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(Reuters) - As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, Facebook Inc is going out of its way to show its neutrality - an increasingly urgent matter for the social network as evidence of its power continues to emerge. Recent studies have shown the site has extraordinary influence. According to research scheduled to be published in August in the Journal of Communication, when people tagged their friends on Facebook in voting reminders, turnout increased by 15 to 24 percent. During U.S. presidential primary elections this year, a Facebook reminder that informed people when their state’s voter registration deadline was approaching and provided a link helped produce a surge of nearly 650,000 new voter registrations in California alone, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla. In the United Kingdom, a Facebook reminder days before the deadline to register to vote on whether the country should exit the European Union led to 186,000 people registering online to vote, according to the government. “Generally, getting people out to vote could swing a national election,” said Katherine Haenschen, a PhD student at the University of Texas, Austin and author of the upcoming Journal of Communications study. Facebook is eager to show that its political involvement is limited to seemingly neutral activities such as encouraging voting. The company this week released some of the guidelines that govern its all-important News Feed - the place most people see postings on Facebook - and has pushed back hard against recent allegations of political bias in its “Trending Topics” module. At the same time Facebook has embraced its role as a “new town hall” for politics, hosting events and helping candidates more effectively leverage their platforms, said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director Her team helps candidates by answering their questions and providing advice, such as how to use Facebook Live and how to increase engagement on their pages. Still, concerns about Facebook’s role in shaping political attitudes are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Some people object even to voter-registration drives. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for example, alleged this week that Google and Facebook were trying to encourage a “remain” vote in Britain’s referendum on European Union membership by encouraging voting, asserting that media users are disproportionately youthful and pro-Europe. A more common complaint is that Facebook and other social networks serve as an echo chamber of ideas and beliefs, as users decide which people and pages they will follow and customize their News Feed. A 2015 study in Science showed that Facebook users tended to interact and click on content that was more in line with their ideological views. Facebook customer Tom Steinberg wrote in a post this week -one that quickly spread over Twitter - that he had actively looked on Facebook for people celebrating Britain’s vote to exit the European Union last week but could not find any. Steinberg, who said he was in favor of remaining in the European Union, urged tech leaders to do more to address the echo chamber on social media. “To not act on this problem now is tantamount to actively supporting and funding the tearing apart of the fabric of our societies,” Steinberg wrote. “We’re getting countries where one half just doesn’t know anything at all about the other.” Adam Mosseri, vice president of product management for News Feed, said the team tries to help users find new pages to follow, though he did not cite any specific efforts aimed at encouraging people to diversify their feeds. | 1 |
Saturday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, backed “100 percent” by President Donald Trump, condemned North Korea for reportedly launching a missile into its eastern sea, calling the test launch “absolutely intolerable. ” Prime Minister Abe released the following statement through a translator: North Korea’s most recent missile launch is absolutely intolerable. North Korea must fully comply with the relevant U. N. Security Council resolutions. During the summit meeting that I had with President Trump, he assured me that the United States will always [be] with Japan 100% and to demonstrate his determination as well as commitment, he is now here with me at this joint press conference. President Trump and I myself completely share the view that we are going to promote further cooperation between the two nations and also we are going to further reinforce our alliance. That is all from myself. President Trump followed up Abe’s statement by affirming his support. “I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0 |
“Wikileaks is the Mossad, Stupid, Not the Russians, We are playing them like a fiddle…” Assange (sort of) ‹ › Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. He is Host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO ; a hard driving weekly LIVE call in radio show. He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. Iranians had every right to take over US embassy By Kevin Barrett on November 3, 2016 The “Den of Espionage” – the former US Embassy whose top floor was a maze of wiring that tapped every phone call in Iran (click HERE to watch The Debate)
I think Americans ought to storm and occupy our own NSA, FBI, CIA and Pentagon (as well as the Federal Reserve, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Goldman Sachs and other corporate HQs etc. etc.) just like the Iranian students did to the Den of Espionage in 1979. Does that make me an Iranian stooge or an American patriot? Watch The Debate and make up your own mind. –Kevin Barrett
Press TV Debate , featuring Kevin Barrett , Veterans Today Editor
The 13th day of the Iranian calendar month of Aban, which falls on November 3, is known as the Student Day in Iran, marking the National Day of Fight against Global Arrogance. On this day 37 years ago, a group of Iranian university students took over the US embassy in Tehran, which had turned into a center of espionage aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic following the country’s Islamic Revolution earlier in 1979.
Press TV has spoken to Kevin Barrett, an author and Middle East expert, as well as Maxine Dovere, a journalist and political commentator, to get their take on this issue.
Barrett believes the US embassy in Iran was a “CIA station” which was used to “run the country” before the revolution, adding that Iranian students had every right to take it over.
He also said the United States was using its embassy to essentially “dominate” and “exploit” Iran through the puppet government of the Shah whose “torturers were trained by the CIA.”
The analyst further stated the US is an “aggressive imperial power” which has been waging wars of “disguised aggression” throughout the world.
He also opined that the United States is “today’s supreme war criminal” which has been using the word “preemptive war” to legitimize its “naked undisguised aggressions” after the “neoconservative-Zionist coup d’état of September 11, 2001.”
“The neoconservatives in particular after their coup d’état on September 11, 2001 made it clear that any country in the world that seeks parity with the United States must be destroyed preemptively and that is essentially the situation we have today as the US Empire is out there crushing the Middle East, destroying all of Israel’s enemies through balkanization, through Oded Yinon Plan to break up these countries into smaller units along ethnic and sectarian lines, getting ready for a war with China and provoking a war with Russia through aggressive actions in Ukraine and through the destruction of Syria and threats against Russia when Russia comes to the defense of Syria,” he said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Barrett noted that both US presidential candidates are “quite horrific” in their policies toward the Middle East – namely Iran.
He also asserted that Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is “absolutely right” in saying that he cannot trust the United States and that Tehran has to “rethink” the opening it has had towards Washington.
Ayatollah Khamenei has warned that compromise with the United States will not resolve Iran’s problems as Washington has not set aside its hostilities towards the Iranian nation.
Meanwhile the other panelist on Press TV’s program, Maxine Dovere, mentioned that taking over an embassy is not “an acceptable diplomatic action” anywhere in the world.
“An embassy is sacred ground for any country in any other country. Having a diplomatic dispute is certainly one of the things that happens in political and diplomatic life but taking over an embassy and holding diplomats hostage is not within the realm of normal political behavior,” she said.
According to the commentator, the United States and Iran need to come to “a civil understanding” and “a trust,” adding that part of this process is eliminating the shaky foundations that have existed until 2016.
Elsewhere in her remarks, she dismissed the US election campaign as a “negative personality cult” which has not concentrated on policy, economics, and foreign relations.
She also said all the important issues that a president eventually has to deal with seem to have gotten lost in this election campaign. Related Posts: | 1 |
We on the left are all wondering why, out of the vast field of GOP candidates, Donald Trump roared to the nomination, toppling traditional candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and even hard-right bigots like Ted Cruz. No, they picked The Donald, and no matter how vulgar he was, how bigoted he was, how dangerously unhinged he was, they still picked him. Then, they got him elected president, to the horror of most Americans and to the delight of that swath of people who were so entranced by Trump from the moment he rode down that escalator.Well, now, we are 100 days in, and the Trump presidency is just as chaotic and terrifying as we all knew it would be. Trump is incompetent and dangerous, as well as an embarrassment on the world stage. Yet, his voters are sticking with him. And Bill Maher, host of HBO s Real Time, thinks he knows why. Remember when Trump said he could shoot someone in the middle of New York City s Fifth Avenue and not lose voters? That s likely true. And Maher has the answer as to why. He said in his New Rules segment on Friday night: Trump supporters aren t changing their minds because the problem isn t in the mind. It s lower. It s emotional. He could have Ann Frank s skeleton in his closet. They d all vote for him again. He continued, letting liberals know why facts, vulgarity, incompetence, and any other outrage Trump might commit matters not to his devoted followers: I think it s a gut feeling that the world has changed and they don t like it. Trump is going to change it back to the way it was. Maher then went on to mock Trump voters in a hillbilly affect, saying things like: I ain t no racist, but why does American need to have a black Santa Claus? And did I mention Bruce Jenner has tits now? Returning to his normal voice, Maher explained: I think I speak for most liberals when I say, I don t care about black Santa. I don t think it s going to make the Little Drummer Boy start cutting himself. But to Trump voters, making Santa black is unthinkable. It d be like making Jesus Middle Eastern. Maher concluded, summing up just why Trump voters put him in the White House, despite the fact that he is clearly the last person who should be president: This is why building that stupid wall is still a key issue for them. It represents keeping out not just immigrants but everything that is new and different and scary and unfamiliar. And this is just it. These people don t care what Trump does. He ll make America comfortable for them again, in their minds. There will be no more religions besides Christianity, there will be no LGBTQ rights, black people and other minorities will know their places, women would be in the kitchen and the bedroom where they belong rather than in the boardroom, and white men will control everything again.This is about cultural anxiety and bigotry. It really was, as Van Jones says, a white lash. Therefore, don t try and woo Trump voters away from him with facts. They seriously don t care.Watch Bill Maher s very important message below:Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
Donald Trump s desperation to talk about something anything that doesn t involve Russia has caused him to lose what was left of his mind, apparently.On Monday morning, The Donald s descent into madness continued as he lashed out at Hillary Clinton. Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Trump tweeted. Just asking! Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017Clinton has not, in fact, apologized for receiving the answers (he means questions) for a debate, but she has a good reason it didn t happen.Trump s claim comes from a fake news story in the Baltimore Gazette, a fake news source.The first presidential debate was held and Hillary Clinton was proclaimed the winner by the media. Indeed Clinton was able to turn in a strong debate performance, but did she do so fairly? Multiple reports and leaked information from inside the Clinton camp claim that the Clinton campaign was given the entire set of debate questions an entire week before the actual debate.Earlier last week an NBC intern was seen hand delivering a package to Clinton s campaign headquarters, according to multiple sources. The package was not given to secretarial staff, as would normally happen, but the intern was instead ushered into the personal office of Clinton campaign manager Robert Mook. Members of the Clinton press corps from several media organizations were in attendance at the time, and a reporter from Fox News recognized the intern, but said he was initially confused because the NBC intern was dressed like a Fed Ex employee.Even though the story is a lie, right-wing websites, Russian trolls, and everyone who hates Hillary Clinton jumped on the opportunity to accuse the former Secretary of State of cheating.He then pushed his insane allegation that President Obama put a tapp on his wires at Trump Tower..@FoxNews from multiple sources: "There was electronic surveillance of Trump, and people close to Trump. This is unprecedented." @FBI Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017Naturally, the Internet was not kind to Mr. 45 after his latest outburst:@realDonaldTrump Did you ever apologize for birtherism? Just asking! Mike Denison (@mikd33) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Oh Jesus, you're on a roll today! You're still trying to deflect from your wrongdoings by talking about Clinton how sad. Mike P Williams (@Mike_P_Williams) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Did you ever apologize for grabbing women by the pussy? Deren Ney (@DerenNey) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Apparently, your performance was stronger from all of the sniffling and interrupting with "wrong!" when indisputable facts were presented. Paul Campbell Haider (@Paulhaider74) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Have you apologized for your daily lying & your obvious colluding with the Russians ? Just asking? DangerGirl (@DangerGirl6) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Did you ever apologize for making fun of disabled? For discriminating against tenants? For inciting violence at rallies? Natasha Vo (@tashvo) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Did you ever apologize to that Vet who gave you his purple heart & you told him being given one was much easier than earning? Just asking! Amy (@SeattleHypno) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Did you ever apologize to the people you fleeced with your fake University? Just asking! Tommy Campbell (@MrTommyCampbell) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Did you ever apologize to the women you assaulted? Just asking! Bonfire (@aggiebonfire) April 3, 2017@realDonaldTrump Have you ever apologized for being a traitor? Turd (@Turdtastic) April 3, 2017At this point, Trump s attempts to distract from his very real Russia scandal are pathetic and we can only expect them to become more unhinged as he backs himself further into a corner.Featured image via Getty Images (Mark Wilson)/screengrab | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May has not yet set a date for the next stage in the passage of legislation to sever ties with the European Union, her spokesman said on Wednesday after the BBC reported it would not be until November, later than many had expected. The EU withdrawal bill, which seeks largely to copy and paste EU law into British legislation to ensure Britain has functioning laws and the same regulatory framework as the bloc at the moment of Brexit, is the next major hurdle for May. Weakened by a June election when she lost her governing Conservatives majority and an ill-fated party conference that failed to reset her agenda, May wants to steer the bill through both houses of parliament with as little difficulty as possible. But lawmakers have already proposed several amendments to the bill, including some to hand parliament a vote at the end of the negotiating process with the EU and others to reduce the amount of power the government gives itself to amend laws. Asked whether the government was planning to introduce the legislation into the so-called committee phase of its lengthy passage towards the statute book in November, her spokesman told reporters: We haven t yet confirmed a date for the bill at the committee stage. But the leader of the house will set out (next week s business) tomorrow, he added, referring to a weekly procedure when the government sets out its agenda, which may, or may not, include the EU withdrawal bill. Earlier, the BBC cited sources as saying it would not be introduced until after a parliamentary recess ends on Nov. 13. Sources in both the Conservative and opposition Labour parties expect the government to offer some concessions to avoid a defeat, amending powers which allow ministers to rewrite some laws without consulting parliament. Several Conservative lawmakers said they would not vote on any amendment that had been backed by opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. But the sheer number of amendments could slow the progress of a bill which the government says is essential to ease Britain s departure from the EU in March 2019 and give certainty to business. | 0 |
The men of Morning Joe found Donald Trump s insults against women funny, but Mika Brzezinski shut them and their disgusting sexism down HARD.Joe Scarborough and Willy Geist had a laugh over Trump s interview with Bill O Reilly on Wednesday night and seemed to have no problem with him fat-shaming women just because they gain a little weight.Scarborough tried to excuse Trump s behavior as just trying to help while Geist called Trump the real hero of this story. A sickened Mika then jumped in and took Trump to the woodshed on behalf of women everywhere. It s a beauty contest. You can t actually have any weight on your body for a beauty contest because that wouldn t be beautiful. Think about that. Geist then cracked that women shouldn t put on 60 pounds and attributed the joke to Newt Gingrich, a supporter of Trump and his campaign. Really? Mika asked. That s the pot! People like Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich and men can walk around just rotund as all get out, Mika continued. And it s not an issue. But women, in order to be beautiful, you have to be 117 pounds. I m sorry. Can someone tell me what year we re in here? Is it 2016? I think we re back in the 70s with these hideous pageants which, by the way we need to talk about at some point. Someone who runs beauty pageants you have to think about how they think about women.Look at those beauty pageants. Look at them! Young women walking around in bikinis getting graded on how they look. I can t believe we still do these things.Do we want someone who ran beauty pageants? And still thinks it s okay to talk about gaining weight being a problem? Do we really want that person in the White House? Hiring women? I don t think he s going to hire women unless they re tens. In his view, which is 117 pounds and starving and covered in plastic. Indeed, these sexists think it s okay for them to gain weight but they think women should be held to certain standards. And that s why Trump is getting his ass handed to him by women right now in the polls.Joe Scarborough repeatedly tried to interrupt Mika and talk over her throughout her rant, which is something he probably took a lot of flack about later after the show.In the end, however, Mika got the last word and made it clear that Trump s treatment of women is not something to joke about. It s disgusting. It s perverted. It s a serious story. Stupid men. Here s the video via YouTube.Donald Trump s sexism should automatically disqualify him from seeking the presidency. Instead, Republican chose him as their leader and that demonstrated just how little they care about women, and if every woman in this country voted against Trump and the GOP every year, the party would go extinct.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1 |
Attract beneficial types of birds to your garden and watch your plants flourish!
Nuthatches Nuthatches search crevices for ants, scale, beetles, moth eggs, caterpillars, and cocoons. During the winter season, they feed on seeds and nuts, but during the summer season, they are 100% insectivorous. They also raise their young exclusively on insects.
Nuthatches are most likely to settle into nesting boxes that are located in clearings in or along the edges of wooded areas.
Chickadees During the winter, chickadees can be seen searching bark crevices for hibernating insects and the eggs of moths, plant lice, pear psylla, and katydids.
Chickadees are wonderful pest-control birds due to their diet consisting of 90% insects including moths, caterpillars, flies, beetles, scale, plant lice, leafhoppers, and tree hoppers.
You can provide some suet in a mesh bag or a feeder filled with sunflower seeds to keep chickadees around over the winter season. In the spring, provide a nest box packed with wood chips. It is best to place the nest box at the edge of a wooded area.
Bluebirds During the spring, western bluebirds eat insects such as grasshoppers, beetles, weevils, crickets, and caterpillars. Bluebirds prefer to nest in sunny, open areas.
The perfect nest box for these birds should be mounted on a post within 50 feet of a tree, fence, or other structure away from bushy hedgerows.
Although sparrows mostly rely on seeds for their diet, they also enjoy eating insects, especially during nesting season. Sparrows often prefer weed seeds, such as crabgrass, ragweed, and pigweed, so their seed eating habit is even beneficial to crops.
The insects of choice for sparrows include grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, leafhoppers, and beetles.
Warning: In warmer areas, sparrows sometimes supplement their diet with winter garden crops by clipping off seedlings and sprouts. You can avoid this by using row covers to protect your crops.
Provide nesting material for sparrows to use. Good material to provide include straw, bark, and pieces of string.
Nighthawks These little birds enjoy eating flying ants, leaf chafers, flies, mosquitoes, moths, and grasshoppers. Nighthawks even eat Colorado potato beetles, squash bugs, and cucumber beetles.
There is not much that can be done to attract nighthawks but you can watch out for their eggs and be careful not to harm them. Nighthawks are known to lay 1 to 3 whitish olive eggs with dark blotches on stumps, sandy soils, old robin’s nests, and even gravel.
Phoebes Phoebes will feast on everything from flies, mosquitoes, small moths, flying ants, and small beetles to grasshoppers, crickets, and caterpillars.
You can use water to entice these stealthy hunters into your yard. Phoebes enjoy building their mud nests in, on, or around manmade structures. Attract them by providing them with a safe nesting area.
Ariana Marisol is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. She is an avid nature enthusiast, gardener, photographer, writer, hiker, dreamer, and lover of all things sustainable, wild, and free. Ariana strives to bring people closer to their true source, Mother Nature. She is currently finishing her last year at The Evergreen State College getting her undergraduate degree in Sustainable Design and Environmental Science. Follow her adventures on Instagram.
Photo Credits: | 1 |
SEOUL (Reuters) - Senior defense officials from the United States, South Korea and Japan held trilateral talks and urged North Korea to walk away from its destructive and reckless path of weapons development, the U.S. military said in a statement. Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford hosted his South Korean and Japanese counterparts at the U.S. Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii on Sunday to exchange views on North Korea s recent long-range ballistic missile and nuclear tests. Together they called upon North Korea to refrain from irresponsible provocations that aggravate regional tensions, and to walk away from its destructive and reckless path of development, the statement said. | 0 |
ZURICH (Reuters) - Nuclear proliferation watchdog CTBTO said on Saturday it had detected two seismic events in North Korea on Saturday but they were probably not deliberate explosions in the isolated country. Two #Seismic Events! 0829UTC & much smaller @ 0443UTC unlikely Man-made! Similar to collapse event 8.5 mins after DPRK6! Analysis ongoing, CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a Twitter post. China s earthquake administration said it had detected a magnitude 3.4 earthquake in North Korea that was a suspected explosion , while an official at South Korea s meteorological agency said the initial view was that it was a natural quake. | 1 |
BERLIN (Reuters) - Leaders of Germany s Social Democrats have voted unanimously to begin exploratory talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives about forming a coalition government, Andreas Nahles, head of the SPD s parliamentary group, said on Friday. Nahles said party leaders would work on substantive issues in the talks, with a party conference in January to determine the way forward. She said the SPD, which suffered its worst post-war election losses in September, planned to enter the talks with an open and constructive attitude with an eye to improving the lives of ordinary Germans. | 0 |
Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” wasn’t the first rock ’n’ roll song, but it was the best and brashest of the genre’s early advertisements. Released in 1956, it opens with a nimble, bendy guitar riff — a prelude to the one that would be perfected a year later, on “Johnny B. Goode” — that serves as an intrusion and an enticement. Then Mr. Berry describes the fever, “the rockin’ pneumonia,” that was soon to grip the country. “My heart beatin’ my soul singin’ the blues,” he sang. “Roll over tell Tchaikovsky the news. ” Plenty of artists would go on to cover “Roll Over Beethoven” — the Beatles streamlined and sweetened it Electric Light Orchestra distended it into an overlong, pompous shuffle with a snatch of the Fifth Symphony Paul Shaffer and his band made a sleek version as the theme to the 1992 film “Beethoven,” about a St. Bernard with the composer’s name. But those covers lacked the panache, the transgressive potential, the unexpected twists and turns of the Chuck Berry originals. Mr. Berry, who died on Saturday at his home near St. Louis, was the first true rock ’n’ roll superstar. When in his late 20s he emerged from St. Louis onto the national scene, the genre wasn’t yet codified. In its infancy, rock was hybrid music, and Mr. Berry was its most vivid and imaginative alchemist. From the through the end of that decade, he concocted a yowling blend of blues, country and rhythm blues that ended up as the template for what became widely accepted as rock ’n’ roll (though the term predated his rise). He gave it virtuoso playing via guitar work that drew on country and the blues. He made it a songwriting genre with wry, detailed lyrics that helped shape the idea of American freedom via stories of teenage abandon or adventure. He embodied the music by giving it physical language, from his signature duck walk to his coiffure, which was equal parts structure and flair. (He also was a beautician, having studied hairdressing and cosmetology when he was still playing in small bands in St. Louis in the early 1950s.) And in performance, he sold the music hard, with eyes bulging, hips swaying and a sly smile that indicated he knew just how much he was pushing the envelope. That archetype of rock ’n’ roll swagger would define the next couple of decades of global pop music. Without his twitchy, gloriously accessible songs, there would have been no Rolling Stones, no Beatles, no Bob Dylan — at least not as we know them now. While Elvis Presley, flaunting his sexuality, was making himself into the original pop star, Mr. Berry was being policed, both figuratively and literally. On songs like “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” he sang, in judiciously coded language, about pushing back against segregation. In his autobiography, he wrote that he changed a phrase in “Johnny B. Goode” from “little colored boy” to “little country boy” because he “thought it would seem biased to white fans. ” Instead, he coded a tale of racial achievement in terms he felt would be more broadly palatable. But Mr. Berry was still a successful black man in a rights world, and as such, he was a target. He was prosecuted twice under the Mann Act, for bringing a minor across state lines for immoral purpose. The first time he was convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal because of racial remarks made by the judge. The second time, he was convicted again, and he served more than a year and a half in federal prison. His career never quite recovered. White artists had been studying him, and were building up a version of rock ’n’ roll that no longer required Mr. Berry, nor his blackness. So if, for the remainder of his very long career, he was a bit flinty, could you blame him? The tug of war between what he was expected to provide and what he hoped to receive was constant. He was obstinate about his influence. He demanded to be paid up front for performances. He often toured with just his guitar, hiring local bands, not speaking to them and expecting them to know his music well enough to back him. (The results were spotty.) Even when he was being celebrated, Mr. Berry grated. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, Keith Richards convened an band to perform a pair of tribute concerts with him. They were filmed for a documentary, “Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll,” which began as a glowing commemoration of Mr. Berry’s talent and reach and ended up a document of his intransigence. His guitar playing and singing were electric, and so was his quarreling. Mr. Berry seemed inclined to believe that rock ’n’ roll belonged to him and no one else. In that documentary, Jerry Lee Lewis said that the first time the two met, they fought over who was the true king of the genre. And Mr. Berry had a particularly fraught friction with the white artists who benefited the most from the style he innovated. In the documentary, Mr. Richards is his leading antagonist. And many years later, Mr. Richards told a story about being backstage at one of Mr. Berry’s shows and laying eyes on Mr. Berry’s guitar, sitting in an open case. Enthralled, he began to play it, but when Mr. Berry caught him in the act, Mr. Richards recalled, he punched him dead in the face. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Banking Committee unanimously backed new sanctions targeting Chinese banks that do business with North Korea on Tuesday, just before President Donald Trump visits Beijing for the first time since taking office. As well as strengthening existing sanctions and congressional oversight, the measure will target foreign financial institutions - in China and elsewhere - that provide services to those subject to North Korea-related sanctions by the U.S. Congress, a presidential order or U.N. Security Council resolution. All 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the panel voted for the “Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act,” clearing the way for its consideration by the full Senate. The bill was named after a U.S. student who died earlier this year after he was imprisoned in North Korea, further chilling already poor relations between Washington and Pyongyang. “For too long, we’ve been complacent about the growing and gathering threat from the North Korean regime,” Republican Pat Toomey, one of the bill’s authors, said after the committee voted. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, another author, said that in addition to Chinese banks, Malaysian financial institutions might end up in its sights. Trump is due to wrap up a visit to Seoul on Wednesday with a major speech on North Korea, and then shift focus to China, where he is expected to press a reluctant President Xi Jinping to tighten the screws further on Pyongyang. Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, as well as many Democrats, have been critical of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric about North Korea, and have called for the use of economic tools like sanctions or more negotiations before talking of war. Washington so far has largely held off on imposing new sanctions against Chinese banks and companies doing business with North Korea, given fears of retaliation by Beijing and possibly far-reaching effects on the world economy. Van Hollen told reporters on Monday ahead of the committee vote that he wished Trump would follow the model of President Theodore Roosevelt and “speak softly and carry a big stick,” adding: “We’re trying to give him a little bigger stick with the sanctions.” Republican and Democratic lawmakers said last week they had reached a bipartisan agreement on the sanctions bill. A companion bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives. The leaders of the Republican-led Senate have not said when the chamber might vote on the legislation. | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanon s prime minister Saad al-Hariri will arrive in France on Saturday and meet French President Emmanuel Macron, a source inside the French presidency said. Macron invited the Lebanese premier and his family to France on Wednesday, hoping to soothe a crisis triggered when Hariri announced his resignation 12 days ago. | 0 |
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A decision by the United States to investigate China’s trade practices is a unilateralist “baring of fangs” that will hurt both sides, China’s state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday. U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday authorized an inquiry into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property that administration officials said could have cost the United States as much as $600 billion. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will have a year to look into whether to launch a formal investigation of China’s trade policies on intellectual property, which the White House and U.S. industry lobby groups say are harming U.S. businesses and jobs. “While it is still too soon to say that the United States intends a showdown with China on trade, it is no exaggeration that the latest baring of fangs on Washington’s part against China, like all the other unilateral moves by Washington, will hurt not only China, but the United States itself in the long run,” Xinhua said. Xinhua said while Chinese exporters could be the first to suffer from trade sanctions, the pain would soon spread to U.S. industries and households, adding that China was willing to resolve any disputes between the two sides through dialogue. The investigation is likely to cast a shadow over U.S. relations with China, its largest trading partner, just as Trump is asking Beijing to put more pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear program. Ken Jarrett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, said in a statement on Tuesday that trade and North Korea should not be linked, and said the investigation was a sign of growing U.S. discontent with Chinese trade practices. “The President’s executive order reflects building frustration with Chinese trade and market entry policies, particularly those that pressure American companies to part with technologies and intellectual property in exchange for market access,” he said. “Chinese companies operating in the United States do not face this pressure.” “We support actions that recognize the importance of U.S.-China commercial ties but which also encourage progress toward a more equitable trading relationship,” he said. | 0 |
Why Did Attorney General Loretta Lynch Plead The Fifth? Barracuda Brigade 2016-10-28 Print The administration is blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran. Of course she needs to plead the 5th. She either can’t recall, refuses to answer, or just plain deflects the question. Straight up corruption at its finest!
