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While they are sad and in understandable despair, liberals are not simply sitting shell-shocked over the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Very aware of the danger the newly elected Republican government will mean for vulnerable citizens, liberals are rushing to the defense of key organizations that have been targeted by Republicans.Few groups have been the subject of Republican and conservative attacks like Planned Parenthood has, and now liberals are letting them know they ve got their backs.Since the election, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said it has received nearly 80,000 new donations nationwide, although it did not disclose the money amount.Planned Parenthood of Illinois said online appointments for long-acting contraceptives like IUDs, or intrauterine devices, rose nearly 50 percent in the past two days compared to the same period last week. It said it plans to increase the number of available appointments to meet demand. We have been overwhelmed by community members making donations and contacting us to offer to volunteer and provide support, said Sarah Wheat, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, where successive Republican governors have cut funding to the organization.Republicans have gone after Planned Parenthood because they provide birth control and abortion access to women, regardless of income. The right has gone after them with hoax videos designed to implicate the group in criminal acts, brought its leaders before congress in order to berate them without cause, and voted over and over and over to cut federal funding.President Obama and congressional Democrats have repeatedly pushed back against the Republican onslaught, but many of the measures they have put in place have been weakened by sustained Republican obstruction over the last eight years. Many of these protections can be undone by a Trump presidency, and while Trump himself has not strongly pushed on the abortion issue, many Republicans will be looking to him in to attack women s health.Featured image via Flickr | 1 |
Complaining about Western “hysteria” surrounding repeated predictions of Russian military attacks on NATO member nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to resolve two solid years of predictions to that effect with a straightforward assurance that “Russia is not going to attack anyone.”
Via AntiMedia
Putin accused Western nations of having “mythical, dreamt-up problems,” and insisted the idea that Russia was going to attack the West was “simply stupid and unrealistic.” He added that he believes the idea is being played up to justify bigger military spending.
The Russian president also sought to dismiss allegations that he is plotting to rig the US elections to his own benefit, noting that the US is a great power and not some banana republic with an easily manipulated political system. Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in such plots.
NATO has played up the Russian threat to justify sending over 40,000 ground troops to the Russian border, with ever-growing numbers announced all the time. Such predictions started after the ouster of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine led to a civil war in that country’s east, with NATO military leaders repeatedly predicting Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine into NATO countries.
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It is increasingly apparent that the U.S. war against Islamic extremism has been put on hold by President Obama and his national security team.
President Obama failed to even mention Al Qaeda during his State of the Union address. In early January, the recent terrorist attacks in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket gave us a glimpse of what the future of terrorism looks like, and what the civilized world will have to defend against.
At the same time, the unfolding chaos in Yemen and loss of a U.S. partner in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) raises serious concerns about the future of a country that four months ago President Obama cited as a successful model for U.S.-led efforts to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
ISIL and AQAP are two faces of the same enemy, radical violent Islam, which is on the march around the world.
In 2013, ISIL was confined to Syria and Iraq. As the Syria civil war dragged on, and in the absence of early, forceful intervention on the part of the United States or European nations, the chaotic situation spread to Iraq, where weak security services were no match for an emboldened terrorist army.
In 2014, global support to the Islamic State blossomed as it began to supplant likeminded terrorist groups, and the Islamic State counted affiliates in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. ISIL even has begun to make inroads in Yemen, where the United States has been involved in efforts to degrade AQAP's capabilities, but have been unable to eliminate AQAP's ability to conduct attacks on us and our allies. AQAP remains one of the most pressing security threats America currently faces as the recent attacks in Paris show.
In the wake of the Paris attacks and plots disrupted elsewhere in Europe, European capitals are rightfully defiant in the face of terror. But without a change in our strategy, the task of defending against the triple threat of home grown extremism, jihadists who have easy access to hotbeds of radicalization in places like Yemen and Syria, and the expansion of the Islamic State, will be nearly impossible.
The Islamic State continues to recruit extremists in Europe, the Middle East, and as far away as southeast Asia, using targeted, high quality videos, magazines and literature copied in several languages to spread their message around the world. They trumpet their successes on the battlefield, and try to portray a welcoming environment centered on family and Islam as a means to attract terrorists and their families as subjects of their caliphate.
The United States and all civilized countries need to coordinate our efforts to fight the Islamic State first by cutting them off. We must counter their message on social media; bolster allies like Iraq and Jordan; and ensure that we prevent suspected terrorists from traveling back and forth between their homelands and places like Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Perhaps most importantly, we have to help governments eliminate the safe havens that the Islamic State relies on to gather strength.
Syria, Yemen, and Libya are all examples of our failure to learn one of the fundamental lessons of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- that failed and failing states breed instability and are potential safe havens for terrorists who will eventually turn their attention toward us.
We also cannot afford to ignore another lesson of 9/11 and curtail intelligence gathering capabilities that have been legally and painstakingly established following those horrific attacks.
The U.S. government should implore American technology companies to cooperate with authorities so that we can better track terrorist activity and monitor terrorist communications as we face the increasing challenge of homegrown terrorists radicalized by little more than what they see on the Internet.
This year, a new Republican majority in both houses of Congress will have to extend current authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and I urge my colleagues to consider a permanent extension of the counterterrorism tools our intelligence community relies on to keep the American people safe.
The challenge we face as free societies is unlike anything we have seen in recent decades. As we look at this moment in the long war against terrorism, it is encouraging to see Europeans aggressively moving to defend the continent following a horrific attack. But one need look no further than the setbacks in Yemen and the stalemate in Syria and Iraq to see the limitations of President Obama's current strategy.
Lofty speeches and half measures do not defeat terrorist groups. They also do not keep Americans safe in the long term. The threat from Islamic extremism is only growing and without greater leadership from the United States, I fear that it will only be a matter of time before innocent Americans pay the ultimate price if we continue to underestimate our enemies and not develop a strategy that is commensurate to the threat.
Republican Marco Rubio represents Florida in the U.S. Senate. He is a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. | 0 |
Republicans are delusional if they really believe forgoing a new cell phone will allow poor people to afford healthcare.But that s exactly what Utah GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz believes.On Monday, House Republicans passed a monstrous bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act which pretty much leaves 30 million Americans out in the cold without insurance. Republicans stripped subsidies away from low-income Americans and will give them to families who can actually afford to pay for healthcare without government aid. The bill also wipes out the Medicaid expansion that allowed millions more to obtain coverage. Furthermore, the bill kills the insurance mandate, which guaranteed that enough Americans would have health insurance that the insurance pool would be able to cover people with pre-existing conditions. The bill also makes senior citizens pay more for healthcare and defunds Planned Parenthood, which would strip low-income women of the health services they need, including cancer screenings.During an interview to defend his party s evil bill on Tuesday morning, Chaffetz actually had the gall to claim that poor people could afford health insurance if they didn t go out and purchase iPhones.Seriously, he literally used this as an excuse to strip 30 million people of their health insurance. You know what, Americans have choices, and they ve got to make a choice, Chaffetz said. And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own health care. Here s the video via Twitter.GOP Rep. Chaffetz: Americans may need to choose between new iphone they just love and investing in health care https://t.co/5Hxwn2uOl5 New Day (@NewDay) March 7, 2017Chaffetz s ignorant remarks make it clear that he doesn t know anything about the cost of healthcare, probably because his healthcare is free courtesy of American taxpayers.As Raw Story points out, the average cost of a health insurance plan is $235 per month while an iPhone costs just $27 a month with a two-year payment plan.In short, choosing not to buy an iPhone will not do anything to help poor Americans afford healthcare.Meanwhile, Republicans like Chaffetz can actually afford to buy their own health insurance because they make $174,000 a year. But they don t have to buy their own insurance because they get government healthcare along with the best hospitals all on the taxpayer dime.Chaffetz, and every Republican who voted for this bill, is a hypocrite and they should be ashamed of themselves.Featured image via screenshot | 0 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The top contenders in both the Democratic and the Republican presidential nominating races have roughly equal support among members of their respective parties, according to a national Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. The results suggest the race to get onto the Nov. 8 presidential ballot is tightening, as candidates prepare for their next state contest, in New York next week. In the Democratic race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont each had 48 percent support, according to responses from 719 Democrats polled from April 8-12. The two have been tied frequently since February. In the Republican race, celebrity real estate developer Donald Trump had 41 percent support, to 35 percent for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, according to responses from 598 Republicans. The result was within the poll’s credibility interval. Cruz’s support has risen in recent weeks, making him the first candidate to rival Trump’s popularity among Republicans since neurosurgeon Ben Carson in November. | 1 |
BERLIN (Reuters) - Angela Merkel s conservatives are ready to make further concessions on reducing coal emissions to salvage talks with two smaller parties on forming a coalition government, an ally of the German chancellor said on Thursday. Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of Merkel s conservatives, said the conservatives, Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) could still seal a deal this weekend despite deep differences on climate and migration. Despite the big stumbling blocks I believe it could work, Kauder told reporters. I feel readiness by all sides and everyone has to make concessions. And I believe that the exploratory talks must end this weekend. | 0 |
Wow! Talk about putting our nation s security at risk A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation -Ronald ReaganDemocratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told executives at a Brazilian bank in a private speech that she wants open borders for the United States, according to a new leak by the online hacktivist group Wikileaks. My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, Clinton says in an excerpt from a speech to Unibanco Itau, a Brazilian bank. We have to resists protectionism [and] other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade. The unreleased transcripts of Clinton s paid speeches to financial firms were a major point of contention during the Democratic primary, with Sen. Bernie Sanders repeatedly demanding that Clinton release the transcripts, and Clinton repeatedly refusing to do so.Now, Wikileaks has released what appear to be excerpts from those speeches, and in one of them Clinton has described a vision in which the United States has open borders and total free trade with the rest of North and South America.While campaigning for the presidency, Clinton has opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement after previously backing it, and critics have accused her of switching sides for political convenience.The excerpts were obtained thanks to an email Clinton research director Tony Carrk sent to several senior Clinton aides, in which he identified the flags from HRC s paid speeches that could cause political difficulties Via:Daily Caller | 1 |
at 11:11 am 5 Comments
While most Americans were captivated by last night’s World Series Game 7, some very, very big news broke. Normally, I’d summarize the news and provide my perspective before highlighting source text, but in this case I want to provide the information first.
The real blockbuster came from Fox News’ Bret Baier, who released some serious information courtesy of two sources at the FBI. Real Clear Politics summarized Bret’s primary conclusions based on his conversations:
1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year.
2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time.
3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton’s secret server on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature.
4. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is “likely” in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, “barring some obstruction in some way” from the Justice Department.
5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton’s server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it.
Here’s Bret Baier saying it in his own words:
While Friday’s bombshell alerted the American public to the reopening of Hillary Clinton’s private email server probe, the Clinton Foundation investigation is a totally separate beast. It’s now clear that Hillary Clinton, and much of her close circle, are subject to two very serious ongoing investigations. As I explained in the post, Another Black Swan Hits the U.S. Presidential Election , this is very material to the Presidential election for the following reason:
The problems with Hillary Clinton will never go away. They will always resurface or new problems will emerge, and it has nothing to do with a “vast rightwing conspiracy” (or Putin). It has to do with her. It has to do with the fact that her and her husband are career crooks, warmongers, and shameless looters of the American public. This re-opening of the FBI investigation just hammers all of that home for everyone. We know what 4 years of Hillary will look like. It’ll be Obama cronyism on steroids, plus endless investigations with a side of World War 3. I don’t think people want that, and so more Americans than the pundits realize will take a gamble on Trump.
The latest revelations about the Clinton Foundation investigation just further hammers home the above point.
Moreover, it’s becoming increasingly clear that political appointees at the Injustice Department like Loretta Lynch and Peter Kadzik (John Podesta’s close friend since the 1970s) have been trying to thwart probes into the dirtiness of the Clinton Foundation. I covered this earlier in the week in the post, The Story of How the DOJ Tried to Thwart an FBI Investigation Into the Clinton Foundation , but additional details have started to emerge.
As we learned from yesterday’s CNN article, Turmoil in the FBI :
Behind the scenes over the past 15 months, infighting among some agents and officials has exposed some parts of the storied bureau to be buffeted by some of the same bitter divisions as the rest of American society.
This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen officials close to the matter who spoke anonymously because they’ve been ordered not to speak to the news media.
Tensions have built in particular over the handling of matters related to Hillary Clinton. Some of the sharpest divides have emerged between some agents in the FBI’s New York field office, the bureau’s largest and highest-profile, and officials at FBI headquarters in Washington and at the Justice Department.
Some rank-and-file agents interpreted cautious steps taken by the Justice Department and FBI headquarters as being done for political reasons or to protect a powerful political figure. At headquarters, some have viewed the actions and complaints of some agents in the field as driven by the common desire of investigators to get a big case or, perhaps worst, because of partisan views.
Much of the turmoil centers not only on the handling of the probe into Clinton’s use of a private server while secretary of state, but also another case some FBI agents wanted to pursue into the Clinton Foundation and whether there was any impropriety in dealings with donors.
In both cases, some FBI investigators felt stymied by headquarters and Justice Department officials and they interpreted roadblocks as politically partisan.
During the Clinton email server investigation, investigators and prosecutors debated whether to issue subpoenas to Clinton’s aides, officials say. Leaders at the FBI and at the Justice Department thought it would be faster to come to voluntary agreements with aides. Subpoenas could cause delays, particularly if litigation is necessary, officials said. And the FBI and Justice Department wanted to try to complete the probe and get out of the way of the 2016 election.
Now here’s where the Clinton Foundation probe comes into focus…
In the Clinton Foundation probe, at least one FBI field office also received notification of a possible suspicious bank transaction. The transaction involving a Clinton Foundation donor was flagged in what is known as a suspicious activity report, routine notices sent through the Treasury Department’s financial enforcement arm.
By early this year, FBI agents from four field offices — Los Angeles, Little Rock, Arkansas, Washington, D.C., and New York — had open files on the Clinton Foundation and were seeking to get permission to formally conduct investigations of the Clinton Foundation.
In February, as CNN first reported, FBI criminal division leaders and lawyers met with the lawyers from the Justice Department’s public integrity section to present what was known so far and to seek permission to conduct full-blown investigations, including the ability to subpoena records.
At that time, the Justice officials in the meeting advised FBI officials that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to move forward and declined to give the authorization for overt investigative techniques. Some officials described a contentious meeting with strong disagreement on both sides.
Officials leading the meeting told the FBI that investigators hadn’t turned up much more evidence beyond that contained in “Clinton Cash.”
FBI lawyers at headquarters concurred with the Justice Department’s view that agents be allowed to continue their work with the option to return if they found more evidence.
In July, Comey made his announcement to recommend no charges against Clinton.
At a Capitol Hill hearing days later, Comey told members of Congress that he was proud there had been no leaks of his decision.
But blowback from some current and former agents was immediate. As Comey made his rounds of visits to field offices around the country, he heard stinging criticism, particularly from retired agents.
At one meeting in Kansas City, Comey was confronted with stinging criticism of the probe. He pushed back, saying the career agents who knew the most of the case arrived at the conclusion that the case against Clinton wasn’t even a close call.
FBI agents again pressed to take more overt steps in the Clinton Foundation probe, including possibly issuing subpoenas.
Justice Department officials again opposed such moves. They cited, again, a lack of evidence to warrant more investigative steps. And they expressed concerns that with the election close, any overt actions shouldn’t be made until after Election Day.
“It’s just a (message of) ‘hold right now until after the elections — no subpoenas issued, no interviews,” one law enforcement official familiar with the July decision said.
So what conclusions can we draw from the above? First, it seems to confirm some of what Fox reported, namely that there is an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. That’s important in its own right for the reasons I explained earlier. The second bit of information is new. We learned that Justice Department officials “ expressed concerns that with the election close, any overt actions shouldn’t be made until after Election Day.” The pieces are finally coming together…
Specifically, one of the more interesting aspects of last night’s news is the increased willingness of FBI agents to break protocol and speak to the media about ongoing investigations. Why would they do that? They seem to be doing it due to continued concerns over political interference from the Justice Department (and possibly FBI headquarters) into various investigations into the workings of an extremely powerful political-oligarch family. They are rightly troubled by what a President Clinton could do to any investigation if she’s elected. As such, they are trying to get their concerns out to the public ahead of time.
I’ve been watching all of this develop for some time, and I wrote two prior articles on the topic. Here they are in case you missed them:
October 18, 2016: Internal Anger at the FBI Over Clinton Investigation Continues to Grow
So what’s going on is extremely serious, and many within the FBI appear to be acutely concerned that the perception of the rule of law will be permanently destroyed if Clinton gets into the White House and shuts down all investigations into her and her inner circle. Martin Armstrong summarized the situation perfectly in a blog post earlier today:
The Department of Justice is so compromised with Lynch at the head it is getting to be absurd. Peter J. Kadzik is the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Clearly, there is an internal war going on as I reported. Now that the FBI has over the 650,000 emails uncovered in Anthony Weiner’s notebook, which Huma Abedin failed to turnover to Congress claiming she had no idea how they got there. The US Justice Department announced it is now also joining the probe to dedicate all necessary resources to quickly clear Hillary, up pops the conflict of interest. In the letter to Congress, the DOJ person to aid this investigation to clear Hillary by the election, is Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik who wrote to the House and Senate lawmakers.
This is Podesta’s friend for dinner who goes to his house. Plus, Peter Kadzik donated $250 to Hillary also noted in Podesta’s spreadsheet . Kadzik and Podesta were classmates at Georgetown Law School back in the 1970s and have been good friends ever since. In fact, Kadzik represented Podesta during the Monica Lewinsky investigation and Podesta wrote that Kadzik was a “fantastic lawyer” who “kept me out of jail.” It was also Kadzik who lobbied Podesta for Marc Rich to obtain a pardon for a fugitive when you have to show remorse to get a pardon. Never has a Pardon been granted to a fugitive in this manner. Then Kadzik’s wife, Amy Weiss of Weiss Public Affairs, worked on the 1992 Clinton/Gore Campaign as a Press Secretary. She was the Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee, and on top of that, she was White House Deputy Assistant to the President Bill Clinton. It gets better. Another email sent on May 5, 2015 , Kadzik’s son asked Podesta for a job on the Clinton campaign. This is the independent person appointed by Lynch to clear Hillary? Come on! This is outright in your face corruption.
