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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman branded as turf war between U.S. security agencies U.S. intelligence reports that Russia intervened in the presidential election, she wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday. “It looks like banal infighting between U.S. security services”, Maria Zakharova said. | 1 |
WASHINGTON/SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (Reuters) - When Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah introduced legislation last month to transfer about 3 million acres of federally-held public land to state control, he was bombarded by thousands of angry phone calls, letters and social media posts urging him to back off. The pressure came not only from liberal environmentalists – but also from gun-toting, often conservative outdoors enthusiasts who are central to Chaffetz’ political base. Both camps fear that transferring federal lands to state control could open them up to drilling and coal mining rather than recreation and preservation. “I hear you,” Chaffetz wrote in a post on his Instagram account announcing the withdrawal of the bill. “I am a proud gun owner, hunter and love our public lands.” Chaffetz’s office did not respond to requests for comment on his reversal. Outdoor sporting groups - long associated with conservatism because of their support for guns rights and small government - are now collaborating with the environmental left to fight U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to open more public lands to energy development. Such areas include national forests, parks and Native American tribal territories and account for about one fifth of the United States. Recent funding data from the Foundation Center database, which aggregates information from tax filings, shows groups such as the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Outdoor Alliance have accepted grants from big environmental and liberal foundations, including the Turner Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Hewlett Foundation gave $100,000 in 2015 to Backcountry, a conservation group created in 2004. The money accounted for more than two-thirds of its foundation grants that year, and Backcountry told Reuters it is an annual gift with no conditions. Hewlett said it supports Backcountry because of its “critical work to preserve America’s outdoor heritage of hunting and fishing and protect wild places.” The Turner Foundation gave an unrestricted donation of $100,000 to the Outdoor Alliance in 2015, the group’s only foundation grant that year. “Conservation is a nonpartisan issue, and it is a shame it is being politicized,” said Judy Adler, president of the Turner Foundation. The Environmental Policy Alliance, a pro-development organization, has said environmentalists finance sportsmens’ groups as a way to provide conservative cover for a liberal agenda - turning the outdoors groups into “green decoys.” The alliance, which says it aims to “uncover the funding and hidden agendas” of environmentalists, did not respond to requests for comment. Highlighting the odd-bedfellows nature of such collaborative lobbying, the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers counts the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., as a lifetime member. Officials at the Trump Organization, where Donald Trump Jr. is an executive, did not respond to requests for comment. A Trump administration official declined to comment. Trump has made previous statements opposing the transfer of federal land to states, but has strongly supported more energy development in such areas. The outdoor recreation industry is concentrated heavily in conservative western states and generates more than $640 billion annually, according to the Outdoor Industry Association, which represents hundreds of companies and organized the pressure campaign against Chaffetz. That figure would make the outdoors industry about 10 times bigger than the coal industry. For a graphic comparing the outdoor industry's economic output to other sectors, see: tmsnrt.rs/2kHoU6U The cause of protecting public lands is among precious few issues that bind U.S. conservatives and liberals. Outdoors companies such as Patagonia and North Face are building lobbying strength quickly in response to rising threats to federal lands, said Jessica Wahl, government affairs manager for the Outdoor Industry Association. “We are a bipartisan industry,” Wahl said. “We are stronger when talking with a unified voice.” In one example of that clout, more than 30 companies this week - including Patagonia, REI, North Face, KUHL, and others – wrote an open letter to Utah’s Republican Governor Gary Herbert saying they will try to force an annual outdoor retailers’ convention out of the state unless he protects public lands. Patagonia had earlier announced it would boycott the convention - which brings Utah about $45 million each year - because Herbert had opposed a move by former Democratic President Barack Obama to protect 1.3 million acres near the iconic Bears Ears buttes. Tawney, of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, said he supports partnerships with environmental groups to advocate for wilderness conservation. But he dismisses assertions that the outdoor enthusiast organizations have become pawns of the environmental left. “Everything we do is about hunting and fishing,” he said. Some traditional environmental lobbying organizations such as the Sierra Club say they are happy to let outdoor sports advocates be the public face of the conservation movement. The arguments of sportsmen tend to resonate better with business-friendly Republicans and their constituents in rural communities, he said. “They speak from more of an economic voice,” said Matt Kirby, who directs the Sierra Club’s public lands policy work for western states. Elsewhere, local outdoor industry companies have had success engaging with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to have more input on local oil and gas leasing decisions. Ashley Korenblat - owner of Utah-based mountain biking outfitter Western Spirit Cycling and a member of the Outdoor Industry Association - was instrumental in shaping the Moab Master Leasing Plan, which preserves bike trails near Moab, Utah while allowing some oil and gas drilling. Many hunters, fishermen and campers may not think of themselves as conservationists, Korenblat said, but “when you can no longer get to the river where you fish - when the trail you’ve been riding has been replaced by a 30-foot gravel road to a well - suddenly you really care.” Some of the most passionate conservation advocates are in Utah, where two-thirds of the state is federally protected. “I’m just disgusted,” said Grant Bench, a fly-fishing guide who works with Sundance Mountain Resort. “Do we see oil pumps in Yellowstone next?” Last winter, Bench said, he took Donald Trump Jr. fishing on the Provo River. Bench told him he wants future generations of his family to enjoy the same pristine wilderness that currently sustains Bench’s livelihood. Trump Jr. agreed that preserving public lands is important, said Bench, who hopes Trump’s son will carry that message to his father. Reuters could not reach Donald Trump Jr. for comment. Bench provided a photograph of himself with Trump Jr. standing outside in waders, waterproof pants used by fly fishermen to walk through streams. The conservation battles have made Bench start to question his traditionally conservative politics. “I’m leaning further left every day that this stuff goes on,” he said. For a graphic on the U.S. outdoor economy's impact, click here | 1 |
SWABI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Three police officers stand daily guard at the tomb of Pakistani student Mashal Khan to prevent religious hardliners from fulfilling threats to blow up the grave of the 23-year-old beaten to death over rumors he blasphemed against Islam. His grieving family, now also under police protection, say they have little hope the shocking campus killing will prompt a re-examination of blasphemy laws that carry a death penalty, or action against the mob justice that often erupts in such cases. On Friday, there was more evidence the opposite is happening. A new political party that has made punishing blasphemers its main rallying cry won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar, 60 km (36 miles) from where Mashal Khan was killed six months ago. Death to blasphemers! Death to blasphemers! was a common chant of supporters of the Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan party at its campaign rallies in the conservative northwestern city. The party s relatively strong showing - and a separate outcry over a proposed change to an election law that outraged the religious right - has elevated blasphemy into a potent political issue in the run-up to a general election in 2018. While Tehrik-e-Labaik (Movement of the Prophet s Followers) is unlikely to break out of single digits in coming votes, its rapid rise, along with another ultra-religious party, could create an additional challenge for the ruling Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The PML-N party s leader, Nawaz Sharif, was ousted as prime minister in July by the Supreme Court, and opposition leader Imran Khan - who spearheaded the legal case that removed him over unreported income - is seeking to press the advantage. In this week s Peshawar by-election, former cricket star Imran s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party swept to a comfortable victory to retain the parliamentary seat, winning 34.8 percent of the vote. Sharif s PML-N had 18.9 percent, narrowly coming in third to the regionally strong Awami National Party that won just 40 more votes. But the gains by the Labaik party - formed just last year - have grabbed attention. Labaik draws most of its support from the Barelvi branch of Sunni Islam, the largest sect in Pakistan that is traditionally considered moderate. Though the party does not publicly talk about its funding, the Barelvis have a network of mosques and madrassa religious schools that collect donations. The party emerged out of a protest movement against the state s execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform Pakistan s blasphemy laws, among the world s harshest, to prevent abuses. Qadri is considered a hero by the party, and its candidate in Peshawar, Muhammad Shafiq Ameeni, was equally supportive of Mashal Khan s killers, although the student s death was not a main feature at campaign rallies. It was state s responsibility to punish a blasphemer, no two opinions, but when state doesn t do its job and someone does kill, he shouldn t be punished as a murderer, Amini said, referring to the 57 people who face trial over Mashal Khan s death. In Pakistan, allegiance to Islam is the official line of most major parties, but ultra-religious parties have so far remained on the fringes. Labaik is one of two new ultra-religious parties formed in roughly the past year. Together, Labaik and the Milli Muslim League (MML) gained about 11 percent of the vote in last month s by-election in Lahore and 10.4 percent in Peshawar, whereas the established religious parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam, combined had 5.3 percent in the 2013 national election. Blasphemy is such an effective wedge issue in Pakistan because there is almost no defense against an accusation. For that reason, say critics, blasphemy laws are often invoked to settle personal scores and to intimidate liberal journalists, lawyers and politicians. Dozens of Pakistanis are sitting on death row after being convicted of insulting Islam s prophet, a specific charge that carries a mandatory death sentence, though no executions have been carried out in recent decades. Now, political parties may be in danger of facing blasphemy accusations themselves. Earlier in October, the PML-N found itself in the middle of a firestorm when it voted through seemingly small changes to the nation s electoral law. The changes, among other things, turned a religious oath in the electoral laws stating that Mohammad was the last prophet of Muslims into a declaration using the words I declare . The alterations prompted accusations of blasphemy from the religious right and the government quickly retreated, terming the change a clerical mistake and apologizing in parliament. Labaik has vowed to hold a mass rally on Nov. 6 to demand the lawmakers responsible be prosecuted for blasphemy. Even before the Labaik party s political debut, politicians found promising swift action against blasphemers an easy way to appeal to conservative voters. In March, then-prime minister Sharif issued a public order to prosecute anyone posting blasphemous content online. The next month, Mashal Khan was accused of online blasphemy and beaten to death by fellow students and religious activists as onlookers filmed the scene. Sharif said he was shocked and saddened by the senseless display of mob justice . At least 67 people have been killed over unproven blasphemy allegations since 1990, according human rights groups. Mashal Khan s father, Iqbal, said his son was the victim of false rumors. The family has received death threats from right-wingers and Mashal s sisters had to drop out of school. The snakes our country nurtured are now biting us, the father said, two days before the Peshawar by-election, standing beside his son s gave strewn with flowers, lace and poetry. Learning of the Labaik party s gains a few days later only made him more pessimistic about the government s ability to stop abuse of blasphemy accusations. I know very well, I m not going to get my son back, he said. But this only adds to my pain. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his eldest son as “innocent” following emails that showed Donald Trump Jr. welcomed Russian help against his father’s rival in the 2016 presidential election, deepening the controversy over purported Russian meddling. Trump Jr. released a series of emails on Tuesday that revealed he had eagerly agreed to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father. Trump Jr., in a Fox News television interview Tuesday, said: “In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.” The president, after initially releasing a statement calling his son “high-quality,” on Wednesday praised the TV appearance and again condemned news coverage and investigations into his campaign’s alleged links to Russia. “He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!” Trump wrote on Twitter. Christopher Wray, Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday he did not consider special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling to be a “witch hunt.” The emails offered the most concrete evidence to date that Trump campaign officials embraced an offer of Russian help to win the election, a subject that has cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency and spurred multiple investigations. The emails do not appear to provide evidence of illegal activity, but legal experts say Trump Jr. could run into trouble if investigators find he aided a criminal action, such as hacking into Democratic computer networks, or violated campaign-finance laws by accepting gifts from foreign entities. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Moscow sought to help Trump win the election, in part by releasing private emails from Democratic Party officials. The Justice Department and Congress are both investigating alleged Russian interference in the election and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign. Trump has said his campaign did not collude with Russia and Moscow has denied meddling. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday it was preposterous that Trump’s eldest son was under attack for meeting the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. “I learned with surprise that a Russian lawyer, a woman, is being blamed and Trump’s son is being blamed for meeting. For me, this is wild,” Lavrov told a news conference in Brussels. The allegations that Russia tried to help Trump win the election has cast a cloud over his presidency. White House aides say the president keenly watches cable TV news, which he often mentions in his tweets. Trump denied that on Wednesday, saying the White House was focused on getting healthcare and tax reforms through Congress. “The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.,” Trump wrote on Twitter. One of the president’s personal attorneys, Jay Sekulow, in a series of TV interviews on Wednesday said Trump Jr.’s meeting with Veselnitskaya was not a violation of the law and that the president was unaware of the meeting and the emails until recently. “There’s no illegality,” he told NBC’s “Today” program. Trump Jr. said that Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager at the time, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, now a top White House adviser, also attended the meeting with Veselnitskaya, who has denied having Kremlin ties. | 1 |
Why is this not front page news on every major media outlet?Russian intelligence targeted Hillary Clinton before she became secretary of state in 2009, FBI documents show.New FBI information about corruption in a Clinton-approved uranium deal with Russia raises questions about Clinton s actions after the FBI broke up a deep-cover Russian spy ring in 2010.For a decade, the FBI ran an operation called Ghost Stories to monitor and rip apart a deep-cover Russian agent network. Ghost Stories tracked a ring Russian spies who lived between Boston and Washington, D.C., under false identities. It was one of the FBI s most elaborate and successful counterintelligence operations in history.After the FBI arrested 10 of the spies in June, 2010, Secretary of State Clinton worked feverishly to return the Russian agents to Moscow in a hastily arranged, lopsided deal with Putin.It all happened as the uranium deal was in play: An arrangement to provide Moscow s state Rosatom nuclear agency with 20 percent of American uranium capacity, with $145,000,000 to pour into the Clinton Family Foundation and its projects.For the Clintons, the FBI s biggest counterintelligence bust in history couldn t have come at a worse time.The day the FBI arrested the Russian agents, on June 28, 2010, the day before the secretary of state s husband, Bill Clinton, was to give a speech in Moscow. A Kremlin-connected investment bank, Renaissance Capital, paid the former president $500,000 for the hour-long appearance.An unnamed Hillary Clinton spokesman told ABC News that there was no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring. That was a lie.Under the code name Operation Ghost Stories, the FBI had been working the ring for a decade. Its targets had burrowed in along the Acela Corridor between Boston, New York, and Washington DC. They lived normal daily lives as Americans to attend universities, run businesses, marry, and conceive and raise children to infiltrate society and subvert government institutions. One of the SVR agents had stolen the identity of a six-week-old Canadian baby who had died in 1963. That prompted the Ghost Stories code name. The ring inspired the FX network s television series, The Americans. As with any secretary of state, Hillary Clinton would be a primary target under any circumstance. But she was much more. She was a known quantity: predictable, vain and ruthless, and with an insatiable desire for cash to enrich her family, friends, and political machine. Blindly ambitious to become president of the world s only superpower and swearing to come back after losing in 2008 to Barack Obama, she was the 21st century KGB s perfect mark.Read more: Daily Caller | 1 |
Paul Ryan and the Republican leadership are rolling out plans to keep wages stagnant in America for the foreseeable future. A $23 billion cut is aimed at eliminating food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to people on unemployment who are either in school or job training. It s an age-old GOP tactic. Eliminate the help for people who are looking to do better and they are forced out of school or training and into minimum wage jobs.Once they get there, the Republicans can claim they re teenagers living at home for free and it s their own fault for settling for a minimum wage job when all they have to do is go back to school or get some training. And the cycle continues. According to Roll Call:Republican leaders have proposed more than $23 billion in food stamp cuts in a budget plan that could be brought to the House floor in the next two weeks, several sources say.The proposed changes in the food stamp, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, include the end of waivers that allow some adults to receive assistance for a limited amount of time, while they are in school, or training for a job.$23 billion in cuts to food for people. Is there nowhere else we could look for $23 billion dollars? How over budget is that fighter jet program again? We re not talking about handing people cash outside a liquor store here; we re talking about food. All the BS about fraud and dependence and still one in four children in this country struggle with food. Republicans have been after the food stamp program for no reason other than to keep people as desperate as possible.Just imagine if Donald Trump is elected with a Republican majority in Congress. Food will be distributed to the poor in the streets in the form of bags of flour and rice and maybe some milk and whey to make cheese. OK, maybe that s a little extreme. There won t be any free food. Certainly in a Trumptopian society, the poor will stay out of sight where they belong.Featured image from foodsecuritychallenge.com | 1 |
The truth is what you get with this judge! We love her! Judge Jeanine rips into the Democrats: | 0 |
Mark Anderson American Free PressWASHINGTON, D.C. Donald John Trump took to the podium on the Capitol Building s west side with a look described by Connecticut resident Ann Marie Murray as one of humility just before Trump was sworn in Friday as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts.The event clearly was seen as inspiring by many. Chicago resident Doug Sparkman, moments after Trump s inaugural address, agreed that he found Trump s remarks to be rather Jeffersonian, in the sense of being people-based. In that vein, he yearns for a country run on the basis of principle, not party. And given what he heard in Trump s address, he feels that s possible under the new administration. Action, and putting politics aside, is what we really need for this country, Sparkman added.With the whole inaugural ceremony some 20 minutes behind schedule, Trump and his family, looking regal and acting highly anticipatory of the challenges that await them, arrived at the Capitol around 11:15 a.m. The new first lady, Melania, was escorted to the west balcony to be seated first, wearing a stunning high-necked blue outfit that brought oohs from many in the massive crowd whose view was aided by large screens on both ends of the Capitol.Trump himself, appearing reflective and solemn, emerged alongside Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and was seated at 11:32. As the somewhat chilly day spat a little rain here and there, you could feel the heavy anticipation to hear Trump take the oath of office. And soon after former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence was sworn in as vice president by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Trump proceeded to begin taking his oath when a group of six agitators erupted in a flurry of slogans and declarations precisely when Trump began repeating the words I do solemnly swear . . . This writer, some 10 feet from the protestors in the Section eight seating area reasonably close to the presidential podium, could see the anguish on the faces of many of the nearby inaugural attendees, a number of whom traveled long distances to hear their new president take the oath. But from their vantage point, Trump s exchange with Roberts was largely drowned out. It s a testimony to the manners and restraint of the pro-Trump attendees that they did not escort the protestors out by force Continue this story at AFPREAD MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump Files | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said on Wednesday there was “more investigating to do” after top intelligence officials declined to answer questions about whether President Donald Trump attempted to interfere in the investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election. “Our intelligence leaders could have laid allegations against (Trump) to rest. They chose not to and didn’t explain why they wouldn’t answer,” Senator Mark Warner said in a statement on Twitter after a committee hearing. “That tells me we have more investigating to do,” he wrote. | 1 |
Bobby Freeman, whose “Do You Want to Dance” climbed the pop charts in 1958 and endured long afterward in covers by the Beach Boys, the Ramones, Bette Midler and others, died on Jan. 23 at his home in Daly City, Calif. He was 76. The cause was a heart attack, his son Robert Freeman Jr. said on Monday. The death had not been widely reported. Mr. Freeman was still a teenager when he wrote and recorded the song that became his signature. Sung with infectious enthusiasm and featuring a driving Latin rhythm and a joyful guitar solo, “Do You Want to Dance” reached No. 5 on the Billboard singles chart. An energetic showman and dancer, Mr. Freeman was soon touring with Fats Domino and Jackie Wilson and appearing on television shows like “American Bandstand” and “The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beechnut Show. ” Mr. Freeman’s version of “Do You Want to Dance” (also known as “Do You Wanna Dance,” with and without the question mark) embodied the spirit of early rock ’n’ roll, but the secret to the song’s longevity was that artists interpreted it in myriad ways. The Beach Boys reached No. 12 on the Billboard chart in 1965 with a typically interpretation. John Lennon recorded a dreamy reggae version. The Ramones ramped up Mr. Freeman’s energy to levels. Both the Mamas and the Papas and Ms. Midler slowed the song down Ms. Midler’s version, a sensual ballad, reached No. 17 on the Billboard chart in 1973. She told CBS News in 2006 that “Do You Want to Dance” was her favorite song. The song was also featured on the soundtrack of George Lucas’s rock ’n’ roll film “American Graffiti” (1973). Mr. Freeman was not a wonder. “C’mon and Swim” (1964) — a young Sly Stone was its producer and a — reached No. 5 on the Billboard chart. “Betty Lou Got a New Pair of Shoes” (1958) also charted. Robert Thomas Freeman was born in Northern California on June 13, 1940, and raised in San Francisco. He attended Mission High School there before joining the Romancers, a group. In addition to his son Robert, his survivors include another son, Jerrald his partner of 17 years, Michele Ellen two daughters, April Freeman and Nichole Hackett and several grandchildren. Mr. Freeman released a handful of songs after 1964, but none became hits. He spent years performing at clubs in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas and other cities, and that was fine with him. “I’m just as content as I could be with what I’m doing,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1990. “I have no complaints whatsoever. ” | 0 |
Fragment of Old Tax Bill Meant to Undercut Muslims' Claim to Important Mosque by Jason Ditz, October 26, 2016 Share This
While the UNESCO resolution which recognized the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as a “Muslim holy site of worship” was barely reported around the world, and considered fairly non-controversial, Israeli officials have been expressing fury over the matter for two solid weeks.
And the Muslims may have a huge, ancient mosque that has been a key part of Islam for 1,300 years, but Israel has a small strip of papyrus they found in a cave, which they’re pretty sure is a far more conclusive document, since it mentioned the word Jerusalem and was written in Hebrew.
Israeli officials have claimed that the UNESCO resolution, in recognizing the mosque as important to Islam, was tantamount to denying Israel’s absolute and eternal control over the entire city of Jerusalem. Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said the papyrus strip proved Jerusalem “was and will remain the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
The al-Aqsa mosque was built on a site which is believed to have previously housed an important Jewish temple, and some Israelis advocate the eventual destruction of the mosque and the construction of a new temple, though the details of such a construction would be hugely religiously complicated, and since the destruction of the mosque would undoubtedly start a massive war, it is considered unlikely. Still, the far-right government wants to ensure that they have some international precedent for their claim to the territory. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1 |
No one has ever accused the Bundy boys of being intelligent. Their grasp on reality is a little sketchy, as is pretty much everything they do. They are the poster children for entitlement expecting the government to give them free stuff (cattle grazing land), and then when the government charges them, they take over a bird sanctuary in Oregon. Now, they are pissed that after they broke numerous laws, their rights are being stripped away, just like everyone else who s in jail.Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of Cliven Bundy, are suing the Multnomah County Sheriff s Office. Some of their complaints don t seem completely ridiculous. They want more access to the law library, discovery material and office supplies. They also feel that the jail hasn t been accommodating enough to their Mormon religion. But it s not all sane, at all.UNSPECIFIED LOCATION JANUARY 26: (EDITORS NOTE: Best quality available) In this composite with handout images provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff s Office, suspects (Top L) Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Ryan Waylen Payne, Brian Cavalier, (Bottom L) Peter Santilli, Joseph Donald OShaughnessy , and Shawna Cox pose for a mugshot photo after being arrested by U.S. Marshalls January 26, 2016 in Oregon. Ammon Bundy and seven others were arrested in a traffic stop along Highway 395 outside Burns, Oregon. One person was killed in the confrontation. Bundy led a group of armed followers, adopting the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo by Multnomah County Sheriff s Office via Getty Images) My rights are being violated. My right to life is being violated. All of my First Amendment rights are being violated. My right to freedom of religion is being violated, Ryan Bundy wrote in a supporting statement. My Second Amendment rights are being violated. I never waived that right. My Fourth Amendment rights are being violated.Wait, what? The Bundys are complaining because they re not allowed to have their guns, in jail!? Oh, and that search and seizure stuff that they tend to do in jail is very tiresome.Believe it or not, the jail hasn t completely laughed off all the Bundy complaints. They have given them more access to the library and they are considering giving them access to a computer of some sort. MCSO is willing to consider permitting inmates to have a solid-state device like an iPad, loaded with discovery including video, legal materials and a word-processing program to be made available to the person only in his cell, jail officials responded to the request.Just imagine one moment that the Bundys were Muslim instead of Mormon. 9/11 suspects were accused of having laptops, while in Gitmo, according to the unreliable Washington Times.As for the religious gatherings, the jail put their foot down. They wanted to gather together, wearing temple garments beneath their jail clothes. The jail was worried about them gathering, but they did allow them an extra towel for kneeling to pray and they are allowed to wear their religious garments.The jail also refused to give them access to the internet, chairs in their cells, access to other defendants, unmonitored phone calls, a cordless printer and scanner, more storage space and real pens. Come on, anyone who s every watched a prison movie knows that real pens are killers.Not a single one of the jail s concessions have been enough, according to the Bundys. They are considering suing. Here s a copy of the complaint. The Bundys are accused of 16 federal felonies. If they are convicted, they will never be able to own a gun again, not that that will stop them.Featured image via Justin Sullivan with Getty Images | 1 |
The number of migrants illegally coming across the U. S. southern border in March dropped to the lowest level in 17 years, says a leaked agency statement given to the Associated Press. [The statement is included in testimony slated for delivery on Wednesday, April 5, by Gen. John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Typically, routine testimony is provided early to the legislators so they can prepare questions for the witness, but it is rarely leaked. According to the Associated Press: Another report on Tuesday said the data showed a 67 percent drop in migrants seeking to cross the border. David V. Aguilar, former U. S. Border Patrol and acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that March 2017 figures he reviewed indicate illegal border crossings are down 67 percent [compared to March 2016] … . “It’s actually up to 67 percent drop compared to last year,” Aguilar told the Senate committee. During his tenure, former President Barack Obama reduced border barriers and allowed at least 300, 000 migrants from Central America to cross the border and get temporary residency, plus work permits and access to Americans’ schools. That wave of migrants helped solidify public opposition to immigration, aided Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and helped cause many extra crimes in the United States. However, the flow of new illegal immigrants is only a small part of the nation’s oversupply. Currently, at least 11 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States, of which at least 8 million hold jobs. Many of the recent illegal immigrants arrive legally as tourists or workers but fail to leave when their visas expire. In 2015, for example, almost 500, 000 people overstayed their visas and remained for some time as illegal immigrants. Also, the federal government annually invites 1 million people to legally immigrate to the United States, and provides work permits to a shifting population of up to 1. 45 million plus at least 200, 000 . The immigrants and contract workers compete for jobs sought by the 4 million young Americans who join the workforce each year. Overall, the huge inflow of migrants, both legal and illegal, help lower Americans’ salaries and wages by roughly $500 billion per year. In turn, that money is scooped up by employers and Wall Street investors as higher profits. President Trump has promised to toughen border security by building a barrier along most of the border, and he has already directed border officers to end Obama’s “catch and release” policy. He has also rejuvenated repatriation policies and has promised to curb business’ use of temporary contract workers in place of Americans. | 0 |
Steven Crowder is an amazing and ALWAYS unafraid conservative comedian. He was present at the union battle for Right To Work in Michigan where he was famously punched in the face by a union thug, when he confronted union thugs and demanded they stop cutting down a massive tent with pro-Right-to-Work conservatives inside (including an elderly woman who was trapped inside, while in a wheelchair when the tent was cut down).Crowder is one of unafraid to take on the Islamification of our schools and small towns, while government officials and liberals persecute Christians and Christian groups in America. Crowder is also passionate about exposing the dangers of political correctness. Crowder uses his very popular videos to prove undeniable facts that support our free speech and gun rights.Steven Crowder s latest project should be on every news network across America, however, you will likely only find this blockbuster video confirming that Antifa is indeed, a domestic terror group on conservative sites like ours or on Twitter and other social media platforms. That s because the media has been going out of their way to soften the image of ANTIFA. They ve been working in unison to make ANTIFA look like a bunch of rabble-rousers who are simply helping to eradicate speech that Americans the Left doesn t agree with. They re just a group of concerned citizens who want to defeat Nazism Trump supporters in America. The leftist media has been begging their viewers to see things from ANTIFA s point of view after all, they re just a group of non-violent violent kids looking to solve the problems of the world through passionate activism violence, intimidation and yes, domestic terrorism.Watch ABC Nightline journalist Dan Harris gut-wrenching reaction to the video that clearly exposes ANTIFA as a domestic terror group: | 1 |
Posted by Devin Peterson on 11/16/2016 to Outdoor Survival Many of us head out into the woods or the wilderness to “lose ourselves” in the beauty of Mother Nature, but this stops being fun and can become horrible if we are unlucky enough to actually get lost while out there. You might not think it can happen to you, but even the best, most experienced hikers get lost. There are loads of things to consider once you realize you are lost and it is helpful to have an action plan in case it ever happens to you. We’ve come up with a list of questions you should ask yourself once you determine you are in fact lost to try and help you take control of the situation. This is a good way to start, but to get a full idea of what you need to know check out this complete guide of how to survive being lost in the woods . 1. Can I get help?
