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On Thursday, the New York Times published an article entitled Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Department. Then, we read the article. Let s just say that not only is there no there there, the article literally proves the exact opposite of what they are trying to say.The lede paragraph of the article says this:A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department agreed to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport for an adviser to former President Bill Clinton in 2009, according to emails released Thursday, raising new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department.That sounds pretty, well, damning is perhaps too strong a word, but the very next paragraph admits that the adviser, Douglas J. Band, didn t get the passport. Think about it, not even an adviser to the Secretary of State s very own husband, who happens to be a former President, got what he wanted out of the State Department. That s the very opposite of evidence of quid pro quo. Vox has more detail:If this proves anything at all, it s that the media is certainly not in the tank for Clinton. Actually, it was Harvard who proved that back in July:A new report released this week by Harvard Kennedy School s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy found Clinton has received far more negative coverage than any other candidate in the race thus far. The study was based on an analysis of news statements from CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.According to the study, a whopping 84 percent of Clinton coverage is negative. At that time, just 43 percent of Trump coverage was negative. The New York Times article might not be absolute proof that the media is stacked against Clinton, but when people think of the mainstream media, they certainly are at the top of most people s lists. The New York Times supposedly sets the standard, and apparently the standard in this election cycle is to manufacture controversies that, with the teeniest bit of analysis, actually disprove the controversies. Yes, that s convoluted and confusing, but that s the only way propaganda like this works.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. | 0 |
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. | 1 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria s Raqqa said on Tuesday the alliance will capture the last parts of the city held by Islamic State in the coming hours. The spokesman, Talal Selo, said by telephone that there was still fighting around the National Hospital, which the SDF said earlier it had taken, and around the city stadium. | 0 |
A staggering expos by Newsweek has revealed that the city and surrounding areas of once-great Detroit, are now so polluted that asthmatic people are literally choking to death.Zoe Schlanger s piece for Newsweek follows the story of 38-year-old asthmatic Jacqueline Carson and her 10-year-old son forced to River Rogue, a small town of 7,000 on the edge of Detroit by unaffordable housing anywhere better. Prior to moving to the area, her asthma was a footnote in her life, and since, it has become the headline. She suffers multiple crippling attacks a week, and her lungs feel constantly under assault by the toxic air about her. Air which, Schlanger writes, has to be breathed to be believed: As I drove east from the Detroit airport into River Rouge, she writes, the acrid stench of rotten eggs filled my rental car despite the windows being rolled up against the cold. I kept driving, and the smell acquired notes of burnt plastic and gasoline. If I had been anywhere else, I d have worried that my car was about to burst into flames. But I was in River Rouge, so I knew better. I pulled into a gas station. As soon as I opened my car door, I could feel the air in the back of my throat like a fine spray of gravel.It s dirty in River Rouge, and everybody here knows it. The way the air smells, and the gas flares, coal piles and smokestacks around every corner don t let you forget. There are 52 sites of heavy industry within a 3-mile radius; 22 of these either produce over 25,000 pounds or handle more than 10,000 pounds of toxic chemical waste, putting them on the Environmental Protection Agency s Toxics Release Inventory Program. For years, the area has also been out of compliance for sulfur dioxide, meaning there s more SO 2 a known contributor to asthma in the air than federal rules allow.As with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan is failing to protect its citizens from harm by native industries. Polluting corporations are making the area uninhabitable, while the state stands idly by. As Schlanger uncovered:According to the latest state data, more than 15 percent of Detroit s adults have asthma, a 29 percent higher rate than the rest of Michigan. Detroiters are hospitalized for their asthma three times more frequently than other Michiganders. Being black ups the rate significantly: Black Detroiters are hospitalized for asthma at a rate more than 150 percent that of their white neighborsThese citizens pay their taxes, their mortgages and their rents to live in a place so polluted that people are becoming ill and dying.This is yet another life-critical failure to be added to the expanding list of Michigan s Republican Governor Rick Snyder who now faces a recall petition by Michigan residents who have been made, quite literally sick, by his ultra-right wing policies. The petition has 60 days to gather 790,000 signatures to begin the process of ridding the state of perhaps the worst Governor in its history. Author of the petition, Rev. David Bullock of Detroit s Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church told WJBK: It s not about Democrats. This is not about Republicans. It s not about whites or blacks. It s not about rich or poor. You have all kinds of folks rural citizens, urban citizens, people of faith, people who are atheist, [of varying] sexual orientation we ve got everybody. And you have to ask yourself this question: When everybody agrees, what does that mean? I think that means Rick Snyder s got to go. Let s hope Snyder goes quickly, and the process of repairing the broken state of Michigan can begin in earnest. People s lives and livelihoods depend on it.You can watch a local news report from earlier this year about an increase in emissions from a Detroit factory, and the battle of locals to try to protect themselves and their families.Featured Image via Flickr Creative Commons | 0 |
ASTANA (Reuters) - Syria s U.N. ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, said on Friday that U.S. and Turkish troops should leave Syria immediately. He made the demand during Syrian peace talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. | 0 |
You know things are getting bad on the campaign trail when you have to appeal to the child in everyone by offering French fries for everyone. Well, that s exactly what happened at a rally in Iowa over the weekend while presidential hopeful Ted Cruz was apparently trying to appeal to the future voters of America. This is the stuff you have to do when you don t really have any accomplishments to speak of besides shutting down the government and pissing people off.In a lame attempt at throwing First Lady Michelle Obama under the bus, Ted Cruz decided healthy food is for suckers, we need to bring back all the stuff that makes our kids fat and lazy, so Cruz says: Let me say something to the school-aged kids here. When Heidi s first lady, French fries are coming back to the cafeteria The last I checked the cardboard was supposed to be on the tray and not in the food! Yeah! When Ted Cruz is president, it ll be French fries and sugary soda for everyone!! Yeah!! Then recess all day! And no more homework!Cruz honestly sounded like he was running for student body president of the 6th grade. Which probably isn t completely dumb, considering that the average Republican voter hasn t gotten past that reading and maturity level.So, everyone a vote for Cruz is a vote for French fries YEAH!Video/Featured image from Vine | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration publicly released on Wednesday its rules for deciding whether to disclose cyber security flaws or keep them secret, in an effort to bring more transparency to a process that has long been cloaked in mystery. The move is an attempt by the U.S. government to address criticism that it too often jeopardizes internet security by stockpiling the cyber vulnerabilities it detects in order to preserve its ability to launch its own attacks on computer systems. The revised rules, published on whitehouse.gov, are intended to shed light on the process for how various federal agencies weigh the costs of keeping a flaw secret, said Rob Joyce, the White House cyber security coordinator. Speaking at an Aspen Institute event in Washington, Joyce said the rules were the “most sophisticated” in the world and that they set the United States apart from most other nations. Private companies, he said, “are not getting tips from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran” about flaws in their technology. Under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. government created an inter-agency review, known as the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, to determine what to do with flaws unearthed primarily by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA). The process is designed to balance law enforcement and U.S. intelligence desires to hack into devices with the need to warn manufacturers so that they can patch holes before criminals and other hackers take advantage of them. The new Trump administration charter on the process explains how it functions and names the agencies involved in the vulnerability reviews. They include intelligence agencies in addition to several civilian departments, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy and State. The NSA is listed as the “executive secretariat” of the inter-agency group, tasked with coordinating debate over flaws submitted by the various agencies if there is disagreement about whether to disclose them. If disagreements are not reconciled the group will vote on whether to disclose or retain the flaw. The rules also require an annual report, portions of which will be made public, that provides metrics about the amount of flaws discovered, retained and disclosed. Decisions to retain vulnerabilities must be reconsidered every year, according to the charter. The publication of the charter is “a major improvement,” said Ari Scwhartz, coordinator of the Coalition for Cybersecurity Policy and Law and a former Obama administration cyber official. The Obama administration sought to release a similar document before the end of last year but ran out of time, Schwartz said. Some security experts have long criticized the process as overly secretive and too often erring against disclosure. Joyce said on Wednesday more than 90 percent of flaws are ultimately disclosed, though some critics say they are not shared quickly enough and that the most severe flaws are too often stockpiled. The criticism grew earlier this year when a global ransomware attack known as WannaCry infected computers in at least 150 countries, knocking hospitals offline and disrupting services at factories. The attack was made possible because of a flaw in Microsoft’s Windows software that the NSA had used to build a hacking tool for its own use. But in a breach U.S. investigators are still working to understand, that tool and others ended up in the hands of a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers, which then published them online. Suspected North Korean hackers spotted the Windows flaw and repurposed it to unleash the WannaCry attack, according to cyber experts. North Korea has routinely denied involvement in cyber attacks against other countries. Asked about the WannaCry attack, Joyce declined to say whether the Windows flaw detected by the NSA went through the vulnerability review process. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Wednesday rejected appeals that they need new leaders to win back disaffected voters, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to an eighth term as House leader over a Rust Belt congressman who said the party had lost its connection to the American working class. Ms. Pelosi’s victory over Representative Tim Ryan, a congressman from a district anchored in Youngstown, Ohio, ensures that the party will be led in the next Congress by the established “coastal” Democrats who have increasingly defined it — Ms. Pelosi, 76, who represents San Francisco, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, 66, who has held various leadership posts since 2005. The leadership elections, conducted by secret ballot behind closed doors, stamped out calls for new leaders. But while Ms. Pelosi won, 134 to 63, Mr. Ryan’s significant share of the total served as a measure of internal discontent and in some ways a repudiation of Ms. Pelosi’s leadership. “I think there’s a lot of ” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York. “And a lot of really wanting to have a plan. ” For years, support for Ms. Pelosi has run so deep that few would even consider challenging her. In 2010, after a wave of Tea Party Republicans swept Democrats out of power, she lost just 43 votes. Ms. Pelosi, whose victory was mockingly cheered by Republicans as good news for them, dismissed the idea that House Democrats could no longer win with her at the helm. And she vowed that Democrats would continue to stand as a foil to Donald J. Trump’s administration. “We know how to win elections,” Ms. Pelosi said. “We’ve done it in the past. We will do it again by making that differentiation. ” Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon, who backed Mr. Ryan, said after the vote that unless Democrats changed course and adopted “a working man and woman’s agenda,” they should expect defeat. “I’m very worried we just signed the Democratic Party’s death certificate for the next decade and a half,” Mr. Schrader said. Democrats also Representative Steny H. Hoyer, 77, of Maryland as whip, the No. 2 position, as well as Representative James E. Clyburn, 76, of South Carolina in the No. 3 spot as the assistant Democratic leader. Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Clyburn have been part of the Democratic leadership team since 2003 and 2007. Both ran unopposed. Representative Joseph Crowley of New York was also elected chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and in a narrow victory, 98 to 96, Representative Linda T. Sánchez of California defeated another California Democrat, Representative Barbara Lee, to become vice chairwoman. After a dismal Election Day for Democrats, the fight for Ms. Pelosi’s post had become a proxy battle for the future of the party, with House Democrats agonizing over how to reconnect with the voters who abandoned them. “We got wiped out in the Midwest, and we’re toxic in rural America,” aides said Mr. Ryan told his colleagues behind closed doors before the vote. “Ultimately, we’re responsible. ” But in an interview Tuesday, Mr. Ryan suggested few ideas for how to appeal to voters beyond essentially crowdsourcing the task to more House Democrats, and he offered no indication that working with the Republican majority on any particular policy compromises would be a priority. The Democratic leaders seemed short on concrete strategies, too, committing generally to refocus their message on economic issues. Many also vowed to stand in opposition to the Trump administration, gambling that Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans would disappoint voters and prompt a return to the Democratic Party they rejected. Some of the more specific strategies considered included starting a more aggressive recruitment campaign for Democratic candidates from more conservative areas, as well as increasing their outreach to traditionally “red” districts. “Just because you’re only getting 30 percent of the vote in some area doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go there,” said Representative Cedric L. Richmond of Louisiana. “You should go there and engage people and tell them what you believe in. ” Disappointed by the outcome of the leadership election, a handful of Democrats who had backed Mr. Ryan vowed to press forward with a proposal to turn some jobs, such as the chairman of the party’s campaign arm, into elected positions. That plan is expected to meet resistance from Ms. Pelosi, who retains the power to appoint people to those positions, though some Democrats have expressed an interest in the idea. Last week Ms. Pelosi selected Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico to again lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, even though House Democrats picked up just six seats in this election. Though he collected only a dozen or so public endorsements, Mr. Ryan mounted an unlikely challenge to Ms. Pelosi, long considered a legislative and powerhouse. Driven by the conviction that Democrats need a new leader, he tried to harness discontent with a leadership team that has failed three times to reclaim the majority since being swept out in 2010. Trying to quell calls to replace her, Ms. Pelosi announced her nominations last week for a handful of other positions, and proposed that three members from Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York share the leadership duties of the party’s messaging committee, offering more regional diversity. She also released plans to incorporate more junior members into leadership roles, among other ideas, such as including a freshman Democrat in the leadership team’s regular meetings. But each new idea has underscored the fact that Ms. Pelosi refuses to relinquish much power and has cultivated a large, loyal following that does not expect her to. It is from that sizable collection of House Democrats that she draws her picks for smaller leadership posts, making her a powerful ally and, for those like Mr. Ryan who have challenged her, a formidable opponent. “She has a lot of friends,” Mr. Ryan said. “This is her caucus, clearly. ” | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump’s statement Thursday that the United States needs to strengthen its nuclear capabilities referred to the need to prevent nuclear weapons from spreading to unstable countries or terrorist groups, a spokesman said. “President-elect Trump was referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it - particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes,” spokesman Jason Miller said. In his Twitter post earlier, Trump wrote, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” | 1 |
Drinking alcohol might seem like the normal or ‘hip’ thing to do, but consuming it in excess over time can take a toll on one’s health. Effects of excessive alcohol consumption include increased risk... | 1 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, for decades one of the state’s most powerful politicians, was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in federal prison for collecting millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan federal court said she hoped the penalty would cause “the next corrupt politician to hesitate” before accepting a bribe. The prison term could amount to a life sentence for the 72-year-old Silver, who fought prostate cancer last year. The sentencing capped a stunning fall from power for Silver, a Democrat who represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side and served as speaker of the state Assembly from 1994 to 2015. Silver’s counterpart in the state Senate, former Majority Leader Dean Skelos, was also found guilty of corruption just 10 days after a jury convicted Silver of seven counts in December. The legislative leaders were two of the “three men in a room,” along with the governor, who control virtually all legislation in the state capital of Albany. Their convictions represented the biggest wins in a broad anti-corruption campaign by Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who has charged numerous politicians with graft. “Today’s stiff sentence is a just and fitting end to Sheldon Silver’s long career of corruption,” Bharara said in a statement following the hearing. More than 30 legislators have been forced from office for criminal or ethical issues since 2000, according to the nonprofit watchdog Citizens Union. Prosecutors said Silver awarded $500,000 in secret state grant money to a cancer researcher who, in exchange, funneled patients to Silver’s law firm, allowing the lawmaker to collect millions of dollars in referral fees. He was also accused of steering real estate developers to another law firm in exchange for kickbacks and then throwing his support to rent-control legislation favored by the developers. Silver offered an apology during the hearing, saying: “I’ve let down my family, I’ve let down my colleagues, I’ve let down my constituents, and I am truly, truly sorry for that.” Minutes later, he appeared to have no reaction when Caproni announced the sentence. His lawyers said they plan to appeal his conviction. Steven Molo, one of Silver’s lawyers, had asked Caproni for a “sentence that tempers justice with mercy,” citing Silver’s age, health and what he described as a lifetime of good works for the people of New York. But prosecutors said Silver deserved a sentence longer than that of any other convicted New York public official, given his leadership position and the sheer scope of his misconduct. Caproni agreed, telling Silver that corruption “attacks the very heart of our system of government” before offering a blunt assessment of his behavior. “Mr. Silver, those are not the actions of a basically honest person,” she said after listing some of his crimes. “Those are the actions of a scheming, corrupt politician.” The judge also ordered Silver to pay a fine of $1.75 million and forfeit more than $5 million in ill-gotten gains. He is scheduled to report to prison on July 1. | 0 |
There are things that, with all the excitement going on at both the RNC and the DNC, are getting overlooked right now. However, Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) spoke on one such issue that needs much closer attention: That of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. Johnson has a choice word for the settlers, and it s bang-on target: There has been a steady [stream of Israeli settlers], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself. And they are. For the past several decades, Israel has been eating up Palestinian land and treating Palestinian citizens like subjects and much worse while their leader, Bibi Netanyahu, says Israel must occupy all the land in order to ensure their own safety. There s no regard for the people already living there. Termites stream in and eat the wood of our houses. Israelis stream in and eat the houses of Palestinians. An apt description if there ever was one.Johnson went on to say: You see one home after another being appropriated by Jewish people who come in to claim that land just because somebody did not spend the night there.The home their [Palestinian] ancestors lived in for generations becomes an Israeli home and a flag goes up. The Palestinians are barred from flying flags in their own neighborhoods. Nobody in the U.S. would tolerate being told they can t fly the American flag. Nobody. But we ll gladly call a country that does this, and so much more with glee, an ally. Disgusting.Why is this so important right now? Don t we have more important things to worry about?The answer to those questions is, yes and no. It isn t just important because we re busy supporting an apartheid state, or because of Israel s gross human rights violations. It isn t just because we shouldn t support them if we re going to call ourselves the bastion of freedom we think we are. It s also because our support of Israel has poisoned many of our leaders to the point where they actually want to criminalize freedom of expression.The BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divest and Sanction, is under attack here because of our blind love for Israel. Staunch supporters of Israel have been quietly criminalizing that movement, despite the fact that this very same thing helped bring about an end to apartheid in South Africa.Boycotts are also a staple of American protest. Yet the pro-Israel crowd would destroy freedom of expression in dogged support of an ally that maybe shouldn t be an ally. Staunch defenders of the Constitution would tear up the First Amendment before denouncing Israel. It s sick.Israel uses us. Sure, some may say that we need them for intelligence on more hostile Middle Eastern nations (when a lot of our support is because of Sheldon Adelson, his money, and AIPAC), so we send billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment to them, for which we the taxpayers are on the hook, and pretend not to see their relentless and violent crawl across Palestine.We wouldn t turn a blind eye to termites relentless crawl through the structures of our houses, though.Ben Cohen, of The Daily Banter, put it just as perfectly as Rep. Johnson when he said: Israelis routinely claim that they have to defend themselves against Palestinian attacks. But occupying someone else s land is an attack itself, so it is impossible to defend yourself if you are the person attacking. So can we please stop pretending Israel is being attacked? As of March, half of Israeli Jews actually supported ethnic cleansing. We have white supremacists here that support the same thing. We fought a war in Bosnia over ethnic cleansing. It s only something we must stop when we hear calls for ethnic cleansing coming from people and places we don t like. Israel? They ve brainwashed us into thinking they re always the victim.Our growing problem with Islamophobia isn t helping, either.Going into the final stretch of this election cycle, Israel isn t just a distant foreign policy issue something to be dealt with, maybe, after the new president and Congress take office in January. Israel s atrocious and disgusting policies toward Palestine impact us in a direct way, because our support of them could cost us our own freedom. At least we have some leaders here who understand that.Featured image by Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - David Nason, a General Electric executive and former Treasury Department official, is the front runner to become the Federal Reserve’s top Wall Street regulator under President-elect Donald Trump, sources familiar with the screening said on Thursday. Nason leads GE’s Energy Financial Services division, which funds worldwide energy development, mostly from thermal and renewable sources. In 2008, Nason was a deputy to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as U.S. regulators tried to stabilize Wall Street and prevent an economic meltdown after the housing market collapsed. Trump will have a chance to nominate the Fed’s vice chair for supervision - a role conceived in the wake of the financial collapse to watchdog Wall Street. If Nason is tapped for the role, he would be the most senior rule-writer for Wall Street with a large say in how leading banks are supervised day to day. In recent weeks, other names have been floated as vice chair candidates who can boast support from Wall Street. Representative French Hill, an Arkansas Republican and former banker, has been favored by some in the banking industry while some Washington lobbyists have favored Paul Atkins, a former commissioner with the Securities and Exchange Commission. While no final decision has been made on who should fill the job, Nason has Paulson’s backing and has become the front runner in recent weeks, the sources said. In the last several weeks, Nason has met with Trump’s senior economic advisers Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin, according to one source familiar with the meetings. A Trump spokesperson declined to comment. Trump has named Cohn as head of the White House National Economic Council and nominated Mnuchin as Treasury secretary. Both Cohn and Mnuchin held senior roles at Goldman Sachs, and they have heard directly from Paulson, the company’s former chief executive, that Nason is a solid pick, according to another source familiar with the screening. Nason did not immediately respond to a call for comment. A spokesman for Paulson declined to comment. In Paulson’s memoir, “On the Brink,” the former cabinet secretary singles Nason out for praise during the financial crisis. | 1 |
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi s strongest potential challenger in the country s 2018 election plans to return from exile in the coming weeks, his daughter said on Friday. Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander and government minister, said this week he intended to run for president in a surprise announcement from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he is based. Shafik s daughter May Shafik told Reuters on Friday he was preparing to depart, first for Europe and the United States. Then he will head back to Egypt to start his presidential campaign, she said. Shafik had been prevented from leaving the UAE in previous days but had now received assurances that he could travel freely, she said, without specifying who gave the assurances. The UAE denied placing any movement restrictions on Shafik, after a video of him aired by Qatari-owned TV channel Al Jazeera said he had been barred from travel. May Shafik said there had been no intention to release that video, and that it had been leaked to Al Jazeera. The video was filmed as a precaution, she said. The UAE is an ally of Sisi s government, which has been officially silent on Shafik s candidacy announcement. Several Egyptian TV pundits, however, came out against Shafik in a sign of opposition he is likely to face from state-linked media. Shafik is the most serious potential challenger yet to Sisi, who is widely expected to seek a second term, although he has not yet announced he will run. Sisi as a military commander led the ousting of former president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, before his own landslide election a year later. Sisi s supporters see him as key to stability following prolonged, violent upheaval that followed the 2011 Egyptian revolt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak. Sisi s government is fighting an Islamist militant insurgency in the Sinai region and has also enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year that critics say have dented his popularity. Shafik, a minister under Mubarak, narrowly lost to Mursi in Egypt s 2012 election before fleeing overseas. | 1 |
Marching around without any clear direction, mission or destination — and without any clearly stated goal — the women marchers in downtown Washington, DC, threatened to never leave the nation’s capital as they protest newly inaugurated President Donald Trump. [“We won’t go away, welcome to your first day,” women marchers chanted near the White House. It’s ironic that they’re threatening to never leave, since many of the protesters are actually leaving tomorrow or the next day after having been bussed in from around the country and even from Canada. For them to actually stay and occupy Washington, D. C. would cost millions per day — an unrealistic possibility. It’s much more likely these protesters are going to catch their bus or their flight home in the next day or so and depart the national political stage without gaining any real ground. Part of the reason for their looming irrelevancy was evident in the disorganized nature of the march — which was actually more of a giant gathering downtown. Protesters did not have a clear message of what they were asking for — other than venting anger at the fact Donald Trump is the duly elected and inaugurated president of the United States — and did not even march in a coordinated way in any particular direction throughout DC other than to just wander around in groups of a few hundred chanting one thing or another like the aforementioned threat to never leave or another age old Democratic Party protester chant “This is what Democracy looks like. ” Sure, celebrities like Madonna and Ashley Judd and top Democrats like newly elected California Sen. Kamala Harris joined in with speeches but the largely incoherent message that asks for nothing reasonable — the only thing they seem to be demanding is that President Trump go away, something that will not happen — leaves the women marchers against Trump leaving Washington empty handed. | 0 |
There have been aerial signs reading “Hillary for Prison,” rallying cries of “lock her up,” misogynistic souvenir swag mocking her body parts and, in a violent turn, a public call for Hillary Clinton to be executed. Political conventions are usually a mix of talking up the party’s nominee and denouncing the opponent. But as Republicans gather in Cleveland to nominate Donald J. Trump, the venom being directed at Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has taken a strikingly sinister tone that makes the days of and at past conventions seem tame. Here are some of the harshest attacks leveled at Mrs. Clinton this week. Hillary Clinton’s responsibility for the deaths of Americans in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 has been a regular topic of conversation among Republicans, and on Tuesday Al Baldasaro, a delegate for Mr. Trump from New Hampshire who advises him on veterans issues, suggested that she had committed treason. “This whole thing disgusts me — Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” Mr. Baldasaro said on The Kuhner Report radio show. Mrs. Clinton has not been charged with committing any crimes. Mr. Trump has previously described Mr. Baldasaro, a state representative from New Hampshire who was on the convention floor on Tuesday night, as his favorite veteran. Mr. Baldasaro had no regrets about the remark on Wednesday, telling WMUR of Manchester, N. H. that he would also be satisfied with other forms of execution. “As far as I’m concerned, it is treason and the penalty for treason is the firing squad — or maybe it’s the electric chair now,” he said. The U. S. Secret Service later said it was investigating the matter. If execution is taking things too far, sending Mrs. Clinton to prison is another popular wish at the Republican National Convention. The chants of “lock her up!” echoed through Quicken Loans Arena on Monday night when Michael Flynn, a retired lieutenant general advising Mr. Trump, ripped into Mrs. Clinton for her “careless” use of a private email server as secretary of state. “Lock her up,” he said, rousing the crowd. “You’re damn right. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lock her up! You know why we’re saying that? If I did a 10th of what she did, I would be in jail today. ” Mr. Flynn, who was briefly considered as a potential running mate for Mr. Trump, also called on “Crooked Hillary Clinton” to quit the race because of her lack of integrity. Ben Carson got a prime speaking slot at the convention on Tuesday evening, and he took a different approach at questioning Mrs. Clinton’s integrity. Digging into her college thesis about Saul Alinksy, the community organizer and radical, Mr. Carson suggested that Mrs. Clinton admired him. Then he pointed out that Mr. Alinsky had acknowledged Lucifer on the dedication page of one of his books, suggesting that such an association was somehow damning for Mrs. Clinton. “Are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model someone who acknowledges Lucifer?” Mr. Carson asked. “Think about that. ” The connection might seem like a stretch, but Mr. Carson, who ended his own presidential bid in March, doubled down on his assertions Wednesday morning. “If she believed that at that time — and now you look at her actions — you look at what she advocates, the killing of babies, the dissolution of the traditional family, all these kinds of things — those are pretty consistent, quite frankly,” Mr. Carson said on CNN. One of the most emotional attacks on Mrs. Clinton came from Patricia Smith, whose son was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack. On the first night of the convention, she called Mrs. Clinton a liar who was responsible for her son’s death. “For all of this loss, for all of this grief, for all of this cynicism the tragedy in Benghazi has brought upon America, I blame Hillary Clinton,” she told the cheering crowd on Monday. “I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son. ” After laying blame on Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Smith also accused her of lying to her directly about how her son, Sean, had died and said that the State Department had withheld information from her. “How could she do this to me? ,” she said. “How could she do this to any American family?” | 0 |
So much for the most transparent administration in history Because the step-daughter of Theresa Heinz-Kerry, a woman who is reportedly worth a cool billion, needs her daddy to steal from US taxpayers to help fund her non-profit? It looks like John Kerry is using his position as Secretary of State to enrich his family, just like his predecessor Hillary Clinton did.More than $9 million of Department of State money has been funneled through the Peace Corps to a nonprofit foundation started and run by Secretary of State John Kerry s daughter, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.The Department of State funded a Peace Corps program created by Dr. Vanessa Kerry and officials from both agencies, records show. The Peace Corps then awarded the money without competition to a nonprofit Kerry created for the program.Initially, the Peace Corps awarded Kerry s group now called Seed Global Health with a three-year contract worth $2 million of State Department money on Sept. 10, 2012, documents show. Her father was then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which oversees both the Department of State and the Peace Corps.Seed secured a four-year extension in September 2015, again without competition. This time, the Peace Corps gave the nonprofit $6.4 million provided by the Department of State while John Kerry was secretary of state.Seed also received almost $1 million from a modification to the first award, as well as from Department of State funds the group secured outside the Peace Corps.The Peace Corps program called the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) sends volunteer physicians and nurses to medical and nursing schools in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Liberia, according to Seed s website. More than 40 clinical educators worked at 13 sites in the 2014-2015 program.Kerry and government officials colluded to launch the program and ensure that Seed would get the contract.Is there anyone in this administration who s not using their power and influence to enrich themselves?Rich, liberal elitists pretend they re all about helping people while engorging themselves at the troth on the taxpayer s dime.Time for them to go. American LookoutVia:Daily Caller | 0 |
