wing conservative member of the 2004 George W. Bush re-election campaign, and whatever the issues were with the morality of Bush s campaign that year Iraq, terrorism, corruption, etc. it is impossible to argue that it wasn t a well-run and well-organized campaign that beat out Senator John Kerry s effort that year.The Wall Street Journal described her role on that campaign as a data whiz and said she helped perfect political micro-targeting. That is the technique used to target campaign prospects based on their interests and likelihood to be supporters of a candidate. The Bush 2004 campaign pioneered this, and it was used in a massive way by President Obama in his overwhelmingly successful 2008 and 2012 campaigns. It s how modern elections are won or lost.Trump has not invested in campaign basics like that, and even in states where he should be on the ground with organizers that could give him a shot at winning, he isn t doing it. Instead, he is focused on feeding his base voters red meat, filled with bigotry, which turns off the voters he needs to win.And Republicans know it, and the veterans see the likelihood of a massive wipeout coming.Featured image via Flickr | 0 |
Prudence is thirty-four. She has had sex with twenty-one men and three women, according an assignment for high schoolers in Scotland County, Missouri. After being celibate for three years, she meets Larry and a romance begins to develop. Larry is thirty-seven. One night he proposes that, things going the way he thinks they re going between them, they talk about their sexual histories. A concerned mother recently contacted Fox News columnist Todd Starnes about the assignment after her child received it in an English class at Scotland County R-1 Junior-Senior High School. Larry confesses to having slept with three women, one of whom he married. She tells him that she has slept with three men. Larry is uncomfortable with this number, especially since Prudence is younger than he is, the assignment continued. She amends it, saying that one was just heavy petting. Given Prudence s reflexive need for approval and Larry s clear ideas of how things should be, what percentage of the time will Prudence be inhibited in bed with Larry, and consequently fake orgasm to ease his pride? Here is a photo of the assignment: This is something I imagine you would see on a coffee table in every brothel, the irate mother told Starnes.The unidentified woman said she contacted the school s principal, who provided a lame excuse for the assignment. He told me that the teacher was originally a college teacher and he sometimes has trouble differentiating between what is appropriate for a 15- or 16-year-old and a 19 or 20-year-old, she said.For entire story: EAG News | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - British police said they had arrested two more men on Wednesday in connection with the bombing of a commuter train in London last week which injured 30 people, bringing the total in custody to five. The men, aged 48 and 30, were held under terrorism laws in Newport in south Wales. Another man was arrested in Newport on Tuesday night while two others, an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old, were held by counter-terrorism officers on Saturday. | 1 |
Apparently tired of people slamming doors in their faces, Jehovah s Witnesses have found a new way to indoctrinate children.Rather than accept that most parents do not want their children to be brainwashed into hating people, the religious sect is creating cartoons meant to teach them to be anti-gay Christians who can act as advocates for their cause.The cartoon begins with a child at school looking at the drawings her classmates made of their families. Gazing at one image of a child holding hands with her two moms, the child goes home and presents her mother with a picture she drew of her family, which features what conservatives call a traditional family featuring a mother and father.She mentions that one of her classmates drew two mommies, who are married to each other, and that her teacher says that it doesn t matter as long as they love each other and are happy.The girl s mother, however, has an anti-gay viewpoint and promptly goes about trying to teach her child how to hate and that gay people aren t normal. The mother picks up her Bible and tells the girl that marriage is a union between one man and one woman and uses the example of an airport security scanner to demonstrate that gay people are not going to be able to go to paradise if they keep being gay. In other words, gay people are going to hell.The girl s mom goes on to claim that people can change, which is code that means gay people can just stop being gay and become straight. She then encourages the girl to tell her classmate all about Jehovah and that her parents are going to hell if they don t stop being gay.Here s the video via YouTube:Jehovah s Witnesses even proudly gave their stamp of approval after the video ends.This is part of the reason why I started telling Jehovah s Witnesses that I m not a Christian instead of just waiting for them to give up and go away. Their persistence at trying to preach to people at their homes is one of the most annoying things about them but now they are literally trying to indoctrinate children via social media with a cartoon that teaches them to be bigots homophobes who spew hate and condemnation instead of decent human beings who practice love, acceptance and tolerance.Children should not be subjected to this kind of backward thinking and creating a cartoon to do it is about as low as it gets.Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
An illegal alien gang member was released by a federal judge after two immigration attorneys lobbied for his release. [U. S. District Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon ordered the illegal alien gang member be released from federal custody, despite his criminal and history. The illegal alien previously admitted to selling drugs in Honduras and witnessing multiple murders committed by fellow members. Now, he will be allowed to live freely in the U. S. In an interview with the Washington Post, the illegal alien spoke about how being a member of the violent gang felt like a family: “It was like the family I couldn’t find at home,” he said. “I thought nobody loved me. But when I found them, I said, ‘This is my family. They love me.’ ” Older gang members gave him money, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. But soon they demanded he sell drugs, too, including heroin and “piedra,” or crack. “I began to see things, like them torturing people,” the teen said. “For rent. Because they belonged to another gang. Because they had screwed up somehow. ” The illegal alien gang member arrived in the U. S. as an ‘unaccompanied minor child,’ who are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). As Breitbart Texas reported, the federal government has continued placing unaccompanied minor children in gang across the U. S. One of the two attorneys who helped fight for the gang member’s release, Simon and Rebecca Wolozin with the Legal Aid Justice Center, has ties to billionaire George Soros. Wolozin previously worked for Soros’ Open Society Foundation as a ‘Legal Research Intern,’ according to her online resume. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0 |
Trump s acceptance of a Purple Heart, and his saying that he d always wanted one of those, really pissed off a lot of people considering that the way one actually earns a Purple Heart is to be wounded in action. Cameron Kerr, a (true) Purple Heart recipient, decided to start a satirical GoFundMe page in response to Trump s sheer gall.The page, called Help Trump Get a Purple Heart, explains that the money raised doesn t actually help Trump do anything. Instead, Kerr has every penny going to help Syrian refugees a group of people that Trump says we can t vet and is a huge Trojan Horse of terrorists.Kerr said: As with seemingly everything else in his life, Mr. Trump got one handed to him instead of earning it. That being said, as a Purple Heart recipient [proof ] who earned one the old-fashioned way by returning from Afghanistan one leg lighter, I fully endorse his desire to earn one and would happily oblige his interest in doing so, by being one of the first to chip in to fly him to the conflict zone of his choosing. After all, you re never too old to follow your dreams. [emphasis in source]Since Kerr can t actually accomplish that, he is, instead, turning one of Trump s biggest insults to those who serve and sacrifice into something positive. Let s face it, if Trump hates it, helping it is probably positive. The groups to which the money goes are all vetted, so donors know that their money actually is going towards its intended cause. If Trump knew, he d probably have a conniption because his name is tied to this.The money is going to three different groups:In short, Kerr found a way to turn Trump s insults, dullness and hatred into something good. It s such a crying shame Trump won t be able to earn a Purple Heart the right way, is it not? However, he can help Syrians escape their war-torn land, even if he doesn t realize he s doing it. Joke s on him.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
Obamacare architect blames Republicans for rising premiums pic.twitter.com/sFlKgPlvzz FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) October 6, 2016 | 1 |
This story by Paris Swade .
Trump won last night and sheeesssshhhh was it a landslide. That was ugly. Look at this. Hillary spent twice as much as Trump and got nothing for it. Hillary raised $520 million for her campaign compared to the $270 that Trump spent.
*** That means that she spent twice as much as Trump and got NOTHING for it.
That’s why she was supposedly crying the night of the election and didn’t come out and speak. Instead, she sent John Podesta out to address the crowd of social justice losers that had come to see her. Ed Klein: Hillary cried inconsolably, blamed Comey & Obama for not doing enough to stop FBI investigation. pic.twitter.com/KsqiKp5Jhz
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 9, 2016
Hillary Clinton stepped up today, though, and showed that it would be possible to change the toxic rhetoric that has dominated the news.
Let’s come together, y’all. To all the Bernie, Hillary, Jill and Johson supporters, we live in a Trump nation. Get used to it, but we still want you here. We just need to bring the country back to the principles that it was founded on.
*** Please, please, please go back out and let’s sow the seeds of peace!
Share, share, share, share this everywhere, y’all! It’s time to bring this nation together under the strong leadership of Donald Trump. | 1 |
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president raises concern that Washington may increase the intrusiveness of domestic intelligence gathering, former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden said on Monday, warning that democratic checks and balances were losing ground to authoritarianism. Snowden lives in Moscow under an asylum deal after he leaked classified information in 2013 that triggered an international furor over the reach of U.S. spy operations. He spoke at a teleconference hosted by Buenos Aires University’s law school. “We are starting to substitute open government for sheer authoritarianism, a government based not upon the principle of informed consent granted by people who understand its activities but rather a trust in personalities, a trust in claims, a trust in the hope that they will do the right thing,” Snowden said. Washington pledged not to engage in indiscriminate espionage following Snowden’s 2013 disclosures. But Snowden questioned if that policy could be modified by new officials “who have a very different set of values and can govern in the dark.” “If government does actually win our trust, because they go for some years and they do operate in a way that we should support, what happens when it changes?” he asked. “This is kind of the challenge that we’re facing today in the United States with the result of the last election.” Supporters see Snowden as a whistleblower who boldly exposed government excess. But the U.S. government has filed espionage charges against him for leaking intelligence information. Trump, who scored an upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in last Tuesday’s election, broke with many in his own Republican Party during the campaign and emphasized his success as a businessman and reality TV show star. He promised sweeping security measures to deal with the threat of attacks on the United States. His election was greeted with concern from the American Civil Liberties Union over statements he made during the campaign supporting increased surveillance of U.S. Muslims, mass deportation of illegal immigrants, reauthorization of waterboarding and changing libel laws to increase press restrictions. Snowden, asked if he thought the election of Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader, might increase chances of him being pardoned by the U.S. government, responded: “Who knows?” | 0 |
It s hard to shame someone when they have no shame If you live in Virginia and you haven t voted for Ed Gillespie (R) for Governor yet, this ad, and the DNC Chair s unapologetic tone for its disgusting content will make you want to run to the polls before they close. Hopefully, this ad will be the push Ed Gillespie needed to get him across the finish line in Virginia.While most condemned the Latino Victory Fund ad that ran during the closing days of Virginia s gubernatorial race, which showed a supporter of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie driving a pick-up truck and running down Hispanic, Muslim, black, and Asians kids, Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez seemed to be fine with it. It also appears that the Democratic candidate, Ralph Northam, coordinated with LVF to push that ad; LVF listed the ad as a $60,000+ in-kind media contribution. There s nothing wrong with that, but Northam said this ad was totally outside his campaign operation. Not true.Speaking with Meet the Press s Chuck Todd, Perez said that there s been a lot of dog whistling in this race and that Northam was trying to unite people. Right so, you do that by apparently coordinating with the LVF to push an ad that says white people are all racists, drive pickup trucks, love the Confederacy, and just cannot wait to run over nonwhites in the street? The Roanoke Times, which isn t a Republican-friendly paper, aptly noted that what this ad conveys is that Republicans are bad people, and if you support them you re a bad person. It portrays white rural voters as genocidal, and while they offer Hillary Clinton some cover they say her remarks were misinterpreted the LVF ad conveys a deplorable -like tone. TownhallThe NBC Meet The Press host, Chuck Todd commits a courageous and unexpected act of journalism, when he asks the unapologetic DNC Chair Tom Perez: Aren t you stereotyping? I drive a pickup truck. Are all pickup truck drivers racist? Do you understand why some people think the ad implies that? Watch the exchange here: Here is the disgusting ad that has since been pulled off the air in its entirety: | 1 |
This is unbelievably outrageous.Republicans are literally pretending that the last eight years never happened.In February 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia passed away, leaving a vacancy on the Supreme Court that President Obama was responsible to fill. But Scalia s body was not even cold before Republicans vowed to block any nominee he selected for the position.And so, Republicans did just that and refused to even grant Merrick Garland a hearing despite the fact that he is a moderate centrist who enjoyed support from Republicans in the past.Republicans excused their unprecedented behavior by claiming that lame-duck presidents can t pick Supreme Court nominees and claimed that the American people should get a say in November about who should pick the next Supreme Court Justice.Th GOP has three problems here. First, President Obama was elected twice by the American people and therefore had the right to choose the nominee. Second, there is plenty of historical examples of presidents picking Supreme Court nominees and getting them confirmed during their final year in office. Ronald Reagan is one of them. And finally, the American people did not vote for Donald Trump, they voted for Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.So Trump definitely does not have a mandate and Republicans do not have any excuses for their obstruction.But Democrats certainly do have a really good excuse to block Trump s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the high court. After all, Republicans created the new precedent last year by refusing to confirm Garland. Republicans literally stole a Supreme Court seat from President Obama and the Democratic Party.But Mike Pence claims that even threatening to obstruct Trump s nominee is unprecedented. During a speech to the Federalist Society, Pence promised that Gorsuch will pick up where Scalia left off. In other words, he ll be a complete dick who wants to repeal every Supreme Court ruling that protects the rights of women, minorities, gay people, the environment, etc until this nation is taken all the way back to the 1850s.And then he said this. Several announced their opposition within minutes of his nomination, and now they re even threatening to use the filibuster procedure in the Senate to stop him. Make no mistake about it, this is an unwise and an unprecedented act .This seat does not belong to any party or any ideology or any interest group, this seat on the Supreme Court belongs to the American people, and the American people deserve a vote on the floor of the United States Senate. Here s the video via YouTube.Democrats should block Trump s Supreme Court pick at all costs. Turnabout is fair play and Republicans are hypocrites for whining about obstruction when they are the ones who totally disrespected President Obama and Merrick Garland in the first place. They only have themselves to blame for what Democrats are threatening to do and they have no right to complain after the way they acted last year. If Republicans wanted Democrats to cooperate with Trump, they should have thought about that before acting like complete traitors toward President Obama.Republicans wanted the Supreme Court to just have eight justices and that has lasted for a year now. It s time for Democrats to extend that wait to another four years. And if Republicans change the rules to force Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, Democrats should impeach him and Trump when they get control of Congress and show Republicans what the word unprecedented really means.Featured image via screenshot | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barely two days into crafting a new bill to roll back Obamacare, U.S. Senate Republicans were already on the defensive on Tuesday over the absence of any women in their core working group. After a meeting of the Senate healthcare group, lawmakers were bombarded with questions as to why no women were named to the 13-man panel. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to explain. “The working group that counts is all 52 of us,” McConnell told reporters, referring to all 52 Republican senators in the 100-member chamber. “Nobody is being excluded based upon gender ... Everybody’s at the table. Everybody.” Democrats pounced. Republican men are negotiating “a secret healthcare plan, which I really hope is not happening in the men’s locker room,” said Senator Patty Murray, a member of the Democratic leadership from Washington state. If the criticism was any sign of what lies ahead as senators try to improve on a rollback bill passed on Thursday by House of Representatives Republicans, it could be a long road ahead. Dismantling the parts of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law that they dislike and preserving other parts of it is proving to be a difficult task for President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans. A House of Representatives’ plan for doing that, approved last week amid much drama, faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Some Republicans eye drafting a similar Senate bill by mid-summer, possibly with the involvement of Democrats. Others indicate the House bill requires major surgery and that the effort to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, could take months. Regardless of timing, two decisive factors will come into sharper focus soon. One is voter reaction to the House bill, now being voiced in town hall events being hosted nationwide by House members in their home districts. The other factor is an expected analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office of how many million Americans would lose their health insurance coverage under the House bill, if it became law, and how it would affect the U.S. budget deficit. Both the CBO analysis and the town hall events have the potential to do damage to the House legislation, which Trump hailed as a triumph just days ago. Senators are already talking about major changes in the House bill concerning Medicaid, the government healthcare program for the poor, and tax subsidies for healthcare coverage. Trying to get past the controversy over the absence of women on the healthcare panel, Senate Republicans said they expected to devote much time to healthcare in the near future. “I don’t think we’re going to be talking about much else other than healthcare at least three days a week with all members of our conference present,” said Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican. Cornyn said senators would start with the House bill. “If we have to make modifications in order to pass it, we’ll make those modifications and work out the differences with the House.” Medicaid was the topic at the Senate working group meeting Tuesday. The House bill would cut federal spending on Medicaid by $880 billion over 10 years. But some Republicans want any reductions to be more gradual, and Trump made a campaign pledge not to cut the program. “There ought to be a glide path where you do not have a cliff that the House provides in 2020,” when the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare is abruptly ended, said Senator Rob Portman of Ohio. But other Republicans said cutbacks were important to save taxpayer money. “The public wants every dime you can give them. Let’s face it, once you get them on the dole, they are going to take every dime they can. We’ve got to find some way of getting things under control, or this country and your future’s going to be gone,” said Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, a member of the healthcare working group. | 0 |
Jake Tapper laid into Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday over Donald Trump s claim that the media is covering up terrorist attacks.On Monday, Trump literally accused the media of ignoring terrorist attacks to keep the American people in the dark and to keep them in opposition to his Muslim ban. It s gotten to a point where it s not even being reported, Trump told U.S. Central Command. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that. Except that the media has covered lots of terrorist attacks over the years, most of them extensively and journalists have risked their lives to report on some of them.Trump released a list of supposed undercovered terrorist attacks and the list somehow included Paris, Nice, and San Bernardino among other significant attacks even though the media exhaustively covered them.So CNN let Conway appear again on the network to answer for Trump s lies, and they apparently did that so she could get her ass handed to her by Jake Tapper.During the interview, Tapper demanded to know why Trump won t stop lying and refused to take Conway s bullshit when she attempted to spin. After he said that, the White House released a list of the attacks that he was supposedly referring to as, in his words, not even being reported, I want to put some footage of CNN reporters covering attacks that were on that list, Tapper said. Saying that we don t cover terrorism, that s just false. And, indeed, he did put the footage up and forced Conway to concede that not only did CNN cover many of the attacks on the list, they did a good job doing it.But Conway still tried to claim that Trump was somehow making a point by including those attacks and she soon began whining about how the media has covered Trump from the campaign trail to the White House.Apparently, the Wicked Witch of the West expected all the media coverage to be one big cheerleading squad for the Trump administration.That didn t fly with Tapper. That s a lovely spin, but that s not what he was saying Kellyanne, Tapper said, reminding her that Trump literally accused the media of not reporting on these attacks.And then Tapper went for the jugular and demanded to know why Trump has remained silent about a terrorist attack in Quebec, Canada that was committed against a mosque by a white right-wing Trump fan. President Trump has not said or tweeted one public word about this, Tapper said. You want to talk about ignoring terrorism, why hasn t the president offered his sympathy to our neighbors in the north? Mic. Dropped.Conway tried to claim that Trump is opposed to any loss of life, but the fact is that while he constantly whines about petty things on Twitter on a daily basis, he couldn t even be bothered to say anything about the attack in Quebec. In fact, all of the terrorist attacks Trump listed were committed by Muslim extremists, conveniently ignoring the higher number of terrorist attacks committed by white right-wingers in this country.Tapper even noted that Trump found time to tweet about the attack at the Louvre in Paris in which no lives were lost but completely ignored the Quebec attack that killed six innocent people.Here s the video via YouTube.Seriously, CNN and every other media outlets should permanently ban Kellyanne Conway from appearing on their programming. Even when confronted with the truth she continues to lie for Donald Trump and then spins by whining about media coverage. It s the only play she has in her playbook and it is embarrassing and pathetic.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1 |
SYDNEY (Reuters) - More than 20,000 people rallied in Sydney on Sunday urging the legalization of same-sex marriage, days ahead of a contentious postal survey on the issue that has divided the country. Organizers said the gathering was Australia s largest gay rights demonstration, as a diverse range of people clad in rainbow colors converged on the heart of the city to insist on equal rights. We re blown away by the response, Cat Rose from Community Action Against Homophobia said. The force we ve shown today puts us in a good stead to win this battle over the next couple of months. Though the postal ballot is non-binding, a yes vote is expected to lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage which could further fracture the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Ballots will be mailed out from Sept. 12, with a result expected some time in November. The country s Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, said it was the law that had to change, not the gay community. We ve got one last mountain to climb before we make marriage equality a reality. Let s climb it together, today, he said. Turnbull, who has said he will be voting in support of same-sex marriage, told a gathering of the Liberal and National parties faithful on Sunday that the issue was one where everyone is entitled to an opinion. Many people will vote yes , as I will, because they believe the right to marry is a conservative ideal as much as any other principle, he said. His words were in contrast to those of one of his party s previous leaders, former prime minister John Howard, who officially launched the no campaign on Saturday. Howard said in a statement on the website of the Coalition for Marriage that there could not be changes to social institutions without wider consequences. I believe there is a conflict here between those seeking the right for same-sex marriage and the rights of the child, and I believe the right of the child to have a mother and father should be preserved, he said. The coalition, the lead campaigner against same-sex marriage, did not respond to requests for comment. It includes the Australian Christian Lobby and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia. However, yes campaigner Kerryn Phelps, the former chief of the Australian Medical Association, said the survey was about unifying the nation. What we want is to see Australians united in marriage equality and united in fairness for all Australians, she said. Rally attendees Stephen Madden, 55, and David Long, 47, have been together for 21 years and want to get married. We ve had the world s longest engagement, Long said. My mum would really like to have a legal son-in-law, Madden added. The Sydney event followed a similar rally in Melbourne last month which organizers said was attended by 15,000 people. Police declined to comment on the numbers at both rallies. Australia is one of the only developed English-speaking countries not to have legalised same-sex marriage, despite strong popular support and the backing of a majority of lawmakers. | 1 |
WATCH: On The Missouri Campus, A Clash Of 2 First Amendment Protections
When two rights that this country holds as fundamental come into conflict, it makes for complex drama.
That's what happened yesterday on the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia: Student activists, who had just succeeded in their quest to oust the system president, tried to stop Tim Tai, 20, a student photographer, from documenting what was going on for ESPN. It was a clash between the right to assembly, to be left alone and the right of the press to operate in a public space.
The woman seen at the end of the video who appears to grab a reporter's camera has been identified by The New York Times as Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media at the University of Missouri. We've reached out to her for comment, and we'll update if she gets back to us.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the actions in the video were criticized by the Columbia Missourian, a university newspaper with professional editors and staffed by students from the school's journalism program:
" 'I'm pretty incensed about it,' executive editor Tom Warhover told The Times. 'I find it ironic that particularly faculty members would resort to those kinds of things for no good reason. I understand students who are protesting and want privacy. But they are not allowed to push and assault our photographers — our student photographers.' ... "Tai acknowledged that the demonstrators had a point, since he does recognize there are situations that are sensitive to photograph, but he said that he tries to figure out 'how to cautiously or delicately approach these stories without overwhelming people. " 'I don't think everyone there is super anti-media, but I think there's misunderstanding about what we do,' Tai said."
Update at 11:35 a.m. ET. A Reporter's Reflection:
A reporter for NPR member station KBIA was in middle of what happened yesterday. Bram Sable-Smith put together a very personal reflection about the situation that is worth listening to.
One disclosure: KBIA is licensed to the University Of Missouri, which also provides the station with significant support. | 0 |
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“IT’S not like I’m getting my deposit back anyway,” said a deflated-sounding Barack Obama earlier today, messing around with the handle of a White House toilet cistern that never really worked right, but is now completely broken.
Obama had intended to repair the faulty cistern months ago, but with just weeks left in his tenure as the president of the United States, he confided in WWN that he’s probably not going to bother.
“There’s a few jobs that I said I’d get to; fix this fucking cistern, number one,” said Obama, who leaves the White House with several hinges still in need of oiling.
“Just small things, here and there. I was going to give the place the once over; fill a few holes where the kids put posters on their walls, change the lightbulbs in the utility room, that kind of thing… but even if you do all that, the owners will find a way to goose you out of your security deposit. To be honest, the money you’d get back isn’t worth losing a whole weekend doing odd-jobs over”.
