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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Small-business owners in New Mexico and across the country have started 2013 with low expectations for the economy and their companies.</p>
<p>That’s the finding of a survey released Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business. The lobbying group’s Small Business Optimism Index rose 0.9 points to 88.9 in January, but remains at a level that points to continuing pessimism among business owners.</p>
<p>New Mexico NFIB Director Minda McGonagle said, “It’s been clear for a long time that small-business optimism is nowhere on the horizon and this latest report reflects the belief that little is going to change any time soon.”</p>
<p>Neither the conversation in Washington nor in Santa Fe has changed, she said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Whether it is taxes, complying with the new health-care environment or anything else, lately our leaders pontificate but don’t produce results. As we hit the midpoint of the legislative session here in New Mexico it is unclear what our legislative leaders think about small business.</p>
<p>“Yes, we want to see tax reform but that is not the magic bullet. We also need an unemployment insurance structure that is sustainable, a balanced worker’s compensation environment and no more minimum-wage increase pressures,” McGonagle said.</p>
<p>The NFIB survey noted that uncertainty about the economy has kept many small business owners from hiring, borrowing and expanding over the past year.</p>
<p>The findings were in line with a survey last week by the National Small Business Association, that found that its members’ confidence had fallen sharply at the end of 2012. More than two-thirds of the participants said the economy is the biggest challenge to the growth and survival of their companies.</p> | Pessimism remains pervasive among small businesses | false | https://abqjournal.com/168281/pessimism-remains-pervasive-among-small-businesses.html | 2 |
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<p>IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - Evan Leonard hit five 3-pointers and finished with 21 points - both career highs - and Eyassu Worku added 20 points and six assists to help UC Irvine beat Long Beach State 86-73 on Saturday night.</p>
<p>John Edgar Jr. had career highs with 15 points and 10 rebounds and Max Hazzard scored 14 points for Irvine (6-12, 1-1 Big West).</p>
<p>Edgar hit a 3-pointer that gave the Anteaters the lead, 5-4, for good and sparked a 16-2 run over the next four-plus minutes. LBSU (7-11, 1-1) made just 1 of 7 from the field during that stretch. Hazzard scored eight points, including two 3-pointers, Edgar capped the spurt with a 3 that made it 18-6 and UCI led by double figures the rest of the way.</p>
<p>Gabe Levin led Long Beach State with 20 points and Temidayo Yussuf scored 14.</p>
<p>UCI shot 52.8 percent (19 of 36) from the field, and hit 11 of its 14 3-pointers, in the first half.</p>
<p>IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - Evan Leonard hit five 3-pointers and finished with 21 points - both career highs - and Eyassu Worku added 20 points and six assists to help UC Irvine beat Long Beach State 86-73 on Saturday night.</p>
<p>John Edgar Jr. had career highs with 15 points and 10 rebounds and Max Hazzard scored 14 points for Irvine (6-12, 1-1 Big West).</p>
<p>Edgar hit a 3-pointer that gave the Anteaters the lead, 5-4, for good and sparked a 16-2 run over the next four-plus minutes. LBSU (7-11, 1-1) made just 1 of 7 from the field during that stretch. Hazzard scored eight points, including two 3-pointers, Edgar capped the spurt with a 3 that made it 18-6 and UCI led by double figures the rest of the way.</p>
<p>Gabe Levin led Long Beach State with 20 points and Temidayo Yussuf scored 14.</p>
<p>UCI shot 52.8 percent (19 of 36) from the field, and hit 11 of its 14 3-pointers, in the first half.</p> | Leonard, Worku help UC Irvine beat Long Beach St. 86-73 | false | https://apnews.com/624b0ba267f64c75b961e6e012cc1b2e | 2018-01-07 | 2 |
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<p>U.S. foreign aid is expected to promote poverty alleviation and facilitate developmental growth in impoverished countries. Yet, corporations and special interest groups have permeated even the most well-intended of U.S. policies.</p>
<p>El Salvador is a recent example of corporate domination in U.S. foreign aid. The United States will withhold the Millennium Challenge Compact aid deal, approximately $277 million in aid, unless El Salvador purchases genetically-modified seeds from biotech giant, Monsanto.[1] The Millennium Challenge Corporation is “a U.S. foreign aid agency that was created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004,”[2] according to Sustainable Pulse, and serves as a conduit for foreign aid funds. MCC’s unethical aid conditions would force El Salvador to purchase controversial seeds from the American biotech corporation instead of purchasing non-GMO seeds from the country’s local farmers[3] – an action that would have negative effects on El Salvador’s agricultural industry in addition to presenting serious health and environmental risks.</p>
<p>The conditional foreign aid from MCC is an attempt to break into El Salvador’s non-GMO agricultural sector and exploit the food market. Because El Salvador has high food insecurity, it imports 85% of its food. This allows U.S. foreign aid organizations to take advantage of the dire need for their own monetary gain. The United States used similar aid policies in Haiti to force open Haiti’s agricultural market for U.S. food products – effectively destroying Haiti’s agricultural economy and creating an overreliance on food aid.[4]</p>
<p>However, at least one ranking individual is pushing back against predatory aid in El Salvador. Ricardo Navarro, President of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies, states, “I would like to tell the U.S. ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” and hopes that the El Salvadoran government does not bend to U.S. pressure.[5]</p>
<p>El Salvador recently banned glyphosate and other chemicals in September 2013 – at the same time the MCC stopped the aid package process until “’specific’ economic and environmental reforms were made.”[6] Glyphosate herbicide is a fundamental chemical for Monsanto’s genetically-modified crops, but poses serious toxicity concerns.[7] As a result, El Salvador appears to be the most recent victim of U.S. ‘trade wars’ against countries that oppose Monsanto.[8] France – who was working to ban a Monsanto crop – was “requested to be ‘penalized’ by the United States for opposing Monsanto and genetically modified foods.”[9] Hungary and even the Vatican are also targeted by U.S. foreign policy for being anti-GMO, according to documents released by Wikileaks.[10] Despite Monsanto’s GMO crops that pose serious health and environmental risks, U.S. officials continue to push Monsanto’s agenda in domestic and foreign policies.</p>
<p>Due to powerful lobbying by corporate giants like Monsanto, in addition to the shipping and agricultural industries, the U.S. government’s foreign aid program has become an encroaching business. Just when the U.S. foreign aid program couldn’t appear to be more corrupt, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, U.S. Congress, and Monsanto have raised the bar.</p>
<p>[1] “US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds,” RT, June 10, 2014, accessed June 11, 2014, <a href="http://rt.com/usa/165128-us-pressures-salvador-monsanto-gmo/" type="external">http://rt.com/usa/165128-us-pressures-salvador-monsanto-gmo/</a>.; “U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds,” Sustainable Pulse, June 8, 2014, accessed June 11, 2014, <a href="http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/06/08/u-s-government-ties-el-salvador-usd-277-m-aid-package-monsantos-gmo-seeds/#.U5hCmRBCxGN" type="external">http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/06/08/u-s-government-ties-el-salvador-usd-277-m-aid-package-monsantos-gmo-seeds/#.U5hCmRBCxGN</a>.</p>
<p>[2] “U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds.”</p>
<p>[3] Ibid; “US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds.”</p>
<p>[4] Haiti Grassroots Watch, “HAITI: Aid or Trade? The Nefarious Effects of U.S. Policies,” GlobalResearch, November 6, 2013, accessed June 11, 2014, <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-aid-or-trade-the-nefarious-effects-of-u-s-policies/5357204" type="external">http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-aid-or-trade-the-nefarious-effects-of-u-s-policies/5357204</a>.</p>
<p>[5] “U.S. Government Ties El Salvador USD 277 M Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds.”</p>
<p>[6] “US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds.”</p>
<p>[7] Ibid.</p>
<p>[8] Anthony Gucciardi, “Leaked: US to Start ‘Trade Wars’ with Nations Opposed to Monsanto, GMO crops,” Natural Society, January 3, 2012, accessed June 11, 2014, <a href="http://naturalsociety.com/us-start-trade-wars-with-nations-opposed-to-monsanto-gmo-crops/" type="external">http://naturalsociety.com/us-start-trade-wars-with-nations-opposed-to-monsanto-gmo-crops/</a>.</p>
<p>[9] Ibid.</p>
<p>[10] Allison Crawford, “Monsanto Launches ‘Trade Wars’ on Opposing Nations,” Health Wire, September 12, 2012, accessed June 11, 2014, <a href="http://www.myhealthwire.com/news/food/77" type="external">http://www.myhealthwire.com/news/food/77</a>.</p> | Monsanto and Foreign Aid: Forcing El Salvador’s Hand | false | http://foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/06/13/monsanto-and-foreign-aid-forcing-el-salvadors-hand/ | 2014-06-13 | 1 |
<p>OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — More than a half dozen school districts in Oklahoma and one in Texas have closed for at least a day because of a flu outbreak.</p>
<p>In Oklahoma, the Cleveland and Union City schools both closed for a day earlier this week, while the Morris, Quinton, Swink, Hugo and Valliant districts are closed until next week.</p>
<p>The Bonham Independent School District in Texas is also closed until next week.</p>
<p>The Oklahoma State Department of Health reports at least 22 flu-related deaths during the current season while Texas Department of State Health Services spokeswoman Lara Antone said that state has at least 1,155 deaths due to flu or pneumonia, which are counted together.</p>
<p>The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports widespread flu in 49 states.</p>
<p>OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — More than a half dozen school districts in Oklahoma and one in Texas have closed for at least a day because of a flu outbreak.</p>
<p>In Oklahoma, the Cleveland and Union City schools both closed for a day earlier this week, while the Morris, Quinton, Swink, Hugo and Valliant districts are closed until next week.</p>
<p>The Bonham Independent School District in Texas is also closed until next week.</p>
<p>The Oklahoma State Department of Health reports at least 22 flu-related deaths during the current season while Texas Department of State Health Services spokeswoman Lara Antone said that state has at least 1,155 deaths due to flu or pneumonia, which are counted together.</p>
<p>The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports widespread flu in 49 states.</p> | Schools in Oklahoma, Texas close due to flu outbreak | false | https://apnews.com/amp/72dd0810d7ff4e1295c85b695e2426fb | 2018-01-17 | 2 |
<p>The Khasi tribespeople of India want to honor Al Gore with an <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6970018.stm" type="external">award</a> of local handicrafts and a "small amount of money" for raising awareness of the climate change that they say has ravaged their scenic province, the name of which translates to "abode of the clouds." A Gore representative says he is humbled, but unsure if he'll make it to the ceremony, which will be held at a preserved village near a sacred forest.</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>The award will be handed over at the second Dorbar Ri (People's Parliament) on 6 October near a sacred forest at the village of Mawphlang, which has been preserved untouched for more than 700 years.</p>
<p>The award will consist of traditional gifts including local handicrafts and a "small amount of money".</p>
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<p>"We hope Mr Gore would be able to bring global attention to what we are facing in our part of the world," Meghalaya parliament member Robert Kharshing said.</p>
<p>"This whole thing called climate change is affecting us the most."</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6970018.stm" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Al Gore to Snub Struggling Indians? | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/al-gore-to-snub-struggling-indians/ | 2007-08-31 | 4 |
<p>White House press secretary Sean Spicer has had a <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2017/01/23/sean-spicer-needs-a-hug-a-white-house-press-briefing-of-whine-and-poses.html" type="external">rough first few days on the job</a>. As The Daily Show host Trevor Noah explained Tuesday night, Spicer delivered what he described as his "first press conference" on Monday.</p>
<p>"Well, he said it was his first, but it wasn't," Noah said. "He also came out on Saturday to lie about how many people were at Trump's inauguration. But let's agree that it was his first, even though it wasn't? <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2017/01/22/kellyanne-conway-trump-administration-uses-alternative-facts.html" type="external">alternative facts</a>, whatever, we keep it moving."</p>
<p>While Spicer did appear in the press room on Saturday to <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2017/01/22/trump-administration-starts-with-big-lie-over-small-thing.html" type="external">berate reporters about the size of Trump's inauguration crowd</a>, he didn't take any questions. When he returned on Monday, he had some trouble answering even the most basic inquiries from the media.</p>
<p>As an example, Noah pointed to the question Spicer received about the national unemployment rate. Does the Trump administration still believe that it is as high as 42 percent, as Trump <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/30/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-unemployment-rate-may-be-42-perc/" type="external">once falsely claimed</a> on the campaign trail?</p>
<p>"It's not just a number to him," Spicer said of Trump. "He's not just focused on statistics as much as he is about whether the American people are doing better as a whole."</p>
<p>"Wait, did he just say unemployment isn't a number, it's a feeling?" Noah asked. For an administration so <a href="/content/dailybeast/cheats/2017/01/21/trump-claims-media-lying-about-crowd-numbers.html" type="external">obsessed with crowd size and television ratings</a>, there seem to be some numbers they would prefer to pretend don't exist.</p>
<p>The "most revealing" part of Spicer's briefing on Monday, Noah said, was when he took the press the task for their "demoralizing" coverage of President Trump so far. After a year and a half of watching Trump "bully his way to the White House," the host found it odd that, now that he's there, all his team can do is "complain about him being bullied."</p> | ?The Daily Show's? Trevor Noah Burns Sean Spicer's 'Alternative Facts' | true | https://thedailybeast.com/the-daily-shows-trevor-noah-burns-sean-spicers-alternative-facts | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
<p>A century after city planner Daniel Burnham cautioned against making little plans—”they have no magic to stir men’s blood”—a team of technocrats from City Hall has drafted the transformation of the Chicago Public Schools.</p>
<p>New schools. New teaching. New tests. New ways of doing even routine things. And the plans certainly have stirred the blood of those concerned about the city’s schools, in some cases to the boiling point.</p>
<p>In the following interview, edited for space, CEO Paul Vallas first outlines a new student achievement plan, which was to have been unveiled Jan. 24, and then discusses his first six months in office. Asked about investing in local school councils as well as teachers and principals, he says, “Shall we expend our resources developing councils that may change every two years? Or should we invest in . . . teachers that may spend 5, 10, 15, 20 years with us?” He adds, however, that central office should help provide ongoing training. The interview was conducted on two days in early and mid-January.</p>
<p>Q Now you’re dealing with some of the lowest- performing schools, but do you get to the point where you nudge everybody up, as in, for example, Dallas or Kentucky?</p>
<p>Vallas: If you shift resources into the six or seven elements that seem to exist in all good schools, all should show improvement. If you let people know that academic achievement is the No. 1 priority. But clearly there has to be a concentration of effort in those schools that are facing the most serious problems.</p>
<p>What we’re going to do with problem schools is contract out with a number of universities and outside groups to set up school improvement teams. But we’re also going to set up a master principal, master teacher program, so some of our more gifted principals will also lead school improvement teams that will go in and work in other schools. They would receive a stipend, and some of their gifted teachers would receive stipends. They would work with the school beginning in the summer, helping it amend its school improvement plan, develop a curriculum plan, develop a teacher training plan. It’s a way of rewarding your top performing principals, giving them a new challenge and, at the same time, not pulling quality people from performing schools.</p>
<p>The third thing is, we have [former] principals in the central office who were outstanding. Lula Ford, Blondean Davis, Carlos Azcoitia, Jackie Simmons. Just all the way down the list. They will also take a school. The only one who we won’t give a school to is Pat Harvey. We’re also bringing in some of the principals who have left, some of the top retired principals.</p>
<p>We’re about to launch a major student achievement initiative. First of all we are looking at expanding state pre-kindergarten. Our goal is to add an additional 300 preschool classrooms for 3- and 4-year-olds. Two classes a day, 20 kids a class, 12,000 kids. We will trim the existing pre-K bureaucracy and eliminate a number of non-essential, non-teaching, non-assistant teacher preschool positions to provide some of the funding.</p>
<p>Q What do you do in overcrowded schools?</p>
<p>We’ll build the classrooms.</p>
<p>Next, Lynn St. James is developing a Direct Instruction model for kindergarten through 3rd or 4th grade that we want to adopt systemwide.</p>
<p>Q Would this be for phonics only, or beyond that?</p>
<p>It’ll be similar to the Houston model, so it goes beyond simple phonics. Schools that are not performing would have to adopt the model, and schools that are performing could waiver out of the model.</p>
<p>Q What are the criteria for getting a waiver? There may be a school that has lousy scores, but is using an alternative method.</p>
<p>I’m not sure yet. Also, we plan to have a new system of standards that are consistent with state standards and that are simple and understandable, not only by faculties, but also by parents. Our game plan is to have the proposed standards by June and then to work on them and educate people through the summer and have them up and running by September. So when you become a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, you get your standards manual.</p>
<p>Accompanying the standards will be the new assessment system, to replace the Iowa Tests. We’re looking at an internal testing system that can be computerized so you can get instant results.</p>
<p>We’re throwing out the old school improvement plans and replacing them with a very simple, businesslike, very focused academic achievement plan.</p>
<p>We’re going to concentrate on breaking up the high schools by class. We’re going to allow elementary schools that have demonstrated achievement to set up their own 9th grade and then, in some rare occasions, maybe even a 10th grade. We are also looking at setting up a freshman feeder school, so you transition into high school.</p>
<p>Also within every high school that’s not a magnet, we are going to set up a freshman academy—longer school day, longer school year, different faculty, segregated from the mainstream high school population, focused on a core curriculum of language arts, math, science, reading. We’re going to set aside money to allow this to happen, close to $100,000 per high school. First, you will be tested in 8th grade, and you will not get your diploma if you have not reached a certain level of academic achievement. If you’re not at that level, you will go through a summer school program.</p>
<p>Q Does anybody get to opt out of this?</p>
<p>No. No, other than perhaps the magnet schools or schools that are really performing well.</p>
<p>Q What about the kids in 7th and 8th grade?</p>
<p>Middle schools. We’re going to allow the community to decide, because in some cases instead of building a new elementary school, you may want to build a middle school.</p>
<p>Moving on, we are going to revitalize vocational education. Charles Vietzen is in the process of inventorying all the voc-ed classes to determine what they need. We want to bring all the trades into the schools. We’re not going to wait to have these elaborate apprenticeship programs. We want to teach our kids the trades, period.</p>
<p>I know from first-hand experience how successful you can be by learning a basic trade. My brother went to the Washburne Trade School, and now he’s a very successful automotive technician for Amoco Oil. He’s just moved through the ranks. My father-in-law is a successful builder. He started out as a bricklayer. His two sons started out as bricklayers; they now are successful contractors. And no college education. They have a skill, they work hard, they have intelligence, they have drive, ambition. So I know.</p>
<p>Q Do you have enough faculty to do this?</p>
<p>We have a shortage of voc-ed instructors. We’re going to go out, and we’re going to find them. We will bring in retired tradesmen, tradesmen who want to teach part time, whatever.</p>
<p>Q These are not necessarily certified teachers then?</p>
<p>They will not be certified teachers in all cases. In some cases we may work out an arrangement where we can have a contractor come in. We’ll pay the contractor, and then he will have one of his people teach a trade in the school. As you know, we have a major school-to-work initiative where we’re pushing corporations to give our kids job training and part-time jobs.</p>
<p>Q What kind of response do you have there? Has anybody signed up?</p>
<p>There’s about 22 corporations that have responded. We’ve been talking to Jewel, Shell, UPS. We want to get our kids into jobs. We want to begin hiring our kids to do a lot of the odd jobs around school, like mowing lawns and shoveling snow. Now, someone wrote me a letter saying, you’re teaching kids to be custodians. No, we’re telling kids that, rather then hang out on the street corner, there might be an odd job you can perform to make a few bucks around the school and, at the same time, contribute to the school.</p>
<p>These are odd jobs designed to help develop a work ethic. My first job was in a florist shop. My second job was washing dishes and busing tables in my father’s restaurant. It helped me develop a work ethic. It also taught me that I’d better get a college education if I didn’t want to do it forever.</p>
<p>Then there will be a major truancy initiative. We won’t be hiring truancy officers back. We will be training and paying parents a stipend to serve as attendance officers, to go beyond trying to track down a kid who doesn’t show up at school. How about a kid who shows up at school who’s been abused, or is undernourished? We feel that there should be an adult in the school that you can go to talk to if there’s a problem or a concern.</p>
<p>A core curriculum. We want to be very specific on the amount of time that should be spent on language arts, math, science. What is done with the rest of the time is up to schools.</p>
<p>Q Are you under the impression that there’s a lot of time devoted to other things?</p>
<p>In some schools there is. There’s still going to be a lot of local flexibility on these things, but what we’re trying to do is we’re just trying to get everybody to focus.</p>
<p>Q Are you putting these out to hold hearings, or are you putting out tablets written in stone?</p>
<p>There will be working groups, but we will lay out a draft and then solicit input. We’ll modify, and hopefully by June, we’ll be ready to roll.</p>
<p>Q Probably the most controversial thing you’ve talked about is moving to a system of direct instruction.</p>
<p>Probably. But Lynn wants it. She’s very impressed with the model. People will be able to waiver out of the model. So she’ll be the one who will recommend to me the criteria.</p>
<p>Q Something very similar to this was tried in the mid ’80’s, with Ruth Love.</p>
<p>Really? I never studied Ruth Love.</p>
<p>Q A lot of schools will be doing this. You need to provide training. It seems like there are land mines all over the place, and this could blow up on you.</p>
<p>All I know is, at a lot of local schools things have already blown up because you’ve got children not being able to read and they’re in 3rd grade. Sometimes you have to clear the field before you can start planting again. Direct instruction has worked, miraculously in some cases, wherever it’s been done. It’s a way of allowing a lot of these kids to catch up. So it might be a model that would be best used in some of your more challenged environments.</p>
<p>So with the preschool and direct instruction at the early school level, I think you can get these kids out of the education gate with a full head of steam. We can’t wait another generation. A small, vocal group of people thinks that the only way to improve school performance is to let all the schools do whatever the hell they want to do and just concentrate all your efforts on training and remediating local school councils.</p>
<p>Q Is this, then, a calculated risk?</p>
<p>I think the big risk you take is not taking any action at all.</p>
<p>Q Do you ever fear that you have too many things going to handle?</p>
<p>No. I think we have just the right amount.</p>
<p>Q I’ve read your comments about local school councils that you’ve made at a number of venues. My impression is that if local school councils do a good job, that’s great; if they do a lousy job, you’ll step in. But I don’t hear you talk about investing and developing local school councils the way I hear you talk about investing and developing principals and teachers.</p>
<p>Well, there’s 557 local school councils. Shall we expend our resources developing local school councils that may change every two years? Or should we invest our resources in developing teachers that may spend 5, 10, 15, 20 years with us? It is not our responsibility to spend a lot of time and resources trying to bring local school councils up to speed. If you run for local school council, you have a responsibility to come in with the idea that you want to do the job, and the job is improving education and education performance.</p>
<p>I think the board does have a role in providing for local school council training, and I don’t think it should be a three-day affair, like the Legislature mandated. I think there should be year-round training in a variety of areas. Carlos Azcoitia, who has taken over School and Community Relations, will have that responsibility. I also think the board has a role to play in mediating conflicts between local school councils and principals.</p>
<p>The Legislature mandated that we set up this local school advisory council, and we’re in the process of finalizing that. Once that council is set up, they’re going to work with School and Community Relations to come up with a continuous training program and a remediation and intervention program to help deal with dysfunctional local school councils, and to help mediate conflicts.</p>
<p>But my point is, there’s only going to be so much we can do. We have a system without a lot of resources. I meet with some of these so-called systemwide representatives, and all they talk to me about is process. The discussion is never about academic performance, safety in schools, student achievement.</p>
<p>Q Do you think they don’t care about that?</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that they don’t care about it, but I spend a lot of time talking about process and nothing else.</p>
<p>Q To be fair, these groups were out fighting to improve the school system way before even City Hall got interested. It’s not as though they have come out of the woodwork right now.</p>
<p>Well, you must distinguish between the reform groups and the cottage industry groups. The reform groups and the special interest groups.</p>
<p>Q Can you give an example of each?</p>
<p>No, because I have to deal with them all. They know who they are. But you have groups that justify the grants that they get by institutionalizing a process or their role. That’s all they’re interested with. For example, the obsession, the total obsession with Prosser High School. We have a crisis in individual schools, and all they want to talk about is Prosser and education crisis.</p>
<p>Reform was enacted in 1987, it’s now 1996, 45 of the state’s 50 poorest performing high schools are Chicago public high schools. At the elementary school level, the results have been mixed at best.</p>
<p>I am inundated with complaints about local school councils from parents, teachers and principals—and other local school council members. Investigate this, investigate that. Patronage, nepotism, people declaring custody over kids so that they can remain on local school councils. People intimidating parents. It’s a continual onslaught. [Columnist] Ray Coffey is getting half the stuff now. They’ve grown frustrated with us, and they all write to Ray. Because they figure, well, he’s the voice now. So now I have to contend with that. I believe they are, to quote Shakespeare, much ado about nothing.</p>
<p>Q Would it be better if the school system didn’t have local school councils?</p>
<p>No, no, it would not. I accept it as the price you pay for local control. The price that you pay for local control are the Slim Colemans and the Carlos Malaves. Is it a price worth paying? Yeah, it probably is because we live in a participatory democracy, meaning he who participates gets to benefit from the democracy. I think local school councils contribute to reform. But don’t complain when I hold you accountable.</p>
<p>I think there’s a good balance between the responsibilities of the local school council and the responsibilities of the central office. What was missing from the School Reform Act of 1987 was accountability. What the second reform act has brought is the power to hold people accountable. Everyone has to be accountable to the primary mission. The primary mission is delivering on the education product and ensuring that the laws and the school code are properly followed and enforced.</p>
<p>Q I’d like to make another statement for you to react to. My view of the Prosser situation is that both sides screwed up. The law provided for setting guidelines and then acting on them, and that wasn’t what happened. There was an announcement to act first, before the guidelines. And the reform groups didn’t talk about Prosser; all they talked about was process.</p>
<p>Well great, great. Everybody wanted to debate guidelines for the next 90 days or 120 days; meanwhile some terrible wrongdoings are going on. So Rome burns, but we basically debate the process in which we are to put out the fire. We needed to act decisively, but what do we do? We gave the guidelines a sunset and we did not declare another school in education crisis until the guidelines were amended. So I think we acted very, very responsibly.</p>
<p>I am not against local control. My reputation and Gery Chico’s reputation at City Hall was always inclusive, not exclusive. Always. We built our reputations on that.</p>
<p>Now there’s been schools where the community is demanding that I remove the local school council. The Hale School for example. There you have a local school council that is dominated by a single family. You have a firefighter who runs the local school council, and six of his relatives—either firefighters or paramedics—they dominate the local school council. The community wants them out. They scream, shout: get rid of them.</p>
<p>First of all, the school is a good performing school. Number two, there’s no incident of wrongdoing or corruption. Hey, we’ve had incompetent legislative bodies; there’s no law against that. So my point is I won’t intervene in that school, even though the whole community wants me to intervene in that school. So give us more credit for acting with restraint than for acting aggressively.</p>
<p>Q This suggests you must have a good speech for the upcoming local school council elections. Can’t you use your bully pulpit here?</p>
<p>We’re already beginning to give that speech. I went out to the Hale community and I said, I got the perfect solution for you—because I think 85 people elected that local school council. I said, Vote them out, get organized.</p>
<p>Q You’ve got remediation; you’ve got probation; you’ve got crisis. In some instances there’s overlap. It’s very confusing.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s any confusion at all. You have schools on the state’s academic watch list. When those schools have continued to decline, when there doesn’t appear to be a game plan to improve performance, that’s when we put schools on remediation. And that allows us to take action that sometimes may not have to be approved by the local school council, and to remove a principal if we have to. But we envision remediation more as a notice that this school is not performing satisfactorily. Any additional authority that we exercise will really depend on the individual case.</p>
<p>If the records can’t be audited, then schools should be put on financial probation. That means you send in an auditor and the expenditures have to be approved by that auditor.</p>
<p>Education crisis is when something is going on that threatens the whole educational process in the school. There you take radical action. So where remediation is more of a long-term process, education crisis is more of a quick process.</p>
<p>Q And generally what is the trip point that puts a school into crisis?</p>
<p>It can be an emergency. Well let’s take for example Austin. Austin was never put on crisis, although we took the type of action that you might take in a crisis, in part because Austin was already under remediation. But the first week of school: No class schedule. No books. You know what I mean? You’ve got a crisis here.</p>
<p>Q I’m told that on a television program you said that you would like to have a say in the selection of principals. Is that true?</p>
<p>I don’t know if I said that or Gery Chico said that. I think you need to have some standards in the selection of principals that go beyond just a Type 75 Certificate.</p>
<p>Q They might include what?</p>
<p>I’m not sure. We’re in the process of putting together a Principals Academy. The academy would be run by a council of veteran principals, both retired and existing. I would envision that the academy and these veteran principals would make recommendations regarding additional criteria that we might want to consider in the selection of principals. Let’s face it, the principal is the single most critical figure in the schools. So it’s critical that the principals we select are just of the top quality, both as educators and managers.</p>
<p>Q This becomes a difficult political situation as well, if this is construed as placing limits on whom local school councils can select. Do you have to go change the law to get this done?</p>
<p>I’m not so sure that we would need to do that, and we would not impose criteria without consultation. We’re not talking about taking away the authority of local school councils to select principals. We’re not talking about doing something that would affect existing principals.</p>
<p>Q The Chicago Teachers Union contract with the board calls a peer review system to be set up. Is that going to happen?</p>
<p>We’ve got a committee working on that. In fact, there’s a number of things that the contract calls for. It also calls for expenditure reductions in health care. We’re supposed to reach an agreement, I think, by March or April on cost cuts in health care.</p>
<p>Q Does that mean benefit cuts?</p>
<p>It’ll mean what is negotiated. We’re looking for a reduction in cost to the tune of about 20 million dollars. It may mean generic drugs. It could mean a repackaging of certain benefits. Year two, three and four of the contract is contingent on the money being there.</p>
<p>Q Back again to peer review. How close to an agreement are you on that one?</p>
<p>Let’s just say that we will have a peer review system by next year. We’re not so close that I’ve gotten actively involved in it. It’s not at the stage where I’m beginning to see proposals that have gone through a couple drafts. I think it’s going to be a real positive thing.</p>
<p>Q The guidelines on state Chapter 1—what prompted you to change you mind about allowing schools to spend money on retreats?</p>
<p>Public input. The same thing on education crisis guidelines. A lot of the recommendations that emanated from Designs for Change and PURE specifically, we adopted. So we listen and we respond.</p>
<p>Q And you believe that retreats can be a part of school improvement?</p>
<p>Yeah, but once again, when people are deciding to spend public funds, they have an obligation to spend that money in the most cost-effective way possible.</p>
<p>Q How much of the game plan did you have with you when you arrived from City Hall, and how much have you made up as you’ve gone along?</p>
<p>Much of the financial plan was predetermined. We did know about a month before we went in that we were going in, and we spent about five or six weeks sitting down with people who were familiar with board programs and policies and finances. Obviously the most immediate problem that the board was facing was no collective bargaining agreements, a $150 to $200 million-dollar budget hole and [whether] schools would open on time.</p>
<p>We wanted to stabilize the system financially; we wanted to structure a four-year plan, so that there could be a capital component, so that we could go in and do building facility repairs. We wanted to negotiate a long-term [teachers’] contract. In other words, we wanted to buy the system some stability for a number of years, so that we could turn our attention to education policy.</p>
<p>Q You thought this out even before the legislation, because the legislation enabled you to do an awful lot of this, and that was passed in May.</p>
<p>Gery Chico and I were not involved in the formulation of the legislation. I didn’t find out until late May that I was going to be going over as school chief.</p>
<p>Q Then started a crash course in education, right?</p>
<p>Well, no, not really because my first job in government in 1979 was staffing the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee and the Appropriations Committee for Sen. Art Berman. My first government project was working on the Chicago School Financial Crisis Report of 1979.</p>
<p>Q But that was mainly finance. What about teaching and learning and curriculum?</p>
<p>It was finance, but it looked at a number of issues. The staff person for Elementary and Secondary Education would staff both the substantive side and the appropriation side.</p>
<p>Q What’s the mayor’s role now? You, how often do you report to him?</p>
<p>I brief him once a month with Gery Chico and Lynn St. James on school issues, the capital program, education programs, things like that. There’s a formal briefing about once a month, but I’m sure Gery talks to him weekly.</p>
<p>Q Do you need his okay for anything?</p>
<p>No, no. He in no way micromanages. He likes to think that he puts competent people in charge, and he basically lets them run the show. He really has insulated us from politics. I’ve never gotten a direct, personal call from the mayor on behalf of any individual or contract. Nor in my conversations with them.</p>
<p>Q And no one from his staff?</p>
<p>No, no one from his staff. That’s not to say that someone doesn’t call to inquire about something. But it’s almost like whoever you talk to, even when people call to inquire about something, they’re always extra careful to say, Now we don’t want you to do this.</p>
<p>Q Since you’ve had this job, what’s one of the biggest things you’ve learned? What’s been a surprise? What hadn’t you expected?</p>
<p>I hate to say that there are no surprises. I don’t think I’ve been shocked at anything. You heard the stories about the system for all these years and having been involved in education in Springfield, I can’t really say that anything has really surprised me. I think the job is as big as I had anticipated.</p>
<p>Q But in terms of trying to change schools, which are complex political and social organizations. Trying to figure out what levers to push to get teaching and learning to change. Surely, you didn’t know that coming in.</p>
<p>No, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to quickly identify what some of the basic problems are. If there was something that perhaps was somewhat surprising, it was the degree of diversity of approaches at the local school levels. No standardized textbooks; schools using multiple approaches and, in some cases, individual schools themselves using multiple approaches to curriculum and instruction.</p>
<p>Q Is that good or bad?</p>
<p>If it works, it’s good; if it doesn’t work, it’s bad. I’m not suggesting that you need to standardize everything. Clearly you have a responsibility to ensure that there’s a core curriculum and that there’s a focus and that kids are learning the key educational things that they need to learn—reading, math, science, the language arts. But diversity is good too. You can have a core curriculum and still have an Afrocentric curriculum or a performing arts curriculum or be a dual-language school.</p>
<p>I’d like to see schools with more focused education plans. I’d like to see schools that have teachers that have bought into that plan and are trained to teach to that plan. Maybe if we begin to provide more focus at the central office, it’ll have a domino effect within the system.</p>
<p>Q Is there anything you’ve done so far that you would have done differently?</p>
<p>I probably would have gone slower on federal Title I. [Ten weeks into the school year, the administration abandoned its plans to phase in a massive shift in Title I schools; as a result, some schools had to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars in programs that were underway.] Even we didn’t realize the full impact of the reallocation. So I’m not in any way saying that we were comfortable with what happened.</p>
<p>From a personnel standpoint, I would have put Carlos Azcoitia immediately in School and Community Relations and Maribeth Vander Weele in investigations. Because Maribeth is like the Avenging Angel; she cannot be compromised. She’s absolutely relentless, driving everybody crazy. We rehired Joyce Price, who was fired by the previous board. She had a reputation for being a bloodhound for weeding out wrongdoing, which was probably one of the reasons that she was cut.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t have done anything different on Prosser. I might have attempted to get the guidelines out a day or two earlier.</p>
<p>Q One last question now. Have you emptied all the warehouses full of extra stuff?</p>
<p>I don’t know.</p>
<p>Q This sounds like a “did not confirm or deny.”</p>
<p>Pershing Road is pretty big, it’s 2 million square feet.</p> | The new Pershing Road makes no little plans | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/new-pershing-road-makes-no-little-plans/ | 2005-07-22 | 3 |
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<p>The support for Germany's Social Democrats has jumped to the highest level in almost four years in a poll that underscores the party's revival after it picked Martin Schulz as Chancellor Angela Merkel's election challenger.</p>
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<p>The SPD has climbed five percentage points to 26 percent after its choice of the former European president as the ideal candidate to unseat Merkel. The climb is the highest since the last election in 2013. Reports from the weekly Forsa poll that was published on Wednesday indicate that the chancellor's Christian Democratic-led bloc slipped two points to 35 percent.</p>
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<p>All polls suggest that Merkel's bloc will win majority of votes. However, Schulz's surprise candidacy is mobilizing support for a party that's trailed her for more than a decade ahead of the Sept. 24 election. Schulz has emphasized that he'll run on a platform of reducing inequality and easing austerity in the euro area. Nevertheless, he has not ruled out allying with the opposition Green and the anti-capitalist Left parties to lead a government and break out of the SPD's role as Merkel's junior.</p>
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<p>The managing director of Berlin-based Forsa made a statement on Wednesday in which he said that a portion of former SPD voters who had joined the ranks of non-voters or the undecided have now found their way back.</p>
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<p>In a statement made by Frankfurt, an analysts with the Deutsche Bank, there's likelihood that Schulz's nomination is likely going to push the SPD's campaign but unlikely to derail Merkel. If SPD is going to alter Germany's electoral math, about 7 percentage points or more will be fundamentally needed. However, if the Social Democrats boost their support enough to deny Merkel a possible alliance with the Greens, Schulzz will not resist joining Merkel as pointed out by analysts Barbara Boettcher and Dieter Braeuninger.</p> | Merkel's Challenger Leads Social Democrats to German Poll Boost | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/1245-Merkel-s-Challenger-Leads-Social-Democrats-to-German-Poll-Boost | 2017-02-02 | 0 |
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<p>Airlines are sparing no expense these days to enlarge, upgrade and increase the price of their first-class and business-class seating. As the space and dollars devoted to the front of the planes increase, something else has to be diminished, and, as multitudes of travelers can attest, it’s the experience of flying coach. The joys of air travel – once common to all who flew – have been redistributed upward for the well-heeled few.</p>
<p>The new business-class seats that Lufthansa is installing convert to quasi-beds that are 6 feet 6 inches long and two feet wide, The New York Times’ Jad Mouawad reports. The price for this commodious couch, round-trip from Kennedy airport to Frankfurt and back, is $5,000.</p>
<p>Lufthansa is hardly alone. Delta, United and American plan to upgrade business-class seats for cross-country and transcontinental flights. Then there’s Emirates, which sells first-class suites – complete with shower – that go for $19,000 on the New York-Dubai route.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>At the other end of the economic spectrum, low-cost airlines that re-create the thrill of traveling in steerage are thriving, too. The new business model, apparently, is to shrink the seats, charge extra for everything and offer nothing for free that might be construed as an amenity.</p>
<p>That’s certainly the credo of Spirit Airlines, which charges its benumbed passengers a fee for carry-on bags, $3 for water and $10 for printing boarding passes and whose seats don’t recline.</p>
<p>Spirit boasts one of the highest profit margins in the industry and plans to expand by 15 percent to 20 percent every year for the next eight years, according to the Los Angeles Times.</p>
<p>It also ranks last in customer satisfaction – indeed, in last year’s Consumer Reports survey, it had one of the lowest overall customer satisfaction scores of any company in any industry the magazine had ever surveyed.</p>
<p>But people fly Spirit because they can afford the fares.</p>
<p>The upgrading of business and the downgrading of coach present a fairly faithful mirror of what’s happening in the larger economy: the disappearance of the middle class.</p>
<p>As University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez has documented, between 2009 and 2011, the incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent of American families grew by 11.2 percent while those of the remaining 99 percent shrunk by 0.4 percent. Median household income has declined every year since 2008.</p>
<p>Profits, meanwhile, have risen to their highest share of the nation’s economy since World War II, while wages have sunk to their lowest share.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In an economy such as this, the growing markets are the rich and corporations, which have more money to spend on luxury travel, and the downwardly mobile everyone else, whose travel options are increasingly confined to discount outfits like Spirit and the increasingly hellacious coach sections of other airlines.</p>
<p>This week, one of the last airlines devoted to what we might call a middle-class travel experience succumbed to the increasing economic bipolarization of U.S. consumers.</p>
<p>JetBlue, which has never had a first-class or business section but which afforded its coach customers more legroom than other airlines, announced that it would create a new first-class section on its cross-country flights with suites containing seats that fold down to full lie-flat beds.</p>
<p>In an unusually concrete way, JetBlue’s change of cabin configuration highlights what the changes to our broader economy have meant. Its ability to provide its customers with more spacious seats was the direct result of not having a first-class section. Airplanes, like stagnating economies, are finite, and if one class takes up more space or commands more resources, the other class gets less.</p>
<p>The U.S. economy has not stagnated over the past four decades, but so much of its wealth has been claimed by the very top that most Americans have experienced it as a zero-sum game in which they’ve lost ground.</p>
<p>As tax rules favored the wealthy, as employees lost the power to bargain for wages, as globalization reduced the incomes of millions of workers, the rich grew richer at everyone else’s expense.</p>
<p>That’s the reality that today’s air travel illustrates, as the comfortable standard seat that once was the norm goes the way of the dwindling middle class.</p>
<p>Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect.</p>
<p /> | Comfy airline seats are going way of middle class | false | https://abqjournal.com/244524/comfy-airline-seats-are-going-way-of-middle-class.html | 2013-08-09 | 2 |
<p>HAMBURG, Germany — An enthusiastic Polish crowd chanted President Donald Trump’s name and “USA USA USA” as the American president gave a valentine of a speech in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square by a memorial to the 1944 Polish Uprising.</p>
<p>In a half hour, Trump essentially wrapped America in Polish history and likened the Poles’ resistance to the Nazis — most dramatically in a 63-day pitched battle that left more than 150,000 Poles dead and Warsaw a ruin — to America’s and the West’s fight against radical Islamist terrorism.</p>
<p>“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” Trump told the crowded square.</p>
<p>Trump also used the occasion to urge Russia “to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”</p>
<p>The president delivered an expected slap toward NATO nations that, unlike Poland, have missed the benchmark of spending more than two percent of their gross domestic product on defense. However, that criticism was balanced with an unsolicited embrace of Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defense clause, which Trump failed to endorse during his first trip to Europe in May.</p>
<p>Crowds waving U.S. and Polish flags gathered in and around the Warsaw square to hear Trump speak. “America loves Poland, and America loves the Polish people,” Trump said. The crowd returned the love.</p>
<p>Protests in Hamburg</p>
<p>It was a far different scene later in the day when Trump arrived in Hamburg, Germany, where columns of police tried to keep order as waves of protesters — some demonstrating their intent to commit violence by wearing black masks — hit the streets. Authorities expect as many as 100,000 protesters at the Group of 20 Summit, a two-day gathering of the world’s top economic powers.</p>
<p>German police used water cannons, pepper spray and batons to disperse marchers after some attacked them with bottles and other objects.</p>
<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is hosting the G-20 Summit, has made clear her differences with Trump on climate change, refugees and trade. “We are not going to paper over the differences but rather, we will call discord discord,” Merkel said last month.</p>
<p>Trump met with Merkel after arriving in Hamburg. The pair shook hands and spoke briefly while looking directly at each other. They then left for closed-door discussions.</p>
<p>The German government said Merkel and Trump discussed issues including North Korea, the situation in the Middle East and the conflict in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Trump is scheduled to meet face-to-face Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A number of high-ranking Democrats in Washington on Thursday demanded that Trump confront Putin over Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election, but Trump has refused to say if he will raise the issue.</p>
<p>First overseas press conference</p>
<p>Before his Warsaw address, Trump held a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda. It was the first time he took press questions overseas.</p>
<p>During the press conference, Trump declined to definitively declare that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. “I think it was Russia,” he said, but added that other countries also may have been involved.</p>
<p>Trump used the question to slam former President Barack Obama for failing to do more to combat foreign meddling when he was informed of it in August.</p>
<p>Trump reminded the room that the intelligence community is not infallible, and harkened back to the intelligence community’s near certainty under President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>“Everybody was 100 percent sure,” Trump recalled. “Guess what? They were wrong.”</p>
<p>Trump also used the occasion to again call CNN “fake news” and to chastise NBC for being almost as bad — even though his reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” made the network so much money.</p>
<p>Trump then looked to Duda and asked if the Polish president had to deal with the same sort of media coverage. Duda appeared quite sympathetic.</p>
<p>The “fake news” detour began when Daily Mail reporter David Martosko asked Trump about the fallout from a controversial tweet the president had sent that showed him wrestling with a man whose head had been replaced with a CNN logo.</p>
<p>Martosko then asked Duda about his Law and Justice Party’s attempts to clamp down on press freedoms by “limiting who can cover the parliament.” (Last year the Law and Justice Party made such a proposal, but Duda abandoned the plan after public protests.)</p>
<p>Duda’s answer could have come straight from Trump’s “fake news” playbook. The Polish president accused a Polish TV station of not covering his visit to Croatia, “because this broadcaster does not like me as the president of Poland.”</p>
<p>Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal. com or at 202-662-7391. Follow <a href="http://twitter.com/DebraJSaunders" type="external">@DebraJSaunders</a> on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this story.</p>
<p>All eyes on Trump-Putin</p>
