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HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland did not pay a ransom for the release of a Finnish aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan, the Nordic country s foreign minister said on Thursday. Finland has not paid, and will not pay ransom in the future. If we did, we would only encourage further kidnappings, Foreign Minister Timo Soini told a news conference via videolink from Washington. The ministry confirmed earlier on Thursday that the Finnish woman, who was abducted in May and held captive for 118 days, had been released. She was working for a Swedish aid group in Kabul and during her abduction a German colleague and their Afghan guard were killed. The foreign ministry gave no further details about the kidnapping or the release, but said the woman was in Afghanistan and in good condition in light of the circumstances . Kidnapping is a longstanding problem in Afghanistan, mainly affecting Afghans abducted for ransom. However foreigners have also regularly been targeted, either for ransom or to put pressure on their governments.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement still faces an uphill battle for support in Congress and that he was not inclined to bring it up for a vote, because it would not pass. U.S. President Barack Obama’s Pacific trade deal with partners in Asia would “go down” in any vote held now, Ryan told reporters at a regular press briefing. “If you bring it up, it’s going to go down, I don’t think we should bring up a bill that goes down,” Ryan said.
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Valve President Gabe Newell took to Reddit for an AMA this week, giving us another brief peek into the world of the hugely successful . [Newell admitted that customer support is where Valve most needs to improve, but made sure to highlight the changes the company has already made to its gaming distribution platform Steam: Since the last AMA, we’ve introduced refunds on Steam, we’ve grown our Support staff by roughly 5x, and we’ve shipped a new help site and ticketing system that makes it easier to get help. We’ve also greatly reduced response times on most types of support tickets and we think we’ve improved the quality of responses. We definitely don’t think we’re done though. We still need to further improve response times and we are continually working to improve the quality of our responses. We’re also working on adding more support staff in regions around the world to offer better native language support and improve response times in various regions. He’s also not entirely happy with the current state of Steam trading and wants to see it improved. When asked about the disappearance of the “flash sales” from the marketplace during Steam’s storewide sales throughout the year, he explained that the limited time they were available “made it difficult for many people to participate. ” Steam is apparently erring on the side of caution, so that “users can count on finding the best deals whenever they are able to visit the store during the sale. ” Steam’s library increased by 40% in 2016 alone, but a huge portion of that increase was due to terribly rated shovelware titles like GASP. When asked about the increased pollution of the store by low quality titles, Newell waffled a bit. He considers handling the influx of content more a question of organizing games so that the “right” titles are recommended to consumers: There’s really not a singular definition of quality, and what we’ve seen is that many different games appeal to different people. So we’re trying to support the variety of games that people are interested in playing. We know we still have more work to do in filtering those games so the right games show up to the right customers. Will the “right” games include uncensored adult content? According to Newell, addressing uncensored content on the platform first requires solving two problems. First are the challenges of “a completely uncurated distribution tool for developers,” but perhaps even more important is a “toolset” by which customers can both “find and filter content,” so that your kid’s front page isn’t flooded with pornographic visual novels. This answer is just vague enough to offer a potential opportunity for the adult game industry. The strength of a trusted platform like Steam could open doors for content that would otherwise never become profitable enough to develop. Whether that would be good or bad for the industry at large remains to be seen, but Valve is apparently already loosening their grip a little, with titles like Ladykiller In A Bind launching on the platform uncut. On the future of Valve in the gaming industry, Newell had a lot to say. The company is focused on the promise of new technologies, rather than staying safely within the confines of their previous work: The big thing right now is broadening the range of options we have in creating experiences. We think investing in hardware will give us those options. The knuckles controller is being designed at the same time as we’re designing our own VR games. Much more narrowly, some of us are thinking about some of the AI work that is being hyped right now. Simplistically we have lots of data and compute capability that looks like the kinds of areas where machine learning should work well. Personally I’m looking at research in interfaces. But while Newell ponders jacking a Steam account directly into your brain, that doesn’t mean we’ll know about it before it’s ready. Many of the questions tried — and summarily failed — to extract information about the future of franchises like Left 4 Dead and . When a user specifically questioned the company’s approach to development, Newell gave as clear an answer as he ever has about the way Valve as a whole likes to function. He claims that the way Valve makes decisions is “way more conditional than most other companies,” and that they are determined not to waste customers’ time and money in the process. Because of that, they’re much more likely to “cancel or change stuff much later in development. ” He thinks that “tracking [Valve’s] choices would be annoying and frustrating. ” Interestingly, Newell stated that he had many regrets about the franchise when asked about the games: “The issue with for me is that I was involved in a much higher percentage of the decisions about the games, so it’s hard for me to look at them as anything other than a series of things I regret. ” If you are involved in a game, everything ends up being a set of . Anything in a game is a sacrifice of things not in the game. I just feel those more personally about for a bunch of reasons. There were a variety of other questions answered. Among them: Steam will consider an option to toggle off the tray notifications. Newell confirmed the J. J. Abrams movies based in the universe are still coming. He’d like to see harsher punishments for Steam scammers. He enjoyed a visit to Amsterdam. The Valve snack bar has gotten healthier. And he’s going to sign a copy of the Lord GabeN art, for the original artist. For the full text, check out the Reddit AMA. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.
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Contact Dear friends and readers,
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. State Department officials were aware of Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state but did not understand the full extent to which she employed it, a department spokesman said on Wednesday. Spokesman Mark Toner said the State Department has already complied with many recommendations in an inspector general’s report on Clinton’s email use and acknowledged failings during her 2009-2013 tenure. “We, like many federal agencies, were not doing enough to meet the requirements of records management and preservation,” Toner said at a news briefing.
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States will send more troops to Iraq and will put them closer to the front lines of battle there to advise Iraqi forces in the war against Islamic State militants. U.S. defense officials said on Monday that Washington will deploy about 200 additional troops, mostly as advisers for Iraqi troops as they advance towards Mosul, the largest Iraqi city still under Islamic State control. “As we see the Iraqis willing to fight and gaining ground, let’s make sure that we are providing them more support,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with CBS News. “My expectation is that by the end of the year, we will have created the conditions whereby Mosul will eventually fall,” Obama said. The United States has also authorized the use of Apache attack helicopters to help the Iraqis as they can provide quicker air support and precision fire. The advisers will accompany Iraqi units of about 2,500 troops moving closer to the front lines of battle. Until now, the advisers were limited to larger divisions of about 10,000 troops located further back from the battlefield. The change will allow them to offer quicker advice to Iraqi troops as they try to retake Mosul, likely facing stiff resistance from an entrenched enemy. But it could also leave the U.S. advisers more vulnerable to enemy mortars and artillery. “This will put Americans closer to the action,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said. “Their whole purpose is to be able to help those forces respond in a more agile way.” The decision to enlarge the U.S. military force was made in close concert with Iraqi authorities, said Carter, who met U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on a visit to Baghdad. Iraq is engulfed in a political crisis over anti-corruption reforms that is crippling state institutions and threatening to slow the campaign against the militants. The increase raises the authorized troop level in Iraq to 4,087, not including special operations personnel, some logistics workers and troops on temporary rotations. The Pentagon will also provide up to $415 million to Kurdish peshmerga military units, who have played an important role in pushing back Islamic State in northern Iraq. Part of that funding will likely be spent on basics like food, said Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, head of the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State. “Right now the peshmerga are not getting enough calories to keep them in the field,” MacFarland said. The increase is the latest move by the United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein, to step up its campaign against the hardline Sunni jihadists. Since December, Iraqi forces trained by the U.S. military and backed by coalition air strikes have taken back territory from Islamic State, which seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Some U.S. troops already in Iraq will be shifted to establishing logistics for Iraqi forces as they move towards Mosul, Carter said. These include supply lines, particularly important as Mosul is 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad. Most of the new U.S. advisers, who will make up the bulk of the new troops, will be Army Special Forces, as are the about 100 advisers now in Iraq. The rest of the troops announced on Monday include support crew for the Apaches and security forces to protect the advisers. The United States will also deploy an additional long-range rocket artillery unit to support Iraqi ground forces in the battle for Mosul, Carter said. Two such batteries are already in place in Iraq. The officials did not rule out the possibility that lasting success might require further U.S. commitments. “If it doesn’t take us all the way, we’ll come back and have another discussion and ask for more if we need to,” McFarland said.
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The protesters win by scaring people into silence which is known in the law as the heckler s veto. when the hecklers scream so loudly, or in this case advertised their intention to scream that the speaker can t speak. When this happens on property owned by the government a prima fascia case has been made I m afraid we are in danger of losing free speech. JUDGE NAPOLITANOThis is what happened when pro-Trump supporters held a peaceful rally in Berkeley:THE BIRTHPLACE OF FREE SPEECH IS NOW OFFICIALLY A PLACE OF OPPRESSION Berkeley students came together to shut down the free speech rights of gay, conservative activist Milo Yiannopoulis in February. Students violently attacked fellow students who tried to attend Milo s scheduled speech, random fires were lit, windows were broken and rocks were thrown. Using violence, threats and intimidation to shut down opposing views is not only un-American it should be illegal. But we re not talking about just any college or city in America, we re talking about UC Berkeley, the former home of free-speech UC Berkeley has now banned conservative commentator and author Ann Coulter, citing security threats.According to Young America s Foundation, student organizers of an upcoming Ann Coulter event at the university were emailed by Berkeley administrators who claimed they were unable to find a safe suitable venue for Coulter. UC-Berkeley, a publicly-funded university, first imposed a series of ridiculous requirements on the speech allegedly in the name of safety. Coulter, we were informed, would be required to deliver her speech in the afternoon; only students would be allowed to attend; and the speech location would not be announced until close to the event, they continued. Against our advice, Coulter agreed to all these requirements. In return, she requested two measures, which actually had something to do with safety. This is as clear-cut a case as it gets that public universities are using taxpayer dollars to shut down conservative speech, while allowing liberal speech only, Young America s Foundation proclaimed. UC-Berkeley has for example, welcomed the corrupt former President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, who has cursed at and mocked Donald Trump, currently the President of the United States. The university, and U-C chancellor Janet Napolitano personally, have revealed themselves to be using taxpayer money for an unconstitutional purpose. Even after Coulter went along with their ruses and guises to shut down her speech, they simply announced, like Kim Jung Un, that it was cancelled. We have no intention of acceding to these unconstitutional acts, the organization concluded. The Ann Coulter lecture sponsored by Young America s Foundation will go forward. Ron Robinson, the President of Young America s Foundation, further declared in a quote that Berkeley disappoints anyone who really believes in free speech. Their actions to ban conservatives while giving leftists a platform reinforces this fact, Robinson claimed. It s a shame that Berkeley is robbing its students of the opportunity to receive a well-rounded education. Breitbart
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(Reuters) - A drone hit an airplane landing at a Quebec City airport this week, the first time an unmanned flying object has collided with commercial aircraft in Canada, Transport Minister Marc Garneau said on Sunday. No injuries were reported in the incident, which happened on Thursday at Jean Lesage International Airport and involved a plane belonging to Quebec-based Skyjet Aviation. I am extremely relieved that the aircraft only sustained minor damage and was able to land safely, Garneau said in a statement. There were six passengers and two crew members on board the airplane at the time of the collision, according to local news media reports. Drones are not allowed within 5.5 km (3.4 miles) of Canadian airports, helipads and seaplane bases. Operators who put aircraft at risk face steep fines and jail time under Canadian law. Drone usage has soared in North America, Europe and China, raising privacy concerns and fears of collisions with commercial jets, and prompting the United Nations aviation agency to back the creation of a single global drone registry. There have been 1,596 drone incidents reported to Transport Canada so far this year, with 131 of them deemed to be aviation safety concerns. In November 2016, a Canadian airliner with 54 passengers on board had to swerve to avoid an unmanned flying object near Toronto, slightly injuring two cabin crew.
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comments circulating about the Republican presidential candidate Interesting: Not what I thought it was going to be. This is an eye-opener my friends. Please Read all the way to the bottom and pass it on! "He's been divorced and remarried. He can't commit to anything.""He's dangerously ignorant about international affairs. The Russianleaders will walk all over him.""He has no filter- doesn't think before he speaks.""Until recently, he was a Democrat. He's not a real Republican. Hehasn't paid his GOP dues.""He used to be Pro Choice. Now, suddenly he's Pro Life?""That can't be his real hair!""He's a loose cannon. No one wants HIS finger on the nuclearbutton.""His opponent has the experience and political savvy to bepresident. He does not.""His temperament disqualifies him from ever beingCommander-In-Chief.""He's proven himself to be mentally unstable.""The military will never accept him as Commander-In-Chief. He's notsmart enough.""The GOP doesn't want him to be the head of the party. He could never reach across the aisle to get anything done.""Most Republican voters will just stay home rather than go out andvote for him.""Evangelicals will never support him.""He says '(Lets) Make America Great Again'. How dare he say wearen't still great?""His intellect is thinner than spit on a slate rock."After all his gaffs, he doubles down on them instead of admittinghe made a mistake.""He's threatening to upend our treaties and relationships with ourallies by demanding that they pay for their own defense!""Because of his gross factual errors he might take rash action andneedlessly lead this country into open warfare!""He's racist, xenophobic, and fuels the fires of hatred!""The rising turnout of his voters are not loyal Republicans orDemocrats and are alienated from both parties because neither takes asympathetic view toward their issues. "The fact that he could be deemed a serious candidate for presidentis a shame and embarrassment for the country."Is he Safe? ...he shoots from the hip ... he's over his head ...What are his solutions?"Voters want to follow some authority figure, a leader who can takecharge with authority; return a sense of discipline to our government; and,manifest the willpower needed to get this country back on track -- Or atleast a leader from outside Washington."
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November 12, 2016 - Fort Russ
Neyromir TV (Video) - Valentin Katasonov - Translated from Russian by Kristina Kharlova
The heated discussion in the media is a diversion - focused on marginal issues appealing to emotions, while much graver issues that are at stake are hidden behind the scenes, explains Valentin Katasonov, p rofessor, associate member of the Russian Academy of Economic Science and Business.
Part 1 (00.00-14.00)
V.K: Trump understands the situation. I didn't expect him to be so open about revealing all the ills. He is revealing many of the secrets. This is better for America - to face the diagnosis, than to conceal it from the patient.
As you know interest rates in the countries of the Golden billion are below the floor. Last year when interest rates were slightly raised, this caused serious consequences . Christine Lagarde appealed to stop or the global economy will crash. They did not raise interest rates again as planned. Not in the first or the second quarter. They are in a very difficult situation. Trump said if interest rates are raised America will default, because most of the budget will go to pay for interest rates.
Trump probably wants to save capitalism, but capitalism without interest rates is nonsense. Trump is a defender of capitalism.
Host: Who is Hillary Clinton?
V.K.: She doesn't say who she is, she is focused on some marginal subjects, like rights of minorities or climate change. We understand that these are silly games.
Host: But climate change is real?
V.K.: You know I was involved in this as part of World Bank and I know their schemes. Although there might be something going on, I can assure that they don't really care about it.
Host: What about the ruble?
V.K. It depends when this apocalypse will take place. The dropping of the ruble is part of the plan of the occupation.
Only God knows when this apocalypse will happen, may be not next week, could be few months of years for sure, because all the resources have been exhausted. Trump senses this very well, and he wants to save capitalism and America, and for this he wants to negotiate with the lenders and restructure American debt. In reality America is working on new technologies which don't require any negotiations, I am taking about Iran. As you know in the beginning of 2o16 Uncle Sam said we are finally cancelling sanctions and unfreeze Iran's foreign assets.
There are many conditions, some things are written down. Iran is not happy that America is writing off $2 billion to cover losses from terrorist act in Lebanon in 1983. I looked at some documents, Iran had nothing to do with it, but Uncle Sam found them guilty, just like those in 9/11. It turns out the culprit was Saudi Arabia.
Host: But Saudi Arabia threatened to sell treasuries and was taken off the list of culprits?
V.K. Who will let them sell it? Treasuries are in the depositories, it's a double key system, Saudi Arabia has one key and Uncle Sam has another key
Host: Why is Russia buying these treasuries while in a crisis? We did mention this is a levy, but if we don't develop our industry and science nothing will help us?
V.K. You know some of our elites hope they have an second base in the USA, the 'unsinkable'. We know some people have already set up base there, like the first deputy minister of finance. Some are closer, like the former minister of agriculture is in France. It is easier to count those who did not leave. This shows we are dealing with colonial administration which receives basic guarantees for citizenship in the US, France, GB.
Host: Their policies lead to total collapse, what if the owners are not happy?
V.K.: You know, lets not overestimate the masters, they act as parasites. Parsites keep feeding not thinking that the food will run out and they may also perish. They don't see beyond their nose.
Speaking of Iran, according to Iran, their foreign reserves comprise $130 billion, according to US - $100 billion, half of them are gold and currency reserves belonging to Iran's Central bank, or the Sovereign fund of Iran. I think they will eat up these 130 billion very fast, because after the $2 billion, US announced they will demand $11.5 billion for 9/11. The appetite comes during the meal. The Iranian parliament discussed a bill to allow the government to begin a case about damages to Iran by USA. A working group will inventory all the events and estimate them.
Today the world is entering a repatriation game, this is a commercialization of international relations and monetizing of our history. This is very important to Russian Federation. Baltic countries continue to work on such demands, especially Latvia. Ukraine is a little different. While the Baltics refer to Soviet occupation, Ukraine is talking about Crimea. Monetizing losses from events in Donbass and so on. I am just saying we should be a step ahead, we must prepare the same contra-measures.
Don't get caught up in the media's agenda, dig deeper and think with your own head! - KK
Part 2 coming soon...
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On Saturday, former Vice President Joe Biden railed against the “disorienting” and “disheartening” “forces of populism” at home and abroad and implied that Donald Trump legitimized “hate speech” during the 2016 presidential election. Speaking at Cornell University’s Convocation ceremony, Biden conceded that “globalization has cost some” people their livelihoods” and that is why the last election proved that “playing to their fears rather than their hopes and better angels” can still be a “powerful political tool. ” He spoke about the “the forces of populism not only here but around the world” that called “to close our nation’s gates against the challenges of a rapidly changing world. ” Though he said the rise of populism was “disorienting” and “disheartening,” Biden argued that it was just a “temporary state of affairs. ” Biden then implied that Trump, in the last election, “churned up some of the ugliest realities that still remain in our country” along with the “coarsest rhetoric” and “darkest emotions. ” “I thought we had passed the days where it was acceptable for political leaders at local and national levels to bestow legitimacy on hate speech and fringe ideologies,” Biden said. He said since the “world is changing so rapidly, there are a lot of folks out there who both are afraid and susceptible to this kind of negative appeal. ” “The immigrant, the minority, the transgender — anyone not like me became a scapegoat,” Biden said, again taking swipes at Trump without naming him. “Just build a wall. Keep Muslims from coming into the United States. ” He also urged the graduating seniors to “fight the urge to build a and echo chamber of yourself online. ” “Living in your screens encourages shallow and antiseptic relationships that make it too easy to reduce the other to stereotypes,” he said. Last week, Biden, who may decide to run for president in 2020 and would need strong support from black Democrats if he does indeed make a run at the White House, echoed similar themes when he addressed graduates of Morgan State University, a historically black college. Biden implied that Trump stoked “our darkest emotions” and added that “we saw just how much of a grip racism and sexism has on America” in the last election, “Even you were surprised that by the way racism was embraced as a political tool on a national level,” Biden told the students at the historically black college. Biden told the audience that “black lives do matter” and “it has to be said. I’m not being solicitous. ” The former vice president said last week that racism “is still deeply embedded in our culture” and spoke about racism in police departments, education, housing, and the hiring process. “No one has to tell you about the daily indignities of discrimination,” Biden said, telling the graduates that he knew they lived it in “subtle ways. ”
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CSATKA, Hungary (Reuters) - Thousands of Roma from Hungary and beyond flock every year to a shrine to the Virgin Mary in a chapel among undulating hills, to pray for good health, happiness and luck in love. Some actually find love there, like Adam Vidak and his wife Nikoletta who met at the huge party after the holy mass last year and have now returned. They want their newborn to be christened at the shrine, where the main Roma mass this year took place on Saturday. We met each other on Facebook and arranged a date here, we came, we liked each other, then we got in the car and off we went, said Vidak, 22, as 20-year old Nikoletta cradled the baby boy in her arms. The next day we called her parents, told them we were together and shortly afterwards we had our wedding. Hungary has an estimated 700,000 Roma, one of the largest Roma minorities in Central Europe. Most of them live in poverty. The Roman Catholic chapel in Csatka, around 120 km (75 miles) west of Budapest, is their main place of pilgrimage, but many non-Roma Hungarians also come to pray. Roma families come carrying big candles and statues of the Virgin Mary, and draw water from the sacred spring next to the chapel which is believed to have magic healing powers. Some arrive in traditional outfits, like Zoltan Sztojka, 42, who wears a yellow silk shirt and a black vest embroidered richly in gold. He came with more than 40 family members from Soltvadkert, eastern Hungary. Roma have been coming here for 150-200 years, so we have to be here. Everybody comes to lay down our sins, pray for luck, strength and health, he says, showing an enormous silver ring with a finely engraved horse, the coat of arms of his family. The chapel was built in 1862, and at that time a hermit lived at the site. Even under Hungary s four decades of communist rule from 1949, Roma came here in horse-drawn carts. Now there is a huge parking lot for cars and caravans, as some people camp out over the weekend. On the hill, a large family have set up camp, and are cooking tripe stew over a campfire. As a child, Sandor Jakab, 60, used to come here by cart with his parents. Now he brings his family for three days each year from the village of Erd. We have our fridge and freezer here, full of meat and drinks, he says. Is it true that many Roma families seek wives and husbands for their children during the pilgrimage? Jakab replies with his brother-in-law standing next to him. Now let s say, for example, suppose the two of us know each other, then we would have a few drinks, and he has a daughter and I have a son....then we would chat and I would ask whether I can go to you to see your daughter (as a potential bride). He says promises made at Csatka are carved in stone. But he does not agree with the huge party, loud music and dance that follows the prayers on the hillside. My family does not go there... We pray and spend time together. This music is not for this place, he says.
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On Friday, during a segment of Real Time with Bill Maher, the comedic host utterly destroyed Donald Trump s latest round of lies. The most notable example of Trump s no f#cks given, blatant lying relates to unemployment. Trump has stated multiple times that he has heard that the unemployment rate is really somewhere around 40 percent. Trump s continued use of the bogus talking point, has recently garnered new attention.Politifact gave Trump a Pants on Fire rating when he made the claim during a televised press conference back in September. It is just one among his total of the 18 Pants on Fire ratings that Trump has received from them. During the press conference, Trump said: The number isn t reflective. I ve seen numbers of 24 percent I actually saw a number of 42 percent unemployment. Forty-two percent. 5.3 percent unemployment that is the biggest joke there is in this country. The unemployment rate is probably 20 percent, but I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you it s a 30, 32. And the highest I ve heard so far is 42 percent. Maher marveled at how ridiculous the claim is. Maher pondered what exactly an America with a 40% unemployment would look like. He mentions the horrific realities of the life during the Great Depression. During that dark time in the United States economic history, the unemployment rate was at its highest was 25 percent. Almost half of Trump s claim. Maher asks: Do you have any idea what America would look like with 40 percent unemployment? In the Great Depression, people were jumping out of windows and selling apples on the street. Maher laid part of the blame for Trump and other Republican s ability to get away with making such bold and obvious lies, with the media. He points out the lack of outrage in the media over the Supreme Court s decision earlier this week to block most of President Obama s new carbon emission rules, as an example.You can watch the segment below, in full.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXVhR5rC7rg Featured image from video screenshot via YouTube
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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said it was possible that the European Court of Justice could continue to arbitrate trade disputes during a transition period after Britain has formally left the bloc in March 2019. We want to have a smooth and orderly process of withdrawal ... that s why we want that implementation period and we have to negotiate what will operate during that implementation period, and yes that may mean we will start off with the ECJ, May told parliament. The jurisdiction of the European court is a inflammatory issue for some Brexit campaigners within May s Conservative Party. Citing sovereignty as a benefit of Brexit, they argue that leaving the EU should offer supremacy to British courts. Britain also said it will seek to negotiate trade deals with countries outside the EU during a transition period, but it would not bring any such deals into effect if they clashed with the transition terms. In a document setting out its post-Brexit trade plans, the government said it would seek to transition all existing EU trade agreements and other EU preferential arrangements to provide continuity for exporters and investors.