While we have long known about the existence of microbes — the tiny bacteria, fungi and archaea that live all around, on and in us — our full relationship has become one of the hottest topics for research only in recent years. Scientists believe that every person contains as many independent microbial cells as human cells. This collection of life, known as the microbiome, provides useful functions for us. Indeed, some of the things we think our bodies do are actually the abilities and enzymes of living within us. They can help with digestion, vitamin synthesis and even immunological responses. But, as with many new breakthroughs and advances, the hype of the microbiome often outweighs the reality. This seems especially likely in the field of nutrition. Doing research on the microbiome is not easy, and there are many opportunities to foul things up. To accomplish human studies, large samples of people and microbiomes are needed to account for potential confounding variables. Specimens have to be collected and stored carefully because contamination has been a big problem. DNA has to be extracted, amplified and sequenced. Finally, powerful bioinformatics tools are necessary to assemble and analyze the huge amount of data contained in a sequence of nucleotides — all of which has resulted in a wide range of new “omics,” including genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics. Of course, if we think that microbes play a large role in health, we have to rethink the role that antimicrobials play in our lives. In this thinking, antibiotics and antifungals could be or . But that’s not the case. There are many reasons to avoid unnecessary use of these medications, but the microbiome appears able to withstand most treatment. Still, antimicrobials clearly have an effect on the microbiome. Many studies, along with common sense, suggest that when we treat people with antibiotics, we change the amount and type of microbes that live in our gut. We’ve seen this with Clostridium difficile. C. diff, as it is also known, is a bacterium that lives in many healthy people. The presence of other microbes keeps its numbers in check. But when we treat people with antibiotics that kill off other bacteria, but not C. diff, it can increase its presence and lead to serious illness. Infection with C. diff is hard to treat, and it’s not uncommon. In 2011 in the United States, there were more than 450, 000 cases, causing 29, 000 deaths. A number of studies have shown promise in using the microbiome to treat C. diff. Fecal transplant (which is exactly what it sounds like) effectively fixes a damaged microbiome by infusing it with a healthy one. This type of therapy could theoretically work in treating other diseases. But there’s a huge gap between “holds promise” and “definitive treatment. ” After all, there’s a direct biological explanation for why the microbiome and antibiotics play a role in C. diff. That direct link is much harder to describe when talking about other disorders. Many have postulated that the microbiome has an important part to play in inflammatory bowel diseases, which, because of my condition, I follow quite closely. Others have attempted to link it to disorders of development and behavior, like autism. Because the microbiome takes root in childhood, studies have explored if pregnancy, method of delivery or even the environment might hold some meaning in the microbiome’s development and later health. Even more significantly, many have begun to hypothesize that it has a significant role in the current obesity epidemic. Studies have shown that transferring the microbiome from a thin mouse to an obese one, or vice versa, could lead to a change in body size to match. It was this type of study that roused much of your ire when I dismissed it in my discussion of artificial sweeteners. Other studies show that changes in diet can change the microbiome in human beings. But when you analyze all these studies together, as scientists did in a last summer, the certainty of those links becomes much less certain. This doesn’t mean that the microbiome doesn’t play a role in nutrition. Some important research has begun to show that chronic malnutrition probably causes changes in the microbiome that make treating the problem much harder than many anticipate. Problems with substandard sanitation can also contribute to microbial changes in very poor environments, compounding the problems of malnutrition. But we haven’t yet figured out how to translate these findings into easily used treatments. The problem with getting too enthusiastic about the microbiome isn’t much different from the problem with getting too enthusiastic about any research advances. Many mistake correlation for causation just because some people have a different microbiome doesn’t mean that microbes are responsible for other differences. Studies in mice are not the same as studies of humans diet is incredibly complex, and rarely do results in genetically similar animals easily translate to diverse groups of people. And the microbiome is very, very complicated. We understand so little about it, and the idea that we can make accurate representations about it, let alone manipulate it, is somewhat . As with the genome before it, our greater understanding of the microbiome has spurred great excitement and interest. Last May, the White House began the National Microbiome Initiative, with huge public and private investment into research. We hope these investments will yield great returns, but it will be important to temper our enthusiasm with an appropriate amount of skepticism. Health advances usually proceed more slowly than the hype. | 0 |
Protesters at last Saturday’s March for Science faced a continual downpour of rain when they gathered on the National Mall to protest President Donald Trump and his policies. This Saturday’s People’s Climate March may take place in record temperatures, as forecasters say the mercury could reach the degree mark. [Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Virgin Airlines founder Richard Branson, and former vice president Al Gore are expected to attend, according to the Washington Post. Tomorrow, we’re marching for a better world. March with us and #BeInconvenient https: . #ClimateMarch pic. twitter. — Al Gore (@algore) April 28, 2017, The people backing the march range from the Communist Party USA, the Sierra Club, CODEPINK, and the Barack Organizing for Action. But the man funding many of the organizations listed on the march’s website as members of the steering committee have received millions of dollars from George Soros, the billionaire who has deep roots in the U. S. environmental movement and other liberal causes. “The ‘People’s Climate March,’ scheduled for the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, claims to be a movement of the people. But is it really?” Newsbusters reported on Friday. “It turns out of the steering committee organizations have one thing in common — donations from George Soros,” Newsbusters reported. “The liberal billionaire gave them more than $36 million combined. ” “Between 2000 and 2014, Soros gave $36, 018, 461 million to 18 of the 55 steering committee members of the People’s Climate March,” Newsbusters reported. “Donations to six of those groups were more $1 million each: Center for Community Change, the NAACP, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) People’s Action, Public Citizen and Union of Concerned Scientists. ” Newsbusters noted that only three of these six organizations — NRDC, Public Citizen and Union of Concerned Scientists — have climate as all or part of their mission, calling into question why so many focused groups are taking part in the march. “The presence of many related organizations leading the march indicated that this climate march (just like the March for Science and the Women’s March) is not about a single issue, but about attacking the new administration,” Newsbusters reported. The People’s Climate Change website states: Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone. On the 100th Day of the Trump Administration, we will be in the streets of Washington D. C. to show the world and our leaders that we will resist attacks on our people, our communities and our planet. We will come together from across the United States to strengthen our movement. We will demonstrate our power and resistance at the gates of the White House. We will bring our solutions to the climate crisis, the problems that affect our communities and the threats to peace to our leaders in Congress to demand action. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, “Environmentalists will once again rally in the nation’s capital this weekend, this time for the People’s Climate March,” noting that the march “will be more political and aimed at specific Trump administration policies. ” The Post said it’s “unclear” just how many people will show up, but “organizers are prepared to accommodate 50, 000 to 100, 000 people. ” | 0 |
By Vin Armani You know the state is in trouble when they’re afraid of one man with an Internet connection. The case of Julian Assange... | 1 |
The Congressional Black Caucus just broke it down for House Speaker Paul Ryan, explaining to him in no uncertain terms that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) obviously can t be trusted and needs to be removed as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. This action is necessary in order to meet the public s expectation that Congress conducts an impartial investigation into a matter that threatens the core of our democracy, the CBC wrote in a statement issued Wednesday. Congressman Nunes recent actions have caused him to lose the confidence of members of his committee, and, more importantly, the American people, and he can no longer be trusted with the information that the committee receives. Some lawmakers are calling for Nunes to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Others, like the CBC, are calling on Ryan to remove him as intel chair altogether. The caucus is also demanding that a special bipartisan commission be formed to handle the probe into Russia s election meddling and Trump s possible collusion. Congress must create an independent, bipartisan commission to expose the full truth about any and all Trump-Russia connections and collusion, the statement reads. The American people want and deserve to know if their government has been compromised by the Kremlin. The Black Caucus is not alone. Democrats have been calling on Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation into Russia s interference in the presidential election. He landed himself in hot water last week when he decided it would be a great idea to announce that intelligence on Donald Trump had been gathered accidentally while monitoring other people of interest, such as the Russian ambassador, without bothering to mention it to the committee first.All hell broke loose when Nunes then decided he should brief Trump on the matter. To make matters worse, it later came out that he secretly visited the White House the night before the announcement was made, leading some to question where his information came from in the first place.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1 |
(This January 23 story corrects time of 2009 photo to sometime between 12:07 p.m. and 12:26 p.m. from 1:27 p.m., in paragraph seven) By Daniel Trotta (Reuters) - The picture that lit up social media and unsettled the White House began with a trek up 50 flights of stairs, nearly to the top of the Washington Monument, for a bird’s eye view of Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday as the 45th U.S. president. Reuters had asked the U.S. National Park Service in an email on Jan. 13 whether a photographer could be posted on the observation level near the top of the monument, the highest vantage point overlooking the National Mall. The next business day, the park service agreed to grant Reuters access, on condition the news agency would make the picture available to other media that requested it. Because the elevator is under renovation, photographer Lucas Jackson had to climb 897 steps to reach the 500-foot (152-meter) elevation, carrying a backpack and shoulder bag full of photo gear, plus a step ladder. “It was definitely a strenuous climb,” Jackson said. A CBS News camera operator and a Park Service photographer were the only others taking images from the observation level. Reuters published side-by-side pictures of two moments in history. One image was Trump’s inauguration on Friday, taken by Jackson just as Trump took the oath of office, Jackson said. The other picture was taken by Reuters photographer Stelios Varias from the same spot during former President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, between 12:07 p.m. and 12:26 p.m., during Obama’s inaugural address. Reuters published a combination of the two pictures at 2:02 p.m. (1902 GMT). The caption read: “A combination of photos taken at the National Mall shows the crowds attending the inauguration ceremonies to swear in U.S. President Donald Trump at 12:01 p.m. (L) on January 20, 2017 and President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC.” The caption did not state which crowd was larger. The side-by-side images soon went viral on social media sites such as Twitter, where people added commentary about the relative size of the crowds. The controversy dominated Trump’s first weekend in office. From Trump’s vantage point, the new president saw a sea of people that he estimated at 1 million to 1.5 million strong, according to his remarks on Saturday at CIA headquarters. Trump chided the “dishonest media” for showing pictures of empty spaces on the mall. Later that day, White House spokesman Sean Spicer accused some of the media of engaging in “deliberately false reporting.” “This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said. Spicer elaborated on Monday, saying he stood by the remark given the “tens of millions of people that watched it online” with devices that were unavailable in the past. | 0 |
Marcus Lemonis has no problem with some customers taking their RV and outdoor needs elsewhere. Close followers of NASCAR know Lemonis, CEO of Camping World, is a major player in the sport. His brand is the title sponsor of the truck racing series, while its subsidiary Overton s has sponsored multiple races and cars this season.Amid the flood of CEOs rushing to distance themselves from Trump s business councils after the U.S. president s wishy-washy denunciation of white supremacy last weekend, Lemonis on Wednesday appeared on CNBC s Power Lunch, where he seemed to suggest he wouldn t be shattered if people who supported Trump s comments decided to shop elsewhere. Marcus, you have a consumer-facing business, Camping World, CNBC s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera asked. So do you worry about, if you were on one of these councils, would you worry, thinking, wow, I ve got to deal with consumers every day, are they going to look at the business poorly because I m associated with the White House? Lemonis response: There s no doubt that there is probably not many consumers in this country today that are in favor of what has been said in the last couple days and if they are, frankly, don t shop at my business. Lemonis hasn t been shy about criticizing Trump and NASCAR chairman Brian France who last year endorsed Donald Trump for president, for their past political views. He ripped France for endorsing Trump at a rally during last year s presidential election, and NASCAR was forced to move its postseason truck series banquet from Trump National Doral Miami resort in 2015 after Lemonis threatened not to attend. NESNOne day later, Martin said he regretted his remarks after Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis called him (Translation: The major NASCAR sponsor pressured him into publicly regretting his remarks ):https://twitter.com/markmartin/status/899688975371206662Two days later, Martin posted an image of the Winnebago he would no longer be purchasing. He clearly appears to be sticking to his original statement.This was the @Winnebago i was wanting. Would have been fun for short trips. Probably wouldn't have used it much anyway. pic.twitter.com/ma8wROB43q Mark Martin (@markmartin) August 22, 2017 | 1 |
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police said they arrested a 32-year old Syrian man suspected of involvement in terrorist acts abroad. The man was arrested on Thursday in the northern city of Alexandroupolis and is expected to appear before a state prosecutor on Friday, police said in a statement. The man had requested asylum in northern Greece. A police official said he was arrested for violating a restriction order imposed after his wife accused him of participating in terrorist acts . We are investigating his participation, and its extent, in past terrorist acts outside Greece, police said. Authorities were also examining photographs found on his mobile phone, the police source said. | 1 |
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida Governor Rick Scott on Thursday replaced a local prosecutor who declared she would not seek the death penalty in a case against a man accused of killing an Orlando police officer and refused to recuse herself. In an executive order, Scott removed State Attorney Aramis Ayala, the elected prosecutor in central Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, and reassigned the murder case to State Attorney Brad King of the nearby Fifth Judicial Circuit. Ayala, at a news conference earlier on Thursday, said Florida’s death penalty system was the cause of “legal chaos” and said she would not seek the death penalty against Markeith Loyd, charged in the Jan. 9 shooting of the policewoman. He was arrested after an intensive manhunt that drew widespread attention. The statement by Ayala, who took office early this year, outraged law enforcement groups, some state lawmakers and State Attorney General Pam Bondi. But several groups, including Amnesty International USA and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, rose to her defense. “She has made it clear that she will not fight for justice and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case to State Attorney Brad King,” Scott said in a statement. After a discussion with Scott on Thursday afternoon, Ayala issued a statement saying she offered to have “a full conversation” about her decision, but he “declined to explore my reasoning.” “Upon receipt of any lawful order, my office will follow that order and fully cooperate to ensure the successful prosecution of Markeith Loyd,” she said. Florida’s governor signed legislation on Monday tightening state law to require a unanimous recommendation by a jury before judges can impose the death penalty. The law is the state’s latest effort to restart its death penalty process, which was put on hold twice last year after rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court in separate cases. Loyd was arrested on Jan. 7 after a nine-day manhunt that followed the shooting death of Orlando police Master Sargent Debra Clayton. At the time, Loyd was already a suspect in the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon, in December. Florida prisons hold 382 people who have been sentenced to die. Some have been on death row since the 1970s because the process of appealing death penalty verdicts can take decades. | 0 |
ASTANA (Reuters) - The next round of talks between Russia, Turkey and Iran on settling the Syrian civil conflict will take place in Kazakhstan on Sept. 14-15 and focus on forces that the three nations plan to deploy there, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said on Friday. Kazakhstan hosts the talks which have in the past few months focused on establishing de-escalation zones in Syria. According to the information from the guarantor states, during the upcoming meeting they plan to review several documents covering the work of de-escalation control forces, and continue work on agreeing the make-up of control forces in Idlib, the ministry said in a statement. Moscow, Ankara and Tehran plan to map out de-escalation zones in Idlib, Homs and Eastern Ghouta, and discuss other matters such as prisoner exchange, it said. At the most recent Astana meeting, in July, the three nations failed to finalize an agreement on creating four de-escalation zones in Syria after Ankara raised objections. The talks, which began in January, have so far produced no breakthrough. Some Western diplomats have described them as Russia s attempt to hijack U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva involving the government and opposition. | 0 |
Half-term Governor of Alaska and professional grifter Sarah Palin faceplanted while rock running so naturally, she took to her Facebook account to bash Hillary Clinton. Sarah seems to think that Hillary is in hiding and she links to several Breitbart posts to prove it. Stop laughing. She s super-serious. We re not going to link to the Alt-Right site but those links are on her page.Sarah somehow connected her accident to Hillary Clinton. Leave Hillary Alone, Bullies, Sarah sarcastically writes in her post. Aww, c mon guys, give her a break. Anyone can be out of commission . for weeks on end whilst in the heat of battle for the highest office in the land. No press conferences for nearly a year?, she continues. No scheduled campaign events for days upon days? No statements, no answers, no accountability, no problem. Layin low to run out the clock before November, but you re SEXIST for noticing it. And you re MISOGYNIST for questioning a female s fitness. Good thing media didn t hound the crap out of 08 candidate John McCain for his decades-old military medical records or I d guess them to be hypocrites, she writes, with no respect for the English language. Leave Hillary alone! All that email-evidenced yoga, and wedding planning, and cookie-baking-grandma-duty wears you out. Believe you me, she states. Seriously though, is that an actual sentence? Heck, even those of us claiming to be fit as a (seasoned?) fiddle, hit bumps in the wellness road. Even I. Especially I. (Remember Piper s middle name is Grace ; mine isn t.), she writes. Rock-running recently, I tripped over my own two feet and crashed & burned face-first. I recovered with the doc s SuperGlue, and now any man who asks what happened? I ll refer to as just a mean ol SEXIST bully, Palin continues. Glad for Hillary s protective media s precedence. The next woman running for POTUS has no need to answer to much of anything, for we ve got weddings to plan, and Down Dogs to do, and cookies in the oven! So just leave us alone, boys, she concluded. We do not speak Turnip at Addicting Info, so it s beyond our capabilities to translate that psychotic woman s Facebook-babble. Sarah Palin is wrong and if she could master Googling then she d learn that Hillary Clinton has a full schedule ahead of her. Every single day. Sarah is feeding the conspiracy theory that Hillary is unstable and needs assistance walking up stairs. The fact is, Hillary slipped while walking up the stairs. You know, sort of how Sarah Palin slipped while rock running. Speaking of hiding, where are Donald Trump s taxes?We hope Sarah feels better, though. She seems to be suffering from a brain injury.Featured image via Facebook | 0 |
The Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington, D.C., tends to book their annual National Day celebration at the Four Seasons, and this year was supposed to be no exception. However, now this year is an exception because they ve moved it from the Four Seasons to Trump s hotel in the Old Post Office building. And they didn t do that on a lark.A diplomatic source, who wasn t authorized to speak publicly and therefore wasn t named, told ThinkProgress that the decision was political. The Trump Organization reportedly contacted the Ambassador of Kuwait and put pressure on him to move the event. They may have done the same to Bahrain earlier this month.Apparently, there are a lot of foreign governments who are thinking of taking their business to Trump s hotel as a way to curry favor with him. And Trump himself seems to be refusing to completely divest himself of his businesses. Could this be why? Surely an upstanding citizen such as Trump would never use his position as president to continue enriching himself. Right? Right.Har de har har.Trump s greed, along with the hotel s slow start, give him an incentive to continue being totally unethical. About a month after the hotel opened, there were many travel agents and event planners who felt the place wasn t worth the trouble it takes to plan events at fancy hotels. At the time, Trump s name and brand were badly tarnished, and that was reflected in the business at the hotel (and elsewhere, too).This might be a different story if Trump was sincere in his promise to divest, and focus on the issues facing America. Sure, he s open to limits on his involvement, but he doesn t want anyone outside his family to have rights to his name, and he wants to be able to return to his company once his term as president is over.There s no way for this to look good as long as Trump even appears to still be involved with his businesses. There s no way for it not to look like he s trading favors for money. It won t stop with Kuwait and Bahrain.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images | 1 |
Once a broken record, always a broken record. At least that s what Marco Rubio has been demonstrating since his disastrous debate performance on Saturday.As you ll recall, Chris Christie absolutely hammered Rubio for using a canned line about President Obama over and over again. Let s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn t know what he s doing, Rubio said during his exchange with the New Jersey governor. He knows exactly what he s doing. He went on to repeat the line several more times, leading to Christie nailing Rubio for being scripted.Rubio s robotic performance has inspired people to troll him by dressing up and appearing at Rubio rallies as robots.One would think that Rubio would more carefully monitor his speeches to make sure that he doesn t come off as a broken record, but he either doesn t give a damn or he thinks voters are stupid and won t notice.On Tuesday, Rubio repeated himself once again during a rally in New Hampshire as he talked about raising his children in the 21st Century, and he actually repeated the same line twice back-to-back. Because as you saw, Jeanette and I are raising our four children in the 21st century and we know how hard it s become to instill our values in our kids instead of the values they try to ram down our throats. In the 21st century it s become harder than ever to instill in your children the values they teach in our homes and in our church instead of the values that they try to ram down our throats in the movies, in music, in popular culture. Here s the video via YouTube:Clearly, Marco Rubio is having a hard time shaking the appearance of being a scripted robot who glitches out, which certainly does not help him look like a viable candidate for president. Not only do we not need a president who will repeat the disastrous policies of past Republican presidents, we do not need a president who relies on canned lines to communicate with the American people.Featured Image: Flickr | 1 |
The Watergate scandal is considered one of the worst political scandals in American history, but Donald Trump has already done worse.Former President Richard Nixon lied to Congress and the American people repeatedly. He had an enemies list and tried to obstruct the investigation to cover up his involvement.Carl Bernstein is one of the reporters who broke the scandal wide open back in the 1970s. His reporting helped spur an investigation would would lead Nixon to resign rather than face being the first president ever removed from office via impeachment.And according to Bernstein, Trump is way worse than Nixon ever was.On Friday, Trump accused several media outlets of committing treason because they have relentlessly reported on Trump s chaotic administration. Thanks to leaks provided by staffers, the people know how Trump acts behind the curtain and what unconstitutional things he is planning to do.Trump, of course, hates the media for reporting the facts. So he called them fake news and the enemy of the American people. The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017Trump constantly lies every time he opens his mouth and the above tweet demonstrates that he has a list of enemies like Nixon did. Trump s ties with Russia have even become a major scandal, especially since Mike Flynn resigned in disgrace after contacting Russia about sanctions prior to President Obama leaving office and lying about it. Also, Russia hacked into the DNC on Trump s behalf to help him win the election, just as Nixon had people break into DNC Headquarters in 1972.On Saturday, Bernstein made it clear that Donald Trump is more dangerous and treacherous than Nixon.The most dangerous enemy of the people is presidential lying always. Attacks on press by @realDonaldTrump more treacherous than Nixon s. Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) February 18, 2017Real news (not fake) is that @realDonaldTrump trying to make conduct of press the issue instead of egregious (and unhinged)conduct of POTUS. Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) February 18, 2017When focus of press was on Hillary s server by same fake news orgs/ enemies of the people cited by @realDonaldTrump he saw patriots. Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) February 18, 2017Trump s hypocrisy, lies, shady deals with Russia and Putin, and war on the free press makes him an enemy of the people. He should not only be impeached, he should be tried and convicted of crimes against the United States and denied the protection of a presidential pardon. He should be in prison, not the White House.Featured image via Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 1 |
If you watched the most recent Democratic debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, you may have noticed that things got a bit brutal, with the crowd noises even seeming reminiscent of a WWE showdown.Clearly noticing this were the folks over at Saturday Night Live, who literally had Hillary (played by Kate McKinnon) and Sanders (played by Larry David) going head to head."Are you feeling THAT Bern?!" #SNL pic.twitter.com/oRXmSAN2Tz Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) April 17, 2016During the SNL reenactment of the debate they had a members of the audience ask the candidates questions, and since the debate took place in New York City, one of the trusty citizens was Elaine Benes from the hit show Seinfeld played by this week s SNL host Julia Louis Dreyfus, who perfectly reprised her famous role.Elaine wanted to know how exactly Bernie was going to break up the banks, and lets just say, she wasn t too fond of his answer. Bernie answered: Once I m elected president, I ll have a nice schvitz in the White House gym, I ll sit them down and yada yada yada, they ll be broken up. With Elaine replying: You can t yada yada at a debate. Of course, yada yada yada also being a famous line from Seinfeld and seeing Julia Louis Dreyfus back with Larry David who co-created the show alongside Jerry Seinfeld was definitely amazing.Elaine, clearly annoyed, asked Hillary: Doesn t it suck to be the only girl in a group of guys? And when Hillary said yes, Elaine added, Don t worry, because everyone thinks you are by far the funniest I mean, the most qualified. There were also questions from Rachel Green from Friends, but Elaine had one more question for Sanders: Senator Sanders, you believe the super-rich should pay more in taxes? But wouldn t that be bad for actors who made a lot of money on a certain very successful sitcom? even worse for the person who created that sitcom? Of course, speaking of herself and David.David s Sanders responded: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you should vote for her. All in all, it was definitely a lot of fun to see Elaine back in action. Now, if only she would do her infamous dance.Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
During a segment of CNN s State of the Union, Arizona s Republican Governor Jan Brewer became very upset over accusations that Trump supporters, including herself, are being labeled as racists and bigots for supporting the GOP s presumptive presidential nominee.Last Friday, President Obama went after Trump in a speech where he referred to Trump as a charlatan going on to say that we don t have time for bigotry or hatred. Brewer was questioned on how she felt about the president s characterization of Trump. She responded by saying: Obama just always comes tearing after Republicans constantly, calling names and calling people bigots and racists. And that s their big comeback, you know. And it s absolutely ridiculous. To see a president, speak like that is offensive. Former Democrat primary candidate and current governor of Maryland told Brewer that the President wasn t referring to all Republicans when President Obama made the remarks under discussion. O Malley did back up the president s comments, however, saying that: He [President Obama] did say it rightly that Donald Trump is a bigot, Donald Trump is a racist. Donald Trump is, in fact, making fascist appeals. That s why many self-respecting Republicans are not supporting Donald Trump. Brewer claimed that no matter what the topic is, Democrats refuse to talk policy and instead only want to sling accusations of racism and bigotry towards Republicans. The show s host Jake Tapper asked Brewer if she believed that Trump s proposals and remarks are at least somewhat racially motivated. Instead of admitting that it is possible, she simply blamed the things that Trump says that make her uncomfortable on his political juvenility.From there, Brewer descends into a full-blown freak out over accusations that Trump and his supporters might just possibly have racist motivations.You can watch the segment below.Featured image from video screenshot | 1 |
DETROIT (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stepped up his bid to win over minority voters by addressing a largely black church in Detroit on Saturday and calling for a new civil rights agenda to support African-Americans. As scores of protesters outside chanted “No justice, no peace,” Trump said he wanted to make Detroit - a predominantly African-American city which recently emerged from bankruptcy - the economic envy of the world by bringing back companies from abroad. Trump separately met with about 100 community and church leaders, his campaign said, in his latest push to peel away minority voters from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. His outreach to minorities over recent weeks comes as he seeks to improve his chances in the Nov. 8 election and shake off months of offending the sensibilities of black and Hispanic voters with his hard line on immigration and rough-hewn rhetoric. “I fully understand that the African American community is suffering from discrimination and that there are many wrongs that must still be made right,” Trump said at the church which was half-full. “I want to make America prosperous for everyone. I want to make this city the economic envy of the world, and we can do that.” His address of over 10 minutes at the Great Faith Ministries International church received moments of applause, including when he said Christian faith is not the past, but the present and the future. Accompanying Trump to the church was Ben Carson, the former Republican presidential hopeful who grew up in the city and whose childhood neighborhood Trump visited on Saturday. Trump has argued that his emphasis on job creation would help minority communities in a way that Democrats have failed to. But Clinton has accused Trump of aligning himself with racists. Opinion polls show Trump has low support among minorities. “I believe we need a civil rights agenda for our time, one that ensures the rights to a great education, so important, and the right to live in a good-paying job and one that you love to go to every morning,” Trump said. “That can happen. We need to bring our companies back,” he added. Emma Lockridge, 63, said as she entered the church that she found his comments about Mexicans and Muslims “hateful.” “That’s my major reservation with Mr. Trump is how he’s treated those particular sets of people,” said Lockridge, who is retired and an environmental activist. But she said she also had concerns about Clinton’s support in the 1990s for crime legislation signed by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, which many black Americans say contributed to high incarceration rates in their communities. Vicki Dobbins, an activist protesting outside, said she was disappointed the church asked Trump to speak. “I believe that Trump coming to Detroit is a joke, and I’m ashamed of the pastor who invited him,” she said. “In my opinion, he stabbed everyone in the back.” | 1 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. Veterans help veterans cope with PTSD through decorated Marine’s New York-based nonprofit Headstrong Project By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 7, 2016 PTSD
BY Larry Mcshane
Two years after serving two tours in Iraq, Army veteran Dustin Shryock started feeling something was wrong — and he didn’t know how to make it right.