<p>President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to size each other up in person for the first time on Friday.</p>
<p>Trump has said he wants to find ways to work with Putin, though the White House declined to offer details on what Trump would request of Putin and what he might offer in exchange for cooperation.</p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump wanted to talk about how the two countries can work together to stabilize war-ravaged Syria.</p>
<p>Reuters</p>
<p /> | Trump likens terrorism fight to Poland’s resistance to Nazis | false | https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/trump-likens-terrorism-fight-to-polands-resistance-to-nazis/ | 2017-07-06 | 1 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />LOS ALAMOS — The management group that operates northern New Mexico’s Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort is taking over the ski slopes near Los Alamos.</p>
<p>Resort officials say they are now planning for a full season of skiing and snowboarding at the Parajito Mountain Ski Area starting on Thanksgiving Day.</p>
<p>The Los Alamos Ski Club made the announcement Monday, saying the partnership with the Sipapu Group will allow the club’s traditions to continue and it will enhance recreational opportunities for the community.</p>
<p>Last May, the ski club — which had previously owned and operated Pajarito — voted to transfer the ski area to Los Alamos County and the Sipapu Group. The club is now in the process of transferring its assets to the group and the county.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Group takes over Pajarito Mountain Ski Area | false | https://abqjournal.com/483504/group-takes-over-pajarito-mountain-ski-area.html | 2 |
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<p>U.S. toymakers Mattel Inc and&#160;Hasbro&#160;Inc have held talks about a possible merger, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mattel's shares rose as much as 8.2 percent to a 16-month high of $34.36, while&#160;Hasbro&#160;was up 3.3 percent in afternoon trading on Thursday. (http://bloom.bg/1mgngZw)</p>
<p>The companies had a combined market capitalization of more than $20 billion as of Wednesday's closing.</p>
<p>Hasbro&#160;approached Mattel about a potential transaction late last year, and the companies have held talks about a deal since then, Bloomberg said citing the people.</p>
<p>The talks may not lead to a deal, Bloomberg reported, adding that details on how a deal might be structured could not be immediately learned.</p>
<p>Hasbro&#160;spokeswoman Julie Duff said the company does not comment on rumors or market speculation. Mattel was not immediately available for comment.</p>
<p>This is not the first time the companies have held merger talks. In 1996, Mattel had offered to buy&#160;Hasbro&#160;for about $5.2 billion, but withdrew the offer, citing an intolerable climate at the time.</p>
<p>In recent years, the companies have vied for lucrative contracts.</p>
<p>Hasbro&#160;won a license to make Walt Disney Co's Disney Princess dolls, including those based on the hit movie "Frozen". It also has the rights to make action figures based on the popular Star Wars franchise.</p>
<p>Mattel reported a surprise rise in holiday quarter sales, its first increase in over two years, boosted in part by recovering sales of its 56-year old Barbie brand.</p>
<p>Hasbro&#160;will report its holiday-quarter results on Monday.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Subrat Patnaik and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Report: Toymakers Mattel, Hasbro Held Talks on Possible Merger | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/02/04/report-toymakers-mattel-hasbro-held-talks-on-possible-merger.html | 2016-02-04 | 0 |
<p>If you take the long view, perhaps the most striking story of last Wednesday’s elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly is this one: the party that ruled the “Protestant state for a Protestant people” for most of its history after the partition of Ireland was outpolled by a movement that up to a decade ago was in armed insurrection against that state. Given Ireland’s alleged obsession with history, that story, of Sinn Fein overtaking the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in the popular vote, has been remarkably little noted. In fact, you would hardly know the two parties were competing in the same election. Instead, the election has been widely portrayed as two separate polls: one for supremacy among the Catholic/nationalist minority, in which Sinn Fein decisively overtook the SDLP (of which John Hume has retired as leader); and one contest for votes from the unionist majority, in which Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) trumped David Trimble’s UUP.</p>
<p>The bifurcated election, then, was united by a single headline, probably found somewhere in your local paper wherever in the world you’re reading this: “Hardliners triumphant”. Hume and Trimble may have picked up the Nobel Peace Prize, but it’s Gerry Adams, with his shady IRA past, and Paisley, with his fire-and-brimstone bigotry, who picked up the votes in their respective contests.</p>
<p>For a change, you can’t blame the media for the sectarian presentation of double results. It’s completely logical within the sectarian terms of the ‘power-sharing’ arrangement in Northern Ireland: government there must have the support of a majority in ‘both communities’, which means every elected ‘MLA’ (member of the legislative assembly) must tick a box to declare which side she or he is on. Thus the Alliance Party, which spent decades insisting it was neither/nor, opted for ‘unionism’ after the 1998 elections; Kieran Deeny, an independent newly elected on a protest vote in West Tyrone to preserve local hospital services, will have to declare (probably for ‘nationalism’) before he can start fighting for his constituents of whatever persuasion.</p>
<p>That’s why the DUP scored a decisive victory against the ‘Good Friday Agreement’, with just 27 per cent of the vote and 30 seats in the absurdly oversized 108-member assembly (itself a sort of welfare service designed to spread the booty of good government among a sceptical populace). Their majority of the unionist half of the equation, bolstered by a handful of anti-agreement individuals among Trimble’s elected UUP colleagues, means government can’t happen without Paisley’s blessing, even though pro-agreement nationalists and unionists together constitute a sizeable majority of the new assembly.</p>
<p>So the election campaign, already delayed when the British government got nervous last spring about the likely outcome, and begun stutteringly earlier this autumn after a Trimble-engineered fiasco over IRA ‘decommissioning’, has ended, only to give way not to a new government, but to the familiar scenario of bilateral meetings, talks about talks etc. The word games have already begun: do we need a ‘new agreement’? ‘Negotiations’? A ‘revised agreement’? A ‘review’? A ‘re-review’? (Will the present stalemate make the British more or less likely to propose a similar sectarian power-sharing arrangement for a new Iraqi ‘democracy’?)</p>
<p>Already the media seek cracks in the Paisleyite edifice, identifying the younger DUP smoothies who, we suspect, will eventually sit down with Sinn Fein (or “sup with Satan”, as the party leader might have it) if that’s the only way to a ministerial Mercedes. Gerry Adams appealed, smirkingly, directly to the Reverend himself: Christianity, Adams said, is all about “dialogue, conversation, and dealing with sinners”. No doubt thinking punningly of the nickname for members of his party, ‘Shinners’, Adams continued: “As a sinner, I offer myself on behalf of those I represent to be converted by Dr Paisley to his vision of the future.”</p>
<p>The institutionalization of sectarian politics in Northern Ireland only serves to make such miraculous conversions all the more unlikely. The cross-community Women’s Alliance took a battering in this election; the left-leaning Progressive Unionist Party, which despite its links to the paramilitary Ulster Voluntary Force has occasionally sounded open to nationalist arguments, was also badly dented; journalist Eamonn McCann, probably the most dedicated and admired socialist campaigner in Ireland over three-and-a-half decades, ran, hard, on a red-green ticket in his native Derry and got a fairly disappointing 5 per cent of first-preference votes, leaving him nowhere near the assembly.</p>
<p>You have to admire many of the individuals in Sinn Fein (e.g. Caitriona Ruane, a new MLA whose efforts on behalf of the ‘Colombia 3’ have been covered in CounterPunch). The party’s leadership has done extraordinarily well to preserve the IRA ceasefire while making historic compromises with unionism and the British government; they’ve got a helluva electoral machine to boot. But as Sinn Fein makes the by-now-familiar Irish trek from being a revolutionary movement to being a ‘slightly constitutional’ party of capitalist government (e.g. a Sinn Fein minister was in charge of health-service cutbacks in Northern Ireland under the last executive), one would hope that a clear political alternative would emerge on the left.</p>
<p>It hasn’t, despite the considerable advantage in these assembly elections of a PR system involving six-seat constituencies with a single transferable vote, roughly the same electoral system that applies in the Republic of Ireland. In US terms, it would mean you could vote for your favourite commie feminist for president; then see your vote shift to your number-two, say Nader, once she was eliminated from the count; and eventually watch it elect, gulp, Howard Dean, who would then know indisputably that he’d pushed past Dubya thanks to the low-preference ballots of left-wing voters. And you’d be drunk enough after 16 hours in front of the television watching umpteen counts of redistributed votes that you might even think that was a good thing.</p>
<p>Counterpuncher HARRY BROWNE is a lecturer in the school of media at Dublin Institute of Technology and a recently fired columnist for the Irish Times! He can be contacted at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland | true | https://counterpunch.org/2003/12/01/democracy-delayed-in-northern-ireland/ | 2003-12-01 | 4 |
<p>The Chinese People's Congress meets this week to select a new set of leaders for the country.</p>
<p>The decisions will all be made behind closed doors.</p>
<p>The regime is extremely concerned about any disruption.</p>
<p>"They're very insecure," says The World's Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad.</p>
<p>For example, "taxi-cabs must keep their windows closed to prevent passengers scattering leaflets."</p>
<p>Magistad says it couldn't be more different from what's happening in the US.</p> | China Braces for New Leadership | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-11-06/china-braces-new-leadership | 2012-11-06 | 3 |
<p>&lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/126164815@N04/17162302381/in/photolist-s9zhzc-s9CtHn-s9zqdP-rcCnMo-rcCtH1-rcCoQ5-s7kyEU-rS4nJW-rS4dBs-rSbnH8-s9u5GA-s7kDP1-rQirta-s7kxCo-rQiAnT-rcQ85T-s7ksMm-rSbgU4-rSbmCH-s7kAAh-s9zoBn-s9zkEv-rS4io1-rS35td-s9zmE6-fozL9Q-fozLHW-fozLxE-fozKYu-foku24-foktJv-fokupn-fokuk6-nCk7YS-nAi7E3-nkQC55-nCknCx-nC6FVj-nkQZem-nCk5QU-nCkr25-nC3JkK-nkQeuf-nC3w3t-nCjEeE-nC6E17-nC7geJ-AvpDN-atPLoW-pGFREG"&gt;MTEA&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
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<p>In a widely expected move, a panel appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/nyregion/new-york-minimum-wage-fast-food-workers.html?emc=edit_na_20150722&amp;nlid=54698227&amp;ref=headline&amp;_r=0" type="external">recommended</a> today that the state’s minimum wage for employees of fast-food chain restaurants be raised to $15 an hour.</p>
<p>The recommendation comes three years after <a href="" type="internal">strikes by New York City fast-food workers</a> set off a national labor movement that has led to the passage of a $15 minimum wage in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. But unlike those cities, New York doesn’t have the power to set its own minimum wage—it’s up to legislators in Albany.</p>
<p>When New York lawmakers balked at raising the minimum wage last year, Gov. Cuomo convened a board to examine wages in the fast food industry, which employs 180,000 people in the state. The state’s labor commissioner, a Cuomo appointee, has the power to issue an order putting the proposal into effect. If he approves the wage hike, fast-food workers currently earning the state’s minimum wage of $8.75 will get a 70 percent raise, effective by 2018 in New York City and 2021 in the rest of the state.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to explain to my children why they can’t do things other kids do,” Barbara Kelley, a Buffalo mother who works at Dunkin’ Donuts and takes home an average of $150 a week, said in a statement released by <a href="http://fightfor15.org/" type="external">labor organizers</a>. “With $15 an hour, I will be able to get by and maybe reward my kids in little ways, like ice cream after a long day, and in big ways like being able to save for the future.” Labor organizers are optimistic that the $15 wage will be adopted and will spur raises in other industries.</p>
<p /> | New York Fast-Food Workers Just Scored a Big Win In Their Fight For a Living Wage | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/new-york-fast-food-workers-minimum-wage/ | 2015-07-22 | 4 |
<p>MCCAIG/iStock</p>
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<p>Drama on the California drought front: On Friday, a group of water districts sued the State Water Resources Control Board in response to an <a href="" type="internal">order</a> prohibiting some holders of senior water rights from pumping out of some lakes and rivers.</p>
<p>“This is our water,” <a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/06/15/court-battles-loom-over-challenge-to-state-water-rights/" type="external">said</a> Steve Knell, general manager of Oakdale Irrigation District, to KQED’s Lauren Sommer. “We believe firmly in that fact and we are very vested in protecting that right.”</p>
<p>Water allotments in the Golden State are based on a byzantine <a href="" type="internal">system of water rights</a> that prioritizes senior water rights holders, defined as individuals, companies, and water districts that laid claim to the water before 1914. Typically, those with the oldest permits are the first to get water and the last to see it curtailed.</p>
<p>But on June 12, the state ordered the 114 senior water rights holders with <a href="http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/drought/docs/jun12pre14maillist.pdf" type="external">permits dating back to 1903</a> to stop pumping water from the San Joaquin and Sacramento watersheds, a normally fertile area encompassing <a href="" type="internal">most of northern California</a>. “There are some that have no alternative supplies and will have to stop irrigating crops,” <a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/06/15/court-battles-loom-over-challenge-to-state-water-rights/" type="external">admitted</a> Tom Howard, executive director of the State Water Resources Control Board. “There are others that have stored water or have wells that they can fall back on. It’s going to be a different story for each one and a struggle for all of them.” This is the first time since 1977 that the state has enacted curtailments on senior holders.</p>
<p>In response, an umbrella group called the <a href="http://calsmartwater.org/" type="external">San Joaquin Tributaries Authority</a> (which includes the Oakdale Irrigation District) has sued the state. In addition, the Patterson and Banta Carbona irrigation districts filed two separate lawsuits. The lawsuits claim the state overstepped its authority by curtailing water to districts that claimed rights to the water before the state set up a control board in 1913 to oversee water rights.</p>
<p>“Water right holders were here before the state exerted any authority over water,” <a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/06/15/court-battles-loom-over-challenge-to-state-water-rights/" type="external">said Knell</a>. “Most of our water rights go back to the mid-1800s. So the state having authority over something that we developed long before the state got into this business is the legal question we will be asking a judge.”</p>
<p /> | California Water Districts Just Sued the State Over Cuts to Farmers | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/water-districts-just-sued-state-over-water-rights/ | 2015-06-23 | 4 |
<p>by Rick PeckMcDonald County PressMarch 5, 2003</p>
<p>The largest mobilization of the Missouri National Guard since 1940 has hit home.Forty-five members of 203rd Engineer Battalion, Company A, Detachment 1, based in Anderson, have been mobilized to support Operation Enduring Freedom, Noble Eagle and will report to the unit’s armory March 15. The unit will be on active duty for up to 365 days.From there, around March 18, the unit will head to Fort Leonard Wood for final training before being deployed to “somewhere in the Middle East.”The mobilization of the 203rd includes soldiers from 10 detachments and involves 643 soldiers and their families.(...)Lt. Col. Frederick J. Koonce, the battalion’s commander, stressed that while deployed, it is vital that “my” soldiers keep their minds on their job at hand and that they need a high degree of confidence that everything is all right at home to do this.</p>
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<p /> | National Guard unit called to active duty | false | https://poynter.org/news/national-guard-unit-called-active-duty | 2003-03-07 | 2 |
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<p>Apple's iPhone SE. Image credit: Apple.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>On March 21, Apple announced the latest addition to its iPhone lineup -- the iPhone SE. The device is priced as the company's entry level model, with the 16 gigabyte version selling for $399 and the 64 gigabyte model coming in at $499.</p>
<p>Aside from its price, the device is novel because it has very high end processing performance and retains the display size and industrial design of the popular iPhone 5s.</p>
<p>Teardown specialists at Chipworks <a href="https://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/apple-iphone-se-teardown" type="external">got ahold Opens a New Window.</a> of an iPhone SE and many of the major components inside have been identified. Here are three of the winners.</p>
<p>No. 1: InvenSense In a prior <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/27/3-possible-winners-from-the-apple-inc-iphone-se.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">article Opens a New Window.</a>, I suggested that since the iPhone SE recycles components from the iPhone 6/6s, it could very well move to an iPhone 6/6s class motion processor. If Apple were to do this, rather than recycle the one used in the iPhone 5s, then this would represent a win for InvenSense which was not included in the 5s but did win spots in the iPhone 6 and 6s-series of devices.</p>
<p>The Chipworks tear-down shows that this is exactly what happened with the iPhone SE.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Given that iPhone 6s-series phones have seen weaker-than-expected demand and given that InvenSense apparently lost the main motion processor spot in the Samsung Galaxy S7, the motion processing specialist could certainly use this win.</p>
<p>No. 2: Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic has long provided audio chips into Apple's devices, so it's not surprising that the iPhone SE packs two audio chips from the chipmaker. What's interesting, though, is that Chipworks says that these chips are the same ones that are found in the iPhone 6s/6s Plus.</p>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/09/25/cirrus-logic-inc-soars-on-iphone-6s-content-win.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">believed Opens a New Window.</a> that Cirrus saw a boost in dollar content boost in the iPhone 6s/6s Plus (and by implication the iPhone SE) relative to the prior generation iPhone 6/6 Plus (and certainly relative to the iPhone 5s). To the extent that iPhone SE sales take the place of would-have-been iPhone 5s sales as well as cannibalize iPhone 6/6 Plus sales, Cirrus should benefit.</p>
<p>No. 3: Qualcomm In going from the iPhone 5s to the iPhone 6s, Apple has apparently adopted Qualcomm's MDM9625M modem and accompanying WTR1625L RF transceiver. This is the same cellular modem and RF transceiver that was found inside of the iPhone 6/6 Plus generation of smartphones.</p>
<p>Though not a terribly huge win for Qualcomm, the wireless chip giant does get to see some increased content relative to what it had inside of the iPhone 5s. Given that Apple shipped at least 30 million iPhone 5s phones in 2015, and given the attractive price point and feature-set of the new phone, this could work out to be a small positive for Qualcomm overall.</p>
<p>The thing that investors should really watch for, though, is what kind of content increases Qualcomm will see in the next generation iPhone and whether it will ultimately have to <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/30/likely-no-intel-corp-inside-the-iphone-se-analysts.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">share those spots Opens a New Window.</a> with a competitor.</p>
<p>Interesting, but not game changingAt the end of the day, the iPhone SE should be a nice device for some of Apple's suppliers, particularly the first two mentioned in the above list. However, what is really going to be important to investors in Apple suppliers is what components the iDevice maker uses in the iPhone 7/7 Plus and how that content compares to that in the iPhone 6s/6s Plus.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/31/3-winners-from-the-apple-inc-iphone-se-teardown.aspx" type="external">3 Winners from the Apple Inc. iPhone SE Teardown Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/aeassa/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Ashraf Eassa Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple, InvenSense, and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends Cirrus Logic. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Winners from the Apple Inc. iPhone SE Teardown | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/3-winners-from-apple-inc-iphone-se-teardown.html | 2016-03-31 | 0 |
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<p>Very impressive how POTUS has improved over the past seven years:</p>
<p>He's a much better liar now?</p>
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<p>".Those of us who remember the first Obama presidential campaign may recall this telling interview Garrett conducted with Obama on another occasion, like today, when Obama's answers turned out to be unsatisfactory".</p>
<p>Don't think for a minute that Barack Obama has forgotten any of this. The intensity of his response betrays how he hasn't.</p>
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<p>“… Bring large-scale conservatively structured music … that will be unique and fresh without seeming odd or overly commercial,” Bass wrote in an email.</p>
<p>The New Mexico Philharmonic’s “Holiday Joy” concert, which Bass is guest-conducting, is just such an attempt, he said.</p>
<p>The program opens with Bass’ own setting of the liturgical “Gloria” text from the Roman Catholic Mass. The text isn’t sung during Masses during Advent but reappears on Christmas morning.</p>
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<p>Bass wrote that his work has both “highly energetic and lyrical moments, and is easily the most-performed large work from my compositional catalog.”</p>
<p>The New York Pops Orchestra under Skitch Henderson premiered it in a 1990 Christmas concert in Carnegie Hall.</p>
<p>It is followed by a short sequence from W.A. Mozart’s orchestration of Handel’s “Messiah.”</p>
<p>The next work in the first half is the most extensive on the program. “Glad Tidings – The Story of Christmas” is Bass’ musical arrangement of the biblical Christmas story paraphrased from the Scriptures and other sources. Clifton Chadwick narrates. It has seven movements “of familiar Christmas carols intertwined with the textual underlays relating the well-known account of the birth of Jesus,” Bass wrote in the email.</p>
<p>The last selection in the first half is Leroy Anderson’s tune “Sleigh Ride.”</p>
<p>A festive non-holiday piece opens the second half – the overture to Johann Strauss’ opera “Die Fledermaus.” It is followed by three holiday songs from the movie “Home Alone” by award-winning film composer John Williams.</p>
<p>“No orchestral Christmas program would be complete without a rendition of the traditional ‘Silent Night,’ and owing to the culture of New Mexico and its colorfully Hispanic roots, we will perform this carol in its Spanish translation, ‘Noche de Paz,'” Bass said.</p>
<p>Next up is a short sing-along followed by Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry narrating the Clement Moore poem “The Night Before Christmas” with accompanying orchestral music.</p>
<p>The concert concludes with a medley of popular songs, including “Frosty, the Snowman,” “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” and “Jingle Bells.”</p> | Philharmonic presents orchestral Christmas chorus | false | https://abqjournal.com/152025/philharmonic-presents-orchestral-christmas-chorus.html | 2012-12-09 | 2 |
<p>The Promise Keeper, aka Donald Trump, has now retreated on yet another statement he made during the campaign that won him votes. Last December, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/12/07/e56266f6-9d2b-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html" type="external">issued a statement</a> in which he called for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” He told a South Carolina rally that a ban was “common sense” and that his Muslim friends agreed with him.</p>
<p>But on Wednesday, Trump, as usual, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/trump-muslim-ban-was-just-a-suggestion-223102" type="external">backed down</a> from statements he made during the campaign, telling Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade that his December call was “just a suggestion.” Trump mewled, “We have a serious problem. It’s a temporary ban. It hasn’t been called for yet. Nobody’s done it. This is just a suggestion until we find out what’s going on.” He went even further with Fox Host Greta Van Susteren, who said some people were worried that the proposed ban could “go on forever.”</p>
<p>Trump <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-on-muslim-ban-sure-id-back-off-on-it/" type="external">whined</a>, “It was never meant to be. I mean, that’s why it was temporary. Sure I’d back off on it, I’d like to back off it as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>Trump’s latest foray into retreat shows his utter contempt for the American electorate, as he pulled his usual routine, staking out the hardest position on a subject to win votes, and then backing down later.</p>
<p>His latest retreat followed his comment to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/05/09/donald-trump-says-new-london-mayor-could-be-exception-to-his-ban-on-muslims/" type="external">The New York Times</a> on Tuesday that he would make an “ <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-rejects-donald-trumps-offer-to-be-exception-to-muslim-ban/" type="external">exception</a>” to his proposed Muslim ban for the new Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.</p>
<p>Trump’s new best friend Chris Christie, had condemned Trump for his statement in December, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/politics/donald-trump-muslim-ban/" type="external">saying</a>, "This is the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don't know what they are talking about. We do not need to resort to that type of activity nor should we. What we need to do is to increase our intelligence activities. We need to cooperate with peaceful Muslim Americans who want to give us intelligence against those who are radicalized."</p>
<p>"Sure I’d back off on it, I’d like to back off it as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>Donald Trump, reneging on his famous proposal to ban Muslims</p>
<p>Trump’s soon-to-be best friend, Paul Ryan, had responded to Trump by stating that Trump's proposal was "not who we are as a party" and violated the Constitution, adding, "This is not conservatism. Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islam terror are Muslims."</p>
<p>That’s the beauty of Trump; he can say anything to win support, then change his mind, because when your father tells you as a child <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1203-dantonio-trump-race-horse-theory-20151203-story.html" type="external">that you are a king</a>, and you grow up believing it, your royal edicts do not require any thought or loyalty to anyone but yourself.</p> | Trump On Muslim Immigration Ban: Eh, I Was Just Making A Suggestion | true | https://dailywire.com/news/5685/trump-muslim-immigration-ban-eh-i-was-just-making-hank-berrien | 2016-05-12 | 0 |
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<p>BOSTON (MA)Boston GlobeBy Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff, 5/19/2003</p>
<p>Back Bay priest who was pulled from his pulpit last week told his parishioners yesterday that despite their swelling resentment toward the bishop who dismissed him for alleged financial improprieties, they should cooperate with church leaders to protect the social programs their parish has worked so hard to create.</p>
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<p>In an emotional farewell homily, the Rev. Michael F. Groden urged his flock ''to work in a most constructive way with the archdiocesan bishop,'' Richard G. Lennon, who forced him out.</p>
<p>Groden, who is credited with reviving St. Cecelia's Parish and effectively leading the diocese office that develops housing for the needy, was forced to resign after it came to light that he had been receiving two salaries and had charged about $20,000 in personal expenses to the housing office. But a dozen churchgoers in one of the city's wealthiest parishes yesterday said they believe the firing was politically motivated.</p>
<p>''When you're developing affordable housing in Boston, you have to be persistent, and if you're really going to accomplish something, you have to step on a few toes,'' said Jackie O'Neill, a parishioner for 15 years and the wife of former lieutenant governor Thomas P. O'Neill III. ''You're going to have a few enemies around town, and probably that's been the case with Michael.''</p> | Ousted pastor urges focus on saving social programs | false | https://poynter.org/news/ousted-pastor-urges-focus-saving-social-programs | 2003-05-19 | 2 |
<p>The Anti-Empire Report</p>
<p>On the Fourth of July, Senator Patrick Leahy declared he was optimistic that, unlike the Soviet forces that were driven from Afghanistan 20 years ago, US forces could succeed there. The Democrat from Vermont stated:</p>
<p>The Russians were sent running as they should have been. We helped send them running. But they were there to conquer the country. We’ve made it very clear, and everybody I talk to within Afghanistan feels the same way: they know we’re there to help and we’re going to leave. We’ve made it very clear we are going to leave. And it’s going to be turned back to them. The ones that made the mistakes in the past are those that tried to conquer them.[1]</p>
<p>Leahy is a long-time liberal on foreign-policy issues, a champion of withholding US counter-narcotics assistance to foreign military units guilty of serious human-rights violations, and an outspoken critic of robbing terrorist suspects of their human and legal rights. Yet he is willing to send countless young Americans to a living hell, or horrible death, or maimed survival.</p>
<p>And for what? Every point he made in his statement is simply wrong.</p>
<p>The Russians were not in Afghanistan to conquer it. The Soviet Union had existed next door to the country for more than 60 years without any kind of invasion. It was only when the United States intervened in Afghanistan to replace a government friendly to Moscow with one militantly anti-communist that the Russians invaded to do battle with the US-supported Islamic jihadists; precisely what the United States would have done to prevent a communist government in Canada or Mexico.</p>
<p>It’s also rather difficult for the United States to claim that it’s in Afghanistan to help the people there when it’s killed tens of thousands simply for resisting the American invasion and occupation or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; not a single one of the victims has been identified as having had any kind of connection to the terrorist attack in the US of September 11, 2001, the event usually cited by Washington as justification for the military intervention. Moreover, Afghanistan is now permeated with depleted uranium, cluster bombs-cum-landmines, white phosphorous, a witch’s brew of other charming chemicals, and a population, after 30 years of almost non-stop warfare, of physically and mentally mutilated human beings, exceedingly susceptible to the promise of paradise, or at least relief, sold by the Taliban.</p>
<p>As to the US leaving … utterly meaningless propaganda until it happens. Ask the people of South Korea — 56 years of American occupation and still counting; ask the people of Japan — 64 years. And Iraq? Would you want to wager your life’s savings on which decade it will be that the last American soldier and military contractor leaves?</p>
<p>It’s not even precise to say that the Russians were sent running. That was essentially Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision, and it was more of a political decision than a military one. Gorbachev’s fondest ambition was to turn the Soviet Union into a West-European style social democracy, and he fervently wished for the approval of those European leaders, virtually all of whom were cold-war anti-communists and opposed the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan.</p>
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<p>[1]&#160; Vermont TV station WCAX, July 4, 2009, WCAX.com</p> | The Myths of Afghanistan, Past and Present | false | http://foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/08/05/the-myths-of-afghanistan-past-and-present/ | 2009-08-05 | 1 |
<p />
<p />
<p>From The Source: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.asp?cid=N00013770&amp;cycle=2002" type="external">Campaign Finance filing for Bill Shuster</a></p>
<p>Related Coverage: <a href="http://www.voicesweb.org/voices/pe/shuster0401.html" type="external">Boss Shuster</a> — Voices of Central Pennsylvania</p>
<p />
<p>He forced the Republican Party to bloat his son’s campaign chest to $1 million. That was three times the amount gathered by the other fellow, who had no Congressional relatives. “This is about Bill Shuster,” Bill Shuster insisted, “and Bill Shuster standing on his own two feet.” Shuster won the election and is heading to D.C., where he can discuss his rugged individualism with FCC chair Michael Powell, son of Colin; Solicitor of the Labor Department Eugene Scalia, son of Antonin; Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist, daughter of William; and, of course, President George W. Bush.</p>
<p>The Common Touch Award</p>
<p>Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) screamed at three parking-lot security officers in Atlanta when his shuttle van was held up at the entrance. The most polite account alleges Barr yelled at one of the guards, “When are you going to open the gate, you stupid black idiot?” Another version says Barr called a guard a “nigger.”</p>
<p>Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) left his car idling at an airport (post-9/11) and returned to find a cop, Sergeant Edward Stupka, writing a $15 ticket. Watts blew his lid, crammed the ticket behind Stupka’s badge, and told him to “take care of it.” “I could have been a terrorist carrying a bomb,” Watts screamed, “and you would never have seen it!” He drove off after Stupka threw the ticket into his car. When called on his arrogance, Watts refused to apologize. His wife paid the fine.</p>
<p>Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) drove over a 13-year-old boy’s foot just outside the Capitol in 2001 and then left the scene.</p>
<p>Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose voice can be heard on millions of his Viper car alarms shouting, “Stand back!” was stopped by Border Patrol for “driving 90 mph through an Interstate 5 construction zone at San Clemente.” He insisted to the officer, “It’s not your job to stop me for speeding.”</p>
<p><a href="diddly_02.html" type="external">Back</a> | <a href="diddly_04.html" type="external">And the winner is…</a></p>
<p /> | Bud Shuster | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2002/09/bud-shuster/ | 2018-09-01 | 4 |
<p>Photo by Tyler Merbler | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Trump’s series of threats this week was a one-two punch. First, he threatened to impose national security tariffs on steel and aluminum, primarily against Canada and Mexico (along with Korea and Japan). Then, he suggested an alternative: He would exempt these countries if they agree to certain U.S. demands.</p>
<p>But these demands make so little economic sense that they should be viewed as an exercise in what academia used to call power politics. Or in Trump’s world, Us versus Them, a zero-sum game in which he has to show that America wins, they lose.</p>
<p>It won’t work. Trump’s diplomatic ploy with Mexico is to say that he’ll be willing to exempt them from the steel and aluminum tariffs if they agree to (1) build the wall that he promised to make them build, and (2) give other special favors to the United States. He can then go to American voters and say, “See, we won; Mexico lost.”</p>
<p>This is unlikely to elicit a Mexican surrender. Its president already has said that building a wall makes no sense, and cancelled the planned diplomatic visit to Washington last week. Giving in to Trump’s election promise to American voters (or more to the point, indulging in his own ego trip about the wall) would be political suicide. Trump would crow that he made Mexico bow to his bidding.</p>
<p>Matters aren’t much better in Canada. While some Pennsylvania and Ohio steel companies probably will try to make Trump look good by hiring back a few hundred workers if and when the tariffs are announced, Canada and other suppliers would have to be laid off. Canadian resentment already has been building up for decades, ever since the auto agreement of the 1960s and ‘70s that favored U.S. suppliers.</p>
<p>But the real economic problem comes from within the United States itself. If new steel workers are hired, they may be laid off in a few months. Most important is the bigger economy-wide picture: The Chamber of Commerce and other groups have calculated that the loss of jobs in steel- and aluminum-using industries will far outnumber the new hiring of steel and aluminum workers.</p>
<p>NPR on Wednesday had a maker of beer kegs explain that if the cost of steel goes up, he can’t afford to match the prices of foreign keg manufacturers who buy their raw materials cheaper – and do NOT have tariffs raised on higher manufactures.</p>
<p>There are many good arguments for protectionism. These arguments are in fact much better than the free-trade patter talk used to indoctrinate college economics students. Of all the branches of today’s mainstream economics, free-trade theory is the most unrealistic. If it were realistic, Britain, the United States and Germany never would have risen to world industrial powers. (I review the fallacies of free-trade theory in <a href="" type="internal">Trade, Development and Foreign Debt</a>.)</p>
<p>Economic history provides a long and excellent successful pedigree of good arguments for protective tariffs. Britain created its empire by protectionism, stifling manufactures in the United States as long as it pursued free trade. After the Civil War ended, America built up its industry and agriculture by protectionism, as did Germany and France. (I discuss the strategy in <a href="" type="internal">America’s Protectionist Takeoff: 1815-1914</a>.)</p>
<p>But as each of these nations became world leaders, they sought to pull up the ladder and prevent other countries from protecting their own industry and agriculture. So they changed to “free trade imperialism.” The aim of industrial leaders is to convince other <a href="https://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-the-host-digital-book/" type="external" />countries not to regulate or plan their own markets, but to let the United States engineer an asymmetrical trade policy whose aim is to make other countries dependent on its food exports and monopoly exports, while opening their markets to U.S. companies.</p>
<p>Since the 1920s the protectionist economies that came to support free trade have rewritten of history to white out how they got rich. The strategy of protectionism has been forgotten. Trump’s so-called protective tariffs against steel and aluminum are the antithesis to every principle of protectionism. That is why they are so self-destructive.</p>
<p>A really nationalistic trade strategy is to buy raw materials cheaply, and sell finished manufactured goods at a high value-added price.</p>
<p>The idea of industrial protectionism, from British free trade in the 19th century to U.S. trade strategy in the 20th century, was to obtain raw materials in the cheapest places – by making other countries compete to supply them – and protect your high-technology manufactures where the major capital investment, profits and monopoly rents are.</p>
<p>Trump is doing the reverse: He’s increasing the cost of steel and aluminum raw materials inputs. This will squeeze the profits of industrial companies using steel and aluminum – without protecting their markets.</p>
<p>In fact, other countries are now able to legally raise their tariffs to protect their highest-technology sectors that might be most threatened by U.S. exports. Harley Davidson motorcycles have been singled out. They also can block U.S. monopoly exports, such as bourbon and Levi blue jeans, or pharmaceuticals. Or, China can block whatever U.S. technology it decides it wants to compete with.</p>
<p>Trump’s tariff threats caused short-term aluminum prices to jump by 40 percent, and steel prices by about 33 percent. This raises the price of these materials to U.S. manufacturers, squeezing their profits. Foreign manufacturers will not have their materials prices increased, and so can out-compete with U.S. steel- or aluminum-using rivals. The global oversupply in fact may make the price of steel and aluminum decline in foreign markets. So foreign industry will gain a cost advantage.</p>
<p>On top of that, foreign countries can legally raise tariffs in their own markets – for whatever industries they deem will best gain from this advantage.</p>
<p>Trump’s tariffs will not induce new capital investment in steel or aluminum</p>
<p>America’s logic behind protective tariffs after the Civil War ended the Southern free-trade policies was that tariff protection would create a price umbrella enabling U.S. manufacturers to invest in plant and equipment. Britain already had made these sunk costs, so the United States had to include the cost of capital in its revenue.</p>
<p>That’s how America built up its steel industry, chemical industry and other manufacturing industry.</p>
<p>But no steel or aluminum company is likely to invest more or hire more U.S. labor as a result of higher tariff revenues. These companies may raise their prices, but neither investment nor trickle-down effects are likely.</p>
<p>For one thing, aluminum is made out of electricity, and America is a high-cost producer. Alcan – America’s largest supplier – has a rip-off deal with Iceland getting electricity almost for nothing.</p>
<p>For steel, it takes a long time to build a modern steel mill. No company will do this without an assured market. Trump’s tariff increases do not guarantee that.</p>
<p>America’s policy of breaking international agreements (we’re the “indispensable nation”)</p>
<p>Few companies, labor groups or banks in New York City have been willing to trust Mr. Trump in recent years. He should have called his book “The Art of BREAKING THE deal.” That’s how he made his money. He would sign an agreement with suppliers to his hotels or other buildings, and then offer only 80 cents (or less) on the dollar. He’d tell them, in effect: “You want to sue? That will cost you $50,000 to get into court, and then wait three or four years, by which time we’ll have made enough money to pay you on the cheap.”</p>
<p>Bank lenders had as much trouble getting paid as did Trump’s hapless suppliers. He made his fortune this way – so successfully that he seems to believe that he can use the same strategy in international diplomacy, just as he’s threatening to break the Iran agreement.</p>
<p>Will this work? Or are foreign economies coming to view the United States as “not agreement-capable”? In fact, will U.S. companies themselves believe that agreements signed today will still be honored tomorrow?</p>
<p>Trump’s national security ploy to bypass Congressional authority over trade policy</p>
<p>This is not the first time the United States has raised tariffs unilaterally. George W. Bush did it. And my 1979 book, <a href="" type="internal">Global Fracture</a>, describes U.S. protectionism in the 1970s against other countries. America did it again and again.</p>
<p>But Trump has introduced some new twists. First of all, former U.S. protectionism had Congressional backing. But Trump has bypassed Congress, no doubt aware that steel-using and aluminum-using industries can mobilize Congressional support against Trump.</p>
<p>So Trump has used the one play available to the Executive Branch: the National Security umbrella. In a great mind-expansion exercise he claims that it would be a loss of national security to depend on neighboring Canada, Mexico, or allies such as South Korea and Japan for steel and aluminum. If he can convince a kangaroo trade court, this loophole is indeed allowed under WTO rules (GATT Article XXI). The idea was to apply to times of war or other great crisis. But U.S. steel and aluminum production has been steady for over a decade, and there seems to be no military or economic crisis affecting national security.</p>
<p>Suppose Trump gets away with it. Other countries can play this “national security” game. Any economic activity can be deemed national security, because every economy is an overall system, with every given part affecting all the others. So Trump has opened the door for overall asymmetrical jockeying for position. The most likely arena may be high-technology and military-related sectors.</p>
<p>Back in the 1980s this was called “Uncle Sucker” patter talk – acting as if the United States was the exploited party, not the exploiting actor in international trade and investment. Ultimately at issue is how much policy asymmetry the rest of the world is willing to tolerate. Can the United States still push other countries around as it has done for so many years? How far can America push its one-sided agreements before other countries break away?</p>
<p>Each foreign country threatened with loss of steel or aluminum exports has a more high-tech industry that it would like to protect against U.S. competition. The response is likely to be asymmetrical.</p>
<p>And here at home, how long will higher manufacturing industries back Mr. Trump and his policy that makes a travesty of “smart” protectionism?</p> | Trump’s Travesty of Protectionism | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/09/trumps-travesty-of-protectionism/ | 2018-03-09 | 4 |
<p />
<p>There's insufficient to no evidence that marijuana is an effective treatment for cancer.That's what the National Academies ofSciences, Engineering, and Medicine said in a comprehensive report on the health effects of marijuana in January. But this report's conclusion might already be in question.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH) recently announced encouraging results from a mid-stage clinical study of a cannabis-based drug combination in treating an aggressive type of brain cancer. Could marijuana potentially become the next "miracle drug" for treating cancer?</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>A combination of two chemicals derived from marijuana,tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), was administered to 12 patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Another 9 patients were given placebo. All patients were also on temozolomide,a standard chemotherapy used for treating brain cancer. Results from the THC/CBD patient arm of the study were significantly better than the placebo group.</p>
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<p>The study found that patients who were treated with the THC/CBD combo had an 83% survival rate at one year compared to a 53% survival rate for patients in the placebo cohort. Median survival for the patients taking the THC/CBD combo was over 550 days. Median survival for the placebo group was 369 days.</p>
<p>Researchers were also encouraged by the safety profile of the cannabinoid treatment. GW Pharmaceuticals' THC/CBD combo was generally well tolerated. The most common adverse events were vomiting, dizziness, nausea, headache, and constipation.</p>
<p>Glioblastoma multiformeis one of the most common types of brain tumors -- and one of the most aggressive. Only28.4% of patients on average survive one year after diagnosis, with 3.4% surviving to year five. The severity of the disease and lack of effective treatments has led to a flurry of activity by biopharmaceutical companies and cancer research organizations. Over 150 mid- and late-stage clinical trials targeting GBM are currently active.</p>
<p>Based on these positive results, GW Pharmaceuticals is following up with regulatory agencies on a pivotal clinical study for the THC/CBD combo in treating GBM. The company is also exploring opportunities to evaluate the cannabinoid treatment in treating other forms of cancer.</p>
<p>Cannabinoids have shown considerable potential for treating other indications (such as GW Pharmaceuticals' cannabinoid Epidiolex in treating rare forms of epilepsy). However, there hasn't been much progress thus far with the drugs tackling cancer.</p>
<p>Two drugs that contain a synthetic form of THC are currently available for treating nausea associated with chemotherapy. Dronabinol and nabilone were both approved in 1985.</p>
<p>Cannabics Pharmaceuticalshas a late-stage study underway evaluating cannabis capsules for treatingcancer anorexia cachexia syndrome (CACS), a disorder where cancer patients lose skeletal muscle and fat.Another phase 2/3 study is being conducted in Mexico for nabilone in reducing anorexia and improving the quality of life in lung cancer patients.</p>
<p>There are also some clinical studies in progress evaluating CBD in treating graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). GVHD occurs after a bone marrow or stem cell transplant from another person and can be a complication of cancer treatments.</p>
<p>All of these examples, though, only address peripheral indications related to cancer. None focus on marijuana-based drugs tackling cancer head-on.That's why GW Pharmaceuticals' latest results are so important.</p>
<p>Any drug that could extend the life expectancy of patients with severe brain cancer might be legitimately called a "miracle drug," especially considering the lack of effective treatments so far. However, it's too soon to bestow that description on GW Pharmaceuticals' THC/CBD combo.</p>
<p>The number of patients included in the mid-stage clinical study conducted by the company was small. More studies with more patients are needed. The good news is that's exactly what GW Pharmaceuticals is planning. Perhaps in the next few years, there will be plenty of evidence that marijuana-based drugs are effective in treating cancer. And it shouldn't require a miracle for that to happen.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than GW PharmaceuticalsWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=30e71d38-c385-4331-9065-58db50fbd190&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and GW Pharmaceuticals wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=30e71d38-c385-4331-9065-58db50fbd190&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Could Marijuana Be the Next Miracle Drug for Treating Cancer? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/19/could-marijuana-be-next-miracle-drug-for-treating-cancer.html | 2017-02-23 | 0 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/facebook/" type="external">Facebook</a> is going to ship a standalone VR headset called Oculus Go next year. The headset, which won’t require a PC or phone to run, will be available early next year for $199.</p>
<p><a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/facebook-make-up-or-break-up-extension-shan-boody-1202584381/" type="external">Facebook</a> CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially announced the new product during his keynote speech at&#160;Facebook’s fourth <a href="http://variety.com/t/oculus-connect/" type="external">Oculus Connect</a> <a href="http://variety.com/t/virtual-reality/" type="external">virtual reality</a> (VR) developer conference in San Jose, Calif. Wednesday, where he framed the device as an important step towards bringing VR to the masses.</p>
<p>“We want to get a billion people in <a href="http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/jumanji-vr-experience-1202585719/" type="external">virtual reality</a>,” Zuckerberg said.</p>
<p>Facebook VP of VR Hugo Barra said that the company developed custom lenses for the headset, which allow for a wide field of view. The display is a fast-switch LCD screen with a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels, and it comes with integrated headphones. The company will be shipping first headsets to developers in November.</p>
<p>Oculus Go will ship with a handheld controller and work with the same apps available on Samsung’s Gear VR headset. However, it won’t have any positional tracking, which means that high-end VR apps available on the Oculus Rift headset won’t run on the device.</p>
<p>On that front, Oculus is also continuing its work on a high-end standalone headset.&#160;Zuckerberg showed off a first prototype of the wireless headset at last year’s <a href="http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/blade-runner-disney-oculus-virtual-reality-1201880510/" type="external">Oculus Connect</a> conference. The headset was then known under the code name “Santa Cruz.”</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that the company will be shipping developer versions of this high-end standalone headset some time next year. This likely means that it won’t be available to consumers until 2019.</p>
<p>Developing.</p>
<p /> | Facebook Announces $199 Oculus Go Standalone VR Headset | false | https://newsline.com/facebook-announces-199-oculus-go-standalone-vr-headset/ | 2017-10-11 | 1 |
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<p>DALLAS — It’s not your usual car abandoned on the side of a road.</p>
<p>A Dallas police impound lot is the new home for a yellow Lamborghini left on the Dallas North Tollway.</p>
<p>Police found the Italian luxury sports car on the shoulder of the highway Sunday after its driver apparently hit a retaining wall and then left the car there.</p>
<p>Dallas TV station WFAA reports ( <a href="http://bit.ly/1EFkrab" type="external">http://bit.ly/1EFkrab</a> ) police found no identifying information in the vehicle.</p>
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<p>Lamborghini prices begin at about $200,000.</p>
<p>Police called for a tow truck which hauled it away.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Information from: WFAA-TV, <a href="http://www.wfaa.com" type="external">http://www.wfaa.com</a></p> | Lamborghini left abandoned on Dallas highway | false | https://abqjournal.com/552091/lamborghini-left-abandoned-on-dallas-highway.html | 2 |
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<p>From Hot Air:</p>