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DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Airlines canceled more flights departing the Indonesian holiday island of Bali on Saturday, citing forecasts of deteriorating flying conditions due to a risk of volcanic ash from the erupting Mount Agung volcano. A Bali airport spokesman said the airport was still operating normally, but airlines such as Jetstar and Virgin Australia had opted to cancel some flights Bali flying conditions expected to be clear throughout the day, but forecast for tonight has deteriorated so several flights have been canceled, Australian budget airline Jetstar said on its Twitter account. The erupting volcano had closed the airport for much of this week, stranding thousands of visitors from Australia, China and other countries, before the winds changed and flights resumed Twenty flights were canceled on Friday evening due to concerns over ash. Some airlines including Malaysia s AirAsia Bhd have said they would only operate out of Bali during the day, as the ash could impair visibility at night and wind conditions in the area were unpredictable. Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash as it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure. There are also concerns over changing weather conditions with a tropical cyclone south of Java island impacting weather and wind in the area, including for Bali, the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics agency said With some airlines continuing to fly normally on Saturday, there was frustration among passengers. Australian couple Justine and Greg Hill were on holiday with their two teenage children and had been due to fly out today but their flight later this evening was canceled. It s more an inconvenience than anything. Don t understand why if other airlines are flying, some others aren t. Obviously there must be safety protocols but there s no detailed explanation, said Greg Hill, 46, who was waiting at the airport. Several foreign consulates have set up booths in the international departures area to assist stranded passengers. Subrata Sarkar, India s vice consul in Bali, told Reuters at the airport s international departure area that they had helped around 500 passengers so far this week. We have advised citizens the volcano may erupt. We never say please don t come . But we have issued travel advisories. If it s urgent business, then ok, but if it s only tourism, then plans should be reconsidered, said Sarkar. For an interactive graphic on Mount Agung volcano, click - tmsnrt.rs/2hYdHiq For a graphic on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," click - tmsnrt.rs/2BjtH6l
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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has identified all 23 people who died in a horrific fire at an Islamic boarding school, an official said on Friday, as calls mounted for tougher regulation after the worst such tragedy in two decades. The fire killed 21 teenage boys and two teachers after it broke out early on Thursday at a tahfiz school, where students learned to memorize the Koran. We hope and pray this will be the last such incident and preventive actions must be in place and be the order of the day, said Noor Hisham Abdullah, Malaysia s director general of health, adding that DNA tests were used to identify the bodies. There have been 31 similar fire incidents in the past, Malaysian officials said, but media put the figure higher. Among 1,034 fires in religious schools during the two years to August 2017, 211 schools burned to the ground, the Star daily said, quoting fire department figures. Family members of Mohamad Haikal Abdullah, a 12-year-old who died in the blaze, were furious over reports that the only door to the school s dormitory had caught fire while metal bars on the windows trapped the boys, leaving them unable to escape. From what we understand, there was only one way out, but they couldn t get through because it was on fire, said his brother, Faizal Abdullah, as he waited outside a hospital morgue for his sibling s remains to be identified. How could they have escaped? How could something like this have happened? We want to know. Fire officials said they found no damage to the electrical wiring of the dormitory, ruling out their earlier suggestion that a short circuit probably caused the blaze. The incident is being investigated as negligence, the fire chief, Wan Mohd Nor Ibrahim, told state news agency Bernama. The school denied a statement by authorities that it had made structural changes without approval from fire officials. Muslim-majority Malaysia offers a secular education system, but growing conservatism has led to a boom in the number of Islamic religious schools, most privately-run and not overseen by education authorities. Some offer a curriculum similar to secular schools, but with a greater emphasis on Islamic knowledge, while others provide more specialized education. Inadequate regulation and training has led to a slew of safety issues at such schools, including reports of fires, abuse, and student deaths, religious leader Mohamad Asri Zainul Abidin said on social media site Facebook. Some owners had set up schools simply as money-making enterprises or to satisfy their own interests, said Mohamad Asri, the mufti of the northern state of Perlis. Some low quality schools, in order to save costs, also take in anyone ready to teach, even when they have nothing to do with the subjects they re teaching, he added. Some religious schools were reluctant to follow government regulations for fear of interference in their administration, said Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose tenure lasted 22 years, said no lessons had been learned in nearly three decades, citing a 1989 tragedy that killed 27 girls at a religious school. I m sad that this kind of incident happened again, news portal the Malaysian Insight quoted him as saying after visiting victims families. Safety measures are very important. I hope after this, all schools will review (safety measures).
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Saddled with economic problems and its own damage from Hurricane Irma, Puerto Rico is taking thousands of refugees from the U.S. Virgin Islands whose homes were destroyed by the storm, with a cruise ship carrying up to 2,000 more due to set sail for the U.S. territory on Wednesday. Visibly shaken residents from St. Martin and the Virgin Islands arrived on Tuesday on U.S. military aircraft, bringing tales of terrifying winds and a breakdown of law and order. The people of Puerto Rico - what big hearts you guys got because our (local) government did nothing - nothing, said William Vonfabrice, 61, from St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. People coming at us with machetes, offering bullets and saying There is more for you, breaking into houses, hurting people. Royal Caribbean s Majesty of the Seas cruise ship was expected to depart the badly damaged St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, on Wednesday evening bound for San Juan, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands commissioner of tourism Beverly Nicholson-Doty said. Irma skirted Puerto Rico last week, knocking out power to 70 percent of the island, damaging buildings and killing at least three people, but the destruction was not nearly as bad as elsewhere in the Caribbean. The storm s 185 mph (297 km/h) winds hammered a string of tiny Caribbean islands that are territories of Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States. Homes, hotels, hospitals, marinas and airports were badly damaged and the extent of the chaos seemed to catch the wealthy nations off guard. Britain s government said local authorities had imposed a curfew on the British Virgin islands, where locals complained of widespread looting and violent crime after Irma. U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson visited the islands on Wednesday, calling them a scene of utter devastation on Twitter as his government announced 25 billion ($33 billion) in extra aid for its territories. The nations all have launched military relief operations but locals and tourists have criticized the response for being too slow and not reaching everybody evenly. Visiting the French Caribbean on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron promised to quickly rebuild St. Martin, a French territory shared with the Netherlands. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met with security officials in Anguilla. Dutch King Willem-Alexander said the destruction he saw in St. Martin was on a scale he had never seen before. Charles Morrison, 89, an evacuee from the Dutch part of the island, Sint Maarten, said one person was killed when the hotel he was staying in was flooded and partially destroyed. Morrison then took shelter in a friend s more secure place. The fact is, that s the end of Sint Maarten, he said as he was pushed through San Juan s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in a wheelchair. Puerto Rico has $70 billion in debt, a poverty rate above 46 percent, and near-insolvent pension and health systems, a fact not lost on the arrivals. God bless Puerto Rico and the hearts because you guys are struggling. And from the hardest struggle, that s where the real people come out, Vonfabrice said, thanking Puerto Rico for sending food, water and ships to the Virgin Islands. A Puerto Rico government spokeswoman said the financial situation and expected length of stay of the 2,000 refugees due to arrive in San Juan was still unclear, but that expenses would be covered by emergency federal funding. Puerto Rico has set up a large convention center to house refugees who cannot afford to go to a hotel. Other countries in the region also helped. St. Lucia has agreed to house prisoners from the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands, after the storm damaged the prisons in those British territories. The Cayman Islands has sent police to help reinforce security in the British Virgin Islands after more than 100 prisoners escaped when the storm breached the prison. Mexico s foreign minister Luis Videgaray instructed his diplomats in the Caribbean to offer unspecified help to Puerto Rico and Cuba even as it seeks to cope with the fallout from a massive earthquake. St. Thomas resident Laci Rivers, 33, was waiting on board the Royal Caribbean s Majesty of the Seas, eager to bring her two small children to safety after days of uncertainty. Everyone is stressed and hungry and confused, she said. Rivers said her car was broken into with a hammer, items were stolen from the flattened sushi restaurant where she worked, and she saw fights break out in St. Thomas among increasingly desperate people jostling for food and water. She was under no illusions about what would happen to her home in western St. Thomas. We ve already realized it s going to be looted while we re gone, she said. ($1 = 0.7571 pounds)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has had the “luxury of being a complete long shot” so far in the race to be the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, President Barack Obama said in an interview published by Politico on Monday. Obama said both Sanders and Hillary Clinton, his former Secretary of State, share similar views on core issues like income inequality, but said Clinton faces the disadvantage of being well-known “in a culture in which new is always better.” “I think Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose,” Obama told the political news website. “I think Hillary came in with the both privilege and burden of being perceived as the front-runner.” Obama, who won the Democratic nomination over Clinton in 2008, lauded her experience, saying it will help her govern if she wins but described her campaign as “cautious.” “Her strengths, which are the fact that she’s extraordinarily experienced, and, you know, wicked smart and knows every policy inside and out, sometimes could make her more cautious and her campaign more prose than poetry,” he said. The interview was the first time Obama discussed in detail the Democratic race and comes just ahead of the first contests to pick a nominee for the November election: Iowa, on Feb. 1, and New Hampshire, on Feb. 9. He did not explicitly endorse a candidate, and mentioned only once in passing former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who trails in polls. Sanders has surged in recent polls in Iowa and leads Clinton in New Hampshire. Still, Clinton holds the edge nationally, with nearly 56 percent support to Sanders’ 36 percent in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos polling. Still Obama, asked whether Sanders reminded him of himself, told Politico: “I don’t think that’s true.” Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver on Monday also rejected the idea that Sanders is a repeat of Obama, although he pointed to similarities in their campaigns’ momentum and the large crowds their rallies have attracted. “They’re obviously very different people,” Weaver told CNN. Obama said if Sanders wins Iowa or New Hampshire, he will face the intense scrutiny the media has long given Clinton, subjecting him and his policies “to a rigor that hasn’t happened yet.” Obama also said Sanders would need to broaden his message to continue to succeed. “I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you’re going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you, because the one thing everybody understands is that [with] this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing,” he said. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.
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Washingtons BlogEveryone s talking about fake news Google Trends shows that starting in late October that phrase absolutely exploded in terms of internet searches:In the last month, Obama, Merkel, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post and many other mainstream media have warned about the dangers of fake news.There certainly is a lot of fake news. And some of it is by anti-establishment types trying to discredit American institutions with false reports.But as we document below the government and mainstream media are by far the biggest purveyors of fake news.The Government s Been Deploying Propaganda On U.S. Soil for Many YearsThe United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities found in 1975 that the CIA submitted stories to the American press: After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services.The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan [i.e. the rebuilding of Europe by the U.S. after WWII]. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.In 2008, the New York Times wrote:During the early years of the cold war, [prominent writers and artists, from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jackson Pollock] were supported, sometimes lavishly, always secretly, by the C.I.A. as part of its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. It was perhaps the most successful use of soft power in American history.A CIA operative told Washington Post owner Philip Graham in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories: You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month. Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977: More than 400 American journalists in the past twenty five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. ***In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America s leading news organizations.***Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were [the heads of CBS, Time, the New York Times, the Louisville Courier Journal, and Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include [ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters], Hearst Newspapers, Scripps Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald Tribune.***There is ample evidence that America s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. Let s not pick on some poor reporters, for God s sake, William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee s investigators. Let s go to the managements.***The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were taught to make noises like reporters, explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management.***Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.***Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Timeand Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.***In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine s foreign correspondents attended CIA briefing dinners similar to those the CIA held for CBS.***When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from, said a former deputy director of the Agency. Frank Wisner dealt with him. Wisner, deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965, was the Agency s premier orchestrator of black operations, including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast of his mighty Wurlitzer, a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.)***In November 1973, after [the CIA claimed to have ended the program], Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star that the Agency had some three dozen American newsmen on the CIA payroll, including five who worked for general circulation news organizations. Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding its hearings in 1976, according to high level CIA sources, the CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy five to ninety journalists of every description executives, reporters, stringers, photographers, columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews. More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency. According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of 1976.***Those officials most knowledgeable about the subject say that a figure of 400 American journalists is on the low side . There were a lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest names in journalism would get smeared .An expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA now employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations. Whether or not his estimate is accurate, it is clear that many prominent reporters still report to the CIA.A 4-part BBC documentary called the Century of the Self shows that an American Freud s nephew, Edward Bernays created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques.John Pilger is a highly-regarded journalist (the BBC s world affairs editor John Simpson remarked, A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed ). Pilger said in 2007:We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake.***One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. I have to tell you, said the spokesman, that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don t have to do any of that. What is the secret? Nick Davies wrote in the Independent in 2008: For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I ve spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.The Zarqawi letter which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of strategic communications which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda. ***The Pentagon has now designated information operations as its fifth core competency alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own psyop element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department s campaign of public diplomacy which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two black propaganda specialists from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through editors and writers who work with us from time to time .The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual escort services for the moneyed elites, selling access for a price to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first. For example, the head of the U.S. Information Agency s television and film division Alvin A. Snyder wrote in his book, Warriors of Disinformation: How Lies, Videotape, and the USIA Won the Cold War: All governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first. ***Another casualty, always war s first, was the truth. The story of [the accidental Russian shoot-down of a Korean airliner] will be remembered pretty much the way we told it in 1983, not the way it really happened.In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there s even less to constrain propaganda than before.One of the most common uses of propaganda is to sell unnecessary and counter-productive wars. Given that the American media is always pro-war, mainstream publishers, producers, editors, and reporters are willing participants.It s not just lying about Saddam s non-existent weapons of mass destruction the corporate media is still selling lies to promote war. While the older generation that pioneered these domestic propaganda techniques has passed from the scene, many of their prot g s are still around along with some of the same organizations. The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond s NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year.Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com s A Shadow Foreign Policy. ]Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan s article for The New Republic, entitled Superpowers Don t Get to Retire, touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan s criticism of Obama s hesitancy to use military force.***Rupert Murdoch s media empire is bigger than ever .Another key to American propaganda is the constant repetition of propaganda. As Business Insider reported in 2013:Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a highly-respected officer who released a critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan .From Lt. Col. Davis:In context, Colonel Leap is implying we ought to change the law to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 appears to serve this purpose by allowing for the American public to be a target audience of U.S. government-funded information campaigns.Davis also quotes Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker the Pentagon officer responsible for the Department of Defense s Joint Force Development who defines Information Operations (IO) as activities undertaken to shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience. Brig. Gen. Baker goes on to equate descriptions of combat operations with the standard marketing strategy of repeating something until it is accepted:For years, commercial advertisers have based their advertisement strategies on the premise that there is a positive correlation between the number of times a consumer is exposed to product advertisement and that consumer s inclination to sample the new product. The very same principle applies to how we influence our target audiences when we conduct COIN.And those thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs appear to serve Baker s strategy, which states: Repetition is a key tenet of IO execution, and the failure to constantly drive home a consistent message dilutes the impact on the target audiences. Government Massively Manipulates the Web, Social Media and Other Forms of CommunicationOf course, the Web and social media have become a huge media platform, and the Pentagon and other government agencies are massively manipulating both.Documents released by Snowden show that spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don t like and amplify messages they do.The CIA and other government agencies also put enormous energy into pushing propaganda throughmovies, television and video games.Cross-Border PropagandaPropaganda isn t limited to our own borders Sometimes, the government plants disinformation in American media in order to mislead foreigners. For example, an official government summary of America s overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950 s states, In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq (page x).The CIA has also bribed leading foreign journalists.And CNN accepted money from the brutal Bahrani dictatorship to run pro-monarchy propaganda.Everyone Who Challenges the Status Quo Is Labeled As a Purveyor of Fake News Or WorseThe First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of the press from censorship by government.Indeed, the entire reason that it s unlawful for the government to stop stories from being printed is because that would punish those who criticize those in power.Why? Because the Founding Father knew that governments (like the British monarchy) will always crack down on those who point out that the emperor has no clothes.But the freedom of the press is under massive attack in America today For example, the powers-that-be argue that only highly-paid corporate media shills who will act as stenographers for the fatcats should have the constitutional protections guaranteeing freedom of the press.A Harvard law school professor argues that the First Amendment is outdated and should be abandoned.When financially-savvy bloggers challenged the Federal Reserve s policy, a Fed official called all bloggers stupid and unqualified to comment.And the government is treating the real investigative reporters like criminals or even terrorists:READ MORE MSM LIES AT: 21st Century Wire MSM Files
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BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck a note of caution with respect to French calls for deeper European integration on Monday, a day before French President Emmanuel Macron lays out his plans for ambitious European reforms. At a news conference after a German election that has forced her to consider a new coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), a party critical of Macron s ideas on Europe, Merkel said her conservative CDU/CSU bloc would support sensible measures but also wanted to see countries become more competitive. I m not going to rule out anything or set red lines, she said when asked how much scope she still had to compromise with Paris following the election results. The union (her conservatives) will support what makes sense. My view is that we can use more Europe, but this has to lead to more competitiveness, more jobs and more clout for the European Union. Her reserved tone may unsettle Macron, 39, who since his own election victory in May has spoken of working with Merkel, 63, on a fundamental overhaul of the EU, including the possibility of creating a eurozone budget, a eurozone finance minister and a preemptive fund to help countries in trouble. Macron will set out his vision in a speech at the Sorbonne University in Paris on Tuesday. Elysee officials said Macron would push ahead with the idea of a eurozone budget despite stiff opposition from Germany s fiscally conservative FDP. One Elysee official said that since a eurozone budget would be necessary in due course , Macron felt it worthwhile to broach the issue, which he hoped would be taken into consideration during Germany s coalition negotiations. In Berlin, Merkel alluded to Macron s speech, saying it was important to move beyond slogans such as eurozone budget and eurozone finance minister, and to focus on details. It is not about the slogans but what lies behind them, she said. I am talking about this with the French president. Merkel has sent conciliatory signals to Macron since his election, when he ran on a pledge to relaunch Europe together with Berlin. But Sunday s election result means her room for maneuver is likely to be curtailed, depending on what agreement is reached with her eventual coalition partners. Merkel s conservatives remain the biggest bloc in the new Bundestag, or lower house, but will end up with fewer seats after suffering a decline in support. She is expected to seek a coalition with the FDP and the Greens. Such a coalition, unprecedented at the national level, is likely to face opposition in the Bundestag when it comes to any major EU reform ideas. The FDP has called for a phasing out of Europe s ESM bailout fund and changes to EU treaties that would allow countries to leave the euro zone. And the far-right, eurosceptic Alternative for Germany is now the third biggest party in the Bundestag, further curbing Merkel s room for maneuver. It may take months before a coalition agreement is signed. But once it is, its contours are strict, effectively setting limits on the chancellor s ability to act. Merkel said Europe would play a role in the coalition negotiations and that it would be important to sound out the FDP. FDP leader Christian Lindner said he would not agree to any coalition that did not promise a change in the German government s direction. While that appeared to set the stage for tough talks, he also offered some hope for Macron, saying when asked about the French president s eurozone budget ideas that the FDP had a strong interest in the strength of France. Elysee officials noted that the FDP had reaffirmed its attachment to the EU and strong Franco-German relations, a point Macron was likely to emphasize in his speech. Macron, the sources said, would propose that the whole EU move forward together, and that those who did not want to do so should not stand in the way of those that did.
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Liberals internal struggle in one clip: .@andersoncooper on the level, .@SenWarren name-calling. #Bannon https://t.co/pX6TzNeRCP William Bairamian (@Bairamian) December 1, 2016
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Both sides would benefit if Israel recognized it cannot permanently occupy Palestinian land and if Palestinians rejected incitement and recognized Israel’s legitimacy, U.S. President Barack Obama told the United Nations on Tuesday. Obama’s efforts to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement have failed over the nearly eight years he has been in the White House, with the latest push by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry collapsing in 2014. U.S. officials have held out the possibility Obama could lay out the rough outlines of a deal - “parameters” in diplomatic parlance - after the Nov. 8 presidential election and before he leaves office in January, but many analysts doubt this would have much effect. “Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel ...(and if) Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land,” Obama said. Speaking at the General Assembly annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations for the last time as president, Obama also said Russia was trying to recover “lost glory” through force. He warned Russia that if it “continues to interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, it may be popular at home, it may fuel nationalist fervor for a time, but over time it is also going to diminish its stature and make its borders less secure.” Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 after months of protests in Kiev ousted pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich. On the international dispute over the South China Sea, Obama said: “A peaceful resolution of disputes offered by law will mean far greater stability then the militarization of a few rocks and reefs.” China claims almost all of the South China Sea, through which ships carrying about $5 trillion in trade pass every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea, which is also believed to be rich in energy resources and fish stocks. In July, an arbitration court in The Hague said China’s claims to the waterway were invalid, in a case was brought by the Philippines. Beijing has refused to recognize the ruling.
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It s not just Trump who s exposing the truth about the hundreds of thousands of muslims being sent to our country where they have no intention of assimilating. Expert Ann Corcoran tells us the truth about why our State Dept. is bringing mostly muslims over here in video below. Over the past several years Syrian Christians have been desperately trying to smuggle themselves out of Syria as ISIS tells them to convert or die.The Obama White House sa far has ignored their desperate plight.It is also widely known that Barack Obama has been absent as thousands of Iraqi and Syria minority populations have been persecuted and slaughtered by ISIS.Today in Las Vegas Donald Trump attacked the Obama administration s policies that have allowed thousands of Syrian Muslims in the country while Christians from Syria suffer.https://youtu.be/KdmTpHE7ZoUIf you re worried Donald may not have his facts straight on this issue, listen to our friend and expert on the US State Department s Refugee Resettlement Program, Ann Corcoran explain how it works. You will be SHOCKED:
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As part of the magazine’s annual The Lives They Lived issue, we invite readers to contribute a photograph and a story of someone close to them who died this year. A number of submissions will be chosen to be published on The New York Times website. All entries must be submitted by Dec. 31, 2016, to be eligible for consideration.
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Residents in Florida who work at a Pizza Hut were told by the manager that workers would be disciplined if they evacuated due to the deadly hurricane that barreled down on the state. A photo quickly circulated on Twitter of a memo posted for employees in one Jacksonville Pizza Hut location, which included a list of instructions for employees according to the Washington Post. To all Team members, the memo begins, then lays out a policy that dictates that employees cannot evacuate more than 24 hours before the storm, and then must return within 72 hours. Failure to show for these shifts, regardless of reason, will be considered a no call/no show and documentation will be issued, it states. After the storm, we need all TM s available to get the store up and running and serve our communities as needed. Pizza Hut wants its minimum wage employees to risk their lives for corporate profits. (@KatiSipp) pic.twitter.com/r8rwb3O7I6 Jacobin (@jacobinmag) September 11, 2017We re not sure how drivers can deliver pizza during or following a storm, even for a whopping $7.91 per hour, which is totally worth risking your life for. After all, you re a team member. Obviously, a backlash ensued on Twitter, probably because most people don t want to see Pizza Hut employees die.@pizzahut why do you threaten workers who flee Irma?This is sick! brucewayne (@centurysavior) September 11, 2017@pizzahut You guys are closed on Christmas, but sending delivery drivers to their death for a hurricane? What's up with that? Avery (@Avyrey) September 11, 2017This is sick Serena Vega (@Serena_vegaYT) September 11, 2017Because the first thing I'm concerned about in a Cat 5 storm is whether or not I can get a stuffed crust pizza delivered. Josva Oedon ?? (@gtch603) September 11, 2017Pizza Hut has been taking a lot of flak and issued a statement. We are uncompromising in our commitment to the safety and well-being of our team members, the statement begins. All locations in the path of Irma are closed and will remain closed until local authorities deem the area safe. We absolutely do not have a policy that dictates when team members can leave or return from a disaster, and the manager who posted this letter did not follow company guidelines. We can also confirm that the local franchise operator has addressed this situation with the manager involved, it concludes while confirming that the manager of the store did indeed tell his or her employees that they would be disciplined for fleeing from a deadly hurricane.But not all Pizza Hut restaurants are bad. A Pizza Hut in the Houston area participated in relief efforts and handed out free pizza pies to Hurricane Harvey victims. One Pizza Hut manager, Shayda Habib, took it upon herself to use a kayak in order to deliver free pizza to people who were stuck in flooded homes. By the way, Ms. Habib is pregnant.Photo via Ulrich Baumgarten/Getty Images.
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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - Police in North Carolina sought leads on Monday about a fire they believe was deliberately set at a local Republican headquarters over the weekend and a graffiti message warning the political party to “leave town or else.” Investigators are treating the incident as arson. The fire caused heavy damage to the Orange County Republican Party’s office in Hillsborough, North Carolina, about 40 miles (65 km) from the state capital of Raleigh. “This is political terrorism,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party. Both Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton condemned the attack. North Carolina is considered a battleground state that could play a pivotal role in the Nov. 8 presidential contest. “We are taking this incident very seriously and have significant resources at the local, state and federal level committed to this investigation,” Hillsborough Police Chief Duane Hampton said in a statement on Monday, asking anyone with information to come forward. Hillsborough police said a bottle containing flammable material ignited after being thrown through a front window of the headquarters between midnight and about 9 a.m. on Sunday, when a nearby business owner reported the crime. “Someone has firebombed through the window (of) the Republican party up here beside me and sprayed all over the side of my building, ‘Nazi Republicans leave town or else,’” the caller told a 911 operator in a call released on Monday. A swastika also was spray-painted on the neighboring building, police said. They said no one was in the party office at the time, but the substance burned furniture and charred campaign signs. White House spokesman Josh Earnest praised the efforts of self-described Democrats who raised about $13,000 in an online GoFundMe campaign to help Republicans reopen the office. “That’s consistent with the values that we lift up in this country,” he said at a news briefing. “There is no justification for the use of violence to advance a political agenda.” In a tweet on Sunday, Clinton said she was grateful no one was hurt in the attack, which she called “horrific and unacceptable.” Trump blamed his Democratic opponent’s supporters for the crime. “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina just firebombed our office in Orange County because we are winning,” he said on Twitter. Registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans in Orange County, according to elections board data. Republicans said the incident took them by surprise but left them undeterred as they started clean-up efforts at their strip-mall headquarters and worked in a bus being used as a temporary mobile office. “We’re not going to be intimated; we’re not going to be cowed,” Woodhouse said. On Monday, the Arizona Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix was evacuated for about two hours after a bomb threat was left by phone. Police said nothing was found during a search of the premises. Party officials said the call was received from an adult male at about 3:15 p.m. local time saying there was a bomb in the building and for occupants to get out.