Once you have admitted to yourself that you are lost one of the first things you want to consider is how you are going to get help. Here’s a few ways that you could do this, some more obvious than others. Check your cell phone - obviously if you have service and can reach either a friend or can call 9/11, this situation is going to be much easier. Stay in the area and yell - you never know who might be in the area or how close to a trail you might be. Stick around in the same spot and shout at the top of your lungs for help. If someone is in the area, they’ll come find you. Make a fire - if you are in an area where it might be hard to find you, try to make a small fire using heavier, smokier woods. This could alert someone to your presence and could direct anyone looking for you to where you are. 2. What time is it?
Now that you have tried a few things to try and get help, you need to assess the situation and the time of day that it is will play a huge role in what you decide to do next. Depending on what your clock says you can: Begin looking for a place to camp Retrace your steps Rest until it gets cooler Have an idea of which way is East and which way is West.
The idea of using the sun to help you orient yourself is useful, but obviously depends on you knowing where it is you are headed. You may think East is the way back, but if you are already East of where you started this could be dangerous. Also, the sun is actually very rarely aligned perfectly with East and West. This could be helpful in some situations, but be careful basing major decisions on this information. 3. Do I have enough water?
No matter if you have enough time to try and find your way back to where you came or if you have decided to make camp, you are going to need water. Also, since you are now lost, it is important that you ration the water you do have until you find a new source. If you decide to walk around looking for where you came from, you are going to get thirsty and want to drink, which will deplete your supply. If you can find a water supply, stick to it and start thinking about how you can purify it to make sure it is safe to drink. Here are some of the most effective ways: Boil the water - this is relatively easy and safe to do, but it might be difficult if you are not carrying a pot or some other receptacle to hold the water Make a filter - you can make a filter using rocks and leaves and any burnt wood you might be able to find. This is not the cleanest way to do this, but could be effective in desperate situations Use chemicals - if you are a prepared hiker you might be carrying some iodine or chlorine with you that you can drop into the water you collect in order to make sure it is clean. If you don’t have this, see the first two options.
If it is impossible to do any of these, the only thing left to do is to look for a running stream and chance drinking out of it. This is risky and not recommended, but if you really need water you may not have any other choice. If you can’t find a stream you could use one of the following water collection techniques: Collect condensation from trees with plastic bags Collect rain water with a shirt or a towel Neither of these is ideal, but desperate times call for desperate measures. 4. Where can I get food?
If you are not carrying any food with you or it looks like you are going to be on your own for a while, you are going to need to figure out where your food is going to come from. If you are near a lake or a pond or in an area with wildlife, you could try to be inventive and fashion a fishing pole or a spear out of some branches to try and get food. However, if the area you’re in doesn’t allow for this or you’re not handy enough, there are some plants easily found that can be eaten that offer nutrients for emergency situations. Here are a few: Pine needles - sounds weird, but they are full of Vitamin C, especially the light green parts that come out in Spring Dandelion leaves - they taste quite bitter, but are full of iron and will help you maintain your energy level Elder weed - legend has it that the Roman army helped feed itself on this plant while out campaigning. It’s got lots of nutrients and can be found anywhere.
When you have to resort to eating in the woods, just be careful. The most harmless looking berry can be poisonous. You should be okay, but play it safe. Hopefully you never need this
It is good information to have in case you ever are lost in the woods, but hopefully proper preparation and practicing safe hiking techniques will mean you will never have to ask yourself the questions we’ve discussed. Having said that, do you have any experience surviving in the woods? Let us know what you did to stay alive, but again, let’s hope it doesn’t happen. | 1 |
Dozens of intelligence analysts working at the U.S. military's Central Command (CENTCOM) have complained that their reports on ISIS and the Nusra Front in Syria were inappropriately altered by senior officials, according to a published report.
The Daily Beast reported late Wednesday that more than 50 analysts had supported a complaint to the Pentagon that the reports had been changed to make the terror groups seem weaker than the analysts believe they really are. Fox News confirmed last month that the Defense Department's inspector general was investigating the initial complaint, which the New York Times reported was made by a civilian employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
At a panel discussion Thursday moderated by Fox News' Catherine Herridge, DIA Director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart also confirmed the probe and said the DIA will let the investigation play out. He said the DIA "delivers the truth wherever the debate takes us."
The Pentagon acknowledged the IG investigation as well.
"I think ... the best thing for us to do is wait" for the IG investigation, spokesman Peter Cook said. He said Defense Secretary Ash Carter expects "candid assessments" from the intelligence teams.
"Unvarnished, transparent intelligence is what this secretary expects on a daily basis," he added.
The assessments in question are prepared for several U.S. policymakers, including President Obama.
The Daily Beast report, which cited 11 individuals, claimed that the complaint being investigated by the Defense Department was made in July. However, several analysts reportedly complained as early as this past October that their reports were being altered to suit a political narrative that ISIS was being weakened by U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria.
"The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command," the report quotes one defense official as saying.
According to the report, some analysts allege that reports deemed overly negative in their assessment of the Syria campaign were either blocked from reaching policymakers or sent back down the chain of command. Others claim that key elements of intelligence reports were removed, fundamentally altering their conclusions. Another claim is that senior leaders at CENTCOM created a work environment where giving a candid opinion on the progress of the anti-ISIS campaign was discouraged, with one analyst describing the tenor as "Stalinist."
The report alleges that when the analysts' complaints were initially aired, some of those who complained were urged to retire, and did so. Facing either resistance or indifference, other analysts self-censored their reports, the Daily Beast claims.
The defense official quoted by the Daily Beast said that some who spoke up did so out of guilt that they did not express doubts about former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged chemical weapons program in the run-up to the Iraq. War.
"They were frustrated because they didn’t do the right thing then," the official said.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have been advised of the complaint that prompted the inspector general's investigation, which is required if Pentagon officials find the claims credible.
Government rules state that intelligence assessments "must not be distorted" by agendas or policy views, but do allow for legitimate differences of opinion.
Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick S. Ryder said in a statement Wednesday that they welcome the IG's "independent oversight."
"While we cannot comment on ongoing investigations, we can speak to the process and about the valued contributions of the Intelligence Community (IC)," he said, adding that intelligence community members typically are able to comment on draft security assessments. "However," he said, "it is ultimately up to the primary agency or organization whether or not they incorporate any recommended changes or additions. Further, the multi-source nature of our assessment process purposely guards against any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision-makers."
Earlier this summer, on the eve of the anniversary of the launching of airstrikes against Iraq, the Associated Press reported that U.S intelligence had concluded that the airstrikes had helped stall ISIS after sweeping gains in the summer of 2014. However, the report also said the terror group remained a well-funded army that could easily replenish its numbers as quickly as fighters were eliminated.
Click for more from The Daily Beast. | 0 |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Political consultants are sometimes accused of hiding the naked truth about the candidates they represent or the campaigns they devise. But California voting expert Paul Mitchell bared it all after Tuesday’s primary election, running naked around the grounds of the state Capitol building in Sacramento after his prediction in a key race turned out to be wrong. “When improbable things happen, some pay consequences,” Mitchell posted on Twitter early on Wednesday morning. Along with the posting was a photo of the darkened Capitol, a map of a running route from the athletic tracking app Strava and the title, “Streaking.” Last year, Mitchell firmly dismissed predictions that two Democrats would be chosen in Tuesday’s primary to vie for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in November. He was so sure that would not happen - despite a change in the state’s open primary law advancing the top two vote-getters to the general election regardless of party affiliation - that he vowed to run naked around the Capitol if two Democrats were chosen. When it became clear on Tuesday night that state Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, both Democrats, topped the polls and would advance to the general election, Mitchell knew what he had to do. He parked his car in front of the Capitol building in downtown Sacramento in the darkest spot he could find, took off his clothes (including shoes) and ran, he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “I couldn’t put up with all the badgering I would get if I didn’t do it,” he said. “There’s honor among politicos, I guess.” He managed to maintain his privacy to all but a couple of youths on skateboards. “It really doesn’t seem like it’s very dark outside when you’re streaking,” Mitchell said. | 1 |
CANTON, Ohio — Joshua Brown loved his Tesla Model S so much he nicknamed it Tessy. And he celebrated the Autopilot feature that made it possible for him to cruise the highways, making YouTube videos of himself driving . In the first nine months he owned it, Mr. Brown put more than 45, 000 miles on the car. “I do drive it a LOT,” he wrote in response to one of the hundreds of viewer comments on one of his two dozen videos. His postings attracted countless other Tesla enthusiasts, who tend to embrace the cars with an almost cultish devotion. They also tend to be people who like to live on technology’s leading edge, which in Mr. Brown’s case meant dismantling bombs for the Navy during the Iraq war, then coming home to start his own company to extend internet service into rural America. In his spare time he used a printer to make model tanks and trucks. His Tesla, in other words, was simply one more extension of his life. It took him on adventures from the gravel driveway of the clapboard house where he lived alone in Canton, an hour’s drive south of Cleveland. But Mr. Brown became a victim of an innovation geared precisely to people like him when his Tesla Model S electric sedan collided with a semitrailer truck on a Florida highway in May, making him the first known fatality in a car. “He liked it mainly because it was an exceptional use of technology, and Josh was very much an innovator,” said his friend Paul Snow, who recalled how excited Mr. Brown was about his Tesla during a recent road trip. “He enjoyed the fact that technology was available, that it was being used to, ironically, increase safety on the roads. ” Tesla owners are a devoted bunch. Immediately after the company unveiled a prototype of its Model 3 car, more than 200, 000 enthusiasts put down deposits on the vehicles, which start at $35, 000 and will not be available until next year. Many owners like to showcase their cars on social media, creating songs, routines and other demonstrations of different features, particularly to show off how Autopilot works. Mr. Brown’s most recent video was his most popular. Titled “Autopilot Saves Model S,” it shows Mr. Brown driving on an interstate highway from Cleveland to Canton. A white truck cuts in front of Mr. Brown’s vehicle, and by his account, the Tesla’s Autopilot feature swerves the car to the right, avoiding a collision. After Elon Musk, Tesla’s founder, called attention to the video on Twitter, it went viral. Mr. Brown seemed to be elated. “He had said, ‘For something to catch Elon Musk’s eye, I can die and go to heaven now,’” said a neighbor, Krista Kitchen, choking up. “He was absolutely thrilled — and then a couple weeks later he died. ” In a statement, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said preliminary reports indicated that the crash occurred when a made a left turn in front of the Tesla, and the car failed to apply the brakes. The agency did not name the victim, but the Florida Highway Patrol identified him as Mr. Brown. Ms. Kitchen said Mr. Brown, 40, had just left a family trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando. His relatives did not respond to requests for comment. At Mr. Brown’s house, behind an expansive, lawn, a man who answered the door on Friday said the family did not wish to speak to reporters. Ms. Kitchen and others described how Mr. Brown would eagerly share his Tesla with friends, letting them take turns behind the wheel. And they described a man who was broadly generous with his time, who consistently helped friends in need, and who stayed in touch with his fellow veterans. “He was certainly an adventurer,” Mr. Snow said. “He was a warrior that served proudly for his country he was a patriot. He did many things that had never been done before. ” Mr. Brown was particularly interested in testing the limits of the Autopilot function, documenting how the vehicle would react in blind spots, going around curves and other more challenging situations. “This section in here is going to be very, very difficult for the car to handle,” he said in one video, posted in October, as his vehicle rounded a curve. “We’re filming this just so you can see scenarios where the car does not do well. ” Mark Vernon, a high school classmate who recalled tinkering with electronics in shop class together, said that his friend showed off the feature on a recent visit at Mr. Brown’s home. “He knew the hill that it would give up on, because it couldn’t see far enough,” Mr. Vernon said. “He knew all the limitations that it would find and he really knew how it was supposed to work. ” Mr. Brown attended the University of New Mexico, where he studied physics and computer science, but did not graduate, the school said. Instead, he joined the Navy, where he served for more than a decade and specialized in disarming explosives, according to his company’s website. His service included a stint with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team 6. Ricky Hammer, a retired Navy master chief who worked with Mr. Brown at the development group, said he had strong computer skills and “was the equivalent of an electrical engineer even though he didn’t have the degree. ” Tesla owners tend to share a love of technology, and an eagerness to embrace the unknown, the untested or the unproven. Photos posted on Mr. Brown’s Facebook page show a love of the outdoors, where he rappelled down cliffs and jumped out of airplanes for fun. One of those struck by Mr. Brown’s adventurous side was Terri Lyn Reed, a senior insurance account executive who said she had helped Mr. Brown set up the insurance at his company, Nexu Innovations. “He’d probably fly an to it,” she said, referring to the military fighter jet. Tesla enthusiasts often also share a loyalty to the company, much the way Apple has engendered true believers whom it relies on to back the introduction of new iPhones, Macs and other products. Richard Henry, 26, who bought a 2015 Model S about nine months ago, uses Autopilot to take him through about 40 miles of freeway driving on each leg of his commute between San Francisco and Mountain View. When he started using his car’s Autopilot mode, it had a tendency to lose track of the highway lines and tell him to take control. But in the last few months it has improved more and more. Most days he turns it on and sits with his hands on his knees — ready to take the wheel, he pointed out. Learning about the technology and getting used to it has been “superfun,” he said. That is a point that separates him from the many other drivers who tend to learn how to use a few necessary functions in their car and never bother with most others. “I really like trying stuff like this out and understanding how the technology works,” Mr. Henry said. Mr. Brown’s enthusiasm for technology factored deeply into his work at Nexu, which specialized in setting up internet access in rural areas of the country where forests and mountains created special obstacles to entering the connected world. “Josh knew how to get around all the interference from all the trees and all the hills,” said Cindi Staneski, who runs the Hickory Run Campground in Denver, Pa. an operation that became one of Mr. Brown’s early clients. “The big companies wanted nothing to do with it,” Ms. Staneski said, adding that Mr. Brown had become a mentor to her son. “It was too difficult, or they just wanted to charge you an extreme amount of money, whereas Josh felt that we deserved a chance that everybody else had. ” | 0 |
Donald Trump had one more surprise up his sleeve. The Republican nominee was elected president Tuesday, winning a stunning upset that defied nearly every prediction. Trump broke through Hillary Clinton’s Democratic firewall and turned back her bid to become the first woman to serve as president, even as the candidates battled for the lead in the popular vote. Trump was carried to victory by a wave of right-wing populist nationalism, as working- and middle-class white Americans turned out in droves to vote for a candidate who had rejected Republican dogma during an erratic, peculiar campaign. Trump overperformed expectations in nearly every public poll, as well as the internal expectations of both parties. The result, paired with Republican victories in the House and Senate, promises to remake American policy and politics, and the global order as well. It represents a wholesale repudiation of the establishment, from Washington to Wall Street. Even before Trump had clinched the win Tuesday night, markets around the world cratered and trading in stock futures was halted. The result is a disaster for the Democratic Party, which had put its faith in a repeat candidate representing a fading dynasty, could not win the Senate, and has few obvious young standard bearers waiting in the wings; the traditional conservative wing of the Republican Party, which largely broke with Trump; the media, which plainly detested Trump but fueled his movement with incessant coverage; and the political consulting and polling industry, which saw its methods ridiculed. It is also a body blow to the legacy of President Barack Obama. The nation’s first African American president will be succeeded by a man who built his political career on questioning whether Obama was a legitimate citizen.
Trump’s victory is an incredible finish to a campaign that often beggared belief. When Trump began his campaign in June 2015, proclaiming that Mexican immigrants were “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he was widely viewed as a curiosity, a garish entertainer whose repeatedly unfulfilled political flirtations were the butt of jokes. Despite billing himself as a businessman, he garnered little respect within the business community. But Trump demolished what was touted as the most talented class of GOP politicians in a lifetime, winning the primary over the objections of most elected Republicans. It is difficult to overstate the surprise of a Trump win, except perhaps with recourse to the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline of 1948. Polling averages never showed him leading, or only leading for a fleeting moment after the Republican National Convention. He centered his campaign around a promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico that practically no serious analyst believes is possible, and to force Mexico to pay for it, a remote possibility. He lost all three presidential debates. He rejected several key pillars of the Republican Party, including free trade, projecting American power abroad, and social conservatism. He broke longstanding tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, but bragged about having paid no income taxes for extended periods. During the campaign, The Washington Post published a video in which Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women, and about a dozen women came forward with allegations of sexual assault and harassment stretching across decades. He was a historically dishonest candidate, lying publicly on matters large and small, important and not, easily debunked and not. He would not commit to accepting the results of the election if he lost.
Trump’s campaign borrowed its tactics from Europe’s right-wing populist parties, eagerly leveraging race for political gain. He blamed immigration, whether from Latin America or from the Middle East, for many of the country’s ills, openly demonizing Hispanics and Muslims and railing against “political correctness.” He drew support from a resurgent white supremacist movement, passing along messages from anti-Semites and those who argue that a “white genocide” is occurring. He was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and wavered before rejecting the support of former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke. These choices, along with his comments about women, produced a lopsided demographic result, with African Americans, Hispanics, and women backing Clinton by wide margins and white voters carrying Trump to the win. Trump broke nearly every rule of political campaigning on the way to his win. He survived an unprecedented abandonment by members of his own party; even GOP officials who endorsed Trump often did so through gritted teeth. He lost the endorsements of even the most staunchly Republican newspapers. He barely engaged in fundraising for his race, beginning to ask for money only late in the game. Ultimately, Trump raised scarcely half of what Clinton did, and he hardly purchased ads to combat her onslaught of television spots, relying instead on social media and his own Twitter account. He eschewed traditional campaigning, from the construction of a field organization to the use of polling to the deployment of a carefully calibrated data analytics team, a tool that Obama’s two wins had established as a must. His unfavorable ratings lagged far behind even Clinton’s shoddy numbers, and national exit polls found a majority of Americans did not believe Trump was qualified to be president. He expressed a profound disgust for the First Amendment and a free press.
Clinton, meanwhile, was revealed as a badly damaged and weak candidate. She was never able to articulate a clear, concise purpose for her campaign, positioning herself more than anything as the only person who could stop Trump. Her long resume—stretching from her time as first lady through stints in the Senate and as secretary of state—turned out to be a liability. So, crucially, did her use of a private email server while leading the State Department. Democrats were quick to point a finger at FBI Director James Comey, whose announcement of new emails pertinent to the investigation of that server shook the race, but whose statement eight days later that the emails did not change his conclusion may have come too late to save Clinton. But the signs of her weaknesses were apparent before then, when she struggled to dispatch a primary challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Clinton—never a compelling orator—called on an all-star team of Democrats and others to buoy her, including Obama, Michelle Obama, Sanders, Vice President Biden, and a host of stars of sports, music, and movies. The Trump win in the face of his unified support from the elites in nearly every field underlines the vast split between them and Trump’s base. With both Clinton and Sanders near the ends of their career, it is unclear what the future Democratic Party will look like or who will lead it. The party will take cold comfort even if it does end up winning the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections.
A Trump presidency will present the largest shift in U.S. foreign policy since the nation became a superpower. He has offered an isolationist vision of American foreign policy, arguing that the United States does not get out of international alliances like NATO what it puts in, suggesting he would recognize Russian annexation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. (He was rewarded with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin.) He has promised to renegotiate existing free-trade agreements and promised the return of tariffs. He has spoken disdainfully of climate-change agreements and has suggested nuclear proliferation could help create global peace. Domestically, Trump is expected to cut closer to standard Republican fare, though his plain lack of interest in policy details makes it more difficult to predict. He supports lower taxes and subscribes to supply-side economics, though he has also promised not to cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. With the likely outcome that the lame-duck Senate will continue to stonewall Obama nominee Merrick Garland, Trump will likely have the chance to nominate at least one and perhaps several more justices to the Supreme Court. He has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Assuming he is able to mend fences with Republicans—not necessarily a sure bet—GOP majorities in both the House and Senate will give him broad maneuvering room to enact his policies. The Republican advantage in both the House and Senate decreased, but the party was able to hold both chambers, against expectations that a Clinton win would carry Democrats to a Senate edge. Democrats took over a seat in Illinois and held a seat in Nevada, they failed to pick up any of the other contested seats without Clinton’s coattails.