Other odd-jobs, including stability in the Middle East, health care, gun control, poverty, weeds between the patio slabs out the back, and taxation reform will all be ‘left to the next lad’, confirmed Obama. | 1 |
French warplanes launched a ferocious retaliatory assault late Sunday on targets in Raqqa, Syria — the Islamic State’s de facto capital — after coordination with U.S. defense officials who helped with the targeting.
The French Defense Ministry said that 10 aircraft dropped 20 bombs on facilities used by the militant group, which has claimed responsibility for Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, striking a command center, a militant-training facility and an arms depot.
Opposition activists reached in Raqqa said they counted at least 30 bombs, which they said had hit, among other things, a soccer stadium, a museum and medical facilities. They said the strikes had knocked out electricity in the city of about 200,000 people.
The French statement said the operation, launched from bases in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, was conducted in coordination with U.S. forces, which have compiled an extensive target list in Raqqa. American officials, speaking at the Group of 20 summit here that President Obama is attending, said the French operation was discussed between the two militaries, as well as in telephone calls Saturday and Sunday between Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and his French counterpart.
U.S. planes have repeatedly struck in and around Raqqa, in north-central Syria, in recent months.
In Iraq on Sunday, Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari said Iraqi intelligence had obtained information before the Paris attacks that the Islamic State was planning an imminent terrorist strike overseas that may have been aimed “in particular” at France, the United States and Iran.
“We notified these countries and warned them,” Jafari said in a statement, which did not include specifics of when the Iraqis acquired the information. U.S. intelligence officials did not confirm the report.
Administration officials said the United States would not alter its strategy against the Islamic State in response to the Paris attacks, despite evidence that the terrorist group was expanding its ability to hit Western targets. In recent weeks, Obama has approved the escalation of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq and has authorized the deployment of 50 Special Operations troops to assist Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces pushing toward Raqqa.
Officials said that, in response to the attacks in Paris, the administration was seeking renewed global commitment to that intensified military action, and to a negotiated settlement of Syria’s civil war.
France’s retaliation came as Obama held talks with allied leaders and with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the summit being held in this Turkish Mediterranean resort city.
Obama vowed again on Sunday to help France hunt down the perpetrators of the attacks. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Obama agreed with French President François Hollande that the rampage, which killed at least 132 and wounded more than 350, was an “act of war.” But he and others disputed suggestions from Republicans that Obama, who said in an interview last week that the U.S.-led coalition had contained the Islamic State, has consistently underestimated the adversary.
[Manhunt in Europe for at least 1 suspect ‘directly involved’ in Paris attacks]
The president was referring to recent setbacks for the militant group on the battlefield in Iraq, Rhodes told reporters. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, a derogatory term in Arabic, has long harbored ambitions to sow bloodshed farther from its home base in Syria, he said, emphasizing that Obama has been realistic that the fight would be long and difficult.
“It’s the manifestation of what has been the ambition of ISIL for some time now — to conduct attacks beyond Iraq and Syria,” Rhodes said. “The president indicated when he launched the counter-ISIL strike campaign that he knew ISIL had those ambitions, which is why we have always focused on the threat of foreign fighters.”
The highly coordinated assaults on several locations in Paris on Friday evening have shaken the gathering of global leaders here. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, which intelligence officials said were carried out by three teams of terrorists affiliated with the extremist group.
The attacks prompted Hollande to declare that France would lead a “merciless” fight against the Islamic State, a move that could increase pressure on the Obama administration to take stronger actions to ensure that the Islamic State cannot attack the United States directly.
GOP leaders, including some presidential candidates, have faulted Obama’s strategy as too limited to contain the Islamic State. The Paris attacks, along with the recent bombing of a Russian commercial plane claimed by the group, have thrust the administration’s approach in the Middle East into the 2016 campaign for the White House.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who served as secretary of state in Obama’s first term, has struggled to articulate how she would deal with the threats. Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the United States “should declare war and harness all of the power the U.S. can bring to bear.”
[In Paris, a soccer game, an Asian dinner, a concert — and then terror]
After a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the summit host, Obama said that the attacks in Paris, and last month in Ankara, were attacks “on the civilized world,” and that the United States would “stand in solidarity” with the victims in “hunting down the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice.”
Rhodes emphasized that the attacks did not change the White House’s reluctance to establish a massive ground force of U.S. troops in the region, saying the administration remains confident that it can push back the Islamic State by relying on local forces it is training and advising in Iraq and Syria, along with punishing airstrikes.
“The further introduction of U.S. troops to fully re-engage in ground combat in the Middle East is not the way to deal with this challenge,” Rhodes said.
In Vienna on Saturday, diplomats from the region and from Europe, the United States and Russia agreed to press the various factions they back in Syria’s civil war to come together no later than Jan. 1 to begin talks on forming a transitional government.
Once that process starts, participants agreed, they will support a U.N.-monitored cease-fire between forces of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, and a wide array of rebel groups variously backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.
[Coordinated assault seems to mark new chapter in terrorism]
The administration has said that settling the ongoing civil war would allow global competitors to focus on defeating the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq.
The Paris attacks, Rhodes said, “can serve to create a greater sense of urgency in the international community behind supporting various elements of the counter-ISIL campaign and support for a diplomatic resolution of the Syrian conflict.”
Obama met with Putin on the sidelines of the summit. White House officials said that they spoke for 35 minutes and that the discussion “centered around ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria, an imperative made all the more urgent by the horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris,” and on the “diplomatic progress” achieved in Vienna. While the United States has insisted that Assad must relinquish power, Russia, Assad’s main backer, has bombed rebel forces in a bid to help him remain in control.
Obama and Putin were joined in their meeting, held in the lounge area of a hotel conference center, by U.S. national security adviser Susan E. Rice and a man who appeared to be an interpreter. A closed-circuit video feed showed them sitting around a coffee table, with Obama leaning forward in his chair and talking intently with Putin, who was also leaning in, as other world leaders milled about.
The president also met here with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
In Brussels, NATO dropped the flags of its 28 member nations to half-staff to honor the French dead. NATO officials said that France so far has declined to invoke the alliance’s Article 5, which would oblige all members to join its fight against the militants.
The only time Article 5 has ever been invoked — at the request of the United States — was after the September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks.
“We support the French authorities in their determination to deal with the terrorist threat,” a NATO official said Sunday, “and a number of allies are already working with France on their ongoing operations and investigations in the wake of the attacks.”
Loveday Morris in Dahuk, Iraq, and Hugh Naylor in Beirut contributed to this report. | 1 |
He who controls the spice controls the universe. Frank Herbert, from the Dune seriesShawn Helton 21st Century WireOver the past week, much of the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities were allegedly laid bare by the Wikileaks Vault 7 publication. According to the transparency seeking website, they ve published less than 1% of the intelligence regarding their Vault 7 series under the moniker Year Zero. All in all, the Wikileaks Vault 7 release is said to be the largest publication of classified intelligence in history. While there are still many unknowns associated with this latest CIA centered leak, there are a quite a few things to consider.Let s explore some of what we know to date and how it relates to other suspicious tech related stories over the past few years YEAR ZERO ZERO DAYS Wikileaks discloses the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities still no official comment from the intelligence agency. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)Wikileaks Vault 7 In 21WIRE s first report regarding the new revelations concerning Wikileaks Vault 7, we discussed how some of the content exposed in part one of Year Zero revealed what many in new media and other investigative fields have thought technologically possible for years.Here s a portion from the 21WIRE news alert mentioned above that describes the latest controversial publication by Wikileaks: WikiLeaks has released its largest ever publication of confidential documents on the Central Intelligence Agency. Entitled Vault 7 and containing a password that echoed the alleged JFK quote splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds, this leak comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Year Zero , which is part one of the leak and conveniently named after a zero day exploit used by intelligence agencies, was gathered throughout 2016 and is said to be the largest intelligence publication in history .Whilst a lot of the information and methodology outlined in Year Zero is of no surprise to security analysts and researchers since the Edward Snowden (image, left) revelations, once again the public has explicit confirmation of how one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, aided by their international counterparts like GCHQ, have been infiltrating and scooping vast quantities of private information from Apple and Android devices right up to Samsung Smart TV technology where false stand-by modes and live microphones can be executed to record information and send it back to the appropriate servers. The Year Zero leaks a simple but cleaver play on the term zero day something which is defined on Wikipedia as an undisclosed computer-software vulnerability that hackers can exploit to adversely affect computer programs, data, additional computers or a network. A zero day, zero hour exploit is said to leave a software author without the necessary time to correct coding or workaround actions of a particular hack or intrusive malware damage. (Image Source: daily express)According to Wikileaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, their most recent treasure trove of confidential files were obtained by a current or former CIA contractor, a story similar in scope and impact to the collection of documents dropped by former CIA/NSA contractor Edward Snowden but are said to be much larger.This time, the public has been given a glance inside the prism of the CIA s cyber hacking potential and data mining efforts similar to the NSA.In May of 2013, Snowden revealed information displaying that American citizens as well as other foreign nations throughout the world were subject to unprecedented levels of spying at the behest of the NSA. Massive data mining via XKeyScore and other similar applications proved to be very controversial particularly in America as it seemed to be in direct contradiction to the US Constitution s 4th Amendment.Over the past decade other aspects of NSA spying activities were revealed under the George W Bush administration in 2005 and further brought to light by Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who exposed how the multinational telecommunications company was working with the intelligence community to collect the public s data.In 2011, Gadgets and Gizmos reported the following: The recent Web 2.0 2011 conference in San Francisco saw the issue made public and now the worry is that private information could be obtained by third parties using this secretly stored data.Once the data is accessed it can even be downloaded onto an interactive map which shows where the owner of the device has been lately. So far the best way to avoid this causing a problem is to go into the settings menu and turn of the location services all together. The newly leaked Vault 7 documents identify specific cyber weapons, hacking systems, viruses and malware created by the CIA that can be used on just about anyone or any entity. This most assuredly will cause other countries to become more critical of the agency s cyber capabilities. By the looks of it, this is something that appears to be happening in Germany, as the Wikileaks docu-dump exposed an apparent CIA spy-hub in Frankfurt.Zero Hedge reports: The consulate was the focus of a German investigation into US intelligence capabilities following the 2013 revelation that NSA agents had tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel s phone.German daily S ddeutsche Zeitung reported the building was known to be home to a vast network of intelligence personnel including CIA agents, NSA spies, military secret service personnel, Department of Homeland Security employees and Secret Service employees. It reported the Americans had also established a dense network of outposts and shell companies in Frankfurt. Germany s reaction could prove to be more theatrical than that of true concern only time will tell.If Vault 7 is to be accepted wholesale, it also reveals that since the 9/11 attacks the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force its own substantial fleet of hackers. Part and parcel to this, Wikileaks contends that CIA hackers have developed cyber weaponry to spy on people through cell phones, computers and smart TVs.According to Year Zero part one of the Wikileaks Vault 7 release: The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell s 1984, but Weeping Angel , developed by the CIA s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a Fake-Off mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In Fake-Off mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server. Interestingly, Wikileaks published a batch of classified CIA spy/hacking documents that not only include the privacy invading Weeping Angel developed by the clandestine agency to listen on microphones covertly but also ways the CIA has sought to remotely infect and control Microsoft Windows, with viruses like Hammer Drill as well as automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as Assassin and Medusa. According to security analysts, the CIA has designed the covert methods listed above for hostile foreign actors. However, since the intelligence service has had a propensity of going rogue, these technological leaps made by the secretive agency should be a major concern to the general public.Over the past few decades there have been other spoken critics of intelligence services such as well-known journalist James Bamford and former high-ranking NSA official William Binney, both who have come forward to share the inner workings of the security world. The screenshot above from Wikileaks Vault 7 discusses CIA s techniques that can be used to frame other entities for a malware attack.Framing the Big Bear?One of the more curious details contained in Vault 7 were the revelations concerning the CIA s ability to mask any hacking fingerprints that could potentially implicate the agency. Additionally, the secretive agency could also leave behind potential evidence that a cyber attack was carried out by a foreign body or nation. Here s another passage from the Wikileaks publication on the matter: Tradecraft DO s and DON Ts contains CIA rules on how its malware should be written to avoid fingerprints implicating the CIA, US government, or its witting partner companies in forensic review . QUESTION: Is it possible that the CIA could use its highly specialized malware to frame a foreign country for violating US national security?Zero Hedge reported the following Wikileaks information concerning the CIA s ability to bypass device encryption before it can be applied as well as mask itself from forensic review via its own entity, the Center For Cyber Inteliigence (CCI):Among the more notable disclosures which, if confirmed, would rock the technology world , the CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect audio and message traffic before encryption is applied. Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in false flag cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant. Discussing the CIA s Remote Devices Branch s UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks source notes that it collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques stolen from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. Here s an image originally published by Wikileaks Vault 7 that displays the CIA s Center For Cyber Intelligence apparatus With claims of alleged Russian hacking at the forefront of Western intelligence, let s take another look at how that meme started Prior to the 2016 US presidential race taking place the mainstream media along with the White House, set the stage for a massive PR push implicating Russia as a disrupting force for democracy allegedly through Kremlin-sponsored hacking of US democratic institutions and through sophisticated Russian propaganda. In August, the western media s claims against Russia began to hit overdrive, when the New York Times s Moscow bureau was the target of an attempted cyber attack this month. But so far, there is no evidence that the hackers, believed to be Russian, were successful. Flash forward to September here and here, as well as early October in the lead up to President Obama s Russian Hack decree, the Clinton-friendly outlet, the NY Times, had all but solidified the Russian cyber-hack claims but once again, without any definitive evidence or proof.Throw in another American October surprise in the form distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, renewed calls for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) internet, led to so-called cyber experts blaming the largest hack on America because of the inability to pass SOPA in effect, reigniting the previously stalled SOPA in Washington DC, along with all of its draconian copyright law positions all perfectly timed as mainstream reports regarding fake news suddenly became all the rage across all forms of media.Will Vault 7 prove to shed light on other CIA related activities?The screenshot above from Wikileaks Vault 7 discusses the CIA S HIVE multi-platform software control system.DDoS AttacksIn October of 2016, I noted some of the suspicious activity surrounding America s biggest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that was said to be caused by the malware Mirai. Given that there was a hardcoded blacklist of certain government entities and major multinational companies/defense contractors from being attacked its seems more likely that the attack was US government created: Interestingly, according to Bradley Barth, a senior reporter for the IT security online magazine SC, the Mirai (supposedly leaked on September 30th) contains a very unique subset of characteristics that will not attack certain IP addresses such as the Department of Defense (DoD), the US Postal Service and consumer giant General Electric (GE) due to its coding: An Imperva analysis of the source code revealed several unique traits, including a hardcoded blacklist of IPs that the adversary did not want to attack, perhaps in order to keep a low profile. Some of these IPs belonged to the Department of Defense, the U.S. Postal Service and General Electric (GE). Though SC claims that the makers of Mirai may have been trying to keep a low profile, the recent DDoS attack attributed to the malware was as high-profile as you can get so this begs the question, what was the real reason the malware creators put an IP blockade on the DoD, the Postal Service and GE? Is it possible that the DDoS attack originated from whitehat hackers associated with the US government, a major US defense contractor like GE or some other intelligence service, possibly the CIA? HACKED? Michael Hastings death sparked a wave of controversial theories. (Image source: pinterest)CIA Hacking Tools Upon closer inspection of the Wikileaks Vault 7 release, we see that in addition to the public s privacy apparently being invaded through the CIA s ability to bypass encryption on Android and iOS phones, computers and smart TVs there was also the Wikileaks revelations exposing the agency s development of vehicular control.Wikileaks Vault 7 stated the following stunning revelation: As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations. It is this part of Year Zero that has revived the conspiracy surrounding the death of investigative reporter and war veteran Michael Hastings, who died after his Mercedes C250 coupe supposedly burst into a giant fireball in the early hours of June 18 2013. According to eyewitness accounts, Hastings was going at a high rate of speed as sparks and flames were seen before his fiery automobile crashed.The UK s Sun recently revisited the Hastings tragedy. Here s a passage of that report: Hastings a vocal critic of government mass surveillance had sent an email to colleagues and friends just 12 hours earlier, telling them he was onto a big story and was under investigation.The Buzzfeed and Rolling Stone contributor, 33, wrote: The Feds are interviewing my close friends and associates . May be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices. I m onto a big story and need to go off the radar for a bit. WikiLeaks also tweeted after the crash to say Hastings had contacted its lawyer Jennifer Robinson just before his death, claiming the FBI was investigating him.The FBI took a departure from normal policy to deny that Hastings had ever been under investigation after receiving a barrage of calls about his death. The CIA has failed to confirm or deny the authenticity of the Vault 7 release, only deepening the mystery surrounding the death of Hastings.The question of CIA control over cars and trucks naturally leads us to what was revealed regarding high-tech avionics in recent years (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)Uninterruptible Flight ControlIn my article entitled FLIGHT CONTROL: Boeing s Uninterruptible Autopilot System , Drones & Remote Hijacking, I noted the CIA s involvement in certain advancements in flight technology. Lets revisit a portion of that article describing the agency s involvement: On December 4th of 2006, it was announced that Boeing had won a patent on an uninterruptible autopilot system for use in commercial aircraft. This was the first public acknowledgment by Boeing about the existence of such an autopilot system.The new autopilot patent was reported by John Croft for Flight Global, with the news piece subsequently linked by a Homeland Security News Wire and other British publications around the same time. According to the DHS release, it was disclosed that dedicated electrical circuits within an onboard flight system could control a plane without the need of pilots, stating that the advanced avionics would fly the aircraft remotely, independently of those operating the plane: The uninterruptible autopilot would be activated either by pilots, by onboard sensors, or even remotely via radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of a flight deck. Continuing, I outlined the suspicious nature of both the MH370 disaster and that of MH17. Since then there have been a number of strange airline catastrophes including Germanwings 9525 and EygptAir MS804. Following the apparent vanishing act of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, many investigators and researchers began to question the likelihood of such an event happening in today s high-tech world.At 21WIRE, we ve also looked into the unprecedented disappearance of MH370 and the subsequent downing of MH17, as certain details came to light regarding the history of the remote autopilot function installed within Boeing commercial airliners (a subject which also opens the door to the events of 9/11).The Boeing 777 along with other Boeing models, can in fact be flown remotely through the use of independent embedded software and satellite communication. Once this advanced system is engaged, it can disallow any pilot or potential hijacker from controlling a plane, as the rooted setup uses digital signals that communicate with air traffic control, satellite links, as well as other government entities for the remainder of a flight s journey.This technology is known as the Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot System. Has the CIA had the ability to remotely hack vehicles for much longer than we think?The Wikileaks release once again opens questions about 9/11, the deep state and what intelligence agencies have control over in the War on Terror era. CLOAKED What other blueprints will Wikileaks provide regarding the CIA s capabilities? (Image Source: offgraun)Public Privacy Vs. the Deep State In an article detailing the encryption saga between Apple and the FBI, we stated that there are no guarantees in the security world, especially if a digital master-key were to be created, as this would potentially make it easier for invaders (either the government, or various hackers) mining for data moving forward into the future.If the CIA has been secretly data mining just like the NSA, they have unquestionably violated the public s constitutional rights and trust.Is this really what the CIA has been up too?In a 2016 the Guardian interviewed some of those involved in the technology and security sector. These individuals offered their thoughts regarding the government s continued encroachment on individual privacy. here s another look at that passage:Dan Kaminsky, the security expert who made his name with the discovery that one of the most basic parts of the internet, the domain name system, was vulnerable to fraud disagrees: Feds want final authority on engineering decisions, and their interests don t even align with fighting the vast bulk of real-world crime. Continuing, The Guardian interviewed former FBI agent Michael German, currently the Brennan Center, a judicial think-tank. The following is a part of that interview: After 9/11, you had this concept of total information awareness. The intelligence community was very enamoured of the idea that all information was available. Much like the NSA, they wanted to see it all, collect it all, and analyse it all. Western political leaders and their media arms often discuss the dangers of so-called terror sleeper cells residing in a nation near you, but none of them acknowledge or attempt to explain the historical fact that for decades, they themselves have helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through their own clandestine counter-terrorism operations.Many of these operations have directly implicated security agencies (and military alliances) such as the FBI, CIA, MI5, MI6 and NATO in the production of real terror.While most of these counter intelligence operations have fallen under the umbrella of the so-called War On Terror era, they have also largely served to obfuscate the nature of various government programs that some critics suggest is the work of a deep state apparatus.QUESTION: Will there be a large public outcry regarding the lack of oversight over the CIA s spying and hacking capabilities?Watch below as 21WIRE s Patrick Henningsen discusses the NSA-like body of the CIA on Peter Lavelle s Cross Talk show on RT In Summary The timely release of Vault 7 comes amid a flurry of wiretapping claims from President Donald Trump, while a review of US cyber capabilities and vulnerabilities is currently underway.Additionally, the Wikileaks Vault 7 publication revealed the following stunning information concerning the scope of the CIA s cyber capabilities previously unknown to the public: By the end of 2016, the CIA s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other weaponized malware. Such is the scale of the CIA s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its own NSA with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified. In 2012, then CIA Director David Petraeus, mused about the emergence of an Internet of Things that is, wired devices at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA s venture capital firm. The Wired magazine article continued, disclosing that the future of spying hinged on smart devices and a smart home: All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you re a person of interest to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the smart home, you d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room s ambiance. The public has long been prepped for the surreal level of surveillance we are only just beginning to understand, whether through books, film or tech magazines or by the government itself the warning signs of lost privacy and protection have been hidden in plain sight for decades.Even still, Wikileaks Vault 7 shocks the avid researcher, writer and pundit as it gives further insight into the CIA s multi-pronged ability to distort the perception of the public, while vacuuming up all kinds of data.*** Author Shawn Helton is Associate Editor of 21st Century Wire, as well as an independent media forensic analyst specializing in criminal investigations and media coverage from war theaters. READ MORE WIKILEAKS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire WikiLeaks FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1 |
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African anti-apartheid veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, ex-wife of the late President Nelson Mandela, is in high spirits after being admitted to hospital for minor surgery, her spokesman said on Thursday. Victor Dlamini said in a statement the 81-year-old former first lady was admitted to hospital on Tuesday for minor surgery on her knee and doctors had decided to keep her in for the next two weeks as she recovers. I visited her at the hospital this afternoon and she was in high spirits, Dlamini said. In our conversation (she) said that her health problems go back to the time when she was banished to Brandfort by the apartheid government and during this period her knee first gave her trouble. Madikizela-Mandela spent several weeks in hospital last year for back surgery. During her ex-husband s 27-year incarceration for his fight against apartheid, Madikizela-Mandela campaigned for his release and for the rights of black South Africans, undergoing detention, banishment and arrest. | 1 |
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria should tighten rules on foreign financing for religious communities and restrict visits by foreign clerics to help counter the potential spread of radical Islam, deputy prime minister Krasimir Karakachanov said on Thursday. Karakachanov is a co-leader of the nationalist United Patriots, a junior partner in the coalition government that is known for its tough rhetoric on migration and Bulgaria s Roma. He said proposals to parliament to amend laws on religion and education as well as the criminal code would be submitted by the end of the year. Bulgaria s government banned the wearing of full face veils in public places last year. Bulgaria has one of the biggest Muslim communities in Europe at about 12 percent of its 7.1 million population a legacy of almost 500 years of Ottoman Turkish rule that ended in the late 19th century. Historic resistance to the Muslim Ottomans is a core element of national identity for the mainly Orthodox Christian majority and some nationalists have cast the recent arrival of Muslim migrants via Turkey as a threat to the nation s security. It turns out that problems we see in a number of European countries already exist in Bulgaria, Karakachanov said after a meeting to discuss how to prevent the spread of radical Islam in the country. He said extremely liberal laws were allowing the spread of non-traditional Islam through the private provision of education and training. It is mostly the ... financing by private structures of religious communities that attempt to realize political influence in the country, Karakachanov said. Many Islamist organizations in Europe are financed largely with foreign donations. Karakachanov has previously complained that many imams preaching in Bulgaria come from abroad and do not speak Bulgarian, and has spoken of fostering native imams who are more deeply integrated into Bulgarian society. The wave of mainly Muslim refugees and migrants reaching Europe s borders over the past years has contributed to a rise in right-wing nationalism across the continent. | 1 |
(Reuters) - An order by President Donald Trump that could scale back enforcement of some Obamacare provisions is unlikely to sink health insurance stocks, but shares of hospitals and Medicaid providers could be under pressure over fears more poor people would lose coverage, analysts said. President Trump signed an executive order on Friday urging government departments to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of provisions of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, that imposed fiscal burdens on states, companies or individuals. While the order lacked details, it signaled the start of an effort by Trump and Republicans to repeal and replace the program, which expanded health coverage to some 20 million people. Obamacare has been plagued by increases in insurance premiums and deductibles and by some large insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna Inc, largely pulling out of the system. Shares of UnitedHealth and Aetna were little changed in early trading on Monday. The equity markets dislike uncertainty and Trump’s executive order introduces at least a modest level of new uncertainty, J.P. Morgan analyst Gary Taylor wrote in a note on Monday. The new administration may no longer enforce an Affordable Care Act rule requiring individual Americans to pay a penalty for not carrying health insurance, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said on ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday. The healthcare exchange system that is the cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act depends on premiums from healthy, younger individuals, typically between ages 18 to 34, to offset higher expenses for covering older, less healthy individuals. The scrapping of enforcement was “a real risk” for 2017 insurance exchanges enrollment, Sheryl R. Skolnick, a healthcare analyst for Mizuho Securities USA Inc, said in a research note on Saturday. “We have to wonder why the hospital companies and investors who have pushed the stocks back up to pre-election levels would be so enthusiastic,” Skolnick wrote. But young people did not buy health insurance at desired levels, even when penalties increased for not having the coverage, said Ana Gupte, a healthcare services analyst for Leerink Partners LLC in New York. “Fundamentally, I don’t think it’s going to make a difference,” if the so-called ‘individual mandate,’ requiring individuals to buy coverage or pay a penalty, is scrapped, said Gupte. Some experts also question whether the Obama administration itself was vigilant about enforcing the rule. “We’re not sure as to how vigorously it was being enforced anyway,” said Les Funtleyder, healthcare portfolio manager for E Squared Capital Management. Still, Trump’s plans could pressure shares of insurers such as Molina Healthcare Inc, Centene Corp and WellCare Health Plans Inc, who administer state Medicaid plans, over concerns that the number of insured, especially among the poorest, would shrink. Molina’s shares were down 0.7 percent, while Centene’s shares were down 0.5 percent. If Medicaid funding becomes less than what states are receiving now, “it will put pressure on the number of people who are covered through Medicaid expansion,” Gupte said. Hospitals may also be on the hook for more unpaid medical expenses as the number of uninsured individuals increase and seek emergency room treatment, Gupte added. Longer term, though, the hospital industry is lobbying to get more money for unpaid expenses and “it looks like they will get what they want,” Gupte said. Shares of hospital operators such as HCA Holdings Inc, Tenet Healthcare Corp and Community Health Systems Inc were down about 1 percent. “In reality, the executive order is just a sideshow to the main event – the Repeal/Replace legislation that Republicans are expected to introduce this year,” Taylor said. | 1 |
An admitted Al Qaeda agent released this month from a U.S. federal prison had been offered up as part of a potential prisoner swap in exchange for two Americans held in Qatar, a former U.S. diplomat said Monday.