<p>It’d be easy to think, based on all the press coverage Occupy Wall Street has received (we’re up to&#160; <a href="http://biggovernment.com/jjmnolte/2011/10/28/occupywallstreet-the-rap-sheet-so-far/" type="external">333 violent or outrageous incidents</a>, by the way!), that the American people hate business. After all, what is “Wall Street” except an abstraction of business? But, as it turns out, more than 60 percent of Americans have a favorable view of major companies and a full 90 percent of Americans have a favorable view of small businesses, according to a Public Affairs Pulse Survey cited in an article on&#160; <a href="http://www.chamberpost.com/2011/11/survey-generation-y-most-favorable-toward-business/" type="external">ChamberPost.com</a>.</p>
<p>But what was arguably most interesting about the study is that it revealed Generation Y — ages 18 to 34 — are actually the&#160;most&#160;likely to think highly of major companies. That might be yet one more statistic that helps to correct the popular misperception that Occupy Wall Street consists of mainly spoiled adolescents. As more information about the demographics of OWS has come out, it’s become increasingly evident that the original hippies are&#160;still&#160;the hippies. According to&#160; <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1792056/occupy-wall-street-demographics-infographic" type="external">data</a>&#160;from Fast Company, about 44.5 percent of the protesters are aged 25 to 44 and another 32 percent are older than 44. Just 23.5 percent of the protesters are 25 and under.</p>
<p>Photo courtesy Bob Jagendorf, Flickr</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/23/turns-out-americans-still-like-business-after-all/" type="external">(Read Full Article)</a></p> | Turns out, young Americans still like business after all | false | http://capoliticalreview.com/trending/turns-out-americans-still-like-business-after-all/ | 2011-11-26 | 1 |
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<p>History was made across Tuesday’s 89th annual Academy Awards nominations, where the retro musical “La La Land” reaped a record-tying 14 nominations and a wave of African-American films, led by the luminous coming-of-age portrait “Moonlight,” resoundingly toppled two straight years of “so white” Oscars.</p>
<p>The twin forces — Damien Chazelle’s candy-colored love letter to musicals and a broad group of diverse films that also included Denzel Washington’s fiery August Wilson adaptation “Fences” and the uplifting African-American mathematician tale “Hidden Figures” — dominated the nominations .</p>
<p>The 14 nods for “La La Land,” including best picture, best actress for Emma Stone, best actor for Ryan Gosling and best director for Chazelle, matched the record hauls of 1997’s “Titanic” and 1950’s “All About Eve.” A disoriented Chazelle, speaking by phone from Beijing, said, “All that I have in my head is ‘thank you’ a million times over.”</p>
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<p>Also a record: the six black actors nominated, including “Fences” stars Washington and Viola Davis, Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris of “Moonlight,” Ruth Negga of “Loving” and Octavia Spencer of “Hidden Figures.” Dev Patel, the British-Indian star of “Lion,” was also nominated, making it seven actors of color nominated out of 20.</p>
<p>It made for a stark contrast to the last two years of all-white acting nominees, a disparity that prompted widespread outrage throughout the film industry and led academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs to revamp the academy’s membership.</p>
<p>Jenkins, who was nominated for directing and adapted screenplay, said the eight nominations for “Moonlight” and those for other films showed that people were eager to put themselves in the shoes of others. “Moonlight,” “Fences” and “Hidden Figures” were each nominated for best picture.</p>
<p>“I love the American film industry and to see it this year, I feel, really reflect the world that we all live and work in, it gives me hope,” Jenkins said by phone from Amsterdam. “It heartens me. There’s a lot of work being done to make this year not be an anomaly.”</p>
<p>Nine films out of a possible ten were nominated for best picture. The others were: Denis Villeneuve’s cerebral alien thriller “Arrival,” Kenneth Lonergan’s New England family drama “Manchester by the Sea,” the West Texas heist thriller “Hell or High Water,” the “Lion,” and Mel Gibson’s World War II drama “Hacksaw Ridge.”</p>
<p>Redemption was everywhere: for a previously diversity-deficient Oscars, for the old-fashioned musical and even for the long-shunned Gibson. Days after the birth of his ninth child, the “Hacksaw Ridge” director was also unexpectedly nominated for best director over the likes of Martin Scorsese (“Silence”) and Clint Eastwood (“Sully”). The nods seemed to restore his stature in Hollywood since an anti-Semitic tirade while being arrested for drunk driving in 2006 and a 2011 conviction for domestic violence.</p>
<p>“I think finally people are remembering who Mel actually is, not what the tabloids (said),” said Andrew Garfield, who was nominated for his lead performance in the film. “I’m so, so proud of him.</p>
<p>“Arrival” tied “Moonlight” for the second most nominees with eight nods. Yet its five-time nominated star, Amy Adams, was left out of the competitive best actress category.</p>
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<p>Instead, Meryl Streep, whom President Donald Trump recently derided as “overrated,” landed her 20th nomination. Her performance in “Florence Foster Jenkins” was among the best actress nominees that included Stone, Natalie Portman (“Jackie”), Ruth Negga (“Loving”) and Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”). Also left out was Annette Bening for “20th Century Women.”</p>
<p>Best-actor favorite Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) was joined by Washington, Gosling, Garfield and Viggo Mortensen (“Captain Fantastic”). Along with Ali and Patel, the best supporting actor nominees were Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”), Michael Shannon (“Nocturnal Animals”) and Jeff Bridges (“Hell or High Water”).</p>
<p>Viola Davis, the supporting-actress front-runner for her performance in “Fences,” notched her third Oscar nod. Also nominated were Harris, Spencer, Nicole Kidman (“Lion”) and Michelle Williams (“Manchester by the Sea”).</p>
<p>Whether fairly or not, the nominations were taken as a test for the overhauled film academy. The inclusion influx, though, wasn’t driven by any kind of response to the last two Oscars; most of the nominated films have been in development for years. And the awards still left many unrepresented. No female filmmakers were nominated for best director and outside of the EGOT-approaching Lin-Manuel Miranda (up for his song to “Moana”), Latinos were nearly absent .</p>
<p>Still, change was seen all through the Oscar categories, nowhere more so than in best documentary. Four black directors led nominees: Ava DuVernay (“The 13th”), Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”), Ezra Edelman (the seven-plus hours “O.J.: Made in America”) and Roger Ross Williams (“Life, Animated”). (The other nominee was the European migrant documentary “Fire at Sea.”)</p>
<p>“Now more than ever it is important to educate ourselves, explore our shared history and elevate our awareness about matters of human dignity,” DuVernay, whose film is about historical connections between slavery and mass incarceration, said in a statement.</p>
<p>Joi McMillon, who edited “Moonlight” with Nat Sanders, became the first African-American woman nominated for best editing. Bradford Young of “Arrival” was just the second black cinematographer nominated. Kimberly Steward, who financed “Manchester by the Sea,” became the second African-American producer to land a best-picture nomination after Oprah Winfrey.</p>
<p>Though “La La Land,” “Arrival” and “Hidden Figures” are knocking on the door of $100 million at the North American box office, none of the best-picture nominees have yet crossed that threshold, making this year’s best picture nominees one of the lowest grossing bunch ever.</p>
<p>“Deadpool,” this season’s underdog, and the year’s no. 2 box-office hit, “Finding Dory,” were shut out. Only one major studio — Paramount, which distributed “Arrival” and “Fences” — scored a best-picture nomination.</p>
<p>Amazon, however, landed its first best-picture nod for “Manchester by the Sea,” which the streaming retailer partnered with Roadside Attractions to distribute. Propelled by “La La Land,” Lionsgate led all studios with 26 nominations.</p>
<p>The dearth of blockbusters will pose a test for Jimmy Kimmel, host of the Feb. 26 ceremony. Last year’s broadcast, which host Chris Rock introduced as “the White People’s Choice Awards,” drew 34.4 million viewers, an eight-year-low.</p>
<p>Viggo Mortensen is among those who expecting a strong political undercurrent.</p>
<p>“The Trump White House,” Mortensen said Tuesday, “is about, to some degree, shutting people up you don’t like or who don’t agree with you, and I think the Oscars will probably be the opposite of that.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Lindsey Bahr and Sandy Cohen contributed to this report.</p> | Oscars change their tune with ‘La La Land,’ diverse nominees | false | https://abqjournal.com/934356/oscars-go-gaga-for-la-la-land-with-record-tying-14-nods.html | 2017-01-24 | 2 |
<p />
<p>At about 11 p.m. on a Saturday, Dutchboy, a local hip-hop MC, struts onto the stage at San Francisco’s Peacock Lounge, just a few feet in front of a tight half-circle of fans. He’s decked out in standard MC gear: Raiders jersey, baggy pants, Kangol hat, and Chuck Taylor sneakers. But aside from that, Dutchboy is about the farthest thing imaginable from a traditional MC.</p>
<p>He stands at only about 5-foot-7. He is Caucasian, which gives him all the street credibility of a farm hand. And he … well, just listen:</p>
<p>“Struggling every goddamn day/Cuz I decide to be real/Got to be who I am — a gypsy queen!”</p>
<p>“Gypsy queens” — slang for gay men, or in Dutchboy’s case, bisexuals — are certainly not uncommon in San Francisco. But a self-proclaimed “queen” rocking the mic at a hip-hop show is something of a shock to both gay and hip-hop cultures. Homophobic rap lyrics are as prevalent as blunts at a Cypress Hill show. And while gay hip-hop clubs have been a part of New York City’s underground for years, the gay community has not exactly welcomed the hetero-centric ruffians of rap music with open arms.</p>
<p>But the climate may be changing. Dutchboy (real name Judge Muscat) is the front man for Rainbow Flava, a group of gay, lesbian, and bisexual hip-hop artists in San Francisco. The group is part of a nascent nationwide network of openly gay rap musicians. The sub-subculture includes New York’s gay/lesbian duo Morplay, Houston’s Money the B-Girl Wonder, and the Austrian MC/producer <a href="http://www.schoenheitsfehler.de" type="external">Operator Burstup</a>. Meanwhile, New York-based producer Tony “DJ Soul” Dobson says he’s “scouting feverishly” to build a coalition of gay hip-hop artists.</p>
<p>“Most of the people who I was worried would have a homophobic reaction, didn’t care,” says Kevin Cruze, a.k.a. DJ Monkey of Rainbow Flava. “It’s just not an issue for most of them.”</p>
<p>It sure doesn’t seem to be for the Flava’s fans. By the middle of his set, Dutchboy has people screaming for him to take off his shirt. When he asks “all the ladies in the house who don’t shave their legs” to give him a “Hooo!”, the hooos reverberate off the walls.</p>
<p>Though Rainbow Flava’s fan base is small, Dutchboy believes that their music will ultimately help open the door for mainstream acceptance of gay hip hop. “It’s only a matter of time,” he says.</p>
<p>“I’m in this business to make a lot of changes for faggots,” adds Cazwell, an MC from Morplay. “We’re gonna drop a new album soon, and when we do, I think it’s gonna prove to record companies that [a gay rap group] can sell.”</p>
<p>Maybe, but don’t expect to see gay rap albums at Sam Goody anytime soon, says former punk rock and hip-hop producer Matt Wobensmith.</p>
<p>“Gay hip hop doesn’t yet have a ‘scene’ — it’s more conceptual,” Wobensmith says. “But that was what it was like when the gay punk scene started.”</p>
<p>Wobensmith’s now defunct record label, Outpunk, paved the way for gay punk’s emergence as a viable genre that has spawned such relative mainstream successes as Sleater-Kinney and Pansy Division. In 1998, Wobensmith started the Queercorps label, which was devoted largely to recording gay hip-hop music. However, the label released just two albums before Wobensmith quit his music career altogether.</p>
<p>A critical difference between gay punk and gay hip hop, he says, is that the gay punk movement coincided with the rise of punk feminism. In hip hop, despite an upsurge of female artists in recent years, the booty-slappin’ fraternity remains firmly entrenched. “Hip hop is dominated by black males, the people who are the most homophobic,” says N.I. Double-K.I., a black lesbian rapper who occasionally performs with Rainbow Flava.</p>
<p>Frank Williams, deputy editor for the hip-hop magazine The Source, says he would like to see a gay rapper gain widespread acceptance, but it’s not likely to happen. “Part of proving yourself in hip hop is showing how hard you are,” he says. “If you’re a record company that’s gonna invest all this money to get these kids to believe in this myth of toughness, you’re not gonna sign a gay rapper.”</p>
<p>No high-profile rap artists have ever outed themselves publicly, despite widespread speculation that some of them are gay or lesbian. The relatively small number of hip-hop fans who do admit to having same-sex relations typically do not celebrate their sexual orientation. “Most of the bruthas I know, be they ‘homie-sexual’ or not, don’t identify themselves as ‘gay,'” says James Earl Hardy, who authored a series of novels about young homosexuals in hip hop. “Who they are attracted to or have sex with is not an identity; it just is.”</p>
<p>Of course, winning over a hip-hop audience is only half the battle. Traditionally, says Dutchboy, gay people see rappers as adversaries. “We look like the kids who beat them up in high school,” he says.</p>
<p>But that attitude may be changing. The crowd at the Peacock Lounge was more Rocky Horror than Ruff Riders — comprised largely of gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals.</p>
<p>“[Gay] people who weren’t turned on to hip hop before are getting turned on to it now,” says Cazwell. “I think that if you’re gay and out, you can still be successful, but you have to give yourself more time to make it.”</p>
<p /> | Homie-sexualz | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2000/03/homie-sexualz/ | 2000-03-15 | 4 |
<p>An agent during Bill’s presidency has come out with a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3626031/A-Secret-Service-agent-protected-Hillary-Clinton-set-publish-tell-book.html" type="external">‘tell all’ book about his time while serving</a>. He claims it was a culture that sickened him. Hillary must hate this!</p>
<p>A Secret Service agent who protected Hillary Clinton is set to publish a tell-all book.</p>
<p>Gary Byrne says he was posted outside Bill Clinton’s Oval Office in the 1990s and that what he saw ‘sickened him’.</p>
<p>His expose is causing deep concern in the White House, according to Drudge Report, and its release comes as Hillary comes within touching distance of securing the Democratic nomination.</p>
<p>The book titled Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate is set to hit shelves on June 28.</p>
<p>The Democratic convention, where Hillary could be confirmed as the nominee, will take place a month later.</p>
<p>According to Drudge, specific details of the book are being kept under a tight embargo.</p>
<p>A description of the book reads: ‘Posted directly outside President Clinton’s Oval Office, Former Secret Service uniformed officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton’s character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family.</p>
<p>‘Now that a second Clinton administration threatens — their scheme from the very beginning — Byrne exposes what he saw of the real Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>‘While serving as a Secret Service Officer, Gary Byrne protected President Bill Clinton and the First Family in the White House and outside the Oval Office.</p>
<p>‘There, he saw the political and personal machinations of Bill and Hillary Clinton and those who were fiercely loyal to them.</p> | Clinton Secret Service Agent Drops BOMBSHELL on Hillary & Bill | true | http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/clinton-secret-service-agent-drops-bombshell-on-hillary-bill/ | 0 |
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<p>From the September 16 edition of Fox News' Fox &amp; Friends:</p>
<p>CARLSON: You want to see some more shocking video? Guess what? We have it. ACORN, corrupt policies - watch.</p>
<p>[begin video clip]</p>
<p>KAELKE: But, it - you know, I don't think that that's a nice thing. I don't think -</p>
<p>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You killed him emotionally?</p>
<p>KAELKE: No, I shot him.</p>
<p>[end video clip]</p>
<p>DOOCY: Hmm.</p>
<p>CARLSON: She killed somebody? Despite this, some lawmakers want to keep funding the group. Griff Jenkins tracked one of them down for us.</p>
<p>From the September 16 edition of Fox &amp; Friends:</p>
<p>BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Yeah, the same routine. They go in, they say, listen, I need a house. They're pushing -- she's a prostitute. And then she used that line where she says I have about a dozen girls ready to come, between 12 and 16, from El Salvador, and that's when she, this woman you just saw, springs into action. Well, they need a place to stay.</p>
<p>CARLSON: Well, before she killed her husband, allegedly -- and, by the way, I think he's still alive somewhere in California.</p>
<p>KILMEADE: Yeah, they found him alive.</p>
<p>CARLSON: They --</p>
<p>DOOCY: Barstow.</p>
<p>CARLSON: According to ACORN, he's still alive. So, there's still a lot of questions about that whole thing.</p>
<p>KILMEADE: We've just got a great bowl of --</p>
<p>CARLSON: And a sad -- well, and a sad back story if in fact she was a victim of domestic violence -- so, a lot of questions here. But, first and foremost, before she admits to killing her husband, she gives prostitution advice to these young kids because she says she was actually in the business before.</p>
<p>San Bernardino PD: Investigators found former husbands "alive and well." In a September 15 <a href="http://www.acorn.org/fileadmin/Press_Releases/090915-San_Bernardino_Police_Report_Alleged_Homicide.pdf" type="external">news release</a>, the San Bernardino Police Department stated that Kaelke's claim that she shot and killed her husband does "do[es] not appear to be factual":</p>
<p>DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT:</p>
<p>An undercover video reportedly filmed in the San Bernardino office for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was recently released on the Internet. The film depicts a worker talking about her past involvement in prostitution and the alleged self-defense killing of her former husband.</p>
<p>The San Bernardino Police Department is investigating the claims made regarding the homicide. From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party's known former husbands, who are alive and well.</p>
<p>Kaelke said she decided to tell actors "outrageous things with a straightface." According to an ACORN <a href="http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12439&amp;tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=22583&amp;tx_ttnews%5bbackPid%5d=12387&amp;cHash=f1e6ffcdd4" type="external">press release</a>, Kaelke stated of the actors who filmed her, "They were not believable. ... Somewhat entertaining, but they weren't evengood actors. I didn't know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them asmuch as they were shocking me. Like Stephan Colbert does -- saying the most outrageous things with a straightface." The press release also stated: "When the actors approached Ms. Kaelke with their provocative costuming and outlandish scenario, she could not take them seriously. So she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness. She matched their false scenario with her own false scenarios."</p>
<p>From the September 16 edition of Fox News' Fox &amp; Friends:</p>
<p>KILMEADE: Well, we had Washington, D.C.; we had Baltimore.</p>
<p>DOOCY: Right.</p>
<p>KILMEADE: We saw a little Brooklyn. Are you ready for San Bernardino --</p>
<p>DOOCY: Yeah. Why not?</p>
<p>KILMEADE: -- inland empire of Los Angeles?</p>
<p>CARLSON: Yeah, but, now, here's the key. They say that the woman that you're about to see in this ACORN probe in California, that she knew that the fake pimp and prostitute -- you know, this whole scheme that these young kids have done in these ACORN offices, undercover -- this woman now claiming, well, she knew they were fake so she created her own fake story as well.</p>
<p>DOOCY: Yeah. The woman's name is Tresa Kaelke and she was one of the people who worked in the front office there at -- in San Bernardino at the ACORN office. It's interesting, right now, ACORN is starting to spin this as, "Oh, yeah, those people who you see on tape, those are low-level employees."</p>
<p>Well, anyway, attention ACORN: Here's one of your low-level employees talking about how she killed her husband.</p>
<p>[begin video clip]</p>
<p>KAELKE: This is an ex-husband, you know, that just beat the hell out of me, you know, a few times and then, you know, I killed him. But, it -- you know, I don't think that that's a nice thing. I don't think --</p>
<p>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You killed him emotionally?</p>
<p>KAELKE: No, I shot him. ... He came at me and I let him throw me around a little bit, you know. And then I just picked up the gun and said [bleep]. And I shot him. And he died right there. And -- but before that, I had done some -- laid some groundwork.</p>
<p>[end video clip]</p>
<p>KILMEADE: And they did their same act.</p>
<p>DOOCY: Routine.</p>
<p>KILMEADE: Yeah, the same routine. They go in, they say, listen, I need a house. They're pushing -- she's a prostitute. And then she used that line where she says I have about a dozen girls ready to come, between 12 and 16, from El Salvador, and that's when she, this woman you just saw, springs into action. Well, they need a place to stay.</p>
<p>CARLSON: Well, before she killed her husband, allegedly -- and, by the way, I think he's still alive somewhere in California.</p>
<p>KILMEADE: Yeah, they found him alive.</p>
<p>CARLSON: They --</p>
<p>DOOCY: Barstow.</p>
<p>CARLSON: According to ACORN, he's still alive. So, there's still a lot of questions about that whole thing.</p>
<p>KILMEADE: We've just got a great bowl of --</p>
<p>CARLSON: And a sad -- well, and a sad back story if in fact she was a victim of domestic violence -- so, a lot of questions here. But, first and foremost, before she admits to killing her husband, she gives prostitution advice to these young kids because she says she was actually in the business before.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>CARLSON: You want to see some more shocking video? Guess what? We have it. ACORN, corrupt policies -- watch.</p>
<p>[begin video clip]</p>
<p>KAELKE: But, it -- you know, I don't think that that's a nice thing. I don't think --</p>
<p>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You killed him emotionally?</p>
<p>KAELKE: No, I shot him.</p>
<p>[end video clip]</p>
<p>DOOCY: Hmm.</p>
<p>CARLSON: She killed somebody? Despite this, some lawmakers want to keep funding the group. Griff Jenkins tracked one of them down for us.</p> | Ignoring police report, Carlson advanced false claim that ACORN employee killed husband | true | http://mediamatters.org/research/200909160003 | 2009-09-16 | 4 |
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<p>A year ago the supposed handover of power by the US occupation authority to an Iraqi interim government led by Iyad Allawi was billed as a turning point in the violent history of post-Saddam Iraq.</p>
<p>It has turned out to be no such thing. Most of Iraq is today a bloody no-man’s land beset by ruthless insurgents, savage bandit gangs, trigger-happy US patrols and marauding government forces.</p>
<p>On 28 June 2004 Mr Allawi was all smiles. “In a few days, Iraq will radiate with stability and security,” he promised at the handover ceremony. That mood of optimism did not last long.</p>
<p>On Sunday the American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told a US news programme that the ongoing insurgency could last “five, six, eight, ten, twelve years”.</p>
<p>Yesterday in London, after meeting Tony Blair, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, tried to be more upbeat, commenting: “I think two years will be enough and more than enough to establish security”.</p>
<p>Tonight President George Bush will make his most important address since the invasion, speaking to troops at the US army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is expected to seek to assure increasingly sceptical Americans that he has a plan to prevail in Iraq, and that the US is not trapped in a conflict as unwinnable as the one in Vietnam, three decades ago.</p>
<p>The news now from Iraq is only depressing. All the roads leading out of the capital are cut. Iraqi security and US troops can only get through in heavily armed convoys. There is a wave of assassinations of senior Iraqi officers based on chillingly accurate intelligence. A deputy police chief of Baghdad was murdered on Sunday. A total of 52 senior Iraqi government or religious figures have been assassinated since the handover. In June 2004 insurgents killed 42 US soldiers; so far this month 75 have been killed.</p>
<p>The “handover of power” last June was always a misnomer. Much real power remained in the hands of the US. Its 140,000 troops kept the new government in business. Mr Allawi’s new cabinet members became notorious for the amount of time they spent out of the country. Safely abroad they often gave optimistic speeches predicting the imminent demise of the insurgency.</p>
<p>Despite this the number of Iraqi military and police being killed every month has risen from 160 at the handover to 219 today.</p>
<p>There were two further supposed turning points over the past year. The first was the capture by US Marines of the rebel stronghold of Fallujah last November after a bloody battle which left most of the city of 300,000 people in ruins. In January there was the general election in which the Shia and Kurds triumphed.</p>
<p>Both events were heavily covered by the international media. But such is the danger for television and newspaper correspondents in Iraq that their capacity to report is more and more limited. The fall of Fallujah did not break the back of the resistance. Their best fighters simply retreated to fight again elsewhere. Many took refuge in Baghdad. At the same time as the insurgents lost Fallujah they captured most of Mosul, a far larger city. Much of Sunni Iraq remained under their sway.</p>
<p>At the handover of power the number of foreign fighters in the insurgency was estimated in the “low hundreds”. That figure has been revised up to at least 1,000 and the overall figure for the number of insurgents is put at 16,000.</p>
<p>The election may have been won by the Shia and Kurds but it was boycotted by the five million Sunnis and they are the core of the rebellion. It took three months to put together a new government as Sunni, Shia, Kurds and Americans competed for their share of the cake. For all their declarations about Iraqi security, the US wanted to retain as much power in its own hands as it could. When the Shia took over the interior ministry its intelligence files were hastily transferred to the US headquarters in the Green Zone.</p>
<p>To most ordinary Iraqis in Baghdad it is evident that life over the past year has been getting worse. The insurgents seem to have an endless supply of suicide bombers whose attacks ensure a permanent sense of threat. In addition the necessities of life are becoming more difficult to obtain. At one moment last winter there were queues of cars outside petrol stations several miles long.</p>
<p>The sense of fear in Baghdad is difficult to convey. Petrol is such a necessity because people need to pick up their children from school because they are terrified of them being kidnapped. Parents mob the doors of schools and swiftly become hysterical if they cannot find their children. Doctors are fleeing the country because so many have been held for ransom, some tortured and killed because their families could not raise the money.</p>
<p>Homes in Baghdad are currently getting between six and eight hours’ electricity a day. Nothing has improved at the power stations since the hand-over of security a year ago. In a city where the temperature yesterday was 40C, people swelter without air conditioning because the omnipresent small generators do not produce enough current to keep them going. In recent weeks there has also been a chronic shortage of water.</p>
<p>Some Iraqis have benefited. Civil servants and teachers are better paid, though prices are higher. But Iraqis in general hoped that their standard of living would improve dramatically after the fall of Saddam Hussein and it has not.</p>
<p>Adding to the sense of fear in Baghdad is the growth of sectarianism, the widening gulf between Sunni and Shia. Shia mosques come under attack from bombers. Members of both communities are found murdered beside the road, in escalating rounds of tit-for-tat killings.</p>
<p>The talks between US officials and some resistance groups revealed in the past few days probably does not mean very much for the moment. The fanatical Islamic and militant former Baathists and nationalists who make up the cutting edge of insurgency are not in the mood to compromise. They are also very fragmented. But the talks may indicate a growing sense among US military and civilian officials that they cannot win this war.</p>
<p>PATRICK COCKBURN was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting in recognition of his writing on Iraq over the past year. His new memoir, <a href="" type="internal">The Broken Boy</a>, has just been published in the UK.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Iraq: a Bloody Mess | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/06/28/iraq-a-bloody-mess/ | 2005-06-28 | 4 |
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Assembly is set to vote on a bill that would legalize children’s lemonade stands.</p>
<p>The Republican bill would allow a minor to operate a temporary food stand without a local permit or license or a state food processing or retail food establishment license.</p>
<p>The stand can’t generate more than $1,000 in annual sales, however, and must be operated on a temporary basis on private property.</p>
<p>The measure’s author, Rep. Joel Kleefisch, says he was driven to draft the bill by a media report of Appleton police shutting down two pre-teen girls’ lemonade stand in 2011.</p>
<p>The Assembly was expected to vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon. Approval would send the measure to the state Senate.</p> | Wisconsin to vote on legalizing children’s lemonade stands | false | http://valleynewslive.com/content/news/Wisconsin-to-vote-on-legalizing-childrens-lemonade-stands-470737593.html | 2018-10-09 | 1 |
<p>DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Eugene German scored 26 points and Northern Illinois snapped a two-game skid, beating Eastern Michigan 72-66 on Saturday.</p>
<p>Levi Bradley added 14 points and six rebounds, Justin Thomas had 11 points and Lacey James had nine points and eight rebounds.</p>
<p>Northern Illinois was down 33-27 at intermission but German opened the second half with a 3-pointer, sparking a 24-9 surge that took the Huskies (9-8, 2-2 Mid-American Conference) to a 51-42 lead with 10:38 to play. He followed that with a 3-point play and two more from distance to make it 60-52 with 5:44 remaining.</p>
<p>Eastern Michigan's Elijah Minnie sank a layup to cut it to 66-63 with just under a minute left but Bradley drained a 3 and James followed with a 3-point play in the final 34 seconds to seal the win.</p>
<p>Paul Jackson had 19 points for the Eagles (10-7, 1-3) who have lost three of the last four. James Thompson IV added 15 points and led the team with 12 rebounds.</p>
<p>DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Eugene German scored 26 points and Northern Illinois snapped a two-game skid, beating Eastern Michigan 72-66 on Saturday.</p>
<p>Levi Bradley added 14 points and six rebounds, Justin Thomas had 11 points and Lacey James had nine points and eight rebounds.</p>
<p>Northern Illinois was down 33-27 at intermission but German opened the second half with a 3-pointer, sparking a 24-9 surge that took the Huskies (9-8, 2-2 Mid-American Conference) to a 51-42 lead with 10:38 to play. He followed that with a 3-point play and two more from distance to make it 60-52 with 5:44 remaining.</p>
<p>Eastern Michigan's Elijah Minnie sank a layup to cut it to 66-63 with just under a minute left but Bradley drained a 3 and James followed with a 3-point play in the final 34 seconds to seal the win.</p>
<p>Paul Jackson had 19 points for the Eagles (10-7, 1-3) who have lost three of the last four. James Thompson IV added 15 points and led the team with 12 rebounds.</p> | German leads Northern Illinois over Eastern Michigan 72-66 | false | https://apnews.com/amp/1b576b2354ef4f33ab13e5dde1cd2621 | 2018-01-14 | 2 |
<p />
<p>BATS Global Markets and Direct Edge are in talks over a potential merger that would create the No. 2 U.S. stock exchange, people close to the matter told FOX Business’s Charlie Gasparino.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The two companies, formed to challenge the dominance of NYSE Euronext (NYSE:NYX) and Nasdaq OMX Group (NASDAQ:NDAQ), each operate U.S. stock exchanges. BATS is the third-largest exchange, while Direct Edge is No. 4.</p>
<p>BATS &#160;runs one of the largest pan-European markets and a U.S. stock-options exchange as well.</p>
<p>The combination would also create the largest cash-equities venue, although that business has been on the decline as derivatives trading and listings have taken prominence.</p>
<p>A merger would create the second-largest U.S. stock-market operator behind NYSE Euronext in terms of shares traded. The transaction would be subject to approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators.</p>
<p>Discussions between BATS and Direct Edge predated Thursday's halt of Nasdaq-listed securities and are therefore unrelated to the 'Flash Freeze,' the sources said.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>A spokesperson for Direct Edge declined to comment. BATS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>Last year, Jersey City, N.J.-based Direct Edge said it was in talks to be acquired by Canadian exchange group TMX Group. Those discussions fell apart and a group of Canadian banks and investment firms agreed to buy TMX in September 2012.</p>
<p>Talks between BATS and Direct Edge come at a time when NYSE is planning to complete its merger with IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE:ICE) this fall.</p> | Sources: BATS, Direct Edge Mull Merger | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/08/23/sources-bats-direct-edge-mull-merger.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Donald Trump delivered the feature speech as the GOP nominee during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, OH, on Thursday. Left-wing media outlets responded as astute political observers would expect them to.</p>
<p>1. Vox</p>
<p>Vox's Ezra Klein <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12253638/republican-convention-trump-speech" type="external">says</a> American worries are much ado about nothing. Below is the article's introduction. It goes predictably downhill from there, with a litany of President Barack Obama's supposed accomplishments.</p>
<p>Donald Trump is not a candidate the American people would turn to in normal times. He’s too inexperienced, too eccentric, too volatile, too risky. Voting Trump is burning down the house to collect the insurance money — you don’t do it unless things are really, really bad.</p>
<p>Here is Trump’s problem: Things are not really, really bad. In fact, things are doing much better than when President Obama came into office.</p>
<p />
<p>2. The Huffington Post</p>
<p>The Huffington Post's Paul Blumenthal and Ryan Grim <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-republican-nominee_us_579167e1e4b0bdddc4d3f03c" type="external">added</a> the following racial analysis of Donald Trump's campaign:</p>
<p>Trump so far has disproportionately attracted white men without college educations – the one demographic slice that is actually shrinking in the country.</p>
<p />
<p>3. The New York Times</p>
<p>Note the headlines of the editorials on the right, including "Donald Trump's Campaign of Fear," "Make America Hate Again," and "The Death of the Republican Party."</p>
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<p>4. The Washington Post</p>
<p>The Washington Post's op-ed section was predictable with its perceptions of Donald Trump's speech. The same pundits do not ever accuse Democrats or the broader left of campaigning on fear with respect to its agitation campaigns, racial or otherwise. Further, no explanation is ever provided as to why fear is somehow an illegitimate emotion to be leveraged for political purposes.</p>
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<p>5. Slate</p>
<p>Slate's Franklin Foer <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/donald_trump_s_un_american_acceptance_speech_at_the_republican_national.html" type="external">aptly notes</a> that Donald Trump did not provide any sweep of American history or values in his speech, although he ironically pushes apocalyptic predictions of what a Trump Administration would lead to while decrying the New York City billionaire's vision of a nation in crisis.</p>
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<p>6. Salon</p>
<p>Salon's Simon Maloy <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/07/22/trumps_terrifying_speech_fear_and_xenophobia_become_the_gops_official_platform/" type="external">pushes</a> the immigrants-as-victim narrative while blurring the lines between legal and illegal immigrants. He writes:</p>
<p>From whence derives all this criminality and violence that Donald Trump will eradicate from our daily lives? Immigrants, primarily, according to the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. “They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources,” Trump warned. He ticked off examples of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants and vowed once again to keep out the undesirables with his “great border wall.”</p>
<p>When not demonizing immigrants, he trained his fire on refugees from war-torn areas of the Middle East.</p>
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<p>7. CNN's Van Jones and Jake Tapper</p>
<p>Left-wing CNN's Van Jones described Donald Trump's speech as "schizophrenic" and "psychopathic." The left-wing network also had Jake Tapper, John King, and Gloria Borger join in.</p>
<p>Jones said:</p>
<p>What Donald Trump did tonight is a disgrace. That was a completely, a relentlessly - even for Donald Trump, who at least occasionally breaks up the fear-mongering with some jokes, with some asides, some amusement - he had one funny line in an hour and fifteen minutes, and the rest of it was just a relentlessly dark speech. He was describing some Mad Max America. I work in some of the toughest neighborhoods in some of the toughest communities in this country. And I don’t know what he’s talking about when he describes the country he’s talking about. There was some schizophrenic psychopathic attempt to pull apart the Obama coalition, but from a political point of view, he even botched that.</p>
<p>Tapper said:</p>
<p>The speech was, I would say, this is how Donald Trump won. He painted a dark and a frightening picture of America, talked about a people being attacked by criminals, attacked by terrorists, betrayed by their leaders, that the game is fixed. And he said he would be their voice, almost echoes of richard Nixon’s silent majority.</p>
<p>Tapper also lamented a lack of "details" he implied should have been present in Trump's speech.</p>
<p>8. MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace</p>
<p>Left-wing MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace described the Republican Party she knows as having died during the Republican National Convention.</p>
<p>Listening to this, I was struck by two things I always believed in my two decades of Republican politics: 1. The voters always get it rights, and 2. The Republican Party that I worked for for two decades died in this room tonight. We are now represented as a party by a man who believes in protectionism, isolationism, and nativism. And those were the forces that George W. Bush, and I believe John McCain too were most worried about during their times as leaders of the Republican Party.</p>
<p>9. The Guardian</p>
<p>London's most prestigious neo-Marxist news outlet <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/22/donald-trump-speech-republican-national-convention" type="external">drew parallels</a> between Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini.</p>
<p>Comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini have been made so often and so glibly that they tend to obscure rather than clarify. Yet the ability of this demagogue to play the crowd, switching its anger on and off like a tap, carries too many echoes of the past century to ignore.</p>
<p>Another article at The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/22/republican-party-donald-trump-madman-in-his-castle" type="external">remarked</a>:</p>
<p>Isolated from power, the Republican party has turned inward and driven itself insane on a toxic mix of fear and rage. Trump is its natural figurehead.</p>
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<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p> | Top Left-Wing Reactions To Trump's Speech | true | https://dailywire.com/news/7714/top-left-wing-reactions-trumps-speech-robert-kraychik | 2016-07-22 | 0 |
<p>A Senate panel will pose questions to a new set of key players Thursday as it delves deeper into General Motors' delayed recall of millions of small cars.</p>
<p>GM CEO Mary Barra will certainly be asked about how she's changing a corporate culture that allowed a defect with ignition switches to remain hidden from the car-buying public for 11 years. It will be Barra's second time testifying before the panel.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But Senators at a hearing of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection might sling their most pointed questions at GM General Counsel Michael Millikin as they drill down on the role the company's legal department played in the mishandled recall.</p>
<p>An internal investigation led by former federal prosecutor Anton Valukas — paid for by GM — showed that even as GM lawyers recommended the settlement of similar cases involving crashes where front air bags failed to deploy in Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions, they didn't alert higher-ups, including Millikin, to a potential safety issue.</p>
<p>Lawmakers may also question Valukas about the report's conclusion that a lone engineer, Ray DeGiorgio, was able to approve the use of a switch that didn't meet company specifications, and years later, to order a change to the switch without any senior executives at GM being aware.</p>
<p>Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a Senate subcommittee member who has criticized the Valukas findings as "the best report money can buy," says he'll ask Valukas at the hearing "why they failed to go beyond the low-level management and engineers."</p>
<p>Also testifying will be Rodney O'Neal, the CEO and president of Delphi. His company manufactured the ignition switches. Compensation expert Kenneth Feinberg will testify about the plan he recently unveiled for compensating victims of crashes caused by the faulty switches.</p>
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<p>Some other questions senators may ask:</p>
<p>BARRA</p>
<p>— Q: How does GM plan to change the corporate culture exposed by Valukas's report? In light of the revelations, was the termination of 15 employees sufficient?</p>
<p>Valukas's investigation found a dysfunctional culture in which people didn't take responsibility for fixing problems. Barra has said that GM has restructured its process for making safety decisions, elevating it to the company's highest levels.</p>
<p>Senators also may have more questions on how much Barra knew about the problem with the ignition switches when she was GM product development chief.</p>
<p>MILLIKIN</p>
<p>— Q: What role did the company's legal department play in the delayed recall?</p>
<p>GM attorneys signed settlements with families of some crash victims in cases where the switch defects figured. Blumenthal said in an interview he wants to know, "Why did GM insist on keeping the settlements secret?"</p>
<p>O'NEAL</p>
<p>— Q: Why did Delphi send GM the switches even when its own tests showed that the force needed to turn them didn't meet GM's specifications?</p>
<p>Delphi, once a GM division, didn't allow Valukas's investigators to interview its employees and turned over a limited number of documents.</p>
<p>Senators likely will ask O'Neal whether Delphi should have notified GM higher-ups after DeGiorgio approved the out-of-spec switches. DeGiorgio also told Delphi to alter the switches in 2006 but not change the part number, making the change hard to track. That raises the question of why Delphi agreed to keep the part number the same.</p>
<p>Panel members will want to know when Delphi found out that the switches began causing fatal crashes, and why the company continued to provide them to GM after knowing about the deaths.</p>
<p>FEINBERG</p>
<p>— Q: Should the compensation program be extended to victims of crashes involving cars that GM recalled on June 30 — mainly older, midsize vehicles where ignition keys are the issue rather than switches?</p>
<p>Feinberg has presided over compensation plans for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and other disasters. He has said GM placed no limit on what it will pay for crashes caused by faulty ignition switches. Victims of the June 30 recalls, affecting 8.2 million cars, can't file claims to the fund.</p>
<p>In the original recall, the ignition switches didn't meet GM's specifications but were used anyway, and they slipped too easily out of the "run" position.</p>
<p>The vehicles recalled last month have switches that do conform to GM's specifications. In these cases, the keys can move the ignition out of position because of jarring, bumps from the driver's knee or the weight of a heavy key chain, GM says. The recalled cars will get replacement keys. The 2.6 million small cars recalled in February are getting new ignitions.</p>
<p>VALUKAS</p>
<p>— Q: Do the actions that GM has taken so far appear sufficient to prevent the problem from happening again?</p>
<p>Valukas has acknowledged that his report leaves open some questions, notably whether there was civil and criminal culpability; whether GM will make the right decisions to stop this from happening again; and what specific crashes were caused by the ignition switch problem.</p>
<p>Skepticism from senators over Valukas's "lone engineer" finding can be expected to be thick.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.</p> | Senate panel, delving into GM recall delay, to ask executive about role of legal department | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/07/17/senate-panel-delving-into-gm-recall-delay-to-ask-executive-about-role-legal.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
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<p>From:&#160; <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/03/07/3249896/" type="external">Breitbart</a></p>
<p>Sunday at the University of Michigan-Flint at the CNN debate, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton said she wants to work to limit the numbers and kinds of people with access to guns.</p>
<p>Clinton said, "I think we have to try everything that works to try to limit the numbers of people and the kinds of people who are given access to firearms. The Brady Bill, which has been in effect now for about 23 years, has kept more than two million purchases from going forward. So we do have to continue to try to work on that because not every killer will have the same profile."</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p>0 comments</p> | Hillary Clinton: Try Everything To Limit The Numbers And Kinds Of People Who Are Given Access To Firearms | true | http://freedomsfinalstand.com/hillary-clinton-try-everything-to-limit-the-numbers-and-kinds-of-people-who-are-given-access-to-firearms/ | 0 |
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<p>Actor Daniel Franzese popped the big question to his partner Joseph Bradley Phillips at Starbucks, <a href="http://www.people.com/article/mean-girls-actor-daniel-franzese-engaged" type="external">People</a> reports.</p>
<p>Franzese, 38, met Phillips at a Starbucks in North Hollywood, Calif. two years ago. According to People, the couple went to the same Starbucks where they met and Franzese gave the ring to a barista, who was in on the surprise. When the barista called their drink orders, she called them “Mr. &amp; Mr. Franzese” and handed Phillips the cup with the ring inside.</p>
<p>The actor got down on one knee and asked Phillips to marry him.</p>
<p>“Joseph has given me the best of his heart and I am so happy he said yes,” Franzese told People.&#160;“Finding my soulmate has made all the years I struggled with myself worth it. We can’t wait to be Mr. and Mr. Franzese.”</p>
<p>Franzese is best known for his role as Damian in “Mean Girls.” He has also appeared in “Looking” as Eddie.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Daniel Franzese</a> <a href="" type="internal">Joseph Bradley Phillips</a> <a href="" type="internal">Looking</a> <a href="" type="internal">Mean Girls</a> <a href="" type="internal">people</a> <a href="" type="internal">Starbucks</a></p> | ‘Mean Girls’ actor Daniel Franzese gives Starbucks proposal | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/07/19/mean-girls-actor-daniel-franzese-gets-engaged/ | 3 |
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<p>Spending at small retailers increased at a faster pace in June than retail growth rate overall in the U.S., according to a recent survey.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>MasterCardAdvisors and Wells Fargo recently released its SpendingPulse for Small Business Report, which found spending at small retailers increased 8% in June, year-over-year. This compares to U.S. retail growth of 6.9%.</p>
<p>While this growth is solid compared to May’s 7.5% increase, it is still not back at the 9% growth seen in the first four months of the year.</p>
<p>The study also found that sales at these small businesses has outperformed overall retail sales for nine consecutive months, beginning in October 2011. The report measures sales at retailers with less than $35 million in annual sales and fewer than 200 employees. Most of the respondents have less than $10 million in annual sales.</p>
<p>The report includes information about current retail sales, excluding autos and gasoline, as well as views with and without food services. When gasoline sales are removed, the sales growth rate drops slightly to 7.8% compared to June2011, as higher gasoline prices inflated top line retail sales readings for much of the year.</p>
<p>The food services share of total retail sales in the report increased by less than 1% year-over-year. Food services sales grew between 8% and 9% last year. When food services are removed from retail, the growth rate falls to 7.5% year-over-year.</p> | Small Retail Spending Grows Faster Than U.S. Retail Rate, Survey Finds | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/07/19/small-retail-spending-grows-faster-than-us-retail-rate-survey-finds.html | 2016-03-23 | 0 |
<p>&lt;img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47115" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Riots-Student-Suicide.jpg" alt="Student Suicide Starts Riots" width="1200" height="627" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Riots-Student-Suicide.jpg 1200w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Riots-Student-Suicide-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Riots-Student-Suicide-768x401.jpg 768w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Riots-Student-Suicide-1024x535.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /&gt;</p>
<p>When tragedy strikes, we can count on the harpie-lipped left to abandon all compassion and consideration. Death, loss, and trauma become a big game of who can scream the loudest while wearing the most colors. Stop it (see <a href="" type="internal">Bill Maher Thinks it’s Unfair to Give Hurricane Relief to ‘Climate Deniers.’</a>&#160;and <a href="" type="internal">Somalian Cop Shoots White Woman… Leftists Cry Islamophobia?!</a>). Following the suicide of a non-binary student at Georgia Tech, leftist students’ number one priority was burning cars and hurting cops. You know, the default reaction.</p>
<p />
<p>The deceased student ( <a href="" type="internal">who committed suicide by cop</a>) charged campus police with a knife while shouting “Shoot me!” Now students are proclaiming “ <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/us/georgia-tech-protest-slain-student/index.html?sr=fbCNN091917georgia-tech-protest-slain-student0310PMVODtop" type="external">Police violence!</a>”</p>
<p>Attendees at the vigil for Scout Schultz said that gathering ended quietly after less than half an hour, and about 20 minutes later a separate gathering developed with chanting, marching and, ultimately, confrontations at the campus police headquarters.</p>
<p>A campus police car burned after its windshield was smashed, and videos taken by people at the scene showed police handcuffing individuals who had been forced to the ground.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech said in a statement late Monday that about 50 people had marched to the police station. Three arrests were made and two officers received minor injuries.</p>
<p>The later demonstration began with a “core group” of about a dozen people chanting “This is not OK” and unfurling a banner that read “Protect LGBTQ,” according to Xincheng Shen, a doctoral student at Tech who attended the earlier vigil.</p>
<p>Antifa, is that you? Thought so.</p>
<p />
<p>Students were instructed to remain indoors due to the violent nature of the riot.</p>
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<p>Then there were tweets like this.</p>
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<p>&lt;img class="wp-image-47116 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/confused-cranston.gif" alt="" width="368" height="207" /&gt;</p>
<p>The prevention of such suicides isn’t found in&#160;riots or <a href="" type="internal">safe spaces</a>. The solution isn’t even holding pretty candles and singing kumbayah. The answer is getting “non-binary” students help for their very real <a href="" type="internal">mental health conditions</a>, not telling them they were “born this way” so suck it up and identity as a hopping, land-dwelling amphibian.</p>
<p>Second step? Stop blaming cops for doing their jobs. If a person charges at you with a weapon, your first instinct is not to pen an essay about police violence, then break windows. Your first reaction is to defend yourself or run the other way. Cops are trained not to run the other way. Cops are trained to defend themselves. With their guns. So if a person is running at a cop with a knife, screaming, the cop isn’t going to hold up his hands and ask “Are you a gay, disabled person?” He’s going to open fire, becuase in that moment he sees: person, charging, weapon. Or maybe the order is reversed: weapon, charging, person. Who knows. What I known for sure is Antifa and its ilk will use any and all excuses to be rioting crapbags.</p>
