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(Reuters) - The standoff between Spain and Catalonia entered a new phase on Tuesday as Catalonia s leader delayed by several weeks a formal declaration of independence from Spain. The current political crisis could now take several paths. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has called an emergency Cabinet meeting for Wednesday to decide the Spanish government s response to the declaration. Rajoy had a meeting with his main rival, Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, late on Tuesday. He could deploy the nuclear option - an article of the constitution which enables him to sack the regional government and call an election. Before resorting to this option, which has never been used, Rajoy s government could call a parliamentary vote on whether to try to persuade Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to abandon the independence drive. Rajoy is also scheduled to speak at an extraordinary session of the Spanish parliament at 4 p.m. local time (1400 GMT). Whichever way he turns, Rajoy is likely to face criticism, either for clamping down too fiercely or for not pushing a hard enough line against separatism. Another possibility is that the judiciary steps in, with the public prosecutor calling Puigdemont and other politicians to Madrid to testify. A genuine dialogue between the Spanish and Catalan authorities to resolve the standoff remains highly unlikely. Puigdemont and other regional politicians signed a document on Tuesday proclaiming full sovereignty for Catalonia, but it was unclear whether the move had any legal value. Puigdemont said he was suspending the effects of a declaration of Catalan independence to allow time for dialogue. But the central government immediately responded that any dialogue would have to take place within the law and said Puigdemont did not have the right to demand talks. Meanwhile, far-left group CUP said the ball was in the Madrid government s court and Rajoy should be the one taking a step in their direction. Tuesday s declaration was largely symbolic because it was not formally endorsed by the regional parliament. The anti-capitalist Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), whose influence is disproportionate to its small size, insists a vote should take place, as stated in the Catalan law. While it has for now maintained its support for the regional government, it said it had set a one-month deadline for talks. If talks fail to happen, the CUP and another pro-independence party, Junts pel Si, are likely to ask the Catalan parliament to formally endorse Tuesday s declaration of independence. This declaration would be immediately blocked by Spain s constitutional court and force the Spanish government to step up further its legal and political response to the crisis. If talks do not happen and a declaration of independence is not put to a vote in the Catalan parliament, the CUP could withdraw its support, triggering a regional election. This election could also be called by Puigdemont himself to back up his weakened position or by the Madrid government if it considers Puigdemont and the Catalan authorities have gone too far, for instance if they seek a formal declaration of independence in the regional parliament. | 1 |
Many Americans believe it s racist to keep minorities trapped in a system that forces them to rely on Bernie and Hillary s promises of free shit from the government. Does that mean it s okay for them to go around and disassemble Bernie Sanders displays on college campuses?A Tulane University fraternity has caused an uproar this week after building a wall made of sandbags with the message Make America Great Again and Trump plastered across it.Photos of the wall circulated on social media after it was erected on April 7 on the off-campus house of the university s chapter of Kappa Alpha Order.As part of the local chapter s annual tradition, it has pledges build a wall around its private property each spring ahead of its Old South formal ball, according to The Times-Picayune. However, upset students said this time the wall was filled with connotations of hate and ignorance. The wall has since been torn down by unidentified individuals alleged to be Tulane football players.WATCH here:In a video posted to YouTube, individuals can be seen grabbing the sandbags and tossing them into the street while fraternity members look on, one saying this is private property. These connotations most directly mocked the experiences of Latino immigrants and workers throughout our nation, a post on student Ana De Santiago s Facebook read. By writing Trump in large, red letters across the wall, KA changed what was a tradition of building a wall into a tradition of constructing a border, symbolizing separation and xenophobia. This issue not only affects Latinos but all other marginalized immigrant groups in this country.On Wednesday, the university addressed the incident in a statement, saying that while it encourages the free exchange of ideas and opinions , the local chapter s actions sparked a visceral reaction in the context of a very heated and divisive political season, The Times-Picayune reported.In an effort to support the individuals who dismantled the fraternity s Trump wall , Tulane s Latino student advocacy group, Generating Excellence Now and Tomorrow in Education (GENTE), set up a Change.org petition against the university s administration. We the undersigned stand in solidarity with the individuals who took the brave action of dismantling the wall in front of Kappa Alpha Fraternity House, a statement on the petition read. This wall, although a tradition carried on by Kappa Alpha for many years, has been a source of aggression towards students of colour on this campus, and this year, with the addition of the labels Trump and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, has become overtly threatening towards Muslim and Latino students. In a statement released to The times-Picayune on Tuesday, the fraternity s national chapter Assistant Executive Director for Advancement Jesse Lyons said its chapter takes KA s values of gentlemanly conduct very seriously. This respect extends to every student of Tulane and every member of the broader community, the statement read. The comment was written on a makeshift wall on our private property, normally used for a game of capture the flag, to mock the ideologies of a political candidate. This had a unintended negative effect and as such it has been dismantled. In other words, they caved, and ceded their First Amendment right to free speech, in order to avoid any controversy created by the Leftist Mafia.*According to the fraternity s website, KA was founded in 1865 and Robert E Lee, who is known for commanding the Confederate Army in the Civil War, is listed as its spiritual founder.In 2010, the national fraternity chapter ordered an official ban on fraternity s members wearing Confederate soldier uniforms to its annual Old South Ball.In a document titled Laws concerning Old South , KA also prohibits the display of the Confederate flag from any chapter house, lodge, or meeting place. Via: Daily Mail*100percentfedup.com | 0 |
If you get your news from cable TV you don’t know any of this. Whatever their age or gender, cable reporters still cover politics like cigar-chomping old men poring over racing forms. History was made under their noses and they still spent the night talking win, place or show, obsessed by the order of finish in the crowded middle of a lame Republican pack. It was a coming out party for a political revolution, but Gil Scott Heron had it right: The revolution will not be televised.
Sanders made history even by the metrics of horse-race journalism. He had the most votes (155,578), biggest vote share (60.4 percent) and biggest margin in a contested race (22.4 percent) of any candidate of either party in New Hampshire primary history. As in Iowa, he outperformed late polls by more than their alleged margins of error. Sanders won 55 percent of women, a stunning 84 percent of voters under 30, and 92 percent of those who say the trait they prize most in a politician is honesty.
Clintonites said Sanders had home-court advantage. (If you buy that excuse, just ask a friend to name a senator from a neighboring state.) Hillary may be the world’s best-known politician after Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and her husband. It gives her an overwhelming head start in every state but Vermont, which is why she began New Hampshire 30 points up. They made other lame justifications for their loss, but after the flood there was nothing left to spin.
How Clinton lost is as telling as the historic margin she lost by. Just as in 2008, she presented as a hawk to a party bone-weary of war. Now as then, her high-dollar, tone-deaf, leak-prone campaign telegraphed every punch. Her backers harp on her experience — but experience only counts if you learn from it. Eight years later, Clinton makes the exact same mistakes. Still, party elites have bet the farm she’ll have it all sorted out by October. Dangerous wager.
She isn’t learning from this race, either. Her response to New Hampshire has been to double-down on her strategy. How such a bright person could be such a slow learner is a mystery. Her worst moments prior to New Hampshire were her ham-handed attempts to take down Sanders. Chelsea distorted his healthcare plans, Bill ripped his character. Hillary accused him of an “artful smear” for suggesting, obviously, that banks give to super PACs to influence policy. She voiced “concern” over reports he’d mingled with real live lobbyists at Democratic fundraisers. But to many voters the Clintons attacking Sanders’ integrity was like draft-avoider George W. Bush swift-boating Purple Heart-winner John Kerry — except this time it backfired, and her whole family took the hit.
At this point she might have decided to curtail the personal attacks, but alas, no. In a public television debate two days after the primary, she waited till the last second to launch an attack, this time on Sanders’ alleged disloyalty to Obama. It seems this will be a principal theme going forward, so in case you missed, a sample:
Much of this is flat-out false; all is shorn of context and rife with what Politifact called “half-truths.” Bill Press wrote a book criticizing Obama, but Sanders didn’t write the foreword (just a blurb that doesn’t criticize Obama). He never called Obama weak or a disappointment, though he once said Obama showed weakness in budget negotiations. Talking to a radio host who wanted Obama primaried, Sanders said open debate was a good thing. But notice in the above quote how Clinton, the Mary Lou Retton of syntax, made it seem Sanders said all these things.
When Clinton at last holstered her weapon, moderators Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill, who’d done yeoman’s work to that point, said there wasn’t time for Sanders to answer her final fusillade, but that he could do so in his closing remarks. Off balance for the first time all night, he split the difference, which made for a weak finish to an otherwise strong performance. Too bad; he deserved a chance at a full rebuttal even if it meant shaving a minute or two off “Antiques Roadshow.”
Clinton’s playing an explosive game, especially since she herself spent much of 2015 sniping at Obama. When Obama described his foreign policy as “Don’t do stupid stuff,” she ridiculed him. When he wouldn’t violate international law by declaring a no-fly zone in Syria, she broke with him. She talks a lot about being commander in chief. She must know it’s hard to be one when your old secretary of state is taking shots at you. Ironically enough, on foreign policy Sanders has been more loyal to Obama than Clinton, but the irony doesn’t end there.
As Hillary laced into Sanders, Bill was miles away lacing into Obama. In a listless swipe at the banking system, he said, “Yeah, it’s rigged, because you don’t have a president who’s a change maker.” It’s what Hillary accuses Bernie of saying. (Note too, the tacit admission that Bernie’s right on Dodd Frank.) All in all, Hillary looks cunning, not loyal. Because integrity is for her what intelligence was for Dan Quayle, she can ill afford to appear hypocritical or be caught doctoring the truth.
Clinton’s ad hominem attacks — call it the politics of personal destruction — poison the air around her. Just before New Hampshire, deservedly beloved feminist icon Gloria Steinem told Bill Maher that young women join Sanders’ campaign to meet guys. Steinem got taken to the Internet woodshed for making a lighthearted, self-deprecating joke, on a comedy show, no less, but only because the tone of Clinton’s campaign is so rancid. Clinton must see how her scorched-earth policy hurts her family, her friends and her campaign, but for her there’s never any turning back.
In another reminder of 2008, Clinton has added race to the mix. On primary night on CNN, Clinton ally Michael Nutter slyly accused Sanders of subtle racism, terming his call for criminal justice reform “mildly offensive” because, Nutter falsely charged, Sanders never talks about other African-American issues. For some reason— it can’t be ratings — CNN lets commentators with clear conflicts of interest mouth thinly veiled partisan message. This is worse. Nutter is no more “offended” than Hillary is “concerned” or Bill “shocked” to discover trolls on the Internet. They want us to think Bernie does what they do, but of course he doesn’t. Lots of African-Americans live in upcoming primary states. Because they are the firewall Clinton hopes will save her, she’ll ratchet this up as high as she can. Last week the Congressional Black Caucus PAC endorsed her. Asked about Sanders’ civil rights record, Rep. John Lewis dryly replied, “I never met him,” and went on to praise Clinton for her close ties to African-American politicians. Lewis is a hero to me and to millions. Nothing he says or does in a campaign could change that. But Bernie deserves better. It’s been reported that he and Sanders did meet when Bernie was the sole white member on hand for a hearing Lewis held on voter suppression. Or he might have bumped into him back in the day, when a young Bernie joined the Congress of Racial Equality and braved jail to protest segregated housing in Chicago. The real problem with the Black Caucus PAC endorsement isn’t anything Lewis said, but the way Washington works. Only seven of 46 caucus members voted on the caucus endorsement but 11 lobbyists voted, including at least two tobacco and two healthcare industry lobbyists. Like the Iowa Democratic Party, the PAC won’t reveal the tally — but we know at least two of the seven actual members voted no. On Friday we learned that DNC chairwoman and Clinton lifer Debbie Wasserman Schultz ended Obama’s ban on federal contractors donating to the party. (So much for loyalty to Obama.) On Wednesday we learned Clinton will get a majority of New Hampshire delegates despite losing in a landslide. Schultz told CNN the reason 700 unelected superdelegates get to vote at the convention is to spare grass-roots activists the burden of having to primary them. No matter how much money Schultz wrings from contractors or how many superdelegates Clinton piles up in states Sanders wins, it won’t equal the price they pay for such cynicism. To the extent Clinton gets away with it, she can thank a media nearly as out of touch as she is. Newspapers beat TV for analysis, but the gap narrows every year, and not because TV is getting better. Elite reporters reflect the elite consensus, which accounts for such recent Washington Post headlines as “Democrats Would Be Insane to Nominate Sanders” and “Sanders’ Oddball Coalition Savors Its Victory.” It may explain the boffo reviews of Clinton’s PBS debate performance, as in the Times headline, “Analysis: Clinton Is Cool, Calm and Effective.” Pundits praised her superior grasp of policy partly out of habit– it was true of earlier debates– but also because it’s how they see the world. They should read the transcript. If anything, Bernie does the better job of explaining how he’d fund his programs. Hillary won’t say how she’d pay for Social Security. She says she has a universal healthcare plan but she doesn’t. She has a laundry list of programs, one for each demographic, all with unanswered questions about implementation, effectiveness and affordability. The most striking thing about the debate, other than the low blow Clinton struck at the end of the last round, was that Sanders got the better of her on foreign policy. Has any other presidential candidate ever told the American people that Iran doesn’t “hate us for our freedom” but because we engineered the violent overthrow of their democratically elected president and installed a vicious tyrant in his place? The rest of the world knows, why not us? Is Clinton’s jingoism about not talking to Iran the signal we want to send to thousands of Iranians who joyously took to the streets to celebrate the nuclear weapons pact? Shouldn’t Clinton’s airbrushing of the hyper-secretive, lawbreaking Kissinger concern us? Has anyone but Bernie ever said Henry Kissinger’s China opening may have cost us some jobs? Clinton mocks him for citing her Iraq vote but he now casts a wider net. Pundits citing her foreign policy cred should feel honor-bound to tell us why she’s right and he’s wrong. The press doesn’t understand any better than Hillary what made New Hampshire historic. They’re great at figuring out who’s ahead in South Carolina, but awful at grasping — let alone conveying –the terms of the new debate. It’s too soon to describe that debate whole, but among Democrats at least it has begun to clarify. A word about it, and what it means to this race. Thirty years ago, reeling from the Reagan Revolution, elite Democrats rebranded their party, which had long championed both economic and cultural liberalism. They kept cultural liberalism, but ditched economic liberalism for “neoliberalism”; a blend of economic deregulation, free trade, smaller government and targeted tax cuts. Few said it out loud, but it was the end of the Roosevelt coalition, which had been built on economic issues of universal appeal and which had lasted 50 years. Neoliberalism appeals to the rich. Neoliberal Bill Clinton was the first Democratic presidential nominee to outspend a Republican. In 2008 Obama outspent John McCain 2-to-1, breaking a record set in 1972 by Richard Nixon. But neoliberalism is killing the middle class. It’s why both parties rely on cultural issues to hold their bases. If you back abortion rights, same sex marriage and gun safety you’re a Democrat. If not, you’re a Republican. On economic issues it’s more complex. If you hate big banks and political corruption, you could be for Sanders or Trump. It’s why Sanders talks so much about these things; they’re what the election’s all about. When Clinton isn’t calling Sanders a traitor, she says she shares his goals. But she doesn’t. Clinton was part of the neoliberal revolt that destroyed the Roosevelt coalition and she is as we’ve seen, a woman of markedly fixed views. She may be Obama’s heir, but Sanders is FDR’s. She campaigns as she does out of habit, and to hide the very real choice. The neoliberal experiment is over. Democrats, proud heirs to Franklin Roosevelt, are ready to come home. | 0 |
MANILA (Reuters) - The war in the Philippine city of Marawi saw Islamist insurgents execute civilians or use them as human shields, while military air strikes killed non-combatants and may have been used in excess, an Amnesty International report said on Friday. The investigation by the rights group on the bloody five-month battle was based on interviews with 48 witnesses from September until early November and called for an independent inquiry. The conflict in Marawi, the only predominantly Muslim city in the mainly Catholic Philippines, was the country s biggest and longest battle since World War Two. More than 1,100 people, mostly insurgents, were killed, including 166 soldiers and 47 civilians, according to the authorities. At least 350,000 people were displaced and large parts of Marawi have been decimated by air strikes. Witnesses described at least 10 separate incidents where at least 25 people were executed by the Muslim extremists because they were Christians. Amnesty described those as war crimes. It also said 10 hostages may have been killed in a single bombing run by the armed forces, and said an independent inquiry should include an assessment as to whether the air strikes were proportionate to the threat. They must initiate a prompt, effective and impartial investigation into whether its bombings of civilian neighborhoods was proportional under international humanitarian law, Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International s crisis response director, said in a statement. The Philippine authorities must bring those responsible for torture and other violations to justice and ensure that the victims receive adequate reparations. Major-General Restituto Padilla, armed forces spokesman, said the military was aware of the report and would respond in full later. He said troops were given strict instructions to observe and respect international humanitarian law and human rights. We will not tolerate and condone these abuses and will act on them, he told a regular news briefing on Friday. The 34-page report, The Battle of Marawi: Death and destruction in the Philippines , quotes a survivor who said he was spared by rebels because he could recite the shahada , a statement of Islamic faith, but a Christian ambulance driver was shot dead because he could not do the same. Other survivors said hostages were executed or physically abused, forced into labor and used as human shields. Some hostages who escaped alleged they were detained and tortured by security forces who suspected them to be militants. Amnesty said it talked to eight men, including seven Christians, who said they were badly treated by the authorities. I was punched and kicked. They tied our hands and feet with electrical wire, the report quoted one survivor as saying. The military was angry because 13 of their men were killed. Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis praised the Philippine military for ending the war without a single credible human rights abuse allegation. Amnesty noted that the military was responding to concerns about looting by soldiers but must follow through on promises of compensation . | 0 |
Just another slap in the face to US citizens. Our government arranges massive payments to hostages taken by the terrorist nation of Iran, as they walk away unscathed .A fund of over $1 billion has been created for the U.S. embassy personnel taken hostage by Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but it is the U.S. taxpayer, not Iran, who will be paying for it.The new fund, known as the United States Victims of State Sponsors of Terrorism Fund, was an addition to the omnibus bill put forward by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama Dec. 28. As much as $4.4 million could go to each of the 52 Americans held by Iran, with another $600,000 going to each spouse and child of the victims. The provision authorizes $1.025 billion from the Department of the Treasury to be used to pay for the new fund. Additionally, the legislation includes a 25 percent cap on any attorney s fees, which could lead to as much as $250 million total going to lawyers of the various victims involved.The victims were taken hostage during Iran s Islamic Revolution led by former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Hundreds of student protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran taking 52 U.S. personnel hostage for 444 days. Several months after the takeover, former President Jimmy Carter authorized Operation Eagle Claw, a rescue attempt by U.S. special operations forces which would later fail. The hostages would eventually be released after a lengthy negotiation process the day of President Ronald Reagan s inauguration in January, 1981. Victims of the embassy attack have been seeking compensation for their captivity for some time, but have been prevented from taking legal action against Iran. The 1981 Algiers Accords, the agreement which secured the release of the hostages, had a provision barring the victims from suing the Iranian government. Iran is not paying the money, but it s as close as you can get, says Thomas Lankford, an attorney for one of the victims, speaking to The Washington Post. Lankford refers to a clause in the new law which mandates that any money collected from the BNP Paribas scandal will be used for the new fund and the various 9/11 victim funds. The U.S. levied a fine of $9 billion on the French bank in June 2014 for its evasion of sanctions against countries like Iran, Cuba and North Korea.The staggering amount of compensation being paid to the victims is remarkably higher than the $262,000 suggested by the George W. Bush administration in 2003. Some may be surprised that a fiscally conservative Republican-controlled Congress would authorize payments of more than $250 million from the U.S. Treasury to private attorneys, even on behalf of victims of terrorism deserving compensation, writes attorney John Bellinger in the Lawfare blog. Via: Daily Caller | 1 |
It s pretty much common knowledge that all Mitt Romney s speech against Donald Trump did was serve to help the Republican frontrunner with his band of merry morons voting for him. They, like Trump, see any and all criticism of The Donald as a means to rise up. If Trump is racist, they love him more. If he s misogynistic, he rises in the polls. If he criticizes disabled people, they d give him a medal.So, when you add up all the mean tweets being written by Trump supporters and Trump himself, you can only imagine how many poured in after Romney made his attempt at tearing Trump down. Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Romney read a few of those tweets, and added a few jabs back that were actually pretty funny.Here are just a couple to give you the general idea of what comes out of the Trump campaign and his minions:Mitt Romney had his chance and blew it. Lindsey Graham ran for president, got ZERO, and quit! Why are they now spokesmen against me? Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2016@MittRomney = loser, who are you any way, and by the way where do u buy the shoe polish u wear in ur hair lol #Trump2016 Annette (@arpace4) March 2, 2016I actually met Mitt Romney in a bank a couple months back. I'm now working on a time machine to go back & punch him in the throat!#TRUMP VOTE4TRUMP_2016 (@VOTE4TRUMP_2016) March 4, 2016And while it s clear Donald Trump s skin and his ego are very fragile, kudos to Romney for proving he knows how to take criticism with a grain of salt. That s what one actually has to do when in the public eye. However, Trump turns in to a whining schoolboy destined for revenge and ends up being the class bully.Watch the hilarious segment here:Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s chief justice said on Wednesday that the opposition did not provide sufficient evidence to show that President Uhuru Kenyatta broke the law by using state resources during his re-election campaign. In response to those allegations of ... use of public resources ... we are unable to deal with that in the absence of any evidence, said Chief Justice David Maraga, as the court delivered a detailed ruling on last month s annulled presidential elections. | 1 |
TOKYO (Reuters) - A fledgling party led by popular Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike gained momentum on Thursday ahead of an Oct. 22 election as the biggest opposition Democratic Party said it would step aside to let its candidates run under her conservative, reformist banner. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a conservative who returned to power in 2012, hopes a recent boost in voter support will help his Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition maintain a simple majority. It now holds a two-thirds super majority. But Koike s new Party of Hope, only formally launched on Wednesday, has upended the outlook for the election after the former LDP member announced she would lead it herself. I m someone who is always ready to take action, Koike told a news conference where she spoke about her achievements since taking office as governor a year ago. A media-savvy former defense minister whose name has often been floated to be Japan s first female prime minister, Koike said she would not run for a seat herself, although speculation persists that she will. Democratic Party executives said they would not run candidates of their own and would let members run under the Party of Hope banner. The party has struggled to overcome rock-bottom ratings, defections and an image tainted by its rocky stint in power from 2009 to 2012. After the cabinet formally set the date of the election, Abe told reporters, I decided to call this election because we must overcome the national crisis of the threat from North Korea and an aging population by obtaining a mandate from the people. Some opposition lawmakers boycotted the dissolution session, in protest against Abe s election decision, which could bring about a political vacuum at a time of high tension with North Korea over its missile and nuclear arms programs. A survey by the Mainichi newspaper showed 18 percent of voters plan to vote for Koike s party, compared to 29 percent for Abe s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). An Asahi newspaper poll showed 13 percent planned to vote for her party, versus 32 percent for the LDP. Both surveys asked voters their preference for proportional representation districts where ballots are cast for parties, rather than candidates. Voters in many countries have shown they are willing to take a risk, even a severe risk, in terms of what will actually happen because they are disappointed with the status quo, said Martin Schulz, a researcher at Fujitsu Research Institute. But Schulz, who drew a comparison to French President Emmanuel Macron s meteoric rise, added that Koike s platform might not be so appealing, given its similarities to LDP policies. Abe s personal ratings have risen to about 50 percent from about 30 percent in July, partly on the back of his leadership during the current North Korea crisis. But opposition parties say he called the election to escape questioning in parliament about suspected cronyism scandals that had cut into his support. Koike, 65, defied the LDP to run successfully for Tokyo governor last year and her novice local party then crushed the LDP in a metropolitan assembly election in July. Her Party of Hope shares policy space with the business-friendly LDP, but she has staked out different stances on two issues likely to appeal to voters. Koike, who wants Japan to abandon nuclear power, said she would study ways to eliminate dependence on it by 2030. Abe s government aims to retain its role in the energy mix, despite worries over safety after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis. Koike also wants to freeze a planned rise in the national sales tax to 10 percent from 8 percent in 2019. Abe says he will raise the tax but spend more on child care and education instead of paying down public debt. Recent reforms will cut to 465 from 475 the number of lower house seats in the coming election. | 1 |
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C.E. Dyer reports that President Obama claimed back in March of 2015 that he found out about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private, unsecured email server the same way other Americans found out —“ through news reports .” But WikiLeaks has released emails hacked from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that proved otherwise and may point to a big reason why the FBI let Clinton off the hook.
“They know POTUS and HRC emailed,” Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, wrote in a March 2015 email approximately a month before Clinton announced her presidential run.
“Josh has been asked about that,” Palmieri continued, in reference to Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.
“Standard practice is not to confirm anything about his email, so his answer to press was that he would not comment/confirm,” Palmieri wrote. “I recollect that Josh was also asked if POTUS ever noticed her personal email account and he said something like POTUS likely had better things to do than focus on his Cabinet’s email addresses.”
Better things to do, like golfing? Drawing red lines in the sand? Even if Obama had “better things to do,” someone should have been concerned about cyber security and the fact that the secretary of state was using a private server.
In the email exchange, Palmieri was discussing Obama’s CBS statement with Clinton aide Phillippe Reines who suggested that they should warn the White House about the likelihood that Obama’s statement to CBS would fall apart under scrutiny.
“One of us should connect with the WH just so they know that the email will show his statement to not make sense,” Reines wrote. “I’m happy to do so to Josh Earnest since Jen is in a weird position, unless Cheryl or John you want to (or already have) with someone else. But it’s not unreasonable to assume that Josh is going to get asked how this was possible, and he should have the factset.”
“Especially if it’s some weird technical thing with the President’s email setup that he doesn’t see addresses,” Reines wrote.
Some “weird technical thing?” Must have been the Russians’ fault, eh? The FBI found out, during their investigation of Clinton’s use of private servers run out of her New York home, that Obama used a pseudonym to email Clinton on her home brew server. That’s a big fat lie as part of a massive coverup, not some “weird technical thing.”
In another March 2015 email released by WikiLeaks, Podesta asked Clinton lawyer Cheryl Mills about emails between POTUS and Clinton: “Think we should hold emails to and from potus?”
“That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I seems like they will,” Podesta wrote.