Richard Grenell, who had worked on the case of the jailed Americans, confirmed to Fox News that the offer was put on the table.
"There's no disputing the fact. I don't care what they say -- the idea was floated," he said.
The Daily Beast first reported that the trade was proposed to the then-U.S. ambassador in Qatar in July 2014 by an individual close to Qatar's attorney general. Grenell, a former spokesman for the U.S. mission at the United Nations under the George W. Bush administration, confirmed the idea was floated to then-U.S. Ambassador Susan Ziadeh by a "close confidant" of the Qatari attorney general.
Further, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., wrote in a letter last week to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee that he understands "engagement began months ago" on such a "possible exchange arrangement for other Americans" at the request of the Qataris.
Al Qaeda operative Ali Saleh al-Marri, who had been in U.S. custody since 2001, was ultimately released this month prior to completing his 15-year sentence because of "time served," according to the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, the two Americans -- Matthew and Grace Huang -- were allowed to leave the country last December after their controversial conviction in the death of their adopted daughter was overturned.
Administration officials, though, disputed the notion that the Al Qaeda operative's release was part of a quid pro quo. A State Department official told The Daily Beast that "no such proposal was ever on the table." The official said al-Marri was sent home as scheduled, not because of a deal.
"Al-Marri's release happened as a matter of course, as a result of his court-imposed sentence being completed," another administration official told The Daily Beast.
That squares with what other officials have claimed.
"After more than 14 years in U.S. custody, Al-Marri completed his court-imposed sentence on his terrorism conviction," DOJ spokesman Marc Raimondi told Fox News on Monday. "He has been removed from the United States and is barred for life from ever returning. As the outcome in this case shows, the U.S. government is committed to prosecuting terrorists to the fullest extent of the law and in a manner consistent with our values."
White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett recently told Fox News, when asked about the case, that "people who served their sentence are then released."
Referring to administration claims that they did not negotiate here, Grenell said, "I take them at their word."
But he said the administration has already "sent the message to our friends and allies and even our enemies that we'll negotiate."
The administration did trade five Taliban fighters last year for American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
Still, in reference to Japanese prisoners held by the Islamic State, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Sunday stated the U.S. policy of not negotiating with terror groups over hostages.
"The policies are well set: The U.S. doesn't pay ransoms and will not do prisoner swaps. We will not discuss what the Japanese should do," he told "Fox News Sunday."
Al-Marri had been in U.S. custody since 2001, after reportedly being picked up on a routine traffic stop just weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks. He was charged with providing "material support or resources" to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda operatives.
At the time of his arrest, the Qatar native was a U.S. resident attending graduate school.
He was declared an enemy combatant in 2003 and sent to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. In 2008, U.S. courts ruled he was entitled to a federal hearing. He accepted a plea deal in 2009 that included the 15-year sentence, at a federal prison in Illinois.
Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report. | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday it wanted to develop smooth military-to-military ties with the new U.S. administration of Donald Trump. While the world’s two largest economies are frequently at odds over issues like the disputed South China Sea, both have been trying to improve trust between their armed forces to reduce the risk of misunderstanding in any encounters. This month, China and the United States staged a three-day humanitarian relief military drill as part of that trust-building exercise. New concern looms with Trump’s election as U.S. president. He lambasted China on the campaign trail and has suggested Japan and South Korea be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Asked about Trump’s election, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said it went without saying there were tensions in the military relationship and China hoped the United States would respect its core interests and concerns. “China is willing to work hard together with the defense department of the next U.S. government to promote the healthy and stable development of military-to-military relations,” Yang told a monthly news briefing. Trump will take over as president in January. | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China defended its ally Pakistan on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States could no longer be silent about Pakistan’s “safe havens” for militants and warned it had much to lose by continuing to “harbor terrorists”. Trump on Monday committed the United States to an open-ended conflict in Afghanistan, signaling he would dispatch more troops to America’s longest war and vowing “a fight to win”. Trump insisted that others - the Afghan government, Pakistan, India and NATO allies - step up their own commitment to resolving the 16-year conflict, but he saved his sharpest words for Pakistan. Senior U.S. officials warned security assistance for Pakistan could be reduced unless the nuclear-armed nation cooperated more in preventing militants from using safe havens on its soil. Critics say Pakistan sees militants such as the Taliban as useful tools to limit the influence of old rival India. Pakistan denies allowing militants refuge on its territory, saying it takes action against all groups. Asked about Trump’s speech, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Pakistan was on the front line in the struggle against terrorism and had made “great sacrifices” and “important contributions” in the fight. “We believe that the international community should fully recognize Pakistan’s anti-terrorism,” she told a daily news briefing. “We are happy to see Pakistan and the United States carry out anti-terror cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, and work together for security and stability in the region and world.” China and Pakistan consider each other “all-weather friends” and have close diplomatic, economic and security ties. China has its own security concerns in the region, in particular any links between militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Islamist groups China blames for violence in its far western region of Xinjiang. “We hope the relevant U.S. policies can help promote the security, stability and development of Afghanistan and the region,” Hua said. | 0 |
October 31, 2016 BBC Under Fire for ‘Transgender Diaries’ Program Aimed at Children as Young as Six
The BBC has come in for a slew of criticism for broadcasting a program aimed at children as young as six, which tells the story of a school boy as he prepares to transition to a girl.
The program, broadcast on CBBC, follows a boy as he attempts to access drugs to delay the onset of puberty, as part of the process for having an eventual sex change, the Mail on Sunday has reported.
MPs and campaigners have questioned the appropriateness of telling such a story to young children, who may be easily confused by what they are watching. One mother, commenting on the program on the parenting site Mumsnet, said her daughter had questioned her gender identity and asked her “anxiously, if that means she was a boy”.
But the BBC has defended the show, insisting that it was merely trying to “reflect true life”. It said there was enough context for children to understand the theme.
Norman Wells, a family campaigner disagreed. He said: “It is irresponsible of the BBC to introduce impressionable children as young as six to the idea that they can choose to be something other than their biological sex.” | 1 |
We’re fresh over the Canadian border, in a supermarket on Vancouver Island gathering supplies for our first night on the road. There are three of us, and as we come together at checkout and pile our dinner ingredients onto the conveyor belt, the woman at the register doesn’t seem to know what to make of us. She watches our selections roll toward her: a rotisserie chicken, instant mashed potatoes, spinach, marshmallows, bottled water. We are three young women wearing motorcycle jackets and heavy boots, bandannas knotted around our necks. Lindsay asks her to add a bundle of firewood to the tally, and suddenly our presence here, just down the road from the Bamberton campground, clicks into place for her. “Did you leave your men at the campsite?” she asks. We laugh, not meaning to be rude, but the question strikes us as absurd. “Nope,” Lindsay tells her. “We left the men at home. ” She is confused and intrigued. Another woman comes to bag our purchases, and we chat with them both for a moment about the campground up the road, about our journey and about the fact that our men were not invited. The assumption that there are men waiting for us anywhere at all is a tangle for another day. They are excited for us, are thrilled to learn about our motorcycle adventure — from Seattle to Banff, then back across through Montana, Idaho and Washington. “Have the best time,” they say. We thank them, gather up our bags and head out to the parking lot, scooping up our firewood on the way. In the fading light, we pack up our two motorcycles with the purchases. We stash the bags and a of bottled water in the leg space of the sidecar we have reserved for gear, then secure the firewood under a web of bungee cords. We’re quick about it, because we’re hungry and want to make camp before it gets dark. I get on one of the bikes and back it out of the parking spot. Jenny starts the other one while Lindsay climbs into the sidecar. “Hurry!” I yell over the engines, with mock urgency. “The men are waiting,” we shout together and gun it toward the Highway. And it’s sort of true: There are men waiting. At every gas station and every diner and every campsite. They are waiting to ogle our machines, to quiz us about our trip, to ask us about our experience as motorcycle riders. Women manage uninvited attention from men every day, but there’s something particularly alluring to the male about a woman on a motorcycle. Two days in and we already know their lines of interrogation by heart. It’s not just the questions but the nonquestions that have begun to wear us down: “Let me give you directions [insert directions we don’t need]. ” “ friend rides motorcycles, too [insert random motorcycle story]. ” “Be careful [insert skeptical tone]. ” “I know things about sidecar motorcycles [insert inaccurate history lesson]. ” We take turns speaking with these interlopers, because there are just so many of them. Some are polite and curious and complimentary. Some are less so. As we wait for the ferry off Vancouver Island, a man with a neck tattoo ambles over and asks: “Did your fathers loan you these motorcycles? Or was it your uncles?” Jenny and I widen our eyes at each other in disbelief, and Lindsay tells him exactly what she thinks of his query. But we learn to put ridiculous moments like this behind us as we continue across British Columbia and Alberta. Near Whistler, we picnic on the shore of a lake. Outside Kamloops, we camp at the end of an abandoned dirt road, and in the morning we do doughnuts for so long the dust rises around us like a curtain. On our way to Banff, a tire blows out and, after struggling to change it by the side of the highway, we ride through the frigid, rainy night to make up the time I put on a midnight recital for Lindsay, who is huddled in the sidecar beside me, singing every Dolly Parton song I know. We look out on Banff’s lakes and pass through Calgary, and then, after days of rain, the weather becomes beautiful near the Montana border, where we stop for a field of yellow flowers. Along the way, every time we see a man on an expensive motorcycle, we nudge one another and whisper, “Did your mom loan you that?” After almost two weeks on the road, when we finally say goodbye, all I can think about is where I want to adventure next with these women. | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China and the United States are in “close communication” on arranging a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The remarks were reported by China’s official Xinhua news agency on Saturday. | 0 |
It is now a year since the Democratic National Committee s mail system was compromised a year since events in the spring and early summer of 2016 were identified as remote hacks and, in short order, attributed to Russians acting in behalf of Donald Trump. A great edifice has been erected during this time.President Trump, members of his family, and numerous people around him stand accused of various corruptions and extensive collusion with Russians. Half a dozen simultaneous investigations proceed into these matters. Last week news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had convened a grand jury, which issued its first subpoenas on August 3. Allegations of treason are common; prominent political figures and many media cultivate a case for impeachment.The president s ability to conduct foreign policy, notably but not only with regard to Russia, is now crippled. Forced into a corner and having no choice, Trump just signed legislation imposing severe new sanctions on Russia and European companies working with it on pipeline projects vital to Russia s energy sector. Striking this close to the core of another nation s economy is customarily considered an act of war, we must not forget. In retaliation, Moscow has announced that the United States must cut its embassy staff by roughly two-thirds. All sides agree that relations between the United States and Russia are now as fragile as they were during some of the Cold War s worst moments. To suggest that military conflict between two nuclear powers inches ever closer can no longer be dismissed as hyperbole.All this was set in motion when the DNC s mail server was first violated in the spring of 2016 and by subsequent assertions that Russians were behind that hack and another such operation, also described as a Russian hack, on July 5. These are the foundation stones of the edifice just outlined. The evolution of public discourse in the year since is worthy of scholarly study: Possibilities became allegations, and these became probabilities. Then the probabilities turned into certainties, and these evolved into what are now taken to be established truths. By my reckoning, it required a few days to a few weeks to advance from each of these stages to the next. This was accomplished via the indefensibly corrupt manipulations of language repeated incessantly in our leading media.There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee s system on July 5 last year not by the Russians, not by anyone else.Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device.In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC s system. This casts serious doubt on the initial hack, as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.This article is based on an examination of the documents these forensic experts and intelligence analysts have produced, notably the key papers written over the past several weeks, as well as detailed interviews with many of those conducting investigations and now drawing conclusions from them. Before proceeding into this material, several points bear noting.Qualified experts working independently of one another began to examine the DNC case immediately after the July 2016 events. Prominent among these is a group comprising former intelligence officers, almost all of whom previously occupied senior positions. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), founded in 2003, now has 30 members, including a few associates with backgrounds in national-security fields other than intelligence. The chief researchers active on the DNC case are four: William Binney, formerly the NSA s technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis and designer of many agency programs now in use; Kirk Wiebe, formerly a senior analyst at the NSA s SIGINT Automation Research Center; Edward Loomis, formerly technical director in the NSA s Office of Signal Processing; and Ray McGovern, an intelligence analyst for nearly three decades and formerly chief of the CIA s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch. Most of these men have decades of experience in matters concerning Russian intelligence and the related technologies. This article reflects numerous interviews with all of them conducted in person, via Skype, or by telephone.The customary VIPS format is an open letter, typically addressed to the president. The group has written three such letters on the DNC incident, all of which were first published by Robert Parry at www.consortiumnews.com. Here is the latest, dated July 24; it blueprints the forensic work this article explores in detail. They have all argued that the hack theory is wrong and that a locally executed leak is the far more likely explanation. In a letter to Barack Obama dated January 17, three days before he left office, the group explained that the NSA s known programs are fully capable of capturing all electronic transfers of data. We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks, the letter said. If NSA cannot produce such evidence and quickly this would probably mean it does not have any. Forensicator s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.In addition, there is the adulteration of the documents Guccifer 2.0 posted on June 15, when he made his first appearance. This came to light when researchers penetrated what Folden calls Guccifer s top layer of metadata and analyzed what was in the layers beneath. They found that the first five files Guccifer made public had each been run, via ordinary cut-and-paste, through a single template that effectively immersed them in what could plausibly be cast as Russian fingerprints. They were not: The Russian markings were artificially inserted prior to posting. It s clear, another forensics investigator self-identified as HET, wrote in a report on this question, that metadata was deliberately altered and documents were deliberately pasted into a Russianified [W]ord document with Russian language settings and style headings. VIPS has assembled a chronology that imposes a persuasive logic on the complex succession of events just reviewed. It is this:On June 12 last year, Julian Assange announced that WikiLeaks had and would publish documents pertinent to Hillary Clinton s presidential campaign.On June 14, CrowdStrike, a cyber-security firm hired by the DNC, announced, without providing evidence, that it had found malware on DNC servers and had evidence that Russians were responsible for planting it.On June 15, Guccifer 2.0 first appeared, took responsibility for the hack reported on June 14 and claimed to be a WikiLeaks source. It then posted the adulterated documents just described.On July 5, Guccifer again claimed he had remotely hacked DNC servers, and the operation was instantly described as another intrusion attributable to Russia. Virtually no media questioned this account.It does not require too much thought to read into this sequence. With his June 12 announcement, Assange effectively put the DNC on notice that it had a little time, probably not much, to act preemptively against the imminent publication of damaging documents. Did the DNC quickly conjure Guccifer from thin air to create a cyber-saboteur whose fingers point to Russia? There is no evidence of this one way or the other, but emphatically it is legitimate to pose the question in the context of the VIPS chronology. WikiLeaks began publishing on July 22. By that time, the case alleging Russian interference in the 2016 elections process was taking firm root. In short order Assange would be written down as a Russian agent. See Wikileaks founder Julian Assange s interview about the possibility of Seth Rich being the DNC leaker near bottom of the article. Behind the ICA lie other indefensible realities. The FBI has never examined the DNC s computer servers an omission that is beyond preposterous. It has instead relied on the reports produced by Crowdstrike, a firm that drips with conflicting interests well beyond the fact that it is in the DNC s employ. Dmitri Alperovitch, its co-founder and chief technology officer, is on the record as vigorously anti-Russian. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which suffers the same prejudice. Problems such as this are many. We continue to stand by our report, CrowdStrike said, upon seeing the VIPS blueprint of the investigation. CrowdStrike argues that by July 5 all malware had been removed from the DNC s computers. But the presence or absence of malware by that time is entirely immaterial, because the event of July 5 is proven to have been a leak and not a hack. Given that malware has nothing to do with leaks, CrowdStrike s logic appears to be circular.Click HERE for the entire THE NATION article. h/t Gateway Pundit Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has strongly hinted that the source for the DNC emails he released was Seth Rich. In this interview with Julian Assange, he seems to suggest on Dutch television program Nieuwsuur that Seth Rich was the source for the Wikileaks-exposed DNC emails and was murdered: | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The internal watchdog at the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday he hopes to complete his review by early spring into whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation erred when it announced it was reopening its investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails ahead of the 2016 presidential election. “We have interviewed dozens of people. We are not at the 100 level yet, but we’re in the dozens range. We’ve reviewed about 1.2 million records in the course of the investigation,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said, in testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives panel. “We are aiming to release the report in late winter/early spring, so hopefully in that March-April time period.” After a deluge of congressional requests, Horowitz’s office earlier this year announced it would review the pre-election decision-making at the FBI. At the heart of the review is whether former FBI Director James Comey improperly made a series of public statements about the status of the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server for official correspondence while she was Secretary of State. Comey, who was fired in May by U.S. President Donald Trump, had also led an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. The FBI does not typically discuss its investigations publicly. In the case of Clinton, however, Comey decided in July 2016 to hold a press conference and explain why the FBI had declined to refer Clinton for prosecution. He said at the time her actions were careless, but did not rise to criminal behavior. Comey in October 2016 sent Congress a letter saying the FBI needed to re-open its investigation after it uncovered new emails on the computer of former Representative Anthony Weiner, who had been married to one Clinton’s top aides. Then on Nov. 6, 2016 - two days before the presidential election - Comey said the FBI had not uncovered any new evidence. Comey’s various public disclosures stirred a lot of controversy with some questioning whether he had violated the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from interfering with U.S. elections. Republicans have also complained about why former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch did not recuse herself from the matter after it was revealed she had met with former President Bill Clinton on board a plane while the investigation was still ongoing. The issues have recently prompted a handful of committees in the Republican-led U.S. Congress to open their own reviews into the same set of facts being probed by Horowitz’s office. | 1 |
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A man from Kyrgyzstan who had a Russian passport was responsible for the deadly subway blast in St. Petersburg, the Russian and Kyrgyz authorities said Tuesday, as the toll from the attack rose to 14 dead and more than 60 wounded. The Investigative Committee of Russia, the main federal law enforcement agency, identified the bomber as Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, 22. Kyrgyz officials said he was a member of the Uzbek minority in the southern city of Osh who received Russian citizenship in 2011, around the time he moved to St. Petersburg. Russian forensic experts found his DNA on a bag left at the Vosstaniya Square subway station, the agency’s statement said. A more powerful bomb was discovered there and defused, soon after the explosion on Monday afternoon, on a train that had just departed another station, Sennaya Square. The DNA evidence, as well as television footage, led investigators to believe that Mr. Dzhalilov had blown himself up and had wanted to bomb the Vosstaniya Square station, the statement said. There was some indication that Mr. Dzhalilov had not acted alone. Russian investigators were seeking a young man and woman from Central Asia, according to some news reports, but there was no official confirmation. In addition to killing 14 people, the blast on Monday wounded 64 others, a St. Petersburg official, Aleksandr Rzhanenkov, said at a news briefing. Some of the survivors who were being treated at City Hospital No. 26 in St. Petersburg described a gruesome interruption to their routine commute when the bomb went off. “Children were torn into pieces,” recalled Konstantin Y. Kolodkin, 40, who boarded the subway just before the blast at 2:40 p. m. on Monday. He said flying shards of metal sprayed the passengers aboard his subway car. “I don’t know what it was, metal balls, screws,” he said. “There were bits of skin. ” Mikhail A. Veprentsev, an college student who was riding in a subway car adjacent to the one that ferried the bomber, said he saw victims “with screws sticking out their heads like bullets. ” There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, or any information linking the suicide bomber to Islamist extremists. Investigators were trying to piece together where and when Mr. Dzhalilov might have become radicalized. One unidentified source told the Interfax news agency that after a trip home in February, Mr. Dzhalilov, a car mechanic, returned to St. Petersburg sullen and withdrawn. They say he might have been recruited then. The authorities in the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, which are predominantly Muslim, have said that the Islamic State has recruited hundreds of fighters from the region. The Islamist insurgency in the northern Caucasus has also provided thousands of fighters. Members of the Islamic State have periodically threatened to carry out attacks in Russia in retaliation for its intervention in the Syrian conflict, among other reasons. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia, while not confirming any details of the investigation, said it was wrong to portray the attack as a result of his country’s intervention in Syria. “As far as the discussions by several media outlets that the terrorist act is a revenge for our Syria policy, this is cynical and despicable,” he said during a news conference with his Kyrgyz counterpart. Erlan B. Abdyldaev, the Kyrgyz foreign minister, said the investigation would reveal whether the suspect had any ties to radical Islamist movements. Photographs on Mr. Dzhalilov’s page on the social media network VKontakte, the last of which was posted 18 months ago, show a slim teenager growing into a muscular young man with a beard. The last photograph shows him wearing a baseball cap, a green hoodie and a black Adidas puffer vest. There is a link on his page to the Islamic website Tawba, or Repentance, which posted automatic messages about the faith every few hours. The photographs indicated that Mr. Dzhalilov had an interest in martial arts as well as fast cars, and they included souvenir shots taken around St. Petersburg with a few friends. “He wasn’t a very advanced fighter,” said Salam Khudoerzoda, who said he vaguely remembered encountering Mr. Dzhalilov more than four years ago at a martial arts gym. “He came, had a few fights and then left. ” Mr. Khudoerzoda said, “If he was a big fighter, I would know him. ” In Osh, a representative of the security services said Mr. Dzhalilov’s family had been questioned, Interfax reported. According to Russian news reports, the man’s father, who had been working in Russia, brought him to St. Petersburg as a teenager to start working to help pay for a new house after their old neighborhood in Osh had been devastated by ethnic riots. The Russian authorities have long feared that radicalized militants from the former Soviet states, who can travel freely to Russia, might carry out attacks. Many Russian nationalists have argued for introducing visa requirements for those countries, but Russia’s government has sought to avoid doing so, in the interest of preserving good relations. Neighbors and others interviewed by Russian news organizations said Mr. Dzhalilov thrived in Russia, starting as a metal worker in an auto repair shop and becoming an accomplished mechanic. He went home once or twice a year to visit his mother and younger brother and sister. He did not come to the attention of law enforcement officials except for some unpaid traffic tickets, according to the Interfax report. It is still not clear how he might have been recruited. His father also went home in February, but stayed, the reports said, and he was still there when law enforcement officials showed up after the attack to question the family. On Tuesday morning, Aleksandr Drozdenko, governor of the region that surrounds St. Petersburg, rode the subway to try to reassure a jittery population that the system was safe. The blast occurred just as the train departed the Sennaya Square station, one of the busiest transportation hubs in central St. Petersburg, Russia’s city. The train was able to reach the next station, the Technology Institute, where the full extent of the carnage became clear. The toll could have been much higher if the second bomb, disguised as a fire extinguisher, had not been disarmed. Security was increased at major transportation facilities across Russia, including on the Moscow Metro. The driver of the train, Alexander Kaverin, said he had no time to be afraid after the blast. “I couldn’t think about fear at that moment I had to work,” he said at a news conference. “According to standard instructions, I had to move the train to the next station. ” | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday the chamber’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election would also examine President Donald Trump’s claim that he had been wiretapped by the Obama administration. Asked by CNN whether Trump’s claim, for which he has presented no evidence, would be part of the probe, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said: “I think all of that is part of the investigation.” “It needs an investigation so we can find out what the facts are,” he added. “We’ll follow the facts wherever they may lead.” | 1 |