<p>#Woke</p>
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<p>NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST?&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">FIX THAT</a>! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH&#160; <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/louder-with-crowder/id929121341?mt=2" type="external">ITUNES&#160;HERE</a>&#160;AND&#160; <a href="https://soundcloud.com/louderwithcrowder" type="external">SOUNDCLOUD&#160;HERE</a>.</p>
<p /> | Video: Antifa Exploits Student’s ‘Suicide by Cop’ to Torch Police Cars | true | https://louderwithcrowder.com/riots-student-killed-police-knife/ | 2017-09-19 | 0 |
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<p>The latest fire update for the Jaroso blaze lists the communities of Camp Davis, Gascon, Ledoux, South Carmen and Upper Rociada several miles east of the fire as areas of concern. But Steven Miranda, a U.S. Forest Service fire management specialist who served as incident commander of the Jaroso Fire, said those areas appear safe for now.</p>
<p>“The probability of success is pretty high,” he said when asked the chances of the fire reaching those communities. “We’re at the peak of the fire season right now, but beginning a downward trend. Since the monsoon flow is setting up, I don’t think it’ll have the opportunity to get so large that it becomes a mega fire.”</p>
<p>Miranda said the blaze still has the potential to double in size, but more favorable weather conditions and aerial attacks — airtankers and helicopters dropping water and fire retardant on the east and south perimeter of the fire — has helped slow its progress in recent days.</p>
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<p>Earlier this week when conditions were drier and more windy, the Jaroso Fire doubled in size from about 4,500 to 9,400 acres in a two-day span. Despite record high temperatures in the days that followed, the weather system that has settled over the state has brought higher humidity and dew points, helping the fire fighting efforts.</p>
<p>“Forty-degree dew points for five days would be a good thing right now,” Miranda said.</p>
<p>Due to steep and rugged terrain that doesn’t provide for escape routes and safety zones, fire crews have yet to fight the blaze from the ground.</p>
<p>The eastern edge of the fire was within about 200 yards of the Pecos River on Friday morning. Miranda said they were hoping to keep the fire from jumping the river.</p>
<p>“But we don’t ever base our strategies on hope,” he said.</p>
<p>Should the blaze cross the river, Miranda said the terrain is such that it could allow firefighters to get their boots on the ground.</p>
<p>“We see a lot of opportunity along Hamilton Mesa,” he said, adding that the higher elevation also helps to suppress the fire because there’s less oxygen to feed it.</p>
<p>Miranda said there are meadows along a trail that runs across Hamilton Mesa that could serve as safety zones. He said hot shot crews scouting the area have identified a possible contingency line along the mesa.</p>
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<p>The burn scar from the 2002 Trampas Fire to the southeast of the Jaroso blaze would also serve to protect communities to the east, he said. There’s also a bulldozer line east of Bordo del Medio that was cut during a previous fire that he said could still be utilized.</p>
<p>Another area of concern is the south edge of the fire, where there are structures scattered around Cowles, Grass Mountain, Panchuela, Pecos Canyon Estates and Winsor. Aerial crews have bombed that perimeter with water and retardant, and have slowed the fire’s progress.</p>
<p>Fire engines are on standby in Panchuela, ready to move in when the opportunity arises to wage a direct assault from the ground.</p>
<p>While rain would be welcome to suppress the fires that are currently burning in the state, Gov. Martinez warned of the adverse affects of flooding, erosion and mud slides that could result in areas already scorched by fire. She said Burned Area Emergency Response teams are assessing conditions in areas where fires have burned.</p>
<p>The governor also asked for the public’s assistance in preventing more fires.</p>
<p>“With the Fourth of July approaching, I encourage everyone to limit the use of fireworks, and I strongly urge them to attend public fireworks displays,” which she said were more spectacular anyway. “We do not want to start a fire in a neighborhood that would take resources away from crews battling these wildfires.”</p> | Fire officials hope to keep losses at zero | false | https://abqjournal.com/215915/fire-officials-hope-to-keep-losses-at-zero.html | 2013-06-29 | 2 |
<p>A "daredevil" acrobat from Norway is hoping to perform a hand-stand from the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.</p>
<p>The Dubai skyscraper <a href="http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/language/en-us/the-tower/fact-figures.aspx" type="external">bills itself</a> as the world's tallest free-standing structure, at over 2,700 feet and 160 stories. The building's elevator also broke a record for having the longest distance to travel in any highrise of its kind.</p>
<p>From the United Arab Emirate's <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/stuntman-aims-to-balance-on-burj-khalifa" type="external">National</a>:</p>
<p>Eskil Ronningsbakken, a former circus performer from Norway, has asked the owners of the Burj Khalifa for permission to perform the stunt, which he hopes to be "contrary to all physical laws".</p>
<p>He would set up a ladder, secured with rigging, at the spire of the Burj Khalifa, then balance on one hand at the top of it, his body pointing out at an angle away from the building.</p>
<p>"Why would I not want to do it?" he said. "This is how I live. This kind of performance is as natural to me as meeting in court is for a lawyer."</p>
<p>Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12888817" type="external">"Spiderman" Alain Robert climbed the Burj al-Khalifa</a> in 6 hours with ropes and a harness. &#160;</p>
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<p /> | UAE: Stuntman hopes to do handstand on world's tallest building | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-12-04/uae-stuntman-hopes-do-handstand-worlds-tallest-building | 2011-12-04 | 3 |
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<p>His bold bet to take on Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) with e-commerce startup Jet.com Inc. didn't pan out as he projected. But Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT) $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet is the highest amount ever paid for a U.S. e-commerce startup, according to Dow Jones VentureSource, and marks the second time in six years he has compelled a retail giant to add one of his companies to its shopping cart.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Mr. Lore also sold Quidsi Inc., known for Diapers.com and Soap.com, to Amazon in 2010 for $550 million.</p>
<p>That two-time feat is a credit to the entrepreneur's relentless drive and ability to sell a bold vision of upending entrenched players, traits revered among Silicon Valley venture capitalists.</p>
<p>"Marc is the most talented e-commerce operator I've come across," said Jeremy Levine, a partner at venture-capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, which invested in Quidsi. "He has a deep, intuitive grasp of the finance side of things -- that's something that most entrepreneurs don't have an eye for."</p>
<p>Mr. Lore will take on a senior leadership position on the e-commerce side of Wal-Mart following the transaction, a person familiar with the situation said. Wal-Mart's top online executive, Neil Ashe, is expected to depart, this person said.</p>
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<p>A native of Staten Island, Mr. Lore, 45 years old, went to high school in New Jersey followed by liberal arts school Bucknell University, then received his business degree from University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He worked in finance at banks like Credit Suisse First Boston and Bankers Trust during the dot-com boom of the 1990s before founding his first companies.</p>
<p>Mr. Lore, a New York Yankees fan, created online sports cards trading company The Pit, later selling it to Topps Co. for about $5.7 million in 2001 and joining the company.</p>
<p>Seeing an opportunity to sow loyalty among busy mothers, Mr. Lore founded 1800Diapers.com, later called Diapers.com, in 2005 with his childhood friend Vinit Bharara, promising to deliver everyday household essentials quickly and reliably.</p>
<p>The Jersey City, N.J., company grew quickly, in part because of its willingness to try new technologies, such as Kiva robots which shuttle shelving units around warehouses to save humans unnecessary steps. Quidsi raised about $60 million from firms like Bessemer, Accel Partners and New Enterprise Associates.</p>
<p>The success of Diapers.com and offshoots like Soap.com eventually provoked the ire of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who launched a pricing war before deciding to buy the parent company Quidsi for nearly 10 times the amount of venture capital raised.</p>
<p>Two years later, in 2012, Amazon bought Kiva for $775 million and has since deployed the ottoman-sized robots to about a dozen warehouses.</p>
<p>Mr. Lore left Amazon in 2013 after fulfilling his contract there and set out again to take on his bigger rival in Seattle. This time, with Jet.com, he promised prices that were as much as 15% lower than on Amazon and elsewhere thanks to pricing software that took into account how far the merchandise would have to be shipped and how big customers' orders were, as well as how they were paying.</p>
<p>Mr. Lore also planned to undercut Amazon's popular $99 Prime membership by half and, in a twist, use vendors' commissions to further lower prices. Mr. Lore said he was exploiting what he saw as inefficiencies in e-commerce, creating a marketplace like eBay where sellers held the bulk of the inventory and were rewarded with sales by competing against one another to lower prices and shipping expenses.</p>
<p>Before Jet.com's launch in July 2015, Mr. Lore told The Wall Street Journal he expected the company to reach profitability by 2020 once it sells $20 billion worth of products a year. Jet's business model is "100% proven viable at scale," he said then. "You just have to get to scale."</p>
<p>Jet had already drawn investments from Chinese giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., (NYSE:BABA) Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) GV en route to a nearly $600 million valuation, making it one of e-commerce's highest valued companies before its site even launched.</p>
<p>Many of Mr. Lore's promises didn't pan out. Less than three months after the site's launch, he surprisingly abandoned Jet's fundamental business model--$50 annual membership fees -- forcing the company to skim from commissions. As a result, Mr. Lore said discounts would be smaller, just 5% less than competitors, making it more difficult to compete purely on its price slashing.</p>
<p>And Mr. Lore's initial discussions with investors about a $3 billion valuation fizzled by the fall. A hoped-for $2 billion valuation in October became $1.35 billion in a new $350 million funding round.</p>
<p>But Jet.com's sale likely means a hefty return for Mr. Lore and his investors in one of the largest acquisitions of a roughly one-year-old startup, according to VentureSource.</p>
<p>"I hate to say it, but I feel like an idiot for not investing in this one," Mr. Levine said.</p>
<p>Write to Greg Bensinger at [email protected]</p> | Wal-Mart Gets Retail Rogue in Jet.Com Founder | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/08/08/wal-mart-gets-retail-rogue-in-jet-com-founder.html | 2016-08-08 | 0 |
<p>When NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Friday, asked Haley Barbour if Rick Perry had to "clean up his language?" the former head of the RNC brushed back the host of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports by subtly accusing her of engaging in typical liberal media tricks. The current Mississippi governor warned his fellow Republican to be prepared to be "nitpicked by the liberal media elite" because "when you are a conservative, Christian Southerner, Republican, you have to expect that." The following is the relevant exchange as it was aired on the August 19 edition of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports:</p>
<p>ANDREA MITCHELL: Do you think that Rick Perry has to clean up his language? Karl Rove said that what he said about Ben Bernanke is not presidential. Others and also Bob McDonnell, who succeeded Rick Perry as head of the Governors, the Republican Governors Association was on with me this week and said that he doesn't agree that President Obama may not love his country. He said that he thinks that President Obama is a patriot. What about Rick Perry refusing to say that he believes President Obama loves the country?</p>
<p>HALEY BARBOUR: I think Rick Perry has to get prepared for the fact that he's going to be nitpicked by the liberal media elite for everything that he says. And that he has to be very careful because anything that he says that can be taken out of context will be taken out of context. When you are a conservative, Christian Southerner, Republican, you have to expect that.</p>
<p>MITCHELL: Governor, with all due respect, it isn't the liberal media that's taken on Rick Perry. We're talking about Karl Rove, we're talking about Bob McDonnell. We're talking about a lot of mainstream and conservative Republicans, John Podhoretz, who say that what he said about the Fed and Ben Bernanke and the President's patriotism was not appropriate, was not presidential.</p>
<p>BARBOUR: But as a candidate for president - my point is that Rick Perry as a candidate for president or Haley Barbour if I had run or Mike Huckabee if he had run, every one of us has to be prepared to be nitpicked by the mainstream media and so you've got to run your campaign learning to avoid that.</p>
<p>MITCHELL: Does Rick Perry have to change his language if he wants to become a viable Republican standard-bearer if he gets the nomination?</p>
<p>BARBOUR: I don't take it as offensive to say that we would, we would not treat you nice. But Andrea when you come to Mississippi we treat you nice, because we like you and we're proud to have you down here, but that isn't exactly threatening language to most people. But, he has to understand in a position he's in as I talked about a minute ago, that's gonna be nitpicked. But it could be a good lesson for him. I thought President Obama made a very good point when he was asked about this. He says when you start off running for president you have lessons to learn. And this is a lesson that has to be learned that you're gonna be nitpicked.</p>
<p>MITCHELL: What about saying that printing money is nearly treasonous?</p>
<p>BARBOUR: Well, he is right about the policy. I wouldn't consider it treasonous, because treason is a, is a harsh word. It's actually the only crime that's described in the United States Constitution or defined. But, printing more money is hurting this economy.</p>
<p>MITCHELL: I'm not, not I'm not debating the policy - I'm just talking about language. About, talking about a capital crime, treason in the context of debating monetary policy.</p>
<p>BARBOUR: He is right on the policy. I would not have used that terminology. And I don't think it's the right terminology. But he is right about the policy.</p>
<p>MITCHELL: What about the whole question of secession when he said, actually proposed in his last campaign talking about succeeding from the nation. He joked about it today. Do you think that, that is an issue that might follow him around and is that appropriate for someone who's running to be President of the United States?</p>
<p>BARBOUR: If somebody thought he was saying that seriously a couple years ago, that would be one thing. But everybody knew then he was joking about it. My comment when I was asked about it, we already tried that once. Didn't work. We're not going to try that again. Rick Perry no more meant that in a serious vein than the man in the moon. However, he's gonna get nitpicked because he's the governor of Texas. Because the liberal media elite dislike George Bush so much and he reminds them of him. And as I say, conservative, Christian, Republican, Southerner he needs to understand he doesn't have the liberty to say things loosely that somebody else might.</p>
<p>MITCHELL: Governor, my sources tell me that leading Republicans including Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush and others are concerned. They don't, - they're not in love with Mitt Romney. They think Rick Perry may not be ready for prime time. They're not in love with Michele Bachmann. They're still talking about Paul Ryan or somebody else. Do you think Paul Ryan or anybody else will be in the field or is this the field? And do you have any, do you share any of those concerns that I've been told are real among other Republicans?</p>
<p>BARBOUR: I haven't heard that from any of them. I hear it from the news media all the time. However, I don't think that the field is necessarily filled out. I mean Rick Perry just got in about a week ago and has made quite a splash which would indicate that there's room for others.</p>
<p>- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/GCDickens" type="external">Click here</a> to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.</p> | Barbour Warns Perry: A Conservative, Christian, Southern Republican Like You Will Be 'Nitpicked' by Liberal Media | true | http://mrc.org/biasalert/2011/20110819042558.aspx | 2011-08-19 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Image source: NVIDIA.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Shares of graphics chip company NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) surged on Friday following the release of its third-quarter report, which blew past expectations. Both revenue and earnings came in well ahead of estimates, driven by the strength of its Pascal graphics cards, and the company's guidance was far better than expected. At 10:45 a.m. EST, the stock was up about 24%.</p>
<p>NVIDIA reported third-quarter revenue of $2 billion, up 54% year over year and a whopping $310 million higher than the average analyst estimate. The main driver was NVIDIA's gaming products, which generated $1.24 billion of revenue, up 63% year over year. NVIDIA's Pascal graphics cards have been a major success, aided by a lack of competition at the high end of the market from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD).</p>
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<p>NVIDIA's other segments produced growth as well. Professional product revenue grew 9% to $207 million, data center revenue grew 193% to $240 million, and automotive revenue grew 61% to $127 million. Gaming still accounts for the bulk of NVIDIA's sales, but the company is rapidly diversifying beyond that market.</p>
<p>Non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.94, up 104% year over year and $0.37 higher than analyst expectations. Non-GAAP gross margin improved by 270 basis points year over year to 59.2%, while non-GAAP operating margin jumped to 35.3%, up from 23.6% during the prior-year period. Non-GAAP operating expenses increased by just 11% year over year, facilitating the massive earnings increase.</p>
<p>NVIDIA's fourth-quarter guidance didn't disappoint. The company expects to produce revenue of $2.1 billion, plus or minus 2%, with a non-GAAP gross margin of 59.2%. Analysts were expecting revenue guidance of just $1.69 billion. The company also announced that it plans to return a total of $1 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in fiscal 2017, and $1.25 billion in fiscal 2018.</p>
<p>Despite AMD launching its anticipated Polaris graphics cards at the end of the second quarter, NVIDIA's gaming business is only getting stronger. The GTX 1060 launched in July, followed by the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti in October. Both challenge AMD in the mainstream portion of the market, and by all indications they have been successful for NVIDIA.</p>
<p>The data center segment nearly tripled its revenue, astonishing performance that suggests that NVIDIA's intense focus on deep learning is paying off. The auto segment also posted impressive results, with the business buoyed by recent news that Tesla had adopted NVIDIA's DRIVE PX 2 platform for all of its cars going forward.</p>
<p>NVIDIA's results continue to impress, and the company showed no signs of slowing down during the third quarter. A couple of post-earnings analyst upgrades have pushed price targets for the stock up to $95, and investors are doing their part driving the stock price higher.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Nvidia When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=f096d2de-6414-46a7-a6c0-2bcb8aed6c45&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">ten best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Nvidia wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of November 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBargainBin/info.aspx" type="external">Timothy Green Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends NVIDIA and Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | NVIDIA Stock Rockets Higher After Blockbuster Results | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/11/nvidia-stock-rockets-higher-after-blockbuster-results.html | 2016-11-11 | 0 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Donald Trump and the chair of the Federal Reserve (all times local):</p>
<p>4:06 p.m.</p>
<p>Outgoing Fed chair Janet Yellen has congratulated colleague Jay Powell on his nomination to succeed her next year after her term expires.</p>
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<p>Powell currently serves on the Fed board. Yellen says in a statement that his distinguished career has been marked by “dedicated public service and seriousness of purpose.”</p>
<p>Yellen says she’s confident in Powell’s “deep commitment” to carrying out the mission of the Federal Reserve, which sets U.S. monetary policy.</p>
<p>She adds that she will work with Powell to ensure a smooth transition. The Senate must confirm Powell’s nomination, which President Donald Trump announced Thursday.</p>
<p>Yellen is the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve; she’ll also be the first Fed leader in decades to be denied a second term after completing a first.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>3:43 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s announcement of his nominee to lead the Federal Reserve included one noticeable absence: current Chair Janet Yellen.</p>
<p>Although he praised Yellen and thanked her for her service, she did not participate in the announcement — a departure from how previous presidents chose to announce a new Fed nominee.</p>
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<p>When former President Barack Obama announced Yellen’s nomination in 2013, then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stood by the podium as well. When President George W. Bush announced Bernanke’s nomination in 2005, longtime Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was there. In 1987, when Greenspan was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, he was accompanied by then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>3:15 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Reserve says he will work to make sure the Fed stays “vigilant and prepared to respond to changes” in the market.</p>
<p>Jerome Powell was introduced by Trump in the Rose Garden.</p>
<p>The nominee says the U.S. economy has made “substantial progress” since the 2008 financial crisis and the financial system is much stronger.</p>
<p>Powell says the Federal Reserve understands that monetary decisions “matter for American families” as he awaits confirmation by the Senate.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>3:13 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump is praising outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as he chooses Fed board member Jerome Powell to lead the Fed.</p>
<p>The president says Yellen is “absolutely a spectacular person,” and says she has served “with dedication and devotion” and the nation is grateful to her.</p>
<p>If confirmed by the Senate, Powell would succeed Yellen when her term ends in February.</p>
<p>Yellen is the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve; she’ll also be the first Fed leader in decades to be denied a second term after completing a first.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>3:12 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump is choosing Federal Reserve board member Jerome Powell to become the next chair of the U.S. central bank.</p>
<p>Trump says Powell has the “wisdom and leadership” to guide the U.S. economy through any challenges it may face.</p>
<p>He is calling Powell, “strong,” “committed” and “smart.”</p>
<p>Trump announced Powell’s nomination Thursday at a White House ceremony. If confirmed by the Senate, Powell would succeed Janet Yellen when her term ends in February.</p>
<p>Yellen is the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve; she’ll also be the first Fed leader in decades to be denied a second term after completing a first.</p>
<p>The 64-year-old Powell is seen as a safe choice. He supported the cautious approach to interest rate hikes that Yellen pursued during her tenure.</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>11:26 a.m.</p>
<p>Mona Mahajan, an investment strategist for Allianz Global Investors, says Wall Street prefers Jerome Powell to other finalists for the Fed post, in part because he appears to share Chair Janet Yellen’s go-slow approach to interest-rate hikes.</p>
<p>“Relative to a John Taylor or Kevin Warsh, Powell is more of a continuity candidate,” Mahajan says, suggesting that low borrowing rates could support economic growth and a strong stock market.</p>
<p>Mahajan says she also thinks that more than Yellen, Powell, like Trump, might be inclined to relax some of the stricter regulations that were imposed on banks after the 2008 financial crisis.</p>
<p>“He wants to ease some of the Dodd-Frank rules and relieve some of the pressure on the region and community banks,” Mahajan says.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:55 a.m.</p>
<p>Two senior administration officials say Federal Reserve board member Jerome Powell is President Donald Trump’s choice to succeed Janet Yellen — the first woman to lead the U.S. central bank.</p>
<p>Trump plans to make the announcement later Thursday at the White House — and the officials are confirming that Trump’s settled on Powell as the next Fed chairman.</p>
<p>The officials weren’t authorized to discuss administration personnel decisions before the president’s formal announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>The 64-year-old Powell is seen as a safe choice. He’s supported the cautious approach to raising interest rates that Yellen has pursued during her tenure.</p>
<p>Powell spent years working at investment firms. Unlike the past three Fed leaders, he doesn’t have a doctorate degree in economics.</p>
<p>Yellen had drawn widespread approval for her performance as Fed chair.</p>
<p>–Associated Press writer Ken Thomas.</p> | Trumps nominates Jerome Powell for Fed chair | false | https://abqjournal.com/1086921/the-latest-ap-learns-trumps-settled-on-powell-for-fed-post.html | 2017-11-02 | 2 |
<p>About one-sixth of California’s general fund is spent on Medi-Cal coverage. A federal report issued last Thursday projected that public spending on healthcare would outstrip individual spending in just two years. On top of this, the state will witness the largest private individual insurance premium increase in its history as Anthem Blue Cross plans <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure-anthem5-2010feb05,0,3002094.story" type="external">dramatic rate hikes</a> this Spring. These are all indicators of an underlying problem, a sharp rise in treatment costs. The exorbitant price of pharmaceutical drugs and surgical procedures is mostly to blame for this trend. That is why state funding for studies on alternative treatments could open a market to provide vastly cheaper care for millions with preexisting conditions who can’t afford the more dangerous chemical therapies pushed by the <a href="http://caivn.org/article/2010/01/03/big-pharma-victory" type="external">Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex</a>.</p>
<p>More public funds were spent on “healthcare” last year than ever before. We aren’t as a culture, however, seeing a return on this investment. There is now evidence to suggest that the West is experiencing an overall decrease in the health of its citizens. Children today are <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/028071_children_fitness.html" type="external">less fit</a>, more obese, and more likely to fall victim to a variety of degenerative diseases. Mine is the first generation that is predicted to have a shorter lifespan than its predecessor’s. Moreover, based on statistical evidence cited in a 2003 paper, “Death by Medicine,” researchers claim “the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.” The report indicates that iatrogenic fatalities now outpace heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of preventable death in the country. These are not symptoms of a malfunctioning healthcare system; they are signs that health is not the aim in what can be called a sickcare industry.</p>
<p>Opponents of what has come to be called “alternative medicine” point to a lack of empirical data supporting its efficacy in treating FDA designated diseases. This is a major talking point for mainstream medicine but as Tony Isaacs of Natural News points out:</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Drug companies are by far the largest source of funding for medical studies and the cost of such studies is a huge barrier for natural alternatives. The FDA trial process costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one can afford to get a natural item approved that they cannot control. Whole herbs and extracts of herbs that contain multiple compounds found in nature cannot be patented.</p>
<p>California can break the of FDA/Big Pharma monopoly on the prescription drug market and work to get naturally grown remedies approved for medicinal use. In this way, costs will come down as competition mounts to produce the best quality treatments. Why not offer state funds to investigate the curative claims of plant and mineral compounds with the FDA? Better yet, the state could establish its own regulatory agency to study natural remedies at a fraction of the cost. Independent research on the effectiveness of vitamins, minerals and plant based medicine is too well documented to ignore the potential for reducing healthcare costs. Isaacs has a point when he states, “…as long as the FDA and FTC continue their campaigns of censorship against nutritional cures and natural remedies, we will always have a health care crisis. You know why? Because no nation in the world can afford to foot the bill for a country full of sick people.”</p>
<p>No matter how many drugs we create, illness will always abound if the role of proper diet and regular exercise in preventing disease is not universally appreciated. The production of food locally and organically through community gardens addresses both issues by offering the opportunity of therapeutic physical labor and the training necessary to grow a perfectly balanced diet anywhere workable land is available. Those who can’t garden can still benefit if California were to get serious about supporting local food distribution networks so all households can be weened off of processed diets. Start up grants for Community Supported Agriculture networks and farmers markets can do just that.</p>
<p>The importance of a local food economy to the healthcare of its participants can not be underestimated and the costs to taxpayers will be more than offset by reduced medical expenditures for the state in years to come. I have written more extensively on the social and economic benefits of municipal urban gardening in a previous <a href="http://caivn.org/article/2010/01/23/operation-green-thumb-go" type="external">article</a>.</p>
<p>With all the debate over rising healthcare costs and single-payer plans, has anyone stopped to ask the simple question: why do we even need health insurance? The sedentary and synthetic ways of living born from the industrialization of agriculture have yielded their fruit. True healthcare reform will take a social revolution on an individual scale. Personal accountability and individual responsibility for one’s own health is ultimately required to stop this upward trend in medical costs.</p> | Local food, exercise, and natural remedies could lower healthcare costs | false | https://ivn.us/2010/02/06/local-food-exercise-and-natural-remedies-could-lower-healthcare-costs/ | 2010-02-06 | 2 |
<p>Tiffany is taking another shot at reviving its luster, naming a long-time Bulgari executive and Diesel CEO as its top executive.</p>
<p>The company had also hired Frederic Cumenal to revitalize the brand, but ran out of patience in February after only two years.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Alessandro Bogliolo, 52, spent 16 years at the luxury jewelry and watch company Bulgari and had most recently been CEO of Italian clothing company Diesel.</p>
<p>Bogliolo is expected to take over the CEO post at Tiffany by Oct. 2. He will also become a board member.</p>
<p>Tiffany &amp; Co., based in New York, has wrestled with weak sales as millennials spend money elsewhere and competition intensifies from online players like Amazon and Blue Nile. The luxury jeweler reported lower-than-expected sales during the most recent holiday season, a critical period for retailers.</p>
<p>Shares of Tiffany added $1.51, or 1.6 percent, to $93.97 in late afternoon trading.</p> | Tiffany hires Diesel exec in bid to regain luster | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/13/tiffany-in-bid-to-regain-luster-and-cool-hires-diesel-exec.html | 2017-07-13 | 0 |
<p>SILVER CITY, Mich. (AP) — Michigan officials have reached a settlement with a mining company involving erosion caused by exploration of an underground copper deposit near Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.</p>
<p>The state Department of Environmental Quality says it recently signed a consent order with Copperwood Resources. The company will pay a $25,000 fine, stabilize the site and restore affected wetlands.</p>
<p>DEQ officials say property owned by Gogebic County was damaged when the company conducted test drilling last spring, as snow was melting in the western Upper Peninsula. The company did not obtain several required permits.</p>
<p>A company official says a feasibility assessment of the mining project is expected this summer.</p>
<p>Permits to allow development of the mineral deposit were granted in 2012 but will have to be amended if the company decides to proceed.</p>
<p>SILVER CITY, Mich. (AP) — Michigan officials have reached a settlement with a mining company involving erosion caused by exploration of an underground copper deposit near Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.</p>
<p>The state Department of Environmental Quality says it recently signed a consent order with Copperwood Resources. The company will pay a $25,000 fine, stabilize the site and restore affected wetlands.</p>
<p>DEQ officials say property owned by Gogebic County was damaged when the company conducted test drilling last spring, as snow was melting in the western Upper Peninsula. The company did not obtain several required permits.</p>
<p>A company official says a feasibility assessment of the mining project is expected this summer.</p>
<p>Permits to allow development of the mineral deposit were granted in 2012 but will have to be amended if the company decides to proceed.</p> | Michigan, mining company reach settlement on erosion damage | false | https://apnews.com/9c13b907271b4604b24fee5ff3605a36 | 2018-01-17 | 2 |
<p>Ed. note: This is a guest post from Tira Harpaz. Harpaz is a graduate of Princeton University and Fordham Law School and the mother of three children. She was formerly a Senior Attorney at Davis Polk &amp; Wardwell and she is currently the founder and president of CollegeBound Advice, an independent college counseling firm. You can also read&#160; <a href="" type="internal">her first piece for Feministing</a>.</p>
<p>Scientists at Duke University’s Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics are close to perfecting an “invisibility cloak,” a breakthrough they have been working on since 2006. While I appreciate their efforts, I want to give them a tip: If you want to make a person invisible, just put them in the shoes of an over-fifty woman and abracadabra, watch them disappear.</p>
<p>For many of us, the daily process of aging is manageable and often not even that noteworthy. Maybe one day you see a new line or wrinkle on your face, or your knee begins aching after a weekend stroll, or your night vision seems to be increasingly spotty. But on a day-to-day basis, it’s not that bad. Invisibility is different. It’s the feeling you are no longer vital or important or noticeable to others, a constant nagging pain you can neither avoid nor forget. It hits you in areas where you feel most vulnerable–a loss of attractiveness and sex appeal, the end of fertility, a glimpse of a slow, lingering decline. The first time I felt invisible was on a train to New York City, about nine years ago. As I eased into the end seat of a three-seat row, the 30-something man sitting in the window seat glanced up at me. It was a brief glance, but it conveyed disappointment and complete disinterest.&#160;After flinching inwardly, I made a mental list of reasons for his look that didn’t involve me: Maybe he had hoped for a row to himself, or maybe he was waiting for someone he knew to sit down. But as days and years went by, I realized that the look was everywhere. Passersby would simply not see me when I walked down the street. People I met at parties would look slightly disappointed and then look past me, and gradually, I began to shrink inside.</p>
<p>Invisibility is found in the small daily cuts. When the radiologist no longer asks if there’s any chance you’re pregnant. When the cashier at the movie theater, glancing indifferently at your gray roots, suggests you might want the senior discount (years before you might qualify).&#160;When people in the subway don’t really look at you as they politely offer you a seat.</p>
<p>This effect often takes place along gendered lines. Women are often defined and judged more harshly by their appearance and attractiveness, a feeling reinforced by a society in which magazine covers celebrate youthful feminine good looks and taut bodies often photoshopped to an unnatural degree.&#160;</p>
<p>Women are made to feel like their biological clocks are constantly ticking down, and even for people who have never had or wanted children, the onset of menopause can be interpreted as a sign of losing a fundamental part of womanhood because of the social emphasis on women as childbearers. In the social narrative, there is virtually no corresponding absolute time limit to a man’s fertility, no ticking clock. Moreover, unlike many women, relatively few men have stayed home or reduced their hours or taken a lower visibility job to spend more time with their families. Thus, they don’t experience the triple whammy of invisibility, children leaving home and the need to find a new identity, a new job or a new way to re-connect with the world.</p>
<p>Many women my age try to bravely fight the aging/invisibility battle by joining a gym, restyling their wardrobes, or even going under a plastic surgeon’s knife. While I don’t condemn those efforts, at best, this will just delay the onset of invisibility. One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that the few women who remain visible into and well past their fifties are those with leadership positions or powerful jobs. Think of Nancy Pelosi, Madeleine Albright, Sonia Sotomayor, Oprah Winfrey and probably the most recognizable and visible woman in the country, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is sixty-five. <a href="#_msocom_3" type="external" /></p>
<p>If power – whether through leadership or business acumen – can prevent &#160;a woman from fading into the background and provide protection against invisibility, that seems to raise a compelling argument for keeping your job or at least keeping up your professional ties while you raise your children. But what if you don’t want to continue working during that period or can’t work or even more importantly, don’t have those types of professional options? And what about women like me, the 50- to 60-year-olds who stayed at home with their children or took on limited professional responsibilities and are now trying to re-launch themselves in the workplace and in the world. Is it too late?</p>
<p>While there’s no magic bullet, I do think we can learn from Rodham Clinton’s example. We can’t all be Secretary of State, and we might not be able to see some of the systemic and cultural changes that would create a more positive landscape for older women in our lifetimes. But&#160;in order to stop being invisible, we have to find places, organizations and people to whom and with whom we feel vital and alive, and if possible, look for ways to become leaders no matter our age. A recent study by Princeton University found that women are less inclined to seek out leadership roles than men, and are subject to much more self-doubt about their abilities. We have to fight or ignore our insecurities and look for opportunities to become visible – run for local office, get on a community board, start a program – and find ways to take control of our lives. I have found that when I reach out to old friends, get involved in activities I’m interested in and share my thoughts through social media or in person, I feel that people are really listening to and seeing me – not the anonymous older woman who is ignored time and time again, but the youthful, creative, interesting me who still lives inside.</p>
<p>So, while it may not help you find a job or force the media to treat older women with dignity and respect, I do know that the more time I spend with people who really see me, the less time I spend with people who don’t. And even if it’s only for a few hours a day, any time I can wear my visibility cloak, I feel like I’ve achieved my own breakthrough.</p> | Ageism and the magical invisibility cloak | true | http://feministing.com/2013/04/04/ageism-and-the-magical-invisibility-cloak/ | 4 |
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<p>Nearly 600 illegal immigrants convicted of sex crimes were released by the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement Agency (ICE). One of the reasons is that their home countries refused to take them back.</p>
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<p>In the latest accounting period for fiscal 2015, a total of 564 illegal immigrants sex criminals were released by the ICE but for legal reason. Since the Freedom of Information Act does not provide the names and locations of the illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes, the Immigration Reform Law Institute can only provide the general classification of the sex crimes. From the 564 illegal immigrants sex criminals, 95 were convicted of commercialized sexual offense, 275 were convicted of other sexual offenses, and 194 were convicted of sexual assault.</p>
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<p>From these numbers, 218 were granted bond by an immigration judge, 12 were released due to "prosecutorial discretion" including those who were considered under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and 151 were released because their home countries would not accept them back to their own country.</p>
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<p>A 2001 Supreme Court case were applied to this decision because it specifies that the government can't indefinitely jail an illegal immigrant that was ordered to be deported if their home countries won't take them back.</p>
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<p>Executive Director of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, Dale Wilcox, said, "The anti-borders left routinely inject sanctimony into the immigration issue claiming that anyone with opposing arguments is morally inferior," "but when statistics like this come out, statistics which show the horrific consequences of having an unregulated immigration system, they merely step over them like they don't exist."</p>
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<p>Wilcox's group has documents showing flaws of the immigration system. The document they have can show that number of illegal immigrants sex criminals that were released could be higher because there are also other law enforcement agencies that are holding the same cases.</p>
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<p>These numbers will surely strengthen the groups stand to push for tougher immigration policies.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ice-nearly-600-illegals-convicted-of-sex-crimes-released/article/2623591" type="external">http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ice-nearly-600-illegals-convicted-of-sex-crimes-released/article/2623591</a></p> | Nearly 600 Illegal Immigrants Convicted of Sex Crimes Released by ICE | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/3059-Nearly-600-Illegal-Immigrants-Convicted-of-Sex-Crimes-Released-by-ICE | 2017-05-21 | 0 |
<p>President Obama and the Democrats who currently run Congress have been hoist on their own collective petard by their craven and gutless refusal to consider adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system to finance health care in the US, or simply to expand Medicare, which is a successful single- payer program, to cover everyone, instead of just people over 65 and the disabled.</p>
<p>Instead, because they are the recipients of tens of millions of dollars in legal (and probably plenty of illegal) bribes from the health care industry, they have cobbled together a “reform” in name only, which preserves not just the central role of the vampire-like health insurance industry, but also ensures the continued rapacious profitability of the other segments of the medical-industrial complex–the hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, and the specialist doctors.</p>
<p>Now, like Hillary and Bill Clinton before them, these weasels and slimeballs who pose as the people’s advocates are left with nothing but a Potemkin Health Plan that looks on the outside like a reform, but that changes little or nothing, leaves vast numbers of Americans uninsured, forces tens of millions to buy crappy plans from private companies, and that will end up doing nothing to halt the continuing rise in health care costs that is bankrupting the people, employers and the country.</p>
<p>Nice going guys!</p>
<p>Let’s for a moment consider what could have happened (and what could still happen if the American people would descend on Washington with pitchforks and firebrands in hand to demand it!).</p>
<p>Medicare, which is wildly popular among seniors and the disabled according to every poll I’ve seen, currently covers 45 million of the highest-cost segment of this country’s 300 million people–its elderly and its permanently disabled.&#160; It does this at a cost of $484 billion.</p>
<p>Now that’s a heck of a lot of money–about 13% of the federal budget–but it’s money well spent.&#160; We’re talking about our parents and grandparents here, after all, and because they’re all covered by a government single-payer plan that pays virtually all of their doctors’ and hospital bills, we don’t have to pay those bills for them out of our own pockets.&#160; Okay, there are problems–the drug industry managed during the Bush/Cheney dark ages to get a prescription drug law passed that bars Medicare from negotiating group discounts for drugs, and that has added enormous rip-off costs to the program, but that’s just another example of corporate scamming of the system that needs to be fixed. And I know that Medicare is not as good as it should be–leaving out important tests, and requiring people to buy supplemental insurance. But it’s still better than all but the most expensive private insurance plans.</p>
<p>The important point that needs to be made is that according to Medicare analysts, 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries account for fully two thirds of the total annual cost of Medicare.</p>
<p>What that tells you is that the cost of treating that 10% of the elderly is $320 billion, while the healthier 90% of the elderly–roughly 40 billion people–only cost $160 billion a year to care for.</p>
<p>Now, given that the rest of the population under 65–about 255 million people–need on average far less care than the 90% of seniors who are in that lower-cost group, extending care to them all would clearly cost less than $1 trillion.&#160; Add in the cost of the 10% of high-cost elderly, and you’ve got a total bill of $1.34 trillion to care for everyone in America.</p>
<p>That’s a big number, but now you need to subtract out the total cost of Medicaid–the crappy program that, primarily funded by the states through income and sales taxes, pays for the crappy care of the poor. That would be about $400 billion in 2009. So now we’re down to $944 billion to care for all Americans. But from that we need to subtract the cost of Veterans health care–another successful single-payer program that already cares for veterans (or at least some of themit’s grossly underfunded). If we had a single-payer system for all, we could just fold the Veterans Hospital system into the national program. That would mean eliminating another $100 billion that would be saved (because remember, we calculated that original expanded Medicare budget for covering all 300 million of us). So now we’re down to an annual budget of $844 billion for a single-payer program to cover all Americans. Finally there is uncompensated care provided by hospitals to those 47 million Americans who have no health insurance but who don’t qualify for Medicaid. This care, such as it is, is funded in two ways–one by state and county revenues, which come out of state income and sales taxes and also out of local property taxes, and the other is in the form of higher hospital charges and insurance premiums and Medicare costs for the rest of us. Uncompensated care is estimated to cost about $200 billion, all of which would be eliminated if we had a single-payer plan for all.</p>
<p>Okay, so now we’re down to a total net cost for a national single-payer program of just $644 billion.&#160; Now remember, we’re talking about expanding a single-payer program that we already have in place, that doctors and hospitals are already familiar with, and that the people who use it already like.&#160; And expanding it to cover everybody, instead of just the old and disabled would only cost an added $160 billion, or just 33% more than it costs now to cover only the old and disabled.&#160; In these days of trillion-dollar Wall Street bailouts, $160 billion is almost chump changeheck. Heck, it’s less than the cost of a year of war in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Sure it would still mean a modest tax increase for everyone (to figure out how much, just look at your check stub, find the Medicare tax deduction, and multiply it by 1.33. Then double that to account for the employer share of the added funds). But wait, all you anti-tax nuts! Before you start freaking out at a tax hike and waving those little teabags Fox TV got for you, there are more savings we haven’t considered.</p>
<p>If everyone is covered by Medicare, that means no more out-of-pocket payments by you for doctor bills. No more co-pays. No more deductibles that you have to pay yourself&#160; before your health insurance kicks in. No more employee contributions to health insurance premiums, which these days more and more employers are forcing us to pay. That’s a lot of money. For many families, it adds up to thousands of dollars a year.&#160; But there’s more. Your employer, if the company is one of the one-in-three that still provides and pays at least something towards health benefits for its workers, would be off the hook. That would free up a lot of money that could go to higher wages and salaries for workers (especially if you have or get yourself a union to make sure that the managers pass the savings on to you and don’t just pocket it or pass it along to shareholders).&#160; We’re talking about big savings here. (Incidentally, we’re also talking about ending the feudal relationship that has you afraid to talk union, or even to talk back, or speak up, to your employer, for fear of losing not just your job, but your and your family’s health insurance. We’re talking about liberating you from a major shackle.</p>
<p>So while yes, your taxes would go up a bit to expand Medicare to all, it wouldn’t be by much, and on the plus side, you would be saving an enormous amount of money, making the added tax bite easy to swallow (and remember, your state and local taxes could be reduced).</p>
<p>Why didn’t Obama and the Democrats tell you all this? Why does Obama continue to diss single-payer, as he did to the American Medical Association, and as he continues to do, claiming it is not in the American addition, as though he never heard about Medicare?</p>
<p>Well, as a matter of fact, some people in Congress, notably Reps. John Conyers (D-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh),&#160; Anthony Wiener (D-NY) and 83 other members of the House are pushing a bill, HR 676, which would do exactly what I’m suggestingexpanding Medicare to cover everyone.</p>
<p>It is being opposed by the Congressional leadership to the point that advocates at one committee hearing were ejected and arrested for even mentioning the term single-payer.&#160; With the blessing of the White House.</p>
<p>Clearly, Obama and the Democratic Party and Congressional leadership are in bed with the health care profiteers. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they at least have the Congressional Budget Office do a formal analysis like I just did here in simple form? Clearly too, they think we’re just too stupid to understand that higher taxes to pay for single-payer would be more than compensated for by the amount of out-of-pocket savings we’d realize if we didn’t have to pay for health care on our own.</p>
<p>There is no other excuse for failure to do the obvious, and have America adopt some version of the kind of health care system that has been proven to be more effective and far, far cheaper than our own in every other developed nation in the worldand in many less developed nations, too.</p>
<p>My question: How long are we going to stand for this crap?</p>
<p>DAVE LINDORFF&#160; is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “ <a href="" type="internal">The Case for Impeachment</a>” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | The Health Care Reform Sell-Out | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/08/06/the-health-care-reform-sell-out/ | 2009-08-06 | 4 |
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<p>The first thing Clinton should do is enumerate a vision and stick to it. Even people who hated Reagan miss his consistency. You knew where he stood. You never know where Clinton stands and he doesn’t seem loyal to his own vision.</p>
<p>With the exception of Haiti, Clinton has failed to find the American role in a new world order. But I suspect that his Haiti policy augurs a new day in his positioning himself as a force for democracy around the world.</p>
<p>I’d like to see President Clinton go to Cuba. I can’t believe Castro isn’t looking for a graceful way out. He knows Cuba is dead under him. Let him save face with a democratic election.</p>