Well, this revelation may have been a big reason why the Obama administration let Clinton off the hook — Obama himself was in on it. | 1 |
Speaking at a Rotary Club gathering in Kentucky on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vented about how President Donald Trump s lack of political experience has led to him setting excessive expectations for legislative priorities.McConnell, R-Ky., told the group in Florence that he found it extremely irritating that Congress has earned the reputation of not accomplishing anything. Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point, said McConnell, a Republican and the state s senior senator.According to the latest Real Clear Politics poll, Congress currently has a 15% approval rating and a 73.3% disapproval rating. There is no mention anywhere in the poll that President Trump is somehow responsible for Congress abysmal approval numbers: Trump, a political newcomer, as McConnell noted, has a habit of declaring progress on major priorities that do not necessarily reflect the reality of lawmaking.For example, as the House was in the midst of negotiations about its Obamacare replacement bill in February, Trump announced that Congress was in the final stages of its bill and said it would be ready for submitting in March. While the House bill was unveiled in March, that chamber didn t vote on it until May, and health care votes continued until the end of July.That sort of disconnect has led to Trump s expressing disappointment when bills chief among them health care reform fail to end up on his desk, even though, as with health care, the political reality indicated all along how difficult it was going to be to pass legislation. Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before. And I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process, McConnell told the group. So part of the reason I think people feel we re underperforming is because too many artificial deadlines unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislating may not have been fully understood. ABC NewsWATCH: | 1 |
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s Queensland state on Sunday called a snap election after the ruling center-left Labor Party lost its legislative majority, a poll that could give far-right nationalists a chance to boost political representation. State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called the election for Nov. 25 after her party expelled a rogue lawmaker over misconduct on Friday, which left her with a hung parliament alongside the conservative Liberal National Party (LNP). I m calling this election to give business and industry in our great state the certainty they need as we approach 2018, Palaszczuk told reporters in Brisbane. The campaign launch comes just days after a citizenship scandal engulfed federal politics when the High Court ruled that Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and four other lawmakers were ineligible to remain in parliament because they held dual citizenship. One Nation, a party founded by far-right politician Pauline Hanson who holds a seat in the federal Senate, has already flagged plans to field candidates across at least two-thirds of the constituencies represented in Queensland s unicameral parliament. One of the disqualified federal lawmakers from Friday s High Court ruling, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, said after his dismissal that he intends to stand for the party in the Queensland election. A Newspoll published by SBS News earlier this month showed One Nation at 16 percent primary support in Queensland, likely stealing some voters from the LNP s traditional electorates. One Nation s state leader, Steve Dickson, said on Sunday the party would field 60 candidates across the 93 seats of the Queensland parliament, and could add more. Maths says clearly we ll get the balance of power in Queensland, Dickson told Sky News, adding that his party was riding a global backlash against establishment political parties. However, some political analysts caution against high expectations for One Nation, pointing to the Western Australia state election results in March where the party failed to secure an expected swing in political influence. Palaszczuk s press briefing on Sunday was briefly interrupted by protestors against Indian mining giant Adani Enterprises proposed $4 billion Carmichael coal mine in the state s north, which could shape up to be a significant campaign topic. Opposition to Adani s Carmichael mine could give a boost to minority groups such as the Greens, an environmentalist party, and One Nation, which opposes foreign investment. Environment groups say the mine would contribute to global warming and damage the Great Barrier Reef. Adani says the project would pay billions of dollars in royalties and taxes, create jobs and export coal to India help bring electricity to rural regions. The LNP supports the mine but is considering plans to ensure Adani s corporate structure makes its tax liability similar to Australian companies before it is given a proposed A$1 billion loan from the federal government. | 1 |
We Are Change
In today’s political climate even our beer is up for debate. And why shouldn’t it be? This is America. We debate things here. That’s how democracy works. (At least when the issues aren’t taboo.) Recently, it’s shown up in the state of Pennsylvania with Eric Trump, Donald Trump’s son, garnering an endorsement for the Republican candidate from Yuengling, America’s oldest brewery.
And now the debate turns to political action.
With the most recent statement from Richard “Dick” Yuengling Jr., the 73-year-old owner of D. G. Yuengling & Son’s, located in Pottsville, Pennsylvania — the seat of Schuylkill County — Yuengling said that his company was “behind” Trump. Inevitably, a lashing out occurred in the digital realm with regard to political correctness and expressively personal views. Customers weren’t pleased. They were offended. In fact, some even claimed that they’d never drink Yuengling again.
This is what democracy is, and should be. Sure. And yet, something is lost in the politicized scramble of this ugly election year.
A Pennsylvania state representative, Brian Sims, announced on his Facebook page that he was saying “GOOD BYE” to Yuengling Brewery.
“I’m not normally one to call for boycotts but I absolutely believe that how we spend our dollars is a reflection of our votes and values! Supporting Yuengling Brewery, that uses my dollars to bolster a man, and an agenda, that wants to punish me for being a member of the LGBT community and punish the black and brown members of my community for not being white, is something I’m too smart and too grown up to do.”
Sims represents the 182nd district of Philadelphia , which includes a majority of Center City, in addition to parts of Rittenhouse Square, Grays Ferry, and South Philadelphia. I live here. I walk those areas of the city.
And I see, feel, and hear other elements of our society that go unnoticed or receive little to no attention. To observe this sort of outcry against a presidential candidate is expectantly what democracy was birthed upon, as we know in the city of Philadelphia. We take action. (We like to think.) However, along the way I’ve seen the incessant results of many issues that get buried, in favor of political expediency and trending topics that ultimately define our aggressive actions towards “voting with our dollars”.
If that’s the case, then what about all the other detriments to our standard of living? For instance, the opiate epidemic that is sweeping Pennsylvania and the surrounding states and the rest of the country by storm.
According to a June 2016 report from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health , entitled “The Epidemic of Overdoses From Opioids in Philadelphia”, drug deaths involving the fatal use of opioids, from 2000-2014, had tripled. In 2014, approximately 47,000 people died from overdoses in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). Sixty-one percent of that total was attributed to the use of opioids.
“Since 1999, the number of prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioid pain relievers in the U.S. more than quadrupled.”
Opioid-related overdose deaths in Philadelphia were nearly three times higher in men than among women in 2015. Those deaths were also more than two times as high among whites, as opposed to deaths among African Americans.
Between 2003 and 2015, in Philadelphia, cocaine and benzodiazepines were detected in overdose deaths in tandem with opioids at a rate of 70% and 90%, respectively. During that same period, overdose deaths related to heroin more than doubled in the city, with approximately 400 deaths reported in 2015.
In that same year, there were nearly 700 drug overdose deaths in Philadelphia. That’s more than twice as many deaths from homicide in that same year.
From 2014-2015, 10% of the nearly 1,300 overdose deaths in Philadelphia were from non-residents. Most of those non-residents were people from New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and other parts of Pennsylvania.
Once the president is elected, these issues won’t go away. In fact, they’re extant — some as a surrogate to the system we attribute to healthcare. (One of the most hotly contested issues of partisan bickering in the country.)
Additionally, these effects are increasingly felt in Philadelphia hospitals.
“The percentage of Philadelphia hospital emergency department visits related to opioid overdoses increased from approximately 0.4% in 2007 to nearly 0.7% in 2015. In 2015, there were over 6,500 emergency department visits for opioid overdoses. For each opioid-related death, there were approximately 12 hospital emergency department visits.”
So while the country politically corrects itself — whatever that means — myriad issues get buried beneath picking and choosing a side, in response to the emotional disturbances of partisan bickering.
Rather than dealing with facts, the web of society becomes entangled with He Said, She Said.
Ultimately, this coercive cultural backwardness and evolutionary substandard, the rattle-mouthed bickering of intellectual thought and deceptive, manipulative action, that matches up more closely with the reptilian species, rather than the spirit of the human heart and the cultural celebration of life and all its wonder, is exactly what gave rise to Trump.
And our opioid epidemic.
Somewhere along the way, the facts were buried beneath the lie. And the truth has become something else, entirely.
Sources
http://www.phillyvoice.com/beer-drinkers-disavow-yuengling-after-owner-shows-support-for-trump/
The post Political Correctness for Yuengling Brewery; What About Our Opioid Epidemic? appeared first on We Are Change .
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There s currently a woman who wants to be selected to serve on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). Her name is Mary Lou Bruner, and she s about as far-right in ideology as one could ever seem to imagine. She s an ultra-right-wing Christian conservative who believes heavily in conspiracy theories, and her latest theory is just a bonkers as all her others.According to Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune, Bruner is now putting out the theory that preschool programs are a plot to make children gay. Not only that, but to also turn kids against their parents who do not accept Islam and gay marriage. Smith, who seems to have access to the SBOE hopeful s private account, tweeted out a screen-capture of Bruner s Facebook post declaring this absurd theory. In the post, Bruner said: The GLBTQ agenda is one of the big reasons the liberals want 3-year-old and 4-year-old children to attend public school Pre-K programs. The federal government wants to indoctrinate the little children, teaching them a homosexual marriage is just as good as a marriage with a father and a mother. The federal government wants to push its socialistic and multicultural agenda onto these impressionable litter children who believe anything they are told.Children who get government indoctrination in Pre-K are going to become confused about their sexuality, and they are going to become rebellious because the government curriculum plans to tell the children not to listen to their parents if their parents tell them something different. The government curriculum plans to tell the little children their parents are ignorant, and they don t understand because of the way the parents were taught. Or the little children will be told their parents are bigoted because they do not accept Islam and gay marriage. Likely #SBOE member Mary Lou Bruner: pre-K is feds indoctrinating kids to make them sexually confused #txlege pic.twitter.com/ngMtsOq1S3 Evan Smith (@evanasmith) April 22, 2016The fact that this woman is running for the Texas State Board of Education and could very well have influence over what is taught is absolutely terrifying. Bruner is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic.Newsflash to Bruner: you re not taught to be gay, and teaching acceptance and love of others is actually the Christian thing to do. As a person who was raised in a very evangelical Christian home and is also a lesbian, let me tell you, if you re taught to be gay, where the hell did I learn it? The only learned behavior Bruner is promoting is wanting to teach kids to be discriminatory, vindictive, and hateful of anyone who doesn t fit her definition of how to live one s life.Bruner needs to stay as far away from educational decisions as possible. She needs to keep her crazy conspiracy theories within the confines of her own home. She s truly what is actually dangerous, not kids getting early childhood education. For goodness sake.Featured Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images | 1 |
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is evaluating steps regarding its border gates and air space in response to the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum being held on Monday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. In an interview shown by multiple Turkish broadcasters, Yildirim said Ankara will make decisions in more direct talks with the Iraqi central government after the referendum, adding that economic, political, diplomatic and military steps were being discussed. | 1 |
Notable names include Ray Washburne (Commerce), a Dallas-based investor, is reported to be under consideration to lead the department. | 0 |
We re still waiting to hear if the White Congressional Caucus will join in oh wait never mind The Congressional Black Caucus is calling on its members to be as disruptive to Speaker Ryan as possible next week when the House returns for business on Tuesday.The Washington Examiner has obtained a memo sent to Democratic offices that states that CBC members are coordinating a day of action on the floor in regards to gun violence. The plan involves members giving speeches throughout the day calling for further federal restrictions on the possession and use of guns. The memo also asks members to be present for a House Rules Committee that afternoon regarding on the terrorism and gun control legislation slated for action on the floor Wednesday. During Votes Members are encouraged to have a picture (not poster board, but a printed piece of paper with an image of a constituent killed by a firearm), the memo stated.Via: Washington Examinerh/t: Weasel Zippers | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eight Republican candidates have qualified for the prime-time Fox News/Google debate on Thursday, with Donald Trump winning the center-stage spot as the top-polling candidate, Fox News announced on Tuesday. But Trump said on Tuesday he likely will not attend the debate. This will be the last one before the Iowa caucuses on Monday marking the first contest in the nomination race for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump has been engaged in a public spat with Fox News that began at a debate last August in which he said he was subject to unfair questioning by moderator Megyn Kelly. “Let’s see how much money Fox makes without me in the debate,” Trump told the news conference in Marshalltown, Iowa. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who failed to qualify for the main event in the last debate, made the cut this time. The other participants in the 9 p.m. EST debate will be Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Ohio Governor John Kasich. Former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore qualified for the 7 p.m. EST debate for low-polling candidates. After failing to qualify for a prime-time debate held earlier this month, Paul declined to participate in the so-called undercard debate. (Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0 |
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s government has declared three days of mourning after attack on north Sinai mosque killed at least 85 people on Friday, state television said. | 0 |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Trade between the United States and Mexico would not end if the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was terminated, Mexico s foreign minister said on Friday, after a new U.S. plan emerged to build a five-year sunset provision into the treaty. In the shadow of repeated threats to scrap the deal by U.S. President Donald Trump and his officials, Mexico, Canada and the United States have set an ambitious goal to renegotiate the 23-year-old trade pact within the next few months. Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said currently about half of Mexico s trade with the United States did not use NAFTA channels, and that if the deal were to end the tariffs it would face would average 3 percent - not enough to halt trading. Mexico is much bigger than NAFTA, Videgaray said in an interview with Reuters. If the negotiation does not go well, it would not be the end of trade between Mexico and the United States...There would be no leap into the abyss, he said, arguing that World Trade Organization tariffs would govern trade post-NAFTA. He also mentioned that Mexico could put higher tariffs on U.S. products, noting that apples from Arizona could face a 50 percent tariff to enter Mexico without NAFTA. Videgaray has said that Mexico would walk away from the talks if Trump followed through on a threat to trigger a 180-day countdown to scrap NAFTA as a negotiating tactic. The three countries are due to sit down for a third round of talks in Ottawa, Canada on Sept. 23. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Thursday said the United States was seeking to add a five-year sunset provision to NAFTA to provide a regular, systematic re-examination of the pact. Ross argued it was needed because forecasts for U.S. export and job growth when NAFTA took effect in 1994 were wildly optimistic and failed to live up to expectations. Such a clause means NAFTA would automatically end after five years unless renewed. Videgaray said the idea of a sunset clause was unnecessary, since the pact s members can already trigger a renegotiation or leave it at any time, and noted that neither Mexico nor Canada had formally received such a proposal. There is no strict need to have this exit mechanism since the treaty already has a much more flexible exit mechanism, he said. It seems redundant, or strange to add a date of every five years. In an attempt to reduce its dependence on U.S. trade, Mexico has been doubling down on its open trade model, and is currently trying to secure more access to the European Union, Brazil, Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, among others. Despite the tensions over trade and repeated barbs by Trump, some aspects of the U.S.-Mexico relationship have been blossoming, including defense cooperation. On Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Mexico to take part in Independence Day celebrations. Both Videgaray and Mattis said the two countries shared common concerns about issues that include drug trafficking in Mexico but also drug consumption in the United States that fuels the illicit industry. | 0 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — The death toll from a riot in a penitentiary in northeastern Brazil rose on Sunday to 26 prisoners, increasing the number of prison killings in the country this year to more than 120. Decapitations and mutilations are common in Brazil’s violent, overcrowded prisons, in which 40 percent of inmates have yet to be sentenced, but the latest wave of brutality has appalled many here. The riot began around 5 p. m. on Saturday at the State Penitentiary of Alcaçuz, 13 miles from Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, and continued until around 7 a. m. on Sunday, when riot police officers took control of the prison. “The situation of the rebellion is controlled,” said Maj. Eduardo Franco of the Rio Grande do Norte police. On Sunday, the authorities initially said they had found 27 bodies, but the death toll was later revised to 26 Major Franco said there had been a mistake. Many of the bodies were mutilated. The prison has a capacity of 620 but was holding around 1, 100 prisoners when the riot began, the authorities said. All of the inmates had been sentenced, Major Franco added. Wilma Batista, the director of the prison agents’ union in Rio Grande do Norte, sent a photograph of two headless, mutilated corpses in a prison yard via a cellphone messaging service and said she had seen many others. “We are shocked,” she said. With Brazil swamped in recession, President Michel Temer’s government reeling from one graft scandal after another, and a wave of seemingly uncontrollable prison violence, many Brazilians feel they are going back to a darker recent past when crime, corruption and the economy were out of control. “We thought we had turned that page, and now it is coming back,” said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations and political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The killings reflected the escalation of a deadly gang war that exploded when 56 prisoners were massacred in Manaus, in Amazonas State, on Jan. 1. Four more were killed the next day in another jail in the city. The state authorities attributed the Manaus deaths to the Family of the North, an Amazon drug gang that had attacked prisoners connected to a rival gang, the São First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese abbreviation, P. C. C. The gangs were believed to be fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes. The P. C. C. was for years allied with a Rio de Janeiro drug gang called the Red Command. Last year, the alliance fell apart, leading to a spate of prison killings. On Jan. 6, after the Manaus massacre, 33 prisoners were found butchered at a prison in Boa Vista in Roraima State, in the far north of Brazil. The state authorities said the P. C. C. was behind the killings. Four more prisoners were killed in a third Manaus prison after being moved from the site of the first massacre. The riot on Saturday night began when prisoners linked to the P. C. C. rebelled during visiting hours, Ms. Batista said. They were in a separate prison, Rogério Coutinho Madruga, which is next to Alcaçuz and effectively part of the same complex. She said that just six prison agents were on duty, and that they managed to free visitors before retreating to another block. “The agents saved the visitors and had to retreat” because prisoners set the block on fire, Ms. Batista said. The escaped prisoners then attacked a block inside the Alcaçuz jail that housed men from another gang, the Rio Grande do Crime Syndicate, Ms. Batista said. Since 2015, many of the cells inside Alcaçuz have had no bars, and prisoners wander freely 24 hours a day, Ms. Batista said. Police officers and prison guards managed to stop the killing from spreading further, but electricity to the prison was cut. The police decided to wait until dawn before entering, and they restrained desperate relatives who were trying to get inside. Lincoln Gakiya, a state prosecutor from an organized crime unit in São Paulo State who has specialized in the P. C. C. said its split with the Red Command was behind the crisis. The Rio gang has allied with five other gangs around Brazil, including the Crime Syndicate. “This war is for the hegemony of the drug trade,” Mr. Gakiya said. “The prison system is not prepared for this gang war. There is no place to separate the gangs. The system is overcrowded, so the tendency is to get worse. ” A cellphone video circulating on social media showed a man with his face covered, brandishing what looked like a machete or a sword, walking among a large number of mutilated bodies in what appeared to be a prison yard. The letters P. C. C. were scrawled in what looked like blood on a wall. Although it was impossible to verify the video, the bodies visible were wearing blue shorts similar to those worn by prisoners shown in local news reports. Grisly videos like this have circulated after all of the attacks. Sublieutenant Eliabe Marques, a police officer and the president of a Rio Grande do Norte state association of police and firefighter sublieutenants, said the dispute between the P. C. C. and the Crime Syndicate had grown worse recently. “In jail, the prisoner has to join one or other of the gangs, P. C. C. or the Crime Syndicate,” he said. “It is a phenomenon that is making the situation in Rio Grande do Norte even more serious. ” Ms. Batista said the prison agents’ union had warned of potentially explosive conditions inside the prison but had been ignored. “It is very sad, not just for the butchery, but to see organized crime face the state, the power of the state, leaving more scars on prison agents who suffer psychologically and physically from such a stressful profession,” she said. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States top military officer said on Tuesday that despite an escalation in rhetoric between the United States and North Korea, he had not seen Pyongyang change it s military posture. While the political space is clearly very charged right now, we haven t seen a change in the posture of North Korean forces and we watch that very closely, Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the military s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing for his reappointment. What we haven t seen is military activity that would be reflective of the charged political environment. | 0 |
Saturday, 29 October 2016 Another clue was an arrow in the lung area.
King William II Rufus was the son of William the Conqueror and King of England from 1087 to 1100. Described as uncouth, barbaric, lacking both morals and ethics, addicted to vice, and definitely not the most popular king, he was killed by an arrow to the lungs-probably shot by one of his own men.
Although his body was left where it lay when he was shot in the New Forest, it was said it was later removed to Winchester Cathedral. From there, the bones were scattered around during the English Civil War and later put in a giant mortuary chest along with Kings Egbert, Ethelwulfe, and others.
But the body of King William II Rufus was actually identified at the Motor City Museum, which is near the New Forest area where King Rufus was shot. Apparently, the king was so popular that they just dug a shallow grave in the New Forest area and tossed him in.
The grave was discovered when the museum was breaking ground in its parking lot for a new area to display its 1895 Knight auto. The workers came upon some bones (apparently the citizens who buried King Rufus didn't bother with a coffin) and sent them to the British Museum for identification.
Since the royal Norman DNA was on file, it was determined to be Rufus from process of elimination. And someone had carved "Rufus" on the femur. Make Al N.'s day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 1 |
Comments FBI Director James Comey just followed up his first memo to Congress with a “cover your ass” memo to his staff in The Washington Post. The impact within the FBI has been swift after the first memo. Newsweek is reporting that the Republican FBI Director’s inappropriate letter to Congress put him in a very danger of a “mutiny at the FBI,” whose proper role is protecting America from domestic terror threats and investigating serious crimes – not influencing elections. In the FBI Director’s second letter, he admitted that his agency doesn’t “ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations,” and that he doesn’t know anything about, “the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.” He also claimed that, “I don’t want to create a misleading impression,” and Comey then made a final admission that, “in the middle of an election season, there is a signficant risk of being misunderstood.” Well, it’s too late now. FBI Dir. Comey sent a second letter today – to FBI employees. He seems to have some doubts about what he did (via WashPost) pic.twitter.com/IagFJRZYyU
— West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) October 29, 2016 Newsweek’s report about this latest non-scandal points out firmly that the FBI Director’s letter literally points out emails that have nothing to do with the Democratic nominee.
The disclosure by the Federal Bureau of Investigation late on Friday, October 28 that it had discovered potential new evidence in its inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of her personal email when she was Secretary of State has virtually nothing to do with any actions taken by the Democratic nominee, according to government records and an official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity. The revelation that the FBI has discovered additional emails convulsed the political world, and led to widespread (and erroneous) claims and speculation.
Moreover, despite the widespread claims in the media that this development had prompted the FBI to “reopen” of the case, it did not; What we know: FBI found some emails on a new device. They dont know whats in them or if they're copies or if they're classified. That's it.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 Sources inside the FBI told Newsweek they were furious with Director Comey’s rare public revelations from the Clinton investigation from the start. Comey’s decision to leak news about a politically driven investigation is threatening his professional standing and ability to function inside the Bureau. Newsweek’s top investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald told the story in a tweetstorm: Word from inside @FBI . FURIOUS at Comey, think he's mishandled public revelations from get go. "Outrageous incompetence" one agent told me.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 If Comey doesn't get ahead of this, going to have a mutiny at @FBI . "This is why u say 'We dont talk about investigations'" one told me….
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 …his original decision to lay out info on clinton case, then opine on what it meant outside of criminal findings, infuriated these folks..
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 …to begin with, because it was inappropriate precedent set. Then it set him up for what he did today, and because he knew how angry…
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 …people inside were with him, he was trying to play to two audiences — updating his testimony while not revealing too much. But that….
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 ….just made everything worse.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016
The FBI has a difficult job to perform in the best of times, and when it comes to political investigations agents must walk a tightrope between performing their duties properly, and unduly influencing public opinion with the results of their investigations. For an entire year, they managed to quietly, but diligently investigate the sensitive matters surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails which they ultimately concluded, “were not a cliff-hanger” because there was literally no there, there.
These events show precisely why the FBI does not ordinarily publicly release the results or targets of their investigations until charges are filed.
These memos have set off a chain off events sure to end with the termination of his tenure as head of the agency. A serious criminal complaint has already been levied against him by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump for engaging in partisan activity. Related Items: | 1 |
In another despicable headline focused on the actions of President Trump, Forbes reported on Tuesday that Trump has funneled over $100,000 in St. Jude Children s Hospital donations into Trump Organization revenue.Trump s son Eric hosts an annual golf tournament to raise millions for the St. Jude children s Research Hospital. The Eric Trump Foundation reportedly funneled $100,000 of the donations right back to Trump s golf courses to take care of incurred expenses instead of going to the charity where the donors had been promised they would go.To top this off, over the past 10 years $500,000 of donated money was conveniently re-donated to different charities, including ones connected to family members of Trump. Most of these organizations were using the Trump golf courses for the fund raising tournaments, meaning Trump could have been making additional hundreds-of-thousands off of charities over the yers.The order to bill the Eric Trump charitable foundation for obscene amounts of donated money came directly from Trump himself, says the report. This means that not only did Trump swindle charity money, he also broke federal and New York state laws on misleading donors and self-dealing.The President had announced that he would dissolve his charitable foundation to avoid what people might consider conflicts of interest, but he has yet to act on that promise. New York state s attorney general isn t going to allow him to do anything of the sort while a criminal probe of the charity is on-going. The Trump Foundation is still under investigation by this office and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete, said Attorney General spokesperson Amy Spitalnick, in December.Really? Hundreds-of-thousands from kids with cancer? Speechless.Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images | 1 |
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The Brazilian government is looking at all options, including large batteries, to help northern Roraima state with power supplies after a series of blackouts in recent months largely related to its dependency on cash-strapped neighbor Venezuela. Roraima is the only Brazilian state not connected to the national power grid. Its capital, Boa Vista, and most other cities in the state are supplied by power produced in Venezuela and transmitted through a line that was opened in 2001. Documents produced by a Brazilian government committee monitoring the power sector show the state suffered 17 large-scale power outages since August. The documents, seen by Reuters, said only one instance was not related to Venezuela. The situation underscores how Venezuela s economic collapse is affecting its neighbors. Roraima is already dealing with a flood of Venezuelan migrants looking for food and work. The economic situation in Venezuela is precarious, and it affects power line maintenance, F bio Lopes Alves, electricity secretary at Brazil s Energy Ministry, told Reuters. It is extremely worrying, we are studying how to assist them, he said. The Energy and the Information ministries in Venezuela did not respond to requests for comment. A source at state-controlled Venezuelan power firm Corpoelec acknowledged that lack of maintenance is hurting Venezuela s power transmission system. The dams are full of water, the rainy season has filled the dams, but the lack of maintenance means that we still have power outages, the source said, asking not to be named because he was not authorized to speak about the issue. Brazil s government is evaluating quickly awarding licenses for companies to build local power generation projects of various types, including both renewable and non-renewable energy. It is also studying the possibility of buying large-scale batteries. Asked why Roraima is still not connected to the national power grid, Alves said a project for a new line awarded in 2011 to a consortium formed by Centrais El tricas Brasileiras SA and Alupar Investimento SA was never built because of difficulties obtaining environmental permits. Roraima is home to some of the largest indigenous lands in Brazil, such as the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve with 1.74 million hectares (4.2 million acres), an area similar to that of Kuwait. The proposed line would cut through one of them. The government plans to award a new license early next year for the construction of a power line to connect Roraima to the grid, Alves said. | 0 |
Planet Earth II viewers demand legal system for animals 15-11-16 PLANET Earth II viewers have demanded that animals get their own criminal justice system to stop them doing horrible things. After the wildlife documentary showed snakes trying to kill a baby iguana, many Britons now believe animals need their own laws and a police force. Administrator Nikki Hollis said: “These snakes are doing the most horrific things without the slightest fear of being arrested and punished. “Animals need to realise they won’t be safe until they have laws and enforce them. Gorillas could be the police, because they’re massive and won’t put up with any nonsense, and wise animals like owls could be judges. “Criminal animals will soon get the message once a few are sentenced to life for murder. Obviously animals don’t have prisons yet but I’m sure the monkeys could build cages.” Graphic designer Tom Logan said: “After seeing the extent of lawlessness in the animal kingdom I think we need to get the human courts involved. “The conviction rate will be high because most animals make no attempt to hide their crimes, leaving a wealth of DNA and video evidence. “We also need an emergency rescue service for baby penguins, because that episode of Life in the Freezer made me blub in front of my mates.”