Why would the DOJ pick such a conflicted person? The answer is obvious. They want to CLEAR Hillary no matter what. Kadzik is there to now counteract anything Comey does because there is really an internal war waging in Washington. The screams from behind the curtain are getting deafening. It is so disgusting that we are witnessing the complete collapse of anything pretended to be the rule of law. The status quo, including George Bush Sr, are all backing Hillary so there is NOTHING that will change and they all live fat and happy off of our taxes and legal oppression. This is really becoming a battle to save the country from the privileged establishment. They milk us like cows and send our boys into battle with lies and propaganda to enrich themselves. I lost half my school friends to Vietnam when Lyndon Johnson even said in 1965 the Vietnamese never attacked us; “For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there.” ( source )
I also covered the disturbing crony relationships between the DOJ/FBI and Clinton’s inner circle in recent weeks. For more on that, see: | 1 |
Iran, where the thought police will always have a job: Not only will we not grant foreigners the permission to inspect our military sites, we will not even give them permission to think about such a subject. A spokesman for Iran s nuclear agency has once again rejected calls to grant IAEA access to military sites, continuing a war of words on the issue that began Sunday.Press TV reports that Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), gave an interview Monday in which he stated that demands for access to Iran s military sites were not practical and acceptable. According to Press TV, his statement was a response to a claim U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz made earlier in the day.During an interview with Bloomberg News earlier Monday, Secretary Moniz said, We expect to have anywhere, anytime access within Iran. That statement appears to match the contents of the U.S. fact sheet published three weeks ago. The fact sheet states, Iran will be required to grant access to the IAEA to investigate suspicious sites or allegations of a covert enrichment facility, conversion facility, centrifuge production facility, or yellowcake production facility anywhere in the country. Secretary Moniz s statement about access anywhere, anytime was itself an apparent response to a blunt statement Sunday by Brigadier General Hossein Salami. According to Press TV, General Salami gave an interview to Fars News in which he stated, Not only will we not grant foreigners the permission to inspect our military sites, we will not even give them permission to think about such a subject. In case that was not clear enough, Gen. Salami added, They will not even be permitted to inspect the most normal military site in their dreams. General Salami is not the first high ranking Iranian to deny the IAEA will get access to Iran s military sites under the proposed deal. Nearly two weeks ago, Iran s Defense Minister said any inspection of Iran s military sites was a red line and added that no inspection of any kind from such facilities would be accepted. Ayatollah Khamenei backed up that stance the next day.AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi who said military site inspections were not acceptable was reportedly awaiting a nuclear delegation from Russia to discuss the construction of two new nuclear power plants in Iran next year.Via: Breitbart News | 1 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Reaction to President Trump’s address tended to focus on its “presidential” style. His sobriety, seriousness of purpose, and calls for unity reassured — and surprised — many listeners. “I think it sounded great, like a utopia,” one voter said, adding, “I don’t think it’s that simple. ” Indeed, Mr. Trump, who met with congressional Republican leaders on Wednesday, above, faces not only a committed Democratic opposition but a divided Republican Party. Today’s episode of The Daily podcast examines the president’s speech, especially his promises to protect Americans. Listen from a computer, on an iOS device or on an Android device. _____ • As Chinese officials gather this weekend for the start of the annual National People’s Congress, China’s weak currency is likely to be a major topic behind closed doors. The momentum appears to be turning against keeping the renminbi weak, not only because it risks worsening relations with the U. S. but also because it may hurt Chinese companies more than it helps. _____ • Russia mistakenly bombed Syrian fighters being trained by the U. S. another unintended clash among the myriad forces on the fluid battlefield. Separately, United Nations investigators released a report detailing war crimes committed by various forces in the Syrian conflict. The Syrian government’s deliberate bombing of a U. N. aid convoy in September, which killed 14 aid workers, was “one of the most egregious. ” Also in Syria, a senior Qaeda leader who was a of Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday in a U. S. drone strike. _____ • The Malaysian investigation into the Feb. 13 assassination of Kim the half brother of North Korea’s leader, has been halted at the doors to the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Two North Korean suspects in the case have taken refuge inside, adding to tensions between the former close allies. _____ • The Philippines appears set to reinstate the death penalty, after a crucial vote by the House of Representatives that demonstrated the popularity of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody antidrug campaign. A few last steps to enactment are unlikely to be difficult, despite opposition from some lawmakers and the politically influential Catholic Church. The church has had more success in preventing the distribution of condoms to high school juniors and seniors, despite the country’s H. I. V. infection rate, one of Asia’s highest. _____ • Are the microtubes and filaments magnified above the oldest fossils on Earth? Some researchers identify them as bacterial remains that offer evidence that life emerged not long, geologically speaking, after the birth of the planet 4. 5 billion years ago. Others are, in the words of one scientist, “frankly dubious. ” Such battles, an optimist observed, are ”how science progresses. ” • Snap Inc. Snapchat’s parent company, makes its market debut with a valuation set at $24 billion, an extraordinary starting point for a trajectory that could rise like Facebook — or fall like Twitter. • India’s rivers are paying the price for the country’s runaway construction boom. Ruthless “sand mafias” are devastating waterways to feed demand for concrete. • Women on the boards of companies on average earn 43 percent less than their male counterparts. • Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have signed a publishing deal. Penguin Random House won the fierce auction — an insider said the opening offers for Mr. Obama’s book alone were as high as $20 million. • ResearchGate, a social network for scientists, is growing in influence and funding, linking academics worldwide and providing research feedback. • U. S. markets were up. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Iraqi forces, backed by U. S. air power, recaptured the last major road out of western Mosul, trapping Islamic State militants inside the city. [Reuters] • The Afghan Taliban carried out twin bombings in Kabul that killed 15 people and wounded 50. Most of the victims were believed to be civilians. [The New York Times] • China has unveiled its latest combat drone, the Wing Loong II. The aircraft can fly for 20 hours and carry 12 bombs or missiles. [China Daily] • Trade associations in India’s Tamil Nadu State have proposed a ban on and Pepsi, citing environmental concerns. More than a million shopkeepers are expected to comply. [BBC] • Vandalism at Jewish cemeteries and threatening calls to community centers and schools has left American Jews on edge. [The New York Times] • U. S. scientists report an increase in the risk of colorectal cancers in adults in their 20s and 30s, though the reasons are unclear. [The New York Times] • The Kiwis are back. Four years after squandering an lead in San Francisco, Team New Zealand heads to Bermuda for the America’s Cup, yachting’s most prestigious prize. [The New York Times] • If you feel your productivity flagging at work today, try putting on some music. • Recipe of the day: For a different take on dinner, try roasted fish with sweet peppers. • France’s perennial obsession with “Frenchness” is colored with fears that its essence is being lost with the decline of provincial towns — dense hubs of tradition where Balzac set his novels. • Be nice to your doctor or nurse. A study of an Israeli neonatal unit suggests that quality of care suffers if a parent is rude, or even just unpleasant, to the medical staff. • Finally, what to pack for a monthlong trip to Asia? King Salman of Saudi Arabia arrived in Indonesia, his first stop, with an entourage of 1, 500 people, six Boeing jets and a cargo plane carrying two Mercedes limos and 506 tons of luggage. When the movie “King Kong” was first screened, 84 years ago today in New York City, it was widely anticipated for its technological feats and a challenging narrative that had a “monstrous ape 50 feet tall” climbing the Empire State Building. “The film will show prehistoric monsters fighting one another and making weird sounds,” The Times reported before the release, calling it a “fantastic film. ” It also helped define the career of Bruce Cabot, who played Jack Driscoll, the hero who rescues Fay Wray from the giant ape. Mr. Cabot’s career didn’t start in acting school. At 14, he scavenged cattle remains on the prairies of New Mexico for bone meal. Work in construction “gave him a democratic outlook on life,” The Times wrote in 1933. As a ship deckhand, he worked his way to Europe and meandered through War I France and Spain. After “King Kong,” a series of supporting roles followed, often alongside John Wayne. World War II military service took him back to Europe, where he worked in intelligence. That may have prepared him for one of his last roles: Fighting a fictitious spy named James Bond in “Diamonds Are Forever. ” Patrick Boehler contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 0 |
(Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Friday he will attend a Fox News televised debate on March 3 with moderator Megyn Kelly after he skipped a similar event hosted by Fox last week, an online and cable television network reported on Friday. “No, I’ll be there. I have no objection to being there. That had nothing to do with Megyn Kelly the fact that I went out of the last one, it had to do with a memo that was sent out by Fox that was a little bit taunting and I said it was inappropriate,” Trump said on NewsmaxTV.com. He added that he had no regrets about missing the Jan. 28 debate in Des Moines, Iowa just days before the Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest of the 2016 campaign, at which he came in second after Texas Senator Ted Cruz. “And what happened, because I didn’t do it I raised $6 million for the vets. So, I wouldn’t have changed places. I did the right thing,” he said on “The Steve Malzberg Show.” Trump said last week he was angered by a statement from Fox News (FOXA.O) that mocked him for refusing to participate in the Des Moines event. The real estate billionaire had said earlier he doubted he would be treated fairly at the Des Moines debate and at one point called Kelly “a lightweight reporter” and “highly overrated.” He later said Fox News had apologized for the statement and that the situation had been resolved. Trump accused Kelly last August of asking him tougher questions than other candidates during a debate. His comments drew outcry, with some accusing the business tycoon of sexism. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by James Dalgleish) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage. | 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 / What A Hillary Presidency Would Bring Essential Reading Untold Truths About the Planned War on Iran By wmw_admin on April 9, 2013
Dynamite documentary: Press TV talks to former White House insider Gwenyth Todd about the push for war with Iran. She has subsequently escaped to Australia to avoid FBI prosecution. Essential viewing Inside 9/11: Hijacking the Air Defense By wmw_admin on August 13, 2011
Why did U.S. air defense fail so spectacularly on 9/11? As this video explains, it was likely due to one man and he wasn’t sitting in a Afghan mountain cave Who Are The Illuminati? By wmw_admin on April 24, 2004
Conspiracy theory is now an accepted turn of phrase but sometimes one hears the expression, sometimes whispered rather than spoken. “The Illuminati”. 9/11 and Zion: What Was Israel’s Role? By Nick Kollerstrom on August 31, 2012
When Netanyahu said the very next day, ‘This is very good for Israel”, he wasn’t just blurting out something indiscreet, he was publicly congratulating the various agents who had worked so hard The Essene Gospel of Peace I By wmw_admin on April 26, 2007
Based on texts found in the Vatican library and the Royal Library of the Hapsburg’s and dated to the first century AD, the following is considered by some to be the real words of Christ The Anglo-Saxon Mission Part II By wmw_admin on March 1, 2010
Former City of London insider reveals that the depopulation program would begin with a planned war between Israel and Iran. More importantly, he goes onto to describe how we can derail their plans for global dominance London Beheading Hoax Confirmed? By wmw_admin on May 24, 2013
Was the London beheading a hoax? After Sandy Hook anything is possible and the authors present a very convincing case that it was. Judge for yourself | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department’s legal office has reminded employees not to promote private interests on social media after its online accounts publicized President Donald Trump’s private Florida resort and his daughter Ivanka Trump’s new book. An article on a State Department website in April about Mar-a-Lago and a retweet in May about the book were eventually withdrawn, but the new guidance issued on Tuesday said employees should “exercise caution before using a Department social media account to highlight non-official activities of U.S. government officials and their family.” The guidance was posted on an internal website and written by the Office of Ethics and Financial Disclosure of the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. A State Department official declined to comment on internal communications but said the legal adviser’s office routinely provides guidance to employees on ethics matters. The guidance was directed to social media managers who oversee hundreds of official government accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms used by State Department agencies, consulates and embassies to communicate information and U.S. foreign policy. The guidance, which was seen by Reuters, never specifically mentions Trump or his family. But its content appeared to be at least in part in response to the postings on the resort and the book. “If a government official has a commercial enterprise or has published a book, U.S. government resources should not be used to publicize those ventures,” the guidance said. The posting on Trump’s resort was shared on the websites and social media accounts of several U.S. embassies. Ethics experts said the piece represented use of public office for private gain. The State Department said the article had been meant to inform the public about where Trump had been hosting world leaders. A Twitter account for the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues retweeted a post by Ivanka Trump in which she promoted her new book. Ivanka Trump serves in the White House as an adviser to her father. Trump maintains ownership of his global business empire, though he has handed control to his two oldest sons, an arrangement that ethics watchdogs say does not prevent conflicts of interest. | 0 |
MISRATA/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A man seized by U.S. forces in Libya accused of involvement in an attack that killed the U.S. Ambassador in Benghazi in 2012 is a Syrian who had links to the suspected ringleader, Libyan military officials said on Tuesday. U.S. special forces captured Mustafa al-Imam in the past few days and he is being transported to the United States, U.S. officials said on Monday, without giving more details. Speaking on condition of anonymity, eastern-based military officials told Reuters Imam was believed to be a Syrian national aged between 35 and 40. He was captured near Misrata, the country s third-largest city located some 190 km east of the capital Tripoli, said Mohammed al-Ghasri, spokesman of the defense ministry of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. He was caught near the city of Misrata after his movements had been monitored, Ghasri told Reuters in the first official statement of the Tripoli-based government. When asked whether Libyan authorities had been present during the U.S. operation he only said: Yes...(there) was coordination with the security agencies inside Misrata city. He declined to elaborate. The man had been originally from eastern Libya but spent time in Misrata where he had roots while he also had been moving around, Ghasri added. He did not live in Misrata. Imam had previously lived in the Benghazi district of Laithi where he frequented the same Al-Awza i mosque as suspected ringleader Ahmed Abu Khatallah who was snatched by U.S. forces in 2014, eastern military officials said. U.S. prosecutors opened their case against Abu Khatallah this month. Imam has been charged with killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility and providing material support to terrorists resulting in death, the U.S. Justice Department said. He will appear before a federal judge in Washington when he arrives in the United States. Laithi was an Islamist stronghold that saw some of the heaviest fighting in a battle for control of Benghazi that began in 2014. In July, eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar announced victory in the campaign, which pitted his Libyan National Army (LNA) against Islamists and other opponents. Libya has rival governments: one in the capital and another in the east allied to Haftar. An eastern news agency backing the LNA published what it said was a picture of Imam standing in front of the Benghazi barracks of an armed group before it was taken by Haftar s forces. The Benghazi attack, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, was the topic of numerous congressional hearings, with Republican lawmakers critical of the way in which then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled the attack. Libya has been mired in conflict since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, with Islamist militants gaining ground as fighting between rival factions created a security void. | 1 |
by Jerri-Lynn Scofield
Jerri-Lynn here: The following post summarizes the state-of-play regarding production cutbacks for twelve oil-producing states invited to participate in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) ongoing discussions regarding a much-anticipated output freeze. As the post suggests, failure to agree restrictions and stabilize prices might heighten the risks of terrorist attacks and political instability in some of the non-OPEC countries invited to participate in wider negotiations. Yet inviting new participants to the negotiating party is only likely to complicate the situation and slow further the implementation of an internal production reduction already delayed for nearly a year.
By Zainab Calcuttawala, an American journalist based in Morocco. She completed her undergraduate coursework at the University of Texas at Austin (Hook’em) and reports on international trade, human rights issues and more. Originally published at Oilprice.com
Last week, Venezuelan oil minister Eulogio del Pino released a list of states invited to participate in the OPEC ongoing negotiations regarding a much-anticipated output freeze.
Russia, Egypt and ten other oil exporters made the list, though the high variation between the economic and political standings of the non-OPEC participants add to the already complicated and delicate orchestration of the deal— if there is to be a deal, that is.
This past weekend, several of the invited non-OPEC countries sent representatives to Vienna for consultations regarding the terms of a potential freeze deal. No details have been finalized, but those who participated agreed to meet again before the 30 November OPEC summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Energy Minister Alexander Novak have recently agreed to freeze output in coordination with OPEC, if the group’s members can flesh out a plan amongst themselves.
According to OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo, the bloc is on track to deliver a deal by the end of November. Barkindo also said that Russia has agreed to participate in OPEC’s official meeting this month.
As outlined by the Jamestown Foundation last month, Kazakhstan is desperate for a freeze deal to help economic development rebound to the 6-7 percent expansion rate that the former Soviet Republic saw when barrel prices exceeded $100. But just because they are desperate for a cut doesn’t mean they will participate.
Kazakh Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said on Tuesday that Kazakhstan itself would not be doing any cutting, because, according to Bozumbayev, their production levels are small in proportion to some of the others at the negotiating table, namely Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Iran, and Mexico.
This year, Kazakhstan does not expect its economy to grow more than 0.1 percent, while 2017 forecasts from the World Bank predict a low one-percent increase in GDP. Kazakhstan – which recently reopened its Kashagan field, depends on oil exports for over 60 percent of total government revenues and a quarter of its GDP.
A failed deal could mean renewed terrorist attacks and political instability for Kazakhstan as the Kazakh economy continues to spiral downwards.
Asked what he hoped Saturday’s meeting would achieve, a Kazakh official in attendance in Vienna desperately said: “We just hope the price will react and it will increase.” That desperation is shared by many other oil-dependent countries, but this desperation is also a sign that these countries are not in any position to scale back the production that generates the most revenue.
Azerbaijan was also at the table. Halfway through October, Azerbaijan – a country that produced more than half of the world’s oil a century ago – also announced its support of an OPEC/non-OPEC cut, which, as ClipperData noted , is convenient because the country’s September oil production was 10.2 percent lower than its August rate.
“Venezuela and Azerbaijan agree that some measures will be taken to stabilize the market,” Azeri Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said this weekend. “We agreed the price of oil can be around $60 per barrel.” Statements revolving around price, however, do not speak to who is ready to share the burden of cutting production, and do little to assuage market fears that a cut is but a wispy goal.
Oman wasn’t buying the feasibility of OPEC cuts either, and before the Algiers meeting in September, Oman said as much, stating that it did not believe in the bloc’s ability to solve the pricing crisis due to several failed efforts to freeze output over the past year.
Newer reports on Oman show that they officially support an output freeze and overall reduction, with the expectation that “similar measures be taken by other countries.” It remains unclear if Iraq, a war-torn nation currently defying production limits, and Iran, a country trying to regain its legs now that sanctions were lifted, count as one of the “other countries” that Oman expects to cut output.
As a net oil importer, Egypt does not have the market power or political capital to sway the momentum of a freeze one way or another. The North African country’s recent spat with Saudi Arabia – the de facto leader of OPEC – over suspended petroleum shipments will also limit the salience of Egyptian interests in the bloc’s proceedings.
Sources from the Egyptian Parliament say the country’s energy ministry will be asked to review Saudi Aramco’s five-year agreement to supply Egypt with petroleum derivatives in the coming weeks, further complicating relations between the two nations.
Ninety-nine percent of Canadian oil exports go straight to the United States, according to governmental data from the buyer and seller countries.
Neither of the two North American countries is part of OPEC, and they have their own agreements for energy supplies. So even though Canada has been invited to participate in the freeze talks, the country does not have the economic or political incentive to reduce output.
Brazil elected to “observe” Saturday’s meeting as the country prepares to increase production rates over the next few years. This makes them extremely unlikely participants in any efforts to scale back production.
Other countries present this weekend included Mexico, which has spent the better part of this summer building a hedge against low oil prices for the next fiscal year.
Small-scale producers such as Bolivia and Trinidad and Tobago have already turned down production over the past two years, which had a limited effect on market fundamentals.
Norway, a 1.6 million barrel per day producer that has increased output by 2.1 percent in 2014 and 3.08 percent in 2015, declined to meet with OPEC over the weekend.
The geopolitics of oil within OPEC has already delayed the implementation of an internal production reduction for almost an entire year. By adding new nations from previously uninvolved continents (North America and Europe), the bloc has flooded the negotiation table with new interests – creating a fresh slate of diplomatic obstacles to overcome before an output freeze can be implemented. 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 |
By Lambert Strether of Corrente .
TTP, TTIP, TISA
CETA: “The provisional application of CETA refers to the fact that some things—like the tariff reductions—will come into operation immediately, assuming the European Parliament agrees. But other areas, notably the ISDS/ICS, must wait for full ratification of the deal. That requires all of the EU’s 28 member states to go through national ratification processes, which will probably take several years” [ Ars Technica ]. “And despite what the commission would have you think, it is by no means certain that all the national parliaments will approve CETA.” More:
For example, a tweet by Katharina Nocun pointed out that left-wing and green parties could block its passage in Germany. At various times, there have been hints that other countries’ parliaments may not agree to the deal, but it’s not yet clear what the current situation is around the EU…..
Another serious threat to CETA’s coming into force are legal challenges. As part of the deal to obtain Wallonia’s permission to sign CETA, the EU agreed that the ICS framework would be examined by the EU’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). If the CJEU finds that the approach is incompatible with the EU’s fundamental principles, it will either have to be dropped from CETA (and TTIP ), or CETA itself will fall (as will TTIP).
In addition, there are two constitutional challenges to CETA, one in Canada , and one in Germany.
Good wrap-up of the state of play.
TTIP: ” A much-debated trade deal between the European Union and the United States is not dead and negotiations will continue with the new U.S. administration after November’s elections, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said on Saturday” [ Reuters ]. TTIP dresses up for Halloween. As a zombie!
TPP: “[new Zealand] Prime Minister John Key believes the TPP still has a 50-50 chance of being passed in the lame-duck Congressional period after the November 8 presidential election” [ Otago Daily Times ].
TPP: “TPP Is Exciting. Let’s Make the Case for It” [Tyler Cown, Bloomberg ]. “So what then is the exciting, big-picture case for TPP? I say it’s to keep North America, and especially the U.S., the world’s leading economic cluster for the foreseeable future.” It’s a cluster, alright.
TPP: “Only 38 per cent of Japanese want to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, according to a survey published by the newspaper Nikkei, showing a growing public distrust of free trade agreements” [ The Advertiser ]. “The government of Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed to ratify the TPP before the end of the current parliamentary session, on November 30, in order to ensure that Japan is the first country to give its assent to the agreement.”
2016
Days until: 6. That’s less than a week!
Corruption
“If there is any lesson to be learned from the ghosts of Watergate, it is that the big-money support of a leader who has lost the ability to deliver the goods crumbles very quickly as the endgame unfolds” [ Of Two Minds ].
Downballot
“Democrats are poised to gain seats in the House of Representatives this year, but with well over a dozen competitive races still viewed as tossups just one week before Election Day, the extent of that gain — and whether Republicans can stem the bleeding and keep a strong grip on their majority — remains uncertain” [ RealClearPolitics ]. “GOP insiders say their polling in swing districts has stabilized, and they feel energized by the news Friday that the FBI is looking into emails that could be related to its previously close investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server.”
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign has nearly taken up residence in North Carolina, strategically eyeing what it calls the “Checkmate State” as a way to soundly block Donald Trump’s path to the presidency” [ RealClearPolitics ]. As we wrote yesterday .
The Trail
I expected the Clinton campaign to have pulled up its dump truck and unloaded some serious oppo Monday or today; but so far as I can tell, all we have are damp squibs (1) and (2). Clearing the way for Wikileaks on Wednesday?
(1) “Why Trump’s Russian server connection is less suspicious than it sounds” [ Engadget ]; Franklin Foer’s original piece of crap piece here, in the Jeff Bezos Shopper’s lifestyle insert (I’m not dignifying it with square brackets because the reaction by tech twitter is universally derisive).
(2) “Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes” [ New York Times ]. “Tax experts who reviewed the newly obtained documents for The New York Times said Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance maneuver, conjured from ambiguous provisions of highly technical tax court rulings, clearly pushed the edge of the envelope of what tax laws permitted at the time.” I’ve helpfully underlined the weasel phrase.
Democrat Email Hairball
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, last year signed a $7,000-a-month contract with the foundation of a major Clinton donor who made a fortune selling a type of mortgage that some critics say contributed to the housing collapse, hacked emails show” [ Politico ]. How cozy!
” Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run” [Thomas Frank, Guardian ].
[T]he emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.
The good people.
Stats Watch
Purchasing Managers’ Manufacturing Index, October 2016: “A marked upturn in new orders leads a very positive manufacturing PMI” [ Econoday ]. “The increase in orders is centered in domestic demand though export orders also improved. Backlogs are another plus, rising to the best level in three months…. Based on this report, the manufacturing sector, after a flat year, is now accelerating into year end.” But: “There is nothing in the ISM or Markit reports that would leave one to think manufacturing is on the mend” [ Econintersect ].
Institute For Supply Management Manufacturing Index, October 2016: “ISM’s manufacturing sample reported no better than moderate conditions [below consensus]. But new orders are a disappointment, still showing monthly growth but at a much slower rate” [ Econoday ]. “The construction sector, despite unusually low mortgage rates, has been struggling this year with the softness in single-family housing posing continued challenges for what is otherwise a strong new home market.” And: ” ISM employment index is not useful in understanding manufacturing jobs growth. The ISM employment index appears useful in predicting turning points which can lead the BLS data up to one year” [ Econintersect ].
New Normal: “Another factor, too, is the productive capacity that was built up to support a consumption engine that is no longer running at full tilt. Companies have more equipment and infrastructure than they are currently using, and with unused capacity, there is little reason to invest in new equipment or technologies. This helps explain the weak rate of capital spending in GDP – and may also help answer the vexing question of why productivity gains are so anemic. After all, productivity might be enhanced by innovation, which requires research and investment” [ Econintersect ].
Construction Spending, September 2016: “Construction spending remains weak but indications on housing do show limited improvement” [ Econoday ]. And: “well below the consensus forecast” [ Econintersect ]. But: “Overall, however – construction is now contracting after spending nearly 5 years expanding year-over-year. Still note that the rolling averages did improve” [ Econintersect ]. “But the confusion is that construction spending does not correlate to construction employment – casting doubt on the validity of one or both data sets.”
Housing: “Nearly half of the homes purchased in major cities in Florida are all cash buyers. Cleveland is also seeing nearly half of all home purchases being made with all cash” [ Doctor Housing Bubble ]. The “All Cash Buyer Percentage” in Miami is 54% (!), and in Los Angeles 20%. Cleveland, 45% and Pittsburgh, 42%.
Coops: “Today, National Cooperative Bank, known for providing banking solutions tailored to meet the needs of cooperatives nationwide, released its annual NCB Co-op 100®, listing the nation’s top 100 revenue-earning cooperative businesses. In 2015, these businesses posted revenue totaling approximately $223.8 billion. The NCB Co-op 100® remains the only annual report of its kind to track the profits and successes of cooperative businesses in the United States” [ Market Wired (DB)]. See also this list of coop-oriented podcasts .
Shipping: “Study shows e-commerce consumers are loyal to UPS, USPS, and FedEx… in that order” [ DC Velocity ]. Non-union trails…
Shipping: “Developers are having a harder time finding space for new warehouses in increasingly crowded and expensive U.S. cities. Their answer: build upward” [ Wall Street Journal , “Prologis to Build First Multistory Warehouse in the U.S.”]. “[M]ultistory warehouses are already common in countries like Japan and Singapore, as well as elsewhere in Asia and Europe, where vacant land is harder to find. ” Like New England mills…
Shipping: “None of the world’s biggest container-shipping companies is likely to post a profit this year, a top executive of French shipping giant CMA CGM said Monday” [ Wall Street Journal , “Grim Year Forecast for Big Shipping Firms”].
Shipping: “A mainstay of the U.S. domestic shipping business is struggling to stay afloat. Lawyers who put International Shipholding Corp. into bankruptcy in July say they have a deal to bring the vessel owner’s troubled operations under the umbrella of a larger Florida-based maritime services firm. International Shipholding’s survival battle hasn’t gotten the attention of bigger turmoil in the global shipping business, but the 69-year-old company’s collapse highlights the impact that the downturn in demand is having across the entire shipping supply chain” [ Wall Street Journal ]. Wow.
Shipping: “The cascading of increasingly larger containerships from the Asia-Europe trade to smaller trades is set for a second, “potentially more destructive”, phase, with a new generation of ultra large container vessels moving into north-south lanes” [ Lloyd’s List ].
Shipping: “A giant fire engulfed a beached tanker today killing at least ten workers at the Gadani shipbreaking area in Pakistan injuring another 50” [ Splash 247 ]. “A welding error led to a blast on the ship, which rapidly spread into a blaze with images and videos seen by Splash showing dark, vast plumes above the beached vessel.”
Shipping: “Over 90 percent of world trade moves by sea, but once cargo is on a ship, it enters a zone with little information about the path ships are taking or the stops they are making. Only in recent years have the largest ships begun regularly transmitting location data, and even now, a ship may stop its transmission and ‘go dark’ at any time” [ MIT Technology Review ].
Honey for the Bears: “Economic Planning Associates Inc.’s (EPA) latest freight rail-car forecast for total deliveries in 2016 has edged up to 61,800 units from 60,300 units. But, weakness in the market for certain cars has prompted the firm to lower its estimate for 2017” [ Progressive Railroading ]. Another straw in the wind for 2017. “‘Strength in box cars, hi-cube covered hoppers and mid-sized hoppers prompted EPA to increase this year’s total delivery estimate. However, weaknesses in tank cars, coal cars, flat cars and mill gons will serve to lower 2017 assemblies to 41,000,’ stated EPA’s report, which was released yesterday. ‘After a further easing to 40,000 car deliveries in 2018, demand for rail cars will rebound on an annual basis, reaching 51,500 cars in 2021.'”
Fodder for the Bulls: “But as the year has progressed, worries about the state of the world’s second-largest economy have abated as economic data have firmed. There’s a bevy of evidence from domestic figures and other metrics sensitive to the state of the Chinese economy now showing that the nation isn’t in the midst of a disruptive downturn” [ Bloomberg ].
Apparel: “In an industry famous for shrouding the connection between what it costs to manufacture garments and accessories, and the price that consumers pay for those items, Everlane seemingly fills a void; hence, its success. Price transparency aside, on the heels an array of garment manufacturing-related tragedies in recent years and amongst a larger call – particularly from millennials – for more ethically sound garments, Everlane founder and CEO, Michael Preysman, a former Investment Associate, saw a business opportunity in ethically made clothing” [ The Fashion Law ]. “In accordance with Everlane’s motto, we ask: Why would a brand based on transparency not list its factories?… Making vague and unsubstantiated claims in lieu of providing cold hard facts is a common trend that runs through the Everlane model.”
Commodities: “BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest miner, is hot for electric vehicles” [ Bloomberg ]. “”As you see more renewables and EVs, we also will see an impact on copper demand,” Fiona Wild, BHP’s vice president, sustainability and climate change, said Tuesday at a conference in Shanghai hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. ‘EVs at the moment have about 80 kilograms of copper in them. As they become more efficient, you see a greater amount of copper in those vehicles, so there’s always upside for copper.'” NOTE: “Bloomberg New Energy Finance” is listed on the cover of the McKinsey report on self-driving cars (PDF), whose infamous footnote 17 is analyzed here . They seem to have provided much of the data, including data for Exhibit 10. Talking their book?
Commodities: “A slump in demand for iron ore and coal in Europe has resulted in a marked decrease in dry bulk throughput at the Port of Rotterdam. In the first nine months of the year, it handled 60.3m tonnes of dry bulk, or 7.8% lower than the same period last year, the port said” [ Lloyd’s List ].
The Bezzle: “Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies” [ National Bureau of Economic Research ]. “Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems. Peer transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft present the opportunity to rectify long-standing discrimination or worsen it. We sent passengers in Seattle, WA and Boston, MA to hail nearly 1,500 rides on controlled routes and recorded key performance metrics. Results indicated a pattern of discrimination, which we observed in Seattle through longer waiting times for African American passengers—as much as a 35 percent increase. In Boston, we observed discrimination by Uber drivers via more frequent cancellations against passengers when they used African American-sounding names. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for African American sounding names was more than twice as frequent compared to white sounding names.”
Political Risk: “Variations in the market’s performance under Democratic and Republican administrations, measured by the average of yearly returns over more than 160 years, are so small as to be negligible, said Vanguard senior investment strategist Jonathan Lemco, a former professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University” [ Bloomberg ]. “A recent survey did show that the election ;is causing U.S. voters high anxiety . ;But according to readings of the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, the level of market anxiety is pretty normal, said Lemco. Volatility “hasn’t exceeded normal levels for a presidential election year, and there is no indication that it will deviate from typical patterns after the election,” he wrote in a recent report .”
“Issues about morality, the market, and the constitutional order should have been central to the policy debate about macroeconomics. They weren’t. The standard policy frame eliminated them from discussion, causing a chasm in the policy debate in which the common framework shared by Keynes and Hayek disappeared” [ Evonomics ]. “Market fundamentalists incorrectly were portrayed as heartless and uncaring about the poor by followers of Keynes. Keynesians were incorrectly portrayed as unthinking supporters of big government by followers of Hayek.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 22 Fear (previous close: 30, Fear) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 48 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 1 at 12:30pm. Nobody standing between Mr. Market and the pitchforks?