From the top of the ballot to the bottom, the election shows how deeply divided the nation remains. While Trump performed better that Mitt Romney in urban areas, a stark split between cosmopolitan, liberal urban areas and more conservative, whiter rural ones is a defining feature of the United States, along with a large gap in income and inequality. In other races across the nation, Republicans made big gains in some state houses, while voters in several other states opted to legalize recreational marijuana. In Maricopa County, Arizona, longtime Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a noisy Trump backer and opponent of immigration, was turned out of office. These divisions will likely manifest in increasingly disparate blue and red Americas, often colliding violently. It will take days if not weeks for a full accounting of how polls failed to capture Trump’s surge so badly. He had promised that he would win with the help of the “silent majority,” a phrase he borrowed from Richard Nixon. That prediction was ridiculed by the smart money, along with suggestions that there might be large numbers of “shy” Trump voters unwilling to publicly declare their support. Trump’s win joins in a recent string of shocking upset victories for populist causes, from the rise of right-wing national parties in Europe to the Brexit vote to Colombia’s rejection of a peace referendum. In the home stretch of the campaign, Trump had taken to referring to himself as “Mr. Brexit,” a nod to the unexpected result in that referendum. But as some analysts pointed out, the late polls there indicated that Leave would win. Trump’s victory is something far more surprising. But just as the United Kingdom is trying to sort through what Brexit might mean, Trump and the nation will have to figure out what the United States looks like now. | 0 |
Nobody has spent more of his political career trying to undermine his own government than Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK). The Tea Party Republican most known for his borderline treasonous letter he sent to Iran in a shameful attempt to derail sensitive nuclear negotiations between President Obama and Iran s government. His ravings failed to accomplish anything and in recent months he s been relegated to the obscurity he deserves. Until now.On the night of the State of the Union, Cotton went on CNN s Situation Room to openly and egregiously spread lies about President Obama, even while a difficult situation was unfolding in Iran. On Tuesday evening, the Navy announced that two of its ships, and 10 U.S. sailors, were being held by the Iranian government after the boats floated into the country s territory.Conservatives rapidly lost their minds, even while details continued to come in suggesting the international incident was minor and, in all likelihood, harmless.The Americans were on a training mission in the Persian Gulf when the riverine boats experienced a navigational or mechanical difficulty and appear to have drifted into Iranian waters, according to the Pentagon. Iranian Coast Guard boats brought the vessels to a Revolutionary Guard base on Farsi Island, officials said.U.S. officials said they believe that craft steered off course and that the crew was aided, not captured, by Iranian forces. There doesn t seem to be anything malicious at work on either side, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal assessment.Iran said it was working on releasing the crew members promptly. No big deal, right? In fact, the very lack of hostilities supports the idea that the tensions between the United States and Iran is cooling off, thanks to President Obama s commitment to negotiations.Not as Sen. Cotton tells it. Speaking straight into the camera, Cotton spews lie after lie. His only agenda, to hurt the president s reputation and provoke a hostile response from Iran.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3j8cFq6vUU]In labeling the ships captured and the crew held hostage, Cotton is viciously lying about the troops. They weren t taken by force. They aren t gagged and bound somewhere in enemy territory. Their boat experienced difficulties and they were rescued by Iranian ships. They never surrendered. The United States was never asked to apologize to the Iranians.But by fear-mongering to score political points, Cotton does risk inflaming tensions. Not that the lives of these men and women register in the deep, dark cavity where Cotton s brain allegedly lives. It s clear that even waiting until the sailors are safely out of Iran is too much to ask for a Republican who is hell-bent on painting the Middle Eastern country as a dangerous enemy.As usual, American soldiers are being used by a Republican to serve his agenda. Secretary of State John Kerry couldn t do an interview with CNN, even if it might have helped Democrats in the polls, he was too busy talking personally with Iranian officials, coordinating the release of these soldiers.So going into tonight s State of the Union, where rhetoric on both sides will be high, ask yourself this: Which politician supports the troops more? The one who uses them as bargaining chips to lie his way into better poll numbers or the one who spent the last few hours making sure they get home safely.Feature image via YouTube | 1 |
Well, that didn t take long Nancy Pelosi went on a unhinged angry rant at Republicans for blaming yesterday s shooting on left-wing rhetoric. While she doesn t say it s appropriate to talk about she goes on to rant at Republicans for any comment blaming Democrats: Somewhere in the 90 s the Republicans went on the politics of personal destruction Here s the second part of Pelosi s ridiculous response:The gunman who shot Steve Scalise was a strong political supporter of Bernie Sanders. He had a Facebook page and twitter account full of hate for Republicans and President Trump. Anyone with half a brain would know this man committed this heinous crime for political reasons. Nancy Pelosi acts innocent in all this hate and political terrorism when she was just recorded laughing at the California DNC Chair flipping off President Trump and saying, F*ck Trump! : A reporter asked: Can you comment on the possibility that this incident could be used against Democrats or the Democratic Party politically because the assailant was apparently motivated by some kind of anti-Republican sentiment and we have heard comments from Republicans, including Congress, about vitriol rhetoric from the left being in some way to blame? Pelosi responded with the most idiotic comment: The comments made by my Republican colleagues are outrageous. Beneath of the dignity of the job they hold, beneath the dignity of the respect we would like Congress to command. How dare they say such a thing. How dare they Pelosi went on to point out the past rhetoric that came from Republicans, including President Donald Trump. Probably as we sit here, they re running caricatures of me and Georgia once again of over $100 million, of vitriolic things they say that resulted in calls to my home constantly, threats in front of my grandchildren really predicated on their comments and their paid ads, Pelosi said. So this sick individual does something despicable, and it was horrible what he did, hateful, but for them to all of a sudden be sanctimonious as if they ve never seen such a thing before and I don t even want to go into the president of the United States. But in terms of some of the language that he has used So, again, let s go there another day. This woman needs to retire PRONTO! | 0 |
A Fox host engaged in some seriously f*cked up wishful thinking on Tuesday and every American should be outraged.Bill O Reilly s original goon with a punchable face Jesse Watters smiled during an episode of The Five as he relished the idea of a terrorist attack in October that would scare voters into flocking to Donald Trump s campaign. If there s one more terror attack, maybe in October, this is gonna make Trump s plan look a lot more appealing, Watters claimed.Yeah, that s right. A Trump-supporting Fox host just gave ISIS an idea for how they could seriously interfere with our democratic process. Watters literally talked about this evil October surprise as if it would be a good thing because it could help the Republican nominee beat Hillary Clinton in November.Fellow host Juan Williams was disgusted by Watters remark and slammed him as anti-American for thinking of such a thing. Oh my god, what wishful thinking, Williams responded. Anti-American! That s unbelievable! Of course, Watters then played the victim. Why would you say that that s what I m thinking? he asked. How dare you? Williams demanded to know why Watters would put such a thought out into the world, especially since ISIS is likely watching. How dare you? Watters whined again. It s prudent political analysis, he claimed. Oh that s what it was. I see, Williams replied. I thought it was desperation. No, I know about October surprises, Watters arrogantly claimed.Here s the video via YouTube.This is about as despicable as it gets.Next month will be the 15th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in which nearly 3,000 Americans perished. And as ISIS continues to commit attacks around the world, Jesse Watters is thinking about how great it would be for Trump if only a terrorist attack could happen in this country specifically in October with the goal of affecting the outcome of the presidential election. It s one thing to talk about an October surprise, but Watters got specific and he smiled about it because he thinks it s an opportunity for Trump. This went beyond simple political analysis.Terrorist attacks kill people. They are bloody and violent. There is nothing funny or happy about a terrorist attack, especially at a time when Trump is calling for assassinating Hillary Clinton and claiming that the election is rigged. This election is tense enough as it is without Watters throwing the thought of a possible terrorist attack into the mix.Jesse Watters is sick and he should apologize to every American who has lost a loved one because of an act of terrorism. And he should apologize to America as a whole. Because what kind of American, what kind of human being smiles at the idea of a terrorist attack so that their political party can gain an advantage? This is unforgivable and Fox News should be ashamed for letting a prick like Watters step foot inside their studio.Featured image via screenshot | 1 |
(Reuters) - The chief executives of Intel Corp, Merck & Co Inc and Under Armour Inc resigned from U.S. President Donald Trump’s American Manufacturing Council on Monday, following Trump’s initially tepid response to weekend violence at a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. "I resigned from the council to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues...," Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich said in a blog post. intel.ly/2fFOjAd Kenneth Fraizer, the chief executive of drugmaker Merck and an African-American, said he left the advisory council because of the president’s reaction after the violence between white supremacists and counter protesters. Frazier cited the need to “take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” The AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions that represent 12.5 million workers, said it was considering pulling its representative on the committee. After the white nationalist rally turned deadly on Saturday, Trump initially said that many sides were to blame. On Monday, in a statement, Trump denounced neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan as criminals and thugs, bowing to mounting political pressure as critics assailed him for not singling out white supremacists. The CEO of Under Armour, Kevin Plank, announced his resignation from the council in a Twitter posting. “We remain resolute in our potential and ability to improve American manufacturing,” said Plank. “However, Under Armour engages in innovation and sports, not politics.” Plank was criticized last winter by some of Under Armour’s biggest stars over his support of Trump, comments that basketball star Stephen Curry echoed. The demonstration in Charlottesville by hundreds of white nationalists took a deadly turn on Saturday when a car plowed into a group of counter protesters and killed one person. "America's leaders must honor our fundamental views by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal," Frazier said in a statement announcing his resignation. (bit.ly/2fFnITM) “As CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism,” he said. Trump responded shortly later in a tweet, saying, “Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” Trump doubled down on his attack later in the day, tweeting that Merck “is a leader in higher & higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of the U.S. Bring jobs back & LOWER PRICES!” The son of a janitor, Frazier joined Merck as general counsel of one of the drugmaker’s subsidiaries in 1992, working his way up to CEO of the company in 2011. He made his name as the company’s top lawyer, steering it through daunting litigation over Vioxx, its widely used painkiller that was withdrawn in 2004 after being linked to heart attacks. Many observers thought Merck would eventually have to shell out $10 billion or more to thousands of plaintiffs over the drug’s withdrawal. But Frazier’s legal strategy led to a $4.85 billion settlement in 2007, allowing Merck to refocus on its pipeline of experimental medicines. Merck shares closed up 0.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, roughly in line with the wider market. Frazier frequently made political contributions during the 2016 election, donating to both Republican and Democratic members of Congress but making no donations to a presidential candidate during the year. The political PAC maintained by Merck and funded through donations from Merck employees made over $1.1 million in candidate contributions during the 2016 campaign - but did not contribute to Trump or his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, according to documents filed with the Federal Elections Commission. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents the pharmaceutical industry and lobbies on its behalf in Congress, declined to offer a statement of support for Frazier or to comment on Trump’s reaction. The industry’s silence comes as Trump is finalizing an executive order on drug prices that would relax industry regulation and contains measures that, some say, would protect existing drug prices or even increase them. Individually, at least one CEO, John Maraganore of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, tweeted his support, saying he was “proud to stand with leaders like Ken Frazier.” Other top business leaders also spoke out in response to the violence in Charlottesville. “I support Ken Frazier’s decision. I’m thankful we have business leaders such as Ken to remind America of its better angels,” said Hewlett Packard Enterprises CEO Meg Whitman, who ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tweeted: “Lincoln: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ Isolate those who try to separate us. No equivalence w/ those who bring us together.” Richard Trumka, president of the largest federation of U.S. labor unions, the AFL-CIO, questioned the council’s effectiveness and said the group was mulling leaving. “The AFL-CIO has unequivocally denounced the actions of bigoted domestic terrorists in Charlottesville and called on the president to do the same,” Trumka said in a statement. Several executives from top U.S. companies have previously stepped down from a number of presidential advisory councils in protest to Trump policies. Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk and Walt Disney Co CEO Robert Iger left the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a business advisory group, in June, after Trump said he would withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Musk also left the manufacturing council. Former Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] CEO Travis Kalanick quit the business advisory council in February amid pressure from activists and employees who opposed the administration’s immigration policies. The White House said Sunday that Trump’s remarks condemning violence at a white nationalist rally were meant to include the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups. Democrats and Republicans criticized Trump for waiting too long to address the violence - his first major domestic crisis as president - and for failing when he did speak out to explicitly condemn white-supremacist marchers who ignited the melee. Trump on Saturday initially denounced what he called “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” On Sunday, however, the White House added: “The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred, and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi, and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.” | 0 |
Get short URL 0 37 0 0 A new government report released this week states that the Pentagon spent at least $58 billion over the last 20 years on weapons systems that not only were never built, but often never made it past the design phase.
The report, released by the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Frank Kendall, is an internal review of the Defense Department’s acquisition activities, and contains a chart of 23 pricey projects that received billions in initial funding but were later canceled. The report shows this happening as far back as 1997. © REUTERS/ Master Sgt. Kevin J. Gruenwald Pentagon Prepares to Start Raqqa Offensive Within Weeks
The Army’s Future Combat System was one of the most expensive of the doomed military-money pits, costing over $20 billion, with the RAH-66 Comanche attack and reconnaissance helicopter second with a $9.8 billion price tag before operations were ceased. Taken together these two programs account for 50 percent of what was deemed “sunk costs,” according to the Washington Examiner . The $3.7-billion National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, the $2.7-billion Lockheed Martin VH-71 helicopter, and the $2.5-billion JLENS air-defense blimp are a few of the other pricey and failed ventures detailed in the report.
Out of 23 projects, eight were able to spend all of their allocated money before the plug was pulled. ... | 1 |
ON BOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force may intensify its strikes in Afghanistan and expand training of the Afghan air force following President Donald Trump s decision to forge ahead with the 16-year-old war, its top general told Reuters on Tuesday. Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein said, however, he was still examining the matter, as the U.S. military s top brass had only begun the process of translating Trump s war strategy into action. Asked whether the Air Force would dedicate more assets to Afghanistan, where the United States has been engaged in its longest military conflict, Goldfein said only: Possibly. It s actually too early to tell what this will mean in terms of plus-ups and reductions, he said in a joint interview with Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. Still, he acknowledged that the Air Force was absolutely examining the possibility of increasing air power, including to support U.S. ground forces, following Trump s promise of a stepped-up campaign against Taliban insurgents, who have gained ground against U.S.-backed Afghan government forces. Goldfein said the same about providing training to Afghan pilots. Wilson, who assumed the Air Force s top civilian job three months ago, noted the Afghan military had made strides thanks to U.S. training and equipment, but added: I think there is a long way to go there, very honestly. In a speech on Monday night, Trump appeared to answer a call from the top U.S. commander on the ground for thousands of more troops to break a stalemate with Taliban insurgents, on top of the roughly 8,400 now deployed in Afghanistan. Trump said the United States would not disclose troop numbers, but one U.S. official told Reuters they could start moving quickly. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday he would set troop levels following the review by military chiefs. During the administration of Trump s predecessor, Barack Obama, U.S. military officials privately expressed frustration about their inability to strike at many Taliban targets - including training camps - unless they could show a direct threat to U.S. forces or major impact on the Afghan state. Wilson said Trump appeared to be giving greater flexibility to strike insurgents. Obviously the Joint Chiefs will work through their plans and make proposals, but I think the guidance was pretty clear from the president last night, and we re going to go on the offensive and destroy these terrorist networks, Wilson said. Goldfein said: I thought that came out very loud and clear in the speech that that s his priority. Wilson and Goldfein spoke to Reuters while flying back to the United States after a nine-day trip that included a visit to Afghanistan, where the U.S. military has ramped up its firepower against Islamic State in recent months even as it helps Afghan forces battle the Taliban. Particularly for the U.S. Air Force, the size of the American commitment to Afghanistan far outweighs the number of airmen deployed there. A network of U.S. installations throughout the Middle East supports the Afghan campaign, including in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Still, any substantial increase in U.S. targeting of the Taliban and Islamic State militants would likely require dedicating more U.S. military assets to build intelligence, strike insurgent targets and provide support to U.S. forces in the field. Although the U.S. military is stretched, a string of U.S. coalition-backed victories by Iraqi forces against Islamic State might free up some firepower and intelligence assets for Afghanistan, experts say. Air Force spokesman Brigadier General Edward Thomas declined to speculate on operational planning. But he noted that U.S. air power from the region could be deployed, if needed, including fighter aircraft, bombers and spy planes. With the detailed planning that will follow the president s announcement, the Air Force will be ready to swing any additional airmen and aircraft to the fight as required, Thomas said. Trump ran for the presidency calling for a swift U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which the United States invaded in October 2001, and he acknowledged on Monday that he was going against his instincts in approving the new campaign plan sought by his military advisers. Wilson said Trump s remarks represented a strategic correction in the war effort along with a significant shift in policy on Pakistan. In his speech, Trump delivered a sharp rebuke to Islamabad for allowing Taliban insurgents a safe haven from which launch attacks in Afghanistan, and said it had much to lose unless it changed course. Pakistan denies that it harbors militants fighting U.S. and Afghan government forces in Afghanistan. Reuters has reported that the United States has been considering a range of actions, including withholding aid to Pakistan and, perhaps, ramping up drone strikes. Successive U.S. administrations have struggled with how to deal with nuclear-armed Pakistan, and the U.S. military has been dependent in the past on overflight or land routes through Pakistan to resupply its forces in landlocked Afghanistan. Wilson did not rule out a future U.S. military role against militants in Pakistan should Islamabad fail to act, but she said Trump s focus appeared to be on diplomatic efforts for now. My assumption is that there will be some intense diplomatic pressure, she said. Goldfein said he was not aware of any changes to U.S.-Pakistani military ties, but acknowledged the military would take its cues from the State Department. I can tell you that I have a fairly robust dialogue with the Pakistani air chief. I ve hosted him. He s hosted me, Goldfein said. But that dialogue is always supportive of the diplomatic dialogue. | 1 |
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s Supreme Court has suspended a decree issued by President Michel Temer s government changing the definition of slavery that was widely condemned as a reversal in the fight against forced labor. In her decision taken on Monday and made public on Tuesday, Justice Rosa Weber said the decree s reduction of the scope of what is considered slave labor violated the constitution. Weber also argued that the measure could hurt Brazil s trade relations since other countries could complain that slave labor was a form of unfair competition. Faced with an outpouring of criticism, the government said on Friday that it would pull the decree and issue a new one. In Brazil, forced labor has been defined as a form of modern-day slavery. This includes debt bondage, degrading work conditions, and long work hours that pose a risk to a worker s health or life, and violate their dignity. Human rights campaigners said the decree issued by the labor ministry on Monday changed the way slavery was defined, limiting it to a victim s freedom of movement but disregarding other abuses. The decree, supported by Brazil s powerful farm lobby, would derail enforcement efforts that have freed 50,000 workers from slavery-like conditions since 1995, federal prosecutors and labor inspectors said. Temer opponents said he bowed to pressure from the farm lobby to modify the decree at a time when he is relying on the group s votes in Congress on Wednesday to block corruption charges against him. In exchange for support to escape a criminal trial, Temer promised the farm lobby goods he cannot deliver, said lawmaker Alessandro Molon of the leftist Sustainability Network, the party that asked the court to stop the decree. Molon called the slave labor decree one the most abject bargains in the country s history. | 0 |
Many on the left and in the liberal media are hoping President Trump will butt heads with his new chief of staff, former general John Kelly, proving he is incapable of getting along with senior officials in his administration. But if Trump s experience in the New York Military Academy is an indicator, he will surely excel with his new Chief of Staff John Kelly and his disciplined military style.Donald Trump s freewheeling, off-the-cuff campaign style can sometimes make him look like he s winging it. Playing by the rules is not what the billionaire presidential candidate is known for. But during a little-known time in his childhood military school playing the game meant following the rules. And Trump learned how to win at it.When Rules Were Meant To Be BrokenBefore military school, Trump was famous for breaking the rules. Long before buildings would be named after him, schoolmates used the Trump name as shorthand for getting into trouble. We used to refer to our detention as a DT a Donny Trump because he got more of them than most other people in the class, said Paul Onish, one of Trump s grade school classmates.Onish calls Trump one of his best friends at the Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills, Queens. Trump attended the school through seventh grade, and the two of them got into trouble together constantly talking out of turn during class, passing notes and throwing spitballs. Onish remembers a few stunts on the soccer field, too. There was even a couple of incidences during half-time when we would eat whole oranges without peeling them in front of the competition to show them how tough we really were, Onish said.Getting Sent Up The RiverIt was the late 1950s and in the quiet, well-to-do community of Jamaica Estates, Queens, the nonstop antics became embarrassing for Trump s parents.So right before eighth grade, Trump s father sent him literally up the river to New York Military Academy in the Hudson Valley. Trump would spend the next five years there.Retired Col. Ted Dobias remembers the tall, lanky kid who showed up at his dormitory. I put [him] down at the end of the hall. He didn t know how to make a bed. He didn t know how to shine his shoes. He had a problem, you know, with being a cadet. You know, being a cadet, you gotta take care of yourself, Dobias said.And Trump the cadet didn t quite know how, at first. Dobias had a reputation for being one of the school s toughest instructors. He was a hardened World War II veteran who made it clear to Trump he didn t care who his daddy was. When he got out of line, he got the same treatment like everybody else. His name was Donald Trump, like Johnny Jones. It was all the same, Dobias said. Nobody was different. We treated everyone alike. When Following The Rules Becomes The GameNew York Military Academy, or NYMA, is tucked in a small speck of a town called Cornwall-on-Hudson. It s a short drive from West Point. Arriving here is like stepping back in time. Antique cannons squat on green fields. Buildings date back to the 1800s.Back in Trump s day, cadets would wake up near the crack of dawn, hurry into their uniforms and march in formation to breakfast. First-year cadets had to eat their meals squared-off lifting their forks in a right angle path into their mouths. And after breakfast, they d scurry back to clean their rooms for inspection. Dobias said it was a place where kids who didn t like following the rules learned to like it. It s a hell of a thing for a kid to go to a military school especially when you have to say, Yes sir, No sir, have to learn how to salute, how to do about-face, how to march, how to carry a gun, said Dobias.But instead of recoiling from the discipline, Trump thrived under it. In her book The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate, Gwenda Blair notes how Donald seemed to welcome being in a place with clear-cut parameters, a place where he could focus on figuring out how to come out on top and get what he wanted. Mike Kabealo, one of Trump s roommates at NYMA, said in the confines of the school s rigid rules, Trump wanted to be a standout. Cocksure, positive and anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better kind of stuff you know, he was very competitive, Kabealo said.And friends say Trump channeled that competitiveness into everything at military school. When he was in charge of the rifle rack, he cleaned the rifles obsessively. He was meticulous about his uniform. When it was his turn to do inspections in the barracks, he whipped other cadets into shape. My bed wasn t really made right, and he ripped it, said Ted Levine, another student who roomed with Trump at NYMA.Trump tore Levine s sheets off during inspections one morning. Levine s bed hadn t passed muster.Trump became captain of the baseball team, and Dobias was his coach. He was very coachable, Dobias said. If I told him, Do this, he ll do it. If I told him to do it the other way, he ll do it that way. So that s what made him a good baseball player. He accepted criticism. He wanted to be best. Not better. Here s a picture of Trump with his soccer team:Donald Trump s New York Military basketball team photo :Trump was made a cadet captain at NYMA one of the highest honors for graduates. I don t think he had a handful of loyalists, you know? Levine, his former roommate, said. Because he was so competitive that everybody who could come close to him he had to destroy. But now, more than 50 years later, Levine says he and the other guys still kind of admire Trump.Today Levine s office is littered with Donald Trump knickknacks. Like a talking Trump doll that belts out Trumpisms such as Brand yourself and toot your own horn, and Have an ego there s nothing wrong with ego. Sometimes, Levine said, he squeezes the doll for advice. It s reinforcement positive reinforcement of true values that are very important for businessmen, he said.Values like winning how to fight back and win.Levine gave the doll another squeeze. Never give up, the doll squawked. Under any circumstances, never give up. Levine said he didn t learn that one from Trump they both learned that one in military school.For entire story: NPR | 0 |
Robert Dear, the accused terrorist who shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, CO, is speaking out about his rampage and still sounding like anti-choice activists on the right.Dear spoke to the Colorado Gazette newspaper, and was not ashamed of what he did.The accused Planned Parenthood shooter spoke to The Gazette on Friday at the El Paso County jail, saying he had no remorse for killing three people at the clinic on Nov. 27. I killed three and I saved 3,000 3,000 babies or more, said Robert Lewis Dear Jr., referencing abortions conducted at the clinic.Dear s shooting spree followed the release of several videos deceptively edited to make it seem as if workers at Planned Parenthood clinics were breaking the law and selling fetal body parts. Those videos were created by activists at the group Center for Medical Progress and their leader David Daleiden, who was recently indicted in Texas for tampering with government records and other charges.Despite this, attacks on Planned Parenthood have become a part of the Republican mainstream. Presidential candidates have said they would defund the organization to varying degrees, citing the hoax videos as evidence.Meanwhile congressional committees have previously and continue to harass and attack Planned Parenthood but have been unable to point to any crimes that haven committed.Similarly, numerous state attorney generals including Republicans have investigated Planned Parenthood but have been completely unable to bring up evidence of crimes on their behalf.The attacks have continued, even after Dear s murder spree. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently promised to ramp up investigations of Planned Parenthood while vowing to give Daleiden a pardon for his crimes.In conservative media like Fox News Channel, viewers have been fed a steady diet of anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood on a regular basis. Those outlets have told their viewers that Planned Parenthood is doing illegal, horrific things with baby parts, and have thought nothing of the consequences of those lies on the public and people like Dear.Featured image via YouTube | 1 |
Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Jay Dyer (author of Esoteric Hollywood) and Jamie Hanshaw, host of Happy Hearts Radio for the 88th episode of BOILER ROOM. Water the plants, put the kids to bed and get your favorite snuggy out so you can drop deep into the Boiler Room with the ACR brain-trust.Caller line was open for BOILER ROOM EP #88:Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY! Listen to Boiler Room #87 Behold: The New Ministry of Truth on Spreaker.Reference Links: | 0 |
BERLIN (Reuters) - China s growing military strength and a resurgent Russia will pose growing challenges to the trans-Atlantic alliance in coming years, and NATO s moves to bolster its capabilities could trigger a new Cold War-style arms race, a NATO report said. The report, completed once every four years, identifies 20 global trends that are likely to affect the alliance through 2035, ranging from artificial intelligence and accelerating technology development to climate change and growing inequality. General Denis Mercier, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told Reuters the report showed a higher risk of major interstate war than in the 2013 report. We see a considerable increase in the risk of a major interstate conflict, Mercier said in an interview on the sidelines of the Berlin Security Conference. His command will release a companion report that maps out what NATO should do to respond to these trends in the spring, with both documents to inform the 2019 NATO political guidance. Having a global awareness is more necessary than before. We have to be ready for any kind of scenario, Mercier said, noting that globalization meant NATO had to weigh factors outside its region, including military expansion by China and India. Easy access to technology and the global nature of cyberspace would make it easier for terrorist networks to expand, challenging the current near-monopoly that state actors have on high-tech weapons, the report said. Environmental factors would also play a bigger role, from higher rates of natural disasters to the increased opening of the Arctic, the report said, as well as a growth in global debt and erosion of trust in financial institutions. The report said defense spending had begun increasing after Russia s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014, and projections called for further increases through 2045. But it warned that the increases might create a security dilemma and start an arms race, as was the case during the Cold War . It said competing budget priorities and fiscal constraints in member states could hamper their ability to meet NATO alliance requirement in the future. Mercier said NATO was already working to expand its capabilities in the cyber domain, and to ensure cyber protections were baked into every weapons system and network from the outset. In NATO, we are under permanent attack in cyber, he said, noting that the alliance had proven quite good at protecting itself thus far, but needed to remain vigilant. | 0 |
NRA board member, draft-dodger, pedophile, and all-around terrible person Ted Nugent has a message for those embarrassing and pathetic victims of a recent mass-stabbing at a Minnesota mall and it s one that no decent person would even consider.On September 17, an attacker apparently affiliated with ISIS stabbed nine people at a mall in St. Cloud, Minnetota. He was eventually fatally shot by an off-duty police officer. Fortunately, the victims injuries were not life-threatening something most would celebrate, but Nugent deigns it appropriate to simply attack the victims because they didn t bring their guns to a knife-attack.In one of his traditionally hateful Facebook posts, Nugent unleashed on the victims in exactly the manner one would expect from a man who assumed legal custody of a 17-year-old girl so he could have sex with her. Calling the victims sad soulless & embarrassing, Nugent mocked them for being so pathetic and helpless, remarking that apparently most Americans like being victims :Previously, Nugent has attacked losers who don t carry guns after the mass shooting at Umpqua community College in Oregon last year, blaming them for being victims because they choose not to carry a security blanket firearm around. Nugent falsely claimed that students were not allowed to carry guns on campus because of laws and regulations, but Newsweek reported at the time that the campus was not a gun-free zone and that it was common knowledge many students were armed. Disarmed and helpless is an irresponsible, suicidal choice that will get you killed, Nugent disgustingly concluded. Defend yourself. Victim-blaming is a hallmark of the Right something we can expect to see more and more of if Donald Trump is elected in November. Get out there and do something about it.Featured image via Getty Images(Randy Snyder)/screengrab | 1 |
They had no basis for publishing their article and yet they published anyway. This is journalistic malpractice at its finest:From the Daily Mail: The book makes a number of unpleasant claims such as one that a modeling agency Melania worked for in Milan before moving to New York was something like a gentleman s club .The claims are all unsubstantiated and the Mail could find no trace of the book s author, Adam Schlecter. It is quite possibly the work of an enemy of Trump there are many.Yet the fact a book with such a title even exists must be an acute embarrassment to the Trumps.Say what???Melania Trump has started legal action against the Daily Mail and other outlets for what she claims is a defamatory article about her past.Charles Harder, an attorney for Trump, said in an email that the legal action goes beyond just the Daily Mail and is not limited to the United Kingdom, where the Daily Mail is headquartered. Mrs. Trump has placed several news organizations on notice of her legal claims against them, including Daily Mail among others, for making false and defamatory statements about her supposedly having been an escort in the 1990s, Harder said in an email. All such statements are 100% false, highly damaging to her reputation, and personally hurtful. She understands that news media have certain leeway in a presidential campaign, but outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency. The article in question was published last week by the Daily Mail and questions Trump s biography and history as as model.For entire story: Politico | 0 |
SHARES Hillary Clinton’s silence on the Dakota Access Pipeline has not gone unnoticed. On Thursday morning, young water protectors from Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires, and the Standing Rock Sioux Nation traveled to the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, demanding that she speak out against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The Hillary Clinton campaign has thus far remained silent about the 1,172-mile pipeline , which would cross both the Missouri River and the Ogallala Aquifer, threatening sacred indigenous land and water supplies. The group also called for solidarity actions at Clinton campaign offices across the country. “We are coming directly to Hillary at her headquarters because as the future president, she is going to have to work for us, and we want her to uphold the treaties and her promise to protect unci maka (Mother Earth),” said 19-year-old Gracey Claymore. Garret Hairychin, 23, echoed Claymore’s concerns. “As a young person I want to know what the next four years are going to entail. Is Hillary going to be focused on protecting our land? I want to know if my younger family is going to be safe. Our present situation is in dire need of a leader that still remembers that our kids are here,” Hairychin said. “We want to protect the future for the young ones that come after us. I’m here to support my family.” The youth delegation took over the lobby of the campaign HQ with a full-size tipi to deliver their message to Clinton. Despite the size and energy of the demonstration, Clinton campaign staffers refused to even accept the letter indigenous protesters had for the former Secretary of State.