100percentfedUp.com ; Talk about covering your ass! Loretta Lynch did just that when she plead the Fifth to avoid incriminating herself over payments to Iran…Corrupt to the core! Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.
In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.
The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her]role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch. More Related | 1 |
The media needs to keep grilling Republicans over Donald Trump s flirtation with Nazis, because it s clearly a sore spot.When RNC communications director Sean Spicer appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday night, he was apparently hoping for a softball interview.But Blitzer had other ideas and soon called out Trump for being quick to whine and condemn the diverse cast of Hamilton while being very slow to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists.Blitzer wanted to know why Trump won t just deliver a speech openly condemning these deplorable groups. Spicer responded by saying that, At some point, you ve gotta take his position and move on! Spicer said that Trump merely mentioning a disavowal should be enough and that he has made his position clear, but the problem is that Trump hasn t made it clear. Every time he claims to disavow these groups he ends up blowing them a kiss by sharing their tweets or supporting a policy that they support. In fact, these groups have become so emboldened by Trump that hate crimes have spiked since Election Day.Nazis and white supremacists are celebrating in the streets because they think Trump is the second coming of Hitler and that it will be open season on minorities across the country.Blitzer asked why these groups still support Trump even though he disavowed them, and Spicer threw a hissy fit. I don t know! he snapped. That s really not my focus, figuring out why certain groups support him! Blitzer pointed out that Trump has failed to condemn these groups unlike his consistent attacks on diverse groups like the cast of Hamilton for just merely passing on a message to Mike Pence.And Blitzer s persistence cause Spicer to lose his shit. You ve asked me eight times, the same question! I ve told you what his position is. That s not his focus! His focus is making this country better for all Americans, creating a better country, creating a better education system for all Americans, rebuilding our inner cities. That s what his focus is. So I get that you guys all want to ask the same question over and over again and make him denounce it eight ways to Sunday, but it s not what he wants to talk about! Here s the video via YouTube. The relevant remarks are at the 4:30 mark.The reason why these groups still support Trump is because his condemnation of them has been weak from the very beginning, so it seems like Trump is only saying the minimum to make it sound like he condemns them. What Trump needs to do is deliver a speech to the entire country making it clear once and for all that he strongly condemns these groups and that he does not share their views nor will he help them pursue their hateful agenda.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1 |
BOULDER, Colo. -- It's expected to be another fiery, wild night as the Republican presidential candidates get together in Boulder, Colorado, Wednesday for their third debate.
So far, this presidential soap opera has clearly been entertaining and surprising.
The latest turn is a new CBS/New York Times national poll that shows retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson overtaking Donald Trump as the GOP frontrunner a development that has the billionaire scratching his head.
"Trump losing in polls to Carson. Carson? I don't think Carson is going to negotiate really well with China folks in all fairness, okay? I don't think so and I like him. I don't think so," Trump remarked at a recent rally.
Expect some Trump jabs Wednesday night. As for Carson, the doctor told CBN News he's hoping voters will see what he represents.
"I hope they will look at my life, look at the entirety of my life and see that it has been dedicated to the uplifting of people by leading a life that's not full of scandal, and adhering to the values and principles of our Judeo-Christian foundation," he said.
Carson's not the only candidate who is relying on faith to help his case. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, believes he will eventually move higher in the polls.
"I'm the only one on that stage that has a record of standing up to Washington over and over again, of defending the Constitution, of defending liberty, defending religious liberty, and I think that's why we're seeing such incredible enthusiasm among the grassroots," Cruz declared.
Cruz, Carson, Trump and others want to strike gold with the key evangelical voting bloc. While this debate could begin to show movement, political strategist Ralph Reed doesn't expect any tidal waves.
"This idea that there's going to be a coalescing behind one candidate, that's a myth. That's not going to happen. The evangelical community is very vibrant. It's not monolithic and it doesn't march to a single drummer and it's not easy to command," Reed explained.
Wednesday night's debate will focus mostly on the economy. That will give candidates like Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush a chance to tout their economic records.
Bush will take the opportunity to lay out his recently announced entitlement reform plan, a subject he spoke about at Regent University.
"My belief is that once you reach 67, or 66 now, your payroll tax as an employee you should keep it because that's the way you're going to save money more directly and be able to live a life of independence," Bush told the crowd.
It's just one of the topics on tap for what is expected to be yet another night of presidential must see TV. | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - A top Chinese coal miner, Yankuang Group, and U.S. industrial gas supplier Air Products and Chemicals Inc on Thursday said they planned to build a $3.5 billion coal-to-synthesis gas (syngas) plant in China. The announcement on the facility in the province of Shaanxi comes as part of U.S. President Donald Trump s state visit to China, the world s biggest consumer of coal. The deal is yet to be finalised, although the companies said in a statement that they would look to do this as soon as possible. Syngas is a combination of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and some carbon dioxide that is typically manufactured by gasifying a solid hydrocarbon fuel. It can be used to create energy or to help churn out products such as methane or methanol. Under the agreement, Air Products and Shaanxi Future Energy Group Co (SFEC), a subsidiary of Yankuang, will form a joint venture, in which Air Products will have a majority stake. It will build, own and operate an air separation, gasification and syngas clean-up system in the city of Yulin to supply SFEC, the firms said in a statement. The air separation units are expected to produce about 40,000 tonnes per day (TPD) of oxygen to support the production of about 2.5 million normal cubic meters an hour of syngas. SFEC will supply coal, steam and power and receive syngas under a long-term, onsite contract. Air Products currently supplies SFEC s Phase 1 project in Yulin with 12,000 TPD of oxygen. The addition of Phase 2 would make the complex one of the largest coal-to-fuel and chemicals facilities in China, with SFEC Phase 2 producing 4 million tonnes per year of liquid fuels and downstream chemicals, it said. The companies expect the overall project to come onstream in 2021. | 0 |
ATLANTA (Reuters) - The two Democratic candidates running for governor in Georgia are both lawyers and former state legislators. Both are women, and on many policy issues it’s hard to tell them apart. Both even share the same first name - Stacey. But they sharply disagree on the path to victory. Stacey Abrams, 44, wants to become the first African American female governor in the United States by mobilizing solidly Democratic black voters, who vote sporadically in elections, to form a winning coalition with white liberals. Stacey Evans, 39, thinks the math does not add up without also appealing to white moderates, many of them outside urban areas, who voted for President Donald Trump last November. She is highlighting her crossover appeal as a white suburban mother with country roots. Their divergent strategies mirror a wider debate within the Democratic Party that has grown louder after strong turnout by minority voters helped to power recent Democratic victories in Alabama and Virginia. As the party prepares for the 2018 congressional elections, there is disagreement over which voters to spend more time and money on - minority voters who are a fast-growing share of the electorate but do not reliably cast ballots, or blue-collar and suburban whites who swing between parties. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2yYkcHV) Reuters interviews with liberal activist groups, some donors and an examination of campaign finance records show that many on the left are betting on Abrams’ strategy as the best shot at turning a Republican state. Underscoring the stakes in Georgia is the unusual attention from national groups seeking to push the party farther left. Their level of early support for Abrams is largely unparalleled among other 2018 gubernatorial and many congressional races. A dozen liberal groups have already thrown support behind Abrams, according to a Reuters tally, even though the Democratic primary, or nominating contest, is still months away. The breadth of that support has been little reported. Abrams, who rouses audiences to near religious fervor describing her struggles growing up poor and black in the South, argues that Democrats have wasted resources on swing voters. “We have left too many voters untouched,” she said in an interview, noting that she refuses to tone down her support for abortion, gay rights and labor unions to appeal to Republican-leaning voters. Her opponent does not discount the importance of black voters and also embraces liberal views. But “you are going to have to persuade some moderate Republicans to vote for you, if you are going to win in Georgia,” said Evans, who tears up before crowds when she recounts a childhood spent moving from one rural trailer home to another. After losing the White House last year, the Democratic Party found itself powerless in Washington. Some in the party faulted their presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, for her lack of outreach to minority voters in key states. Others blamed her inability to connect with working class white voters who were once Democratic. Minorities supported the Democratic ticket by wide margins in 2016, but turnout was flat among Hispanics and sharply lower among African Americans, according to the Pew Research Center. Only half of Georgia’s black voters cast ballots in 2016, compared to more than two-thirds of whites, a Reuters review of state records showed. The Democratic National Committee said the recent wins in Alabama and Virginia “show that Democrats are a force to be reckoned with when we invest early in the communities that represent who we are as a Party.” Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said boosting Democratic turnout could work as a strategy. But she urged caution - focusing too narrowly on specific demographic groups risks alienating moderate Democrats. And swing voters, especially in suburban areas, also played a role in the recent Democratic victories, she noted. University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock agreed the numbers are there if Democrats do not lose more white voters. At the Abrams campaign headquarters, a poster titled “How We Win” points out that Democrats in Georgia have lost recent elections by some 200,000 votes. More than 1 million black voters did not cast ballots during the last governor’s race in 2014, state data shows. “They don’t vote because we don’t ask, and this is a campaign that is going to keep asking,” Abrams said, speaking on a recent evening to an audience of three dozen volunteers. Abrams, a tax attorney and romance novelist who led Democrats in the state legislature, said her campaign has already reached out to more than 300,000 voters with door knocks, phone calls and text messages. She hosted summer events with music and barbecue in a dozen smaller cities - places like Macon, a predominately African American community, and tiny Dalton in the rural northern state. National liberal activists are lining up endorsements, money and manpower behind Abrams, who is seen as starting with an advantage in a Democratic primary dominated by black voters. Democracy for America, MoveOn Political Action and the Working Families Party call her campaign a model of how to engage the nation’s increasingly diverse electorate. “Politics is changing in America, and Abrams’ path to victory reflects the changing demographics and enthusiasm,” said Dan Cantor, national chairman of the Working Families Party. MoveOn, whose recent endorsement of Abrams marked its first in a 2018 governor’s race, said it would mobilize its 125,000 Georgia members as volunteers for her campaign. Democracy for America is similarly engaging nearly 35,000 members in the state. Officials said the group has already raised nearly $25,000 for Abrams, an unusually high sum for an election still a year away. A group called PowerPac is organizing a $10 million get-out-the-vote effort with plans to hire people to contact minority voters and use targeted radio, phone and digital campaigns. Individual donors from outside Georgia have contributed more than half of the $470,000 in larger donations that Abrams has reported, according to a Reuters analysis of campaign finance records. Billionaire George Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest financial backers, and two sons donated $21,000 each. By contrast, Evans is not receiving many donations from outside of Georgia, nor national endorsements. Her campaign is focused on restoring cuts to a state college scholarship called HOPE. Most of her money has come from in-state donors, who have fueled almost all of her reported $390,000 in major donations. She has support from Georgia’s last Democratic governor, as well as a big-name Democratic strategist, Paul Begala, who worked for the governor who created the scholarship. The Georgia contest reflects divisions between those who want to broaden the Democratic electorate by bringing back voters who have shifted away, and those who want to drill deeper into the party’s base to increase turnout, said Begala, calling it “an utterly false choice.” “It is like a football team saying, ‘Do you play offense, or defense?’” Begala said. “You have to do both.” At a recent barbecue luncheon in Athens, Evans pointed out that she outperformed Clinton last year in her district by 12 percentage points, picking up moderate voters. “You can win in areas where you might not think you are going to have support, if you show up and talk to people,” she told lawyers lunching on pulled pork served on paper placemats. Evans is not knocking on voters’ doors just yet. But she is traveling the state talking to local Democratic organizations and African-American churches. Lukis Newborn, an undecided rural voter, recently heard Abrams speak in a suburban Atlanta sports bar. He found her exciting. But he also connects with Evans, having been raised in a household where dinner was rice and beans or peanut butter and jelly. “Both are a part of me,” said Newborn, 26, from Paulding County. “It’s an internal struggle of a Georgia Democrat like no other.” | 1 |
It s okay he was probably just a racist white kid with Republican parents On a positive note, this is the last time America will see these two racist community organizers at a White House halloween party Barack has probably already forgotten the humiliation he caused every American when he took this infamous selfie with a few friends at Nelson Mandela s funeral | 0 |
Sounds about right. Thank goodness for the new hate crime rules. I wonder if the same rules apply to Christians and churches? Didn t I hear something about Obama releasing Muslim terrorists from Gitmo? Wouldn t it be great if those guys could be tried on hate crimes? An attack on a mosque using raw bacon and a machete could potentially garner a Brevard County man up to life in prison as a result of a recently added hate crime enhancement, authorities say.Michael Wolfe, 35, was charged with armed burglary of a structure and criminal mischief of a place of worship in connection with the New Year s Eve break-in and desecration of the Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque in Titusville.Police said the convicted felon acted alone, broke into the empty mosque with a machete at night, slashing at windows and other property before leaving behind a slab of raw bacon in and around the front door. A surveillance video shows Wolfe, dressed in camouflage pants and carrying a backpack as he stepped into the carport at the mosque | 1 |
Donald Trump needs to stop the bleeding.
Since the two parties' conventions, he has plummeted in the polls — both nationally and in the states.
His campaign knows this. His new campaign manager, KellyAnne Conway, is a veteran Republican pollster well aware of Trump's deficiencies with certain voting groups.
That's why there's been a concerted effort in the Trump campaign to reach out to black and Hispanic voters, even if it's been poorly received by many nonwhites.
But the outreach might not be entirely to gain the support of minority voters, who are deeply skeptical of Trump and indicate they are supporting Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly.
It might be aimed, in large measure, at white people, in particular suburban whites with college degrees. You know, people who traditionally vote Republican. They might be persuadable, given their past voting history, but they don't want to vote for someone who is viewed as a racist or a bigot.
So his campaign is trying to change that. Trump has been speaking specifically about black voters at multiple events over the last week or so (though in front of predominantly white crowds) in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and Florida. He held an event Wednesday night in Jackson, Miss., where 4 in 5 residents are black.
That outreach continues Thursday at an event at Trump Tower, where black and Latino leaders are supposed to join Trump. And there will perhaps even be a tour of Detroit led by Ben Carson, who grew up there, in early September.
But how can it be, that Trump has a white people problem? Isn't he supposed to be the candidate who appeals squarely to whites?
Let's take a look at the polling. What it shows is that Trump is underperforming with whites compared with Mitt Romney's performance in 2012:
White women: Romney won white women by 14 points — 56-42 percent, according to national exit polls.
Trump, in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this month, is down a point with the group, 43-42 percent.
That's a 15-point shift. No Republican can afford that.
Trump is supposed to drive up the score with white men. But, according to NBC/WSJ, he's only up 13 points (49-36 percent), far less than Romney.
And, let's remember, Romney lost in an electoral landslide to President Obama.
A big problem for Trump is when education is factored in. He is struggling to win the margins he needs with whites with college degrees. Just look at this chart of Trump's massive deficit with white women with college degrees:
What's stunning about this is that Democrats have never won a majority of white voters with college degrees since exit polling began in 1976.
And when it comes to white voters without a college degree, even here Trump is only doing about as well as Romney did. Romney won 61 percent of whites without a college degree. Trump, in the latest, CNN/ORC poll, gets the support of 59 percent.
Yes, Romney lost by big margins with nonwhite groups, too, but white voters made up 72 percent of the electorate in 2012 (likely to be slightly less this year.) Trump's campaign has to think there's nowhere to go but up with minority voters — except, right now, Trump is doing worse (or almost similarly bad) with both African-Americans and Latinos also.
Maybe Trump's outreach to minorities can change his standing somewhat with those groups. But an important group he needs to reach are those white voters, who should be traditionally open to voting Republican but are not behind him right now.
That's a point Republican pollster Whit Ayres made as well this week to the Washington Post.
"After 15 months of denigrating every nonwhite minority in sight, it's hard to believe that he can actually do significantly better among nonwhites," said Ayres, who wrote the book 2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America. He joined Marco Rubio's campaign as his pollster. "But he may be able to soften his image a bit with some Republican and maybe a few independent whites who have been put off by his harshness thus far."