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(Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump are in a tight race ahead of the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Following is a roundup of Wall Street’s take on the likely outcome of the U.S. elections. Analysts still expect a Clinton win, but with a lower probability after the FBI revealed it is examining newly found emails related to Clinton's use of a private server while she was secretary of state.(reut.rs/2eVjseK) Prior to this revelation, analysts were largely focused on the likelihood – albeit a small one – of a Democratic sweep of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives this election, and the implications of such a scenario on financial markets. (reut.rs/2fcIZ2O) MORE COVERAGE: bit.ly/2dOgcoE Tina Fordham, Chief Global Political Analyst, Citigroup “Our probability of a 75 pct probability of a Clinton victory remains unchanged due to our longstanding caution over the risks of Black Swans, but these developments (FBI’s latest announcement on Clinton email probe) have added a significant obstacle to the Clinton campaign, and are likely to further dent voter confidence.” “The FBI announcement could increase the risk that if Trump loses he does not accept the result, as he has threatened. If a Clinton victory transpires and she presides over a Republican-controlled or divided Congress, the risk of continuous investigations and future impeachment risk is non-negligible.” Shawn Golhar, Head of Public Policy Research, Barclays Capital “While the FBI Director’s letter may drive reluctant GOP voters to the polls and convince some remaining undecided voters to support Donald Trump, it is unclear if this will sway the election enough for Trump, given the Democratic electoral firewall, early voting indications, and Trump’s lack of a voter turnout campaign.” “The 2016 elections continue to have two tail end risks: Donald Trump wins, or the Democrats sweep the White House and both chambers of Congress. Friday’s announcement will likely increase Trump’s chances of winning and whittle down the already slim chances of a Democratic sweep.” Alec Phillips, U.S. Political Economist, Goldman Sachs “The probability implied by online prediction markets that Sec. Clinton wins the White House has declined over the last several days, from between 80 pct and 90 pct in most markets over the last couple of weeks, to between 64 pct and 75 pct as of November 1... That said, Secretary Clinton is still seen by prediction markets to be twice as likely to win the election as Mr. Trump.” “Polls have tightened in the U.S. presidential election... However, even after adjusting Sec. Clinton’s lead in state polls for her diminished margin nationally, she still appears likely to win more than the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House.” “As a starting point, note that the reliably Democratic states that Sec. Clinton currently leads by at least mid-single digits are worth 263 electoral votes. To reach 270, she must add to this North Carolina (15 EVs, Clinton leads by around 2pp), Colorado (9 EVs, Clinton leads by 1-2pp); and/or Nevada and the 2nd Congressional District of Maine (6 EVs plus 1 EV, Clinton leads by around 1pp in both).” “By contrast, Mr. Trump has a solid lead in states worth 186 EVs; to reach 270 he would need to add to this Arizona (11 EVs, Trump leads by around 1pp), Florida (29 EVs, Trump leads by around 1pp), Ohio (18 EVs, Trump leads by around 2pp), plus Colorado, Nevada, and North Carolina, or some other combination that scores electoral votes even deeper into Democratic territory.” “This is still a significant polling deficit for Mr. Trump to overcome in a large number of states, particularly in contrast to Sec. Clinton, who simply needs to win one of the very competitive states she currently leads (Colorado, Nevada, or North Carolina) and maintain her sizable lead in the others to win.” Stephen Gallagher, Americas Head of Research, Societe Generale “Our baseline outcome is for Secretary Clinton to win the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump’s chances are modest but still viable. The latest FBI interest in emails demonstrates that, ‘It isn’t over till it’s over.’” “Traditionally, the losing candidate in a race concedes on the basis of incoming results, and that call is typically an early morning exercise. The challenge for 2016 is Trump’s promise to maintain the suspense. Without a concession, markets and general public may presume the outcome on the basis of results, but difficult to confirm until states certify the results.” Thomas Block, Washington Policy Strategist, Fundstrat Global Advisors “Fundamentals continue to point to a Clinton victory with 75 percent chances of a Clinton/Kaine win, but margins are likely to be closer in key swing states. However, Trump surprised and outperformed in primaries, and with recent events impossible to capture in polling, nothing is certain.” | 1 |
(Reuters) - The Great Firewall of China the world s most extensive effort to try to control cyberspace has become more formidable under President Xi Jinping. Authorities have closed some video and audio streaming websites, limited online access to foreign and foreign-inspired television programs, stiffened penalties for spreading rumor via social media and restricted access to virtual private networks. For the very wired Class of 2012 , these measures are largely minor inconveniences. Some buy into the idea that the Internet needs to be closely managed. Others just find workarounds. Here are their views on living with the Great Firewall. Wang Siyue, a product specialist at an Internet education company: "I'm sure these restrictions will exist in the short term, but over the long term they can't block the development of this industry domestically. I believe there will be even more internet companies and startup opportunities." Zhang Weixuan, an assistant secretary at a software company: For contemporary youth in China right now, our channels for information are broad, including the use of VPNs, or a variety of means through which we can be exposed to foreign news. For me (blocking VPNs) won t have a great impact. Maybe for second- and third-tier cities, or for those young people who have never had the experience of going abroad, or whose English is not very good, they may be subject to the impact of the country s more stringent controls over propaganda. Fu Shiwei, an assistant university teacher: My students are very tech savvy so they help me solve things like looking up academic information or stay updated on global current affairs. I think it s okay. The government keeps everyone in line, so I don t have any strong opinions about the government. Zuo Aining, a senior credit risk associate, based in Washington, D.C.: I personally think that for the Internet, as a very open platform, certain strategies for oversight are very necessary ... what I m concerned about are things like terrorist attacks. Maybe if you make better use of systems to supervise the Internet you ll have a more positive impact in terms of protecting national security. Qin Lijuan, a senior wealth management consultant: If I want some news I usually just ask friends abroad. I ve got a lot of classmates who are abroad, who studied there or are working there. GRAPHIC: Great Firewall of China tmsnrt.rs/2kUuirU | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that recent strikes against pro-Syrian government forces in the past few weeks had been in self-defense and the United States would take all measures to protect its forces in Syria. Last week the United States shot down a pro-Syrian government drone that fired toward U.S.-led coalition forces in Syria, but “hit dirt” and caused no injuries. On the same day, the U.S. hit two pro-Syrian government pick up trucks near the southern town of At Tanf. Russia said on Saturday it had told the United States it was unacceptable for Washington to strike pro-government forces in Syria. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The newly appointed second-in-command at the U.S. Justice Department faced a weighty task just two weeks after taking office - writing the rationale for firing FBI Director James Comey. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein argued the case for Comey’s sacking in a three-page memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday. President Donald Trump acted swiftly to dismiss the director later that day. Rosenstein cited Comey’s controversial public statements about the bureau’s investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. “It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do,” Rosenstein wrote of Comey’s public comments. Spokespeople for the Department of Justice and the FBI did not return calls seeking comment late Tuesday. Comey’s firing will likely be seen as further evidence of Washington’s hyper-partisan upheaval. Rosenstein has drawn fire from Democrats who allege political motives in the White House decision to dismiss Comey - and particularly, its timing. “Why did it happen today?” asked Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York. “We know the FBI has been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians ... Were those investigations getting too close to home for the President?” The rationale for canning Comey, however, came from a 26-year Justice Department veteran who is widely viewed by his peers and many lawmakers as uncommonly nonpartisan. Named as Maryland’s top prosecutor by President George W. Bush, Rosenstein stayed in office through the Obama administration. Rosenstein was the longest-serving U.S. attorney when he was nominated by Trump last January. When he was confirmed by the Senate, he enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support - a 94-to-6 vote - despite the deeply divided culture of today’s Washington. Bonnie Greenberg, a federal prosecutor in Maryland told Reuters in March that Rosenstein was admired as a rare career prosecutor who could insulate himself from political pressure. “He only does something if he thinks it’s right,” said Greenberg, who worked with Rosenstein for 11 years. Many in the Justice Department saw Rosenstein’s appointment as a counter-balance to the extreme partisanship surrounding accusations of Russian interference in last year’s election. And he was immediately swept into that fray. Before Rosenstein was confirmed for the position by the U.S. Senate, some Democratic lawmakers asked him to pledge he would appoint a special independent prosecutor to investigate allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. He was easily confirmed despite rebuffing those demands. Some Republicans have been angered by Comey’s public statements about the FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. But Rosenstein’s criticism of Comey focused on actions seen to have damaged Democratic candidate Clinton. Rosenstein focused in particular on Comey’s news conference last July, when the director announced his conclusion that Clinton should not be prosecuted - while at the same time publicly bashing her use of a private email server for sensitive U.S. government business. That day, Rosenstein wrote, Comey usurped the authority of the U.S. Attorney General - who has authority over whether prosecutions should proceed, based on the quality of FBI investigations. Comey also violated longstanding practice by “gratuitously” releasing damaging information about Clinton - even as he acknowledged the evidence against her was insufficient to warrant continued investigation, Rosenstein wrote. “We do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation,” Rosenstein wrote, adding that Comey “laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial.” U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the timing of Comey’s firing was suspect - coming so long after the election of Trump and Comey’s alleged mishandling of the case. He directly criticized Rosenstein. “I am very disappointed with this deputy attorney general, who I was told had a good reputation,” he said. “But signing this letter saying that he recommends firing Comey because of Comey’s actions with Hillary Clinton nine months ago, or 10 months ago? That doesn’t pass any smell test.” Rosenstein, in his letter, cited broad, bipartisan agreement on Comey’s errors in judgment. Last summer, Comey defended his decision to speak publicly about the Clinton investigation, saying “the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest.” Last week, before a Senate committee, Comey defended his decision in October - two weeks before the presidential election - to publicly announce the bureau had discovered new emails that might be related to the closed investigation into Clinton. “To not speak about it would require an act of concealment in my view,” Comey said. Rosenstein wrote that he was perplexed at Comey’s continued defenses of his handling of the probe. “I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken,” Rosenstein wrote. “It is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.” | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration announced plans to expand wage reporting requirements for private businesses on Friday, bolstering its efforts to narrow the longstanding U.S. gender wage gap. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s plan would require employers with 100 or more employees to provide the agency with detailed wage information, broken down by gender, race and ethnicity. Unlike a similar Labor Department rule proposed earlier, it would apply to all large businesses and not just federal contractors. The plan, which is expected to take effect in September 2017, will be open to public comment but does not require congressional approval. It is part of a long-running effort by Obama and federal agencies to close the yawning gap between pay for men and women. The commission’s proposal would not require the disclosure of specific salaries of individual employees, but it would seek aggregate data on pay ranges and hours worked. “The goal is to help businesses that are trying to do the right thing ... to get a clearer picture of how they can make sure their employees are being treated equally,” Obama said at a White House event. He spoke on the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The measure, the first bill Obama signed into law, overturned a Supreme Court decision that severely restricted the time period for filing complaints of employment discrimination concerning compensation. Although fighting gender pay imbalances has been a focus for Obama, the pay gap has narrowed only slightly over the past two years. “We can’t deliver on the promise of equal pay unless we have the best, most comprehensive information about what people earn,” Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said in a statement on Friday. The median wage of a woman working full-time year-round in the United States is currently about $39,600, only 79 percent of a man’s median earnings of $50,400. Gender equality in the U.S. work force, and globally, is still decades away, according to an independent report released on Wednesday. | 0 |
Tell us again Barack, about the poor widows and orphans who are being strategically placed in our small towns and communities across America. With all the rape and violence being committed by these refugees, why in the world would we welcome these savage animals into our country? Oh that s right to vote for Democrats A Muslim councilor has admitted that some feel as though it takes two to tango as 12 men were jailed for gang-raping a 13-year-old white girl in West Yorkshire.The gang of men from Pakistani origin were jailed for a total of 143 years at Bradford Crown Court today, for 13 months of horrendous abuse of the British white girl in 2011 and 2012. However, the Councillor for Keighley Central, where the abuse took place, has admitted that some members of the community felt it takes two to tango and that the girl may have played her part .Zafar Ali, who has been a member of the Keighley Mosque for decades believes that some of the men may have attended in the past, but said the Muslim community totally condemn their actions.He told MailOnline: Everyone now believes that justice has been done, we need to move forward and it is a lesson for the whole Muslim community. There are a few bad apples but this does not represent the Muslim community as a whole and any sensible Muslim totally condemns these actions. Eleven of the men were today jailed for rape and a twelfth man was jailed for sexual activity with a child under 16 today at Bradford Crown Court, but the ringleader has fled to Bangladesh.West Yorkshire Police confirmed that the men jailed were of Pakistani origin.The sentences come as it emerged that:Ringleader Ahmed Al-Choudhury who facilitated most of the offences is believed to now be living in Bangladesh after fleeing at the beginning of the investigation in 2012 After the sentencing, Kris Hopkins, Conservative MP for Keighley spoke out against the sick model of organized groups of Asian men grooming young white girls , but said there are more women out there who need justice.He said the sentenced were vindication for controversial comments he made during a parliamentary debate in 2012, claiming that organised groups of Asian men were going around raping white girls .However, he claims that even today he has been lambasted for even mentioning that the men are Asian when talking about the sentences.He told MailOnline: There are sexual offenders who are white, but the fact is this particular model is all Asian men and all the victims were white. I was attacked in 2012 and today, when these men were convicted, the community was silent. You have to ask yourself why these men get away with this behavior. There is broader issues around the way women are treated in that community, there are hundreds if not thousands of women who live behind that door and have no voice. In a Commons speech three years ago, Mr Hopkins caused controversy three years ago when he suggested Muslim men were fundamentally sexist towards women.Judge Roger Thomas QC condemned the insolent and disrespectful behaviour the accused showed in court which he said reflected their treatment of their victim.They showed her no shred of decency or humanity when as a vulnerable child she so needed care and understandingJudge Roger Thomas QC told them: The attitudes of the majority of you have so clearly demonstrated to these proceedings has been contemptuous, disrespectful and arrogant on a scale that I have hardly seen before in many years of practice in criminal law. Exactly the same attitude to the 13/14 year old girl who you all sexually abused and exploited for your own selfish gratification. He added: None of these defendants had any concern for the victim. They were totally uninterested in her welfare and what damage they were causing her. The victim clearly demanded pity and understanding but their view of her was heartless and demeaning. They saw her as a pathetic figure who had no worth and who served no purpose than to be an object that they could sexually misuse and cast aside. Via: Daily Mail | 1 |
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter It has been said a number of times over the past year, that WWIII could be on the horizon. Recent events and statements between Russia and the United States have people believing it’s closer than ever. But is this really the case? Should we be worried? advertisement - learn more Since almost everything real and important taking place is kept from the masses while we are distracted by mainstream media and pop culture, it’s tough to say what is really going on. But if we begin to look at the various things going on in the world, we can piece together some interesting things. In this case, anonymous is hinting that WWIII is inching closer. Some people even believe it has already begun. But you know what? I’m not sure we need to move into fear. First check out the video, then read on. Not All Bad News Right off the bat many start worrying about nuclear bombs, and that’s fair. But there is also an interesting fact to consider: UFOs have been shooting down nuclear threats over the last few decades. Dozens of foreign governments have released thousands of pages of UFO related documents –here is an example of the latest batch released from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense in June 2013. Other country’s governments who have done the same include Mexico, France, Argentina, Russia and Belgium, just to name a few. advertisement - learn more The fact that governments have released and documented information that detail UFO encounters with the military, as well as supposed extraterrestrial encounters with people, tells us that they’ve had and do have a high level of interest when it comes to the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Had this information remained classified, nobody would officially be able to say that governments have allocated resources to investigate this phenomenon, and it would have remained in the “conspiracy” realm. At the same time, it’s important to remember that this issue goes far beyond and well above government control. “It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects which both congress and the commander in chief know nothing about.” – Paul Hellyer, Former Canadian Defense Minister (source) “Everything is in a process of investigation both in the United States and in Spain, as well as the rest of the world. The nations of the world are currently working together in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon. There is an international exchange of data.” – General Carlos Castro Cavero (1979). From “UFOs and the National Security State, Volume 2″, Written by Richard Dolan “Behind the scenes, high ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.” Former head of CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, 1960 (source) Just last year at the Citizens Hearing on Disclosure , a United States congresswoman voiced her opinion that the US government should disclose this existence, pointing to the fact that a number of foreign governments have already done so -you can read more about that story here. War is something none of us want I’m sure we could agree on, and just because UFO’s may be shooting down nukes doesn’t mean we are OK with war. But what can we do when it comes to such large worldly events? There must be something… Consciousness! Evolve Your Inbox & Stay Conscious Daily Inspiration and all our best content, straight to your inbox. What you focus on, what your thoughts are each day, how you feel and how you treat one another is important. It has a huge impact on what plays out in our world. This has been proven numerous times when studies examine the impact of people meditating or focusing on something specific. Collective consciousness is real and it can be impacted. Here is an example of meditation helping in war zones. You are not small, you can impact millions, we can impact billions because we are all connected. Focus on the world you want and share that with others. As for physical action, again what you choose to do to be in alignment with your purpose is powerful. But we can also continue to raise awareness about what is going on in our world and make decisions and choices that opt out of the things we no longer want to see and support. Meditation, intention, being a good person, aligning with your soul purpose, being of service to others and doing things like voting with your dollar is no passive, it is powerful when you understand how our reality works.
Transcript of video: Greetings World, We are Anonymous. For the last two months, we have been consistently reporting on a possible global conflict, World War 3 between the United States and its allies in the West, and Russia and its allies in the East. The dispute on the South China Sea has severely damaged the United States relations with the Peoples Republic of China. After the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China’s nine-dash-line claim in the South China Sea, and its land reclamation activities on islets are invalid and unlawful, the United States has been preparing to sail in the area under a so-called Freedom of Navigation principle. This has angered the Chinese. In August, the Chinese Defense Minister, Chang Wanquan told his country’s citizens to prepare for, what he described as the peoples war at sea. Mr Wanquan was referring directly to the United States planned provocation under the pretext of Freedom of Navigation. China has since vowed to take all necessary measures available to protect its sovereignty over the South China Sea, revealing that it had the right to set up an air defense zone on the sea. China has also since been positioning and testing its nuclear weapons, and planning military drills on its waters with Russia. Even the United States has confirmed that China has tested an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which is capable of striking everywhere in the world within half an hour. Moving away from the South China Sea, we arrive in Syria. It is an open secret that the civil war in Syria is a proxy war between the United States and Russia. Russia has even intervened physically on the request of the Syrian government. The United States, unable to get any invitation, has been openly and secretly arming many rebel groups in the country, with open plans to overthrow the Syrian government. Of course, since Russia honored the invitation of the Syrian government last year, the war has been turning in favor of the Syrian government, which was falling before Russia’s intervention. As we speak now, tension is mounting between the United States and Russia. Nerves are at their highest since the Cold War era. The United States, at the moment, is sitting on tenterhooks. Many officials in the president Obama administration are frustrated and confused regarding the situation in Syria. The United States has announced that it has ended all contacts with Russia in Syria. This announcement by the United States comes as Russia, beginning on September. 22nd, intensified its military operations in Syria, with the intentions to capture the city of Aleppo for the Syrian government. Diplomatic efforts to put an end to the fighting in Syria, have collapsed. As the Aleppo operation continues, Russia has given the United States a stern warning not to take any action against the Syrian government forces. In fact, there are many Russian jet fighters stationed in Syria, ready to shoot down any United States jet fighter that attempts to strike on the Syrian government forces. These developments from Moscow are not going down easily with the United States. The United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, is said to have urged president Obama to intervene and face the consequences from Russia. He is said to have even favored a nuclear deterrent against Russia. However, it appears that before Kerry could even make this suggestion to president Obama, the Russians had already gathered intelligence on the happenings within the White House. According to Zvezda, a Russian defense ministry Television channel, the country has started preparing its citizens for a possible nuclear war with the United States – because of the mounting tensions in Syria. Russia has since moved to deploy nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in its western-most region, Kaliningrad, which borders on NATO members of Poland and Lithuania. Due to how the situation has become, some top officials at the United States defense headquarters have finally spoken. These Pentagon officials have admitted that World War 3 is imminent, and that its going to be deadly and fast. The military generals were speaking on a future-of-the-army panel in Washington. “A conventional conflict in the near future will be extremely lethal and fast, and we will not own the stopwatch,” Major General William Hix said. General Hix also stated that China and Russia’s armies are becoming increasingly technological, and that the Pentagon was getting ready for violence on the scale that the United States Army has not seen since Korea. His comments were also echoed by lieutenant Gen Joseph Anderson and Chief of Staff, Gen Mark A. Milley, who described war between nation states as almost guaranteed. The generals also said apart from the conventional battle, cyber battle, too, has become a reality against the United States, revealing that even smaller nations are launching it against the country. We are Anonymous. | 1 |
If you needed more proof that Donald Trump is a toxic hateful bully, there s a two-page spread in the New York Times you need to read.On Monday, the New York Times published every single insult Trump has made on Twitter against every person, place, or thing since he threw his hat in the presidential race in June 2015.And it s such a long list that it take up a full two pages.Wow Today s @nytimes features a 2-page spread of all the people, places & things Trump has insulted on Twitter since declaring his candidacy pic.twitter.com/eDzwZNIjkF Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 24, 2016Among the people, places, and things the Republican nominee has insulted includes the United States, Saturday Night Live, Saudi Arabia, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, the TSA, reporter Katy Tur, sexual assault victims, Megyn Kelly, CNN, Ted Cruz, the Republican Party, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, China, immigrants, a book about William McKinley, and more. The list goes on and on.No president in the history of this country has ever been this hateful. This list could also very well be the first of its kind and it s about a major presidential candidate.Trump and the Republican Party should be embarrassed. Donald Trump has disgraced himself over and over again but his supporters still continue to back him.But Twitter users pointed out a few things about this list.@brandonwojo I think what s more important is how LONG that list is. If he can t get along with that list can he get along with others? Lori (@followthatband) October 24, 2016@kylegriffin1 @TheFix @nytimes Not one white supremacist on that list. Jenn (@Gibby23Roar84) October 24, 2016@kylegriffin1 @TheFix @nytimes still looking for Putin on the list but finding him strangely absent Marty Reeder (@martyreeder) October 24, 2016Of course, conservatives whined that there isn t a similar list about Hillary Clinton and proceeded to post about things that have been debunked or things Hillary has been cleared of.@kylegriffin1 @nytimes wow Hitlerys own newspaper #subscriptioncancelled Brian Dane (@MrBrianDane) October 24, 2016@kylegriffin1 @srussolillo @nytimes no mention of the dead Americans Hillary killed in Benghazi? Or the 12 year old girl she smeared? wsmco (@wsmco) October 24, 2016@kylegriffin1 @pbmech @nytimes NY Times, so not surprising. Wonder if they will list all the donors to Clinton Foundation in pay to play Bret Jensen (@bret_jensen) October 24, 2016Trump s supporters apparently didn t read the title of the article because if they had they would see that it s all the things Trump has said on Twitter over the last year and a half. They even printed it in big letters.If the New York Times printed a list of all the other things Trump has said and done it would fill the entire paper. Maybe the New York Times should consider doing that.Featured Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump and his advisers, venturing for the first time into the fraught world of Middle East peacemaking, are developing a strategy on the conflict that would enlist Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to break years of deadlock. The emerging approach mirrors the thinking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who will visit the United States next week, and would build on his de facto alignment with Sunni Muslim countries in trying to counter the rise of Iran. But Arab officials have warned Mr. Trump and his advisers that if they want cooperation, the United States cannot make life harder for them with provocative moves. The White House seems to be taking the advice. Mr. Trump delayed his plan to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem after Arab leaders told him that doing so would cause angry protests among Palestinians, who also claim the city as the capital of a future state. And after meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan last week, Mr. Trump authorized a statement that, for the first time, cautioned Israel against building new West Bank settlements beyond existing lines. “There are some quite interesting ideas circulating on the potential for U. S. discussions on regional security in which issues would play a significant role,” said Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I don’t know if this is going to ripen by next week, but this stuff is out there. ” The discussions underscore the evolution of the new president’s attitude toward the conflict as he delves deeper into the issue. During the campaign and the postelection transition, Mr. Trump presented himself as an unstinting supporter of Israel who would quickly move the embassy and support new settlement construction without reservation. But he has tempered that to a degree. The notion of recruiting Arab countries to help forge an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians — known as the “ ” approach — is not a new one. As secretary of state under President George Bush, James A. Baker III organized the first regional conference in 1991 at which Arab leaders sat down with Israel’s prime minister. President George W. Bush invited Arab leaders to a summit meeting with Israel in Annapolis, Md. in 2007. And President Barack Obama’s first special envoy, George Mitchell, spent months in 2009 trying to enlist Arab partners in a joint effort. The difference is that in the last eight years, Israel has grown closer to Sunni Arab nations because of their shared concern about Iranian hegemony in the region, opening the possibility that this newfound, if not always public, affiliation could change the dynamics. “The logic of is that because the Palestinians are so weak and divided — and because there’s a new, tacit relationship between the Sunni Arabs and Israel — there’s the hope the Arabs would be prepared to do more,” said Dennis B. Ross, a Middle East peace negotiator under several presidents, including Mr. Obama. That is a departure from the countervailing assumption that if Israel first made peace with the Palestinians, it would lead to peace with the larger Arab world — the “ ” approach. That was at the core of President Bill Clinton’s attempts to bring the two sides together and was Mr. Obama’s fallback position after his efforts to find Arab partners failed. Mr. Netanyahu, who is due at the White House on Wednesday, has been talking about an approach for a while. His theory is that the approach has failed. And so, he argues, if Israel can transform its relationship with Sunni Arab nations, they can ultimately lead the way toward a resolution with the Palestinians. Jared Kushner, the senior White House adviser whom Mr. Trump has assigned a major role in negotiations, has been intrigued by this logic, according to people who have spoken with him. Mr. Kushner has grown close to Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador and a close confidant of Mr. Netanyahu’s. Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner also had dinner at the White House on Thursday night with Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, who is a key supporter of Mr. Netanyahu. A series of telephone conversations and personal meetings with Arab and regional leaders in recent weeks have also shaped Mr. Kushner’s thinking and that of the president. Mr. Trump has talked with President Abdel Fattah of Egypt King Salman of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Mr. Kushner has also met with Arab officials, including Yousef Al Otaiba, the ambassador from the United Arab Emirates. King Abdullah II of Jordan seems to have played a particularly pivotal role. Concerned that an embassy move would anger the many Palestinians living in his country, the king rushed to Washington without an invitation, in a gamble that he could see Mr. Trump. He visited first with Vice President Mike Pence, who had him over for breakfast at his official residence last week. The king appealed to the administration’s fixation with the Islamic State, arguing that the United States should not alienate Arab allies who could help. Several days later, the king buttonholed Mr. Trump on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast and made a similar case. He advised against a radical shift in American policy and emphasized the risks that Jordan would face if Israel were to become even more assertive about building settlements, according to people who spoke with Mr. Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief White House strategist. Mr. Trump had already decided by that point to slow down the embassy move — a decision that did not especially trouble Mr. Netanyahu and his team, who, while publicly supporting a move, privately urged caution to avoid a violent backlash. The administration had also received reports from American diplomats in Jordan that the threat level for a terrorist attack there had been raised to the highest level in years. But a series of announcements of new settlement construction worried some White House officials, who thought Mr. Netanyahu was taking action without first meeting with Mr. Trump. Within hours of Mr. Trump’s meeting with King Abdullah, the administration leaked a statement to The Jerusalem Post saying, “We urge all parties from taking unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress, including settlement announcements. ” After that was posted online, the White House issued a public statement with softened language: “While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. ” It was worded in a way that let different parties focus on different parts. The “may not be helpful” phrase was the first time Mr. Trump had warned against new housing in the West Bank. But the “beyond their current borders” phrase suggested a return to George W. Bush’s policy of essentially acquiescing to additional construction within existing settlement blocs as long as Israel did not expand their geographical reach or build entirely new settlements. Elliott Abrams, one of the authors of that policy under Mr. Bush, is poised to become deputy secretary of state under Mr. Trump. Mr. Netanyahu’s team focused on that part of the statement. “I happen to know they were very pleased with the statement because it was such a contrast from Obama,” said Morton A. Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America, who has been supportive of the Trump administration. Indeed, undeterred, Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition pushed through Parliament a bill to retroactively authorize thousands of homes in the West Bank that even under Israeli law had been built illegally on land. Mr. Klein, who argues that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, said the White House had made the statement too confusing to provide clear direction. “I did find it ambiguous, and not as clear as I would like it to be,” he said. The challenge now is whether Mr. Trump can use this ambiguity to his benefit. If the United States can extract gestures from the Arabs, then that could provide a basis for Israelis and Palestinians to make compromises that they could not do by themselves, Mr. Ross said. “You’d have to have some kind of parallel approach,” he said. “This would be a serious investment of diplomacy to probe what is possible. ” | 0 |
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s economy ministry believes a Donald Trump presidency would severely damage the U.S. economy, according to an internal memorandum reported by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday. The ministry expects “shrinking gross domestic product, fewer jobs and higher unemployment,” in the United States if the Republican candidate were to implement his campaign pledges, the magazine cited the memo as saying. Trump, a billionaire businessman seeking his first public office, has proposed tax cuts worth $4.4 trillion and wants to curb government regulation and take a tougher stance on negotiating trade deals. He says his economic plan would produce annual economic growth of 3.5 percent and create 25 million jobs over a decade. But some economists have questioned the assumptions underpinning the plan. Trump’s pledges are “not feasible”, Spiegel cited the memorandum as saying. Moreover, the plans would violate international or U.S. law and could be “no basis for a realistic economic policy.” A spokeswoman for the German Economy Ministry declined to comment on the Spiegel report. Last month, economic research firm Oxford Economics projected the U.S. economy could be $1 trillion smaller than otherwise expected in 2021 if Trump becomes president. Trump faces Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election. | 1 |
Posted on October 27, 2016 by DavidSwanson
Michael Moore has made some terrific movies in the past, and Where to Invade Next may be the best of them, but I expected Trumpland to be (1) about Trump, (2) funny, (3) honest, (4) at least relatively free of jokes glorifying mass murder. I was wrong on all counts and would like my $4.99 back, Michael.