WATCH: Anti-Dakota Access pipeline protesters marching to Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn to demand that she…
Posted by NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt on Thursday, October 27, 2016 The delegation included four of the Oceti Sakowin youth runners, a group of young people who ran over 1,600 miles from North Dakota to Washington, DC earlier this year to pray for the water, raise awareness, and deliver 140,000 petition signatures to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. One of the runners, 18-year-old Adam Palaniuk Killsalive, said those thousands of miles should mean something. “We are here to tell Hillary how badly we need to protect the water. We didn’t come all the way to New York for nothing. We didn’t run all the way to Omaha or DC for nothing,” Killsalive said. “We want to ask Hillary if she wants to see her great-grandkids line up for water rations.” A large and growing community led by indigenous groups has come together in rejecting the DAPL, with thousands gathering at a series of encampments on the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux to resist the pipeline’s construction. Hundreds of peaceful protectors, including children, have been pepper sprayed, attacked by dogs, and arrested by private security forces and state law enforcement. American Indians from over 300 tribes have joined in solidarity, as have 21 city and county governments. Clinton’s silence grows increasingly conspicuous as more and more of her peers speak out against the project. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), former Vice President Al Gore , and U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona) have all condemned the DAPL and called for an end to its construction. Lilian Molina, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, agreed that the total silence from both Hillary Clinton and GOP nominee Donald Trump is a major cause for concern. “Silence is not acceptable. Waiting is not acceptable,” Molina said. “We are grateful for the young people who have traveled so far to say enough is enough. If you claim to be a climate champion, that means respecting Indigenous sovereignty, rejecting new pipelines, and keeping dangerous fossil fuels in the ground.” 16-year-old William Brownotter, another member of the youth delegation, pointed out that the DAPL isn’t just a new threat, but a continuation of centuries of disenfranchisement and theft from Native Americans. “We made treaties and agreements. A violation of a native treaty is a violation of federal law,” said Brownotter. “By refusing to stand against DAPL, Hillary is putting our environment, wildlife, culture, and land at risk.” The DAPL, which would cross unceded Indigenous territory, is a direct violation of the sovereign rights and culture of the Standing Rock Sioux. The fast-track process of approval disregarded key U.S. legislation, including the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. No proper environmental impact study was performed , and no consultation was sought from the indigenous community. In a letter presented to Clinton , water protectors wrote that as the possible next president, it’s on the former Secretary of State to stop the pipeline and protect valuable natural resources. “As we look into the coming days and months, we are prepared to continue to stand for the rights of our people and Mother Earth. As President Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, we urge the new President to be a leader and continue standing up for what is right by rejecting the Dakota Access Pipeline,” The letter states. “The First 100 Days is a significant time for you to set the stage – are you with us? “
While water protectors protested at the Clinton campaign headquarters, militarized police moved in on the Standing Rock camp, deploying sonic weapons, destroying prayer tents, and arresting observers in an effort to force water protectors off the land. As of this writing, Hillary Clinton has not made any statements against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Zach Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at [email protected] , and follow his work on the Public Banking Institute blog . 3463 | 1 |
Bill Maher is a hardcore supporter of the legalization of marijuana. On Friday, during a segment of New Rules on the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, the host laid out his case for legalizing marijuana. He also admonished Congress for refusing to legalize marijuana, despite historically high (no pun intended) levels of support for the legalization of the drug.Maher even went as far as to light up a joint while he railed against the powers in place that are preventing marijuana legalization efforts from succeeding. This is the first time that Maher has smoked marijuana on his show. It is, however, not the first time someone has smoked marijuana while on the show.In the fall of 2010, Zach Galifianakis appeared on the show as a guest. During the middle of a segment, Galifianakis quietly and calmly lite up a joint, with hilarious consequences.Maher noted how horrible it is that people who use medical marijuana cannot use their medicine in other states where it is not legal. It s not a tenable situation. When I leave Colorado, Oregon, Washington or Alaska, my back pain doesn t go away. Or whatever it is I have. I m kidding I use medical marijuana because my third eye has glaucoma. Maher pointed out how utterly ridiculous it is that in 2016, Congress has not made any serious effort to pass marijuana legalization legislation. Maher says: Somehow, this is the year that everything from socialism to mass deportation is on the table and voters love the authentic guys who speak their minds, but when it comes time for Congress to consider common-sense pot legislation, it s like smoking a joint with Woody Harrelson; they just won t pass it! I couldn t agree with Maher more. It s time for the self-described Republican lovers of small government in Congress to put their legislation where their mouth is. Marijuana is now is legal in twenty-three states, as well as the District of Columbia, in one form or another. Of those, four states and Washington D.C have fully legalized recreational marijuana. That number is expected to dramatically increase over the next few years.You can watch the segment from the show below.Featured image from video screenshot via YouTube | 1 |
Lois Lerner s criminal behavior with the IRS targeting of conservatives was just a test run Here s a little reminder for anyone who doesn t believe that what the left really wants is a totalitarian state in which opposition to its agenda is a crime.New York s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is extreme even by left-wing standards. He s a radical who ran by promising that violent racist thug Al Sharpton would have an annex in Albany if he won.Now Schneiderman and a few left-wing congressmembers have come up with a great idea. Charge Exxon with securities fraud for not disclosing the risks of Global Warming.Whether on not any charges happen, this is a foot in the door for an agenda list that goes well beyond Global Warming.After energy companies that aren t paying protection money to Al Gore, gun manufacturers can be hit with charges for not disclosing the risks of gun violence. Private prisons can be hit for not disclosing the risks of failing to back sentencing reforms. Educational companies can be hit with charges for not disclosing the risks of not adopting Common Core.Basically any company that disagrees with a left-wing policy can be hit with civil and criminal charges. It helps if the company, like Exxon, at one point employed kooks who claimed the sky was falling. But that just makes the case easier. If the executives disagree with a left-wing policy, it s securities fraud.Under this standard, it becomes child s play to cut off conservative organization from any corporate funding. Furthermore, conservative organizations would be muzzled by extension. Funding organizations and people that dissent from the left would be fraud . Because that is what this is really about.Global Warming is the testbed for making leftist ideology mandatory. Manufacture a fake consensus, then use the law to make it mandatory.Then there can be a pseudo-scientific consensus on a variety of issues, such as the need for higher taxes, and a crackdown on anyone who disagrees.Since there s money in pursuing charges like this, and since the best way to get the left off your back is to give their political allies money, this is robbery for tyranny. And that s how the left does business.This is where the left has always been headed. This is a totalitarian movement. Via: Front Page Magazine | 1 |
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Candidates allied with Argentine President Mauricio Macri enjoyed sweeping victories in Sunday s mid-term election, strengthening his position in Congress while dimming prospects for a political comeback by his predecessor Cristina Fernandez. A free-spending populist who nearly bankrupted the country during her 2007-2015 rule, Fernandez came in a distant second in her race for the Senate representing Buenos Aires, Argentina s most populous province. With 98 percent of ballots counted by the interior ministry, Macri s former education minister, Esteban Bullrich, had 41.34 percent versus 37.27 percent for Fernandez in the province that is home to nearly 40 percent of Argentine voters. Macri s Cambiemos or Let s Change coalition won the top five population centers of Buenos Aires City, and Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Santa Fe and Mendoza provinces. No single party had won all five in a mid-term vote since 1985. Today the change elected in 2015 has been consolidated, Vice President Gabriela Michetti told voters. The election results, largely in line with pre-vote opinion polls, robbed the opposition of the two-thirds majority needed to block presidential vetoes, said Ignacio Labaqui, a local analyst with New York-based consultancy Medley Global Advisors. This is a significant boost for the Macri administration, particularly because of the defeat of Cristina in Buenos Aires province, Labaqui said. Fernandez s second-place showing still grants her one of the province s three Senate seats under Argentina s list system. One third of the Senate and half of the house were elected, and Macri s coalition will not have a majority. The private sector has worried about a political resurgence by Fernandez, who is loved by millions of low-income Argentines helped by generous social spending during her administrations. Fernandez thanked voters at her campaign headquarters and said her Citizen s Unity party would remain a firm opposition to Macri s economic model. Critics say Fernandez s growth-at-all-costs policies stoked inflation and distorted the economy through heavy-handed currency controls. She has been further isolated politically by graft accusations. Fernandez, who as a senator will have immunity from arrest but not from trial, says there may have been corruption in her government but denies personal wrongdoing. Bullrich and Fernandez were tied in a non-binding primary in August but Bullrich pulled ahead in polls soon after, helped by a burst of economic growth as Fernandez failed to unify the Peronist opposition behind her. People are more confident in the future, the economy, in making investments. They are tired of corruption and populism, said Cecilia de Francesca, a 50-year-old writer who was celebrating at the Cambiemos campaign headquarters. Argentina s Merval stock index and its peso currency have strengthened on bets Fernandez would not get enough support to launch a serious bid for the presidency in 2019. Investors, particularly in Argentina s vast agriculture and budding shale oil sectors, have said they want to see Macri push through labor and tax reforms aimed at lowering business costs in Latin America s third-biggest economy. | 1 |
TALLINN (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Monday assured the Baltic states of U.S. support if they faced aggression from Russia, telling them that Washington firmly backs NATO’s doctrine of collective defense. Pence’s comments to the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ahead of Russian war games on their doorstep, were clearly intended to reassure following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump’s early lukewarm support for NATO. During a visit to NATO’s Brussels headquarters in May, Trump jarred allies by not restating U.S. support for a critical portion of the alliance’s charter and instead berated some members for not spending enough on defense. Trump has since said he supports the NATO charter’s Article 5, the requirement that each member of the alliance defend each other if they come under attack. “A strong and united NATO is more necessary today than at any point since the collapse of communism a quarter-century ago and no threat looms larger in the Baltic states than the specter of aggression from your unpredictable neighbor to the east,” Pence said at news conference with the three Baltic presidents. “Under President Donald Trump, the United States stands firmly behind our Article 5 pledge of mutual defense. An attack on one of us is an attack on us all.” Russia is scheduled next month to hold large-scale military maneuvers with its ally Belarus. The U.S. army’s top general in Europe said this month that the Zapad war games could be a “Trojan horse” resulting in military equipment being left in Belarus. He warned that Russia continues to “seek to redraw international borders by force, undermine democracies of sovereign nations and divide the free nations of Europe, one against another”. Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite told Lithuanian radio that NATO’s air-policing missions would be doubled during the Russian-led Zapad exercise. Pence is also due to visit Montenegro, the alliance’s newest member, and make a stop in Georgia, an aspiring member, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008. | 1 |
If anything should tell the militia terrorists occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon that it is time for them to give this ridiculous occupation up, it should be the fact that a committee that Ammon Bundy himself helped create is telling them to leave.On Friday night, the Harney County Committee of Safety, which Ammon Bundy helped form, held a townhall event in which the occupiers were told to leave. A letter from the committee told them, essentially: you made your point, now it s time for you to go home. First, spokesperson Melodi Holt seemed to try to butter the clowns up when she began speaking, telling the militia people that they did a good job by: shining a light on the Hammond case here in Harney County.Your actions have created a national focus on the Hammonds and other issues here and across the West that have created mutual distrust, anger and unrest between the people of the land and the federal government, Molt read. We thank you for stirring us to action. However, that was the end of the good things Holt and the committee had to say about the Bundy militia. She went on to slam the occupiers tactics, saying that the committee and its supporters: were very upset that you chose to take the aggressive action of occupying the refuge and did it without our knowledge or any local approval, and in a fashion that has created huge distrust and loss of credibility of and for us as a group and as residents within the community. We approved of most of your message but disapprove of your unilateral methods of occupation. We ask that you organize your people, explain that your point has been made and leave in a peaceful and honorable fashion. No comment has come from the militia occupiers, and they declined to show up to the event that was essentially held to blast what they are doing.Mr. Bundy & Co., when your own people think you are doing the wrong thing, it really is time to hang it up. Go home. The local communities and residents, along with the federal government, have been more than lenient and patient with you. The committee is right. The point has been made. Leave.Watch video of Holt s remarks below:Featured image via video screen capture from Raw Story | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department will resume news briefings the week of March 6, a spokesman said on Friday, breaking a silence under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that had caused consternation among American diplomats and contributed to confusion abroad about U.S. positions on key issues. The briefings, which in the past were televised and held daily, are watched closely by U.S. allies and adversaries for signals on American positions on major international crises and developments around the world. But they have been halted ever since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, a move that is unprecedented in at least the last three inter-party presidential transitions, according to online archives of briefing transcripts. The last televised news briefing at the State Department was held on Jan. 19, the last full day of Barack Obama’s presidency. The question-and-answer sessions allow reporters to press spokespeople on the nuances of U.S. foreign policy and the actions of diplomats abroad. “The Department will host press briefings beginning the week of March 6,” said Mark Toner, the State Department’s acting spokesman. “We continue to be responsive to media queries and breaking news on an ongoing basis.” Toner did not say if the briefings would be held every day, or if they would all be televised. In a statement earlier this week, Toner said the briefings might be made available to reporters outside Washington via remote video. Top officials in the Trump administration - including Vice President Mike Pence, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Homeland Security chief John Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and Tillerson - have at times made conflicting or diverging statements from Trump himself on issues including U.S. support for the NATO alliance, support for the two-state solution to conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, attitudes toward the news media, and the role of the U.S. military in immigration operations. The diverging messages have raised questions in foreign capitals over who actually speaks for the Trump administration and which policies it will pursue. The silence from the State Department during the tumultuous first month of Trump’s presidency has also raised fears among current and former American diplomats that the department is being sidelined and is less able to help shape U.S. foreign policy. | 0 |
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The speaker of Ethiopia s lower house of parliament submitted his resignation on Sunday, one of the highest-ranking officials to do so since the ruling EPRDF coalition came to power in 1991. Abadula Gemeda did not disclose reasons behind his decision, but said he would disclose the factors once his move was approved by parliament. Analysts in the Horn of Africa country said Abadula, an ethnic Oromo, may have decided to step down owing to disapproval of the government s response to unrest that roiled Ethiopia s Oromiya region in 2015 and 2016. The violence there forced the government to impose a nine-month state of emergency that was only lifted in August. Given the existence of circumstances that do not enable me to continue in this position, I have submitted my resignation to my political party and the House of People s Representatives, he said in a short speech on national television. I will disclose the reasons behind my decision once my request is reviewed by the House of People s Representatives, the former defense minister added. The unrest was provoked by a development scheme for the capital Addis Ababa that dissidents said amounted to land grabs and turned into broader anti-government demonstrations over politics and human rights abuses. It included attacks on businesses, many of them foreign-owned, including farms growing flowers for export. In April, a government-sanctioned investigation said 669 people had been killed during one period in the violence and more than 29,000 people arrested | 0 |
The voters of the world have had quite a year: They rejected Colombia’s peace deal split Britain from the European Union endorsed a Thai Constitution that curtails democracy and, in Hungary, backed the government’s plan to restrict refugees, but without the necessary turnout for a valid result. Each of these moves was determined by a national referendum. Though voters upended their governments’ plans, eroded their own rights and ignited political crises, they all accomplished one thing: They demonstrated why many political scientists consider referendums messy and dangerous. When asked whether referendums were a good idea, Michael Marsh, a political scientist at Trinity College Dublin, said, “The simple answer is almost never. ” “I’ve watched many of these in Ireland, and they really range from the pointless to the dangerous,” he added. Though such votes are portrayed as popular governance in its purest form, studies have found that they often subvert democracy rather than serve it. They tend to be volatile, turning not just on the merits of the decision but also on unrelated political swings or even, as may have happened in Colombia, on the weather. Voters must make their decisions with relatively little information, forcing them to rely on political messaging — which puts power in the hands of political elites rather than those of voters. “This is a tool that’s risky, but politicians keep using it because they think that they’ll win,” said Alexandra Cirone, a fellow at the London School of Economics. But often they do not win, and instead of resolving political problems, the referendums create new ones. Looking over the research on these votes, it becomes clear why many experts are skeptical. Voters face a problem in any referendum: They need to distill difficult policy choices down to a simple yes or no, and predict the outcome of decisions so complex that even experts might spend years struggling to understand them. Voters typically solve this problem by finding what the political scientists Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins have termed “short cuts. ” The voters follow the guidance of trusted authority figures or fit the choice within a familiar narrative. When a referendum is put forward by the government, people often vote in support if they like the leadership and vote in opposition if they dislike it, according to research by Lawrence LeDuc, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. “A vote that is supposed to be about an important public issue ends up instead being about the popularity or unpopularity of a particular party or leader, the record of the government, or some set of issues or events that are not related to the subject of the referendum,” Professor LeDuc wrote in a 2015 paper. In Colombia, for example, most regions that voted for President Juan Manuel Santos in 2014 also voted for the peace deal, and vice versa. Voters may also cope with complex issues by shoehorning them into existing ideological beliefs. This dynamic plays out in virtually every referendum — especially those with higher stakes. Politicians or other powerful actors will often reframe the referendum into simplistic, straightforward narratives. The result is that votes become less about the actual policy question than about contests between abstract values, or between which narrative voters find more appealing. In Britain’s debate over whether to leave the European Union, or “Brexit,” neither side emphasized the specifics of membership in the bloc, instead framing the vote as a choice about which values to emphasize. The “Remain” campaign presented membership as a matter of economic stability. The “Leave” campaign emphasized immigration. It worked. People who voted to remain expressed great concern about the economy, but not much about immigrants. People who voted to leave said they were very concerned about immigration, and less so about the economy. In Colombia, Mr. Santos presented the referendum as a vote on peace, but the opposition presented it as a decision on whether the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, was entitled to leniency. Neither narrative fully portrayed the question of whether the peace deal would be worthwhile. Colombia, Ms. Cirone said, also highlighted that “in contexts where the referendum addresses a historical political issue, it may be hard for voters to separate past experiences with what is best for the country in the future. ” In Thailand, the government held a referendum in August to approve a new Constitution that would entrench its power and curtail elements of democracy. But the military also promised elections only after the Constitution passed, in effect selling an document as the choice. The measure passed. Though presented as putting power in the hands of the people, referendums are often intended to put a stamp of popular legitimacy on something leaders have already decided to do. “It doesn’t have a lot to do with whether this should be decided by the people,” Ms. Cirone said. “It has to do with whether a politician can gain an advantage from putting a question to the people. ” For example, David Cameron, until July the British prime minister, held the vote on whether to depart the European Union expecting that it would bolster his decision to stay in the bloc and would thus silence British politicians who wanted to leave. The Thai military restricted news coverage of the draft Constitution, ensuring that there was no counternarrative that might portray it as a threat to democracy. By giving the appearance of popular input, the military in fact dampened it. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary most likely devised his country’s referendum — on whether to reject European Union requirements for accepting refugees — to inevitable objections in the bloc to his policies and to bolster his political standing at home. In both cases, it was about using the vote as an instrument to strengthen himself. This stamp of popular legitimacy, though, can sometimes be a good thing, settling contentious national disputes that might otherwise lead to political turmoil or even to armed conflict. But it is precisely because the stakes are so high that the risks are, as well. Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace deal in 1998 was followed by two referendums, one in Northern Ireland and one in the Republic of Ireland. That gave communities a sense of having been included, and marginalized anyone who wanted to keep fighting, making a relapse into conflict less likely. This shows an important way referendums are different from regular elections: They succeed only when the nation perceives the vote as reflecting popular will. That works best if turnout is high and one side wins in a landslide, as happened in Northern Ireland’s 1998 vote. But in Colombia, turnout was just 38 percent, and the vote was split almost perfectly down the middle, meaning a few thousand people swung the outcome. Even if the referendum had passed, it would have failed to give the peace deal popular legitimacy. That problem can be solved by requiring high turnout and a landslide victory for a referendum to be binding, Ms. Cirone said. But in a puzzling decision, neither Colombia nor Britain required more than 50 percent of the vote for either side to win. A close result like Colombia’s can risk deepening political disputes rather than bridging them. Leaders have to choose whether to accept a result that does not demonstrably reflect popular will, or reject the result and risk a political backlash or a constitutional crisis. National referendums can also be extremely volatile, driven by factors unrelated to the issue’s merits and outside anyone’s control. Opinion polls are often misleading because people do not form their opinions until immediately before the vote. Tellingly, they often abandon those views just as quickly. Professor Marsh of Trinity College Dublin said he had found, in some cases, that “most people can’t remember any arguments for — this is about a week later — they can’t remember any arguments against, and they’re not really quite sure why they voted yes or no. ” He added, “That doesn’t inspire me, really, with referendums. ” The ambient noise of politics can also distort popular will: Whether one party is up or down in the polls, whether intraparty infighting over the vote spills into public, and how the news media portrays related issues all play a role. Votes are also subject to random factors, including the weather. In Colombia, turnout for the referendum may have been depressed by a hurricane that hit the day before, forcing evacuations in some areas. “The idea that somehow any decision reached anytime by majority rule is necessarily ‘democratic’ is a perversion of the term,” Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard, wrote after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. “This isn’t democracy it is Russian roulette for republics,” he added. | 0 |
A former Obama Administration official responsible for the detention of illegal immigrants said President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly are “dismantling the progress we had made. ”[Kevin Landy, President Barack Obama’s director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Detention Policy and Planning, took exception to President’s Trump’s decision to shut down his department. Under Secretary Kelly, the DHS is poised to change some of the conditions illegal immigrants, including criminals, receive while in detention. As an example, illegal immigrants in two Orange County, California, detention facilities have daily clothing and bedding changes performed by a jail employee. The standard for other criminal facilities is a weekly change. “That one seems a little overkill,” detaining center Commander Jon J. Briggs told the New York Times. “Jail is jail,” Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones told the New York newspaper. “It’s fair and it’s human, but we don’t put chocolates on the pillows. ” Landy reacted to the Trump Administration’s efforts to toughen standards in the detention centers and claimed, “a decision to simultaneously abandon detention standards could have disastrous consequences for the health and safety of these individuals. ” He said he hoped Secretary Kelly, “wouldn’t want to dismantle the progress we had made,” but didn’t really detail what “progress” he was referencing. The New York Times detailed some of the “progress” he might have been referencing. The ever growing list of requirements call for: Notify immigration officials if a detainee spends two weeks or longer in solitary confinement. Check on suicidal inmates every 15 minutes, and evaluate their mental health every day. Inform detainees, in languages they can understand, how to obtain medical care. In disciplinary hearings, provide a staff member who can advocate in English on the detainee’s behalf. ICE officials declined to comment on Landy’s claims, stating only that the agency responsible for enforcing immigration law is “in the midst of examining a variety of detention models to determine which models would best meet anticipated detention needs. ” The Clinton Administration established the initial standards in 2000. Since that time, they expanded under President George W. Bush in 2008 and again under President Obama in 2011. The current guidelines now fill 455 pages and go into “granular detail on subjects including the minimum number of toilets — one for every 12 detainees in male facilities or eight detainees in female facilities — and trash bag thickness (at least 1. 5 millimeters),” the New York Times reported. With the crackdown on criminal aliens and other deportable individuals under the Trump Administration, more detention facilities will be required and costs will be an increasing concern. Commander Briggs told the reporter from the New York Times the Trump Administration has already requested 500 additional beds. They warned that more will be coming in the months ahead. The commander said he currently can take only 120 at this time. Breitbart Texas Managing Director and Brandon Darby contributed to this article. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 0 |
From the moment Trump won the election, he was already bragging about how he was going to run again in 2020, and win.In a move that shows just how delusional Trump truly is, the undeserving POTUS ignored the fact that his approval rating has reached a historic low by launching his first ad for his 2020 bid. And in true Trump fashion, the ad was one big embarrassing fail, as Trump was forced to pull the ad over an obvious violation it violated the ban that prevents active duty military members in uniform from participating in political stunts.The Washington Post wrote: The initial version of the ad released by the campaign included a shot of Trump shaking hands at his Mar-a-Lago estate with H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser. An updated version dropped the shot of McMaster, who remains an active duty member of the Army, and replaced it with Trump visiting a business. Campaign law expert Larry Noble also pointed this out:It should be noted that Trump pathetically celebrated Inauguration Day by filing for re-election, probably to soothe himself after seeing those tiny crowds. This ad is the perfect embodiment of Trump s sloppy administration these people have no idea how to run the country, which trickles down to the most simple tasks.From what we ve seen from Trump himself, his White House doesn t really pay attention to detail or do their research first before going all in. Trump s team has had to repeatedly correct themselves, and not even a simple campaign ad can go off without a hitch.Not even halfway through his first term, Trump has already made his bid for re-election a joke and displayed just how incompetent his entire team is. It s no wonder the majority of Americans can t wait until this clown and the rest of his circus are out of the White House.Featured image via Pool / Getty Images | 1 |
If Donald Trump thought he d be seeing Elton John sing his praises on Inauguration Day he was sorely mistaken.During an interview with BBC, Trump transition team member Anthony Scaramucci claimed that openly gay singer Elton John will be performing at Trump s inauguration on January 20th. Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall for inauguration, Scaramucci said, adding that John s appearance shows our commitment to gay rights. This will be the first American president in US history that enters the White House with a pro-gay rights stance, Scaramucci continued.There s just one problem. Apparently, Trump and his team failed to ask Elton John first.Because after hearing about this claim, Elton John told Trump to go f*ck himself.First a representative for John made it crystal clear that the openly gay artist isn t going anywhere near Trump s inauguration. Elton will not be performing at Trump s inauguration, the rep said.Then John s publicist Fran Curtis rejected the claim more emphatically. Incorrect. He will NOT be performing. Donald Trump may be a fan of Elton John, but the feeling is far from mutual. John supported Hillary Clinton for president and said of Trump just last month that, We need a humanitarian in the White House, not a barbarian. Just because Donald Trump said on 60 Minutes that same-sex marriage is settled law, it doesn t mean that the LGBT community believes him. After all, Trump s running mate is Mike Pence, a man who is vehemently anti-gay. Plus, conservatives expect Trump to nominate anti-gay judges to the Supreme Court, which puts gay rights in serious jeopardy.So while Trump is claiming that he s pro-gay rights, his actions need to speak louder than his words if he wants the LGBT community to stand behind him. Because Elton John is not going to be used as a propaganda tool.Featured Image: Wikimedia | 0 |
On Thursday, Donald Trump truly became the President. He bravely stood up to the FAKE NEWS media by tweeting about MSNBC s Mika Brzezinski having blood coming out of her wherever wherever in this case being her face.I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017 to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017While the LAMEEstream media is presenting this as a horrible incident of cyber-bullying, White House spokesidiot Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that Trump was just pushing back because the tortured little snowflake is being bullied by the liberal media. This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by the liberal media, Sanders told right-wing propaganda network Fox News. Look, I don t think that the president s ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn t push back. There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just to him but to frankly everyone around him, she added.These attacks include the publishing or dissemination of any facts that are inconvenient or damaging to Trump.That anyone associated with Trump would even consider defending this reprehensible attack on one of his critics speaks volumes about this administration.Watch it below:Featured image via screengrab | 0 |
http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/dduke/112216.mp3 Dr. Duke & Andrew Anglin the True Voice of the Republican Party! Today Dr. Duke had Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin as his guest for the hour. The talked about the revolution that has occurred within the Republican Party. The Republican establishment did everything they could to stop Donald Trump, and now he is the president elect in spite of them. Andrew Anglin suggested that all Alt-Right people and white nationalists join the Republican Party in order to replace the establishment.
They also talked about the agenda of the incoming Trump administration. The personnel decisions he has made thus far and his communications with the press indicate that he will not back down from the platform he enunciated during the election campaign.
This is another great show that you won’t want to miss. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 1 |
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson s better get busy running the State Department because the entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday over alleged president Donald Trump. This is only part of the ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers following Trump s election.Trump s team was looking for people to fill Tillerson s Number one and two positions as well as three officials and looking to replace the State Department s undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy, The Washington Post reports. Kennedy held that job for nine years and hoped to keep it under Tillerson. He was actively involved in the transition.Then suddenly:Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.On Jan. 20th, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired. On that same day, the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, left her position. It s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that s incredibly difficult to replicate, David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry, told the paper. Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector. Since the election, several senior foreign service officers in the State Department s regional bureaus have also resigned or retired. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void, said Wade. These are very difficult people to replace. This sort of mass exodus has never happened before. It s not a partisan issue. These officials worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations.Meanwhile, our newly minted Twitter-addicted president is busy sending out mean-girl tweets on his unsecured Android and trying to prove that he won the popular vote even though he didn t. There s a madman in the White House and senior officials with the State Department want no part of the former reality show star s presidency.Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images. | 0 |
adobochron 1 Comment Comerford
WASHINGTON, D.C. ( The Adobo Chronicles, Washington Bureau) – White House executive chef, Filipino-American Cristeta Comerford, has revealed what she would cook for President Hillary Clinton’s first meal when she moves (back) to the presidential residence. That is, of course, assuming the Clintons will continue to retain her services.