But this is a big hole to climb out of in less than 11 weeks. | 1 |
(Before It's News)
Some liberals will criticize me for this post, especially the title. That’s their problem. After reading this article, though, I’m not worried about liberals’ criticisms. The truth is that health insurance premiums are going through the proverbial roof with the ACA. People should flinch when they hear that “[before] taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel […]
Continue reading The ACA: fewer choices, more expensive
. . . → Read More: The ACA: fewer choices, more expensive | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court selection, failed to persuade Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley during a private meeting on Tuesday to hold confirmation hearings on his nomination. “As he indicated last week, Grassley explained why the Senate won’t be moving forward during this hyper-partisan election year,” Grassley’s office said in a statement that described the meeting as “cordial and pleasant.” The two men met for 70 minutes in the Senate dining room. The Iowa Republican two decades ago also sought to block Garland’s nomination to the federal appeals court on which he currently serves as chief judge. Garland later met privately with Lisa Murkowski, one of the dwindling number of moderate Senate Republicans. Her office issued a statement that also seemed to close the door on confirming Garland. Garland was nominated by Obama, a Democrat, on March 16 to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the Feb. 13 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans who control the Senate are refusing to advance the nomination, prompting Democrats to accuse them of obstructionism and of ignoring their constitutional obligations. Republicans insist that the next president, to be elected on Nov. 8 and take office Jan. 20, fill the vacancy, hoping a Republican will win the White House and choose a conservative rather than the centrist Garland. Democrats applauded those Republicans willing to meet with Garland but said public hearings are essential. “Dark-money groups (conservative contributors) are trying to do the Republicans’ dirty work and sully Judge Garland’s name while Republican senators prevent Judge Garland from explaining his views to the public,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer told reporters. “That is cowardly, it’s backward and it is wrong.” The White House released a letter written by 15 former presidents of the American Bar Association to Senate leaders urging a timely hearing and a vote on Garland’s confirmation. “The stated refusal to fill the ninth seat of the Supreme Court injects a degree of politics into the judicial branch that materially hampers the effective operation of our nation’s highest court and the lower courts over which it presides,” the former ABA leaders stated. The conservative Tea Party Patriots and Judicial Crisis Network praised Grassley for holding firm against hearings. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll that included 900 registered Democrats and 788 registered Republicans conducted April 5-12, 55 percent said the Senate should hold confirmation hearings. The respondents were split along party lines, with 61 percent of Democrats supporting Garland’s confirmation compared to 22 percent of Republicans. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States will take care of the North Korea issue after its latest missile launch, and that the basic U.S. approach to dealing with Pyongyang will not change. Trump has tightened sanctions on North Korea and pressured China to do more to help rein in Pyongyang s ballistic missile and nuclear ambitions. North Korea fired what the U.S. Pentagon said appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that landed close to Japan on Wednesday. Trump said the missile launch did not change what he called the very serious U.S. approach, a week after he put North Korea back on a U.S. list of countries that Washington says support terrorism. I will only tell you that we will take care of it... It is a situation that we will handle, Trump told reporters during a meeting with Republican congressional leaders at the White House. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was also at the meeting, said the ICBM launch was a higher trajectory than any test conducted thus far by North Korea and called it part of a research and development effort. It went higher frankly than any previous shots they have taken, Mattis said. He said South Korea retaliated by firing some pinpoint missiles into the water to show North Korea that the U.S. ally would not be rattled by Pyongyang s launch. North Korea has said its weapons program is a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - In his baseball cap and baggy yellow t-shirt, the rap star Li Yijie - better known by his stage name Pissy - is an unlikely face of China s strait-laced ruling Communist Party. His group, Tianfu Shibian, has won fans and the support of the party s youth league with songs like Force of Red and This is China that chime with President Xi Jinping s nationalist vision of China and its place in the world. Under Xi, set to begin a second five-year term at a key party congress next month, the once-hidebound Communist Party has sought to revitalise its role in society amid challenges to its traditional authority as the country gets richer, more mobile and more digitally connected. The party's modernising push also comes as a significant number of educated Chinese millennials, faced with a tough job market and high housing costs in big cities, have grown disillusioned about their career and life prospects. The party s effort extends increasingly to co-opting swathes of Chinese popular culture, such as Tianfu Shibian. At the same time, the government is cracking down on online content and entertainment that strays beyond the narrowing definitions of what is acceptable. If the Party sticks to the old ways, it will only be more and more rejected by young people, said Li, 23, whose band s name means Tianfu Incident . Tianfu refers to the region around Chengdu, the band s home city in western Sichuan province. We need to stand up and say: Why can t younger folks be more patriotic? he said during an interview in Beijing. We need to step into this system, he said. If the post-1990 generations don t enter the system, what is our country going to do? said Li. Beijing has the same idea. It has latched onto other acts like TFBOYS, a wholesome boy band whose three members each have nearly 30 million followers on the popular microblog Weibo, to help spread the Party message. The band often appears at Youth League events. This kind of propaganda is a step forward that better suits the demands of its audience, said Qiao Mu, a media researcher and former professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Ordinary people are now rejecting the old preaching ways of the People s Daily newspaper and CCTV News, he said, referring to the Party s official newspaper and China s state broadcaster. On its Bilibili account - a video site popular with China s post 1990s generation - the Communist Youth League has posted hundreds of videos this year interspersing patriotic raps with more traditional fare such as defence ministry briefings. One such guichu a fast-paced clip of repeated images, sounds and catchy music calls on citizens to be on the lookout and report people they suspect are spies to the authorities. Tianfu Shibian shot to prominence in 2016 voicing patriotic values in sometimes expletive-filled songs. Force of Red attacked Tsai Ing-Wen, the president of Taiwan, an independently governed island that Beijing considers a renegade province. There s only one China, HK, Taipei, they are my fellas, ran the lyrics of the song in English, along with expletives aimed at Tsai and her government: Far away from us you forget how to act. Even dogs know to come home with a thankful bark. The music video went viral, racking up more than 7 million views on the band s Twitter-like Sina Weibo feed and catching the attention of the Communist Youth League, a training ground for elite cadres within the 90-million-strong Communist Party. The group s next outing - This is China - came with production support from a Youth League-backed music studio, though the band says there was no other financial backing. The party connection deepened in September last year when Beijing sent the band to Woody Island, in a disputed area of the South China Sea, to film a music video rebuking an international tribunal ruling that rejected China s claims in the area. Li said the group now has ties across China s propaganda related agencies, and frequently dines with officials to exchange ideas. In return they ve cleaned up their act to fit with Beijing s drive towards more wholesome content. While their songs are unabashedly pro-China, Tianfu Shibian s lyrics also touch on problems in contemporary China, including tainted food, corruption, and pollution. Critique with rationality has its place in our songs, but we despise those who keep complaining blindly, Li told Reuters. Not everyone is a fan. A song by the band praising the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong was criticised online as glossing over China s Cultural Revolution, a period of chaos and violence between 1966-1976 in which some historians estimate as many as 1.5 million people died. Others online have dismissed the band as a propaganda machine, calling it wumao - roughly 50-cents - a reference to those paid by the government to post patriotic comments online. While countercultural or subversive art has long been at the fringes in China, it has all-but been extinguished in the Xi era, with censors banning not only politically incorrect material but also clamping down on negativity. China s most internationally recognised artist, Ai Weiwei, a fierce critic of Beijing, spent time under house arrest and finally left China in 2015. He had helped design Beijing s Bird s Nest stadium for the 2008 Olympics. Erstwhile rock and roll rebels have cleaned up their acts to placate censors or been sidelined. Zuoxiao Zuzhou - a music producer who was banned by the government from 2011-2014 for his connection to Ai Weiwei - is one who has chosen to toe the government line. With great difficulty, Zuoxiao Zuzhou has now established an image that is relatively acceptable to society, his agent, Qin Baogui, told Reuters, declining an interview with the artist because of the sensitivity of the topic. Cui Jian, whose 1986 Nothing to My Name became an unofficial anthem for students demonstrating during the deadly 1989 Tiananmen protests, pulled out of a show on Chinese state television in 2014 because he was told he would not be allowed to sing the song, his manager said at the time. On the flip side, films and music that embrace the party have benefited from state support to tap China s huge fan bases. The overtly patriotic Wolf Warrior 2 became China s top grossing film after its July release, helped in part by strong state media support. Last month, U.S. organizers aiming to bring Grammy Award artists to China said they would only promote artists with a positive and healthy image. As for Li, he is currently working on a song in the run-up to next month s Communist Party Congress, called A Letter to President Xi Jinping. However, Li has not joined the party himself - though it s some distance from youthful rebellion. It s too troublesome and complicated to write an application letter, he said. | 0 |
Mississippi Republicans are taking a shoot first, ask questions later approach to preventing potential church violence with a bill that amounts to legalizing religious security squads tasked with killing perceived threats. This week, the state s Republican-led senate passed the so-called Mississippi Church Protection Act which would militarize the state s churches while also walking back gun regulations and stripping away oversight.The bill would allow churches to create security programs and designate and train members to carry concealed weapons. It would provide criminal and legal protections to those serving as church security.The bill also would allow concealed carry in a holster without a permit in Mississippi, expanding a measure passed last year that allowed concealed carry without a permit in a purse, satchel or briefcase, and another recent law that allows open carry in public.The bill also seeks to prohibit Mississippi officials from enforcing any federal agency regulations or executive orders that would violate the state constitution an attempt to federal gun restrictions not passed by Congress.Mississippi church goers will now get to assign church members as security which can carry concealed weapons without permits and are protected from legal liability if their actions result in death based on a designation of justifiable homicide the same legal standing that we afford police officers on duty.@pourmecoffee It passed pic.twitter.com/H8WvOdHFA4 pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) March 30, 2016What could go wrong?Much of this baffling new legislation is in direct response to NRA lobbying directives to erode existing gun laws in order to create a polite society of heavily-armed citizens. Exploiting tragedy (and ignoring irony) the NRA has used recent mass shootings to push for more guns, not less. The narrative goes that if only churches would have access to firearms, shootings like the one in Charleston, South Carolina, could be prevented.The premise, as tempting as it sounds for would-be vigilantes, has been thoroughly debunked both in theory and in practice. Data suggests that as the number of guns increase, the risk of someone being shot by those guns also increases. Places with a lot of good guys with guns tend to have higher incidences of gun injuries. Go figure. At the same time, anecdotal evidence supports these warnings as well. We ve seen that guns in churches often lead to disastrous accidents, while at the same time not once stopping a mass shooting in a house of worship.With the removal of even permit requirements, Mississippi is planning on handing over the power of life and death to a bunch of untrained, untested amateurs who won t even have the risk of prosecution keeping their index finger off the trigger. A militarized church security unit assigned by the church, trained by the church, and meant to protect the church by any means necessary. If Mississippi legislators can t see the inherent danger in this as the bill heads to the House of Representatives to be finalized, then we are in a lot of trouble.Featured image via George Frey/Getty Images | 0 |
Roll Call Democrat Doug Jones drastically outraised GOP nominee Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate race, new campaign finance documents show.Jones raised nearly six times Moore s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent. Jones raked in nearly $10.2 million compared to Jones $1.8 million. Jones also spent roughly 5 times as much as Moore during that period, nearly $8.7 million compared to Moore s $1.7 million.The Democrat Party, who up until just recently, was essentially broke, just got some very bad news today from reliable media ally, CBS News.As the majority of Alabama Republicans believe that the allegations against Judge Roy Moore are untrue, he now takes a commanding lead over radical leftist Democrat Doug Jones per a new CBS News poll.The CBS News/YouGov poll, conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, surveyed 1,037 Alabamians registered to vote in Alabama. It further segmented the poll results into some results among registered voters and others among likely voters. Among registered voters, the margin of error is 3.8 percent. Among likely voters, the margin of error is 4.8 percent. The results of the election, with Moore leading Jones, were broken down to likely voters.Another part broken down to likely voters was polling specifically about the allegations about Moore. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a significant number of Alabamians do not believe the allegations against Moore one bit. Breitbart Despite all of the money Democrats have poured into the race, Alabama voters are not buying the media reports that decades ago, several women were victims of Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore, who they are now accusing of being a sexual predator. After many of the women s claims were called into question, including the claim made by Beverly Young-Nelson, whose stepson said she s lying about having a sexual encounter with the judge, and whose yearbook that was allegedly signed by Roy Moore has been called into question as a forgery. And then there s another accuser, Tina Johnson who lost her 12-year old son to her mother in a nasty custody battle, in a case where Roy Moore represented her mother. It s entirely plausible that Roy Moore s sexual assault accuser, Tina Johnson, had an ax to grind with Moore, the person who was able to successfully prove to the court that Johnson was unfit to care for him.To add insult to injury, only yesterday, President Trump appeared with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to announce record-breaking fundraising of over $120 million, which McDaniel attributed to President Trump.Watch: | 1 |
Many Americans have been begging Donald Trump to delete his Twitter account for the sake of the country s reputation, and Twitter might have actually found a way to make him quit the social media platform for good!In an effort to combat fake news , Twitter is developing a feature that will allow its users to flag tweets that contain false or harmful information which pretty much describes every tweet that Trump posts. Twitter s Vice President of Policy, Colin Crowell, stated that Twitter is working hard to detect spammy behaviors We ve been doubling down on our efforts. This feature is currently in the prototype phase, and is being noted as Twitter s most aggressive attempt yet to maintain the integrity of the content that appears on its platform. According to the Washington Post, this feature would work as a small tab in a drop-down menu next to tweets. According to two anonymous sources, Twitter is still testing and researching this function carefully, as there are concerns that legitimate information could also be censored if this feature could be manipulated.This might not only kill Trump s tweets, but it will also have a major effect on his audience. Trump loves to brag about how big his following is on Twitter, yet third-party service Twitter Audit states that over half (59%) of Trump s audience is comprised of fake accounts or bots.While this feature is very much in the early phases and there is no guarantee that it will definitely be implemented, this is big news for Trump s presidency. And while the company hasn t said anything about targeting Trump with this initiative, one can only wonder as we recall the words of Twitter s co-founder, Evan Williams: It s a very bad thing, Twitter s role in that. If it s true that he wouldn t be president if it weren t for Twitter, then yeah, I m sorry. Featured image via Joe Raedle / Getty Images | 0 |
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DR BEN CARSON gives his take on Loretta Lynch calling the North Carolina bathroom law controversy like Jim Crow: Everything is like Jim Crow. Everything is like racism and segregation and slavery. What a bunch of crap. You know, they want to do that so that they can always gain the sympathy, but thinking people know better. LORETTA LYNCH ANNOUNCES A LAWSUIT AGAINST NC: | 0 |
(Reuters) - The Republican National Committee filed two lawsuits on Wednesday seeking to obtain emails related to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s tenure as U.S. secretary of state. Clinton, front-runner to be her party’s candidate in November’s general election, has faced questions about her emails since it emerged a year ago that she used a private email account and a private server during her time in the post from 2009-2013. Clinton has apologized for the email arrangement, which is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but has said she did nothing wrong and believes the government will vindicate her. The RNC said it filed the lawsuits after the State Department failed to respond in a timely manner to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in December. It sought the information to ensure the public has information to decide if Clinton is “fit to serve” as president, the RNC said in a statement. The first lawsuit seeks emails, BlackBerry Messenger or text messages between then-Secretary of State Clinton and several key senior aides, including her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and director of policy planning, Jake Sullivan. The second lawsuit seeks emails and other electronic exchanges between nearly a dozen State Department officials and any Clinton associate using one of more than a dozen different internet domain names. It covers the period between Feb. 1, 2013, when Clinton left the job, and Dec. 4, 2015. The request includes any emails to the State Department officials from Clinton’s campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, or the website of former President Bill Clinton’s foundation, ClintonFoundation.org. The suit also targets emails from domains like MediaMatters.org, a liberal non-profit group that seeks to counter what it believes is misleading conservative information in the U.S. media. This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 1 |
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man on Friday near the Gaza border in clashes over U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said hundreds of Palestinians were rolling burning tires and throwing rocks at soldiers across the border. During the riots IDF soldiers fired selectively toward two main instigators and hits were confirmed, the army statement said. | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May s blueprint for Britain s exit from the European Union faces a crucial test starting on Tuesday, when lawmakers try to win concessions from a weakened leader on the government s legislation to sever ties. It is yet another battle for May after scandals and gaffes that have brought questions about her leadership into the open. As many as 40 of her lawmakers would support a no-confidence motion against her, according to the Sunday Times newspaper. But many sources in her governing Conservative Party say now is not the time to force her out because despite backing Britain remaining in the EU, even if reluctantly, they think she is still the best option to deliver Brexit. That makes the debates over EU withdrawal bill all the more important as a test of her ability to steer through legislation she says is crucial to give companies confidence that the rules will not change when Britain leaves in March 2019. With the power balanced in favor of lawmakers rather than the government after the Conservatives lost their majority in a June election, many - even within the party - will use the debate over coming weeks to put the pressure on. We have no intention of parliament being a bystander, we are a key participant in this process, said Hilary Benn, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party who is chair of the Brexit parliamentary committee. In the end we are going to have to vote on the final deal, and the outcome of the election and the balance of votes in the House of Commons now really does bring that home, he told the Institute for Government thinktank earlier this month. The public debate in parliament on Tuesday is the first of eight to discuss the bill before it goes on to other legislative stages. The schedule will be determined by the House of Commons over the course of the debates. Lawmakers have proposed 186 pages of amendments to the bill, which largely copy and paste EU rules and regulations into British law but also, critics say, hand the government wide-ranging powers and cut parliament out of some Brexit planning. The bill is separate from negotiations going on in Brussels, but the EU will want to see how many and which amendments are passed and will regard the showdown as a test of May s strength at home. May is under pressure to make progress with the EU at a summit in December after growing European frustration over Britain s refusal to say how much it thinks it should pay to leave. The amendments include one to stop the government from adopting the so-called Henry VIII powers, named after the 16th century monarch who ruled by proclamation, which allow the government to amend laws being transposed from EU law. Other amendments address criticism that parliament will not get a meaningful vote on the deal eventually agreed with the EU, and press the government to enshrine in law the EU protections Britons now enjoy such as workers rights and environmental protections. May s government has taken some of the fire out of the proposed challenges by signaling it is willing to bend on the Henry VIII powers, and on Monday, her Brexit minister David Davis said parliament would be offered a new vote on the final Brexit deal. The first debate will cover the part of the bill that repeals the 1972 European Communities Act on the retention, conversion and interpretation of existing EU laws, and EU rights. Getting parliamentary scrutiny is a winner. The government will change position because it doesn t want a defeat, said one Conservative lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity. But other issues, such as the push for a vote in parliament on the EU deal which could force the government back to the negotiating table, or even possibly overturn Brexit, present huge challenges. The debate comes at a new low point for May since she was made prime minister after Britain voted for Brexit last June. She has lost two ministers in a week, and her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, is under pressure from the opposition to resign over comments about a jailed aid worker in Iran, a case further complicated at the weekend by Gove, his ally. On Monday, Keir Starmer, the Brexit spokesman for the Labour Party, launched a new bid to derail the withdrawal legislation, saying May s policy to end the jurisdiction of the EU court - the European Court of Justice - was incompatible with her own policy for a smooth transition after Brexit. Over recent weeks, it has become increasingly clear that you alone do not have the authority to deliver a transitional deal with Europe and to take the necessary steps to protect jobs and the economy, he wrote in an open letter to May. | 1 |
William Shatner is such a smarty pants on twitter. He gets his snarky point across with few words.Shatner has been the subject of left-wing anger since he announced in May that he would not follow the lead of many in Hollywood and attack President Donald Trump.Shatner, a Canadian, said, I consider myself a guest here, when asked to comment on former Star Trek cast member George Takei s constant criticisms of the President.On Twitter Wednesday morning, the Captain Kirk actor was asked his plans for the day. He responded by saying, Tweet Hello. Have SJWs get offended by figuring some obtuse way to define it. Spend my day telling them off. You know, just a typical day. A Twitter user joked that the term social justice warrior was offensive, to which Shatner responded, when are SJW s social? When they are sleeping? Fellow actor Adam Baldwin asked Shatner if social justice warriors ever explain the difference between their social justice and Justice? Shatner repled:The tweets go on with one person on the left saying that progressives gave shatter his career back Shatner simply replied, How so? LOL!Read more: Daily Caller | 1 |
David Brooks: Whites are “voting their gene pool” after being “ruined” by globalization, immigration, and feminism November 7, 2016 at 1:09 am By Dr. Patrick Slattery
On the PBS News Hour on Friday, David Brooks said white people are “voting their gene pool.” Wow. Just wow. This is the same David Brooks who wrote in his New York Times column about a Jewish woman who came up to him after a speech, and knowing that he was Jewish too told him that his speech was a description of how Jews had taken over America, which he acknowledged in the column was indeed the case.One of my Jewish professors once boasted that “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” In other words, they voted their gene pool. Of course, they eventually bought out the Republican party as well, which gave their gene pool’s vote a choice.
Blacks famously vote their gene pool. Hispanics are expected to vote their gene pool. But when whites and whites alone consider their ethnic interests in voting, it is something that Brooks and the rest of the Zio elite and their Goyish lackey find “deplorable.”
Basically, less educated or high school-educated whites are going to Trump. It doesn’t matter what the guy does. And college-educated going to Clinton.
Sometimes, you get the sense that the campaign barely matters. People are just going with their gene pool and whatever it is. And that is one of the more depressing aspects of this race for me.
But what Brooks said about the reasons for whites (besides the college-indoctrinated whites) voting their gene pool was even more interesting.
We had a lot of good things over the years that were really good for America. I think globalization has been really good for America. I think the influx of immigrants has been really good for America. Feminism has been really good for America.”
But there are a lot of people who used to be up in society, because of those three good things, are now down, a lot of high school-educated white guys. And they have been displaced.
When David Brooks was growing up, whites make up close to 90% of the American population. So it doesn’t really make sense to say that the displacement of the bulk of the American population is good for America.
Of course, he did specify “high school-educated white guys.” Well, were blacks helped by globalization, immigration, and feminism? What did that do for their employment rates, crime rates, illegitimacy rates, etc.?
And white women? Well, maybe all they ever wanted in the first place was to have blue hair, nose rings, tattoos, and raise cats instead of babies. I guess we never asked them.
And college educated white guys? Well, they used to go to Harvard and Yale. Now, with affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics, competition from Asians, and massive Jewish nepotism, a white guy is lucky to get into a second-tier state school.
Brooks conclusion was even more breath taking:
And shame on us for not paying attention to that and helping them out. And, therefore, as a result, what happened was, they were alienated, they got super cynical, because they really were being shafted. And so they react in an angry way.
Well, that’s not a shock, given the last 30 or 50 years of American history. And so, for us going forward, it’s to not reverse the dynamism of American society and the diversity. It’s to pay attention to the people who are being ruined by it, and so this doesn’t happen again.
Here he admits that whites got shafted. That we are being ruined by diversity. But the weird thing is that line about “so this doesn’t happen again.” What? Is he concerned that Hispanics might be Jewed out of the America they inherit from whites?
The rest of his appearance was just a poetic rant against Donald Trump. With any luck, on Tuesday Trump will be elected president, and we can make begin the process of making America America again. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday imposed some limits on the kind of fraud claims that can be brought against federal contractors in a case involving a suit against one of America’s largest hospital operators over a woman’s death at one of its facilities. But the 8-0 ruling was not the broad victory for business sought by the company, Universal Health Services, and other healthcare providers fearful of suits under the U.S. False Claims Act, which lets individuals make claims that the federal government has been defrauded. The justices threw out a 2015 appeals court ruling that had allowed the parents of Yarushka Rivera to sue Universal Health Services under the False Claims Act, but sent the case back to a lower court, meaning the suit could potentially still proceed. Rivera suffered a fatal seizure in 2009 at age 19 a mental health facility owned by the company in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The lawsuit said the facility provided “gravely inadequate treatment” and used “unsupervised and unqualified personnel.” The ruling represented a partial victory for the business community because it rejected the lower court’s expansive view of a company’s liability under the False Claims Act. Roy Englert, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based Universal Health Services’ lawyer, said he was pleased the justices threw out the appeals court ruling and set a “new rigorous standard” for determining if the claims can move forward. Rivera’s parents, Julio Escobar and Carmen Correa, accused the company of defrauding the government because it was getting federal Medicaid funding to provide treatment to low-income people and did not comply with personnel regulations at the Lawrence facility. The ruling “accepts the basic notion that fraudsters can’t provide shoddy services to the government and expect payment without incurring significant liability,” said David Frederick, the lawyer for Rivera’s family. Businesses had hoped the justices would put more limits, or disallow completely, lawsuits based on a federal contractor’s failure to meet certain legal or regulatory requirements not specifically outlined in a government contract. The court instead said such lawsuits can be filed as long as they are relevant to the government’s decision to make the payment to the company. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said the parents “may well have adequately pleaded a violation” of the fraud law, but added that the False Claims Act “is not a means of imposing treble damages and other penalties for insignificant regulatory or contractual violations.” The Obama administration had backed the parents. | 1 |
link a reply to: carewemust "Vomiting black liquid" caught my eye. I know bleeding internally can cause black vomit, sometimes it looks like coffee grounds. But something in the HeatStreet article that Fox news linked too also caught my eye: Max was buried in Canterbury cemetery after his mother arranged to have his body flown home a week after his death. A post-mortem examination was carried out by a pathologist in east Kent, but Vanessa says that more than two months later she still does not know the result, or whether there will be an inquest. She added: “Apparently, he had not suffered any obvious physical injuries but he could have been slowly poisoned, which is why the results of toxicology tests from his post-mortem are so important. [bolding by me] Activated charcoal -- which is black and readily available to anyone -- is used to treat poisoning, and could cause black vomit also. Could Spiers have suspected he was being poisoned and tried to self-treat with activated charcoal? I can't find much more about the black vomit... as in if someone was with him before/during/after he vomited the black liquid... or if it was found at the same time as he was found dead. | 0 |
geoengineeringwatch.org
The power structure is continuing to fracture from within. Like feuding mafia families that no longer have enough turf to exploit, they will begin to turn on each other. There are many predicting the manner in which the dominos will fall, but who can know with any certainty? There are simply too many variables and too many factors that are already far beyond the breaking point. The noose is being tightened around all our necks from countless directions. The AT&T purchase of Time Warner (and thus CNN News) is just another sign of the rapid power structure consolidation. Those who attempt to stand up to the fascist state are treated brutally, as the Dakota pipeline protesters now know. The hypocrisy of environmentalists like Leonardo DiCaprio (and organizations like National Geographic) is perplexing and disappointing. The newly released film "After The Flood (by DeCaprio and National Geographic) was disappointing and unfortunately only a half truth. The US military continues to bomb the forces that are actually fighting ISIS, why? Has the human race overshot the planet's ability to support the population? If so, who bears the blame, and where do we go from here? The latest installment of Global Alert News is below.
