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And this woman wants to be in charge of America? She can t even handle a Laugh Factory standup skit! The thing that s so wrong is that the first amendment comes into play here. You won t believe this:In what appears to be a first for a serious presidential contender, Hillary Clinton s campaign is going after five comedians who made fun of the former Secretary of State in standup skits at a popular Hollywood comedy club.A video of the short performance, which is less than three minutes, is posted on the website of the renowned club, Laugh Factory, and the Clinton campaign has tried to censor it. Besides demanding that the video be taken down, the Clinton campaign has demanded the personal contact information of the performers that appear in the recording. This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. They threatened me, Masada told Judicial Watch. I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don t cut the video. Practically all of the country s most acclaimed comedians have performed at the Laugh Factory and undoubtedly they have offended politicians and other well-known personalities with their standup routines. Tim Allen, Jay Leno, Roseanne Bar, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, Jerry Seinfeld and George Lopez are among the big names that have headlined at the Laugh Factory. The First Amendment right to free speech is a crucial component of the operation, though Masada drew the line a few years ago banning performers including African Americans from using the n-word in their acts.The five short performances that Clinton wants eliminated include some profanity and portions could be considered crass, but some of the lines are funny and that s what the Laugh Factory is all about. The video features the individual acts of five comedians, four men and a woman. The skits make fun of Clinton s wardrobe, her age, sexual orientation, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the former First Lady s relationship with her famous husband. The Laugh Factory has appropriately titled it Hillary vs. The First Amendment. Masada told Judicial Watch that, as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a prominent person inside Clinton s campaign. He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this, Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up. He insists that the comedy stage is a sanctuary for freedom of speech no matter who is offended. Just last night we had (Emmy-award winner) Dana Carvey doing Donald Trump and it was hilarious, Masada said. HERE IT IS:
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Scotland, Wales and London should all benefit from any special deal given to Northern Ireland to smooth access to European Union markets after Brexit, the three regions most senior politicians said on Monday. Most Scots and Londoners voted to stay in the EU in June 2016 s referendum, unlike their compatriots in the rest of the United Kingdom. Politicians in Scotland, Wales and the British capital have campaigned for Britain as a whole to stay in the EU s single market to smooth trade relations. Prime Minister Theresa May has ruled that out so far, saying Britain needed the freedom to make its own rules and trade deals. But the three regions rallied to the cause again after Irish government sources said on Monday that the British government had agreed to maintain EU regulatory alignment for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. May said there had been no overall agreement on Monday. Keeping regulations in Northern Ireland similar to those in the rest of the EU make it less likely that the bloc would insist on border checks after Brexit. But making an exception of Northern Ireland could make it difficult for May to argue that others cannot have the same. So far, she has argued that Brexit should follow a one-size-fits-all pattern for the whole of the United Kingdom. If one part of the United Kingdom can retain regulatory alignment with the European Union and effectively stay in the single market ... there is surely no good practical reason why others can t, Nicola Sturgeon, the head of Scotland s devolved pro-independence government, said on Twitter. Sturgeon welcomed the outline of a deal that meant no return to a hard border in Ireland, but argued that such an agreement meant something similar for Scotland was even more vital. For Scotland to find itself outside the single market, while Northern Ireland effectively stays in would place us at a double disadvantage when it comes to jobs and investment. A large majority of voters in Scotland, one of the UK s four nations with around 5 million people, voted to stay in the EU, as did Northern Ireland. Wales and England, the most populous nation, voted to leave, straining the structure of the UK and complicating negotiations to unwind four decades of political and trading links with the EU. Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it s possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market and customs union after Brexit, Sadiq Khan, London s mayor, said on Twitter. Britain s capital, with a population of 8.8 million, voted by a margin of 59.9 percent to remain within the EU. Turnout was high by local standards at nearly 70 percent and Khan, from Britain s main opposition Labour Party, campaigned to stay in the EU. Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones called for Wales to be allowed to continue to participate in the single market if other parts of the UK could. May s government has up to now ruled out any special deal for Scotland, although the Scottish government published a year ago a plan for the northernmost part of the UK to remain in the single market even if Britain as a whole leaves. Its plan was, however, rejected as unworkable by the UK government.
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Does anyone else find it ironic that black multi-millionaire athletes are protesting oppression in America after 8 years of our first Black President?How much courage does it take for these multi-millionaire athletes to stand in protest against the flag our US military members defend with their lives every day? Members of our Armed Forces are making between $17,892 and $34,696 in basic pay, depending upon time served in the military and rank. But yeah we can see why you multi-millionaire punks who are treated like royalty wherever you go, are all feeling so oppressed that you need to disrespect our flag and the brave men and woman who stand on the field next to you, while you spit on their sacrifices as a way to promote Obama s Black Lives Matter legacy NFL player-activists continued to take a knee Sunday during the national anthem to protest alleged oppression of blacks in America.On Sunday in Seattle, Dolphins running back Arian Foster, wide receiver Kenny Stills, safety Michael Thomas, and linebacker Jelani Jenkins took a knee as everyone else rose to honor America. They are taking a knee for injustice in America, according to civil-rights activist Shaun King.But what is the end game? How will we know when the injustice has subsided to the point so they can stand again?Perhaps when the murder rate in Chicago falls. It s currently on a record pace (512 so far this year) with most of the victims African-American. Or maybe when the black teen unemployment employment rate of 31 percent, six times higher than the national average, improves.Maybe that is what the NFL activists are waiting on, for these two oppressive situations to be fixed.Watch here:We will see. Don t hold your breath. This seems like a one-note song it s clearly an extension of the Black Lives Matter movement, and it s about police killing a few unarmed black suspects. Via: Breitbart News
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The Republican National Convention starts this coming Monday, and things are not looking good for the GOP s biggest event for the next four years. The problem, of course, is their standard-bearer, Donald Trump. Many prominent Republicans are staying as far away from the convention as possible, they are still about $6 million short of actually paying for the whole thing, and to top it all off, it seems that RNC Chair Reince Priebus still can t get the #NeverTrump delegates to fall in line behind Trump. Now, former presidential candidate Jeb Bush has become the latest to go on record saying that he is most definitely #NeverTrump.On Friday, Bush took his anti-Trump sentiments to the Washington Post, where he said that Trump had tapped into anger and frustration in Americans: They have given rise to the success of a candidate who continues to grotesquely manipulate the deeply felt anger of many Americans. Trump s abrasive, Know Nothing-like nativist rhetoric has blocked out sober discourse about how to tackle America s big challenges. Bush then continued to slam Trump throughout the article, and cautioned fellow Republican politicians about the tone of Trump s campaign and the stain he was putting upon the party. He then went on to beg them to reintroduce civility, ideas and optimism back into politics. Let s find ways to campaign and govern inclusively. Let s find ways to ease the angst and fear of people, without cynically feeding it. He then went on to say that he would not be voting for either Trump or Clinton, but might go for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson: I haven t decided how I ll vote in November whether I ll support the Libertarian ticket or write in a candidate but I do know there are a lot of things Republicans can do in the coming months to lay the groundwork for rebuilding our party and the foundation for a true conservative renewal in our country. The only sort-of compliment Bush had for Trump was his choice to choose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for the #2 spot on the GOP ticket, and it came via Twitter:Mike Pence is a good man. He will add value to the ticket. Jeb Bush (@JebBush) July 16, 2016Well, that s something I guess. At the end of the day, good on Jeb Bush and the other #NeverTrump Republicans. We don t agree on much, but we do agree that Donald Trump is dangerously unfit to be president of the United States.Featured image via Michael Vadon/Wikimedia
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The U.S. Senate Banking Committee unanimously backed new sanctions targeting Chinese banks that do business with North Korea on Tuesday, just before President Donald Trump visits Beijing for the first time since taking office. As well as strengthening existing sanctions and congressional oversight, the measure will target foreign financial institutions - in China and elsewhere - that provide services to those subject to North Korea-related sanctions by the U.S. Congress, a presidential order or U.N. Security Council resolution. All 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the panel voted for the “Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act,” clearing the way for its consideration by the full Senate. The bill was named after a U.S. student who died earlier this year after he was imprisoned in North Korea, further chilling already poor relations between Washington and Pyongyang. “For too long, we’ve been complacent about the growing and gathering threat from the North Korean regime,” Republican Pat Toomey, one of the bill’s authors, said after the committee voted. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, another author, said that in addition to Chinese banks, Malaysian financial institutions might end up in its sights. Trump is due to wrap up a visit to Seoul on Wednesday with a major speech on North Korea, and then shift focus to China, where he is expected to press a reluctant President Xi Jinping to tighten the screws further on Pyongyang. Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, as well as many Democrats, have been critical of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric about North Korea, and have called for the use of economic tools like sanctions or more negotiations before talking of war. Washington so far has largely held off on imposing new sanctions against Chinese banks and companies doing business with North Korea, given fears of retaliation by Beijing and possibly far-reaching effects on the world economy. Van Hollen told reporters on Monday ahead of the committee vote that he wished Trump would follow the model of President Theodore Roosevelt and “speak softly and carry a big stick,” adding: “We’re trying to give him a little bigger stick with the sanctions.” Republican and Democratic lawmakers said last week they had reached a bipartisan agreement on the sanctions bill. A companion bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives. The leaders of the Republican-led Senate have not said when the chamber might vote on the legislation.
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Well, it s not like we didn t know this but it s very revealing to know why Obama says he got into politics. Hope and Change was for just some folks and not for others Please note what Malik is quoted as saying about Barack recently Ouch!President Obama s half-brother, Malik Abongo Roy Obama, has sold a handwritten letter from the president, penned 20 years ago, that reveals Obama s reasoning for getting into politics including to deal with some serious issues blacks face here. Some colleagues of mine here have talked me into running for the Illinois State Senate (like being an MP for a province), the future world leader wrote his kin in July 1995, before his political career began. I have agreed, since I have an interest in politics to deal with some serious issues blacks face here, Obama wrote. The letter also reveals Obama s disdain for meetings, saying, Of course, it involves a lot of campaigning, going to meetings and so on, which I don t find so attractive. He adds, Anyway, if I win it will only be a part-time post, and I will continue my work as a lawyer. The letter which we hear Malik sold as a package with a copy of a manuscript of Obama s first book, Dreams From My Father, with handwritten notes also gives an update on First Lady Michelle and his late mother, who died later that year. Modal Trigger Photo: momentsintime.com Michelle is fine, also busy with her work, Obama wrote. My mom s health has been stabilized for now, but she is by no means cured and continues to undergo extensive treatment. In the letter, signed Much love Barack, the future president adds news that his brother s found a new wife, Man, I must say you don t fool around! The letter was offered up to parties such as LA-based memorabilia dealer Moments in Time before it was snapped up by a collector. Malik, who lives in Kenya, also sold two other handwritten letters from Obama for nearly $15,000 each in 2013. Malik, who shares the same father with the president, has said they were best men at each other s weddings. But earlier this year, he called Obama a schemer and said, He s not been an honest man . . . in who he is and what he says and how he treats people. The amount paid for the letter was not disclosed. The White House did not comment.Via: NYP
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Congress is expected to approve President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of retired Marine Corps General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as secretary of defense, despite Democratic concerns that it ignores a long tradition of civilian control of the military. For Mattis to be confirmed, the Senate and the House of Representatives both must pass a waiver exempting him from a law written when the Department of Defense was created to ensure that the military is under civilian command.Legislators have granted such a waiver only once, in 1950, when Congress passed an act that allowed General George Marshall, who had retired in 1945, to serve as Pentagon chief. The 66-year-old Mattis, who is revered by fellow Marines, retired 3-1/2 years ago. The 1947 National Security Act requires a seven-year gap between active duty military service and the Cabinet position, leaving the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff as the Pentagon’s top uniformed military position. Another Marine general, Joseph Dunford, is the current chairman, serving a two-year term that ends in mid-2017. Mattis was once Dunford’s commander. Lawrence Korb, who was an assistant secretary of defense under Republican President Ronald Reagan, said having a military officer as secretary of defense would rob the Pentagon of needed perspective. He noted, for example, that social change in the military - from ending segregation to allowing women in combat - has always been pushed by civilians. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a military person as secretary of defense,” he said Friday in a telephone interview. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. After Trump announced his selection on Thursday, Democrats joined many Republicans, who control majorities in both houses of Congress, to heap praise on Mattis. But a few also raised concerns about having too many generals in the top tiers of the government. Trump’s choice for national security adviser is Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The president-elect is also said to be considering David Petraeus, another retired Army general, as secretary of state, and retired Marine General John Kelly to head the Department of Homeland Security. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said on Thursday she would not back a waiver for Mattis. Chris Murphy, another Senate Democrat, said on Friday he was “deeply fearful” that the precedent of civilian control of the military could wither, although he would talk to Mattis and spoke highly of the military leader. “It would be a really dangerous precedent to break here,” he told a news conference in Connecticut, his home state. Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, had high praise for Mattis but said the House should perform a full review, including committee hearings, if it were to consider overriding the prohibition on recent military officers leading the Pentagon. “Civil control of the military is not something to be casually cast aside,” Smith said in a statement.
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A tax plan proposed by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz would cut federal revenues by $8.6 trillion over 10 years, adding substantially to the debt, according to an analysis published on Tuesday by a nonpartisan research center. Cruz's plan, unveiled in November, would create a flat 10 percent individual income tax that with other changes would mainly benefit high-income households, the study by the Washington-based Tax Policy Center found. (tpc.io/1ToCN7M) Other changes include repealing the corporate income tax, as well as payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and estate and gift taxes; increasing the standard deduction and eliminating most other deductions except for mortgage interest and charity; and adding a broad-based 16 percent value-added consumption tax. “The plan would cut taxes at most income levels, although the highest-income households would benefit the most and the poor the least,” the Tax Policy Center said. The value-added tax proposed by Cruz, a Senator from Texas who won the Iowa caucuses among Republicans last month, would replace only 70 percent of the costs of the tax cuts, according to the center. Cruz is a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement who helped provoke a 16-day government shutdown in September 2013 with his opposition to a spending bill. The goal was to gut the healthcare law known as Obamacare. The TPC analysis noted that high-income taxpayers would see an average tax cut in 2017 of about $6,100 or some 8.5 percent of after-tax income, while those with annual incomes over $3.7 million would see an average cut of nearly 29 percent, or more than $2 million. “Households in the middle of the income distribution would receive an average tax cut of $1,800, or 3.2 percent of after-tax income, while taxpayers in the lowest quintile would receive an average tax cut of $46, or 0.4 percent of after-tax income,” the TPC said. The changes would “boost incentives to work, save and invest,” but the lower revenue would require unprecedented cuts in government spending to avoid borrowing that would raise interest rates and discourage private investment, it said. The Tax Policy Center is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two Washington-based think tanks. It has issued studies of other candidates’ proposals. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.
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Emirates and flydubai have resumed using Iraqi airspace for flights to other countries, the Middle East airlines said on Monday, two days after Iraq declared victory in its years-long fight against Islamic state. Several airlines stopped flying over Iraq in 2014 on safety concerns because of the conflict and after a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine the same year. Airlines have instead been flying longer routes over Iran and other countries, increasing congestion in the region, with many airlines also avoiding Syrian airspace. The use of Iraqi airspace is likely to help Emirates and flydubai to save on fuel costs by shortening flying hours and also reduce regional airspace congestion. Emirates has resumed utilizing Iraqi airspace and a very small number of our flights overfly Iraqi airspace each day , an airline spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. The spokeswoman said that Emirates reviews its flight operations regularly, in line with advice from regulators and authorities. Safety, security and operational efficiency will always be the top considerations when planning flight paths, the spokeswoman said. Emirates did not say when it started flying over Iraq again or which routes were affected. Airlines flying through the region have in the past used Iraqi airspace for flights to Europe and the United States. Flydubai started using eastern Iraqi airspace again on Nov. 28, mostly affecting flights to and from Eastern Europe and Turkey, a spokeswoman said in an email. All the necessary risk and security assessments were conducted prior to the start of overflying, the spokeswoman said. Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert, marking the end of the war against the militants three years after they had captured about a third of Iraq s territory. Emirates and flydubai have continued flying to and from Iraq since 2014 but with temporary suspensions on some flights from time to time.
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken control of the media and is no longer allowing them to push a false narrative when it comes to President Trump and a non-existant Russian connection.Time and time again, Sanders has proven she s no pushover when it comes to the rabid leftist media who would love nothing more than to be able to sabotage her during her press briefings. Yesterday was no exception. With a smile on her face, Sanders called out the media for ignoring the biggest story of the day. The one day there might have been a question on Russia, there wasn t. Often, we have a lot of uh, media with Russia first , and uh, but today, there was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories. And we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians. This is yet the latest piece of evidence that vindicates what the president has said that this is just a witch hunt and a hoax . And its a shame that the president and the country have had to go through this charade. The entire Russia hoax implodes just as the scandal of the year (the Awan brothers) breaks. Bad week for Fake News! pic.twitter.com/acjPqJs33b Newt-Trump Fan Club (@NewtTrump) July 27, 2017
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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will vote later on Wednesday on whether to send its tax legislation to a conference to hammer out differences with the U.S. House of Representatives’ version of the plan. Speaking on the chamber’s floor, McConnell also said Congress later this week would pass a short-term continuing resolution measure to continue funding the federal government while lawmakers work on a longer-term spending bill. He did not give any dates.
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When RYB Education Inc became enmeshed in allegations of child abuse at one of its Beijing kindergartens, it touched off an angry online furor in China, a police inquiry and a precipitous fall in the company s New York-listed shares. Barely a week later, the firm appears to have weathered much of the storm, for now. Chinese police said late on Tuesday some claims of abuse were unfounded, although one teacher was in custody for using knitting needles to discipline children. The company s shares closed up 23.33 percent in New York on Tuesday, after falling over 40 percent last week when allegations first emerged of abuse that included sexual molestation and forced medication. However, shares fell over 10 percent in pre-market trade on Wednesday after the company said there were parent complaints about other RYB-branded kindergartens and that it was cooperating with police. It gave no other details. RYB s actions over the week represented a case of effective crisis management, experts said, rare in the Chinese corporate world where companies tend to hunker down in the face of adverse news and allow events to play out. RYB appeared to have taken some good corrective actions , said James Robinson, managing director of communications consultancy APCO Worldwide s Shanghai office, adding a well-oiled response and open channels of communication with government stakeholders were key. It s essential for companies to respond swiftly, even if it s just to acknowledge they are aware of an issue and are investigating further. Led by chief executive and founder Shi Yanlai, a vocal proponent for China s early child education sector, RYB appeared to have hit all the right buttons last week. When I heard the news, I was personally shocked and very angry, Shi said in an investors call on Friday. This issue has struck an alarm bell for us, she said, adding the firm would look to speed up the installation of blanket surveillance tools at its schools and day care centres. RYB announced a $50 million share buyback and said it had dismissed a teacher suspected of involvement in the case as well as the head teacher of the Beijing school. Shi helped set up RYB in 1998 when her own son was born. It now has over 1,300 play and learn centres and nearly 500 kindergartens in around 300 cities in China. Most are operated on a franchise model. As the case became a lighting rod for wider anger in China about a lack of trained teachers, low wages and poor regulatory oversight in the massive and fast-growing private pre-school sector, Shi underscored that she was a mother herself and repeated frequently in local media interviews that the children were the top priority. On Wednesday, the kindergarten in Beijing was operating as normal, with parents milling around waiting for children to finish class. A handful of police officers were the only sign of last week s troubles. At the company s headquarters in southern Beijing, an RYB official said the police had only released their preliminary findings and that the firm could not provide comment until the investigation had finished. Shi also refused to comment for this story. Teachers, investors and experts said RYB had so far had got off fairly lightly, with a lot of the anger being aimed at regulators and wider issues in the market. Beijing is sending inspectors to the city s kindergartens, while China s education ministry is doing a broad investigation into the sector. I m not really surprised, wrote Zhang Xiaolong, an education sector executive who has half a million followers online, referring to Tuesday s recovery in RYB s shares. After such a serious issue, the government hasn t taken away RYB s license to operate schools, and so it seems like it s being treated like an isolated incident. Teachers in China said the furor over the case - hundreds of millions posted online about it last week - reflected bubbling tensions over the fast development of the private pre-school sector and a lack of resources for teachers. Thresholds for kindergarten teachers getting into the profession are too low; but also status, social recognition and levels of respect for the role are lacking, said Zhong Qian, the head of a private kindergarten in Chengdu. Increasingly there s a mismatch between the demand from students and the need for teachers. RYB has survived similar scandals in the past, at another of its Beijing kindergartens earlier this year and before that at a nursery in northern Jilin province. Before it listed shares in New York in September, its IPO prospectus flagged abuse by teachers as a risk. Teachers and academics, however, said that it was tough to stamp out abuse, especially at franchised, private-sector schools where competition was tough, requirements and checks on teachers were less strict and salaries were low. It s often one of the poorest paid professions in China, certainly right down bottom of the pay scale, said Geoffrey Crothall, communications director at China Labour Bulletin. Schools often just want bodies in there who can supervise kids and pay them as little as possible. The state-run Global Times wrote on Wednesday that even after the police report, there was still fierce criticism online of the case. As often is the case when authorities intercede in a case that has touched a nerve about people s welfare, a raging debate has continued to ferment, the newspaper wrote in a commentary. Robinson, the communications consultant, added: For RYB, it seems they ve taken some good corrective actions, but I don t know whether it s enough. The facts are still emerging.