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It s time for someone to tell Obama that Iran is not an ally The Justice Department is drawing up an indictment that lays blame for the 2013 cyber-attack against a dam in Westchester squarely on hackers working for the Iranian government, a law enforcement source confirmed to The Post.The FBI has been investigating since the discovery of the breach, with the indictment expected to be handed down soon, the source said.The hackers were unable to seize control of the Bowman Avenue Dam in the suburban town of Rye, but they were able to access an unspecified system, sources said.At a time when cyber-intrusions of government agencies are becoming more frequent, the breach at the small dam led to great concern within the Obama administration, sources said.Over recent years, hackers have breached systems in the White House, State Department, FBI and US Postal Service, to name a few. Via:NYP
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Donald Trump is desperately trying to shift focus away from his Russia scandal by accusing President Obama of wiretapping him, and Joe Scarborough just slammed him for it.On Saturday, Trump threw a Twitter tantrum claiming that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower after reading a conspiracy theory on Breitbart. Trump did not offer a single shred of evidence to back up his accusations and still has not done so.Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017Again, Trump is repeating something he read on Breitbart and he offered ZERO proof.On Sunday morning, Trump released a statement declaring that he won t comment on the Russia scandal any further until Congress investigates Obama.In short, Trump is acting like a petulant child who holds their breath until they get their way.Joe Scarborough is absolutely shocked that Trump would make such accusations against a former president and proceeded to trash him on Twitter for disgracing the office and the nation.Did Trump trash the 44th President and slime American democracy based on a conspiracy theory pushed on talk radio and website? That s sick. pic.twitter.com/41vwtB9QNS Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 5, 2017Did Steve Bannon slip the offending article into Trump s hands to set the president swirling into a rage? That toxic mix undermines America. pic.twitter.com/1BhxE30pzc Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 5, 2017Trump is not about the Republican Party. Trump is about Trump. https://t.co/1RYvBYwMUD Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 5, 2017This is a serious accusation Trump is leveling against President Obama and with no evidence to back up his claims this amounts to slander. President Obama should file a lawsuit against Trump and if Republicans start a witch hunt against President Obama instead of investigating Trump s Russia scandal they will have demonstrated that they are incapable of doing their jobs and that they are more interested in protecting themselves and their power than they are about justice and America s reputation.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping urged cooperation with the United States on trade and investment on Thursday, inviting President Donald Trump to visit China in a cordial start to their first meeting likely to broach sensitive security and commercial issues. Trump has said he wants to raise concerns about China’s trade practices and press Xi to do more to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions during his two-day visit to the Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, though no major deals on either issue are expected. The two sides should promote the “healthy development of bilateral trade and investment” and advance talks on a bilateral investment agreement, Xi said, according to a statement on China’s Foreign Ministry website. “We have a thousand reasons to get China-U.S. relations right, and not one reason to spoil the China-U.S. relationship,” Xi told Trump. Trump accepted Xi’s invitation to China later this year, state news agency Xinhua news agency cited officials as saying on Friday. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, joined Trump and his wife, Melania, at a long table in an ornate candle-lit private dining room festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces, where they dined on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak. Trump, a New York real estate magnate before he ran for office, joked before dinner: “We’ve had a long discussion already, and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. But we have developed a friendship - I can see that - and I think long term we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it.” The fanfare over the summit on Thursday was overshadowed by another pressing foreign policy issue: the U.S. response to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. As Trump and Xi were wrapping up dinner, U.S. forces fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase from which it said the chemical weapons attack was launched this week, an escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria that swiftly drew sharp criticism from Russia. In Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry urged all parties in Syria to find a political settlement. Trump and Xi were expected to get into more detailed discussions about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday, concluding their summit with a working lunch. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country’s manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory in November and Trump wants to deliver for them. “We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That’s one of the things we are going to be talking about,” Trump told reporters ahead of the meeting. The bilateral investment treaty mentioned by Xi, talks on which began during former president George W. Bush’s administration and resumed under Barack Obama, has received little attention since Trump took office. Trump is still finding his footing in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on “the principle of reciprocity.” He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both work at the White House, also were among the dinner guests. The summit brings together two leaders who could not seem more different: the often stormy Trump, prone to angry tweets, and Xi, outwardly calm, measured and tightly scripted, with no known social media presence. What worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. “Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China,” a Chinese official said. The most urgent problem facing Trump and Xi is how to persuade nuclear-armed North Korea to halt unpredictable behavior like missile test launches that have heightened tensions in South Korea and Japan. North Korea is working to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Trump has threatened to use trade to try to force China to exert influence over Pyongyang. “I think China will be stepping up,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. Beijing says its influence is limited and that it is doing all it can. The White House is reviewing options to pressure Pyongyang economically and militarily, including “secondary sanctions” against Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with Pyongyang. A long-standing option of pre-emptive strikes remains on the table, but despite the tougher recent U.S. talk, the internal review “de-emphasizes direct military action,” the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts believe any military action would likely provoke severe North Korean retaliation and massive casualties in South Korea and Japan and among U.S. troops stationed there. On trade, U.S. labor leaders say Trump needs to take a direct, unambiguous tone in his talks with Xi. “President Trump needs to come away from the meeting with concrete deliverables that will restore production and employment here in the U.S. in those sectors that have been ravaged by China’s predatory and protectionist practices,” said Holly Hart, legislative director for the United Steelworkers union. A U.S. administration official told Reuters that Washington expects to have to use legal tools to fight for U.S. companies, such as pursuing World Trade Organization lawsuits. “I don’t expect a grand bargain on trade. I think what you are going to see is that the president makes very clear to Xi and publicly what we expect on trade,” a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Trump has often complained Beijing undervalues its currency to boost trade, but his administration looks unlikely to formally label China a currency manipulator in the near term - a designation that could come with penalties.
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2013: 7,157 [4]
Virtually no one in the Zionist media is asking for the perpetrators to be trialed and punished accordingly. But there is more.
Scholar Rebecca Gordon, who has corresponded with this writer last summer, has recounted in her meticulously documented study Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States : “When I had occasion in Jordan in 2006 to meet an Iraqi sheik who had been tortured by U.S. forces, his first question to our little group was whether all American women were ‘promiscuous sluts,’ like the ones who had tormented him by forcing him to look at their naked breasts during his detention…The psychological trauma of sexual humiliation had damaged this man sufficiently so that polite conversation with American women, even those who were likely to be sympathetic, was beyond him.” [5]
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Gordon discusses one case after another and describes what happened when politicians deliberately abandoned the moral order and pursued perpetual wars in the Middle East at any cost. “Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped” was just a fair game. [6] “Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture” was also quite common. [7] Detainees were also sodomized with chemical lights and broom sticks. [8]
Gordon writes on the very first page: “For many years, the United States had secretly funded research on torture at U.S. and Canadian universities. One product of this research was the Central Intelligence Agency’s KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual with its sections covering ‘non-coercive’ and ‘coercive’ techniques, first printed in 1963…. “The United States had also provided covert training and support to torture regimes in other countries around the world—from Greece to Uruguay, Chile to El Salvador, Indonesia to Vietnam. The Phoenix Program, implemented during the Vietnam War by U.S. armed forces and the CIA, involved the torture and deaths of tens of thousands of Vietnamese, as part of the U.S. counterinsurgency project designed to break the will of the Viet Cong. In the testimony before Congress, military intelligence officer K. Milton Osborne provided some details of the methods used: “‘The use of the insertion of the 6-inch dowel into the 6-inch canal of one of my detainees’ ears and the tapping through the brain until he dies. The starving to death of a Vietnamese woman who was suspected of being part of the local political education cadre in one of the local villages. They simply starved her to death in one of the hooches at that very counterintelligence headquarters. “‘There were other methods of operation which they used for interrogation, such as the use of electronic gear such as sealed telephone attached to the genitals of both the men and women’s vagina and the man’s testicles, and wind the mechanism and create an electrical charge and shock them into submission.’” [9]
Between 1968 and 1971, the Phoenix Program was responsible for torturing and killing more than twenty thousand people, [10] many of whom had nothing to do with terrorism. These were not isolated cases. The CIA conducted these essentially diabolical operations “on several continents.” [11]
If history is not enough, what about the recent charge by Amnesty International that the US-led coalition in Syria has killed at least 300 civilians? [12] And what about Saudi Arabia (a US ally) “deliberately targeting impoverished Yemen’s farms and agricultural industry”? [13] Stephen Kinzer, a visiting scholar at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, has recently written: “Anyone who believes the United States is not fighting enough wars in the Middle East can be happy this week. We have just plunged into another one. Twice in recent days, cruise missiles fired from an American destroyer have rained down on Yemen. The Pentagon, a practiced master of Orwellian language, calls this bombing ‘limited self-defense.’ “Since 2002, our drone attacks have reportedly killed more than 500 Yemenis, including at least 65 civilians. We are also supplying weapons and intelligence to Saudi Arabia, which has killed thousands of Yemenis in bombing raids over the last year and a half — including last week’s attack on a funeral in which more than 100 mourners were killed.” [14]
So the logic is pretty simple: the New World Order ideology does not and cannot make sense at all. And if we have to fight ISIS, then we have to support the Assad government; if we have to support the Assad government, then the whole idea that Assad is a “brutal ruler” loses its political force; if that idea goes down the tube, then the New World Order propaganda against Assad is categorically false. In short, we can ignore flaming Neocon Charles Krauthammer when he said last November that Assad is a “dictator and a destroyer.” [15] This brings us to another vitally important issue: New World Order agents spent millions upon millions of tax dollars supporting ISIS or al-Nusra in Syria for absolutely nothing. Barnes-Dacey and Levy concluded their article by saying, “Western leaders have defined ISIS as a threat to their national security. That should now translate into a more nuanced Syria policy, including working with Iran and encouraging the nascent Saudi-Iranian opening.” [16]
I simply could not hold my laughter. For decades, New World Order agents in America and Israel have hammered the spurious idea that Iran is a terrorist state and that it wants to “wipe Israel off the map”; [17] they also spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to destabilize the country both politically and ideologically.
Remember how Obama “secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran ’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyber-weapons”? [18]
Remember how New World Order agents in America and Israel developed Stuxnet specifically to attack Iran, a country that has zero nuclear weapons? [19] The New York Times itself acknowledged then that the cyberattack was “aided by Israel.” [20]
In the same vein, the Washington Post reported that Stuxnet was the “work of U.S. and Israeli experts.” [21] And it was developed way back in 2007 .
Remember how Bush also made false accusations against Iran and even trained the terrorist group the MEK right here in America? [22] Remember how he worked with Israel to perform a covert operation in Iran? “Mr. Kissinger, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you.”
So, all the tax dollars that were spent on destabilizing Iran for more than a decade was a waste. At the same time, decent American military hospitals continued to lack funding:
“many of the hospitals are so small and the trickle of patients so thin that it compromises the ability of doctors and nurses to capably diagnose and treat serious illnesses, much less take on surgeries …
“Two-thirds of the hospitals last year served 30 or fewer inpatients a day — less than a third as many as the typical civilian hospital. Nine served 10 or fewer — so few that Dr. Lucian L. Leape, a leading patient-safety expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, ‘I think they should be outlawed.’” [23]
Obviously New World Order agents don’t care either about military hospitals and even soldiers. In fact, they don’t care about anyone at all. They just care about spreading their essentially diabolical system. Soldiers are just pawns. As Henry Kissinger diabolically declared, military men are “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” [24]
Once those “dumb, stupid animals” can no longer be of service to NWO agents, then they just dump them. They have already dumped at least 360,000 thousand veterans, who “may have brain injuries.” [25]
[1] Julien Barnes-Dacey and Daniel Levy, “To Beat ISIS, Focus on Syria,” NY Times , September 1, 2014.
[2] In 2011, the Pentagon declared that the so-called “war on terror” could cost at least $5 trillion. “The $5 Trillion War on Terror,” Time , June 29, 2011.
[3] For a recent study on similar issues, see Rebecca Gordon, Mainstream Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[4] Dan Murphy, “Iraq Violence More Than Doubles in 2013: Is Country Headed Off the Cliff?,” Christian Science Monitor , December 20, 2013.
[5] Rebecca Gordon, Mainstream Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 53.
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Poor Hillary, she s always the victim of some Right-Wing conspiracy When members of Congress are not allowed to see the contents of the emails Hillary had on her private UNSECURED server that s a pretty big deal!The government intelligence in Hillary Clinton s private emails as secretary of state is sometimes considered so sensitive that some congressmen have been hindered in their ability to even read them, a new report Thursday says.The material in the emails is classified at a level above top secret, Fox reported, meaning that some lawmakers have been required to sign new agreements not to reveal their contents. The situation highlights the sensitivity of the information that is being pored over, despite Clinton s long habit of downplaying their significance.A level above top secret is considered subject to special access programs, requiring the additional security because of the increased sensitivity.Congressional reviewers who scoured the SAP information in Clinton s emails already had Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented clearance the highest level of security clearance but were required to sign extra non-disclosure agreements.Last week, Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote senior lawmakers to advise them that several dozen additional classified emails have been identified including specific intelligence from special access programs. In a later interview with National Public Radio, Clinton downplayed the IG letter and claimed it was politically biased. This seems to me to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign, it s another leak, she told the network. I m just going to leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified. Via: UK Daily Mail
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NAIROBI (Reuters) - A United States citizen working in South Sudan as a freelance journalist was among 19 people killed on Saturday during fighting between government troops and rebels in Yei River state, the rebels and the military said. Christopher Allen, who worked for various news outlets, was killed in heavy fighting in the town of Kaya. South Sudan has been convulsed by conflict since late 2013, pitting President Salva Kiir s troops against those of rebel leader Riek Machar. On the ground, about 16 (bodies) have been found around the defensive position of the SPLA including this white man, Santo Domic Chol, a military spokesman, told Reuters. Three government soldiers were also killed, he said. The rebels identified him as Allen, who had been embedded with them for the past week. We are sad for his family. He came here to tell our story , said one rebel who knew Allen. He asked not to be named but said Allen had been in the middle of the fighting and wearing a jacket marked PRESS. Chol said the rebels had attacked an army base in Kaya but they were repulsed after an hour-long fight. The U.S. government did not respond immediately when Reuters sought comment. The country spiraled into civil war, with fighting along ethnic lines, after Kiir sacked Machar in late 2013. A peace accord was signed in August 2015 and Machar returned to the capital in April last year to share power with Kiir, before the deal fell apart less than three months later and Machar and his supporters fled the capital. The conflict has forced about 4 million people to flee their homes. Uganda currently hosts more than a million South Sudanese refugees, while over 330,000 have fled to neighboring Ethiopia.
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The American taxpayers are on the hook for less than predicted but this is still huge! It was Obama s green energy scam with companies like Solyndra that was like flushing millions and billions down the toilet Taxpayers are on the hook for more than $2.2 billion in expected costs from the federal government s energy loan guarantee programs, according to a new audit Monday that suggests the controversial projects may not pay for themselves, as officials had promised.Nearly $1 billion in loans have already defaulted under the Energy Department program, which included the infamous Solyndra stimulus project and dozens of other green technology programs the Obama administration has approved, totaling nearly about $30 billion in taxpayer backing, the Government Accountability Office reported in its audit.The hefty $2.2 billion price tag is actually an improvement over initial estimates, which found the government was poised to face $4 billion in losses from the loan guarantees. But as the projects have come to fruition, they ve performed better, leaving taxpayers with a shrinking though still sizable liability. As of November 2014, DOE estimates the credit subsidy cost of the loans and loan guarantees in its portfolio that is, the total expected net cost over the life of the loans to be $2.21 billion, including $807 million for loans that have defaulted, the GAO said in its report to Congress.The green program loan guarantees were created in a 2005 law and boosted by the 2009 stimulus. The first applications were approved in 2009, and through 2014 the Obama administration had issued some 38 loans and guarantees, covering 34 projects ranging from nuclear power plants to fuel-efficient vehicles to solar panels and wind-generation technology.Read more: Washington Times
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Four days after the explosive Donald J. Trump “Access Hollywood” tape was made public, Billy Bush was negotiating his exit from NBC. Mr. Bush and NBC are working out the terms of his departure from “Today,” which may come in the next few days, according to two people briefed on the plans. It would be a swift fall for Mr. Bush after a brief tenure as a host in the 9 a. m. hour of the show. He joined “Today” this summer. In the videotape from 2005, which was filmed during the taping of an “Access Hollywood” segment, Mr. Bush laughs and goads Mr. Trump as he speaks about women in vulgar and lewd terms, claiming he tried to have sex with the woman who was then Mr. Bush’s . Mr. Bush, 44, apologized on Friday evening, and throughout the weekend NBC officials maintained they had no plans to discipline him. As late as Sunday morning, the plan was for Mr. Bush go on “Today” on Monday and address the controversy, saying something along the lines of the statement he released on Friday, in which he said he was “ashamed. ’’ But the backlash was significant. Mr. Bush’s Facebook page was deluged with thousands of angry comments. Two women that Mr. Bush and Mr. Trump discussed in the tape — the former “Access Hollywood” host Nancy O’Dell and the “Days of Our Lives” actress Arianne Zucker — released statements over the weekend expressing their disappointment. Given the tape’s incredible visibility, it was likely that Mr. Bush would remain part of the news cycle for the near future. “Today” is in competition with ABC’s “Good Morning America” and the fallout from the videotape could have affected NBC’s ratings in the morning hours, particularly among women, who represent a significant portion of the show’s viewership. By Sunday night, NBC had suspended Mr. Bush. Noah Oppenheim, the executive in charge of “Today,” told his staff in an email, “there is simply no excuse for Billy’s language and behavior on that tape. ” NBC News officials also learned in recent days that at the Olympic Games this summer, Mr. Bush bragged to some staff members about a videotape involving bad behavior by Mr. Trump. The New York Post first reported this on Monday night. “Access Hollywood” personalities like Natalie Morales, Kit Hoover and Nina Parker have offered Mr. Bush support this week (“The Billy that I know — and a lot of people would say this — has the biggest heart of anybody and he is a good person,” Ms. Hoover said) but few other people have defended him. Complicating matters, Mr. Bush did not have a particularly warm relationship with many of the other stars of “Today. ” That point was underscored in August when Mr. Bush landed what looked to be the scoop of the Olympics: The first interview with the swimmer Ryan Lochte as he described being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro. As Mr. Lochte’s story disintegrated in the following days, Mr. Bush was hesitant to condemn him. During a segment of “Today,” Mr. Bush contended that Mr. Lochte “lied about some details. ” Al Roker quickly stepped in to dress down his colleague, saying pointedly, “Billy, not some details,” before adding, “He lied. ”
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions acknowledged on Tuesday he was aware of contact between Donald Trump’s election campaign and Russian intermediaries, again modifying a previous statement about the extent of connections to Moscow. The comment by Sessions to a House of Representatives panel did not reveal any new link between the Trump team and Russia but it was another example of the top U.S. law enforcement official offering a different version of events as lawmakers try to work out if the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he now recalls a meeting last year with then-candidate Trump where a campaign adviser said he had connections with Moscow and could help arrange a Trump meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I do now recall” the meeting where adviser George Papadopoulos made the proposal, Sessions said, “but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he said during the meeting.” Sessions has previously told Congress he was unaware of any Trump campaign contacts with Russia, leading Democrats on Tuesday to accuse him of lying under oath. “I will not accept and reject accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie,” Sessions told the panel. Accusations of collusion with Russia during the election campaign have dogged Trump’s first 10 months in office. Sessions’ testimony appears likely to keep the controversy over Russia boiling as Special Counsel Robert Mueller accelerates his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Since Mueller’s probe began, numerous Trump advisors have acknowledged interactions with Russian intermediaries. They include Donald Trump Jr., former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russian representatives. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election to help Republican Trump’s campaign. The Kremlin denies that and Trump says there was no collusion between his campaign and Russian officials. Sessions faced tough questioning from committee Democrats on Tuesday. Representative Hakeem Jeffries accused Sessions of hypocrisy, saying Sessions, while he was a U.S. attorney, had prosecuted a police officer for perjury after the officer corrected his testimony. “The Attorney General of the United States should not be held to a different standard than the young police officer whose life you ruined,” Jefferies said. That prompted an angry backlash from Sessions. “Nobody! Nobody - not you or anyone else, should be prosecuted, not me. . .for answering a question the way I did in this hearing. I have always tried to answer the questions fairly and accurately.” During the March 2016 campaign meeting where Russia was discussed, Sessions shut down Papadopoulos’ idea of engaging with Russian contacts, according to a source familiar with the matter. Sessions said that was the version of events he recalled. “After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government, for that matter,” Sessions said on Tuesday. After that meeting, Sessions said, he did not have “any further knowledge” of additional contacts between the campaign and Russian officials. It was not the first time that Sessions, who was a senior Trump campaign aide and Republican senator, has revised his comments about contact between the campaign and Russia. He said during January’s confirmation hearing that he was unaware of such communications. News reports then emerged showing that Sessions had himself met Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at least twice in 2016. Under pressure, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. He told reporters he was “honest and correct” in his response in the hearing, although he acknowledged he should have mentioned he had met with the ambassador in his role as a senator. Sessions also said on Tuesday he did not challenge a statement by another campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, that he told Sessions in a brief encounter that he was about to leave for Moscow. But he said he had no memory of that conversation. The hearing was starkly divided. Majority Republicans demanded that Sessions appoint a second special counsel to investigate a series of issues involving Trump’s election rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, including the sale of a uranium company to Russia while she was U.S. secretary of state. Sessions was cautious on that score. When Republican Representative Jim Jordan detailed what the controversy “looks like” to him, the attorney general responded: “‘Looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel.” Earlier, Sessions confirmed that he has asked senior federal prosecutors to look into the potential appointment of a second special counsel. Democrats say that five congressional committees have looked into the uranium sale and found nothing improper.
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An ongoing demonstration taking place outside of Anacortes, WA. The protestors created a blockade on the BNSF Railway tracks, which lead to two oil refineries. One of which is owned by Shell, the other is owned by Tesoro. The protest began on Friday, as a part of a global wave of protests against the continued use of fossil fuels. The international break free protest demands that the world immediately transition to a fossil fuel-free energy system. Thousands of people all over the world have come together to protest and to take direct actions against fossil fuel companies have taken place on six continents over the course of two weeks. Last summer we stopped Shell s Arctic drilling plans, now we re taking our biggest actions yet. The movement for climate justice is growing and getting bolder by the day. A fossil-free Northwest isn t a fantasy, it s inevitable; if we start now, the change can be fair and rational, and we can demonstrate our leadership, says organizer Ahmed Gaya said in a press release.Below is a video that shows the very beginning of the encampment.In addition to the blockade, thousands of activists in Washington staged marched in protests and took part in a massive flotilla of kayaks holding banners and signs demanding an immediate transformation to a 100% renewable energy system.https://www.facebook.com/BackboneCampaign/photos/ms.c.eJwzNDA0NTczMTY0tzAyNzAyMNMzRIiYmGKImJmiiRiZYerCUGMOEgEAhxkVfg~-~-.bps.a.10157643178105206.1073741894.19984125205/10157643178270206/?type=3&theaterHere is a photo of the police who broke up the encampment:https://www.facebook.com/BackboneCampaign/photos/a.10157647965685206.1073741897.19984125205/10157647965990206/?type=3&theater On Saturday, about 1,500 people took part in a blockade against bomb trains in Albany, New York.I'm in Albany, NY to support the campaign to @BanBombTrains as part of #breakfree2016. Find out more @350! pic.twitter.com/LbYNha5bkt Finn Harries (@FinnHarries) May 14, 2016In Germany, over 4,000 people took part in an action that shut down one of the largest coal plants in Europe for 48 hours. Activists in Germany also disrupted a massive coal mining operation.Here s video footage of the actions in Germany:Climate change threatens every nation that happens to be on planet Earth though it s effects will not be felt by all equally. Fossil fuel lobbyists have hijacked the governments of the world in order to prevent them from doing anything that might hurt their short term profits, no matter what it costs them and everyone else on Earth in the long run.That s why we need people to rise up and take bold action to encourage politicians to stand up to corporate lobbyists, and to hit corporations that don t give a d*mn about the average person as hard as they can. Another world is not only possible, it s necessary.Featured image from Trip Jennings | Survival Media Agency Creative Commons 2.0 via Flickr
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LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will only detail how big a divorce settlement Britain is willing to pay the EU when the bloc gives a commitment to moving talks forward, according to a plan rubber-stamped by even her most pro-Brexit ministers. The Brexit bill has become one of several hurdles to talks to unravel more than 40 years of union, with London reticent to offer too much too soon on what officials consider to be one of its strongest bargaining chips. In Brussels, British media speculation that May has won the backing of Brexit hardliners to offer more cash prompted talk among EU diplomats that a deal to unblock talks on future trade relations could be in the making ahead of a crunch Brussels summit in three weeks. At a meeting on Monday, May s Brexit committee - made up of some of her top ministers - backed the long-held strategy that Britain would honor commitments made when it was a member of the European Union. But the government will only offer any specifics when the bloc s negotiators give a commitment that talks will move to a discussion of the future relationship. We are ready to move onto phase two, to see those talks about a deep and special partnership with the EU for the future, a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU, May said on Tuesday. I think that s in the interests of the UK and in the interests of the remaining EU-27. I think it s also important that the UK and the EU step forward together, she added, a turn of phrase a source said expressed her desire for coordination. In public, Brussels is standing firm on the need for Britain to first make clear not a concrete euros and cents offer but a commitment to pay a share of EU spending for some items after Brexit - one of three key conditions the EU has set for opening trade talks. Asked if the EU was ready to give a promise to start those talks as soon as London offers more money, European Commission deputy head Frans Timmermans told CNN: I hear them saying that. But as far as the EU27 is concerned, ... if we tackle the three issues ... if we deal with that satisfactorily, we can move to the next stage. And that s been crystal clear since Day One. Nonetheless, EU negotiators are willing to help May with at least the appearance of cutting a deal. They could help fudge the amount of cash being handed over. And the EU already has an outline of a transition and free trade accord, which May could point to as something she had secured in exchange. We are ready to present the exit bill in a way that would make it easier for the Brits to sell at home, one diplomat said. He added that EU officials had looked at whether Britain might forgo its roughly 50-percent rebate on EU budget payments during a two-year transition period after Brexit, so reducing the gross amount Britain would otherwise hand over in advance. With only 16 months until Britain leaves the bloc, May is under increasing pressure not only from EU officials to move on the money, but also by businesses to provide certainty by early next year so they can make investment decisions. But she has a tightrope to walk. Many in her governing Conservative Party want Britain to quit the talks, feeling the EU is holding the country hostage over money, which they want to spend at home rather than abroad. Her spokesman said no figures were discussed at Monday s meeting and other ministers gave no details of what was discussed. Local media reported that she could increase the sum to 40 billion pounds ($53 billion), more than double the initial estimated offer of 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion). The Commission has cited a figure of 60 billion euros but EU officials have long said that is up for negotiation. For many in May s own party, however, the suggestion of any increase in how much Britain will pay at a time when talks had failed to move forward for five months was unpalatable. I need to be able to look my voters in the eye and be able to say that I have backed a deal that is in the interests of Britain, Conservative lawmaker Andrew Bridgen told Reuters. If I can t do that, I will vote against a deal and we will go to WTO rules of trade, rules with which we already trade with most of the world successfully.