<p>On the domestic front the health plan is important, but Clinton promised universal coverage. Let him say, “This is what I ran on, and I believe in it, and, if necessary, I’ll go down with it.” When he ran and even a few months after he was elected, I knew what he stood for, but now I don’t and it’s too bad. He’s a good guy and smart, and he has good instincts, but apparently wants to be loved.</p>
<p /> | Let’s Talk Clinton: Henry Louis Gates Jr. | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/1994/11/lets-talk-clinton-henry-louis-gates-jr/ | 2018-11-01 | 4 |
<p>The statue of Nelson Mandela in London’s Parliament Square should be removed because the anti-apartheid leader was not British, did nothing for the UK, and was a violent terrorist, the far-right British National Party (BNP) has said.</p>
<p>David Furness, a BNP spokesman, told RT the bronze statue of the late president of South Africa should be removed from Parliament Square and placed in the South African embassy.</p>
<p>His call comes amid a growing public debate about the removal of public symbols that could be considered racist.</p>
<p>Calls to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violent clashes between far-right groups and anti-fascists earlier this month.</p>
<p>There are now similar calls in the UK for the removal of Lord Nelson’s statue, which stands atop Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, because he has been deemed a white supremacist.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>“Political correctness stops people from saying, ‘Oh it should not be there,’” Furness told RT.</p>
<p>“He wasn’t British, whatever he did he did for the South Africans, not for the people of this country.”</p>
<p>As a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, or Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), Mandela was arrested in 1962 for conspiring to overthrow the South African government. He was given a life sentence on Robben Island.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/399802-far-right-nazi-protests/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Released 27 years later following global outcry and the dismantling of apartheid, he was elected president of South Africa in 1994.</p>
<p>The MK is thought to have perpetrated 150 public acts of terrorism and violence that killed 63 people and injured 483 in the fight to end apartheid.</p>
<p>Furness says Mandela should be considered a terrorist who “killed many people.”</p>
<p>“It’s very inappropriate to have a statue of a terrorist in Parliament Square,” he said, suggesting such a “bad example” could legitimize terrorism.</p>
<p>“[It would make people think] ‘I can set off some bombs, get what I want, and eventually it will all be forgiven,’” Furness added.</p>
<p>Mandela’s statue was erected in 2007 by then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.</p>
<p>Speaking to RT, Livingstone said Mandela is one “greatest figures of the twentieth century who fought against the worst forms of racism.”</p>
<p>“He was completely right to fight for the freedom of enslaved black South Africans,” the former Mayor of London said.</p>
<p>“Anyone should be free to struggle for their own freedom.”</p>
<p>Ridiculing the BNP’s call to remove the statue, Livingstone said: “They don’t seem to remember that [South Africans] were once part of the British Empire and Commonwealth.”</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ClaireGilbodyD?lang=en" type="external">By Claire Gilbody-Dickerson, RT</a></p> | Nelson Mandela statue in Parliament Square should be removed, says far-right BNP | false | https://newsline.com/nelson-mandela-statue-in-parliament-square-should-be-removed-says-far-right-bnp/ | 2017-08-25 | 1 |
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<p>Paul Ryan has taken pro-construction-union stances; but the union he has longstanding family ties to, Operating Engineers Local 139, has been accused of retaliating against internal critics. &#160; (Photo by Steve Pope/Getty Images)</p>
<p>The GOP has often <a href="http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/4675/right-to-work-laws-a-gop-assault-on-unions/" type="external">accused unions of unfairly coercing members into paying dues</a>--dues that happen to be a major source of&#160; <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/19/compulsory-free-speech" type="external">support</a>&#160;for Democratic candidates. However, an investigation by In These Times reveals that GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan is closely tied to a union accused of retaliating against members who dared criticize&#160;its financial backing of Republican candidates. Among those candidates were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Paul Ryan himself.</p>
<p>Recently, Operating Engineers Local 139&#160;signed a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board over charges that the union condoned violent threats against members&#160;who spoke out against&#160;the union's political stances.</p>
<p>Paul Ryan’s family company, Ryan Inc. Central, where he once worked, has had cozy ties with Operating Engineers Local 139 for decades. In 1966, the company <a href="http://www.iuoe139.com/engineers.iml?mdl=alert.mdl&amp;Alert_ID=125" type="external">signed a contract</a> to let Local 139, the Wisconsin branch of the national union, represent its workers. Despite Ryan’s conservative positions, the Operating Engineers have been big backers of Ryan’s career, ranking among his top 20 all-time donors with a&#160; <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&amp;type=I&amp;cid=N00004357&amp;newMem=N&amp;recs=20" type="external">total of $48,500</a>&#160;in payments to his campaigns.</p>
<p>Fred Higgins, a member of Operating Engineers Local 139,&#160;says that he and fellow union members have faced severe retaliation for speaking out against the overall&#160;direction set by union business manager Terry McGowan, including close relationships with Republicans such as Paul Ryan. As a result of not supporting McGowan, Higgins says, he and other members were routinely denied work by the union’s hiring hall.</p>
<p>In construction unions, members get work contracts through their union halls, based on a priority number determined by seniority and other factors. Higgins says that, despite being high on the list, he received only a handful of weeks of work in 2008 and 2009. Along with other union critics who received infrequent work assignments, Higgins demanded to see the union's hiring hall procedures. But, he alleges, McGowan illegally refused to post a copy of the procedures&#160;in plain public view--so Higgins and two other members of the union, Tim Pare and Randy Heule, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.</p>
<p>After the compliant was filed, McGowan called a May 2010 union-wide meeting at Operation Local's Pewaukee union hall, where he allegedly berated the dissident union members in front of a packed crowd. McGowan reportedly told the assembled union members that they would be denied raises because of the three who had filed charges. The crowd, at the encouragement of McGowan, turned raucous against the three men; according to Higgins, someone in the crowd threatened to "track down" Pare's daughter's truck and read her license plate number aloud.</p>
<p>After the meeting, Pare filed a second complaint alleging that McGowan “condoned threats of violence made by members against other members because they filed charges against the Union with the National Labor Relations Board."&#160;The union agreed to settle the charges. As part of the settlement, the union was forced to post <a href="http://bigmammasdirt.blogspot.com/p/test-pg-2.html" type="external">a notice</a>&#160;in its hall saying, “WE WILL NOT&#160;condone members threatening other members with physical harm because they filed charges against the union with the National Labor Relations Board.” The union was also required to state in the notice that it would not “threaten members with job loss, monetary consequences or expulsion from the Union.”</p>
<p>In a separate ruling, the National Labor Relations Board found that Lewis Yuker, a foreman employed by URS Energy and Construction who was also a member of Operating Engineers Local 139 and brother of one of McGowan's staffers Guy Yuker, illegally laid off Tim Pare from his job because he filed a complaint against the union with the NLRB. Pare has since been reinstated to his job at the order of the National Labor Relations Board, and could not be reached for comment.</p>
<p>Fred Higgins's case was dropped by the NLRB, and he is in the process of filing another complaint. Meanwhile, he says, he has received only a few days of work in the past year, despite being number 4 on the priority list.&#160;For now, Higgins is drawing down his savings and hoping he can survive until he can find work again.</p>
<p>“McGowan has supported Paul Ryan for years as part of his connections to Ryan's family business,” says Higgins. “McGowan absolutely supports anybody who supports him--and if you don't, you can get retaliated against like me."</p>
<p>Romney-Ryan campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul did not respond to email inquiries about Ryan's relationship with the union.</p>
<p>It's clear, however, that the relationship has been mutually beneficial.&#160;Local 139 was the only private-sector union in Wisconsin to back the Walker budget that stripped public employees of their right to collectively bargain. Ryan has in turn supported construction unions against GOP assaults; last year, Ryan worked against GOP leadership&#160; <a href="" type="internal">to defeat by one vote</a>&#160;a proposed ban on union-friendly Project Labor Agreements. By ensuring that union labor is not at a disadvantage in getting federal project bids, such agreements help both unions and&#160;unionized construction firms such as Ryan Inc.</p>
<p>“We all know--or should know--that if an anti-union politician&#160;like Gov. Scott Walker or Paul Ryan wants to support a union, it’s a just a temporary deal; it’s just words. What he is actually supporting is unionized contractors,” says Higgins. “It’s about getting road contracts. Ryan is helping his family; they are in the road construction business.”</p>
<p>We will have to what and see if a Republican whose party depicts union leaders as <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/news/la-pn-palin-relishes-walker-victory-over-wisconsin-union-thugs-20120606" type="external">"thugs"</a> is willing to denounce a union so close to him that has appeared to engage in coercive behavior. Ryan's relationship with Operating Engineers Local 139&#160;raises serious questions about exactly what party the so-called union thugs are backing in this election.</p>
<p>Update 8/14/2012:</p>
<p>Operating Engineers Local 139 business manager Terry McGowan agreed to speak with In These Times this morning. In response to questions about his union's support of Paul Ryan, he said, "I don't agree with Paul Ryan on his politics, but he is a <a href="http://www.dol.gov/whd/govcontracts/dbra.htm" type="external">Davis Bacon</a>, anti-right-to-work Republican. He supports the right of workers to make a fair wage on federally funded projects. He's a leader in the House and if we were to break off our relationship and find a different direction, I fear we would lose a lot of Republicans on these issues."</p>
<p>McGowan said his union will not be supporting Mitt Romney, but added, "If they were to win, do I feel I could go to Paul Ryan and talk to him about right to work and have a conversation? Yes."</p>
<p>McGowan denied allegations of condoning violent threats against union members. He stated that Fred Higgins' lack of work assignments have to do with his lack of specific skills (a claim Higgins disputes). McGowan was unwilling to comment on specifics in the NLRB complaints.</p> | Paul Ryan Closely Tied To Corrupt Union Accused of Violently Threatening Dissidents (Updated) | true | http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13669/paul_ryan_closely_tied_to_union_that_violently_threatened_union_dissidents/ | 2012-08-13 | 4 |
<p>BRISTOL, Va. — The city of Bristol presented three Virginia Intermont College students with the first ever “Hometown Hero” awards on Jan. 25 in recognition of the students’ rescue of a woman and her three young children from a fire that destroyed their home.</p>
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<p>The students are Amelia D’Agostino, an equine studies major from Herndon, Va.; Cameron Carlson, an equine studies and pre-medicine major from Blowing Rock, N.C.; and Emily Myers, a photography and digital imaging major from Yorktown, Va.</p>
<p>In late December the students were returning to campus at night when they spotted the house fire. They called 911 and even though they were advised against it, their instincts told them since a car was parked in the yard that someone was inside.</p>
<p>The students started banging on the door and were able to rouse Jennifer Pendleton and her three children. The family was able to escape the blaze.</p>
<p>The students say the experience was life-changing, City officials plan to continue the award for years to come.</p> | Hometown heroes | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/hometownheroes/ | 3 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — The fiasco over the fired U.S. attorneys started out as a footnote.</p>
<p>“The president recalls hearing complaints about election fraud not being vigorously prosecuted” and “may have” mentioned this to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino admitted — after it became impossible to deny that crass politics, not job performance, was at the root of the imbroglio over dismissed federal prosecutors.</p>
<p>The operative phrase is “election fraud,” though in Republican parlance it is usually called “voter fraud.” Republicans claim, loudly and regularly, that an army of ineligible voters — illegal immigrants, convicted felons, dead people — has been invading American polling places, diminishing the value of honest voters’ sacred ballots. They make the charge in states where the administration of elections is highly competent, and in states where it is grossly incompetent. It is, of course, leveled solely against Democrats and their supporters.</p>
<p>The charges are almost invariably debunked — by courts, by prosecutors, by state elections officials and by local newspapers that probe beyond partisan screeching and get down to the facts.</p>
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<p>“There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, ‘dead’ voters, noncitizen voting and felon voters,” says a May 2006 report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The bipartisan commission didn’t widely release the consultants’ review, but makes it available on request. It issued a follow-up in December saying there was “no consensus” about fraud and intimidation at the polls and the entire matter deserves — what else? — more study.</p>
<p>Besides rejecting the notion that hordes of ineligible voters are stealing elections, the consultants’ study refutes another common Republican claim — that false registration forms are leading to rampant fraud. The study even cites Craig Donsanto, chief of the Justice Department’s election crimes branch, as saying “the number of election fraud related complaints has not gone up since 2002.” He also says the “proportion of legitimate to illegitimate claims of fraud” is unchanged.</p>
<p>The Justice Department’s own statistics show that of 87 ballot-fraud convictions obtained since the department launched its “voter integrity” initiative in 2002, 17 were for noncitizen voting and another six were for multiple voting. Most of the cases involved vote-buying schemes hatched by local politicians in Kentucky, West Virginia and elsewhere.</p>
<p>So, with 122 million votes cast in the 2004 elections, and about 83 million cast last November, what are the statistical chances that some votes are fraudulent? You do the math.</p>
<p>And what about all the sensational claims? They are sensational claims.</p>
<p>Take the 2004 Washington state gubernatorial election, which appears to figure in the dismissal of former U.S. Attorney John McKay. When the skintight race flipped to Democrat Christine Gregoire after a recount, Republicans cried foul. But after six months of legal investigation and a two-week trial, a county court judge rejected every Republican claim. Though he said there were improper votes cast, the judge also declared he’d found no evidence of fraud. The Republicans didn’t appeal.</p>
<p>In Ohio, some Republicans after the 2004 presidential election circulated stories of dead voters and those who showed up to vote several times — they even conjured up the image of voters who supposedly were bused in from West Virginia during the 1960 election. But a study by the state’s League of Women Voters and a group representing the homeless found that of the 9 million votes cast in Ohio in 2002 and 2004, a total of four were deemed ineligible or fraudulent by the Board of Elections or local prosecutors. “The odds are greater to win the lottery or get struck by lightning than someone casting an ineligible vote in Ohio,” the report concluded.</p>
<p>In Connecticut, state officials became alarmed when the Republican National Committee claimed that 54 residents had voted twice — in Connecticut as well as in another state — in the 2000 election. But a probe by the secretary of state discovered that most hadn’t voted in Connecticut at all, while some had voted in Connecticut but not in the other state. Four had birth dates different from those supplied by the RNC. In New Jersey, Missouri, Michigan and elsewhere, hot claims of fraud have likewise turned out to be hot air, according to an examination of the cases by Barnard College scholar Lorraine C. Minnite.</p>
<p>But the vote-fraud folklore serves its purpose. It enables Republicans to push through state requirements for photos and other forms of voter identification, rules that depress turnout and impact elderly and minority voters — that is, Democrats — most seriously. This is the real fraud.</p>
<p>Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is [email protected].</p>
<p>© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | The Real Voter Fraud | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/the-real-voter-fraud/ | 2007-03-15 | 4 |
<p>Even the Chicago Tribune, which had been a staunch conservative paper for roughly 160 years before it took a hard swing to the left in 2008, when it endorsed a Democratic candidate for president (Barack Obama) for the <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-10-19/news/chi-tribune-2008-presidential-endorsement_1_endorsement-obama-first-african-american-president" type="external">first time</a>, then reiterated that endorsement in <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-26/news/chi-obama-endorsement-chicago-tribune-20121026_1_president-obama-barack-obama-tax-cuts" type="external">2012</a>, somehow came down on the side of conservative Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro after DePaul University threatened his arrest if he set foot on campus.</p>
<p>On Thursday, the Tribune issued an <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-depaul-speech-schapiro-edit-1118-md-20161117-story.html" type="external">editorial</a> decrying DePaul’s actions. The editorial started by reciting the events that occurred leading up to Wednesday night’s confrontation between Shapiro and security officers mandated with keeping him off campus. The Tribune then reported:</p>
<p>Shapiro knew how to respond outside the event hall as a video camera rolled: "If I attempt to enter that hall, right there, just to hear somebody speak, or if I attempt to ask a question or engage in free speech, you will have me arrested?" he asked a security official. "I'm glad in a city that has some 4,000 shootings to this date, you have 30 members of security just for a 5-9,165 (pound) Jewish guy."</p>
<p>Bystanders laughed at his self-deprecating remark. Shapiro certainly can play to a crowd and make a point. It's a shame he wasn't permitted to perform for a full audience. Why couldn't he? Because DePaul remained tied up in knots over the question of how to manage speaker events that may offend some members of the school community.</p>
<p>The Tribune noted that Shapiro is no fan of Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News, the new White House counselor, adding, “Hmm, maybe there is something serious to explore in the political clash between right and left. Shapiro, no fan of Bannon, would have been a very interesting lecturer for engaged students to hear a week after the election. But nope, too risky for DePaul.”</p>
<p>The Tribune acknowledged that DePaul, as a private university, “controls campus access and can approve or refuse guests as it sees fit. This isn't a First Amendment right to assembly issue; it's an issue of academic exploration … In this case, DePaul had a few days' notice and could have allowed Shapiro to appear with adequate security on hand. That would have served the interests of students and made a powerful statement about a university as a marketplace of ideas. Students would have heard Shapiro, engaged him and reached their own conclusions about the values and merits of the conservatism in the era of Trump."</p>
<p>"This isn't a First Amendment right to assembly issue; it's an issue of academic exploration."</p>
<p>Chicago Tribune</p>
<p>The Tribune concluded:</p>
<p>True, there is a lot of confusion today about the country's political direction. There is polarization, there are hard feelings. That's part of life in a democracy. Learning how to confront political differences in a civilized manner is a tough lesson to embrace. Unfortunately, DePaul missed another chance to play the role of enlightened teacher.</p> | Chicago Tribune Slams DePaul University For Banning Shapiro | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10912/chicago-tribune-slams-depaul-university-banning-hank-berrien | 2016-11-17 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Check out <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/authorities-investigate-bluff-collapse-at-we-energies-plant-132929538.html" type="external">this photo</a> that Mark Hoffman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal snapped on Monday of a dam collapse at a coal ash pond:</p>
<p>Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinal</p>
<p>The Journal Sentinel reports that a large section of a bluff used to contain coal ash at the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant broke on Monday, dumping ash and dirt into Lake Michigan. As you can see in the photo, a truck and some heavy machinery were also pushed into the lake. One of the first responders in the area noted that the debris “stretched 120 yards long and 50 to 80 yards wide at the bottom.” A spokesman for the company told the paper that the dam probably did contain coal ash, but said that they’d stopped dumping it there “several decades ago.”</p>
<p>The spill calls to mind the catastrophic dam break at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tennessee, back in December 2008. That spill dumped 1.1 billion gallons of coal slurry, and prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider how coal waste is handled. Although the EPA <a href="" type="internal">was on course</a> to reclassify coal leavings as “hazardous waste” that needed special handling, that rule has been stuck in bureaucratic wrangling for more than two years. So for now, it’s still perfectly legal to store coal ash waste in retention ponds that are likely not lined or particularly well maintained.</p>
<p /> | Coal Ash Spills in Lake Michigan | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/coal-ash-spills-lake-michigan/ | 2011-11-01 | 4 |
<p>California's latest carbon auction brought disappointing results Tuesday as litigation and lagging support by lawmakers weigh down the state's landmark programs combating climate change.</p>
<p>State officials said only 34 percent of the available carbon pollution credits were sold in the latest auction under the program, which requires companies that emit climate-changing gases to buy the pollution permits.</p>
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<p>It was a slight rebound from this spring, when investors bought just 10 percent of the pollution credits offered, signaling a rocky period for the state's overall campaign against climate-changing pollution from fossil fuels.</p>
<p>The cap-and-trade program is a keystone of Gov. Jerry Brown's efforts to reduce climate-changing pollution in California and is being watched closely around the world as other governments put together efforts to fight climate change.</p>
<p>Dave Clegern, spokesman for the state air board that runs the effort, said the program is adapting as it should to shifts in the market.</p>
<p>"The California cap-and-trade program is first and foremost a greenhouse gas reduction program, and it is working" to bring down carbon pollution from fossil fuels, Clegern said in an email.</p>
<p>Pollution credits consistently sold out after the cap-and-trade program began in 2012, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars quarterly for initiatives that reduce greenhouse gases. The proceeds are used to fund a high-speed rail project pushed by Brown, along with other transit construction and energy conservation efforts.</p>
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<p>This year, demand plummeted amid uncertainty about the program's viability. The result was the steep decline in revenue at a spring auction, prompting concerns that funding won't be available long-term to continue the programs.</p>
<p>Brown, backed by environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers, is struggling to win support for extending the state's landmark global warming law amid opposition from oil companies, Republicans and moderate Democrats in the Legislature.</p>
<p>Republican lawmakers called the latest middling auction results a failure and a flop, and called again for the state to abandon the cap-and-trade program.</p>
<p>However, the state Assembly took a critical step Tuesday when it advanced the latest global warming legislation to the state Senate, where it is also expected to pass before next week. Both chambers are dominated by Democrats.</p>
<p>The California Chamber of Commerce is fighting cap-and-trade in court, claiming it is an illegal tax that did not go through the proper legislative approval process.</p>
<p>The lawsuit in particular is scaring away some potential investors, said Dan McGraw, a Houston-based carbon analyst with the ICIS trade publication.</p>
<p>"Potentially there's a lot to lose if the California Chamber of Commerce wins that case," McGraw said.</p>
<p>The growing backlog of unsold carbon credits also is weighing on the cap-and-trade program, he said.</p>
<p>"They're going through something every carbon market has gone through," the analyst said. "The question is: What do you do now?"</p>
<p>The latest auction results show that the market needs certainty about the state's long-term cap and trade program, through either the Legislature or state voters vouching for its future in a ballot initiative, Nancy McFadden, Brown's chief of staff, said in a statement.</p> | Demand sags for California credits aimed at greenhouse gases | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/23/demand-sags-for-california-credits-aimed-at-greenhouse-gases.html | 2016-08-24 | 0 |
<p>“Monday, Monday, Can’t Trust That Day …”</p>
<p>A Baltimore woman is spearheading an effort for the violent city of Baltimore to eschew killing over the weekend. Along with other activists, Erricka Bridgeford, whose stepson and brother were murdered, is taking to the streets with flyers urging people to have a "Nobody Kill Anybody" weekend.</p>
<p>If that works, Monday should be interesting.</p>
<p>As NBC News <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/baltimore-activists-pursue-city-wide-ceasefire-despite-police-mistrust-n789431" type="external">points out</a>, “Although it has less than a tenth of New York City's population, Baltimore has suffered 48 more homicides in 2017, according to police statistics. The Maryland city's murder rate is also on the rise, 20 percent higher compared to the same period last year.”</p>
<p>Bridgeford told NBC News, "We didn’t come up with anything that was brand new but we just had to make a decision that we could at least try."</p>
<p>Some gang leaders and members pledged to hold off on killing until at least Monday.</p>
<p>Although police and city government told NBC News they want to support the movement, Bridgeford insisted she didn’t want their help. Why? Because the people of Baltimore don’t trust them, she said. She added, "You don't have to be woke very long in America, especially if you're a person of color, to notice that there are certain parts of the city that get resources that yours don't.”</p>
<p>The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download" type="external">42% black</a>; in 2015 <a href="https://www.amren.com/news/2015/05/numbers-show-most-baltimore-cops-are-minorities/" type="external">more than half of the force</a> was non-white, either black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American. Over 60% of the incumbents at the highest command levels came from from minority communities. 54% of the command leadership came from minority groups.</p>
<p>BPD spokesman T.J. Smith told NBC News, "At the end of the day we all want the same thing. We want officers to do what they’re expected to do, and the community wants officers to do what they’re expected to do. But we also all want people to stop harming each other, especially with guns."</p>
<p>Last year, a <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/file/883296/download" type="external">Department of Justice report</a> concluded the police department had permitted conduct that violated the Constitution and federal law.</p>
<p>Jonathan Smith, former chief of the Justice Department's Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, took issue with Bridgeford’s rejection of the police. He stated, "This is a real opportunity for dialogue with police to occur and address ways that policing creates circumstances for violence. There are many neighborhoods in Baltimore that are over-policed and under-served. Kids are being swept off the streets at the same time that you can't solve a homicide because you can’t get anyone to talk about what they saw."</p>
<p>Bridgeford confessed, "We don't think this is a cure. We don’t think this will even necessarily stop violence that weekend, but we know that some people have made promises that they won't, and that just might save somebody’s life."</p> | Baltimore Celebrates 'Nobody Kill Anybody' Weekend. Yes, Seriously. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/19357/baltimore-celebrates-nobody-kill-anybody-weekend-hank-berrien | 2017-08-04 | 0 |
<p>* Dollar sags but manages to hold above 3-year lows</p>
<p>* US govt shutdown seen to have been priced in</p>
<p>* Treasury yields at 3-1/2-yr highs, helps limit USD losses</p>
<p>By Shinichi Saoshiro</p>
<p>TOKYO, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The dollar sagged against its peers on Monday as a U.S. government shutdown dented sentiment, although losses were limited for now as investors took a wait-and-see stance on developments in Washington.</p>
<p>The shut down came into effect at midnight on Friday after Democrats and Republicans, locked in a bitter dispute over immigration and border security, failed to agree on a last-minute deal to fund government operations.</p>
<p>In order to break the impasse, Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate held talks on Sunday. The Senate was expected to vote at 0600 GMT on whether to advance a measure to fund the government through Feb. 8.</p>
<p>The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies was 0.1 percent lower at 90.490 but managed to hold above a three-year trough of 90.113 set on Thursday.</p>
<p>The euro rose 0.2 percent to $1.2252, stopping short of a three-year peak of $1.2323 scaled on Wednesday.</p>
<p>“The dollar’s losses have been limited as negotiations going into Friday were proving difficult and the market had time to price in a U.S. government shutdown,” said Shin Kadota, senior strategist at Barclays in Tokyo.</p>
<p>“The shutdown is also not expected to last a very long time. That said, if the shutdown stretches out to several weeks, then we would have to start worrying about the negative impact to the U.S. economy.”</p>
<p>The dollar was 0.15 percent lower at 110.685 yen, still some distance from a four-month low of 110.190 plumbed on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Despite the headwinds from the political impasse in Washington, the greenback received some support from higher U.S. yields.</p>
<p>The 10-year Treasury yield rose to a 3-1/2-year high of 2.663 percent on Friday with the debt market having been on the defensive through much of last week in the wake of a rally in risk asset markets.</p>
<p>The Australian dollar climbed 0.2 percent to $0.8001 and the New Zealand dollar advanced 0.15 percent to $0.7289.</p>
<p>The pound dipped 0.1 percent to $1.3889, pulling away from a 1-1/2-year top of $1.3942 reached on Wednesday. (Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration this week will unveil a list of advanced technology Chinese imports targeted for U.S. tariffs to punish Beijing over technology transfer policies, a move expected to intensify trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.</p>
<p>U.S. tariffs on $50 billion to $60 billion worth of annual imports is expected to be levied on products benefiting from Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” industrial development program, but it may be more than two months before the import curbs take effect, administration officials have said.</p>
<p>The U.S. Trade Representative’s office needs to unveil the list of products by Friday under President Donald Trump’s China tariff proclamation signed on March 22.</p>
<p>The tariffs are aimed at forcing changes to Chinese government policies that USTR says results in the “uneconomic” transfer of U.S. intellectual property to Chinese companies.</p>
<p>The agency’s “Section 301” investigation authorizing the tariffs alleges China has systematically sought to misappropriate U.S. intellectual property through joint venture requirements, unfair technology licensing rules, purchases of U.S. technology firms with state funding and outright theft.</p>
<p>China has denied that its laws require technology transfers and has threatened to retaliate against any U.S. tariffs with trade sanctions of its own, with potential targets such as U.S. soybeans, aircraft or heavy equipment.</p>
<p>On Sunday, Beijing slapped extra tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 U.S. products including frozen pork, as well as wine and certain fruits and nuts in response to steep U.S. tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel announced last month by the Trump administration.</p>
<p>Fears have arisen that the two countries will spiral into a trade war that will crush global growth.</p> TARGETING ‘MADE IN CHINA 2025’
<p>White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said last week that Section 301 tariffs would focus on Chinese industries benefiting from the Made in China 2025 plan, which aims to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products.</p>
<p>“China in my view brazenly has released this China 2025 plan and basically told the rest of the world, ‘We’re going to dominate every single emerging industry of the future and therefore your economies aren’t going to have any future,” Navarro told Bloomberg Television.</p>
<p>“The Section 301, which is on intellectual theft and forced transfer, is specifically designed to address those kinds of things,” Navarro said.</p>
<p>The state-led 2025 program targets 10 strategic industries: advanced information technology, robotics, aircraft, shipbuilding and marine engineering, advanced rail equipment, new energy vehicles, electrical generation equipment, agricultural machinery, pharmaceuticals and advanced materials.</p>
<p>“Foreign technology acquisition through various means remains a prime focus under Made in China 2025 because China is still catching up in many of the areas prioritized for development,” USTR said in its report justifying the tariffs.</p>
<p>U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said that preserving America’s technological edge is “the future of the U.S. economy.”</p>
<p>Reports that the tariff list may also include consumer goods such as clothing and footwear drew strong protests from U.S. business groups, which argued that it would raise prices for U.S. consumers.</p> LIMITED TIME FOR TALKS
<p>While there have been contacts between senior members of the Trump administration and their Chinese counterparts since Trump announced his intention to impose tariffs, there has been little evidence of intensive negotiations to forestall them.</p>
<p>“The administration is following the Japan model from the 1980s,” said a tech industry executive. “They’ll publish a Federal Register notice of tariffs on certain products, then try to reach a negotiated settlement over the next 60 days.”During his first stint at USTR in the Reagan administration, Lighthizer employed similar tactics to win voluntary Japanese export restraints on steel and autos.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the Infrastructure Initiative at the Local 18 Richfield Training Site in Richfield, Ohio, U.S., March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>Wendy Cutler, a former deputy USTR in charge of Asia negotiations, said that addressing the sweeping intellectual property allegations identified by USTR would require major changes to China’s industrial policy. A 60-day settlement may not be realistic in that case.</p>
<p>“I think they’ve set up a high bar for what they need to achieve, in order not to impose these types of tariffs and investment restrictions,” Cutler said.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Peter Cooney and Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Kremlin aide said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump suggested the White House as the venue for a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin when they discussed the idea of meeting in a telephone call last month.</p>
<p>Since that call, on March 20, preparations for a possible summit have not progressed because of a diplomatic row, the aide, Yuri Ushakov, said.</p>
<p>“When our presidents spoke on the phone, Trump proposed having the first meeting in Washington, in the White House,” Ushakov told reporters at a briefing.</p>
<p>“Trump called Putin last month to congratulate him on his election victory and told reporters he believed he and Putin would meet “in the not too distant future.”</p>
<p>White House press secretary Sarah Sanders did not confirm an invitation had been issued to Putin, but said the two had discussed a number of venues for a potential meeting, including the White House.</p>
<p>“We have nothing further to add at this time,” she told reporters on Monday.</p>
<p>Rolling out a welcome for Putin in the White House, rather than at a neutral location, could anger Trump’s domestic critics, who accuse Russia of hostile acts against Western countries, including the United States.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
<p>Some current and former members of Trump’s team are under investigation for alleged collusion with Russia in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration. Trump denies any collusion.</p>
<p>Since the March 20 phone call, Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed a Russian consulate over allegations that Russia was behind the poisoning of former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.</p>
<p>Russia denies involvement and has retaliated against the diplomatic sanctions in kind.</p> FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin talks to U.S. President Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
<p>“Against the backdrop of these events, it’s difficult to discuss the possibility of holding a summit”, Ushakov said.</p>
<p>“We want to believe that the discussions (on a proposed summit) will begin,” Ushakov said.</p>
<p>“We want to hope that... one day, at one time or another we can arrive at the start of a serious and constructive dialogue.”</p>
<p>Reporting and writing by Denis Pinchuk; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Christian Lowe and Robin Pomeroy</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While President Donald Trump has said illegal immigrants heading toward the United States are trying to take advantage of an Obama-era policy that shields certain people from deportation, the program known as DACA is actually not open to new entrants.</p> Activists and DACA recipients march up Broadway during the start of their 'Walk to Stay Home,' a five-day 250-mile walk from New York to Washington D.C., to demand that Congress pass a Clean Dream Act, in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
<p>At issue is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the Republican president last September ordered rescinded. Under DACA, hundreds of thousands of young adults dubbed “Dreamers” who were brought into the United States illegally as children have been shielded from deportation and given work permits.</p>
<p>On Sunday, apparently in reference to a caravan of 1,500 Central Americans who are journeying through Mexico toward the United States, Trump wrote on Twitter: “These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!”</p>
<p>But there is no “act” to get in on. Newly arriving illegal immigrants cannot win protections under DACA, created in 2012 by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, for two reasons.</p>
<p>Anyone admitted into the program had to have been living continuously in the United States since June 15, 2007, along with other requirements. In addition, Trump himself ordered an end to the program, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is not accepting new applicants.</p>
<p>Under Trump’s action, DACA was supposed to have begun winding down last month. But courts have ruled that Trump acted improperly and that the hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently enrolled still qualified for protections while the legal fight over DACA unfolds.</p>
<p>When he announced he was ending DACA, Trump urged Congress to come up with a legislative fix. Referring to the Dreamers, Trump said, “I have a great heart for the folks we’re talking about, a great love for them.”</p>
<p>Seven months later, DACA participants are living with the uncertainty over whether they will be protected or targeted for deportation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, following a series of failed negotiations with Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, Trump has been fuming over the refusal of lawmakers to fully fund a $25 billion wall he wants to build on the U.S.-Mexican border. The wall became a bargaining chip in DACA replacement legislation.</p>
<p>“NO MORE DACA DEAL!,” Trump said on Twitter as he blamed Democrats for the situation. “DACA is dead.”</p>
<p>Matthew Wright, a government professor at American University in Washington, called Trump’s tweets “not connected to reality.” Wright noted that Trump rejected several Democratic offers to address DACA, including at one point a deal that would have provided $25 billion for his wall.</p>
<p>Last month, Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said Trump’s rejection of that offer was the “high-water mark” for the wall’s prospects in Congress, where support for it is tepid at best.</p>
<p>Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump declared as “dead” on Monday a program that protects immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children and pressed Congress to “immediately” pass legislation to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.</p>
<p>Trump, who has taken a hard line toward immigration, said in September he would terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program introduced by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, but gave the Republican-controlled Congress until March 6 to replace it.</p>
<p>Congress failed to meet that deadline, but courts have ruled the program can remain in place for now.</p>
<p>“DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon,” the Republican president said in a Twitter post.</p>
<p>It was unclear whether Trump, in any new immigration legislation, would support safeguards for people protected by DACA. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s tweets.</p>
<p>Democrats blamed Trump for the tenuous status of a program that shielded hundreds of thousands of immigrants, often called “Dreamers,” from deportation and gave them work permits.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-usa-immigration-daca-explainer/explainer-trump-muddles-daca-program-in-anti-immigrant-twitter-comments-idUSKCN1H91UM" type="external">Explainer: Trump muddles DACA program in anti-immigrant Twitter comments</a>
<p>Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said on Twitter that the president created his own crisis.</p>
<p>“The President is blaming everyone under the sun, but he only has to look in the mirror to find the person who turned down six different bipartisan DACA deals from Congress - a few that included funding for his useless wall,” Durbin said.</p>
<p>Democrats had offered at one point to fully fund the wall Trump wants along the U.S.-Mexican border but rescinded the offer in January, accusing the president of reneging on elements of a tentative agreement.</p>
<p>“He walked away - not Democrats,” Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote on Twitter.</p>
<p>“Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People ... Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!” Trump said in another Twitter post.</p>
<p>Congress cannot pass any legislation immediately as lawmakers are on their second week of a spring recess, but taking a tough stance on immigration appeals to Trump’s conservative base.</p>
<p>Senate Republican leaders have ignored previous calls from Trump advocating the so-called nuclear option, which would involve changing Senate rules so Republicans could more easily overcome Democratic opposition to legislation in a chamber they control with a thin majority of 51 out of 100 seats.</p>
<p>Cindy Agustin, 28, a DACA recipient and immigration activist in Chicago, said the impasse over the program breeds fear and uncertainty.</p>
<p>“It’s frustrating because we’re in limbo right now,” Agustin added.</p>
<p>Trump also reiterated his call for Mexico to stop people from entering the United States, after saying on Sunday he would terminate a major trade accord with Mexico if it does not do more to secure its border with the United States.</p>
<p>The United States is currently renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.</p> BACK AGAINST THE WALL
<p>Trump made building a border wall - and making Mexico pay for it - one of his top campaign pledges when he ran for president in 2016. Mexico has refused to pay.</p>
<p>In the past, Trump had said he was open to a deal with congressional Democrats in which they would support funding for the border wall in exchange for protection for the Dreamers.</p>
<p>But on Sunday he indicated that time had passed, writing on Twitter: “‘Caravans’ coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!”</p>
<p>The mention of a caravan apparently referred to a group of 1,500 men, women and children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who are traveling in a “refugee caravan” organized by the U.S.-based immigration advocacy group Pueblo sin Fronteras, whose Spanish name means People Without Borders.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump waves to the media as he arrives with first lady Melania Trump at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., after the Easter weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
<p>By traveling together, the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico toward the U.S. border dangerous. They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States.</p>
<p>No immigration deal has materialized in the Republican-controlled Congress despite months of efforts. The Senate considered several immigration proposals in February but rejected all of them, including bipartisan bills and legislation tailored to Trump’s requirements.</p>
<p>In light of Trump’s call for the “nuclear option,” a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday noted that Republican senators oppose changing existing rules governing the debate and passage of legislation.</p>
<p>Major legislation usually needs a supermajority to pass the Senate. Without 60 votes in support, the Democratic minority can sink a bill.</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | FOREX-Dollar sags on U.S. govt shutdown, losses limited for now Trump to unveil China tariff list this week, targeting tech goods Kremlin says Trump suggested Putin visit the White House Explainer: Trump muddles DACA program in anti-immigrant Twitter comments Trump declares DACA 'dead,' urges Congress to act on border | false | https://reuters.com/article/global-forex/forex-dollar-sags-on-us-govt-shutdown-losses-limited-for-now-idUSL4N1PH013 | 2018-01-22 | 2 |
<p>Investing.com – Gold prices fell sharply as upbeat inflation data lifted treasury yields higher sparking a recovery in the dollar, while signs of progress on tax reform weighed on sentiment.</p>
<p>for December delivery on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange fell by $10.44, or 0.80%, to $1271.85 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>The Core Price Consumer Expenditure (PCE) Index – the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation – in October year-on-year, compared to a 1.3% rise in the previous month, while September inflation was revised upward to 1.4% from 1.3%.</p>
<p>The upbeat inflation report, fuelled expectations that the Federal Reserve would adopt a more aggressive stance on monetary policy, lifting yields and the dollar higher, which pressured gold prices to a nearly two-week low.</p>
<p>Chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities Stephen Stanley said the “tentative evidence” of a turnaround in the trend of slowing inflation could “soothe” concerns of subdued inflation among “all but the most dovish” policy makers.</p>
<p>Gold is sensitive to moves higher in both bond yields and the U.S. dollar – A stronger dollar makes gold more expensive for holders of foreign currency while a rise in U.S. rates, lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bullion.</p>
<p>Also weighing on gold was easing uncertainty over tax reform after Sen. John McCain announced his support of the Senate’s tax bill, greatly increasing its chances of passage through the congressional body.</p>
<p>In other precious metal trade, fell 0.84% to $16.32 a troy ounce, while gained 0.22% to $943.45.</p>
<p>traded at $3.07, up 0.15%, while fell by 3.93% to $3.05. Natural gas came under pressure after data showed that domestic supplies in storage fell less than forecast last week.</p>
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<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Gold Prices Fall Sharply as Bond Yields Rise on Improved Inflation Outlook | false | https://newsline.com/gold-prices-fall-sharply-as-bond-yields-rise-on-improved-inflation-outlook/ | 2017-11-30 | 1 |
<p>Among a litany of other terrible advice, New York Magazine tells women to “Refuse to collaborate with a man” in their latest identity-politics hit-piece, because unity.</p>
<p>The overtly liberal outlet, that by their own estimation reaches <a href="http://nymag.com/newyork/aboutus/" type="external">1.8 million viewers per week</a>, did their “fair share” to help assist in the divide between gender and race lines in their “ <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/01/feminist-resolutions-for-2016.html" type="external">Feminist Resolutions for 2016</a>” listicle—which by the way was re-tweeted by Planned Parenthood (another beacon of unity).</p>
<p>The magazine drives the wedge between genders and specifically advises women to “refuse” to work with men and only “work with women or work alone.” Their reasoning for their “misandry” (the new SJW-term for prejudice against men) is that the evil man will take all the credit, and you need to get ahead so ditch the patriarchy, girl.</p>
<p>This might sound distinctly uncharitable— after all, misandry is mostly an internet joke, right? — but if you want to get full credit for all your hard work, research says you shouldn’t partner up with a man. He’ll see greater benefits to your collaboration than you will. Work with women or work alone, whenever you can. See if you come out ahead by 2017.</p>
<p>The “research” NY Magazine provides to back their original suggestion is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/upshot/when-teamwork-doesnt-work-for-women.html" type="external">a single study</a> (and anecdotal evidence from a transgender economist) discussed in the “unbiased” New York Times which looks solely at only young economists and then extrapolates its suspect findings to all “other professions involving teamwork.”</p>
<p>The leftist magazine also advocates for young women to “Call out casual racism”—“casual racism” being code for “microagression,” which is code for “offending” someone in some obscure manner with zero intent. Adding to their effort to racially agitate, the listicle includes a call for young women to “Actually show up at a Black Lives Matter march.” Of course, <a href="" type="internal">Black Lives Matter</a> members have literally called for the execution of white law enforcement officers among other egregious acts, so again, “unity.”</p>
<p>And because no feminist list would be complete without pushing abortion, the magazine advises young women to “Occupy federal territory until the Hyde Amendment is repealed.” The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/142" type="external">Hyde Amendment</a> is legislation that prohibits certain federal dollars from funding abortion directly in most instances.</p>
<p>And maybe the most bizarre behavior backed: “Stop shaving your legs. Or your armpits. Or grow out your bush to Joy of Sex proportions.” Lovely.</p>
<p>What we see here is another liberal publication hard at work advising women to partake in divisive and harmful behavior. But would we expect anything less from a magazine with “ <a href="" type="internal">New York values</a>”?</p> | NY Mag: 'Refuse To Collaborate With A Man' And Other Terrible Advice For Women | true | https://dailywire.com/news/2674/ny-mag-refuse-collaborate-man-and-other-terrible-amanda-prestigiacomo | 2016-01-18 | 0 |
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<p>The question is: In the tangled mess that is Syria’s conflict, who are those local allies?</p>
<p>Syrian government forces, Turkish troops and their Syrian militia allies, and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces all have their eye on Raqqa. Each vehemently rejects letting the others capture the city and would likely react in anger should the United States support the others. And it is not clear that any has the resources to take the city on its own.</p>
<p>“Raqqa is more of an abstract goal: everyone wants it in principle, but no one is willing to commit the resources and bear the risks necessary,” said Faysal Itani, an analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The fall of Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s de facto capital and largest remaining stronghold, would be the biggest defeat for the militants in Syria since they captured the northern city on the banks of the Euphrates River in January 2014.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump has vowed to “obliterate” the group. “We will work with our allies, including our friends and allies in the Muslim world, to extinguish this vile enemy from our planet,” he told Congress on Tuesday.</p>
<p>The top U.S. commander in the campaign against IS, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, has said he believes Raqqa and Mosul will be taken within six months. So far, the offensive on Mosul has been underway four months, with only half the city captured from the militants in ferocious street-to-street urban combat. And that is using a relatively intensively trained and united military, backed by heavy U.S. firepower and commandos on the ground — a contrast to the comparatively undisciplined and fragmented forces the U.S. has to choose from as allies in Syria.</p>