As the battle for the greater good becomes ever more difficult, and the horizon grows darker, many, unfortunately, abandon their post and passively sit down on the bench. There is no solace in walking away from the most important struggle ever faced by the human race and at the most critical time. We must never turn away, we must never yield, we must never give up, make your voice heard in the fight for the greater good. | 1 |
21st Century Wire says Every Sunday, our editorial team curates another documentary film for 21WIRE readers.This week: Although this is a mainstream and at times, a somewhat sensational depiction of CIA history, the film contains some extremely interesting information and insights regarding the US Central Intelligence Agency s covert program targeting members of the general public which employed the use of Class A and hallucinogenic narcotics in order to develop an array applied behavior science applications to be used in the manipulation of people and the extraction of information under duress. The film also introduces the prospect of RFK assassin, Sirhan Sirhan as a Manchurian candidate. These classified drug-based programs were developed during the height of the Cold War, and who knows how many other similar programs there were, and which one are still running today. Watch: SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE | 1 |
GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas began ceding control of the Gaza Strip s border crossings with Israel and Egypt to U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday under an agreement brokered by Cairo to end a decade of internal schism. The move marked the most concrete implementation of the Oct. 11 reconciliation deal that Palestinians hope will ease economic restrictions on Gaza and enable more fruitful negotiations on their goal of setting up an independent state. Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah said in a statement that taking charge of the crossings would help Abbas s Palestinian Authority (PA) fulfill its duty to improve the living conditions of our people . Israel and the United States have reservations about the intra-Palestinian pact, however, given refusals by Hamas - which has fought three wars with Israel since seizing control of Gaza in 2007 from forces loyal to Abbas - to relinquish its rockets and other arms. Witnesses said PA employees moved into Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings on the Israeli border and Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, as Hamas counterparts packed up equipment and departed on trucks. We have handed over the crossings with honesty and responsibility, without bargaining and unconditionally, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a video address. Citing security concerns, Israel maintains tight restrictions on the movement of people and goods at its crossings with the Gaza Strip, including an almost blanket ban on exports from the territory. COGAT, the Israeli military-run authority that supervises Erez and Kerem Shalom, said a meeting would be held with a PA representative to define joint working protocols and Israeli security conditions, including the complete absence of any Hamas member or representative at or near the crossings. Egypt, which in the past has accused Hamas of aiding an Islamist insurgency in its Sinai peninsula bordering Gaza, has kept Rafah largely closed. Hamas denies the allegations and has stepped up security along the frontier. Nickolay Mladenov, U.N. special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said transfer of the crossings was a landmark development in the reconciliation process, and he called in a statement for the positive momentum to be maintained . PA ministers have begun gradually to assume their duties in Gaza in past weeks and on Tuesday took over the revenue accounts of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, officials said. Hamas had used those revenues - taxes and fees collected from merchants and passengers - as part of its Gaza budget, to pay salaries of the 40,000 to 50,000 employees it has hired since 2007. Those wages will now be paid by the PA, under the Cairo agreement. Hamas also maintains an armed wing, which analysts say has at least 25,000 well-equipped fighters. It remains the dominant force in Gaza, an enclave of two million people. The Palestinian Authority will begin operating the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings immediately, officials said, while in Rafah the operation will await further security arrangements such as deploying a force from Abbas s presidential guards and Cairo completing innovations on its side of the facility. | 0 |
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Spirituality Universal Patterns First Online Academy for the Visionary Arts Opens Global Press Release, October 25th 2016 - New online learning community explores art with the power to shape the future, and integrate the wisdom of ancient cultures. Originally identified through... The Sacred Contribution of the Mazatec Shaman to the Spiritual World There was a time when shamanic ceremonies played a key role in a society. Such rituals involved the consumption of different herbs under the supervision of the shaman who acted as a spiritual guide... Thou Shalt Not Kill Scorpions and Smoketh Them You might think that lighting up a spliff makes you cool but you're nowhere as hardcore (or exposed to danger) as Afghanistan's dried scorpion smokers. Look, we get it - mankind needs its fix... How to Go on Your First Shamanic Journey into the Spirit World As days go by, the way of the shaman is becoming more and more axiomatic. If you feel that one day your path might include a shamanic journey, consider these steps. The most important thing... Understanding and Preparing the ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Experience Ingesting psychedelic mushrooms can provide, without doubt, a life changing experience. But there are certain rules one has to follow in order to get the best out of their alluring effect. When done... Psychedelic Mushrooms – A 7,000 Year Old Friend With an ancient history spanning over tens of thousands of years of human evolution, psychedelic mushrooms are once again making a comeback. Hallucinogenic mushrooms, also known as ‘magic... | 1 |
Sen. Harry Reid is calling for FBI Director James Comey to be investigated after Friday revealed bombshell after bombshell regarding Russia s interference in the U.S. election. Reid put the head of the FBI on blast Saturday morning following the release of a secret CIA assessment that concluded Russia had meddled in the presidential election with the intent of helping to get Donald Trump into the Oval Office. I think [Comey] should be investigated by the Senate, he should be investigated by other agencies of the government, including the security agencies, Reid told MSNBC. You look at the accounts we have just in the press the last few days its stunning, stunning, the conclusions reached by the press. Thank goodness we ve got them still around this is not fake news, okay? he added.The CIA report found that Russia had hacked the DNC, as well as the RNC. However, we all know whose information made it onto Wikileaks and whose didn t. This tidbit of information lends credence to the theory of U.S. intelligence agencies who believe that Russia interfered for one reason: to get Trump elected.Reid is convinced that Comey knew Russia was screwing around with the presidential election, but chose to withhold this information from the American public until after Election Day. I am so disappointed in Comey. He has let the country down for partisan purposes, Reid added, calling for the FBI director to step down.Reid also took the opportunity to praise Sen. Lindsey Graham for his efforts to lead an investigation into Russia s election meddling. I believe Lindsey Graham is a voice of concern, Reid said.Graham, along with Sen. John McCain, is heading up efforts to launch a wide-ranging probe into Russia s hacking and interference. President Obama has also ordered a full review of Russian interference in November s election, which is to be completed before he leaves office in January.Watch more on Reid s call for an investigation into Comey, here;.@SenatorReid says FBI Director James Comey should be investigated in wake of CIA revelations. RETWEET 2AGREE #AMJoy https://t.co/Xu9THTOOfz AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) December 10, 2016Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
Kid Rock has struck panic into the hearts of liberal politicians upon his announcement that he will be running for senate in Michigan.Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, is from Romeo, Michigan and will be a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election.U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is already sounding the alarm with her Democratic base, warning a Senate run by Detroit bad boy Kid Rock could be the second coming of Donald Trump.Watch Fox News host, Tom Shillue tell panelists, If Kid Rock runs for Senate, he ll win :The Wasting Time and All Summer Long rap rocker-turned-country singer tweeted on Wednesday that he s running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Although it s been largely dismissed so far as a publicity stunt, Warren isn t taking any chances with the longshot Republican. I know a lot of people are thinking: this is some sort of joke, right? Warren wrote in an email blast with the subject line Senator Kid Rock (R-MI). Well, she said, maybe this is all a joke but we all thought Donald Trump was joking when he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his campaign, too. And sure, maybe this is just a marketing gimmick for a new album or tour but we all thought Donald Trump was just promoting his reality TV show, too, she added.In her email, Warren included a link where people could donate to Michigan Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and her own reelection campaign.A Warren campaign spokeswoman did not return repeated inquiries about how much the fundraising appeal has hauled in or the strategy behind it.But if the effort succeeds, other Democrats are likely to also cash in on a Rock candidacy remote as it may be to fill their own campaign coffers, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. Political elites and activists who actually give money to campaigns keep up with all this stuff, he said. Plus, the most effective direct mail is often tied to something that just happened something that can be spun into a threat. Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl, who will officially challenge Warren next month, blasted the email as proof that Warren is more concerned about crafting a bid for the White House. She uses any and every issue, whether it s a celebrity Republican or it s Hillary Clinton, to try to scare her support base into giving her more money so that she can reach that main goal I believe of running for president not of focusing on the concerns of her constituents in Massachusetts, said Diehl.Still, don t count him out, said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. He s well-liked, said Anuzis. He s a big proponent of Detroit and somebody who s put his money where his mouth is investing back home. Boston HeraldKid Rock is taking a page from the Donald Trump playbook. He s already responding to #FakeNews on his website. | 1 |
Two nights ago, Mark Levin dropped a bombshell on his show about the Muslim terrorist who killed 9 people in Manhattan and injured dozens. The Diversity VISA immigration program that allowed the Muslim terrorist, and 23 people who were tied to his lottery draw from Uzbekistan to live in the United States, was given the brainchild of none other than New York s own Democrat senator, Chuck Schumer.Mark Levin; NYC muslim terrorist came to US under Diversity VISA Program a bizarre lottery to shove more foreigners down our throats Deplorable MD (@MDDeplorable) October 31, 2017Numbers USA breaks down Senator Chuck Schumer s Diversity Visa immigration program: The Irish Immigration Reform Movement (IIRM) began working directly with Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his staff to draft a diversity program that differed significantly from those considered up to that point. The Schumer proposal would have set aside 75,000 visas each year for a new category of diversity immigrants. 112 Under this proposal, the world would be separated into high-admission regions and low-admission regions, within which would be high-admission states and low-admission states. High-admission states would be those from which at least 25,000 immigrants had come to the United States within the most recent five-year period. While no state would be allocated more than seven percent of available visas, the bulk of visas would go to low-admission states in low-admission regions, with a much smaller number allotted to low-admission states in high-admission regions. Any visas not used by the state to which they were allocated would go to the remaining eligible states.Last night, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin slammed the Diversity Immigrant Visa (green card lottery) program in an interview with Sean Hannity on FOX News Tuesday night. He said a lottery is no way to run an immigration system. Levin said a caller, a counter-intelligence veteran, told him al Qaeda and ISIS are actively using the program to install sleeper cells in the U.S It took effect in 1995, Levin said of the bill. People go online and they apply. They apply online. It s a lottery system. That is no way to run immigration system. I had a caller on my radio program tonight and he said, he used to work counterintelligence. Al Qaeda and ISIS have actively been working to use this program to put sleepers in our country. Levin said we have forgotten what the purpose of immigration is. Immigration is supposed to benefit the United States, not to ensure diversity from the foreigners coming into this country. Immigration is supposed to improve the United States it has nothing to do with improving other countries and so forth, he said. This mass killer has claimed an association with ISIS, hasn t he? This diversity visa program should be gutted. We don t need a diversity visa program with 50,000 people a year come into this country through a lottery system, because we want diversity from different countries, Levin declared.Levin said after 9/11, you would have thought people would take the issue of immigration more seriously. Immigration is about national security, the broadcaster said. Once people get into the country it becomes far more complicated. So you want to stop them at the border. And when the President of the United States said, as he did when he first came into office, we can t vet these people. Some of these governments are effective war with us and some of them don t exist. Some of them are involved in civil war. You know, we can t call Yemen and say, hey, can you check this guy out on your computer system? There is no computer system. There is no effective government. What the President is saying is you can t bring people in from these countries until we figure out what s going on. Real Clear Politics | 0 |
(Reuters) - U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) has informed U.S. airlines that they can once again board travelers who had been barred by an executive order last week, after it was blocked nationwide on Friday by a federal judge in Seattle, an airline official told Reuters. In a conference call at around 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT), the U.S. agency told airlines to operate just as they had before the order, which temporarily had stopped refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Individuals from those states who have proper visas can now board U.S.-bound flights, and airlines are working to update their websites to reflect the change, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The judge’s temporary restraining order represents a major challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump’s action, although his administration could still appeal the ruling and have the policy upheld. Judge James Robart, a George W. Bush appointee, made his ruling effective immediately on Friday, suggesting that travel restrictions could be lifted straight away. He is expected to issue a full written ruling over the weekend. CBP and Washington-based trade group Airlines for America did not immediately comment. | 1 |
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has jailed 21 people for their roles in a deadly fire that killed 39 elderly people at a private nursing home two years ago, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Xinhua said the nursing home in the central Henan province had been illegally extended and flammable materials had been used on the extension. Fan Huazhi, legal representative for the nursing home, received a prison term of nine years while contractor Feng Chunjie, who did not have the appropriate work certificate, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. The other defendants, including firefighting officers and managers at the nursing home, received jail terms ranging from two-and-a-half to eight years. Reuters was unable to reach Fan or Feng for comment. China has had a history of similar disasters as workers are often poorly trained or ill-equipped to protect themselves from accidents. In January, a fire at another nursing home in northeastern China killed seven people. | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese army said on Sunday it had not uncovered any plans for assassinations in Lebanon, a day after Saad al-Hariri cited a plot to kill him in a speech declaring his resignation as prime minister. In a statement, the army said the information in its possession in addition to ongoing arrests and investigations had not revealed the presence of any plan for assassinations in the country . | 1 |
How bad is it in Venezuela? People are eating one meal a day and the government is doing its best to cover up the humanitarian crisis. We know about the toilet paper shortage but a food shortage is horrific. The lines for pretty much everything have been very long. There s a shortage of everything. The bottom line is that SOCIALISM SUCKS! | 0 |
HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean court on Saturday refused to strike down subversion charges against an American citizen who now faces 11 days in a Harare jail until her next court hearing. Martha O Donovan, who works for Magamba TV, which describes itself as Zimbabwe s leading producer of political satire, was on Friday charged by police, who also accused her of insulting President Robert Mugabe. Lawyers for O Donovan, who appeared in court in jeans and a checked shirt, argued before magistrate Nomsa Sarabauta that police only informed O Donovan of the more serious charges of attempting to subvert the government hours after her arrest, thereby violating the constitution. But the magistrate said she was satisfied the officers complied with the law and dismissed the application. The charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in jail. A U.S. State Department official said on Saturday that the government was aware of reports that a U.S. citizen was detained in Zimbabwe. We stand ready to provide appropriate consular assistance for U.S. citizens . Lawyer Obey Shava said he would now apply for bail at the High Court on Monday. O Donovan, who denies the charges against her, was not formally charged nor was she asked to plead in court, where she will return on Nov. 15. The case against her centers around a post on Twitter last month in which O Donovan allegedly called 93-year-old Mugabe a selfish and sick man . Her arrest comes after the creation of a Ministry of Cyber Security last month. Mugabe s government has been particularly uneasy about social media after activists such as pastor Evan Mawarire and his #ThisFlag movement last year used social media to organize a stay-at-home demonstration, the biggest anti-government protest in a decade. A national election is due in 2018. | 0 |
President Obama has finally been vindicated after seven years of Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act resulted in humiliating failure on Friday.Once again, Republicans were forced to cancel a floor vote for their Trumpcare bill the day after previously pulling it because many Republicans couldn t bring themselves to vote for such a terrible piece of legislation.The bill would have repealed the Affordable Care Act, stripping healthcare from over 20 million Americans and causing healthcare premiums to skyrocket.Donald Trump, of course, immediately blamed Democrats for the defeat even though Republicans control the House, Senate, and the White House.In short, Republicans only have themselves to blame because they are the ones who tried to replace the Affordable Care Act with a plan that was just awful and universally opposed across the country.Adding insult to injury, Fox News anchor Bret Baier forcefully pointed out that while Republicans went down in flames, President Obama won the day. Let me just say one thing, the biggest winner today: President Barack Obama, who came out this week and defended his legacy healthcare law, Baier began. It is now clear that Republicans cannot do, at least yet, what they planned on doing in the campaign, after campaign from 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, repeal and replace was the mantra. Indeed, Republicans rehearsed their repeal of the Affordable Care Act incessantly, holding over 60 useless symbolic votes over the years. But when push came to shove, Republicans demonstrated that they are incapable of governing even when they control every branch of government. Barack Obama has the win right now, and it has changed the entire way that we look at healthcare, Baier continued. It is now the Democrats version, the ideology, that government does have a role in providing healthcare in some way shape or form. Thousands of Americans across the country showed up at town halls to confront Republicans in defense of the Affordable Care Act and only 17 percent of Americans approved of their bill.And in the end, not enough Republicans were willing to commit political suicide by supporting the bill and decided to stand against it instead.In conclusion, Baier echoed Fox Business host Stuart Varney by noting that Republicans control Congress and the White House but still could not get anything done. The repeal, drag it up by the root has not worked, Baier said. They can t get it through a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican president. Today is a win for President Barack Obama. Here s the video via YouTube.Americans should remain vigilant, however, and continue to watch Republicans closely to make sure they don t try to sneak the bill through. Just like the Affordable Care Act failed a few times before it passed, the GOP could always bring up their terrible bill again for another vote. It will be up to each and every one of us to make sure they fail again. But for now, the Affordable Care Act is the law and Republicans should accept that and get over it.Featured image via Pete Souza | 1 |
Long before presidential scandals were as serious as conflicts of interest and obstruction of justice, conservatives had to content themselves with bashing President Obama over every small thing however silly. Naturally, those criticisms have come back to haunt them as their own new president s bull in a china shop approach to governance means he does every single thing conservatives once accused Obama of doing but worse.It s exposed the conservative media as a clown car overflowing with hypocrites. Before FBI investigations and Russian collusion, this is the sort of thing conservative reporters spent weeks endlessly covering:Even nearly a decade later, the comment section on sites like Breitbart and InfoWars feature commenters who love to attack President Obama for this supposed bow. Ironically, the fact that they can t think up anything better to criticize him for inadvertently highlights how relatively scandal-free Obama s presidency was.That hasn t stopped Fox News. The network seemed eager to smear Obama during its coverage of Trump s visit to the Middle East. In an hilariously half-baked report on foreign policy, Fox ran with this headline early into Trump s Saudi Arabian visit. Ugh.That headline becomes extremely awkward when the latest video from Trump s visit emerged: The man conservatives say is an alpha male leader gave a small curtsy after he was presented with a medal in Saudi Arabia.Unlike Obama, tRump didn't bow, he curtsied. ??? pic.twitter.com/TH50aJlGW6 BluePixie (@BluePixie3) May 20, 2017What a bold presidential gesture! I m sure Fox News will cover it with just as much seriousness as they had Obama s trip to Saudi Arabia, right?Here s another angle. That s definitely a curtsy.Trump once criticized Obama for bowing to foreign leaders (as is customary).Trump CURTSIES instead. pic.twitter.com/SOEZy7IqGx Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) May 20, 2017In Trump s defense, he is uniquely susceptible to flattery. Giving Trump a medal or praising him are extremely easy ways to get him to do what you want. In Saudi Arabia s case, the small gold token seems to have been enough to compel Trump to rubber-stamp a $110 billion arms deal (including weapons Obama had withheld from the Saudis for fear they would be used in war crimes) and an additional $200+ billion investment deal.And Trump got to get a shiny medal! A win-win.Featured image via Twitter | 1 |
Eric Trump gives a great interview on Fox and Friends this morning. Trump s kids always come across as very likable and respectful young adults who are, understandably incredibly proud of their father. Eric covers a lot of territory in this interview. He talks about Hillary, Ted Cruz, his dad s passion for fixing our nation, the Holiday Inn Express where Donald stayed in Iowa, and how he wasn t raised with a silver spoon in his mouth. | 0 |
John Lester: As a Naval flight officer I held the top secret sensitive compartmentalized information clearance. And that provided me access with materials and information highly sensitive to our war fighting capabilities. Had I communicated this information not following the prescribed protocols I would have been prosecuted and imprisoned. Secretary Clinton, how can you expect those such as myself who are and were trusted with America s most sensitive information to have any confidence in your leadership as president when you clearly corrupted our national security. | 1 |
Ted Cruz has developed a reputation as the most conservative of the major 2016 Republican presidential candidates, but he hasn't taken many specific policy positions to earn that moniker. One exception? His longtime support for a flat tax.
The flat tax dramatically lowers the top tax rate and exempts capital gains and dividends from taxation. It's astonishingly regressive: the rich pay far less, hedge fund managers and private equity types like Mitt Romney would pay literally nothing, and while the exact rate varies from plan to plan, it's certainly not going to be as low as 10 or 15 percent, meaning the plan would likely raise taxes for middle-class people currently in those brackets.
Cruz's flat tax proposal, as you would expect, drives liberals crazy. "It's a fiscal fantasy for people who wish the US existed as it did before FDR was president," writes Wonkblog's Matt O'Brien. "It's not an agenda for anyone who's interested in governing the country as it is today."
But liberals should take at least some of the ideas in the flat tax more seriously. Just as a monomaniacal obsession with growth has made conservative tax policy into a regressive disaster, an obsession with progressivity above all else is becoming an anchor on progressive tax thinking. It's easy to come up with a flat tax–like plan that's not crazily regressive but still benefits the economy, and the result would be substantially better than most of the tax plans Democratic politicians promote.
When thinking about tax policy, you first have to ask what you ultimately want the taxes for. Sometimes — as with alcohol or carbon taxes — the tax does good in and of itself by deterring people from bad behaviors. But mostly you want taxes to pay for worthwhile programs, and liberals in particular need a tax policy that can raise a substantial amount of money to fund a large welfare state. And the experience of most European social democracies is that to do that, you can't just soak the rich. You need broad-based consumption taxes, such as value-added taxes (VATs), that everyone pays.
In his book Growing Public, economic historian Peter Lindert notes that high-budget welfare states in general tax investment income less and consumption more. His argument is that European social democrats realized that income taxes of the scale they'd need to fund a comprehensive welfare state would have a deleterious effect on growth, and that the only way to sustainably pay for universal health care, generous education and pension systems, and so forth is to move toward more broad-based, pro-growth tax schemes.
Which brings us back to Ted Cruz's flat tax.
The term "flat tax" is mostly misleading. It makes people think the flat tax is just an income tax, but with one rate instead of many. It's not, really. Rather, it's a kind of consumption tax — very similar to a VAT of the kind social democracies depend upon.
VATs work by taxing the difference between what a company paid on materials to make a product and what it sells that end product for: the value added, in other words. As the Tax Policy Center's Len Burman explains, the corporate tax side of a flat tax is just a VAT that also lets companies deduct the cost of wages. Individuals then pay taxes on those wages themselves.
Economists tend to find that consumption taxes are better for the economy than income taxes, because income taxes discriminate against savers.
To see why, imagine you make $50,000 in wages and there's a flat 20 percent tax on all income. You'd pay $10,000 in taxes on your wages. That leaves you with $40,000.
Now you've got a decision to make: do you want to take $5,000 of the $40,000 you have left and invest it, or do you want to take that $5,000 and spend it on a really awesome television? If you invest it and make money off the stocks, then the thing you bought with your money — the profits those stocks made for you — will get taxed again. If you just buy the TV, the government doesn't tax you a second time.
Under standard economic models, eliminating this double-taxing of savings promotes investment and thus boosts economic growth. And it's not just conservatives and libertarians arguing this; a highly influential model by Anthony Atkinson and Joseph Stiglitz, both noted lefties, gives this result. A widely cited 2001 paper by David Altig, Alan Auerbach, Lawrence Kotlikoff, Kent Smetters, and Jan Walliser estimates that switching from income taxation to consumption taxation boosts growth in the long run by 1.9 to 9.4 percent, depending on how you do it.
The empirical evidence is murkier. UC Berkeley's Danny Yagan found that the 2003 dividend tax cut — meant to reduce double taxation of savings, just like consumption taxes — didn't do anything to help the economy. But a recent paper by Tulane's James Alm and the IMF's Asmaa El-Ganainy found that in 15 EU countries, increases in VAT rates decreased consumption and boosted savings — exactly the result you get from the models. The matter isn't open and shut, but at the moment the weight of the evidence suggests consumption taxes are preferable for growth. That gives credence to Lindert's argument that to raise taxes enough to fund a welfare state without hurting growth too much, you need to move to consumption taxation.
The problem with consumption taxes is that they're usually regressive. VATs are sales taxes: they make everything more expensive by a set percentage, and because poor and middle-class people spend more of their incomes than the rich do, the end result is that the VAT hits them more than it does the rich. But there are a variety of ways to tax consumption without making the poor worse off.
The simplest way would be to do take a flat tax but make it not, y'know, flat. Recall that the main feature of the flat tax is its business component — again, it's like a VAT that subtracts out wages. It's totally possible to pair that with a progressive tax on wages, rather than a flat tax on wages. The result is still a consumption tax, but it's a progressive one.
This idea — known as the X tax and originated by the late Princeton economist David Bradford — has been promoted in recent years by the American Enterprise Institute tax expert Alan Viard, who along with Robert Carroll wrote an excellent book outlining a detailed X tax proposal. The 2001 simulation by Altig et al. found that replacing the income tax with an X tax would be better for growth then even the flat tax.
The big problem with the X tax is that it doesn't touch capital income. Mitt Romney wouldn't pay a thing. So, alternatively, you could simply amend the income tax so that all savings is tax-deductible. This would effectively turn the income tax into a consumption tax, and do it in a way that makes sure capital income still gets hit.
But the most reliable way to make a consumption tax progressive has nothing to do with the tax itself and everything to do with what the money it generates is used for. Europe's flat VATs are not themselves progressive, the way an X tax or personal consumption tax are, but they pay for transfer payments that are larger, relative to income, for lower- and middle-class people than for the rich. The overall system is progressive even if the tax isn't.
So there's a way to change the tax and transfer system so that it's still progressive but doesn't punish savings, and the change would likely boost economic growth. Why aren't Democratic politicians jumping all over this?
They flirt with the idea occasionally. Then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stated that a VAT was "on the table" for funding health-care reform in 2009. President Obama expressed openness to the idea in 2010 after his adviser Paul Volcker signaled support. Volcker's comments provoked Congressional outrage, and the Senate voted 85–13 to condemn the idea as "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income," but all but one of the 13 senators opposing that move were Democrats.
But years of Republicans promoting flat taxes and sales taxes have left a residual distrust for consumption taxation among liberals. More to the point, supply-siders' insistence that marginal tax rates are the main determinant of the course of human history has done a lot to discredit, among liberals, the idea that taxes have much of an effect on growth at all.
That's fair so far as the recent debates in American tax policy go: the idea that cutting the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent could boost growth by any significant amount is nutty, as are claims that big tax cuts like Ted Cruz's or Marco Rubio's would boost growth so much they'd pay for themselves. But the result of the backlash is that progressivity has become the only criterion by which many left-of-center people judge tax proposals, and more credible cases that tax reform could boost growth are ignored. That's really too bad, especially for those who want a dramatically larger welfare state. Realistically, that increase has to be paid for, and consumption taxes are the obvious way to do it.
To quote Paul Krugman, "if I can trade a somewhat regressive VAT for guarantees of decent retirement and universal health care, I’ll take it."