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Over the years, when we Americans have gotten ourselves into trouble, there have been many jokes made by the British people that essentially say that they should never have given Americans our freedom. This was all good-natured ribbing; after all, Britain is one of our closest allies. However, thanks to the election of one Donald J. Trump, no one is laughing now.Prince Charles decided to without mentioning his name, of course take a shot at Donald Trump during a recent speech to the British public. He warned of the dangers of going after certain segments of people based upon their religious beliefs and reminded people that this is exactly what happened in the 1930s, namely with the rise of Hitler and the eventual execution of the Jewish people. The Prince said, in part: We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith. All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s. Of course, we all know of the deeply disturbing proposals Trump has made with regards to American Muslims, with the suggestions of a Muslim ban and a registry of Muslims seemingly still on the table, and many seemed to see this as the Prince s way of warning against those dangerous and bigoted ideas. This sort of thing is right out of Adolf Hitler s playbook, and anyone who cannot see that definitely needs to wake up. Prince Charles continued: The story of the Nativity unfolds with the fleeing of the holy family to escape violent persecution and to have similar compassion for people fleeing persecution in their homelands today. Of course, the bigots in Trump s brainwashed camp will never understand the historical parallels; after all, many of his supporters are incredibly ignorant and bigoted or even outright white supremacists who sincerely believe that anyone who is not straight, white, and Christian SHOULD face discrimination and persecution. Sad, but true. This is somehow the America we live in.Watch the video below via BBC:Featured image via Chris Jackson/Getty Images
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Twenty-two of the 37 corporations nominated for a prestigious State Department award — and six of the eight ultimate winners — while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton family foundation.
The published donor records of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation don't give exact dates or amounts of its contributors, but it is possible to create a general timeline for when many of the corporations donated and when they were either nominated or selected for the award.
Silicon Valley giant Cisco was the biggest foundation contributor nominated in 2009, giving the Clinton charity between $1 million and $5 million. The company then won the award in 2010 when eight of the 12 finalists and two of the three winners had donated to the foundation.
The other Clinton contributor to win that year, candy-maker Mars, Inc., had given between $25,000 and $50,000. Coca-Cola was the most generous foundation donor to be honored as a finalist in 2010, giving a $5-10 million donation.
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How do you deal with an opponent immune to the truth, whose appeal is atavistic rather than rational? How do you pick off enough of his constituents and prevent him from making inroads into yours? In Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies face a candidate for whom there is no precedent in presidential politics. It remains unclear whether Trump can be brought to his knees the way Mitt Romney was by ads like “Coffin” and “Firms,” which alleged that Romney’s investment firm, Bain Capital, closed factories and shipped jobs abroad. In April, during the primary campaign, Politico reported that Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster currently working for the “super PAC” Priorities USA Action, contended in a phone interview that Trump’s immunity to criticism worked only in the primaries among Republican voters: “Trump is not Teflon. ” Among all voters, Garin argued, “a majority has come to the conclusion that Trump is unfit for the job and that he would represent a significant risk as president. ” Polling and focus group testing, Garin said, have shown that one ad produced by Priorities, “Grace,” has been highly effective. It shows Grace, who was born with spina bifida, her parents, Chris and Lauren Glaros, and a clip of Trump ridiculing a disabled New York Times reporter. The ad concludes with the father on camera: I asked Garin, along with other strategists and political observers, how they would respond to a long list of Trump’s rambling, theatrical promises, which he would, in fact, be unable to keep. Just a partial list of these includes refusing to defend America’s NATO allies, returning 11 million undocumented immigrants to their home countries, saving $300 billion annually on a prescription drug program that spends only $78 billion a year, nationalizing concealed weapons permits and vowing that “If I become president, we’re gonna be saying Merry Christmas at every store . .. You can leave Happy Holidays at the corner. ” Should Democrats, I inquired, point to the infeasibility of Trump’s proposals and the damaging results of any attempts on his part to follow through? That approach would not work, Garin said, because voters, including many of Trump’s supporters, don’t really “believe he will build a wall, or get Mexico to pay for a wall” — they have already discounted many of Trump’s assertions as hyperbole. “The real case has more to do with his character and temperament,” Garin said. “The biggest concern is that he is temperamentally unsuited to lead the country. ” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with the Clinton campaign, argued in an email that there were risks in attacking specific Trump proposals as unrealistic: In an interesting warning to Democrats, Arthur Lupia, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, wrote me: Making a related argument, a Democratic strategist who sought anonymity in order to protect his relationship with the Clinton campaign, wrote me: This strategist cited the futility of accusing Trump of hyping crime: Democrats have to negotiate a tricky path in communicating their candidate’s “identification with the main concerns of many of Trump’s voters” on such issues as immigration, the strategist argued. This empathy has to be Robert Borosage, of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group, described the problem of attempting to refute Trump : Clinton’s task, in Borosage’s view, is not an easy one for a politician who has been in the national spotlight for more than a quarter of a century: “H. R. C. ’s challenge is to claim the future — one that is different than the past,” Borosage wrote. In his speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Bill Clinton sought to address the issue Borosage raises of how Hillary Clinton can plausibly “claim the future. ” The former president referred to his wife’s record of making “positive changes in people’s lives” and noted that his wife is a “woman who has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. ” Borosage brought up a second point, that Hillary Clinton, who has campaigned on the theme that she will protect and enhance the Obama legacy, needs to jump an additional hurdle: “Her biggest challenge is to be different than Obama — bolder, challenging Wall Street, corporate trade and tax deals. ” Borosage’s argument — that the Trump campaign is based on attitudes and ingrained belief systems, not on a set of policies — points to the difficulty of addressing Trump’s rhetoric. Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton and the author of “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Age of Economic Integration” pointed out in an email, for example, that Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported in July 2015 that numerous studies These facts are unlikely to dissuade voters convinced that immigrants are taking jobs, committing crimes and undermining American values. From their point of view, any crime by an illegal immigrant is one crime too many. There are many Democrats who believe that taking on Trump does not require nuance or calculation. “When 60 percent of voters say they’ll never consider voting for you and you have a 29 percent approval rating, you’ve got a serious image problem,” Jim Jordan, who managed John Kerry’s presidential campaign and served as executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, wrote me in an email. “Trump is already gushing blood. This is just blocking and tackling for the Clinton folks. ” Jordan argues that “the two real imperatives” for Democrats are 1) “to deny Trump the ‘I’ ’ space,” and 2) “to keep hammering on how bizarre and dangerous he is to America and our interests around the world. His weird on Putin and his invitation this week to Russia to invade the Baltics seem like good places to start. ” Despite Jordan’s confidence in Democratic presidential prospects, at the moment Trump has moved ahead of Clinton by 1. 1 percent in the RealClearPolitics aggregation of recent polling. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N. Y. U. told me in an email that Democrats need to adopt a more subtle strategy in dealing with Trump. This, Haidt argues, is because the The elephant “really runs the show,” Haidt said, Translating this analytic approach to the 2016 election, in Haidt’s view, means that To counter Trump, Democrats have to get into the electorate’s automatic, intuitive and unconscious level of responding to events before attempting a critique based on reasoned argument, according to Haidt. To do this, he wrote, the goal should be to portray Trump in ways that conflict with “deep moral intuitions about fairness versus cheating and exploitation. ” And how do you do that? The next step is to present a vision of Trump that violates “moral intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity:” On Monday night in her speech, Michelle Obama tapped into this theme when she described “the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children. ” The first lady declared: Haidt put it another way: I could not have said it better myself. Despite the overt chaos, the competing narratives of the fall campaign — each side’s attempt to define the other as weak or crazy and itself as tough and dependable — are clearly emerging from the conventions. The question is whether the Democratic Party can get emotional enough or reach deep enough into our brains to counter the sheer id of Trump’s primeval appeal.
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The Trump administration had proposed $1 billion for the wall in a spending bill, which if passed by Congress and signed into will by Friday, will prevent a government shutdown.However, Democrats have said they would not vote for a bill that included such funding, and reportedly the White House has backed off of its push for that funding because of it.Limbaugh warned against caving to Democrats out of fear that Republicans would be blamed for the shutdown and insisted if there were such a cave this go-around, Democrats would use similar tactics against the White House and congressional Republicans in the future.Go HERE for the audio clip of Rush Limbaugh s show where he discusses funding for the wall and the Democrat threat of a government shut down.Transcript as follows:I m not happy to have to pass this on. I m very, very trouble to have to pass this on. And I want to say at the outset that I hope my interpretation is wrong and I hope this is not the case but it looks like from here, right here, right now it looks like President Trump is caving on his demand for a measly $1 billion from the budget for his wall on the border with Mexico. The Democrats are threatening a government shutdown. It s the same old, same old and I was hoping that Trump would throw this shutdown thing right back in their face and have everybody realize they re the ones engineering these shutdowns that nobody would notice anyway unless a big hullaballoo was made about it. Breitbart News
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The media hyped the fact that Donald Trump used a teleprompter during his speech on Tuesday night after winning the final slate of Republican primaries (with no opposition). The speech was more sober and low energy than most Trump speeches have been, and used more sophisticated language than Trump s traditional events.But he still stuck his foot in it.During the speech, Trump made a reference to helping our African-American people who live in the inner city that have been mistreated for so long.Coming just a few days after referring to a black man in one of his rallies as my African-American, the comment hit a sour note for many people, especially as it sounded like a possessive reference to ownership.Twitter users took Trump to task for the comment almost immediately after he said it:Trump: It's gonna be great. We are going to give "our African American people" 3/5 of a vote. jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) June 8, 2016"Our African American people" pic.twitter.com/WmBc1Er1mq Smooth Kobra (@smoothkobra) June 8, 2016@ljoywilliams correction Trump said we will take care of "our African American " As if we are property. "Our" wtf! Curtis D. Young (@curtisdyoung) June 8, 2016Donald Trump: "We are going to take care of our African American people. Us: pic.twitter.com/scV8uKGUN2 Black Wildcat (@Midwest_KZ) June 8, 2016"Our African American people pic.twitter.com/oyI604JINe Devin Gifford (@dgiff_) June 8, 2016hhhhhh" We are going to take care of our #African_American people!" Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/43JHXdYg2I solgem ofiko (@SolgemOfiko) June 8, 2016"We're going to take care of OUR African American people " Trump pic.twitter.com/hlne5gYSdK Misty Knight's Afro (@Steph_I_Will) June 8, 2016Even a conservative radio host, Hugh Hewitt, thought the Trump statement sounded bad:Even Hugh Hewitt cringed at Trump's "our African American" line pic.twitter.com/jvESXXUSa1 Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) June 8, 2016Trump has used his campaign to repeatedly attack and belittle minorities in America. He described Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, while also calling for a ban on Muslim travel to the United States.His campaign has also received support from white supremacists, who have bankrolled robocalls in his favor and a super PAC backing his election. Trump was endorsed by notorious former klansman David Duke and his campaign arranged for a white supremacist radio show to get credentials to cover them.Trump even rejected multiple opportunities in an interview with CNN s Jake Tapper to denounce and reject support from Duke. Instead he stubbornly tried to deflect the question.His most diehard supporters have echoed Trump s rhetoric, while the most extreme have even assaulted black protesters at his rallies, and in one instance a Latino man was beat up and assaulted by a pair of men who cited Trump as they engaged in violence.So, tell us again how The Donald is not a racist.Featured image via YouTube
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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey and Iraq have agreed to open a second border gate and its construction will begin once the necessary security measures are taken, Turkey s customs minister said on Thursday. I had the impression that the Iraqi government agrees that there should be a second border gate , Bulent Tufenkci told Anadolu news agency. He said the planned gate would be near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, in a region where Islamic State and Kurdish PKK militants still pose a security threat. Once steps are taken to secure the path, there is no other obstacle for us, he said.
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Wow! @FoxBusiness @JeffFlock just WENT OFF on white @SEIU operative for telling black protester she wasn t allowed to speak! #Fightfor15 pic.twitter.com/9aiv8x3YIq Andrew Marcus (@ImAndrewMarcus) November 29, 2016
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This literally made me scream at my television in rage.If there is one person who has been more hypocritical than Donald Trump throughout this election year, it s Kellyanne Conway.Time and time again, she has defended Trump s claims that the election is rigged and supported him when he incited his protesters to threaten violence when he refused to say that he would concede the election if the results didn t go his way.But there Conway was on Fox News on Sunday morning whining to Chris Wallace about anti-Trump protesters and painting Trump as an example of unity.After being asked about outgoing Senator Harry Reid s message that the responsibility for healing the nation rests at Donald Trump s feet because he divided the nation for a year and a half with bigoted and hateful rhetoric, Conway reacted like the total hypocritical bitch she is. I find Harry Reid s public comments and insults about Donald Trump and other Republicans to be beyond the pale. They re incredibly disappointing, Conway said even though she never said the same thing about Trump when he publicly insulted a long list of people and groups during his campaign. Then she warned Reid that there could be some retaliation. He should be very careful about characterizing somebody in a legal sense. He thinks he being some kind of political pundit there, but I would say be very careful about the way you characterize it. Seriously, this is the kind of bullshit that petty tyrants display when something is said about them that they don t like.And if that weren t enough, Conway actually had the gall to attack the people who are protesting Trump. I m calling for responsibility and maturity, Conway began despite the fact that her boss never exercised either of those during the election. The hypocrite then complained about being allegedly booed and spit on at the protests and accused the protesters of being at Trump Tower for nefarious reasons. You know, because she would be saying the same thing about Trump supporters had they lost the election, right? She then lectured Reid that he has a platform to do good here, completely ignoring the irony of her statement. For over a year, Trump has had hundreds of opportunities to use his platform to do good here and he squandered it. Instead, he promoted bigotry, incited violence and hate against others and was the complete opposite of a role model for children.Speaking of children, Conway had this infuriating thing to say. I want the children of America to see decency and honor from our leaders and elected officials and they re seeing that in President-elect Trump. Seriously. Conway actually spewed this bullshit.And then she suggested that President Obama has not been a decent and honorable man until this week.Here s the video via YouTube. Try not to punch your computer or smash your phone as your anger rises.Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway have no right to expect unity when all they did throughout this campaign is divide. They certainly have no right lecturing anyone on the concepts of decency, responsibility, honor, or maturity. Neither of these sorry excuses for a human being ever displayed an ounce of those concepts throughout the last year and a half, nor did they display these concepts at any point during the last eight years. For some reason, people like Conway expect everyone to kiss Donald Trump s ass for the sake of unity but they conveniently forget the utter disrespect and contempt they had for President Obama. They refused to unite behind President Obama and they exercised nothing but immaturity, irresponsibility, indecency, and dishonor from day one. And NOW they expect the opposite for Trump!? Unbelievable.Featured Image: Screenshot
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Kellyanne Conway will be joining the White House as counselor to the president, the Trump transition team announced Thursday.Conway, Donald Trump s final campaign manager, has been a fierce advocate for the president-elect. Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory, Trump said in a statement. She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message. I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing, he added.Watch Conway as she masterfully deconstructs CNN s New Day host Alisyn Camerota s false accusations about Trump and exposes her overt and unprofessional allegiance to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign:Conway joins incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon in making up the most senior advisers in the Trump White House. NYP
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Lifting weights could ward off dementia and make you smarter
by: Vicki Batts Tags: weight lifting , dementia , brain health (NaturalNews) There are many reasons to partake in strength training; weight-baring exercises are known for their health benefits. But, could lifting weights also boost your brain? Recent research indicates that may just be the case.To begin the study, researchers asked a group of people aged 55 to 86 to engage in a mix of weight lifting and brain training exercises. All of the people who partook in the study had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, which is a precursor to Alzheimer's disease , and is an early sign of dementia.While this particular study did not examine whether the benefits of exercise could be extended to the general population, the results were quite impressive. Published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society , the study found that weight-baring exercises could indeed provide some brain benefits. The researchers found a casual relationship between an increase in muscle strength and an increase in brain function. On that basis, the team recommended that more people begin a strength training regime so that the world's aging population can hopefully be a little healthier. It is currently projected that about 135 million people will have dementia by the year 2050.The same team behind this most recent research also published a paper in 2014 that revealed that weight training provided cognitive benefits to just about every area of the brain – something cognitive training failed to do.While discussing their most recent data, one of the study's researchers, Dr. Yorgi Mavros of Sydney University, commented, "What we found in this follow-up study is that the improvement in cognition function was related to their muscle strength gains. The stronger people became, the greater the benefit for their brain."For the strength training, study participants were asked to lift weights that were equivalent to about 80 percent of their maximum capacity, twice a week for six months – similar to the way in which many athletes train. And, as the participants got stronger, the amount of weight they lifted went up as well, in order to maintain the desired 80 percent of their maximum effort.Brain scans revealed that certain regions of the brain actually increased in size for those who took part in the exercise regime. Dr. Mavros says that the benefits were profound enough to warrant recommending weight training for everyone."The more we can get people doing resistance training like weight lifting , the more likely we are to have a healthier ageing population," he told the Independent . Dr. Mavros also added that the best way to ensure that you get the most benefit from exercise is by maintaining a regular routine. Exercising frequently, and with some intensity, is key to getting the most out of what you're doing.This new research is not the first to suggest that exercise can provide benefits to brain health . The body of research linking physical exercise to better cognitive function has only continued to grow over the last several years. Science has indicated that in addition to better mental health, exercise can also promote both better memory and concentration.Dr. James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, also had a few things to say about this new study. He noted, "New research is beginning to unravel how physical exercise may have benefits for the brain as people get older. This study suggests that people with minor memory and thinking problems, known as mild cognitive impairment, may benefit from weight training to improve their brain health."Pickett also noted that while it is not yet clear if exercise can reverse dementia, they do know that it is one of the most important factors in its prevention. Along with being active, he says that not smoking and eating a healthy, balanced diet are all essential to reducing the risk. Sources:
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(Reuters) - Members of Maná, the Spanish-language pop band, are embarking on what they hope will be their most influential series of performances - the U.S. “Latino Power Tour” - seeking to encourage Latinos to use their power at the polls in the Nov. 8 presidential election. “We are so proud, on one hand ‘Latino Power Tour,’ it’s a celebration, but we’re also suggesting for Latinos to use their power with their vote. They can change history in this country,” said vocalist Fher Olvera. The tour opened in San Diego on Sept. 9 and is scheduled to end in Los Angeles on Nov. 13. The band, sometimes referred to as “the U2 of Spanish rock,” will perform in 18 major arenas across the United States. The band from Guadalajara, Mexico, has always been vocal about denouncing violence and corruption in its home country. Now, in the wake of some unfavorable comments about Mexicans by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump - who has also threatened to expel millions of Mexicans - Maná feels its influence can make a difference in the United States as well. “Latinos can move the scale of history in the United States, they can rewrite history and I believe they deserve a lot more than what has been given to them, and they have the power,” Olvera said in an interview. For the “Latino Power Tour,” Maná will perform a career-spanning set including greatest hits and songs from its ninth studio album, “Cama Incendiada” (Bed on Fire). It has also partnered with organizations including Voto Latino and local advocates to provide both inspiration and information Latinos might need to make their voices heard in the upcoming election. “More than anything, it’s a huge celebration of the Latino community,” said drummer Alex Gonzalez. “You know, the Latino community has given so much and has worked so hard here in the United States, developed the country, especially economically. On the other hand also, this tour is to emphasize Latinos to go out and vote.” Maná has earned four Grammy Awards, eight Latin Grammy Awards and sold more than 40 million albums.
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YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar will be allowed to meet their families once their first 14-day period of remand expires, according to local media reports. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in detention for 11 days in an undisclosed location and have had no access to their families, lawyers or colleagues. They were arrested after being invited to meet police officials over dinner on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon on Dec. 12. The authorities are investigating whether they violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which has a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. After the first remand (expires), they will be able to meet their families. They will be sent to the court for testimonies, Tin Myint, permanent secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs, was quoted as saying by Radio Free Asia. In Myanmar, those remanded must be brought to court within 14 days. But it s not immediately clear when the pair was first remanded and whether the authorities will seek court approval to remand them for a second 14-day period. The Home Affairs Ministry did not responded to several requests for comments. Family members of the two journalists say they have not received any official communication about the question of remand or the investigation, and neither has Reuters. Tin Myint said the case against the two Reuters reporters will be transparent and the authorities will follow the rule of law, according to Daily Eleven newspaper. Major governments, including the United States, Britain and Canada, leading international political figures and top United Nations officials are among those who have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week told Reuters that the police had almost completed their investigation and the two reporters will be treated in line with the law. The Ministry of Information said last week that Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media .
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The Hillary Clinton campaign, in an unusual late-afternoon conference call, touted an exclusive Fox News report on the origin of the FBI probe into the candidate’s server in a bid to argue it proves she did nothing wrong -- though a top government watchdog pushed back on the campaign's claims.
The report by Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, for the first time, identified emails that helped kick-start the current investigation. The emails were from top Clinton advisers and had earlier been released to the Benghazi select committee.
On the conference call Wednesday reacting to the report, top Clinton campaign aides said those emails were not marked classified at the time they were sent.
However, despite the Clinton campaign’s claims, a spokeswoman for the intelligence community inspector general reiterated to Fox News that the information in the emails was in fact considered classified at the time it was sent.
An aide to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also issued a statement defending the intelligence community's concern. "Just because the State Department may not think information is or should be classified, it does not have the authority [to] make that decision if it received the information from another agency," a Grassley spokesperson said.
Campaign Press Secretary Brian Fallon acknowledged Wednesday they have a disagreement on that point with the intelligence community inspector general. Clinton campaign officials said on the call that, at worst, this is a dispute between two agencies, as the State Department also maintains the emails were not classified.
Fallon said the campaign previously did not know which emails originally had been flagged, and called the Fox News report a “watershed” moment in understanding what led to the review. Calling the report “fortuitous” and saying they have no reason to doubt its veracity, the aides also emphasized the emails were not written by Clinton herself.
“We again would like to see the government agencies involved in this process to proceed as quickly as possible in conducting a review of the emails,” Fallon said. “We think it will vindicate all the points we made today on this whole matter.”
The emails identified by Fox News as helping spur the referral both pertained to Benghazi.
The first was forwarded by Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. The 2011 email forwards a warning about how then-deputy chief of mission Chris Stevens was "considering departure from Benghazi" amid deteriorating conditions in a nearby city. The email was mistakenly released by the State Department in full, and is now considered declassified.
The second was sent by Clinton aide Jake Sullivan. The partly redacted November 2012 email detailed how Libyan police had arrested "several people" with potential connections to the terror attack.
Abedin and Sullivan now work for the Clinton presidential campaign
Fox News understands those two emails were separate from four other emails that the inspector general flagged in July as containing classified information.
A statement from the IG’s office last month, though, referenced one of the two emails, pointing to an “inadvertent release of classified national security information” by the State Department through its FOIA process. That statement also acknowledged the disagreement between the two agencies, saying the department denies the “classified character” of the information “despite a definitive determination from the IC Interagency FOIA Process.”
Aside from that disagreement, the two emails also represent just a fraction of the hundreds of emails that the IG and State Department have since flagged for containing potentially classified material.
The Clinton campaign argued Wednesday that this whole experience speaks to the government’s tendency toward classification.
“We think that this says more about the bent towards secrecy within some corners of the government. It says more about that than it does about Hillary Clinton’s email practices,” Fallon said.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The murder of a Belgian city mayor whose throat was cut in a cemetery on Monday has shocked the country, and the country s prime minister expressed horror at the death of the retired national lawmaker. Citing the public prosecutor, Belgian media said Alfred Gadenne, 71, the conservative mayor of Mouscron, an industrial town of 57,000 just across the border from the northern French city of Lille, was found dead in a graveyard close to his home where he acted as caretaker and locked the gates each night. Local news service SudInfo, citing unnamed sources, said a suspect had handed himself in to police and that the motive was unclear. The case was handed to a local prosecutor rather than to national counter-terrorism investigators. I have learned with horror of the brutal death of Alfred Gadenne, Prime Minister Charles Michel, a liberal, said on Twitter. All my thoughts are with his family and friends. Among the many others offering condolences was Martine Aubry, the former French Socialist party leader and long-time mayor of metropolitan Lille. Philippe Courard, president of the parliament for Belgium s French-speaking south, tweeted: Terrifying. What kind of world are we living in?
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MSNBC s Chris Matthews deemed the big story of the much anticipated G20 meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin to be the manspreading that took place.Matthews started his Hardball show with a clip of of President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin as they appeared to be having a casual conversation, while sitting next to each while facing the media. The big story was the way they both engaged in the art of manspreading, widening their legs as far as the wings of the chairs would allow them. When they stopped laughing, Fox News hosts mocked MSNBC s thrill-up-his-leg for Obama Chris Matthews for making such an embarrassing and petty observation. Fox News host went on to discuss President Trump s very successful foreign trip G20 meeting with world leaders, discussing things like Trump s movement in encouraging China to reign in North Korea.
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Media Spin: The FBI's Actions Are Deeply Troubling, Not Hillary's
So the Hillary email investigation was reopened due to a sexting investigation of her close aide's husband. So the media focused its outrage and disgust not on the gruesome Weiner-Abedin-Hillary trio, but on the FBI. Reporting line from the alternate universe that the left inhabits, the media is brimming with headlines attacking the FBI for investigating Hillary.
Hillary Clinton called the FBI's actions "deeply troubling." They should be. For her. But instead the media made the propagandistic decision to upend the scandal coverage by portraying the FBI's actions in investigating Hillary as the scandal. Rather than Hillary's own actions.
The agenda is blatantly obvious. But it's also telling that the left has decided that the real scandal is investigating their own.