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“How Despots Use Twitter to Hunt Dissidents” [ Bloomberg ]. For years, Twitter has offered access to its “Firehose”—the global deluge of tweets, half a billion a day—to a number of companies that monitor social media. Some of those companies resell the information—mostly to marketers, but also to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Some of these authorities use the data to track dissidents, as Bloomberg Businessweek has learned through dozens of interviews with industry insiders and more than 100 requests for public records from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. There’s nothing illegal about selling Twitter data, but it’s uncomfortable for a company that promotes itself as a medium for free speech and protest.” One more reason Twitter should be a coop?
Standing Rock and #NoDAPL
“Did #DAPL Security Worker Wielding an AR-15 Rifle Try to Infiltrate Native Water Protectors?” [ Democracy Now!] ” More details are emerging from Thursday, including video footage of a man who appears to be a Dakota Access security contractor holding a rifle, with his face covered by a bandana, apparently attempting to infiltrate a group of water protectors. A Standing Rock Sioux tribal member says he saw the man driving down Highway 1806 toward the main resistance camp with an AR-15 rifle on the passenger side of his truck. Protectors chased down his truck and then pursued him on foot in efforts to disarm him. In the video, the man can be seen pointing the rifle at the protectors as he attempts to flee into the water. He was ultimately arrested by Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Protectors say inside the man’s truck they found a DAPL security ID card and insurance papers listing his vehicle as insured by DAPL. ”
Winter supplies for the protesters: Firewood is #1 [ Sacred Stone Camp ]. So if you’ve got a truck and a couple of cords…
“How to Talk About #NoDAPL: A Native Perspective” [ Truthout ]. “In discussing #NoDAPL, too few people have started from a place of naming that we, as Indigenous people, have a right to defend our water and our lives, simply because we have a natural right to defend ourselves and our communities. When ‘climate justice,’ in a very broad sense, becomes the center of conversation, our fronts of struggle are often reduced to a staging ground for the messaging of NGOs.”
“Dakota Access pipeline protests: UN group investigates human rights abuses” [ Guardian ]. “‘When you look at what the international standards are for the treatment of people, and you are in a place like the United States, it’s really astounding to hear some of this testimony,’ said Roberto Borrero, a representative of the International Indian Treaty Council.”
“At least 1.3 million people had ‘checked in’ to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Facebook as a show of support for activists trying to block the pipeline, after one user claimed that authorities were tracking protesters on social media. The Sheriff’s Department said Monday that the claim was ‘absolutely false'” [ Los Angeles Times ]. So can I take that as a confirmation? Anyhow, “ strength of weak ties” with Facebook, but at least the logic is “I am Spartacus!”
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Like Abusive Policing, Denial of Access to Mortgage Credit for Black Americans is a Growing Crisis” [ Institute for New Economic Thinking ]. “In a report commissioned by the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, Carr and co-author Michela Zonta report that homeownership for black people right now is shockingly low — less than the national rate during the Great Depression, which stood around 43-44 percent.”
Class Warfare
“Opioid overdoses among kids, teens have nearly tripled in recent years” [ New York Times (DK)].
“[C]ollectively, mergers at [the scale of the proposed $85 billion combination of AT&T and Time Warner] are reconfiguring the American economy in ways that seem to be tilting the scales toward the interests of ever-larger corporations, to the broad detriment of labor” [Eduardo Porter, New York Times ]. “As Senator John Sherman, the principal author of the nation’s core antimonopoly law, put it more than a century ago, a monopoly ‘commands the price of labor without fear of strikes, for in its field it allows no competitors.'”
News of the Wired
Exhaustive compilation of reaction to the Apple MacBook Pro event [ Milen.me ]. “From where I’m standing, Apple are redefining (shrinking) their target audience for the Mac platform. If you feel left out by the latest updates and the neglect on the desktop, it’s simple as Apple deciding not to serve your segment’s needs. I know that it can feel quite personal to Mac devotees, like me, but it’s simply business and strategy.” In other words, the rollout wasn’t a debacle; Apple has decided it doesn’t want to serve the professional market any more (including, one would have thought critically, the market in content creation). Since the Mac accounts for 10% of Apple’s revenues, that may be a rational business decision. But if Cook really thinks “the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop” he’s delusional, and I don’t care if he paid for a marketing study. I own both and I know. The ultimate strength of the Mac was always the Human Interface Guidelines — gradually being crapified as iOS idioms infest OS X — which imposed a similar “look and feel” across all applications that ran on the Mac platform. It would be nice if Ubuntu, say, could achieve the same thing. Sadly, that doesn’t seem likely, for reasons both technical and cultural. My first Mac was a 512KE. It was a good run.
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Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . And here’s today’s plant (Rex):
Rex wrote:
Attached is a folder of some of the bees and wasps that frequent a patch of mint in my front yard. The mint is in a half wine barrel and wired to keep the goats from eating all of it. These wasps are only a few of the many different species I see, every morning the thing is abuzz with dozens of types of pollinators. Wasps, hornets, bees, flies…
As a WASP, I appreciate this!
Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the very successful Naked Capitalism fundraiser just past. Now, I understand you may feel tapped out, but when and if you are able, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help. Donate 0 0 0 0 0 0 This entry was posted in Water Cooler on by Lambert Strether . About Lambert Strether
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume “Lambert Strether” comes from Henry James’s The Ambassadors: “Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to.” You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com | 0 |
America s First Black President continues to destroy employment opportunities for the black community We ve got a bad guy in the family, but protect him because he s family. We ve got to wake up, slap ourselves and wake up. This is America and everybody s involved in this and if our children are hurting, it s our responsibility to find someone who understands that pain, feels it like Bill Clinton would say. This guy doesn t feel it. In fact he issues a lot of that pain, with a smile. Harry Alford, Black Chamber of Commerce President (Hannity, February 26, 2013) | 1 |
Another mother who lost her son in military combat is blasting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his attack on the family of deceased serviceman Humayun Khan.Karen Meredith s son, First Lieutenant Ken Ballard, died in combat in Najaf, Iraq in 2004.In a press release from the veterans advocacy group VoteVets, Ms. Meredith wrote: The parents of Humayun Khan showed great courage, standing up in front of the Democratic Convention. Mrs. Khan, who was too grief-stricken to speak to such a large audience, showed extraordinary courage and strength by standing on stage with her husband. For Donald Trump to insult their culture, by saying that is why she did not speak, is offensive. She continues: Donald Trump has already disrespected our POWs, and our veterans, and now, he has insulted the fallen and the families of the fallen. This is an attack on all Gold Star Families. It is an attack on service, and the spirit of service, itself. After Trump attacked the Khan family in an interview with ABC News, he also compared his personal losses to the loss of their son, claiming that he has made sacrifices as well. Of course, all of Trump s five children are alive and well and none have served in military combat.In her letter, Meredith also addresses this point: Our men and women in the military make sacrifices every day. Our military families make sacrifices every day. Donald Trump hasn t sacrificed anything close to that. Building buildings is a job. He didn t lose anything. Even when he went bankrupt he didn t lose anything. All he did is lose other people s money. She also points out the lack of strong condemnation from Republican Party leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan: If they are not willing to stand up to him right now, when he attacks our fallen and Gold Star Families, are they ever going to be willing to stand up to him? When will Paul Ryan stand up to him? When will Mitch McConnell stand up to him? When will Reince Priebus stand up to him? If not now when? By comparison, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly praised the Khan family, including a statement that noted, Captain Khan and his family represent the best of America, and we salute them. Featured image via YouTube | 0 |
This group of Black Lives Matter supporters marched at the Minnesota State Fair chanting, Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon! The media, and the former President Barack Obama ignored it.Watch:Watch Michael Brown s stepfather encourage BLM rioters to burn down the city of Ferguson, MO:Daily Mail Black Lives Matter and five of its leaders are being sued by a Baton Rouge cop who blames them for inciting Gavin Eugene Long s murderous rampage in the city last summer.The officer has not been named, but his description matches that of East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff s Deputy Nicholas Tullier, 42, who suffered severe brain damage in the attack.Tullier, a father of two, was shot in the head, shoulder and neck, and was left in a vegetative state.He has since returned to consciousness, regained some motor control and can now communicate non-verbally.His attacker, 29-year-old Long, was shot dead by a SWAT team member around ten minutes after the mass shooting began.Long, a black military veteran, shot six officers, killing three and seriously injuring one, on July 17 last year in response to the shooting of unarmed black man Alton Sterling by white cops.The suit, filed on Friday, says that BLM leaders incited violence in retaliation for the death of black men killed by police and its denunciations of the attacks came all but too late , CBS News reported.Long had left a note before the shooting in which he said he wanted to hurt bad cops as well as good cops in hopes that the good cops (which are the majority) will be able to stand together and enact justice and punishment against bad cops. He also said in a YouTube video that he was only affiliated with the spirit of justice. Don t affiliate me with nothing, he said. Yeah, I was also a Nation of Islam member, I m not affiliated with it They ll try to put you with ISIS or some other terrorist group no. Among the five BLM members named in the suit is DeRay Mckesson, 31, a former school administrator turned civil rights activist.The suit claims that Mckesson, who took part in nightly protests after Sterling s death on July 5, was in charge of a march on July 9 that turned into a riot. Daily Mail | 0 |
DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iranian court has re-imposed the death penalty on the founder of a spiritual movement after the first sentence was struck down by the supreme court, the judiciary said on Sunday. Mohammad Ali Taheri, founder of Erfan Halgheh which calls itself Interuniversalism in English, was arrested in 2011 and given five years in prison for insulting Islamic sanctities . He was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in 2015 for corruption on earth but the Supreme Court later quashed the sentence. (Taheri s) case was sent back to court and tried with the presence of a lawyer and various advisors and the judge has again reached, Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the news agency ISNA. The sentence can be appealed, he added. Amnesty International says Taheri is a prisoner of conscience and has condemned Iran s use of capital punishment for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalized at all . Tehran dismisses such criticism as part of an effort from the West to heap political pressure on the Islamic Republic. | 1 |
The Trump campaign is self destructing. If things get any worse between now and the election day, Trump could even be bringing down Congress. Republicans are in a panic and the only way out they see is voter suppression.Florida s Governor Rick Scott saw an opportunity when Hurricane Matthew hit. He refused to extend the registration deadline past 5:00 on Monday (seriously, why would the cutoff be a month before the election anyway?). A federal judge put a quick stop to that, calling it irrational. The deadline is extended till Tuesday. Quite simply, it is wholly irrational in this instance for Florida to refuse to extend the voter registration deadline when the state already allows the governor to suspend or move the election date due to an unforeseen emergency, (U.S. District Judge Mark) Walker wrote in a 16-page order. If aspiring eligible Florida voters are barred from registering to vote, then those voters are stripped of one of our most precious freedoms. Source: TampaBay.comMore than that, Walker called the state s effort to block the vote unconstitutional. The right to vote is a precious and fundamental right, Walker wrote, quoting from an earlier case.It s expected that about 100,000 additional people will be registering between now and the deadline. This is especially bad for Republicans. Clinton is leading the race in Florida by a narrow three points, but between his offensive remarks toward women and the fact that it was revealed that Trump illegally did business with Cuba, his Florida support is quickly fading. Without Florida, Trump is almost assured of losing, while Clinton could still win the election while losing Florida. Those 100,000 people might represent about one percent of the Florida electorate, which might not sound like a lot, but in a race that s that close, in a perennial swing state, that could mean the difference between winning and losing.Featured image via Joe Readle/Getty Images. | 1 |
This is a SHOCKING example of a government putting the rights of violent extreme Muslims before their own citizens: | 0 |
advertisement - learn more It’s been more than one hundred years since Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics, said that he regards “consciousness as fundamental,” that he regards “matter as a derivative from consciousness,” and that “everything we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” He is basically saying that the immaterial ‘substance’ of consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world in some sort of way, shape or form, that consciousness is required for matter to be, that it becomes after consciousness….and he’s not the only physicist to believe that. “It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”– Eugene Wigner, theoretical physicist and mathematician. He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 Scientists have been urging the mainstream scientific community, which today is littered with scientific fraud and industry influence as well as invention secrecy , to open up to a broader view regarding the true nature of our reality. “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade that in all of the previous centuries of its existence.”– Nikola Tesla advertisement - learn more Not long ago, a group of internationally recognized scientists came together to stress this fact and how it’s overlooked by the mainstream scientific community. It’s ‘post-material” science, an area of study dealing with the ‘non-physical realm, and it’s challenging the modern scientific worldview of materialism that’s dominated mainstream science. The idea that matter is not the reality is finally starting to gain some merrit. The summary of this report presented at the International Summit On Post-Materialist Science can be found HERE . “The modern scientific worldview is predominantly predicated on assumptions that are closely associated with classical physics. Materialism—the idea that matter is the only reality—is one of these assumptions. A related assumption is reductionism, the notion that complex things can be understood by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things such as tiny material particles.”– Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science MIT’s Max Tegmark,a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, is one of the latest to attempt explaining why he believes consciousness is a state of matter. He believes that consciousness arises out of a certain set of mathematical conditions, and that there are varying degrees of consciousness – just as certain conditions are required to create varying states of vapor, water, and ice. As PBS emphasized, “understanding how consciousness functions as a separate state of matter could help us come to a more thorough understanding of why we perceive the world the way we do.” ( source ) Tegmark describes this as “perceptronium,” which he defines as the most general substance that feels subjectively self-aware and this substance should not only be able to store information, but do it in a way that form a unified, indivisible, whole. “The problem is why we perceive the universe as the semi-classical, three dimensional world that is so familiar. When we look at a glass of iced water, we perceive the liquid and the solid ice cubes as independent things even though they are intimately linked as part of the same system. How does this happen? Out of all possible outcomes, we do we perceive this solution?”– Tegmark ( source ) This new way of thinking about consciousness has been spreading throughout the physics community at an exponential rate within the past few years. Considering consciousness as an actual state of matter would be huge, considering the fact that modern day definitions of matter require a substance to have mass, which consciousness does not have. What it does have, however, is some sort of effect on our physical material world, and the extent of this effect and how far it goes is the next step for science.
The quantum double slit experiment is a very popular experiment used to examine how consciousness and our physical material world are intertwined. It is a great example that documents how factors associated with consciousness and our physical material world are connected in some way.
One potential revelation of this experience is that “the observer creates the reality.” A paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Essays by Dean Radin, PhD, explains how this experiment has been used multiple times to explore the role of consciousness in shaping the nature of physical reality.
The study found that factors associated with consciousness “ significantly” correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double slit interference pattern. ( source ) “Observation not only disturbs what has to be measured, they produce it. We compel the electron to assume a definite position. We ourselves produce the results of the measurement.” (source) For a physicist to brush off the fact that understanding consciousness is necessary for the advancement and understanding of the nature of our reality is not as common as it used to be but, despite the empirical success of quantum theory, even the suggesting that it could be true as a description of our reality is greeted with harsh cynicism, incomprehension and even anger.
R.C. Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University wrote in a 2005 publication for the journal Nature:
According to [pioneering physicist] Sir James Jeans: “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” . . . The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.
(“The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29,2005) (source) Thanks for reading. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on Friday in defiance of other world powers, choosing not to certify that Tehran is complying with the deal and warning he might ultimately terminate it. Trump announced the major shift in U.S. policy in a speech in which he detailed a more aggressive approach to Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for extremist groups in the Middle East. He accused Iran of “not living up to the spirit” of the nuclear agreement and said his goal is to ensure Tehran never obtains a nuclear weapon, in effect throwing the fate of the deal to Congress. He singled out Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for sanctions and delivered a blistering critique of Tehran, which he accused of destabilizing actions in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. “We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” Trump said. Trump’s hardline remarks drew praise from Israel, Iran’s arch-foe, but was criticized by European allies. The move by Trump was part of his “America First” approach to international agreements which has led him to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. His Iran strategy angered Tehran and put Washington at odds with other signatories of the accord - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union - some of which have benefited economically from renewed trade with Iran. Responding to Trump, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday on television that Tehran was committed to the deal and accused Trump of making baseless accusations. “The Iranian nation has not and will never bow to any foreign pressure,” he said. “Iran and the deal are stronger than ever.” European allies have warned of a split with the United States over the nuclear agreement and say that putting it in limbo as Trump has done undermines U.S. credibility abroad, especially as international inspectors say Iran is in compliance with the accord. The chief of the U.N. atomic watchdog reiterated that Iran was under the world’s “most robust nuclear verification regime.” “The nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented,” Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, referring to the deal by its formal name. U.S. Democrats expressed skepticism at Trump’s decision. Senator Ben Cardin said: “At a moment when the United States and its allies face a nuclear crisis with North Korea, the president has manufactured a new crisis that will isolate us from our allies and partners.” While Trump did not pull the United States out of the agreement, he gave the U.S. Congress 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact. If Congress reimposes the sanctions, the United States would in effect be in violation of the terms of the nuclear deal and it would likely fall apart. If lawmakers do nothing, the deal remains in place. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker was working on amending the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act law to include “trigger points” that if crossed by Iran would automatically reimpose U.S. sanctions. The trigger points would address strengthening nuclear inspections, Iran’s ballistic missile program and eliminate the deal’s “sunset clauses” under which some of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire over time. Trump directed U.S. intelligence agencies to probe whether Iran might be working with North Korea on its weapons programs. The president, who took office in January, had reluctantly certified the agreement twice before but has repeatedly blasted it as “the worst deal ever.” It was negotiated under his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Trump warned that if “we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated.” “We’ll see what happens over the next short period of time and I can do that instantaneously,” he told reporters when asked why he did not choose to scrap the deal now. The Trump administration designated the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under an executive order targeting terrorists. The administration stopped short of labeling the group a Foreign Terrorist Organization, a list maintained by the State Department. The Revolutionary Guard is the single most dominant player in Iran’s security, political, and economic systems and wields enormous influence in Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. It had already previously been sanctioned by the United States under other authorities, and the immediate impact of Friday’s measure is likely to be symbolic. The U.S. military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of Trump’s new strategy and was reviewing the positioning of U.S. forces. But U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said no changes in force posture had been made yet, and Iran had not responded to Trump’s announcement with any provocative acts so far. | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - A buzz fills the sky above a flight base in northern Beijing, as pilots practise take-offs and landings ahead of tests to qualify for a license - to fly drones. Drone enthusiasts in China, the world s top maker of consumer unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are scrambling for licenses after the government adopted strict rules this year to tackle incidents of drones straying into aircraft flight paths. A drone is not a toy, said Yang Nuo, the principal of the drone training school in the Chinese capital, who expects more students to sign up in a drive to boost flying skills. It involves complicated aerial theoretical knowledge. Gao Huiqiang, 32, said his construction company told him to seek a license. Since the laws on drones are tightening and a legal framework is being built, they told me to come and get the license first, he added. In June, China set an end-August deadline for owners of civilian drones to register crafts up to a certain weight under their real names. Last week, a test-flight base opened in the commercial hub of Shanghai, which requires civilian drones to fly below 150 m (492 ft), the official news agency s Xinhuanet website said. Others have balked at the idea of spending around 10,000 yuan ($1,534) for an official qualification, particularly as uncertainty surrounds future regulations. They don t know when the next regulation will be introduced, said Hao Jiale, the manager at a DJI drone store. Some people want to wait and see. Privately-held SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd, based in the southeastern city of Shenzen, had a roughly 70 percent share of the global commercial and consumer drone market, according to a 2016 estimate by Goldman Sachs and Oppenheimer analysts. Despite the curbs, prospects for growth look bright. China s camera drone market will see a compound annual growth rate of 68 percent in five years, with shipments reaching 3 million units by 2019, up from 40,000 in the third quarter of 2015, tech research firm IDC said last year. More than 120,000 drones have been registered in China, Xinhuanet said, compared to just 77,000 registered users in the United States. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan made a trip to the White House on Friday to meet with President Donald Trump as the healthcare legislation was being hotly debated on Capitol Hill, its fate uncertain. A White House official said Ryan and Trump would discuss Republican efforts to get enough votes to secure passage of the bill that aims to repeal and replace Obamacare. | 0 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed a healthcare law to kick off their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Following are some questions and answers about healthcare spending and health insurance coverage in the United States as Republicans try to throw out President Barack Obama’s signature piece of domestic policy, the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Who is covered by what insurance? The majority of America’s 323 million people are covered by either government or private insurance. Less than half of U.S. spending on healthcare is publicly financed, a contrast to the 72 percent average among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. A core goal of Obamacare was to cut into the numbers of uninsured and some 20 million people gained coverage under the law. - 155 million people are covered by employer-based health plans - 70 million people are in the publicly funded Medicaid program for the poor, including 32 million children - 56 million older or disabled people receive Medicare - 15 million people are covered by military healthcare - 12 million people buy individual insurance on the online shopping exchanges created by Obamacare - 9 million people purchase unsubsidized health insurance directly - 6 million people are covered by the Indian Health Service, student health plans and other sources - About 28 million Americans remain uninsured The figures are government estimates. They do not add up to a total of 323 million because some people have more than one type of coverage. How much does the country spend? Spending on healthcare in the United States is about $3.5 trillion a year, representing about 18 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Current U.S. government estimates are for that spending to outpace economic growth and rise to 20 percent of GDP by 2025. Healthcare spending has been rising faster than inflation. The government estimated it to have risen 4.8 percent in 2016 and that it will increase at an average rate of 5.6 percent through 2025. What does America get for its money? While U.S. healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP ranks higher than for any other OECD country, Americans’ life expectancy is near the bottom in a ranking of other OECD countries, behind countries such as France, Germany and Britain. The country’s obesity rate is the highest. What was the impact of Obamacare? As the Affordable Care Act was implemented over the past six years, it made sweeping changes to the health insurance system and implemented new taxes, so gutting the law will affect most Americans at some point. The law set a series of minimum standards. It introduced free preventive care coverage, mandated most employers to offer insurance and individuals to buy it, expanded the Medicaid program to include people with higher incomes and created income-based subsidies for individuals to draw them into buying insurance. It prevented insurers from denying coverage to people based on their health status and allowed young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies. What sectors are feeling the impact now? Republicans will tackle repealing Obamacare in multiple steps because while they control both chambers in Congress, they do not have the 60 seats in the 100-seat Senate needed to simply undo the law. The first step focuses on insurance sold to individuals and the Medicaid expansion, which could mean diminished payments to hospitals and doctors who benefited from the 20 million people covered by the ACA. They now face uncertain revenues and the possibility of increased bad debt as they lose paying patients. The impact on insurers is twofold: uncertainty over who will buy insurance could lead to them mispricing insurance plans and suffering financially as soon as this year. In the longer term, the retrenchment is changing the outlook for the growth rate of publicly backed healthcare. Which publicly traded companies does this affect? There are only a handful of publicly traded hospital companies, and the biggest one, HCA Holdings Inc, is not focused on states where Medicaid expanded, so it tends not to be involved. Tenet Healthcare Corp and Community Health Systems Inc are smaller hospital chains with high debt loads and their shares do tend to be affected by news about potential cuts to the numbers of Americans with publicly funded healthcare. The insurers that specialize in Medicaid and government healthcare such as WellCare Health Plans, Molina Healthcare Inc and Centene Corp are small but tend to move on news that the Medicaid expansion may be repealed and on proposed changes in how the federal government pays its share of all Medicaid costs to the states. Anthem Inc is one of the biggest insurers selling plans on the individual exchanges and may see shares affected by news of rules that could affect who enrolls in insurance. Sources - Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services | 0 |
Your Horoscopes — Week Of November 1, 2016 HOROSCOPE November 1, 2016 Vol 52 Issue 43 Aries | March 21 to April 19 Unexpected and startling events in the coming days will compel you to become more familiar with your monthly menstrual cycle. Taurus | April 20 to May 20 Please stop insisting you have nothing left to live for. The phrase you’re looking for is “never had a reason to live.” Gemini | May 21 to June 20 Your firstborn child will have your eyes, thanks to delivery complications and the organ-donor sticker on your driver’s license. Cancer | June 21 to July 22 Attempts to run away from the problem will fail this week when the problem turns out to be a short-circuited treadmill. Leo | July 23 to Aug. 22 Your future as a songwriter ends almost before it begins when you find that someone has already compared the depth, power, and beauty of their love to an ocean. Virgo | Aug. 23 to Sept. 22 The universe has a funny way of balancing things out. Prepare to lose your other eye by the end of the month. Libra | Sept. 23 to Oct. 22 All of those hurtful mother-in-law jokes will come back to haunt you this Friday when you suddenly run out of hurtful mother-in-law jokes to tell. Scorpio | Oct. 23 to Nov. 21 People say you’re a control freak, but if you had your way, they’d say it a little slower and maybe even a touch louder. Sagittarius | Nov. 22 to Dec. 21 There is a time and place for everything, except for your loud and incompetent scat singing. Capricorn | Dec. 22 to Jan. 19 For centuries fire was a sacred symbol of vitality and strength. Keep this in mind as you roll around frantically on your kitchen floor this Thursday. Aquarius | Jan. 20 to Feb. 18 Look to nature for encouragement and inspiration this week. Do this for as many ungodly hours as it damn well takes. Pisces | Feb. 19 to March 20 You’ll be honored as a true war hero, proving once and for all how dire the situation in Iraq has become. Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
Give your spam filter something to do. Daily Headlines | 1 |
Here we go again the Democrats are trying to erase history at the Citadel. Jim Clyburn is determined to take this fight all the way so the flag will be removed. Don t we have much bigger fish to fry? I would think so In the early hours of Thursday morning, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee voted to keep the Confederate flag flying at The Citadel.The rejection of a Democratic effort to force the military institution to take down the banner atop Summerall Chapel potentially paves the way for a bitter, extended fight on the issue, which is being championed by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington State Democrat and ranking member of the committee, offered an amendment to the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act to bar Reserve Officers Training Corps funds to any military university that displays the Confederate flag.The only university that falls into that category is The Citadel. The Board of Visitors voted to remove the flag last summer, after revelations that the deadly shooting of nine black parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME Church was motivated by race an incident which, in turn, prompted the removal of the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds.But the Board of Visitors says it can t actually take the Citadel s Confederate flag down unless the S.C. state legislature makes changes to the so-called Heritage Act that currently stands in the way. Smith acknowledged that his amendment was designed to force state lawmakers to act. The flag still flies, South Carolina has no pressure to change it whatsoever and probably won t, said Smith, and that embarrassment continues to fly over The Citadel, where there are presumably African American people at attending, and I think we need something to force South Carolina to do the right thing. The Armed Services Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, registered his opposition to Smith s amendment by essentially moving to amend the amendment. He opted for adding language to Smith s original provision to exempt any university which has already voted to take down the flag from having ROTC funds withheld, thereby nullifying the amendment s entire purpose. Bottom line is, I don t think it s fair to punish those folks who are trying to do the right thing, but the folks in the state legislature that is preventing them from doing that now, Thornberry said.U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, the only South Carolinian serving on the Armed Services Committee, proceeded to read a letter he had received earlier that day from The Citadel s president, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, in opposition to Smith s amendment. The Citadel provides itself on the core values of duty, honor and respect, and moving the (flag) to another location is consistent with those values, Rosa wrote in his letter to Wilson, a Republican. But the values also require the college to follow the law. The committee members ultimately voted on Thornberry s alternative language cancelling out Smith s original intent, with all Democrats opposed and all Republican in favor except for one outlier, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona, who sided with the minority party.This conversation will likely continue once the NDAA bill comes before the full House.Read more: Post and Courier | 0 |
Russia plans to test elements of new nuclear engine on ISS 27 October 2016 TASS Roscosmos is ready to allocate more than 264 million rubles (about $4 million) for this work. Facebook russia , space , nuclear
Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has announced a tender for developing proposals on testing key elements of a megawatt-class nuclear propulsion system, including aboard the International Space Station (ISS), according to the tender documentation posted on the state procurement website on Thursday.