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The entitled generation .Wearing a cardboard sign upon which $226K is written in green characters, a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders told 24-year-old actress Shailene Woodley that she owes $226,000 in debt.@lindsayzissis telling me why she's voting for #BernieSanders she's $226,000 in debt for trying to help the world pic.twitter.com/oo2Z7q8nDv Shailene Woodley (@shailenewoodley) April 16, 2016Woodley, also a supporter of the socialist senator from Vermont, then asked the young female what she had studied after high school.The answer? Speech pathology. The average mean wage for a Speech Language Pathologist in the US is $77,000 per year. Sanders has promised free tuition nationwide at post-secondary institutions, without specifying conditions relating to preferred pursuits. Under Sanders s proposal, those wishing to become mechanical engineers, pediatricians, or electricians will be afforded the same taxpayers assistance as those studying Greek mythology, social justice, or women s studies. Via: Daily Wire
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Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is over the moon with happiness after Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence refused to call him deplorable. In a CNN interview on Monday afternoon, Pence told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer that he doesn t name call, and would not call avowed racist and anti-Semite David Duke deplorable, as Hillary Clinton has repeatedly done during the campaign. Later asked to do so in a Fox News interview, Pence again refused.This has made Duke, currently running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana, very happy. It s good to see an individual like Pence and others start to reject this absolute controlled media, Duke told BuzzFeed News. The truth is that the Republican Party in Louisiana I received the vast majority of Republican votes for United States senator before and for governor before that in my state. The truth is the Republican Party is big tent. I served in the Republican caucus. I was in the Republican caucus in the legislature. I had a perfect Republican voting record. It s ridiculous that they attack me because of my involvement in that nonviolent Klan four decades ago. Duke is a former Grand Wizard, part of the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan, a hate group with a very long history of terrorizing black families all across the country. The Klan was very involved in the lynching deaths of blacks, other killings, and initiated the practice of burning crosses on the property of blacks in order to frighten them.In addition, Duke is also an anti-Semite who has promoted the concept of Holocaust denial and the conspiracy theorists who promote the fake history surrounding that idea.Duke has endorsed the Trump/Pence presidential ticket, and while Trump now says he rejects the move, Trump also refused on three occasions in one CNN interview to condemn Duke and his support.Featured image via YouTube
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In case you haven t heard, Donald Trump is due in federal court next month just after he may be elected President to answer charges that he raped a 13-year-old girl in 1994 and threatened to harm her and her family if she told anyone about it.The victim, Jane Doe, is seeking $75,000 in damages. The lawsuit was originally filed in California but was thrown out because the original complaint did not state any specific civil rights violations. She refiled in New York in June, dropping some of the harder-to-prove claims and replacing them with two new witnesses. Both witnesses claim they worked as party planners for Trump s pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein, who threw them some cash to attract adolescent women to the billionaire s mansion.One witness says she lured Jane Doe to a party by promising her cash and modeling contracts but instead the 13-year-old child was forced to have sex with Trump and Epstein, both of whom knew how young she was. I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop, Tiffany Doe says, adding that she also witnessed Doe and a 12-year-old girl named Maria being forced to perform oral sex on Trump, with the 2016 GOP nominee physically abusing both children afterward all of this as part of her job duties that required her to personally witness and supervise encounters between the underage girls that Mr. Epstein hired and his guests. Both Trump and Epstein threatened to hurt Doe if she told anyone about the horrific assaults, with Trump adding a very Trump-like threat: I personally witnessed Defendant Trump telling the Plaintiff that she shouldn t ever say anything if she didn t want to disappear like the 12-year-old female Maria, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed. Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and served 13 months in prison but Trump went on to find himself one goose-step away from being the leader of the free world.While this might seem unbelievable, Trump hasn t exactly hidden his lust for children over the years, going on about how hot Paris Hilton was when she was 12, creeping on underage models in their dressing rooms, and repeatedly talking about how much he wants to have sex with his daughter, Ivanka.You can read the allegations below: Donald Trump & Jeffrey Epstein Rape Lawsuit and Affidavits by davidbix on ScribdFeatured image via Getty Images/win McNamee
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The legal mind behind the Bush Administration s illegal wiretapping, torture and other violations of the Geneva Conventions, John Yoo, says that Donald Trump has gone too far with his executive power. When the man who wrote memos that gave the president the power to circumvent international law and ignore acts of Congress thinks you ve gone too far, you ve gone too far.Since Trump took office and began a string of questionable presidential actions, Yoo has become an in-vogue political pundit again. It s kind of like an old criminal helping the authorities profile the new criminal, except they never caught Yoo. In a New York Times op-ed Yoo wrote earlier this year, he suggested that Trump understand the Constitution s grant of executive power. He went on to say that the new President should lead, the executive branch in a unified direction, rather than viewing the government as the enemy. He should realize that the Constitution channels the president toward protecting the nation from foreign threats, while cooperating with Congress on matters at home. According to Charlie Savage, Pulitzer Prize-winning executive powers expert, Yoo thought that the President could do literally anything to stop terror and didn t have to confer with Congress when it came to war-time efforts. But surprisingly, John Yoo argued that the construction of a border wall and the withdrawal from trade deals, like NAFTA and TPP were unconstitutional. He even came out against Trump s Muslim ban.But before anyone thought about celebrating this most unlikely Trump critic, Twitter made sure to ask why anyone was listening to him anyway.Why am I still outraged the NY Times would give John Yoo, the Nazi torture jurist, op-ed space Dan O Sullivan (RIP) (@Bro_Pair) May 19, 2017It really, really bothers me that war criminal John Yoo is still an in-demand political pundit Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) May 18, 2017This one really digs in Dear @axios, please don t describe John Yoo as a leading thinker on executive power. Better to say Torture Memos author. Peter Daou (@peterdaou) May 18, 2017Yoo s most recent New York Times article is titled, Forget Watergate. Think Iran-Contra. It s hard to read a cerebral breakdown of executive powers dos and don ts this evil it feels like he s giving Trump actually good advice. The last thing we need is Trump to have an actual expert as an adviser. He writes that Trump should treat the Russia-Comey scandal like Reagan did the Iran-Contra. Reagan definitely got away with that. Yoo is definitely trying to help Trump. Though, he may have said to much. There is one reminder a silver lining in Yoo s article. It s a point that may have been forgotten. Contrary to common wisdom, impeachment does not require the president to commit a crime but instead refers to extreme political mistakes or even incompetence.
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Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Jay Dyer from Jays Analysis, FunkSoul (21WIRE & ACR contributor), Randy J (ACR contributor) and Andy Nowicki, author of Conspiracy, Compliance, Control & Defiance, for the hundred and seventh episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club. This week on the show we re side stepping politics and talking about movies, Hollywood, Aliens, Elf-men and paradigm shifts brought on be technological innovation!Direct Download Episode #108Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!Reference Links:
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You probably guessed it..he gave a line of total bs about how he would NOT take vacations if elected The bargain that any president strikes with is, you give me this office and in turn my, fears, doubts, insecurities, foibles, need for sleep, family life, vacations, leisure is gone, Obama said. I am giving myself to you.
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On Thursday, June 23, 2016, a Colorado jury convicted former Rocky Ford police officer James Ashby of second-degree murder. Ashby s conviction stems from the 2014 killing of 27-year-old Jack Jacquez.Jacquez was skateboarding near his home in Rocky Ford when he was stopped by Ashby. The on-duty officer followed Jacquez to his house. He shot him in the back as his mother was opening the door.While Ashby claimed that Jacquez had mouthed off to him during the stop, witness testimony contradicted his version of events.As New York Daily News reported in February, 2015:The brother of a police officer who was on a ride-along with Ashby that night, Kyle Moore, contradicted Ashby s account. He said Jacquez did not talk back to Ashby and walked straight from the street to a side entrance to his house, where his mother opened the door for him.Ashby also claimed that Jacquez produced a baseball bat from the house and attempted to swing it at him. The coroner s report showed that the man could not have been in an attack position when Ashby fired his weapon.Ashby was the first Colorado police officer to be charged with murder associated with an on-duty incident in more than 20 years.On the same day the Colorado jury convicted Ashby, two other widely recognized cases involving law enforcement officers were also decided. Those cases had much different outcomes.On Thursday, Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson Jr. was acquitted of all charges associated with the in-custody death of 27-year old Freddie Gray.The news of Goodson s acquittal was followed by news that a Texas judge declined to charge officer Eric Casebolt for his actions at a pool party last summer. A video showing Casebolt throwing a Black teen to the ground and drawing his gun on two other teens during a pool party in McKinney, Texas went viral last June.While Ashby s acquittal suggests that we re making progress toward getting criminal cops off the streets and holding them accountable for their actions, the Goodson and Casebolt decisions show there is still a long way to go.Here s more on this story from KOAA. KOAA.com | Continuous News | Colorado Springs and PuebloFeatured image via wikimedia commons
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While Donald Trump hasn t exactly made an admission of guilt in the Russian scandal, but in a shocking story that just broke in the Washington Post, he s at least privately entertaining the idea that he will be prosecuted and possibly found guilty. Now he s asking if he can pardon family members, staff and even himself.Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump s lawyers have been discussing the president s pardoning powers among themselves.Trump s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller s investigation. This is not in the context of, I can t wait to pardon myself, a close adviser said.Source: Washington PostThis report comes in the same day a New York Times interview was published with Trump. In the interview, he appeared to threaten Special Counselor Robert Mueller if Mueller dared look into Trump s personal finances:Asked if Mr. Mueller s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, I would say yes. He would not say what he would do about it. I think that s a violation. Look, this is about Russia. Mueller didn t care, though. On the same day the interview was printed, it was revealed that Mueller s office is indeed investigating Trump s businesses, which may be why the sudden interest in Trump pardoning everyone around him, including himself.As for whether he can do that, well, the Constitution and history are unclear. No President has tried to pardon himself. Nixon thought about it before he resigned and his lawyer advised him that it was within his realm of authority. Note that a president doesn t have to wait till there are convictions to grant pardons.So what would happen if Trump attempted a self-pardon? First, some pardon fundamentals: Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives the president the power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. Pardons thus can only cover federal criminal offenses and cannot thwart an impeachment (which technically is not a criminal prosecution anyway). .The prosecutor s argument, while much more complicated, is a stronger one. First, a textual argument: The word pardon means something inherently bilateral, something that a sovereign bestows upon a subject. Consider more colloquially that you can beg someone else s pardon, but you never seek or receive one from yourself. While there is admittedly no explicit limitation on self-pardons, there is no need for one, because a self-pardon is by definition not a pardon. Other examples show that the pardon power is subject to inherent limitations like this. For instance, the law is clear that a pardon cannot be prospective it can only reach offenses committed before the pardon is issued but that limit is not spelled out in the Constitution either. It is implicit in the definition of a pardon as opposed to a suspension of the law.Source: Foreign PolicyWhether or not it can be done, it would set a very bad precedence and one that even the most partisan Republicans in Congress would find toxic. It could also be very bad for Trump s businesses.Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he backs the NATO charter’s demand that all members be prepared to defend each other, weeks after jarring allies by not restating U.S. support for the agreement. At a joint news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Trump said he supports the NATO charter’s Article 5, the requirement that each member of the alliance defend each other if they come under attack. During a visit to NATO headquarters last month in Brussels, Trump had pointedly not mentioned U.S. support for the critical portion of the NATO charter. He used his speech there to demand that members pay more for the alliance’s defense. A senior White House official later had said the United States does in fact support Article 5 simply by agreeing to the terms of the charter. But having not mentioned it himself, Trump sowed some doubts among allies and the ensuing controversy prompted Vice President Mike Pence to later express explicit U.S. support for the charter. Senior aides to Trump had tried to get a statement of explicit support for Article 5 in the president’s NATO speech but it was not included, a senior administration official said. “I’m committing the United States to Article 5 and certainly we are there to protect and that’s one of the reasons that I want people to make sure we have a very, very strong force by paying the kind of money necessary to have that force,” Trump said. “But yes, absolutely I’d be committed to Article 5,” he said.
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The leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday they would subpoena two of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s businesses after Flynn declined to comply with a subpoena for documents in the panel’s Russia probe. “While we disagree with General Flynn’s lawyers’ interpretation of taking the Fifth ... it’s even more clear that a business does not have a right to take the Fifth,” the panel’s vice chairman, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, told reporters, referring to Flynn’s decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The committee issued a subpoena for Flynn to provide documents related to its investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and whether there was collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations and Trump denies any collusion. Flynn’s attorney said on Monday he declined to comply. Flynn is considered a key witness in the investigation, because of his ties to Russia. He was forced to resign from his position at the White House in February, after less than a month on the job, for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. Warner and the panel’s chairman, Republican Richard Burr, said the committee would take three actions in response to Flynn’s refusal to respond to their subpoena, the two subpoenas to his businesses, and a letter to Flynn’s attorney pushing back against his refusal to comply. “We’re taking options that we feel are appropriate right now,” Burr told reporters after a closed committee meeting. Burr said a possible contempt of Congress action was a possibility, but not until other measures were exhausted. “That’s not our preference today. We would like to hear from General Flynn. We would like to see his documents,” Burr said. “We would like him to tell his story because he publicly said: ‘I’ve got a story to tell.’ We’re allowing him that opportunity to tell it.”
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As the creeping realization that Donald J. Trump is, in fact, the Republican nominee slowly dawns on conservatives, there has been a new push to re-frame the candidate as more presidential and more serious than people had originally thought. This requires a level of mental gymnastics that would qualify for the Olympics. While Trump s backers and some in the media continue to insist Trump is shifting towards maturity, he keeps emphatically insisting that he really is the racist, xenophobic blowhard he originally postured himself as.Consider this: Just one day after the newly elected mayor of London publicly humiliated Trump over his abhorrent plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States, Trump was on increasingly pro-Trump Fox News to announce his latest Big Plan for when he s president: A tribunal run by Rudy Giuliani with the sole purpose of working out what to do about the Muslim problem. We have a president that won t even use the term radical Islamic terrorism. He won t use the term. He refuses to say the term, even after Paris where 130 people were killed or San Bernardino or any other place. It s a real problem. So we ll figure it out, and we will get it going. But we have to be extremely careful. In fact, I m thinking about setting up a commission perhaps headed by Rudy Giuliani to take a very serious look at this problem. But this is a worldwide problem, and we have to be smart.Giuliani, famous for his handling of New York City s response after 9/11, has spent the last decade and a half growing increasingly fanatical. In recent years it s not uncommon to see him on Fox News complaining about black people and Muslims in ways that sometimes even make the conservative hosts blush.Giuliani is now Trump s go to guy on Islamophobia. When the candidate spuriously claimed that thousands of Muslim Americans were cheering on 9/11, Giuliani quickly rushed onto CNN to describe, in vivid detail, one such example. We had one situation in which a candy store owned by a Muslim family was celebrating that day, right near a housing development. And the kids in the housing development came in and beat them up.And, I think both facts were corroborated to be true. Because they were celebrating that the towers were coming down, some of the kids got really upset about it and they came in and did a pretty good job of beating them up. Except those facts were not true. What Giuliani was referring to turned out to be an anti-Muslim hate crime. Here s what really happened that day:Yesterday I saw first-hand how anger over the World Trade Center attack turns on Muslims who call New York home. At 4:30 p.m. on 116th St., five black teenagers stopped in front of the American Muslim Community of East Harlem site a closet-sized candy store with a make-shift mosque in a back room. Tiny store owner Muhammad Chaudhry stood in the doorway. One of the teenage boys asked him, Do you feel sorry for America? The kid then gave Chaudhry a knock-out punch in the face that sent him reeling backwards and onto the floor.This man, whose hatred for Muslims made him misremember a hate crime to fit his warped view, will now be tasked with solving Trump s fabricated Muslim problem. That is a very scary thought.Featured image via Ralph Freso/Getty Images
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In case you missed it Sen. Harry Reid (R-NV), who announced last week that he will retire after his current term expires in early 2017, said he does not regret taking to the Senate floor in 2012 to accuse then-GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney of not paying his taxes. No, I don t regret that at all, he told CNN s Dana Bash. The Koch brothers no one would help me. They were afraid the Koch brothers would go after them, so I did it on my own. Bash said some viewed the charge as McCarthy-ite, but Reid didn t buy that explanation. He shrugged, saying, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn t win, did he? Reid said somewhat amusingly.
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SHARE this video everywhere. We cannot allow the leftist media to control this narrative. Our freedom and our way of life is on the line
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Preet Bharara, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan known for pursuing a series of cases targeting public corruption and crime on Wall Street, said on Wednesday he has agreed to remain in his post after Donald Trump becomes U.S. president. Bharara, appointed to his position by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2009, told reporters following a meeting with the Republican president-elect at Trump Tower in Manhattan that Trump asked him to stay on during his administration and he accepted. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. “We had a good meeting,” Bharara said. “I said I would absolutely consider staying on. I agreed to stay on.” The announcement’s timing, when Trump has not yet finished filling all Cabinet-level positions, was unusual. But some former prosecutors who served under Bharara said they were not surprised their former boss would be willing to remain as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “I think Preet is an independent, law enforcement-minded prosecutor who loves his job and is clearly talented in it,” said Arlo Devlin-Brown, a former chief of Bharara’s public corruption unit who is now a partner at the law firm Covington & Burling. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the incoming Senate Democratic leader who Bharara previously worked for as chief counsel, said Trump called him last week to ask what he thought about Bharara staying in his job. “I am glad they met and am glad Preet is staying on,” Schumer said in a statement. “He’s been one of the best U.S. Attorneys New York has ever seen.” Bharara’s office has pursued an aggressive push against corruption in state and city politics, an agenda that could fit with Trump’s vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Those political investigations led last year to the convictions of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and former New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, in separate corruption trials. Bharara also brought dozens of successful cases against insider traders and was on the cover of Time magazine in 2012 with the headline “This man is busting Wall St.” Those cases include the 2011 conviction of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam, who is serving an 11-year prison term, and a $1.8 billion settlement and plea deal in 2013 with hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors LP. His 227-lawyer office also secured corporate settlements with companies including General Motors Co and JPMorgan Chase & Co; won several convictions and guilty pleas of former employees of Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff; and prosecuted Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bharara’s office’s priorities have often matched those set by Obama’s Justice Department. Amid an increase in civil rights investigations nationally, for example, Bharara’s office joined a lawsuit that led to a settlement in 2015 aimed at reducing violence in New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex. How priorities set by the Justice Department under Trump’s pick for attorney general, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, affects the cases Bharara’s office pursues remains unclear. “Obviously there is likely be some changes in priorities from Main Justice (the department’s Washington headquarters), and the office will have to adjust to those,” said Richard Zabel, who previously served as Bharara’s deputy before becoming hedge fund Elliott Management’s general counsel. Bharara said his office had for the past seven years pursued its work “independently, without fear or favor.” Former prosecutors they expect that to stay the same. “He would have only taken it on if he were 100 percent confident that that independence could be preserved,” said Matthew Schwartz, partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner and a former prosecutor under Bharara.