Obama is clearly attempting to strip Americans of our right to express our opinions on social issues based on our religion or morals. Americans have found themselves in a scary place, where we are remaining silent when we know we should be speaking out, because we re afraid of being shamed by the progressive Left. Meanwhile the Left continues to blur the lines of morality, hoping that they will erase all individual thought and speech.In a communist society, the individual s best interests are indistinguishable from the society s best interest. Thus, the idea of an individual freedom is incompatible with a communist ideology. The only reason to hold individual speech and information rights would be to better the society. Some of us care little about the debate over public bathrooms. We do, however, care about the ongoing destruction of federalism, individual choice, and good-faith debate.One reliable way to quash dissent and force moral codes on others is to liken your cause to that of the civil rights fight. Every liberal issue is situated somewhere on the great historical arc of equality and justice. If a person stands against even one of these causes which were once great but are increasingly trivial they have, according to the cultural imperialists of the Obama administration, aligned themselves with the Klan. Literally.After U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the Department of Justice had filed a federal lawsuit to stop North Carolina from passing a controversial law this is the go-to characterization of conservative bills that pass with healthy majorities requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms matching their birth certificate, she had this to say:This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation; we saw it in the fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education; and we saw it in the proliferation of state bans on same-sex unions that were intended to stifle any hope that gay and lesbian Americans might one day be afforded the right to marry.Likening a spat over biologically segregated boy/girl bathrooms to the genuine, violent, systematic, state-sponsored, society-wide bigotry that took place in this country for a century is both intellectually and morally corrupt. It s not all a continuum. Yet this administration peddles these kinds of risible comparisons in the cause of self-aggrandizement all the time. Hans Fiene has coined it Selma envy.The present situation is significantly different, and in every possible sense less dire. It is the sort of social problem generally worked out amongst people in this country without unelected civil rights commissions punishing business owners for thought crimes. Under North Carolina s law no one was stopping a private company or coffee shop or big box store from having any kind of bathroom set-up they desire. I m pretty sure most voters don t comprehend this fact when they hear the distorted coverage of these laws in the news.North Carolina and other states have preemptively moved forward with these kinds to bills to head off the state redefining gender. Too late. The fact is that the federal government can simply announce that a man can be a woman and vice versa if they choose. It then compels everyone in country to accept this reality. Yet there is no government definition of what transgendered means, other self-identification, which can mean anything. Civil Rights Division Chief Vanita Gupta says: Transgender men are men. Transgender women are women. So sayeth Vanita Gupta, so sayeth we all. Or else. And now 300 million people have adhere to the Obama administration s relativistic notions about nature and gender.Now, from what I can gather the central anxiety of many people is not that the transgendered will take advantage of their children, but that any man can simply declare himself a woman, put on a wig, and go into a public bathroom. Maybe it s an irrational fear, maybe it s not. As a father who s had to send young daughters into busy public bathrooms, I know one thing for sure: I could not care less what Vanita Gupta has to say on the topic.In a broader sense, the suit is symbolic of the federal government s eight-year crusade to decimate any semblance of federalism and streamline progressive morality. The administration ignores state laws that conflict with federal policy when it approves and it sues states when it does not. States that pass law enforcement bills President Obama finds unsatisfactory will see the full force of the Justice Department come down on them. Those with drug legalization laws and immigration laws he does like, even if they conflict with federal law, have nothing to worry about. Whether one agrees in theory with these moves and I am liberal on drug legalization and immigration allowing Washington to selectively enforce law conflicts with the kind of republicanism that allows us to be diverse and deal with unique problems locally.For entire story: The Federalist | 0 |
Do you agree with Switzerland s decision? Should America follow suit with European countries who are saying no to the burqa?Women who wear burqas and full face veils in public in a Swiss state could be fined up to $9000 under new rules imposed after a local referendum.Females muslims will be banned from wearing the burqa in shops, restaurants or public buildings in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino.The local government in the southern Swiss state approved the ban after a referendum in September 2013 saw two in three voters backing the move.According to the Local, the Ticino government had wanted to ban burqas and niqabs as well as masks worn by demonstrators and balaclavas. Via: 911 | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China called on all parties on Friday to exercise restraint after North Korea s foreign minister was quoted as saying he believes the North could consider conducting a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang also told a daily news briefing in Beijing that China opposes unilateral sanctions outside the United Nations framework. His comments came after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered new sanctions against North Korea on Thursday over its nuclear and missile programs. | 1 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group said on Monday that air strikes on a market had killed at least 29 people in a rebel-held area of northwest Syria. Three air raids hit the town of Atareb, west of the city of Aleppo, the Britain-based observatory said. It said the death toll was likely to rise. Atareb is inside what is known as a de-escalation zone under a deal agreed between Turkey, Russia and Iran to reduce violence in the area. | 0 |
Trump warned us we d be sick of winning Who knew CNN would be sick of winning before Trump even officially assumes his role of President? The big surge on November 7 snapped a nine-day losing streak for stocks that many attributed to Donald Trump s newfound momentum. Wall Street had decided Clinton was going to be the next president and they wholeheartedly approved.So the fact that the market continued to rally last week after Trump won is, in some respects, even more surprising than the fact that he won in the first place.A Republican in the White House and Republicans keeping control of Congress increases the chances of a bill being passed that would lead to more infrastructure spending. There may also be less regulations on health care stocks and financials.Trump s anti-immigration stance could also be a big problem for U.S. tech companies, which have attracted a lot of talented foreign workers due to the H1-B visa program. Will Trump seek to end that?That may be one of the reasons why big tech giants Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), Facebook and Google owner Alphabet all fell last week. Silicon Valley is very wary of Trump and probably with good reason.After all, Trump waged a Twitter war with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos because he wasn t happy with the coverage he was getting from the Bezos-owned Washington Post.A Trump war on tech could be bad news for the market and economy. The tech sector is now one of the most important industries in the United States. Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are among the most valuable companies on the planet.So even though tech stocks zigged while the rest of the market zagged last week, that probably can t go on indefinitely. Prolonged weakness for big tech companies would have a negative impact on the whole market over the long haul. There s also the issue of how much Trump will actually be able to accomplish.Yes, Republicans control Congress. But House Speaker Paul Ryan wasn t exactly the biggest Trump supporter during the campaign. There could be more roadblocks to Trump s plans than expected on Capitol Hill. It is also hard to believe that Trump won t experience opposition in implementing policy. Trump and opposition are words that go hand in hand, said Mike O Rourke, chief market strategist of JonesTrading, in a report Monday.The title of O Rourke s report also summed up the rapid shift in sentiment. Trumpageddon to Trumptopia. Now this isn t to say that the market definitely is due for a crash during the Trump administration. But experts think investors may now need to take a step back and remember that there still isn t a lot that the market knows about possible Trump policies. There remains a great deal of uncertainty over what type of president Trump will actually be. In an election that was dominated by coverage of tweets, videos and emails, policy questions received surprisingly little airtime, said Andrew Sheets, a strategist with Morgan Stanley, in a report Sunday. Those questions are now crucial for markets. To a remarkable extent, investors we ve spoken to both before and after November 8 disagree on what President-elect Trump will actually do, Sheets added.That is scary. CNN Money | 1 |
PAUL SPERRY SPOKE WITH LOU DOBBS ON HIS REPORT ABOUT OBAMA S SHADOW GOVERNMENT:Obama has two things going for him: The judiciary is his lethal weapon. He stacked the courts during his 8 years with liberal judges who can make things really difficult for President Trump. We ve seen it in action with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Trump s Executive Order. President Trump should shake this court up ASAP! Yes, he can do it and he should! NEWT: JEFFERSON WOULD ABOLISH THE 9TH CIRCUIT COURT:The second thing that s troubling is the shadow government that Obama is setting up just blocks away from the White House. He s not going to let his legacy go down without a fight. He ll use the power of the evil doers like George Soros to pay for an army of destructive anarchists:PAUL SPERRY OF THE NYP: When former President Barack Obama said he was heartened by anti-Trump protests, he was sending a message of approval to his troops. Troops? Yes, Obama has an army of agitators numbering more than 30,000 who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.In what s shaping up to be a highly unusual post-presidency, Obama isn t just staying behind in Washington. He s working behind the scenes to set up what will effectively be a shadow government to not only protect his threatened legacy, but to sabotage the incoming administration and its popular America First agenda.He s doing it through a network of leftist nonprofits led by Organizing for Action. Normally you d expect an organization set up to support a politician and his agenda to close up shop after that candidate leaves office, but not Obama s OFA. Rather, it s gearing up for battle, with a growing war chest and more than 250 offices across the country.Since Donald Trump s election, this little-known but well-funded protesting arm has beefed up staff and ramped up recruitment of young liberal activists, declaring on its website, We re not backing down. Determined to salvage Obama s legacy, it s drawing battle lines on immigration, ObamaCare, race relations and climate change.Obama is intimately involved in OFA operations and even tweets from the group s account. In fact, he gave marching orders to OFA foot soldiers following Trump s upset victory. It is fine for everybody to feel stressed, sad, discouraged, he said in a conference call from the White House. But get over it. He demanded they move forward to protect what we ve accomplished. Now is the time for some organizing, he said. So don t mope. Far from sulking, OFA activists helped organize anti-Trump marches across US cities, some of which turned into riots. After Trump issued a temporary ban on immigration from seven terror-prone Muslim nations, the demonstrators jammed airports, chanting: No ban, no wall, sanctuary for all! Run by old Obama aides and campaign workers, federal tax records show nonpartisan OFA marshals 32,525 volunteers nationwide. Registered as a 501(c)(4), it doesn t have to disclose its donors, but they ve been generous. OFA has raised more than $40 million in contributions and grants since evolving from Obama s campaign organization Obama for America in 2013.OFA, in IRS filings, says it trains young activists to develop organizing skills. Armed with Obama s 2012 campaign database, OFA plans to get out the vote for Democratic candidates it s grooming to win back Congress and erect a wall of resistance to Trump at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.It will be aided in that effort by the Obama Foundation, run by Obama s former political director, and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, launched last month by Obama pal Eric Holder to end what he and Obama call GOP gerrymandering of congressional districts.Obama will be overseeing it all from a shadow White House located within two miles of Trump.DON T LET THE LEFT BE THE DEATH OF AMERICA! PLEASE DON T BE SILENT! SHOW UP AND SPEAK UP! | 0 |
Vanessa Tijerina was not politically active until a couple years ago. Then she started looking closely at problems in the healthcare system, feeling that mainstream politicians were not delivering solutions – and discovered Bernie Sanders.
Last September, at short notice, she drove three hours to San Antonio, Texas, from her home near the border with Mexico so she could join other Sanders supporters in a protest against a Democratic congressman who had criticised the Vermont senator. In January she marched through Manhattan for Sanders, inspired by his idealistic and unorthodox message.
And then the 74-year-old lost the Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton, and backed her for the White House last month at the national convention. That was where Tijerina and Sanders diverged.
“A lot of us waited with bated breath, wondering: what’s he going to do?” she said. “Because depending on what he did, that’s where the movement was either going to go or not go. He decided to stay there, and the movement can’t stay there. It cannot stay in a centrist environment. The movement is antagonising that environment so we can’t stay there.”
Tijerina and others were calling for a new phase of a Sanders-style political revolution on Thursday, as the Green party kicked off its presidential nominating convention in the improbable location of Houston, Texas – Big Oil’s back yard. (The convention’s slogan is: “Houston, We Have a Solution”.)
“To me the Green party was the only other option,” Tijerina said in a conference room at the University of Houston. “There’s just no way that anything centre or right of centre was going to get America where it needed to be.”
The 38-year-old nurse is standing as a Green party candidate for a Texas congressional district this November.
“When I found out about Jill Stein, which was literally a month after I found out about Bernie – depending on who you ask, she is perhaps more progressive than Bernie,” Tijerina said. “She is perhaps more aggressive politically than Bernie and she is perhaps, some would say, less afraid, or less intimidated – or whatever it is, she has what Bernie has and perhaps more.”
Stein is set to be confirmed as the Green party’s nominee on Saturday and is openly courting the seemingly large number of Sanders supporters who are reluctant or refusing to heed his call to support Clinton. In a Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, Stein is at 3.9%, behind the Libertarian party’s Gary Johnson, at 8%; Donald Trump is at 36.9% and Clinton at 43.5%.
Hardly numbers to threaten the duopoly, but enough to potentially complicate close races in swing states in November and indicative of significant unhappiness with the Democratic and Republican candidates. (In 2012, Johnson received only 0.99% and Stein 0.36% of the popular vote.) Enough also to awaken some deep-seated Democratic angst rooted in the trauma of 2000, when some blamed Green party candidate Ralph Nader’s presence in Florida for costing Al Gore the general election and sending George W Bush to the White House.
Adding to the sense of the Green party as an irritant for Democrats, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may address the convention via video link on Saturday, about two weeks after carefully timed leaked emails showed that Democratic National Committee officials seemingly plotted to undermine Sanders’ campaign, causing a storm and adding to his loyalists’ antagonism towards Clinton and the party.
Stein’s choice this week of the human rights activist Ajamu Baraka as her running mate might complicate the outreach. In a blogpost last September on the left’s response (or lack of it) to Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen, Baraka wrote: “Sanders supporters have not only fallen into the ideological trap of a form of narrow ‘left’ nativism, but also the white supremacist ethical contradiction that reinforces racist cynicism in which some lives are disposable for the greater good of the west.
“And as much as the ‘Sandernistas’ attempt to disarticulate Sanders ‘progressive’ domestic policies from his documented support for empire … it should be obvious that his campaign is an ideological prop – albeit from a center/left position – of the logic and interests of the capitalist-imperialist settler state.”
A request for comment made through Stein’s campaign was not returned. But it would likely take much more than some debatable blog articles to persuade many of the convention-goers in Houston to vote for an establishment figure they see as emblematic of a dishonest, warmongering status quo that is in thrall to big corporations and unwilling or unable to solve systemic inequalities.
“Voting for the oligarchy is not how you get rid of the oligarchy,” said Carlos Martinez, 40, an activist from Texas who creates social media content. “I in good conscience cannot vote for somebody that supports interventionist wars and supports what Hillary Clinton supports, and I will vote for Jill Stein.”
Sanders, some Clinton supporters – and Trump himself – have argued that casting a ballot for the Green party is tantamount to helping the Republican candidate. Stein and her supporters, of course, reject that idea.
“I really can’t tell who or what Donald Trump is,” Martinez said, “but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be fear-baited into supporting Hillary Clinton and I don’t think that the majority of Sanders supporters are scared to vote their conscience and they’re going to be fear-mongered into pulling the lever for somebody that’s against their own interests.”
Wearing a red “Feel the Bern” T-shirt, Pam Ellis attended a boisterous evening event designed to woo the “Bernie or Bust” crowd that drew a couple of hundred people.
“I have a conflict because I like Bernie; I never really cared that much for Hillary. Nothing specific or anything, I just feel like it’s more big money influence in politics,” the 57-year-old nurse said. Her top issues were access to education and healthcare, subjects that were at the heart of Sanders’ electoral pitch – focused, like Stein’s, on social justice.
“I think he furthered the Green party platform whether he intended to or not, brought it to the forefront and caused me to do a lot of research on the Green party, and that’s why I’m here now,” she said.
Ellis also dismissed the notion that voters should think tactically. “What good is it to live in the United States where you have the right to vote and the freedom to vote for who you want to, if you’re going to be scared into voting?” she said.
“I’m tired of the lesser of the evils. I’m just sick of that. That’s not what my father and his brothers went and fought in world war two for, so we could be scared into voting for one of two candidates. This is a huge country. We should have debates with the Libertarian party and the Green party. We need to hear from everybody.” | 0 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Wednesday a package of legislative and non-binding measures to reform the euro zone and make it more resilient to future crises. Below are the main proposals: The euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) should be transformed into a European Monetary Fund (EMF) with more responsibilities. In addition to providing loans to member states in financial trouble, the EMF would be a backstop for the euro zone s lender-funded bank resolution fund, the Single Resolution Fund. To make it more nimble, the EMF would in an emergency be able to take decisions with a majority vote, rather than with unanimity, as is the rule now. It could also develop new financial instruments that could be used to provide further support to states hit by financial shocks. A European Minister of Economy and Finance could start working from November 2019 when a new commission will take office. The minister would be at the same time a vice president of the commission, the chair of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers and would oversee the work of the new European Monetary Fund. The minister would promote and support the coordination and implementation of reforms in EU countries and would also be responsible for identifying an appropriate fiscal policy for the euro area as a whole. This new instrument would help countries hit by a crisis to maintain the same level of investment as in good times thanks to EU financial support. This could accelerate the recovery of troubled states. An ailing state could receive automatic support with a mix of loans and grants from the EU budget and the EMF. The financial aid would be strictly conditional on clear criteria and continuous sound policies, in particular those leading to more convergence within the euro area . EU states will be encouraged to carry out structural reforms with funds from the EU budget that could be made available already from next year. Technical and financial support would be provided to the EU countries that are not members of the 19-state euro zone and which want to join the common currency area. The intergovernmental Fiscal Compact treaty that has introduced stricter budgetary rules for all EU countries except Croatia, the Czech Republic and Britain which did not sign it, should be incorporated into EU law. The process is to increase the democratic legitimacy of EU fiscal rules, but faces opposition from countries like Italy that fear the tight provisions of the compact will become permanent. It is also criticized in Germany, where many fear it could lead to a softening of the current fiscal rules. | 0 |
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It's no secret just how much time HGTV stars Chip and Joanna Gaines spend together. They have four children together and run an entire Magnolia empire together, so needless to say their time apart is few and far between.
As Joanna writes on her blog “Magnolia Market,” they don't really want to be apart. Image Credit: Donna Ward/Getty Images
In fact, she says that early on in their marriage they learned that they work better when they are together than when they are apart:
“One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was. We seem to give each other energy. We function better together than we do apart, and I don't think either one of us has ever felt the urge to say, 'I need a break from you.'”
And although the inspirational couple admits they have their little squabbles every now and then, they never find themselves in full-blown arguments... anymore, that is. A photo posted by Joanna Stevens Gaines (@joannagaines) on Aug 19, 2016 at 7:07pm PDT
During an interview with YouTube's Jefferson Bethke , Chip described a fight they had as newlyweds that Joanna says ended all other fights:
“I remember when we were first newly weds, we had just bought our first little flip property and we were working at this thing till like two o'clock every morning for weeks at a time. When it got to basically the end of this sleepless endeavor that we were on, Jo and I got into some argument about something completely irrelevant.”
At this point in the story, Jo chimed in saying that the fight started because of something Chip said, but never explained exactly what her husband said some 12 years ago. A photo posted by Chip Gaines (@chippergaines) on Oct 19, 2016 at 3:09pm PDT
That's when Chip continued by saying:
"Jo slammed this gallon of primer down on the floor and the primer bounced back up and literally hit her on the face, as if she's been egged in the face, so this primer is just falling of off her eye lashes, falling off of her nose and mouth.
In my family, you know we are just average middle class American folks, when we would get into these knock-down-drag-out fights and something hilarious happens, we would all be like, 'Timeout, you got primer on your face. That's hilarious.' You know, it's God's way of telling everybody to calm down, you're going to make it."
In Jo's family, however, having something like that happen during a fight changes the nature of the fight from simple argument to “ninja warfare.”
"She started doing these roundabout high kicks toward my face and head. I remember, it was almost like a Matrix moment, where in slow motion, she is wheel-housing toward my face and for no reason I was doing these complete lateral bends that I didn't even know I was capable of.
But in that same moment I was like, 'I love this woman, I think this is going to work.'"
As Joanna made sure to point out, that was the first and only fight of that intensity they have had as a married couple, and Chip agrees with Joanna that they got all of their fighting out in that one night.
However, there was one other time that Chip says Joanna pulled a knife out on him, but Jo didn't want that story told.
If they can get past all of Chip's bad jokes, then this adorable, creative couple can get through anything. | 1 |
21st Century wire says The FBI recently released new documents regarding the bizarre and still forensically critiqued Sandy Hook elementary school shooting tragedy. SANDY HOOK Many questions still remain in this perplexing case. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)KEY POINT: It s important to remember that even though the events at Sandy Hook were said to have been carried out by a deranged lone gunman named Adam Lanza, initial reports on several CBS and ABC affiliates following the Sandy Hook mass shooting stated there was a second shooter who was apprehended at the scene.We should also be reminded that mainstream media reportage of the Sandy Hook tragedy took audiences down several rabbit holes of their own making, eventually implicating an unlikely suspect (left photo) with Asperger s syndrome, in an apparently motiveless crime.Not since the forensically questionable Columbine High School shooting massacre, had the corporate media been so fixated on a tragic shooting, focusing their efforts on politicizing the apparent crime, while investigators offered very little in terms of evidence in their official story.On March 28th of 2013, a few short months after the Sandy Hook shooting, an article entitled Newtown Killer s Obsessions, in Chilling Detail was published by the NY Times. In that article, the public learned that the Lanza s were unknown to authorities and that there were never any disturbances at the family residence that would have prepped law enforcement prior to the school shooting: Two law-enforcement officials who were initially involved in the investigation said in recent interviews that the Newtown police had never been called to the Lanza home for any disturbances, and that before the shootings the family was basically unknown to the authorities.They said they believed that Mr. Lanza had spent most of his time in the basement of the home, primarily playing a warfare video game, Call of Duty. This aspect of the story had remained virtually unquestioned until the recent release of FBI information this week.Earlier this week, an NBC affiliate in Connecticut published an article disclosing the newly released FBI documents regarding the Sandy Hook case. Here s a short passage of that article: The documents include reports by FBI agents who interviewed people about Lanza. Large portions of many of the documents were redacted, including the names of the people who spoke to the agents.The documents also offer a window into the early days of the investigation, as agents chased false leads and gathered evidence of Lanza s isolation.A year after the massacre, state police released a final investigative document that concluded Lanza was obsessed with firearms, death and mass shootings, but that the motive may never be known. While the article continued by placing a heavy emphasis on the media crafted stage-like persona of the alleged shooter Adam Lanza, we re told for the first time of his alleged sexual perversions, as the video game/gun obsessed millennial, apparently also spent time analyzing mass shooting crimes.This murky portrait of the Sandy Hook shooter finally emerges nearly five years after the media sensationalized school shooting. But perhaps the most shocking claim has come from an unnamed Newtown resident alleging that Lanza may have already been well-known to the FBI or possibly the CIA prior to the Sandy Hook school massacre occurring: A Newtown resident told the FBI that Nancy Lanza said Adam had once hacked into a government computer system and federal authorities either FBI or CIA agents showed up at their door.Nancy Lanza told the person that she had to convince the agents that her son was just very intelligent and was challenging himself to see if he could hack into a government system. She said agents told her that if Adam was that smart, he could get a job with their agency someday. QUESTION: Why is the public just now learning that Lanza may have already been known to authorities via his government computer hack and why wouldn t various intelligence agencies continue to monitor his behavior after committing an illegal act that may have been a national security concern?The troubling Sandy Hook saga continues to have more questions than answers READ MORE DAILY SHOOTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 0 |
one would hope that, at least for government institutions, only U.S.A. manufactured computers, from U.S.A. manufactured parts can be used.