Specifically, Roscosmos expects to receive "proposals on the rational structure of key elements, systems and items of a perspective nuclear propulsion unit intended for tests in outer space, including with the use of the ISS’ Russian segment.
According to the tender documentation, Roscosmos is ready to allocate more than 264 million rubles (about $4 million) for this work.
The winner of the tender is expected to be announced on October 28.
As of now, only the Keldysh Research Center has submitted its bid for this work.
The works on creating a transport energy module based on a megawatt-class nuclear propulsion unit were approved by the Russian presidential commission for modernization and technological development of the Russian economy in 2009.
By the end of 2018, the energy propulsion unit should be prepared for flight and design tests.
It was reported earlier that 3.8 billion rubles ($60 million) would be allocated from the budget for developing a nuclear propulsion unit in 2016-2018. Roscosmos is the project’s customer and the Keldysh Research Center is its contractor. The contract should be fulfilled by November 2018. First published by TASS . | 1 |
Former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova suggested Friday James Comey’s reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was the product of a “revolt” inside the FBI.
While speaking with WMAL’s Larry O’Connor , diGenova was asked what Comey meant by saying newly discovered Clinton emails from Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin’s devices “appear to be pertinent” to the FBI’s prior investigation.
“It tells me that the original investigation was not thorough, and that it was an incompetent investigation,” diGenova said, “otherwise they would have discovered this — and I’ll tell you why.”
“These were found on the phone that was used by Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin,” he said. “Why was that phone not looked at originally?”
“There could be one explanation: Huma Abedin may have denied that any other phone existed, and if she did, she committed a felony. She lied to the FBI just like General Cartwright, and if she did, she’s dead meat, and Comey knows it, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
diGenova continued: “And why this letter was sent today was very simple: the agents came to Comey yesterday, they told him about the evidence, and he said oh ‘S’, and realized that his goose was cooked, that this would prove conclusively that his original investigation was incompetent, and he knew that the agents running the Weiner case would leak it if he did not send this letter to congress.”
“And I’ve also been told something very significant, it’s been reported that those laptops [belonging to Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson] were destroyed, they were not, and the reason is the FBI agents refused to do it.”
diGenova went on to say he believes “there is a quiet but serious revolt against the director right now.”
“He sent those letters today because he is in deep trouble inside the bureau,” he said. “Comey sent this letter today because he had to. He has no moral authority inside the agency right now, he’s a joke, he’s a laughingstock of the agency, and among former FBI agents, he has become an anathema.”
Listen to the full interview courtesy of WMAL:
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There may be trouble in paradise amid the folks over at the Donald Trump campaign. After the recent tapes were leaked showing Trump to the misogynistic sexual predator that he so absolutely is, we haven t been hearing much, if anything, from Trump s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.Then, while being interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, Conway may have revealed something she might leave the campaign.Matthews asks Conway:So, are you with the campaign til the bitter end? Conway responded: I m with the campaign to the bitter end . unless Seemingly taken aback like the rest of us at home, Matthews presses Conway: Unless what? Conway quickly scrambled together an answer.Then, when pressed on it later by Rachel Maddow, Conway put together a reason that involved if her family needed her, and not at all around the fact that her candidate is a racist and misogynistic pervert.The fact that she said unless is absolutely telling of how she may feel about her current position within the campaign.Only time will tell to see if Conway stands by her candidate or not until the bitter end, but one thing is for certain, it s likely getting harder for her by the day.Watch Conway admit she may leave here: Trump s campaign manager @KellyannePolls just admitted she may leave the campaign. #Trump #debate pic.twitter.com/WwLhjuXSia Sarah Wood (@SarahWoodwriter) October 10, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
A day after he schooled Republicans during his historic State of the Union Address, President Obama smacked them down again in their own backyard.On Wednesday, President Obama traveled to America s heartland to speak to a crowd in Omaha, Nebraska and just like he did on multiple occasions on Tuesday night, called out Republicans for their bullshit claims about the state of our country. That s how crazy our politics has gotten. Where we now feel obliged to not root for America doing good. So when you hear people peddling this fiction about our enemies getting stronger, America getting weaker, when you hear folks say we can solve challenges by looking meaner or talking tougher, or carpet bombing wherever we want. That s just hot air. It s bluster. It s not serious. There s another word for it that starts with a B It s baloney. Here the video via YouTube.During the State of the Union Address, President Obama chided Republicans for refusing to accept the science of climate change, and slammed them for not voting for military action against ISIS even as they claim that he isn t doing enough to stop them.Despite what Republicans like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump say, America is already great and has been getting stronger every day as President Obama s policies continue to make Republicans desperate to destroy him. America has witnessed an unprecedented job growth streak that has reduced unemployment to 5 percent. Meanwhile, more Americans than ever before are gaining health insurance for themselves and their families. President Obama has also taken actions to fight climate change and has struck back against terrorist organizations time and time again over the course of his presidency, dealing heavy blows to their leadership structure in particular.Yet, to hear Republicans talk, you would think that America has been rendered into a wasteland that somehow only they can save. The only problem is that they have to lie repeatedly to make anyone think that. The facts, however, tell us that America is progressing and flourishing despite every Republican attempt to sabotage it over the years. And that s because President Obama has been a great leader, which is why Republicans are so desperate to have us believe that America is falling apart or faces destruction. Because the only way they will ever win the presidency again is if enough Americans actually believe them.Featured Image: Pete Souza | 0 |
CLEVELAND/HERSHEY, Pa. (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump battled over the strength of the economy in the final stretch of their race for the White House on Friday, with Clinton praising the latest U.S. jobs report and Trump dismissing it as a fraudulent disaster. With four days left in an often bitter contest that has tightened in the last week, each candidate attacked the other as unfit to be president in a late push for votes in battleground states that could decide the outcome in Tuesday’s election. Clinton leads Trump by 5 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Friday, maintaining her advantage in the national survey even as the race tightens in several crucial swing states. In the Oct. 30-Nov. 3 opinion poll, 44 percent of likely voters supported Clinton while 39 percent supported Trump. Clinton wrapped up her day of campaigning with a nighttime concert in Cleveland headlined by rapper Jay Z. He was joined by rappers Big Sean, Chance the Rapper, and J. Cole, and by his wife, popular singer Beyonce, as a surprise guest. “We have unfinished work to do, more barriers to break, and with your help, a glass ceiling to crack once and for all,” Clinton said at the concert. At his final rally of the day in Pennsylvania, Trump mocked Clinton for her celebrity supporters. “I am here all by myself. Just me, no guitar, no piano, no nothing,” he said. Earlier in the day at a rally in Pittsburgh, Clinton cited the government’s latest jobs report as evidence of the economy’s strength. The report showed higher wages for workers as well as the creation of 161,000 jobs in October and a dip in the unemployment rate to 4.9 percent from 5 percent. “I believe our economy is poised to really take off and thrive,” Clinton told the gathering, after being introduced by billionaire investor Mark Cuban. “When the middle class thrives, America thrives.” Trump disputed Clinton’s rosy view, telling a crowd in New Hampshire that the jobs report was “an absolute disaster” and was skewed by the large number of people who have stopped looking for jobs and are no longer in the labor market. “Nobody believes the numbers anyway. The numbers they put out are phony,” he said, referring to the figures released by the U.S. Labor Department. The economy and the candidates’ competing visions for the future could be critical in swaying voters in ailing Rust Belt states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Both candidates made stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Friday, with Trump adding a stop in New Hampshire and Clinton adding one in Michigan. Each of those states is key in the state-by-state quest for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The race has tightened significantly in the past week, as several swing states that are considered must-wins for Trump shifted from favoring Clinton to toss-ups, according to the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project. The two candidates are now tied in Florida and North Carolina, and Clinton’s lead in Michigan has narrowed so much that the state is too close to call. Ohio remains a dead heat, and Clinton has a slight lead in Pennsylvania. Clinton is still the favorite to win Tuesday’s election, with a clearer path to winning of the Electoral College. But Trump now has a plausible route to victory, especially if there is a sharp fall in turnout among African-Americans from the levels of the 2012 election. Trump, a New York businessman and former reality TV star, has made a pitch for blue-collar workers who have been angered by free-trade deals and feel abandoned by Washington. But his protectionist rhetoric - he has promised to review trade agreements - appears to be having mixed success in the Rust Belt. Reuters/Ipsos polling from mid-October found a majority in both Ohio and Pennsylvania believe that international trade benefits Americans by keeping the cost of goods low, although they also think it hurts “average Americans” by depressing wages and causing job losses at home. Clinton appears to be leading among labor union households in both states, the poll found. She has a double-digit lead with women in both, while Trump has a more modest lead with men. Among whites, Trump has a 7-point lead over Clinton in Ohio and a 3-point lead over Clinton in Pennsylvania. In the final stretch, the two candidates continued to paint a dire scenario of life in the United States if their opponent captures the White House. Trump said the FBI’s fresh examination of emails that may be related to Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work while she was secretary of state could lead to “a constitutional crisis.” “Aren’t we tired of all this stuff?” he asked. “America deserves a government that can go to work on Day One.” GET-OUT-THE-VOTE PUSH Clinton suggested the volatile Trump, who has feuded with and insulted a wide array of people and groups including Muslims, Mexican immigrants and women, was too unpredictable to trust. “Think about what it would mean to entrust the nuclear codes to someone with very thin skin who lashes out at anyone who insults him,” she said. Clinton has deployed high-profile supporters to campaign for her in the final days of the long race. President Barack Obama praised her work as his first-term top diplomat during an appearance in North Carolina. “She was outstanding in her job. She was loyal to me,” he said. Obama is trying to energize African-Americans, with whom he is very popular, and young people to turn out for Clinton the way they did for him in 2008 and 2012. Hispanic groups in swing states cranked up their get-out-the-vote efforts for the final stretch of the race on Friday, hoping to push the contest Clinton’s way. | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Moscow regarded updated U.S. sanctions on Russia extremely negatively. The U.S. Treasury s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday published an amendment which bans U.S. entities from helping sanctioned Russian oil companies in exploration or production for deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects anywhere in the world. Peskov said extending the original sanctions to cover projects globally was unacceptable for Moscow. | 0 |
GREAT UPDATE! Three weeks after Hampshire College removed the American flag from campus, the Stars and Stripes was raised again on Friday morning at the liberal arts school in Amherst.The flag s return comes after a torrent of calls, e-mails, and protests from people angered by its removal eight days after it was set on fire in an apparent protest of the election of Donald Trump as president. I ve received many e-mails, a lot of them extremely unpleasant, Hampshire College president Jonathan Lash said by telephone on Thursday night. Our phone lines have been clogged with people calling to express their anger. People can disagree with us, but we ve also received very explicit threats. For us, we raise the flag as a symbol of our hopes for justice, fairness and freedom, Lash said. I hope this is not the end of the dialogue about these issues. The underlying issues are very important for the country. | 0 |
21st Century Wire says What a twisted world we have become.A female, black student activist, Kayla McKelvey (image below), has been jailed for tweeting racially charged threats directed at events that she, herself, was organising and attending. She essentially employed the false flag attack model, where one claims to be under attack from another, who in actual fact has nothing to do with it, to further an agenda.The so-called activist pleaded guilty to causing false public alarm, but claimed the tweets were meant to raise awareness of racism on campus .One wonders how much racism there really is on campus, if someone has to deliberately go out of their way to create fake racial threats. This then raises the questions, what exactly did McKelvey hope to achieve by creating a threat to black people on campus?The threats caused Kean University to shell out $80,000 in additional security costs, costs that McKelvey will now be forced to repay after her 90 days behind bars.Such actions do absolutely nothing to raise awareness of racism , and only further racial divides. If we stop seeing race altogether, and instead see humanity, we can really solve the problem.Get 10% off a 21WIRE TV membership package today using promo code: STU21WIRETVMORE ON ERODING WESTERN CULTURE : 21st Century Wire Culture Files | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The nomination to be ambassador to Singapore of K.T. McFarland, a former security adviser to President Donald Trump, has been delayed due to concerns about her testimony to Congress over communications with Russia, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Tuesday. “Her nomination is frozen for a while until that gets worked out,” Republican Senator Bob Corker told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. Trump earlier this year nominated McFarland, a former deputy national security adviser, to be the U.S. envoy to Singapore. The foreign relations committee approved the nomination in September despite the opposition of almost every Democratic member, but no vote on McFarland has been scheduled in the full Senate. McFarland said in a written response to a question from Democratic Senator Cory Booker, a foreign relations committee member, that she was “not aware” of communications between Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, when Kislyak was ambassador to Russia. However, the New York Times reported on Monday that it had obtained an email McFarland sent on Dec. 29, 2016, the day former President Barack Obama’s administration authorized new sanctions against Russia, saying Flynn would talk to Kislyak that evening. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russia, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into the actions of Trump’s inner circle before he took office. | 1 |
— Don't Panic (@dd42bb) October 30, 2016 @mattzap That sounds like the worst possible answer.
— DC Dude (@DCDude1776) October 30, 2016
That’s not entirely unbelievable, seeing as Weiner was up to all sorts of things he wasn’t eager to share with the wife. Then again, it’s not a great defense to mount when trying to counter charges that Hillary Clinton and her aides at the State Department were extremely careless with their handling of sensitive materials. Trending If Hillary wants to know what new information the FBI has, Sharyl Attkisson knows someone she could ask
That’s weird, though: the story before was that Abedin would forward government emails to her Yahoo mail account so she could print them for the boss, who liked paper copies so that she could relax to the familiar, comforting sound of the office shredder grinding away. But all someone had to do was log into her Yahoo account, and … @ktumulty She used his computer at least once to check her email or maybe he was checking her email. Spouses are known to do that. | 0 |
Adding insult to injury, not only will Donald Trump force U.S. taxpayers to build the wall along the southern border, he will use that money to hire Mexican companies to build it.During his inaugural address, Trump claimed America would follow tow rules.We will follow two simple rules: BUY AMERICAN & HIRE AMERICAN!#InaugurationDay #MAGA?? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2017That s right. The man who buys materials for his hotels from overseas and has his products made by overseas laborers literally commanded Americans to buy American made goods and to hire American workers.And Trump is already breaking those rules as president.Trump repeatedly promised his supporters that he would build a wall alongside the entirety of the U.S.-Mexican border and force Mexico to pay for it. Trump then said that American taxpayers would pay for it and Mexico will simply reimburse us for the cost. Just before taking office, Trump went to Congress to ask them for the money to build the wall.Yesterday, Trump declared once again on Twitter that he is following through with building the wall.Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many other things, we will build the wall! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017But now it appears that Trump is getting ready to screw over American taxpayers, American workers, and American companies because he intends to hire Mexican companies to build the wall.According to The Guardian,The construction consultants Gleeds Worldwide said building a 1,000-mile wall the border is 1,889 miles long but large parts are protected by natural barriers including mountains and the Rio Grande would cost $31bn and take 40,000 people more than five years to construct.And because Mexican laborers and Mexican companies are less expensive, Trump will likely pay them to build it, thus depriving American workers and companies from benefiting. The idea of building a 1,000-mile wall which is designed to be impenetrable is something that may well come back to haunt the president, Gleeds chairman Richard Steer said. You ve got to build roads to move the materials and machinery and get the workforce to the location as the wall is being built. You would need a very big labor force to build it some 40,000 people working over five years. Steer went on to state that Mexican workers would benefit the most from the massive project because they are closer to the site and make less pay.Mexican companies are also poised to benefit most from the project because materials are cheaper.Analysts at Bernstein investment bank plotted the location of nearby plants and quarries and found that the Mexican building company Cemex was best-positioned to provide materials on both sides of the border.In short, Trump is going to do the same thing he did in order to build his hotels. He s going to screw over American companies and American workers by using foreign labor and buying materials from foreign companies to do the job. And the taxpayers are going to fund every last wasteful dime of the cost and get nothing in return except a useless ugly wall that will do nothing to stop immigration and will draw comparisons to walls built by other tyrannical regimes such as the Berlin Wall built by the Soviet Union.It s time for Trump supporters to wake up and realize that Trump doesn t give a damn about them at all.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1 |
Appearing on MSNBC s Morning Joe, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressed concern for President Donald Trump s mental state saying she thinks his family should be concerned by his deterioration HUH? This is so ironic!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOMAxUDa3J4Asked by panelist Mike Barnicle, Are you concerned of the president s health? Pelosi said she believes Trump s family should intervene:THIS IS HYSTERICAL! AND SHE S QUESTIONING TRUMP S HEALTH? I think his family should be concerned of his health, Pelosi carefully stated. The fact is this is hopefully not repairable. He s the president of the United States. You mean you hope it is repairable, host Joe Scarborough interjected. Yes, not irreparable, Pelosi agreed.Later in the segment Pelosi was asked once again if she was concerned about the president s health, with the Democrat responding I m concerned about his fitness for office. | 0 |
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - The mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, was sentenced on Monday to a year of probation for his role in a public corruption case involving a property deal made while he was a county commissioner, a county prosecutor’s office said, but he will remain in office. Youngstown Mayor John McNally, a Democrat, was sentenced in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland after pleading guilty to four misdemeanor counts, said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor spokesman Joe Frolik. The plea deal allows McNally, who was elected mayor in 2014, to remain in office. The charges stemmed from his nine years as Mahoning County commissioner, from 2005 until he was elected mayor. McNally had faced multiple felony charges, including bribery, record tampering and money laundering. But as part of the agreement with prosecutors he pleaded guilty to two counts of falsification, one count of attempted unlawful use of telecommunications and one count of attempted restrictions on present or former public officials, all misdemeanors, officials said. Under Ohio law, a felony conviction bars anyone from holding most public offices for seven years. Also on Monday, former Mahoning County Auditor Michael Sciortino was sentenced by Judge Janet Burnside to one year of probation after pleading guilty to one felony count and three misdemeanors for his role in the matter, Frolik said. Based on the plea deals, McNally had faced a maximum of 36 months in prison and Sciortino a maximum of 2-1/2 years. Both McNally and Sciortino were initially charged for taking part in a scheme to inflate the cost of moving the Mahoning County jobs and family services office from a rental property to benefit a local business owner, prosecutors said. In addition to the plea in the Cuyahoga County court, Sciortino agreed to plead guilty to one felony and one misdemeanor in Mahoning County court on Thursday, according to court records. Youngstown attorney Martin Yavorcik, 42, was convicted on eight felony counts in the Cuyahoga County court on Friday as part of the 83-count indictment brought against the three men in 2014 by the Ohio Attorney General’s office alleging a pattern of corruption. Sentencing for Yavorcik is scheduled for April 22. He faces up to 29 years in prison, Frolik said. | 0 |
With the Democratic presidential primary in its twilight, frustration within the ranks over the party's handling of the primary process spilled out this week as Bernie Sanders supporters lashed out at party leaders, arguing that their candidate has been treated unfairly.
The public outpouring of anger began last weekend at the Nevada Democratic Party convention, where Sanders supporters who said Hillary Clinton's backers had subverted party rules shouted down pro-Clinton speakers and sent threatening messages to state party Chairwoman Roberta Lange after posting her phone number and address on social media.
That led Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other top party leaders to demand an apology and publicly ruminate on the possibility of violence at the Democratic National Convention in July as they prepare for a general election battle with Donald Trump.
Obama administration officials on Wednesday played down concerns about escalating tensions, likening the race to the 2008 primary fight between Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama.
But Sanders isn't backing down. A campaign spokesman said Wednesday that the campaign was "looking into" whether to ask for a recount in Kentucky, where Sanders narrowly lost on Tuesday night, and he fired up his crowd in Southern California Tuesday night by calling out the Democratic establishment.
The Sanders campaign on Tuesday did condemn unruly behavior from supporters and those who made threats to party leaders, but made clear it is sticking with its stance that the party is subverting the process in a way that benefits Clinton.
"These claims that our campaign is sort of fomenting violence in some way are absolute nonsense," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Tuesday night, adding that the campaign "absolutely, categorically" condemns any threatening behavior.
The breakdown in civility comes after what has otherwise been a comparatively polite campaign season for Democrats, but the frustration exposes a rift in the party and undercuts the notion that Clinton will be able to march into the Democratic convention this summer with a party unified behind her.
"The problem is that there are long-simmering concerns about unfair treatment out in the Nevada Democratic Party," Weaver added. "We are not going to allow the millions of people who supported Bernie Sanders to be sort of rolled over in places like Nevada by the way they handled that convention."
Earlier on Tuesday, Sanders released a statement suggesting that his supporters were justified in feeling like the party has given them a raw deal.
"If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned," Sanders' statement read. "Unfortunately, that was not the case at the Nevada convention. At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place."
In an interview with CNN, Wasserman Schultz said that statement wasn't enough.
"I was deeply disturbed," she said. "The senator's response was anything but acceptable. It certainly did not condemn his supporters for acting violently or engaging in intimidation tactics and instead added more fuel the fire."
The DNC chairwoman, however, said she has not spoken directly with Sanders, but that her staff has been in touch with the Vermont senator's campaign. She also pushed back against Sanders' accusation that the party had rigged the system against him.
"We've had the same rules in place that elected Barack Obama. These rules were adopted for state parties all across the country in 2014," she said. "They were followed and even if the Sanders supporters were frustrated, there is never, under any circumstances, a place for violence and intimidation to be resorted to in response."
On CNN's "New Day" Wednesday morning, Weaver accused the DNC chairwoman of "throwing shade."
"We can have a long conversation about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and how she's been throwing shade on the Sanders campaign," Weaver said.
"I gotta say it's not the DNC," he added. "By and large the DNC has been very good to us, but not Debbie Wasserman Schultz."
Wasserman Schultz brushed off Weaver's comments later in the day.
"My response to that is hashtag SMH (shake my head)," Wasserman Schultz told Blitzer on "Wolf." "We need to focus on one thing: get through this primary and work to prepare for the general election and make sure that we can continue to draw the contrasts between either one of our really fine candidates who are focused on helping people reach the middle class and make sure that we get equal pay for equal work and create jobs and not let the Republicans take health care away from 20 million Americans."
'He should get things under control'
Speaking to reporters in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden said if such disruption happens again, "He's going to have to be more aggressive in speaking out about it."
"But here we are in May, as was pointed out," Biden continued. "Hillary was still in this in May, in June. I'm confident that Bernie will be supportive if Hillary wins, which the numbers indicate will happen. So I'm not worried. There's no fundamental split in the Democratic Party."
Leading congressional Democrats also pushed Sanders to rein in his supporters. Reid called Sanders' response "a test of leadership" for Sanders, and a source in his office told CNN that the Nevada senator is waiting to hear from the senator himself on the matter.
"The convention was Saturday. It's now Wednesday afternoon. And he hasn't spoken about it," the source said.
California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who spoke on behalf of Clinton at the Nevada convention, condemned the behavior.
"He should get things under control," Boxer said. "We're in a race that is very critical. We have to be united."
"This is a character moment for Bernie Sanders. He's got to figure out how he's true to his values and his ideals fully," said CNN political commentator Van Jones.
"I think Hillary and Bernie both misunderstand this movement. I think Hillary just sees it as just a bunch of rowdy kids that at some point will just calm down and fall into line," he said, later adding, "I think Bernie actually only sees the good in his followers. I think Bernie really misunderstands there is a nasty edge to his following that he's not taking seriously enough."
Sen. Tim Kaine criticized Sanders' responses in the wake of reports that Democrats felt threatened at and following the convention.