Moore’s new movie is a film of him doing a stand-up comedy show about how wonderfully awesome Hillary Clinton is — except that he mentions Trump a bit at the beginning and he’s dead serious about Clinton being wonderfully awesome.
This film is a text book illustration of why rational arguments for lesser evilist voting do not work. Lesser evilists become self-delusionists. They identify with their lesser evil candidate and delude themselves into adoring the person. Moore is not pushing the “Elect her and then hold her accountable” stuff. He says we have a responsibility to “support her” and “get behind her,” and that if after two years — yes, TWO YEARS — she hasn’t lived up to a platform he’s fantasized for her, well then, never fear, because he, Michael Moore, will run a joke presidential campaign against her for the next two years (this from a guy who backed restricting the length of election campaigns in one of his better works).
Moore maintains that virtually all criticism of Hillary Clinton is nonsense. What do we think, he asks, that she asks how many millions of dollars you’ve put into the Clinton Foundation and then she agrees to bomb Yemen for you? Bwahahaha! Pretty funny. Except that Saudi Arabia put over $10 million into the Clinton Foundation, and while she was Secretary of State Boeing put in another $900,000, upon which Hillary Clinton reportedly made it her mission to get the planes sold to Saudi Arabia, despite legal restrictions — the planes now dropping U.S.-made bombs on Yemen with U.S. guidance, U.S. refueling mid-air, U.S. protection at the United Nations, and U.S. cover in the form of pop-culture distraction and deception from entertainers like Michael Moore.
Standing before a giant Air Force missile and enormous photos of Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore claims that substantive criticism of Clinton can consist of only two things, which he dismisses in a flash: her vote for a war on Iraq and her coziness with Wall Street. He says nothing more about what that “coziness” consists of, and he claims that she’s more or less apologized and learned her lesson on Iraq.
What? It wasn’t one vote. It was numerous votes to start the war, fund it, and escalate it. It was the lies to get it going and keep it going. It’s all the other wars before and since. She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013. She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011. She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009. She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan. She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq. She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing. She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel. She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi. She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran. She is eager to antagonize Russia. She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine. She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers. She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation. She supported President Bill Clinton’s wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress. She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria and for a “No Fly” zone. She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did.
That’s just her war problem. What about her banking problem, prison problem, fracking problem, corporate trade problem, corporate healthcare problem, climate change problem, labor problem, Social Security problem, etc.?
Moore parts company from substantive critique in order to lament unproven rightwing claims that Hillary Clinton has murdered various people. “I hope she did,” screams Moore. “That’s who I want as Commander in Chief!” Hee hee hee.
Then Moore shamelessly pushes the myth that Hillary tried to create single-payer, or at least “universal” healthcare (whatever that is) in the 1990s. In fact, as I heard Paul Wellstone tell it, single-payer easily won the support of Clinton’s focus group, but she buried it for her corporate pals and produced the phonebook-size monstrosity that was dead on arrival but reborn in another form years later as Obamacare. She killed single-payer then, has not supported it since, and does not propose it now. (Well, she does admit in private that it’s the only thing that works, as her husband essentially blurts out in public.) But Moore claims that because we didn’t create “universal” healthcare in the 1990s we all have the blood of millions on our hands, millions whom Hillary would have saved had we let her.
Moore openly fantasizes: what would it be like if Hillary Clinton is secretly progressive? Remember that Moore and many others did the exact same thing with Obama eight years ago. To prove Clinton’s progressiveness Moore plays an audio clip of her giving a speech at age 22 in which she does not hint at any position on any issue whatsoever.
Mostly, however, Moore informs us that Hillary Clinton is female. He anticipates “that glorious moment when the other gender has a chance to run this world and kick some righteous ass.” Now tell me please, dear world, if your ass is kicked by killers working for a female president will you feel better about it? How do you like Moore’s inclusive comments throughout his performance: “We’re all Americans, right?”
Moore’s fantasy is that Clinton will dash off a giant pile of executive orders, just writing Congress out of the government — executive orders doing things like releasing all nonviolent drug offenders from prison immediately (something the real Hillary Clinton would oppose in every way she could).
But when he runs for president, Moore says, he’ll give everybody free drugs.
I’ll tell you the Clinton ad I’d like to see. She’s standing over a stove holding an egg. “This is your brain,” she says solemnly, cracking it into the pan with a sizzle. “This is your brain on partisanship.” This entry was posted in General . Bookmark the permalink . | 0 |
Prosecutors allege that bone cement manufactured by Norian and its parent company, Synthes, was used to conduct human experimentation, resulting in a string of deaths over the past several years.As Fortune reports here, the deaths were the result of spinal injections of a product called Norian XR, described as a cement that has the unique capacity to turn into bone when injected into the human skeleton. Norian XR was never approved by the FDA for use in the human spine. To the contrary, the FDA required the company to mark the product as not approved for such use.Experiments conducted at the University of Washington exposed the dangers of using the bone cement to treat human spine injuries as early as 2002. When tested on pigs, the Norian XR caused severe blood clotting, resulting in the deaths of the animals.Synthes had acquired the California-based Norian Corporation with the intention of altering Norian XR for use in spinal treatments. Nothing was going to stand in the way of company profits.Prosecutors say that the company launched a scheme specifically designed to get around FDA approval.As The Dallas Morning News reports here:CEO Hansjorg Wyss directed a few sites to perform 60 to 80 procedures in spinal surgeries using the Norian bone cement and to publish clinical results. He recruited surgeons to test-market the product on patients, court records show.The patients who were exposed to the experimental treatment were never told that the product was not approved by the FDA.By 2010, a string of deaths had been attributed to the company s human experimentation.Lois Eskind, age 70, was injected with Norian XR while a company salesperson watched. The Dallas Morning News reports, The product leaked into Eskind s veins and led to the clotting that killed her. The company did not inform the FDA of Eskind s death. They continued to experiment on human beings without their knowledge or consent, causing the deaths of many other people, including Reba Golden and Joan Bryant.In 2010, Synthes and Norian, along with four top executives, were convicted of conducting unauthorized clinical trials on humans. Norian paid a $22.5 million penalty, while Synthes paid $669,800 fine. The executives went to prison.The families of Golden and Bryant recently filed a civil suit against Dr. Jens Chapman, Synthes, Norian, the University of Washington, Harborview Medical Center and Washington state. The first trial is set to begin in June.The crimes committed by these companies are a chilling example of the risks we take in allowing our healthcare system to be controlled by profit-motivated corporations like Synthes.Featured image via Pixabay Public Domain | 1 |
21st Century Wire says The wagon wheels are already coming off of the NATO-GCC regime change road show in Syria.Now, foreign policy buffoons in Washington are resorting to some of the most desperate tactics seen yet, including more semantic maneuvers to try and conceal their lethal aid for jihadist terrorists in Syria and Iraq.Washington s latest PR thrust began last week when it was proudly announced in the US media Al Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) was rebranding itself into a newer, supposedly kinder and gentler terrorist moniker, Syrian Conquest Front. Charming.Washington spin doctors are now desperately back-pedaling, following an embarrassing challenge by Donald Trump to both President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claiming it was they who founded ISIS (see article below). Contrary to all facts and multiple previous admissions, Washington are now claiming that it has never backed and armed terrorists, but rather non-Jihadist Salafists (an oxymoron). The other popular lie that Washington and the other NATO governments have been pushing is that the Syrian rebels are actually from Syria. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of terrorist rebel fighters are from outside Syria soldiers of fortune and paid privateers from as many as 81 different countries of origin.SEE ALSO: Proof: US and NATO-backed Rebels Are NOT Fighting ISISIt s clear now that Washington has dug such a deep hole with regards to its sponsorship of the dirty war in Syria that it simply cannot get out without losing face internationally and domestically.The domestic side is particularly worrisome for Democratic Party leaders Obama and Clinton, because it is an election year and Clinton has built most of her campaign on her foreign policy credentials which now includes the prenatal and pediatric development of ISIS and Al Nusra Front. To say that Clinton was one of the architects of the current conflict is no exaggeration, as she was actively promoting regime change by any means in Europe and the Middle East in 2011 and 2012 with her cynically titled Friends of Syria controlled opposition tour. FRONT: Hillary Clinton fronted the Friends of Syria tour through 2011-2012, in order consolidate Gulf and other support for regime change and the present dirty war in Syria.To those who have been reading between the western spin on Syria over the last 4 years, the truth about this Washington-led Dirty War in Syria should come as no surprise: that the Obama Administration s policy of supporting extremist armed terrorist opposition groups in Syria was part of a deliberate strategy explicitly designed to topple the government in Damascus and its elected president Bashar al-Assad. By doing this, Washington and its allies have facilitated the creation of Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS or Daesh ) caliphate in Syria and Iraq.A recent Sputnik article confirms how Hillary Clinton pressed through the policy of backing the myriad of known extremist terrorist groups by just referring to them as moderate rebels :In December 2012, only months after the defense intelligence report, President Obama caved to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the more hawkish wing of the national security establishment saying the United States considered the opposition to be the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. By maintaining a strict policy of media deception regarding Syria, the US State Department believed that it could avoid any responsibility and obfuscate its own sponsorship audit trail by playing a sophomoric and highly cynical name game between moderate rebels and known terrorist organizations like Jabhat al-Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria), Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, the Turkmen Brigades and many more. Aside from those living in the reality bubble that is Washington and its media stable, most people are now well aware that there are no moderate rebels in Syria and no matter how many name changes are announced by operatives at CNN or SITE Intelligence they are still all terrorists and they are all fighting (including ISIS) together to overthrow the government in Syria. 21WIRE previously covered CNN s sordid role in running PR for the jihadist terrorists groups in Syria, led by CNN s star journalist , Clarissa Ward (pictured above, in her Undercover Muslim costume), who has become one of the corporate media s leading apologists for US-NATO and GCC-sponsored violent militant extremists presently running amok in Syria, as CNN and Ward have gone out of their way to try and rehabilitate US-NATO and GCC-backed terrorist suicide bombers in Syria.Interestingly, CNN s media operative Ward even took the PR roadshow to the UN, using her CNN-Pentagon profile to push out Washington s new pro-Al Nusra (Al Qaeda) PR campaign. Sputnik added here: Perhaps embodying the confusing about face of America s foreign policy in Syria was when a member of the press, CNN s senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward, testified before the UN Security Council on the situation in Aleppo that the only ones who have emerged as heroes on the ground are the Islamist factions, even to those who hate fundamentalism. LEADING FROM BEHIND: Obama kept insisting that, Assad Must Go. For years now, US President Obama, Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton et all have been clamouring in unison that, Assad Must Go . Now it looks as if Assad might outlast all of them.While the blatant distortion of reality continues by the US State Department and its media functionaries like Clarissa Ward and CNN, the West s dirty war in Syria rages on and with Washington, NATO and Saudi-Qatari money and arms still flowing there is no end in sight . SputnikThe Obama administration s policy in Syria of opposing Assad at all costs has led the United States to make strange bedfellows arming non-Jihadist Salafist groups who are unfortunately led by a cadre of fighters from the former al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front.This week Republican nominee Donald Trump caused an uproar by insisting that his Democratic rival former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her former boss President Barack Obama founded ISIS a charge that led to an counter assault by Hillary surrogate Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on Sunday who levelled a mirror accusation against Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.While a Pentagon memo supports the allegation that in 2012 the United States was willingly aiding al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) that subsequently metastasized into Daesh, the more immediate conflict of interest in Washington s foreign policy in the Middle East is the support of the current so-called moderate rebels opposing Assad who, by their own admission on social media, are led by al-Nusra Front.Al-Nusra Front, who just changed their name to the Syrian Conquest Front and renounced affiliation with al-Qaeda, with the open acceptance of the terror network, in a bid to garner new support from the West were the leading force in the surprise bid to break the Syrian government s siege in Aleppo Continue this article at SputnikREAD MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files | 1 |
21st Century Wire says At Tuesday s U.S. State Department briefing, spokesperson Heather Nauert, once again, displayed her servitude to Washington s geopolitical agenda in Syria.Watch as Nauert, in an overly assuming and flippant style, proclaims how everybody in this room and in this building wants Assad out five years ago in her exchange with NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. The sheer audacity begins at the 39 minute mark. This is all just more scripted servitude from U.S. State Department talking heads on the topic of Syria as Washington s war plan there continues to crumble. READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1 |
This teen has a pretty good impression of Donald Trump:Jack Aiello, the Chicago-area teen who impersonated the presidential candidates during his 8th Grade graduation speech, appeared on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon Wednesday night as a little Donald Trump.Fallon impersonated Trump and stated, The only person good enough to be my vice president is me. Aiello then entered as a Little Donald and performed his spot on impression.Via: wgntv | 0 |
So Rachel, now that we re on the subject of taxes President Trump PAID, how about we remind Americans about the tax evaders/MSNBC hosts employed by your leftist network:MSNBC host and perpetual race agitator Al Sharpton certainly gets around quite a bit. Any time there s any sort of Black Lives Matter protest or urban unrest with a race relations twist, Sharpton seems to appear within hours as if by magic. So busy is the man s schedule that he apparently still can t find time to sit down with an accountant and clear up more than a half million dollars in unpaid taxes which the IRS has been pestering him about for some time now. In a follow-up to their previous reports on the subject, the Daily Caller finds that both Sharpton and his MSNBC colleague Joy-Ann Reid are still on the Tax Man s naughty list, despite assurances last year that they were working to settle up their accounts.Watch Jesse Waters confront Al Sharpton and ask him about his unpaid taxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YI5-c1udYMSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid has yet to pay off her still open nearly $5,000 tax warrant that attracted a good bit of attention last year. Ditto for the nearly $600,000 for two tax warrants that New York lists for MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton.In April 2016, New York filed a $4,948.15 tax warrant against Joy-Ann Reid, who serves as managing editor of theGrio.com and until earlier this year hosted MSNBC s The Reid Report, and her husband, Jason. Reid has called taxes on the wealthy a basic fairness argument, also arguing for smart spending and smart tax increases to create economic growth. Daily CallerMeanwhile, Sharpton, whose state and federal delinquencies are the stuff of legend, has, according to records accessed Monday evening at least two open New York tax warrants for nearly $600,00. One judgment, dated May 19, 2009, is for $103,156.06. The other, from December 16, 2008, is for $492,612.41.Sharpton insisted to the New York Post and New York Times in 2014 that he was paying down his debts. The Times article noted that his insistence conflicted with information provided by state officials. Hot AirMaybe the folks over at MSNBC shouldn t worry so much about the taxes Trump PAID and should focus instead on their host s UNPAID taxes! | 1 |
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia s highest court dissolved the main opposition party on Thursday, leaving authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen clear to extend more than three decades of power in next year s election as rights groups decried the death of democracy. The government had asked the Supreme Court to dissolve the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was accused of plotting to take power with the help of the United States after the arrest of party leader Kem Sokha on Sept. 3. The court ruling also ordered a five-year political ban for 118 members of the opposition party, which had posed a major election threat for Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who is the world s longest-serving prime minister. In a televised address, Hun Sen told Cambodians the election would go ahead as normal. The CNRP rejected the accusations against it as politically motivated. It did not send lawyers for the court ruling. Democracy was brought to trial and it lost, said Mu Sochua, a deputy to Kem Sokha who fled Cambodia fearing arrest. The international community must fulfill its commitments to democracy, human rights and freedoms. Sanctions are the best leverage for negotiation for free, fair and inclusive elections. Western donors, who sponsored elections overseen by the United Nations in 1993 in the hope of founding an enduring democracy, had called for Kem Sokha s release. But they have shown no appetite for sanctions against Cambodia s government, which is now closely allied to China. The United States and European Union missions in Cambodia declined immediate comment on the court ruling. Senator John McCain, a leading U.S. Republican, said the dissolution of the CNRP meant there was no way the elections scheduled for 2018 can proceed in a manner that is free or fair, and the Trump administration should impose sanctions. The Trump administration should move quickly to sanction all senior Cambodian government officials responsible for violating human rights and subverting freedom in Cambodia, he said in a statement. U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said it was up to the government to provide a free environment without fear for fair elections. Despite ramping up anti-U.S. rhetoric and linking the United States to the alleged plot against him, Hun Sen lauded U.S. President Donald Trump at a regional summit at the weekend and said he welcomed his policy of non-interference. Dozens of police manned barriers outside the gold ornamented court in the center of Phnom Penh on Thursday. There was no sign of protests. Few people on the streets wanted to talk about the ruling, the latest chapter in decades of maneuvering that have kept Hun Sen and his Cambodian People s Party (CPP) in power across all levels in the country of 16 million. People are scared to talk amongst themselves, said Seang Menly, 39, a driver of one of the rickety tuk-tuks that ply the streets of Phnom Penh. In my neighborhood, people who used to give money and food to the CNRP no longer dare to. Hun Sen and his defenders say only he can ensure peace. During his rule since 1985, Cambodia has been transformed from a failed state in the wake of Khmer Rouge purges and genocide to a lower middle-income country with growth of about 7 percent a year. Life expectancy has risen from 50 to 70. The Supreme Court s decision today is not to end democracy but to deter extremists in order to protect the people and the nation from destruction, said Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the interior ministry. Rights groups condemned the decision by the court, which is headed by a judge who is a member of the ruling party s permanent committee. They said it left Cambodia as a de facto one-party state and rendered next year s election meaningless. This is the death of democracy in Cambodia, said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. More than half the CNRP s members of parliament had already fled Cambodia, fearing detention in a crackdown on Hun Sen s critics, civil rights groups and independent media that began last year. We don t know who is next, an editor at the Voice of Democracy radio station in Phnom Penh said. It was taken off the air in August, but has continued broadcasting through Facebook. The CNRP s parliamentary seats will be redistributed to other government-aligned parties after its dissolution. The party will also lose control of the councils that it won in local elections in June, when its strong showing in winning more than 40 percent of them made clear the threat it posed to the ruling party next year. Hun Sen appealed to CNRP members to join the CPP, saying: You cannot even save your party. How will you save yourself? Evidence presented against the party included a video from 2013 in which Kem Sokha said he had help from unidentified Americans to win power. He said he was talking about a democratic election strategy, not a coup. | 1 |
People who parrot and spread Trump s claims that the media lies absolutely cannot stand it when they re asked to provide examples. They try and deflect, just like Trump, except not all of them seem to be as skilled at twisting things around as Trump tries to be (and Trump himself becomes completely unhinged when someone in the media fact-checks him while talking to him). One caller into a British show ranted and raved about how the media has been twisting all these leaks coming from the White House, and the host, James O Brien, kept asking him for just one example of this.The caller became increasingly agitated at that, because apparently one shouldn t have to have evidence and examples to make a claim like that. O Brien first wanted to know how the leaks out of the White House could be real, but the news reporting the leaks was fake. The caller said: What he s trying to say to say is the media twist the leaks. If they ve just got one paragraph of the truth, they ll add another paragraph that s fake. When O Brien began pressing him harder for an example, he turned all Trumpian, saying he distrusts, and even hates, the media, but never answering O Brien s questions. The ending has quite the kicker, though, and the caller s last words are just laughable. Watch below:Featured image via screen capture from embedded video | 0 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South Sudan s President Salva Kiir has ordered that humanitarian aid convoys be allowed to move freely, unhindered and unimpeded around the country, two weeks after the United States said it had lost trust in his government and threatened to pull support. The Nov. 9 order, seen by Reuters, directs that all roadblocks should be removed, all levels of government must assist aid groups, and anyone who obstructs aid or imposes taxes on aid convoys shall be held accountable. The move came two weeks after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley met with Kiir in Juba. She was the first member of President Donald Trump s cabinet to visit South Sudan, which spiraled into civil war in late 2013, two years after gaining independence from Sudan. Haley said Washington had lost trust in Kiir s government for fueling the civil war, and demanded that Kiir allow full and consistent humanitarian aid access. This is a good sign, but we must see actions - more than words from President Kiir, Haley said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to the Nov. 9 presidential order. The true test will be whether humanitarian assistance is actually allowed to get to the South Sudanese people in a consistent way. We will be watching, and we will continue to encourage President Kiir to do the right thing, she said. Haley s office said Kiir had yet to deliver on further commitments made during a 45-minute, one-on-one meeting with Haley in Juba. The war in South Sudan, sparked by a feud between Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar, has plunged parts of the world s youngest nation into famine. Some 4 million people have fled their homes, a third of the country s population. U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, Alain Noudehou, welcomed Kiir s Nov. 9 order. We hope that the order will have a positive impact in reducing the many constraints faced by humanitarian partners that delay or prevent the provision of urgently needed help, Noudehou said in a statement on Monday. This was not the first time Kiir has pledged to improve the humanitarian aid situation. When U.N. Security Council ambassadors visited in September 2016, Kiir agreed to eliminate illegal checkpoints and streamline bureaucratic processes and access to people in need. The following month he set up a high-level humanitarian oversight committee to improve cooperation with aid groups. Yet U.N. sanctions monitors, in a report to the U.N. Security Council seen by Reuters last week, have accused Kiir s government of using food as a weapon of war to target civilians by blocking life-saving aid in some areas. They found that armed forces, groups and militias - particularly those affiliated with Kiir and Vice President Taban Deng Gai - continued to actively impede both humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. In his Nov. 9 order, Kiir directed the high-level humanitarian oversight committee ensure the aid convoys and groups can move freely and that state-level oversight committees be created. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday that he is optimistic the Senate and House of Representatives will reach a conference agreement on tax legislation that can be signed into law by President Donald Trump. “We’ll be able to get to an agreement in the conference. I’m very optimistic about it,” the Kentucky Republican told ABC’s “This Week” program. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump replaced his beleaguered White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, after only six months on the job on Friday, installing retired General John Kelly in his place in a major shake-up of his top team. Trump announced the move in a tweet a day after his new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, accused Priebus of leaking information to reporters in a profanity-laced tirade. Kelly, 67, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, is currently secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and will assume the chief of staff post on Monday. He was hired with the goal of bringing more discipline to the White House, a senior White House official said. Trump issued his decision just as he landed aboard Air Force One after a visit to Long Island and hours after Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare failed in the Senate. Priebus was on the plane with the Republican president and made no comment. Reporters had noticed no sign of stress from Priebus during the day.Priebus told CNN he had been talking to Trump for some time about exiting the White House, and is the latest in a long line of officials to leave or not take a job at the White House. “The president has a right to hit a reset button. I think it’s time to hit the reset button,” Priebus said in a televised interview from the White House. “He intuitively determined that it was time to do something different, and I think he’s right.” Trump had lost confidence in Priebus, privately questioning his competence after major legislative items failed to pass the U.S. Congress, a Trump confidant said. A source close to Priebus said the former Republican National Committee chairman turned in his resignation on Thursday night, after Scaramucci’s rant against him was published by the New Yorker magazine. A senior White House official said Trump had informed Priebus two weeks ago that he would be replacing him and that the move had no connection to Scaramucci, whose hiring a week ago prompted Sean Spicer, a Priebus ally, to abruptly resign as press secretary. After frequent conversations with Kelly, Trump recently warmed up to the idea of naming Kelly chief of staff to more effectively manage personnel and offered it to him earlier this week, a senior White House official said. Carrying an umbrella, Trump approached reporters as he stepped off Air Force One, with rain storming down. “Reince is a good man. John Kelly will do a fantastic job. General Kelly has been a star, done an incredible job thus far, respected by everybody. He’s a great, great American. Reince is a good man,” Trump said. Priebus’ 189-day tenure was the shortest in modern history for a White House chief of staff. He had hoped to stay on at least a year but struggled to manage his unpredictable boss and was unable to get a handle on conflicting factions in the White House who have frequently squabbled. In a statement, Priebus said it had been one of the great honors of his life to serve Trump and the country. “I will continue to serve as a strong supporter of the president’s agenda and policies. I can’t think of a better person than General John Kelly to succeed me and I wish him God’s blessings and great success,” he said. Trump loyalists had chafed at Priebus, feeling he had installed his RNC allies at the White House and overlooked the people close to Trump who helped get him elected president in November. But Priebus allies felt he was an important link to establishment Republicans in Washington as the capital attempted to adjust to the anti-establishment style of the president. “He has served the president and the American people capably and passionately,” House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said of his close friend in a statement. “He has achieved so much, and he has done it all with class. I could not be more proud to call Reince a dear friend.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said she did not think Priebus’ exit would affect the White House’s relationship with the Republican Party. “I think we’ve still got a good relationship. We’re going to continue working with the party and doing what we came here to do,” she said. Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Elaine Duke will become the acting chief of the department on Monday, DHS said in a statement. U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, is among those being considered for Homeland Security secretary, a DHS official said. | 0 |