“Anxiety attacks that would pop up for no reason,” he recalls of the problems that surfaced out of the blue in 2010. “I’d be sitting on the couch, doing nothing. You can just imagine a normal anxiety attack, like a public speaking engagement.
“And a tiny little thing like that, over time, over and over, became debilitating.”
A fellow veteran pulled him aside with a solution: The Headstrong Project, a group founded four years ago by combat-decorated Marine Corps officer Zach Iscol to assist his fellow American fighters scarred by invisible wounds.
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RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) - Speaking as a folksy physician running for Virginia governor, Democrat Ralph Northam vowed in a recent campaign ad to fight Donald Trump on cuts to education funding, environmental protections and health care access. But Northam said he will work with the Republican president when it is in the state’s interest. The balancing act puts Northam, a moderate lieutenant governor with a low-key campaign style, on the front lines of his party’s search for a strategy to exploit Trump’s unpopularity in politically divided states such as Virginia. He is running against Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Nov. 7 general election in the competitive southern state is seen as a bellwether for next year’s midterm elections, when voters will decide whether Republicans should continue to control the U.S. Congress and a majority of state governments. After denouncing Trump as a “narcissistic maniac” during the primary campaign, Northam has since dialed back the vitriol. His emphasis on workforce education and policy matters heeds criticism that Democrats lost the White House because voters did not hear what the party stood for. “The Northam strategy is talk Trump, but don’t just talk Trump,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington, noting that Northam seeks to broaden his appeal to uncommitted voters. Most polls show Northam narrowly ahead in a contest Democrats consider a must-win. Virginia is one of only 15 governors’ mansions still held by the party, and its current governor cannot run for re-election due to term limits. Former Democratic President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail this week for the first time since leaving office to stump for candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, the two states with gubernatorial elections this year. Without naming Trump, he called on voters to send a message by backing candidates like Northam. A recent poll showed nearly one in three likely Virginia voters were factoring Trump into their decision in the governor’s race, according to a survey from the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. Northam’s supporters overwhelmingly disapproved of Trump. Distain for the Republican president is why Niel Manson, a 72-year-old retired engineer living near the capital city of Richmond, became a Democrat nine months ago. Yet the former independent called Northam wise to make his campaign about more than merely reacting to Trump. “There is no benefit in getting in a discussion with Trump, because he changes his mind every 24 hours,” Manson said. The Northam campaign said it has intentionally focused on policies when talking about Trump, seeking to draw parallels to Gillespie. Northam starts another recent ad highlighting differences between the gubernatorial candidates on climate change. “Now Ed’s going right along with Donald Trump as he tries to roll back our clean air and water protections,” the Democrat says from a picnic table at a waterfront park. The strategy works to connect the president to a Republican candidate who is not always in lock step with him, said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes gubernatorial races for the non-partisan Cook Political Report. She said campaigns gearing up for next year’s midterms will learn from Virginia whether such messaging sways independents, or motivates Democrats to turn out in greater numbers than typical for non-presidential years. “This is our first real election to see how these arguments about Trump really do impact Republican candidates,” Duffy said. Gillespie’s campaign declined to comment about Trump’s impact on the race. The president endorsed Gillespie but has not campaigned with him. Vice President Mike Pence headlined a recent rally for the candidate in southwest Virginia’s heavily Republican coal country. Democratic voter Erin Siraguse, 34, said she based her support for Northam on issues such as his efforts to address affordable housing for teachers around her home in Fairfax County in northern Virginia. She admires how Northam has handled the president’s shadow over this year’s most competitive state race. “Lieutenant Governor Northam has done a wonderful job of talking about Trump without mentioning Trump,” she said. | 1 |
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli minister on Thursday declined to comment on reports that Israeli aircraft had struck a target in Syria the night before but repeated a threat to hit arms shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas. The air strike targeted a factory south of the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday night and the Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the aircraft, a commander in a military alliance fighting in support of Damascus said. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment, but Israel s Channel 10 said the aircraft were not hit and returned safely to base. I can t, of course, relate to reports about the Israel Defence Forces attack in Syria, but regardless, Israel s position is clear: Smuggling arms to Hezbollah is a red line in our eyes, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told Army Radio. Syria s Foreign Ministry called on the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israel s attack, state-run SANA news agency reported. The Foreign Ministry asked the Security Council to take strict and immediate measures to stop such Israeli attacks, it said, adding that the strike hit a copper factory in the industrial town of Hisya, 35 km (21 miles) south of Homs and 112 km (70 miles) north of Damascus. The statement did not give details of any casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, said the air strike had targeted a military installation. Israel has acted in the past and it will act in the future to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah according to intelligence information that we will have, said Katz, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s inner circle of ministers. He said Israel s red line was against arms smuggling (and) also against Iran s consolidation in Syria and that it was prepared to act to deter against our responses. I think the other side also understands this clearly and actions that took place in the past for which we did take responsibility, were actions that were according to these lines, these red lines, Katz added. The Israeli air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Lebanese ally, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, nearly 100 times in recent years. Israeli officials have expressed alarm at Iranian influence in Syria, where Iran-backed groups have played a critical role fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the conflict that erupted in 2011. Iran s military chief, General Mohammad Baqeri, warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory during a visit to Damascus last month. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought a major conflict in 2006, have escalated this year. Each side has warned it will unleash devastating firepower in the event of a full-scale war. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee will ask the directors of FBI and the National Security agency to appear in a closed session in its probe of allegations of Russian interference in U.S. elections and U.S. spy agency surveillance of President Donald Trump’s team, the head of the panel said on Friday. Nunes also told reporters that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s lawyers informed the committee that he is volunteering to be interviewed by the committee, and that the panel will work with his lawyers to decide whether the interview would be open or closed to the public. The committee hopes to hold a closed session with FBI Director Comey and NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers on Tuesday. | 1 |
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A man arrested on suspicion of trying to carry explosives onto a plane in western Sweden will be released from custody and is no longer a suspect, the prosecutor said on Friday The suspicious objects have been analysed during the day and the man is no longer suspected of any crimes, the prosecutors office said in a statement. The man was stopped as he tried to get onto a flight at Gothenburg s Landvetter airport on Thursday morning when a regular security check flagged up signs of explosive materials. | 0 |
Just look away. The Democrats don t have any plans to steal your vote. If you don t believe us, ask this Obama appointed judge who s making it his business to make sure Republicans don t get involved protecting the sanctity of the vote for every American A federal judge is ordering the Republican National Committee to detail any agreements it has with Donald Trump s campaign to engage in ballot security efforts in connection with next week s election something the national GOP has been banned from doing for decades without court approval.The order also instructs the RNC to explain by 5 p.m. Tuesday what Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence were talking about in recent comments when they said that Trump s campaign was working closely with the RNC to make sure there is no fraud at the polls. Newark, N.J.-based U.S. District Court John Vazquez issued the order Monday after the Democratic National Committee went to court last week to allege that the RNC was violating consent decrees from the 1980s settling a case alleging that GOP pollwatchers sought to intimidate minority voters in a practice then known as caging. The agreements allow the RNC to organize poll watchers, but prohibit any effort to intimidate voters as they enter a polling place or to challenge individual voters, except as part of a program approved in advance by the court.Here s a little reminder (video below) of how the New Black Panthers intimidated voters outside of a polling place in Philadelphia. But by all means, the RNC and the Trump campaign should just look away The RNC insists it has worked to ensure compliance with the agreement and submitted to the court a series of memos sent to its personnel, national committee members and others from August through this month reminding them about the consent decree and the need to remain at arms length from all ballot security efforts. The memos tell RNC workers, officials and volunteers not to engage in poll watching efforts at all, not to take video or audio recordings at polling places and not to mention ballot fraud concerns on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.However, in August, Pence appeared to indicate there was a joint effort by the Trump campaign and the RNC to combat voter fraud. The Trump Campaign and the Republican National Committee are working very, very closely with state governments and secretaries of state all over the country to ensure ballot integrity, Pence said at a town hall meeting in Denver in August.In addition, Conway reportedly told the Washington Post last month that the Trump campaign is actively working with the national committee, the official party, and campaign lawyers to monitor precincts around the country. Politico | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday against embracing the “stop and frisk” police tactic that he said would worsen relations between police and community in the country. Trump has praised the anti-crime tactic in which police stop, question and search pedestrians for weapons or contraband and said on Fox News on Thursday it “massively changed” the crime statistics in New York City. “Stop and frisk worked,” Trump said on Fox & Friends on Thursday. He said the crime-ridden city of Chicago needed to adopt the tactic. De Blasio rejected that claim and attributed the sharp drop in crime to another strategy adopted by Bill Bratton, the city’s longtime police commissioner who retired less than a week ago. Bratton championed the “broken windows” policing strategy that emphasizes pursuit of crimes no matter how minor. In his resignation letter he attributed the decline in crime in New York City, the nation’s largest with 8.5 million people, to additional officers and an emphasis on building bonds within neighborhoods. “Donald Trump talks about stop and frisk like he knows the facts,” de Blasio said in an interview with CNN. “He has had no experience with policing, no experience with public safety. “He should really be careful because if we reinstitute stop and frisk all over this country, you would see a lot more tension between police and community.” Police tactics and deadly encounters with African-Americans, many of them unarmed, have sparked protests and unrest across the country. A state of emergency was declared in Charlotte, North Carolina, after a second night of unrest sparked by the fatal police shooting of a black man. There have also been protests in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in recent days demanding the arrest of a police officer seen in a video last week fatally shooting an unarmed black man who had his hands in clear view at the time. The stop and frisk policy gained traction in New York City under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now a top Trump supporter. De Blasio promised to end the practice during his 2013 mayoral campaign. De Blasio also credited the continued drop in crime in New York City in recent decades to a crime reduction strategy adopted by Bratton called CompStat, which adopts statistical strategies to achieve more effective policing. “That’s what changed things in New York City,” de Blasio said, adding crime has gone down in the three years since his administration curtailed the use of stop and frisk. (Fixes ninth paragraph to say protesters demanding arrest, officer not arrested.) | 1 |
NEW DELHI — First, Yashpal Singh Rathore’s marriage was delayed by his future who, like most Indians, ran short of cash after Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned the country’s largest currency notes in November. Then the lost his job when the ensuing cash crunch hit demand for motorcycles and scooters sold by the company where he worked, Hero MotoCorp Ltd. After that, the prospective refused to let the wedding go forward until he found another job. “So I lost my job and I lost my marriage,” he said in an interview at a protest, where he shouted slogans with more than 100 workers let go by Hero. Mr. Rathore is one among a large number of Indians — the precise number is not known — who have lost their jobs since Nov. 8, when Mr. Modi abruptly banned 86 percent of the country’s currency in a bid to eliminate “black money,” currency on which taxes had not been paid. For the sake of secrecy, the government largely avoided printing replacement notes in advance. So there has been an acute and protracted shortage of cash as the government struggles to catch up. That, in turn, has proved economically damaging. Exactly how harmful remains hard to determine, but the available data is not reassuring. Demand for vegetables is declining because people don’t have the money to pay for them, for example, and some service industries are reporting steep job losses. The International Monetary Fund this month cut its projected growth rate for India by one percentage point for the current fiscal year, to 6. 6 percent. While the full impact is still difficult to discern, there is little doubt who is suffering the most. “This has actually hurt the poor enormously,” said Nasser Munjee, chairman of DCB Bank and a company director at HDFC and Tata Motors. The pain is hidden, for the most part. Accustomed to hardship, many who lost employment were at first convinced by Mr. Modi’s speeches that their setbacks were transitory and, in the long run, would be worth the suffering. But as the crisis drags on, with no end in sight, some are growing frustrated, as they told us in a series of interviews at protests and at day labor gathering points. Many of them, even children, are forced to go without fruit, vegetables and milk — now unaffordable luxuries. Most had not paid apartment rents and their children’s school fees in the months since the cash ban. Many had sent their families back to their villages, and were ready to give up and follow if things did not turn around soon. Sending cash to the elderly parents they had long supported is now out of the question. As is common in India, the workers said that although they had worked on Hero MotoCorp’s shop floor, wearing company uniforms, they had been formally employed by other contractors, meaning they could be let go more easily without benefits. Sunil Kumar, 28, who had been earning 15, 000 rupees a month, about $220, at Hero, said he had been supporting his wife and two children when he lost his job without notice Nov. 29. They immediately cut milk, green vegetables and fruit from their diets, including for their and children. Paying rent is out of the question. “This is like a massacre for us,” he said. “My livelihood is gone after the cash ban. What do I do now?” The decline in vegetable demand is so steep that the prices of eggplants, potatoes, cauliflower and tomatoes dropped between 42 percent and 78 percent, the NCDEX Institute of Commodity Markets and Research said. In the first month alone after the currency ban, micro and service industries cut staff by 35 percent, the All India Manufacturers’ Organization said, based on a survey. It released a study this month saying that job losses in a variety of industries, including automobile parts, infrastructure and construction, would swell to as much as 35 percent by March. The anecdotal evidence is painful. Mr. Rathore, whose wedding was postponed, is among 582 workers who reported losing their jobs at Hero MotoCorp in November and December, as the company suffered a 34 percent drop in sales in December from a year earlier. Hero did not respond to requests for comment. Most economists believe the economy will rebound, but nobody knows how long it will take. In Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi, hundreds of unshaven men in rumpled clothing stood recently at a intersection called Khoda Labor Chowk that is a gathering place for people seeking work. Before the currency ban, they told us, they would be hired most days, earning 400 to 600 rupees, about $6 to $9, for a day of carpentry, floor tiling or masonry. But since the ban, most interviewed said, they had worked for only a week each month, at best, and even on the few days when they were hired their wages had fallen by half. Rafiq Ali, 46, said that, having worked only 12 days in the last two months, he had sent his wife and two children back to his native village about 200 miles away, where it is cheaper to live. “I am surviving on roti and potato with salt,” Mr. Ali said, referring to the flat Indian bread that is a staple in the Indian diet. “I’ve stopped taking milk, even in tea, and eating vegetables. ” But what hurt him most, he said, was a recent call from his wife, back in the village, who wanted money to take their sick daughter to a doctor. Mr. Ali said he had nothing to send. “A sense of desperation and helplessness is emerging,” he said. “This currency ban is not helpful for poor people. ” Hoti Lal, a father of three, said he could get work for only six days during the last two months, forcing his family to survive on money his son made cleaning offices. Mr. Lal had hoped his son could give up that job to go to college, but that dream is fading fast. His son’s salary of 7, 000 rupees a month, a little over $100, is about half of what he used to earn regularly, Mr. Lal said. So, Mr. Lal said, his family has cut back entirely on green vegetables and milk. Almost every man we interviewed said he was a migrant who had been sending a portion of his salary home to support his parents in his native village — and had been unable to do so since the currency ban wiped out work. Vikas Sahu, 30, who had been working at Hero for four years, has been unable to send money back to his parents, wife and children, who live in his village about 100 miles west of New Delhi. His first grader’s school fees are overdue by months, and his father took out a loan of 70, 000 rupees, about $1, 000, for agricultural expenses, including paying for repairs on the family’s tractor. “How long I can survive like this?” he asked. With little else to do, Rakesh Yadav, 28, shows up most days to protest, hoping for some relief from the government or some upbeat economic news that might induce Hero to begin rehiring. He had worked there for eight years as a machine operator on the shop floor. To cut costs, his wife and daughter went home to his village. He gave up the one room they had shared at a monthly rental of 3, 300 rupees, or about $50, and moved in with four other men who share a room. “I do not know where to go or what to do,” he said. Mr. Rathore said he thought about giving up and returning to his village in Bilaspur district, about 750 miles south of Delhi, but he just cannot bear to do so, at least not yet. “What can I do in my village?” he asked. | 0 |
On a summer morning in 2013, Octavian Mihai entered a softly lit room furnished with a small statue of Buddha, a box of tissues and a single red rose. From an earthenware chalice, he swallowed a capsule of psilocybin, an ingredient found in hallucinogenic mushrooms. Then he put on an eye mask and headphones and lay down on a couch. Soon, images flew by like shooting stars: a spinning world that looked like a chessboard himself on a stretcher in front of a hospital his parents, gazing at him with aching sadness as he reached out to them, suffused with childlike love. Psilocybin has been illegal in the United States for more than 40 years. But Mr. Mihai, who had just finished treatment for Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was participating in a study looking at whether the drug can reduce anxiety and depression in cancer patients. Throughout that session, a psychiatrist and a social worker from NYU Langone Medical Center stayed by his side. Published Thursday, the results from that study, and a similar small, controlled trial, were striking. About 80 percent of cancer patients showed clinically significant reductions in both psychological disorders, a response sustained some seven months after the single dose. Side effects were minimal. In both trials, the intensity of the mystical experience described by patients correlated with the degree to which their depression and anxiety decreased. The studies, by researchers at New York University, with 29 patients, and at Johns Hopkins University, with 51, were released concurrently in The Journal of Psychopharmacology. They proceeded after arduous review by regulators and are the largest and most meticulous among a handful of trials to explore the possible therapeutic benefit of psilocybin. Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a past president of the American Psychiatric Association, and Dr. Daniel Shalev of the New York State Psychiatric Institute are among leaders in psychiatry, addiction medicine and palliative care who endorsed the work. The studies, they wrote, are “a model for revisiting criminalized compounds of interest in a safe, ethical way. ” If research restrictions could be eased, they continued, “there is much potential for new scientific insights and clinical applications. ” Although cancer patients will not have access to therapeutically administered psilocybin anytime soon, the findings add vigor to applications to expand research in a multicenter trial with hundreds of participants. Some medical professionals held the studies at arm’s length. Dr. William Breitbart, chairman of the psychiatry department at Memorial Cancer Center, questioned this use of cancer patients. “Medical marijuana got its foot in the door by making the appeal that ‘cancer patients are suffering, they’re near death, so for compassionate purposes, let’s make it available,’ ” he said. “And then you’re able to extend this drug to other purposes. ” Psilocybin trials are underway in the United States and Europe for alcoholism, tobacco addiction and depression. Other hallucinogens are also being studied for clinical application. This week, the Food and Drug Administration approved a trial investigating MDMA, the illegal party drug better known as Ecstasy, for stress disorder. psychological distress, which afflicts up to 40 percent of patients, can be resistant to conventional therapy. Mr. Mihai’s anxiety began when doctors finally told him he was in remission. He would keep touching the nodules on his neck, where the cancer had announced itself. He flew to Europe to celebrate the end of treatment and his graduation from college, but abruptly returned to New York, terrified to be away from oncologists. He began drinking daily, hard, jeopardizing his fragile health. Alarmed, doctors suggested the psilocybin study. He took the capsule and began tripping. After seeing himself on a hospital stretcher, he recalled: “I had an epiphany. ” “Why are you letting yourself be terrorized by cancer coming back? This is dumb. It’s in your power to get rid of the fear,” he told himself. “That’s when I saw black smoke rising from my body. And it felt great. ” Three years later, Mr. Mihai, now 25 and a physician assistant in Las Vegas, said, “I’m not anxious about cancer anymore. I’m not anxious about dying. ” The session, he added, “has made my life richer. ” In the 1940s and 1950s, hallucinogens were studied in hundreds of trials. But by 1970, when those drugs were placed in the most restricted regulatory category, research ground to a near halt. Since about 2000, investigators have begun studying them, mostly with private funding. These two studies built on a 2011 UCLA psilocybin pilot project with 12 cancer patients. Both share similarities. All volunteers had diagnoses of anxiety or depression. Patients were randomly given a placebo or synthetic psilocybin, and not told which. Within seven weeks, they were given the other sample. All patients were educated about the drug, monitored by two people throughout the placebo and psilocybin sessions, and seen for evaluation. Researchers created music playlists, paced to the anticipated rhythms of the drug reaction. N. Y. U. leaned toward New Age and world music — Brian Eno sitars didgeridoos. Johns Hopkins favored Western classical. At N. Y. U. psychotherapists tried to layer the session into patients’ memories by asking them to write about their visions in a journal and discuss the experience in meetings. The Johns Hopkins study, led by Roland R. Griffiths, a psychopharmacologist, had monitors who urged participants to “trust, let go and be open. ” The N. Y. U. researchers assessed patients the next day and found the effects to be immediate in most of them. Dr. Stephen Ross, the lead investigator and chief of addiction psychiatry at N. Y. U. pointed out that antidepressants, by contrast, can take weeks to show benefit. “Cancer patients with anxiety and depression need help immediately,” he said, “especially if you consider that they are at elevated risk for completed suicide. ” Some experts questioned the reliability of the results. Dr. Breitbart said that because diagnoses ranged from cancer to imminent terminal illness, it was impossible to know which patients might have come through their psychological ordeal without psilocybin — whether some might have adapted to the new norms of their disease felt stronger once chemotherapy side effects, including depression, had abated or even experienced an improvement in health. None of those possibilities fit Kevin, who had a transplant for acute myeloid leukemia. It sent his cancer into remission, but left him with disease. Suffering from chronic pain and fatigue, Kevin, 57, who lives in central Michigan and asked that his last name be withheld because he had been in law enforcement, had to retire. Four years after the transplant, he despaired. “Going through a illness is similar to returning from combat,” he said. “It damages who you are, to the core of what it is to be human. ” “I was hoping to get out of this funk of waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he added. “You’re looking up to the heavens, saying ‘What else can I try?’ ” In 2013, Kevin entered the Johns Hopkins trial. During his session, he saw spirals of iridescent spheres that folded in on themselves. The experience did not restore him to his former life, he said, “but I have a greater sense of peace of what might come. I’m very grateful, beyond words, for this trial. But you have to approach the session with the right intentions of why you’re doing it. Because you’re going to meet yourself. ” Researchers do not know why psilocybin has worked in these settings. Neuroimaging scans of healthy volunteers show areas of the brain lighting up or resting during dosing. Hallucinogens activate a serotonin receptor that can lead to the alterations of consciousness reported routinely. One theory is that psilocybin interrupts the circuitry of thinking that is so pronounced in depressed people, making way for a mystical experience of selfless unity. The studies received funding from the Heffter Research Institute, an alliance of scientists interested in the medical study of hallucinogens. Dr. George Greer, the of Heffter, does not see a commercial future for psilocybin, even if it is eventually approved for therapeutic use, because these patients needed only one dose. Instead, he envisions a nonprofit manufacturer, with distribution restricted to specialized clinics. Researchers were emphatic that these results should not be interpreted as condoning hallucinogenic mushrooms for . Dr. Griffiths noted that patients received extensive support, which may have deepened and secured their transformations. “People will take psilocybin at a rave or at Burning Man” — the art and performance desert festival — “but the effect,” he said, “evaporates like water running through their hands. ” | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats on Monday corralled enough support to hold up a Senate confirmation vote on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee but Republicans threatened to change the Senate rules to ensure conservative judge Neil Gorsuch gets the lifetime job. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-9 along party lines to send Gorsuch’s nomination to the full Senate, setting up a political showdown this week between Trump’s fellow Republicans and the opposition Democrats that appears likely to trigger a change in long-standing Senate rules to allow his confirmation. Democrats, portraying Gorsuch as so conservative he is outside the judicial mainstream, have amassed 42 senators in support of a procedural hurdle called a filibuster requiring a super-majority of 60 votes in the Republican-led, 100-seat Senate to allow a confirmation vote. Even before the panel voted, committee member Christopher Coons put the Democrats over the threshold as the 41st senator backing the filibuster bid. (GRAPHIC - Where senators stand on bid to block Gorsuch vote tmsnrt.rs/2ov6ko0) The Senate’s Republican leaders insist Gorsuch will be confirmed on the Senate floor on Friday regardless of what the Democrats do. Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority. In the face of the filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be expected to force a confirmation vote by having the Senate change its rules and allow for a simple majority vote for confirmation of Supreme Court justices, a move sometimes called the “nuclear option” that Trump favors. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, leading the filibuster effort, said McConnell should have the “vision and courage to see past this impasse” and not “go nuclear,” suggesting that Trump replace Gorsuch with a new consensus nominee chosen after meeting with Democrats. Senate confirmation of Gorsuch, 49, would restore the nine-seat high court’s conservative majority, fulfilling one of Trump’s top promises during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump in January nominated Gorsuch, a conservative appeals court judge from Colorado. He could be expected to serve for decades. On the Senate floor, McConnell called the Democratic strategy “a new low,” saying there was no principled reason to oppose a judge as well qualified and widely respected as Gorsuch. He did not explicitly say he would use the “nuclear option,” but several Republicans said that would happen. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the decision would be McConnell’s. Republican Senator John McCain, a long-time opponent of Senate rules changes, told reporters he would support the move. Judiciary Committee Republicans blasted Democrats for pursuing what they called the first “partisan filibuster” of a Supreme Court nominee - there was a successful bipartisan filibuster five decades ago against a Democratic president’s nominee - and said it would come to naught because of the threatened rule change. But it was Senate Republicans who last year refused to even consider Democratic former President Barack Obama’s nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the same high court vacancy that Trump has selected Gorsuch to fill. “Democrats, including me, are still furious at the way Judge Merrick Garland was treated last year. But the traditions and principles that have defined the Senate are crumbling, and we are poised to hasten that destruction this week,” Coons said. Gorsuch was nominated to fill a vacancy created by the February 2016 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Democrats have accused Gorsuch of being insufficiently independent of Trump, evading questions on key Supreme Court rulings of the past including on abortion and political spending, and favoring corporate interests over ordinary Americans. Republicans control the White House and Congress for the first time in a decade. The inability of Senate Republicans to coax enough Democratic support to avoid the “nuclear option” reflected the intense partisan divide in Washington and the Trump administration’s failure to win the cooperation of the opposition party. Senators Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, and panel member Patrick Leahy, along with fellow Democrats Mark Warner and Ben Cardin, also announced filibuster support on Monday. Spicer accused Democrats of partisan obstruction that sets “a very dangerous precedent” and told a briefing that “we’re obviously disappointed that the overwhelming majority of them are still playing politics with the nation’s highest court.” The actual confirmation vote would be by a simple majority if the filibuster is stopped. To date, four Democrats oppose a filibuster, four short of the eight that Republicans needed. With the failure of Republican healthcare legislation in Congress and with courts blocking the president’s ban on people from several Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States, winning confirmation for Gorsuch has taken on even more importance for Trump. The 60-vote super-majority threshold that gives the minority party power to hold up the majority party has over the decades forced the Senate to try to achieve bipartisanship in legislation and presidential appointments. Republican committee member Lindsey Graham said, “If we have to, we will change the rules, and it looks like we’re going to have to. I hate that. I really, really do.” While Gorsuch’s opponents would fight a Senate rule change, it was the Democrats who in 2013 changed the Senate rules to limit filibusters after Republicans used the procedure against Obama’s appeals court nominees. The Senate, then led by Democrats, barred filibusters for executive branch nominees and federal judges aside from Supreme Court justices. Even if Republicans do change the rules, legislation, as opposed to appointments, would still need to meet a 60-vote threshold. | 1 |
Many of the things we do on a daily basis may seem harmless. But a lot of these things are probably adding to your health problems and, in conclusion, may perhaps be causing you to gain weight. Let’s... | 1 |
MADRID (Reuters) - Catalonia s parliament voted on Wednesday to hold an independence referendum on Oct. 1, setting up a clash with the Spanish government that has vowed to stop what it says would be an illegal vote. After 12 hours of often chaotic debate in the Barcelona parliament, a majority voted for the referendum and the legal framework to set up a new state, under which the assembly would declare independence within 48 hours of a yes vote. Lawmakers who opposed independence abandoned the chamber before the vote, with some leaving Catalan flags in their empty seats. The winners, led by regional head Carles Puigdemont, sang the Catalan national anthem once the votes were counted. Committed to freedom and democracy! We push on! Catalonia s deputy governor, Oriol Junqueras, tweeted after the vote. Polls in the northeastern region show support for self-rule waning as Spain s economy improves. But the majority of Catalans do want the opportunity to vote on whether to split from Spain. The government has asked the Spanish constitutional court to declare the referendum law void as soon as it is approved by the regional parliament. The Spanish constitution states that the country is indivisible. What is happening in the Catalan parliament is embarrassing, it s shameful, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria told reporters. The details of the referendum, which would pose the question Do you want Catalonia to be an independent republic? to all Spanish citizens living in Catalonia, were revealed amid a tense atmosphere in the 135-seat regional parliament. You will not split up Spain, but you are breaking up Catalonia, Alejandro Fernandez of the ruling People s Party (PP) told pro-independence lawmakers. You re putting social harmony at risk. The vote comes about three weeks after Barcelona and a nearby town were struck by Islamist attacks that killed 16 people and caused the Catalan and Spanish governments to present a brief united front. Divisions reappeared as both sides squabbled over whether either could have prevented the attacks, and rallies against terrorism became politicized. Crowds in Barcelona booed Spain s King Felipe when he visited for one march. There will be no minimum turnout requirement to make the result of the referendum binding, Puigdemont said in a recent briefing. Ballot boxes, voting papers and an electoral census are at the ready, he said. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told a news conference on Monday the government would come down with all the force of the law to ensure no referendum would go ahead. Courts have already suspended from office and leveled millions of euros in fines at Catalan politicians who organized a non-binding referendum in 2014, which returned a yes vote on a low turnout. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement that gave no other details. The scheduled telephone calls come as a senior ally of Merkel earlier on Wednesday pressed Japan to quickly seal a trade deal with the European Union. | 0 |
Earlier this week, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, long may he reign, praise be his name, holy is he, we bow down before him, subtly denounced racist, xenophobic hatemonger, Donald Trump, during a keynote speech at the company s annual F8 conference. While he never mentioned Trump by name, the tech god had plenty to say about Trump s nature. As I look around the world, I m starting to see people and nations turning inward, against the idea of a connected world and a global community, Zuckerberg told the crowd. But then he targeted his verbal beatdown to Trump: I hear fearful voices talking about building walls It takes courage to choose hope over fear. Instead of building walls we can help build bridges. Instead of dividing people we can connect people. We do it one person at a time, one connection at time. That s why I think the work we re doing together is more important than it has ever been before. Trump, and his moronic horde of jaded, hateful Teanuts, have all said these things, and worse. It takes courage to choose hope over fear, Zuckerberg added. People will always call you naive but it s this hope and optimism that s behind every important step forward. Zuckerberg s powerful words obviously struck a chord with employees, who voted to ask their CEO a very important question in a recent weekly Q+A: Do they have a moral obligation to stop Trump from rising to power? Gizmodo reports:Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017? A screenshot of the poll, given to Gizmodo, shows the question as the fifth most popular.It s not particularly surprising the question was asked, or that some Facebook employees are anti-Trump. The question and Zuckerberg s statements on Tuesday align with the consensus politics of Silicon Valley: pro-immigration, pro-trade, pro-expansion of the internet.This question could mean many things, depending on the level and nature of help. In the 2010 congressional elections, Facebook used its considerable influence to convince voters to show up at the polls. An estimated 340,000 extra people vote (unfortunately, not many of them were Democrats, who largely stayed home rather than perform their civic duty. Hint, hint, guys) thanks to an aggressive, one-day campaign that strong-armed users into getting off the couch to head to the polls. Could Facebook wage a similar war on Trump by utilizing a similar strategy to inform conservatives that he s the only man in recent history who chances being unfavorably compared to Hitler one day? Would such a thing be ethical, no matter the motivating reason?In 2014, the social media giant experimented with manipulating users emotions. In a move that was widely decried by everyone the company removed either all positive or all negative posts from a good number of its users news feeds in an effort to see how it would affect their emotions. Technically, we have all agreed to this sort of thing when we agreed to the data use policy, but no one was warned that they were part of the experiment, either. The result was as one would expect: more negative posts caused people to produce more negative posts. More positive led to more positive posts from users, and so on.Could the same be done with posts about Trump? Would showing people more negative Trump posts cause the overall sentiment even among the most vapid who reside in Stupidville toward Trump to shift? Could they use this method to influence voters? Once again, would it be ethical, even if it would accomplish something good? Gizmodo notes:What s exceedingly important about this question being raised and Zuckerberg s answer, if there is one is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It s unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It s where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It s also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets.And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what s happening on their network. Facebook can promote or block any material that it wants, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told the publication. Facebook has the same First Amendment right as the New York Times. They can completely block Trump if they want. They block him or promote him. Volokh says that the only way Facebook could legally overstep would be to collude with any candidate. If they were to choose to stamp out positive Trump posts, to create a blackout, they would have every legal right. If they were working with Sanders or Clinton, however, it would be a different issue: If Facebook was actively coordinating with the Sanders or Clinton campaign, and suppressing Donald Trump news, it would turn an independent expenditure (protected by the First Amendment) into a campaign contribution because it would be coordinated and that could be restricted.But if they re just saying, We don t want Trump material on our site, they have every right to do that. It s protected by the First Amendment. It is very clear that Facebook could take a number of actions to ensure that Trump stays as far from the White House as his fans are from reality. But, what if Zuckerberg decides the company does have a moral obligation? Unfortunately, given the secretive nature of the news feed (and their history of manipulating users), we likely won t know what, if anything, he would decide to do at least not until after it has happened.Featured image via Getty Images | 0 |
45 Views November 19, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
For those who are worried about the plunge in the gold and silver markets…
Dr. Stephen Leeb urges investors to hang in there after the plunge in gold and silver: “Don’t lose faith now. Please don’t bail (out of gold and silver) at this critical moment. You had a huge move in a lot of these gold stocks. They’ve pulled back, but so what? It’s a small price to pay for what’s going to happen next. We are moving closer and closer to what I think is going to be the greatest bull market of anybody’s lifetime that’s alive today. Don’t give up on this stuff now. Don’t…For anyone who is worried about the plunge in the gold and silver markets I would urge you to continue listening to this extraordinarily powerful KWN audio interview with Stephen Leeb by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
***ALSO JUST RELEASED: Did This Just Signal A Major Bottom In Gold & Silver? CLCK HERE.
© 2015 by King World News®. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the articles is permitted and encouraged. About author | 1 |
BERLIN(Reuters) - Any United Nations peacekeepers sent to eastern Ukraine must be granted access to the entirety of the region held by Moscow-backed separatists, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. Russian President Vladimir Putin floated the idea of deploying U.N. troops to eastern Ukraine in a Monday call with Merkel, suggesting that the U.N. mission could protect observers from the international OSCE monitoring mission. With growing calls in Germany for the lifting of European Union sanctions against Russia over its activities in Ukraine, Moscow has been keen to float proposals that would help soften export bans that have hit Russians living standards. I find President Putin s proposal to send U.N. troops to protect OSCE observers interesting, she told the FUNKE newspaper group on Friday. A few days ago I discussed with him that the U.N. troops must have access to everywhere where the OSCE is stationed, so the entire Donetsk/Luhansk region. The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies Western accusations it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters. The observers are there to monitor implementation of a peace deal agreed in Minsk in 2015, which has been largely unsuccessful in settling the conflict despite German and French urgings. Some German politicians have said sanctions should be lifted if the peace deal is implemented. Christian Lindner, leader of the Free Democrats, a likely coalition partner for Merkel after Sept. 24 elections, even suggested Germany must accept Russia s occupation of Ukraine s Crimean peninsula. Merkel said Putin s proposals were tender shoots of progress, which give no cause for softening sanctions so far. She rejected Lindner s proposal. The annexation is against international law and must not be accepted, she said. | 0 |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Trapped under tons of rubble and in complete darkness, Diana Pacheco s hopes were fading fast for making it out alive from a collapsed office building after a huge earthquake in Mexico City, despite rescuers frantic attempts to reach her. Then the trapped woman had a great stroke of luck: a series of short messages she had written and sent to her husband some 16 hours earlier lit up his phone screen. My love The ceiling fell We re trapped I love you I love you a lot We re on the fourth floor Near the emergency stairway There s four of us, read the WhatsApp messages, which finally reached her husband Juan Jesus Garcia on Wednesday at 5:34 a.m. Garcia, 33, an Uber driver, had been waiting, often in tears, beside the collapsed building all night and immediately ran over to rescue workers. It was like a miracle because I was the only one who got the message and since I was there with the rescue workers I talked to them and they could locate her, said Garcia. The messages on Garcia s phone, seen by Reuters shortly after they were received on Wednesday, could have been delayed due to erratic cell phone coverage in parts of Mexico City after the quake, or the fact that Pacheco s phone signal was blocked by the tons of concrete that kept her trapped in the collapsed building. When asked whether WhatsApp messages can be delivered hours after they were sent in an area without good cellphone coverage, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed it is possible. Pacheco, a recruiter for a human resources and accounting firm, said she sent the messages shortly after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck at 1:14 p.m. on Tuesday. Those messages helped them know more or less where we were located, Pacheco said on Friday from her hospital bed, her voice weak. Using the information to pinpoint their location, rescuers freed Pacheco, 30, and the three other survivors shortly after 6 a.m. on Wednesday. Rescue operations were still underway on Friday at the building, where Pacheco says there were some 60 people on her floor alone at the time of the quake. I think there are people (alive) there because we had oxygen, air was coming in, she said. Despite having bruises all over her body and wearing a neck brace, Pacheco was generally in good health. She said she tried to send WhatsApp and text messages to other people from under the building, as well as make phone calls and post on Facebook, but only the messages to her husband got through. She said when the building fell, the force of two floors above collapsing violently knocked her down, but a wall of concrete stopped just short of crushing her and three of her coworkers. They found themselves huddled together in a cramped space. They screamed out every time they heard voices from outside the building. We heard them (rescue workers) when they asked us to yell or make noise, but regardless of how much we yelled they couldn t hear us, Pacheco said. The quake, Mexico s deadliest in a generation, has already claimed close to 300 lives. [nL5N1M330H] (This version of the story has been refiled to change the date in dateline.) | 1 |
Shred the political playbook. The 2016 campaign will be remembered as the year in which the conventional wisdom was anything but wise. Most political pundits have been wrong. And almost every assumption about presidential campaigns since the birth of modern politics in 1960, with the first televised debate and widespread use of TV advertising, has been debunked. Our political catechism has been upended. Consider the following:
When the Supreme Court ruled in the 2010 Citizens United case that corporations were people and therefore could spend unlimited amounts of money – without disclosure, in some instances – on political campaigns, Democrats and other critics warned that democracy was now for sale and that the candidate who raised the most money would invariably prevail over less well-funded contenders. Enter Jeb Bush, the Republican Party’s “inevitable” nominee, who raised over $130 million for his campaign and Super Pac even before he formally declared. Eight months later, exit Jeb!, the “low-energy” candidate who, having spent the vast majority of the money he had raised, quit the race, dragging his exclamation point behind him. Donald Trump, by contrast, may be wealthy – just how rich remains in dispute – but he has spent less overall than any other candidate and, because of the nonstop coverage his slurs and antics have received, virtually nothing on TV advertising.
Ted Cruz was supposed to win all the early GOP contests because of his heavy investment in his “ground game.” But, with the exception of Iowa – which he first visited in 2008, only months after being elected a first-term senator from Texas – organization, like money, has meant little this year. Cruz won Iowa thanks to a large evangelical turnout after Trump skipped what turned out to be a critical debate days before the nation’s first caucus, but he has steadily faded ever since. Polls suggest that Trump won in Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina with the most modest of campaign ground organizations because of his powerful slogan of American revitalization; because he is seen as a consummate political outsider, a blunt businessman who says what ordinary people think, a problem-solver and anti-politician; and because of his celebrity status and tempestuous rallies, complete with the by now almost ritualistic ejection of a protester. While Trump has repeatedly flown to primary states in his private jet, he rarely spends a night outside his baronial residence on Fifth Avenue.
Apparently not this year. Almost no establishment politician endorsed Trump during the first two primaries. The only other celebrity politician who rallied to Trump’s side was Sarah Palin, whose rambling, incoherent 45-minute endorsement prior to the Iowa caucus, if anything, may have cost him votes there. Marco Rubio, the candidate who has garnered the most endorsements, has yet to win a primary and is unlikely to do so, despite his growing support from a still reeling Republican “establishment.”
4. You can’t run against the media.
Trump has mocked this political platitude, repeatedly. If anything, one of the bumptious billionaire’s most reliable applause lines is his frequent declaration that the media are “terrible,” “among the most dishonest groups of people” he’s ever met. Apparently his rivals have gotten the message. During the debate in Houston last Thursday, every candidate except John Kasich, who is running a poor fifth except in his home state of Ohio, attacked the press.
Quite the contrary. In 2016, given America’s deep political polarization, no candidate seems able to win without high negatives. The nation’s bitter frustration seems to require candidates to make increasingly stark, even extreme, appeals. The GOP field has no shortage of candidates with high positive ratings, especially Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, neither of whom has carried a single state primary or caucus. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has far higher favorability ratings than Hillary Clinton, who in poll after poll is widely viewed by potential voters of most ages, ethnicities and genders as “untrustworthy” and perhaps even “dishonest.” Yet Clinton got 73.5 percent of the Democratic vote in South Carolina on Saturday.
Many Trump critics continue to assert that he will ultimately stumble, because no candidate can win his party’s nomination or be elected to the nation’s highest office without substantial political experience. While the 2008 election of a junior senator from Illinois whose resume featured only a brief stint as a community organizer began to challenge that political bromide, the crucial primaries on March 1 and March 15 will be the ultimate referee.
Given the pundits’ predictive record so far, a degree of humility is in order. Trump, once the “unthinkable,” may soon become “inevitable.” For better or worse, the 2016 race is anything but politics as usual.
Judith Miller, a Fox News contributor, is an award-winning writer and author, and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The author of several books, her latest is "The Story: A Reporter's Journey" (Simon & Schuster, April 7, 2015) now available in paperback. Follow her on Twitter @JMFreeSpeech.