It would be pancit, that signature noodle dish closely identified with the Philippines.
When asked by The Adobo Chronicles why she chose pancit, Comerford said that pancit represents long life and a ‘long term,’ meaning she was hoping Hillary would be elected to a second four-year term like her predecessor and current boss, President Barack Obama. Filipino pancit (Photo: MyBayKitchen.com)
We were hoping she’d say “chicken or pork adobo” but we agree with her rationale for choosing pancit. Rate this: | 1 |
Watch:MUIR: And as we walked through the White House, we asked the president about the voices. Just outside Washington, D.C. And across the country, the more than a million women, men, and children who marched during the inauguration.Let me just ask you while we re standing outside, could you hear the voices from the Women s March here in Washington? We know there were more than a million people who turned out, and you are their president now too.TRUMP: That s true.MUIR: Could you hear them from the White House?TRUMP: No, I couldn t hear them. The crowds were large, but you will have a large crowd on Friday, too, which is mostly pro-life people. You re going to have a lot of people coming on Friday. And I will say this, and I didn t realize this. But I was told. You will have a very large crowd of people. I don t know as large or larger. Some people said it will be larger. Pro-life people and they say the press doesn t cover them.MUIR: I don t want to compare crowd sizes again. I I I TRUMP: No, you should But let me just tell you. What you do say is that the press doesn t cover them.MUIR: We saw the marches around the country and you are their president now. Do you sense the responsibility to reach out now and to unite them? For those women, men and children who marched who are watching this, what would you say to them?TRUMP: I do, but I have to also say, we just had an election. A few weeks ago. And they voted in many cases, and some cases they didn t vote I imagine. And we did have an election. With that being said, absolutely have responsibility to everybody, including people that didn t vote for Donald Trump. Totally.Here s Vice President Mike Pence s amazing speech to the March for Life marchers:Click HERE to see ABC s published transcript. The conversation about ABC intentionally ignoring massive March For Life crowds has been removed. Here is the ABC interview in its entirety: | 0 |
NEW YORK — His campaign in turmoil, Donald Trump sought to get back on track Wednesday with a familiar tactic: attacking Hillary Clinton.
Clinton is "a world-class liar" who has "perfected the politics of personal profit and even theft," Trump said during a heavily promoted speech he delivered as members of the GOP continued to raise questions about his campaign organization and its ability to raise money.
In a remarkably negative speech against a presidential rival, the presumptive Republican nominee said Clinton "may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States," a line that drew that drew a standing ovation from supporters packed into a meeting room at a Trump hotel in Manhattan.
Echoing attacks he has made throughout the campaign, Trump again claimed the former secretary of State has used her position to solicit contributions to the Clinton Foundation she sponsors along with former president Bill Clinton. Trump accused the foundation of accepting money from foreign governments that brutalize women and gays, and he said "she ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund."
Reading his speech from a teleprompter, Trump also faulted Clinton over the economy, free trade and some of her campaign contributions. Citing a string of contributors across the world, he said donors "totally own her."
While Trump tries to make the fall election about Clinton, the Democratic candidate seeks to do the reverse, casting Trump as wholly unqualified for the presidency. "He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability, and immense responsibility," Clinton said this week.
As for Trump's attack speech, Clinton campaign spokesperson Glen Caplin said Trump offered only "more hypocritical lies and nutty conspiracy theories," all in an effort to distract voters from his campaign problems. At a rally in Raleigh, N.C., following Trump's remarks, Clinton said, "“He’s going after me personally because he has no answers on the substance.”
The Clinton team also noted in a statement that independent fact-checking organizations have frequently given Trump's statements failing grades.
Trump's speech in New York City came two days after he fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski,
The nominee-in-waiting's anti-Clinton speech — initially scheduled for last week, but delayed so that Trump could respond to the Orlando terrorist attack — is part of an attempt by the real estate mogul to move on after bad reports about the state of his campaign.
Hours after Lewandowski's dismissal, the Trump campaign filed a financial report showing it had only $1.3 million in the bank at the start of June; Clinton reported $42 million, one of the biggest financial advantages in the history of American politics.
Republicans continued to voice anxiety about the state of Trump's campaign, citing what they described as its small size, reluctance to invest in micro-targeting and other get-out-the-vote techniques and lack of message discipline.
Tom Rath, a Republican convention delegate from New Hampshire who is pledged to former Trump opponent John Kasich, said Trump's campaign trouble is not just a "process story."
It "guts his strongest argument — that he is an accomplished executive who makes large organizations work," Rath said.
Republican consultant Bruce Haynes, founding partner of Washington-based Purple Strategies, said the Trump campaign seems to be realizing that it has a different job in the general election than it did during the primaries, and "they have to make drastic changes fast."
Clinton on Tuesday delivered another speech describing Trump as temperamentally unfit for the presidency, focusing on economic polices that she said would lead to a recession.
As she did in an earlier speech hitting the Republican candidate over foreign policy, Clinton said, “every day we see how reckless and careless Trump is. He’s proud of it."
David Brock, who heads a pro-Clinton political organization called Correct the Record, said in a memo to reporters that Trump's attacks on Clinton rely on "right-wing books" that have been discredited. He described Wednesday's speech as an attempt to divert attention from his own troubles.
"Donald Trump's presidential campaign is melting down," Brock said.
In his speech Wednesday, Trump said he has built a multi-billion-dollar business, and "that's a talent our country desperately needs."
Attacking Clinton's stewardship of the State Department, Trump cited the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the deadly attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed a U.S. ambassador, and her use of private email that is currently the subject of investigation, and, he suggested, could have been hacked by the nation's enemies.
The result has been "one deadly foreign policy disaster after another," the Republican candidate said.
Trump also cited a letter from a woman whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant, saying she wrote that Clinton "needs to go to prison to pay for the crimes that she has already committed against our country."
Trump cast the fall campaign as one pitting "the people" against "the politicians" who have "rigged" the system in their favor, and are symbolized by both Clintons. He also mocked the Clinton campaign slogan "I'm with her," saying instead, "I'm with you, the American people."
Reciting his favorite campaign themes, Trump linked his opponent to open immigration refugee policies, bad trade deals, President Obama's health care plan, and the weakening of the military, and he pledged a new approach on all of those issues.
Trump and associates have described Lewandowski's firing as part of an effort to re-orient his team toward the challenges of a fall campaign. They also downplayed the fundraising report, saying they have raised millions in June and that Trump can put in his own money if necessary.
Republican critics said Trump's problems are self-inflicted, and they still hope to somehow head off his nomination at next month's convention in Cleveland.
GOP strategist Liz Mair, who has headed up a "Never Trump" group, said "convention delegates — and indeed Trump himself — ought to be looking for a way out of this, whether that means delegates throwing out the rule book, or Trump withdrawing and going back to running his business." | 1 |
This is disgraceful and it is an insult to every American who has ever lost a loved one to gun violence.Democrats are sick and tired of Republicans offering nothing more than thoughts and prayers instead of doing something substantial to prevent mass shootings, so they took to the House floor on Wednesday to protest GOP inaction in order to force House Republicans to allow a vote on gun control bills that Senate Republicans rejected on Monday.Led by legendary civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, Democrats were preparing to hold a sit-in when Texas congressman and NRA shill Ted Poe called for a recess. We have been too quiet for too long, Lewis declared. There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time. Lewis and 60 Democratic colleagues sat on the House floor, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and chanted, no bill, no break. But Republicans called for a break anyway and then they censored the sit-in by literally shutting off the video feed that allows Americans to see what is happening in the people s House.Here s the video via YouTube.Afterwards, Rep. Karen Bass told MSNBC that Republicans are running scared because they fear the NRA more than they fear the voting public. If you are constantly shut down, if if your voice cannot be heard, then it s time to take extraordinary measures, Bass said of the sit-in. I think the NRA s influence is very profound. A lot of times, people think of it as an individual campaign contribution, that s not the issue. The issue is the fact that for a lot of members, if they do not have an A from the NRA, they re concerned about the NRA running campaigns against them, supporting their opponents or running independent expenditure campaigns against them. That s the fear. Indeed, Republicans in the Senate fear the NRA so much that they literally rejected a measure that would have banned suspected terrorists from legally buying guns. We re not talking about la -abiding citizens who are not being investigated for having ties to terrorist groups. We re talking about people who may have been radicalized and are being looked at by law enforcement. Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was a suspected ISIS sympathizer, but he was able to buy his assault rifle legally because the FBI was powerless to ban him from doing so because Republicans are apparently just fine with terrorists buying guns in America to kill Americans with.That s outrageous and should rally every voter in the country to throw Republicans out of office. Because the GOP and their NRA puppet masters are now just as much a threat to national security as the terrorists.Featured image via screenshot | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican head of a congressional inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election said he would temporarily step aside from the probe on Thursday because he is under investigation for disclosing classified information. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and an ally of Republican President Donald Trump, characterized charges that he made unauthorized disclosures of classified information as “entirely false and politically motivated.” “Several leftwing activist groups have filed accusations against me with the Office of Congressional Ethics,” he said in a statement. The surprise disclosure that Nunes was under investigation injected new uncertainty into the wider Russia probe by his committee. The investigation is one of several in Congress examining whether Russia tried to influence the election in Trump’s favor, mostly by hacking Democratic operatives’ emails and releasing embarrassing information, or possibly by colluding with Trump associates. Russia denies the allegations, which Trump also dismisses. The House Ethics Committee issued a statement saying it would investigate allegations Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information “in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct.” Nunes said in a statement he had decided to step aside from the Russia investigation to fight the allegations and wanted “to expedite the dismissal of these false claims.” He remains committee chairman. Representative Mike Conaway, the second-ranked Republican on the intelligence committee, will now lead the probe. While he was a strong Trump supporter last year, the seven-term congressman was not a member of Trump’s transition team, unlike Nunes. The intelligence panel’s top Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff, said Nunes’ decision to step aside was made in “the best interests of the committee, and I respect that decision.” Schiff had called on Nunes to recuse himself. Conaway, who is also chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and a former House Ethics chairman, is respected as an administrator and investigator. “I have great admiration and respect for Mr. Conaway and look forward to continuing to work on that together,” Schiff told reporters. Democrats, and some Republicans, had said the House panel risked losing all credibility after Nunes received information at the White House that information about Trump aides had been swept up in routine surveillance, held a news conference and briefed Trump on it - all before sharing it with other members of his committee. Lawmakers said Nunes’ decision was welcome. “We need to move on. We need to have an independent, credible investigation that makes progress,” Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democratic committee member, said in an interview. Trump praised Nunes as “honorable,” calling both him and Conaway “high-quality” people in comments to reporters traveling to Florida on Air Force One. The ethics investigation stems from whether Nunes disclosed classified information while publicly discussing the contents of foreign intelligence reports. Jane Harman, a former top House Intelligence Democrat who is now president of the Wilson Center think tank, said she hoped the committee could “overcome the paralysis” gripping the investigation. “Most people recognize that the House as an institution needs to do serious oversight here and that the House is on trial,” she said. House Republican leaders, including Speaker Paul Ryan, praised Nunes. “He’s just making sure that as he works through this other (ethics) process and makes sure that people understand he didn’t do anything wrong. He’s fully cooperating, and I believe he will be cleared,” Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who leads the House Republican Conference, told reporters. “But until that happens, it protects the integrity of the Russia investigation,” she said. Trump sparked a controversy in March when he tweeted, without giving evidence, that Obama had wiretapped him as he competed with Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Two and a half weeks later, Nunes held the news conference saying an unidentified source had shown him intelligence reports containing “unmasked” names of Trump associates incidentally caught up in routine foreign surveillance. Immediately afterward, critics said he had disclosed classified information in what many saw as an effort to provide cover to Trump’s wiretapping claim and distract from the wider Russia investigation, a day after FBI Director James Comey confirmed at a hearing that his agency was investigating the matter. Nunes said surveillance of Trump associates appeared legal but expressed concern that Americans’ names may have been improperly revealed. That allegation kicked off an evolving, unsubstantiated controversy about whether the Obama White House spied on the incoming Trump administration. U.S. foreign intelligence activities are classified, but the president can authorize the release of information about them. It is not clear whether Trump authorized Nunes to discuss the foreign surveillance. | 1 |
The House voted 239-186 today to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the latest effort by the Republican-controlled chamber to scrap the law.
The measure also would direct panels to come up with a replacement for the healthcare law — though it doesn't provide a timeline on any new legislation or what provisions it may contain.
The House-approved measure likely will be defeated in the Senate, where the GOP has a smaller majority. President Obama has threatened to veto any legislation that rips up his signature achievement.
The Associated Press notes the House has voted more than 50 times in the past two years to repeal the law. What was different about today's vote? NPR's S.V. Date writes in our It's All Politics blog: "What makes today a milestone is that, for the first time, House Republicans plan to vote on whether to actually take health coverage away from millions of Americans who now have it."
Today's vote came after Obama met with 10 Americans that the White House said wrote the president letters about how they benefited from the law.
"It was maybe plausible to be opposed to the Affordable Care Act before it was implemented, but now it is being implemented and it is working," Obama said at the meeting.
But as NPR's Ron Elving notes, though no one expects today's vote to kill the law, "these issues are important to many who voted for Republican candidates in the 2014 election and expect campaign promises to be honored." | 0 |
http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/dduke/111816.mp3 Dr. Duke & Mark Collett: Anti-White scum who promised to leave: Get the Hell Out!
Today Dr. Duke had British activist Mark Collett as his guest for the hour. They talked about Donald Trump’s latest appointments to his incoming administration. Steve Bannon, General Michael Flynn, and even Senator Jeff Sessions are coming under attack from the Zio media, no doubt because they are not complete cuck sellouts like so many of the neocon rats who opposed Trump but suddenly want to offer their (((experience))) to the president elect. Underdog after taking a super-energy pill
They went into the new terminology of red pills, blue pills, white pills, and black pills. They agreed that the Trump victory has energized (white pilled) his supporters and black pilled (depressed) his opponents, many of whom promised to leave the country should The Donald win. Well, we’re waiting…
This is a fun show that will red pill (enlighten) your friends. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 1 |
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On October 21, 2016, father of two Billy Flynn woke up early. He bought his ex-wife a bouquet of flowers, a card, and a gift, and he helped their kids make their mom breakfast for her birthday.
Flynn was questioned about why he doing something nice for his ex-wife. This, he says on Facebook, annoys him.
Warning: Graphic Language Loading Facebook Post...
He writes, in part:
“[I'm going to] break it down for you all. I'm raising two little men. The example I set for how I treat their mom is going to significantly shape how they see and treat women, and affect their perception of relationships.”
Now don't get Flynn wrong, it hasn't always been this easy. In fact, he tells Independent Journal Review that it took him and his ex-wife a while to create a mutually respectful relationship.
But as Flynn points out, when a divorce involves children, the well-being of those children is much more important than how the adults feel about each other.
The proud father credits their two boys with inspiring them to work hard on their new relationship:
"It definitely wasn't easy up front. I'd say it took us a good year to get it right.
Divorce is hard and I think we all do and say some things that really aren't our best selves. But we always put the kids first, and honestly, I think that focus helped us repair our relationship into one of mutual respect over time, and our kids win as a result."
Flynn tells Independent Journal Review that he believes it is “extremely important” for parents to show care and respect for one another, especially when they are around their kids. Loading Facebook Post...
He explains:
"I'm not advocating that everyone can or should do what we do for each other to model for the kids. But I believe it is extremely important for parents to show each other respect and care in front of the kids. If your ex doesn't have a new [significant other], you got to make sure those kids have Mother's and Father's Day cards, birthday gifts, etc.
Kids want to care for their parents by nature, but they cant do it alone. It's our job to facilitate that. So even if your ex is a terrible person in your eyes, you need to set it aside and realize your kids love this person. Seeing you mistreat someone they love is traumatic, whether you want to own it or not.
So focus on the kids, make a pact, and I think you'll be surprised to find that your mutual focus on the kids will actually benefit your post-divorce relationship because it takes the spotlight off your individual hurts and anger and resentment."
As Flynn says on Facebook, if others in a similar situations aren't modeling “good relationship behavior,” then he suggests they wise up and be an example for their children.
Some may say it's impossible, but Flynn couldn't disagree more. He tells Independent Journal Review that while establishing a mutual understanding with his ex-wife was hard, it was possible. And he knows that if he did it, you can do it too.
By being able to rise above all the drama, co-parenting will turn into “raising good men and strong women,” which as Flynn says, is something we need now more than ever. | 1 |
NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - To preserve federal funding for critical rail projects, New Jersey and New York senators on Wednesday asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to examine firsthand the decaying train tunnels that threaten to cripple regional travel if they fail. In a letter to Chao, four Democratic senators, two each from New York and New Jersey, asked Chao to visit before Republican President Donald Trump’s administration finalizes any federal infrastructure package. They also urged Chao to support Amtrak’s Gateway Program, which includes building a passenger rail tunnel underneath the Hudson River in partnership with NJ Transit, the two states, and their bi-state port authority. That project, which had been fast-tracked by Chao’s predecessor in the administration of former President Barack Obama, is considered one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation. “We’re teetering every single day on the brink of truly a traffic Armageddon,” U.S. Senator Corey Booker said at a news conference in Newark’s Penn Station about the invitation to Chao he issued with New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and fellow New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. “The new administration has to come to the table with a commitment to what is not just a New Jersey problem, not just a regional problem, but really an American problem,” Booker said. The area is also a chokepoint on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, a key section of rail that connects Washington to Boston. The Transportation Department said in a statement that Chao intends to tour a number of the country’s infrastructure projects, including the Gateway site. An important source of funding for Gateway and some other U.S. projects is uncertain because Trump proposed cutting the federal New Starts grant program in his initial budget plan. Two NJ Transit train derailments in recent weeks, both the fault of Amtrak, badly snarled commutes. They also prompted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, to say he would halt state payments to the national rail operator, from which NJ Transit leases tracks. At the news conference, a handful of protesters criticized Christie for underfunding New Jersey transportation and cancelling a previous rail tunnel project. The governor on Wednesday blamed problems on “an absolute failure of the federal government to stand up to their obligations” to maintain infrastructure and said Amtrak is part of Chao’s responsibility. He said he had spoken to Trump about the Gateway project. | 1 |
Cruz, a conservative lawmaker from Texas, won with 28 percent of the vote compared to 24 percent for businessman Trump in the Republican contest. Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, came in third with 23 percent, easily making him the leader among establishment Republican candidates.
Clinton, a former secretary of state, and Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, both came in at roughly 50 percent with 95 percent of the state's precincts reporting results. Sanders declared the results a tie.
Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who had trouble gaining any traction in the Democratic race, suspended his campaign. He took third place with less than one percent.
Cruz's win and Rubio's strong showing could dent the momentum for Trump, whose candidacy has alarmed the Republican establishment and been marked by controversies such as his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
"Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation," Cruz, 45, said during a victory speech that lasted more than 30 minutes. Buoyed by evangelical voters, Cruz thanked God. He said the results showed that the nominee would not be chosen by the media, the Washington establishment or lobbyists.
Trump, 69, congratulated Cruz and said he still expected to win the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election.
"I'm just honored, I'm really honored," Trump told supporters. He said he looked forward to the next contest next week in New Hampshire, where polls show him ahead.
Clinton, 68, said she was breathing a "big sigh of relief" after the results. She lost to then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008. The former first lady congratulated Sanders and did not declare victory in her remarks.
"It is rare that we have the opportunity we do now to have a real contest of ideas," she said.
Sanders, 74, said he and Clinton were in a "virtual tie" and said he was overwhelmed.
"Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state, we had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition, and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America," he said.
The results could shift momentum in both races. Clinton hoped for a strong finish against Sanders to vanquish his insurgent candidacy. Sanders is leading in opinion polls in New Hampshire.
Rubio's third-place finish established him as the Republican mainstream alternative to Trump and Cruz.
"I am grateful to you, Iowa. You believed in me when others didn't think it was possible," Rubio, 44, said.
The results could have ramifications going forward.
"There is now blood in the water for Donald Trump," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. "Ted Cruz proved he could successfully beat back Trump attacks because he had a great ground game and identified well with evangelical voters."
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said he was suspending his campaign for the Republican party nomination. Huckabee won the Iowa caucus in 2008.
Iowa has held the first nominating contests, called caucuses, since the early 1970s, giving it extra weight in the U.S. electoral process that can translate into momentum for winning candidates. The caucuses are voter gatherings that take place in 1,100 schools, churches and other public locations across the Midwestern state.
The 2016 election is shaping up to be the year of angry voters as disgruntled Americans worry about issues such as immigration, terrorism, income inequality and healthcare, fueling the campaigns of Trump, Sanders and Cruz.
Market reaction in Asia to the results was muted, with U.S. stock futures down around half a percent.
"Financial markets might be more comfortable with Hillary (Clinton) than Bernie (Sanders)," said Sean Callow, a strategist at Westpac Bank in Australia.