Correction: This post originally said that all 13 senators opposing an anti-VAT amendment were Democrats. Twelve were; the 13th was then–Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH). | 0 |
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has expressed hope the United States would not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and warned such a decision would have serious implications, state news agency SPA reported on Tuesday. The recognition will have very serious implications and will be provocative to all Muslims feelings, SPA said quoting an unnamed official source at the Saudi Foreign Ministry. The United States administration should take into account the negative implications of such a move and the Kingdom s hope not to take such a decision as this will affect the U.S. ability to continue its attempt of reaching a just solution for the Palestinian cause, the statement added. On Monday, Saudi Arabia s Ambassador in Washington Prince Khalid bin Salman said any U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem before a final settlement is reached in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would hurt the peace process and heighten regional tensions. The kingdom s policy - has been - and remains in support of the Palestinian people, and this has been communicated to the U.S. administration, Prince Khalid said in a statement. U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital but has not yet made a decision, his son-in-law and envoy for Middle East peace Jared Kushner said on Sunday. A senior administration official said last week Trump could make such an announcement on Wednesday. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern portion of it to be the capital of a future state. U.S. policy for decades has been to reserve judgment on both claims until the parties agree Jerusalem s status in a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. | 0 |
JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN WITHOUT VOICES: We have spoken to Detective Luerra with Arcola Police Department and confirmed that the children seen in the video are safe and a case now has been opened. Arcola Police Department is diligently working with CPS and the District Attorney s Office. We want to send a HUGE thank you to Deputy Fisherhill and Detective Luerra for the fast response in making sure these children are safe. And a huge thank you to all of our members who gave this child a voice and helped us get the info to the correct investigating department. We look forward to working with this department, and with all of you, in the future as we advocate for our children and ensure them a voice! Thank you! When in the course of raising awareness, alarmism occurs, we would do well, as a civilized society, to acknowledge those alarming statistics and act accordingly. We should never allow ourselves to believe falsely that awareness is enough when action is required. ~Quote By: Justice For Children Without Voices You wanna hmmmm vote for him? Imma show you! Evan get your suitcase and get out! We don t do Donald Trump here. Bye! https://twitter.com/realVivaEuropa/status/797066325030014977 | 1 |
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s new conservative-far right ruling coalition is likely to be sworn in on Dec. 20, an informed source said on Friday, marking a victory for nationalists so far shut out of government elsewhere in western Europe. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, whose mainstream conservative People s Party (OVP) won a parliamentary election on Oct. 15 but not a majority, has been in coalition talks with Heinz-Christian Strache s Freedom Party (FPO). Both sides have described the discussions as friendly and constructive but so far failed to disclose the kind of sweeping tax, immigration and administrative reforms they had called for in their campaigns. Kurz, 31, who has taken a tough stance on immigration and Muslim parallel societies , tilting towards the FPO line as the far right surged in popularity, is tipped to become chancellor and the youngest head of government in the European Union. There has been no confirmation on who might get which portfolio in the new cabinet, but the anti-immigration FPO has said it would aim for about half of the ministries. The OVP gained 31.5 percent and the FPO 26 percent of votes in the Alpine republic s October election. (Dec. 20) is certainly a possible date (for the swearing-in), OVP Chairwoman Elisabeth Koestinger said on Oe1 radio, adding they would put quality before speed even if that meant a deal only after Christmas. FPO deputy leader Norbert Hofer told Oe1 that no deal had been sealed yet, repeating previous statements that both parties aimed to finish before Christmas. The Austrian national news agency APA also cited Dec. 20 as the most likely date for the swearing-in of the new government by President Alexander Van der Bellen, but listed Jan. 8 as an alternative date. The FPO, which came within a whisker of winning the 2015 presidential election, is allied with France s National Front and Germany s AfD, which in a September election became the third strongest party in Germany s parliament. The populist far right last entered an Austrian federal government in 2000 and currently rules in coalition with centrists in two of the country s provinces. | 0 |
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan Airlines Co (9201.T) said on Monday it has begun screening passengers from the seven Muslim-majority countries affected by the President Donald Trump’s travel ban before their departure for the United States. Officials at Japan’s second biggest carrier will contact the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency when passengers from those countries check in at the airport before departure to confirm whether they will be allowed entry, a spokesman for the airline said. | 0 |
Seasonally Adjusted...
Tis the season to be jolly... | 1 |
CNN Anchor Carol Costello acts like she s never heard about the lying that came from Hillary Clinton when Clinton told Patricia Smith that she d get to the bottom of what happened to Mrs. Smith s son in Benghazi. Was Ms. Costello unaware or was she playing dumb? We ll probably never know but the press has been covering for the Obama administration on Benghazi since day one. The cover-up is real and it s happening from the press on up to the White House. The bottom line is that Mrs. Smith is correct and screaming it from the rooftops as any mom would for their child. It s so shameful and sad that once again politics comes before doing the right thing with Obama and Clinton. Both scumbags who left Americans to die in Benghazi CNN Newsroom host Carol Costello was taken aback when Patricia Smith revealed in conversation that she actually didn t know much about what happened to her son despite the fact that the Benghazi attack occurred three years ago. Smith responded in kind, claiming that although Clinton promised to get back to her following her son s funeral ceremony in Washington, D.C., no one had since contacted her on the matter. She has not called me. She has not contacted me. She has not given me any information, she said, except to tell me that I am not a member of the immediate family and I do not need to know. They told you that? an obviously surprised Costello asked.As alarming at Smith s claims were, however, she really let her feelings be known when Costello played a clip from Clinton s testimony in January 2013. At the time, Clinton said that it was their job to figure out what happened and do everything [they could] to prevent it from happening again. Smith s response? She s lying! She s absolutely lying! The frustrated, bereaved mother of Sean Smith went on to repeat her claim that despite being the mother of the fallen diplomat she wasn t told anything after the funeral ceremony because they didn t consider her a member of the immediate family. I saw on TV the bloody fingerprints on the walls over there. I asked specifically, Are those my son s fingerprints crawling down the walls? she cried. Somebody s got to tell me! Clinton previously spoke with Smith during a town hall event in June 2014. Despite the direct address, however, the grieving mother later expressed her frustration with Clinton and demanded the truth.Via: mediate | 0 |
Financial Markets , Market Manipulation , U.S. Economy Clinton Foundation , FBI warrant , investigation of Hillary , James Comey FBI , Weiner laptop admin
Stewart Dougherty presents the 2nd part of his disembowelment of the Clinton crime machine. The Weiner email bomb dropped in the middle of this. As it turns out, the Weiner lap-top mishap appears to a “Black Swan” of sorts that eluded Hillary’s tentacles of control. In the piece below, Stewart presents useful background knowledge and intellectual tools with which to help you analyze and interpret the next sequence of events before and after the election (assuming the election is not postponed).
The information that emerges from the Weiner laptop is going to blow people’s minds – John Titus, Best Evidence Productions, in an upcoming Shadow of Truth
Author’s Preface: We are far more interested in markets than politics. To us, free markets represent liberty in motion. But today, politics, and particularly the most corrupt political institution on earth, the Federal Reserve, have markets in a hammer-lock. At this point, we have to understand what is happening in politics in order to understand what is likely to happen in markets. We write a great deal about politics at this critical juncture in order to help you understand markets and achieve the financial freedom you desire and deserve.
Regarding the breaking Clinton-scandal developments, we believe that in addition to the 650,000 emails retrieved from the Abedin / Weiner computer which are going to show a level of corruption in this nation never before even imagined let alone proved, the FBI’s decision to re-open the investigation was related to the Bundy acquittals on October 27, 2016. We believe that government officials are looking up the barrel of a full-blown American revolution. Not the shooting kind, but rather something much worse for them: complete moral rejection of government and Establishment corruption by the PRODUCTIVE CLASS in America, which threatens to rapidly spread into and cripple the American economy just ahead of the holiday selling season.
The National Retail Federation has just reported that 25% of shoppers are waiting for the election outcome prior to deciding how much they are going to spend during the holidays, something the NRF has never seen before. If principled, productive people feel that this election was stolen from them by Clinton and Establishment corruption, they are going to shut down. They are going to WITHDRAW THEIR FINANCIAL CONSENT from a rigged, dirty system that is looting them and destroying their futures. While the government can effectively deal with many kinds of protest, it cannot even begin to deal with a general economic boycott by the productive class, even if it is just at the margin. (All profits are at the margin.) The consequences of such a boycott upon general business activity; tax receipts at all levels from municipal to federal; the stock and bond markets; and the national mood, with its extraordinarily complex and critical interconnections and ramifications would be monumental, and perhaps beyond all American precedent.
Despite a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded Federal legal onslaught in the case against the Bundy’s and their co-defendants, the jurors re-confirmed something communicated throughout history. Namely, that while there are a very few things that universally disgust human beings, one of them is bullies. The people are not pleased, and the Establishment knows it is in trouble. Now on to our article.]
The Clinton Syndrome Curse: A Clinton – Obama Co-Presidency. (The Clinton Syndrome: Part 2)
In Part 1, we defined the Clinton Syndrome as a psychological condition in which voters develop a favorable attitude toward a political predator who deceives, disdains, swindles and abuses them. It is a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome, but much larger in scope and scale, as demonstrated by the fact that tens of millions of American voters currently exhibit the pathological condition. This Syndrome was identified by Inferential Analytics (IA), an accurate and reliable forecasting method we have developed and use. You can read a detailed explanation of the syndrome in our first article on the subject: “The Clinton Syndrome: The Establishment’s Weapon for National Conquest (Part 1)” LINK
In this article, Part 2, we delve deeper into what the 2016 presidential election is really all about, and outline the consequences that will occur should the Clinton Syndrome prevail on November 8 th . The Clinton Syndrome has resulted in a potentially deadly national disease which will wreak havoc if it spreads out of control at this time.
We regard as an existential threat to the United States the fact that tens of millions of American voters have no idea how deeply fraudulent the entire 2016 presidential campaign has been, from the very beginning. If Donald Trump had not appeared out of nowhere, this would never have been an election at all, but rather an orchestrated, planned enablement of the Clintons and their Establishment handlers to engage in unprecedented corruption, regime change and outright plunder.
If successful, this still-active effort to fraudulently inject the Clintons into the power seat will become a multi-trillion dollar gift to the Establishment elite who know exactly how to profit from Clinton graft and corruption; will destroy what is left of the American economy, which simply cannot sustain four more years of intense looting and fraud; and will result in the outright overthrow of the American form of governance by a deadly new political system that we call “crony communism (outlined in our article: Crony Communism: Hillary Clinton’s Game Plan for America. LINK
The people have been so confused and deceived by the multi-billion dollar avalanche of deliberately concocted lies and propaganda about this election that they don’t even know who is running for President on the Democrat ticket.
Hillary Clinton has both a co-presidential and a vice presidential running mate, neither of which is Tim Kaine, a corrupt political suck-up and hack who was selected precisely because he will do exactly what he is told, not matter how criminal or immoral.
Clinton’s co-presidential running mate is Barack Hussein Obama; her vice-presidential candidate is the United Nations. This is the Establishment’s Dream Team, cooked up to make the fastest possible progress toward their crony-communist and globalist overthrow of the United States. The Establishment realizes that the people are waking up fast to what is being done to them and their country. Therefore, they have put their corrupt machinations into high gear in order to beat the clock, which is ticking loudly.
When people say that a vote for Clinton means four more years of Obama, they have their arithmetic wrong. A Clinton victory means eight more years of Obama in the next four, and a total knock-out for the nation.
The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) deliberately false narrative is that Obama has been campaigning non-stop for Clinton because he wants to protect his “legacy,” and believes that Clinton will do this for him.
This is yet another of the “Big Lie” mind bombs that have been dropped onto the American people’s heads during this colossally fraudulent, dishonest and propagandistic Establishment onslaught to get Clinton elected.
This narrative is meant to suggest that Barrack Obama wants to retire, and then ride out the rest of his life looking upon his “legacy.”
There are two problems with this story. First, Obama’s legacy is already blowing up in his and the entire nation’s face, so there is nothing Clinton will be able to do to salvage it. Obamacare and the Iran Deal are just two examples among dozens of the collapse of Obama’s so-called legacy, which would much better be called a national damnation.
The second problem is that Obama is only 55 years old and has not given even ONE indication our model can detect that he actually wants or intends to retire. (Soros, one of his champions, is 86 years old and still wreaking havoc worldwide. These people never stop until the Reaper drops in.) In fact, what we see in Obama is the exact opposite: he demonstrates a strong desire not only to remain on the political stage, but to assume a larger presence upon it.
Speaking at a rally in Philadelphia on September 13, 2016 (while Hillary was at home recovering from “pneumonia”), Obama said, “It’s good to be back on the campaign trail.” He then said, “I really, really, REALLY want to elect Hillary Clinton.” (Please carefully consider that sentence, because it is a textbook example (although just one of hundreds over the years) of Obama’s pathological Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). He did not say, “I really, really, REALLY want YOU [the people to whom he was speaking] to elect Hillary Clinton,” but rather, “I really, really, REALLY want to elect Hillary Clinton,” making the people’s national election all about himself. Comments such as this are extraordinarily important to our analysis, and their significance has been borne out time and again over our 15+ years of doing this work. Paradoxically, the smallest factors often have the greatest implications.
Later in the same speech, Obama boasted (our comments added within brackets): “More Americans are working [in part time, minimum wage jobs], more have [100% subsidized] health care, incomes are rising [for the establishment elite], poverty is falling [according to false, politically doctored numbers] and gas is $2.00 a gallon. Thanks, Obama!!!” In Obama’s narcissistically crippled mind, the entire United States economy is a function of one thing and one thing only: him. Narcissists in positions of power are extremely destructive (e.g. Obamacare), because they are completely out of touch with what is happening in the real, as opposed their self-flattering fantasy world. In any event, this kind of campaign bragging, swagger and grandiosity is not indicative of someone who plans to retire from politics in the next few weeks.
Obama’s clear desire to remain in the game makes him valuable to Clinton, while also making Clinton valuable to him. Intersecting motives are where deals get done. And a Clinton – Obama collaboration would be ideal for the Establishment. Obama has been the gift that keeps on giving to the elite, as they have raked in trillions from his presidency. They want as much of Obama as they can get, because he is a money machine. (For example, witness Obama’s continuing efforts to ram the TPP, an Establishment fraud against the people, down the nation’s throat. Obama does whatever the Establishment tells him to do, in the full knowledge his “Library” Slush Fund will be richly rewarded for his efforts, just as the Clinton Slush Fund has been enriched by more than $1.8 billion, with a “b,” for the Clinton sell-out of people to the elite.)
Obama is the most internationally-traveled president in the nation’s history, having made 51 international trips to 56 different countries during his two terms in office. It is as if he has been running for international office, and now we can see that he has been. His globetrotting has required strength, stamina and energy, the exact physical attributes that Clinton, who has been pictured requiring assistance to climb a short set of stairs, lacks. Given her health issues, Clinton cannot possibly perform on a global stage going forward; she will be lucky to successfully navigate the White House.
This presents a problem. For the Establishment agenda to be fully executed, Clinton needs international support, and ideally, that international mandates be imposed upon the United States. But she will not be capable of traveling internationally to seal the deals that must get done.
This is where Obama comes in. While he would never step “backwards” into a role such as, for example, Secretary of State (an ego-wounding demotion), his passion for continued political involvement would find an excellent home at the United Nations.
In this Inferential Analytics scenario, Hillary Clinton will get Obama placed in a high level United Nations position. The United States pays for roughly 25% of total United Nations annual budget, far more than any other nation, and still has clout even though more and more countries are turning their backs on America.
Other nations would support the idea of a senior role for Obama if it were made clear to them that his mission would be to continue the “fundamental transformation” of the United States that he promised during his 2008 campaign and has been conducting ever since. This “transformation” has done extreme damage to the United States, and while it has been a disaster for America, it has been good for the rest of the world. Finally, they see a means by which to bring the United States to heel. The idea of the further weakening of the United States will sound to them like a very good deal. The one assurance they will seek is that in exchange for giving Obama an important role at the U.N., Obama will get Clinton to agree not to incinerate the northern hemisphere in a nuclear war, at least not until they have finalized their preparations for it.
A Clinton – Obama co-presidency will be a double body-blow to the nation, with Clinton turning it into a corrupt, crony-communist Establishment lootocracy from within, and Obama destroying it from without.
Leveraging the United Nations, Clinton and Obama can effect two personal agendas they have long sought: gun control, and a multi-million person “open borders” invasion of America. The first agenda will disarm the people, which has been Job #1 in every communist takeover in history; the second will ensure that the “Last American Presidential Election” occurs on November 8, 2016. In the future, presidents and all other politicians and government agency heads will be appointed by the Establishment, exactly as happens in communist regimes. While there might be “show elections,” the outcomes will have been pre-determined at every level far in advance.
A Clinton – Obama co-presidency will also ensure that other Establishment objectives are met. These include the institution of carbon taxes (an enormous and unprecedented new revenue source and looting opportunity); the passage of the TPP (an Establishment bonanza); and the maximum-possible imposition of the New World Order regime change agenda upon the nations and their people.
While Obama could advance the Establishment’s aims in virtually any high level position at the U.N., a role that would make him particularly deadly at the outset would be Co-chair of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), joining current head Filippo Grandhi.
Obama could make his appointment a matter of smooth sailing by stating his belief that the United States is a large, wealthy, relatively under-populated nation that could rapidly absorb a large number of immigrants. By promising to tap into the country’s private wealth, Obama could warrant that all new immigrants would be fully covered by the country’s comprehensive welfare system upon arrival, which is exactly what happens today. This idea would be intoxicating to the new Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, who was the former head of the UNHCR and is an avowed socialist.
The United Nations currently reports the existence of more than 60,000,000 displaced persons and refugees in the world. If the United States pledged to take in, say, 5,000,000 of them, senior U.N. officials would be delighted. What would they have to lose? Dealing with the integration and cost issues would be America’s problem, not theirs. The U.N. could pass a resolution, written by Obama in such a way as to make it convertible into an Executive Order by Clinton, mandating the acceptance of these refugees by the United States. Clinton would put up her hands and say, “I didn’t do it. The U.N. did it, and we must do our “fair share,” while also complying with international law and being decent and responsible international citizens.”
As we have pointed out in the past, the United States government is irredeemably bankrupt by any accounting definition one wishes to use. With $20,000,000,000,000.00 in on-the-books debt, another $10,000,000,000,000.00 in debt projected to be added over the next decade (it will be far greater than this, given current trends), and at the very minimum another $120,000,000,000,000.00 in unfunded debt and contingent liabilities, there is absolutely no way the government can ever pay its obligations. So you might wonder, how could the government possibly pay for an immigrant invasion of this magnitude?
The answer is, the government won’t pay for it; the people will. This is what crony communism is all about. It is estimated that today, there is roughly $70 trillion in private wealth in America. Assuming that half of it, or $35 trillion belongs to the cronies and is off-limits, this leaves $35 trillion that is available for expropriation and looting. While this is certainly not enough to fix America’s fiscal problems, not even close, it could fund 4 years’ worth of radical fiscal adventurism as well as crony communism regime change.
As Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said during this campaign, “We are going to go where the money is,” and if you don’t take that statement seriously, we believe you are making a very big mistake. She and top colleagues such as Sanders and Warren have said in plain English, at a high decibel level that they are coming for your money, and they are, because in their minds, you don’t deserve to have any. Just as Obama once famously said, in a rare, honest, off-script, non-tele-prompted moment, “If you have a business, you didn’t build that,” he and his fellow crony communists also believe, “If you have saved some after-tax money, you don’t deserve to have that.” To them, any savings you possess represent funds the government should have gotten its hands in the first tax cycle, but didn’t. They intend to rectify that error going forward.
We have outlined this theme to demonstrate that this election is about an agenda that very few people understand, because it has deliberately been withheld from them. In actuality, the voters have no idea what Clinton truly stands for, or what the Establishment agenda, which she fully believes in and will implement, really is. The stakes in this election are therefore greater than those of any other election in our nation’s history, in our view. This is why the Establishment has spent billions of dollars rigging it. They intend to collect trillions in plunder on the other side, but they can only do so if it goes their way. As we have already seen, they will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Some Implications of a Clinton – Obama Co-presidency:
Here is a snapshot of the forecast generated by IA in the event of a Clinton – Obama victory: The Clinton – Obama Co-presidential regime will be the most secretive and non-transparent presidency in U.S. history. Clinton will become invisible, just as she often has during the campaign, not just for health reasons, but because she will turn her back on everyday citizens, whom she disdains, once she gets the prize she has sought her entire life. Obama will make secret deals all over the world (think of the secret Iran cash payments and deal, and his behind-the-scenes agitating for TPP, but on a much larger scale, as illustrations). Every one of these deals will be a dagger in the nation’s back. The American people will never again know the truth about what actually goes on behind government doors, or about the corruption that infects the entire political and establishment system. The political class will never again allow itself to suffer Wikileaks-like exposure. Politics will shift to a CIA-like “need to know” model, where information is doled out selectively and in piece-parts. Only a very few at the top will know the overall agenda, and the full set of tactics being employed to achieve it. Anyone who compromises or exposes the system will simply be executed. (Seth Rich comes to mind.) Going forward, the people will know absolutely nothing about what is really happening in Washington, D.C., or about the D.C. / Wall Street and Establishment initiatives. Orwell’s prophecy, “1984,” which is already quite real, will become even more so. The United States will experience an accelerating Brain Drain. Forward-thinking people will realize that America’s slide into predatory crony-communism can and will never be reversed, and that it will be impossible for them and their loved ones to get ahead in such a corrupt, suffocating environment. (Imagine being scolded, lectured, insulted and talked down to on a regular basis by people like Clinton, Obama and Warren, because that is exactly what will happen.) Progressive countries will put out the welcome mat for hard-working, principled, skilled, entrepreneurial Americans. No one will want America’s whining, lazy, non-productive, “entitled” mooches. That’s just a fact. Virtually every nation anyone would actually want to move to for a better opportunity grades potential immigrants according to age, education, language proficiency, skills and likelihood to be productive. Prospects are disqualified if they do not earn a sufficient score. No sensible nation on earth wants to bring in do-nothings whose only capability is to leech off its producers. Productive Americans who remain in the country for their own reasons will quietly adopt a John Galt mindset, sidestepping the corruption and crony communist expropriation by shutting down, dropping out and fading off the radar screen. This will result in an immediate slow-down of business activity, which will ultimately lead to economic collapse. Given that all profits are at the margin, relatively small percentage declines in sales can entirely wipe out income. The John Galt effect will result in the collapse of the nation’s many Ponzi schemes, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, pensions (government and private) and the biggest one of all, Government Debt. These schemes simply cannot be maintained in a dramatically slowing business environment, no matter how much private wealth is looted. Government will take draconian steps to shut down all non-government-sanctioned news and information outlets. Their prime target will be the Alternative Media, which will only be further empowered, and embraced by the people. A powerful Resistance movement will spread like wildfire. Nonetheless, people should fill their minds with as much truth as they possibly can right now, because it will become much harder and more expensive to find in the future. Today’s Alternative Media is the greatest gift any people in history have ever received, and people should leverage it as best they can while they can. A steady retreat by government officials and establishment elitists to their multi-trillions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded bunkers will occur, as they seek to hide from the American people, who will be waking up by the additional tens of thousands every day. A Federal Reserve December rate hike has a 0% chance of happening if Clinton is elected; there is a 100% chance of a rate hike if Trump is elected. The Fed is a totally political organization, and they will do everything they can to punish the voters and scorch the economic earth if the people choose Trump over the Establishment agenda the Fed has been 100% behind. If Clinton wins, people will IMMEDIATELY be bombarded with MSM reports about the implications of the 2016 election upon the 2018 mid-term and 2020 general elections. This will be part of a full-scale effort to inject mass quantities of Hopium into the Trump supporters’ brains, and get them to focus not upon the rigged election of 2016, but on the “next” election where, they will falsely be told, their vote will “really count!” In the meantime, the Establishment will be doing everything necessary to ensure that the 2018 and 2020 “elections” are completely rigged, fraudulent and meaningless. A massive move into real money will begin, and this will be the subject of our next article. There are developments in this sphere that you must know about, and one of the most important Inferential Analytics themes we have ever examined was triggered on October 27, 2016. We will have a full description in the next week or so.
In conclusion, the 2016 election is an existential event for the United States. W believe that the situation is becoming so unstable that you have little time to do everything you can to prepare, and get your personal houses in order. We are writing to help as best we can, while we can.
Stewart Dougherty
Stewart Dougherty is the creator of Inferential Analytics, a forecasting method that applies to events proprietary, time-tested principles of human instinct, desire and action. In his view, forecasting methods not fundamentally based upon principles of human action are unlikely to be reliable over time. He is a graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Business School and has developed IA over a period of 15+ years.