Douglas E. Schoen has served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton. He has more than 30 years experience as a pollster and political consultant. He is also a Fox News contributor and co-host of "Fox News Insiders" Sundays on Fox News Channel at 7 pm ET. He is the author of 13 books. His latest is "Putin's Master Plan" (Encounter Books, September 27, 2016). Follow Doug on Twitter @DouglasESchoen. | 0 |
A Carrier union leader called Donald Trump out for his lies about the deal that supposedly saved American jobs from moving to Mexico. So what did Trump do? Tell the truth? Take responsibility for his actions? Recant his bogus claims? Oh, heck no! He attacked him on Twitter. Because of course he did.On Wednesday, United Steelworkers 1999 President Chuck Jones said Trump and his second in command, Mike Pence, used misleading numbers and pointed out that some of the jobs they took credit for saving weren t ever even leaving to begin with. What they re doing, they re counting in 350 odd more that were never leaving this country at all, Jones told Burnett. If you re dealing with people s livelihoods, you sure as hell ought to know what the numbers are. Jones said that, for some unknown reason, he believed Trump would do the right thing at his Dec. 1 press conference and tell the truth that 550 jobs weren t saved. But he got up there, Jones said, and, for whatever reason, lied his ass off, Jones said.Not being one to handle criticism well, Trump blew his top when Jones called out his B.S. and took to Twitter to voice his anger.Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2016If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2016So now, among all the other groups Trump has taken aim at, he is going after union leaders. The heroes of the very white working class, blue collar folks who voted him into office have now become the latest victims to feel the brunt of Trump s billionaire boots. That sure didn t take long. All they had to do was quit kissing his ass and call him out for being the pathological liar that he is and he turned on them in a heartbeat. Is anybody here surprised? No? Didn t think so.Featured image via Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images | 0 |
Black Lives Matter leader DeRay McKesson endorses Clinton McKesson praised Clinton's platform for seeking to reform parts of her husband's 1994 crime bill Mallory Shelbourne | The Hill - October 26, 2016 Comments Top Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson on Wednesday endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
“Clinton’s platform on racial justice is strong: It is informed by the policy failings of the past and is a vision for where we need to go,” McKesson wrote in a Washington Post op-ed . Clinton hosted a meeting with McKesson and other Black Lives Matter activists in the fall to discuss the Campaign Zero plan to end police violence. McKesson wrote that Clinton “didn’t appear to understand the urgency of the need to address racism” when she began running for the White House but that her position on racial justice is now “strong.” | 1 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Christie said on Friday the state would begin taxing income earned by people who work in New Jersey but live in Pennsylvania, ending a long-standing arrangement with the neighboring state. Pulling out of the nearly 40-year old “reciprocity” agreement would allow New Jersey to raise more revenue starting Jan. 1. Christie, a close ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said in a statement that he was forced to act because the Democrat-controlled legislature created a $250 million budget hole in June by relying on public employee health insurance cuts they have not yet made. If lawmakers come back next week and cut health costs, Christie could consider “revising” his termination of the reciprocal tax pact. “I will not raise state taxes, cut property tax relief, reduce aid to education or our hospitals, or reduce the state’s record pension payment to cover for this blunder by the legislature,” Christie said. Jeff Sheridan, press secretary to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, said Christie “erred significantly in his decision to unnecessarily punish 125,000 Pennsylvanians and cost the commonwealth $5 million annually.” He said Wolf, a Democrat, was hopeful Christie would change his mind. However, Christie seems committed to making Pennsylvania “suffer the consequences of his failure to enact a responsible budget in a bipartisan way,” Sheridan said. Pennsylvanians pay a flat 3.07 percent income tax rate with no personal exemptions. New Jerseyans pay higher rates the more they make, with progressive rates increasing from 1.4 percent to 8.97 percent. The reciprocal agreement is advantageous for high-income Pennsylvania residents who work in New Jersey, because they pay their state’s lower tax rate. It is also good for low-income New Jerseyans who work across the border because of New Jersey’s progressive tax system. New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney said in a statement that ending the scheme is “the wrong decision for our state” and that more than 100,000 New Jersey residents will pay almost $1,000 per year in additional income tax. “The burden falls completely on working families in New Jersey, especially those in South Jersey who work in Philadelphia, and will have a very real impact on their quality of life,” he said. | 1 |
(Reuters) - Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president on Friday was greeted with notes of caution by some foreign leaders. Here is some of the reaction: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto congratulated Trump on his inauguration, saying he would like to strengthen ties, but that sovereignty, national interest and protection of Mexicans would be paramount. Pena Nieto, criticized for meeting Trump last year even after the New York businessman had insulted Mexicans in his election campaign, said on Twitter he would seek “respectful” dialogue with the new U.S. government.[nL1N1FA1G8] Canada’s government, eager to sidestep potentially protectionist U.S. policies, said it was confident Trump would see that working closely with Canada benefited both nations. “We are confident the new Administration will see that Canada’s partnership with the U.S. mutually strengthens our two nations and provides real opportunities to grow our respective economies,” Joseph Pickerill, spokesman for Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, said in a statement.[nL1N1FA1A3] Germany will need a new economic strategy geared toward Asia should the new U.S. administration start a trade war with China, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said, warning against protectionism hours after Trump was sworn in. “What we heard today were high nationalistic tones,” Gabriel said in an interview with the public broadcaster ZDF, the first official German reaction to Trump’s inauguration. “I think we have to prepare for a rough ride.” [nL5N1FA52T] Pope Francis urged Trump to be guided by ethical values, saying he must take care of the poor and the outcast during his time in office. [nL5N1FA4YF] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a statement posted in his name on the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, congratulated Trump. He added, “I look forward to working with him for the sake of peace, security and stability in a world that is troubled and in a region that lives a tragic era, and to contribute to creating a safe future for everyone.” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO chief and now an adviser to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, said in a telephone interview with Reuters that, “I had hoped and also expected a more internationally oriented speech. Instead we got a very domestically oriented, anti-establishment speech. “As president of the United States, he should also realize he has become the leader of the free world - that’s why people all over the globe are watching his inauguration speech. And that’s why I had hoped that he would also address the need for determined American global leadership.” | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli jets flew low over the city of Saida in southern Lebanon on Sunday causing sonic booms that broke windows and shook buildings for the first time in years, security sources and residents said. Israeli warplanes regularly enter Lebanese airspace, the Lebanese military says, but rarely fly so low. The Israeli military gave no immediate comment. The sonic booms also caused panic in Saida, residents said. Tension has risen between Lebanon s Shi ite group Hezbollah and Israel, which last fought a war in 2006. Hezbollah has played down the prospects of another imminent conflict but warned it could take place on Israeli territory, and said its rockets could hit targets anywhere in Israel. Israel s air force chief has said it would use all its strength in a future war with Hezbollah. The 2006 war killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. | 0 |
Should the U.S. Continue to Support Israel? | 1 |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Back in his days as a test pilot at Air Force Base in Ohio, Gus Grissom had a message for his wife, Betty. “If I die, have a party,” he said. Betty Grissom never did have that party. But on Friday, as for the past 25 years, there was a solemn observance at the memorial for her husband and two crewmates who were killed in the Apollo 1 disaster. Mr. Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White died in a flash fire that engulfed their capsule atop a Saturn 1B rocket during a routine training operation on Jan. 27, 1967. Mr. Grissom was 40. Ms. Grissom, 89, was at the memorial again on Friday, wearing a denim jacket with a large Apollo 1 patch in patriotic colors. She joined old friends, family members, and NASA officials and veterans, among them Charlie Duke, who took part in the Apollo 16 moon landing. With the recent deaths of the astronauts John Glenn and Eugene A. Cernan and the sea changes in Washington, the gathering felt like a memorial for an era as well as for three men. At the ceremony, candles were lit for the dead astronauts by members of their families, including Cody Grissom, 22, a pilot, who is completing his last year at his grandfather’s alma mater, Purdue University. Representatives from the Navy, the Air Force and NASA spoke, and a Navy bugler performed taps after the sun went down. “It is important that Challenger and Columbia are remembered, and that Apollo 1 is remembered,” said the Kennedy Space Center director, Robert D. Cabana. “And that we take those steps that create an environment where everyone has a voice, that we really work to ensure the success and the safety of the crew as we continue to explore and move beyond our planet. ” Ms. Grissom said this year’s ceremony was probably her last. It coincided with a NASA tribute exhibit about Apollo 1 at the Kennedy Space Center, which she, like many, thought was long overdue. “I thought this is probably a good time to call it quits with them finally getting a memorial of some kind,” she said. This year’s event drew around 150 people, one of the largest crowds ever for a memorial that few people knew of unless they were related to an astronaut or were a space fan. “We need heroes today, and these were heroes,” said one such fan, Robert Pearlman, an American space historian. People from all over the world traveled to the memorial, among them Masato Maruyama, 65, who has come for the past 10 years from Tokyo. He brought a big bottle of sake to share with the family and friends. Mr. Maruyama said Mr. Grissom reminded him of his father, who was in the Japanese Navy. He remembers just where he was when the fire occurred. “It’s not the distance — it’s in here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “I’m just one of hundreds of thousands. Apollo counted a lot not just for Americans, but human beings. ” Although the launch platform is crumbling like a concrete Greek ruin, and stenciled with an eerie “Abandon in Place,” the site was decorated with three floral wreaths brought by the Grissom family. A bagpiper stood ready and Ms. Grissom sat front and center. She was treated as the event’s grande dame as people lined up to speak with her. “I want you to know it is such an honor,” said Shirley Brown, whose shop provided the wreaths. “The first time you walked in my shop and said, ‘I’m Betty Grissom,’ I thought Queen Elizabeth had walked in. You never went down, you fought all the way. ” “I never quit,” Ms. Grissom agreed, in the kind of taciturn response her astronaut husband might have offered. Many years after the accident, two space buffs, Bob Castro and Mark Pinchell, started going out to the site of the fire, which is on Air Force property, in their own private tribute. One year, they bumped into each other, and came up with the idea of doing something bigger. “Just two space geeks who were going to Pad 34 and doing their own separate ceremonies,” said Mark Grissom, 63, who was 13 when his father died. “They met at the pad and decided to invite the families. ” The Grissoms were the first astronaut family to become involved. Early on, car headlights provided the only illumination. While other astronauts and families have been absent over the years, this year Roger Chaffee’s wife, Martha, and her daughter, Sheryl, attended, along with Ed White’s daughter Bonnie. “This is the families’ memorial,” said Sonny Witt, the 45th Space Wing director of operations for Division 1 at Patrick Air Force Base, who helps provide the access. “Not the Air Force and not NASA. They are the ones that lost the husbands and brothers and fathers. Mistakes were made, and they paid the price. ” When the three Apollo 1 astronauts were trapped in their burning capsule on Pad 34, a cry for help, believed to be from Mr. Chaffee, a rookie astronaut, came over the communications system: “Hey, we’re burning up. ” Mr. White tried opening the hatch, but caught within the highly combustible pure oxygen atmosphere, the crew suffocated. “I don’t want any of this forgotten,” Ms. Grissom said. “Gus Grissom was a human being. ” Mr. Grissom, often seen as an underdog, was a favorite astronaut of many Americans. He infamously “screwed the pooch” — as Tom Wolfe put it in “The Right Stuff” — when the hatch blew on his Mercury capsule, causing it to sink it in the Atlantic upon splashdown. Mr. Grissom was initially blamed, and the sunken capsule cost the astronaut couple a visit to the Kennedy White House. In the end, he was cleared of responsibility. Ms. Grissom, who lives in Houston by herself, and Mr. Grissom were high school sweethearts in Mitchell, Ind. Her life always revolved around him. She worked as a telephone operator for Indiana Bell, putting her husband through college at Purdue, where he studied mechanical engineering on the G. I. Bill. He was selected as an astronaut after flying an Sabre on over a hundred combat missions in Korea. Death was always on the horizon for the wives. The program lost seven astronauts on the path to the moon, largely as a result of crashes of the the supersonic jet trainer airplanes the astronauts flew back and forth from where they lived in Houston and Cape Canaveral. When the news of the Apollo 1 accident came to her, delivered by a NASA doctor when she was at a friend’s home for a weekly poker night, Ms. Grissom told her friend that she had “already died 100, 000 deaths” living with her husband. Martha Chaffee, the youngest space widow, slept with the flag that hung over her husband’s coffin at Arlington. Pat White killed herself years later, a weekend before she and some of the other wives had a reunion planned, her friends said. The space widows felt rejected after their husbands died, while still living in the closely knit community of astronaut families in the “space burbs” by the Manned Spacecraft Center (later the Johnson Space Center) in Houston, nicknamed “Togethersville” because of its exclusivity. In the late ’60s, Ms. Grissom became a black sheep among the astronaut community. She was the first of the widows to sue NASA’s largest contractor, North American Rockwell, over the construction of the capsule, and she inspired Ms. Chaffee and Ms. White to do the same. Ms. Grissom eventually settled for $350, 000. On Friday, as Ms. Grissom was helped off the old launching pad, professional and amateur stargazers pointed out the International Space Station passing in the sky above, along with Venus and a shooting star. Back in the car and about to be driven to a celebratory dinner for friends and family at a hotel in nearby Cocoa Beach, she turned to her son and said, “The stars are out tonight. ” Earlier, she spoke of how her husband’s sacrifice helped pave the way for the missions to come like the Apollo 11 moonwalk her husband never got to see. Still, she said, “I’m pretty sure he got to the moon before they did. ” She added: “Of course he didn’t make it, but in spirit I think he was already there. ” | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp is being awarded a U.S. defense contract worth up to $582 million for delivery of F-35 spares, the Pentagon said on Friday. | 1 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / American Funhouse: Manufacturing Consent Essential Reading By Smoking Mirrors on September 8, 2011
Smoking Mirrors at his creative best writing about … well you decide what he’s writing about Hellstorm – Exposing The Real Genocide of Nazi Germany (Full Documentary) By wmw_admin on May 10, 2015
What happened in the aftermath of World War II has been one of the darkest and best kept secrets in world history. The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop! By wmw_admin on August 21, 2010
The sacrifice of “six million Jews” was being talked about before Hitler rose to power. A photocopy from the American Hebrew dated Oct. 1919, speaks openly about a holocaust of six million Jews before declaring “Israel is entitled to a place in the sun”!! The Advent of the Anti-Christ By Rixon Stewart on August 2, 2010
A few words on the market meltdown and how it may assist the debut of a truly sinister figure Does God Play Dice with the Universe? By Rixon Stewart on December 1, 2003
Research into particle physics is revealing a world full of almost magical qualities. Could it be that this mysterious, puzzling world is in fact the world of the spirit – the spiritual world that saints and mystics throughout history have sought to explo “Holocaust” declared 7 years before there was a “Holocaust” By wmw_admin on December 13, 2014
The New York Times was already reporting of Jewish persecution and an ongoing “Holocaust” in May 31, 1936 Magic Thermite and the 9/11 Fairytale By Smoking Mirrors on April 15, 2009
The evidence is in and it’s irrefutable: scientists have discovered traces of hi-tech explosives in the WTC debris. Which means the UK/US/Israel will have to stage another event on the scale of 9/11 to counter the brushfire this report will ignite | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. Donald J. Trump began a victory lap, heading to Indiana to celebrate both his win and his seeming success at preventing some manufacturing jobs in the state from moving to Mexico. The deal with Carrier, best known for its saves 1, 000 jobs through a $7 million incentive package — just the kind of corporate giveaway he knocked on the campaign trail. Afterward, he went to a rally in Ohio, where he announced the selection of James Mattis, an with a tough stance on Iran, to be his defense secretary. _____ 2. Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters say he is risking charges of hypocrisy for filling his cabinet with people of wealth and power — the very kinds of people he vowed to drive out of Washington. The consideration of Mitt Romney, above, for secretary of state has been the most infuriating to conservative leaders who wanted to see Mr. Trump shake up the party establishment. Some have mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign to try to usher David H. Petraeus, the former C. I. A. director, into the job. _____ 3. The first recount of the 2016 presidential election is underway in Wisconsin, above. Few people expect the effort, initiated by Jill Stein, to reverse the election’s outcome. Another recount will begin Friday in the neighboring battleground state of Michigan. _____ 4. A measure to extend sanctions against Iran for a decade was passed by the Senate and will now go to President Obama, who has not said whether he intends to sign or to veto the legislation. The vote showed the desire of lawmakers to maintain a tough posture toward Iran amid uncertainty over the future of the nuclear agreement with the country, which Mr. Trump railed against during his campaign. Iranian officials have threatened to respond if the United States goes through with the extension. Above, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. _____ 5. The United Nations apologized for its role in the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti that led to the deaths of about 10, 000 people. Secretary General Ban in his address to the General Assembly, implicitly acknowledged that the disease was not present in the country until the arrival of U. N. peacekeepers from Nepal, where cholera is common. _____ 6. President François Hollande stunned France, announcing he would not run for a second term in next year’s election. Mr. Hollande, a Socialist, has had some of the worst approval ratings in France’s modern history. He has struggled to cut unemployment and has had to grapple with agonizing terrorist attacks. _____ 7. The process to demobilize FARC rebels in Colombia can begin now that a revised peace accord ending the country’s civil war has been ratified. This time the government bypassed voters, who had turned down the accord by a narrow margin on Oct. 2. In coming weeks, the rebels will leave their camps and relocate to a set number of sites, where they’ll disarm under the watch of United Nations inspectors. _____ 8. Psilocybin, an ingredient found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, can significantly reduce anxiety and depression in cancer patients, according to a study published today. The drug has been illegal in the United States for more than 40 years. “I have a greater sense of peace of what might come,” one cancer survivor said. “I’m very grateful, beyond words, for this trial. ” _____ 9. Jim Delligatti, above, the McDonald’s franchise owner who created the Big Mac, died on Monday. He was 98. In the Mr. Delligatti’s initial proposal to add a hamburger to the menu was met with resistance. Today, the company sells about 550 million Big Macs in the United States every year. “All I got was a plaque,” Mr. Delligatti said in 2007. _____ 10. Tiger Woods made his comeback to golf at the Hero World Challenge, his first competitive round in more than a year — 466 days, to be exact. He had been sidelined by back injuries, watching his ranking plummet to 898th while he was away. Woods, now 40, showed flashes of his old self on the course Thursday, but finished over par. _____ 11. One of our stories is about a fortune that went missing when a wealthy businessman set out to divorce his wife. The quest to find it would reveal the depths of an offshore financial system used by the richest people in the world for one main purpose: to make it appear that they own as little as possible. “Dictators use it to loot their own countries. Drug lords use it to launder money,” our reporter wrote. The system “is a darkness that shields the businessman and the criminal alike. ” _____ 12. Finally, we have reached the last month of 2016. December will usher in holiday decorations, party invitations, airport congestion and, most likely, an overwhelming number of lists. Here’s one to kick things off: the 10 best books of 2016, selected by editors of The New York Times Book Review. Enjoy. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0 |
For generations, mothers have encouraged children to take long, slow breaths to fight anxiety. A long tradition of meditation likewise uses controlled breathing to induce tranquillity. Now scientists at Stanford University may have uncovered for the first time why taking deep breaths can be so calming. The research, on a tiny group of neurons deep within the brains of mice, also underscores just how intricate and pervasive the links are within our body between breathing, thinking, behaving and feeling. Breathing is one of the body’s most essential and elastic processes. Our breaths occur constantly and rhythmically, much like our hearts’ steady beating. But while we generally cannot change our hearts’ rhythm by choice, we can alter how we breathe, in some cases consciously, as in holding our breath, or with little volition, such as sighing, gasping or yawning. But how the mind and body regulate breathing and vice versa at the cellular level has remained largely mysterious. More than 25 years ago, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles first discovered a small bundle of about 3, 000 interlinked neurons inside the brainstems of animals, including people, that seem to control most aspects of breathing. They dubbed these neurons the breathing pacemaker. In the years since, though, little progress had been made in understanding precisely how those cells work. But recently, a group of scientists at Stanford and other universities, including some of the U. C. L. A. researchers, began using sophisticated new genetics techniques to study individual neurons in the pacemaker. By microscopically tracking different proteins produced by the genes in each cell, the scientists could group the neurons into “types. ” They eventually identified about 65 different types of neurons in the pacemaker, each presumably with a unique responsibility for regulating some aspect of breathing. The scientists confirmed that idea in a remarkable study published last year in Nature, in which they bred mice with a single type of pacemaker cell that could be disabled. When they injected the animals with a virus that killed only those cells, the mice stopped sighing, the researchers discovered. Mice, like people, normally sigh every few minutes, even if we and they are unaware of doing so. Without instructions from these cells, the sighing stopped. But that study, while literally breathtaking, raised new questions about the capabilities of other neurons in the pacemaker. So for the newest study, which was published recently in Science, the researchers carefully disabled yet another type of neuron in mice. Afterward, the animals at first seemed unchanged. They sighed, yawned and otherwise breathed just as before. But when the mice were placed in unfamiliar cages, which normally would incite jittery exploring and lots of nervous sniffing — a form of rapid breathing — the animals instead sat serenely grooming themselves. “They were, for mice, remarkably chill,” says Dr. Mark Krasnow, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford who oversaw the research. To better understand why, the researchers next looked at brain tissue from the mice to determine whether and how the disabled neurons might connect to other parts of the brain. It turned out that the particular neurons in question showed direct biological links to a portion of the brain that is known to be involved in arousal. This area sends signals to multiple other parts of the brain that, together, direct us to wake up, be alert and, sometimes, become anxious or frantic. In the mellow mice, this area of the brain remained quiet. “What we think was going on” was that the disabled neurons normally would detect activity in other neurons within the pacemaker that regulate rapid breathing and sniffing, says Dr. Kevin Yackle, now a faculty fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, who, as a graduate researcher at Stanford, led the study. The disabled neurons would then alert the brain that something potentially worrisome was going on with the mouse since it was sniffing, and the brain should start ramping up the machinery of worry and panic. So a few tentative sniffs could result in a state of anxiety that, in a rapid feedback loop, would make the animal sniff more and become increasingly anxious. Or, without that mechanism, it would remain tranquil, a mouse of Zen. The implication of this work, both Dr. Krasnow and Dr. Yackle say, is that taking deep breaths is calming because it does not activate the neurons that communicate with the brain’s arousal center. Whether deep breathing has its own, separate set of regulatory neurons and whether those neurons talk to parts of the brain involved in soothing and pacifying the body is still unknown, although the scientists plan to continue studying the activity of each of the subtypes of neurons within the pacemaker. This area of research is in its infancy, Dr. Yackle says. It also so far involves mice rather than people, although we are known to have breathing pacemakers that closely resemble those in rodents. But even if preliminary, this research bolsters an ancient axiom, Dr. Krasnow says. “Mothers were probably right all along,” he says, “when they told us to stop and take a deep breath when we got upset. ” | 0 |
(Reuters) - Co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and former Republican U.S. congressman Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday that he is leaving the Republican party and becoming an independent during an appearance on a late-night talk show. Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, appeared on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” where he explained that his decision stemmed from his opposition to Republican President Donald Trump and his party’s unwillingness to speak out against the president and his policies. “My party has betrayed their core values,” he told Colbert. “Time and time and time again they turned the other way. They are doing the same thing now. It’s actually disgusting.” Scarborough and Brzezinski, who are engaged, were embroiled in public argument with the Republican president two weeks ago. After Trump levied personal attacks against Brzezinski in a series of messages on social network Twitter, the pair responded with a searing opinion piece in the Washington Post that questioned his mental health. Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton last November in the most divisive presidential election in modern U.S. politics, in which a gulf between Republicans and Democrats has widened and hardened over ideological positions on social and economic issues. | 1 |
Blackmail is a crime. It s time to impeach Donald Trump.Despite a desperate effort by the White House to deny it, Trump derailed those efforts by posting on Twitter Friday morning.In response to a Washington Post story in which Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski claim that Trump tried to blackmail them in order to force them to apologize by promising to stop a National Enquirer tabloid story about the pair if they complied with his demands, Trump went on Twitter and confirmed the whole thing.Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017The problem for Trump is that while he claims Scarborough called him and he s the one who said no, Scarborough has actual evidence to support his side of the story and he informed Trump of that on Twitter while calling him out for lying at the same time.Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven t spoken with you in many months. https://t.co/TZWiElo6Gs Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 30, 2017Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you? https://t.co/aAoUj5HYZS Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 30, 2017So Trump not only lied again, he literally tried to use blackmail against members of the media. It s all the more credible since the owner of the National Enquirer is David Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump s.If anyone should be apologizing to someone, it s Trump. What he said about Brzezinski on Thursday was totally deplorable and completely beneath the dignity of the office he holds.As you recall, Trump attacked the Morning Joe hosts for criticizing him earlier in the week by claiming that Mika was bleeding badly from a face-lift and that she is crazy. 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, 2017All Trump had to do is ignore their rightful criticisms. Instead, he lashed out because he has thin skin and a vulnerable ego and made things worse by trying to blackmail them. That s the very definition of abuse of power.This national circus has to be put to an end. Trump s crimes in office far exceed Richard Nixon s during Watergate. Trump should be sitting in prison, not in the Oval Office.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 0 |
This story just proves what we ve been saying all along. When it comes to unions, it s not about the members, it s about the union leadership and how they can increase their membership numbers (dues). Aiding union leadership in their quest to add members to flailing union membership numbers is just a way for Obama to keep the skids greased and ensure future contributions from one of the largest Democrat party donors (unions) in America. Congressional investigators say they ve uncovered another attempt by the Obama administration to aid illegal immigrants in the U.S. this time, by teaching foreign workers lessons on union organizing.The National Labor Relations Board has entered into agreements with Mexico, Ecuador and the Philippines to teach workers from those countries in the United States their rights when it comes to union activity.The agreements reportedly don t distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants. But lawmakers are worried it s part of an effort to shield illegal immigrants specifically, by encouraging them to join a union and get protection.NLRB spokeswoman Jessica Kahanek explained to Fox News that under the National Labor Relations Act, employees, whether documented or undocumented, are protected from retaliation due to union or other protected concerted activity. That means employers could be charged for dismissing an illegal immigrant worker if the firing is determined to be tied to the worker s union activityHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia, argued illegal immigrant workers could soon learn to exploit the system, creating a catch-22 for businesses. They could instead be charged with violating the National Labor Relations Act because someone will claim that they re doing it because the individual is engaged in unionization activities, Goodlatte said.He also claimed the Obama administration was trying to keep the NLRB union education agreements, which were originally signed in 2013 and 2014, quiet. This is the first we ve learned of this and it s the first that news organizations have learned of this and they didn t learn it because the administration came out and told them, Goodlatte told Fox News. They learned about it because of leaked materials, and again, that is not the kind of transparency the American people expect of their government. An NLRB official, though, disputed the notion that the agreement was a new development or something that was intentionally being kept out of the news. Yet it isn t just the NLRB that could view union activity as a shield for illegal immigrants.In June 2011, then-Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton issued a memo saying: ICE officers, special agents and attorneys are reminded to exercise all appropriate discretion on a case-by-case basis when making detention and enforcement decisions in the cases . . . [of] individuals engaging in a protected activity related to civil or other rights (for example, union organizing). While this may serve as a way to boost union membership at a time when their numbers are trending downward, one activist said it will likely hurt U.S. citizen union members in the end. It seems that the union is almost selling out the interests of American workers and legal immigrant workers in order to boost its membership by appealing to illegal workers and getting the assistance of other countries in doing that, Jessica Vaughan, of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News.Via: FOX News | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Funding to battle the Zika virus failed to advance in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, as Democrats blocked a Republican proposal that they said would short-change the challenge posed by the mosquito-borne virus as well as other health priorities. The proposal to provide $1.1 billion in funding, which has already passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, got 52 votes, well short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate to clear a procedural hurdle. It was unclear when Congress would revisit the issue. | 0 |
“Look at how much African American communities are suffering from Democratic control. … Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?”
“He’s [Trump] saying, ‘How in the world can we abide a 58 percent unemployment rate among African American youth?’ ”
Regular readers of The Fact Checker know we have written about this figure in some of our round-up fact checks of Trump’s speeches.
But Trump continues to use it, and his new campaign manager has now adopted it as a talking point. Since we haven’t explored it in depth, we decided to take a more thorough look at what this figure means, and explain exactly why it doesn’t hold water.
The official Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment rate for black youth is 19.2 percent — about one-third of the rate Trump uses.
A Trump campaign official previously told us that they calculated the 58 percent using this data set from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, calculating the number of people classified as “unemployed” and “not in the labor force” as a percentage of the total civilian population.
“Unemployed” refers to people who are available for work and actively looking for a job, but don’t have one. “Not in the labor force” refers to people who are not looking for jobs because they have given up looking, or are not interested — such as students. Students working part time while going to school are counted in the “employed” category.
That means Trump is counting students who are not looking for work as a part of the “unemployed” population. Technically, those students don’t have jobs. But that does not fit the definition of “unemployed” and is especially problematic for this age group, because the number of people who aren’t looking for jobs includes people who are in school full time.
Consider a 16-year-old high school sophomore, who is going to school full time and engaged in extracurricular activities when not in school. The student doesn’t have a job but isn’t looking for one. Counting the student as “unemployed” — defined as a person who’s looking for a job but can’t find one — doesn’t tell you anything about the labor market.
“No economist, I would think, would feel comfortable using that because it’s counting people who may have no interest in having a job,” said Adam Millsap, research fellow for the State and Local Policy Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
The BLS did not come up with the definition of “unemployed” out of thin air. It actually reflects an internationally embraced definition set by the International Labor Organization in 1982.
If you apply Trump’s definition to white youth, 49 percent are “unemployed.” That’s five times the official BLS unemployment rate (10 percent) for white youth.
Asians fare worse than blacks using Trump’s fuzzy math. The BLS youth unemployment rate for Asians is 9.6 percent, lower than the rate for white youth. But under Trump’s calculation, the Asian youth unemployment rate jumps to 63.6 percent — seven times the official rate, and even worse than the 58 percent figure for black youth.
See how the calculations for Asian, black and white youth compare in this graphic below. (Thanks to Millsap for helping us with the calculation.)
The difference in Asian youth rates may reflect a cultural factor, Millsap said. Fewer Asian youths may be in the labor force because they are more devoted to school and work less, even part time. But their BLS unemployment rate may be lower because Asian youth are more successful at finding a job if they look for one.
A campaign official previously told the Fact Checker that its calculation “is a more comprehensive reflection of disengagement from the labor force than the unemployment rate,” as it includes those who are not finding work because they are discouraged from previous attempts at employment. But the campaign did not respond to our latest inquiry, specifically for this fact check, for an explanation of why the campaign includes those who are not interested in looking for work (i.e., students).