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UPDATE:Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is defending a campaign mailer that Iowa s secretary of state says misrepresents election law.The mailer bills itself as a voting violation notice and tells the recipient it s been sent due to low expected voter turnout in your area. It then grades the recipient s voting history and that of several neighbors, citing public records.Cruz told reporters in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday that the mailing is routine. He says he won t apologize for using every tool we can to encourage Iowa residents to vote.Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate says in a statement that there s no such thing as an election violation related to voting frequency and that insinuating otherwise is not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses. How is it that Ted Cruz is opposed to gov t data collection yet he s using big data mining to shame voters in IOWA into voting for him. Strange, very strange.Residents have been receiving notices like this one:THE COPY AT THE BOTTOM READS: You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday s caucuses . Cruz, a critic of excessive government data collection, has been notably aggressive about gathering personal information for his campaign. Some of the data comes from typical sources, such as voters consumer habits and Facebook posts. According to several sources, a donor-funded US startup embedded in Republican s campaign has been paying UK university academics to collect psychological profiles on potential voters. The result is a personalized citation sent to Iowan voters from the Cruz campaign.On Friday evening, personalized letters target individual Iowa voters and identifies them as having failed to vote in prior elections. Much like the China social credit system, it knows too much about its citizens, and it identifies the neighbors of the voter, and provides their voting history and their score as well.Ted Cruz claims to be running a positive campaign and paints himself as a trustworthy conservative. Attempting to shame voters into caucusing for him with these completely fake Voting Violation letters is a sleazy tactic that is sure to leave a bad taste in the mouth of undecided voters. Worse still was his decision to go ahead with sending these letters not thinking he would get caught. In the social media age, when you do something bad, people are bound to find out and expose you. This was clearly a last ditch desperation tactic from a campaign that has been going in the wrong direction in the polls for weeks now.Via: Red State Watcher
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Donald Trump has been on an insane Twitter rampage lately, and it s been beyond terrifying for everyone watching. Trump has not only been crying about fake news and the opposition of his disgusting Muslim ban, but his narcissism is clearly out of control.Throughout his transition and beginning weeks of his presidency, Trump has made CNN a target because the news outlet dared to hold his team accountable, and the network just hit back at Trump again. Just days after turning down an interview with Kellyanne Conway because she lacked credibility, CNN s Jake Tapper nailed Trump for his recent tweets and made an absolute mockery of the most undeserving POTUS we ve ever had.Tapper comically said that Trump s tweets are windows into his soul, right before rattling off several disturbing tweets that Trump had posted recently. The tweets jumped from criticism of the federal judge who blocked his Muslim ban to fake news to negative polls. Throughout the clip, Tapper tries to translate Trump s Twitter babble.Taking on the tweet that said any negative polls are fake news , Tapper said: Got that. Any polling suggesting anything negative about the president or his policies is not, in his view, real. Tapper also attacked Trump for his comments about the judge that stopped his inhumane Muslim ban, and for spreading inaccurate information about legitimate polls: To sum up, if a judge rules against the president he is a so-called judge. If a poll shows the majority of you disagrees with his policies, the poll is fake. If a well-sourced news story reflects something unflattering about him, that story is fake. Tapper then commented that Trump believes two fundamental pillars of our democracy are not legitimate if it doesn t work in his favor. Then Tapper asked, Okay. What about a known geopolitical foe of the United States like, say, I don t know, Russian President Vladimir Putin? In the most surprising footage in the clip, Tapper played Trump s disastrous interview with Fox News Bill O Reilly where Trump praised and defended Russian leader Vladimir Putin and called Americans killers. Tapper said what we were all thinking: Whoa! So as long as we all know where we stand, I suppose. Watch Tapper remind Trump that CNN isn t backing down below:Read more:Featured image via screenshot and Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
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The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Wednesday that Congress was working on a package of reforms that would prohibit using taxpayer money for settlements in sexual harassment claims lodged against lawmakers’ offices. “That’s among the things we’re working on right now,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview with Wisconsin radio station WISN a week after three lawmakers said they were stepping down after sexual harassment or misconduct claims.A wave of sexual misconduct allegations has emerged in recent weeks against high-profile figures in journalism, entertainment and politics. Democratic Representative John Conyers resigned after reports he had used public funds to settle a woman’s claim. Conyers acknowledged his office had settled with a former staffer over harassment allegations, but denied wrongdoing. The congressional office that handles employment disputes also said it had paid settlements on two claims involving sex discrimination allegations and one sexual harassment accusation since 2013. Politico reported that the sexual harassment settlement, which amounted to $84,000, was made on behalf of Texas Republican Representative Blake Farenthold. In a statement after he reached a settlement agreement in 2015, Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday withdrawing the country from the Paris climate accord would stave off an economic crisis and protect American jobs - but many American companies seemed to disagree. Criticism of his decision rolled in from blue-chip companies like Facebook Inc, Apple Inc , Ford Motor Co and Microsoft Corp , while the response from fossil fuel groups with the most to gain from a relaxation of U.S. carbon emissions standards was muted. Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and Walt Disney Co CEO Robert Iger said they would leave White House advisory councils over Trump’s decision. In an interview on Thursday, the president of the World Coal Association, Benjamin Sporton, told Reuters that he had mixed feelings about Trump’s announcement, adding he was eager to see a U.S. policy that actively promotes a place for coal in the global energy mix. “What we really need to see, if the president wants to re-enter the deal, is that he can change the agreement to recognize the role of all sources of energy, including coal,” Sporton said, adding his group had described to administration officials the benefits of remaining in the agreement. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s biggest trade group, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it had never taken an official position on the Paris accord. A number of its members, including Exxon Mobil Corp and ConocoPhillips, had publicly supported the deal. “For us, our position on the Paris agreement... we need a framework like that to address the risks of climate change,” Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods told reporters on the sidelines of the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday. Some other groups expressed measured support for Trump’s decision, saying it provided an opportunity to fix problems with the deal. “Manufacturers support the spirit of the Paris Agreement and the effort to address climate change through a fair international agreement. But as the president has acknowledged, certain elements of this deal were not equitable for U.S. manufacturers,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, in a statement to Reuters. A spokesman for Peabody Energy Corp, America’s largest publicly traded coal miner, had said on Wednesday that the company would support a decision by Trump to withdraw from the Paris deal because the “accord is flawed on a number of levels.” Trump vowed during his campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris deal, arguing the pact would cost the United States trillions of dollars, kill jobs, and stymie economic growth without providing tangible benefit. His critics have argued, however, that the risks of climate change require action, and that a shift to a low-carbon energy economy can create more jobs than it eliminates. Spokespeople for other extractive oil and mining groups, like the National Mining Association and the American Fuel & Petrochemicals Manufacturers, declined to comment on Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord. But a number of other business leaders derided it in forceful terms. “Today’s decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.’s leadership position in the world,” said Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein in his first-ever tweet. “Disappointed with today’s decision on the Paris Agreement. Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend on government,” tweeted General Electric Co’s Jeff Immelt. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, meanwhile, posted to Twitter: “Decision to withdraw from the #ParisAgreeement was wrong for our planet” and “Apple is committed to fight climate change and we will never waver”. “Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children’s future at risk,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.
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Russia said it had repeatedly warned the United States it would retaliate against what it saw as hostile moves and was growing tired of showing restraint, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, the Interfax news agency reported. Ryabkov’s comments came after the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to slap new sanctions on Russia and force President Donald Trump to obtain lawmakers’ permission before easing any sanctions on Moscow.
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German police investigating four people suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated attack raided nine locations in Berlin and the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt on Thursday, prosecutors said. The four suspects, aged between 18 and 21, are accused of being members of the Islamic State group, prosecutors and police said in a statement. Three are believed to be in Syria: two traveled from Berlin via Istanbul to Islamic State-held territory in Syria in November 2016 and a third is accused of receiving military training in Syria. The fourth is believed to have helped the other three travel there. Prosecutors did not say if any arrests were made in the raids, mounted by some 130 officers, including special forces, who confiscated electronic devices. The General Prosecutor s Office in Berlin is investigating four suspects aged between 18 and 21 who are suspected of membership in a terrorist organization (IS) as well as of preparing a serious crime against the state, the statement said. Bild newspaper said police had arrested a number of people suspected of having links to a failed asylum seeker who killed 12 people by driving a truck into crowds at a Berlin Christmas market last year. Tunisian Anis Amri escaped after launching the Dec. 19 attack and was shot by Italian police in Milan less than a week later. The affair exposed failings by intelligence agencies who had stopped surveillance of Amri after concluding he posed no danger. Security at Christmas markets has been beefed up this year with guards and concrete blocks.
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Andrej Babis, the frontrunner to become Czech prime minister after this month s election, said on Monday he had been formally charged with fraud in a case involving a 2 million euro EU subsidy a decade ago. Babis has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying the investigation was a plot by adversaries who want to prevent him from taking power and cutting corruption links between the EU member country s incumbent politicians and business. I have received a decision on the commencement of criminal prosecution in the pseudo-case ... I immediately appealed this decision, Babis said in a text message through his spokeswoman. Spokesmen for the Prague prosecutor and police were not immediately available for comment. The charges were expected after police asked parliament in August to lift parliamentary immunity of the billionaire businessman Babis, leader of the ANO movement, and ANO deputy chief Jaroslav Faltynek. Parliament voted to allow prosecution on Sept 6. The ANO spokeswoman said Faltynek, former executive at companies owned by Babis, had also been charged with fraud. He also denies wrongdoing. Babis is almost certain to win a new parliamentary mandate in the Oct 20-21 vote, which would renew his immunity. Parliament would have to vote again to lift it to allow the prosecution to go ahead. ANO is expected to win the most votes in the election but fall short of an overall majority in parliament. Several potential coalition parties have said they would not join a government led by Babis personally due to the investigation. The case involves an allegation that Babis hid ownership a decade ago of the farm and conference center, Capi hnizdo (Stork Nest), so it would qualify for a European Union subsidy that was meant for small businesses. It would not qualify as part of Babis s Agrofert group of companies which is the largest private employer in the central European country. Babis said it was owned by his family members when the subsidy was awarded. It was folded into Agrofert later. Babis and Faltynek, a former executive at Agrofert companies, face potential prison sentences if the case is brought to court and if they are found guilty. The Slovak-born Babis moved Agrofert and other assets into trust funds earlier this year to meet new conflict of interest legislation. He remains beneficiary of the funds. Apart from police, the European Union s anti-fraud unit OLAF has also been looking into the case.
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The U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday that it would form a new committee to review royalty rates collected from oil and gas drilling, coal mining and renewable energy production on federal lands to ensure taxpayers receive their full value. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the committee would advise him on whether the government is getting a fair price from companies that lease public land for energy and natural resource development. The committee will replace the process put in place by former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to review and overhaul the federal coal leasing program. “The programmatic review put in place (by Jewell) was costly and unnecessary,” Zinke told reporters on Wednesday. “I have established a royalty policy committee to provide advice to me about how we value collections across the board,” he said. In January 2016, the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama began a multiyear review of the federal coal leasing program after government and watchdog reports found Interior’s Bureau of Land Management was not properly accounting for the fair market value of coal. It also ordered a moratorium on new coal leases for at least three years during the review, which Republican President Donald Trump officially rescinded in the executive order on energy he signed Tuesday. Zinke’s committee will instead get recommendations on adjusting royalty rates for coal, as well as oil and gas, from a panel of up to 28 members. Members will include Interior Department officials, representatives of western states and Indian tribes that produce energy, energy stakeholders and academic groups who will serve three-year terms. Federal coal, primarily from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, accounts for more than 40 percent of all of that fuel mined in the United States and produces for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Zinke’s predecessor Jewell said a review of the program was three decades overdue and necessary after reports called for more transparency in the leasing process. Environmental groups raised concerns that replacing the more comprehensive review with a committee approach will mean that other core problems with federal energy leasing will not be addressed, such as transparency and boosting competition in lease sales. “Cancelling the coal program review is a serious mistake that only harms American taxpayers, coal states and communities,” said Dan Bucks, former director of revenue for the state of Montana.
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Japan will build four coast guard radar stations on islands in the Sulu Celebes Seas separating the Philippines and Indonesia to help Manila counter a surge in piracy by Islamic insurgents, two sources said. An agreement to fund the facilities and provide training to local coast guard personnel may be signed as early next week by Japanese Prime Minister and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila, the sources said. The seas in that area are an important waterway for merchant ships traveling to Japanese ports, one of the people with knowledge of the plan said. The sources asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the media. Of 30 acts of piracy reported in the first half of 2017 six involved the use of guns, of which three were crew abductions from ships underway in the Sulu Celebes Seas, according to the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP). Four attempted abductions in the waters were also logged. Japan will fund construction of the radar stations through its Overseas Development Aid (ODA) budget, the sources said. Japan is aware of the need to counter piracy in the region and is keen to help, but we can t discuss individual projects, said an official at Japan s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which overseas ODA spending. The radar stations are part of a wider aid package that include helicopter parts for the Philippines military, financing for infrastructure projects such as rail lines and help to rebuild conflict-torn southern Marawi city after five months of military operations against Islamic State rebels. By providing such aid Tokyo is aiming to deepen economic and security ties with Manila as it looks to contain China s growing power. Japan sees the Philippines, which lies on the eastern side of the South China Sea, as a key ally in helping prevent Beijing s influence spreading into the western Pacific. Abe will travel to the Philippines on Monday following a two day gathering of regional leaders at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Vietnam.
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!The United States sent Iran $400 million in debt plus $1.3 billion in interest, and the money was disbursed as a ransom payment for four American hostages of the Islamic regime, a top Iranian commander said Wednesday afternoon. Therefore, the U.S. paid the Iranian regime $425 million dollars per American hostage, according to the commander. The annulment of sanctions against Iran s Bank Sepah and reclaiming of $1.7mln of Iran s frozen assets after 36 years showed that the US doesn t understand anything but the language of force, said Iranian Basij Commander Brig Gen Mohammed Reza Naqdi, addressing his forces in Tehran. This money was returned for the freedom of the US spy and it was not related to the (nuclear) negotiations, he claimed, according to state-controlled Fars News Agency.Four Americans who were held hostage by the Islamic Republic Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, Pastor Saeed Abedini, and Nosratollah Khosrawi Roudsari (who decided to stay in Iran) were part of the deal that included the ransom payment, along with the release of seven Iranians who were sitting in American jails on charges of thwarting international sanctions, and the delisting of 14 Iranian nationals from Interpol s Red List, which seeks international criminals for extradition.A fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, who was imprisoned by Tehran, was also released, but under the terms of a separate deal, according to reports.The U.S. State Department tells Breitbart News that the payment to Iran was separate but simultaneous, and not a ransom. We did not pay ransom to secure the return of these Americans. The funds that were transferred to Iran were part of a separate but simultaneous arrangement we agreed to with Iran related to the U.S.-Iran Claims Tribunal at the Hague, a State Department spokesperson told Breitbart News late Wednesday.State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters earlier on Wednesday in Washington that no ransom was paid, rejecting the remarks of the Iranian commander. There was no bribe, there was no ransom, there was nothing paid to secure the return of these Americans who were, by the way, not spies. We ve spoken to this in the days after their release on Sunday morning in great detail about how this process worked. There was this consular channel that was opened up to secure their release, Toner said. Via: Breitbart NewsHere is the question we posed after discovering the interesting timing of this $1.7 BILLION payment to Iran while 4 American prisoners were being simultaneously released:Was this transfer of funds to a terrorist state (via the American taxpayer), the REAL reason the prisoners (hostages) Iran was holding were suddenly released? Did the incompetent Obama-Kerry duo use this settlement as a bargaining chip to make it appear as though freeing these hostages was part of the Iran nuclear deal all along? This is absolutely sickening The United States and Iran on Sunday settled a longstanding claim at the Hague, releasing to Tehran $400 million in funds frozen since 1981 plus $1.3 billion in interest, the State Department said.The funds were part of a trust fund once used by Iran to purchase military equipment from the United States but which was tied up for decades in litigation at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal.The settlement announcement was made after Tehran released five American detainees in a prisoner swap as a nuclear deal was implemented. Via: Business Insider
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German Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz said that, if elected chancellor, he would push for the EU to cut subsidies to countries that do not take in refugees. With me as chancellor we won t accept that solidarity as a principle is questioned, Schulz said on Tuesday at a conference of a business lobbying group with ties to his party.On Monday, Orb n told the Hungarian parliament that his country will not give in to blackmail from Brussels and we reject the mandatory relocation quota. Schulz shot back swiftly at Orb n in his speech on Tuesday.His comments came as the European Commission voted to launch infringement proceedings against the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary for not taking in refugees under a mandatory 2015 quota system advocated by Germany that aimed to relocate 160,000 refugees across the Continent.Hungary s badass Prime Minister Viktor Orb n has consistently stood up to leftist EU bullies who are demanding that all EU nations take their fair share of the mass influx of mostly Muslim refugees. We shall not allow others to tell us whom we can let into our home and country, whom we can live alongside. Prime Minister Viktor Orb nWatch Prime Minister Viktor Orb n s historic speech in March, 2016, where he demands other European leaders find their backbone and save Europe before it s too late. His speech will make you want to stand up and cheer! Mr.Orb n says That s a German problem, Schulz said. Let me make this perfectly clear: When it comes to agricultural policy, it s all Yes, please. When it comes to subsidies, it s all Yes, please. And when it comes to solidarity in refugee policy, it s No, thank you that s not acceptable. German Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz said that, if elected chancellor, he would push for the EU to cut subsidies to countries that do not take in refugees. With me as chancellor we won t accept that solidarity as a principle is questioned, Schulz said on Tuesday at a conference of a business lobbying group with ties to his party.His comments came as the European Commission voted to launch infringement proceedings against the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary for not taking in refugees under a mandatory 2015 quota system advocated by Germany that aimed to relocate 160,000 refugees across the Continent.East European leaders, particularly Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb n, have repeatedly railed against the EU resettlement plan. Politico
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Four Moldovan nationals were killed and two others were injured when a propeller-engine cargo plane crashed into the sea near the international airport in Ivory Coast s main city Abidjan on Saturday, the Ivorian security minister said. Four French citizens also survived the crash but were injured, Sidiki Diakite told reporters at the scene of the accident. Several Ivorian security sources said they were French soldiers.
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General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia s general staff, on Thursday used a meeting with General Petr Pavel, the chairman of the NATO military committee, to reassure him about upcoming Russian war games, the Interfax news agency reported. The Zapad-2017 war games this month have stirred unease in some countries because Russian troops and military hardware will be training inside Belarus, a Russian ally which borders Ukraine as well as NATO member states Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Interfax said Gerasimov, during a meeting in Azerbaijan, had told Pavel that the war games were purely defensive in nature, not aimed at any third countries, and designed to help secure the security of Belarus.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday that he was “not going anywhere,” denying news reports that he was considering leaving his post. “I’m not going anywhere,” Tillerson told reporters at the State Department. Asked how long he would stay on, Tillerson turned and smiled, saying, “As long as the president lets me.” Asked about his relationship with President Donald Trump, Tillerson said simply, “Good.” The speculation over Tillerson’s remaining in Trump’s cabinet came after days of Trump publicly attacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump said Sessions had “taken a VERY weak position” on investigating his former opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server. On Monday, Trump called Sessions “beleaguered.”
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Congressional Republicans, seeking to address the complaints of small businesses, are floating changes to their controversial proposal to eliminate business tax deductions for debt interest payments, business lobbyists said on Tuesday. A top U.S. Republican on tax policy acknowledged that modifications are in the works, but did not provide details. The debt interest proposal, long seen by Republican policymakers as necessary to help drive economic growth, is backed by large companies with ready access to equity financing that they could substitute for debt if eliminating the interest deduction made issuing debt too costly. Debt-dependent small business owners, farmers and ranchers don’t have that luxury. As Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration slog ahead with a push to overhaul the U.S. tax code, a key task is figuring out how to resolve conflicting groups’ priorities, with business debt interest a clear example. The tax code has not been overhauled since 1986, partly because reconciling these conflicts can be so difficult. “We’ve asked businesses large and small to look at that, test drive it and give us back their feedback,” House of Representatives tax committee Chairman Kevin Brady said in remarks at an event in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday, without offering specifics about the modified proposal. His staff at the committee had no comment. Businesses lobbyists said the panel’s lawmakers have quietly agreed to focus on exemptions for small businesses, including farmers and ranchers, and an exemption for land. Lawmakers have also discussed a possible partial elimination of the interest deduction, with an exemption for existing debt, or eliminating the deduction only for businesses deemed to have an excessive amount of debt, according to lobbyists. Brady is one of the “Big Six” negotiators from Congress and the Trump administration who are guiding the tax reform debate. At the Louisville event, he described rolling back the business interest deduction as a “trade-off” for another proposal to accelerate expensing, which would allow businesses to write off investments in plants and equipment more quickly. He said net interest deduction is one of a number of tax breaks that lawmakers are looking to eliminate to help pay for lower business tax rates. Republicans say tax cuts will help drive annual U.S. economic growth above the 3 percent mark. Independent analysts say that eliminating the interest deduction would raise more than $1 trillion in federal revenues. Republicans want to cut the corporate income tax rate to 20-25 percent from 35 percent. But they have been hard-pressed to pay for such a cut since jettisoning a border adjusted import tax that would have raised more than $1 trillion.