"There would have to be at least some jitters over the guy who plans to break up the big banks. But it's probably too early to expect the U.S. presidential race to have an impact on the U.S. stock market." | 0 |
ADEN (Reuters) - A Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Yemen s capital, Sanaa, local media said, lending support to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh after he signaled he was abandoning his support of the Iran-aligned Houthis - a shift that could pave the way to end three years of war. In a speech on Saturday, Saleh appeared to indicate the end of his loyalists alliance with Houthi fighters. He said he was ready to turn a new page in ties with the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, if it stopped attacks on Yemeni citizens and lifted a siege. Residents on Sunday, however, said a coalition air strike overnight killed 12 Yemeni civilians in one family in the northern province of Saada, the home territory of the Houthis. The attack could not be verified. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said on Sunday coalition aircraft pounded Houthi outposts in southern Sanaa overnight, but gave no details on casualties. Separately, the Houthis, who together with Saleh s loyalists, control most of northern Yemen, said they had fired a cruise missile toward a nuclear power plant under construction in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a report quickly denied by the UAE. Saleh s announcement on Saturday was welcomed by the Saudi-led coalition, which has been backed by the United States and other Western powers. The coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates, is trying to help Yemen s internationally recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi back to power, but it has struggled to advance against Houthi-Saleh forces. A split between Saleh s armed allies and the Houthis could tip the balance of power. Army units loyal to Saleh have been clashing with Houthi fighters in the past five days, adding a new layer to an already complex situation in Yemen. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash appeared to back Saleh s side in remarks on his official Twitter page. The events in Sanaa are murky, but its national uprising needs support ... to protect the Arabian Peninsula from Iranian expansion, he said. Residents in Sanaa reported on Sunday that the Houthis appeared to be clawing back some territory lost to Saleh over the previous four days, and Houthi tanks were deployed amid heavy gun battles in the city s central Political District. The area is a stronghold of Saleh s loyalists under the command of his nephew Tareq, an influential army general. The fighting has cut off the airport road, prompting the United Nations to try to evacuate at least 140 aid workers from Sanaa, according to U.N. and other aid officials. The U.N. was awaiting approval from the Saudi-led coalition, they said. Residents earlier said Houthi fighters seized the television studios of Yemen Today, a news channel owned by Saleh, after clashes that damaged the building. Residents said 20 employees were trapped inside. The Red Cross said dozens of people have been killed in clashes over the past five days and called for civilian lives to be spared. In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi called for calm and restraint. All internal disputes should be resolved through dialogue to block the grounds for any abuse by the enemies of the Yemeni nation, he said, according to a statement on the ministry s website. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, and the proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed Hadi has created widespread hunger and disease, in one of the worst humanitarian crises of recent times. More than 10,000 people have died since 2015, more than two million have been displaced and nearly a million have been infected by a cholera outbreak. Famine threatens much of the country. Yemen descended into violence in late 2014 when the Houthis, a group that follows the Zaidi branch of Shi ite Islam, marched on Sanaa and seized control of the government. Backed by government troops loyal to Saleh, the Houthis fanned out across the country, forcing Hadi to flee to Riyadh. His ouster led the alliance headed by the Saudis to join the fighting. The Houthis said the missile fired on Sunday was directed toward the al-Barakah nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi, but provided no evidence of any attack. There were no reports of any missiles reaching Abu Dhabi. The country s crisis management authority said the al-Barakah was well protected and urged the public not to listen to rumors. The National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority denies claims by the coup trumpets in Yemen that they fired a missile toward the airspace of the United Arab Emirates, the department said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM. It said the nuclear power project was fortified and sturdy against all possibilities. And enjoys all measures of nuclear safety and security that such grand projects require . The Houthis had said Abu Dhabi, a member of the Saudi-led coalition fighting against them since 2015, was a target for their missiles. The Barakah project, which is being built by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) (015760.KS), is expected to be completed and become operational in 2018, the UAE energy minister has said. It is the second time this year the Houthis have said they have fired missiles toward the UAE. A few months ago, they said they had successfully test-fired a missile toward Abu Dhabi, but there were no reports of any rockets being intercepted by or falling in the UAE. | 1 |
The Republican nominee s campaign has bragged about how he will appear on Dr. Oz and allow the television physician to read the results of his latest physical. I know this that Donald Trump will turn over those records right to Dr. Oz and he will analyze it and it will be a surprise to Donald Trump what Dr. Oz is going to say, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on Tuesday.According to The Hill, Trump bragged about undergoing the physical and made predictions. I did pretty much the whole deal, because I think we should, I think we should do that, Trump added on CNBC s Squawk Box. Trump predicted his physical would show large numbers and hopefully very good statistics. I feel very confident, otherwise I probably wouldn t be telling you I did this, right? Trump asked. Large numbers are not necessarily a good thing, especially if we are talking about blood pressure.But despite his bragging, Trump has still not released any medical information and he won t be releasing any during his interview with Dr. Oz either.CNN host Brian Stelter reported on Wednesday that just hours before the show taped Trump cowardly backed out of releasing his medical records and letting Dr. Oz read them on the air. Trump will be talking with Oz about his physical activity, dietary habits, and broader health-related issues. The plan also calls for Trump to discuss political topics that are of interest to the Dr. Oz Show audience, like efforts to fight the Zika virus and Trump s new child care policies. So the only thing we know about Donald Trump s health is that all of his lab results are positive according to the ridiculous note written by his alleged physician Dr. Harold Bornstein, which Dr. Jennifer Gunter hilariously shredded on CNN last month. Lab results aren t reported as being astonishingly excellent or not we give lab values of positive or negative, she explained. Then there s the fact that he says all of Mr. Trump s results are positive which, of course, would be a bad thing. When I tell someone they have gonorrhea, when they have a positive test for gonorrhea, they re not happy about that. That s not astonishingly excellent. Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
In what may go down in history as one of the greatest fatal mistakes any president has ever made, Trump decided to sit down with NBC s Lester Holt and spill the beans on his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey mid-way through the FBI s investigation into Trump s collusion with Russia. Even casual observers of the law know that when you stand accused of crimes, in this case going all the way up to possible treason, the best thing to do is shut up and get a lawyer. Instead Trump just gave an unhinged confession of sorts that will be broadcast worldwide.The clip that everyone will be talking about came when Holt turned to Trump s decision to fire Comey and the reasons behind it. A visibly angry Trump managed to debunk his own administration s lies about the circumstances behind the dismissal and instead incriminated himself.By White House versions, Trump decided to fire Comey after he was given that recommendation by the Deputy Attorney General and after realizing Comey had lost the respect of the American people and those working within the FBI. By Trump s telling, he had already made up his mind to fire Comey long before any recommendation passed his desk and even went further: I was going to fire Comey. My decision. It was not A stunned Holt interrupt him to clarify: You had made decision before they had come into the room? Trump, not realizing he may as well have been confessing to a bank robbery, nonchalantly responds in the affirmative: I was going to fire Comey. There s no good time to do it, by the way. That s huge, because Trump is admitting his personal grudge against Comey led directly to the FBI Director s dismissal. His hand wasn t forced. He just didn t like Comey or what he was looking into.But Trump, oblivious to all of this, marched on and stumbled into an even greater admission of guilt: He also claimed to have directly asked the FBI director for details about his investigation. That s a HUGE no-no. In one case I called him In one case he called me I actually asked him. I said, If it s possible, will you let me know am I under investigation?' According to Trump, Comey assured him he wasn t. (Comey, in fact, has testified under oath that Trump and his campaign are under investigation meaning Trump is lying or Comey is. Which is more likely?) But in either case, what Trump is confessing to is a major ethical and perhaps even legal violation. Demanding an FBI investigator provide you the person he s investigating with up-to-date details on how the case is proceeding presents all sorts of problems.BREAKING: I was going to fire Comey anyway, Pres. Trump tells @LesterHoltNBC in exclusive interview at White House https://t.co/MAmo1PE1RL NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) May 11, 2017Ultimately, it may have been the fact that Comey wouldn t give Trump the details on his investigation that led to his dismissal. Sources close to Trump say the White House was furious when Comey refused to unethically hand over his planned remarks before his congressional hearing in the days before his firing.If this were a game of Clue, Trump just confessed to being in the billiard room with the candlestick. On national television.Featured image via Twitter | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Sunday condemned what she called the “apparent terrorist attacks” in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. The three attacks on Saturday involved a stabbing in a Minnesota mall that wounded nine people, a bombing in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 29 and a pipe bomb explosion in New Jersey. | 0 |
PNHOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday called on lawmakers from the main opposition party to defect ahead of a court ruling on whether to dissolve it, saying they could be banned from politics for five years if they left it too late. The government s move to ban the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) follows the arrest of its leader, Kem Sokha, on treason charges. He rejects the charges as politically motivated ahead of next year s general election. Hun Sen, the world s longest serving prime minister, has held power for more than 32 years. Western countries have called for the release of Kem Sokha and for an end to attempts to dissolve the CNRP. Hun Sen said in a message to CNRP parliamentarians and local councillors, he knew not all had been involved in Kem Sokha s alleged treason and they should take the chance to switch to his ruling Cambodian People s Party (CPP). I want to give you this opportunity to continue in your job, he said. It will not only be that the party is dissolved and then the matter is finished. Maybe more than 100 people will be banned from politics for five years. He said such a ban was likely to include all the CNRP s steering committee - meaning most of its members of parliament, around half of whom have fled Cambodia to escape arrest. No CNRP officials were immediately available for comment. Cambodia s Supreme Court is in theory independent of the government in ruling on the interior ministry s request for the CNRP to be banned, but Hun Sen has said it is a fact that the party will be dissolved. Cambodia s parliament has already passed a law to share out elected positions to other parties if the CNRP is dissolved. Most of the seats in parliament will go to minor parties while local councils, known as communes, will be taken over by the ruling party. | 0 |
Attorney Dario Navarro was one of several leftists who were all of a sudden concerned about the constitutionality of President Trump s actions.If Trump issued pardon with specific intent to obstruct justice, it could be challenged as unconstitutional abuse of discretion. #Dems pic.twitter.com/1p9981yyMD Dario Navarro (@darionavarro111) June 15, 2017Even the New York Times, who helped to sell Barack Obama s horrific Obamacare plan is concerned about Sheriff Joe Arpaio s pardon.Good case for #ArpaioPardon to be considered unconstitutional.Of course, we'd need a congress with a spine first https://t.co/8Z5M1rVr8u Dimitri (@DimitriWillert) August 26, 2017On July 25, 2016, America s Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found guilty of misdemeanor criminal contempt without the benefit of a jury of his peers.Here are a 6 interesting facts that Breitbart News laid out, regarding the Sheriff Joe Arpaio case, that every American crying foul over President Trump s pardon yesterday needs to know: The US District judge who tried the case against Sheriff Arpaio was a Bill Clinton appointee. 1. The guilty ruling, by Bill Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, is the latest chapter of a nearly decade-long saga of legal proceedings against Sheriff Joe initiated by leftist groups opposed to his aggressive policing of illegal aliens.The charges against 85 year old Arpaio stem from a civil rights suit demanding he cease racial profiling in his Maricopa County Sheriff s Office s immigration enforcement operations. After a federal judge issued an order demanding certain practices, Arpaio was charged with contempt for continuing to try to enforce the law as he saw fit.The misdemeanor charge was a ploy to prevent Sheriff Arpaio from having a jury trial. 2. Because Arpaio was charged only with a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six-months in jail, the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee him a right to trial by a jury of his peers. Arpaio and his attorneys repeatedly petitioned for a jury, only to be denied by Judge Bolton in March and again in May. Sources familiar with the proceedings have told Breitbart News the decision to charge only the misdemeanor was likely a ploy by federal prosecutors to avoid a jury trial in the community where Arpaio served as sheriff for more than 20 yearsAccording to the NCPD President, the DOJ had no evidence to make their case against Sheriff Arpaio.3. National Center for Police Defense (NCPD) President James Fotis, who was present in the courtroom, was highly skeptical a Phoenix jury could have ever found Arpaio guilty. He told Breitbart News:I sat through three days of testimony and it was clear from the beginning that the DOJ had no evidence to make their case. In fact, all of the DOJ s witnesses made it clear that Judge Snow s order was unclear and ambiguous. There is no way a jury would have determined that the Sheriff willfully and intentionally violated the judge s order. Judge Bolton s ruling has caused me to lose my faith in the court system and the federal judicial system, Fotis added in a NCPD press release.Over 40,000 signatures were gathered on a petition by current and former law enforcement officers in support of Sheriff Joe Arpaio who they claimed spent his entire career upholding and defending the Constitution. 4. Fotis was hardly the first or only commentator to question the impartiality of Arpaio s prosecution. In June, his group managed to assemble over 40,000 signatures from current and former law enforcement officers in support of Arpaio, delivering them to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. After devoting 56-years of his life to upholding and defending the Constitution, Sheriff Arpaio deserves our nation s eternal gratitude not jail time, those petitions read.The Judge in the case should have recused himself, but refused to do so. 5. The initial racial profiling suit that eventually led to this conviction also took on political dimensions and its conduct was criticized. The judge in that case, G. Murray Snow, ignored calls to recuse himself based on the fact his brother-in-law is a partner at Covington & Burling, the firm representing those suing Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff s Office.President Obama spent much of his 8 years in office trying to find a way to take down America s toughest Sheriff on illegal immigrants, who also headed up an independent investigation into the alleged fake birth certificate that would prove Barack Obama was not born in the United States. 6. The decision to criminally prosecute Arpaio was taken while the DOJ was run by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. It would be highly unusual for new leadership to intervene and drop an ongoing prosecution, and no such step was taken, despite the aforementioned petitions. | 0 |
They laughed at us when we said @realDonaldTrump would win This morning they're too devastated to get out of bed.#MAGA #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com/A0xApdid7K Harlan Z. Hill (@Harlan) November 9, 2016 | 0 |
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into “peril” by commenting on the probe. “I would just say this with the president: There’s an ongoing criminal investigation,” Graham said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril,” he added. On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser - a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given. That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI.” Legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then pressured Comey not to investigate him, that could bolster a charge of obstruction of justice. Trump’s attorney, John Dowd, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that he had drafted the Saturday tweet and made “a mistake” when he composed it. “The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea,” Dowd said. “Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand.” Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact that Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged. Dowd also clouded the issue by saying that then-Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn in January that Flynn told FBI agents the same thing he told Pence, and that McGahn reported his conversation with Yates to Trump. He said Yates did not characterize Flynn’s conduct as a legal violation. Part of Yates’ testimony in May before a Senate committee appears to conflict with Dowd’s account. She said at the time that she declined to answer McGahn when he asked how Flynn had done in his FBI interview. Dowd said he stood by his version of events. Dowd said it was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president. “I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “I’m sorry I misled people.” Yates did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a lawyer for McGahn did not respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The series of tweets came after a dramatic turn of events on Friday in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, just weeks before Trump entered the White House. Flynn also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russia before the president took office. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she believed the indictments in the investigation so far and Trump’s “continual tweets” pointed toward an obstruction of justice case. “I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That’s obstruction of justice,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime,” Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the ABC program “This Week.” The Russia matter has dogged Trump’s first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax bill. Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides. Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion. Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn. “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Trump said on Twitter on Sunday. On CBS, Graham criticized Comey, saying he believed the former FBI director made some “very, very wrong” decisions during his tenure. But Graham also said Trump should be careful about his tweets. “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I’d watch this,” Graham said. | 0 |
European Union (EU) countries which constructed border fences in response to the migrant crisis have seen a collapse in illegal migration, while unprotected states have seen it increase. [Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, reported drastic falls in illegal immigration for countries which have constructed border defences in its Risk Analysis for 2017. Hungary, which led the charge on strong borders, was able to cut illegal crossings from Serbia to 25, 000 — a massive drop from the 2015 high of 200, 000. Neighbouring Croatia condemned Hungary’s robust stance at the time, with then Prime Minister Zoran Milanović promising his country would not follow suit. “We are ready to accept and direct those people,” he said, adding that “barbed wire in Europe in the 21st century is not an answer, it’s a threat”. Just days later, however, Milanović completely reversed his stance, the country having been inundated with thousands of migrants. “We cannot register and accommodate these people any longer,” he said. “They will get food, water and medical help, and then they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant ‘hotspot’. We have hearts, but we also have heads. ” Croatia quietly joined Hungary in constructing what Frontex describes as “a technical obstacle” along its Serbian border. As a consequence, illegal migration via this route plummetted from 500, 000 in 2015 to just 100, 000 in 2016. The clear pattern which emerges from the risk analysis is that, as one country institutes strong border controls, neighbouring countries which remain lax see a corresponding increase in illegal migration. For example, the report describes how “African illegal stayers who primarily entered the EU through the Central Mediterranean route significantly decreased in Austria” after the country “upgraded the controls of its national border with Italy”. The statistics show illegal stayers growing in Switzerland, which is outside the EU but inside the bloc’s borderless Schengen zone, “at the same time”. Despite clear statistical evidence of the effectiveness of walls in tackling illegal migration, Europe’s leading politicians remain wedded to open borders. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s unelected High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, has insisted that “we have a history and a tradition and an identity based on the fact that we celebrate when walls are broken down and bridges are built”. Her statement was seen as a swipe at U. S. President Donald J. Trump, and was reiterated by the bloc’s Trade Commissioner earlier on Wednesday. The German foreign minister, whose country has absorbed millions of unvetted illegal migrants at a cost of over 20 billion euros and suffered terror attacks as a result, has also told the president that “building walls is a bad idea”. Surveys suggest that a majority of European voters do in fact wish to severely curtail immigration, particularly from the Islamic world. | 0 |
BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Wednesday he was still working to reach agreement with Britain about its exit from the bloc. We are still working. (That is) the only comment I can make, Barnier said after a speech at the Berlin Security Conference, when asked about reports that Britain had offered to pay much of what the EU was demanding to settle a Brexit divorce bill . I am working for an agreement, Barnier told Reuters. | 1 |
(Reuters) - U.S. immigration authorities are arresting Iraqi immigrants ordered deported for serious crimes, the U.S. government said on Monday, after Iraq agreed to accept U.S. deportees as part of a deal to remove it from President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Dozens of Iraqi Chaldean Catholics in Detroit, Michigan were among those targeted in immigration sweeps over the weekend, according to immigration attorneys and family members, some of whom feared they would be killed if deported to their home country where they have faced persecution. Kurdish Iraqis were also picked up in Nashville, Tennessee in recent days, attorneys, activists and family members told Reuters. The actions came as part of the Trump administration’s push to increase immigration enforcement and make countries, which have resisted in the past, take back nationals ordered deported from the United States. “As a result of recent negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq, Iraq has recently agreed to accept a number of Iraqi nationals subject to orders of removal,” said Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Christensen said the agency arrested individuals who had criminal convictions for violations ranging from homicide to drug charges and had been ordered removed by an immigration judge. She declined to give more details, citing the ongoing nature of the operation. An Iraqi official said Iraqi diplomatic and consular missions would coordinate with U.S. authorities to issue travel documents for the deportees when they can be proven “to be ‘Iraqi’ based on our records and investigation.” The Iraqi official said around 100 people were arrested just in Detroit over the weekend. Reuters could not independently confirm all of the cases. The moves come after the U.S. government dropped Iraq from a list of countries targeted by a revised version of Trump’s temporary travel ban issued in March. The March 6 order said Iraq was taken off the list because the Iraqi government had taken steps “to enhance travel documentation, information sharing, and the return of Iraqi nationals subject to final orders of removal.” There are approximately 1,400 Iraqi nationals with final orders of removal currently in the United States, according to U.S. officials. Iraq had previously been considered one of 23 “recalcitrant” countries, along with China, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and others, that refused to cooperate with ICE’s efforts to remove nationals from the United States, according to ICE. At least some of the people who were picked up came to the United States as children, got in trouble years ago and already served their sentences, according to immigration attorneys and local activists. They had been given an effective reprieve from deportation because Iraq would not take them back. “I understand these are criminals, but they paid their dues,” said Eman Jajonie-Daman, an immigration attorney in Detroit who had been receiving frantic phone calls from clients’ families over the weekend. “But we cannot send them back to die.” Some of the weekend arrests took place in Michigan’s Macomb County, which Trump won by 53.6 percent in the 2016 Presidential race, backed by many in the Iraqi Christian community. The community is home to many refugees who have fled Iraq in the face of religious persecution, according to the Chaldean Community Foundation. At least one family of Trump supporters has been affected by the recent enforcement actions. Nahrain Hamama said ICE agents came to her house on Sunday morning and arrested her 54-year-old husband Usama Hamama, a supermarket manager who goes by “Sam.” He has lived in the United States since childhood and has four U.S.-born children. During the election, all his U.S. citizen relatives were Trump supporters, Hamama said. “He forgot his language, he doesn’t speak Arabic anymore. We have no family there on both sides. Where would he go? What would he do? How would he live?” Hamama said. She fears for his health and that he will be targeted by groups in Iraq because of his religion, made more visible because of a cross tattooed on his wrist. Sam got in trouble with the law in his 20s, in what his wife called a “road rage” incident where he brandished a gun during a fight in traffic. He served time in prison and was ordered deported after being released. For the past seven years he has regularly checked in with immigration officials, his wife said. “It is a shame that for one mistake, that he paid for legally, now he has to pay with his own life.” | 0 |
TALLINN/VILNIUS (Reuters) - From planes, radars and ships in the Baltics, NATO officials say they are watching Russia s biggest war games since 2013 with calm and confidence , but many are unnerved about what they see as Moscow testing its ability to wage war against the West. NATO believes the exercises, officially starting on Thursday in Belarus, the Baltic Sea, western Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, are already underway. It says they are larger than Moscow has publicized, numbering some 100,000 troops, and involve firing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Codenamed Zapad or West , NATO officials say the drills will simulate a conflict with the U.S.-led alliance intended to show Russia s ability to mass large numbers of troops at very short notice in the event of a conflict. NATO remains calm and vigilant, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week during a visit to an Estonian army base where British troops have been stationed since March. But Lithuania s Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis was less sanguine, voicing widely-felt fears that the drills risk triggering an accidental conflict or could allow Moscow to leave troops in neighboring Belarus. We can t be totally calm. There is a large foreign army massed next to Lithuanian territory, he told Reuters. Some Western officials including the head of the U.S. Army in Europe, Gen. Ben Hodges, have raised concerns that Russia might use the drills as a Trojan horse to make incursions into Poland and Russian-speaking regions in the Baltics. The Kremlin firmly rejects any such plans. Russia says some 13,000 troops from Russia and Belarus will be involved in the Sept. 14-20 drills, below an international threshold that requires large numbers of outside observers. NATO will send three experts to so-called visitor days during the exercises, but a NATO official said these were no substitute for meeting internationally-agreed norms at such exercises that include talking to soldiers and briefings. Moscow says it is the West that threatens stability in eastern Europe because the U.S.-led NATO alliance has put a 4,000-strong multinational force in the Baltics and Poland. Wrong-footed by Moscow in the recent past, with Russia s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its intervention in Syria s war in 2015, NATO is distrustful of the Kremlin s public message. In Crimea, Moscow proved a master of hybrid warfare , with its mix of cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and use of Russian and local forces without insignia. One senior European security official said Zapad would merge manoeuvres across Russia s four western military districts in a complex, multi-dimensional aggressive, anti-NATO exercise . It is all smoke and mirrors, the official said, adding that the Soviet-era Zapad exercises that were revived in 1999 had included simulated nuclear strikes on Europe. NATO officials say they have been watching Russia s preparations for months, including the use of hundreds of rail cars to carry tanks and other heavy equipment into Belarus. As a precaution, the U.S. Army has moved 600 paratroopers to the Baltics during Zapad and has taken over guardianship of the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which lack capable air forces and air defense systems. Russia s military show of force raises some uncomfortable questions for the alliance because NATO cannot yet mass large numbers of troops quickly, despite the United States military might, NATO officials and diplomats said. NATO, a 29-nation defense pact created in 1949 to deter the Soviet threat, has already begun its biggest modernization since the Cold War, sending four battalions to the Baltics and Poland, setting up an agile, high-readiness spearhead force, and developing its cyberspace defenses. But NATO has deliberately taken a slowly-slowly approach to its military build-up to avoid being sucked into a new arms race, even as Russia has stationed anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles in Kaliningrad, the Black Sea and Syria. The last thing we want is a military escalation with Russia, said one senior NATO official involved in military planning, referring to Zapad. In the event of any potential Russian incursion into the Baltics or Poland, NATO s new multinational forces would quickly need large reinforcements. But a 40,000-strong force agreed in 2015 is still being developed, officials say. Lithuania s Karoblis said he hoped to see progress by the next summit of NATO leaders in July 2018. Baltic politicians want more discretion given to NATO to fight any aggressor in the event of an attack, without waiting for the go-ahead from allied governments. During Zapad, NATO is taking a low-key approach by running few exercises, including an annual sniper exercise in Lithuania. Only non-NATO member Sweden is holding a large-scale drill. NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Everard told Reuters there was no need to mirror Zapad. It s not a competition, he said during a visit to NATO forces in Latvia. | 0 |
Richard Painter, former ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, claims that President Donald Trump weighing in on his son, Donald Trump Jr. s, statement on meeting with a Russian lawyer is yet another possible example of obstruction of justice by the U.S. Commander in Chief. Painter even went as far as to say that obstruction of justice is a weekly occurrence for the Trump administration. I would like to have one week from this White House where they don t engage in a new act of obstruction of justice, Painter said during an interview on MSNBC s All In With Chris Hayes on Tuesday evening.Painter also added that if Trump Jr. has no problem using a false statement drafted by his father when dealing with the public, then he would probably have the same disregard for the truth while taking the stand to testify on the situation during a criminal investigation. Once the son says something in a public statement he d be very likely to say something to the special prosecutor, and lying to the special prosecutor is a crime. If he lies under oath it becomes perjury, Painter said. This is a common strategy for obstructing justice. But that wasn t the first time Richard Painter made his opinions about the President s method of dealing with the Russia accusations known. In fact, Painter had taken to Twitter earlier that morning to attack Trump on his favorite platform.Knowingly drafting a false statement for a person who is a witness in a criminal investigation is itself a crime. Obstruction of justice Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) August 1, 2017Lawyers who knowingly participate in drafting false statements for witnesses in criminal investigations should be disbarred and prosecuted. Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) August 1, 2017What kind of a man drafts a false statement for his own son about a matter under criminal investigation? A man who can pardon his son. Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) August 1, 2017Donald Trump Jr. has admitted to meeting with a Russian lawyer in order to get damning information about his father s rival, Hillary Clinton, in the lead up to last years presidential election, but has since given several contradicting statements, including details of who was present and the actual purpose of the meetings. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that President Trump had helped draft the first, inaccurate statement given by Trump Jr., a report initially denied by Trump s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, but later confirmed by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He certainly didn t dictate. But he weighed in, offered suggestions like any father would do, Huckabee Sanders said.Watch Richard Painter s interview on MSNBC s All In With Chris Hayes right here:Richard Painter: "I would like to have one week from this White House where they don't engage in a new act of obstruction of justice." pic.twitter.com/u2LaPgRWKD Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 2, 2017Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