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FORMER CONSERVATIVE darling Tomi Lahren made a big deal about her upcoming appearance on The View. I know, because I set the alarm on my phone to remind me when she would be on their show so I wouldn t miss it. I figured there would certainly be fireworks, and at the very least, a few memorable moments with the marxist loudmouth hosts of The View. I thought if nothing else, it would be entertaining to see her put Joy Behar in her place. People have come to know and love The Blaze s conservative firebrand Tomi Lahren for her outspoken commentary on current political and social issues. Until now, most of us have believed that she actually meant what she was telling us. When she finally appeared on The View last Friday, she was mostly dealt softball questions and her answers were clearly more about getting along with the angry hosts than the defense of conservatism. That s okay I could live with that. As disappointed as I was in her wimpy responses to their ridiculous questions, nothing could have prepared me for the moment she decided to step out of her conservative persona and cross-over to the dark side, when host Sonny Hostin asked her about her position on abortion.Lahren: No, I m pro-choice, and here s why. I am a constitutional, you know, someone that loves the constitution. I am someone who is for limited government. So I can t sit here, and be a hypocrite and say I m for limited government, but I think that the government should I think that the government should decide what a woman can do with their bodies. I can t sit here and say that as a Republican. And I can say, ya know what, I m for limited government, so stay out of my guns and you can stay out of my body as well. Joy Behar jumped in (panting with excitement): You need to go out and speak to women about that. Lahren responded: I do. I do every day. And I get a lot of attacks from conservative women as well. I think it s equal hate from all sides for me. Really Tomi? You argue with women every day about your position on abortion? Maybe you can explain how only 3 months ago, you called people like Lena Dunham who were pro choice straight up baby killers! (Watch 2nd video below)Here is a short clip showing the abortion exchange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOT3EiKCL-w&feature=youtu.beHere s Lahren calling anyone who is pro-choice a straight up baby killer . Note the Christmas tree in the background. That s because this video is only 3 months old. Wow apparently a lot happens in 3 months! Does she realize how damaging she is to her own narrative? Think about it: the pro-choicers are supposed to be about rare and safe abortions. That s how they avoid sounding like straight-up baby killers.Then we have Lena freakin Dunham out there wishing she could have murdered a fetus. Wishing for the option to kill your child doesn t exactly say much about the cause, her character, or the pro-choice movement.And here I thought the loving Left were all about peace, and love, and light, except when it comes to the unborn, I suppose. Then it s a different story, a story they write and rewrite to fit their narrative.
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Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a Somalian refugee came to the US in 2014, and he is already a US Citizen. How does a Muslim refugee from Somalia become a US citizen so quickly? While others wait in line for years, refugees who come to the US through the State Dept. sponsored Refugee Resettlement program are given, food stamps, free health-care, free education, housing, a monthly stipend, in many cases, they are given free furniture, and best of all, they are fast-tracked to US citizenship. What was it that Trump was criticized about again? Wasn t it something about how we needed to stop the flow of Muslim refugees into America until we can find a better way to vet them? I m pretty sure most of the students on the OSU campus are rethinking their opposition to Trump s plan after today (at least those who were mowed down by his vehicle or stabbed by the butcher knife he was wielding during his planned attack). Authorities had previously confirmed that the suspect was a Somali refugee, legally residing in Ohio.Artan fled Somalia with his family in 2007 before landing in Pakistan.He moved to the United States in 2014, where he was granted legal, permanent status.It should be noted that Ohio State s online directory only lists one student with the name, Abdul Artan.Furthermore, The Lantern OSU s campus newspaper ran an interview with Artan just a few months ago, in which he criticized the school for not having Muslim prayer rooms on campus. I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media, he stated. I m a Muslim, it s not what the media portrays me to be. I don t blame them, he continued. It s the media that put that picture in their heads so they re just going to have it, and it s going to make them feel uncomfortable. Authorities maintain that the attack was done on purpose and are treating the incident as a possible terrorist act. DCMedia would like us to believe they are unsure of the motive behind his attack.
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LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - The wife of ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Sunday captured his parliamentary seat with a reduced majority in a by-election seen as a test of support for the Sharif dynasty ahead of the 2018 general election. Sharif s daughter Maryam said her mother Kulsoom won despite Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party workers being threatened and kidnapped. Although she did not name anyone, PML-N sources said she was referring to alleged intimidation by parts of Pakistan s powerful military. The military could not be reached for comment. This is not an ordinary victory, Maryam said in a speech to jubilant PML-N supporters. You have defeated not only people who were in the field but also those who are invisible. The main opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party made gains but alleged voter irregularities in the eastern city of Lahore, the electoral heartlands of the Sharif family since 1980s. Official results are yet to be announced but party officials who also tallied the numbers say Kulsoom, who did not campaign as she is receiving treatment for cancer in London, scooped about 53.5 percent of the vote, with the party s majority reduced from about 61 percent in the 2013 general election. The PML-N wanted to demonstrate that support for the Sharif family was undiminished despite the Supreme Court s removal of Nawaz, who has kept control of the party and installed long-term ally Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as prime minister. Maryam said dozens of PML-N activists were blindfolded and picked up from their homes at night, while others received threatening phone calls from unknown numbers during the campaign. This victory is a message to the forces hatching conspiracies against Nawaz Sharif that there would be only rules of people and democracy, added Maryam. Maryam, who some PML-N leaders see as a future leader, spearheaded the PML-N campaign for her mother with fiery speeches denouncing the judiciary. In an interview with Reuters before the vote, she hinted at military involvement in her father s ouster. Nawaz, who served two stints in power in 1990s until he was deposed in a military coup in 1999, had strained ties with the military during his third stint in power that ended in his ouster, when the Supreme Court disqualified him for failure to declare a monthly salary, equivalent to around $2,700, from a company owned by his son. Sharif denies receiving the salary. Tensions between civilian governments and the military have been a constant source of instability in Pakistan, with the military staging coups and running the country for nearly half the time since independence from British colonial rule in 1947. MILITANTS-LINKED PARTY Opposition leader Imran Khan - whose threats of street protests pushed the Supreme Court to launch a probe into Nawaz s wealth - had sought to build on the success of his anti-graft crusade by making inroads into Sharifs power base in Punjab. Khan turned the by-election into a plebiscite about corruption and has accused the provincial Punjab government, which is run by Nawaz s brother Shahbaz, of abusing state resources to help the PML-N campaign. PTI candidate Yasmin Rashid, a local gynaecologist, saw her share of the vote rise from about 35 percent to 41 percent but she afterwards said about 29,000 voters did not have fingerprint identification with the national database. PML-N s lead was reduced in part by the strong showing of Yaqoob Sheikh, who the United States in 2012 designated a terrorist. Sheikh received 4,174 votes, or nearly 4 percent of the total vote after being backed by a new Milli Muslim League party led by an Islamist firebrand who is the subject of a $10 million bounty offered by the United States. Hafiz Saeed heads the Jammat-ud-Dawa (JuD) charity, having founded and formerly led the Lashkhar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people. The United States has placed Saeed, the charity and LeT on its terrorist list. The United States, in 2012, said Sheikh was a senior LeT leader.
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Millions and millions of dollars from outside the state of Georgia have made their way to the campaign of Democrat challenger Jon Ossoff. The Georgia election has become a referendum on President Trump and could mean a symbolic gotcha moment for Democrats. This is a big deal for both parties! This is kind of like a crown jewel of the Republican Party right now holding on to this thing. Chris Cox, Founder of Bikers for TrumpWhile the Dems throw money at their candidate, the Republicans are bringing in the Bikers for Trump to go door to door in Georgia for Republican candidate Karen Handel.This race has gotten pretty ugly with vulgar letters containing white powder sent to Handel s neighbors. The left is really counting on this win but the vitriol only wins votes for Handel.Here s the note put in mailboxes in Handel s neighborhood LANGUAGE ALERT!Much has been made of the fact that Handel s challenger doesn t even live in the district he s running in!FEAR MONGERING TO GET VOTES:Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) stood in front of 50 Jon Ossoff volunteers at a campaign barbecue and fear mongered to get the message out: The vote is precious and sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have, he said. There are some in this country who still seek to deny some of us our right to vote. We can fight back by exercising that right. NOTE TO JOHN LEWIS: NO ONE IS TRYING TO DENY ANYONE S VOTE! MARIETTA, Ga. This neighborhood might have gotten quite a jolt when Bikers for Trump sporting tattoos galore, black vests and a massive flag with the group s insignia showed up in this Atlanta suburb to politely ask people to vote for the Republican candidate in this week s special congressional election.At one stop, Chris Hummel and his wife, Karen, assured Chris Cox, founder of Bikers for Trump, and the six other men and women who were going door to door that they had voted early for the Republican, Karen Handel, over Democrat Jon Ossoff. Mrs. Hummel even shed some tears after learning that three of the bikers had served in the military. Her father served as a battalion leader in the Vietnam War and returned a different man. Years later, when Mrs. Hummel was a baby, he took his own life. We have heard about them, Mrs. Hummel said about the group. I just think it is cool that it is just kind of grass-roots door-to-door, just common folks. Because that is really what America is. Mr. Cox and his crew of volunteers had visited this well-groomed neighborhood before and returned Tuesday to make certain that its heavily Republican voters planned to or already had voted for Mrs. Handel. The bikers are hoping to punch a hole in the Democrat-driven storyline that President Trump s supporters are turning their backs on him. For us, it is more about Support Donald Trump, and by supporting Karen Handel we are supporting Donald Trump, said Mr. Cox, standing in a cul-de-sac next to his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and steps away from a miniature soccer goal. This is kind of like a crown jewel of the Republican Party right now holding on to this thing. Via: WT
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A ruling by New York’s highest court in a fraud case against former American International Group Inc (AIG.N) Chief Executive Maurice “Hank” Greenberg could affect the state’s case against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his defunct Trump University. The New York Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman could seek to recoup millions of dollars in bonus payments to Greenberg using the legal remedy called disgorgement. Unlike damages, which are used to compensate victims’ losses, disgorgement requires a defendant to give back gains obtained from unlawful means. The ruling means that Schneiderman can go after $5 million he says Trump personally pocketed from the Trump University real-estate seminar venture. “It doesn’t help him,” Jeffrey Goldman, Trump’s lawyer in the New York case, said on Monday of the Greenberg ruling. But Goldman said Trump expected to win the case and could also try to limit the amount subject to disgorgement, such as by arguing that most of it was earned outside of New York. According to the state’s 2013 lawsuit against Trump, filed in state court in Manhattan, Trump University was an unlicensed, illegal operation that bilked students of up to $35,000 each between 2005 and 2011. Two proposed class actions in California make similar allegations. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly raised the Trump University litigation on the campaign trail, calling the lawsuits baseless and politically motivated. He has also accused the federal judge overseeing the California lawsuits of being biased against him because of his ethnicity. The judge was born in Indiana to Mexican parents. In the Greenberg case, the state accused the former CEO of orchestrating sham transactions at AIG and misleading shareholders about the company’s financial health between 2000 and 2005. Schneiderman is asking that Greenberg disgorge some $25 million in bonuses during that period, plus interest. Greenberg has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer, David Boies, who represented Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in the dispute over the 2000 election recount, had argued that disgorgement was not a remedy available to the New York attorney general under either the state’s securities fraud law or another fraud statute. The Court of Appeals rejected Boies’ arguments. The ability to seek disgorgement may be useful to Schneiderman because the California cases involving Trump University may be resolved before the New York case. One is scheduled for trial on Nov. 28, just a few weeks after the Nov. 8 election. A settlement or judgment in those cases could undermine Schneiderman’s claim for $40 million in damages because he is suing on behalf of many of the same former Trump University students. But disgorgement claims would not be affected.
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Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday he was "prepared to use all the powers" the federal government has to get the city of Ferguson, Missouri, in line with the Constitution. Asked if that included "dismantling the police force," Holder said, "If that's what's necessary, we're prepared to do that."
It sounds like a radical move on Holder's part. But don't get too swept up in it. The DOJ doesn't exactly have the power to dismantle the Ferguson police department if the city doesn't consent — and would have to go through a lot of steps before getting that power. Plus, dismantling the embattled police department might not fix some of the worst problems outlined in the Justice Department's report.
The Department of Justice doesn't have the power to dismantle local police departments at will. The way it's probably going to "work with" the City of Ferguson, as Holder also hinted today, is by drawing up an agreement where Ferguson's police would still be independent, but would be monitored by the DOJ. (The agreement would be enforced in federal court.) The feds would only take over if the city failed, and failed badly, to make the changes laid out in the agreement.
This nearly happened in Oakland in 2012; as a compromise, the federal government fired the police chief but left the department under the city's control. But it was a full decade after the agreement was first signed.
if dismantling happens, it'll be something the city agrees to do itself — or even suggests to begin with
If Holder really wants to tear down the Ferguson Police Department and start over, the best way to do that would be to make dissolution part of the original court-enforced agreement. If the city didn't agree, he could sue them to do it (which would also take years).
But given how expensive it's going to be for Ferguson's police to comply with the likely court agreement, it might actually be cheaper for them to agree to give up and try again. So the possibility exists that the Ferguson police department will be dissolved — but it would almost certainly be because the city of Ferguson agreed to do it, or even suggested it in the first place. That also means the city would be in charge of putting together whatever is going to replace the Ferguson PD.
Getting rid of the police in Ferguson would only address half of the problems identified by the federal government. The Department of Justice also found massive discrimination and Constitutional violations in the municipal court system, including arresting people for showing up to court without being able to afford a court fee; suspending drivers' licenses of people who didn't even know that they'd had a court date, let alone missed one; and setting jail bonds not based on what someone would be able to pay, but based on making the most money for the city.
There's no way the federal government's going to be satisfied if Ferguson reforms its police but leaves its courts the way they are. Disbanding the police department might allow the city to focus on reforming the courts, but it won't be enough on its own.
More importantly, though, who would do police work in Ferguson after the Ferguson police force gets dismantled?
the actions of "other law enforcement agencies in st. louis county...have contributed to a general distrust" of police
Typically, a nearby police force is brought in to take over: either temporarily, while a new police department is hired from the chief down, or permanently, on a contract. And it's not at all clear whether other police departments in the St. Louis area are any better. After all, residents had plenty of experience with the St. Louis County police last summer during the protests after Michael Brown's death — and they didn't treat protesters any better than Ferguson police did.
The DOJ report certainly indicates that the problem in St. Louis is bigger than Ferguson. In fact, some of the things it faults the Ferguson police for doing are things they're being asked to do by other jurisdictions, like arresting people without warrants based on requests from police in other departments. By the same token, many of the unfair court practices the DOJ found appear to be pretty typical in municipal courts in the area.
The report even says: "Individuals’ experiences with other law enforcement agencies in St. Louis County, including with the police departments in surrounding municipalities and the County Police, in many instances have contributed to a general distrust of law enforcement that impacts interactions with the Ferguson police and municipal court."
If Eric Holder wants to dismantle the problems facing the criminal-justice system throughout the St. Louis area, he's welcome to try — but it's going to take a lot more investigations and potential lawsuits than the one he has going right now.
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On Thursday, the New York Times published an article entitled Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Department. Then, we read the article. Let s just say that not only is there no there there, the article literally proves the exact opposite of what they are trying to say.The lede paragraph of the article says this:A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department agreed to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport for an adviser to former President Bill Clinton in 2009, according to emails released Thursday, raising new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department.That sounds pretty, well, damning is perhaps too strong a word, but the very next paragraph admits that the adviser, Douglas J. Band, didn t get the passport. Think about it, not even an adviser to the Secretary of State s very own husband, who happens to be a former President, got what he wanted out of the State Department. That s the very opposite of evidence of quid pro quo. Vox has more detail:If this proves anything at all, it s that the media is certainly not in the tank for Clinton. Actually, it was Harvard who proved that back in July:A new report released this week by Harvard Kennedy School s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy found Clinton has received far more negative coverage than any other candidate in the race thus far. The study was based on an analysis of news statements from CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.According to the study, a whopping 84 percent of Clinton coverage is negative. At that time, just 43 percent of Trump coverage was negative. The New York Times article might not be absolute proof that the media is stacked against Clinton, but when people think of the mainstream media, they certainly are at the top of most people s lists. The New York Times supposedly sets the standard, and apparently the standard in this election cycle is to manufacture controversies that, with the teeniest bit of analysis, actually disprove the controversies. Yes, that s convoluted and confusing, but that s the only way propaganda like this works.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
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America keeps waiting for word that Hillary will be indicted. Is Obama waiting for the right moment or will the FBI be allowed to do their job and put Hillary behind bars? Are Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren standing by in the wings? One thing we know for sure, with this corrupt administration, anything could happen. Obama seems to have mastered the art of punishing America. Will the most corrupt President to ever occupy our White House, be the one responsible for finally putting end to the Clinton Crime Syndicate or does she know too much?Hillary Clinton posted and shared the names of concealed U.S. intelligence officials on her unprotected email system. Federal records reveal that Clinton swapped these highly classified names on an email account that was vulnerable to attack and was breached repeatedly by Russia-linked hacker attempts. These new revelations reminiscent of the Valerie Plame scandal during George W. Bush s tenure could give FBI investigators the evidence they need to make a case that Clinton violated the Espionage Act by mishandling national defense information through gross negligence. Numerous names cited in Clinton s emails have been redacted in State Department email releases with the classification code B3 CIA PERS/ORG, a highly specialized classification that means the information, if released, would violate the Central Intelligence Act of 1949.The State Department produced a document to Judicial Watch in April 2014 that identifies different types of (b)(3) redactions, including CIA PERS/ORG, which it defines as information Specifically exempted from disclosure by statute Central Intelligence Act of 1949. That s what it suggests, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Breitbart News, referring to the indication that Clinton disclosed the names of CIA-protected intelligence sources, based on the B3 redactions.The CIA justifies (b)(3) redactions with this description: (b)(3) Applies to the Director s statutory obligations to protect from disclosure intelligence sources and methods, as well as the organization, functions, names, official titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed by the Agency, in accord with the National Security Act of 1947 and the CIA Act of 1949, respectively. The State Department declined to comment. Per the colleague who handles this issue, we are not speaking to the content of emails, State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson told Breitbart News.Here are some examples of (b)(3) redactions;Naming the defense attach in MaltaOn October 16, 2011, recent U.S. Ambassador to Malta Douglas Kmiec sent an email to Cheryl Mills with the subject line TIME SENSITIVE AND CONFIDENTIAL Malta Trip Backgrounder for the Secretary Confidential. Kmiec wrote to Mills, I know from current events that your life must be a whirlwind. I know that if there ever was someone who could tame the whirlwind, it would be you. Just read the news report of the Secretary s stop in Malta next week. Thank you for arranging this. This letter and the accompanying clips I believe will help make the Secretary s visit a highly successful and well received one. In the memo, Kmiec revealed the name of a top defense attach in the country. That name was later classified by the State Department with three different classifications: 1.4 (D) to connote Foreign relations or foreign activities of the US, including confidential sources, B1 to connote Information specifically authorized by an executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy, and B3 CIA PERS/ORG. The largest part of our US team in the embassy is the navy/coast guard/ ncis contingent that has established a Maritime training program with the AFM to good success. The defense attach there now is new [REDACTED] beloved and hardworking and to good effect, patrolling the waters and the ports for [illegible] traffickers and terror related figures, Kmiec wrote.Mills forwarded the memo directly to Clinton s private email account at clintonemail.com with the note Fyi background. Clinton replied to Mills and CC ed Huma Abedin with the confidential information, writing, I need enough time there to meet. Hague is there today and doing all the right meetings. So, I m copying Huma to reinforce my desire to squeeze more out of a too quick trip. When he sent the memo to Mills, Douglas Kmiec had been out of his Ambassador to Malta job for several months. Kmiec was a big supporter of President Obama. He garnered criticism in a 2011 inspector general report for ignoring directives from Washington and for spending too much time writing articles about religion. Iran Insights On September 2, 2009, Jackie Newmyer of Long Term Strategy Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts sent an email directly to Clinton s private account with the subject line Iran Insights From [Redacted] that included the B3 redaction code:Secretary Clinton,Last week I traveled to Israel [REDACTED] in an Iran-related seminar and simulation exercise with the IDF general who is likely to become Israel s next chief of military intelligence and his team and, separately, [REDACTED]. Yesterday, [REDACTED] Iran workshop in Washington involving DoD and think tank experts. Despite the fact that the meetings were with defense [REDACTED] personnel, there was universal sentiment that a strike on Iran s nuclear facilities would be counterproductive, on the one hand, and that incremental measures would be perceived by Iran as an indication of weakness, on the other.The email included sensitive information including the following:If Iran acquires a nuclear capability, no single American/allied countermeasure will be adequate. Something like the flexible response posture from the Cold War will be required, necessitating a range of actions from enhancing the US deterrent presence nuclear submarines carrying ballistic missiles in the Arabian Sea to bolstering regional actors defenses.Israeli leaders should be able to contain the damage to the Israeli population s morale from an Iranian bomb, but this will require careful management of public statements. There is a tension between building up support for action against the Iranian nuclear program now and delivering the kind of reassurance that will be necessary once the capability has been acquired.Clinton replied that she would like to discuss the matter with Jackie.Jackie replied:I will be in Washington for a day-long meeting on Thursday this week [B3 REDACTED] and my travel plans are flexible, so I could meet you any time on Wednesday afternoon, after 5 pm on Thursday, or any time on Friday morning. If those times do not work, I would be happy to come down at your convenience.Clinton and Jake Sullivan then set up a meeting with Jackie.For entire story: Breitbart News
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Nancy Pelosi ( ) on Friday called on Speaker Paul Ryan ( ) to reconvene the Congress for debate on the United States’ Thursday night airstrikes on a Syrian military airbase. [Shortly after Thursday night’s strike, President Donald Trump read a statement which proclaimed that he ordered the attack in response to Syrian President Bashar launching chemical attacks on innocent Syrian civilians on Tuesday. Early Friday morning Pelosi tweeted out a letter to Speaker Ryan in which she writes, “I am writing to request that you call the House back in session immediately to debate any decision to place our men and women in uniform in harm’s way. ” The letter continues: Bashar ’s chemical weapons attack on his own people places him outside the circle of civilized human behavior. Assad also continues to attack his own people with conventional weapons. Meanwhile, Russia props up the Assad regime and enables its brutal war crimes to continue. The President’s action and any response demands that we immediately do our duty. Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation. As heartbreaking as Assad’s chemical weapons attacks on his own people was, the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes. The killing will not stop without a comprehensive political solution to end the violence. The American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives to keep our brave men and women in uniform safe and avoid collateral damage to innocent civilians in Syria. Directly following the U. S. airstrikes, Pelosi responded with condemnation of the Syrian government’s chemical and other attacks on its own people. She stated, in part, “Tonight’s strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons. If the President intends to escalate the U. S. military’s involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another war in the Middle East. ” Overall reaction to the U. S. strikes has been mixed on both sides of the aisle. Republican Sen. Rand Paul has condemned the attacks as “illegal” and “unconstitutional. ” Sen. Ted Cruz has expressed great anticipation to hear Trump make the case for military action in Syria and said he is “encouraged” by the Trump Administration’s foreign policy. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the strikes “the right thing to do. ” Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said, “It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. ” Congress recessed on Thursday for a Easter break. Pelosi is calling on Ryan to call members right back. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago will continue to shrink its structural budget deficit in 2017 and 2018, but faces new pension funding pressures starting in 2020, according to a financial analysis released by the city on Monday. The nation’s third-largest city projects it will end fiscal 2017 on Dec. 31 with a $137.6 million gap in its $3.73 billion operating budget, down from $232.6 million in fiscal 2016. In fiscal 2018, the deficit is expected to fall by 17 percent to $114.2 million. The city’s budget gaps have been declining since hitting a high of $654.7 million in fiscal 2011. “This decrease is a direct result of sustainable and balanced revenue growth coupled with lasting savings and reforms made in the past six budgets,” the city’s analysis said. Chicago has taken big steps in recent years to shore up its four employee retirement systems by hiking property taxes for its police and fire fighter funds, levying a new tax on water and sewer usage for its municipal workers’ fund, and increasing a telephone surcharge for its laborers’ fund. The city is gradually increasing contributions to the systems until it meets requirements for actuarially funding public safety worker pensions in 2020 and for the other two systems in 2022. As a result, Chicago’s pension payments will jump from $1.18 billion in fiscal 2018 to a projected $1.7 billion in fiscal 2020, topping $2 billion in fiscal 2022 when all four systems will be on an actuarially funded path, according to the analysis. At the same time, the city is weaning itself off of one-time revenue fixes, such as so-called scoop and toss restructurings of outstanding bonds to push off debt payments. Chicago’s base budget forecast indicates gaps of $212.7 million in fiscal 2019 and $330.3 million in 2020, although the projections do not completely account for escalating pension payments. “The city previously secured ongoing and sustainable funding sources to match these growing contributions, and the funding sources for these increased contributions will be determined through our annual budget process,” the analysis said. The city’s total unfunded pension liability, which climbed to $35.76 billion in fiscal 2016 from $33.8 billion in fiscal 2015, has been a concern of credit rating agencies that currently rate Chicago at the low investment grade to junk levels.
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Archives Michael On Television If Donald Trump Wins, He Will Be 70 Years, 7 Months And 7 Days Old On His First Full Day In Office By Michael Snyder, on November 1st, 2016
A couple of weeks ago, it looked like Hillary Clinton was all set to cruise to victory , but now the FBI has delivered an election miracle in the nick of time. A few of my readers had criticized me for suggesting that Trump might lose, but I don’t know who is going to win the election, and so all I had to go on was the cold, hard numbers. And a couple of weeks ago the cold, hard numbers were telling me that Hillary Clinton was going to win. Of course it is entirely possible that the national polls might have been seriously wrong, but even the state polls in the most important battleground states consistently had bad news for Trump. So things didn’t look good for Trump at the time, but now that the FBI has renewed their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails the poll numbers have shifted dramatically in Trump’s favor .
As I write this article, the national polls have really tightened up. In fact, the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll puts Trump 1 point ahead of Clinton. Trump has all of the momentum at the moment, but that does not mean that he is going to win. As we have seen already in this race, one day can literally change everything.
And as I noted yesterday , more than 23 million Americans have already voted, and most of that voting was done during a period of time when Hillary Clinton was doing very well in the polls.
So we shall see what happens. But if Trump does win on November 8th, there is a fact about his birthday which will start to get a lot of attention.
Donald Trump was born on June 14th, 1946. If you move ahead 70 years from that date, that brings you to June 14th, 2016. Moving forward another 7 months brings you to January 14th, 2017, and moving forward another 7 days brings you to January 21st, 2017.
And if Donald Trump wins the election, January 21st will be his first full day in office.
Of course Trump would be inaugurated on January 20th, but he would only be president for part of that day.
So that means that Donald Trump would be 70 years, 7 months and 7 days old on his first full day as president of the United States.
And this would happen during year 5777 on the Hebrew calendar.