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Saad al-Hariri landed in Beirut on Tuesday, his media office said, returning home for the first time since he resigned as Lebanon s prime minister in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia and plunged his country into political crisis, Hariri s sudden resignation on Nov. 4 thrust Lebanon to the forefront of a regional power struggle between the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran, whose powerful ally Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government.
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Highlights for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday: Trump proposes slashing tax rates for businesses and on overseas corporate profits returned to the country in a plan greeted as an opening gambit by his fellow Republicans in Congress. Trump’s plan could shift the U.S. economy into higher gear but could have one effect the White House would not welcome — interest rates ratcheted higher than expected by a wary central bank. The Trump tax cut will generate growth but not nearly enough to replace trillions of dollars in lost revenues, while rising deficits could even take back some of the economic gains, fiscal experts say. Congress inches toward a deal to fund the government through September but is preparing to possibly extend a midnight Friday deadline in order to wrap up negotiations and avoid an imminent government shutdown. Trump is considering issuing an executive order to pull the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, an administration official says, a move that could unravel one of the world’s biggest trading blocs. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discuss bilateral trade in their second conversation in as many days amid strains over softwood lumber and dairy. The Trump administration says it aims to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and remains open to negotiations to bring that about. Trump gives the military the authority to reset a confusing system of troop limits in Iraq and Syria that critics say allows the White House to micro-manage battlefield decisions and ultimately obscures the real number of U.S. forces. Trump signs an executive order to allow national monument designations to be rescinded or reduce the size of sites as the administration pushes to open more federal land to drilling, mining and other development. Trump orders Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to review the government role in school policy, which supporters cheer as a step in creating more local control in education and critics worry it could lead to lower quality schools in poorer neighborhoods. Israel’s intelligence minister says his country wants an “understanding” with the Trump administration that Iran must not be allowed to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria.
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Last night, Fox News reporter Steve Harrigan was reporting live in Charlotte, North Carolina to cover police brutality protests that had erupted after a shooting. Perhaps because Fox News has typically shamed these kinds of protests and ran footage that depicted protesters as thugs and looters in the past, Harrigan got his a** handed to him by a protester that didn t hesitate to confront the notoriously racist network.The female African American protester went right up to Harrigan and decided to educate him about why she and other protesters had gathered. When Harrigan tried to shame her for being outside in an area where someone had just gotten shot, the protester couldn t tolerate his ignorance and white privilege any longer. Harrigan made the mistake of asking her, If a man was shot about 50 yards over there, we don t know by who. Why are you here? And that was it. The protester went off, and replied to Harrigan, Because I serve a purpose right before giving him a brutal lesson in racism. She forcefully said that no matter where she is, at any given moment she could be shot just because of the color of her skin. She said: I could be at work, at school, in my car, I can still get shot by the police! Pointing out the fact that racism still exists in America, she continued: We are not the same. We are human, but I am black and you are white so don t tell me not to come over here Harrigan tried to jump in, but the protester quickly called him out for using sarcasm as a crowd began to gather, and accused the network of only being at the protests so that they could get video footage and make a f*cking fabricated story which we all know Fox News has done in the past.You can watch the protester shut down Fox News below:Featured image is a screenshot
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared ready to rule against a Puerto Rican politician who maintained he cannot be retried on corruption charges involving a trip to Las Vegas to watch a boxing bout after his original conviction was thrown out. The eight justices heard the first oral argument of their new term in the appeal filed by Hector Martinez Maldonado, who served in Puerto Rico’s Senate from 2005 until his 2011 conviction, and businessman Juan Bravo Fernandez, former president of a private security company. Several justices expressed skepticism about the defendants’ arguments. Bravo Fernandez sought to bribe Martinez Maldonado to win passage of bills that would benefit his business, according to prosecutors. The case focused in part on allegations that Bravo Fernandez paid for Martinez Maldonado to travel to Las Vegas in 2005 to watch boxer Felix “Tito” Trinidad, a sports hero in the Caribbean U.S. territory, lose to underdog Winky Wright. Bravo Fernandez and Martinez Maldonado were convicted for their roles in the alleged bribery scheme. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out their convictions in 2013. Federal prosecutors planned a new trial but the two men said it should be barred because it would violate the U.S. Constitution’s protection against “double jeopardy,” preventing people from being tried on charges for which they already have been acquitted. Their lawyers said double jeopardy applies because the jury had acquitted them on some of the criminal charges concerning conduct closely related to the actions on which the retrial would be focused. Prosecutors said the acquittals were inconsistent with the convictions, suggesting jurors did not understand the law. Based on the questions they asked, the justices appeared unlikely to throw out a 2015 appeals court decision backing prosecutors. Justice Elena Kagan asked the defendants’ attorney, Lisa Blatt, about her argument: “Is it anything more than rhetoric?” Chief Justice John Roberts told Blatt it was her burden to show the jury’s verdict was a legal and valid judgment on the same set of facts that the government wants to re-try, and not just a misunderstanding. A ruling is due by the end of June. Outside the courthouse, protesters demanded that the U.S. Senate confirm Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the court’s vacancy left by the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Republicans have refused to act on Garland’s nomination, saying Obama’s successor should make the appointment after taking office in January.
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The media is in an all out frenzy today, as they attempt to help pump up the sales of the horribly flawed presidential candidate and Benghazi liar, Crooked Hillary, while attempting to trash our beloved president. Does the media, or Hillary really believe we re going to buy into their latest attempt to prop up America s biggest loser s book sales, while trying to paint President Trump as some sort of creeper ?Here are just a few of the usual suspects who jumped in with this nothing burger story in an attempt to help Hillary sell her book: Cosmopolitan, the former fashion and beauty magazine, also chimed in on the nothing burger story to show their support for the crooked female who set the woman s movement back at least 50 years: Hillary how quickly you forget about the creepy people you ve surrounded yourself with for most of your adult life. Do you seriously think any American will take you seriously when you call President Trump a creep for standing to close to you, after your husband, who s been accused of rape and sexual assault by many women, had oral sex with a 19-year old intern in the Oval Office? What about serial creeper Joe Biden, who you just can t seem to get enough of?From the Trump-hating The Hill: Hillary Clinton writes in her new book that Donald Trump s attempts to intimidate her during the presidential debates made her skin crawl and that she wanted to tell him to back up, you creep. What would you do? Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren t repeatedly invading your space? the 2016 Democratic nominee asks in her new book, What Happened, excerpts of which were released by MSNBC s Morning Joe early Wednesday. Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly Back up, you creep. Get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can t intimidate me, so back up. Listen to the phony Hillary read an excerpt from her new book that will likely end up where the last book did, on a bargain basement shelf at Walmart.Coming up, we'll have a Morning Joe Exclusive on Hillary Clinton's new book, and here is a first look of Clinton discussing a debate. pic.twitter.com/xRkgcoTnKw Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 23, 2017Or this Was Hillary s poor health the reason for Joe Biden s awkward embrace while they campaigned together in Pennsylvania, or was it simply just another perfectly acceptable creeper moment from the former Vice President.
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British police are chasing down the people they suspect of being behind a bomb which injured 29 people on a packed commuter train in west London on Friday, the country s most senior counter-terrorism officer said. Mark Rowley said officers were sifting through surveillance footage and examining the remains of the device. This is a very complex investigation which is continuing at speed, he told reporters. We are chasing down suspects.
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U.S. House Republicans are working on changes to their healthcare overhaul bill that would implement a work requirement for the Medicaid program for the poor, as well as boost tax credits for older, lower income people, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Sunday. “We think we should be offering more assistance than the bill currently does,” for lower-income people age 50 to 64, Ryan said of the tax credits for health insurance that are proposed in the legislation. Speaking on the “Fox News Sunday” television program, Ryan also said Republicans are working on changes that would allow federal block grants to states for Medicaid. Lawmakers plan to have the healthcare legislation on the House floor this Thursday, Ryan said.
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CNN s Allyson Camerota expressed her concern about how the tax breaks for Americans will harm the Democrats chances of winning in the mid-term elections with Michigan s Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.Camerota appeared somewhat panicked, as she started out her segment whining to Dingell about bonuses and pay raises that Americans will receive as a result of Trump s GOP tax bill: Just, ever since the tax reform was announced, or the tax overhaul, or whatever you want to call it, there have been this whole slew of companies that have come forward and saying, Guess what? We re going to give out bonuses, now, to our employees. I mean, I have just a partial list in front of me, and there s nine companies on here from AT&T, to Boeing, to Comcast, Bank of America, Sinclair, Wells Fargo, PNC. There s all sorts of companies that say they re going to give something to a thousand dollars worth of bonuses to their hundreds of thousands of employees. Fifth Bank Corp is gonna boost the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Obviously, they could have done this before the tax overhaul was announced. They were sitting on profits. But they didn t, they did it when the tax overhaul was announced. And I m wondering if you, as a Democrat are you worried about the wind in their sails? People vote with their pocketbooks. I don t have to tell you this. So if you get a thousand dollar bonus, you re voting for Donald Trump again. Although Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) voted against the tax cut bill, she smartly responded to Camerota s question by saying that she s never going to complain that any working man or woman will get an extra boost in their, uh, income. Dingell then told Camerota that at some point a lot of people are still going to see a tax increase at some point. Camerota interrupted her to say, Years from now Years from now! Well after the mid-terms. So couldn t this carry Republicans through the mid-terms? RT @RealSaavedra: CNN "journalist" Allisyn Camerota frets over how many businesses are giving back to their employees as a result of the tax cuts and worries it may help GOP. #TheFive #Tucker #SpecialReport pic.twitter.com/xUHXHHJ8wk Tosca Austen (@ToscaAusten) December 26, 2017Businesses and major corporations tweeted about bonuses and pay raises they would be giving their employees as a direct result of Trump s GOP tax reform bill that was passed without a single Democrat vote:Here is AT&T s full statement: Boening announced on Twitter that a $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future:#Boeing announces $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future. pic.twitter.com/ZNawbAW7AY The Boeing Company (@Boeing) December 20, 2017
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Unfounded claims that President Trump was filmed with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel surfaced in the closing stretch of last year s White House race.Mrs. Clinton s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reportedly helped fund the research.According to US media reports, Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and DNC, hired intelligence firm Fusion GPS in April 2016. BBCYesterday, another bombshell was revealed by Rep. Jim Jordan on the Lou Dobbs show, when Jordan told Dobbs that he believes the FBI paid Christopher Steele, the creator of the Trump dossier and that they used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign. Jordon told Dobbs: There are a couple of fundamental questions here. Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele? I asked that of the Attorney General two weeks ago he wouldn t answer the question. Did they actually vet this dossier? Because it s been disproven, a bunch of lies, a bunch of National Enquirer garbage and fake news in this thing. Did they actually check it out before they brought it to the FISA Court which I m convinced they did. And all of this can be cleared up if they release the application that they took to the court I think they won t give it to us because they did pay Christopher Steele. I think they did use the dossier as the basis for the warrants to spy on Americans associated with President Trump s campaign. Strzok is the guy who took the dossier to the FISA Court. Watch:Politically Corrupt FBI @Jim_Jordan: I believe the FBI paid Christopher Steele, and then used the discredited, fake news dossier to spy on @POTUS and his campaign. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DTS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/bfgk37LbFC Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) December 8, 2017While Democrats desperately try to convince the American public that Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat one of the most unpopular candidates they ve ever stuck their party with, real journalists continue to uncover the real collusion, and it s looking more and more like sadly, it s between the FBI, Obama s DOJ and investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.This one image by cartoonist Antonio Branco, pretty much sums up who s really in charge of the phony Trump-Russian collusion sham of an investigation:
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U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan has “full confidence” in the investigation of possible Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. election campaign being led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Ryan spokeswoman said on Monday. “Speaker Ryan has full confidence that Chairman Nunes is conducting a thorough, fair and credible investigation,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an emailed statement.
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Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman on Thursday said he opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in its present form, dealing a significant blow to the pact a day after officials from 12 countries signed it. Portman, from Ohio, said the Pacific trade deal fails to meet the needs of his state’s workers because it lacks an enforceable provision to fight currency manipulation and because of new, less-stringent country-of-origin rules for auto parts. “I cannot support the TPP in its current form because it doesn’t provide that level playing field,” Portman said in a statement. While approval of the trade pact is a top priority of President Barack Obama this year, his final year in office, it faces stiff opposition from many of his fellow Democrats in Congress. Meanwhile, Republicans have begun voicing concerns with specific provisions and are indicating that they are in no rush to bring the deal to a vote. Besides insisting that portions of the sweeping pact be renegotiated, some Republicans worry that bringing TPP to a vote before the November elections could hurt the chances of some of their incumbents running in swing states or congressional districts. Portman is seeking a second term in an industrial state where many workers blame job losses on previous trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He is expected to face a stiff challenge from former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland. The 12-nation deal would liberalize trade from Chile to Japan, representing 40 percent of the world economy.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=NeqMSI6OR5Q
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President Barack Obama has approved giving the U.S. military greater ability to accompany and enable Afghan forces battling a resilient Taliban insurgency, in a move to assist them more proactively on the battlefield, a U.S. official told Reuters. The senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision would also allow greater use of U.S. air power, particularly close air support. However, the official cautioned: “This is not a blanket order to target the Taliban.” Obama’s decision again redefines America’s support role in Afghanistan’s grinding conflict, more than a year after international forces wrapped up their combat mission and shifted the burden to Afghan troops. It also comes ahead of Obama’s eagerly anticipated decision on whether to forge ahead with a scheduled reduction in the numbers of U.S. troops from about 9,800 currently to 5,500 by the start of 2017. A group of retired generals and senior diplomats urged Obama last week to forgo those plans, warning they could undermine the fight against the Afghan Taliban, whose leader was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan last month. Under the new policy, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, will be able to decide when it is appropriate for American troops to accompany conventional Afghan forces into the field - something they have so far only been doing with Afghan special forces, the official said. The expanded powers are only meant to be employed “in those select instances in which their engagement can enable strategic effects on the battlefield,” the official said. That means that U.S. forces should not be expected to accompany Afghan soldiers on day-to-day missions. “This added flexibility ... is fully supported by the Afghan government and will help the Afghans at an important moment for the country,” the official said. The decision is a departure from current U.S. rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which impose limits on U.S. forces’ ability to strike at insurgents. For example, the U.S. military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban “in extremis” - moments when their assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback. That definition, however, left the U.S. military postured to assist them in more defensive instances. The new policy would allow U.S. forces to accompany Afghans at key moments in their offensive campaign against the Taliban. “The U.S. forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces,” the official said. The Taliban control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since they were ousted by a U.S.-backed intervention in late 2001, and U.S. officials have acknowledged the uneven performance of Afghan security forces. Large portions of Afghanistan, including the provincial capital of northern Kunduz and multiple districts of southern Helmand province, have fallen, at times briefly, to the Taliban over the past year-and-a-half. Many other districts and provinces are also under varying degrees of Taliban control. The new authorities that Obama has given the U.S. military could give it greater leeway in addressing the shortcomings of Afghan security forces. Still, experts warn that its hard to predict when Afghanistan will be able to stand on its own against the Taliban, not to mention the country’s enormous economic difficulties and fractious political system. The U.S government’s top watchdog on Afghanistan told Reuters that the United States had wasted billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan over the past decade, and now a renewed Taliban insurgency was threatening the gains that had been made.
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Pittsburgh s head coach Mike Tomlin showed his solidarity for players who took a cowardly stand against our President after Trump said NFL owners should fire players who disrespect our flag during the national anthem. The Pittsburg Steelers team and coaching disrespected our flag and our veterans who have sacrificed so much by hiding in a tunnel instead of joining the fans to honor our flag. After the game, coach Tomlin took it a step further, and openly criticized the Army Ranger and 3-time Afghan war vet Alejandro Villanueva, for standing during our National Anthem.Fans rewarded the brave offensive lineman buy snatching up so many of his jerseys, that Villanueva s jersey sales surpassed the previous record held by Patriots QB Tom Brady. Today, that vision of a hero Americans watched yesterday, who stood alone on the field, undeterred by angry leftists, determined to promote division and hate for our law enforcement, has been shattered.NYP Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Alejandro Villanueva, who broke with his team to stand for the national anthem on Sunday, became the best-selling NFL player Monday, according to a report.The former Army Ranger, who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, was the only Steeler to appear for The Star-Spangled Banner before the game against the Chicago Bears.Alejandro Villanueva was the only Steeler to come out for the National Anthem, standing in the tunnel. pic.twitter.com/L4EtxRQSvA CBS Sports (@CBSSports) September 24, 2017Fans rewarded Villanueva by purchasing his jersey, helping him to break a record for NFL jersey sales:His patriotic counterprotest while his teammates remained in the locker room helped him unseat New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as the top gear seller in the league, ESPN reported.A spokesman for Fanatics, which runs the NFL s online store, confirmed that more Villanueva items, including jerseys and T-shirts, had been ordered than that of any other NFL player in the past 24 hours.Less than 24 hours after the dust settled, and Villanueva s teammates and coach had a chance to vocalize their feelings about him standing alone, Villaneuva made a shocking statement to the press about his decision.The Pittsburgh Steelers player who is being heralded for taking the field on Sunday for the national anthem despite the rest of the team boycotting has now revealed that it was all a big mistake, and he meant to be in the tunnel with his fellow players. Unfortunately I threw my teammates under the bus, unintentionally, Alejandro Villanueva said on Monday. Every single time I see that picture of me standing by myself I feel embarrassed. Villanueva then explained that he had asked to stand in the front of the team with the captains of the squad at the last second so that they showed some respect for wounder veterans.That plan backfired though when he did not stop to check that the captains were by his side as he walked to the opening of the tunnel, which is how the 6ft 9in lineman ended up in plain view on the field as the national anthem began to play.Watch:His admission comes after thousands across the country declared him a hero for his actions, and began purchasing his jersey in record numbers to show support for what they thought was a calculated move.Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger also said on Monday that he was meant to be by Villanueva s side at the time, but got held back by the melee in the tunnel after the tackle walked too far out. Daily MailSocial media isn t buying Villanueva s story:Villanueva has now been pressured to apologize, after his coach criticized him. So much for HIS free speech. https://t.co/quHh76R5F6 Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) September 26, 2017
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In a telephone call, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump told Vietnam’s prime minister he wanted to further strengthen fast-warming ties between the two countries, the government of the Southeast Asian nation said on Thursday. Vietnam has advanced ties with the United States to a new level under the Obama administration as it faces down communist neighbor China’s challenge to its territorial claims in the busy waterway of the South China Sea. During Wednesday’s conversation, Vietnamese premier Nguyen Xuan Phuc congratulated Trump on his election win and stressed the importance of maintaining friendship and cooperation. “President-elect Trump spoke highly of the achievements of Vietnam, as well as the positive developments in bilateral ties,” Vietnam’s government said on its news website. “He also asserted his wish to cooperate with Vietnam to accelerate the relationship between the two countries.” Trump has had conversations with several leaders of countries locked in maritime disputes with China, among them Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. His trade platform runs counter to Vietnam’s interests, however, with his opposition to a Trans-Pacific Partnership proving a major setback for Southeast Asia’s biggest exporter to the United States. Trump and Phuc discussed ways to promote economic ties, trade and investment, the government added. In a statement, Trump’s transition team confirmed the conversation, saying the two men “discussed a range of shared interests and agreed to work together to continue strengthening the relationship between the two nations”. Just days after Trump’s win, Phuc told parliament that ratification of the TPP would be shelved because of political changes in the United States, but Vietnam still wanted good relations with Washington. In a separate development, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the Mustin, visited Cam Ranh international port on Thursday in a routine technical stop, the U.S. embassy said. The ship’s visit was “an example of the depth of our comprehensive partnership and the importance of strengthening our civilian and military ties,” said U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius. Vietnam has expressed support for the United States to maintain its security presence in Asia. Washington fully lifted a U.S. lethal arms embargo on Vietnam in May, allowing closer defense links and some joint military exercises.