"What he did yesterday was sort of say it's the party's fault," Kaine told CNN. "That deflection of responsibility is not leadership."
Kaine added that the angry protests could be "dirty tricksters in the crowd" and not just Sanders' supporters.
"I don't think we should assume that all of the people raising hell are Bernie people," Kaine said.
Sanders goes after the establishment in fiery speech
Speaking in Southern California Tuesday night, Sanders fired up the crowd by calling out the Democratic leadership.
"The Democratic Party is going to have to make a very, very, profound and important decision. It can do the right thing and open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change. That is the Democratic Party I want to see." Sanders said.
"I say to the leadership of the Democratic Party: Open the doors, let the people in! Or the other option for the Democratic Party, which I see as a very sad and tragic option is to choose and maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy," he said.
The crowd responded by chanting, "Bernie or Bust!" the equivalent of the Republican #NeverTrump slogan for the Democratic race.
His speech barreled through his list of Clinton contrasts, comparing his stances with her (and criticizing those stances) on minimum wage, fracking, breaking up the big banks, and her use of super PACs.
In response to the chaos in Nevada, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook simultaneously praised the passion and participation of Sanders' supporters while adding that Clinton believes that "no one should be intimidated, harassed or threatened in this process." He called on them to focus that energy on unifying the party, a task that could be difficult given the raw feelings many Sanders supporters have for Clinton after the primary.
"Supporters of both Clinton and Sanders deserve respect for the work they have put into their campaigns," Mook said. Ultimately, we are confident that the passion and energy from the primary will be united in a common purpose -- to move forward the ideals of our party and keep the White House out of Donald Trump's hands."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Wednesday downplayed any tensions between the two campaigns.
He recalled a similar "tenor" to the 2008 contest between Clinton and Obama, saying those tensions were "no less intense" and didn't lead to a negative result in the general election.
"I think one of the lessons of 2008 is not to confuse passion in primary for disinterest in the general election," he said, adding that "highly motivated" supporters were good for democracy.
While the spotlight this year was on the Republican primary and prospect for a contested convention and protests at the national convention in Cleveland, some Democrats now worry about that happening at their convention in Philadelphia.
Wasserman Schultz said the incidents in Nevada would result in the DNC reviewing its procedures for Philadelphia.
"As a result of this happening this weekend, we will have conversations both at the staff level as well as my having conversations with the candidates so that we can make sure that both campaigns are focused on making sure that we can allow this process for the duration of the primary to play out in a civil and orderly way," she said.
But the DNC chairwoman said she wasn't worried about violence happening at the convention.
"This was absolutely a serious concern, which is why I said what needed to be said yesterday and others have said that there was real concern," Wasserman Schultz told Blitzer Wednesday afternoon. "But it is important and I am confident that the candidates take the messages to heart about making sure that we respond and conduct ourselves in a civil and orderly way."
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, however, warned that Sanders' intention to take his candidacy to the Democratic convention could spark unrest similar to the chaotic 1968 convention in Chicago and the riots surrounding it.
"It worries me a great deal," Feinstein told CNN's Manu Raju. "You know, I don't want to go back to the '68 convention, because I worry about what it does to the electorate as a whole -- and he should, too."
And Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois also said he's concerned about violence in Philadelphia.
"We saw what happened at the Trump rallies, which broke into violence, people punching one another. I don't want to see that happen at the Democratic Party," Durbin told CNN. "I call on Bernie to say to his supporters: be fervent, be committed but be sensible. Don't engage in any violence."
Weaver pledged Tuesday night that the convention will be peaceful.
"There's not going to be any violence in Philadelphia, Wolf, I guarantee you that," he said on CNN. "We hope for a fair and orderly convention." | 1 |
A scene from a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina showing a white Trump supporter sucker punching a black protester as The Donald s private police ignore him has been making waves since the incident occurred Tuesday night. As Rakeem Jones was being escorted out of the event along with a group of others who chose to peacefully speak out against the American Hitler s unabashed hatred of all that isn t white, one of Trump s supporters drew on the numerous permissions his Master has given him to assault black people at rallies and sucker punched Jones.In video captured from multiple angles, Trump s private police force ignores the 78-year-old cowboy hat-wearing white man, now identified as John McGraw of Linden, NC, and piles on the victim of the attack because, after all, this was a Trump rally and people like Jones are considered Untermensch. Boom, he caught me, Jones told the Washington Post. After I get it, before I could even fain my thoughts, I m on the ground getting escorted out. Now I m waking up this morning looking at the news and seeing me geting hit again. It s happening at all these rallies now and they re letting it ride, Jones said, adding that he was also targeted by the racisl slurs that are typically hurled at black men who attend Trump rallies. The police jumped on me like I was the one swinging. He added: My eye still hurts. It s just shocking. The shock of it all is starting to set in. It s like this dude really hit me and they let him get away with it. I was basically in police custody and got hit. Yes, it really did seem like McGraw was going to get away with it but thanks to public outcry, the police have no choice but to deal with the problem. WRAL reports:A 78-year-old Linden man has been charged with assaulting a protester at the rally held in Fayetteville Wednesday for Republican front-runner Donald Trump.John McGraw is charged with assault and battery and disorderly conduct, according to the Cumberland County Sheriff s Office.A video posted on YouTube shows McGraw hitting Rakeem Jones as he was being escorted out of Crown Coliseum by authorities.After being hit, Jones was tackled by law enforcement officials.Amazing and all it took was monumental social media outcry for law enforcement to do the thing that should have been done in the first place.Watch the assault below:Featured image via screengrab | 0 |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Moore, the left-wing filmmaker known for provocative documentaries that deliver a biting message, will release an anti-Donald Trump movie on Tuesday as Hollywood ramps up efforts to support Democratic White House contender Hillary Clinton in the final weeks of the 2016 election campaign. Moore, the Oscar-winning maker of documentaries about guns, the Iraq war and the U.S. health system, said on Twitter he would release “Michael Moore in Trumpland” in a free screening in Manhattan on Tuesday night at one movie theater, followed by commercial release in theaters in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday. The film’s release comes three weeks before the Nov. 8 election. The film is based on a one-man show, “October Surprise,” that Moore, a vocal critic of the Republican presidential contender, recently performed in Ohio and shows Moore “dive right into hostile territory,” according to a brief description. The film is being released as scores of celebrities rally round Clinton ahead of the Nov. 8 election. More than 30, including Barbra Streisand, Billy Crystal, Julia Roberts, Helen Mirren and Lena Dunham, staged a fundraising show on Broadway on Monday with tickets that sold for up $10,000 each and which was streamed live online. Singer Jennifer Lopez and rocker Jon Bon Jovi will play separate Get Out The Vote gigs in Florida next week on behalf of Clinton’s campaign. “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. and actors Neil Patrick Harris, Don Cheadle and Julianne Moore are among those asking Americans to “save the day” in a social media campaign aimed at getting people to vote against Republican businessman and former reality star Trump. Clinton counts more, and more vocal, celebrity supporters than Trump, whose backers include Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight, country singer Loretta Lynn, Kirstie Alley and rapper Azealia Banks. But fans of celebrities are not necessarily fans of the candidate they support. Comedian Amy Schumer was booed at her stand-up show in Florida on Sunday after she attacked Trump and Republican voters, causing some 200 audience members to walk out, according to the Tampa Bay Times. | 0 |
MADRID (Reuters) - Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has until 10:00 a.m. local (0800 GMT) on Monday to clarify whether he is calling for the region s independence from Spain, with Madrid threatening a return to direct rule if his stance remains ambiguous. The wealthy region s threat to break away following a referendum that Spain s Constitutional Court said was illegal has plunged Spain into its worst political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981, just six years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. Puigdemont made a symbolic declaration of independence last Tuesday, only to suspend it seconds later and call for negotiations with Madrid on the region s future. Spain s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy then gave him a Monday deadline to clarify his position and until Thursday to change his mind if he insists on a split and said Madrid would suspend Catalonia s autonomy if he chooses independence. The Spanish government said Puigdemont should answer the formal requirement with a simple Yes or No and that any ambiguous response would be considered a confirmation that a declaration of independence had been made. This would trigger the Article 155 of the 1978 constitution, under which the government in Madrid can install direct rule in any of Spain s 17 autonomous communities if they break the law. The central government can then sack the local administration and install a new governing team, take control of the police and finances, and call for a snap election. Sources close to the Catalan government said Puigdemont would send Rajoy a letter before the deadline expires, although they declined to say what his answer would be. Local media, including Catalan public broadcaster TV-3 and Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, said on Sunday Puigdemont was unlikely to say clearly whether he had declared independence and send instead a more elaborate response. Puigdemont, who is consulting local parties to prepare his answer, faces a dilemma. If he says he did proclaim independence, the central government will step in. If he says he did not, the far-left Catalan party CUP would probably withdraw its support for his minority government. The Catalan government says 90 percent of Catalans voted for a breakaway in an Oct. 1 referendum that central authorities in Madrid declared illegal and which most opponents of independence boycotted, reducing turnout to around 43 percent. Puigdemont said on Sunday his answer would be inspired by democracy, something most political observers in Spain said was a sign he would push ahead with secession plans. If this was the case, and article 155 was invoked, Rajoy would then replace the Catalan government with a new set-up to manage the region, which could be run by politicians or technocrats, Madrid-based newspaper El Mundo reported on Sunday. Elections to the Catalan parliament would then be held within three months. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An unprecedented pre-presidential inauguration feud between Donald Trump and intelligence agencies that soon will be under his command could harm U.S. security if not quickly defused, current and former government officials said. They said morale at the CIA and other agencies was already sagging because of disputes with Trump over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered interference in the U.S. election and over leaks about an unsubstantiated dossier compiled by a private security firm suggesting Moscow had compromising information on Trump. Unless addressed, the disputes could prompt the departure of personnel and lead those who remain to take fewer risks to counter security threats, the officials said. In the last few months, Trump has expressed his willingness to deal with Putin and denigrated the work of the intelligence agencies. This week, the President-elect accused agencies of leaking the dossier’s information to the media, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he did not believe intelligence officials were responsible for the leak. “People shooting at (the CIA) is pretty common. But usually it’s not the president,” one former senior U.S. official said. Trump’s transition team did not reply to email messages seeking comment. “I think it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Daniel Benjamin, who served in senior White House and State Department counter-terrorism posts under Democratic presidents. Benjamin, now at Dartmouth College, said there was a “strong chance” people would leave and they have “tremendous value” to the private sector. Complicating the situation just a week before Republican Trump is sworn in, two of his nominees for top security posts set a different tone at their Senate confirmation hearings, heaping praise on the men and women who work in the secret world of intelligence gathering. Republican congressman Mike Pompeo, nominee for Central Intelligence Agency director, said on Thursday that he has seen CIA personnel “walk through fire.” Separately, Trump’s nominee for U.S. defense secretary, James Mattis, told senators that he had a “very, very high degree of confidence” in U.S. intelligence agencies. Mattis also put Russia at the top of a list of threats to U.S. interests. A top official at one intelligence agency said a growing number of intelligence officers over the age of 50 and with at least 20 years of service, including at least five years overseas, have drafted and in many cases signed but not dated their resignation letters. “There is great anxiety here about the President-elect’s apparent disdain for the work we do and the dangers we face,” a second senior intelligence official, at another agency, said. He and others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters and morale at their agencies. The latest round of rancor began with a CNN report that Trump had been briefed Jan. 6 by intelligence and law enforcement chiefs on a two-page memo summarizing the unverified claims in the dossier. In blaming intelligence agencies for the leak, Trump wrote on Twitter: “One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?” Spy chief Clapper called Trump before dinnertime on Wednesday to calm the waters. Trump and Clapper differed on what was said in the phone conversation. On Friday, Trump appeared to again blame U.S. spies for the leak. “Probably released by ‘intelligence’ even knowing there is no proof and never will be,” he said on Twitter. U.S. intelligence agency personnel “are kind of shell-shocked at being accused of being Nazis and intentionally leaking this stuff,” the former senior official said. The 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have combined budgets of more than $70 billion and tens of thousands of employees. They are responsible for everything from warning of terrorist attacks to supporting American troops on the battlefield and analyzing the impacts of global trends such as climate change. Several former U.S. officials said the tensions with Trump were the worst they could recall since President George W. Bush and the CIA traded blame in 2003 and 2004 over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But Douglas Wise, a former senior CIA official, said it will be harder for Trump to “beat up” on his own intelligence chiefs once they are in place instead of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama. “I think things are going to change,” Wise said. Still, tensions seem likely to persist after Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who will be Trump’s national security adviser, led the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency until he was fired by Clapper. He has a long-time suspicion of the CIA, according to Wise and others who have worked with him. “What Pompeo said was somewhat reassuring, but it’s not at all clear whether that matters, or whether Trump’s apparent attitude and Flynn’s bitterness toward us is what counts,” the second senior intelligence official said. | 1 |
Undercutting President Trump s agenda is what McConnell and ryan do best. It was most obvious during the Obamacare effort to repeal and replace. It s maddening to us but can you imagine how President Trump feels?He tweeted out his frustration last week and we can t blame him:The latest effort to block the MAGA agenda is happening because of Ryan and Mcconnell AGAIN!The Daily Caller reports below:President Donald Trump is angry with Republican leaders because of a proposal floating around Capitol Hill that undercuts his legislative agenda and provides major concessions to Democrats, two conservative strategists with more than 40 years of Hill experience told The Daily Caller News Foundation.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are planning to pass legislation that would raise the debt ceiling and fully fund Obamacare subsidies through the 2018 election cycle, a source within the administration told TheDCNF. Leadership is also preparing to pass a short-term spending bill a continuing resolution that would fund the government through mid-December, include no appropriations for Trump s border wall, and continue funding to Planned Parenthood, the conservative strategists told TheDCNF.Trump called both Republican leaders out on Twitter Thursday, claiming he asked the pair to attach a measure to raise the debt ceiling to the recently-passed Veterans Affairs bill. He then went on to blame McConnell and Ryan for failing to follow through with his request, and said raising the debt ceiling could have been easy. Now the situation is a mess, he said.Read more: DC | 0 |
Liberals have been questioning the intelligence of Tea Partiers since the movement arrived on the national political scene complete with misspelled signs and idiotic conspiracy theories. Their leaders include such great minds as Michele Bachman and Ted Cruz, two people with impressive educational backgrounds who can t seem to stop saying incredibly dimwitted things.That mentality trickles down to the state and municipal level as well, as members of the crowds of tea bag wearing patriots decided to go home to seek public office and crusade for a return to 1789. Never has that been more obvious than in the case of Hampstead, NH Advisory Budget Committee Chairman, Jorge Mesa-Tejada.The school board in Hampstead was seeking approval for upgrades to the local elementary school, using the security of the students as one of their reasons. Looking to eliminate the use of remote classrooms outside of the main building, the board cited that the traveling back and forth of students may provide an opportunity for a sniper to shoot children.While that may seem a little bit extreme, it is nothing compared to the chairman s argument against the upgrades. In an open committee hearing broadcast on local cable access television, Mesa-Tejada outlined exactly how he would use his military training to wipe out children, killing them at recess from the woods behind them. I would have a field day, he said.Reaction from the school board was swift. Mesa-Tejada has had a no trespassing order issued against him, banning him from being anywhere near school property. Not only did he outline what could only be the delusions of a very sick mind, he also gave other lunatics the perfect plan of attack to pull off the next Newtown.The chairman has since apologized, but it s too little too late for the school board and the residents of Hampstead. When I saw the recording, I had two first reactions, said Caitlin Parnell, a mother of two children at the school. One was disbelief that an elected official would be talking this way, and my second reaction was to feel sick to my stomach. You can watch Mesa-Tejada s despicable comments below:Featured image via Twitter | 0 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is set to cut up to 175 million euros for Turkey in 2018 that are linked to Ankara s stalled bid to join the bloc and could block some 3.5 billion euros in development loans earmarked for the country, lawmakers and diplomats said. In a symbolic stand against deteriorating human rights in Turkey, the 2018 cuts are likely to be the start of a longer-term reduction of pre-accession aid that is meant to help EU candidate countries prepare for membership. As long as Turkey is not respecting freedom of speech, human rights, and is drifting further away from European democratic standards, we cannot finance such a regime with EU funds, said Siegfried Muresan, the European Parliament s chief budget negotiator. Two EU diplomats said EU governments had agreed with the European Parliament this week to withdraw 105 million euros that would have gone to help finance political reforms in Turkey, as well as holding back another 70 million euros. Ankara can still access the 70 million euros if it improves its rights record, Muresan said. Signaling the slow collapse of Turkey s decades-long attempt to join the European Union, the cuts are deeper than an initial proposal to reduce funds by 80 million euros next year. They follow a call for action by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her re-election campaign, who has described Turkish behavior on human rights as unacceptable . Aside from money that the EU gives Turkey as part of its 2016 migration deal, Ankara was set to receive 4.4 billion euros from the EU between 2014 and 2020. Some EU governments now want frozen funds to go to non-governmental groups in Turkey, not to Ankara. Next week, EU governments and lawmakers are set to decide whether Ankara should also lose access to some 3.5 billion euros of European Investment Bank loans that have been earmarked for Turkey until 2020 and that have yet to be assigned. They are now likely to be made available to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, diplomats said. Merkel has said the rule of law in Turkey is moving in the wrong direction , a reference to the large-scale purge that President Tayyip Erdogan has carried out following a failed coup attempt in July 2016. While the EU condemned the coup attempt, the scope of Erdogan s response, his detention of U.S. and European citizens including dual nationals, and his jibes at Germany for what he has called Nazi-like behavior have soured EU-Turkey ties. Erdogan says the purges across society are necessary to maintain stability in a NATO country bordering Iraq and Syria. Launched in 2015 after decades in which Ankara sought to formally start an EU membership bid, Turkey s EU membership negotiations were always sensitive for France and Germany because of its status as a large, mainly Muslim country. They are not officially frozen, despite calls from Austria to formally scrap Turkey s EU membership program. That is in part because the EU relies on Ankara to take in Syrian refugees in return for billions of euros of aid. But a majority of EU countries, led by Germany and the Netherlands, say it no longer makes sense to fund political reforms in Turkey when formal EU membership talks have not taken place since last year. | 0 |
Who could forget the unbelievable standoff in Oregon between patriots and the government? Who could forget the dramatic shooting of patriot Lavoy Finicum who traveled from Arizona to Oregon from to stand with American ranchers against the BLM, an overbearing government agency? Oregon State Police troopers fired the three rounds that killed the Arizona rancher and father of 11 during a confrontation on a remote road, law enforcement officials said at a news conference in Bend. Go HERE to see the actual video showing patriot Lavoy Finicum being shot to death by authorities.Here s a great video showing the historic standoff between patriots and the overreaching BLM government agency:Recently FOX News Bret Bair did a special report, where he asked, whatever happened to the Bundy s? On October 27, 2016, Ammon and Ryan Bundy were been found not guilty of conspiracy. Their five co-defendants Jeff Banta, Shawna Cox, David Fry, Kenneth Medenbach and Neil Wampler have all been found not guilty as well. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on Ryan Bundy s theft of government property charge.The jury returned its verdict after some six weeks of testimony followed by less than six hours deliberations, and the last minute replacement of a juror after an allegation surfaced that he was biased.The jury was instructed to disregard their previous work and to reconsider the evidence. It was a pretty jaw-dropping verdict, said OPB reporter Amelia Templeton of the climate in the courtroom. The jury began by reading out the verdict for Ammon Bundy, ostensibly the leader of the occupation, and when we heard that Ammon Bundy was not guilty, it became clear very quickly that likely no one in the case was going to be found guilty, and indeed, everyone has been acquitted. After the verdict was read, Ammon Bundy s attorney Marcus Mumford was tackled to the ground by five U.S. Marshals. He insisted his client was free to go. Ammon Bundy faces a US Marshall hold and is supposed to be transferred to Nevada where he faces charges for the Bunkerville standoff.Here is Ammon Bundy explaining why they are protesting:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.11'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));Standing for the rights of men & womenBREAKING! SHARE! Standing for the rights of Men & Women. Calling all freedom loving people to come to Harney County Oregon, come to the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge. The people are finally getting some good use out of a federal facility.Posted by Bundy Ranch on Saturday, January 2, 2016Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed jurors Wednesday, several weeks after the trial began against Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and militia member Ryan Payne, who were accused of leading an armed standoff with federal land agents in 2014.Navarro cited five key pieces of information that prosecutors did not disclose: records about surveillance and snipers at the Bundy Ranch; unredacted FBI logs about activity at the ranch in the days around the standoff; threat assessments about the Bundys dating to 2012; and internal affairs reports about the BLM.Withheld evidence at issueNavarro methodically laid out her reasoning for about an hour, citing legal standards and case law, before delivering her ruling.She said the evidence that was withheld could have been favorable to the accused and could have affected the outcome of the case.Navarro stopped short of dismissing charges against the four men. It is unclear whether the case will be retried because Navarro did not rule whether the mistrial was with or without prejudice.She has set another hearing for January and has tentatively scheduled a new trial to begin Feb. 26.Navarro suspended the trial two weeks ago and warned of a potential mistrial after prosecutors for the first time disclosed several documents that appeared to support defense claims about the government s use of video surveillance and sniper teams during the standoff.Prosecutors have long maintained the FBI was not involved in the standoff and that no video surveillance or sniper teams were used. They charged defendants with making false claims about snipers and videos to incite militia in the runup to the standoff.Lawyers raise self-defenseDocuments turned over by the prosecution after the start of the trial indicated the FBI played an active role in the standoff and that surveillance camera and armed tactical teams were positioned around the Bundy Ranch.Defense lawyers filed motions to dismiss the case, arguing the new documents provided critical evidence that would have allowed them to challenge the government s charges, impeach government witnesses and lay the foundation for self-defense claims.The Bundys launched a social-media rallying cry. Hundreds of supporters, including members of several militia groups, converged on the Bundy Ranch. Federal agents abandoned the roundup, saying they were outgunned and in fear for their lives.Last year, the government charged 19 people with conspiracy, assault, extortion and weapons violations for their roles in the standoff. Two men took plea deals. Trials for the remaining 17 defendants were broken into three tiers based on their alleged levels of culpability.Bundy has maintained there was no conspiracy and that supporters were staging a peaceful protest and exercising their constitutional rights to bear arms.For many Americans, images of the four-day standoff in a dusty wash below Interstate 15 about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas were shocking. Hundreds of protesters, ranchers and militia members took armed positions around federal law-enforcement officers, some lying prone on freeway overpasses and sighting down long rifles.But making a solid case against Bundy and his supporters has so far eluded prosecutors. Two federal juries in Las Vegas have rejected conspiracy claims against six defendants in earlier trials. AZ Central Here is a video showing Cliven Bundy asking the local Sheriff, on behalf of We The People to disarm the Park Service: | 0 |
It s bad enough to have crazed costumed characters in Times Square begging and harassing tourists but the NYPD can t even arrest the mostly illegal aliens because of the policy of the de Blasio administration. Costumed and nude panhandlers are giving the finger to attempts to rein them in, refusing to stay in designated areas and continuing to curse in front of kiddies and threaten passers-by for dough.Breitbart News Reported: Mayor Bill de Blasio has stated that the NYPD won t cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seeking to repatriate illegal immigrants: The NYPD will not participate as immigration enforcement agents because we have, for decades, built a close working relationship with immigrant communities, de Blasio said. Our police force is not going to be out there knocking on people s door and it is not going to share information about people s documentation status with the federal authorities. City officials city and the NYPD officers will cooperate with the feds only in immigration cases which involve serious and violent crimes, Foul-mouthed desnudas, grabby Hulks and tourist-terrorizing gangs of Minnie Mice are still brazenly holding the Crossroads of the World hostage even amid a heavy presence of NYPD cops, who act oblivious to their disturbing antics.At any given moment on two recent afternoons, only half of the two-dozen tip-mooching characters stayed behind the blue lines of Times Square s Designated Activity Zones, or DAZs, the city-mandated areas created last year as their boundary for posing for photos and asking for tips.Yet none of those who illegally strayed outside the zones were issued summonses by the half-dozen police patrolling the pedestrian plaza.A law-enforcement source shrugged that the officers hands were tied since most of the costumed panhandlers are illegal and under the de Blasio administration, it s a no-no to go after them.The law-enforcement source added that past proposals to license the creatures went nowhere because most of the panhandlers are illegal immigrants and they wouldn t register anyway. Besides, the administration at City Hall isn t interested in going after illegals in this capacity, the source said.The most shameless of the costumed pack repeatedly left the DAZs to grab, mob and berate tourists Take a photo lady! Mami! shouted a trio of overly-aggressive Minnie Mice in their frantic pursuit of cash. I told you, if you don t have a tip, then f off! one star-spangled desnuda, a painted nude hustler, snarled to a Post reporter, displaying just the sort of greed that detractors say is ruining Times Square s happy, family vibe.This insanity was reported by a New York Post reporter who walked Times Square and spoke with different people. If you ve ever experienced the harassment that goes on in Times Square from these beggars then you d be even more furious that these people are even walking our streets! Thanks to the ridiculous policy from the commie mayor of NYC, the tourists and legal citizens living there have to endure this pond scum of humanity. Pitiful!Read more: NYP, Read more: DM | 0 |
Florida Governor Rick Scott is not holding anything back. He is angry that Obama has made the Second Amendment the enemy while ignoring ISIS. We need a President who says my number one job right now is, on top of turning the economy around is to destroy ISIS. | 1 |
Mitch McConnell famously or infamously, depending where you stand on the political spectrum attacked Donald Trump on Monday, putting blame for Republican dysfunction and failure to pass Trumpcare squarely on the shoulders of Dear Leader.Well, apparently Trump didn t take too kindly to what he likely perceives as a backstabbing and he s letting McConnell know about it the only way he knows how: Twitter.Here s the tweet Trump fired back with:Senator Mitch McConnell said I had "excessive expectations," but I don't think so. After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017 Senator Mitch McConnell said I had excessive expectations, but I don t think so. After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done? Here s the video of the McConnell statement he s referring to: Speaking to Rotary club in Kentucky, @SenateMajLdr says he finds it extremely irritating that Congress has a reputation for doing nothing. pic.twitter.com/zAx1TqkAWw ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 8, 2017While they dither about whose fault it is their party has every branch of government and yet still cannot accomplish much, reality has the answer: The Republican Party has no idea how to lead. They have formed their modern identity as the anti-Democrat, anti-Obama, anti-progress party, and that platform doesn t allow for things like ideas, cooperation, or leadership. And with a an amateur clown and do-nothing testudine running the show, that doesn t look likely to change anytime soon.Read more:Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to admit up to 45,000 refugees to the United States in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, a former U.S. official said on Tuesday, a ceiling that would keep admissions to their lowest level in over a decade. The White House settled on the figure after a contentious debate between officials who wanted a lower ceiling and those who wanted a higher one, said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. On one side of the debate were officials who tended to look at the issue through a domestic political prism given President Donald Trump’s focus on curbing immigration during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. On the other were foreign policy experts who argued that taking refugees into the United States is vital to ensure other nations keep their borders open. The plan to set the cap at 45,000 was earlier reported by the Wall Street Journal newspaper. The former official, who favored a higher number, said the decision will undermine the U.S. ability to persuade nations such as Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon that have accepted huge flows of Syrian refugees to keep admitting them as well as to convince donor nations to keep up financial contributions for refugees. “We have no standing to play that role when we cut our own humanitarian assistance and when we are halving our refugee admissions,” said the former official. In his two travel ban executive orders, Trump directed the United States to accept a maximum of 50,000 refugees for permanent resettlement in the fiscal 2017 year ending Sept. 30, less than half the 110,000 President Barack Obama authorized. In part because of court challenges to those orders, the United States ultimately accepted more than 50,000 refugees during the current fiscal year. According to State Department data, the United States took in 51,392 refugees through August. If the United States accepts 45,000 in fiscal 2018, it would be the lowest level admitted since fiscal 2006, when it took in 41,223, according to State Department data. A State Department spokesman declined comment on the 45,000 figure, saying only that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke would consult Congress on Wednesday. “Each year, the president makes an annual determination, after appropriate consultation with Congress, regarding the refugee admissions ceiling for the following Fiscal Year. Secretary Tillerson and DHS Acting Secretary Duke will consult with Congress tomorrow,” he said. | 0 |
New Zealand’s country’s entire east coast and urged residents in low-lying areas to evacuate and seek higher ground.