These amazing “coincidences” were first pointed out on Facebook by a user named Alyson Kelly. Some may take these numbers as a sign that Donald Trump is supposed to become the next president, but I want to make it exceedingly clear that I do not know what is going to happen, nor am I making any sort of prediction about what is going to happen.
I just thought that this information was “interesting” and so I thought that I would share it.
Someone that does believe that Trump is going to win is Glenn Beck. He was been virulently anti-Trump throughout this campaign, but now he is convinced that Clinton will be unable to overcome this new email scandal, and he is calling this renewed investigation by the FBI “the greatest gift given to any candidate of all time in the history of America.”
Beck also says that if Clinton wins now it will be evidence that “magic exists”, and he is currently projecting that Trump should win the national vote by 5 points …
“Let’s just say he was 8 points, that was fair to say, 8 points behind last week,” Beck said, according to a transcript posted on his website . “He should win by 5 points.”
Beck later added: “How can the next president face a possible collapsing economy, possible war with Russia, and a current war with ISIS? Oh, and also, be under FBI investigation and indictment? Can’t. Can’t.”
The conservative personality called the latest FBI revelation “the greatest gift given to any candidate of all time in the history of America” and added that if Clinton still managed to win, it would be akin to proof “magic exists.”
Hopefully Glenn Beck is right, because none of us should want to see Hillary Clinton in the White House.
She is the most evil, corrupt and scandal-ridden politician of this generation, and I can’t understand how any American in their right mind could possibly vote for her.
And the hits just keep on coming. Wikileaks has just released an email in which John Podesta told Clinton “fixer” Cheryl Mills that they were “going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later” …
It was not entirely clear what Podesta meant by that phrase, but it could potentially be smoking gun evidence of obstruction of justice .
Back in 2008, Barack Obama was new, intriguing and mysterious. We didn’t know a lot about him, and so one can almost understand how the American people could have been fooled by him.
But in 2016, Americans know more about Hillary Clinton than they have ever known about any candidate in modern American history.
The Clintons have a history of crimes and scandals that goes all the way back to the 1980s, but about half the country is choosing to ignore all of that history and vote for her anyway.
I believe that this election is America’s final exam. Originally there were 17 Republicans and 5 Democrats running for the presidency. When you throw in the major third party candidates, that brings us to a total of approximately 25 people that the American public could have chosen from.
If the American people willingly choose the most wicked candidate out of all of them after everything that has been revealed, I don’t think that anyone will be able to say that we don’t deserve the bitter consequences that follow that decision.
The time for talking is almost over, and shortly we shall find out which path the American people have chosen.
If that choice turns out to be Hillary Clinton after everything that we have seen during this election cycle, I truly believe that we will have reached the point of no return as a nation.
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The latest chapter in the Legend of Zelda series is a masterclass in elegant design, filled with interlocking gameplay systems wrapped in a gorgeous aesthetic and played over one of the most endearing worlds Nintendo has ever created.[ No matter its faults, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece. It is not a flawless gem, but it remains so brilliant as to stand head and shoulders above most of the best games of the decade, let alone the year. Breath of the Wild takes place in the land of Hyrule, in one of the biggest and most universally traversable maps ever created for a game, let alone the Zelda series. The game borrows heavily from the preponderance of other titles but seasons it with that distinct Nintendo flavor. You play as Link, the fabled hero and dauntless rescuer of Princess Zelda, and roam the land, serving its people and uniting its nations, gaining strength for your inevitable battle against series antagonist Ganon. And while the broad strokes of the story may feel intimately familiar, there is character and depth lurking beneath the surface that consistently impressed me. Whether you’re running, sliding, climbing, or riding, exploring the environment is a constant joy. The gameworld is speckled with countless shrines each one is an environmental puzzle, and they come in wildly varying degrees of complexity that will challenge you to learn the ways to manipulate the game’s systems in order to succeed. And there are a lot of systems. At any given moment, your gameplay will be influenced by your weapons, armor, cooked meals, elixirs, the time of day, the region you’re in, the weather, the temperature, and the multitude of boulders, logs, and other objects around which you will have to strategize to emerge from combat victorious and solve a wealth of puzzles. It’s as complex and involved as it sounds, but even more fun. That’s the thing, really. It’s almost impossible to find something in Breath of the Wild that isn’t fun. Even the activities that would serve as mindless filler in other games feel fresh and fun because of just how dynamic the world itself can be. This is how you build an open world. You won’t just want to go back to the game, you’ll want to go back to Hyrule itself. That in itself is a tremendous accomplishment and cannot be overstated. Even the elementary core of Breath of the Wild‘s combat feels great. It is simple yet responsive, a tangle of the typical dodging and striking with all manner of more creative approaches. Once again, swiping your weapon is far from the only way to handle a situation. Want to attach a dozen balloons to a raft, float it over a bokoblin encampment, then shoot the balloons to crush them? Go for it. Or roll a boulder over them. Or set everything on fire and mop up the charred foes that survived. Roll some boulders and then freeze time and climb atop one for the ride. Rain explosive arrow hellfire on enemies below from your glider. Chop down massive trees onto your foes. Lure them to a bomb beside the edge of a cliff. The nature of the game is so dynamic as to not only allow these scenarios — and many, many more — but to reward you for them, and sometimes even, at times, expect this type of creative thinking from the player. The tools you need to succeed are always at your disposal, and the game expects you to exploit them in ways that most games are mortally terrified of allowing. Breath of the Wild doesn’t just give you permission, it revels in the possibilities. Breath of the Wild is also home to an absolutely massive cast of characters, and all of them have something to say. Whether they’re sending you on one of the dozens of sidequests you’ll encounter or just making conversation, the cast is endearing almost to a fault. Even the most seemingly unimportant character might carry a vital clue to one of the myriad mysteries hidden in every conceivable corner of Hyrule. None of the game’s writing is especially elegant on its own, but Breath of the Wild commits so fervently to it that it remains difficult to keep from being drawn in. It’s a study in earnest storytelling that makes up for lack of technique with sheer enthusiasm. The soundtrack is also predictably stirring, whimsical, and epic by turns. All of these characters populate a breathtaking world. Breath of the Wild is a game that may not stand beside the technical wizardry of other games in this generation, but it leverages its art direction to stunning effect. textures and simple geometry don’t stand up to close inspection, but the raw sense of scale and organic design are quite simply unmatched by just about anything else in gaming. I spent a couple of hours just searching for my ideal horse and cooking up meals that would give me the stamina to tame her. Even the horses have different personalities, and some require more effort to bond than others, even after they are saddled and registered at the local stable. Another time, I inadvertently spent an entire night chasing fireflies through the depths of a misty forest. There are mountains to climb, with warm clothes and spicy food to keep you from becoming a . It’s easy to become lost in this game, in the very best of ways. The game’s systems aren’t universally fun. Specifically, the weapon durability mechanic in Breath of the Wild sabotages its otherwise stellar sense of immersion for the sake of mandating a certain style of play. Rather than encouraging the player to use the vast array of entertaining combat options available, the durability of every weapon in the game outright forces constant inventory management in the midst of even the most encounters. Sometimes the solutions you find to dealing with your fragile arsenal in the midst of this can be enjoyable, but it’s just as often a source of irritation. It’s a design decision that could have been a benefit to the gameplay had it been implemented with more restraint. As it stands, it feels too much as if it’s haranguing the players into largely forgettable items just so they can make it to their next objective alive. Regardless of creative design surrounding those items, you are never permitted to become attached to them because each one is so necessarily disposable. If they had differentiated each weapon less by the damage it does and focused more on individual utility, they could have accomplished the same philosophical objective without excising the personal attachment and sense of accomplishment that comes with item collection done right. For example, you cannot wear metal if you’re going to run around in a thunderstorm unless you prefer your Link by lightning. That means the primitive wood and bone weapons of the goblinoid enemies are necessary to keep with you for when you’re caught in the wilderness and a storm rolls through. It’s a simple mechanic that makes it useful to keep less efficient items around, just in case. I don’t need my sword to break in half after a dozen swings to encourage that type of flexibility there is already a fun and organic reason for me to vary my equipment. Pepper in some varying damage types along with the attack variety and capable artificial intelligence the game already uses, and you could preserve all of the good parts of the system with little to none of the bad. The other major criticism I have is a technical one. Performance, for the most part, is just plain bad. The game runs poorly on both the Wii U and the Switch, clawing for more processing power that neither console possesses. I cannot help but feel that the game would have attained virtual perfection had Nintendo shifted its focus to developing its universally acclaimed software on more capable hardware. Both versions of the game are functionally identical, with just a slightly higher resolution differentiating them. This is a game that could certainly sell the Nintendo Switch, but if you have a Wii U there isn’t an especially compelling motivation to upgrade consoles for this game. Even compared side by side, the differences are rarely noticeable. But in the end, none of this criticism feels like it matters. Breath of the Wild gets almost everything else right, and everything outside of its technical shortcomings are subjective disagreements in design that still can’t manage to hold back an enormous, thrilling, and utterly charming experience that absolutely no one should miss. For all its flaws, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is gaming at its best. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.
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Wow! Bravo Tomi! You really nailed it this time Enjoy! This notion that political incorrectness is somehow responsible for terror attacks is absolute BS! Do you think we are stupid? How dare you blame this crap on Donald Trump! Excuse me? Was he Secretary of State? Did 4 Americans die on his watch in Benghazi?
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MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull slumped to a new low in a poll released on Monday as his government cobbled together a deal with the main opposition party to stem a citizenship crisis that has left his government hanging precariously to power. Turnbull has been heavily criticized for failing to act decisively in a crisis that has so far seen his deputy, along with six other lawmakers, ejected from parliament because they were dual citizens, leaving Turnbull presiding over a minority government. In the latest twist in a drama that has played out over several months, independent lawmakers threatened over the weekend to use their new-found power in the lower house to push through controversial legislation that has been blocked by the government, including a Royal Commission into the banking sector. The latest Newspoll, published by The Australian, showed the main opposition Labor Party leading Turnbull s Liberal-National party coalition on a two-party basis, marking a 23rd consecutive loss since Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott to become prime minister in September 2015. Turnbull, then riding high in the polls, cited the fact that Abbott lost 30 consecutive Newspolls to justify the spill. On a personal basis, Turnbull s support crumbled from 41 percent to 36 percent. At the time of becoming prime minister, his support was at an all-time high of 55 percent. He s probably had one of the fastest falls in personal standing in our history, former Liberal Party leader John Hewson told Australian Broadcasting Corp television. And worse still, no outcomes that really matter to the average voter. The citizenship saga has overshadowed Turnbull s attempts to turn the domestic agenda to voter-friendly issues like tax reform, infrastructure and housing affordability. A contentious national survey on same-sex marriage and a checkered rollout of a multibillion dollar broadband network have added to perceptions of chaos in the country s leadership. With Turnbull in Vietnam for a meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders, his foreign minister and acting prime minister Julie Bishop told reporters the polls were not surprising and the government had a plan to resolve the dual citizenship issue. Dual citizenship is banned for members of parliament under Australia s constitution in a bid to prevent split allegiances. But adherence to that rule has only come under the spotlight in the current crisis, with the High Court confirming a strict interpretation of the law. With both sides of politics threatening to out lawmakers from the other side as dual citizens, the government and opposition agreed on Monday to a deadline of Dec. 1 for all politicians to disclose the birthplace of their parents and grandparents.
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Recently, at one of his thank you rallies, Donald Trump admitted that his supporters yeah, those people who were regularly in the news for beating African-Americans at rallies, attacking minorities (often finding themselves praised by The Donald), and generally proving that Hillary Clinton was being generous when she said only half of them are deplorables are violent and crazy. While the mainstream media portrays these people as what did they say? Oh, yes, economically anxious rather than racist, violent, deplorable, xenophobic, or any of the bazillion terms that can properly be applied to such individuals, the rest of us had no problem telling it like it is. Even Trump, who regularly blasted anyone who insulted his precious little snowflakes, now seems willing to admit that they are awful people. He s just OK with it (until anyone who isn t him calls them what they are, of course).Following the obvious response to The Donald applying terms to his followers that previously were verboten in his eyes, Trump tweeted perhaps the stupidest thing he has tweeted in a while (and that s saying a lot) on Sunday. If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned & called terrible names! Trump said.If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned & called terrible names! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2016Trump, of course, seems to be referencing attempts to call him out on his cozy relationship with Russia, whose leader directly commanded an effort to hack Trump s political opponents to help the billionaire secure the presidency. Maybe he meant the peaceful marches in the streets that followed his historic victory (historic in the sense that no one elected President has lost the popular vote by as much as Trump). In any case, he seems to feel that the many crimes committed in his name like when two men Trump later called passionate individuals who love this country beat a Hispanic homeless man with a pipe and urinated on him pale in comparison to the ongoing effort to expose him as a real-life Manchurian candidate (don t call those men names, though. Wouldn t want to hurt their feelings). Naturally, Twitter jumped on this latest opportunity to curb-stomp President-elect P*ssygrabber:Please @realDonaldTrump, for your own sake, stop with this nonsense. You're demonstrably wrong and the proof is in the numerous hate crimes. David G. McAfee (@DavidGMcAfee) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump Like the ones that spray paint swastikas in the honor of your name? Or the ones that want Americans of different color out of "your" country Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) December 18, 2016This is a twisted joke, because Trump is well aware how violent and racist his supporters are. @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/QPo8SW0CdM Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump You have absolutely zero self-awareness. Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 18, 2016I know right @realDonaldTrump!! You would be horrified at the actions of #DonaldTrump & his supporters during the election. pic.twitter.com/uWyGxW44hy Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump they already are called terrible names lol jolly duley (@Advil) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump ARE YOU KIDDING ME? rachelrobertsREAL (@scouserachel) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump Your supporters include a burgeoning neo-Nazi movement. Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump every time one of your tweets shows up in my feed it feels like a parody account Molly Knight (@molly_knight) December 18, 2016.@realDonaldTrump I have some bad news for you about your supporters. Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump you are embarrassing yourself and this great country every time you whine on Twitter. Delete your account. Molly Knight (@molly_knight) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump God you're the worst. Zoss (@JZossMPLS) December 18, 2016@realDonaldTrump Absurdly Thin Skin! #DopeyDonald #NotMyPresident #Unpresidented #TotallyFuckingBatshitCrazyRacistMisogynistMoron pic.twitter.com/P9vdDBPLn8 The Zen Parrot (@The_Zen_Parrot) December 18, 2016Trump s supporters are terrible no matter how you slice it, as even those who do not commit hate crimes in his name are fine with it as long as we build that wall to help Make America White Again. Oh well, better get these loons a safe space or eleven. They re going to need it.Featured image via Getty Images(Mark Wallheiser)/screengrab
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday said President Donald Trump wants to avoid nuclear war with North Korea and will do everything we can to avoid conflict. I can assure you the president s number one priority is the safety of the American people and our allies, Mnuchin said on ABC News. The president doesn t want to be in a nuclear war, and we will do everything we can to make sure that doesn t occur. Trump has dialed up the rhetoric against North Korea over the weekend, warning the country s foreign minister that he and leader Kim Jong Un won t be around much longer, as Pyongyang staged a major anti-U.S. rally.
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In his speech at Washington University, MILO condemned the “commie sleaze bags” who today tried to disrupt Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States.[ The protests, which operated under the name #DisruptJ20, involved blockading streets, burning cars and even organising a gay dance party outside Mike Pence’s house. Police have also been injured as over 200 arrests have been made over the course of the day. “You’re all familiar with a protest movement that started up calling itself Disrupt J20. What you might not have realized is they are a meritocracy. All of the really good commie sleazebags got trips to Washington DC to try to cause problems at the inauguration. ” “All of the losers were left back here in Seattle, and they are violent tonight. So violent in fact, that they assaulted my cameraman,” he continued. Before the beginning of MILO’s event, protesters were caught wielding baseball bats and sharp weapons, as riot police, an FBI bomb squad and two helicopters were deployed in order to control violence. MILO wears jeans by True Religion, $200. Shirt by Pam Gela, $220. Sneakers by Gucci, $750. Glasses by Givenchy, $350. Louis Vuitton belt, $450. Topshop fur coat, $140. Huf socks, $15. 99. Chains, jewels, pearls n shit: more than your tuition. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com
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UPPER DARBY, Pa. — Last Thursday afternoon, at the Tower Theater outside Philadelphia, the five members of Temple of the Dog were onstage grappling with a common problem faced by men in their early 50s: trying to remember just how they did things in their 20s. The next night, the roughly hall would be packed, the rock band’s first headlining concert appearance since, well, pretty much ever, but in rehearsal the band’s only audience was stagehands and lighting techs. After plowing through the crunching riffs of “Pushin Forward Back,” however, something didn’t sound quite right. “I don’t think we go into that long of a breakdown on the record,” said the guitarist Stone Gossard, noting the extended solo by his fellow guitarist, Mike McCready. “I’ll solo all night,” Mr. McCready admitted. After a brief discussion, the musicians set down their instruments and huddled in front of the drummer Matt Cameron’s kit, listening over a smartphone to the song as it appeared on their 1991 album, “Temple of the Dog. ” Memories refreshed, they returned to their stations, and resumed pushing “Pushin Forward Back” to its conclusion. Not that the band members are unfamiliar with one another: Mr. Gossard, Mr. McCready and Mr. Cameron, along with the bassist Jeff Ament, are all longtime members of Pearl Jam, while the singer Chris Cornell is known primarily for his work leading Soundgarden. Rather, it was the material that was somewhat alien, Mr. Gossard said during a conversation in the theater’s dressing room, describing the challenge of “learning songs that we literally played maybe 10 times 25 years ago. ” Despite the rust, tickets for the group’s first tour, eight shows in five cities (including Madison Square Garden on Monday night) sold out in minutes, all the more remarkable for a band, as Mr. Cameron points out, “that doesn’t exist. ” Temple of the Dog was originally convened a ago, in tribute to their friend and colleague Andrew Wood, lead singer of the Seattle bands Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, who died in March 1990 of a heroin overdose shortly before the release of Mother Love Bone’s debut album, “Apple. ” At the band’s inception, Soundgarden was preparing for its second major label album and Pearl Jam was just beginning to coalesce. To help deal with his grief, Mr. Cornell had written two songs, “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down,” in which he tried to channel Mr. Wood’s influence. “I thought, well, this is one thing that I can do to remind myself and maybe other people of who this guy is and was and keep his story and in a way his life with us,” Mr. Cornell said. He made demos of the songs, and approached Mr. Ament and Mr. Gossard, both of whom had been in Mother Love Bone with Mr. Wood, about properly recording them. The project soon evolved into an entire album, with the trio joined by Mr. Cameron, Soundgarden’s drummer, and Mr. McCready, a childhood friend of Mr. Gossard’s. “I think that was a healing process for us all and you can certainly still hear it in the record,” Mr. Cameron said. The name Temple of the Dog came from a lyric by Mr. Wood in the Mother Love Bone song “Man of Golden Words” (also on the set list for the current tour). The group played two short opening sets in Seattle in 1990, and has occasionally performed Temple of the Dog songs with Mr. Cornell at Pearl Jam concerts, but otherwise the band has never played together live since recording the album. “It was never intended to be like a big promoted rock record,” Mr. Cameron said. AM released the album in April 1991 and 70, 000 copies sold that year, but not until 1992 did sales explode. After the success of Pearl Jam’s debut, “Ten,” and Soundgarden’s “Badmotorfinger,” AM reissued “Temple of the Dog” and promoted the video for “Hunger Strike,” featuring the band and the Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder. “It didn’t really get that broad attention,” Mr. Cornell said, “until someone at MTV put it together that ‘Oh, there’s this one video that we have that has members of both bands in it let’s play it all day! ’” “Hunger Strike” shot up the charts and the album went platinum, but a tour for Temple at the time would have been “impossible,” Mr. Cornell said, given the busy road schedules of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. “You had to be out there beating the drum all the time,” he said. “Now it’s sort of a luxury. It’s a different world and a different time in the life spans of our respective bands, where we’ve written our own tickets, we sort of do whatever we want, so we’re fortunate that we can do this now. ” The current tour is accompanied by the recent release of a “25th Anniversary Mix” of the album, available in several permutations, including a CD, DVD and collection. Also arriving this week is a Mother Love Bone box set, “On Earth as It Is: The Complete Works” (on the Pearl Monkeywrench label) offering a new opportunity to examine the talents of Mr. Wood, a flamboyant figure in the Seattle scene who idolized Freddie Mercury, Paul Stanley and Elton John. “He had this way of looking at life that just made you laugh while you were around him,” Mr. Gossard said. Mr. Cornell was Mr. Wood’s roommate for about a year during the late 1980s in a dilapidated house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle perched right over Interstate 5. The freeway noise was so loud it permitted Soundgarden and Malfunkshun to rehearse in the living room. “We had bands that were influenced by each other,” Mr. Cornell said, “and there was kind of a rivalry between us as songwriters, but literally like five feet apart — through the doors to the bedrooms we could hear each other. ” In the lyrics to “Reach Down,” Mr. Cornell depicted Mr. Wood “wearing a long white leather Purple glasses and glitter in your hair. ” “There was an aspect of him that was always performing all the time,” Mr. Cornell said. “He had sort of invented himself as this character. The first time I ever saw him he had this entourage. He was a rock star, really, because he was it didn’t have anything to do with anything else. ” The idea of a Temple reunion began percolating around five years ago, during Pearl Jam’s 20th anniversary festival, after Mr. Cornell joined the other musicians onstage (Mr. Cameron having signed up as Pearl Jam’s drummer in 1998) to play five Temple songs. It took a while to coordinate schedules, but time has finally been set aside. “I always think about where Andy would want these songs to be played,” Mr. Ament said. “The Garden and the Forum were like the two places he probably wanted to play more than anywhere, so from that standpoint it’s awesome. ” Mr. Cameron hopes the reissues and the tour can elevate Mr. Wood’s presence in the legacy of Seattle’s music scene. “He wasn’t a footnote in our history,” Mr. Cameron said. “He was a real big influence for us all. ”
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions found himself at the center of controversy this week because he answered a question about the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Russian government without talking about his contacts as a United States Senator. [The assumption made by the media, the Democrats, and even some Republicans was that even routine contact with the Russian government is burdened by suspicion of collusion. Not since the McCarthy era have suspicions reached such levels. But if Sessions ought to resign, perhaps the entire Senate should quit. Because on Monday — two days before the Washington Post broke the highly scandalous story that Sessions had met the Russian ambassador twice in the course of his duties — every single United States Senator had formal contact with the Russian government. And not just any functionary: they had contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. Worse (apparently) still, they initiated the contact with the Russians. The contact was a letter, signed by the entire Senate, urging Putin to release a valuable library of Jewish religious texts that was seized by earlier Russian regimes and which has been the subject of a legal and diplomatic dispute in recent decades. Senate Letter Re Chabad — 2017 — Without Hatch Signature by Breitbart News on Scribd, Senator Orrin Hatch ( ) provided the final signature on the letter, and tweeted proudly about his support for the effort: For the last year, Hatch has led his colleagues in an effort to recover the texts, including a letter signed by all 100 Senators. ( ) pic. twitter. — Senator Hatch Office (@SenOrrinHatch) February 28, 2017, None of that means Sessions should have misled Congress — but the point is, again, that he did not. Ordinary contact with foreign governments is such a routine part of the job that he did not think to mention it, just as no one mentioned the Putin letter this week, even in the heat of debate about which senators might have met the Russian ambassador, and when and why. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Elected officials of Cambodia s banned opposition party have begun handing over their duties after a court ordered the party dissolved, the government said on Monday. The Supreme Court outlawed the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) last week at the request of authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen s government in a move that prompted the United States to cut election funding and threaten more punitive steps. The party was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason. The government says he sought to take power with American help. He rejects that allegation as politically motivated, to allow Hun Sen to extend his more than three decades in power in next year s general election. Among those told to give up their positions were councillors elected to communes in June, when the CNRP gained control of 40 percent of local councils, showing the electoral threat it posed to Hun Sen. The implementation has been going smoothly, the Interior Ministry s spokesman, Khieu Sopheak, told Reuters on Monday, adding that he did not know how long handover completion would take. The ruling Cambodian People s Party (CPP) will take over nearly all of the communes won by the opposition. The CNRP s 55 seats in the 123-member parliament will be shared among six minor parties, the National Election Committee (NEC) said. It had been unable to contact one of the parties entitled to a seat because its headquarters was shut, it added. Three NEC members submitted a letter of resignation from the electoral body in protest at their party s dissolution, saying the redistribution of seats to other parties was unconstitutional and against voters will . The court has also banned 118 CNRP party members from politics for five years. Mu Sochua, a senior CNRP member who moved abroad shortly before the ban, said party officials met over the weekend outside Cambodia to put together an action plan for the immediate future. We reject the decision of the court, she said, adding that Kem Sokha remained president and the party s former leader, Sam Rainsy, had rejoined it. Sam Rainsy had resigned in February, saying he feared the party would be banned if he did not, because of defamation convictions that he calls politically motivated and which pushed him to flee Cambodia in 2015. Across Cambodia, police took down CNRP signs outside party offices and on the streets. The interior ministry spokesman said the CNRP had helped by taking down its Phnom Penh headquarters sign itself. Rejecting the criticism from the United States over the dissolution of the opposition party and a crackdown on local rights groups and independent media, Hun Sen said on Sunday that Washington should cut off all aid for Cambodia.