And after his tax and regulation FIX, perhaps we will see a resurgence of U.S.A. manufacturing of EVERYTHING. | 1 |
Alert! Alinsky tactics at work here! Remember Pick a Target? Well, the media and Deep State have picked their target Breitbart News has been exposing H.R. McMaster so now the media and Deep State are going hard after Steve Bannon EVEN HARDER THAN THEY HAD BEEN BEFORE. The media and politicians have been targeting Bannon since the election. They ve been calling him all of the usual names like Nazi or White Supremacist . They re clearly afraid of Bannon because he has the media and the left figured out just like Breitbart did. We re hoping Bannon won t get squeezed out by Kelly and McMaster! This could cause a HUGE policy shift for the Trump presidency. Not good, not good at all for Trump supporters who want America back after 8 awful years of Obama.White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster repeatedly refused say whether he could work with chief strategist Steve Bannon Sunday on Meet The Press, dodging the question three times! Three times! This is a Deep State wake up call!IS BANNON ON THE WAY OUT? NOT GOOD!Did you notice that Scaramucci went after President Trump today? AND Steve Bannon? Yes, he was on the morning shows letting it rip on those two!Axios reported Saturday that Bannon has entered President Donald Trump s doghouse and that top officials believe he s part of leaks meant to target McMaster. Bannon was previously executive chairman of Breitbart, and the right-wing website has published a series of stories attacking McMaster in recent weeks.SHOULDN T THE TRUTH COME OUT ON MCMASTER?New Chief of Staff John Kelly has said he will not tolerate the infighting and anonymous comments to the media that characterized predecessor Reince Priebus tenure, according to Politico.Earlier in the interview, host Chuck Todd asked what was going on between him and Bannon. McMaster dismissed the saga as a lot of noise and didn t mention Bannon s name.At the end of the interview, Todd repeatedly asked McMaster if he could work together with Bannon, but McMaster wouldn t answer. Can you and Steve Bannon still work together in this White House or not? Todd asked. I get to work together with a broad range of talented people, and it is a privilege every day to enable the national security team, McMaster said. You didn t answer. Can you and Steve Bannon work in that same White House? Todd asked. I am ready to work with anybody who will help advance the president s agenda and advance the security, prosperity of the American people, McMaster said. Do you believe Steve Bannon does that? Todd asked. I believe that everyone who works in the White House, who has the privilege, the great privilege every day of serving their nation, should be motivated by that goal, McMaster said.VIA: WFB | 1 |
Not too long ago, the Republican Party and Donald Trump made a disgusting move to screw over millions of Americans when they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with the American Health Care Act (Trumpcare). The plan fortunately didn t work out and was shot down immediately, leaving the GOP stunned and upset that their disastrous bill didn t pass. They ve just been delivered another devastating blow, this time by Americans who are showing the Republican Party they haven t forgotten.Thanks to the GOP s unethical Obamacare replacement, Obamacare is now more popular than ever more popular than the Republican Party as a whole!Ezra Klein tweeted this amazing graph to illustrate:This is going to tear Trump and the GOP apart, considering how desperate they were to get rid of Obamacare. The overwhelming support that the Affordable Care Act is receiving now will surely make it harder for Republicans to get rid of it in the future, if they dare try again.This serves as a major warning to the GOP if they keep trying to get rid of Obama s legacy and policies that clearly work, their party will lose all support and soon there will be no Republican Party. If conservatives thought they would have Americans standing behind them during their attempt to repeal a health care law that provides access to more Americans than ever, they ve just learned that they were very, VERY wrong.The GOP has no idea how badly the party has been damaged under Trump. He is completely obsessed with pushing legislation through, and it has been working against the Republican Party as each attempt of his fails and the party becomes more unpopular than ever. With the introduction of Trumpcare, Republicans have basically paved the way for Democrats to get Congress back in two years, and getting Trump out of the White House.Featured image via Win McNamee / Getty Images | 0 |
The Internet is buzzing today after white supremacist presidential candidate Donald Trump was caught by hotel staff snorting cocaine.
Maria Gonzalez an employee at the Folks INN & Suites Hotel in Phoenix brought room service to his room witnessed it all.
When I walked in I saw 3 naked prostitutes and maybe 100,000 in hundred dollars bills and a mountain of white powder on the table, I thought it was a dog on the floor sleep but it was his hair piece, he was bald and sweating like crazy. I asked him where to put the food and he asked me did I wanna take a hit, I told him no but Ill take some of that money, he called me a free loader, told me to get the f*ck out his room and go back to my country
We reached out to Trumps campaign and he released a statement saying:
I did not disrespect that woman shes a god damn liar and I dont do drugs I do business, when I get elected all hotel employees will have to be U.S. Citizens, they keep taking real American peoples jobs and that will stop, not on my watch
Maria Gonzalez has a cell phone video of what happened and has contacted several media outlets to sell the footage. So expect the video to hit the Internet any day now. Stay Tuned. | 1 |
The report exposed in an email shared by Wikileaks shows the results of a review that was completed in 2011, by Jennifer Reynoso, a New York lawyer. The report states that the Clinton Foundation is missing several policies/procedures that are required by law (e.g.,record retention policy). The report goes on to give the following recommendation:In addition to pointing out that employees of the Clinton Foundation are underpaid as compared to comparable positions in other companies, the email also states that the overall morale of the company is low and the staff would like to see more structure. STAFF MORALE IS LOW AND STAFF IS HUNGRY FOR MORE STRUCTUREIronically, the staff complained about a policy not being made available for an employee to blow the whistle on potential wrongdoings within the non-profit. Given Bill Clinton s history as a sexual predator and his role in the Clinton Foundation, it shouldn t come as a surprise that there isn t a strong Sexual Harassment policy in place. | 0 |
Home / Be The Change / The State / Sheriff Says Cannabis Makes People Murderers Because “Rational Thought” Leads to Violence Sheriff Says Cannabis Makes People Murderers Because “Rational Thought” Leads to Violence Claire Bernish May 10, 2016 35 Comments
It isn’t gang violence. It isn’t even domestic violence. What is the leading cause of murder in Carson City? According to Sheriff Ken Furlong, it’s marijuana.
“It’s against that law,” Furlong told local ABC affiliate, KOLO 8. “It does change people’s attitude and we do see people dying as a result of it, needlessly, and there’s no excuse for it.
“In the last 13-15 years, all of the violence we’ve seen that has turned deadly, have [sic] been in someway related to a marijuana issue.”
Before you get too excited, thinking Furlong nailed it — the fact cannabis remains a federal Schedule 1 drug and thus technically illegal in the ongoing yet utterly failed war on drugs — that isn’t all he had to say on the matter.
KOLO 8 noted the 2016 deaths of 18-year-old Grant Watkins and 40-year-old Dennis Watkins, Jr. — both killed during transactions involving the sale of cannabis.
“During a transaction, they set it up, ‘I’m going to sell this to you,’ then all of a sudden someone gets shot and killed,” Furlong continued. “It’s not because they were under the influence; it’s because they were doing something deadly and it turned out that way.”
As Furlong explained, the threat to life isn’t due to the drug’s effects on the system, per se , but the ‘culture and crimes’ surrounding it ‘that can be overwhelming,’ as KOLO 8 paraphrased.
“It’s a very cherished culture and people have very strong beliefs,” the Sheriff elaborated. “When you violate someone’s beliefs, you put them in a position where they can act out.”
But Furlong’s complete lack of understanding of all things cannabis — including both medicinal and recreational aspects — didn’t stop there. According to the Sheriff, the community faces repercussions following a law enforcement drug bust — because addicts suddenly have no way to procure their … cannabis.
“We’re watching very closely, not only for a spike in crime, but for people who are in critical need of medical care because of that lack of treatment, based on withdrawal from the drug,” he asserted.
Yes, you read that right. Carson City’s Sheriff-in-charge firmly believes depriving people of cannabis — a plant scientifically and anecdotally proven to save lives — will lead to a crime wave and health crisis of no small proportions.
But what he explained next, as paraphrased by KOLO 8, harkens back to the earliest days of cannabis prohibition and the propagandist classic, Reefer Madness:
‘Sheriff Furlong says unlike other drugs like heroin or methamphetamines that can distort your mind, people using marijuana usually have rational trains of thought which give them the ability to act out and become violent when someone takes away or violates their drug.’
At this point, if you’re having a good laugh, stunned, or shaking your head, you most certainly are not alone.
Obviously, Sheriff Furlong grasps the potential perils in black market trade — but he wholly fails to recognize removing cannabis’ illegality would thus remove the risk of violence. When the State is removed from consensual business transactions, individuals are free to conduct trade as they see fit — if cannabis were abundant and legal, it would be highly unlikely people would continue killing each other over soured deals.
But Furlong’s stupefying lack of knowledge concerning the effects cannabis has on the body, though certainly laughable, also should concern the residents he’s tasked with overseeing.
Mischaracterizing cannabis so broadly as to believe it will warp people’s minds to a heightened frenzy where they’re likely to commit violence is downright dangerous.
For one thing, this inexcusable misperception could color the training Sheriff Furlong decides to give law enforcement trainees and officers. Considering the absolutely epidemic national spate of violence inflicted by trigger-happy cops who already seem to have an irrational fear of the public, training them to further view cannabis users as likely to act out physically is nothing short of dangerous.
If sheriff’s deputies conduct a raid on a residence known for cannabis transactions with the preconception the people inside could turn violent instantly, it’s arguable they would be more likely to misinterpret anything they encounter. This unnecessarily heightened fear that their life could be in peril from a cannabis-crazed maniac would have obvious influence on their decisions for whether or not to employ deadly force.
Sadly, Sheriff Furlong likely isn’t alone among law enforcement in the United States. As long as the drug war remains firmly entrenched in policy and culture, dangerous misunderstandings and lack of knowledge will arguably be the greater source of violence than would the substances be were they not illegal.
In the meantime, while forced to pick apart drug laws state by state, perhaps drug and cannabis education — not fear- and prohibition-based propaganda, but serious education — should be mandatory in law enforcement training. Share Google + Lannim
All he did, without knowing it, was admit that the real criminals are the ones who enforce prohibition and create this culture of violence. When you suppress a legitimate market it will be replaced by a black market that is regulated by force instead of voluntary interaction. Violence begets violence, and it doesn’t get any more violent than the state. ACAB Matt Agorist
EXACTLY! James Michael
Considering the government never created a constitutional amendment allowing prohibition the entire drug war is treason and felonius…. EVERY killing a murder…. EVERY raid a felony home invasion…. EVERY jailing a false imprisonment…. EVERY fine extortion…… The cops and the courts are a criminal enterprise…. AKA RICO….. and meet the definition of it perfectly…. Lannim
Exactly. I would say that the drug war would be just as illegitimate and criminal with an amendment, but being able to argue that it’s ALSO unconstitutional helps, considering most Americans think their rights are contingent upon what’s written on sacred documents. b4integrity
The federal government is a continuing, criminal, domestic, terrorist enterprise.
We need a DEA eradication program. Paschn
Goddamn it does my old heart good to see folks lay things out as you did! Couple that with SCOTUS’ treason with corporate citizenship, Patriot act, Habeas corpus gone, Posse Comitatus, gone granting civil immunity to big pharma, setting up a federal committee to “review” claims made by citizens harmed by “safe” vaccines, then paying off those claims WITH TAX PAYER MONEY to protect the bottom line of the elites…. Murdering Ranchers for pointing out the FED’s treason.. Let us not forget the 2 sets of books most governments run (CAFR). Let me know when you folks have had enough SEWER NATION – IDIOT CULTURE. Centrist Force
This is easy to solve. end the criminal part of this. There is no need for marijuana to be illegal. You want to end drug deals and guns get the cops out of the equation and nobody needs to play this mob games. Gregory Pius
We did that in Oregon and Washington. Tax revenues are bursting the state coffers, and the police now have to find honest work (or at least overzealously enforce something else). Everybody wins. Sadly, almost all LEOs I’ve ever heard to talked to have a deeply-held conviction that legalization of cannabis will result in the loss of their job. A … kaynash
We have far too many ignorant people in positions of power…..of course our press doesn’t help either, they are just as ignorant, so no one is getting educated from that source any longer. But really, a Sheriff? If you are going to criminalize people, you should have a much better understanding of what you are saying. Because thinking people in law enforcement are more than aware that it’s criminalizing drugs that is the problem….and this guy actually comes close to realizing that and then draws the totally wrong conclusions from it. dufas_duck
“When you violate someone’s beliefs, you put them in a position where they can act out.”
Sounds like he described the average policeman…….. Gregory Pius | 0 |
Wall Street's Calling The Sheep To The Slaughter Again! We return to the fiscal theme because one thing we are endeavoring to accomplish here at Contra Corner is to stay ahead of the shocks and surprises that neither Wall Street nor the mainstream media can seem to even remotely anticipate. In that regard, we believe that the shock of Donald Trump's election will soon be vastly exceeded by an even more shocking shutdown of Washington governance within days of the inauguration. | 1 |
A young British woman was stabbed to death on Jerusalem’s tram network on Good Friday, with her killer identified by local police as a Palestinian male “terrorist”. [The unidentified woman, who was in her early 20s and a student from Britain in Jerusalem on a tourist visa, was killed by “multiple stab wounds to her upper body” by a “mentally ill man” identified by The Jerusalem Post as Jamil Tamimi. The suspect has been arrested. Update to stabbing attack: Women in 20s dies In hospital few minutes ago. Arab Terrorist arrested who carried out attack is from Rasel Amud. — Micky Rosenfeld (@MickyRosenfeld) April 14, 2017, The stabbing, which is the second time in weeks that a Palestinian individual has launched an attack in the city, comes as Jewish and Christian pilgrims congregate in the city for Holy Week, Good Friday, and Passover. According to reports, the attack took place on Jerusalem’s light rail tram system, and that the man pulled a kitchen knife from his bag and started stabbing other passengers as the train approached Kikar Tzahal, the ‘IDF Square’ near the old city. In addition to the young British citizen who was killed in the attack, a man and a pregnant woman were also injured, and are receiving treatment in hospital — the pregnant woman having been stabbed in the belly. Britain’s Sky News reports the comments of a spokesman of the Israeli security services Shin Bet agency, who said: “This is one of many instances where a Palestinian suffering personal strife … chooses to carry out an attack in order to find release for his problem. ” Terrorist who carried out knife attack is from Rasal amud in his 50s. Arrested by police at the scene. Woman in 20s in critical condition. pic. twitter. — Micky Rosenfeld (@MickyRosenfeld) April 14, 2017, Police photo of weapon, Police commander Yoram Halevi said of the attacker that he had a history of sexual and domestic violence and was “very mentally unstable”. It is reported he had attempted to take his own life in the past, and that he is now being interrogated by police to establish his motives and to discover whether he has any accomplices. | 0 |
Email It’s not just the FBI that has been forced to reveal that they’ve made new and worrisome discoveries about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal .
The Department of the Defense apparently sent Congress a letter on Tuesday detailing their discovery of at least 1,000 new, previously unknown Clinton emails between she and General David Petraeus. House Oversight Orders DoD Sec. Ashton Carter Hand Over Clinton E-Mails to Pertraeus. #DC https://t.co/E19GbZ8SX6 pic.twitter.com/aghRlCMbqI
— Bruce Porter, Jr. (@NetworksManager) October 29, 2016 LOOKs like it declassified this morning now Ashton Carter n mix wonder how many going down 4 #HillarysEmail #DoD #DC https://t.co/vzQlohNZ4r
— Bruce Porter, Jr. (@NetworksManager) October 29, 2016 Mon House likely knew more #HillarysEmail Tues House order DoD give Clinton-Petraeus emails
— Bruce Porter, Jr. (@NetworksManager) October 29, 2016
These 1,000 new emails are likely to be quite important, considering that the General was the Commander of CENTCOM and then the Director of the CIA. While we may not know what appeared in these emails, the probability that these are simple boilerplate political issues is low. The most likely reason for Clinton and Petraeus to be communicating would be to discuss classified security issues.
Even more troublesome (for Clinton and for our national security) is what the FBI seems to have discovered on devices acquired from Anthony Weiner (and Huma Abedin).
The FBI seems to have discovered “ tens of thousands” of emails on a laptop belonging to Abedin, and in those emails they’ve discovered a worrisome amount of obviously classified material .
What is more troubling is the amount of redaction involved in these emails which migrated to the open email account, which as we now know ended up in Anthony Weiner’s computer: in the above example, the two pages of timetables and deliverables attached to the email were 100 percent redacted, with “PAGE DENIED” stamped across the first redacted page.
An argument can be made that the extensive redaction confirms confidential material was part of the transmission…
… According to the NYT , the number of Huma emails that made their way to Weiner’s PC was staggering:
The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the tens of thousand
While this could (and should) damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes, the latest revelations could mean even stiffer punishment for Abedin in the not-too-distant future. Remember, Abedin swore under oath that had given up each and every device that contained State Department emails, and that she had held nothing back from investigators. This latest discovery proves that story to be a complete lie.
This should serve as a reminder to everyone that Hillary Clinton isn’t the only person involved in this morass that deserves to serve time in prison. There is a small circle of Clinton confidantes that all owe the American people a few years in a federal prison, including Huma Abedin .
Article posted with permission from Constitution.com Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . shares | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May congratulated Donald Trump on winning the U.S. presidency on Wednesday, saying Britain and the United States would remain “strong and close partners on trade, security and defense”. “I would like to congratulate Donald Trump on being elected the next president of the United States, following a hard-fought campaign,” May said in a statement. “Britain and the United States have an enduring and special relationship based on the values of freedom, democracy and enterprise. We are, and will remain, strong and close partners on trade, security and defense,” she said. “I look forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump, building on these ties to ensure the security and prosperity of our nations in the years ahead.” | 0 |
Less than a month from Election Day, Donald Trump is behind by double digits in the polls. It’s clear his campaign needs to do everything it can to get out the vote.
It’s also clear that Trump does not have a normal campaign; it is small, apparently disorganized, and, compared with Hillary Clinton’s operation, woefully behind in conventional campaign tactics. Trump is notably lagging.
In September, his then newly appointed campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said it was her intention to overhaul the campaign’s ground game tactics. "Mr. Trump is an unconventional candidate, but I have an appreciation for ... conventional tactics," Conway said, according to CNN. "We've got to invest in the fundamentals. ... Do I wish these things had been done before? Sure. But we're trying to accelerate it, and not abandon it."
But is it too late? Even if the Trump campaign has been building up his operation since September, it is irrefutable that Clinton’s campaign has invested more resources for much longer.
To ask, I called up Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the director of research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the author of Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns, a study of the resurgence of ground game in American politics. As the forms of political communication popular in the 1990s — like dominating the mainstream media and using political advertising — have become diluted, Nielsen makes the case that personalized political communication, with staffers and volunteers talking to voters on the ground, is an increasingly impactful arm of competitive political campaigns.
His insight on the 2016 election: Trump certainly didn’t do himself any favors by deprioritizing his ground game, and that could have adverse effects on the Republican Party in the future.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
We have one candidate, Hillary Clinton, who is running close to a textbook campaign. Then you have Trump, who is only now, with his most recent hires in Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon, building some ground game. It’s not nothing, but it’s still minuscule compared to Clinton’s operation. How unprecedented is this imbalance?
We have probably not seen this kind of imbalance since the ’70s. The closest historical analogy is the George McGovern/Nixon race — where you have one candidate who is clearly in the mainstream of his party and has the support of the conventional funders, activists, and the party organization, and you have another candidate [who] is a very polarizing figure with strong support from a subset of the party but whom many from the mainstream of the party regard with great skepticism.
I live in Europe now, and we have more experience in Europe than Americans with political candidates that are seen as extreme by much of the establishment but actually do much better with the electorate than worthy observers expect them to do. I think we have seen many of the same tendencies — that if people do not expect you to be very measured and controlled and on message all the time, they never expect that of you. Donald Trump’s campaign has understood that he is not held to those [campaign] standards, and that gives him room to maneuver. That is very, very different for Hillary Clinton.
In your writings about the history of ground game, you call this era the resurgence of the “ground war.” Does Donald Trump’s approach — focusing on media messaging — shift that trend back?
I don’t think [the resurgence] is shifting at all. If Hillary Clinton’s campaign were prioritizing other forms of campaign communication, that would really signify a large structural and pragmatic shift of how campaigns think about strategic communication. But Donald Trump’s campaign is as unusual as he is as a candidate. I think we know for sure that had the candidate from the Republican Party been Scott Walker or Jeb Bush, then the Republican Party would try to operate in the same way that the Hillary Clinton campaign is operating.
Fair enough. Does this punch any holes in how we think about how effective or imperative having a ground game is? There have been times this election cycle where you could argue Clinton wasn’t doing as well as she would like, even having such a robust ground operation.
Well, I would push back against that in two ways. A lot of political science work that would try to estimate the likely outcome of this presidential election on the basis of fundamentals — economic fundamentals, and what we know from history on the relative advantage of incumbency versus being a challenger — would actually suggest that this very well could be a Republican year. Compared to that baseline, Mr. Trump is not doing as well.
What is important to realize is that one can be competitive in many different ways. One way to be competitive is to do things by the book. Another way to be competitive is to offer something completely new that some people find attractive and seems to be the approach of Mr. Trump.
So is the point here that for Clinton, ground game is important, but Donald Trump doesn’t seem to need it?
I think there is no question that Donald Trump would be more competitive if they had a better ground game.
Let me frame this in another way. Past research says ground game can improve a candidate’s odds by 1 to 5 percentage points. Given the truly abnormal nature of this campaign, how would you go about studying the effects of ground game in this election?
The disadvantage of the Trump campaign is in its ability to turn out voters — we will only know after Election Day how significant that advantage is when we see the difference between the polls and the actual outcome.
You can think of turning out voters in two different ways: One is to say that you turn them out by making sure they do not forget, they are registered to vote, they send in their early ballots when possible, and on and on. All the things that ground operations are mostly focused on; the nuts and bolts of turning out the vote.
Another way to turn out your supporters is to ratchet up the intensity of the choice they face. If you can convince large parts of the public that this is a defining moment in political history and if you don’t get out and vote for your candidate, things will go very badly, that’s another way to turn out the vote. That doesn’t rely on a ground game, and it is relatively clear that the Trump campaign relied on the second version. It was message-driven and not driven by a ground game.
Personally, I think it is very unlikely that that alone will let the campaign realize its full potential. They are at a significant disadvantage — but we will only know in November.
Explain the case for investing in a ground game.