Waves of up to two meters (6 feet) could be possible for up to two hours, it said.
Anna
“That’s reasonably significant so people should take this seriously,” she told Radio New Zealand.
New Zealand’s Geonet revised up its estimated magnitude of the quake to 7.5, from 6.6 earlier.
USGS Zealand’s South Island.
A 6.3 quake there in February 2011 killed 185 people and caused widespread damage.
The
“The whole house rolled like a serpent and some things smashed, the power went out,”
Chris Hill, a fire officer in Cheviot, a coastal town near the quake’s epicenter, said officials had gone door to door evacuating residents.
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In California, after the state robs the taxpayers of their last pennies, apparently more money just falls out of the sky. [That must be the conclusion reached by a California state senate committee that passed a $400 billion universal healthcare proposal Thursday with no funding plan. Yes, that’s 400 billion with a B, which is more than twice the annual budget for the entire state. Sen. Ricardo Lara ( Gardens) introduced SB 562, which calls for a sweeping overhaul of the state’s health insurance market. His committee passed the bill with a vote, clearing the way for it to be taken up on the Senate floor next week. But Lara has yet to reveal a plan about how the state would come up with the money to provide health care to California’s nearly 40 million residents, including illegal immigrants. But in California, who cares about funding mechanisms? There’s still that $68 billion “bullet train” out there going nowhere. The state doubled down on increasing services for illegals after President Donald Trump pledged to tighten the nation’s borders. And just last month, the state legislature decided to levy even more taxes on gasoline purchases, as Californians will be paying $1 in taxes for every gallon of gas. And Democratic Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown had the audacity to lecture the taxpayers who complained about the added burden as “freeloaders. ” But this latest whopper might be a bit too much for even Brown and California’s Democrats, who own a supermajority in both the state senate and assembly, to swallow. Then again, maybe they believe in unicorns. Lara told the Sacramento Bee that he thinks it’s possible to come up with a sustainable funding mechanism that doesn’t overtax people and guarantees coverage for all. He never mentioned how. Lara said in a statement: Republicans in Congress voted to strip healthcare from 23 million people without a hearing or a fiscal analysis. We have already held two hearings and had an analysis, and I will be introducing a plan to pay for this program and cover every Californian. With Republicans determined to take away people’s healthcare, we can’t afford to wait. Part of Lara’s rush is to appease a progressive base that’s never shy about spending other people’s money. RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, offered a tirade at a rally for SB562 that ridiculed those who wanted a fiscal analysis as engaging in “ *** talk. ” California’s Republican legislators — what’s left of them — wondered out loud if their Democratic colleagues would eventually come to their senses. “We’re thinking about it as a concept that we’re going to pass without any detail,” Patricia Bates ( Niguel) told the Bee. “I hope at some point rational thinking kicks in and we’re not just driven by this lobbying effort. Good policy doesn’t come out of intimidation. ” Don’t hold your breath. Follow Samuel Chi on Twitter @ThePlayoffGuru. | 0 |
When Obama had the opportunity to speak out against 49er s quarterback Colin Kaepernick s disrespect for our flag, he chose instead to defend his actions, explaining that it was okay for him to sit out the national anthem, as long as he was bringing attention to the cop-hating/killing, divisive Black Lives Matter terror group President Obama said San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is exercising his constitutional right to sit out the national anthem, but the president acknowledged that the silent protest is a tough thing for military service members to accept.At a news conference in China on Monday, the president said he did not doubt Kaepernick s sincerity in his decision not to stand for the anthem ahead of games to protest the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement in U.S. cities. Obama noted a long history of sports figures protesting political or social issues. There are a lot of ways you can do it, Obama said after the G-20 summit here. As a general matter when it comes to the flag and the national anthem and the meaning that holds for our men and women in uniform and those who fought for us that is a tough thing for them to get past to then hear what his deeper concerns are. But I don t doubt his sincerity. I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about. If nothing else, he s generated more conversation about issues that have to be talked about. Obama said he has not closely followed the controversy surrounding Kaepernick s actions while he has been overseas, but he said he was aware of the public response, which has been sharply divided. The president has sought to balance his own response to the unrest and mistrust between African Americans and police officers over the past several years, including in Baton Rouge and Dallas this year. You ve heard me talk in the past about the need for us to have an active citizenry, Obama said. Sometimes that s messy and controversial and gets people angry and frustrated. But I d rather have young people that are engaged in the argument and trying to think through how they can be part of our democratic process than people just sitting on the sidelines not participating at all. My suspicion is that over time he s going to refine how he thinks about it. Maybe some of his critics will start seeing that he had a point about concerns about justice and equality. That s how we move forward. Washington Post | 1 |
A MUST watch video!https://youtu.be/-5Z-jJ2Z4bU | 0 |
There has been a lot of social media speculation over what will happen if and when Donald Trump is impeached or he is forced to resign. The Constitution, obviously, says that Mike Pence will be made President. Pence, it s assumed, will be a slightly better alternative. While he s anti-LGBT and anti-woman enough to be the inspiration for the Handmaid s Tale, he appears to be just bland enough to be called sane.Not so fast. He might be sane, but if his latest move is any indication, he could be going down with Trump and the rest of the people who are in bed with Russia. He has hired his own lawyer for the apparent inevitability of appearing under oath.The vice president s office said Thursday that Pence has retained Richard Cullen, a Richmond-based lawyer and chairman of McGuireWoods who previously served as a U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.Pence s decision comes less than a month after Trump hired his own private attorney, Marc E. Kasowitz, to help navigate the investigations related to the Russia probe, and a day after The Washington Post reported that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is widening his investigation to examine whether the president attempted to obstruct justice.Source: Washington PostOf course, the act of hiring a lawyer in no way means Pence is guilty. What we do know, though, is that Pence knew from at least March that Trump s fired National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn, was lobbying for a Turkish firm. Yes, there is evidence that policy changed because of Flynn s Turkish ties. Flynn had supposedly left that out when Pence was heading Trump s transition team.The White House, though, sat on that information for 18 days before firing Flynn.Again, hiring a lawyer does not mean guilt, but only three Vice Presidents have done so. Richard Nixon s VP, Spiro Agnew, hired one when he was under investigation for extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy. He ended up resigning, even before Watergate.Al Gore also hired counsel over questions about illegal fundraising. Dick Cheney hired counsel several times.The significant thing to note, though, is that none of the VPs hired counsel because their bosses were in trouble. They hired counsel because they were under fire. We can t be positive, but it s safe to assume that Pence will soon be testifying, and not just for his opinions.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1 |
On Sunday s broadcast of CNN s Reliable Sources, a panel discussed the role Roger Ailes legacy. The Fox News founder is retiring from his position as the network s CEO due to a massive wave of allegations from female employees of sexual harassment.The episode began with the show s host, Brian Stelter posing the question, When you take stock of Roger Ailes legacy, his impact on media, do you think we would have Donald Trump as the GOP nominee without Roger Ailes? Political analyst Jeff Greenfield wasn t ready to say that Trump would not be a political success if it were not Ailes. Roger Ailes did to the media what Donald Trump did to the political process. What Greenfield is saying is that both Ailes and Trump are spectacular at rallying hardcore right-wing conservatives to support whatever narrative they choose to promote.While Greenfield isn t ready to put the burden of Trump on Ailes shoulders, Jane Hall, a former regular guest on Fox News said that you would not have Donald Trump without Roger Ailes. It has been rumored that Ailes next major project besides the autobiography he is going to write would be to work on Trump s presidential campaign. Panelist and Trump supporter, Jeff Lord, didn t provide any more credibility to those rumors. That being said, he did mention that Ailes would be very useful on the Trump campaign trail.Fox News, right-wing extremism, and now Trump exist in a reinforcing feedback loop that has caused so much harm to the United States and the world. They have given megaphones to the biggest loons out there in the United States.You can watch the panel discussion below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn3AgNq2QikFeatured image from video screenshot | 1 |
Earth To Ammosexuals: NRA Admits No One Is Coming For Your Guns! (VIDEO) By Natalie Dailey
For decades, gun-toting, ammosexual Right Wing Nut Jobs have claimed that the government is going to take their guns away.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been preaching this kind of crap “news” for years, and blaming it on Democratic presidents. It turns out that the organization has finally admitted that this is a lie.
When asked about it, President Barack Obama said : “I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I’ve been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country. And at no point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it is just not true.”
The NRA responded with : “Congress writes the laws, not the president. He could then have listed the many attacks on the right to bear arms — from Operation Fast and Furious to Operation Choke Point to Obama’s attempted ban on common ammunition for AR-15-type rifles to his using a ‘pen and phone’ to push anti-gun executive actions. But Rhude respectfully stayed silent.”
Even if Congress and the president were able to pass such a law, the Supreme Court would rule it unconstitutional if challenged since they would be going against the Second Amendment.
Not only has the NRA lied about taking away guns, but Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is spreading that BS as well. He said this about it back in May: “Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to abolish it. Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to take the bullets away. She wants to take it.”
Americans really need to stop listening to these fear-mongering idiots. No one is coming after your guns. We need to keep guns out of the hands of people who abuse them and commit crimes with them.
Here is a clip from The Daily Show about Obama’s last batch of gun control executive orders :
Featured image via YouTube screenshot . About Natalie Dailey
Hi, I'm from Huntsville, AL. I'm a Liberal living in the Bible Belt, which can be quite challenging at times. I'm passionate about many issues including mental health, women's rights, gay rights, and many others. Check out my blog abravealabamaatheist.com. Check out my other blog weneedtotalkaboutmentalhealth.com Connect | 0 |
"If I have an opportunity I would tell him to just focus, focus on policy," Ernst told CNN.
Ernst was speaking at the "Roast & Ride" event in Des Moines, Iowa, that she hosted. Trump later addressed the audience; he did not address Ernst's remarks.
"Hillary Clinton has given us so much to talk about really in the email scandal and her policies overseas. Really, she has a record of failure. Let's talk about that record of failure. We can focus on issues, not name-calling," Ernst said.
"I don't like it when campaigns go that direction. I'd say to both of them, back down. And let's really talk about the policies and the issues. That's my advice to them," Ernst was quoted in The Post. Ernst's comments come after Trump was criticized for calling Clinton a "bigot" at a campaign rally, and repeatedly refused to back down from the claims. "That is not acceptable to be doing the name-calling back and forth," Ernst said. "We need to focus on the issues. He has given voice to millions of American and there's something there. Americans feel that their voice is not being heard and he has really given her a platform, let's focus on the failures of Hillary Clinton," Ernst told CNN. | 1 |
The photo taken on October 4, 2016, shows destruction in the village of Amatrice that was rattled by an earthquake on August 24. (Photo by AFP)
An earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale has hit central Italy, including the capital Rome.
Italy's national geophysics institute said the quake struck at a depth of nine kilometers in the Macerata area of the central region of Marche on Wednesday.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) confirmed the magnitude, saying the epicenter was seven kilometers south-southwest of Visso village in Macerata.
There was no information immediately available about potential casualties or damage caused by the quake, which was felt in the towns of Pescara, Ancone and L'Aquila, which was jolted by a 6.3-magnitude quake in 2009 that killed over 300 people.
Wednesday’s quake rattled windows and doors in the capital of Rome.
The quake comes about two months after nearly 300 people were killed as a strong earthquake hit central Italy.
On August 24, a powerful earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale hit Italy, and almost flattened scores of towns and villages in the central parts. The quake was followed by a series of aftershocks, the strongest of which measured 4.2, rattling the already hit areas. Loading ... | 1 |
Wow! America is hungry for a real leader. America, this is what leadership looks like https://youtu.be/JCXpkAPQvhk | 0 |
For the first time in months, a national poll shows Donald Trump is not leading the Republican 2016 primary race, and instead has Ben Carson in first place.
Carson won the support of 26% of Republican primary voters, compared to 22% who are backing Trump, according to CBS News/New York Times . Though within the poll's margin of error, it marks the first time since the billionaire businessman's dominant rise over the summer where he has been bumped from the top spot nationally.
The new numbers also represent a reversal from the last CBS /New York Times poll, taken more than a month ago, which saw Trump leading Carson 27%-23%.
Carson and Trump have been running consistently neck-and-neck since the start of September -- with other candidates struggling to keep pace.
The switch in the lead comes as Carson has taken a clear lead in the Iowa race, beating Trump in some polls by double-digits. Trump told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday morning "I don't get it."
CBS/New York Times pollsters found Carson outpacing Trump among women and evangelicals and running even with him among men. Trump performed better with moderate Republicans and voters without college degrees. No other candidate cracked double-digit support in the latest poll. Marco Rubio won 8% support, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina tied for fourth place with 7 percent and Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and John Kasich each got 4%. The poll does carry an important caveat, however: 70% of respondents said they had not settled on a choice yet. Trump's supporters, however, are more locked in with their support. The most recent CBS/New York Times poll surveyed 575 Republican primary voters and carries a 6-percentage-point margin of error. RELATED: Donald Trump on poll slump: 'I don't get it' | 1 |
0 17 1 0 The proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner would concentrate too much power in one media company and should be blocked by regulators, US Senator Bernie Sanders said in a letter to Acting Assistant US Attorney General Renata Hesse on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On Friday, AT&T announced plans to acquire Time Warner for $84.5 billion. The deal would include Timer Warner’s popular brands HBO and CNN, and force other distributors to negotiate with AT&T for programming licenses. © REUTERS/ Brendan McDermid/Files "This merger represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the public good and should be blocked," Sanders wrote to Hesse, who heads the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.
Sanders argued the proposed merger would shrink the media landscape and stifle competition in the United States.
Sanders explained that the plan would give AT&T control over both content and distribution, which he alleged would give the company less incentive to provide additional choices to consumers.
The merger has to be approved by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and other US federal regulators. ... | 1 |
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According to a DNC source, they are rapidly looking for a replacement for the Democratic nominee in the wake of news that the FBI has re-opened its investigation into her private email server while Secretary of State… They are diverting money down to House and Senate races in attempt to hold on to current seats https://t.co/VxF9eKrUI4
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 29, 2016 "The legal people are meeting to see how we can replace her" https://t.co/VxF9eKrUI4 | 1 |
(Corrects source in headline and first paragraph of Dec. 5 story; adds source in third paragraph) By Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has communication channels with North Korea open and Moscow is ready to exert its influence on Pyongyang, Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov as saying on Tuesday. We have channels, through which we are conducting a dialogue, and we are ready to deploy them, we are ready to exert our influence on North Korea, Morgulov was quoted as saying at a conference in Berlin. He also said that neither Washington nor Pyongyang want a real war but such scenarios exist , according to RIA news agency. The Kremlin has traditionally protected the reclusive state though the latest Pyongyang tests have irked Moscow. North Korea, which conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September, has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim Jong Un s leadership in defiance of international sanctions. Morgulov called for other measures than isolation to exercise in dealing with North Korea. We believe that the isolation alone...will not work, this won t take us forward. By doing this, we will only worsen the situation, which is dangerous. We are really on the brink of a real war, he said. In Washington, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said the Trump administration still wanted a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the nuclear and missile threat from Pyongyang but said: (North Korea) has shown through its actions that it is not interested in talks. We must remain focused on increasing the costs for Pyongyang to continue to advance its WMD programs. Morgulov was also quoted as saying that North Korea was seeking a direct dialogue with the United States on its nuclear program, while it was not in need of security guarantees either from China or Russia. | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - The Northern Irish party that props up Prime Minister Theresa May said it only got the text of the draft Brexit deal late on Monday morning and that the party told the British government that the terms were unacceptable. Despite several briefings over the course of the last few weeks, we only received written texts late yesterday morning, Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said. We understand this was due in part to delays caused by the Irish government and the EU negotiating team, Dodds told reporters. Upon immediate receipt of that text we indicated to senior government representatives that it was clearly unacceptable in its current form. Dodds said the party would work for as long as needed to get the Brexit deal right. | 0 |
CNN political analyst just spent her Thanksgiving Day so consumed with hate for President Trump s White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that she removed any doubt her Twitter followers may have had about the possibility of having an objective bone in her body.CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan suggested, without any evidence, Friday that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders actually didn t actually cook the pecan pie Sanders said she did.Here is Sanders tweet that got under April Ryan s skin:I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan is frequently praised by liberals for being a nuisance in the White House press briefing room, but she failed to present any evidence Friday, except for the claims of random Twitter users, that Sanders faked the pie. Ryan did not respond to this reporter when asked for proof.A reverse image search did not find any other pictures of the pecan pie that Sanders posted.The White House press secretary responded to Ryan s criticism and said that she will make the journalist a pie of her own.-Daily CallerDon t worry @AprilDRyan because I m nice I ll bake one for you next week #RealPie #FakeNews https://t.co/5W3mGbKs4J Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 24, 2017While hundreds of liberal Twitter users jumped on Ryan s thread, as a way to drum up hate for the brilliant and witty conservative Press Secretary, Sanders definitely got her fair share of support. Conservative actor James Woods didn t make any secret about how he is thankful on Thanksgiving Day for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. One final reason to be thankful today: @SarahHuckabee She is the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. The #CNN and other liberal minions melt before her intelligence, her wit, and her sheer fortitude like snowflakes in the desert. James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 24, 2017Twitter user, Vanessa Vega nailed it with her tweet in response to Sanders reply to Ryan s ridiculous claim:It burns them up. That a graceful intelligent woman like you holds the WH positions, rocks at it, is an amazing mother and baked a pie during a traditional American Holiday. keep doing you @PressSec !! We are grateful for you & the haters are entertaining to watch Vanessa Vega (@EscbrRoX2017) November 25, 2017 | 0 |
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A 17-year-old Danish girl who offered to fight for Islamic State was found guilty on Friday of planning bomb attacks at two schools, one of them Jewish, state broadcaster DR reported. The High Court ruling upholds a ruling in the Holbaek district court in May that found the girl - who was not named - guilty of attempted terrorism. The girl was arrested at her home in January last year, when she was aged 15, and charged with planning the attacks after acquiring chemicals for making bombs. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday following the latest missile launch by North Korea that he is more confident than ever that our options in addressing this threat are both effective and overwhelming. Speaking to a group that included military personnel at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, Trump said North Korea has once again shown its utter contempt for its neighbors and for the entire world community. | 1 |
Donald Trump is losing it. On Monday, he kicked off his morning with perhaps his dumbest ravings yet about swamps and sewers and fake news (oh my?). Drain the Swamp should be changed to Drain the Sewer it s actually much worse than anyone ever thought, and it begins with the Fake News! our middle-schooler-in-chief tweeted.Drain the Swamp should be changed to Drain the Sewer it's actually much worse than anyone ever thought, and it begins with the Fake News! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017If you re thinking what the f*ck is he on about? then you re not the only one. For one, a sewer is a drainage system. That s the whole point.Just like Adolf Hitler, Trump continued his attacks on the L genpresse FAKE NEWS as Trump calls the media.He also once again demanded that everyone focus on Crooked Hillarys rather than himself. It is unclear if he meant that as a possessive or a plural.So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017Basically, this tantrum was a gigantic mountain of stupidity and Americans were glad to mock him mercilessly for it.You are right. If DC was a swamp before, you made it a sewer. Next stop: toxic waste dump Dani Bostick (@danibostick) July 24, 2017How do you think sewers work, exactly? Ryan Broderick (@broderick) July 24, 2017Brilliant!Although, to be fair, DC s sewer is clogged by a MASSIVE fatberg at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sean (@DailyChef7) July 24, 2017If by Fake News you mean My misleading tweets, statements & surrogates, agree! Screw the sewer; in 2018 & 2020 let s Flush the Toilet ! Pep Rosenfeld (@peprosenfeld) July 24, 2017Okay, have you tried calling the plumber? Let me know how it goes. nic shields (@nicshields) July 24, 2017You ARE the biggest, slimiest, diseased sewer rat so stop whining #DonnieTwoScoops! pic.twitter.com/Zx7GKfBUV4 alexandra halaby (@iskandrah) July 24, 2017You re SO right! You DID create a sewer in the @WhiteHouse! Thank you for correctly pointing that out. #drainthesewer Shaun O Banion (@shaun_obanion) July 24, 2017Ofcourse it s worse. You added half of Goldman Sachs, the foreclosure king, a racist elf, white nationalists, neo-nazis & Russian colluders Facts Do Matter (@WilDonnelly) July 24, 2017Where would sewers drain into? Surely you d have to use more sewers and that would compound the problem, no? Conor Mac (@thefella) July 24, 2017Yes, change the slogan. That should stop you from hiring a rogues gallery of the least qualified, most compromised federal officials ever. Mark Banker (@themarkbanker) July 24, 2017Is a sewer better or worse than a swamp? This is the most interesting debate topic you ve raised since becoming president. Paul Caiozzo (@PaulCaiozzo) July 24, 2017Yes, you managed to drain the swamp directly into the WH. And your constant refrain of fake news leads us to believe it isn t fake at all Susan Price (@PriceSjrw5614) July 24, 2017So you turned the swamp into a sewer ? And now it s overflowing. So much winning! Paul Cyr (@PaulCyr5) July 24, 2017We know you re much worse than we first thought. We d love to drain the sewer . How long before you can move out? Kristine Lynne (@thegoodmama) July 24, 2017It begins with you so when are you gonna resign so we can drain the sewer? Sheree Williams (@ShereeW1974) July 24, 2017Trump seems nervous about something. Could it be that his son-in-law, son, and former campaign manager are testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee about their collusion with Russia? The fact that the noose is tightening?What s he worried about?Featured image via Getty Images/screengrab | 0 |