Report: Friend Has Been Going By Middle Name This Whole Fucking Time CALABASAS, CA—Astounded that it had never come up at any point in the six years they had known each other, local woman Lucy Reed, 25, reported Tuesday that her friend Nicole Silberthau had apparently been going by her middle name this whole fucking time. Teary-Eyed Tim Kaine Asks Clinton If His Hair Will Grow Back In Time For Election Day NEW YORK—His lower lip quivering while showing his running mate the uneven patches on his head where he attempted to give himself a trim, a teary-eyed Tim Kaine reportedly asked Hillary Clinton this morning if his hair would grow back in time for Election Day. | 0 |
WASHINGTON/JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s White House campaign was in turmoil on Wednesday after he angered senior Republican Party leaders by criticizing a dead soldier’s family and refusing to back the re-election campaign of House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan. On Tuesday, Trump denied support to both Ryan and Senator John McCain in their coming primary contests, hitting back at critics in the Republican leadership who have taken him to task for his insistent public dispute with the parents of the soldier, a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in the Iraq war. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was furious over the failure to endorse Ryan, who is the most senior elected Republican, and over Trump’s feud with the Khan family, two Republican sources said. “He feels like a fool,” a Republican source familiar with the situation said of Priebus. The RNC did not respond to a request for comment about Priebus. Another Republican source said Trump’s family members, who have played an influential role in his campaign, were aware that an intervention was needed to get Trump back on track. One idea being floated was to have a senior adviser travel with Trump to help him stay on message. More than any other major figure in the Republican establishment, Priebus worked to bring Trump into the party’s fold despite the New York businessman’s status as an outsider. Trump, who had never previously run for public office, beat 16 rivals to become the Republican presidential nominee for the Nov. 8 election. Ahead of last month’s Republican Party Convention, the RNC chairman sought to rally the fractured party behind Trump. Priebus feels burned by Trump’s string of self-inflicted wounds and his refusal to observe basic decorum by giving Ryan his support. But in what appeared to be an effort to soothe ruffled feelings, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, said on Wednesday he endorsed Ryan as “a strong conservative leader” and was doing so with Trump’s blessing. The Indiana governor told Fox News that it takes time to build relationships in politics and that was exactly what Trump and Ryan were doing. Trump has had a running dispute with the parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan since they took the stage at last week’s Democratic National Convention. Khizr Khan, with his wife, Ghazala, standing by his side, cited the sacrifice of their son, who was killed by a car bomb in 2004, and criticized Trump’s proposal to combat terrorism by temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States. Many Republican leaders, including Ryan and McCain, have criticized Trump’s subsequent attacks on the parents. Even longtime ally Chris Christie, the Republican New Jersey governor, said it was inappropriate to attack the Khans. Trump’s feud with the Khans was the final straw for Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, a former Air Force pilot and Iraq war veteran. Kinzinger, who had held off supporting Trump, told CNN on Wednesday: “I just don’t see how I get to Donald Trump anymore.” Trump, who made his comments about Ryan and McCain in an interview with The Washington Post, shrugged off the backlash. “There is great unity in my campaign, perhaps greater than ever before. I want to thank everyone for your tremendous support. Beat Crooked H!” he wrote on Twitter early on Wednesday, referring to his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Campaign manager Paul Manafort told Fox News the campaign was moving in a positive direction, with Trump himself in control. “The campaign is in very good shape. We are organized. We are moving forward,” Manafort said. In Daytona, Florida, Trump said the news media’s coverage of him was dishonest. “We’re doing quite well despite the fact that we get a totally false narrative,” he told supporters at a rally. At another campaign event in Florida, in Jacksonville, Trump pointed out a group of families, known as Gold Star families, who have lost loved ones in war, calling them “incredible people.” He didn’t mention the spat with the Khans. Trump’s always unruly campaign has been mired in disorder in recent days. On Monday, Trump fired Ed Brookover, a senior adviser hired as a liaison between the campaign and the RNC. Ryan, who is favored to win next week in his race against primary challenger Paul Nehlen, appeared to be trying to ignore the snub from Trump. An aide to the speaker said he would not have time to meet Trump later this week, when Trump is expected to be campaigning in Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state. The aide did not indicate whether anyone had requested a get-together of Trump and Ryan, but when asked whether they might meet to patch things up, the aide told Reuters, “The speaker has a full schedule – can’t back out of previous commitments in the (congressional) district.” A Republican congressional aide said there was deep frustration on Capitol Hill that Trump keeps engaging in “petty spats.” The aide said congressional offices that support Trump got two sets of talking points on Monday from the campaign about the Khan situation but have not heard anything from the campaign about Trump’s Ryan comments. The dissent over the Trump campaign also took other turns. Late on Tuesday, Meg Whitman, a prominent Republican fundraiser and chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE.N), endorsed Clinton’s White House bid, calling Trump an “authoritarian character” and a threat to democracy. In better news for Trump, his campaign and the RNC jointly raised $80 million for his White House bid in July, the campaign said on Wednesday. That was less than the $90 million Clinton raised along with the national Democratic Party the same month, but it was a substantial bump from past months. A former reality TV star, Trump has won support particularly from white blue-collar workers who feel neglected by the political establishment. Along with his proposed ban on Muslims, his plans have included building a wall along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants and renegotiating trade agreements. Opinion polls have shown Clinton benefiting from a boost after her party’s convention last week. The RealClearPolitics average of recent national polls put her 4.5 percentage points ahead of Trump, at 46.5 percent to 42 percent. The Detroit Economic Club, where candidates usually appear to give major economic addresses, said Trump would speak at the club on Monday. | 1 |
It s a federal offense to threaten a presidential candidate. But is it a federal offense if the candidate is Donald Trump? Would the media cover this story if a bar owner suggested a well-known attempted assassin kill Hillary? Is it a clever joke or a threat? Maybe a little bit of both? A sign outside a bar is turning a lot of heads.The message is political and timely and if you understand the context, but it could be considered a possible threat on Donald Trump. ABC22Now | 0 |
While Trump works like crazy to win your vote, Hillary and Bill are rocking the night away. The Limousine liberals love these two grifters and just keep throwing cash at them. Pretty sickening!Rock superstars Sir Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi and Jimmy Buffett took to the stage at a glamorous fundraiser for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Monday night. The trio serenaded the crowd with the Beatles classic Hey Jude while both Hillary and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, danced with other guests at the bash in the Hamptons.Video from the $25,000-a-ticket event at Jimmy and Jane Buffett s estate shows Buffett, Bon Jovi and McCartney singing on stage for the grand finale: The Democratic presidential nominee hopped from mansion to mansion in the ocean-front vacation destination, appearing at parties and dinners where the contributions ranged from $1,000 to $100,000 for guests and hosts. The top-dollar tour concluded last night with an event in Sag Harbor complete with the stellar musical line-up.On an outdoor stage, Buffett entertained for more than an hour, playing hits like Margaritaville and Cheeseburger in Paradise. Bon Jovi serenaded the crowd with Who Says You Can t Go Home, and McCartney s numbers included Can t Buy Me Love and Lady Madonna. The trio closed out the show with a performance of Hey Jude. Attendees said Clinton even hit the dance floor with McCartney during one of Buffett s numbers. McCartney joked with the crowd, according to fundraiser guests, saying that this was the first time I ve paid to hear myself sing. Read more: Daily Mail | 1 |
A WARNING shot has been fired at North Korea by the Trump administration. There s a new sheriff in town and North Korea s crazy little dictator may need to rethink his antagonistic behavior. He may be poking the wrong tiger Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday it may be necessary to take pre-emptive military action against North Korea if the threat from their weapons program reaches a level that we believe requires action. Tillerson outlined a tougher strategy to confront North Korea s nuclear threat after visiting the world s most heavily armed border near the tense buffer zone between the rival Koreas. He also closed the door on talks with Pyongyang unless it denuclearizes and gives up its weapons of mass destruction. Chicago TribuneThe US Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden is reportedly set to join military training drills against North Korea for the first time.Along with other elite US units including the Army Rangers, Delta Force and the Green Berets, SEAL Team Six will take part in annual training exercises alongside South Korean forces, according to Yonhap News. A bigger number of and more diverse US special operation forces will take part in this year s Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises to practise missions to infiltrate into the North, remove the North s war command and demolition of its key military facilities, a South Korean official told the news agency.SEAL Team Six would practice removing Kim Jong-un and destroying North Korea s weapons of mass destruction, South Korea s Defence Ministry told the Joong Ang Daily newspaper.North Korea has already warned of merciless attacks if the USS Carl Vinson, a US aircraft carrier currently in South Korean waters, infringes on its sovereignty and dignity even a bit .North Korea has already warned of merciless attacks if the USS Carl Vinson, a US aircraft carrier currently in South Korean waters, infringes on its sovereignty and dignity even a bit .The secretive state last week fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan in response to the annual military drills, which it sees as preparation for war.Both the US and South Korea maintain that the exercises are purely defensive. North and South Korea are technically still at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.For entire story: Independent UK | 1 |
Share on Facebook Newly leaked documents from whistleblowing website, DC Leaks, reveal that Liberal billionaire, George Soros, used his Open Society Institute to pay Al Gore $10 million dollars per year to lie to the public about the effects man-made global warming has on the planet. According to the documents, George Soros gave former Vice President, Al Gore's environmental group millions of dollars in the space of three years to create a "political space for aggressive U.S. action" on global warming. YNW reports : “U.S. Programs Global Warming Grants U.S. Programs became engaged on the global warming issue about four years ago, at George Soros's suggestion,” reads a leaked OSI memo. “There has been a budget of $11 million for global warming grants in the U.S. Programs budget for the last several years,” the memo reads. “This budget item captures George Soros's commitment of $10 million per year for three years to Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, which conducts public education on the climate issue in pursuit of creating political space for aggressive U.S. action in line with what scientists say is necessary to put our nation on a path to reducing its outsize carbon dioxide emissions.” It's unclear what year the memo was sent, but the Gore co-founded Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP) was established in 2006 and lasted until it became The Climate Reality Project in July 2011. In 2008, the Alliance launched a $300 million campaign to encourage “Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” The Washington Post reported. ACP got $10 million from the Open Society Institute (OSI) in 2008, according to the nonprofit's tax filings. OSI handed over another $5 million to ACP in 2009, according to tax filings. The investigative reporting group ProPublica keeps a database that has OSI tax returns from 2000 to 2013. TheDCNF could not find other years where OSI gave money to ACP. OSI is primarily a grant-making nonprofit that hands out millions of dollars every year to mostly left-wing causes. Now called the Open Society Foundations, Soros's nonprofit has handed out more than $13 billion over the last three decades. OSI didn't only plan to fund Gore's climate group to promote global warming policies in the U.S., OSI also planned on giving millions of dollars to spur the “youth climate movement.” “This budget item also allows for the renewal of U.S. Programs’ long-standing support of the Energy Action Coalition, which is the lead organizer of the youth climate movement in the U.S.” , the memo reads. “We are also including a placeholder for an additional $2 million, pending discussion about and development of OSI's global warming agenda,” the memo reads. “There is a memo from Nancy Youman in the strategic plans binder that recommends pathways forward for OSI on the climate issue – in the U.S., as well as in other parts of the Open Society Network.” Related: | 1 |
Saturday, on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” MSNBC political analyst Joan Walsh accused White House adviser Ivanka Trump of applauding “cruelty” when her father, President Donald Trump, “was celebrating “taking health care away from women. ” “[Ivanka Trump] did stand and clap when her father was having a little party to celebrate taking health care away from women. And she has not pushed for parental leave, even in her capacity as a top White House adviser with security clearance,” Walsh told host Joy Reid. “[S]he really wants to have this appearance of being a force for good, and, yet, she’s accomplished nothing, and she applauds cruelty. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior Republican U.S. senators criticized Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday for saying that Russia may have the “right approach” on Syria and for what they called his lack of focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. “His statements about Syria really disturb me. No, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin does not have it right when it comes to Syria,” Senator Lindsey Graham said. In separate television interviews, Graham and Senator John McCain, prominent Republican foreign policy voices, took aim at Tillerson’s remarks last week that Russia may have “got the right approach” and the United States the wrong approach to Syria. Russia has backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war, while the United States supports rebel groups trying to overthrow him. McCain told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he “sometimes” regretted backing Tillerson’s nomination by Republican President Donald Trump and that his comments on Russia being “right” on Syria made him emotional and upset. “I know what the slaughter has been like. I know that the Russians knew that Bashar Assad was going to use chemical weapons. And to say that maybe we’ve got the wrong approach?” he said. Both senators backed the nomination of Tillerson in January, even while expressing concern about his dealings with Russia when he was chief executive of ExxonMobil. (XOM.N) Graham, who visited Afghanistan and Pakistan last week with McCain, accused Tillerson of being “AWOL” on the two countries and failing to fill key State Department posts. “I am so worried about the State Department,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” A State Department official responded to the criticism of Tillerson by saying that a U.S.-Russian-brokered ceasefire for southwest Syria was an example of what the secretary had described as the potential to coordinate with Russia, in spite of unresolved differences, “to produce stability and serve our mutual security interests.” The official, who did not want to be identified, also said the State Department was taking an active role in a review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy and continued to work with the White House on nominations. Since the exit of most foreign troops in 2014, Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government has lost ground to a Taliban insurgency in a war that kills and maims thousands of civilians each year. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz lashed out at rival candidate Donald Trump on the day of Indiana’s primary on Tuesday, calling him a pathological liar, narcissist and bully after the front-runner linked Cruz’s father to John F. Kennedy’s assassin. “I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies,” Cruz told reporters in a scathing indictment. “He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And...his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.” In a television appearance earlier, Trump linked Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, citing a report by National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid known for celebrity gossip and alien sightings. “You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody brings it up,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” Republicans in Indiana might give New York billionaire Trump an almost unstoppable advantage in his turbulent journey toward the party’s presidential nomination. The real estate mogul holds a double-digit polling lead in the Midwestern state over Cruz, a U.S. Senator of Texas. Cruz denounced the Enquirer and its chief executive, David Pecker, who has endorsed Trump, for claiming his father, a Cuban immigrant to the United States, was pictured handing out pro-Fidel Castro literature with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963. “Yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his back yard,” Cruz said in a sarcastic retort. Cruz also unleashed fury over Trump’s earlier comment about his wife, Heidi. “Donald has a real problem with women. Donald is terrified by strong women - he lashes out at them,” Cruz said. “The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him,” Cruz said. | 1 |
One would think that conservatives would have figured out by now that they can t get people to turn out for their marches and protests. That seems to be especially true with Trump in office. So many more people are against him than for him, yet these delusional Trumpkins still think they re some kind of majority in this country.Witness their enthusiasm for today s March 4 Trump. It was supposed to be a counter to the Women s March on Washington that happened all over the world the day after Trump s inauguration. The Women s March drew well more than two million people just in the U.S. The March 4 Trump must have been overwhelming then, given all that support Trump and his loyal subjects think they have.And overwhelming these marches were, in their own way the lack of support they showed for Trump is actually what was overwhelming. Most of these protests drew dozens, rather than the thousands they seemed to think they were going to get. For instance, in Orlando, roughly 200 people showed up, compared to the 5,000 that showed up in January for the Women s March.Denver had just dozens, where 145,000 had marched in January. In our nation s capital, Trumpers were hoping that they could draw more than half a million, which would rival the Women s March there. They drew a few thousand at best, despite Trump s claim that marches for him would be the biggest marches of all:Here at the yuge rally for Trump at the White House pic.twitter.com/aJ5gcMicyr Brian Tashman (@briantashman) March 4, 2017The #TrumpTrain is in town and standing strong for @POTUS.I will be articulating the case for #Trump shortly, friends.#March4Trump pic.twitter.com/zdH682s7Vk Michael Johns (@michaeljohns) March 4, 2017Here s the march at Trump Tower in New York City:Literally the March 4 Trump pic.twitter.com/Of8vChB8NQ Eric Grant (@ericgrant) March 4, 2017Small crowd at the March 4 Trump. pic.twitter.com/LxPMcYtBO3 Eric Grant (@ericgrant) March 4, 2017Crowds were just as pathetic elsewhere, too:#March4Trump draws about 200 people to Voinovich Park, plus about 100 counter protestors pic.twitter.com/Jfq3GL05ar Kabir Bhatia (@KabirBhatiaTime) March 4, 2017#NoMorein614 march in Columbus, OH. #BlackLivesMatter #NoBanBoWall #organizeCBUS #JaronThomas @614Unity @soit_goes @marymad @OhioPJP pic.twitter.com/du1EdboKfd SURJ Columbus (@SURJColumbusOH) March 4, 2017At #March4Trump rally in Springfield,IL pic.twitter.com/WFvZLkSn25 James B (@JebLadat) March 4, 2017We are live from Denver where black bloc is confronting March 4 Trump DPD ready with police tape line https://t.co/RxJlYm2jkM pic.twitter.com/2817ZMkUq4 Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) March 4, 2017A better view of just how empty the Plaza is for this pro-Trump rally. Sad! pic.twitter.com/Ji78hNXJBD Cari Wade Gervin (@carigervin) March 4, 2017This is embarrassing for them. Trump supporters keep trying to tell the resistance to get over it, and give up, and ultimately call us treasonous for daring to oppose a dangerous orange despot in the White House. If they truly had the love and support they think, their protests would blow anti-Trump protests out of the water every time. Doesn t look like we re the ones who need to get over anything.Featured image via screen capture | 1 |
A South Korean naval vessel fired five shots as a warning to a North Korean patrol boat that briefly moved south of the countries' disputed boundary line in the Yellow Sea, Seoul's defense ministry said Monday.
A South Korean military official told the Yonhap news agency that the North Korean vessel retreated northward after the warning shots were fired into the water. However, the incident underscores the heightened hostilities between the two Koreas.
The brief encounter came hours after the United Nations Security Council condemned North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket that world leaders described as a banned test of ballistic missile technology and South Korea's president called another "intolerable provocation."
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un went ahead with the launch just two hours after an eight-day window opened early Sunday, and a month after the country's fourth nuclear test. He ignored an appeal from China, its neighbor and important ally, not to proceed, and, in another slap to Beijing, he chose to launch the rocket on the eve of Chinese New Year, the country's most important holiday.
China and the United States have been negotiating the text of a new Security Council sanctions resolution since Pyongyang's Jan. 6 nuclear test, which it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. That claim has been met with outside skepticism.
The U.S., backed by Japan and South Korea, wants tough U.N. sanctions reflecting Kim's defiance of the Security Council. But diplomats say China, the North's key protector in the council, is reluctant to impose economic measures that could cause North Korea's economy to collapse — and a flight of North Koreans into China across their shared border.
The 15-member Security Council strongly condemned the launch and pledged to "expeditiously" adopt a new resolution with "further significant measures" — U.N. code for sanctions. The word "robust" referring to the measures was in an initial draft, but was dropped in the final statement.
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters that "it cannot be business as usual" after two successive North Korean acts that are "hostile and illegal."
"What's important is that the Security Council unites," Power said. "China is a critical player. ... We are hopeful that China, like all council members, will see the grave threat to regional and international peace and security, see the importance of adopting tough, unprecedented measures, breaking new ground here, exceeding the expectations of Kim Jong Un."
He said a new resolution should "do the work of reducing tension, of working toward denuclearization (of the Korean peninsula), of maintaining peace and stability, and of encouraging a negotiated solution."
"I believe the council needs to work together for a new resolution," Liu added, indicating that China may want negotiations with the United States to be widened.
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, whose country is also a North Korean ally, said: "It has to be a weighty resolution, but it also has to be a reasonable resolution" that doesn't lead to North Korea's economic or humanitarian collapse, or further heighten tensions.
Russia's goal is to see six-party talks aimed at denuclearization resume, he said, but in the current atmosphere that's unlikely because the North Koreans "have been very unreasonable" and are challenging the entire international community.
"We think this is wrong for their national interests ... for the Korean Peninsula ... for the region," Churkin said.
North Korea, which calls its launches part of a peaceful space program, said it had successfully put a new Earth observation satellite, the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Shining Star 4, into orbit less than 10 minutes after liftoff, and vowed more such launches. A U.S. official said it might take days to assess whether the launch was a success.
But in Pyongyang, North Koreans celebrated the launch with an official fireworks display Monday night, state broadcaster KCTV reported, according to CNN.
Japan's U.N. ambassador, Motohide Yoshikawa, told reporters the missile, which went over Japan and landed near the Philippines, was "a clear threat to the lives of many people."
The Security Council underscored that launches using ballistic missile technology, "even if characterized as a satellite launch or space launch vehicle" contribute to North Korea's development of systems to deliver nuclear weapons and violate four Security Council resolutions dating back to the North's first nuclear test in 2006.
North Korea under Kim Jong Un has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy meant to collapse Kim's government.
In a development that will worry both Pyongyang and Beijing, a senior South Korean Defense Ministry official, Yoo Jeh Seung, told reporters that Seoul and Washington have agreed to begin talks on a possible deployment of the THAAD missile-defense system in South Korea. North Korea has long decried the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, and Beijing would see a South Korean deployment of THAAD, which is one of the world's most advanced missile-defense systems, as a threat to its interests in the region.
In a statement, North Korea's National Aerospace Development Administration, in typical propaganda-laden language, praised "the fascinating vapor of Juche satellite trailing in the clear and blue sky in spring of February on the threshold of the Day of the Shining Star."
Juche is a North Korean philosophy focusing on self-reliance; the Day of the Shining Star refers to the Feb. 16 birthday of Kim Jong Un's father, former dictator Kim Jong Il. North Korea has previously staged rocket launches to mark important anniversaries.
Fox News' Jonathan Wachtel and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Myanmar national security adviser Thaung Tun told Reuters on Monday that Rohingya Muslims who had fled to neighboring Bangladesh to escape violence in Rakhine State would be able to return but the process would have to be discussed. We will make sure that everybody who left their home can return to their home but this is a process we have to discuss, he said after a ministerial meeting on the crisis hosted by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. We want to make sure that everybody who needs humanitarian assistance gets it, without discrimination. That is one of the things we agreed on, Tun said. | 0 |
The Department of Homeland Security announced its plans to build a 15-mile prototype of the border wall in San Diego.The department issued a waiver from numerous environmental laws and regulations to build the wall with robust physical characteristics to prevent illegal immigration crossings in an area of high illegal entry. The Department is implementing President Trump s Executive Order 13767, Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, and continues to take steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border, the department said in a statement Tuesday announcing plans to issue the waiver.In one of his last moves as DHS secretary, Gen. John Kelly signed the notice on July 26, before he was tapped to serve as White House chief of staff.The waiver was published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.The notice outlines the plans for projects along a 15-mile stretch along the Southwestern border in the San Diego sector. The department said the area is in need of further border protection immediately, as it is the site of over 31,000 illegal alien apprehensions, the seizure of 9,167 pounds of marijuana, and approximately 1,317 pounds of cocaine last year alone. The construction of border wall prototypes in the Project Area and the robust physical characteristics that are to be incorporated into the border wall prototypes are intended to deter illegal crossings, the notice states.The department will waive several environmental regulations to build the prototype wall, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and a host of others.DHS said it is still committed to safeguarding the environment but is eliminating onerous rules that would delay construction.For entire story: Washington Free Beacon | 0 |
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Remy Porter Remy escaped the enterprise world and now works as a consultant. Editor-in-Chief for TDWTF.
When Nate was wrapping up his senior year of college, he hunted around for a job that would hire an undergrad on flexible hours. He knew that the kinds of companies that tended to hire on those terms could often have… creative practices, but college wasn’t about to pay for itself.
He found a small shop that needed an extra hand. Extremely small- there was only one other developer, Gordon. Nate was prepared to enter a tiny shop with no real practices or procedures, because with only one developer, you don’t expect a lot of rules and bureaucracy.
Gordon was only one person, but he was able to create enough contrived, arcane, and downright mysterious bureaucratic policies and procedures for fifty developers. Reading the style-guide was closer to reading a novel, but not a good novel where there was a clear point and narrative thread, but something meandering and pointless, like a Douglas Adams book.
Gordon wasn’t just opinionated about style . He also had Opinions™ on the proper use of source control. “Branches,” Gordon explained, “are absolutely vital for separating units of work.”
Gordon’s explanation came after Nate was stunned by the sheer number of branches- there were hundreds of branches in the repository. “Look,” Gordon said, “you don’t have to be intimidated by this. We can start you out, just do this small change in the main branch, then I’ll show you how to release it.”
Nate dutifully checked out master , made the change, and committed it. He sent Gordon a pull request.
“You used the wrong branch. Back out your change, and put it in the main one.”
“Which branch is the main one? It’s not master ?”
“It used to be, but we don’t really use master anymore. Use master_4513 .”
As it turned out, the “main branch” was usually whichever branch Gordon touched last. There were five or six different branches that could be the “main” branch at any given time. Maybe seven- it was very hard for Nate to be certain.
Nate made the changes in master_4513 , but that was only the start of the nightmare. Now, those changes had to be merged into the correct branch for deployment. “This is pretty complex, do you want me to walk you through it?” Gordon asked.
Nate said yes, and so Gordon sat down next to him, and started explaining each step that Nate needed to perform. These “explanations” started with Gordon pressing his fingers against Nate’s monitor and saying, “Click here.”“No, fire up the GUI, not the CLI.”“Select this branch.” The instructional process was recorded as a smear of fingerprints on Nate’s screen.
Changes merged outward from the main branch (whatever “main” happened to be that day). Instead of merging back towards a known-good trunk of code, changes were made to the trunk, and then percolated outward, according to Gordon’s own twisted logic. “You see,” he explained, “we’ve gotta maintain, like, 15 different versions, and some of them depend on a different version of our framework lib. This main version builds against version 1.2 of the framework.”
“But… isn’t your framework up to version 4.5? Like… for years now?”
“Yeah, but this change only goes out to the 2.0 users, so you need to merge from main to master_51 , then to frameworkupgradeA1 , then to perky_peregrine . You’ll need to resolve conflicts.”
Nate ground his teeth hard enough to make diamonds between them, and fought his way through the merge conflicts. A few hours later, Nate’s one line change was merged into a releasable version, but Nate had no idea how that change would migrate to any other version, if it ever did.
Nate’s next assignment was to make a change to the same version, and since it was a larger change, he made a feature branch off of perky_peregrine , do the changes there, then merge right back into perky_peregrine after the work was done. Then he could propagate the changes back to the current “main” branch, asdfg . This resulted in an angry visit from Gordon.
“Are you trying to mess this up?” Gordon demanded. “There is a system . There are policies ! Did you even read the development guide I gave you? Feature branches are fine, but they have to come off the main branch, not one of the dependent branches!”
Nate had tried valiantly to read it, but failed. “I was just going to do the work, merge into perky_peregrine , and then delete the branch, why does it matter?”
“Merge back ?” Gordon shrieked. “DELETE the BRANCH? Branches don’t merge backwards , only outwards. Like a tree. Each feature branch is supposed to be an entirely new line of development. Have you even used source control?”
Something snapped in the back of Nate’s brain, because for a brief, terrifying moment, that almost made sense. Nate had been puzzling over the bizarre state of their source control repository, and those words from Gordon put understanding it within tantalizing reach. If he asked a few more questions, he might just see the method to this madness…
Nate chose the wiser path. He smiled, he nodded, he complied with Gordon’s policies, and moved on to the next feature, weeks after cutting through the shrubbery that was Gordon’s branching system.
The next feature was to make a change that only impacted users of the latest version of the base framework. The current “main” branch was back on version 2.3, so Nate needed to start by making a branch from there. Then he had to bring it up to version 4.0, then convert a few of the datafiles into a new format, then finish the upgrade to 4.5. This was about two weeks of hair pulling frustration. Then he could make his changes. He spent that week asking serious questions about the career path he was on. Finally , he could merge his changes into the actual 4.5 release branch, but never back into any master branch.
This resulted in tens of thousands of merge conflicts. The next few weeks were spent cutting through them, and by the end of that time, Nate discovered the semester was nearly over. He was about to graduate. He went to Lindsey, the co-owner of the small company, and handed in his resignation.
“We’ve been really impressed by your work,” she said. “You could stay on after college, if you like.”
Her tone was even, perhaps even a little indifferent, but there was a plea in her eyes. Nate vaguely recalled hearing that Gordon was a friend of Reggie, the other co-owner. Nate saw a hint that Lindsay knew what Gordon was doing to their software product. Maybe she thought Nate could be her ally in fixing it.
Or maybe Nate was reading too much into it. Discretion was the better part of valor. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think I’m the right fit for this team,” he said. They made the polite noises, she promised him a recommendation letter, they connected on LinkedIn, and Nate went off to find a source tree that didn’t look like a tangled briar.
A few months after Nate settled into his new job, he snooped on Gordon’s LinkedIn profile- he was unemployed. A message to Lindsay confirmed that she’d fired him over his inability to deliver new features. The last anyone had heard, Gordon had retired to a cabin in the woods, where he could be alone with many branches that never merged back into their trunks.