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President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen discussed risks to the economy and progress from Wall Street reform during a rare meeting in the Oval Office on Monday, the White House said. “They discussed both the near and long-term growth outlook, the state of the labor market, inequality, and potential risks to the economy, both in the United States and globally,” the White House said in a statement about the meeting. “They also discussed the significant progress that has been made through the continued implementation of Wall Street Reform to strengthen our financial system and protect consumers.”
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Thank you, President Trump, for those words of comfort and for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred -Susan Bro, mother of Charlottesville attack victim Heather Heyer.Susan Bro, mother of Charlottesville attack victim Heather Heyer, thanks Pres. Trump for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred pic.twitter.com/E46OnwE5fW NBC News (@NBCNews) August 14, 2017PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS DENOUNCED OVER AND OVER THE VIOLENCE ON BOTH SIDES! To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend s racist violence you will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered. POTUS pic.twitter.com/AGjrt4Xnfr CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) August 14, 2017SUSAN BRO S STATEMENT isn t what the left wants The woman who lost her daughter is behaving better than those who are calling for more violence in the streets. Yes, the groups on the left are using Charlottesville as a launching point for even more violence and chaos Can you believe it?The Daily Caller reports: Far-left agitators are calling for an escalation in tactics following this weekend s violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.Many of the same groups that have organized violent demonstrations in Berkeley, California and elsewhere are now calling for an aggressive response to the violence in Charlottesville. Far-left anti-fascist (or antifa) figures are advising agitators to do the job that police won t: shutting down fascists and prevent them from organizing.Radical left-wingers have for months justified violence as a way to fight back against fascism and racism terms that they have applied not just to white nationalist fringe groups but to prominent figures on the right as well.A HUGE SIGN OF A BIGGER FORCE (SOROS) WITH THE FUNDS IS WHEN SIGNS ARE PROFESSIONALLY DONE AND YOU SEE LOTS OF THEM:NOTE: The signs say RefuseFascism.org Please go to this link to see what they re planning: REFUSE FASCISM Charlottesville is just the beginning. If the alt-right can get away with murder there, none of us will be safe. We have to stand up to white supremacists, we have to shut down and chase out these bigots every time they try to organize, or else they will kill more people, reads one poster created by anarchist group CrimethInc, a self-described international network of aspiring revolutionaries.
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Airlines operating at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport have begun implementing measures in compliance with U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries, airport sources said on Sunday. The measures would include denying U.S.-bound travel for nationals from those countries - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen - who were not U.S. green card holders, the sources said. U.S.-bound journeys from Beirut typically involve transfers in Europe, Turkey or Gulf Arab countries.
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The entitled generation .Wearing a cardboard sign upon which $226K is written in green characters, a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders told 24-year-old actress Shailene Woodley that she owes $226,000 in debt.@lindsayzissis telling me why she's voting for #BernieSanders she's $226,000 in debt for trying to help the world pic.twitter.com/oo2Z7q8nDv Shailene Woodley (@shailenewoodley) April 16, 2016Woodley, also a supporter of the socialist senator from Vermont, then asked the young female what she had studied after high school.The answer? Speech pathology. The average mean wage for a Speech Language Pathologist in the US is $77,000 per year. Sanders has promised free tuition nationwide at post-secondary institutions, without specifying conditions relating to preferred pursuits. Under Sanders s proposal, those wishing to become mechanical engineers, pediatricians, or electricians will be afforded the same taxpayers assistance as those studying Greek mythology, social justice, or women s studies. Via: Daily Wire
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More than 90 Republican foreign policy veterans have pledged to oppose Donald Trump, saying his proposals would undermine U.S. security, in the latest sign of fissures between the Republican presidential front-runner and the party establishment. “Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world,” the signatories wrote in a open letter on Wednesday. “Furthermore, his expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors poses a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States,” said the letter, which was posted on a blog called War on the Rocks. The signatories include Robert Zoellick, a former World Bank president and deputy secretary of state; former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; and Dov Zakheim, a top Pentagon official under President George W. Bush. They represent both centrist Republican foreign policy circles and neoconservatives who favor a robust U.S. international role and wielded clout during Bush’s 2001-2009 presidency. Billionaire businessman Trump won the largest number of states in this week’s Super Tuesday nominating contests, intensifying moves by the party’s establishment wing to derail his path to the nomination. On Thursday, Trump in an interview with ABC News flatly rejected the criticism in the letter and blasted the nation’s military leaders as ineffective. Bryan McGrath, a retired U.S. Navy officer and adviser to Republican Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign who helped organize the letter, said at least two people declined to sign because of concerns it would fuel Trump’s campaign theme of being an anti-Washington candidate opposed by the establishment. “This is really drawing a bright moral line and saying that if we’re going to keep our souls, we can’t cross it,” said Eliot Cohen, who served as counselor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and helped spearhead the letter. Rice was asked to sign but chose not to, in keeping with her general practice of not signing on to such group letters, a spokeswoman for the Stanford University professor said. The list of signatures, which numbered 60 when the letter was released on Wednesday night, had grown to 94 by Thursday afternoon. The signatories did not include other several high-profile former officials such as Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley or former Secretary of State Colin Powell. It was unknown if they were invited to sign. The letter rejects numerous Trump foreign policy statements, including his “hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric,” his demand that Mexico fund a wall to control illegal immigration across the U.S. border, and his insistence that Japan pay much more for U.S. security assistance. “As committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head,” the signatories said. “We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.” The War on the Rocks blog calls itself a platform for former diplomats, military and intelligence officers and scholars to comment “through a realist lens” on global affairs. Trump has alarmed some mainstream Republicans with vows to shred international trade deals. Many fear a Trump presidency would severely strain ties with allies and are concerned about his stated willingness to work more closely with authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump also has criticized the Republican Party for its backing of Bush’s 2003 Iraq invasion and has said he supports the practice of waterboarding and other similar interrogation techniques. Max Boot, a foreign policy adviser to Romney’s 2012 campaign and supporter of the Iraq invasion, was among the letter’s signers and said he “would sooner work for (North Korean dictator) Kim Jong Un than for Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump is objectively more dangerous than Kim Jong Un and not as stable.” Kurt Volker, a permanent representative to NATO under Bush, said he did not sign the letter because of concerns that any letter from “national security intelligentsia” could backfire. “He would actually use it as a bragging right,” said Volker, adding he had no intention of working for Trump but wanted to be free to offer advice to any future president, and that such a letter could prompt Trump to hold a grudge. Several others who declined to sign and asked not to be identified, said they feared it could help Democrat Hillary Clinton win the presidency. Trump told MSNBC on Thursday that he would name his foreign policy and national security advisers “in a week or two. ... But ultimately it’s my thought more than anybody else’s.” Those Trump has spoken with on foreign policy include a retired U.S. general and intelligence official, Michael Flynn, who favors closer ties with Russia. Flynn has declined to comment on whether he is advising Trump. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who won popularity for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has said he has been having regular talks with Trump but not in a formal role. (Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Arshad Mohammed and Susan Heavey; Editing by David Rohde, Stuart Grudgings, Bill Trott and Peter Cooney) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.
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21st Century Wire says Congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard continues to face down the mainstream propaganda machine with her based and skeptical opinion surrounding the war on Syria, including the recent attacks on Shayrat air base by the United States as a reprisal for the alleged chemical attack on Idlib by Damascus.It s not surprising within the American political party system that if you don t agree with the gang , they come for your blood, and this is exactly what s happening to Gabbard. Her previous fact finding visit to Syria in 2016 had already began to turn heads, but now after the CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer, who happens to all of a sudden like Donald Trump, the Democrats are circling Tulsi Gabbard in increasing droves.More on this report from The Duran Alex Christoforou The DuranNo room for free speech. No dissent. No skepticism. Neocons, Democrats, liberal leftists all united to remove Assad, prop up ISIS and begin WW3.The warmonger knives are coming out for Gabbard in what is looking like Iraq WMDs all over again.Gabbard spoke with CNN s Wolf Blitzer who all of a sudden finds Trump very presidential and capable.Rep. Gabbard: Yes, I m skeptical of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack https://t.co/fETssThsLF https://t.co/fpYdUNR2t4 CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017Rep. Gabbard: Yes, I m skeptical of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack https://t.co/fETssThsLF https://t.co/fpYdUNR2t4 CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017Zerohedge reports Gabbard, who sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, drew criticism earlier this year when she took a somewhat mysterious trip alone to meet with Assad in Syria without alerting House Speaker Paul Ryan. The liberal Democrat subsequently explained she simply wanted to engage in dialogue with Assad though it clearly burned some bridges within her own party. Per CNN:Gabbard told CNN on Friday that she wants to achieve peace in Syria, Why should we just blindly follow this escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war? There s responsibility that goes around, Gabbard said. Standing here pointing fingers does not accomplish peace for the Syrian people. It will not bring about an end to this war. People of Hawaii's 2nd district was it not enough for you that your rep met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?1 https://t.co/jbwGuZIJ6R Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) April 7, 2017Zerohedge further adds that former DNC chair Howard Dean also decided to join in on ganging up on Gabbard, but he immediately got shut down by a follower who asked the obvious question of why engaging in dialogue was disqualifying for Gabbard but violating federal record retention laws and a Congressional subpoena was perfectly fine for Hillary.It s becoming increasingly clear that Gabbard is just another Putin puppet who likely assisted Russian hackers in their efforts to take down Hillary we sincerely hope the Congress launches an immediate investigation Continue this report at The DuranREAD MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday detailed $5.6 million in contributions he raised for military veterans, and staged a fiery news conference where he attacked reporters for questioning him for months about the money. Appearing at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the billionaire accused the media of failing to give him credit for raising the funds at an event in January in Iowa. His tirade, in which he called one reporter “a sleaze” and sarcastically described another as a “real beauty,” overshadowed what otherwise should have been an upbeat event for the presumptive Republican nominee. “The press should be ashamed of themselves,” he told reporters gathered before him. “You make me look very bad. I’ve never received such bad publicity for doing a good job.” While Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the media, questions about the donations to veterans touched a raw nerve with him as he tries to build a conservative base ahead of the Nov. 8 general election. Reporters have been persistently asking whether Trump in fact raised all the money he said he had in January and why it took so long to hand donations over to veterans groups. A number of veterans groups listed by Trump on Tuesday as recipients confirmed they had received the donation as listed, ranging from $25,000 to, in one case, $1.1 million, which went to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. Some of the donations arrived in February or March, some as recently as last week around the time a critical article appeared in The Washington Post. The money arrived in the form of a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. “We received a $75,000 gift early last week from the Trump Foundation, it was not restricted or earmarked in any way,” said Katherine Fritz, director of development at America’s Vetdogs. Trump’s criticism of the media dashed the hopes of some Republican leaders who want him to tone down his rhetoric and become more magnanimous now that he has sealed the Republican presidential nomination. The Washington Post said Trump only handed over a personal donation of $1 million last week - four months after announcing it - once the newspaper started asking about the money. Trump said the news coverage of his veterans group donations had been close to libelous. Asked whether he would maintain an adversarial stance with reporters if elected president, Trump said: “Yeah, it’s going to be like this.” A reporter told Trump he seemed resistant to the kind of scrutiny that comes with the office of U.S. president. But Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, said the news media should stop fretting about how Trump treats them. “My advice to the press: Stop interviewing yourselves about Trump’s attack on the press. Don’t worry about it. Just do your jobs and be fair,” he said. The contretemps took place on the same day documents were disclosed from a lawsuit involving Trump University, a now-defunct education program that ran a real estate training program. Trump has attacked the presiding judge as hostile to him. The university documents showed Trump University created a special class to teach students how to cash in on U.S. mortgage foreclosures when the United States was struggling with an entrenched housing crisis in 2009. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton sought to take advantage of Trump’s discomfort over the media scrutiny he has faced. She told CNN that Trump’s tendency to attack his critics “is a recipe for gridlock in Washington.” Clinton defended her own policy toward dealing with the news media, saying she has conducted 300 interviews this year alone. Unlike Trump, she rarely holds news conferences. Her last one was last December. Clinton leads Trump by 11 percentage points in the latest Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. According to the May 27-31 survey of likely voters, 46 percent support the former U.S. secretary of state while 35 percent back Trump. California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday endorsed Clinton for the Democratic nomination, saying it was the only way to “stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump.” At his news conference, Trump also bristled at the possibility that Republicans opposed to him might run a third-party candidate as an alternative to Trump or the expected Democratic nominee Clinton. He said a leader of that effort, Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, “looks like such a fool.” “Let me tell you these people are losers,” said Trump, adding that a third-party candidacy would guarantee Clinton wins the White House and deny Republicans the chance to put conservatives on the Supreme Court. “What you’re going to do is lose the election for the Republicans and therefore you lose the Supreme Court,” he said. Trump read out a list of veterans’ organizations that had received money from the January event, which he attended instead of participating in a Fox News-sponsored candidates’ debate. He said the money was benefiting 41 groups and that the total cash raised could climb as more comes in. He turned the microphone over briefly to Al Baldasaro, a Trump supporter and a veteran from New Hampshire who also skewered the news media, saying reporters should “get your head out of your butt, focus on the real issues.”
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Honolulu s Caf 8 gets rave reviews on Yelp for its Radiatore Verde and Italian stir fry, among other popular dishes at the eclectic mom-and-pop restaurant but the response to its new policy barring pro-Trump patrons has been decidedly more mixed.A bright yellow, handmade sign posted on the restaurant s front glass door declares: If you voted for Trump you cannot eat here! No Nazis. A photo of the sign was shared with FoxNews.com. One also is proudly posted on the caf s Facebook page, and was liked by some 40 people.Honolulu resident and Donald Trump voter Susan Roberts told FoxNews.com she found the sign in extreme poor taste. It s childish and very unprofessional, she said in an email. The restaurant owner doesn t have to worry I will not be stepping foot in that establishment. A Facebook user who wrote on the 8 1/2 Cafe page says he was joking about the restaurant not serving Trump supporters when the owner came over and took away his food:Unlike everybody else, I actually DID eat here recently on a trip. I was there with one of my friends and we thought they were joking about not serving Trump supporters WRONG!!! We were talking about it when all of a sudden a giant fat male comes over, identifies himself as the owner and takes away our food. He still insisted we pay until we called the police and they sorted him out explaining to this guy that you can t take away food and then expect people to pay. What a joke this place is.Here are a few additional comments from Facebook users that were found on the 8 1/2 Cafe website:Maybe someone should call the health department on them. Didn t someone see a rat skittering across the floor or maybe that was cockroaches.No need to eat at a restaurant owned by a Trumpophobe they ll be sued shortly for discrimination, just like the bakers were who wouldn t bake cakes for gay weddings.Like the Nazis put signs in the windows of restaurants and businesses No Jews Allowed . I find it strange that your sign says no Nazis no Trump supporters? Yet you are doing the exact same thing the Nazis did in Poland. Your business will suffer because you do not understand the power of social media, nor do you understand the power of Trump supporters. Oh, by the way your food looks like shit!Going to Hawaii this summer but I will stay away from your so called restaurant. I voted for Trump and apparently my money isn t good enough for you your choice. By the way you might want to pick up a history book and read about the Nazis I think you might find the similarities in you both uncanny. People should be able to get food without hearing a political message, one apparent former customer wrote on Yelp. I will never go back. The 8 1/2 Cafe received so many negative comments on YELP that the service designed to rate restaurants as a way to help consumers find good food had to step in and shut down the comment and ratings section for their restaurant:According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the caf was founded by Robert Warner, a former hair stylist for Vidal Sassoon in San Francisco and former restaurateur in Seattle, along with his wife Jali. FOX News
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SEE ALSO: ORLANDO KNOWN WOLF Watched by FBI, Worked with DHS, Amid Crisis Actors, Drills & CI s21st Century Wire says The Orlando Shooting. Many things are just not right with this story, including the father of the alleged shooter Omar Mateen, an Afghan-American, Seddique Mateen, who is closely linked to some of the most powerful leaders and agencies in Washington DC.Below is a photo of Omar s father after a meeting at the US State Dept. in Washington DC where he met with officials , but oddly, no log of his visit is available in the public record. Image Credit: facebook.com/seddique.mateenThe alleged shooter s father played an absolute key role in setting up the entire hate crime narrative by inserting this quote into the MSM machine during the immediate aftermath of the sensationalized media event. Seddique Mateen said: We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music, and he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry. They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that. And they we were in the men s bathroom and men were kissing each other. For the media, and every other political leader in the US, this was now classified as a hate crime , and so case closed. In other words, a simple story line with real traction was now baked firmly into this event about a homophobic, ISIS-inspired, crazed lone gunman who went postal in a Orlando gay nightclub, and coincidentally, on the eve of an international Gay Pride celebration day.Pictured below is Seddique Mateen with California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher (R-CA) was initially elected to Congress in 1988, with the fundraising help of friend Oliver North.Rohrabacher s decades-long involvement in all things Afghan eventually earned him the nickname Gunga Dana. Today he chairs the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.This morning President Obama called him a home-grown terrorist. In a series of phone interviews Monday morning, Donald Trump responded that there s something going on with the President s reaction to the Orlando shooting.I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It s like calling Blackwater XE Orlando shooter Omar Mateen s father said his son was not motivated by Islamist radical ideology, but in a Facebook video posted early Monday he said, God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality. My own suspicion was first awakened on Monday morning when U.S. news outlets uniformly reported that the father s TV show aired on a U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel. That sort of circumlocution is typical when something is being hidden which the corporate media prefers we not ask questions about.The name of the nameless Afghan satellite channel, Payam Afghan, is said to be widely-known in Southwest Asia as a CIA-Pakistani ISI construct, as this picture from Flicker shows.The identification of shooter Omar Mateen also involved deception. He was said to work for a security company called G4S, which few have ever heard of. However, G4S is merely a re-branded Wackenhut Corporation, a name with a storied reputation for scandal in the U.S. and around the world.Rohrabacher has stated that he sees radical Islam as the source of a major terrorist threat to the U.S.Calls to his office today to request comment on whether he views CIA assets relocated in the U.S. as a terrorist threat have not been returned.SEE FULL REPORT: ORLANDO KNOWN WOLF Watched by FBI, Worked with DHS, Amid Crisis Actors, Drills & CI sHelp support us by becoming a 21WIRE Member at: 21WIRE.TV
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It s being dubbed the rare boycott that actually worked. In today s age of endless cycles of outrage and amnesia, Rush Limbaugh probably assumed that listeners would forget and forgive after, in a fit of characteristic rage, the conservative radio host called a Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a slut on air (for the crime of using birth control, no less). Instead, it may have finally cost Limbaugh his job.It s been four years since Limbaugh lashed out at Fluke, but the damage is finally being felt. For one thing, his show which is still a go-to source of batshit crazy has been dropped by an ever growing list of advertisers and affiliates who, understandably, have no interest in being associated with Limbaugh s sickening brand nor care about appealing to his vicious, toxic listener. Making matters worse, Limbaugh s $38 million a year contract is expiring and as negotiations begin, suddenly the thought of paying a man tens of millions of dollars a year to call a college student a slut doesn t seem like such a good investment.Much of this is due to David Brock and his liberal watchdog organization, Media Matters for America. According to Politico, the company has spent over $100,000 on organizing the Limbaugh boycott that may finally take him down.The anti-Limbaugh faction came up with the social media-friendly slogan Flush Rush. The group s efforts met considerable success in the months that followed. Dozens of companies, including Netflix, JCPenney and Sears, announced they would boycott Limbaugh s show. Most have yet to return. And the increasing popularity of platforms like Twitter, which can be used to stoke outrage and promote boycotts, makes it highly unlikely they ever will.The Sandra Fluke incident did a lot of harm to talk radio, Darryl Parks says. Thirty-eight percent of revenue disappeared overnight. And the damage was not limited to Limbaugh; he hurt all of talk radio, including even some liberal hosts. Certain programs Michael Savage, for example, and in an earlier era, Bob Grant had always been considered toxic by some advertisers, but after the Fluke incident, entire stations or indeed, the entire format of talk radio were deemed no-go zones by blue chip brands.Compare this boycott to those frequently half-heartedly kicked off by the right and it s easy to see why the outcome was different. Unlike, say, the attempt to boycott Starbucks because they made their holiday cups red, the Flush Rush boycott is on firm moral ground. What Limbaugh did, and continues to do, to the people who happen to catch his ire is pathetic and wrong. While the color of a coffee cup might be controversial to some, listening to Limbaugh label a young woman a slut because she doesn t want to get pregnant is deeply repugnant regardless of your political leanings.Featured image via YouTube
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U.S. President Donald Trump was wrong to have posted anti-Islam videos on Twitter that had originally been published by a leader of Britain First, a fringe, far-right party, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday. It is wrong for the President to have done this, the spokesman said. Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency tolerance and respect.