October 31, 2016 | 1 |
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 | 1 |
Russia s Defense Ministry is investigating whether they have killed possibly the world s most wanted man, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, among 330 other fighters in an airstrike on May 28. Al-Baghdadi s death has yet to be verified and this also isn t the first time the claim of his demise has been made.The claim comes after the Ministry said that their airstrike targeted an IS military council meeting in the group s de-facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria. The Russian state-funded Sputnik news agency first made the claim of the possibility of al-Baghdadi s death when they published a statement by Russia s defense ministry that said he may have been present when the airstrike took out 30 IS commanders and up to 300 soldiers at the Raqqa meeting. The leaders at the meeting were discussing their exit through the Southern Corridor, the location of the meeting being confirmed by drone footage according to the Ministry According to information that is checked through various channels, IS leader Ibrahim Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed as a result of the strike, was also present at the meeting, the statement claims, however, al-Baghdadi s presence at the meeting is still being investigated.Al-Baghdadi has kept a low profile and his whereabouts have been unknown for quite some time, however, he was believed to have been in Mosul, Iraq, before a US-led coalition began an effort to reclaim the city in October 2016. Since then the general consensus is that he had been hiding out in the desert. His last major public appearance was back in 2014 when he gave a sermon at a mosque in Mosul after ISIS took control of the city. During the sermon, which was filmed and watched around the world, he declared himself the leader of his envisages Islamic caliphate. If the Russians can confirm that they have killed al-Baghdadi, then that will make the whole investigation into Trump s Russian ties a little more interesting, as U.S. authorities had previously offered a $25 million reward for information that led to his capture.Featured image via screenshot | 1 |
Vince Foster Part II?The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster s 1993 suicide.Ashe who was facing trial for tax fraud died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fund-raising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.One source told me, During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed. Via: NYP | 1 |
As we all know, Donald Trump does not like to read books. Hell, he really doesn t read anything at all unless it s something that strokes his ego. But he finally found the perfect book and he humiliated himself by telling the world about it.In a morning Twitter rant on Monday, Trump promoted a book that is literally filled with mostly blank pages. And conservatives are actually spending their money on it.A great book for your reading enjoyment: REASONS TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS by Michael J. Knowles. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2017If you preview the book on Amazon, all you ll find for content is blank pages. The word count clocks in at 1,235 words over an entire 266 pages. Basically, it s a waste of paper, ink, and brain cells that only someone like Donald Trump and his conservative fans appreciate. You know, because reading something of substance is hard.Here s just a couple screenshot of the pages within the book. It goes on and on like that throughout and it s easy to see why Trump likes to read it. Because there s nothing to really read at all.Keep in mind, Trump s tweet of admiration for this piece of right-wing trash comes only a few days after his daughter Ivanka tweeted about the importance of reading.This #NationalLibraryWeek, we honor our libraries and librarians for opening our eyes to the world of knowledge, learning and reading! Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) April 14, 2017Clearly, her dad doesn t pay attention to her posts.Twitter users were unimpressed by Trump s book choice and proceeded to humiliate him for it.@realDonaldTrump You have publicly admitted you don t read books Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump @POTUS #booksTrumphasneverread pic.twitter.com/JzoK35nJxH Joe Papp (@joepabike) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Trump: Actually, I m looking at a book. I m trying to get started That is a quote from someone who has clearly never read a book Edward Hardy (@EdwardTHardy) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Here s a book you should read, assuming you can spare some time between golfing and war-mongering pic.twitter.com/1b3XcHGXdD Mike P Williams (@Mike_P_Williams) April 17, 2017@Harry1T6 @michaeljknowles @realDonaldTrump The leader of the free world just promoted a troll book. #TheEndIsNigh Warpath von Drumpf (@Warpath72) April 17, 2017@Warpath72 @Harry1T6 @michaeljknowles @realDonaldTrump It s because it s written at his preferred reading level: grade 1. Adam Whisler (@WhislerA) April 17, 2017The perfect book for Trump, since it s nothing but blank pages. (aka right wing humor. ) @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/Jiik7vC109 Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Presumably on the Betsy DeVos reading list. Julia Reiss (@thereisspiece) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Glad to see you could find a book on your reading level. Julia Reiss (@thereisspiece) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump I call BS, you don t read books, which as far as your supporters are concerned is fine with them. Besides they prefer burning books ? Kevin (@TheKevinDent) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Better than Two Corinthians? Mark Gagliardi (@MarkGags) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump The Trump Book Club is 4 vintage issues of Hustler and the entire Animorphs series. RJ City (@RJCity1) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Unless you personally read it, you shouldn t be recommending it. And we know you don t read. Speters (@PalmBayGirl6) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Thanks for the recommendation on where I can find something to wipe my ass with? Tyler (@tymitch1982) April 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump We can change the title and keep the blank pages for your next book: All I accomplished as a US president . Tove Ir n Becker (@TovesTekster) April 17, 2017Featured Image: Twitter | 1 |
Hillary Clinton s campaign charged up to a hundred thousand dollars for fundraisers in L.A. she may well not attend.It s a big deal the rich and famous were expecting to rub elbows with Hillary at Seth MacFarlane s home. There was also an intimate dinner with Hillary at billionaire Barry Diller s estate. For lunch at the Family Guy creator s pad donations start at $5k $10k gets you co-host status with preferred seating and for a whopping $33,400 you get a photo with HRC. Dinner at the home of Barry and Diane von Furstenberg s a tad steeper $100k per couple. The campaign said Monday Hillary will be back on the campaign trail by the middle or end of the week and it s likely she ll miss the 2 fundraisers due to pneumonia. We re told the donors have already shelled out the money and received Secret Service clearance. There s buzz Bill Clinton could end up showing up You know he doesn t want to miss out on the LA babes Via: TMZ | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 40 lawmakers urged the Trump administration on Wednesday to reimpose U.S. travel bans on Myanmar’s military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for a crackdown on the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. In a letter sent to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a group of Republican and Democratic members of the House of Representatives called for “meaningful steps” against Myanmar’s military and others who have committed human rights abuses in an offensive that has driven more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the Southeast Asian nation. “Burma’s authorities appear to be in denial of what has happened,” stated the letter. “We urge you to do everything possible to ensure protection and security for those trapped inside Burma or willing to return, as well as oppose forcible returns from neighboring countries.” | 1 |
ATHENS (Reuters) - Shots fired at riot police guarding the headquarters of Greece s Socialist PASOK party on Monday came from the same gun that one particular guerrilla group has used in attacks, police said. There were no injuries during the shooting, which occurred at a busy intersection in Athens at around 1745 GMT, when some 30 people were inside the party s offices. No one has claimed responsibility. Police found four shells at the spot and said tests showed they had been fired from a Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle. One bullet passed through a shop window and a second pierced a metal electricity pole. The same rifle had been used in at least two attacks claimed by left-wing guerrilla group Revolutionary Self-Defense, including one on the PASOK offices in 2014, police said. The group, which emerged during Greece s economic crisis, claimed an attack with a hand grenade on the French embassy in Athens last year. The tests point at a certain direction and the government needs to act, PASOK spokesman Pavlos Christides said. Small-scale attacks on businesses, police, politicians and embassies are relatively frequent in Greece. The country has a long history of political violence and is struggling to emerge from a huge debt crisis that has sent unemployment soaring and cut incomes. PASOK, a once dominant party that signed up to the country s first international bailout in exchange for austerity, holds a leadership contest on Sunday. It has seen its popularity wane since 2009 when it last won a national election with 43 percent. Its headquarters are in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia, the scene of regular confrontations between police and anti-establishment protesters. (This version of the story was corrected to make clear that same rifle was used in past attacks) | 1 |
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Republican nominee Donald Trump is an admitted serial sexual predator. His own recorded words confirm as much, as do the dozen or so women who have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. His campaign is desperately fighting to put a lid on the growing awareness that Trump will be testifying under oath during a trial in federal court under the accusation of raping a thirteen-year-old girl and a previously undisclosed second girl, who was even younger .
The case was thrown out in May due to a clerical error, but re-filed in June with two new witnesses –“Joan Doe” and “Tiffany Doe” who both say they worked as “party planners” for convicted child rapist and billionaire Jeffery Epstein. Part of that “planning” appears to have been procuring girls for the party, as “Joan Doe” revealed in her deposition that she convinced victim “Jane Doe” to attend four different parties with promises of money and “meeting contacts” in the modelling industry – a story that matches the account of another person who would arrange for underage women to attend Trump’s parties.
At one of these parties, “Jane Doe” was forced to perform oral sex on Trump with a twelve-year old named “Maria.” At the fourth and final encounter, Tiffany Doe says “ I personally witnessed Defendant Trump telling the Plaintiff that she shouldn’t ever say anything if she didn’t want to disappear like the 12-year-old female Maria, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.”
“Maria” hadn’t been seen since the previous encounter. Trump then forcibly raped “Jane Doe,” who was then raped and sodomized again by Jeffery Epstein, who was apparently furious tha t Trump had ta ken her virginity and not him, beating her in his fury .
Donald Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Epstein’s brother, Mark, also testified that “Trump flew on Jeffrey’s private jet at least once and records indicate that Trump called Epstein twice in November of 2004.”
Epstein eventually recieved a slap on the wrist – 13 months in prison and registration as a sex offender – for decades of abuse :
“according to law-enforcement officials and alleged victims, between the years 1998 and 2007—and possibly even earlier—he ran a particularly vile pyramid scheme that involved paying minors around $200 at a time to perform sexual massages nearly every day and then recruit even younger girls to do the same. (“The more you do, the more you are paid,” one said.) During these massages, girls as young as 13 told police they were instructed to get undressed. Epstein would masturbate or penetrate them, they said—with his finger, or a vibrator, or his allegedly egg-shaped penis.”
The details keep coming, and the picture they paint grows darker and more horrifying by they day. How much more evidence does America need? How many more stories need to be told before the word of one rich man is outweighed by literally dozens of contrasting accounts? Donald Trump is a sexual predator and a possible pedophile; he deserves a jail cell on Riker’s Island, not the White House. | 1 |
(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since late August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts is not known. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at Battalion8 s compound and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said the arrests were a blatant attack on press freedom and called for the immediate release of the journalists. Here are reactions to their detention from politicians and press freedom advocates around the world: ** U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. ** British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, I absolutely strongly disapprove of the idea of journalists, going about their everyday business, being arrested. We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. ** Swedish Foreign Minister Margot called the arrests a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region. She said, We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear ... To be able to send journalists to this particular area is of crucial importance. ** U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. Guterres said, It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country. He added: And probably the reason why these journalists were arrested is because they were reporting on what they have seen in relation to this massive human tragedy. ** Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, the former editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Freedom of the press is essential for democracy and must be preserved, she said. ** President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two reporters. ** Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said, We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting. ** Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s spokesman Motosada Matano said his government was closely watching the situation, and that Japan has been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general. ** The Committee to Protect Journalists said, We call on local authorities to immediately, unconditionally release Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance. ** The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in Myanmar. It called on authorities to ensure the reporters safety and allow their families to see them. ** The Foreign Correspondents Club in neighboring Thailand said it was alarmed by the use of this draconian law with its heavy penalties against journalists simply doing their jobs. The club called for the journalists to be released. Wielding such a blunt legal instrument has an intimidating effect on other journalists, and poses a real threat to media freedom, it said. | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has started establishing a permanent military presence at naval and air bases in Syria, the defense minister said on Tuesday as parliament ratified a deal with Damascus to cement Russian presence in the country, the RIA news agency reported. The deal, signed on Jan. 18 will expand the Tartus naval facility, Russia s only naval foothold in the Mediterranean, and grant Russian warships access to Syrian waters and ports, Viktor Bondarev, head of the upper house security and defense committee, told RIA. RIA news agency separately quoted Sergei Shoigu as saying: Last week the Commander-in-Chief (President Vladimir Putin) approved the structure and the bases in Tartus and in Hmeimim (air base). We have begun forming a permanent presence there. The Tartus naval facility, in use since the says of the Soviet Union, is too small to play host to larger warships. According to the RIA report, the agreement will allow Russia to keep 11 warships at Tartus, including nuclear vessels. The agreement will last for 49 years and could be prolonged further. The Hmeimim air base, from which Russia has launched numerous air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad during his war with rebels, can now be used by Russia indefinitely, according to the deal. | 0 |
It s interesting that Josh Earnest still carries around the line of bs that all middle class Americans know is a lie. He is, after all, the chief propagandist for Obama so lying is what he does professionally. The truth is, Obama s presidency has been horrific for the middle class but great for the uber wealthy. Once again, they re counting on the American people to buy the line of bs and propaganda instead of looking at facts One moment of unintended and unnoticed levity occurred near the end of the White House briefing Tuesday, when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claimed that President Obama has been a president of the United States that for the last six and a half years has scratched and clawed to protect the interests of middle-class families all across the country. Not sure about who or what he has scratched and clawed. Because the markings are difficult to discern.The White House is careful to dress up its policies as middle class economics. Because the middle class is where the votes are. But the Obama presidency is not about the middle class.You can agree or disagree with Obama s methods and policies. But his chief enthusiasm has been helping the lower classes by expanding the welfare state and regulating businesses. The middle class stuff is camouflage for the real agenda.The proof is in the pudding. Here s the pudding.According to Reuters:Barack Obama enters the final two years of his presidency with a blemish on his legacy that looks impossible to erase: the decline of the middle class he has promised to rescue.Federal Reserve survey data show families in the middle fifth of the income scale now earn less and their net worth is lower than when Obama took office. In the six years through 2013, over the recession and recovery that have spanned Obama s tenure, jobs have been added at the top and bottom of the wage scale, a Reuters analysis of labor statistics shows. In the middle, the economy has shed positions whether in traditional trades like machining or electrical work, white-collar jobs in human resources, or technical ones like computer operators.Between 2010 and 2013, as recovery took hold and stock markets soared, the average net worth of families in the top 40 percent of income earners grew. For all others average net worth shrank, declining 19 percent for the middle fifth.These results stem from specific policies. Obama s chief domestic initiative, Obamacare, is not a middle class program. It s an effort to get health insurance to the lower class, including a massive expansion of Medicaid. Expanding health insurance is a good goal, but the way he has done it involves turning insurers effectively into wards of the state and raising the price and lowering the quality of healthcare for everyone else.Among his other battle cries are raising the minimum wage and legalizing illegal immigrants. He pushed and signed legislation containing massive new regulations on the banks, wants to regulate carbon emissions by fiat, and has enlarged the government s share of the economy while running up trillions in debt.Meantime the WEALTHY have benefited during Obama s tenure for the zero-interest rate Fed policies needed to keep the economy afloat in the absence of any serious presidential leadership on expanding the economy. The low rates have grandly goosed everyone s stock portfolios and made the rich richer.These things he scratches and claws for. Not private sector expansion and business-friendly policies that would promote middle class expansion.And the results speak for themselves.Via: White House Dossier | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - America’s allies in Asia were silent on Wednesday over confusion about a U.S. aircraft carrier group that was supposed to be headed toward North Korea in a show of force, but was actually completing training exercises in Australia. But many Chinese took to social media to joke about it. “American imperialism is a paper tiger,” said one user on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “The aircraft carrier was sleep-walking,” said another. The U.S. military’s Pacific Command explained on Tuesday that the Carl Vinson strike group first had to complete a shorter-than-initially planned period of training with Australia. But it was now “proceeding to the Western Pacific as ordered”, it said. U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that he had ordered the strike group to head for Korean waters amid talk that unpredictable North Korea was likely to conduct a nuclear or long-range ballistic missile test. “We cannot comment on details of U.S. operation of its assets,” a military official said in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. North Korea remains technically at war with the South and the United States because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice and no peace treaty was signed. Japan, the other main U.S. ally in the region, did not comment on the mix-up while China’s foreign ministry declined to comment at a regular briefing. Singapore-based security expert Ian Storey said countries in the region would have found the confusion over the strike group’s location “unsettling and perplexing”. “This disconnect between the White House and Pacific Command may be an operational issue but it is distinctly odd,” said Storey, who is based at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute. “The fact that the Carl Vinson strike group was not in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula undermines the Trump administration’s tough approach towards Pyongyang.” North Korea did not refer to the mix-up but said the United States and its allies “should not mess with us”. “A nuclear powered aircraft carrier that the United States and its puppet group are loudly advertising is nothing more than a pile of scrap metal in the face of our revolutionary forces’ mighty power,” said the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party. | 1 |
Hillary shows her true colors when a female student speaking broken English accidentally refers to Barack Obama as Mr. Clinton . Her overreaction to this woman s innocent error shows what really happens when you unintentionally displease the Queen of the Democrat party We re doing our part to expose this video she never thought would surface. Here it is: | 1 |
Food mixology: When eaten together, these foods can boost health
Isabelle Z. Tags: nutrients , food pairings , turmeric (NaturalNews) If you are making a conscious effort to eat nutritious food, you are already stacking the odds in your favor when it comes to your health and well-being. However, eating all the organic fruits and vegetables in the world is not going to do much for you if your body is not prepared to absorb the nutrients they contain.To be clear, eating a diet that is rich in organic produce, whole grains, and a reasonable amount of healthy fats is always preferable to a diet full of fried food, sugar and processed foods. However, if you want to maximize the benefits of your smart eating choices, you should try some of these food pairings to enhance nutrient absorption and give your health a boost. Milk and honey Your grandmother might have offered you a glass of warm milk with honey when you struggled to fall asleep as a child, and this tried-and-true combination has stood the test of time for good reason: it is a very effective pairing for your health. An amino acid found in milk known as tryptophan is used by the brain to make melatonin and serotonin, while the carbohydrates in honey can help with the uptake of tryptophan. Turmeric and black pepper The active ingredient in turmeric, curcumin, has anti-inflammatory properties, but it tends to be poorly absorbed by the body. Interestingly, the piperine found in black pepper can help boost its absorption significantly, which is why many supplements contain both ingredients. Try cooking a dish that contains generous amounts of turmeric , like curry, and add a sprinkling of black pepper. A tiny pinch of pepper can enhance your absorption of curcumin by more than 2,000 percent! Green tea and lemon If you are drinking green tea for its extraordinary antioxidant content, you might want to start adding some organic lemon juice to your cup. That's because Purdue University researchers have discovered that mixing green tea with lemon juice can significantly boost the amount of antioxidants that are available for your body to absorb. The catechins in green tea can help protect your body against cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Olive oil and tomatoes These two Mediterranean diet staples go hand in hand, and it's easy to see why. Tomatoes contain antioxidants that can protect your body from disease, and adding a small amount of healthy fat to carotenoid-rich foods like tomatoes can increase its absorption. Try making a simple salad of chopped tomatoes drizzled in extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar to reap the benefits. The lycopene in tomatoes is also better absorbed when they are heated first, so take this one step further and make a tomato sauce or pizza sauce by cooking tomatoes and adding olive oil and www.herbs.news "="" target="_blank">www.herbs.news">fresh herbs like oregano. Beans and cauliflower People who follow plant-based diets often rely on beans to get iron, but this type of iron is not as easily absorbed by the human body as iron that comes from meat sources. You can increase your body's absorption of the iron from beans by consuming a food that is rich in vitamin C at the same time, and cauliflower fits the bill quite nicely. Pair cauliflower with green beans or garbanzos to give your body an iron boost. You can also try other iron and vitamin C pairings , like strawberries with oatmeal.While all of these foods are quite healthy on their own, if you are looking to increase your intake of certain nutrients, make sure you are opting for food pairings and preparation methods that will boost absorption so you can reap the most benefits. Sources: | 1 |
Another Republican has dropped out of the race. This time, it s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. In a released statement, Paul said: It s been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House. Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of Liberty. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08M7ASDe7F8]The self -described libertarian-ish Paul touted himself as an alternative to establishment Republicans, marketing himself as a grassroots guy.However, Paul finished 5th place in the Iowa caucuses and and although he was one of the first to announce his candidacy, his campaign never gained any traction. Since the beginning of his candidacy, polls consistently showed Paul in the back of the pack. Paul always failed to break away from Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and even the lowly Jeb Bush.Paul struggled to raise money from both large and small donors, resulting in a cash strapped campaign that was never able to spend and then replenish through donors, whether big or small. His ideas of a non-interventionist and non-violent approach in U.S. foreign policy apparently didn t sit well with Republicans. Ted Cruz, the guy who plans on killing lots of folks, especially in the Middle East, is the current front runner for the Republican nomination.Featured Image Via Wikimedia Commons | 0 |
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of a Christmas market in Frankfurt has turned out to be harmless, the city s police said on Twitter. Authorities said the package in question at Roemer square, the heart of the city s Christmas market, was a donation for the homeless. Well intentioned, but poorly placed, the police said on Twitter. The all clear came about 45 minutes after the evacuation was announced. | 1 |
Meet Alice Miller who single-handedly scr*wed the legal voters of America by letting non-citizens vote. I guess voter integrity only applies to some .The Supreme Court has been asked to allow Kansas and Arizona to verify that only United States citizens are registering to vote in those states. Unfortunately, a single federal bureaucrat refused to allow the two states to weed out non-citizens trying to register to vote.Meet Alice Miller, the acting executive director of the Election Assistance Commission. Miller alone, from her inside-the-Beltway office, refused to amend the Kansas and Arizona version of a federal voter registration form to include state laws requiring proof of citizenship. Backed by a swarm of left-wing groups, Miller, by herself, made it easier for foreigners to vote in Kansas and Arizona.You might wonder how a single federal bureaucrat could have so much power over how elections are run in Kansas and Arizona. Federal law, commonly known as Motor Voter, requires states to accept a form drawn up by the Election Assistance Commission to register voters in their state. But states can ask the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to revise the version for their state to include state qualification laws. In Kansas and Arizona, registrants must establish that they are citizens to be qualified to register. When Kansas and Arizona asked the EAC to print new forms with those state law requirements, Miller refused.Kansas and Arizona sued, and a federal court ordered the EAC to reprint the forms. However, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and held that Miller had the power to deny Kansas and Arizona new forms.The Supreme Court has been asked to take the case, a case which implicates both the integrity of American elections as well as the reach of federal bureaucrats.Normally, the commissioners at the EAC decide what versions of a form the states can use, but the EAC lacked a quorum. Into this vacuum swept Miller.The Public Interest Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief for the American Civil Rights Union with the Supreme Court. The brief asks the Court to take the case and to restore the constitutional balance which Miller has disrupted.Read more: pj media | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least eight North Korean ships that left Russia with a cargo of fuel this year headed for their homeland despite declaring other destinations, a ploy that U.S. officials say is often used to undermine sanctions. Reuters has no evidence of wrongdoing by the vessels, whose movements were recorded in Reuters ship-tracking data. Changing a ship s destination once underway is not forbidden and it is unclear whether any of the ships unloaded fuel in North Korea. But U.S. officials say that changing destination mid-voyage is a hallmark of North Korean state tactics to circumvent the international trade sanctions imposed over Pyongyang s nuclear weapons program. Changing course and the complex chain of different firms many offshore involved in shipments can complicate efforts to check how much fuel is supplied to North Korea and monitor compliance with a cap on fuel imports under U.N. sanctions. As part of North Korea s efforts to acquire revenue, the regime uses shipping networks to import and export goods, U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Marshall S. Billingslea told the congressional Foreign Affairs Committee this month. North Korea employs deceptive practices to conceal the true origins of these goods. Pyongyang has been found to routinely falsify a vessel s identity and documentation. The eight vessels identified in the tracking data set sail from the Far Eastern Russian port of Vladivostok or nearby Nakhodka and registered China or South Korea as their destination with the Information System for State Port Control. After leaving Russia, they were next recorded off the North Korean ports of Kimchaek, Chongjin, Hungnam or Najin. None went on to China and most went back to Russia. All had a cargo of diesel, a source at the company that services vessels in Vladivostok said. Their cargo capacity ranged from 500 tonnes to 2,000 tonnes. One of the vessels was the Ma Du San, owned by North Korea s Korea Kyongun Shipping Co. It took on a cargo of 545 tonnes of marine fuel at Vladivostok s Pervaya Rechka terminal, owned by Russia s Independent Petroleum company (IPC). Reuters obtained a bill of lading a receipt for goods issued when a ship loads up dated May 19 showing the Ma Du San s cargo came from Khabarovskiy NPZ, a refinery owned by IPC. The ship set sail on May 20. Documents filed with Russia s Information System for State Port Control stated its next destination as the Chinese port of Zhanjiang and the bill of lading showed it as Busan in South Korea. The Ma Du San s next recorded location after Vladivostok was inside the perimeter of the port of Kimchaek all the other ships were tracked only in the vicinity of ports. North Korean ships intermittently turn off their transponders, and satellites cannot track them at such times, U.S. officials say. Allegations outlined in two U.S. Treasury Department sanctions orders and a legal complaint filed by the U.S. government match the information Reuters obtained on the Ma Du San though the U.S. documents do not name the vessel involved. On June 1, the U.S. Treasury Department included IPC on its sanctions blacklist, saying it provided oil to North Korea and may have been involved in circumventing sanctions. On Aug. 22, the U.S. government sanctioned two more companies, both registered in Singapore Transatlantic Partners and Velmur Management Pte. Ltd. The legal complaint, also filed on Aug. 22, accused the two firms of money laundering on behalf of sanctioned North Korean banks seeking to buy petroleum products, citing a bill of lading for May 19 for a cargo of diesel sold by IPC to Velmur and loaded in Vladivostok the same date as the bill of lading for the Ma Du San. Andrey Serbin, who represents Transatlantic Partners, said the firm had not received payments from a sanctions-hit bank and that ownership of the fuel changed after it was loaded. We sold the fuel to a Chinese company, Serbin, who has been blacklisted by the U.S. government for operating in the energy industry in the North Korean economy and working to purchase fuel for delivery to North Korea, said of several shipments where the company acted as middleman. There s no way we can control them (the goods), he said. Serbin did not identify the vessels Transatlantic Partners loaded fuel on to, but a source in a company that services ships in Vladivostok said the Ma Du San was among them. The bill of lading named the recipient of the Ma Du San s cargo as a company called LLC Sky Shipping Limited. Reuters was unable to find any record of such a firm. Velmur said it could not have known where the cargo would end up and did not knowingly help anyone dodge sanctions. IPC did not respond to a request for comment. Its parent company, Bermuda-registered Alliance Oil Company Ltd., denied having any contractual relations with North Korean companies when U.S. sanctions were imposed on IPC. The U.S. Treasury and State departments declined to answer questions about Reuters findings. Russia s foreign ministry did not respond to questions about fuel exports to North Korea but has said Russia complies with the sanctions. Russia s customs service said it could not provide information about movement of goods across borders. Since the U.S. sanctions were imposed on IPC, all North Korean-flagged vessels that had been in Vladivostok port have left, according to the tracking data. They departed with no cargo, an employee with a shipping agent in Vladivostok said. This is confirmed by documents seen by Reuters. Russian supplies of oil and oil products to North Korea are much smaller than volumes shipped by China, Pyongyang s only major ally. Beijing has acted to reduce the flows, but Russia s trade in all goods with North Korea more than doubled in the first quarter of 2017 to $31.4 million. Moscow s trade with Pyongyang is under closer scrutiny following a series of missile launches by North Korea and a test involving what it said was a hydrogen bomb. (GRAPHIC - After Russia, ships located off North Korea click tmsnrt.rs/2xvVgL0) (This story fixes punctuation in paragraph 5) | 1 |