28 year old Abdullah Faris Freatekh, aka Feras Mohamed Freitekh was a Muslim with a Palestinian backgroundThe National Transportation Safety Board s initial investigation of a Tuesday s aircraft crash in East Hartford, Connecticut should be a serious concern as it was a possible attempt to destroy one major US military defense contractor. As it seems, Muslims are possibly attempting to carry out an attack by using airplanes again.The investigation by The National Transportation Safety Board also indicates the crash is the result of an intentional act, which means the likelihood this involves an act of terrorism. FBI and police have also raided the pilot s apartment and are questioning three of the associates of Feras M. Freitekh, the pilot. The Jordanian students were also studying to become pilots.Freitekh who was killed on impact is a 28-year-old Jordanian national from a Palestinian background who was studying to become a pilot died after crashing a small plane Tuesday afternoon in Connecticut, and the instructor pilot who survived the crash said it was intentional. Family and friends of Freitekh are already writing about him on Facebook with oodles of praises from good man hero to Allah be with him in Arabic. Click and check it out for yourself. Rafeek Zabian comments Our old friend, Feras Freitekh, is with Allah, after he fulfilled his dream to fly, he died as a pilot, yes, and he accomplished his dream, may Allah be with you .Here are pictures from the Facebook page of in what appears to be Mecca. The pictures appear to be very recent, as they are dated June 3, 2016. People see him kissing the tip of the propeller and they do not think. The kiss is a kiss for the tip of his missile he is using. He and the Muslims and relatives commenting know why he came to the U.S. The argument with the co-pilot that he does not want to fly anymore is an excuse to land early because his intention is likely to swerve at the US defense contractor facility. It would take hours to include all the other praises from folks who would seem normal to the naked eye, yet they harbor ill for the United States.What is alarming about this crash is that the crash occurred near Pratt & Whitney, a defense contractor that makes jet engines for the military. Pratt & Whitney is a major defense contractor which manufactures military and commercial jet engines. East Hartford Police Chief called the company s plant critical infrastructure, the Hartford Courant reports. Police said the FBI was contacted because of the proximity to Pratt & Whitney.A high-ranking law enforcement source told the Hartford Courant there was an argument between the student pilot and the instructor prior to the crash. Terrorism is a criminal act, East Hartford Police spokesman Lieutenant Joshua Litwin said at a press conference. There is a lot of criminal investigators on scene. Nothing has been ruled out. The surviving flight instructor, identified by the Courant as Arian Prevalla, was able to get out of the plane after the crash and is expected to survive. Freitekh came to the United States from Jordan in 2012 on a temporary M-1 visa for flight school. The FBI and local police raided an apartment on Annawan Street as part of the investigation, WVIT-TV reports. Neighbors told WTIC-TV that four men lived together in the apartment targeted by police. Sources told the Hartford Courant the three other men who lived there were also foreign nationals studying to become pilots. And don t be fooled, the pilot, Feras M. Freitekh also has another Facebook as Rafael Majdi Freitekh and he is gay with all the rainbow flags. He was not a peaceful Muslim and neither was he a peaceful gay after all, as society tries to arm-twist us to believe about Muslims and gays. He stops writing anything on his timeline for a year is perhaps the man decided to go dark becoming a lone-wolf.The instructor pilot who survived the crash was hospitalized with serious burns, CBS News reports. He was identified as Adrian Prevalla by the Hartford Courant. Officials say he is cooperating with the investigation. He runs the Hartford Jet Center, according to his Linkedin profile. The flight school is based at Hartford-Brainard Airport, where the plane took off from on Tuesday.Via: Shoebat | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration has been contacting U.S. energy companies to ask them about their views on the U.N. global climate accord, according to two sources with knowledge of the effort, a sign Trump is reconsidering his 2016 campaign pledge to back out of the deal. The sources, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said many of the companies reached by the administration had said they would prefer the United States remain in the pact, but would also support reducing U.S. commitments in the deal. The accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015, would limit planetary warming in part by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The sources did not name the companies contacted. One of the sources said the companies were “publicly traded fossil fuel companies,” and added the White House would consider their input in making a decision on the Paris accord shortly. The source said the White House has been leading the discussions with the fossil fuel companies and the State Department, which represents the United States in climate negotiations, had not taken part. A White House official declined to comment. Trump has called climate change a hoax and vowed during his campaign for the White House to “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement” within 100 days, claiming it would be too costly for the U.S. economy. Since being elected he has been mostly quiet on the issue. In a New York Times interview in November he said he would keep an open mind about the Paris deal. He and members of his family and inner circle also met with climate change advocate and former Vice President Al Gore in December. Officials for Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Peabody Energy Corp and others did not immediately comment when asked about whether they had been contacted by the White House about the Paris accord. But several, including Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, have expressed public support for the pact. The World Coal Association, which represents Peabody and other miners, has also said it supports the deal. Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Darren Woods recently called the pledges that came out of the Paris agreement an “effective framework” for dealing with emissions, and pointed to Exxon’s own work to cut its carbon emissions. In comments on Exxon’s website, Woods wrote: “I believe, and my company believes, that climate risks warrant action and it’s going to take all of us – business, governments and consumers – to make meaningful progress.” Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s former CEO and now U.S. Secretary of State, also supported remaining a part of the climate change discussion during his confirmation hearing. He said he did not see climate change as an imminent national security threat but said the U.S. would be “better served by being at that table” and remaining a party to climate change negotiations. Conoco CEO Ryan Lance similarly said he favored the U.S. remaining in the Paris agreement, during CERAWeek comments last week, in part because it could create opportunities for its natural gas operations and its investments in carbon-capture and storage. Benjamin Sporton, the president of the World Coal Association, had a similar stance: “With a number of well-developed carbon capture and storage projects, the United States is already a global leader in cleaner coal technology. Given the role given to low emissions coal technology in the Paris Agreement by many developing economies, there are clear benefits to remaining within the agreement.” J. Robinson West, former chairman of Magellan Petroleum Corp., and now a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, said President Trump’s anti-Paris accord sentiments probably reflected his dealings with the CEOs of smaller companies that operate only in the U.S. “The independents are anti-climate change ... all this stuff costs them money. The global companies operate all over the world. They have to operate at one standard - the highest standard - wherever they operate,” he said. Global oil companies have spent heavily on environmental initiatives in recent years. Exxon Mobil, for example, logged $4.9 billion in environmental spending in 2016, about 2.24 percent of total revenue, according to its annual report with the Securities and Exchanges Commission. ConocoPhillips spent $627 million, or 2.57 percent of revenue. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Party officials sued Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in four battleground states on Monday, seeking to shut down a poll-watching effort they said was designed to harass minority voters in the Nov. 8 election. In lawsuits filed in federal courts in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio, Democrats argued that Trump and Republican Party officials were mounting a “campaign of vigilante voter intimidation” that violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and an 1871 law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. “Trump has sought to advance his campaign’s goal of ‘voter suppression’ by using the loudest microphone in the nation to implore his supporters to engage in unlawful intimidation,” the Ohio Democratic Party wrote in a legal filing. Similar language was used in the other lawsuits. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Since August, Trump has urged his supporters to monitor polling locations on Election Day for signs of possible voting fraud, often urging them to keep a close eye on cities like Philadelphia and St. Louis that have high minority populations. Campaigning in Ohio, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Trump was hoping to discourage people from participating in the election. “His whole strategy is to suppress the vote. Lots of noise. Lots of distractions,” Clinton said in Cleveland. Democrats are also trying to stop the Republican National Committee from working with the Trump campaign or state parties on poll monitoring, arguing in a separate case that a long-standing court order prevents the national party organization from engaging in “ballot security” measures. In a motion filed on Monday in that case, the RNC said it was not involved in poll watching but was working to support Trump in other areas. “That is evidence of politics, not wrongdoing,” the RNC said. Many states allow campaigns and political parties to monitor balloting, although they often face restrictions. In Pennsylvania, for example, poll watchers must be formally certified by the local election board and must be registered voters in the county where they are working. The state Republican party has sued to remove those restrictions. With early voting under way, civil rights groups have said they have heard isolated reports of self-described poll monitors photographing voters and engaging in other intimidating behavior. Democrats also sued Republican operative Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally who is organizing an exit-polling effort. Democrats said the true purpose of the project, called Stop the Steal, was to intimidate minority and urban voters. Stone told Reuters that his project was designed to ensure that electronic voting machines were working properly. On Stop the Steal’s website, Stone says Clinton’s Democrats “intend to flood the polls with illegals. Liberal enclaves already let illegals vote in their local and state elections and now they want them to vote in the Presidential election.” Stone said the 1,400 people across the United States who volunteered for the project had been instructed to use neutral language and only approach people after they had voted. “Since we are only talking to voters after they have voted, how can we be intimidating them?” Stone said. | 1 |
A powerful letter from a lifer in the military:Because I am a lifer in the military, I ve seen the impact of a president more than many of you can imagine. I enlisted with LBJ and saw just what a Democrat clusterflock was all about. I went to Vietnam and saw how we were constantly and incessantly bombarded with micromanagement from Washington that got thousands of military people killed. I sometimes wonder if I ll get to heaven, but if I go to hell, I m sure I ll still be a few hundred floors above that bastard Robert McNamara , LBJ, John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and yes, even the hero John McCain.After Johnson abdicated rather than having his ass waxed, I lived through Nixon who was hawkish but allowed the generals (and there WERE a few real generals back then versus now) run the show. He was so out of touch that he never knew North Vietnam was about to surrender when the Paris Accord was presented.Only God could help us after Gerald Ford was beaten by Jimmy Peanuts who d been funded by Saudi money. The military was turned into Section 8 and even the Whitehouse suffered the austerity. Then the light began to shine and Ronald Reagan swept into the fray. He not only loved the country and the military, they loved him back. Esprit d corps was off the scale during his presidency. The Liberals were slowly turning into socialists, however, and about this time all the draft dodgers of the 1960 s who d been given amnesty by Jimmy Peanuts were turning out college graduates with degrees in socialism. Bush 1 was an enigma from the CIA and though he never did much either way, he NEVER DID MUCH EITHER WAY.Welcome to Bill Clinton. Clinton spent most of his two terms wagging the dog and creating the Oral Office, sending a bomber to blow up Quaddafi s tent and killing a goat or two, while allowing the UN to set up the infamous Black Hawk Down situation. He made history by becoming only the second president to be impeached.I actually felt sorry for Bush 2. He was doomed to infamy from the start. He thought most of America was still the rah rah patriots of WWII when they were simply socialists waiting to feed him to the sharks. Then there came the Manchurian Candidate with a faked (OK Democrats, let s say of questionable origin to assuage your PC brains) birth certificate, who d gotten a free ride through college under a foreign student exemption, and whose college records and complete life history had been sealed. (We know more about Thomas Jefferson s bastard children than we do about Obama, Michelle, OR their two kids.) From his inaugural address, he slandered America and within days had begun to encourage dissention of the races as well as slandering police who acted stupidly. That was mild to the crap that would come in doubling the national debt from what had been built by ALL THE PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS COMBINED, feeding us bullspit about how Muslims built this country, and nationalizing American industries. Fueled by George Soros money and using the Air Force fleet as his personal charters, he appointed malcontents and traitors into positions of authority. He trashed the Constitution by installing czars (interesting he chose a title like that) to bypass Congressional authority. By that time, Congress was completely corrupt on both sides of the aisle. No one had balls to impeach this charlatan. Mysteriously, the lone outspoken conservative Supreme Court Justice suddenly dies in his sleep at an Obama pal s hunting lodge and the Supreme Court is evenly split. Finally, Congress shows some balls and rejects Obama s nomination. The Libtards aren t worried because the fix is in. Soros has paid demonstrators to cause turmoil at all the Republican gatherings, Obama concedes that illegal aliens should vote as they won t be prosecuted, and Soros-manufactured voting machines are caught switching votes in certain precincts. Hillary has cheated her way to the nomination and her lies are completely ignored by the brainwashed minions of sycophants who follow her. But a shocking thing happened on the way to the forum.Middle America had had enough and although the pollsters and the pipers tried to convince them not even to bother to vote, they were fed up with the denizens of the swamp. It was time. Florida was designated a swing state ignoring that all those old retirees living in St. Petersburg, and the fed up Cuban Americans of Miami weren t interested in their platform. Ohio and Pennsylvania, where coal production was blacklisted and where Obama had ridiculed them for clinging to their Bibles and their guns, lay awaiting this supposed landslide Hillary vote and creamed it.The Socialist world of the Democratic Party disintegrated. An American who expressed unbridled love of country and respect for police, firemen, and military steamrolled across the heartland and the liberals realized their scheme was trashed. A CONSTITUTIONALIST would be nominated to the Supreme Court and if the hag who d claimed to retire if Trump were elected would actually leave, the Supreme Court would have a massive majority of CONSTITUTIONALISTS for the next 40-50 years.Now, the same party who d ridiculed Trump on his comments about the election being rigged, started screaming that the election was rigged. They even advocated having the election repeated. They created mobs that burned and pillaged, stopped traffic, threatened murder, battery and rape of Trump supporters, and became the anarchists that the socialist dream thrives upon. They run like castrated pigs for safe zones and use diaper pins as their national symbol.This is exactly what happens when political correctness takes over and participation trophies are awarded to everyone. They can t conceive how disgusting and subservient they have become. Donald Trump may NOT be the best person for the job, but he s such a welcome respite from the candy-assed whimps who ve been running the swamp that it s refreshing to see. At the very least, Donald Trump derailed the Socialist train and bought us precious time. If he only does half of what he s promised, we ll still be legions ahead of where Obama has dragged us. Already countries who held us in contempt are lining up to be found in the favor of America.So for you liberal lurkers and you half-assed fence-sitters, kiss off. You had your big hurrah and now your party is over. For you staunch Republicans in office, don t gloat so much yourselves. You ve been put on notice by the American people that we re fed up with ALL YOU BASTARDS and if you don t start putting America first, you do so at your own peril. You might want to buy a copy of George McGovern s autobiography and see how shocking and humbling it can be for a professional politician to have to try to find legitimate work once he falls from grace. This election was pure, unadulterated AMERICAN. Hillary got beaten and AMERICA WON THE ELECTION. You can claim he s not your president all you want, but unless you forfeit your American citizenship, YES HE IS!!!! Go cry a river some place they need water.Retired Chief Master Sergeant George Roof gave permission to 100percentfedup.com to publish his amazing letter on our website. We applaud George s passion and his honesty. Most of all, we thank him for dedicating his life to service in our US armed forces. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer plans to meet on Monday afternoon with Leandra English, the Democrats’ pick to lead the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren will meet jointly with English, who on Friday was named temporary head of the agency by outgoing Director Richard Cordray, according to Warren’s office. President Donald Trump is challenging English’s bid to serve as acting director, naming his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, to serve in an interim role. English has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order barring Mulvaney from leading the regulator. | 0 |
Share on Facebook Physicists say they may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation. How? They made a computer simulation of the universe. And it looks sort of like us. A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilization of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible. A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilization of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible. And since there would therefore be many more simulations (within simulations, within simulations) than real universes, it is therefore more likely than not that our world is artificial. Now a team of researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany led by Silas Beane say they have evidence this may be true. In a paper named ‘ Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation ’, they point out that current simulations of the universe – which do exist, but which are extremely weak and small – naturally put limits on physical laws. Technology Review explains that “the problem with all simulations is that the laws of physics, which appear continuous, have to be superimposed onto a discrete three dimensional lattice which advances in steps of time.” What that basically means is that by just being a simulation, the computer would put limits on, for instance, the energy that particles can have within the program. These limits would be experienced by those living within the sim – and as it turns out, something which looks just like these limits do in fact exist. For instance, something known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin, or GZK cut off, is an apparent boundary of the energy that cosmic ray particles can have. This is caused by interaction with cosmic background radiation. But Beane and co’s paper argues that the pattern of this rule mirrors what you might expect from a computer simulation . Naturally, at this point the science becomes pretty tricky to wade through – and we would advise you read the paper itself to try and get the full detail of the idea. But the basic impression is an intriguing one. Like a prisoner in a pitch-black cell, we may never be able to see the ‘walls’ of our prison — but through physics we may be able to reach out and touch them. Watch What Elon Musk Says On This Subject: Related: | 1 |
Super Pacs backing Donald Trump are off to a slow and rather rocky start as they try to raise funds because the candidate’s rhetoric and policy pronouncements are still so incendiary and he has sent mixed signals about how much financial help he wants from outside groups.
Trump’s campaign war chest is dwarfed by Hillary Clinton’s, who had $42.5m in the bank at the start of June compared with her Republican rival’s $1.3m, according to the Federal Election Commission. Trump has taunted big donors repeatedly, and bragged for months that his campaign was not going to rely on them or Super Pacs, before appearing to change his tune more recently.
Several donors backing Trump told the Guardian that the candidate’s errors are piling up. “He’s got to learn not to put his foot in his mouth,” said Stan Hubbard, a billionaire broadcaster who has donated $100,000 to the pro-Trump Great America Pac. “He needs a clearer message without name-calling.” Hubbard also called Trump’s recent trip to Scotland – where he was criticized for hailing the plunge in the pound post-Brexit as good for his golf course there – a mistake. “He should have let his kids do it.”
Likewise, potential Super Pac donors say Trump badly needs to curb his bombastic rhetoric and craft a better message. Michael Epstein, who raised big money for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and plans to vote for Trump but also “hold my nose and pray”, said that he might back a Super Pac if Trump has a strong GOP convention next month and really “turns it around”. But Epstein added: “I’m less and less hopeful. He can’t get out of his own way. He’s going to have to demonstrate more presidential behavior. They’re behind the eight ball and they’ve got to move fast.”
Four key pro-Trump Super Pacs have been formally launched, but between them they have run only about $5m in ads. By contrast, the leading pro-Clinton Super Pac, Priorities USA Action, in mid-May began a massive television and digital ad blitz in key states reportedly slated to cost almost $130m.
Signs of turmoil and slow growth among the Trump Super Pacs, which unlike campaigns can accept unlimited donations, are palpable.
Texas mega-donor Doug Deason, who in tandem with his billionaire father Darwin Deason recently met with Trump, said that the candidate’s top fundraiser had signaled to them that a new Super Pac, Make America Number One, backed by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, was deemed the “official” one. In a twist, Make America Number One will seek big checks from GOP donors who are not ready to back Trump but want to stop Clinton, according to Bloomberg.
Deason said that he and his father would probably write a check to a Super Pac but stressed that “we’re waiting to see what Sheldon Adelson does”, a reference to billionaire Adelson, who has pledged some $100m to help Trump – which Deason thinks is the amount needed for a Super Pac to really have an impact.
Adelson has been considering setting up his own Super Pac and talking to key Republican operatives about cobbling one together to help Trump, fundraising sources told the Guardian.
But the casino baron has been typically cautious and slow in opening his checkbook after at least two meetings with Trump since late May.
Adelson is said to be talking to some other wealthy donors – including Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and energy investor Toby Neugebauer – about teaming up on a Super Pac, say fundraising sources.
One GOP operative with ties to Adelson told the Guardian that the casino mogul may put up his funds in installments, predicting that about half would come after Trump picks his running mate. The operative said Adelson has been pressing Trump to choose the casino owner’s longtime ally Newt Gingrich, the ex-House speaker, or another staunchly pro Israel figure who shares Adelson’s hawkish views on Israel. “Adelson is very succinct about his expectations,” said the operative.
Meanwhile, the existing Super Pacs are trying mightily with mixed success to bring in big checks. The Great America Pac, which boasts veteran GOP operative Ed Rollins as a strategist, organized two events in June to woo big donors in Dallas and New York, where a luncheon at the 101 Club was hosted by Peter Kalikow, a wealthy real estate executive and Trump buddy.
Eric Beach, the co-chair of Great America, said the Pac has raised $5m and has commitments for another $4m. The Pac has plans for a few more events to court big donors in Los Angeles and Oregon before the Republican national convention and by election day hopes to raise $150m, he said.
In June, the Pac launched a three-week, $750,000 ad buy on Fox and cable channels to promote Trump. “Donors care about a path to victory,” Beach said, adding that he expects the Pac to focus on about 10 key states including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Other pro-Trump Pacs are ramping up their fundraising and ad drives.
Laurance Gay, the managing director of the Super Pac Rebuilding America Now and a former lobbyist and one-time partner of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, said it had raised $2m, most of which has paid for two TV ads.
“Our Pac is gearing up to keep Hillary Clinton’s head under water through the elections,” Gay said.
Rebuilding America Now expect to raise and spend close to $20m through the GOP convention next month and then hope to raise another $80m for the rest of the campaign season, Gay said.
The Guardian has learned that Gay and Tom Barrack, a private equity executive and old friend of Trump’s who played a big role in getting the Super Pac launched and told CNN it had $32m in commitments, met with Adelson in June to woo him but it is unclear if they will get a check. Gay said that it was no secret that “we’re well behind in fundraising”.