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Sources from inside Donald Trump s campaign told ABC News on Sunday that because the Republican nominee has f*cked up so much in the past couple of weeks, his own advisers are starting to fear that he is deliberately trying to lose. Correspondent Jonathan Karl said during a panel discussion on ABC s This Week that supporters are afraid that Trump is purposely undermining his own campaign following weeks of one ghastly mistake after another: Let s be honest, he does face a hostile news media. And that s not surprising. We have a candidate who bans news organizations from his events, a candidate who calls the press despicable and disgusting, a candidate who in every single stump speech I ve ever seen has lashed out at the press. But, according to Karl, it isn t just supporters who are now convinced Trump is sabotaging his own campaign. Even advisers inside of his campaign are now becoming concerned that he is intentionally shooting himself in the foot. But Donald Trump s problems are not because of media coverage. I ve talked to people in the past week people who are very much on the Trump train advisers outside the campaign, even some advisers inside the campaign who think that it as almost as if Donald Trump is trying to lose.There is absolute frustration in his inability to get on message and win a race that many of them believe is eminently winnable. Trump has indeed had a bad couple of weeks. From attacking Gold Star families to encouraging Russian espionage to casually suggesting the assassination of his rival, Hillary Clinton, the billionaire bully has certainly managed to f*ck up good and proper.Watch the segment here: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhknX6zg_u4]Featured image via video screen capture
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Iraqi Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi declared victory over Islamic State militants in Tal Afar and the entire province of Nineveh on Thursday, despite continued fighting in the small town of al- Ayadiya. Tal Afar had become the next target of the U.S.-backed war on the jihadist group following the capture of Mosul, where it had declared its caliphate over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Tal Afar has been liberated, Abadi said in a statement. We say to the Islamic State fighters: wherever you are, we are coming for you, and you have no choice but to surrender or die. The defeat in Mosul, Nineveh s provincial capital, marked the latest in a string of territorial losses for the group. However, the militants still control areas on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border. This includes Hawija, a city between Mosul and Baghdad that Iraqi officials have said will be the coalition s next target. The Iraqi army dropped millions of leaflets over Hawija on Thursday, warning residents it was preparing an offensive to recapture the city from Islamic State, the military said in a statement. The leaflets urged residents to stay away from militants headquarters, to drop weapons and turn themselves in to avoid being killed. Iraqi forces had been waiting to clear al- Ayadiya, 11 km (7 miles) northwest of Tal Afar, before declaring complete victory in the offensive. Islamic State militants had retreated to the town. Divisions from the Iraqi army and federal police, backed by units from Shi ite paramilitaries, retook al- Ayadiya on Thursday, military officers told Reuters, after several days of unexpectedly fierce fighting. However, pockets of resistance remained and Iraqi forces were still working to clear the remaining militants from the town. We have to make sure that no more terrorists remain hiding inside the town s houses, Army Lieutenant Colonel Salah Kareem told Reuters. Two military officers whose units are leading the fight in al- Ayadiya on Thursday said scattered groups of militants were still hiding in houses and using tunnel networks to move through the town. Four soldiers were killed and 10 more wounded as clashes continued in parts of al- Ayadiya on Thursday night, despite the announcement hours earlier by the prime minister. Three soldiers were killed on Thursday evening and seven more wounded when a woman detonated a suicide vest, Kareem said. Soldiers thought the woman was a civilian trying to escape the fighting, but as soon as she came close to the soldiers, she blew herself up and killed three, an army officer said. In a separate incident, an Islamic State sniper killed a soldier and wounded three others during a search. We are still being shot at by snipers and coming under heavy gunfire from Daesh fighters, Kareem said. Iraqi forces will intensify their operations on Friday, to dislodge the militants still entrenched inside scattered houses, army officers said. Hundreds of additional troops had been sent into al- Ayadiya on Wednesday, as Iraqi forces came under increasing pressure to clear Islamic State fighters before the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid on Thursday evening. The battle was unexpectedly tough, with house-to-house fighting in the center of town. If reclaiming the town was harder than expected, the larger battle for Tal Afar was easier. The city s rapid collapse on Sunday after just eight days of fighting lent support to Iraqi military reports that the militants lack sturdy command and control structures west of Mosul. Up to 2,000 battle-hardened militants were believed to be defending Tal Afar against around 50,000 government troops last week. It was unclear how many had retreated to al- Ayadiya. U.S. Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend congratulated the Iraqi forces on achieving a stunningly swift and decisive victory in Tal Afar. This is Iraq liberating Iraqis, he told a Pentagon teleconference from Baghdad. Townsend added however, that a quick victory in Tal Afar did not necessarily mean the fight to retake Islamic State s remaining territory would be easy. While I would like to say that we would see this elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, we are not really planning for that, Townsend said. We pledge to you, our people, that we will continue to liberate every inch of Iraq, Abadi said in his statement. Tens of thousands of people had fled Tal Afar, a city with a pre-war population of about 200,000, in recent months. The United Nations estimated that 20,000 people had fled the city and its surrounding areas between Aug. 14 and 22 alone. Civilians who fled Tal Afar in recent weeks told Reuters they had faced months of starvation and brutal treatment by the militants, who threatened them with death if they tried to escape.
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The majority of America saw this coming: Trump s supporters are finally becoming extremely disappointed in the failing performance of their president of choice.Thanks to a New York Times profile of Trump supporters in Pennsylvania, we now know that Trump voters recognize that they re not seeing any of the winning that Trump has promised them over and over. Things have gotten so bad, that the only people in Trump s corner are actually losing hope.Theresa Remington, a home-care worker with two children on active duty in the Marines, had hopes Trump would be good for the Veterans Administration and health care system and has been severely disappointed. Remington said Trump was Just like any other damn president, and now she s curious about what things would have been like if Sen. Bernie Sanders had won the election.Brian Mock, a tattoo artist, admitted with reluctance that Trump is not the right president for this country. Mock said: No one wants to be wrong. It s seeing a house on fire and saying, That house isn t on fire. It is very clearly on fire. According to The Times, Trump supporters feel they have been blindsided and are wondering where Trump s grandiose promises have gone. Some have been completely turned off by Trump s erratic tweeting. Some are so upset with Trump that they feel more confident that Vice President Mike Pence would be a more capable POTUS.Bill Yokobosky IV, a train engineer, admitted: It s not what he s done, it s what he s trying to do. He hasn t succeeded, really. He s fighting himself and he s fighting Washington. They re just trying to get settled in there. The Times report of the defeat Trump supporters are feeling is right in line with Trump s approval rating, which is now lower than ever before according to a recent Gallup poll. After dropping the Mother of All Bombs , Trump s broken his own record to reach a new historic low.Featured image via Win McNamee / Getty Images
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Offices at Scotland s devolved parliament in Edinburgh were briefly evacuated on Tuesday after suspicious packages containing white powder were found. It s a white powder incident, there were a couple of suspicious packages sent to a Tory (Conservative) MSP, a source at the parliament told Reuters, using the acronym for Member of the Scottish parliament. Business returned to normal after police gave the all-clear, the Scottish parliament said. Known as Holyrood, the parliament building is located at the bottom of the Royal Mile, Edinburgh s most famous thoroughfare which leads down from its historic castle to Queen Elizabeth s Edinburgh residence, Holyrood Palace. The parliament s chief executive said only the building housing MSPs offices had been evacuated while the rest of the parliamentary campus was operating normally. The parliament said later police inquiries had concluded there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the incident and that no crime had been committed.
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Kenya lurched deeper into political confusion on Wednesday as a court ruling and a parliamentary vote appeared to ease Uhuru Kenyatta s path to a second term as president, a day after his chief rival quit an election they were to contest. Kenyatta and Raila Odinga were due to face off in a repeat election on Oct. 26, after the Supreme Court annulled their August ballot - in which the president was declared the winner. But Odinga pulled out of the re-run on Tuesday, fuelling doubts about whether it would be contested at all. Wednesday s interventions by the judiciary and legislature added to the uncertainty. As police used teargas to disperse opposition protesters demanding electoral reform, the High Court approved a petition by Ekuru Aukot, who polled less than 1 percent in the August vote, to contest the second ballot. The election board later issued a statement saying that all eight candidates who competed in August would be on the ballot. It also said although Odinga had notified them of his withdrawal by letter, he had not yet submitted the official form to do so. The developments suggested that the second election would go ahead, with Kenyatta the likely winner against a plethora of weaker candidates. No challenger except Odinga polled more than 1 percent. Further muddying the political waters, parliament passed an election law amendment stating that if one candidate withdrew from the re-run vote, the remaining one would automatically win. The vote was boycotted by opposition lawmakers. The law aimed to ensure Kenyatta could be declared president if he faced no challengers. The events stoked confusion among voters and fears that politically-driven violence might escalate. Months of political uncertainty have already blunted growth in East Africa s richest nation, a long-time ally of the West. There s a real atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty. There seems to be dozens of opinions of what should come next, said Murithi Mutiga, a senior Horn of Africa analyst for the global thinktank International Crisis Group. Justifying his pullout on Tuesday, Odinga said the election would not be free and fair and renewed calls for the electoral board (IEBC), which he blamed for the procedural irregularities identified in the first ballot, to be replaced. Opposition supporters on Wednesday renewed their protests for electoral reform. Demonstrators lit bonfires in Kisumu, an Odinga stronghold in the country s west, while more than a thousand supporters marched through the central business district in the capital Nairobi. Police used teargas to disperse them in both cities, witnesses said. Juliana Otieno, the chief executive of the Oginga Odinga Hospital in the city, said 17 people had been admitted with injuries suffered during the protests. A Reuters witness counted at least five of them with bullet wounds. Kisumu s police commander, Titus Yoma, said he had no information on the bullet wounds and his officers were still quelling the protests, which were centered around two slums in the lakeside city. At least 37 people were killed in protests immediately following the August vote, almost all of them by police, a Kenyan rights group said on Monday. Ethnic clashes killed 1,200 people following a disputed presidential poll in 2007. We want a reformed IEBC, said Elisha Odhiambo, an opposition legislator, referring to the electoral board, which has frequently relied on riot police dispersing protests outside its offices in recent weeks. Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho, a key opposition player, told protesters in Uhuru Park: Our voices must be heard. We have no war with anyone but we will not allow anyone to stifle us. After the High Court ruling in his favor, Aukot told reporters that he still had concerns about the board and would issue a statement in a day or two giving clarity about his plans. It was unclear if other candidates from the first ballot with little support would also seek to be included, but the election board said it still had time to print ballot papers. The Sept. 1 Supreme Court judgment that nullified Kenyatta s 1.4 million vote win also stipulated elections had to be held within 60 days. If that schedule is not met, the constitution provides for the speaker of parliament, a member of Kenyatta s party, to take power. With two weeks to go until the elections, it is still unclear who will stand. I would expect one of the parties will try to seek an authoritative announcement from the Supreme Court, International Crisis Group s Mutiga said. Amid the political uncertainty, the government has trimmed this year s GDP growth forecast from 5.9 percent to 5.5 percent last month. The country s equity markets slid further on Wednesday. Kenya s all share index closed down 0.67 percent while the blue chip index fell 1.41 percent.
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Run, yes run, to the nearest gun store and buy a gun to protect your family. This may sound extreme but we are in extreme times because of a very divisive president who s condoned domestic terrorism from a group hell bent on destruction. You can choose to be a sitting duck or not A multi-block neighborhood in north Milwaukee erupted into rioting, looting, and arson after minority residents affiliated with Black Lives Matter used the death of an armed violent criminal to justify a crime spree. The rioting, looting, and arson followed the officer-involved shooting death of 23-year-old gang-affiliated felon named Sylville K Smith. Smith turned towards a black police officer with a stolen gun in his hand and was fatally shot.The criminals who rioted in Milwaukee last won t get another chance to to wage war against civil society without a fight.Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has activated the National Guard to help police should further rioting erupt in a predominantly black Milwaukee neighbourhood where police killed an armed suspect.The Sherman Park neighbourhood, which has a reputation for poverty and crime, appeared calm hours after businesses were burned, cars set ablaze and gunshots fired overnight by demonstrators angered by the police killing.Seventeen people were arrested in the disturbances, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said.Four police officers were treated for injuries and released from hospitals.Chief Walker said the Guard would be in a position to aid local law enforcement upon request. Unfortunately, the response comes almost 24 hours too late.One of the terrifying realities of an interconnected digital age is that radicals can easily and quickly organize flash riots. They can descend on an area with little or no warning in large numbers, commit significant felony acts in a short amount of time, and then disappear before law enforcement can mount a significant response.This new reality leaves citizens in a position where virtually any urban or suburban neighborhood community can find itself turned into a flashpoint for a riot within hours, before local authorities have the opportunity to recognize an escalating threat, much less mobilize, equip, and deploy their forces in effective numbers.Now more than ever, you may find yourself and your neighbors forced to band together and defend your homes, businesses, and lives, just as Korean shopkeepers famously did in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and residents, storekeepers, and Oathkeepers did in Ferguson in 2014.A Ferguson store owner prepared to defend his store during on of the recent riots in Ferguson, Missouri.It probably won t come as a surprise to anyone that the firearms best suited for keeping these violent mobs at bay are the very firearms that anti-gun Democrats are so fervently attempting to ban.AR-15An AR-15 is among the most effective possible firearms against murderous, arson-minded rioters in suburban and urban situations.Equipped with a low variable-power scope to help discern threats, a bright tactical light to clearly identify threats, and 30-round magazines, a law-abiding citizen is well-equipped to take on mobs primarily armed with handguns, impact weapons, and molotov cocktails.The same general rules of engagement apply during riot as they would at any other time. You may not use deadly force upon another human being unless they pose an imminent deadly force threat to you or a third-party.That noted, the willingness of these rioters to use deadly force is unquestioned. They have fired shots at police and citizens, and they have shown that they are willing to torch buildings with little or no thought to the lives inside those structures.This creates a plausible scenario where a citizen sees rioters about to put lives at risk up to several block away, justifying a much-longer-than-normal third-party self defense shot of dozens to hundreds of yards.If you do not yet own a quality AR-15 (or similar rifle) with good low-powered scopes or a red dot optic, a decent weapon-mounted light, other required accouterments and the training to use these carbines for the defense of your family and community, you may want to consider if you re making a mistake.Increasingly, it may be the responsibility of armed citizens to save their communities from violent mobs when law enforcement cannot mobilize fast enough to prevent attacks that are nothing more or less than domestic terrorism.Be prepared.Via: Bearing Arms
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Dear San Francisco Police Union: We wanted you to know that if you decide to boycott the 49er s, America supports you 100%. If the 49er s are unable to speak out against this sickening bench-warmers anti-american,and anti-law enforcement antics, they can figure out how to protect themselves at their next home game. Maybe they could ask the Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter thugs to patrol the stadium I m sure the fans would love that idea LOL!The union for police officers who work San Francisco home games says its members may boycott policing the stadium if the 49ers don t discipline Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand during the national anthem and for his statements about law enforcement.A letter from the Santa Clara Police Officers Association sent to the 49ers was obtained Friday by KNTV-TV, the NBC affiliate in San Jose.It says that Kaepernick s protest has threatened our harmonious working relationship with the 49ers. About 70 officers from the Santa Clara Police Department patrol Levi s Stadium when the 49ers play there. If the 49ers organization fails to take action to stop this type of inappropriate behavior it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities, the letter reads. The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officer s Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior. It also criticized what it called anti-police statements made by Kaepernick, calling them insulting, inaccurate and completely unsupported by any facts. ABC News
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U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio on Wednesday unveiled legislation to tax financial trades that will likely wither in Congress but could stoke partisan fires in the presidential election. The Oregon Democrat’s bill would levy a 0.03 percent tax on most financial trades, and is intended to discourage “risky trading behaviors.” DeFazio expects that will collect more than $417 billion in revenue in the next decade, which he said could be used to fund free higher education or infrastructure repairs. When the Democratic Party gathers in Philadelphia for its national convention at the end of the month, it will adopt a platform that calls for taxing trades. Many liberals in the party embrace the proposal as a way to curb speculative trading, which they say led to both the 2007-09 financial crisis and the 2010 stock market “flash crash.” The party’s left wing, led by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination, meanwhile, has pushed for free university education. “Thanks to the reckless greed of Wall Street over the past few decades, the American economy is a grossly unbalanced playing field,” said DeFazio. “The only way we can level it is if we rein in reckless speculative financial trading and curb near-instantaneous high-volume trades that create instability in the stock market and our national economy.” The legislation is supported by Democratic Party stalwarts, including the AFL-CIO labor union federation, the Americans for Financial Reform coalition, the Communications Workers of America union, and advocacy group Public Citizen. The Center for Economic and Policy Research said it also backs the bill. It will likely not get far. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and most say that Wall Street regulation passed in the aftermath of the financial crisis has been overly restrictive. In addition, the Republican Party generally favors having fewer taxes. “I am opposed to any taxes that would raise the cost of financial transactions,” said Randy Neugebauer, the Republican chairman of a House subcommittee on financial institutions, noting that the bill would tax stock, bond and derivatives trades. Currently, the top U.S. securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, charges a tax on security futures of less than half of a penny to recover the costs of regulating markets and financial professionals. The idea for the tax can be traced back to economist John Maynard Keynes, who wrote in 1935 after another devastating financial crisis - the Great Depression - that a transfer tax on all transactions might mitigate speculation. (This version of the story corrects reference to Center for Economic and Policy Research in 7th paragraph, which had been incorrectly described as a Democratic stalwart)
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President Donald Trump forged a surprising deal with Democrats in Congress on Wednesday to extend the U.S. debt limit and provide government funding until Dec. 15, embracing his political adversaries and blindsiding fellow Republicans in a rare bipartisan accord. Trump, living up to his reputation for unpredictability, met at the White House with congressional leaders from both parties and overruled Republicans and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who wanted a longer-term debt-limit extension rather than the three-month Democratic proposal the president embraced. “We could have done a one-year deal today,” Mnuchin told reporters aboard Air Force One later in the day en route back to Washington from an event in North Dakota where Trump spoke about taxes. Mnuchin said Trump chose a short-term deal to keep his options open on possibly raising military funding later this year, suggesting a longer-term government funding deal might have blocked that. Trump is very focused on military spending, “particularly with what’s going on in North Korea and other parts of the world today,” Mnuchin said. “The president wasn’t willing to give up his need for additional military spending.” If passed by the Republican-led Congress, the three-month agreement would avert an unprecedented default on U.S. government debt, keep the government funded at the outset of the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and provide aid to victims of Hurricane Harvey. “It was a really good moment of some bipartisanship and getting things done,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said. Less than an hour before the meeting, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan had called the Democratic proposal that Trump later embraced a “ridiculous and disgraceful” idea that would “play politics with the debt ceiling.” Even with the three-month extension of the debt limit, a Senate Republican aide told reporters that nothing in the tentative deal would stop the Treasury Department from using its powers to extend the deadline, depending on revenue flow. In the past, the debt limit deadline has been extended for several months under those powers. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, overridden by Trump during the meeting, said he would bring the deal to the Senate floor for a vote. “The president can speak for himself, but his feeling was that we needed to come together, to not create a picture of divisiveness at a time of genuine national crisis,” McConnell told reporters. The agreement was an uncommon instance of bipartisan compromise since Trump took office in January. Washington has suffered through bitter partisanship that has at times left the U.S. capital dysfunctional under Trump and his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump had tangled repeatedly with Schumer and top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi. “We had a very good meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,” Trump, a wealthy businessman who as a candidate touted his deal-making skills, told reporters aboard Air Force One, without mentioning McConnell or Ryan, with whom he has had fraught relations. “We agreed to a three-month extension on debt ceiling, which they consider to be sacred, very important. Always we’ll agree on debt ceiling, automatically because of the importance of it,” Trump said. Conservative groups were aghast, accusing Trump of caving in to the Democrats rather than insisting on spending cuts to accompany the debt ceiling increase, and some hard-line Republicans expressed opposition to it. Republican leaders and Mnuchin pushed in the meeting for an 18-month debt limit hike, then floated six months, but Pelosi and Schumer held firm to their three-month proposal and Trump sided with them, according to people familiar with the meeting. The party in power, in this case Republicans, often argues for the longest debt limit increase as possible for two reasons. First, it protects members of Congress from casting multiple votes on the politically unpopular legislation over a short period of time, especially in the run-up to the 2018 congressional elections. Second, it helps stabilize markets. For minority Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass debt ceiling increases, they could potentially use the debt limit vote later in the year as leverage to win concessions on a tax overhaul package that Trump badly wants to advance. Even though Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, Trump has yet to win passage of any major legislation, with Democrats typically united against him. The House on Wednesday approved roughly $8 billion in initial emergency aid for relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey, which tore into Texas on Aug. 25, with the measure now going to the Senate. “Our No. 1 priority was getting funding for Harvey,” Mnuchin said. “To get the funding for Harvey, we needed to extend the debt limit.” U.S. shares rose and the dollar gained against the safe-haven Japanese yen as word of the deal helped mitigate investor concerns about North Korea and a major hurricane barreling toward Florida. The news also lifted the yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR after it had fallen to a near 10-month low at 2.054 percent. The Treasury Department has said the ceiling must be raised in the next few weeks. If not, the government would be unable to borrow more money or pay its bills, including its debt payments. That could hurt the U.S. credit rating, cause financial turmoil, harm the economy and possibly trigger a recession. Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, was aboard Air Force One when he heard about the short-term deal. He told reporters on the plane: “I will tell you that I gasped when I heard it.” He said the deal would be a “tough sell” for House Republicans but that some would “warm up to the idea” when they learned more about it.