Niraj Srivastava 21st Century WireIt is barely seven weeks since Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Perhaps too early to figure out the details of America s foreign policy during his presidency. However, some broad contours of his policies are taking shape, which may provide pointers to what he is likely to do in the next four years.These pointers are based partly on what Trump said during his election campaign and partly on what has happened since he became President. Actually, quite a lot has happened in the last seven weeks or so, including considerable turbulence in US domestic and foreign policy.Before proceeding further, it may be useful to recall that Trump s victory in the Nov. 2016 elections was unexpected. Most opinion polls and the mainstream media (MSM) predicted victory for Hillary Clinton, who was the candidate of the US Establishment and the Deep State (DS), which includes the military-industrial complex, the intelligence agencies, the MSM, Wall Street, and the Jewish Lobby.The DS is a permanent, unelected, group of institutions, lobbies, and individuals which wields enormous power from behind the scenes and continues to do so irrespective of who is the President and which party controls the US Congress. It is driven by the quest for money and power, among other things.The present DS began taking shape almost thirty-five years ago when Jimmy Carter was President. There was a DS before that too, going back to the 1950s, which came into existence after the Second World War. However, it was much less powerful and entrenched than the present one. John F. Kennedy tried to defy it but did not succeed. Some believe he paid for it with his life.The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 speeded up the consolidation of the current DS, which found that there was nobody to restrain the military power of the US. America could do what it liked. The 1990s also witnessed the emergence of a group of individuals known as the neoconservatives, or neocons, who believed in using the American military for global domination, irrespective of international laws or institutions, such as the UN.The first military adventure of the neocons was the illegal NATO bombing of the then Yugoslavia in 1999, which was carried out without UN approval. It resulted in the disintegration of the country. Russia was too weak to counter it militarily. Having gotten away with it, the US and NATO embarked upon a series of wars in the next fifteen years, aimed at regime change in countries whose leaders were not US allies.Thus, the US and its NATO allies invaded Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussain, bombed Libya and killed Qaddafi in 2011, intervened in Syria in 2011 to oust President Bashar al-Assad, effected regime change in Ukraine in 2014, and are currently involved in a very destructive war in Yemen along with Saudi Arabia.The US has therefore continuously been at war during the last fifteen years. Some of these wars are still continuing, with no end in sight. It is estimated that the US has lost more than 5000 soldiers and spent around US$ seven trillion to fight these wars. Tens of thousands of US soldiers have been injured, straining the social and economic fabric of the country.But these wars have also greatly benefited elements of the Deep State, who have made enormous amounts of money by selling weapons and other material needed to fight wars. Follow the Money is a useful dictum to identify these elements, for whom continuous warfare has become a way of life. And to sustain that, a powerful enemy is required.It is here that Russia comes in. Since Putin came to power in 1999, Russia has slowly but steadily nursed its economy and military back to health. Russia s resurgence has upset the neocons and other members of the DS, who had gotten used to unfettered use of American military to invade countries and overthrow regimes, as mentioned above.It was not a coincidence that Russia, and Putin personally, were strongly demonized by the DS during the US presidential campaign in 2016. Russia was accused of all types of subversion, including hacking the Democratic National Committee emails, hacking the elections themselves, and supporting Trump. Hillary Clinton s campaign theme was that Trump was a Russian agent.What is noteworthy is that not a shred of credible evidence was provided by Clinton or anyone else in the DS to support the above allegations. What was provided included fake news, unsubstantiated dossiers, and rumours. They failed to impress the voters, and Trump won the election by a comfortable margin.But the matter did not end there. Humiliated by the defeat of its candidate Hillary Clinton in the election, the DS has launched a campaign to undermine Trump s presidency, by promoting Russophobia and by portraying Russia and Putin as a threat to US security.It was necessary to provide the above background in order to interpret Trump s foreign policy moves since he took over as President. His policies relating to some major countries and issues will be analyzed.RussiaFirst, Trump s approach to Russia. During his election campaign, Trump had repeatedly said that he would work to normalize relations with Russia. He implied that Russia was not an enemy of the US, and could become a partner to find solutions to problems in certain countries.In particular, Trump said that the US and Russia could jointly fight the ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria. He suggested that since President Assad was also fighting the ISIS in Syria, dislodging him, or regime change, was not a priority.Trump s attitude to Moscow flew in the face of what Hillary Clinton and the DS had been saying for a long time that Russia was an enemy which had to be deterred by overwhelming military power. Trump s detractors, therefore, could not accept his Russia Policy. They had to make sure that he did not abandon their hard line towards Moscow.They did so by targeting Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump s National Security Advisor (NSA). On 9th Feb., the Washington Post carried a story claiming that Flynn had spoken on the phone to the Russian Ambassador to the US before Trump s inauguration, and discussed US sanctions against Russia with him. It was also claimed that Flynn lied about the conversation to Vice President Pence.Under intense media and Congressional pressure, Trump asked Flynn to resign, which he did on 13th Feb. The Deep State had claimed its first victim and shown Trump what it could do if he deviated from its Russia Policy. Though Flynn had not violated any US law and done nothing to compromise US security, he had to resign because Trump could not stand up to the DS and buckled under pressure.But that was not the end of the matter. On 2nd March the Washington Post carried another story stating that Trump s Attorney General Jeff Sessions had spoken twice with the Russian Ambassador in 2016 when Sessions was a Senator and failed to disclose the same during his confirmation hearings.This time Trump defended Sessions and said he had done no wrong, which was true. Trump even went on the offensive stating that the really important issue was the illegal leaking of secret information by US intelligence agencies to the media, which he asked the FBI to investigate. Trump also alleged on 4th March that President Obama had ordered wiretapping of his phones in Trump Tower ahead of the 2016 election.After the attack on Flynn, Trump had realized that the final target of the DS was Trump himself. Flynn s removal was the opening salvo, and the attack on Jeff Sessions was the second. Trump reluctantly accepted that he had to fall in line with the agenda of the DS on Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and other issues. Otherwise, the DS might try to remove him by impeachment, on charges of treason and conspiring with an enemy state.Trump s changed approach to Russia was reflected in his appointment on Feb. 20 of General H.R. McMaster as NSA, in place of Flynn. McMaster sees Russia as a hostile revisionist power, and does not support normalization of relations with that country. The appointment of McMaster has been widely seen as an attempt by Trump to placate his enemies in the Deep State; it also reflects his apprehension that if he does not do the bidding of the DS, he might end up like Flynn.Trump has also proposed an increase in the Pentagon s budget by ten percent, amounting to about US$ 54 billion. That is equal to around eighty percent of Russia s entire military budget in 2015. The US expenditure on defense is about nine times that of Russia. These figures speak for themselves in the context of Russia s purported threat to the US.It is, therefore, safe to predict that Trump will abandon his objective to normalize relations with Russia, at least in public. He will depict Russia as a threat to US security and act accordingly. Thus, in the recent past, US troops have been deployed in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania, while NATO troops have been sent to the Baltic states all on Russia s periphery. The White House has also asked Russia to hand back Crimea to Ukraine. ChinaSecond, US relations with China. Trump raised Chinese hackles by speaking on the phone to the Taiwanese President soon after he was elected. China protested vigorously, eliciting a dismissive reaction from Trump, who said there was nothing wrong in receiving a congratulatory phone call from the Taiwanese President. China saw Trump s action as undermining the US s One China policy.During his confirmation hearings, US Secretary of State Tillerson said that China s activities in the South China Sea were not acceptable to the US, which will respond if China violates international law in that area. That cannot have pleased the Chinese.However, in the recent past, Trump has climbed down by reaffirming the US s One China policy and avoided making statements that could annoy the Chinese. He seems to have grasped China s importance globally, as well as the massive US economic stakes in that country.Nevertheless, it would not be surprising if US-China relations witness turbulence during Trump s tenure in office. China is also a designated enemy of the US Deep State because that helps increase the Pentagon s budget. The more the number of US enemies, the better for the DS.MexicoThird, Mexico. Trump had repeatedly promised during his election campaign that he would build a wall along the US-Mexico border to reduce illegal immigration from that country. What s more, he had also said he would ask Mexico to pay for the wall. Another issue that he had raised was NAFTA, which, according to him, was hurting the US economy, and needed to be scrapped.After assuming power Trump continued to repeat what he had said about the US-Mexico wall. This angered the Mexican President, who cancelled a scheduled visit to the US in end-January 2017. After that, Trump sent Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly to Mexico on 23rd Feb. for damage control and normalization of relations. It is safe to say, however, that US-Mexico relations under Trump will continue to witness turbulence because Trump is serious both about the wall as well as NAFTA.IsraelFourth, Israel. In his approach to that country, Trump is proving to be even more pro-Israel than Hillary Clinton, who was the candidate of the Jewish lobby in the US. Trump s Israel Policy seems to be driven by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, whose wife Ivanka, Trump s daughter, converted to Judaism before marrying Kushner. During his election campaign, Trump had said that he would move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in mid-Feb. 2017 to meet Trump. After their talks, Trump said that he would accept whatever the Israelis and the Palestinians decided between themselves either a two or a one-state solution to the Palestinian issue. This was a significant departure from the official US and UN position on the issue a two-state solution based on the land-for-peace formula.By adopting the above position, Trump effectively washed his hands off the Israeli-Palestinian issue, leaving it to the Israelis to do whatever they liked, and abandoning the Palestinians to their fate. He has also sent a team of US officials to Israel to examine the feasibility of shifting the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as promised by him.It is likely that during his presidency Trump will allow Israel to do what it wishes in the region, especially regarding the Palestinians, Syria, and Iran. That cannot be good for regional security.IranFifth, Iran. During his election campaign, Trump had repeatedly expressed his anti-Iran feelings and criticized the Iran nuclear deal engineered by Obama. On 6th March, Trump imposed a 90-day ban on travel to the US by Iranian nationals. As things stand, it would be safe to say that during his presidency, US-Iran relations will come under strain. His approach to Iran will also affect US policy in Syria.SyriaSixth, Syria. After becoming President, Trump has spoken about setting up safe zones in Syria which Obama had resisted because he did not want greater and direct US military involvement in that country. Trump has said that Syrian refugees should stay in safe zones in Syria, rather than migrating to Europe or America.If Trump insists on setting up safe zones in Syria, significant numbers of US troops will have to be deployed in the country, in addition to the hundreds of US special forces already present in seven or eight bases in northern and eastern Syria. That would also increase the chances of a deliberate or inadvertent confrontation between the US and Russian forces, who are already present in the country.European UnionSeventh, the European Union. Trump has taken steps to reassure the EU that the US commitment to NATO remains strong, though he insists that NATO members should contribute two per cent of their GDP to NATO s budget. Whether he would be able to enforce that remains to be seen. Under Trump, US relations with EU are unlikely to be as close and warm as they were during Obama s presidency. It is no secret that EU members would have been happier if Hillary Clinton were elected.ImmigrationEighth, immigration. Trump has linked his policy on immigration to the prevention of terrorism in the US. On 6th March, Trump signed an Executive Order banning travel to the US for 90 days by nationals of six Muslim-majority countries Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Ironically, the US has been responsible for launching wars and destabilizing three of these countries Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The travel ban from these countries could not be more hypocritical and unjust.International Trade and GlobalizationNinth, international trade and globalization. Trump has promised to implement an America First policy which may clash with globalization and free trade. Soon after taking over, he scrapped the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and blamed NAFTA for migration of manufacturing jobs to Mexico. Trump s top priority during his tenure would be to fulfill his promise of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. If, in the process, free trade and globalization are undermined, so be it.IndiaFinally, US-India relations. While campaigning, Trump spoke positively about India. The Indian diaspora in the US, particularly some Hindu community groups, organized fundraisers for Trump. He was quoted as saying: I am a big fan of Hindu and India. Under the Trump administration, we are going to be even better friends. In fact, I would say we are going to be the best of friends. There won t be a relationship more important to us. Trump phoned Indian Prime Minister Modi five days after he was sworn-in as President, and described India as a true friend and partner in addressing the challenges of the world. However, Trump s protectionist approach to trade may pose some problems for India, particularly regarding the H-1B visas, which are used by Indian software companies to send technical personnel for jobs in the US. It is possible that Trump may reduce the number of the visas or impose more stringent rules to obtain them. India has conveyed her concerns to the US side through various channels, and cannot do more than wait and see what Trump finally does. But it seems clear that he will give high priority to relations with India.This is how Trump s foreign policy looks at the moment. It is still early days, and things may play out differently. Only time will tell what actually happens.***Niraj Srivastava is a former Ambassador of India who has served in several countries including Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the United StatesREAD MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesREAD MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1 |
After just three months on the job, White House communications director Mike Dubke is out. [The seasoned Republican operative was one of the few staffers respected by establishment Republicans in Washington, D. C. but was ultimately unwilling to continue to try to shape a daily narrative for the Trump White House. Dubke resigned on May 18, according to Axios’s Mike Allen, after taking the job in March. He was viewed as a professional close to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, both familiar with the workings of Washington, D. C. Mainstream media reporters also respected Dubke’s background as a operative who worked in Karl Rove’s orbit. But Trump loyalists never trusted Dubke, seeing him as an establishment figure who didn’t understand the president’s strengths. Communications professionals in Washington view Dubke’s job as impossible as President Donald Trump sets most of his communications strategy himself on Twitter while leaving staffers to fill in the gaps. | 0 |
We all know Trump s paranoia over ISIS is making him do really annoying things, like ban travelers from countries that have never sent terrorism to us while ignoring countries that have. During his campaign, he also stupidly called on Bill Gates to close up the Internet, because the Internet is one of ISIS primary recruiting tools. Yet, just like the rest of the right, he s completely ignoring a far more immediate terrorist threat, and it s growing much faster than ISIS.According to a new study from George Washington University, white nationalist groups (including Neo-Nazis, the KKK, skinheads and more) seem to be working harder and having far more success recruiting people online than ISIS. Over the last four years, the number of people claiming allegiance to these groups grew more than 600 percent from about 3,500 people in 2012 to over 25,000 in 2016. ISIS worked hard, but these white nationalist types are much better at creating new terrorists.Image via George Washington UniversityThey re outperforming ISIS in most metrics now, including follower counts and number of tweets. ISIS online activity has dropped dramatically since 2014, due in part to social media networks rooting out and suspending accounts. In that same time frame though, as shown above, white nationalist groups have grown considerably, and we hear silence from everyone.And where s Trump on this? We have to close up the Internet to stop the spread of terrorism, don t we?He s focusing on Islamic terrorism and alleged criminal activity among those he believes are undocumented immigrants. He s totally ignoring a threat that the FBI (and other law enforcement agencies) has been saying is a far more immediate danger. These groups surged following President Obama s election win, but aren t acknowledged as terrorists.In fact, whenever an attacker or potential attacker (like, oh, say, Wayde Lynn Kurt who pledged to assassinate Obama; or Dylann Roof, who killed 9 people in a black church in South Carolina) is white, even our media is likely to say they were a lone wolf, or something of that nature. Yet they re quick to jump on any attacker who shouts, Allahu Akbar, or proclaims allegiance to ISIS, as proof that terrorism is here.Worse, the report says that while increasing worry over ISIS is understandable, white nationalistic groups are able to watch and learn from ISIS tactics both on and offline. So while we focus too heavily on Islamic terrorism, to the point of trying to keep even green card holders from seven countries out of the U.S., these groups watch Muslim radicalization on and offline, and adapt those techniques to suit their own movements.Trump s ascendancy to the presidency has only further galvanized these groups. His protectionist rhetoric and overt racism is exactly what these people want to hear. For instance, David Duke, the ex-KKK grand wizard, hailed his election, and also hailed his Muslim ban.Kevin MacDonald, another white nationalist, applauded Trump s plans to crack down on undocumented immigration, and for just generally saying what these people have been thinking forever.And we still sweep this stuff under the rug as people acting alone. They appear to act alone because these groups aren t nearly as centralized as ISIS. Also white nationalist groups don t generally claim responsibility for attacks the way ISIS does. But the movement is growing, growing quickly, and is far stronger on our home soil than ISIS, or any Islamic terrorism, is.Trump and his administration will continue to ignore this, and even feed it, putting us in grave peril.Featured image by Andrew Harrer via Getty Images | 0 |
According to new Wikileaks emails recently released, Huma Abedin, who is Hillary’s main right hand and John Podesta her campaign manager, both confirmed that Hillary Clinton still has brain damage!!
It seems there’s still cause for concerns about Hillary’s health. Her concussion was cause for talk about her head and whether she was functioning normally.
In an email from April 2015 with the Wikileaks ID 29549 , her aide Huma Abedin said:
“She’s going to stick to notes a little closer this am. Still not perfect in her head. ”
See below:
Then there’s also another Wikileaks ID 27111 from John Podesta in September 2015 where he says:
“ How bad is her head? ”
Even if we ignore all the pay to play and other corruption scandals, though why would anyone ignore that? Are you people sure that this person is even psychically and physically fit to be the president?
Just yesterday while in Lake Worth Florida, Hillary Clinton needed HELP from her aide guy to climb a SINGLE STEP! She stopped in front of the step, raised her hand, turned her head over to see if the guy is there and waited to grab his hand. He immediately rushed towards her and helped her out. See for yourself:
Also, remember this scene from last month at 9/11 in New York where she completely collapsed? She was all frozen up, like a peace of wood, a plank or something. They just dragged her like a corpse:
Hundreds of top doctors came out and confirmed that she has brain damage and is not fit for office. Some were working for the leftist media and when they acknowledged her problems, they had their shows canceled.
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(Reuters) - Four years ago, Frances Broaddus-Crutchfield, 74, gave $500 to the campaign of Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring. This election cycle, the lifelong Democrat who lives on a farm in Powhatan County, Virginia, upped the ante, donating $6,500 so far to Herring’s re-election bid. “These are desperate times,” she said. Like many Democratic state attorneys general, Herring has made legal challenges to the agenda of President Donald Trump a priority. He joined with attorneys general in other states to challenge Trump’s executive order banning travel to the United States from six predominately Muslim countries and to defend former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to slash carbon emissions. Those fights, and the prospect of others, are drawing record amounts of campaign contributions into attorney general races in a number of states, according to campaign finance records and more than a dozen interviews with attorneys general, challengers, political operatives and donors. Attorneys general, who as the top elected legal officers in each state are charged with defending state agencies from lawsuits as well as initiating litigation on their own, have always helped shape national politics. But their influence grew during the Obama administration, when Republican attorneys general regularly sued the administration over immigration and the environment. Now, with Republicans controlling the White House and Congress, Democrats are using the same playbook to challenge some of Trump’s initiatives in the courts. Donors from both parties have taken notice and are pouring money into upcoming attorneys general campaigns. In his most recent campaign filings, Herring reported raising about $2.8 million through the end of June - over three times more than he had at this point during his campaign four years ago. “What I am seeing is a lot of energy,” Herring said. Herring’s Republican challenger this November, John Adams, has also done well. A corporate defense lawyer who worked in George W. Bush’s White House, Adams has raised about $1.5 million, roughly 26 percent more at this point than the Republican candidate in Virginia had in 2013. “When I first ran in 2012 I would tell people this is one of the most consequential offices, and people would give me a funny look,” said Bob Ferguson, Washington state’s attorney general who successfully sued to block Trump’s first travel ban. “I don’t get that look anymore.” The national fundraising arm for Republican attorneys general, RAGA, announced raising a record $7.4 million in the first six months of 2017, 45 percent more than at this point during the last election cycle in 2015. Republican AGs have filed legal briefs defending Trump’s travel ban and other policies. “The substantive work we are doing helping the Trump administration, but also weighing in on a lot of regulatory issues, is motivating people,” said West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey, RAGA’s chairman. Meanwhile, the Democratic AG’s counterpart, DAGA, raised about $3.1 million between January and June, DAGA executive director Sean Rankin said, 73 percent more than in the first half of 2015. DAGA hired full time finance staff for the first time this year, Rankin said, and launched its first candidate recruiting program. “Four years ago people weren’t moving at this pace,” he said. To be sure, some donors are motivated by more than simply whether a candidate supports or opposes Trump. C. Boyden Gray, who served as a White House counsel and then Ambassador to the European Union under two Republican presidents, doubled his donation in the Virginia AG’s race this year, largely because he thinks Adams has the talent to aspire to even higher office. But Gray also said he recognizes the growing stature of attorneys general. “They’ve upped their game over the last decade,” Gray said. RAGA decided this year to end a longstanding custom to avoid spending money against Democratic incumbents, and DAGA followed suit. Neither committee has yet filed individual donor lists for the first half of 2017; the deadline is Monday. Republicans currently hold 29 state AG seats across the country. Next year, 32 AG elections are scheduled including the District of Columbia. In Wisconsin, Republican attorney general Brad Schimel has raised about $454,000 through the end of June, even though he is not up for reelection until November 2018. In his 2014 campaign Schimel had not raised that much until about three months before his election. A representative for Schimel did not return requests for comment. Schimel faces Josh Kaul, an attorney who has raised about $175,000 since he launched his run in April. Kaul’s law firm, Perkins Coie, served as top election law adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year. Kaul’s campaign has already drawn RAGA’s attention, which funded a web site targeting him. RAGA has also funded online ads against Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is expected to run for reelection next year, and set up a website attacking Aaron Ford, a Democratic state senator in Nevada eyeing an AG run in 2018. In Colorado, four Democrats are currently vying for the AG nomination. The fundraising leader, Phil Weiser, served as a technology advisor in the Obama White House and has raised about $355,000 through the end of June, almost four times more than the Democratic candidate had raised at this point in 2013. The incumbent, Republican Cynthia Coffman, has disclosed about $40,000 in contributions to her AG committee. However, Coffman is also mulling a run for governor, and it is unclear whether donors are awaiting her decision before they write checks. Coffman did not respond to a request for comment. Weiser, who has made fighting Trump the centerpiece of his messaging, says Democratic donors are making a “sophisticated investment” to confront the administration. “I’m pushing on an open door,” Weiser said. | 0 |
This is truly shocking! Roy Moore takes a commanding lead in the Alabama Senatorial race as the allegations against him by the left and the RINO Republicans collapse. Check this out:Yesterday, the spread between the two leading candidates was 15 Today, it s 62 -40. While the internal polling for the Moore campaign had the spread at 5 points, it s looking really great for a Moore win in Alabama!NEW WITNESSES REFUTE THE ACCUSER S STORY:The witnesses say they ve shared the information with news outlets but to no one s surprise, the outlets refused to run the story. The employees who came forward offered details about the restaurant that refute the claims by the accuser. The calls for the arrest of Allred for the crime of forgery are getting louder. See the interesting discrepancies with the yearbook below:Roy Moore s campaign sent the following in a press release:GADSDEN, Ala. On Monday evening, the Moore Campaign unveiled statements from key witnesses that completely bust the story of Beverly Nelson and Gloria Allred and further reveal an unconscionable bias on the part of state and national press to hide the truth from Alabama voters who will undoubtedly see through the fake news and elect Judge Moore for the man that they have always known him to be.Rhonda Ledbetter, a retired public school teacher who is currently the senior choir director at a Baptist church and teaches children at a local, church-sponsored day care center, was a waitress at Olde Hickory House for almost three years from 1977-1979. She was a college student at Jacksonville State University at the time and worked varying shifts at different times of day, multiple days a week during the time of her employment. She said in a statement: When I heard Beverly Nelson s story, there were several details that were different from what I remember. I was nervous at coming forward because of all the attention this story has gotten, but as a moral and ethical person I had to speak up about what I know to be true. I was a waitress at Olde Hickory for almost three years from 1977-1979, and I never saw Roy Moore come in to the restaurant. Not one time. And I would have noticed because most of our customers weren t wearing suits, especially not at night. Many customers worked at Goodyear next door and would stop in on their way to and from work, and I don t remember anyone from the courthouse coming in at all. That just wasn t our crowd. A few things stuck out to me. First, Nelson said she was 15 years old when she started working there but you had to be 16. I don t remember her from my time there, and I don t remember any 15 year olds working there at all. Second, Nelson said the restaurant closed at 10 p.m. but I know the earliest it closed was 11, though I believe it was midnight. I m certain of that because Goodyear employees came in to eat after their shift ended at 10:00 p.m., so there s no way we would have closed at that time. Third, the area wasn t dark and isolated as she described. Rather, the building was right off the busy four-lane highway and people and cars were always around. The restaurant had a wrap-around porch, like the ones at Cracker Barrel restaurants, and there were lights all around the sides of the building. So it wasn t dark and anyone in the parking lot was visible from the road. Fourth, the dumpsters were to the side of the building, not around back and there sure wasn t room to park in between the building and the dumpsters. People from the kitchen would take trash out of the side door and throw it right into the dumpsters. We were always told to park on the side of the building, because there just wasn t much room behind it. I don t remember there being an exit from the back of the parking lot, there would barely have been enough room to turn a car around. I came forward because from what I ve seen, the media is only interested in reporting one side of this story. In fact, Dixon Hayes from WRBC in Birmingham asked for former employees to contact him but never responded when I told him I never saw Roy Moore come into Olde Hickory House during the three years I worked for. Two other news outlets in the state asked to interview me and I agreed, but neither one has aired my interview and I have to wonder why they don t think the people of Alabama deserve to hear anything that counteracts the accusations against Judge Moore. It s not for me to say whether or not something happened, I can only tell the truth about factual details that I know for sure. I think all Alabamians deserve to have all of the facts so they can decide for themselves what the truth is. Despite what the national media and people in DC might say, Alabama voters are intelligent and have common sense. We don t need anyone to tell us how to vote or to explain to us what really happened. We will make that decision and I just wanted to do my part in sharing the truth on some of these important facts. I, like all Alabama voters, want any and all information that can shed light on the truth. Johnny Belyeu, Sr. is a former police officer with over two decades of experience with the Etowah County Sheriff s Department and the Gadsden Police Department. He said in a statement, I was an officer with the Etowah County Sheriff s Department in the 1970s which means I worked in the courthouse and knew who Roy Moore was since he was the Deputy District Attorney at the time. I was a regular customer at Olde Hickory House, and I never once saw Judge Moore come in there. If he had I would have immediately recognized him. I also never met Beverly Nelson during any of the many times I frequented the restaurant, and I can t say that she even worked there. Renee Schivera of Huntsville, Alabama stated, I was a waitress at the Olde Hickory House during the summer of 1977, before my senior year of high school. When I heard Beverly Nelson s story the first thing that stuck out to me was that I don t remember Roy Moore ever coming into the restaurant. I also don t remember her working there. The other thing that struck me as odd is that from my best recollection, the dumpsters were to the side of the building. I just know they were visible from the road, and not back behind the building. But the main thing is that if someone came in almost every night we knew who there were, and I never saw Roy Moore there. As a Christian woman, I wouldn t lie for anyone and I am only sharing what I know because it s the truth. The days of unbiased reporting are over, Moore Campaign strategist, Brett Doster said. The liberal media will dodge any source and refuse to air any interview that doesn t square with their effort to land a liberal Democrat in the senate seat. The Moore Campaign is committed to presenting factual truth to the people of Alabama and looks forward to victory on December 12. "The Moore Campaign unveiled statements from key witnesses that completely bust the story of Beverly Nelson and Gloria Allred and further reveal an unconscionable bias on the part of state and national press to hide the truth from Alabama voters." #ALSen pic.twitter.com/AxIpaAMc2E Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 21, 2017Roy Moore tweeted about the yearbook that lawyer for accuser won t turn over:Good morning, Alabama!Day 7 of New York attorney Gloria Allred's refusal to turn over her fake yearbook for third party examination.#ALSen Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 21, 2017CALLS TO ARREST ALLRED!Gloria Allred is in some hot water over her effort to stop candidate Moore with salacious allegations and very flimsy evidence. The Moore campaign offered to have a handwriting analysis on the yearbook the accuser said he signed but Allred hasn t offered the yearbook up yet. The two things that came up about the signing of the yearbook are that it s in two different colors of ink and Moore was not a DA the year of the signing. The Moore signature says, Roy Moore DA .Swamp creatures like Mitch McConnell should be called out along with the Washington Post and other political operatives. Mitch McConnell should be ashamed of his dirty politics against Moore This is backfiring on him BIG TIME! | 0 |
MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, a well-known architect of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, tells CNN that the law known as ‘Obamacare’ is working exactly as intended.