<p>Raqqa is a smaller city than Mosul, but the militants are believed to have dug in with powerful fortifications there.</p>
<p>In Syria, U.S-backed predominantly Kurdish fighters known as the Syria Democratic Forces, or SDF, remain Trump’s best bet. Aided by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and some 500 U.S. special forces troops deployed in an advisory role, the force has been marching toward Raqqa since November. Closing in on the city from different directions, it is now stationed some eight kilometers (five miles) north of the city.</p>
<p>The U.S. military recently provided a small number of armored vehicles to the U.S.-backed force to give better protection from small arms fire and roadside bombs as they get closer to Raqqa.</p>
<p>Further aid to the rag-tag group, however, raises sensitive questions over how to deal with Turkey, a NATO ally with much at stake in Syria. Turkey considers the main Kurdish militia in Syria — known as the YPG, and an affiliate of the U.S.-backed SDF — a terrorist organization, and has vowed to work with Syrian opposition fighters known as the Free Syrian Army to liberate Raqqa.</p>
<p>In a dramatic reversal of years of the Obama administration’s calls for the ouster of President Bashar Assad, Trump has hinted he might be willing to work with Assad’s army and Russia, whose year-and-a-half military intervention has propped up Assad’s government.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Assad’s forces are preoccupied with other battles, however, and would likely need significant U.S. military involvement to take on Raqqa. On Wednesday, the Syrian military recaptured the central town of Palmyra, a city located in the desert south of Raqqa that has gone back and forth between control of the military and the extremists several times. The government forces have also clashed with the Turkish-backed Syrian fighters, who block their path to Raqqa.</p>
<p>Syrians are sharply divided over who should enter Raqqa. Many opposition supporters consider the SDF, which maintains a tacit non-aggression pact with Assad’s forces, to be a hostile group. There are also fears of tensions if Raqqa, home to a nearly 200,000 mainly Arab population, is taken by the SDF, a coalition of Kurdish, Arab and Christian fighters.</p>
<p>“Let us be frank that any force that will liberate Raqqa, other than the Free Syrian Army, is going to be a new occupation force with different flags and banners,” said Mohammed Khodor of Sound and Picture Organization, which tracks atrocities by IS in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was even more blunt, warning that if the SDF enters Raqqa, it will hurt relations between Ankara and Washington.</p>
<p>“We have said that a terror organization cannot be used against another terror organization,” the Turkish leader told the state-run Anadolu news agency.</p>
<p>The Kurds reject that notion and insist that only forces fighting under the SDF banner will liberate Raqqa.</p>
<p>“Turkey is an occupation force and has no legitimate right to enter Raqqa,” said SDF spokeswoman Cihan Sheikh Ehmed. In a text message exchange from northern Syria, she said the SDF has the experience in fighting IS to finish the operation.</p>
<p>Battlefield victories by the SDF against the Islamic State group have brought growing Western support. Asked if adding more U.S. troops or better arming Syria’s Kurds were options, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he will “accommodate any request” from his field commanders.</p>
<p>In Mosul, the U.S.-led coalition is playing a greater role than ever before in the fight against IS and coalition forces have moved closer to front-line fighting.</p>
<p>U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian says the increased support is an effort to “accelerate the campaign” against the Islamic State group, noting that launching simultaneous operations in both Mosul and Raqqa “puts further strain on the enemy’s command and control.”</p>
<p>“It is a complicating factor when you don’t have a partner government to work with,” conceded Dorrian, adding that whoever the coalition partners with in the fight for Raqqa is “a subject of ongoing discussions.”</p>
<p>Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a Middle East analyst at the Jamestown Foundation who closely follows Kurdish affairs, says the U.S.-led coalition wants to have a quick end to IS in Raqqa, from which external operations against the West are planned. That means it would prefer to work with the Kurdish-led SDF forces “since they are able to mobilize manpower unlike the Turks,” he said.</p>
<p>In any case, the battle for Raqqa is sure to be a long and deadly one. It took the SDF nearly 10 weeks to capture the northern Syrian town of Manbij from IS last year. It took Turkish forces and allied groups more than three months to retake the town of al-Bab, a costly battle that killed dozens of Turkish soldiers and many civilians.</p>
<p>Raqqa is much larger than either Manbij or al-Bab. Some Syrian opposition activists say the extremists dug a trench around it to make it difficult for attackers to storm it.</p>
<p>“It would be difficult for any troops,” said Itani of the Atlantic Council.</p>
<p>“Witness the slow and ugly progress in Mosul as well. Raqqa would be tough,” he said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Susannah George in Mosul, Iraq, contributed to this report.</p> | Rivals in Syria race to assault militants’ ‘capital’ Raqqa | false | https://abqjournal.com/961547/rivals-in-syria-race-to-assault-militants-capital-raqqa.html | 2017-03-03 | 2 |
<p>Nov. 9 (UPI) — The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Indianapolis-Colts/" type="external">Indianapolis Colts</a> have released veteran cornerback Vontae Davis.</p>
<p>Indianapolis announced the move on Thursday. Davis, 29, joined the Colts in 2012 as part of a trade with the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Miami-Dolphins/" type="external">Miami Dolphins</a>. The two-time Pro Bowler was the No. 25 overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, played his first six seasons for the Dolphins.</p>
<p>He made the Pro Bowl in 2014 and 2015 with the Colts. He had 47 tackles, 10 passes defensed and an interception in 14 games last season. In 2014, he had 58 tackles, 27 passes defensed, four interceptions, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery in 15 appearances for the Colts.</p>
<p>The 5 foot 11, 207 pound defensive back had 21 tackles and two passes defensed in five starts this season with Indianapolis. The Colts previously ruled Davis out of Sunday’s matchup against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Houston-Texans/" type="external">Houston Texans</a> with a non-injury related issue. He did not make the trip to Houston.</p>
<p>Indianapolis previously tried to trade the veteran cornerback, with <a href="https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/NFL/2017/10/30/Sources-Indianapolis-Colts-willing-to-trade-TY-Hilton/3921509364823/" type="external">several interested teams reportedly</a> checking in on his availability. His contract expires after this season.</p>
<p>Davis signed a four-year, $36 million contract in 2014. He was due $9 million this season.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2017/11/08/source-colts-vontae-davis-needs-season-ending-surgery/846963001/" type="external">league source told the Indianapolis Star</a> Wednesday that doctors have recommended season-ending groin surgery for Davis.</p> | Vontae Davis: Indianapolis Colts release veteran cornerback | false | https://newsline.com/vontae-davis-indianapolis-colts-release-veteran-cornerback/ | 2017-11-09 | 1 |
<p>Britain’s biggest arms fair starts Tuesday, and will play host to several countries labelled human rights abusers by the UK Foreign Office.</p>
<p>The full list of the 56 countries which received official invitations to the Defence and Security Equipment International Exhibition (DSEI) was released by the Department for International Trade’s Defence and Security Organisation in response to a <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2017-09-04/8328/" type="external">parliamentary question</a>.</p>
<p>Among them are Bahrain, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – all named ‘Human Rights Priorities Countries’ in the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/630623/Human_Rights_and_Democracy_Report_2016_accessible.pdf" type="external">2016 Foreign and Commonwealth Report</a> published last July.</p>
<p>Others accused of human rights violations on the guestlist include the Philippines, Indonesia, Qatar, UAE and Turkey.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.dsei.co.uk/why-exhibit/compliance#/" type="external">arms fair</a> – which is described as the world’s leading defense and security exhibition – &#160;takes place at the ExCel Centre, London, from September 12 to 15.</p>
<p>Some 1600 exhibitors including BAE Systems, Thales, Rolls Royce, General Dynamics, Israel Defence, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon will display products at the event.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dsei.co.uk/conferences/conferences--seminars-overview#/" type="external">Keynote</a> speeches will be made by Secretary of State for Defence Sir Michael Fallon and Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox, among others.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/uk/392390-bae-surveillance-middle-east/" type="external">READ MORE: Arms giant BAE sold powerful mass surveillance equipment to oppressive regimes – report</a></p>
<p>The UK remains the second largest global defence exporter, winning defence orders worth a total of £5.9 billion ($7.78 billion) in 2016, according to government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/631343/UK_defence_and_security_export_statistics_2016_Final_Version.pdf" type="external">statistics</a> published last July. Some 57 percent of total UK defence exports between 2007 and 2016 were sold to the Middle East.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.caat.org.uk/media/press-releases/2017-09-04" type="external">Campaign Against Arms Trade</a> &#160;members have been leading protests outside the venue since Monday, September 4. The week of blockades is intended to highlight the “deadly consequences of the arms trade.”</p>
<p>“This list includes a roll call of despots, dictatorships and human rights abusers. They will be greeted by civil servants and Government Ministers who are there for one reason only: to promote weapons. It’s impossible to promote human rights and democracy while arming and supporting authoritarian regimes and tyrants,” Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade <a href="https://www.caat.org.uk/media/press-releases/2017-09-08" type="external">said</a>.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for the Department for International Trade told RT that the “government undertakes a stringent process of scrutiny and approval before issuing any invitations to foreign governments to attend a major UK defence exhibition like DSEI.”</p>
<p>“Respect for human rights is a mandatory consideration in the process and a country would not be invited where that would contradict the UK’s international obligations. Invitations are reviewed if the situation in any one country changes.”</p>
<p>London’s Met Police told RT that 102 arrests had been made since protests began last Monday. Arrests were for a variety of offences, the majority, however, were for obstruction of the highway, according to a police spokesperson. No information is yet available on any possible charges.</p>
<p>Last year a court dismissed charges against eight protesters who blocked the road outside the DSEI in 2015 after the judge stated the defence had presented clear and credible evidence that illegal activity had taken place at the event in previous years.</p>
<p>He also said police arresting the activists had failed to investigate to ensure it was not happening again.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for the DSEI told the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/court-dismisses-charges-against-london-arms-fair-protesters" type="external">Guardian</a> at the time that compliance regulations were not breached at the 2015 fair.</p>
<p>RT has reached out to DSEI for comment on procedures in place to combat potential illegal activity at this year’s event. The compliance section of the DSEI website states that all exhibitors are subject to the UK Export Control Act 2002 and the Export Control Order 2008.</p>
<p>It also outlines goods banned from the exhibition; these include those designed for executions, those banned by the EU because of evidence of their use in torture, landmines and certain cluster munitions.</p> | ‘Weapons for tyrants’: UK blasted for inviting human rights abusers to arms trade fair | false | https://newsline.com/weapons-for-tyrants-uk-blasted-for-inviting-human-rights-abusers-to-arms-trade-fair/ | 2017-09-11 | 1 |
<p>Former president and epic foreign relations "expert" Jimmy Carter has offered to take care of the North Korea problem for President Donald Trump, and broker a peace deal between the United States and pint-sized dictator Kim Jong Un.</p>
<p>"Carter wants to meet with the North Korean leader and play a constructive role for peace on the Korean Peninsula as he did in 1994,” University of Georgia professor Park Han-shi told a South Korean newspaper.</p>
<p>Carter wants "to prevent a second Korean War," Park, who is the chair emeritus of UGA's School of Public and International Affairs, explained. "Should former President Carter be able to visit North Korea, he would like to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and discuss a peace treaty between the United States and the North and a complete denuclearization of North Korea."</p>
<p>Carter should know, as most freshmen taking their first international relations classes do, that the United States doesn't typically engage in bilateral talks with dictators, and that sitting down to a negotiating table with a crazed, bowl hair-cutted Bond villain isn't the typical diplomatic approach when nuclear war is on the line.</p>
<p>But given Carter's track record, it's not entirely clear he has the basics of foreign policy down.</p> | Jimmy Carter Offers To Broker Peace With North Korea | true | https://dailywire.com/news/22105/jimmy-carter-offers-broker-peace-north-korea-emily-zanotti | 2017-10-10 | 0 |
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<p>Jimmie Johnson was already locked into one of the title-contending spots at Homestead.</p>
<p>So that leaves two spots for the final four in the deciding Sprint Cup race Nov. 20. And there are six drivers — half of them Edwards’ teammates with Joe Gibbs Racing –with one more chance to claim them next Sunday at Phoenix.</p>
<p>Edwards got the victory he so desperately needed to advance when he won a rain-shortened race at Texas. It was cut by 41 laps because of rain late Sunday night after the start was delayed nearly six hours.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I feel like this is what we needed to do. We were able to do that. There’s a lot of pride in that,” Edwards said. “To be able to run like we did tonight, for the pit crew to perform the way they did, it’s really great. I think it’s a testament to the team that Coach Gibbs put together.”</p>
<p>Gibbs drivers Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin are still in contention for the final spots. They go to Phoenix third through fifth in the points standings, though separated by only two points.</p>
<p>“Next week will be super competitive,” Gibbs said. “For us and our guys, I know all three of them want this. They really want it bad.”</p>
<p>Team Penske driver Joey Logano, who led a race-high 178 laps at Texas before finishing second, is listed second in the points with a tiebreaker over Kyle Bush. Kenseth is only one point back, with Hamlin one behind him.</p>
<p>Kevin Harvick is sixth in points, 18 back, but goes to Phoenix where he won his track-record eighth race in March and has won six of the last eight.</p>
<p>“We will just go there and do what we always do and race as hard as we can,” Harvick said.</p>
<p>If one of the remaining six contenders doesn’t win at Phoenix, the final two spots will be determined by points.</p>
<p>Harvick and Kurt Busch, his Stewart-Haas teammate who is 34 points back in eighth, are both likely in the position of needing a victory at Phoenix for a title chance.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>That is pretty much the situation Edwards faced when he got to Texas eighth in points among the drivers still eligible for the championship, a week after a cut tire and crash led to a 36th-place finish at Martinsville.</p>
<p>Winning a rain-shortened race provided a bit of vindication for Edwards.</p>
<p>Last year’s race at Phoenix was delayed nearly seven hours as a series of storms passed through the area, and then once it started at night, it was called after 218 laps. Edwards finished fifth, leaving him five points out of the final spot for the Chase finale.</p>
<p>“This rain was a lot more welcome than that rain,” Edwards said. “That was frustrating.”</p>
<p>Edwards took the lead on lap 258 after beating Martin Truex Jr. off pit road, and led the rest of the way.</p>
<p>Light rain was already falling and plenty more was on the radar around the track, when the caution came out with 45 laps remaining of the originally scheduled 334-lap race.</p>
<p>All cars were brought to pit road four laps later, and it was only a few more minutes before NASCAR declared the race over and official after 293 laps. It could have taken two hours or more to dry to track, even though it ended up being only a brief shower.</p>
<p>Some other things from Texas:</p>
<p>DRIVE FOR FIVE SHORT: Johnson had won the previous four fall races at Texas, but finished 11th after starting 19th.</p>
<p>LONG GAP: Edwards had last won at Texas in 2008, when he swept both Cup races at the track. Those were among his nine wins overall that season when he finished second in points. Three years later, Edwards was the season runner-up again even though he matched Tony Stewart for the most points. Stewart won the championship on a tiebreaker since he had five wins to Edwards’ one.</p>
<p>UP NEXT: An elimination race Sunday at Phoenix. Assuming Harvick wins again, the playoff picture is realistically five drivers racing for the final slot in the finale.</p> | After rain in Texas, 6 drivers with 1 race for 2 final spots | false | https://abqjournal.com/883469/after-rain-in-texas-6-drivers-with-1-race-for-2-final-spots.html | 2016-11-07 | 2 |
<p>Here on the Global Hit we love the eclectic.</p>
<p>That's what got us interested in Canadian classical pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin.</p>
<p>His new album's called " Marc-Andre Hamelin in a State of Jazz."</p>
<p>Marc-Andre Hamelin in the WGBH studios with host Lisa MullinsMarc-Andre Hamelin in the WGBH studios with host Lisa Mullins</p>
<p>Hamelin's assembled pieces by musicians who fused jazz and 20th century classical for the piano.</p>
<p>One is a set of arrangements based on songs by the late Charles Trenet...a French music-hall and recording star through much of the last century.</p>
<p>Bulgarian-born pianist Alexis Weissenberg got a hold of this... and other Trenet songs.....and put his own spin on them.</p>
<p>Marc-Andre Hamelin says Weissenberg loved popular songs ...but kept his passion for it a secret.</p>
<p>That's it for our program today.</p> | Global hit | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-06-27/global-hit | 2008-06-27 | 3 |
<p>On November 1st, in Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, one hundred activists gathered to protest against General Dynamics, a weapons manufacturer operating in the state. The diverse group of activists rallied in support of building a peace economy and movement beyond election day. Speaking to the crowd in front of the statehouse, VT-based filmmaker and writer Eugene Jarecki talked about the presidential election and activism. “There’s a moment of real crossroads here,” he said. “But it’s a crossroad for all of us not to be happy and go to bed but for all of us to be absolutely unrelenting and dissatisfied until real change happens.”</p>
<p>General Dynamics has profited more than any other defense contractor from the Iraq War; its revenues have tripled since 9/11 and in 2007 it earned $27 billion. In spite of this wealth, the company received $3.6 million in Vermont tax breaks in 2007. It’s not as though the state doesn’t need this money – bridges and roads are in disrepair, 2/3 of Vermonters can’t afford the median price of VT home, and 60,000 residents in the small state lack health insurance.</p>
<p>These realities underscored the November 1st rally. While the VT Food Not Bombs group spooned out lunch, and seasoned anti-GD activists mingled with children and college-aged activists, Jarecki and others spoke of the billions of dollars spent on US defense while unemployment soars and the funding for schools and healthcare is slashed.</p>
<p>I asked Jarecki, the producer of “Why We Fight” – a film which explores the roots and results of America’s military industrial complex – to comment on the irony of GD operating in VT, a state known for its liberal politics and green businesses. “It’s a stain on Vermont’s record,” he said. “Vermont is at its best when it strays from the widespread corruption that is a national affliction.”</p>
<p>On May 1st of this year, 10 activists committed civil disobedience by sitting in the lobby of the GD weapons plant in Burlington, VT demanding that “General Dynamics stop giving campaign contributions to the politicians responsible for regulating it, stop making Gatling guns, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and give back the $3.6 million dollars in Vermont tax breaks General Dynamics received in 2007.” Later, in October, a panel was organized in Montpelier to share stories and strategies from VT activists who had been organizing against GD for decades.</p>
<p>At the November 1st rally, many spoke of the need to continue organizing in spite of Barack Obama’s imminent victory. Lea Wood, an “all around activist” from Montpelier, said, “we have to push Mr. Obama to make sure he’s heading in the right direction.” Wood, a veteran of World War II, said she is surprised when politicians talk about how long it will take to bring the troops home. “After World War II, people came home pretty quickly. Now they say it’s going to take years to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan – that’s ridiculous.”</p>
<p>Vermont State Senator Ann Cummings was also in the crowd. She agreed that GD was profiting from the wars, and receiving tax breaks in spite of the state’s limited budget. “But I’m here mostly to hear what my constituents are concerned about, I take that very seriously.” Cummings added that she would look into the tax breaks that GD receives and see what can be done.</p>
<p>Matt Howard, an Iraq War Veteran, spoke of why he attended the protest. “I happened to have witnessed the results of the kinds of weapons produced by General Dynamics. I’ve seen first hand what they look like on the ground when they come in contact with real human flesh. As a citizen of Vermont, and a former marine, I cannot in good conscience support our state tax dollars going to enrich the coffers of a company that is making a fortune off the misery and blood of others.”</p>
<p>BENJAMIN DANGL is the author of “ <a href="" type="internal">The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia</a>,” (AK Press). He is an editor at UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America, and TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events. Email bendangl(at)gmail.com</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Vermont Against General Dynamics | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/11/14/vermont-against-general-dynamics/ | 2008-11-14 | 4 |
<p>Photo Credit: AR Images / Shutterstock.com</p>
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<p>America has entered its third great era: the post-constitutional one. In the first, in the colonial years, a unitary executive, the King of England, ruled without checks and balances, allowing no freedom of speech, due process, or privacy when it came to protecting his power.</p>
<p>In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an armed rebellion were used to push back the king’s abuses. The result was a new country and a new constitution with a Bill of Rights expressly meant to check the government's power. Now, we are wading into the shallow waters of a third era, a time when that government is abandoning the basic ideas that saw our nation through centuries of challenges far more daunting than terrorism. Those ideas -- enshrined in the Bill of Rights -- are disarmingly concise. Think of them as the haiku of a genuine people's government.</p>
<p>Deeper, darker waters lie ahead and we seem drawn down into them. For here there be monsters.</p>
<p>The Powers of a Police State Denied</p>
<p>America in its pre-constitutional days may seem eerily familiar even to casual readers of current events. We lived then under the control of a king. (Think now: the imperial presidency.) That king was a powerful, unitary executive who ruled at a distance. His goal was simple: to use his power over “his” American colonies to draw the maximum financial gain while suppressing any dissent that might endanger his control.</p>
<p>In those years, <a href="//www.shmoop.com/american-revolution/politics.html" type="external">protest</a> was dangerous. Speech could indeed make you the enemy of the government. Journalism could be a crime if you didn’t write in support of those in power. A citizen needed to watch what he said, for there were spies everywhere, including fellow colonists hoping for a few crumbs from the king's table. Laws could be brutal and punishments swift as well as extra-judicial. In extreme cases, troops <a href="//www.bostonmassacre.net/timeline.htm" type="external">shot down</a> those simply assembling to speak out.</p>
<p>Among the many offenses against liberty in pre-constitutional America, one pivotal event, the <a href="//www.history.org/history/teaching/tchcrsta.cfm" type="external">Stamp Act</a> of 1765, stands out. To enforce the taxes imposed by the Act, the king's men used " <a href="//www.constitution.org/bor/otis_against_writs.htm" type="external">writs of assistance</a>" that allowed them to burst into any home or business, with or without suspicion of wrongdoing. American privacy was violated and property ransacked, often simply as a warning of the king’s power. Some colonist was then undoubtedly the first American to mutter, “But if I have nothing to hide, why should I be afraid?” He soon learned that when a population is categorically treated as a potential enemy, everyone has something to hide if the government claims they do.</p>
<p>The Stamp Act and the flood of kingly offenses that followed created in those who founded the United States a profound suspicion of what an unchecked government could do, and a sense that power and freedom are not likely to coexist comfortably in a democracy. A balancing mechanism was required. In addition to the body of the Constitution outlining what the new nation's government could do, needed was an accounting of what it could not do. The answer was the Bill of Rights.</p>
<p>The Bill's <a href="//www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html" type="external">preamble</a> explained the matter this way: “...in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the government's] powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.” Thomas Jefferson <a href="https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform_immigrants-rights/bill-rights-brief-history" type="external">commented</a> separately, "[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."</p>
<p>In other words, the Bill of Rights was written to make sure that the new government would not replicate the abuses of power of the old one. Each amendment spoke directly to a specific offense committed by the king. Their purpose collectively was to lay out what the government could never take away. Knowing first-hand the dangers of a police state and unchecked power, those who wrote the Constitution wanted to be clear: never again.</p>
<p>It needs to be said that those imperfect men were very much of their era. They were right about much, but desperately wrong about other things. They addressed “humanity,” but ignored the rights of women and Native Americans. Above all, they did not abolish the institution of slavery, our nation’s Original Sin. It would take many years, and much blood, to begin to rectify those mistakes.</p>
<p>Still, for more than two centuries, the meaning of the Bill of Rights was generally expanded, though -- especially in wartime -- it sometimes temporarily contracted. Yet the basic principles that guided America were sustained despite civil war, world wars, depressions, and endless challenges. Then, one September morning, our Post-Constitutional era began amid falling towers and empty skies. What have we lost since? More than we imagine. A look at the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, tells the tale.</p>
<p>The First Amendment</p>
<p>"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."</p>
<p>The <a href="//www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html" type="external">First Amendment</a> was meant to make one thing indisputably clear: free speech was the basis for a government of the people. Without a free press, as well as the ability to openly gather, debate, protest, and criticize, how would the people be able to judge their government's adherence to the other rights? How could people vote knowledgeably if they didn’t know what was being done in their name by their government? An informed citizenry, Thomas Jefferson <a href="//www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/educated-citizenry-vital-requisite-our-survival-free-people-quotation" type="external">stated</a>, was "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."</p>
<p>That was how it was seen long ago. In Post-Constitutional America, however, the government strives to "control the message," to actively thwart efforts to maintain a citizenry informed about what’s done in its name, a concept that these days seems as quaint as Jefferson's powdered wig. There are far too many examples of the post-9/11 erosion of the First Amendment to list here. Let's just look at a few important ones that tell the tale of what we have lost since 9/11.</p>
<p>(Lack of) Freedom of Information</p>
<p>In 1966, an idea for keeping Americans better informed on the workings of their government was hatched: the Freedom of Information Act ( <a href="//www.foia.gov/" type="external">FOIA</a>). Strengthened in 1974, it began with the premise that, except for some obvious <a href="//foia.state.gov/Learn/FOIA.aspx" type="external">categories</a> (like serious national security matters and personal information), the position of the government should be: everything it does is available to the public. Like the Bill of Rights, which made specific the limits of government, FOIA began with a presumption that it was the government’s duty to make information available -- and quickly -- to the people, unless a convincing case could be made otherwise. The default position of the FOIA switch was set to ON.</p>
<p>Three decades later, the FOIA system works far differently. Agencies are generally loath to release documents of any sort and instead put their efforts into creating roadblocks to legitimate requests. Some still require signatures on paper. (The State Department <a href="//foia.state.gov/Request/Submit.aspx" type="external">notes</a>, “Requests for personal information cannot be submitted electronically and should be submitted by mail.”) Others demand hyper-detailed information like the precise dates and titles of documents whose dates and titles may be classified and unavailable. The NSA simply <a href="//www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/06/1221694/-NSA-Rejecting-Every-FOIA-Request-Made-by-U-S-Citizens" type="external">denies</a> almost all FOIA requests out of hand, absent a court order.</p>
<p>Most federal agencies now regard the <a href="//www.foia.gov/faq.html#howlong" type="external">deadline</a> mandated for a response as the time period to send out a “request received” note. They tend to assign only a few staff members to processing requests, leading to near-endless <a href="//wemeantwell.com/blog/2014/05/13/state-dept-pulls-lowest-ranking-for-foia-request-replies/" type="external">delays</a>. At the State Department, most FOIA work is done on a part-time basis by retirees. The CIA won’t directly release electronic versions of documents. Even when a request is fulfilled, “free” copying is often denied and reproduction costs exaggerated.</p>
<p>In some cases, the requested records have a way of disappearing or are simply <a href="//www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/" type="external">removed</a>. The ACLU’s experience when it filed an FOIA-style request with the Sarasota police department on its use of the cell phone surveillance tool <a href="//www.wired.com/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-aircard/all/" type="external">Stingray</a> could be considered typical. The morning the ACLU was to review the files, Federal Marshals arrived and physically took possession of them, claiming they had deputized the local cops and made the files federal property. An ACLU spokesperson <a href="//www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/" type="external">noted</a> that, in other cases, federal authorities have invoked the <a href="//www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-act-2002" type="external">Homeland Security Act</a> to prevent the release of records.</p>
<p>John Young, who runs the web site <a href="//cryptome.org/" type="external">Cryptome</a> and is a steadfast FOIA requester, <a href="https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/nov/15/interview-john-young-founder-cryptome/" type="external">stated</a>, “Stonewalling, delay, brush-off, lying are normal. It is a delusion for ordinary requesters and a bitch of a challenge for professionals. Churning has become a way of life for FOIA, costly as hell for little results.”</p>
<p>Sealed Lips and the Whistleblower</p>
<p>All government agencies have regulations requiring employees to obtain permission before speaking to the representatives of the people -- that is, journalists. The U.S. Intelligence Community has among the <a href="//www.dailydot.com/politics/james-clapper-media-contact-directive/" type="external">most restrictive</a> of these policies, banning employees and contractors completely from talking with the media without prior authorization. Even speaking about unclassified information is a no-no that may cost you your job. A government ever more in lockdown mode has created what one journalist <a href="//www.editorandpublisher.com/TopStories/Features/When-Censorship-Becomes-a-Cultural-Norm2014-05-15T11-11-19" type="external">calls</a> a “culture where censorship is the norm.”</p>
<p>So who does speak to Americans about their government? Growing hordes of spokespeople, communications staff, trained PR crews, and those anonymous “senior officials” who pop up so regularly in news articles in major papers.</p>
<p>With the government obsessively seeking to hide or spin what it does, in-the-sunlight contact barred, and those inside locked behind an iron curtain of secrecy, the whistleblower has become the paradigmatic figure of the era. Not surprisingly, anyone who blows a whistle has, in these years, come under fierce attack.</p>
<p>Pick a case: <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175500/" type="external">Tom Drake</a> exposing early NSA efforts to turn its spy tools on Americans, <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175719/" type="external">Edward Snowden</a> proving that the government has us under constant surveillance, <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175414/chase_madar_bradley_manning_american_hero" type="external">Chelsea Manning</a> documenting war crimes in Iraq and sleazy diplomacy everywhere, <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/post/175591/tomgram:_peter_van_buren,_our_9_11_torturers/" type="external">John Kiriakou</a> acknowledging torture by his former employer the CIA, or <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/post/175814/" type="external">Robert MacLean</a> revealing Transportation Safety Administration malfeasance. In each instance, the threat of jail was quick to surface. The nuclear option against such truthtellers is the <a href="//legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Espionage+Act+of+1917" type="external">Espionage Act</a>, a law that <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#World_War_I" type="external">offended</a> the Constitution when implemented in the midst of World War I. It has been resurrected by the Obama administration as a blunt “wartime” tool for silencing and punishing whistleblowers.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has already charged <a href="//pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/01/six-americans-obama-and-holder-charged-under-the-espionage-act-and-one-bonus-whistleblower.html" type="external">six</a> people under that act for allegedly mishandling classified information. Even Richard Nixon only invoked it once, in a failed prosecution against Pentagon Papers whistleblower <a href="//www.ellsberg.net/" type="external">Daniel Ellsberg</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, the very word “espionage” couldn’t be stranger in the context of these cases. None of those charged spied. None sought to aid an enemy or make money selling secrets. No matter. In Post-Constitutional America, the powers-that-be stand ready to twist language in whatever Orwellian direction is necessary to bridge the gap between reality and the king's needs. In the Espionage Act case of State Department contractor <a href="//www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/us/politics/ex-state-department-contractor-pleads-guilty-in-leak-case.html?_r=0" type="external">Stephen Kim</a>, a judge <a href="//blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/07/prosecutors-burden/" type="external">departed</a> from previous precedent, <a href="//www.fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/072413-opinion3.pdf" type="external">ruling</a> that the prosecution need not even show that the information leaked to a Fox news reporter from a CIA report on North Korea could damage U.S. national security or benefit a foreign power. It could still be a part of an “espionage” charge.</p>
<p>A final question might be: How could a law designed almost 100 years ago to stop German spies in wartime have become a tool to silence the few Americans willing to risk everything to exercise their First Amendment rights? When did free speech become a crime?</p>
<p>Self-Censorship and the Press</p>
<p>Each person charged under the Espionage Act in these years was primarily a source for a journalist. The writers of the Bill of Rights chose to include the term “press” in the First Amendment, specifically carving out a special place for journalists in our democracy. The press was necessary to question government officials directly, comment on their actions, and inform the citizenry about what its government was doing. Sadly, as the Obama administration is moving ever more fiercely against those who might reveal its acts or documents, the bulk of the media have acquiesced. Glenn Greenwald said it <a href="//m.sfgate.com/default/article/No-Place-to-Hide-by-Glenn-Greenwald-5484817.php#page-1" type="external">plainly</a>: too many journalists have gone into a self-censoring mode, practicing "obsequious journalism."</p>
<p>For example, a survey of reporters <a href="//www.salon.com/2014/05/15/american_journalism_needs_more_edward_snowdens/" type="external">showed</a> “the percentage of U.S. journalists endorsing the occasional use of ‘confidential business or government documents without authorization,’ dropped significantly from 81.8% in 1992 to 57.7% in 2013.” About 40% of American journalists would not have published documents like those Edward Snowden revealed.</p>
<p>And the same has been true of the management of newspapers. In mid-2004, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau <a href="//www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html" type="external">uncovered</a> George W. Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program, but the New York Times held the story for <a href="//m.sfgate.com/default/article/No-Place-to-Hide-by-Glenn-Greenwald-5484817.php#page-1" type="external">1</a> <a href="//m.sfgate.com/default/article/No-Place-to-Hide-by-Glenn-Greenwald-5484817.php#page-1" type="external">5 months</a>, until after Bush's reelection. Executives at the Times were told by administration officials that if they ran the story, they'd be helping terrorists. They accepted that. In 2006, the Los Angeles Timessimilarly gave in to the NSA and <a href="//abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2007/03/whistleblower_h/" type="external">suppressed</a> a story on government wiretaps of Americans.</p>
<p>Government Efforts to Stop Journalists</p>
<p>Reporters need sources. Increasingly, the government is classifying just about any document it produces -- <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/post/175570/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_the_national_security_complex_and_you/" type="external">92 million documents</a> in 2011 alone. Its intelligence agencies have even <a href="//www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/cia-over-classification-report_n_4680479.html" type="external">classified reports</a> about the over-classification of documents.&#160; As a result, journalistic sources are often pressed into discussing, at great personal risk, <a href="//www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/28/nsa-surveillance-too-many-documents-classified" type="external">classified</a> information. Forcing a reporter to reveal such sources discourages future whistleblowing.</p>
<p>In one of the first of a series of attempts to make journalists reveal their sources, former Fox News reporter <a href="//boingboing.net/2014/05/30/house-passes-federal-shield.html" type="external">Mike Levine</a> stated that the Justice Department persuaded a federal grand jury to subpoena him in January 2011. The demand was that he reveal his sources for a 2009 <a href="//www.foxnews.com/story/2009/07/02/somali-americans-accused-al-qaeda-ties-indicted-on-terror-charges-sources-say/" type="external">story</a> about Somali-Americans who were secretly indicted in Minneapolis for joining an al-Qaeda-linked group in Somalia. Levine fought the order and the Department of Justice finally dropped it without comment in April 2012. Call it a failed test case.</p>
<p><a href="//my.firedoglake.com/Jane-2/2014/05/20/the-price-of-whistleblowing-manning-greenwald-assange-kiriakou-and-snowden/" type="external">According</a> to Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, who defended Stephen Kim, significant amounts of time have been spent by the Department of Justice in the search for a legal rationale for indicting journalists for their participation in exposing classified documents. A crucial test case is James Risen's 2006 book, <a href="//www.amazon.com/dp/0743270673/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">State of War</a>, which had an anonymously sourced chapter on a failed CIA operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. When Risen, citing the First Amendment, <a href="//www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/02/08/journalist-james-risen-facing-threat-prison-wins-freedom-press-award/gXiatUVYP9q8q4TXtpCVEI/story.html" type="external">refused</a> to identify his source or testify in the trial of the <a href="//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010604001.html" type="external">former CIA officer</a> accused of being that source, the government sought to imprison him. He <a href="//publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/13/protecting-a-source-james-risen-takes-his-case-to-the-supreme-court/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_r=0" type="external">responded</a> that the “Obama administration... wants to use this case and others like it to intimidate reporters and whistleblowers. But I am appealing to the Supreme Court because it is too dangerous to allow the government to conduct national security policy completely in the dark.”</p>
<p>In June 2014, the Supreme Court <a href="//www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/06/02/the-supreme-court-wont-intervene-in-the-james-risen-case-whats-next/" type="external">refused</a> to take Risen's case on appeal, essentially ratifying a U.S. Court of Appeals <a href="//www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/published/115028.p.pdf" type="external">decision</a> that the First Amendment didn’t protect a reporter from being forced to testify about “criminal conduct that the reporter personally witnessed or participated in.” That decision makes clear that a reporter receiving classified information from a source is part of the crime of “leaking.”</p>
<p>Risen has said he will go to prison rather than testify. It is possible that, having secured the precedent-setting right to send Risen to jail, the government will bring the suspected leaker to trial without calling on him. Attorney General Eric Holder recently <a href="//www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/us/holder-hints-reporter-may-be-spared-jail-in-leak.html" type="external">hinted</a> that his Justice Department might take that path -- a break for Risen himself, but not for reporters more generally who now know that they can be jailed for refusing to divulge a source without hope of recourse to the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>The Descent Into Post-Constitutionalism</p>
<p>As with the King of England once upon a time, many of the things the government now does have been approved in secret, sometimes in <a href="//epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/fisc.html" type="external">secret courts</a> according to a secret body of law. Sometimes, they were even approved openly by Congress. In constitutional America, the actions of the executive and the laws passed by Congress were only legal when they did not conflict with the underlying constitutional principles of our democracy. Not any more. “Law” made in secret, including pretzeled legal interpretations by the Justice Department for the White House, opened the way, for instance, to the use of <a href="//www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html" type="external">torture</a> on prisoners and in the Obama years to the <a href="//www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/obama-released-torture-memos-why-not-targeted-killing-memos" type="external">drone assassination</a> of Americans. Because such “legalities” remain officially classified, they are, of course, doubly difficult to challenge.</p>
<p>But can’t we count on the usual pendulum swings in American life to change this? There were indeed notable moments in American history when parts of the Constitution were put aside, but none are truly comparable to our current situation. The Civil War lasted five years, with Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus limited in geography and robustly <a href="//quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0029.205/--lincoln-s-suspension-of-the-writ-of-habeas-corpus?rgn=main;view=fulltext" type="external">contested</a>. The World War II Japanese internment camps <a href="//web2.uconn.edu/aasi/Research/jarl.html" type="external">closed</a> after three years and the persecuted were a sub-set of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Senator McCarthy’s notorious career as a communist-hunter lasted four years and ended in <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy" type="external">shame</a>.</p>
<p>Almost 13 years after the 9/11 attacks, it remains “wartime.” For the war on terror, the driver, excuse, and raison d'être for the tattering of the Bill of Rights, there is no end in sight. Recently retired NSA head Keith Alexander is typical of key figures in the national security state when he <a href="//www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/05/were-at-greater-risk-q-a-with-general-keith-alexander.html" type="external">claims</a> that despite, well, everything, the country is at greater risk today than ever before. These days, wartime is forever, which means that a government working ever more in secret has ever more latitude to decide which rights in which form applied in what manner are still inalienable.</p>
<p>The usual critical history of our descent into a post-constitutional state goes something like this: in the panic after the 9/11 attacks, under the leadership of Vice President Dick Cheney with the support of President George W. Bush, a cabal of top government officials pushed through legal-lite measures to (as they liked to say) “ <a href="//www.tomdispatch.com/post/63903/mark_danner_bush%27s_state_of_exception" type="external">take the gloves off</a>” and allow <a href="//www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/05/a-staggering-map-of-the-54-countries-that-reportedly-participated-in-the-cias-rendition-program/" type="external">kidnapping</a>, <a href="//abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Investigation/story?id=1322866" type="external">torture</a>, <a href="//www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/independent-review-board-says-nsa-phone-data-program-is-illegal-and-should-end/2014/01/22/4cebd470-83dd-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html" type="external">illegal surveillance</a>, and <a href="//ccrjustice.org/learn-more/reports/report:-torture-and-cruel,-inhuman,-and-degrading-treatment-prisoners-guantanamo-" type="external">offshore imprisonment</a> along with <a href="https://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-issues-executive-order-institutionalizing-indefinite-detention" type="external">indefinite detention</a> without charges or trial.</p>
<p>Barack Obama, elected on a series of (false) promises to roll back the worst of the Bush-era crimes, while rejecting torture and closing America’s overseas “black sites,” still pushed the process forward in his own way. He expanded executive power, emphasized drone assassinations (including against American citizens), gave amnesty to torturers, increased government secrecy, targeted whistleblowers, and heightened surveillance. In other words, two successive administrations lied, performed legal acrobatics, and bullied their way toward a kind of absolute power that hasn’t been seen since the days of King George. That's the common narrative and, while not wrong, it is incomplete.</p>
<p>Missing Are the People</p>
<p>One key factor remains missing in such a version of post-9/11 events in America: the people. Even today, <a href="//www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/05/14/america_china_amnesty_torture_survey_32_percent_of_united_states_citizens.html" type="external">45%</a> of Americans, when polled on the subject, agree that torture is “sometimes necessary and acceptable to gain information that may protect the public.” Americans as a group seem unsure about whether the NSA's global and domestic surveillance is justified, and many remain convinced that Edward Snowden and the journalists who published his material are <a href="//www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/books/review/no-place-to-hide-by-glenn-greenwald.html" type="external">criminals</a>. The most common meme related to whistleblowers is still “patriot or traitor?” and toward the war on terror, “security or freedom?”</p>
<p>It’s not that Americans are incorrect to be fearful and feel in need of protection. The main thing we need to protect ourselves against, however, is not the modest domestic threat from terrorists, but a new king, a unitary executive that has taken the law for its own, aided and abetted by the courts, supported by a powerful national security state, and unopposed by a riven and weakened Congress. Without a strong Bill of Rights to protect us -- indeed, secure us -- from the dangers of our own government, we will have gone full-circle to a Post-Constitutional America that shares much in common with the pre-constitutional British colonies.</p>
<p>Yet there is no widespread, mainstream movement of opposition to what the government has been doing. It seems, in fact, that many Americans are willing to accept, perhaps even welcome out of fear, the death of the Bill of Rights, one amendment at a time.</p>
<p>We are the first to see, in however shadowy form, the outlines of what a Post-Constitutional America might look like. We could be the last who might be able to stop it.&#160;</p>
<p>Peter Van Buren, a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176079/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_who_will_fight_the_islamic_state/" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>, blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805096817/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People</a>. A <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176059/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_the_great_war_in_the_middle_east/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> regular, he writes about current events at <a href="http://www.wemeantwell.com/" type="external">We Meant Well</a>. His latest book is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1935462911/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent</a>. His next work will be a novel, <a href="http://www.hooperswar.com/" type="external">Hooper's War</a>.</p> | How Our Government's Behavior Post 9-11 Has Thoroughly Trashed the First Amendment | true | http://alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-our-governments-behavior-post-9-11-has-thoroughly-trashed-first-amendment | 2014-06-15 | 4 |
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<p>Copyright © 2017 Albuquerque Journal</p>
<p>FBI special agents and task force officers were involved in a shooting that sent a suspect to the hospital Friday afternoon.</p>
<p>Spokesman Frank Fisher said agents were conducting a law enforcement operation near 59th Street SW south of Central around 3 p.m. when the shooting occurred, although the investigation of the shooting was taking place on 61st SW later Friday afternoon.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He said the suspect was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital, but he did not give the suspect’s condition, did not identify the suspect or provide any details about what led to the shooting. He did not say how many agents were involved, how many of them fired their weapons or whether the suspect had or used a weapon.</p>
<p>“No law enforcement officers were injured,” Fisher said.</p>
<p>“Because the incident is under investigation, no further details can be released at this time,” he wrote in an email.</p>
<p>He did not say when more information would be available and did not respond to phone calls.</p>
<p>Crime tape blocked the area near 61st and Central SW as both FBI and Albuquerque police investigated the scene while neighbors watched from their yards. On 61st, multiple vehicles crowded around a dark blue sedan that had bullet holes in the windshield. Yellow evidence markers dotted Lucca SW, an adjacent residential street that was also taped off.</p>
<p>One woman watching nearby said it was her cousin who was shot by agents and identified the dark sedan with bullet holes as belonging to him.</p>
<p>This is the second shooting the FBI has been involved in this year.</p>
<p>On June 19, agents fired at a suspect who struck and injured an agent with his car as he fled a parking lot after being busted in a drug deal. The suspect wasn’t hit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>It also comes at the heels of several shootings, both fatal and nonfatal, involving local law enforcement agencies over the past month.</p>