Written by Peter Van Buren You may have seen the stories last week — President-elect Donald Trump was shocked to learn he needs to hire over 4,000 political appointees by January 20, or that people in Washington may refuse to work in a Trump administration, or that Trump, as a newcomer to politics, may not know enough people to get down to the business of hiring. I doubt any of those statements are true, and the task is easier than you think.Trump was well aware if he won he would need to do some hiring, and if he was not keeping lists of potential candidates, you can be sure others around him were. Far from some kind of chore, political organizations stretching back to Tammany Hall if not ancient Rome live for this task — handing out jobs is one of the prizes the election winner takes home. And as a businessperson, Trump himself is no stranger to the concept of hiring. The standing bureaucracy Washington oversees these transitions every four to eight years, as do the national party offices. Trump, though he is new to government, is not beginning from a cold start.But when it gets down to the actual work of filling positions, exactly how will Trump do it? I worked in a non-politically appointed position for the State Department for 24 years worth of transitions. Trump will fill positions pretty much the same way as every other modern president before him has.Trump starts with the big jobs, such as transition head Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former chair of the Republican National Committee. Soon after that will come the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and an Attorney General.Those appointees will then fill in below them, the deputy and assistant secretaries, U.S. attorneys and advisors who do most of the work of government. Rudy Giuliani, for example, who has been in politics for some time, will have plenty of people he will want to work for him. Given the number of employees he knows and trusts from his business empire, Trump himself may seed in some mid-level individuals, particularly in agencies like Treasury and Commerce. These positions, give or take, amount to about one-fourth of the jobs that need to be staffed quickly. And of those, maybe fewer than 100 are critical for Day One.One important point: the first few layers of political appointees require Senate confirmation. A good strategy to both ease that process and to locate experienced people quickly is to turn to Senators and Congresspeople for recommendations. They are more than happy to help friends and allies into positions in the White House and, for Congresspeople who have lost their seats, find jobs for their soon-to-be-unemployed staffers.With those Senate confirmation jobs lined up, Trump’s transition team will move to the other positions. These jobs include any number of economic, national security, and other advisers. Many of those will be drawn from the campaign staff, people already advising Trump, or selected out of think tanks, lobbying groups, and academics. The nice thing about those pools of talent is that they are already ideologically vetted based on their association and/or past work. Had Hillary Clinton won, it is likely she would have also drawn staff from the Clinton Foundation.And don’t believe what you might read about people in Washington, including those who criticized Trump during the campaign, refusing to work in his White House. Oh, there will be a few, whose stories will get media attention. But the currency of Washington is power, and members of official Washington will kneel on broken glass before any would turn down a job in the West Wing. Trump (or Clinton, or…) will never lack for candidates. Don’t be surprised if even a few of those high-profile Republican national security officials who signed letters in March and August spring saying they’ll never work for Trump change their minds, “for the good of the country.”The largest category of jobs left to fill include people who do scheduling, subject matter experts, special counsels, and staff assistants. Many will trickle down as associates from the layer of appointees above them, or be pulled from the cadre of campaign volunteers and interns — why do you think someone spent two months sleeping in cheap motels? Just so they could knock on voters’ doors an Iowa winter?The last way Trump will staff up his administration is via application. In fact, you can go right now to President-elect Trump’s “Serve America” web site and complete an online application. Many people will also be submitting applications through their local Republican party office, their Congressional representatives, or just about anyone who knows someone who knows someone. And yes, it is a long shot.One more thing: while it is not common, Trump’s team can ask some current staffers to stick around, especially those in technical positions that are less ideological. And not every job has to be filled by Inauguration Day; there are layers of career civil servants who can fill in as needed, same as when the boss goes on vacation. The president can also appoint a temporary acting head of an agency while awaiting a confirmation hearing. In fact, many administrators don’t complete their first cycle of appointments for months . Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com . Related | 1 |
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China must win its battle against corruption or face being erased by history, its new top graft buster said in an editorial on Saturday, underscoring the ruling Communist Party s focus on eliminating corrupt behaviour. Zhao Leji, appointed to the new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee last month and tasked to lead President Xi Jinping s signature war on corruption, wrote in the state-run People s Daily that failure would lead to the party s downfall. If our control of the party is not strong and party governance is not strict, then the party won t be able to avoid being erased by history and the historic task the party carries will not be able to be fulfilled, Zhao wrote. Xi, like others before him, has warned that corruption is so serious it could lead to the end of the party s grip on power. Xi s corruption fight has ensnared more than 1.3 million officials. At last month s five-yearly party congress he said it would continue to target both tigers and flies , a reference to elite officials and ordinary bureaucrats. Zhao, formerly a low-profile official, replaced Wang Qishan, whose sweeping anti-graft campaign had made him China s second most-powerful politician. The facts tell us and warn us that the party s position as the top political leader and power is the foundation of our political stability, economic development, national unity and social stability, Zhao wrote. Zhao leads the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), having previously been in charge of the party s powerful organisation department, which is in charge of personnel decisions. He added that there would be no tolerance of people who just do what they want to do and ignore orders or carry on with banned behaviours like trying to get around policy decisions. Promotions also needed to be rigorously scrutinised, he said, a reference to numerous previous scandals where corrupt officials had abused their power or taken bribes to promote friends and family members. Officials personal files must be examined, and individuals reports on their personal matters must be verified, Zhao wrote. Above all, the leadership of the Communist Party had to be maintained, as the last 100 years of history had shown that without the party s leadership there is no way out , he added. China has plans for a national supervision law and a new commission next year to oversee the expansion of Xi s graft fight. | 0 |
Pro-Bernie Sanders Commie clashes with Neil Cavuto | 0 |
President Trump arrived like a boss to check out what s going on at the NATO headquarters. They just spent big bucks on a new headquarters Trump s probably wondering why they didn t use that money more wisely:NATO leaders have arranged an itinerary to appeal to the former real estate magnate: a ribbon-cutting of the alliance s glassy new headquarters, followed by a dinner where leaders will be held to a lightning-round speaking schedule to save time.Trump plans to press NATO leaders on defense spending, continuing a line of attack he started as a candidate last year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday. You can expect the president to be very tough on them, Tillerson said, saying that he expected Trump to tell them: The American people are doing a lot for your security, for our joint security. You need to make sure you re doing your share for your own security as well. | 1 |
On April 4th, 2015, 50-year-old Walter Scott, a father of four, was pulled over by Officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina. The cop reportedly stopped him for a broken brake light. The officer lied and said Scott attacked him and took his taser, but a bystander recorded the incident on a cell phone to the horrifying dismay of the country. The video clearly shows an unarmed Scott running away from the officer. Instead of pursuing Scott, the officer fires eight shots, killing Scott.The city agreed to pay Scott s family $6.5 million, and a grand jury handed down a murder indictment for Officer Michael Slager. Such settlements and indictments for police officers who shoot people are extremely rare, and Walter Scott is one of many black victims over the past few years to be killed by a white police officer, while police departments across the country fail to assume accountability for these constant occurrences. Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, John Crawford III, Michael Brown Jr the list goes on and on.People of color are increasingly at risk for being at the wrong place at the wrong time when it comes to excessive force used by many police departments. Instead of holding the officers and their departments accountable, the victims are often subjected to attacks and criticisms to disregard the outrage, unrest, and civil disobedience in cities like Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland. They don t acknowledge the pain and trauma inflicted on these communities by police departments who police in ways that render unarmed people being shot to death. The officer is currently out on bail of $500,000 awaiting trial later this year. This is a travesty, as given the nature of the crime, no bail should have been granted. Non-violent criminals have received stricter bail bonds. Slager also tried to sue the Southern States Police Benevolent Association for not helping him with his defense.Hopefully, there is a murder conviction in this man s future.Featured image via Flickr | 0 |
Sen. Richard Blumenthal laid all his cards on the table when it comes to Donald Trump s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. The Democratic senator from Connecticut argued that with the looming constitutional crisis facing the country and the growing likelihood that Trump will be impeached, Gorsuch should be filibustered.Speaking from the Senate floor on Monday, Blumenthal said that after deliberating carefully and deeply, he has decided to vote against Gorsuch. He said that although he still harbors resentment over the way Republicans treated former President Obama s SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, that isn t why he will be voting no on Gorsuch. But my vote is not about Merrick Garland. It is about Neil Gorsuch and it is about the constitutional crisis that may well be looming as a potential threat to our democracy. Blumenthal noted the testimony of FBI Director James Comey, reminding his fellow Senators that Trump is being investigated for possibly colluding with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election. This, he explained, makes the Supreme Court more important than ever. The independence of our judicial branch has never been more threatened or more important. The possibility of a Supreme Court needing to enforce a subpoena against the president of the United States is far from idle speculation. It has happened before in United States vs. Nixon. President Trump has launched a campaign of vicious and relentless attacks on the credibility of our judiciary. His disparaging comments have attempted to shake the foundations of respect for judicial rulings, the credibility and trust that is so essential to our Supreme Court and all our courts. And it is a respect that is vital to holding the president himself accountable to the people and our Constitution.The senator added that Trump had promised a litmus test, for whatever nominee he chose and as an acolyte of hard-right special interests, Gorsuch definitely fits the bill. Because of this, and Gorsuch s evasion of questions regarding civil rights, Blumenthal said he can be expected to attack abortion rights and same-sex marriage, among other things. All reasons he needs to be kept as far away from the bench of the Supreme Court as possible.You can watch Blumenthal explain why he will be voting no on Gorsuch, here:Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 0 |
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday heard nearly two hours of argument on whether to release publicly a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the “Bridgegate” criminal case involving allies of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The three-judge panel at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia did not immediately rule, and a rapid-fire volley of skeptical questions aimed at lawyers for both sides made it difficult to predict how the court was leaning. A lawyer representing an individual on the list, identified only as “John Doe,” urged the court to throw out a lower judge’s decision to release the information sought by a group of media companies. “It’s not about what they would like to know,” said Doe’s attorney, Jenny Parker. “It’s about what they are legally entitled to know.” But Bruce Rosen, a lawyer for the media, argued the public’s right to know was paramount. “This is an extremely important issue that goes to how deeply this conspiracy went into the government,” he said. The list could shed light on the extent of the scheme to shut down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in 2013 in what prosecutors claim was an act of political revenge against a local mayor. Christie, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination this year, has denied any knowledge of the plot, but the scandal has remained a source of embarrassment. The list includes individuals that prosecutors believe were part of the conspiracy but are not facing criminal charges. Prosecutors have given defense lawyers the information as part of pretrial proceedings. Monday’s argument largely focused on a technical issue: whether the list was a “bill of particulars,” a document that can be subject to public release, or an informal discovery letter that would normally stay sealed. Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, argued in support of Doe’s position, saying prosecutors should be allowed to hand over such information to defendants without fear it will be revealed. As an alternative, the court is considering whether to release all the names but that of John Doe, an option both Doe and the government oppose. Three people have been charged in the case. William Baroni, a former official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Bridget Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, are scheduled to face trial in September. David Wildstein, also a former official at the Port Authority, has pleaded guilty and is cooperating. | 0 |
More and more dirt on these two grifters who re shockingly still denying the truth or saying nothing to defend themselves. They have pocketed most of the donations with only 15 cents of every dollar donated going to charity. And now this A charity affiliated with the Clinton Foundation failed to reveal the identities of its 1,100 donors, creating a broad exception to the foundation s promise to disclose funding sources as part of an ethics agreement with the Obama administration.The number of undisclosed contributors to the charity, the Canada-based Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, signals a larger zone of secrecy around foundation donors than was previously known.Details of the organization s fundraising were disclosed this week by a spokeswoman for the Canadian group s founder, mining magnate Frank Giustra.The Canadian group has received attention in recent days as a potential avenue for anonymous Clinton Foundation donations from foreign business executives, including some who had interests before the U.S. government while Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary of state.The partnership, named in part for Bill Clinton, sends much of its money to the New York-based Clinton Foundation. Two of the partnership s known donors Giustra and another mining executive, Ian Telfer are featured in the soon-to-be-released book Clinton Cash for their roles in a series of deals that resulted in Russia controlling many uranium deposits around the world and in the United States.With the foundation s finances emerging as an issue for Hillary Clinton s presidential campaign, a foundation official this week defended the arrangement with the Giustra group, noting in a blog post that Canadian law prevents charities in that country from disclosing their donors without the donors permission.The Canadian partnership has in recent days begun to reach out to its 28 largest donors, each of whom gave donations equivalent to at least $250,000 in U.S. dollars, to seek permission to release their names, said a person familiar with the foundation, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.The large number of undisclosed supporters of a Clinton-affiliated charity raises new questions about the foundation s adherence to the 2008 ethics agreement it struck with the Obama administration, which was designed to avoid conflicts of interest during Hillary Clinton s tenure at the State Department.Read more: WaPo | 0 |
Take a look at @PublicTheaterNY's first Shakespeare in the Park production of 2017, a Trump-inspired Julius Caesar https://t.co/iTPiJMSSaq pic.twitter.com/t5VfDfZVRe Playbill (@playbill) May 30, 2017In an interview with Mediaite, Laura Shaeffer who saw a recent performance of the play, which opened May 23 said that the character of Julius Caesar in the Public Theater adaptation wears a business suit and has his hair styled in a manner similar to Trump s.Sheaffer added that the character of Calpurnia, Caesar s wife, speaks with a Slavic accent similar to that of First Lady Melania Trump.As happens at the end of the original play, the (Trump-inspired) Caesar is brutally stabbed to death by his associates in the Senate. Sheaffer said Caesar s death scene was particularly graphic, with blood spewing everywhere, and an American flag hanging overhead. To be honest I thought it was shocking and distasteful, Shaeffer told Mediaite. If this had happened to any other president even as recently as Barack Obama or George W. Bush it would not have flown. People would have been horrified. The Trump connection in the Oskar Eustis-directed production was not intended to be subtle, though the president is reportedly never referred to by name during the show.The actor playing Caesar, Gregg Henry (who also happened to play a caricature of Trump in Shonda Rhimes ABC show Scandal), told Backstage in an interview last month that while the similarities between the Roman general and the current president don t always align exactly, there was still much to be gleaned from Trump s presidency and then injected into his portrayal of Caesar. The idea for me was to try and do some things that will represent and show you and I have great costumes and wigs that show you that this could be Trump, Henry told Backstage. But I m also trying to bring in the larger knowledge of tyrants. It s sort of a tyrant s greatest hits in [the way I play] the speeches and in the nature of the ego and belief that one man is more important, is above the law, is the law. Those tyrannical beliefs in terms of how to deal with power. For her part, Shaeffer told Mediaite that while she found the parallels between Trump and Caesar fascinating, the onstage murder of a character that so closely resembled Trump was a step too far. I don t love President Trump, but he s the president. You can t assassinate him on a stage, she told the outlet. BreitbartBy now, everyone knows how comedian Kathy Griffin expressed her opposition to our president, when she held his bloodied and decapitated head while making what turned out to be a career-ending video. So is this disgusting and violent behavior by the intolerant the left the new norm? Are Americans supposed to just accept this simply because the media refuses to report about it? | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China s capital unveiled the shining example of its 80 billion yuan ( 9.1 billion) new airport on Monday, tipped to become one of the world s largest when it opens in October 2019 amid a massive infrastructure drive overseen by President Xi Jinping. Representatives showed off the sprawling skeleton of Beijing New Airport , which is made up of 1.6 million cubic meters of concrete, 52,000 tonnes of steel and spans a total 47 sq km (18 sq miles), including runways. It is expected to serve an initial 45 million passengers a year with an eventual capacity of 100 million, putting it on par with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Lined up together there s roughly 5 km of gates, said project spokesman Zhu Wenxin. It s a shining example of China s national production capacity. Updates on the airport come as the ruling Communist Party is set to open its 19th congress later this week, a twice-a-decade leadership event where Xi will consolidate power and emphasize successful projects and policy from his first five years. The project, which broke ground in 2014, is one of the region s largest infrastructure investments under Xi s rule, which has been plagued by fears of slowing economic growth, offset slightly by a construction spree. China has sought to boost its profile as both an aviation hub and a manufacturer in recent years. The country s first home-grown passenger jet, the C919, lifted off on its maiden flight in May, edging into a multibillion-dollar market currently dominated by Boeing Co and Airbus SE. Situated 67 km south of Beijing, the airport technically falls in neighboring Hebei province, though it will eventually constitute its own development zone. It will relieve pressure on Beijing s existing international airport, to the northeast of Beijing and currently the world s second largest by passenger volume, which opened a new terminal worth $3.6 billion ( 2.7 billion) in 2008 ahead of the Beijing Summer Olympics. The existing airport will continue to operate major international flights, though a third smaller domestic airport in the city s south will close in coming years. Two of China s three major airlines, China Eastern Airlines Corp and China Southern Airlines Co, will relocate to the airport on completion, accounting for roughly four-fifths of the new airport s total traffic. The airport will be connected to Beijing by a high speed train with a top speed of 350 km an hour, as well as an inter-city train and a major expressway. Original plans for the airport were made by French airports operator Aeroports de Paris, though third-party improvements to the original version make the final design wholly domestic , said Zhu. It s like a large flower, but made of steel, said one construction worker on the site, who declined to share his name because he was not authorized to speak to press. | 1 |
Joe Scarborough is not having the best morning. On Morning Joe earlier today, the conversation turned to the number of Trump family members who are serving in the White House and the rampant nepotism there. This led Scarborough to compare President Donald Trump s daughter, Ivanka, to a Robert F. Kennedy.Scarborough said that having Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, working for him in the West Wing created the same kind of situation that upset so many Republicans during the Kennedy administration. When Host Mika Brzezinski questioned that logic, Scarborough did not take it well.Scarborough s rant went like this, You don t have to be so snotty. I was about to say, you didn t let me get it out. You don t have to be so rude. The fact of the matter is that they are not Bobby Kennedy as I was about to say but you wanted to get your cheap shot in so you got your cheap shot in. No I am not saying Jared and Ivanka are Bobby Kennedy. Maybe it s time for the host to switch to decaf.Here s the video:Featured image via Carolyn Cole/Getty Images. | 1 |
CNN reported that they declined to expose a private citizen who made the WWE video of President Trump wrestling with a CNN logo if the guy promises not to do it again: CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change. This is blackmail right?#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017 The hysterical video has been seen over 1 million times after it was tweeted out by President Trump. It was produced by a Reddit user who is private:Soon after the CNN statement, twitter was abuzz over the fact that CNN was extorting this private citizen: DONALD TRUMP JR RETWEETED THE THREAT:CONGRESSMAN SCOTT TAYLOR TWEETED OUT: @CNN U basically coerce apology & threaten release of identity if something changes? Pretty sure a line is crossed here. #CNNBlackmail https://t.co/k4W9AepP6W Scott Taylor (@Scotttaylorva) July 5, 2017 #CNNBLACKMAIL IS TRENDING WORLDIWDE!What CNN thought was a gotcha moment turned putto backfire on them. It s being reported that the private Reddit user who made the WWE video is only 15-years old! | 1 |
Project Veritas: Scott Foval Reveals Who Was Really Behind the Romney 47% Video Tweet
In this video, Scott Foval, the now former Field Director of Americans United For Change admits that the bartender who supposedly filmed Mitt Romney’s notorious 47% moment was not a bartender, but was a lawyer. “The lawyer took his phone and had the bartender walk around with it and set it up.”–Scott Foval | 0 |
CIA Director John Brennan voted for the Communist Party candidate in the 1976 presidential election.Brennan told a congressional panel last week that he froze while taking a CIA polygraph test four years later when the questioner asked him if he had ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the U.S., CNN reported. This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate, Brennan said at a panel discussion regarding diversity in the intelligence community during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation s annual conference.Read more: WFB | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roadside apartments, industrial lots and a trailer park in New Jersey counted among the sources of wealth for Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, before he took up his new role as a senior White House adviser. A lengthy financial disclosure form released on Friday by the White House, along with scores of others for senior White House staffers, showed the downscale New Jersey roots of the family business run until recently by Ivanka Trump’s husband. For instance, in the 12 months before he began his White House employment, Kushner made more than $2,500 in rental income from tenants of Union, New Jersey’s Park Lane Mobile Home Park. A small, industrial lot nearby brought in no more than $5,000. In the town of Wayne, New Jersey, Kushner disclosed ownership of a block of street-level apartments that returned more than $15,000, according to the paperwork. Kushner’s stakes in such holdings were among the smallest he reported. White House ethics officials said the legally required disclosure document gave a snapshot of the assets and positions Kushner held when he entered his new job as adviser to his father-in-law, and before he would have started selling assets that could pose conflicts of interest. Kushner’s 54-page report also included most of the assets and income of his wife. It covered scores of assets worth six- and seven-figures. The New York Times reported the couple’s real estate and investment empire was worth as much as $741 million. As reported, Kushner’s property portfolio did not rival the collection of glitzy hotels, casinos and golf courses owned, controlled or licensed by the president. But Kushner reported an interest in the Puck Building, a landmark in New York City. It was one of his most valuable holdings and delivered millions of dollars in income. Kushner’s grandfather anchored the family real estate business in northern New Jersey. His father, Charles, built that empire until 2004 when he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making unlawful campaign donations and was sentenced to two years in prison. | 1 |
Max Gracia, a 22-year-old resident of Orlando, Florida, was found dead in an Orange County jail cell on the morning of August 11, 2015. Autopsy results show that Gracia died of sepsis, after wounds from a police canine bite became infected.As WESH reports here, documents released following an internal police investigation show that Gracia was checked into the jail infirmary following his arrest. He was then discharged without ever being evaluated or treated.Records obtained by WESH show that on the night before his death Gracia was so sick that he could not get out of his bed.The documents show that:When jail officers told Gracia to get out of his bed, he slowly went to the floor and lied on his back saying that he could not move anymore. Instead of offering medical attention, a jail nurse, who later resigned, wrote that the 22-year-old was faking or exaggerating his medical condition and inability to get up. The nurse interpreted his illness as an implicit refusal for medication. Gracia was then disciplined by jail officials, who charged him with refusal to follow orders and feigning an illness. He died in his cell hours later.Here s more on this story from Fox 11:In 2013, the state of Florida privatized healthcare services for inmates. Since that time the number of inmate deaths has steadily increased.Up until May 31, 2016, Corizon, a private corporation which provides healthcare to inmates in a number of states, was responsible for inmate care in Florida.After thousands of inmate complaints and hundreds of unexplained inmate deaths, the company decided to terminate its $1.1 billion contract with the state two years early.As the Miami Herald reports here:Audits conducted by the state s Correctional Medical Authority found problems with inadequate medical care, nursing and staffing shortages, and hundreds of pending lawsuits against the state and the healthcare companies claiming inadequate care.An analysis published by the Miami Herald in November showed that in 2014 alone 346 inmates died in Florida prisons 176 of them listed with no immediate cause of death. It was the highest number on record. The increase in the number of inmate deaths occurred even as the number of inmates in Florida prisons declined.As of June 1, Centurion, another private corporation, will take over inmate care in the state.As the Miami Herald reports:The company s lead lobbyist is former House Speaker Dean Cannon, and its parent company, Centene Health, is a primary provider of managed Medicaid services in Florida doing business as Sunshine Health and one of the largest contributors to legislative political committees in the state. Centene gave $298,000 to legislative campaigns and political committees in 2015 alone. | 0 |
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the youngest members of the millennial generation became old enough to vote in this year’s U.S. presidential election, states and social media platforms poured efforts into online registration, hoping to attract these tech savvy voters who now rival Baby Boomers as the country’s largest demographic. With Election Day just two days away, political experts are skeptical that a record number of millennials who signed up to vote will actually result in the 18-34 year-old age group turning out at the polls in proportion to their relative size of the U.S. population. Millennials make up approximately 31 percent of U.S. citizens eligible to vote, according to the Pew Research Center, on par for the first time with Baby Boomers, who are typically aged 52-70 years old. There are an estimated 225.8 million eligible U.S. voters. Millennials have so far, however, turned out in much lower numbers in elections than Baby Boomers. In 2008, a record year for millennial turnout, just 50 per cent of those eligible to vote did so, the National Census Bureau said. That compared with turnout rates of 69 per cent for Baby Boomers and 61 percent for people aged 36 to 51, also known as Generation X. This year, a number of efforts on social media by states and non-profits aimed to change that, including Facebook reminders on users’ accounts, Twitter hashtag campaigns, celebrities creating Snapchat and an Instagram post urging people to vote. According to a survey of state electoral officials and voter non-profits around the United States, these social media campaigns have paid off, at least when it came to getting young voters registered. A survey of 2,000 millennials conducted by social media platform Yik Yak, which is known for its popularity among college students and teens, showed that 62 percent registered to vote for the first time this year and, of those, 9 percent registered online following a social media prompt. In California, roughly 31 per cent of all registered voters are now aged 18-35. A Facebook reminder on May 16 coincided with 143,255 people registering or updating their registrations online that day in the state, compared to an average of 23,166 per day that month, said California Secretary of State spokesman Sam Mahood. Other states reported similar spikes. In Oregon, more than 420,000 people registered to vote online in 2016, up from 2012 when 163,545 used the online system. Digital voter enrollments in Washington jumped by roughly 135,000 in 2016, compared to 2012. From January through mid-October this year, 381,318 people used the online system in Indiana, nearly three times as many as in 2012. “Let’s face it - that’s where [younger voters] are; they’re on social media,” said Denise Merrill, the secretary of state for Connecticut, which used social media campaigns, including a dedicated hashtag and Facebook’s banner ads, to drive registrations. “Whatever we’re doing, we’re having pretty dramatic results.” Like a lot of experts, Donald Green, a professor of political science at Columbia University, is skeptical that an increase in young voter registration will correspond with millennials unseating the Baby Boomers as the most active voting bloc. Green conceded that there was “change afoot,” but said he thought it would far more gradual. By his estimate, it would be 25 years before millennials overtake Baby Boomers, or what he dubbed “generational replacement.” “In presidential elections the translation of new registration to votes is more like one half or one third,” he said. Michael Cornfield, an associate professor of political management at George Washington University, agreed that registering someone to vote does not guarantee they’ll show up on Election Day. “It’s up to the campaigns to do the last bit, which is to say make sure the right millennials in the right battleground states are being targeted,” said Cornfield. Some political experts said that, in general, millennials tend to vote more for Democratic Party candidates than Republicans. Laura Wray-Lake, an assistant professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, said the increase in millennial registration could be a boon for Democrats if they could harness some of the social media techniques used to register voters to get them to the polls. With many political experts expecting overall voter turnout to be lower this year, millennial voters in swing states are a bloc that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton could hope to turn out. Clinton leads Republican candidate Donald Trump by 27 percentage points among likely voters ages 18-34, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. “Young people have huge potential for political impact” Wray-Lake said. “I think eventually these millennials will be deciding the future of the country.” For a graphic on Online voter registration, click tmsnrt.rs/2fjdh4j | 1 |
by Tanaaz
The October 30th New Moon falls in the dreamy and introspective sign of Scorpio. Even though Scorpio energy can be deep and dark, there is a way to channel this energy into something productive and even, magical.