More broadly, veteran money man Fred Malek, who has been a top fundraiser for GOP governors, cautions that Trump’s policies and temperament pose obstacles for Super Pac fundraising Malek stresses that GOP donors and voters, “want to see a nominee who is more inclusive rather than divisive and recognizes that politics is a game of addition and not a game of subtraction.” | 1 |
President Obama s response to the attacks on Belgium were dignified and hopeful, and it was exactly the opposite of the divisive and racist rhetoric of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who took turns describing the frightening things they would do to Muslims if one of them is elected president. At a baseball game in Cuba, the president said: It s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage. You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation. But the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people s ordinary lives and one of my most powerful memories and one of my proudest moments as president was when I watched Boston respond after the marathon. Unlike the president, Ted Cruz s response was venomous and hateful and he had a sickening new plan, calling for Muslim neighborhoods to be under police watch. He said: We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS. Then of course there is the crazy Donald Trump. Instead of sending condolences and creating unity, here s what he had to say: I ve been talking about this for a long time. Brussels was a beautiful place. Zero crime, and now it s a disaster city. It s a total disaster and we have to be very careful as to who we allow into this country. As usual, nothing but opportunistic Republican politicians looking to cash in on a tragedy. But the president s words resonated hope. He continued by saying: They cannot defeat America. They don t produce anything. They don t have a message that appeals to the vast majority of Muslims or the vast majority of people around the world. What they can do is scare and make people afraid and disrupt our daily lives and divide us and as long as we don t allow that to happen, we re gonna be okay. Cruz and Trump are clearly falling into the trap of what terror is designed to do. Let s hope they don t succeed because if they do, that means that terror has succeeded.Watch Video Here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdTiKLhCcc] Featured image via Wikimedia Commons. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department is considering formally declaring the crackdown on Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims to be ethnic cleansing, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, as lawmakers called for sanctions against the Southeast Asian country’s military. Pressure has mounted for a tougher U.S. response to the Rohingya crisis ahead of President Donald Trump’s maiden visit to Asia next month when he will attend a summit of Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, in Manila. U.S. officials are preparing a recommendation for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that would define the military-led campaign against the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, which could spur new sanctions, the U.S. government sources said. The proposal - part of an overall review of Myanmar policy - could be sent to Tillerson as early as this week, and he would then decide whether to adopt it, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine state in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh, since security forces responded to Rohingya militants’ attacks on Aug. 25 by launching a crackdown. The United Nations has already denounced it as a classic example of ethnic cleansing. Three U.S. officials testifying at a Senate hearing on Tuesday declined to say whether the treatment of the Rohingya was ethnic cleansing, but listed new measures including targeted sanctions that Washington is considering. Those steps, however, stopped short of the most drastic tools at Washington’s disposal such as reimposing broader economic sanctions suspended under the Obama administration. “I’m not in a position ... to characterize it today, but to me this very closely resembles some of the worst kind of atrocities that I’ve seen during a long career,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Storella said when pressed to say whether he viewed the situation as ethnic cleansing. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said he considered the treatment of the Rohingya “genocide” and is working on bipartisan legislation that could spell out whether additional sanctions are needed. Myanmar, also known as Burma, insists that action was needed to combat “terrorists.” The recommendation to Tillerson - first reported by the Associated Press - is not expected to include a determination on whether “crimes against humanity” have been committed, as this would require further legal deliberations, one U.S. official said. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Some U.S. lawmakers criticized Aung San Suu Kyi, head of Myanmar’s civilian-led government and a Nobel peace laureate once hugely popular in Washington, for failing to do more. Senator Bob Corker, Republican chairman of the committee, chided Suu Kyi for what he called “dismissiveness” toward the plight of the Rohingya and said it might be time for a “policy adjustment” toward Myanmar. At the hearing, Patrick Murphy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian And Pacific Affairs, said additional sanctions were being considered, but cautioned that doing so could lessen Washington’s ability to influence Myanmar. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In April 2014, the administration of President Barack Obama announced the most ambitious clemency program in 40 years, inviting thousands of jailed drug offenders and other convicts to seek early release and urging lawyers across the country to take on their cases. Nearly two years later the program is struggling under a deluge of unprocessed cases, sparking concern within the administration and among justice reform advocates over the fate of what was meant to be legacy-defining achievement for Obama. More than 8,000 cases out of more than 44,000 federal inmates who applied have yet to make it to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for review, lawyers involved in the program told Reuters. That is in addition to about 9,000 cases that are still pending at the DOJ, according to the department’s own figures. Only 187 inmates have had their sentences commuted, far below the thousands expected by justice reform advocates and a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate. The administration said it wanted to decide on all the applications before Obama’s term ends next January, when the program will automatically expire. A senior DOJ official told Reuters it is calling on the lawyers’ group — Clemency Project 2014 — to simply hand over the outstanding cases without further vetting, saying it is not working fast enough. So far, the group estimates it has handed over around 200 cases. But criminal justice experts say the administration itself should bear much of the blame. The idea to tap pro-bono attorneys to help vet the cases originated with the DOJ, and critics say it should have prepared its own staff to handle the large volume of applications. “It’s unfair to criticize the volunteer group that you asked to help,” said Rachel Barkow, a criminal law professor at New York University who has studied clemency in U.S. prisons. She estimates that about 1,500 prisoners should be eligible for commutation, saying the 187 granted so far does not “fulfill the promise of the program.” The DOJ declined to comment when asked for its response to such criticism. The delays have left prisoners like Linda Byrnes, 69, in limbo. “I thought clemency was for people like me,” Byrnes told Reuters through an electronic messaging system from a federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia. Byrnes, who has spent 20 years in prison for distributing marijuana and has two years left on her sentence, was recently diagnosed with mouth cancer and has yet to hear whether she has been assigned a lawyer after submitting her application to Clemency Project in August 2014. Obama, who has commuted more sentences than the past five presidents combined, has been a stern critic of harsh U.S. sentencing policies that he says have disproportionately burdened minorities. Federal life sentences have fallen since Obama took office, from 280 in fiscal year 2009 to 153 in 2013, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. About three quarters of the sentences were given to minorities and most were for non-violent offences, the report said. Clemency Project 2014 said it does not comment publicly on the individuals it represents. The group vets the applications, writes the petitions and sends them to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which oversees all pardons and sentence commutations and makes recommendations for the president’s approval. So far, 25,000 of 34,000 applications received by Clemency Project have been rejected for failing to meet the basic criteria - no record of violence, no significant ties to a gang or drug cartel, good behavior in prison and completion of at least 10 years of sentence. About 10,000 inmates did not go through the Clemency Project and either applied directly to DOJ or through a paid attorney. “It really would be a sad state of affairs if individuals who had asked for a lawyer weren’t considered in time because their petitions never reached the pardon attorney’s office,” a DOJ official told Reuters on the condition of anonymity. (Graphic on the clemency bottleneck: tmsnrt.rs/1VThxVT) A large number of mostly unqualified applications, a shortage of lawyers and the complexity of the cases have slowed progress, said Cynthia Roseberry, project manager for Clemency Project 2014. “There are a lot of gray areas,” said Roseberry, who estimates it takes 30 days for one lawyer to review one case on average. “We’ve got to unpack each of these applicants to see specifically what factors affect them... and so that takes a little more time.” This includes finding pre-sentencing reports for each case, determining if the person would have received a shorter sentence under current law and reviewing prison behavior records. Roseberry said the group was unaware of any request from the Justice Department to hand over the pending applications. Roseberry said the group’s initially slow pace has picked up in recent months. The Justice Department declined to elaborate on its private communication with the lawyers. The Pardon Attorney’s office has brought in personnel from other parts of the department to help to speed up reviews of petitions, the DOJ official said. Roseberry said about 3,000 applicants still need to be assigned to a lawyer, and that it was not certain whether the group will be able to submit all of the applications it has received before Obama leaves office. The group has more than 570 law firms and 30 law schools contributing to the effort. Some rejected prisoners and those who have yet to hear a decision say they believe they would have had a better chance if they had sent their clemency petition directly to the government. Josie Ledezma was sentenced to life for conspiracy to transport cocaine and applied for clemency through Clemency Project 2014. She said she did not hear from them for six months and later learned that her assigned lawyer had shut down her legal practice. In January, nearly one year after applying, she was told Clemency Project 2014 could not help her and encouraged her to apply directly. “I wrote back and asked what was it that made me not qualify, but never got a response,” Ledezma told Reuters through an electronic messaging service for federal prisoners. | 1 |
If Republicans have their way, rape victims will continue to be terrorized by their rapists.The victim was only 12 years old when Christopher Mirasolo raped her and impregnated her. Despite also threatening her life, Mirasolo only spent six months in prison, only to spend four more years in prison for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.That being said, Mirasolo should NOT be allowed anywhere near a child and should still be rotting in prison.But a Michigan judge has decided that Mirasolo should have joint custody of the child his victim gave birth to eight years ago.According to The Detroit News, county officials surveyed the victim s use of food stamps, aid she relies on to take care of her eight-year-old son.For some reason, the county connected her to Mirasolo and a DNA test was taken. It appears the county was searching for a reason to kick her and her son off the food stamp program so they did all of this without her consent.Well, despite the fact that Mirasolo is the victim s rapist, Sanilac County Circuit Judge Gregory S. Ross gave him joint custody of child, ordered the victim to move back to Michigan, and gave her address to Mirasolo.In other words, Judge Ross just put a woman s life in danger and endangered a child.And by giving Mirasolo joint custody, he is allowing a rapist to continue terrorizing his victim. I think this is all crazy, the victim told The Detroit News. They never explained anything to me. I was receiving about $260 a month in food stamps for me and my son and health insurance for him. I guess they were trying to see how to get some of the money back. Her attorney is also rightfully pissed off.This is insane, attorney Rebecca Kiessling said. Nothing has been right about this since it was originally investigated. He was never properly charged and should still be sitting behind bars somewhere, but the system is victimizing my client, who was a child herself when this all happened. And the same scenario could play out across the nation if Republicans have their way. House Republicans recently passed a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks and you can be damn sure they will keep trying to ban abortion entirely, with zero exceptions for rape victims. That means rapists will be able to seek joint custody in order to make their victim s lives a living hell. Imagine having to interact with the person who raped you and having to hand your child over to them.It s a terrifying scenario that no rape victim should have to face. Conservatives are constantly telling us that rape victims should carry these pregnancies to term because the baby isn t to blame. But as long as rapists are able to pursue custody and terrorize their victims for the rest of their lives, women should never lose the right to choose. Because no one should be forced to live their life in terror and fear.Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1 |
On Saturday, MSNBC s Joy Reid repeatedly attempted to race-bait former Republican congressman J.D. Hayworth on her show AM Joy. NewsBusters reported that the claims that Reid threw at Hayworth ranged from false to misleading. Joy started out by asking if Hayworth had any discomfort that an undocumented woman walked into a courtroom to file a protection order against an abusive boyfriend (no mention of his residency status) and was met with ICE agents who arrested her (The job of an ICE agent is to arrest people who illegally cross our borders). An alternative version would be: A woman who has broken our laws, and living in our country ILLEGALLY, was arrested after walking into a courthouse to ask for the same protections afforded to taxpaying US citizens, after it was discovered that she is also a lawbreaker.However it wasn t until Hayworth exposed Reid s liberal hypocrisy by bringing up the fact that Elizabeth Warren is not Native-American that Reid flipped out and kicked the GOP guest off the show. | 0 |
SPOT ON RACHEL ZONATION The Obamas pride themselves on being staples in the black community who can do no wrong in the eyes of African Americans. Unfortunately for them, however, more and more black people are turning on the Obamas and seeing them for what they really are.After seeing Michelle Obama s graduation speech at the predominantly black Tuskegee University, TV show host Alfonso Rachel knew that he could stay silent no longer. He took to his internet talk show to slam the first lady in a video that has gotten over 25,000 views in just 3 days.Here s an excerpt of what he said: If knowledge is power and you are graduating with the power of knowledge then how are you going to tolerate this agitator coming in to convince you, that you re a victim, despite the power you re graduating with. You are the first freaking lady of the United States and you re still a spoiled butt-hurt victim, whining about unfairness. You re not interested in representing the United States, you re not interested in representing ALL the people, your interest is in representing the black community and as the first lady you have represented us as bitter and spoiled. The only hope that people like you have, Michelle Obama is that people will be as miserable as you. Via: MrConservative.com | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Few issues in this campaign cycle seem as toxic as trade: Both presidential candidates oppose President Obama’s Partnership, and congressional leaders, having refused all year to vote on the trade accord until after the election, say they will not do so even then — potentially killing the largest regional trade pact in history. So that must mean voters are overwhelmingly opposed, right? Wrong. National polls continue to show that Americans either narrowly favor international trade generally, and the T. P. P. specifically, or are split. Younger voters are especially favorable. But Republicans are not, reflecting the influence of the nominee Donald J. Trump on his traditionally party. And certainly trade remains more unpopular in battleground states like Ohio, where it is blamed for years of manufacturing job losses. Yet the level of support for trade agreements in general, and the pending Pacific pact in particular, stands in notable contrast to the toxicity of trade in an election season largely defined by anger among voters. What matters to many politicians, however, is the fact that the opponents are the ones most motivated to vote based on the issue — just as they are on issues like immigration and gun restrictions that also have more support than divisive debates suggest. “There really is a lot of ambivalence on the part of the public” toward expanded foreign trade, said Jay Campbell, a senior vice president with the polling firm Hart Research, who is not working for a presidential campaign. “At a very basic level they know it’s a necessary thing for the United States to trade with other countries — that is clear as a bell throughout all the polling,” Mr. Campbell said. But when asked about trade’s impact on jobs, “people are more inclined to think it’s more of a negative than a positive. ” A survey last month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that Americans by 50 to 42 percent said trade agreements had been “a good thing” for the United States. By a narrower 40 to 35 percent, they said the same of the Pacific pact, which would phase out tariffs and set commercial rules between the United States and nations from Canada and Japan to Australia, Vietnam and Chile. Mr. Trump has had a measurable negative impact, the research center said. In a Pew poll a month before Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Republicans, by 51 to 39 percent, said trade accords had been good for the nation. By last month, after Mr. Trump was nominated, Republicans, by 61 to 32 percent, called past agreements a bad thing, a flip that has not been lost on Congress’s Republican leaders. Democrats’ views are little changed. Among registered voters surveyed by Pew, 55 percent of supporters of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, said the Pacific pact would be a good thing (58 percent of Trump supporters said the opposite). And while Mrs. Clinton, under pressure from her pact Democratic primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, came out in opposition to the T. P. P. in October, a Pew survey in March found that even 55 percent of Sanders supporters said trade agreements had been good for the country. The pollster for the liberal group Public Citizen, which is among the most active opponents of trade agreements, recently found that the public comes to the debate over T. P. P. from a position “bordering on neutrality,” with Republicans very negative and Democrats more positive. A plurality of all Americans favored past agreements, it said. “The public rates past trade agreements more positively than not, though many are unsure and few hold strong opinions,” said a memo on the poll by Democracy Corps, a liberal nonprofit founded by the Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville. As for the T. P. P. specifically, 56 percent of voters were either unfamiliar with it or neutral, the group said. To build opposition, Democracy Corps recommended that opponents link the agreement to the influence over government by corporations and “big money. ” Perhaps the most counterintuitive finding, given that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump oppose the T. P. P. was in a July Washington News poll. Asked if they wanted the next president to be someone who supports trade agreements or opposes them, 75 percent of respondents said they wanted a supporter and 17 percent favored an opponent. A Gallup poll early this year found that 58 percent of Americans viewed trade as an economic opportunity, 34 percent as a threat. Similarly, in a July poll for NBC News, 55 percent of registered voters agreed with a statement that trade was good “because it opens up new markets and we cannot avoid the fact that it is a global economy,” while 38 percent agreed that trade was bad “because it has hurt manufacturing and other key industries. ” Among the groups most supportive of trade are younger and highly educated voters. The Pew survey, for example, found that people with a high school education or less said that trade agreements had hurt their family’s finances — by a ratio of nearly two to one. That survey and a poll in June by the Associated Center and Black Youth Project found that about of voters under 30 said that trade agreements had helped them and their families. But strategists in both parties say those who are more supportive of trade are less likely to vote on that issue than are the opponents. “I can guarantee you that the intensity and energy on the issue is all on the side,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster and founding partner of the firm Public Opinion Strategies. “It’s a motivating issue, and one that hits home to Americans who are still struggling to make it back from the recession. ” He added: “Those who support free trade are more ‘lukewarm.’ For them it’s not a voting issue. ” Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster and strategist for Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting Mrs. Clinton, echoed Mr. Newhouse. “The people who are opposed to trade agreements feel more passionately about it than the people who are supportive of them,” he said. Alluding to Mr. Obama’s arguments that approving the T. P. P. is crucial for American influence in the region, Mr. Garin added: “Most people don’t really live in the world of geopolitics, and don’t think very much about China’s influence in the Pacific relative to our influence in the Pacific. But they do think about jobs and wages and whether corporations can be trusted to use these trade agreements for the greater benefit of the American people. ” Presidents do worry about geopolitics, and that alone could keep the Pacific deal alive. On Friday, after Mr. Obama met with business leaders and elected officials to coordinate their uphill campaign for the accord, the mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, told reporters, “People who run for office often campaign against trade, but people who become president of the United States end up supporting trade. ” | 0 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Monday it had not changed its position on Catalonia after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced he would invoke special constitutional powers to fire the regional government and force a new election. The position is well known. We ve always said we respect the constitutional and legal arrangement of Spain, a Commission spokesman said. He added that the measures taken were precisely to be seen within that constitutional context . | 0 |
WARSAW (Reuters) - The Venice Commission, a panel of constitutional law experts of the human rights body Council of Europe, said on Friday that Poland s proposed court overhaul poses serious risks to all parts of the country s judiciary. The Commission also said that giving the Polish parliament the right to select members of the National Judiciary Council, in conjunction with the proposed immediate replacement of the currently sitting members, will lead to a far reaching politicization of this body. | 0 |
PARIS (Reuters) - The Kremlin-funded Russian broadcaster RT was due to launch its French language news channel on Monday night amid heavy suspicion by the government and President Emmanuel Macron who has dubbed it an organ of propaganda . Macron has led official criticism of RT, formerly known as Russia Today , and openly accused it of sowing disinformation about him via its website and social media during the presidential election earlier this year which he won. RT has denied the allegations and RT France s chief executive Xenia Fedorova, speaking at the channel s new offices in a western Paris suburb, again brushed off criticism, saying that RT stood for news not covered by mainstream media . The channel was being cold-shouldered by Macron and the channel had still not been granted accreditation to cover news conferences inside the French presidential Elysee palace, Fedorova said on Monday a few hours before the channel was due to start broadcasting. There was just one example of when we actually managed to visit. That was actually during the Trump visit to Paris, she added, referring to the visit by the U.S. president last in July. A spokesman for the French government said last week that the current administration was concerned by encroachment on freedom of expression but highlighted that RT was owned by a foreign power. Fedorova brushed off the remarks, citing other well-known international news channels that receive public funding such as BBC World, France 24 or Al Jazeera. RT stands for news that are not covered by the mainstream media, she said. We will keep the platform (open) to perspectives and opinions that are either not covered or silenced. RT France has planned a budget of 20 million euros ($24 million) for its launch and aims to recruit a total of 150 people by the end next year. By comparison, BFM TV, France s number one news channel, started with 15 million euros and now has an annual budget of about 60 million euros. RT s first international channel was launched in December 2005. The network broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish and its programs are viewed by 70 million people in 38 countries, it says. The landscape for news channels is already crowded in France, with four round-the-clock local news channels. Unlike its rivals, RT will not reach all French households via the digital terrestrial television technology. Rather, it can be viewed only online or by subscribers of Iliad s broadband services. Bouygues Telecom is also due to distribute RT France from the end of next February. The two biggest French telecom operators, Orange and Altice s SFR Group, are still in discussions with RT France, the firms said, underscoring the low audience level that RT is likely to have in its first few days. Russia s international news outlets have come under the spotlight since 2016 after being accused of meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Russia has denied interfering in the election. In October, Twitter accused RT and Russian news agency Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief tax writer in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Friday that Republicans had finalized a tax bill they hope to vote on next week and that details would be released in a “few hours.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters the text of the bill would be posted when the House comes into session at 5:30 p.m. (2230 GMT) on Friday. | 1 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO allies on Tuesday welcomed President Donald Trump s decision to commit more forces to Afghanistan, as part of a new U.S. strategy he said would require more troops and funding from America s partners. Having run for the White House last year on a pledge to withdraw swiftly from Afghanistan, Trump reversed course on Monday and promised a stepped-up military campaign against Taliban insurgents, saying: Our troops will fight to win . U.S. officials said he had signed off on plans to send about 4,000 more U.S. troops to add to the roughly 8,400 now deployed in Afghanistan. But his speech did not define benchmarks for successfully ending the war that began with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and which he acknowledged had required an extraordinary sacrifice of blood and treasure . We will ask our NATO allies and global partners to support our new strategy, with additional troops and funding increases in line with our own. We are confident they will, Trump said. That comment signaled he would further increase pressure on U.S. partners who have already been jolted by his repeated demands to step up their contributions to NATO and his description of the alliance as obsolete - even though, since taking office, he has said this is no longer the case. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement: NATO remains fully committed to Afghanistan and I am looking forward to discussing the way ahead with (Defense) Secretary (James) Mattis and our Allies and international partners. NATO has 12,000 troops in Afghanistan, and 15 countries have pledged more, Stoltenberg said. Britain, a leading NATO member, called the U.S. commitment very welcome . In my call with Secretary Mattis yesterday we agreed that despite the challenges, we have to stay the course in Afghanistan to help build up its fragile democracy and reduce the terrorist threat to the West, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said. Germany, which has borne the brunt of Trump s criticism over the scale of its defense spending, also welcomed the new U.S. plan. Our continued commitment is necessary on the path to stabilizing the country, a government spokeswoman said. In June, European allies had already pledged more troops but had not given details on numbers, waiting for the Trump administration to outline its strategy for the region.Nearly 16 years after the U.S.-led invasion - a response to the Sept. 11 attacks which were planned by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan - the country is still struggling with weak central government and a Taliban insurgency. Trump said he shared the frustration of the American people who were weary of war without victory , but a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum for groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda to fill. | 1 |
They took out Saddam in two weeks, but they can t finish IS in two years? asked Falih, another Iraqi who asked that his last name not be used out of security concerns. It just doesn t make sense. 21st Century Wire says This latest report serves as a reminder of just how thin the US-led international game of supporting extremist militants has become.The most comical part of this story is how US military court scribes at the Associated Press are still in denial that Iraqis are harboring ill will against the US for suffocating (via crippling sanctions), bombing and destroying, looting and occupying their country over the last 25 years.Aside from numerous reports showing US weapons and equipment being dropped by accident and then used by ISIS, it s undeniable by now that the US have been the primary driver in fueling the rise and growth of this militant fighting group over the last 7 years.Associated Press writers are very careful to frame this narrative and advance the establishment s favorite meme that the debacle of Iraq was down to US government incompetence , rather than inherent malice even though history clearly demonstrates that malice has been omnipresent in US foreign policy for at least the last 70 years.SEE ALSO: 50 Years of Targeted Kill Lists by US Government Why can t they (the Iraqis) appreciate what we ve done for them? Seriously Sinan Salaheddin and Susannah George AP/Military.comBAGHDAD For nearly two years, U.S. airstrikes, military advisers and weapons shipments have helped Iraqi forces roll back the Islamic State group.The U.S.-led coalition has carried out more than 5,000 airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq at a total cost of $7 billion since August 2014, including operations in Syria. On Tuesday a U.S. Navy SEAL was the third serviceman to die fighting ISIS in Iraq.But many Iraqis still aren t convinced the Americans are on their side.Government-allied Shiite militiamen on the front-lines post videos of U.S. supplies purportedly seized from ISIS militants or found in areas liberated from the extremist group. Newspapers and TV networks repeat conspiracy theories that the U.S. created the jihadi group to sow chaos in the region in order to seize its oil.Skepticism about U.S. motives is deeply rooted in Iraq, where many still blame the chaos after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein on American malice rather than incompetence Read more at Military.comREAD MORE ISIS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire ISIS Files | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking to add an amendment this week to spending legislation that would slash the number of staff at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The budget research office, known as the CBO, has drawn recent Republican criticism, including from the White House, after it concluded that Republican proposals to replace Obamacare would lead to 23 million more Americans being uninsured if they became law. Representative Mark Meadows, head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Monday his colleague Morgan Griffith has offered an amendment to an appropriations bill the House is expected to take up this week that would cut the CBO’s staff of 235 by 89 employees, saving about $15 million. “They ought to be aggregators,” Meadows said of the CBO at a National Press Club lunch. “There’s plenty of think tanks that are out there. We ought to take a score from Heritage, from AEI (American Enterprise Institute), from Brookings, from the Urban Institute and bring them together for a composite score.” The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, as is the American Enterprise Institute. The Brookings Institution and Urban Institute are liberal-leaning think tanks based in Washington. The CBO is one of a handful of analysis units of Congress whose employees strive for political impartiality, providing dependable and neutral information that lawmakers can use when making often complex budget, tax and other decisions. Its staff includes economists, public policy analysts, lawyers and editors. In May, after Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the CBO’s healthcare analysis “absurd” and questioned its continued existence, Democrats defended the office, saying Republican attacks were irresponsible. “When Trump administration officials either disagree with or do not understand the impacts of their own policies, they prefer to attack the nonpartisan analysts who are doing their jobs with integrity and expertise,” Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democratic House leader, said at the time. The CBO was created in 1974 during a spending dispute between the Democratic-controlled Congress and Republican President Richard Nixon after he withheld funds for government programs that did not support his political positions. | 0 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it was talking to the United States about the U.N. Security Council renewing an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but Washington countered that Moscow had refused to engage on a U.S.-drafted resolution. The mandate for the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has found the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack, expires on Friday. Russia vetoed an initial U.S. bid to renew the joint investigation on Oct. 24, saying it wanted to wait for the release of the latest investigation s report two days later. It has since proposed its own rival draft resolution. We are talking to the U.S., it s not over yet, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Monday. The inquiry s report found the Syrian government was responsible for the April 4 attack using sarin in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing dozens of people. The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons. Russia has refused to engage on our draft resolution which the vast majority of council members agree is the most viable text in spite of our multiple attempts to consider Russian concerns, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations said on Monday. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France to pass. The council unanimously created the inquiry, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), in 2015 and renewed it in 2016. It is important that the JIM is renewed but on an updated mandate because the systemic errors that we saw with the recent report should be corrected and that s the aim of our resolution, Nebenzia said. He added that if the mandate of the inquiry was not renewed, It may send a bad signal, but the way the investigation has been conducted sends an even worse signal. The JIM previously found that Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State militants used mustard gas. The draft text Russia put forward without any negotiation is unhelpful, has no support, and cannot be taken seriously, said the spokesman for the U.S. mission. Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. | 0 |
America has become Entitlement Nation where thousands line up for housing is this a need or just a want? Those in need like the disabled or our veterans are the ones Section 8 was meant for, yet able bodied Americans started to line up TWO DAYS before the voucher giveaway. Are thousands upon thousands of people REALLY in need of free housing? My answer came in the form of a Facebook post that clearly defined for me the fact that people use these entitlements when they REALLY don t need them:The comments below this picture were very telling this is the norm for many Americans:Laura- That s awesome! Lasuzy- Wow..you should of seen the line here in Modesto Ca it never ended,lucky there was no numbers,so I assume all in line got a application its been 5 years ago,still waiting to be called Karen- Wow back when i had applied for just the LA County it took 17 years for them to send me the card telling me my packet was coming. But by the time my packet came i was already in housing out here in San Bernardino county and had been for some years Ray- My BROTHER there going to wait a long time I ve been on the waiting list 8 years. GODBLESS. Florence- I wish I can get section 8 so I can do more for my grand sons I raise .it s hard But thank God that he provides every day Jennie- Oh cool, hopefully they call all those people back quicker than LA does SOUNDS LIKE THIS HUD/SECTION 8 HOUSING IS A RACKET FOR THOSE WHO FEEL ENTITLED TO THE FREEBIES!Thousands of people lined up Monday morning for the chance to apply for low-cost, government-subsidized housing in the city of Norwalk.Officials with the City of Norwalk Housing Authority began handing out applications at 8 a.m. at the Norwalk Arts and Sports Complex. Roughly 3,000 applications for the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program waiting list were scheduled to be distributed through Sept. 24 or until all applications were handed out, city officials said. By just past 7 a.m., a line of people could be seen going all around what appeared to be nearly a city block, according to aerial reports: A fact sheet distributed by the city prior to the event warned prospective applicants that it may be many months or several years before we are able to assist you with your rent. This is not an emergency program. The city of Norwalk has a population of just under 107,000 as of a 2013 census.HOUSING EXPENDITURES HAVE SKYROCKETED:THIS IS FROM 2005 SO JUST IMAGINE WHAT IT IS NOW! Via: CBS | 0 |
MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) - Seven satellite calls that Argentine officials detected recently believed to have come from a navy submarine missing in the South Atlantic have not helped to determine the vessel s location, a navy official said on Sunday. We analyzed these signals, which as we know were intermittent and weak, said Gabriel Galeazzi, a naval commander. They could not help determine a point on the map to help the search. | 0 |
Hillary Clinton is a serial liar. Hillary Clinton has a hard time maintaining a consistent level of truth and that was proven today and it s been proven before I think Hillary Clinton should really think about resigning from ever running for any office at this point. She s incompetent. Michael Ingmire, Uncle of Benghazi victim Sean Smith | 1 |
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo on Monday condemned the arrest of about 30 opposition members amid a crackdown on dissent by President Joseph Kabila s government. The arrests occurred in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi on Sunday when police broke up a meeting by the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) party on the eve of a return to the city of opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi, party members told Reuters. Such security incidents are threatening to spiral out of control in Africa s largest copper producer because of Kabila s refusal to hold elections when his presidential mandate expired nearly a year ago. From now, we no longer consider Joseph Kabila as president, Tshisekedi told journalists on Monday in Lubumbashi, where a planned rally was banned by the government. He is usually in the capital, or in Europe. Congo s government has banned opposition demonstrations since last year, when security forces killed dozens of protesters demanding Kabila s departure. The election commission said this month that an election to replace Kabila, who came to power after his father s assassination in 2001, would not be possible before April 2019 at the earliest - raising the prospect of long-term unrest. I urge the Congolese authorities to release immediately and unconditionally those arbitrarily arrested yesterday in Lubumbashi, said Maman Sidikou, head of the U.N. MONUSCO peacekeeping mission. MONUSCO also demanded an end to restrictions imposed on Kyungu wa Kumwanza, president of the National Union of Federalists of the Congo (UNAFEC) party, who has been under de facto house arrest for several months without being charged with a crime. In another sign of discontent with election delays, the Union for the Congolese Nation(UNC)opposition party said in a statement on Monday it was withdrawing its representative in a power-sharing government, Budget Minister Pierre Kangudia. The latter could not immediately be reached for comment. Kabila s political opponents are weak and divided. Many joined a power-sharing government earlier this year following the death of opposition figure, Etienne Tshisekedi, Felix s father, and they enjoy limited credibility with the population. However, an economic crisis that has seen inflation spike to over 50 percent, increased militia activity, and a series of prison breaks have highlighted Kabila s tenuous hold on power. | 0 |
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