<p>On July 4, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Coggins shot and killed Miguel Gonzales, 28, in southwest Albuquerque after he fled a traffic stop.</p>
<p>On July 23, a sheriff’s deputy shot at David Macias, 23, after police say he rammed two patrol cars in a stolen truck. Macias was uninjured.</p>
<p>Just two days after that, on July 25, Coggins shot another man, 26-year-old Charles Chavez, after responding to a burglary call in southwest Albuquerque. Chavez was hospitalized but the injuries were not life-threatening and he was booked into the county jail this week.</p>
<p>On July 28, a BCSO deputy Pete Martinez fatally shot Raymond Cruz, 37, after what was described as a one-man crime spree that included a home invasion and hostage situation. Martinez shot Cruz after he said he was dragged, hanging from the passenger side door of a stolen car.</p>
<p>The most recent shooting was on Monday when Albuquerque Police Department officer Jon O’Guin shot and killed 43-year-old Robert Savelli, after he said Savelli pointed a gun as he fled from a traffic stop.</p>
<p>So far, there have been 13 shootings by law enforcement in the Albuquerque metro area this year, seven of which were fatal.</p>
<p>An Albuquerque SWAT team officer also shot and killed murder suspect Hector Gamboa, 59, in Cibola County after he refused to come out of a home.</p>
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<p /> | FBI involved in Southwest ABQ shooting | false | https://abqjournal.com/1043576/fbi-agents-involved-in-shooting-in-sw-albuquerque.html | 2017-08-04 | 2 |
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<p>This was one of those Astral Weeks when the entire body politic of&#160;America seemed to undergo a CAT scan, revealing a glimpse of just how fetid the inner-workings of the System have become.</p>
<p>First Hillary swooned, then her poll numbers collapsed, sending the Liberal Establishment into a collective freakout not seen since it became apparent that Shrub was going to win his second term over that hapless dolt John Kerry.</p>
<p>Speaking of Bush, joining in the Widespread Panic were two-thirds of W.’s&#160;Inner Circle (from the deplorable Paul Wolfowitz to the deplorable Hank Paulson), who have volunteered their deplorable services aboard&#160;the USS Clinton, only to see the ship listing severely to the starboard under the strain.</p>
<p>The Trump campaign, which to this point has given new meaning to Teflon, scarcely fared much better, as the Trump Foundation was revealed to operate as&#160;a kind of charitable Ponzi Scheme for the glorification of … Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p>Trump&#160;seems more and more like one of those deeply-inbred Egyptian Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom, whose sandy empire consisted largely of colossal&#160;monuments of themselves built under the lash by slave labor. &#160;Of course, these very qualities are greatly admired in post-industrial America. No wonder Imen-Ho-Trump is&#160;surging in the polls. All hail,&#160;Imen-Ho-Trump, Pharaoh of the Deplorables (half of them anyway.)</p>
<p>Then came the bombshells dropped by the hacker Guccifer 2.0: a trove of bitchy emails from Colin Powell that exposed the dark underbelly of the Beltway Set. Powell is one of the most self-righteous figures in Washington, a man who casts a&#160;mysterious&#160;allure&#160;over&#160;the Liberal Establishment, despite his plump&#160;resumé of fatal blunders, war crimes and pathological&#160;mendacity.</p>
<p>Powell slams everyone: former allies, friends and rivals. His e-epistles depict&#160;the Cheney claque as creepy idiots, Trump as a bigoted blowhard and Hillary as an untrustworthy Medea-like character, consumed by ambition&#160;and greed,&#160;who is perpetually undone by her own hubris.</p>
<p>The General’s&#160;must-read emails offer the most jaundiced portrait of the scabrous exploits of the DC Elite since the glorious days of stripper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanne_Foxe" type="external">Fanne Foxe</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xaviera_Hollander" type="external">Xaviera Hollander</a>, the Happy Hooker, who went to&#160;Washington to “serve her country.”</p>
<p>This surreal week in American politics came to an end with Imen-Ho-Trump’s grudging admission that Obama was, in fact, born in Hawai’i. Trump refused to apologize&#160;for slandering the President, naturally, and blamed the origin of the myth on Hillary Clinton. The New York Times&#160;pronounced that Trump had “ended one lie by starting another.”</p>
<p>Yet there appears to be some truth in the allegation. Shortly after Trump’s surprise announcement, James Asher, the former DC Bureau Chief for McClatchey News, tweeted that “ <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/sidblumenthal?hc_location=ufi" type="external">#SidBlumenthal</a>, long-time&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hrc?hc_location=ufi" type="external">#HRC</a>&#160;buddy, told me in person&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/obama?hc_location=ufi" type="external">#Obama</a>&#160;born in&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/kenya?hc_location=ufi" type="external">#kenya</a>.”</p>
<p>Hardly, surprising that Blumenthal’s fingerprints might be found on this ugly slander. Recall that the Clinton Circle also instigated the “Death Panel” meme about ObamaCare, which eventually killed the “public option.” The&#160;Clinton loyalists were hoping to cripple Obama before 2012 elections, thus clearing the deck for Hillary, then Sarah Palin picked up the theme and promptly ran it off the cliff…</p>
<p>Revel in&#160;the fun while it lasts.</p>
<p>Monday</p>
<p>+&#160;August ties July for hottest month <a href="" type="internal">EVER</a>. “Overheated” HRC still says almost nothing on campaign trail (i.e., Wall Street and Hollywood fundraisers) about climate change.</p>
<p>+ Will Charlie Crist loan Hillary (“ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQJ8WrKnLUs" type="external">I’m melting! I’m melting!</a>“) Clinton his secret podium fan for the first debate?</p>
<p>+ Joe&#160;Biden is in the bullpen warming up to relieve the ailing HRC. Biden’s four-years older, a serial plagiarist and with documented brain damage from <a href="" type="internal">aneurysms&#160;and two surgeries</a>. You’d think with these kinds of problems afflicting the Dems that they would finally junk ObamaCare for a real health care program like single-payer.</p>
<p>+ Hillary and W., the parallels keep coming. It turns out the Bush administration has lost <a href="" type="internal">22 MILLION</a> emails!</p>
<p>+&#160;Jill Stein&#160;and&#160;Ajamu Baraka&#160;continue to press for yet another investigation into 9/11. I admire them both, but I&#160;think this plays into the worst instincts of the Left, half of which continues to obsess over the JFK assassination and almost nothing else. So be it. But I hope the Greens also call for an investigation into the Sand Creek Massacre and the Tulsa “Race” Riots. Those might, in the end, prove more productive and edifying about the true character of the American Project …</p>
<p>+&#160;&#160;I persist in my lonely belief that the only way to get beyond 9/11, which we desperately need to do as both a nation and a movement, is to get beyond&#160;9/11. I don’t think there is a ‘secret truth’ to that day–those events were the consequences of 50-plus years of US imperialistic policy in the Middle East. We all should have known why we were attacked the very moment that first jet hit the World Trade Tower. And if we didn’t know that, Osama Bin Laden himself made it clear in his fatwahs. To ignore the evidence before us&#160;is to surrender to a dangerous delusion.</p>
<p>+ David Cameron is leaving Parliament and is now on the prowl in&#160;rural Britain. <a href="" type="external">Hide your pigs</a>!</p>
<p>+ MS-DNC’s Chris Hayes asks more softball questions than that Russian agent Larry King. Tonight he teed up a few for Joe Conason, a longtime Clinton courtier, who called the Clintons, America’s Most Transparent Couple! Hayes, naturally, didn’t press him on this, but smugly lapped it up, as he has been house-trained to do.</p>
<p>+&#160;Hayes’s interview technique–which he did not&#160;learn from me (or the late great <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Weinstein_(author)" type="external">Jimmy Weinstein</a>) when we were stablemates at In These Times— is to ask, answer and then annotate his own questions and answers until he’s finally interrupted by a commercial for a new drug to treat&#160;Restless Leg Syndrome, a condition nearly all of his interview “subjects” eventually acquire…</p>
<p>+ As Trump narrows the gap, liberals fret about white supremacists running the country. Hasn’t this been the case&#160;for the last 240 years?</p>
<p>+ The Clinton troops are on the defensive over Hillary’s description of Trump’s most rabid supporters as “a basket of deplorables.” In defense of Hillary’s Romney Moment, her flacks are citing <a href="" type="internal">a poll</a> showing that 49 percent of Trump supporters hold the rancid view that blacks are more violent by nature than whites. Sounds definitive. But hold on a minute. That same poll discloses&#160;that&#160;&#160;many Clinton backers share the abominable view that blacks are&#160;inferior to&#160;whites with regard to certain personality traits. Nearly one-third of Clinton supporters described blacks as more “violent” and “criminal” than whites, and one-quarter described them as more “lazy” than whites. Now that’s deplorable!</p>
<p>+&#160;I got my copy of the Mekons’ new record/video/book Existentialism this week.&#160;The music is raw, raucous, and as immediate as improvised jazz. The video captures the wild thrill of it all. The book, with its wonderful Creature Feature cover art by CounterPunch contributor&#160;Martin Billheimer, offers 12 writers each scribbling (essays, poems, stories) about one of the songs on the record. My own contribution is “The Cell Being Played,” a poem, of sorts, in the dissonant mode of Wittengstein. Thanks to the Welsh Artaud, Jon Langford, for inviting me to tag along on this grand adventure. (Existentialism is available from <a href="" type="external">Bloodshot Records</a>–but hurry they’ve only printed 1000 copies and my mother just bought 400 of them to finally see her son’s name in print on something she didn’t find utterly offensive–not yet anyway.)</p>
<p>+ Paranoid States of America: A report from the <a href="http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/terrorism-immigration-risk-analysis" type="external">Cato Institute</a> calculates that&#160;The chance of being killed in a terrorist attack committed by a foreigner is about 1 in 3.6 million per year, while the chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack by an ‘illegal’ immigrant is 1 in 10.9 BILLION! Be afraid, very afraid!</p>
<p>Tuesday</p>
<p>+ The Democrats&#160;were&#160;gushing this&#160;morning with the buoyant news of rising incomes. But is your’s rising? Not likely, especially if you are a member of the working poor or a child. Most incomes in working America have remained stagnant&#160;over the past 10 years, with the vast majority of the increase being captured by the top 10 percent. <a href="" type="internal">Childhood poverty rates</a>, especially for black children, under the Obama “Recovery” are still higher than they were in the last years of the Bush administration.</p>
<p>+ When it comes to training mass murderers, the School of the Americas has nothing on Harvard University. The latest evidence comes from <a href="" type="internal">a report</a> that Big Sugar hired Harvard scientists and professors in 1965 to discredit the links between sugar and heart disease. How many have died as a consequence of this kind of twisted science? 500,000? A million? More?</p>
<p>+ The best news to come out of the Hillary overheating-dehydration-pneumonia drama is that she apparently infected <a href="" type="internal">Charles Schumer</a> with her “bug.” Her aim is true!</p>
<p>+ You just knew it was coming. It was inevitable that some Democrat would blame Hillary’s illness on the Russians. It sure didn’t take long. This morning, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/295688-concussion-pathologist-says-clinton-may-have-been-poisoned" type="external">Bennet Omalu</a>, the pathologist who first raised the warnings about traumatic brain injury in NFL players, offered his informed opinion that HRC was probably poisoned by Trump or Putin. Imagine the possibilities for the new Clinton Special Edition of the board game Clue: Was it Putin in the Lincoln Bedroom with a dose of Polonium? Or Trump at The Plaza with a toxic puff of Melania’s Eau de Toilette?</p>
<p>+ Trump continues to blame IRS audit for the failure to release his tax returns, though <a href="" type="internal">Mini-Donald</a> later spills the beans that releasing “a 12,000-page&#160;tax&#160;return that would create… financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from his main message..” (That is 12,000 pages of exploited loopholes and few charitable contributions resulting in little taxes actually paid.) The press is too lazy and shiftless to ask that Trump release previous returns from 2012, 2002, 1992, or any other decade.</p>
<p>+ <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/295423-bill-clintons-cia-chief-joins-trump-campaign" type="external">Adm. James Woolsey</a>, one of the craziest intelligence officials&#160;since Bobby Ray Inman, announced he was joining Trump’s foreign policy team. This means that Bubba’s CIA man is all in with the Donald and Bush’s CIA men are backing Hillary. Less than a dime’s worth of difference?</p>
<p>+ On MSDNC tonight Rachel Maddow announced a “YUGE” exposé: she claimed to debunk Gary Johnson’s proclamation that he would be on all 50 state ballots. According to Maddow’s in-depth investigation, in Rhode Island Johnson&#160;may, just possibly, be 79 signatures shy of the required 1000 (with a few days to go). God forbid she fact check the HRC campaign with such rigor.</p>
<p>+&#160;Maddow &amp; MSDNC’s current fixation on Johnson is all geared at keeping a real antiwar candidate out of the debates to expose Hillary and Trump’s hawkishness. If Stein was polling at 10% they’d be savaging her.</p>
<p>+ In the end, Maddow’s “yuge exposé” turned out to be another big dud. The Rhode Island Secretary of State <a href="" type="internal">confirmed</a> that the Johnson campaign had indeed submitted the required number of signatures to appear on the ballot in November.</p>
<p>+ Here’s the logic of the American police state in action: a West Virginia police officer named <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/police-officer-sacked-not-shooting-black-man-virginia-stephen-mader-ronald-williams-a7245681.html" type="external">Stephen Mader</a>was fired for failing to shoot a black man holding an unloaded gun.</p>
<p>+ In West Virginia, you get fired when you don’t kill&#160;unarmed black men. In New York City, you get rewarded when you do. Consider the case of NYPD&#160;officer Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who choked Eric Garner to death in 2014. In the two years since Garner’s death, Pantaleo’s salary and overtime pay has jumped from&#160; <a href="" type="internal">$99,915 in 2014 to&#160;$119,996 in 2016</a>, even though Pantaleo has been on “modified duty” since the killing. Brutality pays.</p>
<p>Wednesday</p>
<p>+ Cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to date? $4.79 TRILLION. Interest payments on the cost of those wars by 2053? $7.3 TRILLION. (See new study “ <a href="" type="internal">US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security</a>”&#160;by Brown University economist Neta C. Crawford.)</p>
<p>+ With all of the brutality going against Native protesters in North Dakota at the hands of oil company mercenaries, the New York Times chooses to splash a story across its homepage this morning on North Dakota’s…”most grueling” <a href="" type="internal">mountain bike trail</a>!</p>
<p>+ Making my way through the rich vein of Colin Powell’s emails and stopped in my tracks at this one&#160;on Hillary and Bill: “I’d prefer not to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect. A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home (according to NYP).” NYP: New York Post.</p>
<p>+ If Bubba gets caught up&#160;in another “bimbo dicking eruption” before election day, HRC will probably rush right to the Today Show studio to pronounce that it’s all part of “a vast Russian conspiracy.” A Russian sleeper agent? In Bill’s case, perhaps an entire sleeper cell.</p>
<p>+ With Hillary bedridden, the deplorable Tim Kaine is being&#160;pushed&#160;forth to say something, though what it is isn’t exactly clear. He has a way of speaking which makes him look like a living&#160;version of his own&#160;bobblehead doll.</p>
<p>+ Tim Kaine’s chief personality trait is the complete absence of a personality.</p>
<p>+ If the DNC emails had been hacked and released by the Principality of Monaco, DNC flacks would still be saying with a Jedi flick-of-the-wrist: “These are not the emails you are looking for!”</p>
<p>+ Now comes news that the RNC severs have also been breached. Who will the RNC blame: Putin? Fidel? Gary “Off-the-Weed” Johnson?</p>
<p>+ First Dilma, <a href="" type="internal">now the indictment of Lula</a>. The purge of Brazil advances. Step-by-step, the Empire is moving&#160;to reclaim its grip on the Global South.</p>
<p>+ The email hacks by Wikileaks, DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0 reveal the impotence of investigative journalism. A real press would have exposed these scandals months and years ago. It goes beyond impotence and incompetence, of course. The deplorable Big Media is in collusion with elite power.</p>
<p>+ I was flipping through Theodor Adorno tonight before turning out the lights and found that the Frankfort savant had, with unerring prescience, already explained why Trump and Clinton won’t be releasing their complete medical records: “Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.”</p>
<p>+ Adorno’s admonition reminds me&#160;of the one-percenters in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, circling the ruined Earth eternally in their custom-made satellites, every bodily function jacked into some cyber-circuitry, still obsessing over the minutiae of their financial portfolios. Elon Musk, phone home!</p>
<p>Thursday</p>
<p>+ I awoke on a chilly Oregon morning and&#160;greedily read more installments of Colin Powell’s email and was struck by one where he lambasts arch neocon and Hillary Clinton supporter Paul Wolfowitz as “a fucking liar.” This is rich coming from the deplorable Powell, a&#160;man who participated in the <a href="http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/colin3.html" type="external">coverup of the My Lai massacre</a> and told at least 17 distinct lies at the UN on Iraq’s non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Takes one to know one, eh, Colin?</p>
<p>+ In one of Powell’s more frank emails, he says that “ <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/colin-powell-leaked-emails-nuclear-weapons-israel-iran-obama-deal-a7311626.html" type="external">Israel has 200 nukes pointed at Iran</a>.” I assume the&#160;IDF&#160;saved at least one nuke to targeting the coordinates of Jeremy Corbyn.</p>
<p>+ My friend&#160;Lawrence Libby&#160;told me that Powell was so secretly glad that these emails had been released&#160;that he might have&#160;hacked himself! But, Lawrence, isn’t the&#160;more likely culprit, in this scenario, Alma Powell? &#160;She is, after all, an audiologist!</p>
<p>+ &#160;Leave it to the New York Times to&#160;headline a story about the investigation of savage abuse of Muslims recruits in the Marine Corps as “an inquiry into hazing.” In fact, Marine drill instructors called the recruits “terrorists,” beat, hounded and harassed one to the point that he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a barracks. Another Muslim recruit was stuffed into an industrial clothes dryer, where he was severely burned. One deplorable Marine defended the abuse by saying enduring this torture “is what becoming a Marine is all about.” Let me rephrase that: “Racist sadism is what becoming a Marine is all about.” Semper&#160;Fi, boys.</p>
<p>+ Any mention of economic inequality has disappeared from the Clinton and Trump campaigns. Why? Let us consult Guy Debord: “The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.”</p>
<p>+ Like lemmings to a cliff, so are the Democrats to corporate power. SPLAT!</p>
<p>+ Tyree King was 13-years old when he was gunned down and killed by Ohio police. The cops said they shot the black teenager because they thought&#160;he&#160;was armed and fleeing the scene of a robbery. King was carrying <a href="" type="internal">an air pistol</a> in his waistband. You can’t say the&#160;police haven’t learned from the slaying of <a href="" type="internal">Tamir Rice</a>.&#160;They’ve clearly learned the deplorable lesson they can kill toy-carrying black teens with impunity.</p>
<p>+ Since the murder of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, American police have killed at least 2,195 people, as tallied by <a href="http://www.fatalencounters.org" type="external">Fatal Encounters</a>. Cartographer Soo Oh plotted each of these killings on <a href="http://www.vox.com/a/police-shootings-ferguson-map" type="external">an interactive map</a> for Vox. The sobering map gives new meaning to Red States.</p>
<p>+&#160;Clara Jeffery is the snobbish co-editor of the faux-left magazine Mother Jones. &#160;This morning Ms. Jeffery broke out in a cold sweat when she read a New York Times story reporting that younger voters just weren’t all that into Hillary. In fact, the story noted&#160;that the third party campaigns of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were drawing their most fervent support from&#160;twenty-something voters, with a full 26 percent saying they were planning to vote for the Libertarian ticket and another 10 percent to vote for the Greens. This wholesome news prompted Jeffery to have a Twitterfit. “I have never hated millennials more,” Jeffery sniffed. Jeffery should be thanked for exposing&#160;what most of the decrepit liberal establishment really thinks about&#160;American youth and&#160;any kind of independent thinker who doesn’t march in goose-steps for HRC.</p>
<p>After seeing this outrageous outburst, some asked whatever happened to Mother Jones?&#160;They were cool once, weren’t they? Perhaps, a long, a long time ago, in a Republic far, far away,&#160;before they canned Michael Moore as editor for publishing&#160;a pro-Palestinian piece&#160;and then refusing to run the deplorable Paul Berman’s attack on the Sandinistas, which prompted MoJo columnist Alexander Cockburn to resign in protest.</p>
<p>Moore sued Mother Jones for wrongful termination. I don’t know the terms of the settlement, but Moore used some of the proceeds to finance&#160;his film “Roger and Me” and launch a much more influential, if increasingly&#160;exasperating, career as film-maker and roving progressive pundit.</p>
<p>+ Two Bay Area High Schoolers, one a Native American, got their <a href="" type="internal">grades lowered</a> for honorably refusing to stand and recite Red Scare era Pledge of Allegiance. The school administrators are too ignorant of American history to know that many of the “pilgrim” settlers to the colonies–Anabaptists &amp; Quakers, in particular–were fleeing just this kind of persecution by Church of England and the British Crown, and refused to take any kind of Oath or Pledge on moral principle, often enduring brutal torments for their valorous stance. (See my old essay on John Lilburne: “ <a href="" type="internal">Intolerable Opinions in the Age of Secret Tribunals</a>.”) The administrators are also ignorant of the Constitution. This kind of retaliatory&#160;punishment for the free exercise of basic 1st Amendment rights has been prohibited since a&#160;1943 Supreme Court decision involving the Jehovah Witnesses.</p>
<p>+ Our first Muslim president, who has killed more Muslims than ISIS has, just handed Israel its largest aid package ever: $38 billion. The eye-popping tranche of money was award after Netanyahu gave a speech so vile that it was denounced as fascistic by even hardcore Israeli apologists. The subsidy will enable Israel to begin doing to the West Bank what it has done to Gaza: divide, cage and destroy whatever it does not what to hand over to settlers or loot for itself. &#160;I wonder: was the check&#160;delivered with a personalized note?&#160; “Dear Bibi, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours…Love, Barack.”</p>
<p>+ The&#160;AFL-CIO has just&#160;betrayed Native Americans, pipeline protesters, climate change activists and 28 million water consumers by reiterating its support for the Dakota Access Pipeline. In a <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/Press-Room/Press-Releases/Dakota-Access-Pipeline-Provides-High-Quality-Jobs" type="external">press statement</a>, Richard Trumka, president of the rapidly crumbling mega-union, alleges that the pipeline&#160;is “part of a comprehensive energy policy that creates jobs, makes the United States more competitive and addresses the threat of climate change. Pipelines are less costly, more reliable and less energy intensive than other forms of transporting fuels, and pipeline construction and maintenance provides quality jobs to tens of thousands of skilled workers.” Now that’s DEPLORABLE!</p>
<p>+ Here’s your chance to do something that is NOT deplorable: donate to the <a href="https://fundrazr.com/d19fAf?ref=sh_25rPQa" type="external">Sacred Stone Camp Legal Defense Fund</a>.</p>
<p>Sound Grammar</p>
<p>What I’m listening to this week…</p>
<p>1/ Lydia Loveless: <a href="" type="internal">Real</a></p>
<p>2/&#160;Lori McKenna:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Bird &amp; the Rifle</a></p>
<p>3/ Nels Cline: <a href="" type="internal">Lovers</a></p>
<p>4/ Aaron Neville: <a href="" type="internal">Apache</a></p>
<p>5/ Charlie Hunter: <a href="" type="internal">Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth</a></p>
<p>Booked Up</p>
<p>What I’m reading this week…</p>
<p>1/ Bill Ayers: <a href="" type="internal">Demand the Impossible: a Political Manifesto</a></p>
<p>2/ Paul Beatty: <a href="" type="internal">The Sellout</a></p>
<p>3/ Wang Wei: <a href="" type="internal">Laughing in the Lost Mountains: Poems</a> (Trans. Tony Barnstone)</p>
<p>More Stupid Than Nature Made Them</p>
<p>Bertrand Russell: “Our ‘great democracies’ still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”</p> | Roaming Charges: America’s Political CAT Scan | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/09/16/roaming-charges-americas-political-cat-scan/ | 2016-09-16 | 4 |
<p>AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Mary Lou Lang</a> September 6, 2013 11:00 am</p>
<p>Students across the nation heading back to school have found newly hired armed officers stationed in their schools to protect them.</p>
<p>Schools in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Texas have hired armed resource officers for this upcoming school year to keep students safe.</p>
<p>The Olentangy School <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/21/olentangy-hires-more-school-resource-officers.html" type="external">District</a> in Ohio, the Mena School <a href="http://mypulsenews.com/mena-school-district-hires-full-time-armed-school-resource-officer/" type="external">District</a> in Arkansas, and the Wallenpaupack Area School <a href="http://www.riverreporter.com/news/4302/2013/08/28/armed-officers-wallenpaupack" type="external">District</a> in Pennsylvania all now have armed officers at their schools.</p>
<p>Additionally, the Gloucester High <a href="http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x312420800/Resource-officer-taking-up-GHS-post" type="external">School</a> in Massachusetts, the Longview <a href="http://www.kltv.com/story/23304418/longview-school-hires-armed-security-guards" type="external">School</a> District in Texas, the Lodi <a href="http://www.northjersey.com/lodi/Lodi_schools_begin_classes_today_with_newly_hired_armed_guards.html" type="external">School</a> District in New Jersey, and the North Branford <a href="http://www.wtnh.com/news/new-haven-cty/7-armed-guards-for-north-branford-schools" type="external">Schools</a> in Connecticut hired armed officers for the 2013-14 school year to ensure students’ safety.</p>
<p>Police officers will be <a href="http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2013/09/south_brunswick_police_officers_will_be_present_at_all_12_district_schools_beginning_sept_9.html" type="external">stationed</a> at all 12 district schools in South Brunswick, N.J., when the opening bell rings on September 9. &#160;Pittsburgh’s North Hills School District recently <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-north/a-newsmaker-you-should-know-north-hills-safety-director-wants-to-be-a-resource-for-students-698558/" type="external">hired</a> a safety director and is now seeking applicants for a school resource officer <a href="http://jobview.monster.com/School-Resource-Officer-Job-Pittsburgh-PA-124540811.aspx" type="external">position</a>.</p>
<p>Falkville, Ala., found <a href="http://whnt.com/2013/08/09/donations-enable-falkville-to-hire-school-resource-officer/" type="external">funding</a> for a school resource officer this year through donations. One officer has already been <a href="http://triblive.com/news/fayette/4553258-74/board-winfrey-officer#axzz2e7BnwVTZ" type="external">hired</a> in Uniontown, Pa., and a vote will be held this month on hiring a second officer.</p>
<p>The Sedalia School District in Missouri also hired a school resource officer this year for its middle school.</p>
<p>"We are excited to have a resource officer housed at SMS and appreciate the district’s determination to enhance the security for our students, the building, and district as a whole," principal Sara Pannier said in a <a href="http://ksisradio.com/sedalia-school-district-200-hires-armed-school-resource-officer/" type="external">statement</a> to the press.</p>
<p>These schools joined numerous other school districts <a href="" type="internal">that hired</a> armed officers in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown shooting.</p>
<p>More officials this school year have embraced the hiring of armed officers for students’ safety despite calls by the left for more gun control to prevent further school shootings.</p>
<p>Many of these schools were reluctant to comment on the issue. Over a half dozen school districts were contacted, and none returned phone calls or email requests for comment.</p>
<p>Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said his organization has seen a measurable increase in requests to train school resource officers since December.</p>
<p>NASRO has trained far more officers this year than the year before.</p>
<p>"We have probably come close to tripling the amount of training since December, by request," Canady said. Typically, he explained, school districts or police departments request training of law enforcement officers for the school setting.</p>
<p>Additionally, the NASRO’s yearly conference this past July attracted more attendees and exhibitors than in the past several years, according to Canady.</p>
<p>Canady said the effectiveness of school resource officers, who are sworn law enforcement officers and properly selected and trained to work in the school setting, "certainly makes a difference" in terms of deterring armed intruders, stopping violent crimes, and lowering school arrest rates.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.nasro.org/content/protect-and-educate-report" type="external">study</a> the group released before Newtown detailed the many benefits of having school resource officers in schools.</p>
<p>One superintendent in Arkansas is attempting to get his teachers armed. The Clarksville School District superintendent David Hopkins is working with legislators to change the law to allow teachers to be armed. He hopes it can occur by the end of <a href="http://www.4029tv.com/news/arkansas/river-valley/clarksville-school-district-working-to-arm-teachers/-/14498626/21693798/-/17amja/-/index.html" type="external">October</a>.</p>
<p>Hopkins also did not respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>Newtown and a recent shooting closer to home have led several schools districts in Georgia to review their security measures.</p>
<p>After an armed intruder gained entry to the McNair Discovery Learning Academy on August 20, the DeKalb County School District began considering all safety options. Options on the table include installing metal detectors, additional training of staff, and hiring more school resource officers, according to Quinn Hudson, director of communications for DeKalb County Schools.</p>
<p>"We’re considering everything," Hudson said. "We are committed to safety and take it very seriously."</p>
<p>Hudson said the training of the teachers, staff, and even students at the McNair Discovery Learning Academy helped lead 800 students out of the building to safety and to a nearby staging area to be reunited with their parents.</p>
<p>"What saved the day was the training of the employees, to allow them to respond appropriately," Hudson said. "Ms. [Antoinette] Tuff engaged the intruder," he said, while two other teachers started the lockdown.</p>
<p>The DeKalb County School District currently has armed officers in all their high schools and middle schools, Hudson said, and a decision on whether armed officers will be hired for elementary schools is under consideration.</p>
<p>The nearby Gainesville School District is now considering storing rifles at schools. Superintendent Merrianne Dyer said the issue was initially brought up after Newtown but became "more timely" with the shooting at McNair, according to a <a href="http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/88220/" type="external">report</a> in the Gainesville Times.</p>
<p>Dyer did not respond to several requests for comment by the Washington Free Beacon.</p>
<p>Having armed officers in schools to keep students safe isn’t just what many school officials believe. The latest Rasmussen <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/gun_control/62_would_feel_safer_if_their_child_attended_a_school_with_an_armed_guard" type="external">poll</a> conducted last month showed 62 percent of parents said they would feel safer if their child attended a school with an armed guard. That poll was in line with a <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/december_2012/most_feel_safer_with_armed_security_guard_at_child_s_school" type="external">previous poll</a> by Rasmussen released shortly after the Newtown shooting.</p> | Back to School | true | http://freebeacon.com/back-to-school/ | 2013-09-06 | 0 |
<p>Dutch bank ABN Amro says its underlying net profit, which strips out exceptional items, rose 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 333 million euros ($351 million).</p>
<p>The bank, which has been restructured and re-privatized following its bailout by the Dutch government in 2008 during the global financial crisis, said Wednesday that operating income for the fourth quarter rose 7 percent to 2.2 billion euros ($2.3 billion).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>CEO Kees van Dijkhuizen says that in the last quarter the bank "achieved loan growth in all of our major loan books: we were the number one provider of new mortgages in the Netherlands for the second consecutive year."</p> | Dutch bank ABN Amro sees profits grow in fourth quarter | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/15/dutch-bank-abn-amro-sees-profits-grow-in-fourth-quarter.html | 2017-02-15 | 0 |
<p>Getting closer to solving an ancient mystery: <a href="http://medievalnews.blogspot.ca/2012/10/hun-tombs-discovered-in-mongolia.html" type="external">where did</a> the Huns come from?</p>
<p>Scientists and researchers from the Institute of History of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (IHMAS) have found tombs from the Hun people dating back to the 2nd century BC. In total, 31 Huns were buried in the tombs that were discovered at the foot of Salkhit of Rashaant Soum in Khuvsgul Province.</p> | From Whence Came the Huns | true | https://thedailybeast.com/from-whence-came-the-huns | 2018-10-05 | 4 |
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<p>Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, right, prepares to kick John Makdessi during their lightweight bout at UFC 187 on May 23, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)</p>
<p>It turns out a motorcycle did almost cause Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone to miss a fight.</p>
<p>That one merely delayed his highly anticipated welterweight showdown with Robbie Lawler a few weeks was enough to make the Edgewood resident and Jackson-Wink MMA team member agitated enough.</p>
<p>“I’m just as excited as you guys are to finally get this one on,” Cerrone said of the fight on Saturday’s main card of UFC 214 in Anaheim, Calif.</p>
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<p>It originally was scheduled for UFC 213 before he got pulled due to a staph infection.</p>
<p>The New Mexico mixed martial artist, known as much for his fan-favorite fights as for his extreme sports, Harley Davidson riding and fast living outside of the sport, has never missed a fight due to his extra-curricular activities.</p>
<p>But in June, helping a fellow Harley rider at a local gas station pick up his tipped-over motorcycle, Cerrone burned his leg on the bike. The wound led to an MRSA infection that required 10 days on antibiotics and a delay in the Lawler fight.</p>
<p>Considering Cerrone (32-8) had already been on the shelf for one of the longest stretches in his career — he hasn’t fought since a Jan. 28 loss to Jorge Masvidal — he was starting to get antsy.</p>
<p>But the time off could be a blessing.</p>
<p>“His whole career, he’s fought four or five times a year,” said Brandon Gibson, a striking coach at Jackson-Wink who also does extensive training with Cerrone at the fighter’s Edgewood BMF ranch training facility. “Sometimes that adds up. These training camps are grueling. I’m really happy Cowboy took some time off. He’s rested. We were able to work on some things out of camp, and then when we got to camp, he was already in great shape.”</p>
<p>It will be necessary to beat Lawler (27-11), a former champion who has been in some of the more gruesome UFC fights of recent years.</p>
<p>“They’re going to see two legends throwing down, for sure,” said Cerrone. “It’s going to be fun.”</p>
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<p>SIX GUN’S READY, TOO: Gibson, who goes by the nickname “Six Gun,” is already sporting the team’s first battle scar of the week.</p>
<p>During a mitt session on Thursday, Gibson, who will corner both Cerrone and Jon “Bones” Jones in Saturday’s main event, scratched the cornea of his left eye and is now sporting a protective eye patch.</p>
<p>It won’t keep the Albuquerque native from his part in one of the biggest UFC events of the year. He’s using vacation time from his job with the City of Albuquerque to be in Los Angeles this week.</p>
<p>“If I need to corner with one eye, I’ll get it done,” Gibson said. “My voice still works. My mind is still sharp. We’re good.”</p>
<p>Truth is, it’d take a lot for Gibson to miss this one.</p>
<p>“This is probably the biggest coaching night of my career, so I’m looking forward to make those walks with Cowboy and Jon,” Gibson said. “We’ve worked hard, prepared hard and we’re ready to bring two victories back to Albuquerque.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Rested ‘Cowboy,’ injured ‘Six Gun’ looking for big night at UFC 214 | false | https://abqjournal.com/1040196/cowboy-cerrone-hopes-to-capitalize-on-long-break.html | 2017-07-28 | 2 |
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<p>BCSO deputies talk to a neighbor near Harzman and Goff roads in the South Valley. A woman was found dead near there in a suspected homicide. (Roberto E. Rosales/Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sheriff’s deputies have said the death discovered Christmas Eve night in the South Valley is actually a homicide, and they are now investigating what happened and who might be behind it.</p>
<p>Sheriff’s office spokesman Cpt. Edward Mims said a woman was found covered in blood and dead near the road on the 1900 block of Harzman SW in the South Valley. Mims said she suffered “severe trauma” to her upper body but that a cause of death had not been determined.</p>
<p>He said detectives are in the “very early stages” of the investigation but are certain they are investigating a homicide. Deputies arrived at the scene near Goff and Five Points around 7:30 p.m.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>This is a developing story. Additional information will be posted as soon as it becomes available.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | South Valley death ruled a homicide | false | https://abqjournal.com/517067/deputies-investigate-death-in-south-valley.html | 2014-12-24 | 2 |
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<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed a bill that could end tax-free shopping on the Internet for many shoppers.</p>
<p>The Senate voted 69 to 27 Monday to pass the bill, sending it to the House where it faces opposition from some lawmakers who regard it as a tax increase.</p>
<p>The bill would empower states to require businesses with more than $1 million in out-of-state sales to collect taxes for products they sell on the Internet, in catalogs and through radio and TV ads. Under the legislation, the sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.</p>
<p>Under current law, states can only require retailers to collect sales taxes if the merchant has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are tax-free.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Senate passes online sales tax bill | false | https://abqjournal.com/196413/senate-passes-online-sales-tax-bill.html | 2 |
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<p>PRAGUE (AP) — Romania midfielder Nicolae Stanciu has completed a transfer from Anderlecht to Sparta Prague.</p>
<p>The Czech club says the 24-year-old Stanciu has signed a contract through the 2020-21 season.</p>
<p>The clubs have not published financial details but media estimate Sparta paid about 4.5 million euros ($5.5 million) for the playmaker, the highest transfer fee for a player coming to the Czech league.</p>
<p>Stanciu went to Anderlecht in 2016 but rarely started recently.</p>
<p>He has played 19 matches for Romania, scoring six goals.</p>
<p>PRAGUE (AP) — Romania midfielder Nicolae Stanciu has completed a transfer from Anderlecht to Sparta Prague.</p>
<p>The Czech club says the 24-year-old Stanciu has signed a contract through the 2020-21 season.</p>
<p>The clubs have not published financial details but media estimate Sparta paid about 4.5 million euros ($5.5 million) for the playmaker, the highest transfer fee for a player coming to the Czech league.</p>
<p>Stanciu went to Anderlecht in 2016 but rarely started recently.</p>
<p>He has played 19 matches for Romania, scoring six goals.</p> | Romania midfielder Stanciu moves to Sparta from Anderlecht | false | https://apnews.com/amp/caeb274088c240958f45fefab48e8efb | 2018-01-23 | 2 |
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<p>Michael Swickard</p>
<p>“Oh, I wish you had talked to me 20 years ago,” said the sad-eyed woman, as she labored at stocking shelves in a local store. She overheard my conversation with someone else about the value of education and felt the need to bare her soul.</p>
<p>I turned to her and asked, “What should I have said to you 20 years ago that would have made a difference?”</p>
<p>She straightened up wearily.</p>
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<p>“You should have told me not to drop out of high school. If you had told me that, I would not be making minimum wage now. And you should have told me not to get pregnant and not to get married so young,” she said, as she struggled with a balky box that did not want to open.</p>
<p>There were a few seconds of silence. Then I cleared my throat and asked, “Well, 20 years ago is the past. It’s over and gone. So what do you want to do about your problems now?”</p>
<p>She looked even more uncomfortable as she stated there was nothing she could do about them now.</p>
<p>“There is nothing I can do but work until I die,” she said.</p>
<p>“Not so,” I countered. “It is never too late to increase your earnings with more education. Go to school, even if you have to go at night.”</p>
<p>In an instant, it was just like what had happened in her life 20 years ago. The good advice was once again being rejected.</p>
<p>“I can’t go back to school,” she said. “It is too late for me.”</p>
<p>“But you have at least 20 or more years working,” I protested. “The education you get this year will get you a much better job.”</p>
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<p>She replied evasively, “Maybe I can find a nice man to marry.”</p>
<p>Finding a nice man and having kids was what she told me started her problems since she dropped out of school, got married and had kids. She shambled away before we could talk further. She wore no ring so the early marriage may not have endured. And, I am sure she found, when you marry the wrong person, that individual is also the wrong person to divorce.</p>
<p>I am not unduly picking on this person, nor do I think she is a victim of anything but her own actions. We should make this woman the poster child for the consequences of making bad choices.</p>
<p>Truth be told, I was writing newspaper columns 20 years ago about the value of education. This woman ignored good advice then and now. Unfortunately, she is not alone.</p>
<p>Many people do not care whether some students drop out of school since we, as a society, always need someone to stock the shelves in stores, to flip the burgers and to answer the phones. Some people win, some people lose. Under the poster of this woman, we should write, “Do the minimum in school, get the minimum in wage.”</p>
<p>There is a syndrome I have seen repeatedly. When faced with good and bad choices, some people consistently make the wrong choice. With three or four good choices, the person decides on the one bad choice and then suffers the consequences.</p>
<p>Can we protect people from themselves? All states have mandatory school attendance laws. Yet, that only gets the students to school. It does not guarantee the students will come away from school with something useful.</p>
<p>We must make doing the right thing easy and doing the wrong thing hard. It is like that in the long run, but many students who are thinking of dropping out do not see this truth.</p>
<p>This woman, who wished she could change her decisions made 20 years ago, was told by me she could become educated now by our society. She attended school until she dropped out. From then on at each of her adult intersections, she made bad choices.</p>
<p>Twenty years from now, will you be saying, “Oh, I wish he had told me to stay in school, and not to get pregnant?”</p>
<p>I hope not. But I am certain some will continue to make those bad choices now and in the future. I would change that if I could, but I cannot.</p>
<p>(Michael Swickard hosts the syndicated radio talk show “News New Mexico” from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: [email protected])</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Do the minimum in school, get the minimum in wage | false | https://abqjournal.com/452849/do-the-minimum-in-school-get-the-minimum-in-wage.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>The waiver, announced Tuesday, will allow highly rated teachers - via a controversial teacher evaluation system - to teach classes in other subjects and grade levels without having to meet the qualifications stipulated by No Child Left Behind.</p>
<p>It will not apply to new teachers, and school districts will be able to decide whether to take advantage of the waiver, PED officials said.</p>
<p>"This decision is great news for every school district in New Mexico," Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera said. "Providing flexibility for districts to better utilize the skills of their most effective teachers will expand the access our students have to excellent instruction. This is a big win for New Mexico's students."</p>
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<p>Under the waiver, a physics teacher with a rating of "effective," "highly effective" or "exemplary" would be able to teach an algebra course, for instance, without having to pass exams or undergo training on the subject.</p>
<p>Nearly 74 percent of statewide public school teachers received evaluations of "effective," "highly effective" or "exemplary" under the second year of ratings, which were released earlier this month by the Public Education Department.</p>
<p>In statements released by the PED, several superintendents in rural school districts said the waiver would help students by providing more flexibility to teachers and administrators.</p>
<p>"If one of our teachers has a proven record of achieving results for students in agriculture, they should be able to teach botany without jumping through bureaucratic hurdles," said Audie Brown, the superintendent of the Estancia Municipal School Department.</p>
<p>However, Rep. Christine Trujillo, D-Albuquerque, said Tuesday that the waiver could actually hurt students, because having teachers without formal qualifications in a subject area could lead to more superficial instruction.</p>
<p>"I don't know how they think they're going to get better outcomes by doing this," said Trujillo, a former educator and union leader.</p>
<p>New Mexico has also received a waiver from the U.S. Education Department on a separate No Child Left Behind requirement regarding standardized testing. In exchange for the flexibility, the state agreed to enact several initiatives aimed at improving school accountability, including the teacher evaluations.</p>
<p>A federal education law, No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2001 by then-President George W. Bush.</p>
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<p /> | NM PED gets waiver on teacher qualifications | false | https://abqjournal.com/583794/nm-ped-gets-waiver-on-teacher-qualifications.html | 2 |
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<p>Using the federal income tax system to promote social policy goals is a time-honored strategy for policymakers of both political parties.</p>
<p>The nation's main anti-poverty program, the Earned Income Tax Credit, uses the tax system to supplement the earnings of low-income families. Employer-provided health insurance is tax-free for workers and tax-deductible for companies, a huge boost for workplace coverage.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>But some economists say that the chief purpose of any tax system should be revenue collection, and using income taxes to advance social policy makes the code needlessly complicated, while also distorting incentives to work, save and invest.</p>
<p>Some pros and cons of using the tax system to help people pay premiums for private health insurance, as the Affordable Care Act does:</p>
<p>PRO: Could build support for the health overhaul because tax credits have greater political popularity than traditional government spending programs.</p>
<p>CON: Complicates tax filing for many lower-to-middle income people, who may not be able to afford tax-preparation services.</p>
<p>PRO: Avoids the social stigma of Medicaid, the safety-net health care program for low-income people. (Separately, the health law also expands Medicaid.)</p>
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<p>CON: Requires people who get the tax credits to accurately project their incomes for the coming year, a real challenge for those who may not have stable employment.</p>
<p>PRO: The Internal Revenue Service has a lot of experience administering tax provisions that serve a social policy agenda, from mortgage deductions for home ownership to child care tax credits that help families.</p>
<p>CON: It constitutes mission creep for the IRS, straining the agency when an estimated $385 billion a year in taxes owed, or more, goes uncollected.</p> | Pros and cons of using the tax system to subsidize health care premiums for the uninsured | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/08/24/pros-and-cons-using-tax-system-to-subsidize-health-care-premiums-for-uninsured.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
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<p />
<p>Patton almost did not get a chance at his summer of glory. After brilliant service in North Africa and Sicily, fellow officers – and his German enemies – considered him the most gifted American field general of his generation. But near the conclusion of his illustrious Sicilian campaign, the volatile Patton slapped two sick GIs in field hospitals, raving that they were shirkers. In truth, both were ill and at least one was suffering from malaria.</p>
<p>Public outrage eventually followed the shameful incidents. As a result, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to put Patton on ice for 11 key months.</p>
<p>Tragically, Patton’s irreplaceable talents would be lost to the Allies in the soon-to-be-stagnant Italian campaign. He also played no real role in the planning of the Normandy campaign. Instead, his former subordinate, the more stable but far less gifted Omar Bradley, assumed direct command under Eisenhower of American armies in France.</p>
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<p>In early 1944, a mythical Patton army was used as a deception to fool the Germans into thinking that “Army Group Patton” might still make another major landing at Calais. The Germans apparently found it incomprehensible that the Americans would bench their most audacious general at the very moment when his audacity was most needed.</p>
<p>When Patton’s Third Army finally became operational seven weeks after D-Day, it was supposed to play only a secondary role – guarding the southern flank of the armies of Gen. Bradley and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery while securing the Atlantic ports.</p>
<p>Despite having the longest route to the German border, Patton headed east. The Third Army took off in a type of American blitzkrieg not seen since Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s rapid marches through Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War.</p>
<p>Throughout August 1944, Patton won back over the press. He was foul-mouthed, loud and uncouth, and he led from the front in flamboyant style with a polished helmet and ivory-handled pistols.</p>
<p>In fact, his theatrics masked a deeply learned and analytical military mind. Patton sought to avoid casualties by encircling German armies. In innovative fashion, he partnered with American tactical air forces to cover his flanks as his armored columns raced around static German formations.</p>
<p>Naturally rambunctious American GIs fought best, Patton insisted, when “rolling” forward, especially in summertime. Only then, for a brief moment, might the clear skies facilitate overwhelming American air support. In August, his soldiers could camp outside, while his speeding tanks still had dry roads.</p>
<p>In just 30 days, Patton finished his sweep across France and neared Germany. The Third Army had exhausted its fuel supplies and ground to a halt near the border in early September.</p>
<p>Allied supplies had been redirected northward for the normally cautious Gen. Montgomery’s reckless Market Garden gambit. That proved a harebrained scheme to leapfrog over the bridges of the Rhine River that would devour Allied blood and treasure, and accomplish almost nothing in return.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the cutoff of Patton’s supplies would prove disastrous. Scattered and fleeing German forces regrouped. Their resistance stiffened as the weather grew worse and as shortened supply lines began to favor the defense.</p>