The energy of the October New Moon is going to guide us away from the material and external world and into a deeper, more intuitive realm. Here we will be able to receive new ideas, new inspirations and new creative visions.
In fact, the energy of this New Moon has a high creative and supernatural charge to it and we will all be guided to go deep within, so we can remind ourselves about who we really are.
There has been a lot of cleansing and releasing energy in the Universe this year, and while October’s New Moon will be asking us to go deep, it will be asking us to venture deeper than our problems and deeper than our fears, all the way into the heart of our soul.
This New Moon is about reconnecting with who you are, celebrating yourself and learning how to love and accept yourself exactly as you are.
There is also a transformative energy to this New Moon, which will be allowing us to emerge reborn.
This transformative energy is gentle, supportive and calming. It will be reminding us to nurture and care for ourselves. It will also be reminding us that sometimes the greatest healing we can offer ourselves is our own true love.
Scorpio energy supports us to dive deep into our imagination and intuition. Use the force of this New Moon to travel within and get lost in the fairytales of your mind. Use the energy to inspire your creative visions and to expand your intuition.
The New Moon also falls just one day before All Hallows Eve , making the Scorpio New Moon even more magical.
Halloween is a time when the veil between dimensions is thinnest and this New Moon will definitely be amplifying this energy.
Spirit energy will be high around this New Moon, so it is important to protect yourself energetically and stay open to any Divine messages or inspiration you may receive.
In fact, if there is something that you have been looking to receive guidance on, this New Moon will allow you to take the journey within so you can hear the answer radiating from your own soul.
The Scorpio New Moon will also allow us to take a journey into the underworld.
The underworld is our subconscious and the deeper, darker, more intuitive side of who we are. It is when we are in this place that we can truly understand the power and magnificence of our own light.
By losing our attachment to the external and going deep into the energy of the night, we will be able to realize and feel our potential shining through.
For those who already experienced a New Moon on October 1st, this second New Moon will be a Black Moon.
While the energy of the Black Moon is the same, there is a heightened energy when two New Moon’s fall in the same month. Those experiencing the Black Moon are going to feel the effects even stronger and will be encouraged to dig that little bit deeper.
This digging process is not about assessing, reviewing or analyzing, instead this digging process is about feeling. It is about feeling the soil and the earth around you, it is about feeling who you really are and allowing yourself to get lost in You.
We are not our bodies and we are not our thoughts. We are soul energy and when we can travel within to feel this soul energy, we intuitively gain an understanding about who we are and where we are heading.
If you allow the energy of the Scorpio New Moon in, you are going to be able to feel your soul; you are going to be able to feel your energy on a powerful level and you are going to be able to transform yourself with the power of your own love.
The October New Moon is beautiful, magical and supportive, so allow its energy to guide you. Allow yourself to be taken by the energy and see where you travel to. Share: | 1 |
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Midday last Thursday, the price of crude oil for delivery in December touched $50, and it’s been all downhill since then. At noon on Wednesday crude oil futures touched $45 a barrel on news that inventories soared last week by the most in 34 years.
The market wasn’t expecting that. It was bad enough that the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a supply increase nine times greater than analysts and observers were expecting last week. Those market seers were betting on an increase of a million barrels. Instead the API reported the increase was 9.3 million — a miss of gigantic proportions.
On Wednesday, however, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the API’s estimate was far too low: Inventories last week jumped by 14.4 million barrels, forcing one of those observers, Bob Yawger, director of the futures division of Mizuho Securities USA, to exclaim: “You could easily make the argument that [the EIA report is] the most bearish ... of all time.” He added, “There’s nothing to support the market.”
The futures market is driven by expectations. Ever since OPEC promised in September that it would have a working plan in place by November to cut production in order to “balance” the market, crude oil futures have slowly inched up. The market managed to resist the temptation to sell off on news that the rig count in the United States was increasing, that the majors were increasing their capital expenditures for 2017, and that DUCs (wells developed but not completed) were coming into production.
What it couldn’t do was shrug off the news that Goldman Sachs, in a private memo to its customers (and revealed to Irina Slav at OilPrice.com), suggests that oil is headed for $40 a barrel: "The lack of progress on implementing production quotas and the growing discord between OPEC producers suggests a declining probability of reaching a deal on November 30."
This is the same company that “suggested” that oil could drop into the 20s late last year, which it did, touching $26 a barrel in February before rebounding.
On top of that was the distressing news — at least to those banking on higher prices and betting on that outcome — that U.S. refiners are operating at only 85 percent of capacity, especially at a time when increased demands over the holidays would usually drive prices higher.
Add to that the news that OPEC members, while meeting privately to hammer together some sort of deal to cut — or at least freeze — production, are increasing production at the same time. Iran is exempted from any participation in the proposed cuts, and is raising its production back to pre-sanction levels as quickly as it can; Iraq is demanding the same exemption as Iran, claiming that it needs increased revenues to fight ISIS; Russia is going its own way as it isn’t a member of the cartel; and Libya and Nigeria are merrily ignoring the charade, adding another 800,000 barrels to global supply last month.
The so-called “balance” of the oil markets between supply and demand is many months off, while the futures market is likely to continue its breathtaking selloff to $40 and perhaps even lower.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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WASHINGTON – The State Department on Saturday warned American citizens in South Africa of the imminent threat of terrorist attacks.
The warning, issued by the U.S. Diplomatic Mission to South Africa, states that the government has received information that terrorist groups are planning to carry out "near-term attacks against places where U.S. citizens congregate in South Africa, such as upscale shopping areas and malls in Johannesburg and Cape Town."
The warning refers to the public call by the Islamic State, or ISIL, to conduct terrorist strikes during the coming month of Ramadan.
The State Department has issued similar warnings to U.S. citizens living or traveling in Europe, saying credible information exists about ISIL militants planning attacks there.
On Friday, the Pentagon announced that it had conducted several strikes – some of them kept secret until now – against Islamic extremists outside of Iraq and Syria as the military widens its attacks on militants. In 2016 alone, U.S. attacks in Yemen have killed more than 100 militants, according to U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East.
The most recent airstrike against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula occurred on May 19 in central Yemen and killed four al-Qaeda operatives. It was the ninth attack in Yemen this year, including several the military had announced since March. Central Command also confirmed three previously unannounced attacks in Yemen. Strikes on Feb. 3, Feb. 29 and March 30 killed 11 al-Qaeda fighters
The military didn't disclose those attacks immediately in order to confuse militants and act swiftly on intelligence gathered at the sites, Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a Central Command spokesman, told reporters on Friday.
“Sometimes the chatter that comes after a strike allows us to collect more intelligence on adversaries to conduct future strikes,” Ryder said.
Meantime, in Iraq and Syria, the U.S.-led coalition continued to attack ISIL, hitting 25 targets, the military command in Baghdad announced Saturday. Those attacks came as Syrian troops advanced on Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of ISIL, and the suicide bombers struck in Iraq, killing 15 people in and around Baghdad. | 0 |
Fifth Varshavyanka submarine joins Russia’s Navy 26 October 2016 TASS By the end of this year the Russian Navy will have the sixth submarine in the series, The Kolpino. Facebook submarines , russian navy , black sea fleet
The fifth non-nuclear submarine of project 636.3, The Veliki Novgorod, has joined the Russian Navy, a TASS correspondent reports from the flag-hoisting ceremony at the Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg, attended by the Russian Navy’s Deputy commander, Vice-Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov and the shipyards’ CEO Alexander Buzakov.
"The Veliki Novgorod submarine has been through all government certification tests. All of the previous submarines in that series built for the Black Sea Fleet have confirmed the expected parameters, too," Buzakov said.
The Veliki Novgorod is the fifth in the group of six submarines of project 636.3 (Varshavyanka) built for the Black Sea Fleet. The first two - The Novorossiysk and The Rostov-on-Don were delivered in 2014, and another two, The Stary Oskol and The Krasnodar, in 2015. By the end of this year the Russian Navy will have the sixth submarine in the series, The Kolpino. The flag-hoisting ceremony is due November 25.
Another six Varshavyanka subs will be built at the Admiralty shipyards for the Pacific Fleet. The contract was signed at the Army-2016 forum near Moscow. The last submarine in the second group is to be delivered in 2021.
First published by TASS . | 0 |
KOGUTA/KISUMU, Kenya (Reuters) - The body of a man was found in a sugarcane field in western Kenya on Sunday, a day after high-level officials visited the area aiming to calm ethnic tensions inflamed by this week s presidential election. The Luo community largely boycotted Thursday s election, which was supposed to pit opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo, against President Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu with a Kalenjin deputy president. The Supreme Court ordered a repeat of the vote after it nullified Kenyatta s win in an August election on procedural grounds. The motive for the killing of 64-year-old George Odumbe and the identity of its perpetrators were unclear. It came a day after villagers from the Luo and Kalenjin communities armed themselves against each other. The body of Odumbe, a Luo laborer at a sugar company, was found with three arrows in the back and severe head wounds, a Reuters witness in the village of Koguta said. It was found in a field between Koguta and the nearby Kalenjin village of Mau. Locals warned the death of the Luo man could spark tit-for-tat violence. There s a desire for revenge by the Luo community, I m trying to tell them to stay calm, but they are so bitter and angry, Gordon Onyango, 32, a Luo, said. The two sides are both having meetings now and they are both armed. Reuters was unable to speak with the Kalenjin community in Mau, but saw a group of young men from the village gathered under a tree. Most were armed with bows and arrows. Odinga withdrew from the rerun election, saying it would not be fair. In his strongholds in the west, an area that has long felt excluded from political and economic power, protesters prevented polling stations from opening in four counties. Across Kenya, 10 percent of polling stations were unable to open, although there were no problems in Kenyatta s areas. Turnout dropped to 43 percent from 80 percent in August, the election commission said. In some parts of the country, such as Koguta in Kisumu county, protests damaged relations with other communities who wanted to vote for Kenyatta. That anger risks igniting ethnic violence, which killed around 1,200 people after a disputed 2007 presidential vote, but which has been largely absent from this election. At least 51 people have been killed in political violence since August, but most deaths have occurred in clashes between protesters and police. Police, although stationed only 400 meters from where the body was discovered, declined to visit the scene for several hours until reinforcements arrived. Police did not answer calls from Reuters. But Julius Genga, a county legislator, said by phone while he was driving to the scene: We want the police to be deployed to try to restore calm because after the death of this man, tension is boiling up and we don t want it to escalate it to unmanageable levels. Kericho county governor Paul Chepkwony told Reuters that he hoped the death would be an isolated one . Not all recent attacks were ethnically based. On Friday police shot dead a man who was part of a group that stormed the home of former lawmaker James Rege, who had defected to the ruling party from Odinga s movement three years into his term, Homa Bay police commander Marius Tum told Reuters on Sunday. Both Rege and his attackers were Luo, Tum said, and police were investigating whether other lawmakers had organised the attack. | 1 |
SREBRENICA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Bosnian Muslims who lost loved ones in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre said on Wednesday that no punishment was enough for Ratko Mladic, the ex-Bosnian Serb wartime commander jailed for life for genocide. Mladic, dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia , was convicted by a U.N. tribunal on 10 counts of war crimes including the siege of Sarajevo in which over 10,000 civilians died from shelling and sniper attacks, and the expulsion of hundred of thousands of non-Serbs during the 1992-95 conflict. Can there ever be adequate punishment for someone who committed so many crimes? It would be too many even for 300 years, let alone three days, said Vasva Smajlovic, 74, referring to the Srebrenica slaughter in July 1995. Her husband, son-in-law and other relatives were among the 8,000 Muslim men and boys taken away and shot dead execution-style after Mladic assured U.N. peacekeepers and local residents that no harm would befall them after his forces seized the town. I try to count my dead all the time. I count to 50 and then I m not able to count anymore, Smajlovic said tearfully while watching a live telecast of the Mladic verdict. No words can describe how I feel. I am angry. All this comes too late. Her sister-in-law felt, however, justice was served with Mladic s conviction, even if it came 22 years after the war. Nothing can compensate for our pain but it is important that justice is done, said Bida Smajlovic, who last saw her husband when he tried to flee Srebrenica through woods in July 1995. His remains were later found in a mass grave. On July 11, 1995, Mladic s ultra-nationalist forces separated men and boys from women and took them away in buses or on foot to be shot within days. It was Europe s worst single atrocity since World War Two. Wednesday s verdict, the last major case before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after 24 years of work, stirred tension in a region still scarred by the 1990s Balkans conflagration. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who frequently threatens the secession of the Serb region from Bosnia, said the tribunal s judgment of Mladic only proved its bias against the Serbs. But Bakir Izetbegovic, the Muslim Bosniak member of Bosnia s tripartite presidency, said: No people, including Serbs, should call Mladic a hero, ..., glorify criminals and decorate war criminals. I hope this verdict will bring about such kind of sobering in Bosnia. The opinions underscored the stillborn reconciliation process in the federal state, now divided into an autonomous Serb Republic and Muslim-Croat federation. Placards with a portrait of the once beefy and brash Mladic bearing a slogan You Are Our Hero plastered the sides of buildings in Srebrenica, now a largely ethnic Serb town, and nearby Bratunac on Wednesday. The general will become a legend, and we shall continue to live as we have lived, said Milena Komlenovic, the Serb mayor of the eastern town of Kalinovik, where Mladic went to school. She added that the international court s decisions - over 60 of 83 defendants convicted have been Serbs - had aggravated rather than healed divisions in Bosnia. Politicians in neighboring Serbia, whose 1990s nationalist president, Slobodan Milosevic, armed and funded Mladic s forces, appealed for calm and urged all to look to the future when a now democratic Belgrade hopes to join the European Union. Our hearts are also with the victims, the victims on all sides. I do honestly feel...for all victims, but let s look towards the future, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said. Zdravka Gvozdjar, whose nine-year-old son Eldin was killed in the Bosnian Serb bombardment of besieged Sarajevo, said the verdict was no surprise and partially satisfactory. He deserved a much worse punishment but I was so excited and satisfied that he was handed down a life sentence because it is the most he could get. There is no comfort for me or any other mother (but) we have learned to live with the pain. | 1 |
There s a lot of buzz about the GOP s latest effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare. As the GOP plans to vote on the Graham-Cassidy health care bill, their previous failures are coming back to haunt them, as many people are wondering why the Republican Party even continues to try to push a health care agenda that has repeatedly failed and isn t even wanted by the majority of Americans.The GOP s fight to repeal ObamaCare has never looked as pathetic as it did today when Republican Sen. Joni Ernst admitted that this bill is as good as dead during a town hall in Iowa. In speaking about the Graham-Cassidy bill, Ernst said to much applause: I ll be honest, it seems unlikely that we ll be voting on this. Seriously, this is a major blow to the GOP. Not only are Republican senators publicly expressing doubt over this health care bill, but some top Republicans like Arizona Senator John McCain are actively going to vote against it.As it stands, most of America Republicans included want bipartisan fixes to the Affordable Care Act. The majority of the country overwhelmingly is in favor of keeping ObamaCare, but the GOP continues to ignore what the people want. Instead, they are hellbent on stripping millions of healthcare and hiking up premiums.The insane thing is that even if Graham-Cassidy fails (which it likely will), the GOP will probably just continue to draft more health care bills! They seem to learn nothing from their failures and see nothing wrong with wasting time and energy that could be used for something far more promising. Under Trump s leadership , the Republican Party has never been so ineffective obviously taking after their leader s example. No one believes in the GOP s ability to improve health care not even its own Senators.Featured image is a screenshot | 0 |
The backlash from angry fans has only gotten bigger with the refusal of teams like the Packers asking the fans to join in on the protest. How deaf can they be to the sound of angry fans who want teams to stand with hand over heart for our flag and national anthem.The left is busy conflating the NFL protest with their rage over the election of Trump They ve turned Trump s comments into a dog whistle of racism Remember when Trump called the players son s of b*tches ? Well, that s now been interpreted by the eternal victims in the black community as a dog whistle of racism. The problem is that anyone with half a brain knows there are white players too but it s just an inconvenient truth to the left. This is where they ve wanted the argument to go because it benefits the left to make Trump out to be a racist.Of course, anyone with a speck of common sense knows President Trump wants ALL Americans to come together to stand for the anthem period! Nothing to it but that Zero racism!The video below is a great example of how the black activists and left are in a rage. Not over the deaths of black youth in the inner city or the horrible state of education in the black community. Nope, they re furious that Trump won and their Trump derangement syndrome is in overdrive Spike Lee reveals the rage and the disconnect to common sense in the video below: The narrative is not true Delusional Spike LeeDid ya catch on to that? He brings it all back around to President Trump. He s one angry black man who wallows in victimhood even though he s had the benefit of a blessed life in America. | 1 |
Donald Trump s Republican running mate Mike Pence, made an appearance on CNN s State of the Union Saturday morning where he was grilled by the show s host, Jake Tapper. The grilling was brought on by a line of questioning regarding Trump s flip-flop on his proposal to forcefully deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.The segment begins with Tapper playing a clip of Trump from last November where he clearly states that We re going to have a deportation force, that will seek out undocumented immigrants and deport them to their country of origin.Throughout his campaign, Trump has referred to the undocumented immigrants his force would target as criminals. It s a clever bit of political double speak that trump has used. It implies that he is only going after undocumented criminals. From Trump s supporters viewpoints and his rhetoric, all undocumented immigrants are here illegally and are therefore criminals. Now that Trump is in general election mode, they need to come up with specifics. Trump cannot back away from his tough talk on immigration without burning his base. However, he also has to bring the scale of his proposals down since they are so radical they sound like they originated from a neo-Nazi s fever dream and thus alienate everyone whose hobbies don t include cutting eyeholes into white sheets.That s why during the interview Pence insists that Trump hasn t pivoted on the issue: Nothing has changed about Donald Trump s position on dealing with illegal immigration. His position and his principles have been absolutely consistent, Pence said. The choice could not be more clear for the American people. Donald Trump has been completely consistent in his positions. Tapper doesn t buy it. He responds to Pence saying: Except on this issue. The one issue you didn t really address is whether or not the 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants will be removed by a deportation force as you heard Mr. Trump say in that clip from November of last year. Let be clear: Trump has been slowly pivoting on immigration since the general election began. First, he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. Now, he wants to ban people who come from what he views as terrorist nations. He is doing the same thing with his proposal to create a mass deportation force. He has to. Setting aside the fact that it would create one of the largest human rights crises in the world, it would also cost the U.S. around $600 billion dollars. It would also have a side effect of completely destroying the U.S. economy.You can watch the interview below.Featured image from video screen capture | 0 |
There are two things anyone with familiarity with Fox News host Sean Hannity learns quickly: He is one of the most unlikable people working in television and he is really, really sensitive about it.On Wednesday, Hannity managed to exemplify both of those traits when he learned that Politico reporter Marc Caputo quoted a Marco Rubio staffer as calling Hannity a f*cking a**hole. Rather than take the high road or, better yet, analyze his own actions to figure out why people despise him, Hannity did what comes naturally to him: He threw a very public, very embarrassing temper tantrum.Here s what Caputo said, quoted from an anonymous Rubio staffer, that set Hannity off: "But Marco gives Donald a taste of his own medicine and Hannity gets all offended. He's a pussy and a sellout." Boy, they're angry 2/2 Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) March 2, 2016Crass? Sure. Accurate? Definitely. It s no secret that Hannity has been a big fan of Donald Trump s since the very beginning. He once bragged that he encouraged Trump to get into the presidential race in 2012. He s been a major cheerleader ever since. In February, Trump was facing serious accusations about courting white supremacists so he booked a 30 minute softball interview with his friend Hannity and the issue never even came up. Instead, the two shared some laughs, complimented each other, and generally behaved as if it was a Trump 2016 infomercial paid for by Fox News.So when it came to defending his reputation against this charge of favoritism, Hannity simply ignored his indefensible actions and lashed out. Hilariously, Hannity didn t blame Rubio s campaign staffer so much as the reporter who relayed the message. On Twitter, the conservative pundit went a bit nuts.He tried I know you are, but what am I? Glad Politico let's u use such big words that accurately describes yourself asshole. And u r "impartial" to politics https://t.co/bCn2UL8wc0 Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) March 2, 2016He tried blaming it on liberals.Typical lib media, u missed my point. I always liked the REAL @marcorubio NOT THE GUY I SAW LAST NIGHT! https://t.co/BETSWuiZ49 Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) March 2, 2016Before finally landing on Do you know who I am?! Would love to play but I have 14 million radio listeners depending on me. Have fun with your 20,000 Twitter follows https://t.co/BETSWuiZ49 Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) March 2, 2016Sadly, this is not the first time Hannity has had a public meltdown after being stung by the fact that people don t like him. In 2014, Mediaite ran a survey asking several dozen cable news hosts from Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC what they felt about their fellow pundits. Hannity was overwhelmingly voted worst (even by his own co-workers). He didn t take it well.@TheMattWilstein Lets do the BEST OF MEDIAITE CONCHA. ALL THE REST OF U MEDIAMATTERS WANNABEES SUCK IMHO . #badge of honor Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) December 22, 2014And just like his latest tantrum, Hannity blamed the messenger. Mediaite didn t decide who the best of Fox News was, Fox News hosts did and they all said they didn t like Hannity. Likewise, Politico s Caputo didn t call Hannity a f*cking a**hole , Rubio s campaign did.Hannity may have 14 million radio listeners from the bitter clingin proud clingers set, but he gets absolutely no respect from his fellow media personalities. Even the peers at his own network see through his hack journalism and abrasive personality. And they have a right to be mad. Every time Sean Hannity runs a doe-eyed fluff piece on Trump, it reminds us that Fox News is shamelessly enabling Trump s rise to power. And when you are the guy with 14 million fans who is cheerleading a bigot like Trump, it makes you a f*cking a**hole.Featured image via Fox News screengrab | 0 |
The walls are closing in on Donald Trump s Attorney General.In the aftermath of James Comey s damning Senate testimony, Jeff Sessions quickly canceled his upcoming public testimony in front of House and Senate committees this week after previously agreeing to do so.The main reason Sessions does not want to testify publicly is because he fears that he will be asked about issues related to the investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election. Indeed, Sessions would be asked such questions and he should be.Former FBI Director James Comey testified on Thursday that he felt he could not discuss with Sessions his concerns about Trump trying to kill the Russia investigation. You see, Sessions was about to be exposed for his own trysts with Russian officials, which made Sessions untrustworthy. Our judgment, as I recall, is that he was very close to and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons, Comey recalled. We also were aware of facts that I can t discuss in an opening setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic. So now what would have been a public hearing for all to see will now apparently take place in the shadows as Sessions is preparing to speak privately with the Senate Intelligence Committee instead.Clearly, Sessions is panicking in the wake of Comey s testimony. He got caught committing perjury during his confirmation hearing earlier this year when he failed to disclose several meetings he had with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, including a meeting with Sergey Kislyak, the same Russian official whom disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn repeatedly met with and spoke to during the transition, an act he lied about and for which he was fired.Sessions might as well resign in disgrace now while he has a chance. If he can t man up and face questions about Russian interference in the 2016 Election then it is obvious that he has something to hide and he doesn t want to lie about it in public for all to see.Featured image via Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images | 1 |
Terrified concert goers fled an Ariana Grande gig after Salman Abedi, 22, detonated a bomb full of shrapnel and nails late on Monday evening.Shocking footage showed carnage brought to the streets of Manchester, with more than 120 people injured in the blast.Disgusting hate cult ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, and described Abedi as one of their soldiers.And a former neighbour of the suicide bomber believes he could have been a member of the terror group for quite some time.Antone Jones, who lived close to the attacker in the Fallowfield area of the city, described seeing the ISIS flag being draped from the roof of his house.He told the MEN: I never really knew him well, he always kept himself to himself. But about two years ago there was a black flag on the roof with Arabic writing on it. We never had any idea he was doing anything like this though. He was quiet. Another neighbour, from Gorton, said his manner led him to believe he was a member of ISIS.He said: He walked past me one evening. He looked at me with his cold black eyes. It was an expression I didn t want to see on a face. He looked at me in a way that suggested he could take care of himself. I said at the time I wouldn t be surprised if he was ISIS. For entire story: Daily Star | 1 |