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How long do you think our President has known about this? Anyone else sick of this Muslim Sympathizer In Chief? The mysterious Pakistani woman who with her husband gunned down 14 Wednesday at a Southern California holiday party pledged her allegiance to ISIS before the massacre, according to a government source, in what appears to be concrete evidence that the rampage was at least inspired, if not directed, by the terrorist group.Tashfeen Malik posted the pledge to ISIS leader and self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before the attack, in which she and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, stormed a San Bernardino party for his co-workers before escaping, Fox News confirmed through a law enforcement source who said the post was recovered despite the pair s attempts to erase their digital trail. The couple died hours later in a shootout with police, and in the aftermath the 29-year-old Pakistani woman has remained largely a name without a face. No confirmed pictures of her have surfaced, and few details have emerged.The pledge, posted on Facebook under another name and then deleted, was reported by The Associated Press, citing federal sources. It provided a fresh clue to Malik s identity and motivation. The aura of mystery surrounding Malik has given rise to suspicions she may have been the radicalizing force who turned her new husband from an aloof county restaurant inspector into her cohort in carnage, an Islamist fanatic capable of murdering co-workers who had embraced him for years. Tashfeen remains the biggest mystery, said a leader of the area s Pakistani-American Muslim community. She s the one no one knows anything about and has little to no presence on the Internet or having interacted with others in the Muslim community. Tashfeen remains the biggest mystery. She s the one no one knows anything about and has little to no presence on the Internet or having interacted with others in the Muslim community. Southern California Pakistani-American leaderThe aura of mystery surrounding Malik has given rise to suspicions she may have been the radicalizing force who turned her new husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, from an aloof county restaurant inspector into her cohort in carnage, an Islamist fanatic capable of murdering co-workers who had embraced him for years. Usually it s ISIS supporters trying to radicalize young girls online as they try to find new wives, but this may be the first case I know of where the opposite happened, said Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for Clarion Project, which tracks international terrorism.Mauro noted that Farook s older brother, who shares his name, served in the U.S. Navy, which would seem to indicate that Farook s radical leanings did not come from within his own family. It is possible that she radicalized him or that suspected terrorists inside America he was communicating with are responsible for the radicalization, which led him to be attracted to a more hardline Salafi girl, Mauro said.What is known is that Malik met Farook online and that the two became engaged after Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia in September 2013. Malik applied for a K-1 visa at the American embassy in Islamabad in May, 2014 and two months later Farook again traveled to Saudi Arabia, met her there and brought her to the U.S. on a K-1 visa, a 90-day visa given to fianc s planning to marry Americans.They were married on Aug. 16, 2014, in nearby Riverside County, Calif. according to their marriage license. The marriage and passage of criminal and national security background checks using FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases resulted in a conditional green card for Malik in July 2015, two months after she gave birth to their baby daughter.Malik and Farook, an American citizen born in Chicago and raised in Southern California by parents of Pakistani descent, lived with their daughter and his mother, Rafia Farook, in a Redlands, Calif., apartment described by one investigator as an IED factory and ammo arsenal. Via: FOX News
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Stop counting the votes! Your candidates nomination based strictly on the number of delegates they are able to obtain from each state following their elections.WATCH this great video explaining how Hillary can receive less votes, but still win with super delegates:The nominating contests that will determine the Democratic and Republican nominees for the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election are about to enter a critical phase. On March 1, known as Super Tuesday, primaries or caucuses are being held in about a dozen states, and they could be turning points in both parties.But the key to winning the nomination for each party is ultimately not about the popular vote. It is about securing the number of delegates needed to win the nomination at each party s convention July 18-21 in Cleveland for the Republicans and July 25-28 in Philadelphia for the Democrats.Like so many things in politics, there are twists and turns in how the popular vote is used to select each party s candidate.The following is a guide to the nominating process:Q: Is the delegate selection process the same for the Republican and Democratic parties?A: No. The parties set their own rules. One thing that is the same is that at each party convention, a candidate needs to reach only a simple majority of the delegate votes to win the nomination.Q: How many delegates are there?A: The Democratic convention will be attended by about 4,763 delegates, with 2,382 delegates needed to win the nomination. The Republican convention will be attended by 2,472 delegates, with 1,237 delegates needed to win.Q: I keep hearing about superdelegates. Are they different from other delegates? Do both the Republicans and Democrats have superdelegates?A: Superdelegates, officially known as unpledged delegates, are a sort of wild card in the nominating process, but only the Democrats have them.The category was created for the 1984 Democratic convention, and according to political scientists, they are a legacy of the 1980 convention when there was a fight for the nomination between President Jimmy Carter, who was seeking a second term in the White House, and Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Members of Congress were frustrated by their lack of influence, because delegates elected to support one candidate could not switch to support another. So Democratic members of the House of Representatives led an effort to win a role for themselves. That resulted in the creation of superdelegates. Unlike other delegates, superdelegates may change what candidate they are supporting right up to the convention.There is no fixed number of superdelegates because the group is defined by various categories whose members change from one election cycle to another. Here is who gets to be a superdelegate:All Democratic members of the House of Representatives and the Senate; the Democratic governors; the Democratic president and vice president of the United States; former Democratic presidents and vice presidents; former Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate; former Democratic speakers of the House and former Democratic minority leaders. Throw in the members of the Democratic National Committee and the former chairs of the DNC and you finally have the whole pool of superdelegates.Q: What about the other delegates? Do they get to choose which candidate to support?A: Both the Democratic and Republican parties send delegates to their conventions based on the popular vote in the primary elections and caucuses held in each of the 50 states. But the parties have different rules on how delegates are allotted to a candidate.The Democratic Party applies uniform rules to all states. In each state, delegates are allocated in proportion to the percentage of the primary or caucus vote in each district. But a candidate must win at least 15 percent of the vote to be allocated any delegates.The Republican Party lets states determine their own rules, although it does dictate some things. Some states award delegates proportionate to the popular vote, although most such states have a minimum percentage that a candidate must reach to win any delegates. Some other states use the winner-take-all method, in which the candidate with the highest percentage of the popular vote is awarded all the delegates. Other states use a combination of the two methods.States that use the proportionate method may instead use the winner-take-all method if one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the popular vote.In addition, the Republican Party requires that all states with nominating contests held between March 1 and March 14 use the proportional method, meaning that all the states holding votes on Super Tuesday will have to award delegates proportionally.Q: What happens to delegates if a candidate drops out of the race?A: Another good question, because we have certainly seen that happen this year.For the Democratic Party, in every state, delegates are reallocated to the remaining candidates.Nomination About Delegates, Not VotesThe power brokers of the Democrat party are not about to let crazy uncle Bernie represent them in the presidential election this year. He is anxious to flatten the economic map in the nation and go much further than Obama has in stealing from the rich and destroying the wealth generating engine of the country. Perhaps the elite wish things to do down a bit differently than what Sanders has in mind.It turns out that the New Hampshire primary, which Bernie won in a landslide, will probably award him fewer delegates than Hillary receives.Sanders won 60 percent of the vote, but thanks to the Democratic Party s nominating system, he leaves the Granite State with at least 13 delegates while she leaves with at least 15 delegates.New Hampshire has 24 pledged delegates, which are allotted based on the popular vote. Sanders has 13, and Clinton has 9, with 2 currently allotted to neither.Under Democratic National Committee rules, New Hampshire also has 8 superdelegates, party officials who are free to commit to whomever they like, regardless of how their state votes. Their votes count the same as delegates won through the primary.New Hampshire has 8 superdelegates, 6 of which are committed to Hillary Clinton, giving her a total of 15 delegates from New Hampshire as of Wednesday at 9 a.m.The two remaining superdelegates remain uncommitted, so Hillary actually comes out ahead in overall delegate count. Clinton has 394 delegates that includes both super delegates and ones that are picked up in primary elections, while Bernie now has only 42. In other words the fix is in, and Clinton will absolutely be the Democrat nominee for president unless she is indicted for her illegal acts dealing with top secret government documents.But as with the assigning of delegates, it seems that the will of the people, along with their clearly declared votes, will be ignored and the coronation will still take place. As some of my friends like to say, Hillary for Prison, 2016! May it be so.For the Republican Party, it varies by state. In some states, delegates are required to stick with their original candidate at least through the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. In some other states, if a candidate drops out, his or her delegates may immediately pledge to another candidate. There is also a middle ground in which those delegates are reallocated to the remaining candidates. Via: NYPost
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On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea to do Trump s dirty work and deliver a message that should make every American extremely uncomfortable.In an interview with CNN s Dana Bash, Pence confirmed that the Trump administration was throwing diplomacy out the window and abandoning the failed policy of strategic patience. Pence said: We re going to abandon the failed policy of strategic patience. But we re going to redouble our efforts to bring diplomatic and economic pressure to bear on North Korea. Our hope is that we can resolve this issue peaceably. [Strategic patience] was the policy of the United States of America during prior administrations to practice what they called strategic patience, that was to hope to martial international support to bring an end to the nuclear ambitions and the ballistic missile program of North Korea. that clearly ahs failed and the advent of nuclear weapons testing and development of a nuclear program all confirms the fact that strategic patience has failed. When Bash asked Pence to clarify what he meant, Pence said: We re going to abandon the failed policy of strategic patience but we re going to redouble our efforts to bring diplomatic and economic pressure to bear on North Korea. Our hope is that we can resolve this situation peaceably. And I know the President was heartened by his discussions with President Xi (Jinping). We ve seen China begin to take some actions to bring pressure on North Korea but there needs to be more. Resolving this issue requires all relevant parties, especially parties that bear major responsibility and play a key role in this issue, to work in the same direction and make a joint effort. You can watch Pence deliver this message below:.@VP Pence warns North Korea not to test President Trump s resolve in exclusive CNN interview at the DMZ https://t.co/qb7kjI3sPK New Day (@NewDay) April 17, 2017While Pence might have tried to soften his message while he was speaking to Bash, he said this to acting South Korean President Hwang Kyo-ahn on Monday, making more of a direct threat: Just in the past two weeks, the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan.North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region. Clearly, Trump wants to take more of a strong-arm approach and is using Pence to deliver this terrifying message. As North Korea has already launched a (failed) missile and Trump has proven himself to be trigger-happy when it comes to dropping bombs and his own missile attacks, this abandonment of diplomacy could very well mean war in the near future.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
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AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army backed by Russian jets on Wednesday stepped up shelling and air strikes on a besieged rebel-held enclave in Damascus a day after rebels stormed an army base in the area, rebels, a war monitor and residents said. The bombardment follows a surprise ground offensive by jihadist rebels on Tuesday on an army complex in the heart of the city s Eastern Ghouta region that has defied opposition assaults since the start of the conflict. The fortress-like Military Vehicles Administration in the government-held part of Harasta town has long been used to strike at the densely populated Eastern Ghouta, where over 300,000 people live under siege. Rebels have failed in repeated offensives to seize the sprawling compound, from where surface-to-surface rockets are launched against the rebel enclave. Douma, the main city in opposition-held Eastern Ghouta, is only three km away. The fighting is continuing and the shelling and air strikes are heavy near the base and most of the towns of the Ghouta, said Abu Kutaiba, a military commander for Ahrar al Sham, an Islamist rebel group that has spearheaded the attack. A Syrian military source said on state media the army had repelled terrorists who sought to infiltrate in large numbers, killing tens and destroying their weaponry. It did not mention the heavy aerial strikes on opposition areas. Backed by Russian strikes, government forces have escalated military operations against Eastern Ghouta in recent weeks, seeking to tighten a siege on the area, residents and rebels say. The rebel assault aims partly to relieve that pressure. The Eastern Ghouta is part of several de-escalation zones which Russia has brokered with rebels across Syria that has freed the army to redeploy in areas they can regain ground. The rebel offensive which began on Tuesday is the first since last March when mainstream Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels staged an attack against government-held areas in northeastern Damascus. The rebels were forced to retreat after initial gains. In retaliatory attacks, aerial strikes and shelling hit Harasta, Irbin, Misraba, Hamouriya, and Saqba towns in Eastern Ghouta with at least eight civilians killed and about 94 wounded in the last 20 hours alone, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and residents. After securing the last rebel pocket inside the capital s Qaboun district last May, the Syrian army has since concentrated its military drive against Ain Terma and Jobar, northeast of the capital in the Ghouta area. Rebels helped by an elaborate network of underground tunnels have repelled repeated attempts to storm these areas. The army and its militias have failed to make any progress and have had heavy losses, said Alwan, a spokesman for the FSA s Failaq al Rahman rebel group. Backed by Russian strikes, the army has however gradually succeeded in the last year in shrinking rebel held control over Eastern Ghouta. The loss of agricultural land has compounded the humanitarian plight of civilians. The United Nations has warned of impending starvation if aid does not reach the area, where international deliveries have long been erratic and obstructed.
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Just as Sarah Palin was set to deliver another pro-Trump stump speech, the one-time Republican vice presidential candidate learned that her husband, Todd, had been involved in a serious snowmobile accident in Alaska and was in bad condition in the Intensive Care Unit. She cancelled one event, but didn t go home. Instead, she returned to the campaign trail that same day and delivered one of the most pathetic endorsements of Trump yet. She even found a way to exploit her husband. it was painful to watch.It almost makes you feel bad for Todd Palin. Lying in his hospital bed, watching his wife use his moment of need to promote the guy she thinks will keep her relevant.Never one to let a family crisis go to waste (remember when she managed to turn her son s brutal beating of his girlfriend into a critique of Obama?), Palin told the gathered Trump crowd that the experience of learning her husband almost died made her immediately realize how important her time was and that she needed to spend it getting Trump elected.The audience went wild.Incoming word salad (recorded verbatim): Yeah, good to be here. Thawed out and little Alaskas. Literally thawed out. Just before I got on a flight to get out here, he s out ice fishing on our frozen lake and my husband s out snow machinin and thank you guys for your prayers for my husband who is recovering right now in ICUS after a little wreck on a snow machine. So thank you. Big wreck. Thank you. But, you know, when real life happens, right? When someone is sick in your family, there s an accident that happens, all these challenges, these struggles in your business, in your family, with your finances, tryin to get your kids to be able to afford to go to college, all these real life issues that happen, it really puts things into perspective, doesn t it? And doesn t it make you so appreciate your time time is our most valuable resource. It makes me appreciate the time that we have to spend in doing something so worthy. And that s to get Donald J. Trump elected president.When Palin learns her husband is badly injured, she takes the experience to appreciate how important it is for her to shill for Donald Trump. That really does put things into perspective, doesn t it? Palin: Todd s Accident Made Me Appreciate the by tommyxtopherFeatured image via Fox10 screengrab
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Newsweek magazine has gone COMPLETELY overboard with their latest cover picture and title! They ve done a hit piece on President Trump that is so disgusting and offensive that Trump supporters on social media are hitting back.Newsweek posted the cover of President Trump on Facebook with this caption:The top comments in response to this post are outraged pro-Trump followers:Kim Daskam let Newsweek have it!OUR FAVORITE COMMENT:Marian Marek: He s so damn lazy that 1.The Dow hit a record high of 22,085.82 2. Toyota and Mazda are investing 1.6 billion in our country and are creating 4,000 jobs. Foxconn is 10 billion. 3. Lowest jobless rate in 28 years and unemployment claims down by 4 percent. 4. Stock market has put in 4 trillion into the economy. 5. Veterans affairs is being cleaned up. 6. TPP nasty Obama trade deal being redone and improved. 7. Keystone pipeline is starting to be renegotiated and this will also bring jobs and lower energy costs to 1.3 million barrels from Obamas 5,000 barrels. CAN YOU SEE the Trend in the Media? The Washington Post Jared Bernstein to Newsweek! That s why they are called Fake News! The real Lazy Boy honor goes to Congress! Not the President!!Please let Newsweek know that you re offended by their cover photo and article on President Trump! Here s Newsweek s facebook link: NEWSWEEK FACEBOOKMILO HAS A GREAT FACEBOOK VIDEO ON TRUMP S CREATION OF OVER 1 MILLION JOBS:
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WOW! There aren t too many non-political people willing to stand up to the lies of Obama and his ties to radical Islam. Human rights attorney, Brooke Goldstein tears Muslim woman who attended the radical DC mosque with Barack Obama yesterday apart with facts:
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What do you think? Do you agree with Rick Santorum, or should we allow illegal aliens to enjoy all of the same benefits as American citizens simply because they or their parents made it across our US border without getting caught?Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) can t speak to whether President-elect Donald Trump plans to deport undocumented immigrants en masse beginning next year, but he has made one thing clear: People who came to the U.S. illegally as children, also known as Dreamers, should just leave the U.S. if they re worried about their immigration status.Elizabeth Vilchis, a mechanical engineer who said she came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 7 years old, asked Santorum about Trump s immigration plans on Tuesday night during a town hall event with CNN s Van Jones. She asked Santorum how he would advise her to plan for her future.He began his reply by talking about his father, who left Mussolini s Italy to come to the U.S. when he was 7 years old even though, Santorum said, he wasn t allowed to come because of the immigration laws at the time. Then he began to address Vilchis specifically. What most people in America feel is that you ve been given a tremendous benefit by being here in this country, Santorum said, adding that he imagined she wouldn t have had to opportunities to accomplish what you have in her country of origin. My final point is that you have the ability to go to any other country right now and apply those wares, and be successful, and reapply to come back to America, Santorum added. Go and make the world a better place. CNN contributor Ana Navarro butted in. First of all, this is your country, she said. No matter what he says, no matter what anybody else says, this is your country. That s not what the law says, Santorum replied. As much as I m sympathetic to you, you should recognize the gift that America has given you and that you can give to the world. HP@Jorgesays @RickSantorum I'll chip in good money to send Santorum to another country. Any country. Cindy Hargest (@CindyHargest) December 7, 2016No decent country would take him. Lyle (@lyledal) December 7, 2016This broke my heart. "You got your education, now get out." This woman is as American as you Rick. Dave Harrell (@daveharrell16) December 7, 2016Send disgusting @RickSantorum back to Italy. iburl (@iburl) December 7, 2016
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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea put on a musical show to mark the birthday of founding father Kim Il Sung, which ended with a mock-up video of missiles engulfing the United States in flames, prompting cheers from the audience and smiles from current leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea’s state television aired footage of a choral performance attended by Kim Jong Un, the elder Kim’s grandson, on Sunday, a day after a huge military parade in Pyongyang, which also marked the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung. The singing was followed by footage of its test-firing of a missile in February which, in the video, was joined by other missiles shooting into sky, passing over the Pacific and exploding in giant balls of flames in the United States. The video ended with a picture of the American flag in flames, overlapping row after row of white crosses in a cemetery. (reut.tv/2orqo6d) “When the performance was over, all the performers and participants in the military parade broke into enthusiastic cheers of ‘hurrah!’,” state run KCNA news agency said. State TV footage showed leader Kim smiling and waving in return. “The Dear Supreme Leader waved back to them and congratulated the artistes on their successful performance,” KCNA said. North Korea said in February that it had successfully tested a new type of medium- to long-range ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-2, propelled by a solid-fuel engine. During Saturday’s military parade it displayed what appeared to be new intercontinental ballistic missiles. And a day later it conducted a failed missile test, which drew international condemnation. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy the United States and amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula, it has escalated a war of words, warning of full-out nuclear war if Washington takes military action against it. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, on a trip to Asia, has repeatedly warned that the “era of strategic patience” with North Korea is over and on Wednesday said it would meet any attack with an “overwhelming response”.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama’s administration has decided to include a massive report on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in his presidential papers, meaning it may eventually be declassified. The White House wrote to Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Dec. 9 informing them of its decision. Feinstein, who released the letter on Monday, said Obama had refused to declassify the report at this time but she was pleased it would go into his archive, meaning it would one day be available for declassification. “The report represents six years of hard work by dedicated staff, and I firmly believe its 6,700 pages and 38,000 footnotes will stand the test of time. I also strongly believe that this must be a lesson learned — that torture doesn’t work,” Feinstein said in a statement. A White House spokesman confirmed the decision. Burr’s office had no immediate comment. Feinstein and other congressional Democrats had urged Obama to declassify and release the report before Republican President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20. Feinstein chaired the intelligence panel as it researched and wrote the report on the interrogation techniques used in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and she spearheaded the effort to expose the CIA’s actions. The committee, then led by Democrats, released a 525-page executive summary of its findings in December 2014. But the full report has been deemed by Obama and others as too sensitive to release. Trump promised during his campaign that he would not only revive waterboarding, but bring back “a hell of a lot worse” if elected. However, he said more recently that retired Marine Corps General James Mattis, his nominee for secretary of defense, had persuasively argued against it. Obama ended the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” via executive order just after he took office in January 2009. Led by Republican Senator John McCain and Feinstein, Congress has since passed legislation outlawing their use.
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We wrote about this particular and ongoing situation in Texas but it s getting more and more pressing. The feds are coming in and telling legal land owners who ve owned their ranches for decades that they ll be taking their land:LAND GRAB ALERT: Texas Rancher Could Lose 600 Acres To Feds [Video] KAUZ-TV: Newschannel 6 Now | Wichita Falls, TX Unlawful and wrong!In a letter to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Neil Kornz, Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote, The BLM should demonstrate that the federal government still respects private property rights and end this unconscionable land grab. The letter was sent regarding the ongoing battle between Texas landowners and the federal government.Abbott s letter references the battle between Texas landowners and the BLM first reported nationally by Breitbart Texas in April, 2014. At that time, then Texas Attorney General Abbott told Breitbart Texas in an exclusive interview, I am about ready to go to the Red River and raise a Come and Take It flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas. Abbott sent a letter to Kornz on April 22 detailing the concerns over actions taken by the BLM to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations. In the Texas Governor s newest letter to the federal agency, Abbott expressed the frustrations felt by many of the landowners who have been involved in this ongoing battle. Abbott wrote, Texas will not wait any longer. The governor reminded Kornz of his previous letters on this issue. My fellow Texans and I are still waiting for an answer, Abbott wrote. The BLM has yet to identify what land the federal government newly claims as its own. The BLM has yet to identify the legal basis for that claim. And the BLM has yet to identify the process by which Texans can protect their land and private property rights. Read more: Breitbart
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shorty Dispatches from Eric Zuesse
O n November 1st, The Intercept headlined “HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE STORY CONNECTING RUSSIA TO DONALD TRUMP’S EMAIL SERVER” , and the reporting team of Sam Biddle, Lee Fang, Micah Lee, and Morgan Marquis-Boire, revealed that: “Slate’s Franklin Foer published a story that’s been circulating through the dark web and various newsrooms since summertime, an enormous, eyebrow-raising claim that Donald Trump uses a secret server to communicate with Russia. That claim resulted in an explosive night of Twitter confusion and misinformation. The gist of the Slate article is dramatic — incredible, even: Cybersecurity researchers found that the Trump Organization used a secret box configured to communicate exclusively with Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank. This is a story that any reporter in our election cycle would drool over, and drool Foer did.”
The Intercept team concluded their detailed analysis of the evidence by saying: Franklin Foer is an American warmonger and p.r. agent, a Democrat, and former editor of The [scurrilous Neocon] New Republic. Foer was a 2012 Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. “Could it be that Donald Trump used one of his shoddy empire’s spam marketing machines, one with his last name built right into the domain name, to secretly collaborate with a Moscow bank? Sure. At this moment, there’s literally no way to disprove that. But there’s also literally no way to prove it, and such a grand claim carries a high burden of proof. Without more evidence it would be safer (and saner) to assume that this is exactly what it looks like: A company that Trump has used since 2007 to outsource his hotel spam is doing exactly that. Otherwise, we’re all making the exact same speculation about the unknown that’s caused untold millions of voters to believe Hillary’s deleted emails might have contained Benghazi cover-up PDFs. Given equal evidence for both, go with the less wacky story.”
However, they failed to dig deeper to explain what could have motivated this smear of Trump: was it just sloppiness on the part of Slate, and of Foer? Hardly — it was anything but unintentional: A core part of the Democratic Party’s campaign for Hillary Clinton consists of her claim that Donald Trump is secretly a Russian agent. This is an updated version of the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy’s campaign to “root communists out of the federal government,” and of the John Birch Society’s accusation even against the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower that, “With regard to … Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason.”
Neoconservatives — in both Parties — are the heirs of the Republican Party’s hard-right, which now, even decades after the 1991 end of communism and the Soviet Union, hate Russia above all of their other passions. Neoconservatism has emerged as today’s Republican Party’s Establishment, and (like with the Democratic Party’s original neocon, U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the “Senator from Boeing”) they’ve always viewed Russia to be America’s chief enemy, and they have favored the overthrow of any nation’s leader who is friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad. Hatred and demonization of Russia is the common core of neoconservatism — the post-Cold-War extension of Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society. Neoconservatives — in both Parties — are the heirs of the Republican Party’s hard-right, which now, even decades after the 1991 end of communism and the Soviet Union, hate Russia above all of their other passions.