One thing that is a little bit overlooked is the extent to which building a good ground game relies on years of investment, in staff but also in technology: building voter databases and interfaces, and making them useful in the field. It’s just clear not only that the Democratic Party was ahead of the Republican Party in 2012 but also that the ability of the Republican Party to narrow that gap or to overcome that gap has been significantly undermined by the fact that the party nominee has not prioritized investing and catching up here.
One side of this question of campaigning is: Where do you place your bets, where do you invest your money, what is your messaging in terms of strategy and organization?
But you can’t buy this off the shelf. You can’t order a good database even if you have all the money in the world. You can’t just go to Amazon and buy a perfect voter file and the technology to put it to use. There is an important question of whether the Republican Party is falling even further behind in having an effective infrastructure for an effective ground game and a competitive ground game.
So when Kellyanne Conway admitted that the Trump campaign was behind in building a ground game, but that they weren’t going to give up, you’re saying the damage has been done.
The damage is done. You can’t unfurl a cutting-edge ground operation in such a short period of time. There is no question about that. That is simply impossible. You can always invest and always improve, but you can’t possibly put together the kind of operation or the kind of infrastructure that it would require to have a fully competitive organization.
The fundamental issue here is that when you think about American political parties, there is no centralized decision-making. The only time you have that is when you have an incumbent president who will run for reelection.
We saw this very clearly in the 2000s. George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2004 was the most sophisticated, well-organized, and professional campaign in a long time. It was an extraordinarily well-run and well-thought-through campaign in part because they knew who the candidate was going to be. They could fundraise. They could invest. They could collaborate with the state parties and other actors. Again, the 2012 Barack Obama campaign was a similar story: It was a very well-run and professionally organized and well-thought-through campaign in part because of the fact that they knew who was running and they could build the organization around that.
But if you are out of power and you don’t have a presumptive nominee, and then you have a primary process that leads to a candidate that then is regarded with some skepticism by many of the players you need to line up — but also if that candidate, in particular, himself does not chose to catch up — then it becomes very difficult.
You write that there is no evidence that supports the idea of a consistent decline of face-to-face communication in politics. That campaigns cannot rely on “the media” alone to do it. Donald Trump is relying on the media. How does that change the impact of ground game for Clinton?
That only increases the importance of a good ground game for the candidates that want to run a conventional campaign.
My fundamental argument in Ground Wars is that the modes of political communication that dominated in the 1990s were a heavy emphasis in controlling the mainstream media through spin and PR and heavy emphasis in television advertising focusing on voters who were unlikely to pay much attention to newspapers and television news. Those dominant forms of campaign communication became weaker, because fewer and fewer voters who could be persuaded could be reached through television advertising.
On one end, [there is] a sort of engagement strategy of using social media and digital media where you engage with your core supporters in a much closer and [more] direct way than in the past.
But most importantly, [there is] this investment in the much larger ground operation putting many more people — volunteers but also paid staffers — to work, and relying on much, much more sophisticated technology in terms of targeting those contacts.
Campaign advertising experts will say it is very hard to measure impact. Is it the same with ground game?
There is no question that longer-term persuasion is really difficult to actually measure. We know that any effect present at one point in time is very likely to decay over time. People will be cultivated through a lifetime of exposure. In many ways, it is very artificial too — each one of us is touched by hundreds of different messages every day of a political nature. Trying to isolate the effect of one individual message is almost too artificial to help us understand how any political communication works.
But ultimately, in some ways, ground game is a much simpler thing to understand, because it is less about persuasion and more about turnout. You have a very clear measure of whether people turn out or not, and you have direct data.
Persuasion is very hard to accomplish. Motivation and activation are demonstrably doable — in particular if you have personal contacts and in particular if you have motivated volunteers going door to door. | 0 |
Well first of all, politicians, especially those elected President of the United States, are very adept at creating straw men; taking something that they feel rhetorically works to their advantage and using it. That s exactly what the President did. My question did not suggest he was content with the captivity of those four Americans. My question was about the contentment or the satisfaction or the realization that it was necessary within the context of this deal to leave them unaccounted for. That was the essence of the question. Clearly it struck a nerve. That was my intention. | 0 |
The first time the Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, its constitutional foundation under attack, John G. Roberts Jr. was its unlikely savior. In a spectacular display of spot-welding, the chief justice joined fellow conservatives on some points and brought liberals on board for others. Roberts was the only member of the court to endorse the entire jerry-rigged thing, and even he made sure to distance himself from the substance of the law. (“It is,” he wrote, “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”) Still, his efforts rescued President Obama’s signature achievement on grounds that many had dismissed as an afterthought.
As long as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is on the court, he will most often be the decider when the justices split along their familiar ideological fault lines. But, slowly and quietly, Roberts is the one trying to build its legacy. He sees it as somehow exempt from the partisan fugue that long ago enveloped Washington. Justice Stephen G. Breyer has worried that the public might see him and his colleagues as “nine junior-varsity politicians”; public approval of the Supreme Court is falling. But while all of the justices bristle at the notion of a political court, the eponymous head of the Roberts court has the most to lose. After all, its decisions cannot be respected if the court is not respected. “It is a very serious threat to the independence and integrity of the courts to politicize them,” Roberts said at his 2005 confirmation hearings.
Roberts, 60, jokes about the “odd historical quirk” that gives the chief justice only one vote. But he has learned to use the tools that come with the job: He shapes the discussion at conference; he writes the court’s opinion, or assigns it strategically, when he is in the majority; he’s happy to settle for nonthreatening, incremental changes that may bloom later into something more. And last term, what Roberts has described as the chief justice’s “particular obligation to try to achieve consensus” paid off. The share of unanimous decisions soared to 66 percent, a level not seen since the 1940s. The share of 5-to-4 decisions, high during Roberts’s tenure compared with those of other chief justices, fell to 14 percent, the lowest since he joined the court.
And then here comes Obamacare II. In King v. Burwell , to be argued Wednesday, plaintiffs say the text of the law must be interpreted in a way that would neuter it, canceling health insurance subsidies for about 7.5 million Americans in at least 34 states. Can Roberts’s portrayal of the Supreme Court as above politics survive another round with the most partisan issue of the decade?
Roberts, of course, has not ceased to be a conservative. Before Obamacare — or since — it’s hard to think of a case in which he has not voted the way conservative activists had hoped when they recommended him to President George W. Bush. The Roberts court has been described as the most pro-business in history. Its liberals complain that consumers are on a losing streak and that the court has imposed new roadblocks for those trying to prove discrimination.
And when the issue is important to the chief justice, or when there seems to be no chance for compromise, he has been decisive. In a suite of cases, for instance, the court has systematically dismantled campaign finance restrictions, calling them hostile to free speech rights — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission being the most famous of several 5-to-4 votes. Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the most recent, which featured the Republican National Committee as a plaintiff.
He has also forcefully opposed the government’s use of racial classifications, and he wrote to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Roberts, unlike Kennedy or even Justice Antonin Scalia, had never been the lone conservative to join the court’s liberals to make a majority in a major case — until the Affordable Care Act.
Yet chief justices tend not to see the court as a vehicle for advancing their unadulterated ideas. A transformation came over Roberts’s predecessor and mentor, William H. Rehnquist, after becoming chief. As an associate justice, Rehnquist wrote so many solo dissents that his clerks awarded him a Lone Ranger doll. But like chief justices before him, in his new role he felt a responsibility to guard the court’s precedents and image. The most famous example is his metamorphosis on the Miranda rule, requiring police officers to read suspects their rights. For years, Rehnquist had denounced the rule as constitutionally unsound. But after his ascent he voted to uphold it, saying the warnings “have become part of our national culture.”
Roberts came to the court as chief, so there is no similar evolution to judge. But those who know him say his vision of the responsibilities of the chief is paramount. “Associate Justice Roberts would be much closer to Scalia than Chief Justice Roberts is in terms of their approach to cases,” says one lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he argues Supreme Court cases. Anticipating this approach, Roberts pledged himself to the principle of stare decisis at his confirmation hearings and preached a gospel of judicial modesty, saying he came with “no agenda.”
While he can’t change Washington’s partisan warfare, Roberts does what he can to avoid becoming a weapon in it, those who know him say. Unlike his colleagues, he does not give interviews. He avoids partisan gatherings such as the Federalist Society’s annual gala (where Scalia and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. take turns providing the after-dinner remarks) or the American Constitution Society (where Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have been honored). Even the bipartisan Gridiron Dinner, where the nation’s political elite gather for gentle roasts, may have proved too much for Roberts: There’s always a seat at the head table for the chief justice of the United States, but this one hasn’t attended since 2009.
His protection of the court’s image extends to his colleagues. In the first Affordable Care Act case, conservative activists and pols demanded that Justice Elena Kagan recuse herself because of her work as Obama’s solicitor general, while liberal groups called for Thomas to step aside because his wife is a prominent conservative activist. Roberts, without specifically mentioning either, tried to shut down those complaints in his annual “state of the judiciary” report that year. “I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” he wrote. “They are jurists of exceptional integrity and experience whose character and fitness have been examined through a rigorous appointment and confirmation process.”
But the consensus compulsion is clearest when the court issues narrow opinions. With Obamacare, for instance, Roberts bobbed and weaved, agreeing with conservatives that Congress had exceeded its power to regulate interstate commerce but also siding with liberals to save the individual mandate by calling it a tax. In the last term, narrow rulings made it possible for the court to unite, at least on the bottom line, in striking down abortion-clinic buffer zones in Massachusetts and rejecting efforts to restrict class-action suits alleging security fraud.
His efforts are not universally revered. “John Roberts, Thy Name Is Traitor,” one conservative news site blared after the Obamacare decision. Glenn Beck offered T-shirts with Roberts’s smiling face and the word “COWARD” underneath. John Yoo, a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, wrote that this coming week’s challenge gives Roberts a chance to “atone.” Scalia, a frequent Roberts ally, once mocked Roberts’s “faux judicial modesty.” And in last term’s case on the buffer zones, he dismissed the chief’s majority opinion as “Something for Everyone.”
Roberts insists that the nation’s poisonous political climate, rather than anything the justices have done, is to blame for damage to the court’s reputation. But he lives in a universe with a gridlocked Congress, a combative president who calls out the court at his State of the Union address and colleagues identified as often by party affiliation as by their judicial philosophies. “Today’s partisan split, while unprecedented, is likely enduring,” says a study of the court by professors Neal Devins of William & Mary and Lawrence Baum of Ohio State. “A five-member Democratic Court will reach sets of decisions that are quite different from those of a five-member Republican Court.”
Perhaps then political tensions are simply inescapable. But paradoxically, the court is hard to characterize precisely because of its close balance. The Roberts court has found rights for Guantanamo detainees; ruled that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep guns; handed gay rights activists some of their most important victories; drastically cut back on the ability of legislatures to restrict campaign contributions; and narrowed the options for punishing juvenile defendants. Alternating liberal and conservative victories on this term’s two most important cases — gay marriage and health care — offer similar chances for “balance” when the justices complete their work this June.
The court’s conflicting messages usually depend on Kennedy siding either with the conservative justices or the liberal ones. But about two-thirds of the time, the Reagan appointee finds his natural home on the right. And while such snapshots can be misleading, in the last term Roberts agreed with Kennedy more than any other justice did. Kennedy was on the winning side in more opinions than any of his colleagues; Roberts was right behind.
This hardly means that either side sees the court as a neutral arbiter. Most liberal analysts praised Roberts’s first Obamacare decision, but some forecast that his reasoning would be used to secure conservative victories in the future. Others speculated that it gave Roberts “cover” to move on to issues about which he felt more strongly. They felt vindicated a year later when he sided with his conservative colleagues and wrote the 5-to-4 opinion striking down a crucial component of the Voting Rights Act.
Roberts appears to know this. At an appearance at the University of Nebraska law school last fall, he talked about how gridlock between Obama and congressional Republicans means collateral damage for the nine justices, too. “I don’t want it to spill over and affect us,” he said. “We are not Democrats and Republicans in how we go about it, and in nine years I’ve never seen any political issue like that arise between us.” He worried that the near-party-line confirmation of “somebody as eminently qualified as our newest member,” Kagan, could suggest that people perceive the court, too, as a political body.
It is a perception that, despite Roberts’s zealous labors, the court could soon reinforce, at least on the left. “A 5-to-4 decision invalidating the premium tax credits” in King v. Burwell “would seriously call into question the legitimacy of the court,” Tim Jost, a Washington and Lee University law professor and health-care expert, said in a video distributed by the liberal Center for American Progress. “I think it’s going to be [decided] pretty transparently for political reasons.”
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Hillary Clinton’s camp late Sunday issued a significant clarification about the steps they say were taken to review thousands of personal emails before they were deleted, claiming her team individually read “every email” before discarding those deemed private.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill made the clarification in a written statement to Fox News. This comes after the former secretary of state’s office revealed last week that while more than 30,000 “work-related” emails were turned over to the State Department, nearly 32,000 were deemed “private” and deleted.
This admission raised questions over how her team decided to get rid of those messages. Merrill on Sunday clarified an earlier fact sheet that described some of those methods but did not say every email was read.
“We simply took for granted that reading every single email came across as the most important, fundamental and exhaustive step that was performed. The fact sheet should have been clearer in stating that every email was read,” Merrill said.
Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, tried to tamp down the controversy over her exclusive use of personal email while secretary of state during a press conference last week. But the admission that she deleted thousands of messages, and her insistence that her personal server remain private, stirred the ire – and curiosity -- of lawmakers who want greater access to her communications as secretary and complain much of it may be gone forever.
Whether the assurance that “every email” was read before being either deleted or turned over eases those concerns remains to be seen.
“I have zero interest in looking at her personal emails,” South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But who gets to decide what’s personal and what’s public? And if it’s a mixed-use email, and lots of the emails we get in life are both personal and work, I just can’t trust her lawyers to make the determination that the public’s getting everything they’re entitled to.” | 1 |
When Scott Walker pronounced himself agnostic about President Obama’s patriotism and Christian faith, it must have seemed like a clever formulation. “I’ve never asked him, so I don’t know,” he said. And about Obama’s Christianity: “I’ve never asked him that.”
Walker quickly found his pitch unequal to the presidential big leagues. His argument can’t be generalized into a rule. I have never met Billy Graham, for example, but I’m pretty sure what he believes. As political attacks go, this one is particularly heavy-handed — the equivalent of saying: As far as I know, my opponent is not a swindler and a degenerate. A politician who tried this form of passive aggression before also got criticized for it. During the 2008 Democratic primary fight, Hillary Clinton said that Obama was not a Muslim “as far as I know” — sounding more like one of the wackier speakers at a CPAC convention.
For Walker, this is more of a paper cut than a chest wound. But for the Republican Party, which some Americans associate with religious exclusivity, it can’t be good for a front-runner to sound religiously exclusive.
Walker’s Baptist upbringing — he is the son of a pastor — does put a particular emphasis on the personal acceptance of Christ. It was another Baptist governor, Jimmy Carter, who elevated the idea of being “born again” into the realm of presidential politics. For evangelicals in general, there is no such thing as a birthright Christian. Faith requires a conscious and highly consequential decision — a choice that some do not make.
But here Obama has been as forthright as anyone could be. “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian,” he said in a 2008 Christianity Today interview. “I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.”
Questioning this affirmation involves a serious charge — an accusation of the worst sort of cynicism. And it is simply not the role of a Christian layman to publicly dispute the self-identification of other Christians, especially in a political context. It is a practice that can lead down ugly alleys of sectarianism.
Some, of course, will find the whole idea that human beings can make profoundly consequential religious choices to be foreign. And they may find proselytization — the necessary correlate of religious choice — to be offensive. But here a little patience might be in order. In many cases, adult converts have come through low points of addiction, humiliation or crisis. They believe they have found, past the limits of their own strength, something extraordinary and undeserved, which they can only describe as grace.
You may find such converts to be deluded or annoying, but there is little doubt that they have had a profound experience that defies adequate metaphor. They feel they have been washed by water or refined by fire. They have heard a voice in the night or a melody above the noise. Things previously thought important — status or wealth — appear vanishingly insignificant. They can say, with G.K. Chesterton:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
In such cases, people amazed by grace are wont to talk about it. But this motivation is the opposite of self-righteous judgment. It is gratitude. I have known people who, after a single moment of transforming trust, have spent the rest of their lives in astonished and vocal thankfulness.
But this type of faith, by definition, is unlikely to publicly judge the faith of others. It is founded on recognition of personal limits and failure. In the New Testament, grace often moves in stealthy and unexpected ways — lavished on lepers, Samaritans and tax collectors. Perhaps the modern equivalents would be people with HIV/AIDS, illegal immigrants and . . . tax collectors.
In any case, Christians should not look to the powerful for definitions of orthodoxy — or be proud of an unmerited gift.
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The security of our nation has never been more threatened than it is today, under the incompetent leadership of Barack Hussein Obama. The idea that we have one of the most highly trained group of warriors in our US Military paying for their own combat gear is unconscionable. Meanwhile, we are about the spend $50 MILLION or $42,000 per tortoise, to transplant them from a desert in CA to a new environment, where they may or may not survive, is a perfect example of how upside down our nation s priorities are today Breitbart Congressman Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a Marine with three combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on his resume, says Navy SEALs have been telling him they are running short on combat rifles.The Associated Press reports Hunter describing a weapons carousel in which SEALs returning from deployment hand their weapons off to outgoing troops, a practice he described as undermining the train like you fight ideal, and disrupting the personal connection special operators develop with their finely-tuned weapons. Hunter stressed the importance of allowing special operators to train with the same weapons they bring into the field. As it currently stands, following a deployment, a SEAL will have his weapon taken from him, which has been fine-tuned to certain specifications, and given to a different operator to use. This means that SEALs standing by to deploy are waiting for different teams to come back stateside just so they can use their weapons, said Hunter. They want their rifles. It s their lifeline. So let them keep their guns until they re assigned desk jobs at the Pentagon, the Congressman urged.According to the Navy Times, some SEALs have been forced to spend their own money on combat gear. Former active-duty special operator Lt. Cmdr. Sean Matson, visiting Capitol Hill at Hunter s invitation, said he had to put up $900 of his own money to buy a high-quality ballistic helmet when the Navy dragged its heels on upgrading his kit. Hunter portrayed the SEAL rifle shortage as a consequence of wasteful spending, noting that abundant funds for purchasing rifles, which are far less expensive than most of the equipment the military buys, should be available, based on congressional spending authorizations for special ops forces.Hunter s chief of staff Joe Kasper told the Navy Times shortages of optics, night vision, and laser attachments have also been reported, even as the budget for Navy Special Warfare increased. So there are obviously some trade-offs being made, but they re occurring at the expense of operators and their firepower and those are the absolute worst trade-offs to make, said Kasper. Meanwhile Daily Caller The Marine Corps is getting ready to conduct a massive operation to move hundreds of desert tortoises living on combat training grounds so they won t be crushed to death by military vehicles.The operation s total cost: $50 million to move 1,185 tortoises, or about $42,000 per tortoise. | 0 |
A black Cincinnati police officer is currently receiving backlash over a controversial Facebook post where he warned his African-American friends and family about white officers that may be targeting them because of their race.Officer Freddie Vincent had shared the message earlier this month, which instructed black people on what to do if they happen to get stopped by police. The post read: A message to all my Afro America friends and family. When you are encountered by a white officer make sure that you are in a public place, and comply to all of their commands, because they are looking for a reason to kill a black man. And always keep your hands in the air, and never resist. I m so tired of cops using these famous words I was in fear of my life. I m praying for Louisiana, that could have been my nephew in B.R. FacebookThis post was written after the high profile police brutality incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota, so it is perfectly understandable why those tragedies would be weighing on Vincent s heart and he would want to warn his loved ones of the dangers they might encounter. Vincent also had other posts on his Facebook account that addressed police brutality. One of them, posted on July 12, was an illustration on 10 rules of survival if stopped by the police. Vincent commented over the illustration: I can t promise you that this is 100% true, but it s about 85% to 95% and you just might make it home safely. Unfortunately, Vincent s post has landed him in hot water. According to Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac, Vincent s post is being reviewed to see if it falls within the department s social media procedure and our rules and regulations. In a statement, Isaac said: The Cincinnati Police Department strives to maintain a culture of professionalism, as well as transparency and accountability for our actions. I am proud of the work of the men and women of the Cincinnati Police Department and our efforts to work collaboratively with the community. We are aware of a recent post to a commonly used social media site by one of our officers that refers to an interpretation of a law enforcement officer s actions. The comments that were posted are under review as they relate to our Social Media procedure and our Rules and Regulations. A panel discussion was later held at New Prospect Baptist Church in Roselawn, where an audience asked Isaac if there was racism in the Cincinnati Police Department. Isaac responded: I don t think anyone can say there is not racism inside the department. Vincent s post may be even more prominent now, as we are seeing situations where black men are doing everything that police tell them to, and still being shot. Just earlier this week, unarmed black man Charles Kinsey was shot with his hands in the air while trying to take care of a patient with autism. Fortunately, Kinsey lived but many are not so lucky. Referencing Kinsey s incident, Bishop Bobby Hilton of Word of Deliverance Ministries and president of the local chapter of civil rights group National Action Network commented on this horrific incident: When there is a hint of this, that we have police officers who have this thought process about black men, these officers have to be dismissed. We are now seeing situations in Minnesota and Florida, where black men are doing what they are told by police putting their hands up, complying with all instructions and they are still shot. It s understandable why Vincent s posts have caused a stir, but to pretend that there wasn t some truth to what he was saying is ignorant. African Americans have been targeted and mistreated by police for far too long, and it is a situation that must be addressed.Featured image via Flickr | 0 |
A Denver, Colorado doctor under fire for a bizarre racial rant about First Lady Michelle Obama will probably keep her job anyway. Dr. Michelle Herren, who works at Denver Health Medical Center, had an anti-Obama meltdown on her Facebook page.Herren posted a photo of Michelle Obama yelling on Facebook. Under the photo, Herren wrote: Doesn t seem to be speaking too eloquently here, thank god we can t hear her! Harvard??? That s a place for entitled folks said all the liberals! Herren then added, Monkey face and poor ebonic English!!! There! I feel better and am still not racist!!! Just calling it like it is! Herren has a non-paid faculty appointment at CU School of Medicine, who announced that they would be terminating their relationship with the doctor. We are beginning the process to terminate Dr. Herren s faculty appointment, Mark Couch, spokesman for the school, said Thursday. She has expressed values that are at odds with ours and she has compromised her ability to meet the teaching and patient care mission of the School of Medicine. But her position at the Medical Center is likely to remain intact because her offensive comments were made outside of her workplace. They are also protected by her First Amendment rights because the hospital operates under the state, and government employees have the ability to make such comments outside of work.Dr. John Reilly Jr., the CU vice chancellor for health affairs, wrote a letter condemning Herren s smear: Your comments and tone are harmful to the students we teach and the patients we care for. Your derogatory, insensitive remarks have resulted in harm to others in our community and beyond. For almost every day that she has been First Lady, conservatives have hurled a never-ending stream of hate and invective towards Michelle Obama. But despite the hatred, she has become one of the most popular and admired public figures in all of America. Many have signed petitions asking her to run for public office such as the Senate or even the White House, but she has said she wants to return to private life when President Obama leaves office.Featured image via YouTube | 0 |
BARCELONA (Reuters) - Supporters of Catalan independence began occupying polling stations on Friday, setting up a possible confrontation with police who have been ordered to clear them out by Sunday morning to ensure a referendum cannot go ahead. The central government, which has sent thousands of police reinforcements to stop people voting and has attempted to dismantle the infrastructure needed to conduct the referendum it says is illegal, insisted it would not go ahead. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont told Reuters in an interview, however: Everything is prepared at the more than 2,000 voting points so they have ballot boxes and voting slips, and have everything people need to express their opinion. Bands played at a closing rally for the referendum campaign in Barcelona where people constructed the slogan Referendum is democracy in big white letters on a stage in front of a cheering crowd, many draped in the red-and-yellow Catalan flag. People preparing to camp out in polling stations in order to defy court orders to close them were also in high spirits. At one Barcelona school, Hector, a 43-year-old local, said five or six families would be spending the night. We want to make sure the school is open for activities and at night when they might come to clear us out or empty it, there will be families sleeping or people in the street, he said, adding that they planned to play ping-pong and cook a fideua seafood dish on Saturday. The head of the Catalan regional police ordered officers to evacuate and close polling stations by 6 a.m. on Sunday, before the voting is due to open at 9 a.m. In an internal memo published by La Vanguardia newspaper, the police chief said force should be used only as a last resort. At all times, before using force, you must take into account what might be the consequences of this police action and avoid the escalation of this situation, especially when there are children, elderly or other vulnerable people amongst the crowd, the document, whose authenticity was confirmed by a police spokeswoman, said. So far, the Catalan police, known as the Mossos, a force that is held in affection in the region, particularly after the Islamist attacks in August, have shown a friendly face. The Mossos have come to see what we are doing and they ve seen we re having a party, said 45-year-old Ferran Taberner who was at the school with his daughter. If it gets complicated we ll stay inside peacefully and they won t move us. Organizers said 60,000 people had registered to participate in the mass school sleepover which they say will show peaceful resistance , even if they are prevented from voting. I don t believe there will be anyone who will use violence or who will want to provoke violence that will tarnish the irreproachable image of the Catalan independence movement as pacifist, Puigdemont said. At a news conference, regional officials displayed one of the white plastic ballot boxes bearing the crest of the regional government. Puigdemont has said more than 6,000 were being kept in a secret place. Police have confiscated thousands of voting slips, and courts have fined and threatened to arrest regional officials. Catalonia s High Court ordered Google (GOOG.O) to delete a smartphone application that the Catalan government was using to spread information about the vote. A company spokeswoman said Google removes content when it receives a court order. Madrid, which claims the authority of a constitution that declares the country to be indivisible, remained implacably opposed to the vote, but also expressed the hope Sunday would be peaceful. I insist that there will be no referendum on Oct. 1, government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo said, adding that organizers would face criminal charges for trying to hold it. In a sign that large crowds are expected on the streets on Sunday, department store chain El Corte Ingles said it would shut three stores in central Barcelona. The central government said airspace above the city would be partly restricted. Credit rating agency S&P said that while it did not it expect Catalonia, a wealthy region that borders France, to secede from Spain, protracted tensions between Madrid and Barcelona could have a negative impact on the country s economic growth outlook. | 1 |
Wednesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked to comment on Hillary Clinton saying she would have won the election had it been held on October 27 instead of November 8. Spicer likened her comments to the New England Patriots’ comeback victory after being down late in Super Bowl LI. “Well look, I’m a Patriots fan and I think if games ended in the third quarter, there would have been a different team here last week,” Spicer answered. “But you play a game four quarters and you play an election until election day, so with all due respect to her, that’s not how it works. You don’t get to pick the day the election is on. ” He added, “I think it’s somewhat sad that we’re still debating why the president won in the fashion that he did. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0 |
Earlier this week, it was rumored that Hillary could barely fill a phone booth with supporters at her Ohio rallies, so she ended up cancelling them. The media has no desire to report on the lackluster support of the low-information voter Hillary relies on to send her scratching and clawing to our White House. They also have no desire to report on the thousands of patient Trump supporters who stood in blistering Florida heat waiting in line to see the outsider tell them how he was going to keep America safe and bring jobs back to unemployed and under-employed Americans. Here s one of Hillary s biggest media cheerleader s Andrea Mitchell reporting on one of her Ohio stops. Andrea claims Hillary was hitting Donald Trump on outsourcing bankruptcies & promises to tackle systemic racism. Check out the empty seats. My kids have bigger turnouts at their neighborhood lemonade stands.In Ohio @HillaryClinton hits @realDonaldTrump on outsourcing bankruptcies & promises to tackle systemic racism pic.twitter.com/cckJuvgFjf Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) July 31, 2016Compare Hillary s few supporters in Ohio to Trump s massive crowds in the other swing state of Florida:.@realDonaldTrump welcoming in Daytona Beach, Florida w/ the Ocean Center Convention packed! #MakeAmericaGreatAgain pic.twitter.com/S0312wMvw0 Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) August 3, 2016Big crowd for Trump in Daytona Beach, Florida pic.twitter.com/raTVcxUONl Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) August 3, 2016In Daytona Beach, Trump supporters young and old sport shirts calling for Hillary to be locked up pic.twitter.com/j9g7GmlwrD Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) August 3, 2016The scene here in Daytona ahead of Trump rally pic.twitter.com/06mia0qhMT Ashley Killough (@KilloughCNN) August 3, 2016 | 1 |
Not even a week after coordinated attacks in Brussels, Belgium, killed 31 civilians, and barely 24 hours after an ISIS attack in Iraq that killed 25, another tragedy: a blast in Lahore, Pakistan, has taken the lives of at least 56 adults and children, with the approximate death toll still rising.