Full transcript, via CNN:
JONATHAN GRUBER: Obamacare’s not imploding. The main goal of Obamacare was two-fold. One was to cover the uninsured, of which we’ve covered 20 million, the largest expansion in American history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurers could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare…
The 22% increase [in health care premiums], let’s remember who that applies to. That applies to a very small fraction of people, who have to buy insurance without the subsidies that are available.
85% of people buying insurance on the exchanges get subsidies. And for those people, this premium increase doesn’t affect them.
Now, for those remaining people, that is a problem, and that’s something that we need to address, but it’s not a crisis. It doesn’t mean the system’s collapsing. And most importantly, it doesn’t affect the 150 million Americans who get employer insurance, who have actually seen their premiums fall dramatically, relative to what was expected before Obamacare.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN: OK. So let’s talk about how exactly you can fix Obamacare. And I just need you to be specific, because I think people really want answers. So Hillary Clinton says she can fix Obamacare. So what would be one fix that would drive premiums down.
GRUBER: Look, once again, there’s no sense of oh it just has to be fixed. The law is working as designed; however, it could work better, and I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that we need a larger mandate penalty. We have individuals who are essentially free riding on the system. They’re essentially waiting until they get sick and then getting health insurance. The whole idea of this plan which was pioneered in Massachusetts was that the individual mandate penalty would bring those people into the system and have them participate. The penalty right now is probably too low and that’s something ideally we would fix.
COSTELLO: So somebody who is president could go to congress and say, “You know what, lawmakers, this is a fix. Can you pass this?” Is that what would have to happen to put that fix into place?
GRUBER: Basically, it’s hard to know what dramatic fix we could do without congress participating in the process. We could do things like a stronger mandate is one. We could do things like increasing the pressure on states to expand their Medicade programs, a horrible act of political malpractice where states have left millions of people of their lowest income citizens uncovered. We could do things like that, but a lot of that would involve congressional participation. It’s hard to know what you can do just on your own as a new administration.
COSTELLO: What about the insurers who have fled the system? How do you convince them to come back or new companies to sign on? GRUBER: Once again, I think the press here has been misleading. Some insurers are leaving. Other insurers are thriving. I think what you have is a system where we’ve shaken up the status quo, exactly what we expect of new innovation, disruptive innovation if you will, to do. Insurers who were thriving in the old system are finding this new system sort of hard for them. Other insurers are doing really well and what’s going to happen is the natural process as the market evolves. These premiums are going to increase. That’s going to allow profitable opportunities for new insurers to enter they are(ph) and bring premiums back down. So we’re just seeing the ups and downs of a new market. What you have to remember is that premiums in 2014 came in way below what we expected. In fact, where they are today is exactly where they thought they’d be today. It’s just they came in lower than we thought and they rose faster than we thought. And that’s just some of the unpredictability of a new market. That will settle down over time. And new insurers will enter.
COSTELLO: OK. So hindsight is 20/20, right?
GRUBER: Yes.
COSTELLO: Looking back, is there one thing that you wish was done differently?
GRUBER: I think there’s really probably two things I wish was done differently. One is I wish the mandate penalty was stronger. The other, I wish the federal government had done more to get states to expand their Medicaid programs. I think that this is a fundamental flaw in our system that states are leaving so many systems uncovered and citizens who are sick who are coming into this exchange pool and making it more expensive.
COSTELLO: So realistically, you know, after the next president is put into office, what do you think will happen with Obamacare?
GRUBER: I think nothing much is going to happen, to be honest. I think that basically a system that largely works , that the flaws your seeing now or the premium increase you’re seeing now are just the natural dynamics of a market as it transitions to its new state, and I think that we’re just going to let it go for a couple years and it’s going to get better on its own. And basically I think it’s a system which largely works.
COSTELLO: What if Donald Trump becomes president, he has a republican congress, and he does repeal it? What happens then?
GRUBER: Well, first of all he won’t repeal it. Remember, the whole argument and public debate against this law is that people didn’t get to keep insurance they liked. Well, you’re going to have 20 million Americans or more who are now getting insurance that they like. You’re not going to take that away from them. And let’s be clear, there is no replace. There is only repeal. There is no Republican alternative to this law, and the reason is because this is fundamentally a bipartisan legislation that was originally drafted on Republican principles, to be honest. And so there is no Republican alternative. And so his repeal and replace is just repeal and leave people uninsured. That’s not going to happen. | 1 |
Trisha & Garth didn’t marry until 2005. This has to be in reference to the break up of his first marriage. You should fact check before you print. | 1 |
If we didn t know better we d think either Bill clinton is senile or he s trying to sabotage Hillary s campaign! A not-so-slick Willie was campaigning in Goldsboro, North Carolina when he AGAIN listed the problems with Obamacare! | 1 |
President-elect Donald J. Trump s economic advisor Steve Moore told Neil Cavuto the incoming administration may introduce two separate tax bills to increase chances of prompt Congressional approval. Moore says Trump s tax reform plan should primarily focus on slashing the corporate tax rate to somewhere between 15% and 20%. | 0 |
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinemas on Monday, prompting celebrations from film fans, directors and movie chains eyeing the last untapped mass market in the Middle East. The first theaters could start showing films as early as March, the government said, part of a liberalizing reform drive that has already opened the door to concerts, comedy shows, and women drivers over the past year. Cinemas were banned in the early 1980s under pressure from Islamists as Saudi society turned towards a particularly conservative form of the religion that discouraged public entertainment and public mixing between men and women. But reforms led by 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have eased many of those restrictions, as the government tries to broaden the economy and lessen its dependence on oil. Opening cinemas will act as a catalyst for economic growth and diversification, said Minister of Culture and Information Awwad bin Saleh Alawwad. By developing the broader cultural sector we will create new employment and training opportunities, as well as enriching the Kingdom s entertainment options. In a nod to conservatives, the government said the films would be censored to make sure they remain in line with values and principles in place and do not contradict with Sharia Laws and moral values in the kingdom. The details of that censorship were not announced, but could be extensive in a country where images of women are often crossed out on advertising. There was no immediate reaction from the kingdom s Wahhabi clergy and conservative groups, who have responded to past suggestions about bringing back cinema with outraged social media campaigns. Public objections to the reforms have been more muted in recent months, after authorities launched a spate of arrests clamping down on critics of the program. Up to now, the kingdom s film pioneers have had to focus on foreign markets to get their works shown. Saudi Arabia is always in the news, but it s nice to be in the news in this way, said Los Angeles-based Saudi director Haifaa Al Manour, who released the first full-length feature shot entirely in the kingdom, Wadjda, in 2012. I feel like we re about to relive what Egypt was like in the 50s, she said, referring to the explosion of film-making in what is now the epicenter of Arabic popular cinema. Prince Mohammed has also sought to promote a more tolerant form of Islam and crack down on extremism, a cause Mansour said would be furthered by films. If you want to fight terrorism, you need to give people a love of life. A love of life comes from joy, and cinema is joy. Thousands of Saudis currently travel to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and other countries for their entertainment. The government has said it wants to retain the money spent on those trips. Regional cinema chains have also been eyeing the Saudi market, keen to tap the spending power of the young people who make up roughly 70 percent of the kingdom s population. Dubai-based mall operator Majid Al Futtaim, which owns the VOX Cinemas chain, said it wanted to open the first movie theater there. We are very happy about this announcement, as you can imagine, we have been waiting for it for quite some time, said chief executive Alain Bejjani. The government said it expected to open more than 300 cinemas with more than 2,000 screens by 2030, building an industry that would contribute more then 90 billion riyals ($24 billion) to the economy and create 30,000 permanent jobs over the same period. A commission chaired by Alawwad will announce details of licensing and regulations over the next few weeks, it added. Locations for the first cinemas are still under study, but would likely be in top population centers, Fahad al-Muammar, the supervisor of cinema in the kingdom s General Commission for Audiovisual Media, told state TV al-Ekhbariya. ($1 = 3.7502 riyals) | 0 |
This will be America if we don t push back! London red buses will have a Muslim sign saying Praise Allah when Christian signs have been banned. Religious freedom is what America was founded on so it would be a great idea to watch for signs of censorship of Christianity here in America as it has totally changed the UK.BUS adverts are set to carry a slogan praising Allah just months after a clip featuring the Lord s prayer was banned from cinemas.The slogan reads Subhan Allah which translates as Glory be to God and will feature on hundreds of buses across the country as part of a campaign by the Islamic Relief.The group have targeted the ad campaign to raise money for victims of the Syrian Civil War during the holy month of Ramadan in June, when muslims traditionally fast and give to charity.But the campaign has caused anger among some Christian groups after an advert featuring the lords prayer was banned from UK cinemas in the run up to Christmas.The advert, which featured the Archbishop of Canterbury along with a variety of parishioners reciting the Lord s prayer, was banned from Odean, Cineworld and Vue cinema.Former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said: If other religions are allowed to put their religious banners up, then so should Christians. Read more: Express | 0 |
European Union leaders plan to move forward with the creation of an EU military headquarters within the next few days — and warn that Britain may still be expected to take part, even after Brexit. [Plans to set up a joint Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) facility, agreed by all 28 member states in March, had been stalled by British objections to the facility having an operational military role. But speaking to reports in Brussels following a meeting of EU defence ministers on Thursday, the EU’s Foreign Affairs commissioner Federica Mogherini said the path was now clear, and plans would be progressed within the next few days. “I understand it is finalised. I understand we have a couple of days to have the official text in place,” she said. Britain has historically maintained opposition to an EU army, preferring instead to emphasise NATO over a possible joint European force. But quizzed on British involvement in light of Brexit, Mogherini made it clear that both sides expected the UK to play a full part in the plans until Brexit takes place, in 2019 — and possibly beyond. “Obviously, once you are not a member state you cannot take part in the decisions but you can take part” in the missions, Mogherini said. She added that the UK is an “important military player but no way as important compared to the other 27 member states [combined]. ” A statement of conclusions agreed by the ministers and released by the Council of the EU yesterday stated that the Council “looks forward to the effective establishment, as a short term objective, of the Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) within the EU Military Staff in Brussels. ” The MPCC will work “under the political control and strategic guidance of the Political and Security Committee, the document continues, and is expected to undertake “three EU Training Missions deployed in Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia” under the guidance of the “Director General of the EU Military Staff. ” The document also reiterates the Council’s commitment to the strengthening of “EU Battlegroups (EUBGs)” which, it says “are considered to be a coherent force package capable of conducting operations. ” | 0 |
BRIGHTON, England (Reuters) - Britain s opposition Labour Party set out plans on Monday to nationalize billions of pounds of privately-funded infrastructure contracts, cap credit card interest charges, and get extra cash from large corporations. It said it would offer shareholder compensation for the contract nationalization. In June s election, Labour found more support than expected among voters seeking change after seven-years of Conservative-led government, coming in second. Although no election is due until 2022, it is preparing for Theresa May s Conservative minority government to fall much sooner. Under socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn, a parliamentary veteran, and his would-be finance minister John McDonnell, Labour has shifted from the centrist pro-business platform of former prime minister Tony Blair to a more interventionist left-wing pitch. McDonnell used a speech at the party s annual conference in the English seaside resort of Brighton to call for a more state-controlled economy, promising to bring so-called Private Finance Initiative contracts into public control. The contracts have been used for decades to fund public infrastructure project using private capital. They have long attracted criticism for inflating costs and channeling public money to shareholders. Successive governments have attempted to reform the process. We ll put an end to this scandal and we ll reduce the cost to the taxpayers ... we ll bring existing PFI contracts back in-house, McDonnell said. A 2015 parliamentary report said the government owed over 222 billion pounds of charges on PFI contracts spread across several decades. Labour said shareholders would be compensated in the form of government bonds at a level determined by when the contracts are brought back into public control. They did not give an estimated cost for the policy. McDonnell also repeated pledges from Labour s popular 2017 election manifesto to nationalize industries like rail and water. Business was critical of the approach. The Shadow Chancellor s vision of massive state intervention is the wrong plan at the wrong time. It raises a warning flag over the British economy at a critical time for our country s future, said Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI business lobby group. Labour has struggled in recent years to overcome the perception that it is to blame for the effects of 2007/8 financial crisis, which led to a recession, costly bank bailouts and a sharp rise in the national debt. But McDonnell criticized the Conservatives economic track record since they took power from Labour in 2010 and said they were responsible for slow wage growth which was forcing consumers into debt and risking another economic crisis. He said Labour wanted the financial regulator to impose a cap on the amount of interest payable on credit card debt to help those caught in persistent debt . It means that no-one will ever pay more in interest than their original loan, McDonnell said. If the Tories refuse to act, I can announce today that the next Labour Government will amend the law. The Financial Conduct Authority in April proposed a set of less-radical measures to encourage companies to reduce the number of customers in persistent debt. The finance industry trade body said the FCA had rejected the idea of an outright cap on interest charges. And the government said Labour proposals went too far and would hurt the economy. McDonnell, who once listed generally fomenting the overthrow of capitalism among his interests in the Who s Who directory of influential people, also took aim at the wealthy, bankers and large corporations. He said Labour would fund its plans for higher public spending on things like health and education and a large-scale infrastructure investment program by clamping down on tax evasion and making big firms pay more tax. To pay for those public services we ll close the tax loopholes and the tax avoidance scams (used) by the mega rich, he said. He criticized the banking system for pumping up property prices and fuelling a rentier economy , pledging instead to make sure banks invest in high value, high productivity businesses. To reconnect the financial sector to the economy of research and development and production, we will transform our financial system, he said. | 0 |
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several U.S. chief executives had been considering resigning from Donald Trump’s business advisory councils for months after the president said he would pull out of the Paris climate accord and ban transgender people from the military, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, long before Trump’s comments on racial violence this week pushed them over the edge. Trump disbanded two high-profile advisory groups on Wednesday, after the head of his Strategic and Policy Forum advised the White House the group was breaking up, and a trickle of departures from his American Manufacturing Council threatened to become a mass exodus. “He was at 95 percent already,” a source close to Larry Fink, head of investment firm BlackRock Inc (BLK.N), said of Fink’s leaning toward resigning from the Strategic and Policy Forum. “I think that (Trump’s latest comments) just made it 120 percent.” A number of CEOs started to consider more seriously whether to disband after Trump’s initial remarks blaming violence at Saturday’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on “many sides,” which was taken to include not only white nationalists but also anti-racism activists who opposed them. Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) CEO Kenneth Frazier, an African-American, was the first to leave the manufacturing council on Monday over Trump’s weekend reaction. Trump then attacked Frazier on Twitter, prompting other CEOs to consider quitting also. Frazier’s resignation was followed by the CEOs of Under Armour Inc (UAA.N) and Intel Corp (INTC.O) later on Monday. Trump’s fiery comments on Tuesday, doubling down on his initial response to the Virginia rally, unnerved CEOs already doubting the utility and public relations value of remaining on Trump’s councils, sources close to several of the CEOs told Reuters. Soon after Trump’s comments on Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) CEO Jamie Dimon, who serves on the Strategic and Policy Forum, started pushing for the forum to take some kind of action, a person close to him said. Dimon had previously expressed exasperation with politics in Washington, saying in July that it is “almost an embarrassment being an American citizen traveling around the world.” Sensing a breakdown in the group, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of money manager Blackstone Group (BX.N) and chairman of the Strategic and Policy Forum, convened a call on Wednesday for its members. After some debate, “the momentum was such that there wasn’t much room for dissent,” said one source familiar with the discussion. The decision to disband was agreed and Schwarzman called the White House to inform the president, the source said. Shortly after, Trump tweeted that he was disbanding the two groups. The leader of the manufacturing council, Dow Chemical Co DOW.N CEO Andrew Liveris, had planned a call with remaining members to try to salvage the group on Wednesday, according to an email seen by Reuters. The call never took place, superseded by Trump’s dissolution of the group. Sources familiar with the discussions of the boards of Merck and Intel said that they backed their CEOs’ decisions to leave because they did not believe stepping down from Trump’s councils would have a negative impact on their businesses. “I don’t think these are personal decisions,” said Blain Rethmeier, a Republican strategist who worked on the Trump transition and consults with companies in California. “I think these are made through the eyes of what’s in the best interest of the company, and the brand risks of what it means to be involved with the council became too much.” | 0 |
Isn t this just the height of hypocrisy? Hillary Clinton shows at the NY gay pride event but takes millions from Middle Eastern countries that throw gays off of buildings. | 0 |
The salt police are coming to NYC! Thanks to the nutty liberal mayor of New York City, we have a new regulation on salt. Restaurants will be fined up to $600 for not providing salt intro on menus. Oy vey! NEW YORK (AP) New York City plans to start enforcing a first-of-its-kind requirement for chain restaurants to use icons to warn patrons of salty foods after getting an appeals court s go-ahead Thursday to start issuing fines.The novel rule took effect in December, and some eateries already have added the requisite salt-shaker-like icons to menu items that contain more salt than doctors recommend ingesting in an entire day.But penalties have been in limbo as the National Restaurant Association fights the measure in court. That clash is ongoing, but an appeals court Thursday lifted a temporary hold on issuing the fines while the case plays out. Fines can be up to $600.The city will start enforcing the rule June 6.Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio applauded the appeals court s decision on what he called a common-sense regulation that will help New Yorkers make better decisions and lead healthier lives. The city won the first round of the lawsuit in a trial court in February; the restaurant association appealed.Via: FOX 5 NY | 1 |
If one thing has become abundantly clear, it s that Donald Trump and his administration don t like to answer questions, especially questions surrounding Russia.Trump seems to have set a clear standard for those who work with him that the press is not to be trusted. From his abusive and unconstitutional fake news attacks to the clear ignoring of questions that the American people want to know the answers to.Ignoring questions and treating the press like dirt has seemingly also spread to the State Department, and on Tuesday morning, NBC s Andrea Mitchell alongside several others from the press were herded up and bullied out, all the while no questions were answered.Mitchell tried to get a few pressing answers from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She asked: Can you respond to the threats from China? Can you be sure the Trump administration will be strong against Vladimir Putin? Can you assure us that Russia will not be able to move further in Ukraine? You can then see Mitchell grabbed by the arms and escorted out while saying: We haven t had any time in here. This all begs the question, why doesn t the Trump administration want to answer any questions? What are they hiding?The more they remain elusive from the press, the more people will assume they are up to no good, so one would think they would want to remain transparent and respect the right of a free press.What this shows is that our press are disrespected, but it also shows that press, especially those like Andrea Mitchell, aren t about to be bullied around so easily and will still report the story.Good.Watch the confrontation here:You guys. This happened today.This is why we Andrea @mitchellreports. There is nobody more dogged, more tenacious. The best. pic.twitter.com/uINDWmOYEM Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 7, 2017Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
ROME/PALERMO (Reuters) - The death of Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore Toto Riina on Friday does not mark the end of Cosa Nostra, but the crime group is unlikely to allow one man such power ever again, a top magistrate and former mobster said. The 87-year-old Riina died in a hospital in Parma, the northern Italian city where he had been serving 26 life sentences for murders committed between 1969 and 1992. The end of Riina isn t the end of Cosa Nostra, the chief magistrate in Sicily s capital of Palermo, Francesco Lo Voi, told Reuters. What remains to be understood is whether the men of Cosa Nostra will seek a direct successor or a new organizational structure, Lo Voi said. Gaspare Mutolo, who admits to having strangled some 20 people, agrees. Mutolo, now 77, turned state s witness in the early 1990s at the age of 51, and became a key witness in dozens of mafia cases. He shared a jail cell with Riina in the 1960s, and became his trusted bodyguard and driver afterward. Mutolo, who still wears a balaclava to hide his identity from cameras, felt pity when he heard his former friend and cell mate had died, he said. He was a friend. He helped me. He even saved my life. I saw him a little bit as a father figure, Mutolo told foreign reporters in Rome. Riina s death changes little in Sicily, he said: Palermo still has the mafia. BACK-ROOM DEALS As several recent cases show, the mob still extorts business owners on the island, and it still seeks to win lucrative public contracts through back-room deals with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. I can t imagine politics without the mafia, Mutolo said. But the future of Cosa Nostra without Riina, whose brutality undermined the trustworthiness of the organization by driving mafiosi like Mutolo into the hands of the state, is uncertain. The Calabrian mob, known as the Ndrangheta, has had few turncoats and has taken over drug routes once dominated by Cosa Nostra. The Calabrians now are major importers of cocaine from South America to Europe and to North America. Even politicians are wary of doing deals with the Sicilian mob now, Mutolo said. Cosa Nostra is not the same as it was in the 1980s mainly because of the turncoats, Mutolo said. The Calabresi have taken over because they are more trusted. Cosa Nostra has always had a military-like structure, but before Riina there was no single boss of bosses . Power was divvied up by territory, and the local bosses met together in a so-called Commission to discuss strategy and settle disputes. But Riina made himself the dictator of Cosa Nostra. It s not a given that Cosa Nostra will see a charismatic leader as a necessity in the future, Lo Voi said, returning to a decentralization of operations and decision making as there was before Riina took over. | 1 |
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