If Trump really is interested in the rate of disengagement among black youth, there is an academically accepted measure he can use. It’s called NEET, which stands for “Neither Employed nor in Education or Training.” This measure factors out students altogether, and measures the share of disconnected youth aged 16 to 24.
Pew Research Center’s Drew DeSilver, who has written about youth unemployment and NEETs, calculated a 2015 NEET rate among black youth 16 to 24 at 20.9 percent of the total civilian non-institutional population, compared with 14.7 percent among white youth of the same age range.
Youth unemployment is higher among blacks than whites, regardless of the method you use. But Trump’s figure doesn’t show how it’s a persistent problem for black youth compared with white youth, and fails to accurately reflect the state of the labor market for black youth 16 to 24 years old.
Per Trump’s math, a 24-year-old college graduate who is actively looking for a job but can’t find one is in the same situation as a 16-year-old high school sophomore who is in school full time and going to band practice or playing on a school sports team when not in class.
And per Trump’s math, more Asian youth are unemployed than black youth — even though Asian youth have a lower official BLS unemployment rate than whites or blacks. So Trump ends up using a calculation for black youth that greatly exaggerates the actual number of people who can’t find a job even though they are trying, while minimizing their rate in the context of Asian youth.
We previously awarded Four Pinocchios to Trump’s absurd calculation that the “real unemployment rate” is 42 percent — about eight times higher than the official BLS rate. He applies the same junk analysis for the black youth unemployment rate, which defies internationally accepted measures of unemployment while ignoring an actual measure of disengaged youth that could prove his point. We award Trump Four more Pinocchios.
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - A possible meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump at the APEC summit in Vietnam is still being worked on, Russian news agencies cited Kremlin spokesman as saying on Friday. Discussions continue. There is no clarity yet, Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Interfax as saying. The White House said on Friday Trump will not have a separate meeting with his Russian counterpart. | 0 |
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT! The transcript and video below should be shared by everyone because the lying politicians and media are in full anti-Trump mode right now. A female police officer from Puerto Rico s police department in Guaynabo called in to a U.S. spanish speaking radio station to tell listeners what is going on in Puerto Rico. The police woman is very upset, crying and sobbing often, and shares how the Mayor of San Juan is politicizing the situation and not offering help.Note that the politicization of this disaster is on steroids with American celebrities claiming genocide by Trump and just outright lies by the politicians who are using this to score votes while the people suffer.The most visible of the politicians is the lying mayor who stood in front of supplies saying she needs help. Well, help is right behind you! What she didn t say is that truckers are not showing up to take the aid to the people! As it turns out, she hasn t been doing HER job and hasn t shown up for meetings with FEMA and the US military on sight. Here s just one of many ridiculous comments by this lying politician: The world will see how we are treated not as second-class citizens, but as animals that can be disposed of, said Mayor Carmen Yul n Cruz.The call and video was recorded September 28th, and highlights the corruption within government within Puerto Rico and the Municipal authority of San Juan. The video is English closed captioned (hit CC option) and a transcript is below:Transcript:Radio Announcer: What is your name?Police Caller: I cannot give my name because I work for Puerto Rico s Police Department. I need to pass this information out because the stuff that is being brought from the U.S. is not being distributed. They are not allowing the Puerto Rican people to receive the donations.Radio Announcer: What part of Puerto Rico are you calling us from right now?Police Caller: I am right now in Guaynabo.Radio Announcer 2: Wow.Radio Announcer 3: But what information do you have? What have you seen?Police Caller: The Mayor, Carmen Yulin, is not allowing anyone to distribute We need what Puerto Ricans need is that the U.S. armed forces come in and distribute the aid. And that they stop the governor, Rosello, and the mayor, Yulin, on doing what they are doing It s an abuse, it looks like communism, in our own island (sobbing) (sobbing continues, inaudible translation due to cries) Police Caller (cont.): People are helping us, but they are not accepting it, they are not accepting anymore help supposedly: they have to wait for the license, that there are no buses. Let me tell you something Boricuas (Puerto Ricans) are dying of hunger (crying continues) This is a bureaucracy, everything has to be protocol, the lines are stretched. We can only give one box of water per person (sobbing continues). The medics here, people are dying, the hospitals are in crisis.Police Caller (cont.): I am embarrassed, as a Boricua to work for Puerto Rico s police and see that we cannot do anything. There are dozens and thousands and thousands of food and when people ask we cannot give anything away because [Mayor] Carmen Yulin says that we cannot take anything out; because everything is a soap opera, everything is a show and there have to be cameras here and there. .Because you know they are just looking for votes for the upcoming years.Radio Announcer 2: WowPolice Caller: And the governor won t move unless there is a camera behind him; [Mayor] Carmen Yulin won t move unless there is a camera behind her. This is how we are living in Puerto Rico, meanwhile artists are giving money and the people of Florida are sending stuff, and I don t know how many more people are helping because we have very limited communication, very limited, and we have no idea what s going on outside; and the people who are sending stuff, they have to come in; they have to come to help Puerto Rico and distribute what is being wasted because what else are we going to do? You tell me, what are we going to do?Radio Announcer #2: Of course the desperation..Radio Announcer #3: We are with our hearts broken listening to you describing this situation which is heartbreaking when we know that so many people are helping this is a police officer speaking.Police Caller: I ve been for one hour and a half just trying to download an application because the phones that they give to us I cannot use them as a police officer due to security measures. But I need to speak for the people because the people are suffering. Because I, as a cop, and other partners are seeing it. A lot of people have been posting videos (sobbing inaudible) and no-one is paying attention.Radio Announcer #3: We are truly sorry for this situation, we did not know that..Police Caller: If Cuba and Venezuela want to help and we are grateful for that; and that the government denies their help, the government denies Cuba s help. That they reject Venezuela s help, Look for God s sake! Tell me how is that possible, we need help.Radio Announcer #3: We are going to send this message out so that it gets to where it needs to get to Police Caller: We want the U.S. to come in, that the strongest forces come in and take the governor out, he is not doing anything, he is just going around and around, and everyone is like: oh, look how nice, the governor, he is going in the mud, he is going in the water , And where is it? Pardon the expression: WHERE IS THE FOOD?Police Caller (cont.): Look, grab the food, grab the sausage can and take it to the families! Stop the show! The governor is just doing a show, is all a show. There are many mayors that are suffering because they cannot do anything for their people.Radio Announcer #2: What are they doing with the food? Is it being kept in storage because they are not allowing to give it out?Police Caller: They are not doing anything, and they tell the harbors (ports) that they cannot bring stuff anymore. If the U.S. government doesn t get involved they will finish us. We are going to end up worse. Worse than Cuba, Africa, or worse than Haiti. We are living in an era that you don t want to see, people are desperate. The gasoline, people are already killing each other. Not to rob you, they are doing it so they can be the firsts to get food and take it to their families.Police Caller (cont.): Do you know what it is when a woman approaches me and tells me I don t have any more. I don t know what else to give my kids because I don t have anymore. Water and crackers !Radio Announcer #1: Sweetie, thank you for calling us and using this medium to denounce this situation; and good thing that it was you who explained this so that people don t think that we are making up stuff; because this has nothing to do with politics. This is a very serious situation.Police Caller: Very Serious (sobbing continues)Audio/video cuts offRead more: Conservative Treehouse | 1 |
(Reuters) - Highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday: Trump promises a big announcement about tax reform next week and orders an administration review of Obama-era tax rules written to discourage U.S. companies from relocating overseas to cut their tax bills. Trump tells the Treasury Department to examine two powers given to regulators to police large financial companies following the 2008 financial crisis. South Korea says it is on heightened alert ahead of another important anniversary in North Korea, with a large concentration of military hardware amassed on both sides of the border amid concerns about a new nuclear test by Pyongyang. Trump, striving to make good on a top campaign promise, is pushing fellow Republicans who control Congress to pass revamped healthcare legislation but the same intraparty squabbling that torpedoed it last month could do it again. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says Syria has dispersed its warplanes in recent days and that it retains chemical weapons, an issue he says will have to be taken up diplomatically. The Department of Justice threatens to cut off funding to California as well as eight cities and counties across the United States, escalating a Trump administration crackdown on so-called “sanctuary cities” that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The United States will not make an exception for American companies, including oil major Exxon Mobil Corp, seeking to drill in areas prohibited by U.S. sanctions on Russia, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says. Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress face their first major budget test next week, with the threat of a government shutdown potentially hinging on his proposed Mexican border wall as well as Obamacare funding. The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee says it has invited FBI, National Security Agency and Obama administration officials to testify as it restarts its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meets with Trump at the White House for the first time since both took office earlier this year and amid a U.S. push to cut funding to the world body and its agencies. The United States has offered to help fund Mexico’s efforts to eradicate opium poppies, a U.S. official says, as Mexican heroin output increased again last year. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled a national security policy featuring stronger defense on Thursday, the next step in a conservative policy agenda rolling out as he works to unify Republicans after a divisive primary campaign. The plan is sharply critical of President Barack Obama, blaming the Democrat for “eight years of broken promises, concessions, and retreat” in the Syrian civil war, nuclear deal with Iran, chilly relations with Russia and dealings with a bellicose North Korea. It would overturn some of what Obama allies consider his foreign policy achievements, including the Iran deal and his moves toward normal relations with Communist-ruled Cuba. And it criticizes efforts to close the Guantanamo detention center. While not providing figures, it also calls for an end to military rollbacks and demands “adequate, predictable budgets.” The blueprint includes several departures from foreign policy statements by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whom Ryan has endorsed in the White House race. It does not demand the erection of a massive wall along the Mexican border, a centerpiece of Trump’s campaigning. Ryan calls for border security measures including “high fencing,” aerial surveillance and radar. But it echoes some of Trump’s concerns about Muslim immigrants, with calls to tighten refugee screening and discussion of ways not to radicalize youths. Trump sparked outrage by promising to temporarily ban Muslims from the United States. “We must constantly reassess our defenses in order to find and close security gaps so that Islamist militants cannot slip into our country undetected,” Ryan’s plan said. The plan is not isolationist. It takes a strong line on battling militants abroad, saying the United States must keep all options on the table and “eliminate terrorist sanctuaries.” Trump has been critical of some U.S. alliances. Ryan’s plan, in contrast, underscores the importance of NATO, calls ties to Israel “the cornerstone of stability in the Middle East,” advocates severe sanctions on Iran and says the United States should stand up to Russian aggression while bolstering Ukraine. It also calls for more trade agreements and says foreign aid programs should make recipient countries self-sufficient. The plan calls for increased security for diplomats and facilities overseas. In that context, it mentions the 2012 attacks on Benghazi, which many Republicans cite to criticize then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the White House race. Ryan, the country’s highest-ranking elected Republican, has described the agenda as a way to offer voters a coherent policy message for 2017. He unveiled an anti-poverty agenda on Monday. Initiatives on regulation, constitutional authority, healthcare and tax reform are expected in the coming weeks. | 0 |
John Conyers, the 88-year old Democrat Congressman and Black Caucus member who used taxpayer dollars from one of the most impoverished districts in Michigan, to pay off accusers of sexual assault, is refusing to give up the power he s become accustomed to, as the longest sitting House member in America s history. The corrupt Congressman has, however, agreed to step down from his role on the House Judiciary Committee, pending an investigation into the multiple allegations of sexual harassment that have been levied against him.In a statement released through Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi s office on Sunday, Conyers said he would like to keep his leadership position but realized that he may undermine the committee s work if he stays at the helm. I have come to believe that my presence as Ranking Member on the Committee would not serve these efforts while the Ethics Committee investigation is pending, Conyers (D-Detroit) said in the statement. I cannot in good conscience allow these charges to undermine my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, and my friends on both sides of the aisle in the Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives. Conyers, 88, is the longest-serving House member. BuzzFeed reported last week the contents of the secret $27,000 settlement Conyers paid with taxpayer funds to a former staffer who said she was fired for rejecting Conyers sexual advances.Conyers has admitted to the payment but denied any wrongdoing. I deny these allegations, many of which were raised by documents reportedly paid for by a partisan alt-right blogger, Conyers said, referring to the settlement papers obtained by Mike Cernovich and passed along to the news site. I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics. With Conyers stepping aside, the next most senior Democrat New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler will become acting Ranking Member of the powerful committee. Even under these unfortunate circumstances, the important work of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee must move forward, Nadler said in a Sunday statement. I will do everything in my power to continue to press on the important issues facing our committee, including criminal justice reform, workplace equality, and holding the Trump Administration accountable. Nadler added: Ranking Member Conyers has a 50 year legacy of advancing the cause of justice, and my job moving forward is to continue that critical work. New York Rep. Kathleen Rice was the first House Democrat last week to call for Conyers resignation from Congress, and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) said Conyers should at least give up his perch as the House Judiciary Committee s ranking member, pending the outcome of the ethics probe.Earlier Sunday, Pelosi defended Conyers on NBC s Meet the Press by not calling for his resignation and insisting the icon deserves due process. NYP | 0 |
Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” host Sean Hannity used his opening monologue to react to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s decision not to proceed with a vote on the American Health Care Act, which would have been the opening salvo for Republicans trying to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Hannity argued Republicans must make sure this doesn’t happen in the future and point to the flaws in the legislative process where improvement must be made. However, he emphasized the outcome was not the fault of President Donald Trump. “Let me be very clear here,” Hannity said. “This is not President Trump’s failure. President Trump went above and beyond and did everything in his power to get this bill across the finish line. ” Hannity went on to take aim at the media and the Democratic opposition to the bill but reiterated that measures should be taken to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0 |
The Senate moved closer Tuesday to a deal to avert a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, but the proposal faced an uncertain future in the House, where Republican leaders conspicuously refused to embrace it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters he was prepared to move swiftly to extend funding for DHS through the fiscal year in a bill that is not contingent on Republican demands to repeal President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Under McConnell’s proposal, the Senate would vote first on the funding measure and then hold a separate vote on a bill to undo Obama’s new immigration initiatives. McConnell hopes to assuage conservatives who are determined to confront the president on what they see as abuse of his executive authority.
“I don’t know what’s not to like about this,” McConnell said. “This is an approach that respects both points of view.” If successful, the proposal will break a two-month deadlock over funding for the agency that is responsible for border security, airport security checks and a range of other functions.
But House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) did not immediately warm to the proposal, and it was not clear whether he could marshal enough backing in his chamber to complete the deal to keep DHS open beyond Friday, when its spending authority expires.
House Republicans will huddle behind closed doors Wednesday morning. The unsettled DHS debate is expected to be the central focus of their discussion.
The stalemate has tested Republicans’ ability to govern now that they are in full control of Congress. Senate Democrats have blocked four attempts by McConnell to move forward on a House bill that would fund the department but that ties that funding to a repeal of the president’s immigration actions, which would allow millions of undocumented immigrants a temporary reprieve from deportation.
Again on the brink
McConnell’s move represented a concession in a fight that has threatened to shut down the agency less than a year and a half after a budget standoff shuttered a broad swath of the federal government for more than two weeks in October 2013.
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Democrats want assurances from Boehner that a “clean” funding bill will pass the House before they will support McConnell’s plan and allow the votes to move forward.
“Now, all eyes are on Speaker Boehner,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Asked about the emerging Senate plan, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said by e-mail: “The speaker has been clear: The House has acted, and now Senate Democrats need to stop hiding. Will they continue to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security or not?”
Exiting a House leadership meeting later on, House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) said he did not support approving McConnell’s plan. Instead, Sessions said, Congress should pass a temporary extension of funding for up to six weeks and convene a House-Senate conference to try to hammer out the differences between the two chambers.
DHS is scheduled to begin furloughing nonessential workers if Congress does not extend its $40 billion budget by Friday.
At the White House, Obama prepared to inject himself more forcefully into the debate with a town-hall-style forum planned for Wednesday in Miami, which has a heavily Latino population. The president is expected to address the funding standoff and his immigration plan. The administration has appealed a federal judge’s decision last week temporarily blocking the deferred deportations program, under which up to 5 million of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants would be eligible for renewable three-year deportation waivers. Many could receive work permits.
As the president tries to rally the public, however, Obama and his aides have limited their dealings with Capitol Hill. White House and Democratic aides said there is little the president can do, because he will not undo his immigration actions. It is up to Republicans to decide whether they are willing to shut down DHS over the issue, the aides said.
“This is not a battle with the White House. This is a battle taking place on Capitol Hill,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “Legislators on the Hill need to work on this. . . . What you’re going to see from the administration on DHS up until Friday is continuing to call attention publicly to the potential impact of shutting down DHS.”
To that end, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and two predecessors from the George W. Bush administration — Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge — will attend a news conference scheduled for Wednesday to warn of problems that could occur if the agency is forced to begin furloughs.
Essential personnel, as many as 200,000 employees, would continue to report to work without pay during a partial shutdown. Although Johnson and the White House have said that national security would not be jeopardized, they have warned that long-term planning could be affected. In an interview, Chertoff warned of morale problems in the agency and said he thinks a shutdown would “no doubt adversely affect the nation’s security.”
“A couple days of delay [of pay] will not make a difference, but if it starts to mount up and there’s real uncertainty, people will start to feel demoralized, and that could have an impact over a long period,” Chertoff said. “You wouldn’t do this to [military] troops in the field, send them into combat but not get paid. They need to take this seriously.”
Doubts on the right
While McConnell’s plan to split off the immigration issue into a stand-alone measure opened the door to winning over Democrats, conservatives were skeptical.
“Senators arguing fund DHS but vote a separate bill to defund executive amnesty. Have you heard of Obama veto? Think we were born yesterday?” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a staunch opponent of Obama’s immigration actions, wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the administration has struggled to explain how a partial shutdown would affect national security. White House press secretary Josh Earnest, asked repeatedly about it Monday, declined to say that the nation would be more at risk. Rather, he said, the situation would not improve the nation’s safety.
“It’s hard to imagine a good time for Congress to be mucking around with the funding of the Department of Homeland Security,” Earnest said. “But now seems like a particularly bad one.”
Politically, the standoff could help the White House and Democrats. Republicans drew the brunt of public anger over the 2013 shutdown, and administration aides believe the same will happen if DHS is affected at week’s end.
It is not lost on White House allies that the president is traveling to Florida, a key swing state in presidential races, for the Wednesday event, co-hosted by MSNBC and Telemundo.
“In our travels to the immigrant community, the faith community, the law enforcement community and the business community, they want someone in D.C. to do something,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “The president has done something. The political risk to the administration is only there if they stop doing something. Right now, it’s on Republicans to kind of meet the bar.”
Senior administration officials are scheduled to appear at another immigration forum, hosted by Univision, on Sunday in Los Angeles, the city with the largest number of immigrants potentially eligible for deportation relief under Obama’s executive actions.
“For the first time in a long time, the immigrant community and advocates are very aligned with the White House,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “I think the fact that he’s coming to Miami to meet with immigrant community members and take questions directly from folks speaks volumes.” | 0 |
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu congratulated Donald Trump on his victory in the U.S. presidential election on Wednesday and said Ankara would strengthen its “trust-based relations and cooperation” with the United States. He made the comments on his Twitter account. | 1 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Dentist Waiting Room Contains Disproportionate Number Of Boating Magazines November 11, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , LIFESTYLE Share 0 Add Comment
PATIENTS waiting for treatment in a Waterford dental clinic have informed WWN of the curious ration of magazines about boats to magazine about any other topic in the waiting room.
Maguires Dental on St. Kenneth’s street in Waterford city appears to have four magazines about maritime affairs in it’s 9-strong pile of reading literature, with the remainder of the browsing material consisting of 5-year-old issues of Heat, Bella, and an Argos catalogue from 2012 with the back cover ripped off.
Declan Hanlon, in for a filling, spoke exclusively to WWN about the difficulties in passing the time in the waiting room when one hasn’t got much interest in yachting or yacht maintenance.
“I’m here over an hour like, and I’ve read up on Ashton Kutcher getting divorced from Demi Moore, the price of an electric shower, and how to make sure you’ve hired the right people to de-barnacle the side of your boat” said Hanlin, sounding kinda funny because his jaw is sore.
“Whoever puts out the magazines, take a bow. I’ve seen some terrible reading material in waiting rooms in my time, but Jesus Christ this stuff is the worst. Trust me, if you’re coming to this place, you sure as fuck don’t need to learn about boat maintenance”.