Editors Note : We meant no harm in teasing Douglas Adams, but your reaction was much more interesting than it would have been to another tired Twilight joke. [Advertisement] Incrementally adopt DevOps best practices with BuildMaster , ProGet and Otter , creating a robust, secure, scalable, and reliable DevOps toolchain. | 1 |
The DHS has announced that they ll be raiding places that house illegals and deporting them. This could get ugly and it will only garner sympathy for the illegal aliens who ve broken federal law by crossing our border. Over 10,000 illegal minors came across our border in Sept/Oct which is a record for this time of year. The big question in all of this would have to be why Jeh Johnson s rules for deportation have been so lenient. Because of his leniency, word has gotten back to Central America that you can just surrender to border patrol and you re in. Now we have millions and millions of illegals who re roaming around America and we have no clue who they are. The Sanctuary Movement is taking it upon themselves to bring in and protect illegals while putting Americans in danger. Thousands of criminal illegal aliens were simply released last year. Yes, Obama let them go All Americans are in danger from this open border policy and those in the church community should go to jail for aiding this invasion of our southern border. Leaders of the church-based Sanctuary Movement vowed on Friday to offer their places of worship as refuge for immigrants facing deportation under an Obama administration crackdown on Central American families who entered the United States illegally.The statement came two days after The Washington Post first reported the U.S. government was planning a series of raids to remove hundreds of undocumented families as early as January in the first such large-scale effort targeting the recent flood of border crossers.The Department of Homeland Security preparations to intensify deportations of Central American migrants, confirmed by U.S. government sources, drew immediate fire from Democratic presidential candidates and human rights groups.Leaders of the multi-denominational Sanctuary Movement, which has sheltered at least 10 immigrants from deportation over the past 18 months, joined in the criticism on Friday, alluding to the biblical Nativity story of Mary and Joseph seeking refuge before the birth of Jesus. As pastors we know that each and every family is a holy family, said the Rev. Alison Harrington, pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona. We open our doors to today s Josephs and Marys. The gift we have to offer on Christmas Day is the gift of sanctuary. The Sanctuary Movement, which Harrington said encompasses about 50 congregations in a dozen U.S. cities, made headlines in January by providing refuge in Philadelphia to a Honduran woman whose two children were born in the United States. She ultimately won a two-year reprieve from deportation.The Rev. Noel Anderson, a coordinator for the affiliated Church World Service, put the overall number of congregations supporting the sanctuary network at about 300 in more than 20 states nationwide.Immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua have been streaming into the United States from Mexico by the thousands since early 2014 many of them unaccompanied minors and families fleeing extreme poverty, gangs and drug violence in their home countries.Most were detained after turning themselves in at the border seeking asylum, but were released to surrounding communities after initial screening to await further proceedings.A 2008 U.S. anti-human tracking law bars undocumented Central American children from being summarily sent back, as they could be if they were from Mexico or Canada.Government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said the new campaign by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency marks an expansion from mostly targeting individuals to pursuing families with undocumented members who have already been ordered to leave.Asked why the agency was singling out families, a spokesperson said the crackdown focused on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security, whether alone or with family members. Support for the move came from U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, who said it would help eliminate the incentive that results from allowing 95.6 percent of these illegal immigrants to stay. Harrington said she feared the crackdown will ensnare many who lacked sufficient time or legal representation to prepare asylum claims and were too quickly put through the system. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans cheered after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday thwarted President Barack Obama’s plan to offer millions of undocumented immigrants relief from deportation, but any sense of triumph might last only until the November presidential election. If recent history is a guide, the stalled cause of immigration reform could energize Hispanic voters in support of likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, hurting Republican Donald Trump’s chances of reaching the White House. Four years ago, Obama, seeking reelection to a second term, made Republican opposition to reform a central theme of his campaign. He ended up swamping his opponent, Mitt Romney, by almost a 3 to 1 margin among Latino voters, who now make up around 12 percent of the U.S. electorate. Republican hopes for securing a larger share of that vote this election already seemed grim given Trump’s vow to deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally and to build a wall along the southern U.S. border. Democrats were quick to assail the ruling and voice concern about the fate of the 4 million or so immigrants who were to be shielded from deportation by Obama’s executive action. But it was also clear that they believe the high court has handed them a potent weapon to spur Latinos — the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate — to vote in greater numbers. The Latino voting bloc is expected to swell to 27.3 million in 2016, up 4 million from 4 years ago. The prospect of Clinton filling the current vacancy on the top court with a liberal-leading justice who could, potentially, protect immigration-reform programs, may galvanize those voters as well. Republicans in Congress have refused to accept Obama’s pick for the top court to fill the vacancy left by the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February. The justices’ ruling on Thursday sent the question of the legality of Obama’s program back to a Texas federal court for trial, leaving open the possibility that the matter could return to the high court on appeal at a later date. The court’s decision “just adds fuel to the fire that’s already raging,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “Each of these events raises the intensity and the Latino turnout even more.” In the wake of the ruling, immigration activists vowed payback in November’s election and staged protests on Thursday. A recent survey by Latino Decisions, a polling firm, showed that about half of the U.S. Hispanic electorate showed greater enthusiasm to vote in 2016 as compared to 2012, with support for Obama’s pro-immigrant executive orders running high. “We should expect similar dynamics this fall, perhaps even more so given the election is likely to determine the ideological direction of the Supreme Court,” said David Damore, an analyst for the firm. Given Trump’s unpopularity with Latino voters, the question for many Democrats both in and outside the Clinton campaign has been less about attracting the bloc’s support and more about making sure it votes in large enough numbers to help offset Trump’s expected advantage among white voters. The court’s decision may also help make traditionally Republican states with increasing Hispanic populations such as Arizona more competitive this election, strategists in both parties said. Reed Galen, a Republican strategist in California, said the ruling could boost Democratic hopes in Latino-heavy battleground states such as Nevada, Colorado, and Florida. “The issue isn’t getting [Latino voters] fired up,” Galen said. “It’s getting them to show up.” Galen believes there is little his party can do now to mitigate the damage he believes Trump has done to its appeal among Hispanics. A Republican National Committee “autopsy” report after Romney’s defeat said it was essential for the party to broaden its appeal to Hispanic voters by embracing immigration reform. “Trump has pushed the envelope on immigration so far for Republicans, I don’t know this [decision] is going to be any more damaging,” he said. “The barn’s already been blown up.” But Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, a conservative advocacy group, disagreed. He said Republicans in Congress could still enact reform this year, which would ward off Trump’s deportation threat while building stronger ties with Latino voters. “This is the quintessential green light for Republicans to put their money where their mouth is,” Rodriguez said. Many Republicans were careful on Thursday to applaud the court’s ruling on the grounds that it curtailed what they viewed as an abuse of executive authority by Obama, without delving into the underlying immigration issues. “The Constitution is clear: The president is not permitted to write laws — only Congress is,” said Paul Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ryan supports comprehensive immigration reform. Trump, however, went further, praising the ruling and saying the election now held the key to blocking further illegal immigration. “The election, and the Supreme Court appointments that come with it will decide whether or not we have a border and, hence, a country,” he said in a statement. He has vowed to reverse Obama’s executive actions on immigration as president. | 0 |
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 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran s moderate president gave a full-throated defense of his one-time rivals in the Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday, as the country s pragmatist and hardline factions rallied together in the face of threats from Donald Trump. The U.S. president is expected to decertify Iran s nuclear deal with global powers this week and add its Revolutionary Guards military force to Washington s black list of terrorist groups under a strategy to increase pressure on Tehran. The threat of U.S. action has united the two main factions of Iran s leadership, with the pragmatists led by President Hassan Rouhani who seek greater openness to the West demonstrating their support for the hardline Guards. During a cabinet meeting shown on state television on Wednesday, Rouhani said U.S. action against the Guards would be a mistake beyond mistakes . They think that the Guards are a military entity. The Revolutionary Guards are not a military entity. They re in the heart of the people. The Revolutionary Guards, in all the days of danger, have defended our national interests, he said. We re one society. We re Iran. There are no differences between different factions in confronting the plots of our enemies, he added. Rouhani, the architect of Iran s 2015 deal with global powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of international sanctions, won re-election in a landslide five months ago on a platform promising greater openness to the world and reform at home. During an unprecedentedly bitter campaign, he repeatedly spoke out in public against the political influence of the Guards, accusing them of backing his hardline opponent to defend their economic interests. In recent days, however, the threat of new action from Washington has prompted a public display of unity from the rival factions among Iran s rulers. Today, the president of America has created conditions where Iran is more united than ever. Today, those who oppose the nuclear deal and those who support it are side by side. We all have one voice, Rouhani said. Newspapers on Tuesday ran pictures of the urbane, U.S.-educated Foreign Minister Javad Zarif laughing and hugging the commander of the guards, Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari. Zarif brief lawmakers on Wednesday about the expected U.S. action and about Iran s plans for a response, according to members of parliament quoted in state media. In the closed session Zarif emphasized that if the Americans take any steps against the nuclear deal that the Islamic Republic of Iran will give them a more crushing response, Shahbaz Hassanpour, a lawmaker representing the city of Sirjan, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Lawmakers did not disclose the specific actions that Zarif had discussed as plans for Iranian retaliation. Trump s expected move to decertify the nuclear deal would not by itself withdraw the United States from the agreement, but would pass that decision on to Congress, requiring lawmakers to decide within 60 days whether to re-impose sanctions. The nuclear deal is supported by Washington s European allies Britain, France and Germany, as well as by Russia and China, all of which say Iran has complied so far. Adding the Guards to the terrorism blacklist could have economic consequences, since the elite military force also has a vast business empire in Iran. International banks are required to make sure their clients are not blacklisted. Washington has already blacklisted other entities and individuals for supporting Guards activities, but has not yet blacklisted the Guards themselves. During the meeting with Zarif, parliament members expressed their support for the Guards, Hassanpour said. Zarif also noted during the session that European countries will continue backing the nuclear deal regardless of what actions the U.S may take, Hassanpour told IRNA. | 0 |
DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iranian court has re-imposed the death penalty on the founder of a spiritual movement after the first sentence was struck down by the supreme court, the judiciary said on Sunday. Mohammad Ali Taheri, founder of Erfan Halgheh which calls itself Interuniversalism in English, was arrested in 2011 and given five years in prison for insulting Islamic sanctities . He was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in 2015 for corruption on earth but the Supreme Court later quashed the sentence. (Taheri s) case was sent back to court and tried with the presence of a lawyer and various advisors and the judge has again reached, Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the news agency ISNA. The sentence can be appealed, he added. Amnesty International says Taheri is a prisoner of conscience and has condemned Iran s use of capital punishment for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalized at all . Tehran dismisses such criticism as part of an effort from the West to heap political pressure on the Islamic Republic. | 0 |
You may need a calculator to count how many asinine liberals said Trump will never be elected President of the United States. I wonder how many are sick of eating crow?https://youtu.be/PyEXshBOwEU | 0 |
TALLADEGA, Ala. — For a band at a tiny, historically black college, it seems in some ways to be the gig of a lifetime: a chance to march and perform at the Jan. 20 presidential inaugural parade in Washington. Some of the musicians at Talladega College have been excited to see the capital for the first time. But because the is Donald J. Trump, the school has become the subject of an impassioned national outcry, with online petitions, threats to end donations and a flurry of from alumni who feel that performing in the parade would betray the values of an institution founded by newly freed slaves 150 years ago. On Thursday, after days of speculation that the college administration might bow to the pressure and remove the band from the parade roster, the president of Talladega College, Billy Hawkins, issued a statement confirming the participation of the band, the Marching Tornadoes, and argued, in essence, that the 58th presidential inauguration is about something bigger than Mr. Trump. “We respect and appreciate how our students and alumni feel about our participation in this parade,” Dr. Hawkins said. “As many of those who chose to participate in the parade have said, we feel the inauguration of a new president is not a political event but a civil ceremony celebrating the transfer of power. ” Similar issues have been raised about other entertainers scheduled to perform, among them the Radio City Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But because of Talladega’s history, the issues have been especially intense here, with calls for the college to reverse its decision to take part in the festivities. And beyond Talladega, the controversies raise tough questions for Mr. Trump’s most ardent critics as his presidency dawns: What is the proper response to a president as polarizing as Mr. Trump? Should the office of the president be honored, no matter who fills it? Or should there be four years of pure rejection and defiance? And if Mr. Trump’s opponents refuse to participate in his presidency, can critics on the right do the same thing to some other in the future? To a number of Talladega alumni, the Dec. 30 announcement that the band would march in the parade was an insult to the very principles of the college, which was established two years after the end of the Civil War. The school is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination that was deeply involved in the civil rights movement, and for decades it served as an incubator for theories and practices of social justice. Nikky Finney, a poet and Talladega graduate who is now a professor at the University of South Carolina, said in a statement this week that the band should not help celebrate Mr. Trump, who, she said, has maligned women and Mexican immigrants and has proposed barring all Muslims from entering the country. In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Finney, channeling a James Brown lyric, said the college had “sold out the history of Talladega College for chicken change” and “maybe a tin star on a hatemonger’s parade route. ” As of Thursday afternoon, an online petition calling for the band to withdraw from the inaugural parade had attracted more than 1, 900 signers, some of them supporters of the college who have threatened to withhold future contributions. But a second petition, which had nearly 300 supporters, argued that the parade was not about politics but “about seeing firsthand the process of a transition” and giving the students a chance to be a part of history. “We are not thinkers and believe everyone is entitled” to their own beliefs, it stated. “However, we are in support of the United States of America. ” As the debate heated up this week in online forums for students and alumni, the leadership at the private, college hunkered down to consider how best to proceed. The campus police ordered reporters off the campus. Brief interviews with a few band members on Tuesday evening revealed a group divided. Jerome Haynes, 18, a freshman who plays the snare drum, said he hoped politics would not get in the way of an exciting opportunity for the band. In contrast, Ronald Peterson, 21, a sophomore who plays cymbals, said he was going to talk to the director about staying home. “I feel that those who are not Republicans should not have to play for it,” he said. On Thursday afternoon, some students said the administration had done the right thing, despite the protests from alumni. Antonio Phillips, 24, a senior and a drum major, welcomed the exposure. “We’re musicians, so this is a good platform for us to showcase our talent in front of the world,” he said. His friend Ken Randolph, 20, a junior who is not in the band, said the concerns of alumni like Ms. Finney “weigh heavily on the students of Talladega. ” But he said Mr. Trump might benefit from the exposure to a black art form. “This is a part of our culture,” Mr. Randolph said. “With it being on his front doorstep, he might be able to apprehend the vibe and the culture. ” That drama in Talladega, a city of 15, 000 about an hour’s drive east of Birmingham, played out as black activists, including the N. A. A. C. P. president, Cornell William Brooks, were arrested on Tuesday in Mobile in a action at the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican nominated to be attorney general in the Trump administration. Mr. Sessions, who is white, was rejected by the Senate for a federal judgeship in 1986 after he was accused of making racially insensitive statements. To some Talladega alumni, the possibility that policies long opposed by could now be enacted by a Congress and executive branch was what made the notion of a black band marching for Mr. Trump seem so distasteful. “There’s a great deal of fear in this country that the Voting Rights Act is going to be abolished, that the Affordable Care Act is going to be abolished, that Planned Parenthood is going to be cut off from funding, that Medicaid is going be cut off from funding,” said J. Mason Davis, a Birmingham lawyer who graduated from the college in 1956. “Don’t you understand why we have a fear of the man?” Donavon Jackson, 24, a former trumpet player in the band who graduated last year, said performing as part of the inauguration would be particularly special for a college of about 1, 000 students whose band program is only about five years old. The school does not have a football team, which makes parade invitations all the more important. “I’m honored to go to a school that can say they marched in an inauguration parade,” said Mr. Jackson, who received a chemistry degree and now lives in Houston. “Not necessarily for the person — and that’s not necessarily saying he’s a bad person. ” In the statement on Thursday, school officials said they still faced the “challenge” of raising more than $60, 000 to cover expenses for the trip. The population of the city of Talladega is divided about evenly between blacks and whites, and to a visitor, it can feel like a place where racial harmony and discord coexist on seemingly parallel planes. Whites speak with pride about the historic black college downtown — though one white person was overheard on Wednesday warning of a liberal plot to foment a “race war” so that President Obama might declare martial law before the inauguration. While some residents said the band should stay home, and others said it should attend the event in Washington, a few spoke harshly of Mr. Trump while hoping the inauguration would help the band get noticed — something the city, which was bypassed by the interstate highway system, has struggled with in recent decades. Bonquita McClellan, 26, manages her father’s restaurant, Big Mac’s Open Pit BBQ, near campus. Ms. McClellan, who is black, said the disdain for Mr. Trump among her peers was universal. “If anybody would have had us in concentration camps,” she said, “it’d be him. ” But she also said the band should go and make a name for itself in the nation’s capital. “How often,” she asked, “does Talladega College get a chance to play for the president?” Up the street at a real estate office near the courthouse, Randy and Heather Roberts, a white couple who voted for Mr. Trump, raved about the Talladega College band and its performance at the Dec. 5 Christmas parade. Ms. Roberts showed a video of the band on her phone. “They were phenomenal,” Ms. Roberts said. Ms. Roberts, 41, said she grew up with black and white friends. Mr. Roberts, 48, said he and his wife were pleased to cater to their multiracial clientele. But when they spoke about politics, the couple sounded like people who knew something was broken but did not know how it might be fixed. “It is not going to be pleasant for the next four years,” Ms. Roberts said. “It is going to be a battle. ” | 0 |
(Reuters) - A federal judge in Alabama has issued a permanent injunction barring state officials from denying same-sex couples the right to marry in that state, according to court documents made public on Wednesday. The order, filed on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Callie Granade, came in response to a 2014 lawsuit challenging Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage, finalizing a decision Granade made in early 2015 that the state law was unconstitutional. The legality of gay marriage was at the center of a national debate until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that the U.S. Constitution provided same-sex couples the right to marry. Despite that order, Alabama officials continued to resist the change in the law. Last month, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore was suspended for issuing an administrative order to state probate judges that they should not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In March, the Alabama Supreme Court dismissed petitions by opponents of same-sex marriage asking to reinstate the ban on those unions but refused to vacate or withdraw its own March 2015 ruling in favor of the same-sex marriage ban, made just months before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. “This brings a finality by permanently prohibiting Alabama from enforcing its marriage laws which are discriminating against gay couples,” said Susan Watson, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama. “Given Alabama’s fierce resistance, this permanent relief was required to ensure marriage equality in the state.” Officials from the office of Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, who is named in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. Strange’s attorneys had asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed because the state was currently complying with the federal law. But Granade said in her ruling that “promising to sin no more” did not render a permanent injunction unnecessary. The actions of the suspended chief justice and other officials suggested that other attempts may be made to undermine the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, she wrote. “It cannot be said with assurance that there is no reasonable expectation that Alabama’s unconstitutional marriage laws will not again be enforced,” the order said. | 1 |
Children s author and father of two, Ken Jennings took to Twitter to bully 11-year old Barron Trump after entertainment site TMZ reported that Barron saw the photo of the bloodied and decapitated head of his father being held up by comedian Kathy Gifford while watching TV:TMZ reports: Barron Trump was watching TV & saw @kathygriffin holding the severed head. He thought it was his dad. My heart is broken. Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) May 31, 2017Although Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on the game show Jeopardy, it turns out he s really not that smart after all Children s author Ken Jennings obviously found the report about an 11-yr old boy being traumatized by a decapitated image of his dad on TV to be humorous, as he tweeted this disgusting comment in response to this heartbreaking story:Barron Trump saw a very long necktie on a heap of expired deli meat in a dumpster. He thought it was his dad & his little heart is breaking Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 31, 2017Twitter users came after Jennings. Some of them even sent tweets to Simon and Schuster asking them to stop working with this vile bully of children. Here are some of their response to Jennings tweet:I always try to be polite to people on here but this is a bridge too far. If this joke reflects who you are, you're an asshole. Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) May 31, 2017Which books so I won't purchase? Wow! A children's book author mocking a child bc he thought his dad was dead! WTF is up w/ these people?!?! Don't Get Mad (@DontBeSad2017) May 31, 2017Sorry, @KenJennings, unfollow. I don't need the trashy humor. Get that from all directions all day long. Not signing up for more. Ebookwormy (@Ebookwormy1) May 31, 2017I can't believe anyone as intelligent as you doesn't see the problem with mocking a child any child in this way. Juli Caldwell (@ImJuliCaldwell) May 31, 2017Let's tell Third Place Books, as listed on his Twitter bio, what we think about supporting this loser! @ThirdPlaceBooks Lady Liberty (@DutyOfAPatriot) May 31, 2017Haha would you get a load of this guy he actually thinks hes edgy for insulting an 11 year old child. aidan (@LangNasty) May 31, 2017Even Donald Trump Jr. replied to Jennings vile tweet attacking his young brother: It takes a real man to pick on an 11 year old. Yet another low from the left, but they will rationalize this away with their usual excuses. https://t.co/JDF3VsVEJ1 Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 31, 2017Jennings replied to Donald Trump Jr. that he will kill as many white rhinos as it takes to prove his masculinity to Donald Trump Jr. How very clever I will kill as many white rhinos as it takes to prove my masculinity to Donald Trump Jr. https://t.co/mm8YzH2NPB Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 31, 2017Facebook users also had plenty to say about Jennings vile remarks about Barron Trump on his Facebook page. Here are a few of their comments to Jennings:Takes a big tough guy to mock a child. A real genius doesn t make fun of a child. Pathetic.For such a smart man you certainly were quick to ruin your writing career. Maybe you and Kathy Griffin can go on an apology tour.You are truly a pile of human excrement .. your publisher should be ashamed.Does it really make you feel like a man to pick on an innocent 11 year old boy? You are a total douche!!!!Jennings you are a spineless sniveling coward. Why don t you talk smack to someone your own size you sick low life scumbag. | 0 |
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Democratic Vice President Joe Biden wants American women to get back in the workforce to help boost the economy. “If we just put all the women back to work, if they were able to afford childcare, we would increase the GDP in America by close to eight tenths of one percent,” he said. “That’s trillions of dollars over the next decade.”
Biden made his remarks during a campaign event for Hillary Clinton at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. “The state of our economy could be characterized by a single word: pitiful,” he argued. “We’re still battling recession, I don’t care what the official stats are saying, America is still in recession. And we’re not doing anything about it.”
He added that it was “lazy American women” who brought about the downfall of the economy, because “they sit around on their behinds, doing nothing and squandering their days away when they could be improving the country that has given so much to them.” “I’m not sure how exactly we got to this point, but we’re here and we need to move. Like, yesterday,” he said.
“Mark my words and mark them well,” he addressed the crowd. “Hillary Clinton is the only one who can force American women to go to work. This is true because of a number of reasons. First, she’s a woman herself and not just any woman; she’s a self-made woman. So you better believe what she’s saying is true and has been tried and tested in practice plenty of times.”
“Second, Hillary Clinton understands how difficult it can be to give up the status of a free-loader when your husband is the bread-winner of the household and the wife is expected to tend to the house, the children, make sure dinner is served and always be in the mood for marital duties. She’s been all that and she’s learned how to break free from it, the hard way, I might add,” Biden continued.
“Today’s women are pampered and aren’t used to rolling up their sleeves and getting the job done on their own,” the vice president said. “They’re too dependent, too weak and too lazy to contribute to the economy. The reason for that is they’ve learned how to manipulate men by employing one of the most fundamental laws of economics: when a sought-after commodity becomes short in supply, the demand for it rises even higher.”
“Now, that’s all fine and dandy when it comes to their personal interests, but if you look at the big picture, it’s the economy that’s missing out on valuable workforce. And that’s why we need to get them off their lazy behinds and get them into their workplaces. And like I said, Hillary Clinton is the only one who can do it, which is what makes her the ideal candidate for the next President of the United States. We need to heal this country, folks, not run it into the ground even deeper,” Biden concluded. | 0 |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal judge in Illinois on Tuesday blocked same-day registration at polling places in the state’s most populous counties, saying a law enacted last year disproportionately favored urban voters over their rural counterparts. The ruling resulted from a federal court lawsuit brought in August by a group aligned with a conservative think tank challenging a state law allowing Election Day voter registration at polling places in counties with populations of 100,000 or more. “The application of this legislation favors the urban citizen and dilutes the vote of the rural citizen,” Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan of the Northern District of Illinois wrote in his opinion on Tuesday, six weeks before the Nov. 8 election. The Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center, which filed the lawsuit, argued the population threshold unconstitutionally discriminated against voters in less populated counties and boosted Democrats in heavily Democratic Cook County, where Chicago is located. “The court ruled that if Illinois is going to have Election Day voter registration at polling places, it should be available statewide – and it should be fair,” Jacob Huebert, a senior attorney for the Liberty Justice Center, or LJC, said in a statement on Tuesday. Maura Possley, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s Office, was not immediately available to comment on whether there would be an appeal. LJC was founded by the Illinois Policy Institute, which keeps its donors secret, but Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who took office in January 2015, has publicly acknowledged giving the group at least $500,000 over a period of years. The law, passed in late 2014 by the Democratic-led legislature and signed in early 2015 by former Democratic Governor Pat Quinn, allowed Election Day voter registration for the first time, including at polling places. But the section of the law pertaining to polling place registration pertained only to counties with populations of 100,000 or more. Democratic state Senator Don Harmon said in a statement on Tuesday he was disappointed by the decision, which came on National Voter Registration Day, calling it a “blatantly political effort to quell participation in Illinois elections.” Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, also expressed unhappiness with the ruling. “We are concerned about the impact of this decision, changing the rules of voting so close to this hotly contested election,” Edwin Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement. | 1 |
What the hell are we doing over there, insanity... | 1 |
Former President George W. Bush weighed in on his successor's foreign policy challenges in a closed-door meeting over the meeting, voicing concerns about Iran's trustworthiness as Washington and Tehran resume nuclear talks.
Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting Monday with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York. The U.S. and five world powers are trying to finalize a nuclear deal with Iran by the end of June.
But Bush, who rarely comments on the Obama administration's efforts in public, offered a word of caution about the negotiators on the other side of the table, during a closed-door meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday in Las Vegas.
According to a report in Bloomberg View, Bush warned that new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears "smooth," but said: "You've got to ask yourself, is there a new policy or did they just change the spokesman?"
Just how tough Bush was on the sitting commander-in-chief, though, is a matter of dispute.
The Bloomberg report said Bush was highly critical of President Obama's efforts on Iran and the Islamic State
But another attendee, Eric Golub, told FoxNews.com this characterization was "totally wrong."
"[Bush] went out of his way not to criticize President Obama," Golub said.
The meeting was off-the-record, but Golub -- a conservative comedian who describes himself as a "passionate Jewish Republican" -- said he's speaking out to correct the record.
Golub confirmed Bush's comments on Rouhani, but said the ex-president was criticizing Iran, not Obama, in sounding a cautious tone about the course of talks.
At the heart of the pending Iran deal is a commitment by Iran to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. While Obama says those sanctions could snap back if needed, Bush apparently cast doubt on that claim.
"You think the Middle East is chaotic now? Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren. That's how Americans should view the deal," he said, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also reported that Bush accused Obama of putting the U.S. in "retreat" while criticizing Obama's efforts to check the rise of the Islamic State.
Golub said Bush wasn't quite so harsh. He said Bush specifically said he did not want to project an image of the U.S. in retreat.
The toughest Bush appeared to get was quoting Sen. Lindsey Graham as saying the 2011 troop pullout from Iraq was a "strategic blunder."
Golub said Bush described ISIS as Al Qaeda's "second act" and was delivering the basic message that they're "evil killers" -- and the way to deal with them is to kill them.
The New York Times described Bush's comments on Saturday as a "tacit critique" of his successor. Golub described the Times' account as more accurate than the one in Bloomberg.
To date, Bush indeed has largely avoided commenting on the current administration -- though former Vice President Dick Cheney has been outspoken in his condemnation of Obama's national security policies.
The Iran talks, though, have generated a heated international debate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing Congress at House Speaker John Boehner's invitation, blasted the preliminary nuclear deal before it was even announced.
Critics like Netanyahu say it does not close Iran's path to a nuclear weapon, and merely delays that possibility while giving Iran access to funding by lifting sanctions.
Proponents, though, say the framework deal is better than the alternative options -- including military conflict -- and would allow international inspectors to ensure Iran is living up to its end of any agreement. | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese corruption suspect who was on the country s list of 100 most wanted overseas fugitives has returned to China from the United States after giving himself up, the anti-graft watchdog said on Monday. Xu Xuewei, who ran a technology company in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, fled to the United States in late 2012 after being suspected of contract fraud, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Xu returned to China to give himself up under the influence of policy and legal deterrence , the commission said, without elaborating. It was not immediately possible to reach Xu, his family, or a legal representative for comment. Separately, the commission played a short interview with another corruption suspect, former Beijing driving school headmaster Liu Changkai, who turned himself in last month and had been on the run in the United States since 1999 having been wanted for fraud. Against a background of downbeat music, Liu described his loneliness at having had to live on the lam. Living overseas wasn t too difficult, but it was very lonely. It was like being in jail, Liu said. It was also not possible to reach Liu or a representative for comment. As part of President Xi Jinping s vigorous anti-corruption campaign, China has pursued an overseas search dubbed Operation Fox Hunt for corrupt officials and business executives who have fled abroad with their assets. In April 2015, Chinese authorities published a list of 100 most-wanted suspects it believes to be hiding overseas, many living in the United States, Canada and Australia. Xu is the 46th person on the list to have returned to China since the operation was launched, the commission said in a statement on its website. Liu was the 19th person on the list. Many Western countries, however, have been reluctant to help, or to sign extradition treaties, unwilling to send people back to a country where rights groups say mistreatment of criminal suspects remains a problem. They also complain China is often unwilling to provide proof of the crimes that would be acceptable to a Western court. | 0 |
Donald Trump has been very busy trying to defend his anti-Semitic Star of David tweet, which came from an obviously bigoted white supremacist website, but this latest attempt to defend the indefensible really takes the cake. Trump actually tried to use Disney s popular Frozen movie which in some sort of advertising campaign for goods relating to the movie used a 6-pointed star to defend his own bigoted Twitter imagery. He tweeted the following:Where is the outrage for this Disney book? Is this the 'Star of David' also? Dishonest media! #Frozen pic.twitter.com/4LJBpSm8xa Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2016The thing is, though, Disney didn t use the star to suggest corruption or put it on top of a pile of cash. It was innocently promoting stickers for children. What Trump s simple mind can t understand is that it was the combination of things in the image that he tweeted that made it so outrageously offensive. Well, Hillary Clinton was not letting Trump s ridiculous argument fly. She seized on Trump s ignorant tweet, and burned him hard:Do you want to build a strawman? https://t.co/AoeNTJOGpo Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 7, 2016Hillary runs intellectual circles around Trump. This is just a preview of what we re going to see in the debates. His ignorance will really show then, and no amount of Crooked Hillary memes and tweets, no number of raucus, violent rallies, and no amount of dog whistling to white supremacists will be able to hide his massive ignorance and gross lack of presidential qualifications on the debate stage opposite the only truly qualified candidate in this race for the highest office in the land.Keep leaning on him Hillary. We all know how thin his skin is. Make him IMPLODE.Featured image via Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images | 0 |
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