Both Slate and especially Foer have long pedigrees as Democratic Party neoconservatives — champions of U.S. invasions, otherwise called PR agents (‘journalists’) promoting the products and services that a few giant and exclusive military corporations such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Dyncorp, and the Carlyle Group, offer to the U.S. federal government. I’ll deal here only with Foer, not with his latest employer (in a string, all of which are neocon Democratic ‘news’ media). Foer wrote in The New York Times , on 10 October 2004, against ‘isolationist’ Republicans, who regretted having supported George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and he headlined about them there, “Once Again, America First” , equating non -neoconservative Republicans with, essentially, the pro-fascist isolationists of the 1930s. He concluded that they would come to regret their regret: “Conservatives could soon find themselves retracing Buckley’s steps, wrestling all over again with their isolationist instincts.” That’s how far-right Franklin Foer is: he’s to the right of those Republicans. .. On 7 June 2004, Foer, in a tediously long, badly written and argued, article in New York Magazine , “The Source of the Trouble” , described the downfall of The New York Times’s leading stenographer for George W. Bush’s lies to invade Iraq, their reporter Judith Miller. He closed by concluding that “the source of the trouble” was that Miller was simply too earnest and tried too hard — not that she was a stenographer to power: .. “People like Miller, with her outsize journalistic temperament of ambition, obsession, and competitive fervor, relying on people like Ahmad Chalabi, with his smooth, affable exterior retailing false information for his own motives, for the benefit of people reading a newspaper, trying to get at the truth of what’s what. ” .. (She was anything but “trying to get at the truth of what’s what.” She was the opposite: a mere stenographer to George W. Bush and to the Administration’s chosen mouthpieces, such as the anti-Saddam exiled Iraqi Ahmad Chalaby.) O n 20 December 2004, when the question of whether to bomb Iran was being debated by neoconservatives, Foer, who then was the Editor of the leading Democratic Party neoconservative magazine, The New Republic , headlined in his magazine, “Identity Crisis: Neocon v. Neocon on Iran” , and he introduced a supposed non-neocon from the supposedly non-neocon Brookings Institution, Kenneth Pollack, to comment upon the conflict among ( the other Party’s ) neocons: “In part, the lack of neocon consensus [on whether to, as John McCain was to so poetically put it, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ ] can be attributed to the nature of the problem. Nobody — not the Council on Foreign Relations, not John Kerry’s brain trust — has designed a plausible policy to walk Iran back from the nuclear brink. Or, as Kenneth M. Pollack concludes in his new book, The Persian Puzzle, this is a ‘problem from Hell’ with no good solution.” But, actually, both Pollack and Brookings are Democratic Party neocons themselves; and among the leading proponents of invading Iraq had been not only Pollack but Brookings’s Michael O’Hanlon . Brookings had no prominent opponent of invading Iraq. (Brookings has a long history of neoconservatism , and routinely leads the Democratic Party’s contingent of neocon thinking, even urging a Democratic administration to have its stooge-regimes violate international laws .) The real reason why neocons (being the heirs of the far-right extremists’ Cold-War demonization of Russia, even after communism is gone) wanted to conquer both Iraq and Iran, was that both countries’ leaders were friendly towards Russia, and were opposed by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, which family quietly worked not only with the U.S. government but with Israel’s government, against both Iraq and Iran, as well as against Syria — those three nations (Iraq, Iran, and Syria) all being friendly toward Russia, which both the Saudi aristocracy, and not only the U.S. aristocracy, hate. It’s not just the conservative ‘news’ media that are neoconservative now. The so-called ‘liberal’ media are so neoconservative that, for example, Salon can condemn Donald Trump for his having condemned Hillary and Obama’s bombing of Libya. Salon condemned Trump’s having said “We would be so much better off if Qaddafi were in charge right now” — as if Trump weren’t correct, and as if what happened after our overthrow and killing of Qaddafi weren’t far worse for both Libyans and the world than what now exists in Libya. (But, of course, for Lockheed Martin etc., it is far better). CBS News and Mother Jones condemned the Trilateralist Joseph Nye for having veered temporarily away from his normal neoconservatism. Then, Nye wrote in the neocon Huffington Post saying that David Corn of Mother Jones and Franklin Foer of The New Republic had misrepresented what he had said, and that he was actually a good neocon after all. Nye closed: “In any case, I have never supported Gaddafi and am on record wishing him gone, and also on record supporting Obama’s actions in recent weeks. We now know that Gaddafi’s departure is the only change that will work in Libya.” Sure, it did. Oh, really? It’s Trump who is crazy here? More recently, Foer headlined at Slate, “Putin’s Puppet: If the Russian president could design a candidate to undermine American interests — and advance his own — he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.” Foer proceeded to present the view of Trump that subsequently became parroted by the Hillary Clinton campaign (that Trump=traitor). Wikipedia has a 450-person ”List of Republicans opposing Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016″ , and it’s almost entirely comprised of well-known neoconservatives — the farthest-right of all Republicans, the people closest to Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society. Foer cited many neoconservative sources that are not commonly thought of as Republican, such as Buzzfeed; and he even had the gall to blame the Russian government for having made public its best evidence behind its charge (which was true ) that the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was no authentic ‘democratic revolution’ such as the U.S. government and its ‘news’ media said, but was instead a very bloody U.S. coup d’etat in Ukraine , which was organized from the U.S. Embassy there, starting by no later than 1 March 2013 , a year beforehand. Foer wrote: “The Russians have made an art of publicizing the material they have filched to injure their adversaries. The locus classicus of this method was a recording of a blunt call between State Department official Toria [that’s actually ‘Victoria’] Nuland [a close friend of both Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney] and the American ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt. The Russians allegedly planted the recording on YouTube and then tweeted a link to it — and from there it became international news. Though they never claimed credit for the leak, few doubted the White House’s contention that Russia was the source.” To a neoconservative, even defensive measures (such as Russia’s there exposing the lies that America uses to ‘justify’ economic sanctions and other hostile acts against Russia) — indeed, anything that Russia does against America’s aggressions against Russia, and against Russia’s allies (such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych) — anything that Russia does, is somehow evil and blameworthy. And, of course, America’s aggressions are not. The U.S. government and its neocon propagandists are outraged that some people are trying to expose — instead of to spread — their lies. The American government isn’t yet neocon enough, in the view of such liars. About the author =SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.= free • safe • invaluable If you appreciate our articles, do the right thing and let us know by subscribing. It’s free and it implies no obligation to you— ever. We just want to have a way to reach our most loyal readers on important occasions when their input is necessary. In return you get our email newsletter compiling the best of The Greanville Post several times a week. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS Print this post if you want. Share This:
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Previous 14 Days and Counting-There Will Be a Civil War No Matter Who Wins the Election
It is 1860 and Stephen Douglas is running against Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s election will lead to a civil war. The pitfalls of catastrophic events were ever present.
In 2016, it is Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton. It is becoming clear that the election of either candidate will set off civil unrest and possibly lead to a civil war.
We are now just beginning to see a myriad of pieces fall into place in which will irrevocably divide this country for at least a generation.
When Hillary Clinton wins, the awakened American people, and some in the military will not accept this country being handed off to the UN and ultimately the Chinese. Hillary has no plan for America and the reason is clear. America has no future is she is elected by hook or crook.
If Trump even gets close to winning, the forces are of the NWO are not going to forsake the continued raping of the American people and just give up. They will fight! The Electoral College
Through out this week, I have documented case after case of voter fraud through the use of George Soros voting machines. Soros is omnipresent in the voting fraud fiasco. Also, I have broken a story about the attempted bribe of an elector in Arizona and this is only the beginning.
This summer we will begin to hear rumors of the officials of the Electoral College being bought off by TPTB, for it is their vote, not the people, whose votes will elect the next President. Trump could win 70% of the vote and not carry one state if the Electoral College refuses to cast their vote in accordance with the popular vote. And you thought you lived in a Republican form of Democracy.
As I just pointed out, there is always the question of “dirty” voting machines. Most pollsters will tell you that if the general vote is reported with more than 3-4% variation from the polls, one can easily demonstrate voter fraud. However, do you think TPTB, the criminal elite running this country, will care at this point that you know what they are doing? This is why they do the fake polls to condition us to the fact that Trump is losing. He is not, he is winning in a landslide. Further, the globalists always have their finger on the false flag button. This is why they have economic collapse, World War III, power grid down, a manufactured food crisis, etc., etc., etc., and the ultimate martial law to accompany any and all of these potentialities waiting in the wings.
Right now, UWEX 16 is practicing for Civil War and foreign troops are in play. UWEX 16 (i.e. Jade Helm 16) will be spreading to other states as announced in their operational plans. The Federal Reserve has met with Obama and Biden. The only thing that Obama could the Fed is the use of the military to put down any populist uprising over a stolen election or a false flag attack to prevent the election from happening. Now, Paul Martin’s sources have learned and are communicating that there is a coordinated 18 state swat team drill. Could they be practicing for anything else but civil unrest over a stolen election?
In short, if by some manner of Divine intervention, Trump wins, we will see massive terrorism in this country on an unprecedented scale from the Clinton Democrats and the terrorists we have let into the country through the Refugee/Resettlement program. I believe that Obama will not leave the White House and will impose his version of martial law, Executive Order 13603 style.
If Clinton is able to steal the election, America is done and unfortunately, the streets will run red with blood. More Foreign Troops
The knot in the noose, consists of the foreign troop movements that are taking place on our soil. I am getting repeated reports of large armored columns of UN vehicles being transporting or traveling on their own in the South stretching from Texas to Georgia. However, wide scale proof, with clear and convincing photos, not photo shopped, are lacking. Do I think that foreign military are planning for civil unrest in America? Yes, there is no question. I am encouraging all to keep their eyes open, take raw footage and transmit the raw footage to outlets like the The Common Sense Show .
Yesterday, when I said on a radio interview that America is grave danger because of Trump securing the nomination, these are just a few of the things that I had in mind. Yesterday, I was reading about massive revivals in West Virginia. Pray that these revivals sweep the country because we, the American public are defenseless and our faith is our best defense. Conclusion
Barring a miracle from the Almighty, the forces of subjugation have lined up against Trump and appear to have stolen the election. Pray, pray and pray some more that this 4th degree Coven Witch is not allowed to occupy the White House.
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Wish we could clone this guy we love Daniel Hannan! We couldn t have said it better!
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Dinesh D Sousa warned us about Obama s reduction of our nation s nuclear stockpile in his movie, 2016, Obama s America. Shortly after his blockbuster movie appeared in theaters across America, Dinesh D Souza was charged with violating federal campaign finance laws and was sentenced to five years of probation, a $30,000 fine, and eight months in a San Diego community confinement center where he was forced to undergo therapeutic counseling. Here is what Dinesh D Souza predicted:Driven by the alleged anti-colonialist ideology of a father he barely met, President Barack Obama systematically is undermining America economically and militarily leaving it vulnerable to financial collapse, and even as unlikely as the possibility may seem, nuclear attack.And it charges as he slashes the defense budget, Obama is simultaneously pushing to reduce the nation s nuclear stockpile to as low as a few hundred missiles even as other countries like China, Russia and North Korea are modernizing and expanding their arsenals, and Iran widely believed to be close to developing nuclear weapons is threatening to annihilate Israel. From Dinesh D Sousa s controversial 2010 book, The Roots Of Obama s Rage WNDHere is what is actually happening today:The United States cut its nuclear stockpiles by 20 percent between 1996 and 2013, with more reductions likely to come, according to recently declassified information released by the White House.Stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, which is used to fuel a nuclear weapon, were cut from 740.7 metric tons to 586.6 metric tons from 1996 to 2013, according to recently declassified information made available by the Obama administration. This reflects a reduction of over 20 percent, the White House announced. Moreover, further reductions in the inventory are ongoing; the U.S. Department of Energy s material disposition program has down-blended 7.1 metric tons of HEU since September 30, 2013, and continues to make progress in this area. The stockpile reductions are part of an effort by the Obama administration to eliminate nuclear materials and move away from these types of weapons.The move comes as countries such as Russia and North Korea move to increase their nuclear stockpiles. Russia, for instance, has made several announcements about its intent to boost its nuclear stockpile and number of weapons.However, the United States is moving in the opposite direction.Via:WFB
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Republicans clearly just have absolutely no shame anymore. It s already been discovered that the image tweeted out by Donald Trump featuring Hillary Clinton next to a Star of David on top of a pile of money was originally created by white supremacists, but that s not stopping Trump, nor RNC chair Reince Priebus from lying through their teeth.Appearing on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Priebus is parroting Trump s effort of claiming that the star was just a random star pulled out of Microsoft Paint by their campaign staff when creating the image. That it s some sort of sheriff s star even though it doesn t have the globes on the points, and looks exactly like the Star of David.Priebus seems to completely ignore the fact that it s been revealed the original image came from white supremacists, and instead touts the line after claiming the star came from Microsoft: They figured it out, and they fixed it. Which they did, they turned the star into a circle, but it doesn t negate the fact that the original image is from racists, and both Priebus and Trump are lying to cover their own asses.Republicans need to learn to own their mistakes and apologize. It s really that simple. Lying to cover things up just makes them look even worse.Watch Priebus lies through his teeth here:RNC chair on Trump s star tweet: They figured it out, and they fixed it https://t.co/nyY5wUhZ5M https://t.co/Dvl0QOo52m CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 5, 2016Featured image via video screen capture
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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaking in parliament hours before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office, said on Friday he wanted to further strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance. Trump sparked worries in Tokyo and the rest of the Asia-Pacific with campaign comments which included a pledge to make allies pay more for the security provided by U.S. forces and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. “The Japan-U.S. alliance has been, is and will be the cornerstone of our country’s diplomatic and security policies. This is an immutable principle,” Abe said in his policy speech at the start of the regular parliament session. “I am aiming to visit the United States as soon as possible to further fortify the bond of alliance together with new President Trump.” Abe met with Trump in New York after the election in November and called him a “trustworthy leader”. In his speech to parliament, the prime minister repeated his support for TPP, which will go into deep freeze if the United States drops out. “As a flag bearer for free trade, we will build an economic system of the 21st century based on fair rules. The TPP agreement sets the standard for that purpose and serves as the foundation for future economic cooperation,” he said. Japan has ratified the TPP and on Friday notified New Zealand, secretariat for the TPP, it had completed the domestic procedures for the pact, becoming the first country among the 12 signatory nations to do so. New Zealand has ratified the TPP, but not completed the whole domestic procedures. Koichi Hamada, an adviser to Abe and emeritus professor of economics at Yale University, told Reuters that Japan should push back if Trump bases trade and other economic policy on “wrong economics”, in an unusually direct expression of concern about potential protectionism. Echoing the sentiment in Abe’s speech, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida called strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance key to regional peace and prosperity, and said Japan is ready to play a role as a stabilizing power in a world ripe for change. “Uncertainty is growing in the international community, while Japan has conducted stable politics and diplomacy over the past four years and increased its international presence,” Kishida said in his foreign policy speech. “As a stable power, Japan needs to work with countries it shares fundamental values with and take a leading role in the international community, so that this ... will be the year of advancement of Japan’s national interest and of global peace and prosperity.” Abe’s ruling coalition enjoys a two-thirds majority in parliament’s powerful lower house, while the transition of power in the United States, key elections this year in France and Germany and Britain’s departure from the European Union are making the global economic and political outlook uncertain. Trump’s inauguration ceremony will take place later on Friday in Washington, which braces for more than a quarter-million protesters expected during the New York real estate tycoon’s swearing-in. Following the speeches by Abe and Kishida, Finance Minister Taro Aso pledged to stick to the government’s target of achieving a balanced budget in the fiscal year ending in March 2021, by pursuing both economic growth and fiscal consolidation.
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BEIJING (Reuters) - Winter is bringing a frigid existence and an uncertain future for migrant workers in Beijing deprived of electricity and heating as they resist a month-long campaign to evict them from the city s urban villages. A deadly fire in a hamlet of ramshackle dwellings on the capital s southern fringes last month prompted a fire safety blitz by the authorities, forcing thousands of the workers out of homes and businesses. But not everyone has left, and a handful of holdouts are preparing for tough times as temperatures plunge below freezing. There s no electricity when we re coming home. We can t see where we re going, said Feng, a migrant worker hailing from the southwestern province of Sichuan, pointing to a pile of blankets. Feng, who was willing to reveal only his surname, had been renting a room in a shared apartment block built and run by migrants in Picun, a village in northeast Beijing, until the authorities cut off their power and ordered everyone to leave. I sold my house in the northeast, there is nothing to go back to, said another worker, Wang Liping, who said she paid 200,000 yuan ($30,000) to buy part of the apartment block where migrants like Feng rent rooms for a few hundred yuan each month. I d rather freeze to death than leave here, added Wang, who is refusing to leave despite efforts to remove her. The evictions have sparked unusually direct criticism from China s intellectuals, students and journalists, who say the government is unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass. Originally it was just a fire, but they used the fire as an excuse to force people young and old onto the streets in the middle of the coldest days of winter, independent political commentator Zhang Lifan told Reuters. But the city could not do without migrants, Cai Qi, the city s Communist Party chief and a close ally of President Xi Jinping, said during a visit to the migrants this week, in a bid to allay the fears. The capital s need for cheap labor has attracted thousands of workers, even though they are denied official residency permits because of government curbs on internal migration. Migrant enclaves have grown into full-fledged communities today, from clusters of shanty towns. Picun, one of the most developed, has its own literature society and houses numerous aspiring artists and musicians. One young couple living by torchlight in their block said they were considering going to Tangshan, a steel-producing hub in their home province of Hebei, but after 10 years of living in Beijing, they would miss the lifestyle. To be honest, if it wasn t for all the migrants, Beijing wouldn t be any better than any other city, the woman, who is surnamed Xiang, told Reuters.
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(image credit: AP/Charlie Neibergall) Dallas elections officials say allegations “likely false or instances of user error” Over the past few weeks corporate news media have interpreted Donald Trump’s repeated claims of a “rigged” election as exaggerated. The Republican presidential candidate’s response in the third presidential debate of perhaps not accepting the election result was met with similar bluster by the major punditocracy. The experience of voters in Texas and other states may be bearing out Trump’s warning as multiple reports are surfacing of electronic voting machines changing virtual ballots from Republican to Democratic presidential candidates. Because Texas law prohibits videos and photos in polling places many voters in that state explain the apparent polling shenanigans on social media. As The Economic Collapse Blog observes , [A] number of voters in Texas are reporting that the voting machines switched their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The odd thing is that none of the other choices were affected when these individuals attempted to vote for a straight Republican ticket. If Hillary Clinton is declared the winner of the state of Texas on election night, a full investigation of these voting machines should be conducted, because there is no way that Donald Trump should lose that state. I have said that it will be the greatest miracle in U.S. political history if Donald Trump wins this election, but without the state of Texas Donald Trump has exactly zero chance of winning. So those living down in Texas need to keep reporting anything unusual that they see or hear when they go to vote. Here are several social media posts from the Dallas Morning New s article at the I Am A Texan blog . The Dallas Morning News similarly reports : Early voters in Texas have claimed that voting machines in Dallas, Collin, Tarrant and other counties changed their presidential votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The allegations follow a similar pattern: Voters say they voted straight-ticket Republican, but when they reviewed their ballots, they reflected they had voted for Hillary Clinton for president, not Donald Trump. Their votes for Republicans in down-ballot races were not affected, according to the complaints. But elections officials say the allegations are more than likely false or instances of user error. Garland City Council member Stephen Stanley said he went to an early voting station at Nicholson Memorial South Branch Library on Tuesday morning while campaigning for candidates on the ballot. He said around noon a woman came out of the library and told him she had tried to vote straight ticket Republican but the machine said she had voted straight Democrat. The woman told him a poll worker apologized that the machine wasn’t working and instructed her to use another one. Stanley said he was worried about people who didn’t double-check their ballots. “My question is how many other people didn’t know,” Stanley said. Dallas County elections administrator Toni Pippins-Poole encouraged all voters to double-check their ballots before submitting them. She said she’s received second-hand reports of malfunctioning machines, but no one has logged an official complaint and she doesn’t have any names to go with the claims. H/t Matrix Bob
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Fox host Sean Hannity lost his cool during a radio interview with Ted Cruz yesterday, as the GOP candidate tried to dodge answering questions that might actually be helpful to voters.Hannity, who is a Trump supporter, brought up the way Cruz s campaign handled delegates, stating that it baffled many (and possibly being annoyed that Cruz was more prepared to win over delegates than Trump). Cruz completely avoided answering the question, and actually told Hannity he didn t think people cared about that. Hannity pushed back, insisting that millions of his followers wanted to know because they find this whole process confusing. Once again, the GOP s least likable Republican dismissed Hannity s question, claiming that the only people who cared were on Trump s team. Cruz must have gotten Hannity s blood boiling, because then the Fox host blew up. He said: Senator, why do you do this? Every single time no, you gotta stop! Every time I have you on the air, and I ask a legitimate question, you try to throw this in my face. I m getting sick of it. I ve had you on more than any other candidate on radio and TV. So if I ask you a legitimate question to explain to the audience, why don t you just answer it? Cruz s response was equally testy as he shot back, Sean, can I answer your last question without being interrupted? Then he made a half-ass attempt to respond to Hannity s question, but insisted that as I travel the country, nobody is asking me this, other than the Trumpsters and the people repeating it. Hannity wasn t satisfied and continued to press the Texas Senator, stating that it s a simple question, it s not a Trump question. You could tell that both men had gotten under each other s skin, because at one point in the interview, Hannity said to Cruz: Senator, I don t know why you re mad. And Cruz insisted that he wasn t mad, he was just annoyed that they were talking only about the nonsense instead of policy.Here s the intense interview, via The Sean Hannity Show:The interview clearly left Hannity with a bad taste in his mouth, because when the interview was over he took to Twitter to blast the candidate:TwitterTwitterTwitterHannity is known for giving pretty mild interviews to Republicans, but he was obviously no match for Cruz s ability to annoy anyone he comes in contact with.Featured image via Gerardo Mora / Getty Images
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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Important areas of Hong Kong s One Country, Two Systems framework are coming under growing pressure, illustrated by developments such as reports of mainland security officials operating in the autonomous city, a British government report said on Thursday. The One Country, Two Systems principle, implemented as the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997, promises the city a high degree of autonomy, an independent judiciary and a range of freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. The former colonial power has been issuing reports on Hong Kong every half a year since then, and the latest, which covers developments in the first six months this year, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the guiding principle has generally functioned well. However, at the same time, we cannot ignore that important areas of the One Country, Two Systems framework are coming under increasing pressure, Johnson wrote. Examples include further reports of mainland security officials operating within Hong Kong, he said, without elaborating, as well as reports of the local Beijing representative s office heightening its influence in the city. But for the first time, the half-yearly report stopped short of raising concern over five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared in late 2015 and later mysteriously re-emerged in mainland Chinese custody. One of the five men, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, is still in Chinese detention. The report also touched upon the apparent abduction of Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua, who in January disappeared from his downtown Hong Kong apartment in a wheelchair with his head covered. Although Hong Kong authorities said there was no evidence to suggest mainland law enforcement agents had acted on Hong Kong soil, Johnson noted that many in Hong Kong and internationally highlighted the numerous similarities between Xiao Jianhua s apparent abduction and the case of the Hong Kong booksellers. He also said he looked forward to welcoming the city s newly sworn-in leader, Carrie Lam, to visit London to discuss closer co-operation between the UK and Hong Kong as the UK prepares to leave the EU. In response to the report, the Hong Kong government said foreign governments should not interfere in the internal affairs of the city. Since the return to the motherland, the HKSAR (Special Administrative Region) has been exercising a high degree of autonomy ... This demonstrates the full and successful implementation of the one country, two systems principle, which has been widely recognized by the international community.
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Donald Trump, the pathetic man who has yet to apologize for all the hateful and divisive things he said throughout his campaign, is demanding an apology from the media.Seriously.Trump has been lashing out at the media and the intelligence community all weekend over a dossier revealing that he paid prostitutes to pee on the bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow, and also reveals that his campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.He whined about the media during his first press conference in six months, resorting to calling CNN and Buzzfeed fake news for running the story.Now Trump is crowing because legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who shall now be known as a sell-out, agreed with him that the dossier should never have been reported on, which would have hidden information from the American people. His demand for an apology was written in all caps, even though he has failed to apologize for any of the insults and offensive statements he said during his campaign.Thank you to Bob Woodward who said, That is a garbage document it never should have been presented Trump s right to be upset (angry) Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017about that Those Intelligence chiefs made a mistake here, & when people make mistakes, they should APOLOGIZE. Media should also apologize Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017And because Trump is being a hypocrite when it comes to apologies, Twitter told him to go to hell.@realDonaldTrump We are sorry you are such a douche. Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/RlgFOqSVr2 NotABillionaire (@BillionairesNo) January 15, 2017.@realDonaldTrump You MUST stop fixating on the pee story. The more you bring up the pee story the more people will think about it, Donald. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 15, 2017.@realDonaldTrump And if you continue to vilify the media, it s very unlikely they ll apologize to you about anything, dear. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 15, 2017@bessbell @realDonaldTrump Maybe it s me, but he seems frustrated. Almost as if he is guilty of something? Tara (@tgruka) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump stop asking people to apologize you oversensitive man-child. Also stop paying people to piss on each other. TJ Fixman (@TJFixman) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump MSM: Hillary used private email servers DJT: LOCK HER UP! MSM: Trump may be feeding intelligence to Russia DJT: MSM LIES! Mike Denison (@mikd33) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump My God, do you EVER get tired of hearing yourself whine? Give it a rest for once in your life. Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Couldn t agree more Sir. We re waiting. pic.twitter.com/GMewlFpC6D Mike Polk Jr. (@mikepolkjr) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Like you APOLOGIZED to Jeb s wife or to OBAMA for that Birther bullshit, or to the women who you called pigs, or to the . pic.twitter.com/ykBdM2W1jd Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 15, 2017Donald Trump really needs to stop whining and making demands on Twitter. He is five days away from taking over the White House. It s time for him to grow up and start acting like an adult instead of the petulant child he has been his entire life.Featured image by Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A possible cancellation of a meeting planned next week between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump would fuel uncertainty, Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Thursday. “That’s correct,” Meade said on Mexican radio when asked if a cancellation of the meeting would fuel uncertainty. Earlier, Trump said on Twitter Pena Nieto should cancel his upcoming visit to Washington if Mexico refuses to pay for the border wall the American wants to build along the border.
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Let s face it, Obama s second term has been so wildly successful, the only thing Republicans can do to prevent him from being the greatest president in modern history is to block everything. This even includes things that Republicans keep screaming are necessary for the safety of the nation.If you need evidence of this, just look at Mitch McConnell s recent statement regarding ISIS, and why he claims he won t allow Obama s request for congressional approval for war come up for a vote.Well, the problem with what the president submitted for authorization to use military force restricted what he could do. I can t imagine that I would be voting for an authorization for the use of military force that Barack Obama would sign because the one he submitted for us to take a look at restricted his activities, what he could do based upon conditions on the ground.Look, I don t want to tie the hands of the next president. The next president may want to actually defeat ISIL. And I think an AUMF, an authorization to use military force, that ties the president s hands behind his back is not something I would want to do to a new president who s going to have to clean up this mess, created by all of this passivity over the last eight years.McConnell s Obama Derangement Syndrome is so bad that he is literally refusing to allow Obama to go to war with, of all things, ISIS. It would be hilarious if it was another nation doing this.Mitch McConnell is officially afraid that Obama will be able to defeat ISIS before he leaves office. The Obama coalition has already liberated about forty percent of previously held ISIS territory and has prevented any gains by them since May of 2015. If McConnell holds a vote for authorization for war against ISIS, every Republican would have to vote yes to approve Obama s actions. If they didn t, the knives would come out for every one of them in the next election cycle. If they vote yes, they would be seen as cooperating with the president. If Obama made significant progress in the fight against the terror group, Republicans couldn t run on ISIS in 2016 and 2018. If something bad happened, every Republican would get challenged for supporting a failed Democratic president. The only way Republicans can stay safe is by doing absolutely nothing to fight what they would otherwise call the greatest threat to America. That is just plain cowardly.Featured image via barefoot and progressive (altered)
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