A single suicide bomber’s explosion rocked Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore on Sunday. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Punjab province health advisor Khawaja Salman Rafique provided a statement estimating that approximately 200 more were injured in the blast, many of them families enjoying a peaceful day at the park in the heart of the city. According to local police chief Haider Ashraf, the bomber detonated near the section of the park containing children’s amusement park rides. Pakistani prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has already expressed his deepest remorse for the victims and those affected, firmly condemning those responsible for the attack.
In a statement, the White House decried “this cowardly act in what has long been a scenic and placid park,” and pledged to “continue working with our partners in Pakistan and across the region, as together we will be unyielding in our efforts to root out the scourge of terrorism.”
Narendra Modi, the prime minister of neighboring India, also condemned the attack.
The second-largest city in Pakistan, Lahore has long been considered the cultural capital of the turbulent nation. The placement of this attack, especially considering the environment of family fun and repose that the park afforded, sends a clear message of terror.
This is a breaking news story. We’ll be adding new information as it becomes available. | 1 |
Paul Craig RobertsIn the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way. On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President of Russia had not prevented it. Washington is also behind the current destruction of Yemen, and Washington has enabled and financed the Israeli destruction of Palestine. Additionally, Washington operated militarily within Pakistan without declaring war, murdering many women, children, and village elders under the guise of combating terrorism. Washington s war crimes rival those of any country in history.I have documented these crimes in my columns and books (Clarity Press). Anyone who still believes in the purity of Washington s foreign policy is a lost soul Russia and China now have a strategic alliance that is too strong for Washington. Russia and China will prevent Washington from further encroachments on their security and national interests. Those countries important to Russia and China will be protected by the alliance. As the world wakes up and sees the evil that the West represents, more countries will seek the protection of Russia and China.America is also failing on the economic front. My columns and my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, which has been published in English, Chinese, Korean, Czech, and German, have shown how Washington has stood aside, indeed cheering it on, while the short-term profit interests of management, shareholders, and Wall Street eviscerated the American economy, sending manufacturing jobs, business know-how, and technology, along with professional tradeable skill jobs, to China, India, and other countries, leaving America with such a hollowed out economy that the median family income has been falling for years. Today 50% of 25 year-old Americans are living with their parents or grandparents because they cannot find employment sufficient to sustain an independent existance.This brutal fact is covered up by the presstitute US media, a source of fantasy stories of America s economic recovery.The facts of our existence are so different from what is reported that I am astonished. As a former professor of economics, Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, I am astonished at the corruption that rules in the financial sector, the Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and the Federal Reserve. In my day, there would have been indictments and prison sentences of bankers and high government officials.In America today there are no free financial markets. All the markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The regulatory agencies, controlled by those the agencies are supposed to regulate, turn a blind eye, and even if they did not, they are helpless to enforce any law, because private interests are more powerful than the law.Even the government s statistical agencies have been corrupted. Inflation measures have been concocted in order to understate inflation. This lie not only saves Washington from paying Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and frees the money for more wars, but also by understating inflation, the government can create real GDP growth by counting inflation as real growth, just as the government creates 5% unemployment by not counting any discouraged workers who have looked for jobs until they can no longer afford the cost of looking and give up. The official unemployment rate is 5%, but no one can find a job. How can the unemployment rate be 5% when half of 25-year olds are living with relatives because they cannot afford an independent existence? As John Williams (shadowfacts) reports, the unemployment rate that includes those Americans who have given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found is 23%.The Federal Reserve, a tool of a small handful of banks, has succeeded in creating the illusion of an economic recovery since June, 2009, by printing trillions of dollars that found their way not into the economy but into the prices of financial assets. Artificially booming stock and bond markets are the presstitute financial media s proof of a booming economy.The handful of learned people that America has left, and it is only a small handful, understand that there has been no recovery from the previous recession and that a new downturn is upon us. John Williams has pointed out that US industrial production, when properly adjusted for inflation, has never recovered its 2008 level, much less its 2000 peak, and has again turned down.The American consumer is exhausted, overwhelmed by debt and lack of income growth. The entire economic policy of America is focused on saving a handful of NY banks, not on saving the American economy.Economists and other Wall Street shills will dismiss the decline in industrial production as America is now a service economy. Economists pretend that these are high-tech services of the New Economy, but in fact waitresses, bartenders, part time retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services have replaced manufacturing and engineering jobs at a fraction of the pay, thus collapsing effective aggregate demand in the US. On occasions when neoliberal economists recognize problems, they blame them on China.It is unclear that the US economy can be revived. To revive the US economy would require the re-regulation of the financial system and the recall of the jobs and US GDP that offshoring gave to foreign countries. It would require, as Michael Hudson demonstrates in his new book, Killing the Host, a revolution in tax policy that would prevent the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing it in debt obligations paying interest to the financial sector.The US government, controlled as it is by corrupt economic interests, would never permit policies that impinged on executive bonuses and Wall Street profits. Today US capitalism makes its money by selling out the American economy and the people dependent upon it.In freedom and democracy America, the government and the economy serve interests totally removed from the interests of the American people. The sellout of the American people is protected by a huge canopy of propaganda provided by free market economists and financial presstitutes paid to lie for their living.When America fails, so will Washington s vassal states in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Unless Washington destroys the world in nuclear war, the world will be remade, and the corrupt and dissolute West will be an insignificant part of the new world.Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order. READ MORE NWO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NWO Files | 1 |
PRAGUE (Reuters) - A host of pro-western candidates met Tuesday s deadline to run for Czech president, seeking to unseat incumbent Milos Zeman who has leaned toward Russia and China. Czech presidents wield limited day-to-day power but have large informal influence and play a key role in forming governments - now under way following elections last month. The winner of the January presidential election will fuel or tame euroscepticism that has taken hold despite the country s economic success and stability since joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. Zeman, 73, former Social Democrat leader and prime minister, is one of the major figures in the country s recent history, along with predecessors Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus. He remains the favorite to win a second five-year term according to bookmakers, despite limited public appearances in recent months due to diabetes and difficulty walking. So far the most serious rival to Zeman is chemist and former chief of the Czech Academy of Sciences Jiri Drahos who is running as an independent. Drahos, 68, is pro-EU and pro-NATO with a reserved and sober manner, a contrast to Zeman who has a reputation for swiping out at media and opponents. If Drahos wins, it would mean a pro-western, pro-European course, said political analyst Josef Mlejnek jr. Under Zeman, our politicians have often had to remind foreign partners that it is the government and not the president who is in charge of foreign policy, and that does not make a good impression especially if there is such an east-west discord between the two lines. Zeman took a sharp anti-EU turn when he took Russia s line in the Ukraine conflict and opposed EU sanctions. He also has adopted a sharply anti-immigration stance and said Islam was anti-civilisation . Zeman has also given support to Andrej Babis, a billionaire businessman whose ANO party won the parliamentary election last month and who Zeman promised to become prime minister. ANO did not field its own presidential candidate, which removes one of the potential threats to Zeman. Another pro-western contestant is Michal Horacek, 65, founder of betting firm Fortuna which he sold in 2004 and a recognized lyricist for pop music stars. Former centre-right prime minister Mirek Topolanek, whose cabinet collapsed during the country s EU presidency in 2009, also joined the race at the last minute. A eurosceptic, Topolanek s former right-hand man, Marek Dalik, started a 5-year jail sentence on Monday for corruption in army procurement while Topolanek was in office. In a poll published on Monday, Zeman led with 34 percent, followed by Drahos at 22 and Horacek at 13 percent. Another poll on Tuesday gave Drahos a 51-49 percent edge over Zeman in a hypothetical run-off. | 0 |
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban accepted his ruling Fidesz party s endorsement on Sunday to lead it into an election next year, saying he needed another four year term in power to make his transformation of the country irreversible . Orban, who has steered Hungary into confrontation with the European Union by campaigning against immigration, asserting control over the media and courts, and criticizing efforts to deepen European integration, received a unanimous 1,358 votes at a party congress to remain Fidesz leader for two more years. With an election five months away, he leads all contenders and looks likely to secure a third consecutive landslide. There is no mood for a change of government in Hungary, so much as a mood for a change of opposition, Orban said to laughter and applause, referring to disarray within the center-left. [nL8N1MD2V9] Polls show the center-left likely to be overtaken at the next election by the far-right Jobbik party, seen as leaning even further towards ethnic nationalism than Orban s Fidesz. We need to work for four more years to strengthen our achievements to the point that they are irreversible, Orban said. The 54-year-old premier has been widely criticized by Western allies for eroding democratic freedoms, which he and Fidesz deny. He has become unassailably popular at home, especially since 2015, when Hungary became the main land route into the EU for around a million Middle Eastern migrants who crossed the Balkans on their way to Germany and other rich countries further north. Orban and Fidesz say hostility towards them is being whipped up as part of a conspiracy by George Soros, a Hungarian-American financier who has long contributed to open society causes around the world, including in his native Eastern Europe. In his speech accepting his party s endorsement, Orban said he was fighting against globalist views that threaten the EU s Christian nations and their moral foundations, for which he blamed Soros. Some countries in Europe decided to transcend Christianity and their own national character, he said. They want to step into a post-Christian, post-national era. To execute Soros s plan they want to root out governments which represent national interests around Europe, and that includes us, he said. They act like Soviet agitprop agents once did. We old war-horses know them by their smell. | 0 |
With absolutely NOTHING to back it up, Sarah Jessica Parker tells reporters that she fears for her life, and for the life of her husband NY liberal actor, Matthew Broderick if Trump is elected. I know Hollywood and NY liberal actors live an insulated life, safe from the security or financial concerns everyday Americans face, but seriously? Does she not have a TV? Does she not have access to Youtube or the internet?How is it possible that she s missed the vicious attacks launched at Trump supporters by Black Lives Matter terrorists, anarchists and leftists of every size, shape and color against innocent Trump supporters?Just the other day, we reported about a young man who attended a Black Lives Matter rally in CA and was beaten by a mob of around 300 people for simply wearing a Trump hat. Did she somehow miss the rioting and attacks on senior citizens, or the woman who was trapped by mobs of anti-Trump attackers who proceeded to throw eggs and various items at her head and body?Donald Trump might have made two guest appearances in HBO s iconic comedy Sex and the City, but the show s star, Sarah Jessica Parker, has speculated his political ascendancy is putting her life in danger.Throwback to when Trump was on Sex and the City. pic.twitter.com/d72FFLvx8w Billo Rani (@prabhjotkp) September 27, 2016Parker, a high-profile Hollywood liberal who has hosted fundraisers for President Obama, says the political climate generated by Donald Trump has left her fearing she, actor husband Matthew Broderick, and their friends will end up getting hit or worse.SJP, whose new HBO show Divorce begins this Sunday, told Time Out New York: The thing I keep saying is that even if please, God Trump is not elected, I m afraid there is now a climate that has said in silence that it is okay to hurt anybody you not-so-secretly disagree with. Whether it s how they look or the lifestyle you think they re leading or the color of their skin, or they ve come here to, you know, take advantage of this country. I m terrified. She adds of the unnamed Trump-inspired posse of haters: I said to [Matthew Broderick], I feel like someone is just going to hit us. They re just going to reach out and smack us or beat the shit of us or, I don t know, shoot us, shoot my friends. I m not being dramatic when I think of this. I m shocked. SJP is so shocked that she winds up issuing a rallying cry for Trump: I will fight to the very end for you to go and vote for Mr. Trump. Go do it. But you don t have to hurt me to do it. And you don t have to hate me to do it. I don t hate you; I wish I understood you. Via: Heat StreetAre these Hollywood and NY liberals so self-absorbed that they don t see what is REALLY happening in America who is REALLY being attacked for their political views? News flash SJ Parker it s not the Left who s being attacked. How about you just go back to your little safe-space, and we ll call you when it s all over. If America votes for freedom, Trump fans will rejoice. We won t burn any cop cars, we won t loot any stores, we ll likely just say a prayer of thanks and count our blessings that the reign of tyranny is over in America. If America votes for the most crooked President in our history, we will likely feel crushed, but we won t come looking for Sarah Jessica Parker and her whiny husband. We won t be looking for innocent people to harm or buildings to burn. You see, that s not how conservatives do it. So you can rest easy Sarah, knowing that whatever the result, there isn t a single conservative in America who will give you any more thought than we do today. To tell you the truth, I can t remember the last time I even heard your name. Rest easy | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the Iran nuclear program, the Kremlin said on Wednesday. In a phone call, held on the initiative of the Israeli side, the two leaders also discussed the situation in Syria and the referendum in Iraq s Kurdistan, the Kremlin said in a statement. | 0 |
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish military vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device in the southeastern province of Hakkari, killing one soldier, security sources said on Monday. The device was detonated by militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as the vehicle was passing the road near Turkey s border with Iraq, the sources said. Turkey s largely Kurdish southeast has been rocked by violence following the collapse of a 2-1/2-year ceasefire between the state and the PKK in 2015. The autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms in 1984, and more than 40,000 people have died in the conflict. It is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. | 1 |
Donald Trump decided to deflect the utter humiliation he is feeling over Saturday Night Live by trying to convince everyone that most Americans like him. Twitter quickly shattered his ego.Alec Baldwin triumphantly returned to portray Trump last night and he had plenty of material to work with. But the focus was on Trump s first press conference in six months and the intelligence dossier that details how Trump hired prostitutes in Moscow to pee in the bed at the Ritz Carlton presidential suite.After being perfectly roasted on SNL, the world expected Trump to throw a temper tantrum for the ages on Twitter. Instead, Trump responded by insisting that everyone likes him, even Obama Democrats, while also bragging that he is bringing jobs back to America.The Democrats are most angry that so many Obama Democrats voted for me. With all of the jobs I am bringing back to our Nation, that number.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017will only get higher. Car companies and others, if they want to do business in our country, have to start making things here again. WIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017Seriously, Trump actually thinks Democrats voted for him by a landslide and thinks all the jobs that companies have been creating in this country recently are because of him.Of course, Trump is full of shit and Twitter tore him apart.@realDonaldTrump Lost popular vote by 3 million never forget. Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 15, 2017@tonyposnanski and wildly unpopular pic.twitter.com/6t8ORNKojk Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump This country will literally be showered with jobs. Because I am a major whiz with jobs. #SNL pic.twitter.com/EN8wSxAe3v Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) January 15, 2017Dear @realDonaldTrump: this is demonstrably not true, as the figures themselves show. Liar. https://t.co/ZAZw1T3GPV Evan O Connell (@evanoconnell) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Yes, you will have the strongest, steadiest stream of jobs. Urine for a great tenure! Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 15, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Honey, you re starting your day in a rage about the election again. And no need to capitalize nation. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 15, 2017.@realDonaldTrump The only one who s angry right now is Donald. Sweetheart, we only have a few days to get these emotions under control. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Nope! All Americans are angry that a fat, stupid, fascist puppet of Russia will be installed as a fake president. Sad! Stefanie Iris Weiss (@EcoSexuality) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump 8 out of 10 registered voters didn t vote for you &, hint, election over. Obama job boom one of biggest ever. Top that. David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Reminder you lost the popular vote by two points and almost three million votes Tracy Maher (@tracym) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump You mean the jobs Obama brought back that you took the credit for? Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump just to check, are you saying you prefer people do their business where you can watch them? Alex Zalben (@azalben) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Make your own clothes here then! pic.twitter.com/QxoBypw685 Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Obama was the one who rescued the Auto industry in the US SNOWFLAKE (@ChristaAllenFan) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump You don t score points for jobs that companies decided to bring back before you even decided to run for President. Moron! Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) January 15, 2017Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 0 |
We ve all heard it from our conservative friends (and enemies): race relations are worse under President Obama. President Obama is dividing this nation using race and religion as a factor. The Democrats (and, again, President Obama), are pitting Americans against Americans.We ve heard it time and time again. Everything is President Obama s fault, not his vile, racist, xenophobic haters.But before anyone with half a brain entertains that idea any further, look at the first night of the RNC. It was a disaster, we all know. Chaos broke out, Republicans stormed out and threw their credentials, Never Trump delegates staged protests and challenged the rules.But what was even more telling was the vile, racist (blatant and latent) and divisive comments that came from a slew of speakers and representatives:The next time a republican wants to accuse President Obama and the democrats of stoking racial, divisive sentiments, just show them reruns of the first day of the RNC.In only seven hours, the Republicans successfully demonized (multiple times) anyone who wasn t a white, male, Christian conservative. It must be a new record.For too long Democrats and peaceful progressives have been demonized anyone who dares to call out their hateful, radicalizing rhetoric. They have blamed Black Lives Matter for dead police, but don t blame their anti-Muslim rhetoric for radicalization in the Middle East (which has trickled into the United States). They blame liberals for the United States weakened image across the world, but they somehow managed to give us someone dumber than George W. Bush.Republicans say Democrats hyper focus on race, yet they put their token black conservative on stage to celebrate the killing of unarmed black men and women.Republicans say the people don t have faith in American politics or their elected officials anymore, and then they put a general on stage to chant lock her up, making a spectacle never seen before in American politics.Politics has become a victim peddling sideshow to the Republican Party. Their resurgence of Nixon s Southern Strategy, coupled with a divide-and-conquer mentality, was put on full display as one after another, speakers and personalities alike made it their mission to appeal to the lowest common denominator: hate.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1 |
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tens of thousands marched in China-ruled Hong Kong on Sunday in an anti authoritarian rule march that called for the resignation of the city s top legal official over the recent jailing of young democracy activists. The march, an annual fixture over the past few years on China s October 1 National Day, comes at a time of nascent disillusionment with Hong Kong s once vaunted judiciary. Without democracy, how can we have the rule of law, the crowds yelled as they marched through sporadic downpours, from a muddy pitch to the city s harbor-front government headquarters. Organizers estimated about 40,000 people joined the march. Many protesters, some clad in black, expressed dismay with Hong Kong s Secretary of Justice, Rimsky Yuen, who Reuters reported had over-ruled several other senior public prosecutors to seek jail terms for three prominent democrats: Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow. We believe he (Yuen) has been the key orchestrator in destroying Hong Kong s justice, said Avery Ng, one of the organizers of the rally that drew a coalition of some 50 civil and political groups. Around one hundred Hong Kong activists are now facing possible jail terms for various acts of mostly democratic advocacy including the Umbrella Revolution in late 2014 that saw tens of thousands of people block major roads for 79 days in a push for universal suffrage. While the October 1 march is a regular annual fixture, this was the first time the rule of law has been scrutinized like this, with the judiciary a legacy of the British Common Law system long considered one of the best in Asia and a cornerstone of Hong Kong s economic success. It s like mainland (Chinese) laws have intruded into Hong Kong, said Alex Ha, a teacher of classical guitar, who was walking alone in the crowd. The World Economic Forum s Global Competitiveness Index last week downgraded Hong Kong s judicial independence ranking by five spots to number 13 in the world. In response, however, Yuen stressed at the time that Hong Kong s judiciary remained strong and independent. We cannot rely on subjective perceptions, we have to look at the facts, he told reporters. Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise that Beijing would grant the city a high degree of autonomy and an independent judiciary under a so-called one country, two systems arrangement. But over two decades of Chinese rule, differences have deepened between Communist Party leaders in Beijing and a younger generation of democracy advocates, some of whom are now calling for the financial hub to eventually split from China. Hong Kong s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam spoke of a need for unity during a speech to assembled dignitaries at a National Day reception to mark the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People s Republic of China by the Communists. As long as we capitalize on our strengths, stay focused, seize the opportunities before us and stand united, I am sure that Hong Kong can reach even greater heights, she said. | 1 |
Donald Trump is paving the way for Russian aggression against Europe and admitted it during an interview with European newspapers.Trump has had a cozy relationship with Putin ever since Russia helped him win the election in November.In fact, that was the consummation of a relationship that began months earlier when Trump started attacking NATO and made it clear that he intends to eliminate sanctions that were slapped against Russia after Putin seized the Crimea from Ukraine.Now Trump is practically inviting Russia to be more aggressive in Putin s pursuit of tyrannical rule. I said a long time ago that NATO had problems, Trump told the Times of London on Sunday. Number one it was obsolete because it was designed many, many years ago. Number two the countries weren t paying what they re supposed to be paying. Trump then went on to praise Putin and stated his intention to make some good deals with Russia, which apparently involves weakening NATO and Europe as a whole so Russia can attack.To that end, Trump also wants to see the European Union dissolve, which would cause transatlantic chaos not seen since World War II. People want their own identity, so if you ask me, more countries will leave, Trump remarked when asked about the United Kingdom s regretful vote to exit the EU.In other words, Trump wants Europe to return to the nationalism that divided nations against each other and caused the deaths of millions. The two World Wars were the reason why the European Union was created in the first place, not to mention the economic benefits both sides of the Atlantic have enjoyed.According to the Washington Post,The full ramifications of a breakdown in transatlantic relations are so extensive they are difficult to total. U.S. guarantees underpin European security. The United States and the European Union, with a population of 500 million, are each other s most important trading partner. For decades, European nations and the United States have worked tightly together on issues of war, peace and trade. The incoming U.S. president is the first American leader since World War II not to support European integration. The European Union has long been considered to be in the U.S. interest, because it created a unified market for U.S. businesses, provided a bulwark against communism during the Cold War and helped quell the bloody slaughter that cost U.S. lives, among others, in the first half of the 20th century. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the European Union expanded eastward into formerly communist nations, a development that leaders there say helped bring rule of law and stability as they modernized their economies.The only nation that would directly benefit from the fall of NATO and the European Union would be Russia, while America and the various European nations suffer weaker economies and weaker national security.In other words, Trump truly is Putin s puppet and the world is about to become more dangerous because of it.Featured image via screenshot | 1 |