When pressed for better magazines in the waiting room, staff at Maguire Dental said they’d have a root around in a skip at the weekend, if they had time. | 1 |
While the Trump campaign and its candidate celebrate the surrender of his final real competitor for the Republican nomination, there will be no pleasure about this incredible situation from Fox News.Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer prize winning conservative journalist, and long-term Trump critic appeared on the O Reilly Factor to pour a bucket of ice water over the celebration telling O Reilly that a man of Trump s temperament has no place in the White House, or anywhere near the nuclear codes.The interview began with O Reilly asking Krauthammer to give his view on how the GOP establishment felt about Trump becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States. His guest replied calmly: I have no idea what the so-called establishment, if it exists, is thinking. I can tell you what I m thinking. And boy, he really did.O Reilly asks Krauthammer if he would vote for Trump, who responds that based on the campaign so far: I don t think I d be capable voting for Donald Trump. The Fox host then attempts to sell Krauthammer on Trump, as if all the racist, sexist, frat bro behavior from the candidate so far will all fade away once the race for President moves into it s next phase. Finally, after working up this fantasy version of Trump, he asks his guest why he wouldn t vote for Donald if he re-positioned himself as a practical-popular-conservative. Why couldn t you vote for him? O Reilly asks, before Krauthammer delivers a killer deadpan response with: Populist conservative is a contradiction in terms. O Reilly takes his guest to task on the issue, claiming that he (O Reilly) is a traditional populist to which Krauthammer replies that he wouldn t vote for Bill O Reilly for President either. And there s a second issue. Krauthammer continues. His fitness for office. It s matter of temperament and up until now he s not impressed me with his temperament. You have to ask yourself, do I want a person of that temperament, control of the nuclear codes. And as of now I have to say no. While O Reilly continues to run defense for the Trump campaign, his guest Krauthammer bangs the final nail into the coffin. He wins it by floating conspiracy theories that you know and I know are in the twilight zone. In the same way that he led the birther movement. That wasn t ancient history. That was five years ago. Playing with absurd and kooky conspiracy theories is way beyond being unconventional. It is disturbing. And that s when you gotta ask yourself. Do you want someone who does that, in control of the nuclear codes? It looks like Trump is going to be facing some blowback from conservatives who are sick of their party being hijacked by the lunatic fringe. It s great news for the Democrats and liberal America, as it means the 2016 election may well see the GOP tear itself apart leaving the Democratic nominee to a landslide.Here s the video:Featured Image via Screengrab | 0 |
How long before the media will stop using two of the most irrelevant women in America to compare to women who actually will be remembered in history for making a positive difference in this world? British Prime Minister Theresa May, turned heads on Tuesday when she arrived in Saudi Arabia without wearing a headscarf reportedly bucking the advice of her own government.The photos showed May s ankles and wrists were covered. However, The Telegraph noted her outfit did not completely comply with Foreign Office guidelines: Women should wear conservative, loose-fitting clothes as well as a full length cloak (abaya) and a headscarf. There is no law in Saudi Arabia forcing foreign visitors to wear a headscarf, the newspaper reported. FOX NewsMSN News and other publications attempted to paint Hillary and Michelle Obama as two other prominent women who refused to don the headscarf in Saudi Arabia. They probably just forgot that First Ladies going back for several decades refused wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia.She follows in the footsteps of other political figures including Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, in refusing to adhere to the dress code for women.Ms May has said she hopes to be an inspiration to oppressed women in Saudi Arabia by showing people there what women can achieve .Wow here s Hillary in Muslim majority Pakistan. It sure looks like her head is covered in this picture: While the media is busy giving Hillary kudos for being so brave as to reject wearing a headscarf in Saudi Arabia, perhaps they can explain why she and her adult daughter were wearing headscarfs with the person many call the Father of terrorism Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. How is it considered brave to wear a headscarf in deference to a terrorist?Oops! It looks like Michelle was caught wearing a headscarf while visiting Muslim majority Jakarta, Indonesia. It doesn t look like she s refusing to follow the Islamic dress code in this picture. While it s true that Michelle did not wear a headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia, she was only following a long tradition of other First Ladies who also refused to wear a headscarf. She was not expected to, nor did she shake hands with the Saudi dignitaries.Rosalyn Carter can be seen without a headscarf as she walked behind the Saudi dignitaries. | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - An air strike on Masyaf in Syria hit a Scientific Studies and Research Centre facility and an adjacent military camp where ground-to-ground rockets are stored, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday. The United States has imposed sanctions on employees of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which it describes as the Syrian agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons including chemical weapons, something Damascus denies. | 0 |
The rumors that Hillary Clinton is sick have been flying around the right as conservatives desperately search for any way possible to take her down and elevate the disaster that is Donald Trump. Even Katrina Pierson tried to claim that Hillary has a rare brain disease with no evidence whatsoever. These not-so lovely people point to videos of her coughing and appearing to have a seizure, criticize her for getting helped up some stairs, and even claim that her glasses are evidence that she s gravely ill.Rudy Giuliani, who s increasingly extreme and will do anything to remain endeared to Donald Trump, earned a lot of flak for claiming that Hillary Clinton is sick, too, without a any evidence other than online videos. The Washington Post decided to hit Giuliani back on that with an op-ed titled, Is Rudy Giuliani Okay? The first three paragraphs of the op-ed are both scathing and sarcastic, and perfect for what Giuliani has done: During his 15-minute speech at the GOP convention last month in Cleveland, it was notable that when he said Donald Trump loves all people, from the top to the bottom, Mr. Giuliani animatedly gestured toward his knees as he said top, and above his head as he said bottom. Also, why did he say that he and his wife, Judith, have been friends with Mr. Trump for 30 years, though he met his wife in 1999, only 17 years ago?Also we re noting this purely out of concern during his speech he often licked his lips, indicating dry mouth, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, can be a symptom of nerve damage, stroke or Alzheimer s disease. At the end of his address, beads of sweat were visible on his pate did that not suggest heart disease?Mr. Giuliani is just 72, but he seemed slightly stooped as he walked to the lectern, where his wide stance made us wonder if he s unsteady on his feet. Then there was his slurred diction, as when he referred to jushtified police shootings and Syrian refyoongees. More evidence of a stroke? Come to think of it, Giuliani did look a bit decrepit at the convention, didn t he?See how he can t seem to stand up straight? (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) And what is up with that squint? Did he have a a stroke that affected his vision? (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)We can make ludicrous claims like Giuliani, too.The Post wanted to give Giuliani and the rest of the right wing a taste of what it s like for people who aren t doctors of any sort, let alone their doctors, tell the world that they re obviously ill. The truth, however, is that we actually have less cause to question Hillary s health than The Donald s, because Hillary has had a real medical exam and released it.Trump, however, has not. The record he released was a complete sham (like literally everything else he s done), his doctor is a quack at best, and, like his taxes, he won t release his actual health records. So how are we to know how healthy he really is, despite his quack s assertions that he d be the healthiest president ever?Of course, the Post acknowledges that their assessment of Giuliani s health is ridiculous, as they should and as we did above. Their goal was to put the entire Ermagherd Herllery ers serck crowd on the right in their place, and they did an outstanding job of it.So how does it feel to have someone who is not your doctor, or a doctor of any kind, diagnosing you with health problems based solely on how you appeared on television, Mr. Giuliani?Featured image by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is under “active consideration” to serve as U.S. Secretary of State along with other candidates, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said on “Fox News Sunday.” Romney, who met President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday, was a critic of Trump during the campaign. Pence said that Romney was willing to be considered for the position. Trump was “very grateful that Governor Mitt Romney came in. They had a good meeting. It was a warm and a substantive exchange and I know he is under active consideration to be Secretary of State... along with some other distinguished Americans.” But Democrats were skeptical that Romney is an actual contender. Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said on CNN Sunday that he would love Romney to get the position and he would be a “consummate diplomat.” “But I think it’s a total head fake. I think this is Donald Trump still being the entertainer, still running a show where he wants to build suspense and he alone knows who the contestant will be the winner. It’s more of a nod to the appearance of bringing people together.” | 1 |
MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish government has secured opposition support for dissolving Catalonia s parliament and holding new elections there in January in its bid to check the regional government s push for independence. The Socialists, the main opposition, said on Friday they would back special measures to impose central rule on the region to thwart the secessionist-minded Catalan government and end a crisis that has unsettled the euro and hurt confidence in the euro zone s fourth-largest economy. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who wants opposition support to be able to present a united front in the crisis, has called an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday to pave the way for Madrid establishing central control in the region. The government would not confirm whether January elections formed a part of the package, with Rajoy saying only that the measures would be announced on Saturday. However a government spokesman saw regional elections as likely. The logical end to this process would be new elections established within the law, said government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo at a weekly government press conference. It will be the first time in Spain s four decades of democracy that Madrid has invoked the constitution to effectively sack a regional government and call new elections. Head of state King Felipe used a prizegiving ceremony in the northwestern region of Asturias to indicate support for the government and affirm the unity of Spain, of which he said Catalonia is and will remain an essential part. Spain needs to face up to an unacceptable secession attempt on its national territory, which it will resolve through its legitimate democratic institutions, said the monarch, a ceremonial figure who sharply criticized Catalan leaders earlier this month. Rajoy wants as broad a consensus as possible before taking the step, which has raised the prospect of more large-scale protests in Catalonia, where pro-independence groups have been able to bring more than one million people out onto the streets. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, a former journalist who is spearheading the secession campaign, has refused to renounce independence, citing an overwhelming vote in favor of secession at a referendum on Oct.1. Regional authorities said around 90 percent voted for independence though only 43 percent of voters participated. Opponents of secession mostly stayed home. Spanish courts have ruled the referendum unconstitutional, but Puigdemont says the result is binding and must be obeyed. The prolonged standoff has caused hundreds of companies to move their headquarters outside Catalonia and prompted the Spanish government to cut its economic growth forecast. The region accounts for a fifth of Spain s economy. In a test of investor appetite for Spanish stocks, housebuilder Aedas (AEDAS.MC) dropped over 6 percent in its debut on the Madrid stock exchange on Friday, although it later regained losses to trade close to its listing price. The uncertainty surrounding the future of the region has rattled the euro. On Thursday, European Union leaders including Germany s Angela Merkel and France s Emmanuel Macron offered their support for Rajoy at an EU leaders summit in Brussels. After Rajoy announces the direct control measures on Saturday, Spain s upper house will have to approve them in a session which could take place on Oct. 27, a Senate spokeswoman said. Actions could range from dismissing the Catalan parliament and government, to a softer approach of removing specific heads of department. Direct rule from Madrid would be temporary while regional elections are held to form a new government. | 0 |
Elton John will perform at Donald Trump s inauguration, claimed a key adviser, who championed the billionaire as the first president ever to enter the White House with a pro-gay rights stance. Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall for inauguration, Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the presidential transition team executive committee as well as a vice chair of the presidential inaugural committee, told BBC s HARDtalk. Having the Rocket Man singer perform, he continued, shows our commitment to gay rights. John, 69, came out as gay in 1988. The glam pop icon married Canadian filmmaker David Furnish in 2014, when gay marriage became legal in England..@realDonaldTrump transition team member Anthony @Scaramucci says his boss supports gay rights and Elton John will play the Inauguration pic.twitter.com/mEyPZ5ZVZj BBC HARDtalk (@BBCHARDtalk) November 22, 2016 This will be the first American president in US history that enters the White House with a pro-gay rights stance, Scaramucci claimed.John s hope of eroding stigmas has led him into some unlikely alliances. After he agreed to perform at Limbaugh s wedding in 2010, the two men bonded over music and formed a friendship, despite Limbaugh s conservative views. He sends me the loveliest e-mails, said John. What I get from Rush privately and what I get from Rush publicly are two different things. I m just trying to break him down. Politico | 1 |
One of the most vexing challenges of the Trump phenomenon is how the press should deal with it. There’s never been anything quite like it and journalism is having to try to navigate this campaign as the rules are being rewritten on the fly. Back in the beginning, The Huffington Post had tried to keep the whole thing in perspective by relegating the campaign to their entertainment pages but eventually had to move it back to the politics section when it became clear that Republican voters were actually taking Trump seriously. Today they cover him like a normal politician but append a standard disclaimer at the end of their articles about him pointing out that he’s an extremist with noxious views.
Trump has brought the tabloids into the race already, with his good friend David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer, helpfully providing smears of his rival Ted Cruz during the primary. Now Pecker has hired notorious Clinton hater Dick Morris as the Enquirer’s chief political correspondent so it’s likely Trump will be fed a steady diet of tabloid tid-bits which he will undoubtedly share with his adoring fans. So far, the mainstream media has resisted the temptation to run with Clinton gossip stories mainly because there’s so much coming over the transom about Trump. But they are out there and are likely to seep into the coverage as the Hillary smear industry gets up and running. There’s nothing new in that but Trump is a master of tabloid media so we can probably expect this to play a different role than it has in the past.
TV news organizations, meanwhile, have been notorious for allowing Trump to flout their rules. They happily let him call in rather than appear on camera and give him hours of airtime in the hope that he’ll say something news worthy which, to be honest, he often does. His lies and reversals are so constant and so blatant that reporters seem to be almost paralyzed as he slithers and slides out of their grasp. He is sui generis and nobody knows quite what to do about it.
Media critics have been weighing in recently as the situation has become acute. NPR’s “On the Media” correspondent Bob Garfield has been particularly vociferous lately imploring the media to recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses to America. In this column he takes them to task for covering the Trump candidacy “like a bemused recap of House of Cards.” He wrote:
The rapacious CBS Chairman Les Moonves and the cable-newslike channels are delighted at the spectacle; disaster is always great for ratings. But this is not a show, to be consumed and titillated by and parsed. It is a conflagration of hatred and authoritarianism on its way to consuming us, or at least that which makes us us. Trumpism is raging out of control and the Fourth Estate responds how? By going through the motions. The usual false balance. The usual staged cable bickering. The usual dry contextual analysis. The usual intermittent truth-squading to garnish our careless daily servings of uncontested hate speech, incitement and manifest lies. The usual reluctance to “be part of the story” — which, in fact, we are inextricably part of because we in large measure created it by giving oxygen to his every incendiary outrage and being our soundbitten, compulsively enabling selves…[the]reflexive focus on the latest development, the political ebb and flow and the architecture of the coming election simply buries the lede — that the man is monstrously unfit and un-American — and normalizes the grossly, tragically abnormal.
And then he tells them what he really thinks which is that they are falling into the trap of false equivalence between the parties, fear of right-wing pressure and a reluctance to call a fascist a fascist.
Margaret Sullivan, former NY Times ombudsman and current media columnist for The Washington Post has similar concerns, particularly the notion that the media is pursuing a “false equivalence” rather than simple truth-telling:
[T]his perceived need to push for “fairness” for Trump — as if he has been mistreated or put at a disadvantage — baffles me. Trump gets far more media attention than other candidates, if only because he says such outrageous things, commanding the daily news cycle over and over. Wayne Barrett, the investigative reporter who has been covering Trump for 40 years (and whose reporting brought about Trump’s first federal grand jury investigation) told me in an interview: “The great failing is not in print media. But the campaigns occur on the screen.”… Many hard-hitting stories from the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Daily Beast and elsewhere have received little follow-up on TV — “not one minute of air time that I’ve seen” — but the slightest hint of a new angle on Hillary Clinton’s email practices can occupy most of a news cycle. (An exception was TV’s attention, last week, to complaints about Trump University.) Jay Rosen, the New York University professor and author of the PressThink blog, is concerned about how this concept of fairness might play out. “Does it mean ‘we can’t take sides,’ or does it mean ‘let’s treat unequal things equally’?” The latter, which he called “distortion toward the middle,” ought to be prevented, he said.
The Nation’s Eric Alterman wrote about the print media’s propensity for false equivalence as well, focusing particularly on the New York Times: From the earliest days of this campaign, Times reporters have been transparently eager to blame “both sides,” often regardless of circumstance. Last November, Times reporter Michael Barbaro devoted a lengthy article to the GOP candidates’ most brazen lies, albeit one filled with euphemisms for the word “lie.” Carly Fiorina “refused” to back down from a story about Planned Parenthood that was “roundly disputed,” he wrote. Ben Carson “harshly turned the questions” about inconsistencies in his life story “back on the reporters who asked them.” Donald Trump “utters plenty of refutable claims” and “set the tone for the embroidery” by creating “an entirely new category of overstatement in American politics.” But guess what? “The tendency to bend facts is bipartisan.” How do we know? Well, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton chose not to confess their infidelities to the nation during election cycles that took place a generation ago. And apparently Hillary Clinton once mistakenly described herself as being the granddaughter of four immigrants when, in fact, her paternal grandmother was born shortly after her family arrived in the United States—an error she quickly corrected. Barbaro also found Clinton’s explanations about her personal and State Department e-mail accounts to be unsatisfactory. He wrote that she had “used multiple devices, like an iPad, to read and send e-mail,” even though she’d said she “preferred” to read them all on a single device. He failed to note that the iPad didn’t even exist when Clinton set up her e-mail account, nor did he explain why expressing a preference counts as bending the truth Here is an example of false equivalence from just this week. Nobody has done more to probe Donald Trump’s noxious views than CNN’s Jake Tapper. His grilling of the candidate over his bigoted comments about the federal judge overseeing his Trump University lawsuit in California was as good as it gets and he received many kudos for his aggressive journalism. He continued to report on Trump on his show Monday but also featured this harsh criticism of Hillary Clinton in which he lambasted the State Department’s stated inability to release emails pertaining to her work on the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal to reporter David Sirota until after the election. He took on a very aggressive tone, editorializing about the importance of releasing this important information when people are deciding whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. However, he notes that while Clinton was President Obama’s Secretary of State she openly advocated for the deal in glowing terms, even calling it the “gold standard”, facts which have been known for years and have been well hashed out on the campaign trail and in the debates with Bernie Sanders. Now she says she has changed her mind and is against the deal. Politifact called it a flip-flop. So what exactly do they think they will learn about her position that they don’t already know? Maybe she was more involved than she says she was, which would be interesting, but somewhat meaningless since we know she advocated strongly for it all over the world. In the end, you either believe she’s really changed her mind or you don’t and these documents from years ago will not shed any new light on that. And yet the implication was that Clinton was up to something nefarious with those “damn emails” again. I don’t mean to pick on Tapper. He’s a great journalist, one of the best on cable news. The temptation to try to “even things out” with this sort of coverage has to be overwhelming when a personality like Trump dominates the coverage the way he does. It must feel to a straight mainstream journalist as if they’re piling on him every day and it looks like they’re being partisan and unfair. Certainly the right wing is accusing them of that non-stop — as they have been for more than 30 years. But the result of this “distortion toward the middle” as Jay Rosen calls it, has the perverse effect of normalizing Trump and pathologizing Clinton in a way that equalizes them to Trump’s advantage. There is no equivalence between them. He is an unqualified, unfit, unhinged authoritarian demagogue and she is a mainstream Democratic party politician. Let’s hope the press listens to some of these critics and does a serious gut check whenever they are tempted to “balance” the coverage in this election by going easy on Trump and hard on Clinton. It’s dangerous. | 0 |
Oregon Public Broadcasting just busted the Bundy militia using government computer systems and accessing federal employee data within the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.In a rather serendipitous occurrence, the blue tarp man himself LaVoy Finicum was leading OPB reporter John Sepulvado through the building on a tour, explaining what their plans were for the building. That s when Finicum led him right into something none of the militia wanted anyone to see.Finicum led Sepulvado into a computer room that was part of the wildlife refuge compound. He explained to Sepulvado that the militia planned to convert it into a media room to house reporters who they expected to come to the site.That s when it all went wrong for the militia.Sepulvado observed militants interacting with government computers in the compound that can only be accessed with employee badges. Employee badges were also strewn about the room, laying out in plain sight, along with papers that had names and Social Security numbers on them.Finicum immediately realized how badly he screwed the pooch by allowing the OPB reporter to see what they were doing, and for good reason. Their activities likely will fall under the Computer Fraud And Abuse Act which carries some serious penalties (fines and up to 10 years in prison) for what they were doing.Finicum made a mad dash to pick up all the papers full of personal information and ID cards and hid them away. Shortly after that, Ryan Bundy entered the room.Bundy emphatically denied that anything had been touched since they began their occupation of the compound: No, we haven t touched a single personal item. We haven t touched any of the computers, we haven t tried to log on we haven t done anything. We re not here to hurt people. Not even the people who work here. This is where I call BULLSH*T. I ll bet any amount of cash that federal employees do not make a habit of having reams of papers, covered in very sensitive and personal information just laying about on their desks as a normal part of their workday. I will also bet that if they were to do something like this, it would be once in a blue moon and they would put it away before the left for the day. The same goes with the ID cards. If they were the key to using a computer, there is no doubt that any activities would be tied to the card used to access a terminal, and any misuse would fall on the individual who was assigned the card. There s no way employees would leave them laying around like that.The stupidity of the militia, bringing a reporter into what is essentially an ongoing crime scene, would almost be comical, except for one really serious detail.Law enforcement officials informed OPB that prior to the occupation, federal employees and family members of local law enforcement had received anonymous threats. Harney County Sheriff David Ward said that his own deputies and family members had been followed home by unknown individuals, photographed, and had property damaged in recent months.There are 17 employees that work at the refuge. All of these people could have had their personal information, home addresses, phone numbers, emergency family contacts, and God knows what else stolen and disseminated by a group of militants with too many bullets and too few brains. Up till this point, things were a good laugh. Now not so much.Featured image via OPB | 1 |
Sadly, this will be the only reason many women will vote for her. Hillary s crimes will suddenly become a distant memory to many female (and some male) voters. Because when it comes to defending a woman s right to kill her baby, every criminal act Hillary s ever committed takes a backseat There are many on the GOP side thankfully, who are still defending the lives of the most vulnerable among us:Planned Parenthood, the national women s health organization that Hillary Clinton often mentions on the campaign trial, will endorse the 2016 candidate for president on Sunday in New Hampshire.This will be the first time the group, which has been mired in controversy since a series of videos by anti-abortion activists were released in 2015, will endorse in a presidential primary. As a lifelong Planned Parenthood supporter, I m honored to have the endorsement of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Clinton said in response to the endorsement. There has never been a more important election when it comes to women s health and reproductive rights and Planned Parenthood s patients, providers, and advocates across the country are a crucial line of defense against the dangerous agenda being advanced by every Republican candidate for president. The group will make the endorsement official at what they are billing as their election kickoff event in Manchester, New Hampshire on Sunday. The group plans to spend at least $20 million in this election cycle, according to a press release.The endorsement was somewhat of a forgone conclusion. Clinton regularly mentions Planned Parenthood on the campaign trail I will defend a woman s right to choose, she says a line that draws applause from Democratic crowds. In Congress and on the campaign trail, Republicans that claim they just hate big government are only too happy to have government step in when it comes to women s bodies and heath, Clinton said at the New Hampshire Democratic Party s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in 2015. It is wrong, and we are not going to stand for it. Planned Parenthood s endorsement, which was first reported by CBS, is sure to draw scorn from Republican presidential candidates, many of whom regularly pledge to defund the group is elected president.In accepting the endorsement, Clinton said the United States needs a president who has what it takes to stop Republicans from defunding Planned Parenthood and taking away a woman s right to basic health care. If I m elected, she added, I will be that president. This is the second national women s health group to back Clinton. NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC endorsed Clinton earlier this week, their president stating that Clinton has what it takes to fight Republican attacks on women s reproductive rights, and has the vision and experience to ensure women and families thrive. Via: CNN | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday issued an executive order revoking limits imposed by predecessor Barack Obama on the transfer of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, the White House said. Obama had curtailed the equipment transfer program after law enforcement officers using military-style armored vehicles and guns confronted protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 following the fatal police shooting of a black teenager. Trump’s executive order said, “All executive departments and agencies are directed, as of the date of this order and consistent with Federal law, to cease implementing those recommendations and, if necessary, to take prompt action to rescind any rules, regulations, guidelines, or policies implementing them.” The Republican president has reversed or cut back many of his Democratic predecessor’s policies since taking office in January. The use of military equipment in Ferguson prompted a wider outcry over the use of war-fighting equipment by local law enforcement agencies in the United States. After a review, Obama barred the military from transferring certain types of equipment to police or sheriff’s departments, including tracked armored vehicles, armed aircraft or vehicles of any kind, .50-caliber firearms and ammunition, grenade launchers, bayonets and camouflage uniforms. Obama also required law enforcement agencies to justify the need for items like helicopters and other aircraft, wheeled armored vehicles, unmanned drones, riot helmets and “flash-bang” grenades. “These restrictions that had been imposed went too far,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police union in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier on Monday. “We will not put superficial concerns above public safety. We will do our best to get you what you need.” Sessions did not specify what those superficial concerns were. Sessions said helmets and body armor available through the Defense Department program were the types of equipment that saved the life of a police officer during the 2016 Orlando, Florida, nightclub shooting. And helicopters and armored vehicles are vital to emergency and disaster response, he said. Monday’s order drew criticism from some of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress. “It is one thing for federal officials to work with local authorities to reduce or solve crime, but it is another for them to subsidize militarization,” Senator Rand Paul said in a statement. Paul promised to introduce legislation that would ban transfers of certain military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, improve transparency surrounding such transfers, and require the agencies to return equipment prohibited under the proposed law. U.S. Representative Mark Sanford also condemned the executive order, criticizing the transfer program as a potential waste of taxpayers’ dollars. He said in a statement that he had introduced a bill in 2016 to auction off military equipment instead of give it to local agencies. The Defense Department’s law enforcement support program has transferred more than $6 billion worth of equipment to police agencies since its inception 25 years ago, Pentagon figures show. | 0 |
RIYADH (Reuters) - Lebanon s Christian Maronite Patriarch began a historic visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday under heightened scrutiny amid political tensions that have thrust his country back to the forefront of the conflict between the Sunni kingdom and Shi ite rival Iran. Patriarch Beshara al-Rai heads the Maronite church, which has a presence in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus and follows an Eastern rite of the Roman Catholic church. Maronites number about 900,000 in Lebanon, around a quarter of the population. An official visit to Saudi Arabia by such a senior non-Muslim cleric is a rare act of religious openness for the kingdom, which hosts the holiest sites in Islam and bans the practice of other religions but says it wants to open up more to the world. It is also the first trip to Riyadh by a senior Lebanese official since the start of a crisis sparked by Saad al-Hariri s resignation as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4 from the Saudi capital. Top Lebanese government officials and senior sources close to Hariri say Saudi Arabia coerced him into resigning and has put him under effective house arrest since he flew there more than a week ago. During his visit, Rai plans to meet Hariri as well as King Salman and his son and heir-apparent, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, both of whom he praised in an address to Lebanese living in Riyadh. Certainly his resignation surprised the Lebanese and saddened them and created a type of deadlock, he later told reporters between selfies with followers. We hope that with this visit we can speak about this topic. TOLERANCE AND CO-EXISTENCE But Rai said his visit, which was planned before the latest crisis, was not political but aimed at boosting religious tolerance and co-existence in a region torn by sectarian conflict. Hariri said in a television interview on Sunday that he was a free man and would return to Lebanon within days to affirm that he had resigned. He said Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of the Shi ite group Hezbollah s regional meddling. Asked when he expected Hariri to return to Lebanon, Rai said: I wish tonight ... we hope as soon as possible. Hariri s resignation and its aftermath have destabilized his country, where Sunni, Shi ite, Christian and Druze factions fought a civil war from 1975-1990, often backed by rival powers around the region. The only other visit to Saudi Arabia by a Christian patriarch took place in 1975, according to the Saudi information ministry. Rai thanked King Salman for the invitation and said he had never dreamed of visiting the kingdom, which bans all non-Muslim houses of prayer, forcing Christians there to risk arrest by praying in private homes. | 1 |
Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz was on MSNBC to make a statement on the 9th Circuit Opinion: He stated that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against President Trump s immigration order is not a solid decision. And looks like it s based more on policy than on constitutionality. Look, this is not a solid decision. This is a decision that looks like it s based more on policy than on constitutionality. There are many, many flaws. He added, I think this court opinion will not ultimately be sustained by the Supreme Court. Take, for example, the argument that it s an establishment of religion, because it favors Christians or other religious minorities. In 1944 we passed the War Refugee Act, which specifically was designed to rescue a hundred thousand Jews, and everybody knew the purpose was to rescue jews. That didn t establish Judaism as the state religion of the United States. I think the establishment argument will fail in the Supreme Court. I think the standing arguments may fail in the Supreme Court. | 0 |