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The Bundy brothers and their militia continue to play patriots at an Oregon wildlife reserve, but the rest of the world hasn t joined in their revolution. In fact, people are getting really good at mocking them.As the FBI announced that it would be cutting off power to the building and supplies have already begun to run low (who knew you needed more than a few boxes of Ramen noodles to sustain you on an months-long occupation of a federal building?), things are looking pretty desperate for the anti-government fanatics hold up within. It s an open question of how long they will stubbornly insist on staying out in the cold to prove how macho they are.Other than a few baffling interviews, and one hilarious blue tarp, the Bundy s have been mostly quiet. The rest of the world is left to wonder what they are getting up to in there on these cold nights.Needless to say, Twitter began speculating and the right-wing militia isn t going to like what they came up with.Under the hashtag #bundyeroticfanfic, people from around the country are describing sometimes in lurid detail the romantic encounters the Bundy s and their companions may be having while trying to keep warm. The results are oftentimes laugh out loud funny.He wanted snacks, but what he needed was for Cletus' calloused hands to explore every inch of his body #bundyeroticfanfic L30 L005 (@LeoLoos13) January 6, 2016"Jason pressed Jed against a rack of "Birds of Oregon" books; his breath was sweet with jerky. Somewhere, an egret cried" #bundyeroticfanfic colin meloy (@colinmeloy) January 6, 2016#bundyeroticfanfic The small improvised washtub was filled with two things: Cletus and Cheetos. "C'mon, Ammon," he purred. "Snack time." Skip Mendler (@smendler) January 7, 2016#bundyeroticfanfic Ammon hesitated. Isn t this against the laws of nature? Laws? panted Dwight, We make our own laws, Ammon." Remittance Girl (@remittancegirl) January 7, 2016Any my personal favorite:@colinmeloy Zek had fired some big guns before, but this would be his first true magnum. #bundyeroticfanfic John Wegner (@Rtheny) January 6, 2016Mockery has been one of the most effective weapons against the Bundy s pathetic attempt at revolution. In interview after interview, Cliven Bundy s son, Ammon, spoke breathlessly about how noble and important the occupation of this wildlife refuge was for freedom. The reality was anything but awe-inspiring. Ammon has made repeated calls for others to join him and bring supplies, but few have heeded his call. The relentless mocking paired with the group s own embarrassing moments in front of the camera have made even sympathetic right-wing anti-government nut jobs like Sean Hannity recoil.When you ve lost Hannity, you ve lost your right-wing revolution.Ironically, it turns out that all the guns they brought along with them while they were dreaming of a showdown with the government didn t stand a chance against the relentless mockery they have received from the internet. Their cause was doomed to fail, but it s hard to imagine they anticipated it failing because people couldn t stop laughing at them. That probably stings a lot worse than the cold wind.Feature image via YouTube
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THE PLOT THICKENS ISIS is claiming responsibility via Twitter for the Russian plane crash that killed 224 people. The pilot of the Russian plane had reported some difficulty before the crash so the claim by ISIS is curious at best. They also released supposed video of the plane crashing (see below). Please pray for the loved ones of the 224 people who died in this horrible crash. ISIS has claimed responsibility for destroying a Russian passenger jet in response to Vladimir Putin s decision to bomb Jihadi targets in Syria. The aircraft, which had 200 adult passengers, 17 children and seven crew crashed less than 25 minutes after it took off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Irish-owned aircraft was leased by a Russian airline. It crashed in the Hassana area, south of Arish. Security forces discovered the crash wreckage in a remote mountainous area in a region containing many ISIS-affiliated terrorists. VIDEO RELEASED BY ISIS: READ MORE: DAILY MAIL
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U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday urged fellow Republicans to back the party’s healthcare bill, promising additional actions to address conservatives’ concerns while allowing “tweaks” to the current measure. “This is the closest we’ve been to repealing and replacing Obamacare and ... it’s the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare,” Ryan told a news conference, adding that additional health-related legislation will move separately.
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Europe must make clear to the United States that quitting the Paris climate agreement is not a straightforward process, and that fully leaving the deal will take years, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday. “Europe’s duty is to say: it’s not like that,” Juncker told a student conference on the future of Europe organized by the German employers’ association BDA. “The Americans can’t just leave the climate protection agreement. Mr. Trump believes that because he doesn’t know the details.” In reality, it would take several years for the U.S. to extricate itself from the obligations that flow from having signed the agreement, the head of the European Union’s executive arm added.
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Linguistics professor and political commentator Noam Chomsky has come out with a shocking statement about the Republican party. We ve all known that Republicans are pretty much the scum of the earth today, but Chomsky warns they are the most dangerous organization in human history. During an interview with BBC s Newsnight Wednesday with host Evan Davis, Mr. Chomsky quickly addressed the Republican Party, saying that they are worse than the Islamic State terrorist group or anyone else who have caused millions of casualties during the 20th century.Chomsky agreed his statement was outrageous but made it hit home when comparing the Republican part to ISIS. Is ISIS dedicated to trying to destroy the prospects for organized human existence? He went on to explain, What does it mean to say not only are we not doing anything about climate change, but we re trying to accelerate the race to the precipice? he said. It doesn t matter whether they genuinely believe it or not if the consequence of that is, let s use more fossil fuels, let s refuse to subsidize developing countries, let s eliminate regulations that reduce greenhouse gases. If that s the consequence, that s extremely dangerous. Chomsky has a real point. The rate at which the GOP is deregulating industry and ignoring the effects of climate change, the world will see levels of human suffering that have never been experienced in history.Watch the video here:
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Donald Trump s budget is all about punishing the poor while enriching himself.The whole problem with Trump keeping his various business enterprises in his family is that he can use the presidency to only support policies that help him and his family profit financially. And forget about Trump actually doing anything that would harm his own bottom line.Millions of Americans rely on housing aid to make sure they have a roof over their heads and the heads of their children.But that doesn t matter to Trump at all.You see, while Trump s budget makes massive cuts to housing and shelter programs that are designed to help the poor and the homeless, many of whom are also veterans, it protects a federal program that provides millions of dollars in subsidies paid to private landlords.According to the Washington Post,One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.Meanwhile, Trump s budget cuts the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by $7 billion. The federal program Trump personally benefits from only got cut by a mere half a percent, about $65 million.In short, while the low-income families face eviction and homelessness, Donald Trump and his family will continue drawing millions of dollars in income from the government despite owning several lavish homes, including a Trump Tower penthouse plated in gold.On top of that, Trump s healthcare bill would take healthcare away from millions of low-income families as well, which means that poor people will not have shelter or healthcare if Trump has his way.This is disgraceful and totally unethical. Clearly, Trump is designing his budget to enrich himself and his family while disregarding the needs of millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him.Americans should be outraged by this.Featured image via Mario Tama/Getty Images
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The Clampetts are at it again! As usual, the responsible gun owning population can t make it a single day without shooting or threatening to shoot someone over something nonsensical. On Saturday, one brave patriot decided that two men waiting to harvest the meat from an animal someone hit along a Montana highway were getting just a bit too greedy so he proposed a Second Amendment Solution to the problem.An elk had been hit by a car earlier in the day, and two men stopped to wait for it to die so they could grab it, take it home, and salvage the meat from its corpse. Sure, eating roadkill is something one would not expect to create an issue in 2016 but a third man apparently got a bit jealous over the bounty of road splatter.As the men waited, somehow unwilling to put the elk out of its misery, 52-year-old Kenrick Workman drove to the scene where the two men were eagerly awaiting an opportunity to have themselves some roadkill. After arguing with the gentlemen who were patiently awaiting dinner, Workman pushed one of the men and retrieved a handgun from his car. He then threatened to shoot them.The men called police, who arrested Workman on existing warrants for a DUI, resisting arrest, and assault with a firearm.The NRA regularly assures us that gun owners are exactly the people who will save us from oblivion. While they draw a distinction between good guys and bad guys with guns, the problem is that in the eyes of the NRA everyone is a good guy with a gun until they commit a crime. In other words, everyone should be trusted with a weapon until it is too late even someone who would rush out of his home to threaten people in a bizarre argument over who gets to eat the animal someone left on the side of the road.It is unclear if anyone got to eat the elk.Featured image via
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A Maryland man who is a delegate for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally shipping explosives, owning a machine gun and producing child pornography, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday. Caleb Bailey, 30, was indicted by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Wednesday. He was elected to be a delegate for Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and is still listed as one on the state’s board of elections website. Joe Cluster, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, confirmed Bailey had been indicted and told Reuters the party was asking Bailey to resign from the delegation. “I don’t know too much about him beyond what I’ve read,” said Cluster, who declined to comment further. Bailey had hundreds of illegal weapons stored in a bunker beneath his garage, including dozens of machine guns, smokeless grenades and gas canisters, along with ready-to-eat meals, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. Telephone calls and emails seeking comment from Bailey, from the Trump campaign and from the Maryland board of elections were not returned on Thursday. Trump has been working to unify the Republican party going into its presidential nominating convention in Cleveland in July. In March, a New Hampshire man who co-chaired Trump’s veterans coalition in the state was extradited to Nevada to face charges of helping organize the high-profile 2014 armed standoff with federal agents at the ranch of Cliven Bundy. The four-count indictment against Bailey alleges that he used a minor to “engage in sexually explicit conduct to produce child pornography” and illegally owned a machine gun. Authorities became aware of Bailey after he tried to ship explosives and ammunition from Maryland to Wisconsin through the U.S. mail in February, said an affidavit filed by a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Some of the types of cartridges Bailey was sending to Wisconsin are no longer used by the U.S. military because they are too dangerous, the law enforcement official said, so shipping them was “not only illegal, but posed a significant public risk.” The Wisconsin recipient is under investigation as well, according to the official. Bailey attempted to ship five such packages in total, but one broke open at the post office, prompting the facility to call law enforcement, according to the affidavit.
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Rabid, Trump-hating, anti-gun, comedian, and so-called author , Michael Ian Black took to Twitter to answer a question about how having children has changed his comedy . His answer is not what most American would expect. The comedian, who is consumed with hate for President Trump and his followers responded: They inspired all my baby rape jokes. Here is how Michael Ian Black s tweet read:Here is the actual tweet:Question I keep getting in interviews is whether having kids changed my comedy. Yes. They inspired all my baby rape jokes. Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) October 7, 2011It s not the first time Black made a joke about molesting kids. When Subway s spokesman Jared Fogel was convicted of possessing child pornography and crossing state lines to have sex with children, Black responded to a tweet about Fogel by saying (jokingly?): We used to molest kids together Black also believes the NRA is a terrorist group In light of the House passing today s gun bill, a friendly reminder that the NRA is a terrorist organization. Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) December 6, 2017Black is the author of a disgusting anti-Trump book called A Child s First Book Of Trump . If you want to check out (or review) Michael Ian Black s book, you can find it for purchase on Amazon and the Barnes and Noble website. Here is the Barnes and Noble Overview of Black s book from their website:OverviewA Child s First Book of Trump by Michael Ian Black, Marc Rosenthal A New York Times bestseller!What do you do when you spot a wild Trump in the election season? New York Times bestselling author and comedian Michael Ian Black has some sage advice for children (and all the rest of us who are scratching our heads in disbelief) in this perfectly timely parody picture book intended for adults that would be hysterical if it wasn t so true.The beasty is called an American Trump. Its skin is bright orange, its figure is plump. Its fur so complex you might get enveloped. Its hands though are, sadly, underdeveloped.The Trump is a curious creature, very often spotted in the wild, but confounding to our youngest citizens. A business mogul, reality TV host, and now political candidate? Kids (and let s be honest many adults) might have difficulty discerning just what this thing that s been dominating news coverage this election cycle is. Could he actually be real? Are those words coming out of his mouth? Why are his hands so tiny? And perhaps most importantly, what on earth do you do when you encounter an American Trump?With his signature wit and a classic picture book style, comedian Michael Ian Black introduces those unfamiliar with the Americus Trumpus to his distinguishing features and his mystifying campaign for world domination sorry President of the United States.Michael Ian Black is scheduled to appear in Boston at the Laugh House Nov. 9 11th. You can contact the Laugh House at this number and let them know how you feel about them supporting Black at their venue: (617) 725-2844Black can also be found acting with an entire cast of rabid Trump-hating liberal actors on Netflix movie: Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, and previously in Wet Hot American Summer.
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Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced an investigation has uncovered that hundreds of non-US citizens are registered to vote in the state, and dozens of them voted illegally.According to a release from Husted, 385 people who are not citizens of the United States are registered to vote in Ohio. Out of those, 82 voted in at least one election in the last year.19 of the 82 non-citizens voted in the central Ohio area. 14 of those were in Franklin County, 2 were in Delaware County and 1 each in Fairfield, Licking and Union Counties.The 303 registered voters identified as non-citizens who have not cast a ballot will be sent letters both informing them that non-citizens are not eligible to vote and requesting that they cancel their registration. A follow-up letter will be sent to any individuals that still remain on the rolls after 30 days. Any non-citizens identified that remain on the rolls after being contacted twice will then be referred to law enforcement, according to Husted. CNN S CHRIS CUOMO INTERVIEWED HUSTED IT WAS A PRETTY FAIR INTERVIEW UNTIL THE END WHEN THEY BROUGHT UP RUSSIA! Note how Husted speaks about how they need further access to reveal even more illegal voting. They need Social Security info from the feds:https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=309&v=iDhY9CP_SGoRead more: nbc4i
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Donald Trump spent his week on Twitter blasting Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, hosts of MSNBC s Morning Joe. Rather than focus on something important, like the fact that his party is trying to kick millions of people off of their health care and leave them to die, he would rather spout off about the host of a cable news show bleeding badly from a facelift. I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017 to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017He continued his attack, tweeting about Morning Joe being low-rated fake news. Refusing to let it drop, he attacked again on Saturday, writing that Scarborough is crazy and Brzezinski is as dumb as a rock. Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017But MSNBC producer Jesse Rodriguez decided to set the record straight and remind Trump that Morning Joes is currently experiencing record high ratings. Apparently, our tweeter-in-chief missed the memo that the show had MSNBC s highest rating ever in the time period in the key demographic last quarter.Just a reminder about the @Morning_Joe ratings https://t.co/N6GTH99siw Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) July 1, 2017Thanks to our viewers: Morning Joe had MSNBC s highest rating ever in the time period in the key demographic last quarter. pic.twitter.com/HL2J1SciBv Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) June 27, 2017Ironically, Trump s own ratings have been sinking lower by the day. Maybe instead of attacking women on Twitter because he thinks are mean to him on TV, he should focus on doing his job and maybe try to not embarrass himself, the office of the presidency, and our entire country on a daily basis. Just a thought.Featured image via Getty/Olivier Douliery
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Minnesota the hotbed of liberalism and diversity in the Midwest While teachers blow the whistle on the breakdown of discipline for black students in St. Paul Public Schools, a photo has emerged from an equity training that might leave some to wonder what s actually being taught to teachers.Aaron Benner, a fourth grade teacher in the district, told EAGnews about how black students are frequently not held accountable for their actions due to white privilege training for teachers and administrators. As a black man I can say that they are hurting black kids, Benner said. I ve never seen anything as idiotic as PEG. Everything we do, PEG is at the forefront. It s so comical. PEG says shouting out in class is a black cultural norm, and being on time is a white cultural thing. It s so demeaning, so condescending to black kids. If a white person were making claims like this, black people would be in an uproar. You are not doing kids any favors by making excuses for them because they are black. It s not a matter of culture if you re talking about norms that all cultures need to abide by you cannot throw things or attack your teacher, regardless of your race. Now, a source has provided photographic evidence of the tenor of some of the white privilege training being administered to St. Paul teachers.According to the source, the photo is from a training this year at Bruce Vento Elementary during a staff meeting.It features a figure wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood with the question, When do you wear the hood? The principal allegedly displayed the picture and asked the staff to sit in silence and reflect on it for 3 to 4 minutes. The source refused to elaborate out of fear of retribution.Another source said, This picture and the idea that it would be helpful in some way is totally unbelievable. An email to Scott Masini, principal of Bruce Vento, was not immediately returned.Last May, the Pioneer Press reported the St. Paul district had spent at least $1.2 million on such training from Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco-based company that conducts similar trainings in school districts across America.Last fall, the Star Tribune reported St. Paul schools inked a $246,500 contract with PEG for equity training $133,500 less than the agreement approved for 2013-14. Bruce Vento Elementary s website details the district s equity plan, which includes examining the presence and role of Whiteness. Via: EAG NewsFrom the Un-Fair Campaign which originates in Duluth, MN: This campaign is about white privilege and so these suggestions are focused on what white people can do. Use the resources listed below to learn more.Learn how historically white privilege has benefited you and other white people. Accept that you have unearned privilege and advantages write them down Start seeing/hearing the privileges and advantages you have:Below is a White Privilege video put together by the Un-Fair Campaign:
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21st Century Wire says As it turns out, we were right about the ambush, and we were right about the cover-up. After all this, the quislings at the The Oregonian are still trying to tart-up this FBI and OSP debacle by calling it a traffic stop . While forced to now admit that there was foul play on the infallible government s part, mainstream media gatekeepers are still trying to paint the incident as a traffic stop which is beyond a joke.Get ready for another government-issued magic bullet fairy tale to protect the hired guns.How long before we can call this an assassination? New findings by law enforcement officials suggest that an FBI agent on the scene of the fatal shooting of Bundy-affiliated protester LaVoy Finicum during a Jun. 26 felony stop might have fired two shots that were not reported, and agents on the scene might have disposed of bullet casings to cover them up.According to The Oregonian, investigators believe that the shots were fired approximately at the moment at which LaVoy Finicum was exiting his truck with his hands up, prior to when he appears to reach into his jacket and is shot by two Oregon State Police troopers. The above-embedded slow-motion video shows the moment at which investigators believe the shots were fired.Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson and Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norri, who investigated the incident, concluded that the Oregon State Police officers were justified in shooting Finicum, but also announced that they believe that an FBI agent took two unreported shots and then lied about it. The U.S. Department of Justice has subsequently launched a criminal investigation into the conduct of the FBI agents on the scene.The Oregonian s Les Zaitz wrote, A state trooper later described to investigators seeing two rifle casings in the area where the [FBI] agents were posted. Detectives tasked with collecting evidence didn t find the casings, police reports indicate. He added, FBI aerial surveillance video shows that before the detectives could get there, the FBI agents searched the area with flashlights and then huddled, according to law enforcement sources who have seen the video. The group then broke and one agent appeared to bend over twice and pick up something near where the two shots likely were taken. Police reports indicate that detectives showed up to collect evidence around 90 minutes after the moment in the surveillance video in which the FBI agent appeared to pick items up from the ground.All of the FBI agents on the scene that day claimed that they did not take any shots. A state trooper said he had fired three shots while the truck was speeding towards police and two more at Finicum as he was reaching into his jacket after he had exited the vehicle. Police inventory records show that the trooper was missing five rounds after the incident, apparently confirming his story.A fourth bullet hole in the truck came from a different angle of trajectory suggesting that an FBI agent had fired the shot. Investigators believe a second shot, which missed Finicum and did not strike the truck, was also fired by an FBI agent Continue this story at Truth In MediaREAD MORE OREGON STANDOFF NEWS: 21st Century Wire Oregon Files