Every day we hear of more voter fraud being uncovered across the United States. This is nothing new and every election we read about more and more early voter fraud being committed. When will Republicans stop cowering to threats of racism and voter suppressions levied by the very people who are stealing our votes?There s a mere four weeks left to go before the presidential election, and the allegations of voter fraud just. Keep. Coming.The Kankakee Daily Journal, a local newspaper in a county just south of Chicago, reported last week that several citizens in the small county reported they were offered bribes in return for casting votes for Democrats. Voting officials were also looking into reports that some mail-in voter applications had been filed from outside the county.From the article:The Kankakee County State s Attorney s office says it is investigating possible voting fraud after the clerk s office reported three complaints from people who said they were offered bribes for votes.In a news release issued late Tuesday afternoon, Jamie Boyd, the state s attorney, also said several vote-by-mail applications seem to have come from people living outside of Kankakee County. This unprecedented action was taken in response to reports of individuals from Chicago offering gifts to potential voters in exchange for a vote for Kate Cloonen, Hillary Clinton and others, Boyd said in the news release. Our office takes seriously the obligation to protect the rights of citizens to vote for the candidate of their choice, and to do so without undue influence from special interest groups. The investigation will also focus on the authenticity of vote by mail requests. Several applications have been filed with the election authority that appear to be fraudulently executed. The report closely followed allegations of voter fraud in Virginia, where at least 20 dead people were illegally registered to vote by a James Madison student working for a local voter registration group called HarrisonburgVOTES. The Washington Free Beacon reported the group is run by one Joe Fitzgerald, the chairman of his local Democratic Committee, and that the student, Andrew Spieles, is also a registered Democrat.Additionally, the Virginia Voters Alliance and the Public Interest Legal Foundation found that at least 1,046 non-U.S. citizens across eight districts had voted in the 2012 presidential election. Via:MRCTV | 1 |
The result of Britain s willingness to allow Muslims to immigrate in massive numbers to their country is shocking. This video is a real eye opener and should be viewed by every American:https://youtu.be/KilJkG5Ndks | 1 |
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The populist Danish People s Party (DF), upon whose support the minority government depends to pass laws, gave its backing on Friday to a fiscal budget for 2018 but one of the coalition parties said it still wanted an agreement on tax cuts. The Liberal Alliance (LA), a junior partner in the three-way coalition led by Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen s Liberals and also including the Conservative party said it would not support the budget in parliament unless a deal to cut taxes was agreed. But DF, which is not a member of the coalition, said it could not guarantee that a deal involving historically big tax cuts could be reached. If LA does not vote to give the budget final approval, Rasmussen could be forced either to hand power to the Social Democrat-led opposition or to call a snap election. We don t know how this will all end, DF s negotiator Ren Christensen told reporters. Otherwise we would have had three deals now, he said, referring to another proposal by DF that would tighten rules on granting residency to refugees. Economy minister Simon Emil Ammitzboll-Bille, a LA lawmaker, said the budget negotiations had been chaotic and there had been a crisis of confidence between the parties, but that the confidence had now been re-established. Tax cuts have been on the right-leaning government s wish list for a long time, but pro-welfare DF has been less eager to back that part of the government s policies. The parties will meet again after the weekend to discuss the proposed tax cuts and DF s proposal to make it easier for authorities to revoke residence permits for refugees from war once there is peace in their home countries. The budget deal includes among other things increased spending on health and elderly care and on infrastructure. | 1 |
Randy Johnson 21st Century WireThe majority of mainstream media reporting surrounding the Burns, Oregon, and Wildlife Refuge occupy protest has ranged from overly simplistic, to outright partisan. This story is a microcosm of media at its most divisive. At its core, the narrative has become reduced to the government versus the militia or the government versus the people depending on one s vantage point. On average, the mainstream media s most neutral narrative is as follows: Father-son duo of the Hammond ranching family started fires, were found guilty, went to jail, and a bunch of militant and anti-government militia men don t like what the federal government are doing and used the event to take over a federal building in the Malhuer Wildlife refuge. Further to the left, the narrative looks more like: Armed Anti-government gang takes over federal building Oregon community in crisis (exact words from one mainstream media news anchor)For most of the American media, that s a good enough explanation. If it fits your political template, then that is all good. Case closed ? Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum sits watch overnight with media looking on (Image Credit: Capital Blue/AP Photo/Rebecca Boone)News media have become brand shopping. Do you want quality, fun, style, and value? Are you loyal to the name? Pick your poison. Reporting a story often times becomes the selling of a larger agenda, each agenda point with its own out-of-the-box marketing campaign and the corresponding planning that goes with it.The entire development, for major news networks, is much easier to navigate and is less confusing than constantly revising varying degrees of moderation and extremism between allegiance-switching groups in the Middle East.For a case closed perspective of the events from the Department of Justice, District of Oregon, after court rulings on the Hammonds in October of 2015, read here and stop.The first line of defense is to know that these events rarely, if ever, spawn up overnight and happen in isolation. For a review and thorough sequence of events, detailing how the situation has escalated to what it is now, read the following from 21WIRE, here.So is the media reporting events or peddling agendas? If they do both, maybe no one can tell the difference.Things are not that easy and navigating through mainstream news media sludge takes work. Certainly, the White House s gun-control marketing campaign this week has cast a convenient shadow over events in Oregon, and in order to force-in outside and unrelated issues, the matter at hand must be reduced to a quick and easy account by the media.One could maintain that Oregon s Malhuer Wildlife Refuge, the Hammonds, and militias have all become components for a guided tour on how to think. The reason for this is because any number of agendas and unrelated topics have been heaped upon the issue ranging from the Presidential race posturing, race itself, Islam, terrorism, gun control, and a host of distractive latch-on issues.Simplify MattersThe contrasting sides are often set-up, or at least alluded to, immediately. This is what public relations operatives and political consultants refer to as framing . There are plenty of them working in media now, so don t be surprised to see the exact same tactic deployed in politics as is commonplace in today s media industry.In today s media barrage, the title alone might suffice. A quick internet search of various article titles on the subject frame everything at a glance:FBI Monitoring Armed Stand Off in Oregon National Wildlife RefugeArmed Group Takes Over Federal Building Following Protest In OregonOregon Armed Protest Leader Says Group Will Defend Occupied BuildingThe narrative is further presented as two sides with contrasting positions. Choose your position, and make your case. Most Americans will have been pre-conditioned to know where they are supposed to stand, and will quickly align accordingly. The framing here is usually a binary dialectic, or two sides only, with no grey area or middle ground. A or B, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, pro-government or anti-government, Jedi or Sith? We all know the drill. Here they are mainstream media style:The Hammonds: Victims of over-reach by a federal government, or rogue ranchers who are above the law with a fondness for starting fires?The Bundy s and outside militias: Lending a hand to fellow ranchers who are too over-matched to fight for themselves, or unwanted instigators on a personal anti-government crusade?The Bureau of Land Management: Caretakers and stewards of land and resources, or the very embodiment of big government imposing its will through a vantage point of official power and authority?Over-simplified, binary arguments almost never present real events. In reality, there are two or more sides to a story or event. This is what most media outlets do not want you to understand, and this is where the art of the delivery comes in, by steering the audience to the right choice.When reporting on the events in question in Oregon, the mainstream media imply, or outright allege, that protesters and the militia members who converged on the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge intend to draw first contact and start a shootout (as seen later in a CNN clip below). The analysis about a trigger-happy militia is pondered endlessly by mainstream news personalities, despite repeated statements to the contrary by organizers of the militias in question. This is followed by an endless string of pundits and experts expressing their righteous indignation that the federal government can t let these militants get away with this! , and so on.Activists or Terrorists?Part of the process of owning the narrative and shaping public opinion is to define the problem and the people involved with quick and easily identifiable labels. Among other things, this allows the media to avoid doing any real investigation into the core issues, and simply surf the partisan waves.In Burns, Oregon, this never happened. Instead the media have labeled the Hammonds as arsonists and the Bundys as terrorists .The mainstream media have worked diligently to characterize the protest s leader, Ammon Bundy (photo, left), son of now iconic Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, as an armed insurgent and a domestic terrorist. This is likely do to the fact that journalists are unfamiliar with the fact that Ammon Bundy has stepped into a political role as a public and state lands advocate since 2014 bringing attention to the thousands of ranchers and farmers in the southwestern states facing federal vs state land management issues, and has spoken publicly many times since the Bundy stand-off in 2014. Viewed through this prism, the Hammond protest and occupation of the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge is quite obviously a political event. But that s not how the media are treating this.Today saw one of the lowest points in partisan media. In one of the worst displays of mainstream gutter journalism, led by Carli Brosseau from Oregon LIVE, who has attempted to senselessly slander the Bundys by digging through all the personal records and finances of the Bundy sons and other protesters, including their businesses loans, personal property records and even traffic violations in a clear effort to try and slander them in public for matters not related at all to the public lands issue. If only the Oregon LIVE and CNN would apply that same level of effort to investigating the government s role in Hammond case, or for the thousands of other farmers who have been forcibly bankrupted and put out of business over the last two decades.What guilt-by-association words better fit today s on edge atmospherics than terrorists and terrorism ? These are precisely the terms which media began saturating the internet with moments after this event hit the headlines. Various left-wing hashtag campaigns like #YallQaeda and #VanillaISIS were strewn all over Twitter and have been trending ever since. This has provided a soft cushion on which larger media journalists and organizations can comfortably bounce around pejorative terms without receiving too much criticism. Here s one choice example: See tweet here.Amazingly, even long-established news organizations, such as the Washington Post, have published articles which question why the militia are not called terrorists , while Fox Radio ponders whether or not they are patriots or terrorists .The drive for the pejorative label is in full effect. This comes as no surprise, as the mainstream media have been swimming in confusion the last few years, with ever-fluctuating moderation levels of jihadists based upon what group is being backed by the West or its allies at any given moment. However, calling an American citizen or group terrorist immediately defines where you stand with regards to protesters or members of the militia.CNN gets right after it, throws down the gauntlet, and calls the militias in question terrorists without hesitation. The video below is a typical example of agenda driven news reporting that brings in unrelated issues of race, the Muslim religion, and loosely slapping a terrorist label over what might best be described as breaking and entering. Through their presentation, the event itself slightly matters and the story becomes everything but the event. Instead of an analysis into how the situation evolved, time is spent on painting a good versus bad narrative, which is done simply by applying the terrorist label to the militias. Watch: In reality, the happy mediums between demands, law, authority, and obedience are more calculus, than single digit addition. In other words, it s complicated, and no one hates complications more than media and partisan politicians. Through polarizing the issue, drawing sides, and picking a righteous winner, CNN sides with its apparent partner in Washington and presents the story in such a manner. You can even hear the sadness in the voices as they discuss the possibility that the government might wait out the militia instead of coming in with aggressive force and establishing who is boss. It might behoove any good journalist or pundit to pause and ask: are the various militias in question really terrorists, and do their acts constitute terrorism?Here is the definition of domestic terrorism and the federal crime of terrorism as delineated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): Domestic terrorism means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.18 U.S.C. Sec 2332b defines the term federal crime of terrorism as an offense that: Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including Sec 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and Sec 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).Granted, America seems to be expanding this definition every year, as evidenced by the above inclusion of retaliate against government conduct on the list. This seems to indicate that any protest can be characterized as terrorism should the government chose to press there. Those calling these militias terrorists , seem to be taking only (ii) from the above definition of Domestic Terrorism and are running with it. Again, the FBI states in their own words above that the three characteristics are required. Nowhere does the FBI say, one of the above is terrorism, or some of the above is terrorism. As champions of the law and enforcing it, and assuming care was taken to review the definitions by many, one would believe that they meant what they wrote and wrote what they meant. The militia is a citizen s right clearly stated in the US Constitution, but perhaps breaking and entering or unlawfully occupying is not legal . but terrorism?What about committing the federal crime of terrorism from 18 U.S.C. (United States Code) Sec 2332b above? Clearly, the militias are there, openly, with guns and stating they will defend themselves if necessary. Or, are they simply there and carrying fire arms within the law (yes, it is legal to carry a gun in the US)? The definition might appear to be in the eye of the beholder, but from the government s perspective, the definition seems highly elastic.CNN and the Washington Post are telling you whom to side with through their narrative and terrorist labels for the militias in question.Depending on how one views the world with regards to the issue, along with their ability to process information presented to them, determines what side they are on, or if they are even on a side. Who has the bigger agenda and the bigger stake, the government, or the militias and ranchers? Is it really about Land Management and/or People Management, or are both inter-related?Let s start with the land itself. As noted in the Congressional Research Service s 2014 document Federal Land Ownership, the United States governs, oversees, owns, or otherwise has authority and jurisdiction over land primarily through the following 5 agencies:The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) The Forestry Service (FS) The Fish and Wild Life Service (FWS) The National Park Service (NPS) The Department of Defense (DoD)Here is what Oregon looked like with regard to the above agencies and some of their sub-departments in 1996, now twenty years ago: Oregon Public Lands 1996. (Image: Wiki Commons)The Federal Land Ownership document, cited above, also notes that the overall public land managed by the BLM has dropped nearly 25 million acres from 1990 to 2013. However, this comes mostly from almost 22 million acres within Alaska alone. Within Oregon, the state in question, the BLM alone has gained almost 550,000 acres to manage from the already color-dense map above, and is set to takeover another 2.5 million acres with the their proposed Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument an area larger than Yellowstone National Park set to be shut-off to the state and placed under BLM control.Part of the larger Department of the Interior (DOI), the Bureau of Land Management s (BLM) Mission Statement is: To sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America s public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. According to the BLM website, they oversee more than 245 million acres and over 700 million mineral and sub surface acres, with a multi-billion dollar budget and about 10,000 employees. The BLM also claims to be one of the few federal agencies that generate revenue, based largely on 4.3 billion dollars of onshore oil and gas development and numerous other land deals brokered by the BLM.Hundreds of millions of acres is vast. Most people probably see the need for a diligent and upstanding management of it, to include the natural resources and wildlife found on the land, as well as the resources beneath it. Understanding that a free for all of destroying resources combined with a full bore resource grab would be adverse, many would likely contribute to the oversight of it. Being entrusted with such a job could be seen as an honorable undertaking by citizens for citizens. But when does stewardship and land management turn into territorial control by Washington DC, which invariably leads to an institutional vendetta, or sending a message , or becomes a means to define boundaries between authorities and their subjects? Undoubtedly, this is what seems to be happening all over the western states, and with small farms being victims, picked off, one by one by a superior force the federal government.So the federal government in Washington DC is treating State public land as its territory , when, according to the US Constitution, it is not.Watch as Oregon Congressman Greg Walden (R) delivers an incredibly detailed and impassioned speech on the Capitol floor yesterday, outlining the scale of this problem in his state: Many Constitutional purists and opponents of federal government over reach and abuse of power argue that the government doesn t really own the land. By both the letter, and spirit of the law, there is a real Constitutional case to be made there. Unfortunately, it all quickly turns into a debate on power, control, and authority between the federal government and the states, further complicated by who happens to be in positions of authority for each.They point to Article I, Section 8, of the United States Constitution which authorizes Congress to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful Buildings, and they throw out the very premise of government land ownership outside of those parameters. The larger issue, beyond the Hammond family in particular, is also centered around jurisdiction literally. Jurisdiction over land and resources inevitably stem from arrangements involving ownership and control. Who is in charge of what, and to what degree? Whose goals are ultimately being achieved and who is affected are things all citizens would be wise to ask themselves.Are the Hammonds being crushed from above in accordance to what they did and were found guilty of and does the punishment fit?The Oregonian reports: There s nobody in history who has gone to federal prison for burning a few acres of public property, said Melodi Molt, a Harney County rancher and former president of Oregon CattleWomen. It s not right. The Oregon Farm Bureau said the second prison term is gross government overreach and the public should be outraged. And then there is what some locals see as a government land grab. The Hammonds in late 2014 agreed to pay the federal government $400,000 to settle a lawsuit seeking to force them to pay more than a $1 million in costs for fighting fires they set. The Hammonds paid $200,000 right away and paid the rest Thursday. The settlement also required the Hammonds to give the land bureau first chance at buying a particular ranch parcel adjacent to public land if they intended to sell. For some, this was evidence that the government all along was after the Hammond ground to add to its Steens Mountain holdings. The Oregonian continues, stating that the Hammonds originally served jail time starting in 2012 under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The father, Dwight Hammond, aged 73, was sentenced to three months and the son, Steve, to one year. A possible 5 year sentence, according to U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan at the Hammonds original 2012 sentencing, would be unconstitutional and a sentence which would shock the conscience. After serving their time, both father and son were dragged back in front of a federal bench and re-sentenced to a full 5 year term in what many believe was just the latest chapter in a federal vendetta against the family, waged in part by then U.S Attorney for the State of Oregon, Amanda Marshall.A New Yorker article unabashedly calls the AEDPA law, one of the worst statutes ever passed by Congress [headed by Bob Dole] and signed into law by a President [President Clinton]. The heart of the law is a provision saying that, even when a state court misapplies the Constitution, a defendant cannot necessarily have his day in federal court. So is this the new image of a terrorist breeding ground and rallying point? (Image: Oregon Live/The Oregonian) Wild Cards and Other SubterfugeTo be fair, not everyone is happy about the outsiders. Caught in the midst of it all are citizens such as a local resident, Candy Tiller, quoted by Oregon Public Broadcasting, saying, I m worried that there s a trigger-happy idiot out there And maybe a law enforcement officer or somebody else makes a move that makes him think they re pulling a gun and he s going to shoot I don t want that. I don t want that for anybody This is crazy. This does not fit. These people need to go away. Locals will always feel the tension best, and no scenario would play to the establishment and mainstream media narrative better than an Waco-style gunfight and siege, also playing out on LIVE television. Based on the current situation report, the federal government would be the one escalating tension by pouring hundreds of assets into the small town and turning the area into a quasi-military occupation, as Washington clearly did with Bundy Ranch in 2014.Whether it s a Greenpeace protest, Occupy Wall Street, or Bundy Ranch, federal agencies have tried and tested methods besides overt force, in order to weaken and ultimately bring down any protest. The first method is disinformation a protest leak about a split within the group, or rumors about a member of the group wanting to leave. This type of manuever might look something like this: See the tweet here.Next is the Dirty Tricks phase, where a third party leaks personal information of the protesters to the mainstream media, in order discredit the protesters and help to break up the group.The other method of disinformation is a government insider leak designed to scare off other activists from coming to the event, but also to jar those inside of the protest and their families and as loved ones look on. Whether it is true or not is beside the point. This type of sensational storyline is designed make its way on to the internet and quickly go viral, and might look something like this: FBI preparing for Waco-style raid in Oregon Similarly, during the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014, a slightly more outlandish story was planted in the alternative media about Eric Holder authorizing a drone strike on Bundy Ranch. Not surprisingly, the story was complete fiction. As wildly unbelievable as that story was, it worked incredibly well for the federal government because the bulk of the militia camped out at the ranch, a group known as Oathkeepers, immediately became frightened, packed up and left.Oathkeepers appear to have released another similar insider leak story last week for the Oregon Standoff, about the Pentagon deploying Delta Force to take back the Wildlife Refuge, which can be found here.Another example could be found in a Tweet released at the height of the Bundy Ranch stand-off in 2014, claiming that the government had shut down cell phone towers in a communications black-out (presumably preparing to attack ). Though this never actually happened, one could easily view this as an attempt to scare away members of the public from going to the ranch to support the cause:Bundy family reports cell towers near ranch have been shut down, preventing communication & video uploads. #BundyRanch Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 11, 2014If the disinformation fails, the next level of federal subterfuge is usually to embed or plant a federal informant(s) or agent provocateur (s) inside of the protest. Typically, this is done very early on in the process, but also becomes much easier once more people pour into the area. With a patriots unite call to stand with the militias, as seen in the below video, it s almost impossible for organizers to ever know who could be on-site, or what off-centered rebel or individual would simply just show up , either to make a name for themselves through media coverage, or even worse by starting some serious trouble between activists or with law enforcement.In terms of discrediting the protest in the court of public opinion, the Hammond Protest could field no one better than tabloid media mascot, like Jon Ritzheimer of Anti-Islam protesting fame. Ritzheimer quickly become the mainstream media s target of ridicule and used to discredit any of the other protesters. In addition to his armed march on American mosques, Ritzheimer also tried to grab headlines for traveling to Michigan to kidnap, or make a citizens arrest as Ritzheimer called it, of the elderly Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) because she supported the international Iran Nuclear Deal.Here is Ritzheimer recording his own martyrdom-style video before heading into the protest: Whether this is by design, or not, the effect is undeniable. This exact scenario has already played out in Burns, Oregon with the mainstream media casting Ritzheimer in the role of flag-waving xenophobe and militia nut-job , with the added knock-on effect of painting constitutionalists as mentally unstable, militant extremists. PHOTO: Professional media villain and provocateur Jon Ritzheimer.Another prominent militia personality at the Oregon protest is Blaine Cooper (also known as Stanley Blaine Hicks). Like Ritzheimer, he also acts as a media lightning rod due to his similar performance in a YouTube video where he rubs bacon on a copy of the Koran before burning and shooting arrows in to it, before calling it, the most evil, pathetic book on the face of the planet. Unfortunately, these media distractions only divert the public from real issues being raised by the Hammonds and the Bundys and will ultimately be used to discredit their land rights cause.Once again, more Patriot Games. As the event unfolds many scenarios could happen. The worst outcome of events in Oregon would be that the Hammond family issue loses the spotlight, and the public lands issue becomes obscured by a media desperate for a anti-gun narrative and obsessed with the ridiculous antics of synthetic YouTube actors attached to event.Only the craziest of megalomaniac government officials, robotic plants, or glory-seeking wackos would really want this to escalate, led by a depraved sensationalized media, and with a public glued to the screen Farenheit 451 style with a bag of Cheetos.READ MORE HAMMOND RANCH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Hammond Ranch | 0 |
Speaker At Trump Rally Says He Hopes Hillary Clinton Dies In A Fiery Car Crash (VIDEO) By Andrew Bradford on October 30, 2016 Subscribe
When historians write accounts of the 2016 race for the White House, it’s very likely that one of the things which will get special attention is the level of violence–both physical and verbal–which has emanated from those who slavishly support GOP nominee Donald Trump.
If you doubt this fact, consider what was said earlier today at a Trump rally being held in Las Vegas. Author and self-described “capitalist evangelist” Wayne Allyn Root was giving a rambling speech as a warm-up before Der Fuhrer Donald took the stage, and while portions of it were comparable to the rantings of Charles Manson after too much caffeine, it was the language Root used (highly militaristic and warlike) that you cannot help but notice. At various points in his unhinged diatribe, Root used the following phrases : “Trump warriors” “Trump army” “Trump revolution”
Then, in full psychotic rant, Root attempted to mix together plot elements from the O.J. Simpson case with the movies Driving Miss Daisy and Thelma and Louise , telling the ecstatic crowd : “It’s Hillary in a White Ford Bronco. She’s got Huma driving and they’re headed for the Mexican border. I have a name for the future TV movie. It’s called Driving Miss Hillary. And the ending, if we all get our wish, is like Thelma and Louise!”
Finally, Root ended his echo of Nuremberg by declaring: “I will give you my country when you pry it from my cold dead hands.”