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan legislators voted late on Wednesday to amend the country s constitution to allow 73-year-old leader Yoweri Museveni to extend his rule, potentially guaranteeing him a life-time presidency. A provision in the current constitution limits the age of a presidential candidate at 75 years, which would have made Museveni ineligible to stand at the next polls in 2021. At the end of Wednesday s day-long House debate, which capped a protracted and violence-marred process to remove that age limit, MPs voted 315-62 in favor of the amendment. The bill passes, said speaker Rebecca Kadaga after announcing tally results, prompting raucous celebrations from the mostly ruling party MPs who favored the bill. Earlier in the day, two lawmakers were dragged away and detained when they tried to enter parliament, as the divisive debate proceeded in the chamber. Police had blocked some legislators from entering the building, and live television footage showed two of them being driven away in security vehicles. Both opposed the bill. The legislators blocked by police were attempting to enter parliament to serve court documents on House speaker Rebecca Kadaga, who was presiding over the debate. The document called on her to appear in court at 2:00 PM in respect of the irregular suspension of our members of parliament, independent lawmaker Wilfred Niwagaba told a local television station minutes before he was detained. Six MPs - all opposed to removal of the age cap - were suspended from parliamentary proceedings on Monday for alleged disorderly conduct and refusing to heed the speaker s instructions. The bill to amend the constitution was introduced in parliament on October 4 by a Museveni loyalist, after two consecutive days of brawling in the debating chamber between those opposed and those in favor, supported by security personnel. On the second day, security personnel who some MPs said were soldiers from an elite military unit entered the chamber and violently ejected at least 25 MPs that the speaker had suspended from proceedings for alleged misconduct. Wednesday s vote was the second time Ugandan parliament has changed the constitution to allow Museveni extend his rule. In 2005, they voted to remove a limit of two five-year terms, which blocked him from standing again. The bill also extended the length of a term for MPs to seven years from the current five. The limit of two terms was also re-imposed for the president, although that only means Museveni would be limited to two more terms, starting with the 2021 election. Are you not seeing what happened in Zimbabwe, do we want his excellency to end like Gaddafi of Libya, opposition legislator, Gilbert Olanya, who opposed to the amendment, said in Wednesday s debate as he attempted to persuade colleagues to reject it. Several African leaders have amended laws designed to limit their tenure. Such moves have fueled violence in countries including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. Initially hailed for restoring political order and fostering economic growth, Museveni has lately come under mounting pressure fueled by runaway corruption, and accusations he uses security forces to maintain his grip on power. A combination of both military and police personnel were heavily deployed around parliament this week, which opposition MPs say was meant to intimidate members. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pomp and circumstance were like any big Washington celebration: a regal backdrop, the patriotic music, the military precision of the ceremony. But the throngs who attended Friday’s inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump came for change. Dramatic change. Some came to hear about changes in America’s world view or a desire for stronger borders. Some wanted to hear how change would ripple into their hometown. Some hankered for u-turns in policies; some wanted an entirely new approach to governing. Trump, like President Barack Obama in 2008, tapped into a desire for change and cast himself as a challenger to the Washington establishment. But, this time, the demands came from a slice of America that feels neglected during the Obama administration. “Obama’s had eight years and I can see my neighbors in worse shape than they were eight years ago,” said Carol Reiller, 66, a retiree who drove seven-plus hours from Buffalo, New York, with her grandchildren to see the swearing-in ceremony. Many of the inauguration attendees were focused on economic issues. In dozens of interviews with supporters, they pinned their hopes and expectations on everything from job creation to improved border security to a revival of American manufacturing. Christian Early, 37, said many of his friends have lost work in the construction industry and he is looking for Trump to turn that around. He wants quick approval of the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline from Canada through the United States, pressure on U.S. companies to repatriate cash in offshore tax havens, and an immediate loosening of financial regulations. “If he does those things, he will be creating jobs,” said Early, a bank officer from Annapolis, Maryland. “If he’s not making an earnest effort within one year, he’ll just be another politician.” Like thousands in the crowd, Early wore one of Trump’s signature “Make America great Again” baseball caps, a bright red sign of solidarity in an audience overwhelmingly opposed to just about everything symbolized by the city they had come to visit. For his part, Trump’s inaugural address channeled the resentment of the white working class in an echo of his fiery campaign speeches, darkly portraying a dysfunctional country riven by unemployment, poverty and crime that he would change in a movement of nationalism and trade protectionism. George Weber, 51, a car dealer who traveled from Missouri, said he voted for Trump with the hope that he will get Washington “working for the people…. I want to see him shaking things up right away.” Even veterans of previous inaugurations felt the mood this time was different. Marie Quinn, 76, from Richmond, Virginia, said she’d attended Republican inaugurations since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, but felt this one promised to bring more historic change. “This one will probably be much bigger,” she said, predicting that Trump would put the country on a new course. Many attendees said they were eager for Trump to fulfill his promises of a crackdown on illegal immigration. Joshua Rojas, 25, a Mexican-American graduate student who worked as a bank teller to fund his trip, said he understood some of the immigrant community’s concern about Trump, since his own father, a minister, was brought to America as an illegal immigrant. “Trump isn’t popular among Hispanics and sometimes he takes it a little far, but what he’s saying he will do still excites me,” Rojas said. “Illegal immigration is a big burden to local government.” Not everyone who attended the ceremonies was keen on the change Trump is promising. Lani Lutar, 39, a small business owner from San Diego, came for the Women’s March on Washington, an event scheduled for Saturday and expected to draw large crowds. She supported neither Trump nor his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but she got an inaugural ticket from her congressman’s office. Lutar wanted to “appreciate the significance of this amazing ceremony of the best country in the world.” But even the impressive pageantry did not erase her misgivings about Trump. “I worry a lot about a lot of things, his treatment of people of different religions, of women, his racist comments, there’s a lot,” she said. Some of Trump’s supporters echoed those concerns, talking hopefully about the need to unify a nation bitterly divided by a combative and controversial campaign. Francie Keener, 37, wearing a lipstick-red dress to match the ubiquitous Trump cap, thought the new president’s speech was a good start. It showed that “he supports everybody,” the New Yorker said. “I hope people can rest a little easy now.” Susan Suhovsky, 64, a Catholic school teacher from New York, suggested, however, that Trump still has a way to go in softening his often combative rhetoric. “I hope when he speaks, he cleans up how he talks,” she said. “That is a concern, because you represent our country…. He talks like a New Yorker.” | 0 |
There has to something more to this story than what we re being told. If there isn t more to this story, then Atlanta Airport officials and Georgia Power are going to have some explaining to do A complete power outage at the nation s busiest airport, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, grounded flights Sunday afternoon, threatening to cause a holiday travel nightmare for fliers across the country just over a week before Christmas.Thousands of passengers were stranded and flights were grounded or delayed as a power outage crippled Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport the world's busiest airport pic.twitter.com/WpWQLGu5GD EAGLE WINGS (@NIVIsa4031) December 17, 2017Georgia Power said that repairs are well underway at the airport and power is expected to be restored around midnight on Sunday, and the airport tweeted that Power on Concourse F is back ON! Washington Examiner s Byron York tweeted only two hours ago, that no one seems to know why the power outage happened.The Atlanta airport story is huge. By far the nation's largest airport, it just goes dark, operations shut down. Thousands stranded, in very difficult situations. And nobody seems to know why. Byron York (@ByronYork) December 17, 2017 We are working with great urgency w/ @Georgia Power to restore power through rest of airport, the tweet read.According to FlightAware.com, 1,161 flights have been canceled at Hartsfield-Jackson as of 8:20 p.m. ET.Delta passengers were not happy with how things were being handled, especially the passengers who were stuck on the tarmac for several hours, unable to disembark from the planes:Oh. My. God. Just left ATL airport last night at midnight after 15 hours of travel. If I had been stuck against my will in my plane on tarmac..Gives me anxiety just thinking about it. That s A LOT of ppl in tight space. SidNey (@OhGoSquid) December 18, 2017Fox News reported on the outage:Power outage at Atlanta airport causes 'pandemonium,' grounds flights https://t.co/Och4XslbLi pic.twitter.com/VX5lnpZMFQ Fox News (@FoxNews) December 17, 2017Georgia Power said in a statement Sunday evening that the issue may have involved a fire which caused extensive damage in a Georgia Power underground electrical facility. The airport said power had been restored to one of its six concourses around 7:30 p.m., about seven hours after the initial outage, and Georgia Power said it expects to have power fully restored to the airport by midnight.CNBC News reporter Ethan Kraft reports that Chick-fil-A s CEO Dan Cathy will coordinate meals for thousands of stranded passengers at the airport:Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he spoke with Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy to coordinate meals for thousands of stranded passengers at #ATLairport, who have been in the dark since 2p ET Ethan Kraft (@ethan_kraft) December 18, 2017Fire crews were able to extinguish the fire and had begun assessing damage and beginning repairs, but they had not yet been able to ascertain the cause of the blaze, the utility said. FOX NewsNBC News Airport officials said a large portion of the facility had been affected and that repair teams had been working to address the situation since around 1:30 p.m. ET.Not everyone is buying the fire story however. This Twitter user believes that terror threat is the cause for the evacuation:The #atlairport has been evacuated, passangers are standing outside on the tarmac, no one is allowed to leave. I think a high level #Hivite was trying to get away, or they've disrupted a major terror attack. It's not being reported by @CNN (headquarters in Atlanta) #MediaBlackOut Sarah Ruth Ashcraft (@SaRaAshcraft) December 17, 2017Many citizens are questioning the story they are being told about a simple power outage, and wondering why, in the largest airport in the world, there isn t any back up power?https://twitter.com/tonyabonya/status/942576639887663104Officials with the Atlanta Police Department told WSB-TV the airport is evacuating travelers inside.A spokesperson told The Associated Press that no areas outside the airport were affected by the outage. However, flights at Chicago airports O Hare International and Midway both have canceled flights but it s not yet clear if they were canceled due to Atlanta s outage. Dealing with the power outage at the Atlanta airport was actually insane and I'll post other scary videos later. But the staff was having to slide down the escalators to help people and it was amusing. Finally in the car headed home. #atlantaairport #atl #atlantaA post shared by sarahmanleyy (@sarahmanleyy) on Dec 17, 2017 at 2:54pm PSTDelta Airlines, which is headquartered in Atlanta, said it had canceled approximately 900 mainline and Delta Connection flights. Passengers should check the status of their flights, the airline said. Pending full resumption of power, Delta anticipates a near-full schedule Monday in Atlanta, though some delays and cancellations can be expected, the airline said on its website.The airline said it would issue a waiver to those who were traveling through Atlanta with the airline on Dec. 17 or 18. The airline also said it would give travelers a refund if they would like to cancel their trip because their flight was canceled or delayed more than 90 minutes.Those arriving for their flights were met with long lines and a pitch dark airport. No escalators, elevators or information screens were operational.Brian Moote, 36, the morning host of an Atlanta radio show, said he was returning home on a flight from Dallas when the power went out in the airport. Moote said he and his fellow passengers had been stuck in their plane on the tarmac for nearly six hours, beginning at around 12:30 p.m. ET. | 0 |
CHARLOTTE, N. C. — As Hillary Clinton braced for political fallout from her use of a private email server, President Obama delivered a stemwinder on her behalf on Tuesday, praising her “steady judgment” as his secretary of state and criticizing Donald J. Trump for his own lack of transparency. Sleeves rolled up and declaring himself “fired up” on her behalf, Mr. Obama heaped admiration on Mrs. Clinton and assailed Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, saying American voters face a critical choice between “some imaginary past, or whether we are going to reach for the future. ” “I can tell you this, Hillary Clinton has been tested,” Mr. Obama said as he interrupted repeatedly by the cheering crowd. “There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office,” the president boomed. But the jubilant rally — Mr. Obama’s first campaign appearance with Mrs. Clinton — unfolded at an awkward moment, just hours after the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, accused Mrs. Clinton of being “extremely careless” in her email use as he announced the end of an investigation that has engulfed her candidacy and put the Obama administration on the defensive. The dueling political events on Tuesday were as discordant as they were separate: The president and his secretary of state sidestepped the email issue at their rally, where Mr. Obama clasped hands with his onetime rival and predicted victory in the fall, making no mention of Mr. Comey’s dramatic announcement in Washington faulting Mrs. Clinton even as he recommended against criminal charges. Without mentioning the email controversy, Mr. Obama pointed to the political attacks that have chipped away at Mrs. Clinton’s trust among voters. “Can I be blunt?” he said. “Hillary’s got her share of critics. ” But, he added, “That’s what happens when you dedicate yourself to public service over a lifetime. ” Mr. Obama delicately touched on Mrs. Clinton’s perceived weaknesses as a candidate even as he marveled at her tenacity in the nominating fight they waged against each other eight years ago. In an election year in which outsider candidates have railed against the establishment, Mr. Obama portrayed Mrs. Clinton’s experience as a plus. “Sometimes we take somebody who has been in the trenches and fought the good fight and been so steady for granted,” he said, recognizing that voters’ yearning for the next new thing had helped his own 2008 campaign. “We don’t do that, by the way, for airline pilots. ” At a time when her State Department tenure is being picked apart by political critics, he defended her turn as the nation’s top diplomat, noting how her popularity faded only once she returned to the political spotlight. “It’s funny how the filter changes a little bit,” he said. “The filter is a powerful thing. ” Mrs. Clinton, perched on a stool behind the president, grinned and gently nodded. The rally in North Carolina was rescheduled after a previous campaign event in Wisconsin was hastily canceled after the Orlando shootings. But in some ways, the moment had been years in the making. Eight years ago, after a brutal primary fight, Mrs. Clinton appeared arm in arm with Mr. Obama for the first time in Unity, N. H. where she declared, “Unity is not only a beautiful place, it’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it?” Mr. Obama referred to that event at Tuesday’s rally in North Carolina, a rally that served as a kind of bookend to two remarkable careers that at times seemed destined to clash. “We went to Unity, N. H. just in case people missed the point,” Mr. Obama said. “I saw the grace and the energy with which she threw herself into my campaign. ” Mrs. Clinton spoke before the president, an unusual departure from how she appears at events with surrogates, and at times it felt like she was campaigning not for herself, but for Mr. Obama’s legacy, praising his “heart, depth and humility. ” She repeatedly referred to their former rivalry, even praising Mr. Obama’s political deftness at defeating her. “He knows a thing or two about winning elections, take it from me,” she said. The F. B. I. ’s decision not to recommend criminal charges came days after an unplanned, brief meeting between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an airport in Phoenix. To avoid any appearance of political interference, Ms. Lynch said Friday that she would accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the F. B. I. director on whether to bring charges against Mrs. Clinton. On Saturday, Mrs. Clinton and her lawyers met with officials from the F. B. I. and the Justice Department to answer nearly four hours of questioning related to her email server. Aides to both Democrats said Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton did not discuss the F. B. I. investigation on the flight to Charlotte. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, added that Mr. Obama looked at photos of Mrs. Clinton’s grandchildren aboard Air Force One. Serving as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton engendered good will with the White House, and the experience of accepting Mr. Obama’s offer to run the State Department became one of the most popular stories she relayed on the campaign trail, particularly when wooing black voters. Mrs. Clinton also fired away at Mr. Trump, saying that Mr. Obama was “someone who has never forgotten where he came from — and Donald, if you’re out there tweeting, it’s Hawaii,” a reference to Mr. Trump’s calls in 2011 for the president to produce his birth certificate. For several attendees, many of whom waited for hours in sweltering conditions to get into the rally, the chief draw was the chance to glimpse Mr. Obama as he sets off on something of a farewell tour. The crowd was heavily flashing clothing and trinkets dedicated to the sitting president. Vendors sold tote bags and emblazoned with images of Mr. Obama’s teenage daughters, and promising to continue Mr. Obama’s historic 2008 victory by electing the first female president. “It was on my bucket list,” Ivy Dunn, 69, said of seeing him. Asked if she thought Mrs. Clinton could be as effective in office, Ms. Dunn paused. “I’m not going to say yes,” she said, “but she’ll be good. ” Mrs. Clinton will need to nurture Mr. Obama and his supporters, particularly after she strayed to the left of his policies during her nominating fight on issues like the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Keystone XL Pipeline. A majority — 51 percent — of Americans approve of the president, according to a recent Gallup poll. As Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton touched down at the Charlotte airport, and strode off Air Force One together in a sign of solidarity, a reporter asked John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman and a former White House chief of staff to Mr. Obama, whether the F. B. I. announcement overshadowed the rally. He replied with a single word: “Hardly. ” | 0 |
FBI director James Comey wanted to go public with information about Russia s interference in the 2016 election as early as last summer but was reportedly barred from doing so by the Obama administration.According to Newsweek sources, Comey presented a draft op-ed to top administration officials during a White House meeting in June or July. He had a draft of it or an outline, the source said. He held up a piece of paper in a meeting and said, I want to go forward, what do people think of this? Former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and ex national security adviser Susan Rice were among those in the meeting.Comey s idea was rejected because White House officials thought the message would have more impact coming from multiple agencies and not just him. An op-ed doesn t have the same stature, it comes from one person, the source said.A second source told Newsweek the op-ed, which Comey would have likely sought to publish in the New York Times, contained the same information as the intelligence report made public on January 6 that said Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to influence the presidential election.Comey s op-ed was rejected around the same time he publicly revealed details about the investigation in Hillary Clinton s emails. The FBI director revealed before the House Intelligence Committee last week that the agency is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.He told the Intelligence Committee the Russians were very noisy and unusually loud in their hacking of US Democratic party computers. It was almost as if they didn t care if we found out, he added.Watch FBI Director Jame Comey confirm his investigation into alleged Russian interference in our elections: | 1 |
President Donald Trump’s budget director Mick Mulvaney reassured supporters that the White House would build a wall, previewing it to reporters at the White House press briefing. [“We are absolutely dead serious about the wall,” Mulvaney said, calling it one of the president’s “top three” budget priorities. He pushed back against reports that said the administration was reducing funding for the border wall, pointing out that Trump’s budget was a dramatic increase in border security from the previous year. The 2017 budget included $1. 5 billion for border security and $3 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. The 2018 budget, he explained, requested $2. 6 billion and $4. 5 billion for DHS. The text of the budget specifies funds for “a physical wall” on the southern border of the United States. ”a physical wall” pic. twitter. — Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) May 23, 2017, The funding would help fund replacement wall, new wall, roads and infrastructure for the wall as well as land acquisition. The director suggested that supporters should be patient regarding the wall, noting that it was only the first step in the lengthy project. “Keep in mind, you can’t just … you don’t automatically magically build a wall in the middle of nowhere,” he said. On Monday, Mulvaney previewed a $1. 6 billion request for “actual construction. ” He described “competition” process for getting the best possible wall design for each area of the Southern border, citing prototypes that were currently being constructed. “We fully expect that different barriers will serve best in different areas,” Mulvaney said. | 0 |
In an unprecedented and unconstitutional move, New York s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has issued an executive order creating a blacklist of businesses in the state that are involved in the BDS movement against Israel. BDS stands for boycott, divest and sanction, and is a major way of protesting Israel s illegal actions in Palestine.The order actually tells state officials to compile a list of businesses involved in the BDS movement so Cuomo can order the State of New York to boycott them. As Baher Azmy, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, put it, this is 21st century McCarthyism, and it s vile.Speaking at the exclusive Harvard Club, Cuomo had the gall to say: If you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you. If you divert revenues from Israel, New York will divert revenues from you. If you sanction Israel, New York will sanction you. Citizens United pretty much gave businesses First Amendment rights, and this violates those rights. Cuomo is using government power to coerce even force businesses into supporting Israel whether they want to or not. He called BDS an economic attack on Israel that must be stopped.While various states have bills in their legislatures that would likewise sanction businesses involved with the BDS movement, Cuomo s executive order gives him immediate power to take care of these businesses with a list that will be made public once it s finished. He even said that passing legislation can often be tedious, as though that s justification enough for issuing an order like this.Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BDS movement, said this isn t surprising and explained what Israel is busy doing: Having lost many battles for hearts and minds at the grass-roots level, Israel has adopted since 2014 a new strategy to criminalize support for B.D.S. from the top, he said in an email, adding that such actions were meant to shield Israel from accountability.' Israel will live by the sword for as long as it can; it will occupy all of the land for as long as it can, and it s afraid its time will draw to a close sooner rather than later if the U.S. officially condemns their actions in Palestine. As such, they re brainwashing us.Alphonso David, Cuomo s general counsel, said that this order specifies the BDS movement, but would target any boycott aimed at Israel. He also said it s meant to send a message about the BDS movement: Mr. David said in an interview that the executive action was meant to send a clear message that the B.D.S. movement is deplorable. He added that the governor s order was not meant to be interpreted as opining on actions taken to empower Palestinians, or meant to discourage debate over Israeli actions in the Middle East. Rather, it intends to stake a position on a movement that the State of New York unequivocally rejects, as the order puts it. The State of New York can reject whatever it wants. It can issue a statement to that effect. It should not be allowed to trample the 1st Amendment rights of anybody for any reason, especially to protect a country guilty of heinous atrocities.Constitutional rights are inalienable, unless you use them to protest Israel.Featured image by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images | 0 |
It you re into puzzles and figuring stuff out, you ve been loving the past few weeks trying to figure out who the vice presidential picks for either major party will be. Now that we know Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is Donald Trump s pick, we re now left to sift through clues to figure out who Hillary Clinton will give the nod too.Well, one huge clue was given when Elizabeth Warren showed up at Hillary Clinton s Washington D.C. home today, but an ever bigger clue has come as Warren s name appears to no longer be on the speaking schedule for the Democratic National Convention.Originally slotted to speak as the keynote speaker on Monday night of the convention, Warren s name is now missing.According to Politico, this is the schedule as it stands now:Monday: First Lady Michelle Obama, Senator Bernie Sanders and DREAMer Astrid Silva Gavel time expected at 3:00 p.m.Tuesday: President Bill Clinton Gavel time expected at 4:00 p.m.Also scheduled Tuesday are Mothers of the Movement members Gwen Carr, Mother of Eric Garner; Sybrina Fulton, Mother of Trayvon Martin; Maria Hamilton, Mother of Dontr Hamilton; Lucia McBath, Mother of Jordan Davis; Lezley McSpadden, Mother of Michael Brown; Cleopatra Pendleton-Cowley, Mother of Hadiya Pendleton; Geneva Reed-Veal, Mother of Sandra Bland.Wednesday: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden Gavel time expected at 4:30 p.m.Thursday: Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton Gavel time expected at 4:30 p.m.Very interesting indeed.Noticeably also missing are other members on Clinton s shortlist for vice president, such as Sherrod Brown and Tim Kaine, but seeing as Warren was scheduled to speak, and now isn t, it could be very, very telling.Now that Trump has rounded out his ticket with Mike Pence, a man who represents the only group Trump has yet to openly hate the LGBT community it s looking pretty good for Clinton come November, and hopefully whoever she picks as her VP will round out the ticket nicely.Featured image via Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images | 0 |
BANGKOK (Reuters) - It will be business as usual this month for Thailand s lucrative tourism industry as the country gears up for the lavish funeral of its revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the tourism agency said on Monday. Tourism accounts for about 10 percent of Thailand s GDP and has been one of the few bright spots for Southeast Asia s second-largest economy, which has struggled since a 2014 coup by the military. One of the world s most popular travel destinations has observed a year-long period of mourning after the death in October last year of King Bhumibol, who ruled for seven decades, and will be cremated on Oct. 26 in a ceremony lasting five days. Tourism activities will continue as normal around the country, even though Thai people will be in mourning, Tanes Petsuwan, a deputy governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, told Reuters. There are no restrictions on tourists at all and they can still enjoy Amazing Thailand while they are here, he said, referring to a tagline trumpeted in tourism advertisements. However, Bangkok s Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, two key landmarks in the capital, will be closed for most of the month to host the cremation. In a travel advisory last month, the tourism agency asked tourists to behave appropriately and respect Thai sensitivities during what promises to be an emotionally-charged time for many. We would like to request that the solemnity of the royal cremation is observed, and visitors should refrain from any inappropriate or disrespectful behavior, it said. While not required to wear black, tourists should stick to respectful clothing , it added. With its beaches, Buddhist temples and infamous night life, Thailand remains a magnet for travelers despite weathering more than a decade of unrest, including two coups, deadly floods in 2011 and a wave of bombs in tourist towns last year. It expects to welcome a record 32.4 million visitors this year. King Bhumibol was succeeded by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who ascended the throne in December last year. King Vajiralongkorn has since overseen several shake-ups of palace staff and moved some agencies under his direct control, including the Crown Property Bureau, which manages most of the royal family s wealth. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One thing is definitely going right for U.S. President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress: they are steadily getting conservatives appointed as judges, advancing their long-held ambition of reshaping the federal judiciary. So concern among conservatives arose after Democrats swept to victory in state and local elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere this month, signaling potential trouble for Republicans in the November 2018 mid-term elections in which control over Congress is at stake. If the party’s slim 52-48 majority in the Senate, which reviews and confirms federal judicial nominees, is at risk, Republicans may need to move even more quickly on getting judges confirmed by the Senate for their lifetime posts, some legal experts said. “Obviously, who gets nominated and the pace of confirmations ... changes dramatically if the Senate were to flip back to the Democrats,” said John Malcolm, a former Justice Department lawyer and now an analyst at the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank in Washington. Republicans “should be paying particular attention to pushing through as many nominees as they can,” added Malcolm, also active in the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers’ group whose members have frequently been tapped for judicial posts by Republican presidents. Trump and congressional Republicans have not passed any major legislation since he took office in January despite controlling the White House and Congress. But after a slow start that had worried conservative activists, Republicans have made major headway on judicial appointments in recent weeks. The Senate has now voted to confirm 14 Trump judicial nominees, including Donald Coggins on Thursday as a district judge in South Carolina. That includes Supreme Court appointee Neil Gorsuch, eight others on regional appeals courts ranking just below the Supreme Court and five on trial courts. Obama had only seven confirmed at this point in his presidency. Democrats, who accused Republicans of impeding nominations from Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, have said Republicans are trying to ram Trump’s nominees through the Senate, including some they say lack basic qualifications. Conservative groups that just last month were criticizing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the pace of confirmations are now applauding him. McConnell, in a move with little precedent in U.S. history, last year refused to act on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, paving the way for Trump to restore the high court’s conservative majority with Gorsuch’s appointment. “When the history books are written about the Trump administration, I believe perhaps the most long-lasting and significant legacy will be the men and women appointed and confirmed to the federal bench,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. Trump has a unique opportunity to reshape the judiciary. He inherited more than 100 vacancies when he took office, twice the number Obama inherited. The number has since climbed above 160. Trump generally has selected deeply conservative nominees, many in their 40s and 50s and able to serve for decades. He could name up to 30 percent of the federal bench in his first four-year term, said Leonard Leo, a Trump advisor on judicial nominations. Having a more conservative judiciary could be pivotal on legal disputes involving presidential powers, abortion, the death penalty, religious rights, gay rights, litigation involving corporations and other matters. The main impact of this infusion of conservative jurists will be to flip the ideological breakdown of several liberal-leaning federal appeals courts, said political scientist Sheldon Goldman, an expert in judicial selection at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Federal appeals courts, divided into 11 geographic regions plus two based in Washington, often have the final say in major legal disputes because the Supreme Court hears only a small number of cases annually. During Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing for six Trump judicial nominees, Democrats said Republicans were acting on too many too quickly, preventing proper questioning of the candidates. Trump’s appointees may be more reliably conservative than those of previous Republican presidents. Goldman said nearly all have a connection to the Federalist Society, providing a “very consistent ideological vetting process.” Leo, the society’s executive vice president, helped compile a shortlist of Supreme Court nominees for Trump that included Gorsuch. Judges will be a focus of the society’s national convention that started on Thursday in Washington, with Trump selections including Gorsuch due to appear. While Republican lawmakers have been divided over legislation on issues including taxes and healthcare, judicial nominees are an issue on which tend to agree. “Fixing Obamacare is no easy task,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network conservative legal advocacy group, “whereas the president has done such an excellent job of choosing nominees that it’s a no-brainer.” | 1 |
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese F-15 fighters on Tuesday held drills with U.S. B1-B bombers, F-35 stealth aircraft and F-18 multirole combat jets above the East China Sea, south of the Korean peninsula, Japan s Air Self Defence Force (ASDF) said. The exercise was the largest in a series aimed at pressuring North Korea following its ballistic missile tests. The latest launch, on Nov. 29, featured a new missile type the North said could hit targets in the United States, such as Washington D.C. The drill was meant to bolster joint operations and raise combat skills, the ASDF said in a statement. Two U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flew from Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam, joined by six F-35s four F-18s and a tanker aircraft from U.S. bases in Japan. The Japanese air force dispatched four F-15 jet fighters and a patrol aircraft. | 1 |
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