Donald Trump Jr slammed Kathy Griffin for playing the victim after the huge backlash to her beheading Trump photo. saying she deserves whatever she gets. To run and claim victimhood, she deserves everything that s coming to her, Donald Trump, Jr., said Tuesday on ABC s Good Morning America. Griffin initially apologized for posing with the disturbing image, and CNN dropped her from her annual New Year s Eve special alongside Anderson Cooper.However, she reversed course with a Friday press conference alongside civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom, where she tearfully said the Trump family was bullying her and broke her. Griffin s erratic demeanor was widely panned; USA Today said it was a D-list showing, and Salon called it mad and looping. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faulted the Muslim community on Monday for not reporting people like the man who carried out the Orlando gay nightclub attack, killing 49 people and wounding 53 others. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, told CNN he thought Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen was known to people in the Muslim community as someone with a potential for violence. “You will find that many people that knew him felt that he was a whack job ... (that) something like this would have happened,” Trump told CNN in a phone interview. “People that knew him, the ex-wife, other people. They don’t report them. For some reason the Muslim community does not report people like this.” Trump said the United States needed better intelligence-gathering to prevent such things from happening. “We have to look at the mosques ... and we have to look at the community,” he said. “And believe me, the community knows the people that have the potential to blow up.” | 0 |
ARCHIE ELAM is on his third career transition. Now 61 and living in Stamford, Conn. Mr. Elam is a 1976 graduate of West Point. His Army career included acting as head of operations for the 18th Airborne Corps 24th Infantry Division in the first war against Iraq. The Army sent him to get an M. B. A. at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, a degree that started his private sector career in 1996. He was a manager at General Electric, United Technologies, Accenture and elsewhere, mostly focused on Six Sigma, a collaborative program for improving company performance by cutting out waste, and running customer relations management systems and overseeing other operations. His next act? Working at a nonprofit organization. Mr. Elam recently graduated from Encore! Hartford, a training program for corporate professionals over age 50 looking for a career in the nonprofit sector, public agencies and government. “The stuff you volunteer for, you care about, you do for free, and then one day you realize you can get paid to do something you care about,” he said. “How cool is that!” Baby boomers closing in on the traditional retirement years often seek purpose and a paycheck in a second career, also known as an encore experience, next chapter or unretirement. Whatever the term, nonprofit work — focused on addressing society’s pressing needs and promoting arts and culture — has a particular allure for many in this group. “People want to give back they want that social impact in the next phase of their life,” said Kate Schaefers, a career and leadership coach in the . Paul area. “They also turn the retirement stool — Social Security, personal savings and retirement savings — into a stool by adding paid work. ” The timing is auspicious. The nonprofit sector has been vibrant in recent years. From 2007 to 2012, nonprofit employment increased every year, from 10. 5 million jobs to 11. 4 million jobs, for a gain of about 8. 5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By contrast, total private sector employment dropped by 3 percent in that period. This year, 57 percent of nonprofit groups surveyed said they expected to create new positions, an increase of 7 percentage points from last year, according to the 2016 Nonprofit Employment Practices Survey by Nonprofit HR, a the human resources firm. By comparison, the firm notes that only 36 percent of private companies surveyed said they intended to increase staff size, the same percentage as in 2015. Catherine Foley, 62, is among those who have shifted from the corporate world to the nonprofit sector. She worked for 25 years at Salt River Project in Arizona, among the nation’s largest public utilities. For 17 of those years she was manager of corporate affairs with responsibility for advertising communications, philanthropy and community outreach. In 2008, Ms. Foley, known as Rusty, took advantage of an early retirement opportunity. In the middle of the worst recession in decades, the timing was “scary,” she said. But she knew that “there were other things I wanted to do with my life. ” For the next two years, she sat on a number of community boards, including that of the Arizona Citizens for the Arts. In 2010 she became its interim executive director, and a year later she took on the job permanently, overseeing its two employees, many volunteers and $350, 000 budget. “It’s an opportunity to use the professional skills I had accumulated over the years for something I had a personal passion for,” she said. “It’s energizing. ” The transition for experienced baby boomers from corporate America to nonprofit America is probably easier than ever. The management guru Peter F. Drucker wrote in The Harvard Business Review in 1989 that “management was a dirty word for those involved in nonprofit organizations. ” The word suggested a hardhearted focus on the bottom line instead of pursuing a social mission. Mr. Drucker noted, however, that nonprofit boards and donors had come to realize that good management was critical to fulfilling their mission. “The nonprofits are, of course, still dedicated to ‘doing good,’” he argued. “But they also realize that good intentions are no substitute for organization and leadership, for accountability, performance and results. ” The gap has narrowed considerably further since the Drucker article 27 years ago. On the corporate side, many businesses explicitly embrace social responsibility as an important goal, while others embrace ventures that seek to blend purpose and profit. At the same time, nonprofit organizations have moved from society’s tributaries into the mainstream. “There is a greater flow of ideas between the two sectors,” said Thomas J. Tierney, of the Bridgespan Group, which has headquarters in Boston and helps nonprofit organizations and foundations increase their social impact. “There is a greater flow of talent between the sectors. ” That said, the transition remains personally challenging. writing grants and dealing with donors are unfamiliar tasks to those who forged their careers in companies. Those who worked for big corporations are used to much more support. Ms. Foley, only said that what she really missed was an information technology department. And the pay is almost always lower, with more modest benefit packages. “If it isn’t a mission personal to you, you will not get through the tough times,” said Nora Hannah, executive director of Experience Matters in Phoenix, an organization that works with private sector workers who want to shift into nonprofit groups. The transition from a corporate environment to a nonprofit is largely a effort. But programs like Encore! Hartford, Experience Matters, Social Venture Partners and Encore Fellowships offer valuable educational and matchmaking services for those seeking a career. “I can’t tell you how many times we have been approached by people in the sector wanting to make the transition to nonprofits and they struggled with it,” said Marc Freedman, founder and chief executive of Encore. org, which is based in San Francisco and promotes second careers for social good. “There needs to be something more like a Match. com. ” The techniques that work well in any job search apply here. Think about your passions. Understand the underlying skills accumulated over a lifetime of work rather than job titles. Network, network and network. That is what Catherine Bergstrom, 56, a former first selectman in Burlington, Conn. did. She completed the Encore! Hartford program in 2013. The program encourages its students to set up informational interviews with nonprofit organizations, and she said she found them invaluable for figuring out what she wanted to do next. “I would call people up and everyone said, ‘yes,’” she said. “I would talk to the executive directors. ” She ended up becoming director of community engagement for Jewish Family Services in Hartford, one of the organizations where she had an informational interview. The nonprofit job seeker has an additional option for learning about a particular organization: volunteering. The sector is incredibly diverse and complicated, ranging from small groups mostly dependent on the passions of a handful of volunteers and donors to professional and social service organizations. The advantage of volunteering is that it is like dating, a way of figuring out whether an organization is a good match without making a commitment. Here is a safe bet: The baby boomers making the transition from business into nonprofit careers are carving a work path that will become ever easier for those behind them to follow. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate passed the first broad energy bill in nine years on Wednesday, legislation containing modest measures popular with both Republicans and Democrats to modernize the power grid and speed the permitting process for liquefied natural gas exports. The bill, which passed 85-12, attempts to protect the power grid from extreme weather events such as ice storms and hurricanes, and from cyber attacks. It also aims to spur innovations in storage of power from wind and solar energy. The House of Representatives passed a similar bill last year. The Energy Policy and Modernization Act would increase U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), eventually helping to give European consumers alternatives to relying mainly on Russia for gas. After disagreements held the bill up for months, senators last week dropped measures from the bill to aid Flint, Michigan overcome a drinking water crisis, in which children have been exposed to dangerous levels of lead, and on offshore drilling. Lawmakers from both the House and Senate will next iron out differences over the bill. The Senate bill, for instance, requires the Department of Energy to issue a decision on LNG projects within 45 days of an environmental assessment, while the House bill directs the DOE to make the decision on permits after 30 days. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state who co-sponsored the bill, said shortly before it passed that she hoped the chambers would move quickly “so that we can realize the opportunity to help our businesses and consumers plan for the energy future.” The White House has signaled that President Barack Obama would sign the Senate bill. Energy policy analyst Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners said the chances the bill would be signed into law this year were about 65 percent, because the White House has had some differences with the House bill. Charlie Riedl, the head of industry group the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, said the vote was a “big step forward” and that certainty about the regulatory process is “crucial” for projects that cost billions of dollars to build. Rob Cowin, director of government affairs at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group, said the bill falls “far short” of what is needed to promote wind and solar power, but is “better than doing nothing.” The Senate on Tuesday passed several amendments to the bill, including restricting most sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when oil prices are low. | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Following directions from Google Maps on a smartphone last year, Jose Alejandro turned a Ford truck, hauling a trailer, where he thought the app was telling him to go. But he ended up stuck on the railroad tracks at a poorly marked California crossing. Soon after Mr. abandoned the truck, a commuter train barreled into it, killing the engineer and injuring 32 others. On Monday, after investigating the crash for almost two years, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a safety recommendation asking technology and delivery companies to add the exact locations of more than 200, 000 grade crossings into digital maps and to provide alerts when drivers encounter them. The crash involving Mr. ’s truck — on Feb. 24, 2015, in Oxnard, Calif. — was one of the more than 200 fatalities that took place at a grade crossing, where road and railway lines are at the same level, in the United States last year. What made this crash stand out was the possible role of digital mapping technology in taking a driver down a wrong path. This was the first time the safety board has targeted navigation apps as a factor in a major accident. These days, drivers count on mapping apps for more than getting from one place to another. The apps serve as bulletin boards, alerting drivers in real time about their surroundings. Navigation apps such as Waze provide warnings for traffic jams, vehicles, roadway debris or even lurking police officers. The accuracy of mapping data is becoming more important as driverless cars start taking to the road. It will be up to navigation apps to guide cars onto the safest routes and to warn passengers — who may not be paying attention — about potential hazards. “The safer car in the future isn’t going to have a better bumper it’s going to have better navigation,” said Eric Gundersen, chief executive of Mapbox, a digital map provider. The Federal Railroad Administration has lobbied technology companies for 18 months to add alerts for grade crossings. The rail agency said it had contacted 11 technology companies, including Apple and Microsoft, to integrate its location data of grade crossings. In this year’s lineup of GPS devices, Garmin included safety warnings for potential hazards like sharp turns and railroad crossings, the company said, although it does not use the federal rail location data. Several months after the Oxnard crash, the railroad agency said Google had agreed to add audio and visual warnings to Google Maps, the world’s most popular mapping app, based on location data. But Google has not yet included that feature, even though it has updated the app more than two dozen times for the iPhone since then. The National Transportation Safety Board said Apple and three other companies had also agreed to add crossing data, but the board was uncertain when the companies would do so. A spokeswoman from Google said the company was aware of the safety board’s recommendation and was looking at ways to add safety features. Apple said it was working to add the rail data to its maps but would not elaborate on implementation specifics. Microsoft and MapQuest said they were also reviewing the data used in their maps. In a speech on Sept. 15, Sarah E. Feinberg, administrator of the railroad agency, said many of the recent deaths at rail crossings were not from drivers trying to “beat the train” but were “situations where the driver lost situational awareness, or there weren’t sufficient protections in place to protect the vehicle or provide adequate warning to the driver. ” She chided technology companies for procrastinating on integrating data into mapping applications that “will save many lives. ” On Monday, Ms. Feinberg praised the safety board’s recommendation, saying she hoped it “will raise this to the top of technology companies’ priority lists. ” The N. T. S. B.’s recommendations are not binding, but the board can use them to pressure technology companies to take action. It can also try to persuade Congress to offer funds to provide incentives to the companies, said James E. Hall, a former chairman of the safety board. The board has issued safety recommendations in the past, urging utility companies to update their maps with accurate locations of abandoned gas lines. Digital maps started replacing paper maps about a decade ago, when GPS devices from companies like Garmin and TomTom became more affordable and car companies started offering navigation systems. But the breakthrough came when Google and Apple added directions into mapping apps on smartphones, putting the technology into millions of devices already in people’s pockets. Globally, an estimated one billion people use a mapping app or service every week, according to the technology research firm Berg Insight. In the Oxnard crash, the driver was using Google Maps in Spanish on a smartphone borrowed from his wife. Investigators believe the map was one of a number of factors, including driver fatigue. Mr. was on a drive from his home in Yuma, Ariz. What was supposed to be a trip had stretched to 21 hours because his truck broke down along the way and he was involved in a minor crash. He came upon the rail crossing before sunrise, having not slept substantively in more than 24 hours, the safety board’s report said. “The N. T. S. B. concludes that had the driver’s navigation application included information on the upcoming grade crossing, he would have been less likely to misinterpret the visual cues and mistakenly turn onto the railroad tracks,” the safety board wrote in its report. At the time, the crossing had no grade separation, and there were no cones or markers warning drivers from turning onto the rails. Since 2008, there have been five accidents at that crossing, including one in 2010 when a confused driver turned onto the tracks and was struck by a train. The driver was injured, but there were no fatalities. “It’s easy to understand how in the dark, a driver unfamiliar with the area can turn at the wrong place if a navigation app says, ‘Turn here,’” said James McGillis, who lives near Oxnard, in Simi Valley, and has written extensively on his website about the crash. The police found Mr. a mile from his truck. He had abandoned it on the tracks with the headlights and hazard lights on and the driver’s door open. Ron Bamieh, Mr. ’s lawyer, said his client was trying to get help. Mr. was charged in February of this year with vehicular manslaughter and is awaiting arraignment. At some grade crossings, there are no gates or blinking lights to warn drivers of an oncoming train — just a crossing sign or a crossbuck, a white “X” marked with the words “railroad crossing. ” Thomas F. Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, said grade crossings could be especially dangerous because drivers often do not take the proper precautions, especially with all the other distractions in the car. “Sometimes we want to distract while they are distracted,” Mr. Prendergast said, praising the safety board’s move. “That level of technology can be a game changer. ” The need for a recommendation speaks to the dependence some drivers feel toward navigation apps, choosing to follow directions from the app even in the face of contradictory information. In February, after a rockslide closed Interstate 70 in Colorado, directions from Google Maps sent drivers over a mountain pass near Aspen as an alternative. But that road was closed for the winter. A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, Amy Ford, said many drivers ignored road signs informing them that the road was closed and followed the apps instead. The most determined drivers became stranded and needed assistance from law enforcement. “It’s become integral for many drivers,” said Jake Nelson, AAA’s director of traffic safety advocacy and research. “The risk is when we become on these technologies. ” | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave an aggressive response to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, quickly claiming the attack was the work of an Islamist militant while calling on President Barack Obama to resign and for Democrat Hillary Clinton to exit the presidential race. For Trump, it was an attempt to frame the attack in Orlando in a light favorable to his campaign for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Early on Sunday, when few facts were known about the shooting, he boasted on Twitter that it proved he had been right about his warnings over “radical Islamic terrorism.” Trump canceled a planned Monday evening rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire late on Sunday, because of the shooting, but will go ahead with a major speech at St. Anselm’s College on Monday afternoon. In a tweet just hours after the incident, he wrote: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance.” Trump has made combating the threat of groups such as Islamic State a central part of his candidacy. It was last December’s attack in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people that led Trump to propose a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Trump re-visited the proposal on Sunday after at least 50 people died in the attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough,” Trump wrote on Twitter. In a statement late Sunday, the businessman went further than U.S. officials investigating the shootings by asserting that the attack in Orlando was the work of a “radical Islamic terrorist.” Islamic State, which controls land in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the shooting but U.S. officials said they had seen no immediate evidence directly linking the militant group to the massacre. The shooter, U.S.-born Florida resident Omar Mateen, was killed by police. Mateen, 29, called 911 on Sunday morning and made comments saying he supported the Islamic State militant group, officials said. A Trump supporter played Trump’s speeches on a loudspeaker outside the Port St. Lucie, Florida home of Mateen’s parent’s. “I’m a Cuban citizen and I’m becoming an American citizen on July 6 and I’m going to vote for the first time in my life for Donald Trump,” said Arisley Travieso, 36, who works for a shredding company. Traveiso said he supported Trump because the Republican nominee sees “the problem is Islamic terrorism. He (Trump) has been saying it nonstop.” Trump ripped Obama for his long-standing refusal to refer to Islamic State and other extremist groups as in part representative of the religion of Islam. “In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam’. For that reason alone, he should step down,” Trump said, adding that, “if Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words ‘Radical Islam’ she should get out of this race for the presidency.” Trump’s day-long barrage of tweets and statements contrasted with more cautious approaches taken by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and her fellow Democrat Obama. In remarks at the White House, Obama said the investigation into the shootings was ongoing and declined to speculate on the motives of the shooter. “We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer,” Obama said. “The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism. Similarly, Clinton, in a statement, called the attack an “act of terror” but did not speculate about the ideology of the gunman. “Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hard at work, and we will learn more in the hours and days ahead,” said Clinton, who expressed her sympathy for the victims and said “weapons of war” have no place on U.S. streets. Trump’s campaign said that a speech scheduled for Monday that was to be devoted to criticizing Hillary and Bill Clinton would now be centered on national security and counter-terrorism. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, set off an intense backlash on Tuesday when he suggested that President Bashar of Syria was guilty of acts worse than Hitler and asserted that Hitler had not used chemical weapons, ignoring the use of gas chambers at concentration camps during the Holocaust. Mr. Spicer later apologized. During his daily briefing for reporters, Mr. Spicer was defending President Trump’s decision to order a missile strike on Syria by trying to lend gravity to the actions of Mr. Assad. American officials accuse the Syrian president of using sarin gas, a lethal chemical weapon, in an attack on a area of Idlib Province last week that killed dozens, many of them children. But in misconstruing the facts of the Holocaust — Nazi Germany’s brutally efficient, carefully orchestrated extermination of six million Jews and others — Mr. Spicer instead drew a torrent of criticism and added to the perception that the Trump White House lacks sensitivity and has a tenuous grasp of history. “We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Mr. Spicer said. “You know, you had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons. ” He continued, “So you have to, if you are Russia, ask yourself: Is this a country and a regime that you want to align yourself with?” The White House charged Tuesday that Russia had sought to cover up the Syrian government’s role in the chemical attack. Asked to clarify his remarks, Mr. Spicer then acknowledged that Hitler had used chemical agents, but maintained that there was a difference. “I think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” Mr. Spicer said, incorrectly, before mentioning “Holocaust centers,” an apparent reference to Nazi death camps. 160, 000 to 180, 000 Jews killed by the Nazis were from Germany, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mr. Spicer’s explanation drew gasps from reporters in the briefing room. The remarks almost immediately elicited outrage on social media and correctives from scholars of the Holocaust. “Historically, it’s just wrong,” said Deborah Lipstadt, a leading historian of the Holocaust and a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. Mr. Spicer “should not be making comparisons,” Dr. Lipstadt said. “It’s, at the best, not thought out, and at the worst, shows a latent . ” Shortly after his briefing, Mr. Spicer again tried to clarify his comments, saying in a statement that he was not “trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust. ” “I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers,” he said. “Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable. ” But the clarification did not quiet calls from some corners, including from Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Spicer. By Tuesday evening, Mr. Spicer was on CNN, offering a contrite apology. “I was trying to draw a comparison for which there shouldn’t have been one,” he said. The Trump administration has a history of missteps on the Holocaust. Days after Mr. Trump took office, a White House statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day was sharply criticized for failing to directly mention Jews or . Nor was Tuesday the only time Mr. Spicer has shown a hazy understanding of world events or appeared not to understand the implications of his words. On Monday, he said that the president would retaliate against Syria not only if it used chemical weapons, but also barrel bombs. “If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president,” Mr. Spicer said. Barrel bombs are the Assad government’s preferred tool of mass killing Syrian forces dropped more than 12, 000 of them in 2016, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Mr. Spicer’s comments, if taken literally, would signal a much broader American intervention in Syria’s civil war. Mr. Spicer also said twice on Tuesday that Iran was a “failed state,” lumping it in with North Korea and Syria. Iran, though an adversary of the United States with a history of repression, is a robust, functioning state. | 0 |
The answer to this question should shock every American The government has admitted 605 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the United States since last November s Paris terrorist attack, two of whom are Christians.The rest are 589 Sunni Muslims, 10 Shia Muslims, three other Muslims, and one refugee identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data as other religion. At the same time, the proportion of Christians among the total cohort of Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the conflict began five years ago has now dropped below two percent.Just 55 Christians (1.9 percent) are among the 2,769 Syrian refugees admitted since March 2011, while a large majority 2,594 (93.6 percent) has been Sunni Muslims.Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria s population when the civil war began and Sunni Muslims for an estimated 74 percent.The administration has rejected calls by some Republican lawmakers, and some GOP presidential candidates, for Syrian Christians to be prioritized in the refugee admission process.Here s the truth about how these Muslim refugees who are coming from countries who hate are finding their way to the United States:The ISIS terrorist attack in Paris on November 13 fueled concerns that the terrorist group was exploiting the flow of refugees and migrants as cover to send jihadists into the West to carry out attacks.French authorities said two of the attackers had been carrying fake Syrian passports and warned European Union partners that some terrorists are trying to get into our countries and commit criminal acts by mixing in with the flow of migrants and refugees. Last Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper affirmed during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that ISIS has done so. Isn t it already proven that Mr. Baghdadi is sending people with this flow of refugees that are terrorists that in order to inflict further attacks on Europe and the United States? Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked him, referring to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. That s correct, Clapper replied. That s one technique they ve used is taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow. In addition, he continued, ISIS has become pretty skilled at [producing] phony passports, so they can travel ostensibly as legitimate travelers as well. In December, House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said the U.S. intelligence community has identified already individuals tied to terrorist organizations in Syria that want to exploit and get into the United States through the refugee process. Via: CNS News | 0 |
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