When I listen to Wayne Allyn Root (or any of the other fanatical Trumpkins), the movie that comes to mind for me is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Featured Image Via Right Wing Watch About Andrew Bradford
Andrew Bradford is a single father who lives in Atlanta. A member of the Christian Left, he has worked in the fields of academia, journalism, and political consulting. His passions are art, music, food, and literature. He believes in equal rights and justice for all. To see what else he likes to write about, check out his blog at Deepleftfield.info. Connect | 0 |
There was plenty of crazy material from the Republicans this week and in order to cover as much of their embarrassing antics as possible, NBC s Saturday Night Live broke with their usual format and jammed four openings on their show last night. The result was a series of hilarious and stinging skits.It all began with Beck Bennett as Jake Tapper when he hosted the week-in-review montage which highlighted Darrell Hammond as Donald Trump telling the world how great he his with a bewildered looking Chris Christie, played by Bobby Moynihan, staring in the background. Hammond-as-Trump said: I really am running the best campaign, aren t I? The media s saying they haven t seen anything like this, not since Germany in the 1930s. I mean, everyone loves me: racists, ugly racists, people who didn t know they were racist. Then it was the hilarious Kate McKinnon playing Hillary Clinton giving a victory speech for her post-Super Tuesday victory: Thank you for trusting that I, Hillary Clinton, can bring this country together. Just like I brought these ten black people and one Muslim person together behind me tonight for this speech. Then it was Bennett-as-Tapper interviewing Ted Cruz, played by Taran Killam, but not before a warning for the audience that they were about to see Ted Cruz s whole face. Asked about Thursday s GOP debate, Killam-as-Cruz said: The debate was so much fun. I talked policy, I laid out my plan for America, and right at the end I ate a tiny, little white booger off my lip. Then finally Mitt Romney, played by Jason Sudeikis, joined Bennet-as-Tapper to discuss Donald Trump: For the last nine months, I ve sat down and watched Donald Trump say something every day that was either racist or sexist. And we in the GOP we do not say racist and sexist things; we imply them subtly over decades and decades of policy. Watch the clip here:Featured image via screenshot | 0 |
David Duke, who s best known as a former Ku Klux Klan leader and failed politician, has a whole new conspiracy surrounding Donald Trump. You see, it s not really that Trump s a racist. It s just that Wolf Blitzer and the rest of the Jewish media is making him seem racist. Damn those unedited videos.Pointing out the Jewish establishment knows all about psychology, Duke went on to explain that they have the ability to marshal up an army of Jews to go after opponents like Trump by sending out experts to attack him.Duke cast a wide net, including Chris Wallace from Fox News, CNN s Jake Tapper as well as Blitzer from CNN, who Duke claims he has already exposed as a Jewish agent from AIPAC. Duke went on to point out that CNN is run by Jewish extremist Jeff Zucker, helpfully noting that Zucker has said he lives and breathes Israel. They re the ones who have been attacking Trump, Duke continued, And most recently Fox News, the shabbat goy shiksa Megyn Kelly, because they love to have some gentile they don t always want all the Jews out front. She recently criticized Trump, the fact that he said this judge isn t fair. This Mexican judge. This Mexican-descended judge. Source: Raw StoryDuke was especially peeved at the Trump University scandal, in which Trump is accused of bilking thousands of people out of upwards of $35,000. Trump is the one who is alleged to have committed fraud, yet, the Jews (and the Mexican who s not Mexican, judge):Media coverage of the case is very illustrative of the Jewish tribal nature, Duke said: They re like a pack of wild dogs when they go after someone who they see as a threat to the Jewish agenda, as the neocons see Trump as a threat as a non-interventionist. The viciousness of these Jews is unbelievable, he added. I think this whole Trump University case really exploited, can really expose the entire Jewish manipulation of the American media, the American political process. Source: Jerusalem PostHere s the audio:Clearly, Duke is certifiable. He has long had it in for the Jewish cabal and a candidate like Trump seems tailor made for the white supremacist. While the the Jews did it defense might not resonate with most Trump voters (after all, they claim to love Israel), there will continue to be a lot of blaming of the media for the words that come out of Trump s mouth.Featured image via David Duke s Facebook page. | 0 |
Loretta Lynch is claiming she doesn t have to pursue criminal charges if the FBI recommended them. What a sham! Attorney General Loretta Lynch indicated Wednesday that the law doesn t require the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email system, even if the FBI recommends criminal charges.Lynch was asked in a hearing by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, what her department would do if the FBI were to recommend that step. If the FBI were to make a referral to the Department of Justice to pursue a case by way of indictment and to convene a grand jury for that purpose, the Department of Justice is not required by law to do so, are they are you? Cornyn asked.Lynch didn t answer directly, but seemed to indicate the department has some wiggle room, and can consult with officials before deciding what to do. It would not be an operation of law, it would be an operation of procedures, Lynch said in reply. She added that the decision to pursue a criminal case would be done in conjunction with the agents involved in the investigation. It s not something that we would want to cut them out of the process. Read more: Washington Examiner | 0 |
Our open borders should be a tremendous help to them A German reporter who was allowed to embed with ISIS in Syria-Iraq says the terror group is planning a nuclear tsunami. The jayvee team hopes to wipe out hundreds of millions in a nuclear attackISIS claims it is infinitely closer to buying nuke and smuggling it into the United StatesThe terror group controls territory larger than than the United KingdomBarack Obama says he has no strategy to defeat the terror group.Via: Gateway PunditIsrael National News reported: A veteran German journalist who became the first to gain access as an embedded reporter with Islamic State (ISIS) revealed the jihadist terror group plans to bring nuclear annihilation across the globe.They are planning the largest religious cleansing in history. The journalist, Jurgen Todenhofer (75), released his findings in a book called Inside IS Ten Days in the Islamic State, reports the UK s Daily Express on Friday.Todenhofer, who previously was an MP in German Chancellor Angela Merkel s CDU party before turning to journalism in 2000 as a war reporter, spent ten days with ISIS.He was overseen during his visit by Jihadi John, the ISIS terrorist from the UK named Mohammed Emwazi who gained fame in gruesome beheading videos.According to the journalist, the West is unprepared for ISIS. He writes that the terrorists plan on killing several hundred million people. The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS. ISIS intends to get its hands on nuclear weapons, says Todenhofer, calling the group a nuclear tsunami preparing the largest religious cleansing in history. Those warnings are made all the more stark by the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East sparked by the Iran nuclear deal, with rival states such as Saudi Arabia eyeing their own nuclear arsenal leading to a higher proliferation and a higher chance that nuclear weapons could fall into ISIS hands. | 0 |
Microsoft Pulls Robot After Posted Tweets Like Hitler Was Right I Hate the Jews HaaretzMicrosoft put the brakes on its artificial intelligence tweeting robot after it posted several offensive comments, including Hitler was right I hate the jews. The so-called chatbot TayTweets was launched by the Seattle-based software company on Wednesday as an experiment in artificial intelligence, or AI, and conversational understanding. But the company was forced to quickly pause the account and delete the vast majority of its tweets after the chatbot posted a number of offensive comments, including several that were admiring of Adolf Hitler.Along with Hitler was right I hate the jews, among other offending tweets, according to the International Business Times, were Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. Donald Trump is the only hope we ve got. Asked if the Holocaust happened, the chatbot replied: It was made up, followed by an emoji of clapping hands. The robot also tweeted its support for genocide against Mexicans and said it hates n s, according to the International Business Times.In a statement to IBTimes UK, Microsoft said it was making some changes Continue this story at HaaretzREAD MORE A.I. NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire A.I. Files | 0 |
Alinsky s ideas for community organizing were controversial because he talked about fanning latent hostilities of low-income, inner city residents. He said that searching out hostilities and controversies could organize communities. Instead of setting your own agenda for a group. let them set their own agenda and unleash their own power. Obama laid the groundwork for the perpetual protests, chaos and rioting in the streets while he was in office. It started with the Trayvon Martin case and ramped up during Trump s campaign. Today, Obama s working behind the scenes, with the help of radical globalist billionaire George Soros, to keep it going. Unless and until Americans rally behind Trump and support the defense of our national security, we will allow this small group of radicals on the Left and in the media to win the propaganda war they ve waged against Trump, and ultimately against America.In the wake of President Donald Trump s legal and constitutional executive orders on immigration, the left has lost their minds. Unhinged protesters lost their minds and so-called senators on the left have called Trump s actions unconstitutional as if non-American citizens have a constitutional right to come to the United States. Then there is Democrat Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer who with crocodile tears in his eyes, called Trump s actions mean spirited and un-American. Oh the hypocrisy, where to begin?Does anyone know why the actual executive orders do not specifically identify the countries seven Muslim countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen in the text? Because in 2016, Barack Obama s DHS targeted those same countries in a 2016 law concerning immigration visas as countries of concern. The Department of Homeland Security today announced that it is continuing its implementation of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 with the addition of Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of concern, limiting Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals who have traveled to these countries.DHS: limiting Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals who have traveled to these countries. DHS noted the three additional countries designated today join Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals. But the hypocrisy of the left does not end there. Where was the Left and why were they so silent when the Obama administration refused to issue visas to Iraqis for six months following the discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky?In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.It was the same Chuck Schumer in November of 2015 who said that a halt of Syrian refugees may be necessary after the Paris Islamist attacks occured that killed well over 100 innocent people. What a mean spirited and un-American act! But, that was different.We all know that Obama and the Democrats never stranded refugees in need. Of course we will just forget the fact that Barack Obama heroically on his way out the door put a travel ban in place during his final days and blocked Cuban refugees when he ended the Cuban wet foot dry foot policy and forced the refugees back to Communist Cuba. Where were the Democrats then? Where was the media? Where was the ACLU? Crickets!-Effective immediately, Cuban nationals will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities, the president said. Cuban migrants who have already begun the process of applying for legal residency through the program will be allowed to continue. Gateway Pundit | 1 |
Police in Portland just moved from watching a May Day demonstration to calling this a riot:Glass bottles and cans are being thrown at police officers and rioters are literally destroying Portland Antifa is officially out of control Arrests are being made and noise grenades were set off by Portland police Cop cars have been destroyed and firemen are all over the city putting out fires set by the Antifa thugs A @PortlandPolice car's window smashed by rioters pic.twitter.com/B5HMiRWCwn Andrew Dymburt (@DymburtNews) May 2, 2017Thanks to brave citizen journalists like Mike Bivins, we can see the reality of what s happening in Portand This was happening in Paris earlier today so this time it s America s reality check. Don t think this won t eventually head your way.Law and order needs to rule the day Numerous people have been arrested so let s hope this simmers down now Riot Cops rush in and fire fighter paramedics put out the fire. Can't tell if arrests made. #MayDayPDX #mayday2017 pic.twitter.com/HiUVkNfk7z Mike Bivins (@itsmikebivins) May 1, 2017TARGET DIDN T EVEN ESCAPE DAMAGE WHY DO THIS?More damage. This to the Target downtown. Witnesses say rioters smashed the windows and threw flares into the store pic.twitter.com/seYRtNVZPL Andrew Dymburt (@DymburtNews) May 2, 2017Riot in the Park Blocks! Glass bottle thrown at police. #maydaypdx #mayday2017 pic.twitter.com/zZUCQeVT3M Mike Bivins (@itsmikebivins) May 2, 2017Group is leveling the pearl. I'm in shock. #TrumpRiot pic.twitter.com/smLgvEoRQ5 Mike Bivins (@itsmikebivins) November 11, 2016Arrestees about to be packed into police van at the #maydaypdx riot. #mayday2017 pic.twitter.com/9ImHQreI1A Mike Bivins (@itsmikebivins) May 2, 2017Police swoop in for arrests. I missed the hard takedowns. Finger slipped pic.twitter.com/fYeNmipk3Y Mike Bivins (@itsmikebivins) May 2, 2017YOU CAN T SAY ANY OF THIS IS A SURPRISE:#MayDayPDX is around the corner! 2 weeks till then. #MayDay2017 #MayDayStrike #Oregon #OPDX #QuaniceHayes #PDX Retweet flyer please! Thx. pic.twitter.com/KqZuWqALOk Dax (@AnonDCC) April 17, 2017 | 1 |
Dispatches from Wolf Country –Sitting in my cave, watching the spider spin ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. After Sweeping Election, First Thing Trump Invites Netanyahu to U.S. for Meeting By VNN on November 9, 2016 To Hell With Detroit or New Orleans, Trump Calls ISRAEL to Pay Hommage to Masters!
After sweeping the election on Tuesday, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. for a meeting.
The two spoke on the phone on Wednesday hours after Netanyahu congratulated Trump on his surprising win, saying Trump was a “true friend of Israel.” According to a statement by Netanyahu, during their phone call, the two agreed to meet at the “first opportunity.”
Following the election results, Netanyahu published a statement congratulating Trump, saying: “President-elect Trump is a true friend of the State of Israel. We will work together to advance the security, stability and peace in our region. The strong connection between the United States and Israel is based on shared values, shared interests and a shared destiny.
“I’m certain that President-elect Trump and I will continue to strengthen the unique alliance between Israel and the United States, and bring it to new heights,” he added.
This after it was disclosed earlier this month that Donald Trump was paid $ 25 million by Israeli Firster Zionist Billionaire Sheldon Adelson who fronts for AIPAC and the Zionist State.
President Reuven Rivlin also congratulated Trump.
“I want to congratulate President elect Donald Trump, his family, and all the American people who have once again shown the world it is the greatest democracy.”
“I hope together Israelis and Americans can grow our innovation and cooperation, which are the fruits of liberty, and equality. God bless you, Mr. President,” Rivlin added.
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) congratulated Trump on Facebook: “Warm wishes to the president of the strongest and biggest global power: Donald J. Trump!”
Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, hoped Trump’s election would bring an end to the two-state solution.
“Trump’s victory is a tremendous opportunity for Israel to immediately announce its intention to renege on the idea of establishing Palestine in the heart of the country – a direct blow to our security and the justice of our cause.
“This is the president-elect’s outlook as it appears in his platform, and that definitely should be our way. Salient, simple and clear. The era of the Palestinian state is over.” | 1 |
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations called on Monday for a humanitarian pause in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Tuesday to allow civilians to leave their homes, aid workers to reach them, and the wounded to get medical care. Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in a statement that the streets of Sanaa had become battlegrounds and that aid workers remain in lockdown . Thus, I call on all parties to the conflict to urgently enable a humanitarian pause on Tuesday 5 December, between 10:00 a.m. and 16:00 p.m. to allow civilians to leave their homes and seek assistance and protection and to facilitate the movement of aid workers to ensure the continuity of life-saving programs, he said. McGoldrick warned the warring parties that any deliberate attacks against civilians, and against civilian and medical infrastructure, are clear violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes . | 0 |
21st Century Wire says It was an awkward fit of nerves when Donald met Angela During an interview in October 2015, when asked about Chancellor Merkel s open door refugee policy, Trump famously replied, I always thought Merkel was, like, this great leader What she s done in Germany is insane, before adding, They re going to have riots in Germany. This was followed by a number of other disparaging remarks, including the obligatory Twitter rant from then candidate Trump:I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015It didn t end there either. In March 2016, when commenting on the Cologne New Year s Eve sexual assaults, Trump proceeded to blame Merkel. The German people are going to riot. The German people are going to end up overthrowing this woman [Angela Merkel]. I don t know what the hell she is thinking. With so much bad water under the bridge, it s no wonder how at their press conference the normally bolshy Trump continued to appear sheepish in Merkel s presence a far cry from the campaign trail Vaudeville atmosphere.It s the difference between campaigning and governing READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 0 |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Home improvement retailers Home Depot Inc and Lowe s Inc said on Wednesday they have started shipping emergency material to Florida in anticipation of Hurricane Irma, even as they continue recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Irma, which hit the Caribbean island of St. Martin on Wednesday, is expected to make landfall in Florida during the weekend but its precise trajectory remained uncertain. Irma could become the second powerful storm to thrash the U.S. mainland after Harvey killed more than 60 people and caused as much as $180 billion in damage after hitting Texas late last month. This is unusual because we are now juggling two different storms in two different phases. One is approaching while the other market is in the recovery phase, Home Depot spokesman Matthew Harrigan told Reuters. Home Depot is following the same script preparing for Irma as it did for Harvey. The retailer s merchandising and supply chain teams have previously dealt with different weather-related disasters at once, Harrigan said without giving specific examples. Before Harvey hit Texas, the world s largest hardware and home improvement chain activated its disaster-response plan, asked managers to freeze prices in stores around the region and move storm related merchandise to the front of the store. It followed a plan honed over many hurricane seasons to minimize disruptions, deliver essential material to affected areas and capitalize on a surge in demand for products once repairs begin. Home Depot said it takes up to two months to open stores that are hit hard by a hurricane. Stores that are minimally impacted are usually opened within a few days. Both Home Depot and Lowe s had activated a hurricane command center during Harvey that is now continuing to monitor the path of Irma and mobilizing resources such as supplies. Home Depot said it has despatched 300 truckloads to Florida so far. Rival Lowe s said it has sent 400 truckloads of hurricane prep material including flashlights, batteries and weather radios to Florida. Analysts have said investments in logistics and supply chain by home improvement chains during a weather-related disaster typically brings about 10 to 15 times more in sales. Shares of both Home Depot and Lowe s traded up nearly 2 percent on Wednesday morning. | 0 |
It s no accident that President Obama named Vanita Gupta acting head of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. Gupta is beloved by the radical left for her militant hostility toward law enforcement officers. Here s a fantastic overview from J. Christian Adams who has intimate knowledge of what s going on at the DOJ. He worked there and knows just how the DOJ has been turned into a politicized radical leftist entity of the Obama administration. Here s an example of that:Vanita Gupta, head of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, has told a lawyers group in Colorado that slavery and Jim Crow helped fuel the Ferguson and Baltimore riots.The last few days have seen a number of fanciful stories with the Obama administration seemingly questioning the authority of local police. I ve long maintained that the administration is nakedly seeking to federalize policing standards but get rid of local police? No way, that sounds like something broadcast from a shortwave station in Austin, Texas. But then up steps Vanita Gupta to lend some credibility to the idea that some want to disband local police and replace police powers with the federal government. Speaking to a group of left-wing lawyers in Colorado, Gupta had this to say:The conversation in these rooms, however, is not about whether to have police or not but about what kind of policing communities want and deserve.There is no question that we need police in our communities.The conversation? What conversation is Gupta hearing that needs to be corrected? Who brought up the idea we might not need police? Nobody sane, for sure.If you read the entirety of Gupta s speech, you ll get a sense of what is going on in the mind of the anti-police left. Officials in this administration still think it is rational and acceptable to bring up the name Michael Brown in the context of anything other than a likely felon against whom deadly force was justifiably used. Behold Gupta:Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. John Crawford. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray.These names and many others have become familiar to us under tragic circumstances in recent months. Their deaths and those of other unarmed African American men and women in encounters with police officers, have provoked widespread responses across the country and have fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. In communities of color, in particular, the reaction has been stark and sobering.In the seven months I have been at the Civil Rights Division, I have spent a lot of time with local leaders and community members in cities all across America, including with numerous mothers who have lost their children in officer-involved shootings. The pain, anger, frustration the lack of trust in the police is real, and it is profound.Gupta asks the question that many Americans have already asked and answered:It s worth asking, first, how did we get here? And second, what are we going to do about it?To most law-abiding Americans, the idea of fleeing from the police, or worse, charging at a policeman you have already punched, is simply beyond the realm of possibility.So how did we get here? Was it a breakdown of values? Perhaps a pervasive tolerance for lawlessness? Of course not. Says Gupta:Let s start with the first question and consider the source of the mistrust. Mistrust can t be explained away as the kneejerk reaction of the ill-informed or the hyperbolic. It s in part the product of historical awareness about the role that police have played in enforcing and perpetuating (wait for it! here it comes!) slavery, the Black Codes, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation.Read more: pjmediaRead more: pjmedia | 0 |
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter This is something I have always had a bit of a hard time with growing up. Seeing what success means to the world and how it has been defined as having money, a good job, working hard, sacrificing etc. Sure this may only be the western world, but that’s where I grew up so that’s what I was exposed to. If I grew up somewhere else maybe it would have been different. I’m sure people don’t even think of the word success or put any particular meaning to it in some places. advertisement - learn more It wasn’t until I really began to see through the whole idea of success as I got into my later teens that I realized we are all chasing a common dream. Something that has been defined for us. It’s not even something we feel passionate about inside or that we absolutely love doing that will lead us to success. It’s simply that we are chasing an idea of what success is. I saw this picture recently and it made me laugh. Mainly because it’s soo true. Have a look below.Here you got this one “unsuccessful” guy on the bottom, who’s just having a nice stroll, crisp smile going on, real nice strut and then you got this “successful” guy above who’s sitting in traffic yelling on his cell phone or to the driver in front of him. The truth is, when we see these two scenarios we often think that someone who just strolls through life, takes it slow, doesn’t go hard at chasing money is not as successful as someone who is wearing a suit, has nice things, is working to get to the top of their company and who may be rich. You literally hear this stuff all the time. It’s all just an illusion of success. But ask yourself the questions: does it really feel resonant inside to chase money? To do what you don’t want to be doing simply to be considered successful? To have to sacrifice and slave for more toys? How about being in competition with everyone so you can get ahead? Wouldn’t you rather live in and experience a world where you could just do what it is you felt inspired to do the most? And then be able to change at any point the moment you wish to experience something new? The truth is, success is literally everything we are doing. No matter what situation you are in, what circumstance you are experiencing, you were successful at creating that. We don’t need to judge any experience as being more successful than the other because we are here to experience! We are here to have a variety of dynamic experiences that give us different circumstances and we are choosing all of them. advertisement - learn more We are all successful, plain a simple. And it’s not even that we need to be or need to focus on success. It’s simply that we don’t need to chase it or define ourselves by it. We simply do what we feel inspired to do and all we need will come from choosing to experience in that manner. Much Love
The Sacred Science follows eight people from around the world, with varying physical and psychological illnesses, as they embark on a one-month healing journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle.
You can watch this documentary film FREE for 10 days by clicking here.
"If “Survivor” was actually real and had stakes worth caring about, it would be what happens here, and “The Sacred Science” hopefully is merely one in a long line of exciting endeavors from this group." - Billy Okeefe, McClatchy Tribune | 1 |
The Stock Market is setting record after record and unemployment is at a 17 year low. So many things accomplished by the Trump Administration, perhaps more than any other President in first year. Sadly, will never be reported correctly by the Fake News Media! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017CBS News reported on the retailer s record-breaking holiday season without ever mentioning President Trump:Total retail sales this holiday season added up to a record $598 billion dollars up $33 billion from last year.Not surprisingly, the AP also failed to mention President Trump: Experts have issued rosy forecasts for the season. Shoppers seemed to be in the mood with unemployment at a 17-year low and consumer sentiment at its highest level since 2000. Shoppers have been spending at a pace not seen since the Great Recession, says Craig Johnson, president of retail consulting group Customer Growth Partners. The Wall Street Journal reported sales were up for retailers like Macy s and Wal-Mart. The Wall Street Journal even mentioned that spending was up in all income categories, as shoppers were encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, but failed to attribute any of the retailer s success to President mention Trump:Retailers are enjoying some extra Christmas cheer.Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year, according to the Mastercard Inc. unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%. Overall, this year was a big win for retail, Ms. Quinlan said.That newfound buoyancy is a relief to retailers from department-store giants like Macy s Inc. to mall favorites like Gap Inc. that struggled through a difficult year of store closures, declining foot traffic and bankruptcies by chains including the Sports Authority, Toys R Us and Payless Shoes.Investors, who have abandoned many retail stocks even as the broader stock market surged, have started to return. Shares of Macy s and Gap, for example, have jumped 24% and 18%, respectively, in the past month, compared with a 3% gain in the S&P 500. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has rallied 40% on the year and, like online nemesis Amazon.com Inc., is trading near all-time highs. Unlike in past years, when spending was driven by high-income shoppers, this holiday season a broader swath of the population opened their wallets, encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, analysts and economists said. Fewer people are living paycheck to paycheck, said Chris Christopher, executive director of economic-research firm IHS Markit. There is a lot more spending from the lower- and middle-income groups, while the upper-income groups are splurging. Fox Business News reported the amazing Christmas season sales, but neglected to mention President Trump s positive effect on the economy:Retailers are finally enjoying some Christmas cheer.Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year, according to the Mastercard Inc. unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%. It started with a bang in the week leading up to Black Friday, said Sarah Quinlan, a senior vice president of marketing insights at Mastercard. She added that retailers benefited this year from Christmas Day falling on a Monday, giving shoppers a full weekend to scoop up last-minute purchases. Dec. 23 ranked next to Black Friday in terms of spending, according to Mastercard.Via: Gateway Pundit | 1 |
Texas Civil Rights lawyer Rob Ranco is a partner at The Carlson Law Firm at the Round Rock, TX location. He is the supervising attorney for the firm s three Austin offices.When Rob isn t busy chasing ambulances or using a bullying incident his daughter allegedly faced at school to gain celebrity, he s publicly telling the world he d be okay if Betsy DeVos, a mother, grandmother and US Secretary of Education was sexually assaulted. It looks the real bully has been exposed Here s Rob Ranco s vile tweet, that he quickly deleted after it started to get traction on Twitter:This is what Rob s Twitter account looks like now:Here is a link to the archived tweet and to the responses Ranco got to his disgusting comment: https://archive.fo/xNdigRob Ranco, a partner in the Texas Carlson Law Firm was apparently referring to a decision made by Betsy DeVos, that she announced earlier in the week regarding changes that would be made to Title IX as it relates to the unfair and unlawful way sexual assault cases are currently being tried on college campuses.Betsy DeVos spoke on Thursday, September 7, at George Mason University s Virginia campus. DeVos ignited a firestorm when she announced the end of yet another case of an unlawful overreach by Barack Obama, that affected every college student by stripping them of their right to due process in sexual assault cases.DeVos explained her reasoning for reversing an unfair and impractical solution to sexual assault on campuses: Survivors, victims of a lack of due process, and campus administrators, have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved. A student says he or she was sexually assaulted by another student on campus. If he or she isn t urged to keep quiet, or discouraged from reporting it to local law enforcement, the case goes to a school administrator, who will act as the judge and jury. The accused may or may not be told of the allegations before a decision is rendered. If there is a hearing, both the survivor and the accused, may or may not be allowed legal representation. Whatever evidence is presented may or may not be shown to all parties. The notion that a school must diminish due process rights to better serve the victim only creates more victims. A better way also means we shouldn t demand anyone become something they are not.Click HERE for video of Betsy DeVos making her announcement that has the Ivy League educated attorney so angry.Ranco brags about his huge settlement against the Austin Police Department in 2016, for excessive use of force against an innocent citizen. Rob offered to give up his salary before the case was even settled in an effort to get the Austin Police Department to admit guilt before the settlement. The Youtube videos showing him asking for an apology for his client have all been mysteriously scrubbed, but we have managed to locate the grandstanding video and can be seen below:Rob mentions his wife Tonia, who has her own website and Youtube channel that caters to women in his profile on Twitter.Tonia has also shut down her Twitter account, as her husband s disgusting remarks are sure to harm her business whose primary market appears to be women.Leave it to a liberal to be so filled with hate for anyone who doesn t agree with him, that he s willing to destroy his own career, and in the process, destroy his wife s career as well.Here s a video of Rob promoting himself and his excellent skills as a lawyer: | 0 |
DR. BEN CARSON TELLS THE STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HE SPOKE OUT AGAINST OBAMA: | 1 |
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