<p>Historians still argue over Patton’s August miracle. Could a racing Third Army really have burst into Germany so far ahead of Allied lines? Could the Allies ever have adequately supplied Patton’s charging columns, given the growing distance from the Normandy ports? How could a supreme commander like Eisenhower handle Patton, who at any given moment could – and would – let loose with politically incorrect bombast?</p>
<p>We do not know the answers to all those questions. Nor do we quite know the full price that America had paid for having a profane Patton stewing in exile for nearly a year rather than exercising his leadership in Italy or Normandy.</p>
<p>We only know that, 70 years ago, an authentic American genius thought he could win the war in Europe – and almost did. When his Third Army stalled, so did the Allied effort.</p>
<p>What lay ahead in winter were the Battle of the Bulge and the nightmare fighting of the Hürtgen Forest – followed by a half-year slog into Germany.</p>
<p>Patton would die tragically from injuries sustained in a freak car accident not long after the German surrender. He soon became the stuff of legend but was too often remembered for his theatrics rather than his authentic genius that saved thousands of American lives.</p>
<p>Seventy years ago this August, George S. Patton showed America how a democracy’s conscripted soldiers could arise out of nowhere to beat the deadly professionals of an authoritarian regime at their own game.</p>
<p>Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; email: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
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<p /> | An authentic genius who saved thousands of lives | false | https://abqjournal.com/435835/an-authentic-genius-who-saved-thousands-of-lives.html | 2 |
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<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked Justice Department prosecutors to decide if a special counsel should be appointed to investigate certain Republican concerns, including alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the sale of a uranium company to Russia, according to media reports on Monday.</p>
<p>The Washington Post and New York Times cited a letter from the Justice Department to the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Robert Goodlatte, responding to his request for the appointment of a special counsel to look into various matters.</p>
<p>The letter quoted Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd as saying that Sessions had “directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues raised in your letters,” according to the Post, which first reported the story (http://wapo.st/2zEwN7a)</p>
<p>Those prosecutors would then make recommendations “as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel,” the letter said.</p>
<p>Last month, Republican leaders of two House committees launched an investigation into an Obama-era deal in which a Russian company bought a Canadian firm that owned some 20 percent of U.S. uranium supplies.</p>
<p>Some Republicans have charged that the State Department under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the deal after her husband’s charitable foundation received a $145 million donation.</p>
<p>Democrats have accused Republicans of launching a spurious investigation of Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, to divert attention from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged links between President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.</p>
<p>Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said five congressional committees, including the oversight panel, had investigated the deal and “identified no evidence to substantiate allegations that Secretary Clinton orchestrated, manipulated, or otherwise coerced” the interagency committee to approve the deal.</p>
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<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Sessions looking into special counsel for Clinton issues: media reports | false | https://newsline.com/sessions-looking-into-special-counsel-for-clinton-issues-media-reports/ | 2017-11-13 | 1 |
<p>The Trump era will be unpredictable in many ways. But there’s one thing that we can reasonably count on. Moderation, an ancient virtue, will be viewed with contempt. After all, the most temperamentally immoderate major party nominee in American history ran for president and won because of it. Victory spawns imitation, and the Trump template is likely to influence our politics for some time to come.</p>
<p>Moderation, then, is out of step with the times, which are characterized by populist anger and widespread anxiety, by cross-partisan animosity and dogmatic certainty. Those with whom we have political disagreements are not only wrong; they are often judged to be evil and irredeemable.</p>
<p>In such a poisonous political culture, when moderation is precisely the treatment we need to cleanse America’s civic toxins, it invariably becomes synonymous with weakness, lack of conviction and timidity. For many, moderation is what the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre called a “tender souls philosophy.”</p>
<p>This is quite a serious problem, as Aurelian Craiutu argues in his superb and timely new book, “Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes,” in which he profiles several prominent 20th-century thinkers, including Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin and Michael Oakeshott. Mr. Craiutu, a professor of political science at Indiana University, argues that the success of representative government and its institutions depends on moderation because these cannot properly function without compromise, which is the governing manifestation of moderation.</p>
<p>The case for political moderation requires untangling some misconceptions.</p>
<p>Moderation does not mean truth is always found equidistant between two extreme positions, nor does it mean that bold and at times even radical steps are not necessary to advance moral ends. Moderation takes into account what is needed at any given moment; it allows circumstances to determine action in the way that weather patterns dictate which route a ship will follow.</p>
<p>But there are general characteristics we associate with moderation, including prudence, the humility to recognize limits (including our own), the willingness to balance competing principles and an aversion to fanaticism. Moderation accepts the complexity of life in this world and distrusts utopian visions and simple solutions. The way to think about moderation is as a disposition, not as an ideology. Its antithesis is not conviction but intemperance.</p>
<p>Moderates “do not see the world in Manichaean terms that divide it into forces of good (or light) and agents of evil (or darkness),” according to Professor Craiutu. “They refuse the posture of prophets, champion sobriety in political thinking and action, and endorse an ethics of responsibility as opposed to an ethics of absolute ends.” This allows authentic moderates to remain open to facts that challenge their assumptions and makes them more likely to engage in debate free of invective. The survival of a functioning parliamentary system, Sir William Harcourt said, depends on “constant dining with the opposition.”</p>
<p>The charge that moderates lack courage is easily put to rest by people like the French journalist and philosopher Raymond Aron. He was a man of deep, reasoned convictions who possessed a sense of proportion. A nonconformist, Aron was fearless in taking on the leading intellectuals of his time, including his friend Sartre. (Parisian students in 1968 avowed that it was “better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron.”) Aron strongly defended liberal democracy when it was fashionable to denigrate it. Playing off the Marxist claim that religion was the opium of the masses, Aron argued that Marxism was the opium of the intellectuals.</p>
<p>For Aron, political moderation was a fighting creed. Allergic to ideological thinking, he conformed his views to evidence. He retained his intellectual and political independence throughout his life. Aron believed that history teaches us humility, modesty and the limits of our knowledge. He was also skilled at the art of dialogue, engaging those he disagreed with critically but civilly. “As the last great representative of a distinguished tradition of European liberalism,” Professor Craiutu writes, “Aron attempted to disintoxicate minds and calm fanaticism in dark times.” Aron put it this way: “Freedom flourishes in temperate zones; it does not survive the burning faith of prophets and crowds.”</p>
<p>The concern some of us have is that even before Mr. Trump set foot on the political stage, America was becoming a bit more like the Sahara or the Arctic Circle than a temperate zone; that moderation was passé in both parties and that no politician would defend it as a political virtue. Add to this an incoming president who appears to be “passion’s slave,” who has developed few if any habits of restraint and, if he governs as he campaigned, will summon forth and amplify the darkest impulses in our nation.</p>
<p>The business of a government, Oakeshott said, is “not to inflame passion and give it new objects to feed upon, but to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation.”</p>
<p>Mr. Trump deserves the chance to prove his critics wrong. If he doesn’t — if what he has shown himself to be is what he continues to be — then rather than injecting an ingredient of moderation into the activities of Americans, he will inflame their passions and give them new objects to feed upon.</p>
<p>Moderation is a difficult virtue for people to rally around, since by definition it doesn’t arouse fervor or zealous advocates. But in a time of spreading resentments and rage, when truth is increasingly the target of assault and dialogue is often viewed as betrayal, moderation isn’t simply a decorous democratic quality; it becomes an essential democratic virtue.</p>
<p>In this immoderate age, moderation must become America’s fighting faith.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.</p> | Moderation is Not a Dirty Word | false | https://eppc.org/publications/one-way-not-to-be-like-trump-moderation-is-not-a-dirty-word/ | 1 |
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<p>your email</p>
<p>your name</p>
<p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p>
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<p>message</p>
<p>captcha</p>
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<p>From Susie Cagle's <a href="http://www.cartoonmovement.com/comic/17" type="external">"What Every Woman Should Know."</a></p>
<p>I first heard about crisis pregnancy centers about four years ago, looking up a Planned Parenthood in New York. I was surprised to see one Planned Parenthood clinic surrounded by several "pregnancy centers" that promoted "abortion alternatives" and no women's health services -- contraception, Pap smears, and comprehensive counseling. I ended up getting my birth control at the Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street, past the metal detector and security detail that are familiar to any U.S. clinic-goer, but I was always curious about what things were like on the other side.</p>
<p>The most difficult part of making my piece, " <a href="http://www.cartoonmovement.com/comic/17" type="external">What Every Woman Should Know</a>," was having to leave so much out.&#160;</p>
<p>Originally I was interested in pregnancy centers in and around Sacramento, California's capital and a somewhat conservative community. But when I found out the extent of Planned Parenthood's problems in the Bay Area -- controversy surrounding financial mismanagement that took out all of this region's seven clinics -- I decided to follow the story closer to home. I visited 9 local clinics before focusing on First Resort's three -- each of which is depicted in the comic with a different counselor.</p>
<p>&#160;There are about as many CPCs in the Bay Area as there are Planned Parenthoods; but across the country, CPCs outnumber Planned Parenthoods by nearly 5 to 1, and all abortion providers nearly 3 to 1.&#160;My budget and circumstances limited my reporting to the Bay Area, but this is hardly a local or even national issue. Crisis pregnancy centers exist all over Canada and the UK.</p>
<p>Some of the CPCs in America began receiving federal and local tax dollars in 2000, in conjunction with a move toward abstinence-only sex ed for teens. First Resort was operating a subsidized sex education program for kids in more than twenty local East Bay public schools, promoting abstinence pledges and handing out misleading abortion information until a parent took them to court, shutting the program down. (This particular arrangement was found to be in violation of state law.)</p>
<p>This is probably the best example of First Resort's reach, influence and ultimate goals.</p>
<p>I am ambivalent about the practice of "undercover" journalism. As a reporter I am not interested in deception, and so prefacing this project on lies -- small ones, but still -- was counterintuitive and sometimes troubling. I was not aiming to write an expose, but just to depict a woman's average visit at one of these clinics. By posing as a would-be patient I was able to gain a perspective I wouldn't have had if I'd said I was a reporter.&#160;</p>
<p>From the time I approached the building to the time I left, I took detailed notes and drew sketches in a small notepad, and took quick snapshots with my phone whenever possible. (First Resort requires patients to sign a waiver agreeing not to record within the counseling rooms.)</p>
<p>I didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't what I was expecting anyway.</p>
<p>The brilliance and danger of First Resort and other clinics like them is that they do not fit the image of "anti-abortion activist" that we have collectively formed over the last few decades. They are not screaming with pictures of dead babies; they are quietly buying Google ads and tiptoeing around telling you where to buy condoms. They are kind, intelligent, and generous. It is disarming, and effective.</p>
<p>At one First Resort clinic, I asked about acquiring Plan B emergency contraception. Plan B is over the counter for women 17 and over in the US -- no prescription necessary. The counselor affirmed for me that yes, it was technically contraception, "not the abortion pill." But, emphasized, "You have time to think about it. You have five days to take it."&#160;</p>
<p>This is true of one of the three kinds of Plan B on the market. The others have to be taken within three days -- and all of them are significantly less effective with each passing day. The medical suggestion for emergency contraception is "take it as soon as possible" not "think about it." That advice could easily leave a woman pregnant.&#160;</p>
<p>This instance could be easily explained, but there were other, stranger omissions of fact that I found troubling.</p>
<p>At another First Resort, a counselor showed me a diagram of a woman's genitals, pointing out the different parts for me as though I'd never looked in a mirror. This was not a medical chart -- no ovaries, no uterus, just the outside bits.</p>
<p>One counselor told me that the city health insurance San Francisco provides to poor single adults would not cover any sort of women's health services.</p>
<p>"That's shocking," I said.</p>
<p>"I know, I agree. We need that stuff!" she exclaimed, grinning.</p>
<p>We do, and that's why San Francisco does actually provide it. There's also a state program which covers those services for low-income women, but the counselor didn't mention that at all. (Neither of these programs fund abortions.)</p>
<p>I think some people expected this story to reveal some sort of gory, appalling details, the blood beneath the floorboards. For me, this version of reality is much more scary -- false information delivered with a smile, affirmations of choice that hide aspirations to dissuade, prevent and sabotage.</p>
<p>Originally posted at <a href="http://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2011/09/behind-the-scenes-reporting-on-crisis-pregnancy-centers.html" type="external">Cartoon Movement</a>.</p> | Behind The Scenes: Reporting On Crisis Pregnancy Centers | true | http://inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/11981/behind_the_scenes_reporting_on_crisis_pregnancy_centers/ | 2011-09-18 | 4 |
<p>Financial shares fall, but material sector advances</p>
<p>The Dow industrials traded slightly higher Thursday afternoon as shares of McDonald's rallied, but technology lagged behind, a day after President Donald Trump offered further details on a potential, tax overhaul that could jolt Wall Street stocks up.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>What are stocks doing?</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 44 points, or 0.2%, at 22,385, with shares of McDonald's Corp., (MCD)delivering a lift to blue chips (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mcdonalds-stock-surge-after-an-upgrade-accounts-for-more-than-half-of-the-dows-gain-2017-09-28). The S&amp;P 500 was less than a point higher at 2,506, having ended about 0.1% below its closing record on Wednesday. Financials and consumer-discretionary stocks were off 0.2%. Those groups were offset by a rise in the material sector, up 0.5%, headlined by a 2.9% rise in shares of Eastman Chemical Co. (EMN).</p>
<p>The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 7 points, or 0.1%, to 6,445. The tech-heavy index jumped more than 1% on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The Russell 2000 slipped 0.2% to 1,482. The index of small-capitalization companies ended at a record Wednesday.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Transportation Average , meanwhile, hit an intraday record at 9,903 on Thursday, and was most recently up 0.4% at 9,884.32. The gauge, which tracks some of the largest U.S. airlines, railroads and trucking companies, also closed at a record on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>What's driving the market?</p>
<p>The latest economic data painted a mixed picture of the economy. Jobless claims rose by 12,000 in the latest week, although this spike was tied to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, which devastated Florida and parts of Texas. Separately, a read on second-quarter economic growth was raised (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/economys-2nd-quarter-growth-raised-to-31-2017-09-28) to 3.1% from 3%.</p>
<p>Check out:MarketWatch's Economic Calendar (http://www.marketwatch.com/economy-politics/calendars/economic)</p>
<p>What are market participants saying?</p>
<p>While stocks rose Wednesday as President Donald Trump announced his "once-in-a-generation" tax overhaul (http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2017/09/27/republicans-roll-out-tax-cut-plans-for-individuals-and-companies-live-blog/), the excitement that lifted equities was replaced by questions on how the plan will be implemented.</p>
<p>"We shall wait and see how Trump's plans evolve into legislation," said Deutsche Bank's strategist Jim Reid in a note on Thursday. "Our U.S. team's early take is that they see a prospect of some reforms occurring at the corporate level (particularly for small corporates), but the potential for substantive reform of personal tax is much lower."</p>
<p>Which stocks are in focus?</p>
<p>Streaming-software and device-maker Roku Inc. jumped 57% in its trading debut, after its initial public offering priced at $14 a share on Wednesday (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/roku-sets-14-per-share-ipo-price-on-13-billion-valuation-2017-09-27).</p>
<p>Read: 5 things to know about Roku (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/roku-ipo-5-things-to-know-about-the-streaming-device-company-2017-09-05)</p>
<p>(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/roku-ipo-5-things-to-know-about-the-streaming-device-company-2017-09-05)Exa Corp.(EXA) surged 43% after French software company Dassault Systemes SE (DASTY) said it would buy the U.S. simulation-software developer in a cash deal valued at $400 million (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dassault-systemes-to-buy-exa-for-400-million-2017-09-28).</p>
<p>(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dassault-systemes-to-buy-exa-for-400-million-2017-09-28)Shares of BlackBerry Ltd.(BB.T) jumped 15% after a surprise profit and revenue beat (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/blackberrys-stock-soars-after-surprise-profit-revenue-beat-2017-09-28).</p>
<p>(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/blackberrys-stock-soars-after-surprise-profit-revenue-beat-2017-09-28)Southwest Airlines Co.(LUV) shares were little changed after it said natural disasters would have a negative impact on its operating revenue.</p>
<p>Shares of McDonald's, up 2.4%, are looking at their best daily gain since July 25, with the Dow component contributing 26 points to the benchmark.</p>
<p>Read:These companies are expected to increase sales the most in 2018 (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-companies-are-expected-to-increase-sales-the-most-in-2018-2017-09-26)</p>
<p>What are other assets doing?</p>
<p>The ICE U.S. Dollar Index stalled after hitting a one-month high (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dollar-index-stalls-after-striking-one-month-highs-2017-09-28).</p>
<p>Gold futures fell to a six-week low (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-drops-to-6-week-low-as-dollar-continues-march-higher-2017-09-28), squeezed by dollar strength. Oil futures were pushing higher.</p>
<p>European stocks wavered, with just modest gains for some regional indexes. Asian markets closed mostly lower (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nikkei-up-but-chinese-stocks-dip-on-profit-taking-ahead-of-holiday-2017-09-27), outside of a 0.4% gain for the Nikkei 225 .</p>
<p>Read:Japan parliament dissolved, snap elections called: report (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-parliament-dissolved-snap-elections-called-report-2017-09-28)</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>September 28, 2017 14:46 ET (18:46 GMT)</p> | MARKET SNAPSHOT: Dow's Gains Buoyed By McDonald's Stock | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/09/28/market-snapshot-dows-gains-buoyed-by-mcdonalds-stock.html | 2017-09-28 | 0 |
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<p>William Magwood, Barack Obama’s <a href="" type="internal">controversial pick</a> to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a <a href="" type="internal">member of our list of worst nominees</a>, was supposed to spend some time in the hot seat during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. But the members of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee barely questioned Magwood about his lengthy resume working for nuclear interests and how that history would affect his ability to regulate the industry.</p>
<p>Magwood served as the head of the Office of Nuclear Energy within the Department of Energy from 1998 to 2005. But as I wrote when <a href="" type="internal">Magwood was nominated</a>, he has also worked for Westinghouse, which makes nuclear reactors and has big business before the NRC. He has also worked as a private consultant for nuclear interests. The Project on Government Oversight, as well as other anti-nuclear and environmental groups, say Magwood’s boosterism for nuclear power should disqualify him from overseeing the industry.</p>
<p>One of the only senators to question Magwood directly about his work to promote nuclear power was the committee’s chair, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). But it wasn’t exactly what you would call a grilling.</p>
<p>“It is my firm opinion that the best service to the country and to the nuclear industry is to set a very, very high standard for safety and to do so in a way that the public has a great deal of confidence,” Magwood responded. He also told Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that he did not see any potential conflicts of interest over proposals expected to come before the NRC. No-one pressed him further.</p>
<p>Magwood and fellow Nuclear Regulatory Commission nominees George Apostolakis and William Ostendorff received hearty endorsement from both Republican and Democratic members of the panel. “It would be difficult for the president to find three better nominees,” said Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). Even the panel’s more liberal members were equally enthusiastic about the nominees and their role in heralding a nuclear revival. “I’m a proponent of nuclear power,”&#160;said Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “I believe we stand on the cusp of a nuclear renaissance.”</p>
<p>Boxer said their nominations are expected to move forward later this month.</p>
<p /> | Controversial NRC Pick Sails | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/controversial-nuclear-regulator-sails-through-senate-questions/ | 2010-02-10 | 4 |
<p>Medicaid in the state of Oregon now covers " <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/04/05/397275700/puberty-suppression-now-choice-for-teens-on-medicaid-in-oregon?utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=npr&amp;utm_term=nprnews&amp;utm_content=20150405" type="external">puberty suppression</a>" for teenagers who perceive themselves as transgendered, according to NPR.</p>
<p>The NPR article covered the story of a 13-year-old boy named Michael, who now goes by Michaela, and his parents' quest to transform him into a girl by way of a procedure known as "puberty suppression," which essentially stops a pre-pubescent child from sexually maturing by way of routine injection.</p>
<p>According to Michael's mother, named Dee, the decision to make her son a girl came when she brought home some dresses for her nieces and little Michael, whom Dee now refers to as "she," began exclaiming how much he wanted to try them on.&#160;</p>
<p>"When she saw those dresses, her eyes just lit up. And she said, 'Who are those for?' I'll never forget it. And I said, 'Well, these are for the girls. Do you like them?' And she said, 'Yeah.' So I said, 'Well, do you want to try any of them on if any of them fit you, do you want to wear them?' And she said 'Yeah.' She just twirled and twirled in that dress - it was so wonderful."</p>
<p>After 7-year-old little Michael began getting teased by kids at school by showing up dressed as a girl, his family moved him to Portland, Oregon where he could try to live out his transgender identity in peace. As age 13 approached, with puberty on the rise, the parents sought the help of Dr. Karin Selva,&#160;a pediatric endocrinologist with Randall Children's Hospital in Portland, who supports the "puberty suppression."</p>
<p>"Any boy who wants to look like a girl can just grow your hair long and put some mascara on, put a dress on and they'll look very female," Selva says. "But as soon as puberty hits, that's when the body pretty much turns on someone who is transgender."</p>
<p>The procedure, covered under Oregon's Medicaid, consists of Michael taking injections of the drug Lupron, which will stop his becoming a man entirely. Side effects for the procedure include: sterilization, bone deposition, hot flashes, and increased headaches.</p>
<p>Dr. <a href="http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/health/services/providers/index.cfm?personID=722" type="external">Ariel Smits</a>,&#160;the medical director of the group that recommended Medicaid pay for transgender treatments in Oregon, said she supported it because she felt hormone therapy, surgeries and puberty suppression help people live happier lives.</p>
<p>"People with gender dysphoria that did not receive treatment had a much higher rate of hospitalizations or ER visits or doctors visits for depression and anxiety, and they had a pretty significantly high suicide rate. Some studies found about 30 percent," she says.</p> | Transgender Teen Receives 'Puberty Suppression' Under Oregon Medicaid | true | http://truthrevolt.org/news/transgender-teen-receives-puberty-suppression-under-oregon-medicaid | 2018-10-03 | 0 |
<p>Samsung on Wednesday called for a major patent verdict in favor of Apple to be overturned because the jury foreman did not disclose his bias.</p>
<p>Samsung said Apple's win in August was tainted by the foreman's failure to disclose a lawsuit and his personal bankruptcy, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-03/samsung-claims-jury-foreman-misconduct-tainted-apple-case.html" type="external">according to Bloomberg</a>. The company put in a request to the judge for the verdict to be thrown out.</p>
<p>Foreman Velvin Hogan allegedly did not disclose that he had been sued by Seagate Technology, his former employer and a strategic partner of Samsung. Hogan had also filed for bankruptcy in 1993.</p>
<p>Samsung highlighted that it is the largest direct shareholder in Seagate, after a $1.4 billion deal in 2011, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19816642#TWEET250038" type="external">the BBC said</a>.</p>
<p>"Mr. Hogan's failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore," said Samsung in its request for a new trial, according to Bloomberg. It also said Hogan's statements suggest he did not answer the court's questions "truthfully" to "secure a seat on the jury."</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/120928/tim-cook-apple-ceo-apologizes-maps-mess" type="external">Tim Cook, Apple CEO, apologizes for Maps mess</a></p>
<p>The verdict of the trial in August found that Samsung had improperly violated patented technology in the iPhone and iPad. The jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/samsung-apple-jury-foreman_n_1934288.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003" type="external">Reuters reported</a>.</p>
<p>Reuters said, "Hogan acknowledged the litigation with Seagate - now twenty years old - and said he had not been asked to list every lawsuit in which he had ever been involved."</p>
<p>Hogan told Reuters, "They've got a job to do and I don't hold that against them."</p>
<p>Samsung's filing also pointed to interviews Hogan gave after the verdict in which he said he wanted "to send a message to the industry at large that patent infringing is not the right thing to do" and "make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," said the BBC.</p>
<p>Samsung said this showed that Hogan had remained silent when asked if he had strong opinions on intellectual property laws.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/120927/china-facebook-twitter-users-ban-survey" type="external">China: Facebook, Twitter have millions of users despite ban, survey shows</a></p> | Samsung wants Apple's patent win overturned | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-10-03/samsung-wants-apples-patent-win-overturned | 2012-10-03 | 3 |
<p>On Tuesday, two armed men who <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-co-retirement-party-robbery-20170830-story.html#nws=true" type="external">apparently have double-digit IQs</a> decided to hold up a bar near Baltimore.</p>
<p>Here’s how you know they weren’t exactly Phi Beta Kappa: the bar was across the street from a police precinct station.</p>
<p>Sure enough, a group of Baltimore County officers had gathered at Monaghan's Pub for a retirement party for David Neral, a veteran sergeant who had worked with the department since 1988. The masked men entered the bar at roughly 5:30 p.m. According to Monaghan's owner Jack Milani, the men demanded cash from the employee at the carryout counter, then fled.</p>
<p>Some off-duty officers at the party chased the robbers and arrested them, according to the police department. The masked men were identified as Joseph McInnis III, 21, and Tyree McCoy, 22; they were charged with armed robbery, theft and related offenses, department spokesman Cpl. Shawn Vinson reported.</p>
<p>Milani pointed out that the robbers should have known better; police in squad cars often visit the bar during their shift changes. He said that many of the officers are regular customers, adding, “It’s kind of odd you would even attempt it. (Officers) are always in here. There was a decent amount of them.”</p>
<p>Baltimore County police officer Jennifer Peach <a href="http://www.wbaltv.com/article/armed-suspects-rob-pub-full-of-police-officers-attending-party/12149896" type="external">said</a>, "I'm sure that they weren't planning on there being a large room filled with police officers.”</p> | GENIUS: Masked Men Attempt Robbery At Bar Filled With Policemen | true | https://dailywire.com/news/20474/genius-masked-men-attempt-robbery-bar-filled-hank-berrien | 2017-08-31 | 0 |
<p>A Minnesota man who survived a 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis that killed over a dozen people has been charged with conspiring to support ISIS, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.</p>
<p>Mohamed Amiin Ali Roble, 20, is accused of traveling to Syria and joining the terror group just after he turned 18 — and using a more than $91,000 settlement to fund them, the FBI said.</p>
<p>Roble first flew to Istanbul and then China in 2014, according to court documents. That December, investigators said, he flew to Istanbul again and then traveled to Syria. He was supposed to return to the United States the following June, but didn't, the FBI said.</p>
<p>While in Turkey, Roble took out more than $47,000 from his bank accounts, the complaint against him says. He allegedly used that money to support ISIS, including buying vehicles for its members.</p>
<p>Related: <a href="" type="internal">Mississippi Man Thanks FBI for Stopping Him From Joining ISIS</a></p>
<p>Roble is part of a Minnesota-based network that worked to aid the terrorist organization, prosecutors say. He is believed to be living in Syria.</p>
<p>The charges against him bring the number of Twin Cities-area men accused of conspiring to travel overseas to join ISIS to 11. Of the 10 previously charged, nine have been convicted and one is believed to also be in Syria.</p>
<p>Roble was just weeks shy of his 11th birthday in 2007 when the school bus he was riding in was caught on a Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed. Thirteen people were killed and 145 people were injured, including Roble.</p>
<p>The settlement money — funded in part from the state — was given to him when he turned 18.</p>
<p>Roble's name surfaced in May during a trial against three other Minnesota men accused of conspiring to join ISIS, according to The Associated Press, which first reported about his connection to the bridge collapse.</p> | Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Survivor Mohamed Roble Charged With Joining ISIS | false | http://nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/minneapolis-bridge-collapse-survivor-mohamed-roble-charged-joining-isis-n637636 | 2016-08-25 | 3 |
<p>Hulk Hogan is set to be a homebody for WWE's All-Star bash.</p>
<p>Banished in disgrace nearly three years ago from the wrestling organization, the Hulkster is holding out hope for a reunion this year with the sports entertainment giant. Hogan would love to bust out the red-and-yellow colors for the "Raw" 25th anniversary show on Monday and join fellow wrestling greats in celebration of WWE's longest-running show.</p>
<p>Hogan instead will likely <a href="https://twitter.com/HulkHogan/status/953061040924717056" type="external">flip on "Raw" from his Florida home</a> instead of flexing his now 22-inch pythons in New York.</p>
<p>Hogan's bio is still scrubbed from WWE's website in the wake of his 2015 departure and he has not been advertised to appear among the list of former WWE champions that include "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels.</p>
<p>"Brother, if I'm not there, I'll definitely be there in spirit," Hogan said. "One way or the other, Hulk Hogan influenced each and every one of those guys you're going to see on TV Monday night. And that includes Vince McMahon, too."</p>
<p>Once a household name in wrestling, WWE terminated Hogan's contract in July 2015 on the heels of an audio release that contained him using repeated racial slurs to describe a man his daughter was dating at the time.</p>
<p>"It devastated me. The bottom dropped out," Hogan said. "It was just a situation that was unexpected; didn't even know it was going on at the time. I was blindsided by it."</p>
<p>Hogan, a 2005 WWE Hall of Famer, spent 30 years in the ring waging heavyweight battles against pro wrestling's unruliest giants, warriors and savages. Hogan's post-WWE fights had very real stakes.</p>
<p>Hogan, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, went through years of legal wrangling with Gawker Media that landed in a civil trial and exposed lurid details of his private life. Hogan sued Gawker after it published parts of a sex video in 2012 and — after he won a $140 million verdict in his lawsuit — eventually settled with the company for $31 million. The years-long fight led to the media company's bankruptcy and the shutdown of Gawker.com.</p>
<p>Hogan said he viewed the case as about protecting his right to privacy.</p>
<p>"Somebody had to draw the line somewhere," Hogan said. "I just made the decision that I was going to be the guy. If I lost everything, I was going to fight these people. It turned out great. There is justice."</p>
<p>Hogan has an active defamation lawsuit against Florida radio personalities he accused of playing a role in disseminating the sex tape.</p>
<p>Hogan, who wasn't wrestled since his TNA Wrestling stint in 2012, wanted Hulkamania to run wild in 2018.</p>
<p>"I'm 64 years old and right now I could go out and tear WrestleMania down," he said. "I might have that one more match where I really beat the hell out of Vince. I've still got one in me."</p>
<p>But that would have to begin with reconciling with WWE, specifically McMahon, the chairman and CEO, and top executive Paul "Triple H" Levesque. Through several stints with the company, Hogan and McMahon have best tight friends and bitter rivals. Hogan said he has occasional contact with McMahon but is closer with Levesque, the man credited with bringing former disgruntled greats such as The Ultimate Warrior and Bruno Sammartino back into the fold.</p>
<p>"I don't know if they want me back," Hogan said. "I think the fans want me back. I think that I'm part of that company from the ground up. Triple H I know is a huge fan of the guys that gave their blood, sweat and tears and their personal life to make this happen. I know Triple H would love to see me back on the inside again."</p>
<p>WWE sponsors would also have to be on board with Hogan's return.</p>
<p>"At this time, WWE remains committed to its decision," the company said in a statement.</p>
<p>That could leave Hogan to pursue a run outside WWE with the hottest act in pro wrestling: Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes and the rest of the Bullet Club.</p>
<p>"I'm about ready to jump on a plane and fly to Japan and get involved with that Bullet Club, man. I'm so excited about those kids," Hogan said.</p>
<p>As much as Hogan wants to wrestle again, the reality is, he's had two hip, two knee and nine back surgeries and the man who slammed Andre the Giant and went 1-on-1 with The Rock has perhaps had his last bout.</p>
<p>Hogan said he's busy with various business interests, including two beach shops in Florida that bear his name, and he plans to open a restaurant called Hogan's Hangout. He married his second wife, Jennifer, in 2010, and the couple have kept a low public profile after he spent four seasons with his ex-wife portrayed as the protective patriarch in the reality show, "Hogan Knows Best."</p>
<p>"I don't want that reality stuff ever in my house again," Hogan said. "I'd never take it to those personal levels I did before."</p>
<p>The question looms, will his next starring role again come on the WWE stage?</p>
<p>"The setback," Hogan said, "is never as great as the comeback."</p>
<p>Hulk Hogan is set to be a homebody for WWE's All-Star bash.</p>
<p>Banished in disgrace nearly three years ago from the wrestling organization, the Hulkster is holding out hope for a reunion this year with the sports entertainment giant. Hogan would love to bust out the red-and-yellow colors for the "Raw" 25th anniversary show on Monday and join fellow wrestling greats in celebration of WWE's longest-running show.</p>
<p>Hogan instead will likely <a href="https://twitter.com/HulkHogan/status/953061040924717056" type="external">flip on "Raw" from his Florida home</a> instead of flexing his now 22-inch pythons in New York.</p>
<p>Hogan's bio is still scrubbed from WWE's website in the wake of his 2015 departure and he has not been advertised to appear among the list of former WWE champions that include "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels.</p>
<p>"Brother, if I'm not there, I'll definitely be there in spirit," Hogan said. "One way or the other, Hulk Hogan influenced each and every one of those guys you're going to see on TV Monday night. And that includes Vince McMahon, too."</p>
<p>Once a household name in wrestling, WWE terminated Hogan's contract in July 2015 on the heels of an audio release that contained him using repeated racial slurs to describe a man his daughter was dating at the time.</p>
<p>"It devastated me. The bottom dropped out," Hogan said. "It was just a situation that was unexpected; didn't even know it was going on at the time. I was blindsided by it."</p>
<p>Hogan, a 2005 WWE Hall of Famer, spent 30 years in the ring waging heavyweight battles against pro wrestling's unruliest giants, warriors and savages. Hogan's post-WWE fights had very real stakes.</p>
<p>Hogan, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, went through years of legal wrangling with Gawker Media that landed in a civil trial and exposed lurid details of his private life. Hogan sued Gawker after it published parts of a sex video in 2012 and — after he won a $140 million verdict in his lawsuit — eventually settled with the company for $31 million. The years-long fight led to the media company's bankruptcy and the shutdown of Gawker.com.</p>
<p>Hogan said he viewed the case as about protecting his right to privacy.</p>
<p>"Somebody had to draw the line somewhere," Hogan said. "I just made the decision that I was going to be the guy. If I lost everything, I was going to fight these people. It turned out great. There is justice."</p>
<p>Hogan has an active defamation lawsuit against Florida radio personalities he accused of playing a role in disseminating the sex tape.</p>
<p>Hogan, who wasn't wrestled since his TNA Wrestling stint in 2012, wanted Hulkamania to run wild in 2018.</p>
<p>"I'm 64 years old and right now I could go out and tear WrestleMania down," he said. "I might have that one more match where I really beat the hell out of Vince. I've still got one in me."</p>
<p>But that would have to begin with reconciling with WWE, specifically McMahon, the chairman and CEO, and top executive Paul "Triple H" Levesque. Through several stints with the company, Hogan and McMahon have best tight friends and bitter rivals. Hogan said he has occasional contact with McMahon but is closer with Levesque, the man credited with bringing former disgruntled greats such as The Ultimate Warrior and Bruno Sammartino back into the fold.</p>
<p>"I don't know if they want me back," Hogan said. "I think the fans want me back. I think that I'm part of that company from the ground up. Triple H I know is a huge fan of the guys that gave their blood, sweat and tears and their personal life to make this happen. I know Triple H would love to see me back on the inside again."</p>
<p>WWE sponsors would also have to be on board with Hogan's return.</p>
<p>"At this time, WWE remains committed to its decision," the company said in a statement.</p>
<p>That could leave Hogan to pursue a run outside WWE with the hottest act in pro wrestling: Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes and the rest of the Bullet Club.</p>
<p>"I'm about ready to jump on a plane and fly to Japan and get involved with that Bullet Club, man. I'm so excited about those kids," Hogan said.</p>
<p>As much as Hogan wants to wrestle again, the reality is, he's had two hip, two knee and nine back surgeries and the man who slammed Andre the Giant and went 1-on-1 with The Rock has perhaps had his last bout.</p>
<p>Hogan said he's busy with various business interests, including two beach shops in Florida that bear his name, and he plans to open a restaurant called Hogan's Hangout. He married his second wife, Jennifer, in 2010, and the couple have kept a low public profile after he spent four seasons with his ex-wife portrayed as the protective patriarch in the reality show, "Hogan Knows Best."</p>
<p>"I don't want that reality stuff ever in my house again," Hogan said. "I'd never take it to those personal levels I did before."</p>
<p>The question looms, will his next starring role again come on the WWE stage?</p>
<p>"The setback," Hogan said, "is never as great as the comeback."</p> | Hulk Homebody: Hogan sits on the bench for WWE All-Star bash | false | https://apnews.com/amp/472f63e79026421296c07f23391412fd | 2018-01-18 | 2 |
<p>The United States of America is organizing another international conference in the Middle East. This one, sadly, emerges as a result of the destruction of Palestinian society by Israel. By doing so, the US is setting itself up for a political and security failure, yet again. The first US failure was called Oslo, where the Palestinian leadership was lured into a US-sponsored ‘peace process’ that has led to the intentional obliteration of Palestinian cities and dismantling of Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been central to the Middle East ever since Israel was created 54 years ago. Furthermore, ever since Israel occupied the remaining 22% of Palestine – the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – on June 4, 1967 tensions in the region have been steadily increasing. Today’s Middle East crisis reflects another round of US foreign policy failure and the continuation of Israeli disregard for international law and universal standards of nation-state behavior. There is, however, an important difference this time around: the world, including the Arab world, has finally been able to glimpse at the nature of the Israeli occupation. This one difference has the power to create a momentum that may change the political landscape of the Middle East forever, and with it US interests in Middle East.</p>
<p>As Israel defied President Bush’s repeated call for an immediate withdraw from Palestinian cities and refugee camps, some US leaders such as Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have called upon the US to provide the region with the “strong leadership that only America can provide.” This is a senior US foreign affairs official who was unable to predict and is now unable to admit that the last 35 years of US support – financially, politically and morally – for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people would lead to a human catastrophe. Equally astonishing is the refusal of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask why Palestinians should accept American leadership now, after it failed throughout the entire course of the Oslo peace process to address the political rights of the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>The Bush administration’s decision to ignore Israel’s 18-month military aggression on Palestinian cities displays that American leadership is already in full support of Israel’s actions. Bush’s earlier landmark policy change in support of a Palestinian state, now seems only to have provided a thin veneer of political cover under which Israeli tanks rolled into nearly every Palestinian city. All this comes with the backdrop of President Bush, after being rebuffed by Israeli refusal to stop its war on Palestinians, calling prime minister Ariel Sharon a ‘man of peace’.</p>
<p>Conversely, the Palestinian leadership is in over its head. President Arafat does not have a public or organizational mandate to negotiate anything other than the principles in the PLO Covenant. Some would even argue that with the total collapse of the Oslo Peace Accords, the reference points of the Madrid Conference, namely Palestinian acceptance of UN resolutions 242 and 338 and the PLO recognition of the State of Israel, are now also in need of reassessment. The US will continue to abuse this Palestinian political vacuum in order to promote its agenda of having Arab States (fearful for their own survival) pressure President Arafat into accepting less than what Palestinians rightfully and legally deserve. However, the US is mistaken to believe that in this period the Palestinian Authority President and his handful of personal aides or a few randomly appointed Palestinian civilians authoritatively speak for the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority that was established to operate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the Oslo agreement was created by US-blessing and has now been dismantled by US-blessing. That leaves us where we were pre- Oslo with regard to Palestinian politics, with the PLO being the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This being the case, it is crucial that the PLO convene an emergency Palestine National Council meeting outside of Palestine in order to assume the reins of leading the Palestinian struggle. For Palestinians there is too much at stake to wait for President Arafat to be released from captivity by Israel and the US before taking action. Also, it is unfair to all those Palestinians that have sacrificed so much in this struggle to allow the Palestinian Authority to negotiate under these conditions.</p>
<p>With or without the US-sponsored conference being proposed by Secretary of State Powell, the US can end the Israeli occupation and reinstate Palestinians their national, political and civil rights as defined in over 60 UN resolutions. This, and only this, will reinstate US credibility in the region. If the conference maintains the Israeli occupation, in any way, shape or form, it will commit the region to more bloodshed and put regional US strategic interests at serious risk. Given that all participants, except Israel, would be coming to this conference with a US political and economic knife at their throats, it is unlikely that the US and Israel will walk away with anything more than a media success, and at best, another empty ‘peace process’ that delays solving the conflict for a few more years.</p>
<p>The US is clearly defining its Middle East foreign policy by playing Russian Roulette with the Palestinian cause. By spearheading a political initiative based upon Palestinian physical and political ruins, the international/regional conference initiative has two conceivable outcomes. Either the Palestinian struggle will end with the fate that befell Native Americans, or the Palestinians, these suffering 6 million people, will be the Achilles heel of a much larger movement that will tear the US hegemony in the Middle East at its seams. If I were a betting man, I would take the latter, for Martin Luther King was right on the money when he said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.” Without the enfranchisement of the Palestinian people, the Middle East will know neither.</p>
<p>Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American living in the besieged Palestinian City of Al-Bireh/Ramallah in the West Bank and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Bush Playing Russian Roulette with Palestinians | true | https://counterpunch.org/2002/04/18/bush-playing-russian-roulette-with-palestinians/ | 2002-04-18 | 4 |
<p>Was it something he said?</p>
<p>It was nothing President George W. Bush did — no decision he made, no policy he pursued, no faith that he placed in ideological dogma on topics that range from regulating industries to acknowledging global climate change to responding to the terrorist threat — that he finds regrettable. Bush told a cable network, “I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said” over the course of eight tumultuous years</p>
<p>Like when he said he would get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” Or when he seemed to taunt the insurgents who were emerging in Iraq, by saying “bring&#160;’em on.” Or when he went aboard the USS Lincoln less than two months after he launched the Iraq invasion and spoke beneath a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”</p>
<p>“I regret that … that sign was there,” the president said in his first interview since last week’s election.</p>
<p />
<p>And that, my fellow Americans, is that.</p>
<p>Many of us have become numb to the obvious disconnect between the current president and the havoc that has characterized his tenure. Even so, Bush’s departing interview with CNN is jarring. It is an appalling reminder of how and why the nation finds itself at such a low point.</p>
<p>Correspondent Heidi Collins spoke to Bush during his Veterans Day visit to New York. Her approach was gentle — making the president’s response all the more provocative. Here is what Collins asked: “I imagine that you probably have a moment in your presidency that you are most proud of, and a moment I’m sure you most regret.” Bush then recounted his regrettable moments. They amount to a collection of sound bites that now cause him to wince.</p>
<p>Bush is famously averse to self-reflection. And no one really expects an outgoing president to recite an unedited catalog of his flaws. But it is telling that he couldn’t even offer a dose of political bromide for a hurting country, something along the lines of: “I regret that so many Americans are facing financial hardship as the holiday season approaches.” What would have been wrong with that?</p>
<p>The unabridged compendium of regrettable actions Bush has taken since his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001, far exceeds the length of this column. You can start with the initial round of tax cuts, which were tilted toward the wealthy. They caused a then-emerging budget surplus to evaporate and were prologue to a set of economic policies that helped lead us into the current global meltdown.</p>
<p>It is also regrettable that Bush effectively ignored this warning, delivered to him while he vacationed at his Texas ranch on Aug. 6, 2001: “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”</p>
<p>I regret that after the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, Bush began to secretly plot the invasion of Iraq, though there wasn’t a shred of evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 conspiracy. And after Bush ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan, his administration neglected the country where the terrorists had a haven, so that it has devolved once again into corruption, a flourishing drug trade and violent, regional factionalism.</p>
<p>How to continue? Torture. Secret prisons. The president claiming that he has the power to seize even American citizens off the streets, and imprison them indefinitely. The “signing statements” that Bush attached to legislation he approved — asserting that he simply won’t follow parts of a law that he doesn’t like. The Guantanamo prison camp.</p>
<p>Common decency requires the president to regret his failure to heed warnings that Hurricane Katrina would carry a catastrophic force, and to take action. Most Americans regret that the president didn’t rescue New Orleans.</p>
<p>Who can name all the government agencies whose missions Bush subverted by appointing a cabal of industry insiders to regulate the businesses that once employed them, or count the ideological warriors and incompetents he chose to run so many of the rest?</p>
<p>We’ve always known that Bush is resistant to analysis, or even to considering the complexity of an issue. In 2004, a voter at the town hall debate of his re-election campaign asked this: “President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it.” Bush acknowledged no error except a few bad appointments.</p>
<p>The president hasn’t changed. Thankfully, the nation has.</p>
<p>Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.</p>
<p>© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | This Is What He's Sorry About? | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/this-is-what-hes-sorry-about/ | 2008-11-13 | 4 |
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