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As if firing FBI Director James Comey wasn t stupid enough, Trump has gone and driven two more nails into his own coffin this evening. First, he hired an outside law firm to send a certified letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that heard testimony from James Clapper and Sally Yates on May 8, regarding the Russia probe.Second, he s meeting with Vladimir Putin s top diplomat to the U.S., Sergey Lavrov, in the White House Wednesday morning. The Associated Press says that this could be a signal that our relationship with Russia is improving again, but in the wake of the clusterfuck that was Trump s entire Tuesday, this does not look good at all.First, the law firm and the letter. Trump wants the letter to Sen. Graham to claim that he has no connections to Russia.Seriously.He s hired an outside law firm to draft and send a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham claiming that he has no connections business or otherwise to Russia. Because obviously.But wait! This move achieves the impossible by getting even more ridiculous than that! Sean Spicer briefed the White House press corps on this development, and said: The president, obviously, was aware of Senator Graham s suggestion after he made it today and he s fine with that. He has no business in Russia. He has no connections to Russia. So he welcomes that.In fact, he is already charged a leading law firm in Washington, D.C., to send a certified letter to Senator Graham to that point that he has no connections to Russia. If he knows he s got no connections at all to Russia, and he knows he s completely innocent of all these allegations, then why hire an outside law firm to send a letter to Sen. Graham reiterating that? That s not what someone who s sure of their innocence does.Now, his meeting with Lavrov is taking place after Lavrov meets with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Both meetings will supposedly focus on stabilizing Syria the Trump administration seems to think that we need to work with Russia to accomplish anything there. But, as the AP notes in their story: [T]he meeting will be impossible to separate from the Trump administration s unfolding political drama in Washington, where FBI and congressional investigations are looking into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and the Kremlin related to last year s presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies accuse Moscow of meddling to help Trump s chances of victory. That, combined with this letter he s sending to Sen. Graham (and we have to wonder exactly how such a letter is going to prove that he s got no connections to Russia at all), just looks really, really bad. In fact, it s starting to look like the world is about to come crashing down around him.Featured image by Olivier Douliery Pool via Getty Images
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Remember Joni Ernst? Conservatives were so excited to see her win a Senate seat in Iowa. You may be surprised to see who this patriot supported with her vote(below).Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015Senate Vote 218 Advances Trade Promotion AuthorityResult: Cloture Motion Agreed to by a margin of 0 votes Date of Vote: June 23, 2015 Time of Vote: 11:04 a.m. Roll Call Number: 218 Yes Votes (60) Lamar Alexander R TN Kelly Ayotte R NH John Barrasso R WY Michael Bennet D CO Roy Blunt R MO John Boozman R AR Richard M. Burr R NC Maria Cantwell D WA Shelley Moore Capito R WV Thomas R. Carper D DE Bill Cassidy R LA Daniel Coats R IN Thad Cochran R MS Christopher A. Coons D DE John Cornyn R TX Tom Cotton R AR Michael D. Crapo R ID Steve Daines R MT Michael B. Enzi R WY Joni Ernst R IA Dianne Feinstein D CA Deb Fischer R NE Jeff Flake R AZ Cory Gardner R CO Lindsey Graham R SC Charles E. Grassley R IA Orrin G. Hatch R UT Heidi Heitkamp D ND Dean Heller R NV John Hoeven R ND James M. Inhofe R OK Johnny Isakson R GA Ron Johnson R WI Tim Kaine D VA Mark Steven Kirk R IL James Lankford R OK John McCain R AZ Claire McCaskill D MO Mitch McConnell R KY Jerry Moran R KS Lisa Murkowski R AK Patty Murray D WA Bill Nelson D FL David Perdue R GA Rob Portman R OH Jim Risch R ID Pat Roberts R KS Mike Rounds R SD Marco Rubio R FL Ben Sasse R NE Tim Scott R SC Jeanne Shaheen D NH Dan Sullivan R AK John Thune R SD Thom Tillis R NC Patrick J. Toomey R PA David Vitter R LA Mark Warner D VA Roger Wicker R MS Ron Wyden D ORNo Votes (37) Tammy Baldwin D WI Richard Blumenthal D CT Cory Booker D NJ Barbara Boxer D CA Sherrod Brown D OH Benjamin L. Cardin D MD Bob Casey D PA Susan Collins R ME Ted Cruz R TX Joe Donnelly D IN Richard J. Durbin D IL Al Franken D MN Kirsten E. Gillibrand D NY Martin Heinrich D NM Mazie K. Hirono D HI Angus King I ME Amy Klobuchar D MN Patrick J. Leahy D VT Joe Manchin III D WV Edward J. Markey D MA Jeff Merkley D OR Barbara A. Mikulski D MD Christopher S. Murphy D CT Rand Paul R KY Gary Peters D MI Jack Reed D RI Harry Reid D NV Bernard Sanders I VT Brian Schatz D HI Charles E. Schumer D NY Jeff Sessions R AL Richard C. Shelby R AL Debbie Stabenow D MI Jon Tester D MT Tom Udall D NM Elizabeth Warren D MA Sheldon Whitehouse D RIDid Not Vote (3) Bob Corker R TN Mike Lee R UT Robert Menendez D NJVia: NYT s
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This election is already the nastiest one on record in American political history. The aftermath could end up being the bloodiest if Trump supporters follow through on their threats. If she s in office, I hope we can start a coup, Trump supporter Dan Bowman declared at a rally earlier this month. She should be in prison or shot. That s how I feel about it. We re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that s what it takes. There s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that s what it s going to take I would do whatever I can for my country. Bowman is not alone either. Many Trump supporters are simply waiting for Trump to give the word on Election Day, like this person who aimed a gun at Hillary while she was on television during the debate.This all stems from Trump s assertion that the election is rigged for Hillary Clinton and that Second Amendment people should do something to stop her.And right-wing radio hosts like Joe Walsh are only throwing gas on the fire. November 8th, I m voting for Trump, the disgraced former Tea Party lawmaker wrote on Twitter before adding, On November 9th, if Trump loses, I m grabbing my musket. You in? On November 8th, I m voting for Trump.On November 9th, if Trump loses, I m grabbing my musket.You in? Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016During an interview with CNN on Friday, Walsh claimed that he was merely calling for civil disobedience. If I wanted people to take up arms, why would I recommend people take up an antique like a musket? Walsh told Chris Cuomo. I mean, seriously, in 2016 I want people to go out and find a musket, grab their musket? That s just silly. But that doesn t explain why he said everyone should grab their guns if Trump loses. A musket is, in fact, a gun and definitely implies that people should grab their guns.In fact, Walsh doesn t even care if Trump loses fair and square, he still wants people to revolt against the government with their guns. If she wins fair and square, then the anger that a lot of Americans have toward our political system and she s part of that we ve got to double down and triple down and do whatever we can to defend our freedom. That phrase, grab your musket, is a phrase I ve used probably a hundred times in the last two or three years. Cuomo didn t let Walsh get away with trying to spin his own words, however. The CNN host reminded Walsh of another tweet he posted in the wake of the killing of police officers in Dallas. Words matter, context matters, Cuomo pointed out. You say, This is now war, watch out Obama, watch out Black Lives Matter punks, real America s coming after you. You only take this one way you take it provocatively. Trump is the master of this, and you have to now argue whether that s a good thing or a bad thing. You tell me why it s good. Walsh then dropped his civil disobedience spin and went straight to talking about grabbing guns and going to war against the federal government, which would be treason. Look, when I say, grab your musket, man, and let s go to war if Hillary wins, the Republican Party s going to be in our sights. Because all these people are pissed off again at what we believe, Chris, is a corrupt political system. Here s the video via Twitter.Former Rep. Joe Walsh: When I said grab your musket if Trump loses, I meant we need to defend our freedom https://t.co/lgJho3xleM CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 28, 2016Trump supporters are dangerous threats to public safety and our democracy. This nation s government needs to be prepared for the strong possibility that right-wing nuts will attempt a bloody coup or commit acts of violence wherever they are in the country in retaliation of a Hillary victory. That means President Obama should put the military and National Guard on standby. If these idiots want a war, let s see how they do against professionals who have actually been in one.Featured Image: Screenshot
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Gunmen in southwestern Pakistan killed four members of a Shi ite Muslim Hazara family, including a 12-year-old boy, on Sunday, in the latest sectarian attack on the minority community, a senior police official said. Two men on a motorcycle opened fire on a family of eight while they at a filling station some 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of Quetta, the capital of Pakistan s Baluchistan province. Aside from those killed, two others were wounded. Two female members of the family were unscathed, having remained in their vehicle. This was a sectarian attack, senior police officer Tanveer Shah told Reuters, adding that no group has claimed responsibility for the shooting. Hazaras are frequently targeted by Taliban and Islamic State militants, and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many Hazaras fled to Pakistan during decades of conflict in neighboring Afghanistan, and nearly half a million now live in and around Quetta. In 2013, three separate bombings killed over 200 people in Hazara neighborhoods, raising international awareness of the plight of the community. More than 20 Hazaras have been killed in similar shootings in Baluchistan in the past two years, police say. The ongoing violence in the province has fueled concern about security for projects in the $57-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan s southern deep-water port of Gwadar.
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We already know that the citizens of Harney County do not want the Bundy militia around, but neither should the rest of us. Their stupidity is costing us a fortune.While it may seem that occupying an empty, powerless wildlife refuge during the harsh Oregon winter would be an exercise in harmless stupidity, a fuller picture is emerging that reveals the Bundys and their fellow anti-government extremists are costing America hundreds of thousands of dollars a week in tax money.The occupation of the refuge is still centered around a single building, the amount of extremists with guns marching around and threatening to shoot cops has meant nearby buildings have also had to be evacuated. The employees have been placed on paid leave for their own safety. This means that while protesting the government, the militia has caused a costly shutdown of operations that actually wastes more money than it saves.Government Executive did some digging and found that the total amount of money being paid out to employees that can no longer do their job without risk being caught in the crossfire of this ill conceived insurrection is staggering.Nearly 120 permanent and seasonal employees report to BLM s district office in Burns, Ore., nearly all of whom are now on paid administrative leave.The salaries of those workers total approximately $117,000 per week, according to a BLM spokesman. The office has already been closed for more than one week. About 50 more employees work at the refuge center or the Forest Service s Emigrant Creek Ranger District office, many of whom are also on paid leave.An official at the Harney County, Ore., joint information center which is handling inquiries on the situation who refused to be identified due to security threats, said federal officials don t have a cost estimate yet on the other two facility closures, noting they are dealing with a fluid situation. In other words, the expenses are only getting worse as the siege continues and the tension mounts.Hundreds of thousands of dollars have already been lost and the militia is only growing more emboldened. On January 8, the Harney County Sheriff s Department announced that negotiations have all but fallen apart and the militia appears to have dug in for the long haul.Statement from Sheriff Ward: pic.twitter.com/6fz0OenM4d Harney Cty. Sheriff (@HarneyCoSheriff) January 8, 2016While the militia has been dismissed by some as clowns (and they are), they are still dangerous. But even fiscal conservatives should have a problem with this approach. They are expensive dangerous clowns. Every day they stay in Oregon and continue to make threats, the total damage caused by their actions continues to tick upwards.Feature image via YouTube screengrab
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Qatar s foreign minister on Friday criticized reckless leadership in the Gulf for a number of crises including the Gulf rift and Lebanon, taking apparent aim at Saudi Arabia. The diplomatic crisis, in which Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have boycotted Qatar, has been brewing since the summer after the four countries cut diplomatic, transport and trade ties with Qatar, accusing it of financing terrorism. Doha denies the charges. Saudi Arabia and its allies are fighting for sway across the region against a bloc led by Iran, which includes the heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite Hezbollah group. Attention on the dispute has shifted recently especially in the wake of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s shock resignation announcement this month while in Saudi Arabia. Hariri s abrupt resignation and his continued stay in Riyadh have caused fears over Lebanon s stability and thrust it into the bitter rivalry between Riyadh and Iran. Saudi Arabia and Hariri - whom Riyadh backs - say his movements are not restricted. Riyadh also denies accusations it forced Hariri to resign. We see a pattern of irresponsibility and a reckless leadership in the region which is just trying to bully countries into submission, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in Washington. What we are witnessing now in the region ... it s something we just witness(ed) in recent history, bullying small countries into submission. Exactly what happened to Qatar six months ago is happening now to Lebanon. The leadership in Saudi Arabia and the UAE need to understand ... there is no right for any country to interfere in other countries affairs, he told a group of reporters. Asked to comment on those remarks, the Saudi Embassy in Washington s spokeswoman, Fatimah Baeshen, said: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia s foreign policy has always been premised on regional stability, peace, and security. The Kingdom does not interfere with its neighbors domestic affairs. Riyadh says Qatar backs terrorism and cozies up to Iran. Qatar rejects the accusation and says it is being punished for straying from its neighbors backing for authoritarian rulers. Since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rose to power less than three years ago, Riyadh has struck a more aggressive posture towards Iran, launching a war in Yemen, leading the boycott of neighboring Qatar, and ratcheting up its rhetoric against Hezbollah. U.S. efforts to bring an end to the dispute have yet to bear fruit. Qatar hosts the largest U.S. air base in the region which is used in the international coalition fighting Islamic State. Thani said Qatar s Boeing C-17 transport aircraft, used by Doha for logistical support within the coalition, were forced to fly over Iran given that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have blocked Qatari planes from flying over their airspace. So if we imagine that any emergency will happen, those C-17 planes which might have U.S. troops will land in Iran. So this is the impact of this blockade ... on the global coalition and on U.S. military operations there, Thani said. A spokesman for the U.S. Air Forces Central Command said the Qataris have flown nearly 30 mobility missions in support of Coalition operations to defeat ISIS, moving more than a million pounds of cargo, including parts and supplies since Doha recommitted its C-17 fleet to Operation Inherent Resolve in July. At this time, we are aware of no Qatari C-17 flights having traversed Iranian airspace while carrying Coalition cargo, Lt. Colonel Damien Pickart told Reuters.
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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said he is pushing to extend expiring healthcare benefits for retired coal miners by including a provision in a spending bill Congress hopes to pass this week. In a statement on the Senate floor, McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said that in conversations with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan he has insisted that the Continuing Resolution include “a provision to address that issue so these retirees don’t lose their healthcare benefit at the end of this year.” The fate of the United Mine Workers’ health care and pension funds is up in the air as Congress weighs legislation to provide financial support for the soon-expiring benefits, which are at risk of default as coal companies grapple with bankruptcies. Although the Senate Finance Committee in September passed a bill to provide funding for those benefits senior lawmakers are looking for ways to include the provision in the spending bill that has to be passed before existing government funding expires on Dec. 9. Democratic Senators of coal-producing states - Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Mark Warner of Virginia and Joe Manchin of West Virginia - said they would block must-pass legislation until Congress takes action on the so-called Miners Protection Act. “There’s going to be 16,500 retired miners that are losing their healthcare benefits. There will be another 4,000 the first of next year,” said Manchin on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “We’re fighting for those people that we promised, that we believe in, that have powered this nation, that have given us the country we have and now we’re turning our backs on them,” Manchin said. Manchin is due to meet with President-elect Donald Trump later this week to discuss a potential role in the Republican’s Cabinet. Trump had repeatedly promised on the campaign trail to put coal miners back to work. His spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s views on protecting miners’ pensions and health care benefits. Grassroots group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth plan to deliver a 10,000 signature petition to McConnell Tuesday to call on him to pass the Miners Protection Act, as well as RECLAIM, a bill that would offer financial support to help coal communities diversify their economies, before Congress leaves for recess.
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Apparently, original ideas are a liability in the Donald Trump administration. Nearly as many Trumpsters have been accused of plagiarism as weeks he s held in office. Okay, that s a slight exaggeration, but Neil Gorsuch, the man who s about to be rammed into a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, appears to have plagiarized some of his writing.We should have known when Trump s own wife Melania plagiarized part of her Republican National Convention speech from Michelle Obama.Once in office, Trump picked Monica Crowley to head the National Security Council. You got it, she plagiarized her Ph.D. dissertation and the book she published in 2012.Crowley was forced to drop out of contention, but Betsy DeVos is Trump s education secretary and in a move that would get a child kicked out of school, she plagiarized part of the questionnaire she filled out to get the job. Now, it appears, Trump s pick for the Supreme Court is also guilty of plagiarism.Politico obtained several documents that showed several passages of Gorsuch s 2006 book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, were nearly identical to a 1984 article in the Indiana Law Journal. There were also several other incidents.In the most striking example, Gorsuch, in his book, appears to duplicate sentences from an Indiana Law Journal article written by Abigail Lawlis Kuzma without attributing her. Instead, he uses the same sources that Kuzma used: A 1982 Indiana court ruling that was later sealed, a well-known pediatrics textbook, Rudolph s Pediatrics, and a 1983 article in the Bloomington Sunday Herald.Politico reports on documents showing that SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch plagiarized the work of others. Behold: https://t.co/XQnCmd62Ia pic.twitter.com/ooc2TkG2bA Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) April 5, 2017There s more. Read the Politico article for all the instances.The White House is calling the accusations false: This false attack has been strongly refuted by highly-regarded academic experts, including those who reviewed, professionally examined, and edited Judge Gorsuch s scholarly writings, and even the author of the main piece cited in the false attack, said White House spokesman Steven Cheung. There is only one explanation for this baseless, last-second smear of Judge Gorsuch: those desperate to justify the unprecedented filibuster of a well-qualified and mainstream nominee to the Supreme Court. Experts disagree with the White House: Each of the individual incidents constitutes a violation of academic ethics. I ve never seen a college plagiarism code that this would not be in violation of, said Rebecca Moore Howard, a Syracuse University professor who has written extensively on the issue.Not that it should make much of a difference. Senate Republicans are determined to get him through, even if it means changing the rules to require a simple majority.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature is moving to strip powers from the state’s incoming governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, three weeks before he is to succeed a Republican in the executive mansion. Lawmakers on Thursday began debating a bill to require Senate confirmation for cabinet appointments, reduce by 1,200 the number of state employees the governor can hire and fire at will, and eliminate the governor’s power to pick University of North Carolina trustees. The legislation and related bills came as a surprise, filed late on Wednesday on the heels of a special “lame duck” session of the General Assembly called to consider relief for Hurricane Matthew victims. Cooper, to be sworn in on Jan. 7 after defeating incumbent Republican Pat McCrory by 10,000 votes last month, said the proposals are aimed at holding him back. “Most people might think that this is a partisan power grab, but it is really more ominous,” Cooper said at a news conference in Raleigh on Thursday. “This is about thwarting the governor’s ability to move us forward on education and healthcare and clean air and water.” Cooper, currently state attorney general, said his office is reviewing the proposals and will sue if lawmakers approve any measures he believes are unconstitutional. McCrory’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would sign the legislation. Republican lawmakers called the changes justified by the state’s constitution. Senate confirmation hearings were held earlier in the state’s history, they said. “This bill is a good step forward in reasserting legislative authority vested by the constitution and entrusted to the members of this body,” Representative David Lewis, a Republican and a sponsor of the bill, said during a debate on Thursday. A House of Representatives committee, in an unrecorded voice vote, advanced the bill on Thursday, as about 100 people gathered at the legislature to demonstrate against the proposals. The Senate debated a separate measure that would weaken the governor’s control over the state elections board, changing it from a five-member panel appointed by the governor to an eight-member panel with only half the members appointed by him. Protesters who chanted “You work for us” and other slogans were cleared out of the Senate chamber after legislative leaders said they were disrupting debate on the bill. North Carolina, the ninth most-populous U.S. state, has been roiled by sharp political divisions. The state voted for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and then turned to the right, electing McCrory in 2012 and Republican super-majorities in its state legislature. The state became a target of boycotts by companies, musicians and sports leagues after it passed a law this year restricting bathroom access for transgender people in government buildings and public schools.
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Russia is concerned that Japan is allowing Washington to use its territory as a base for a U.S. military build-up in north Asia under the pretext of countering North Korea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. His remarks came at a joint press conference with his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, after talks between the two men in Moscow, and prompted Kono to defend Japan s stance toward North Korea and its ties with the United States. Japan had wanted to focus on resolving a seven-decade old territorial dispute between the countries but Lavrov s comments on North Korea cast a shadow over the meeting. We are expressing deep concern, with facts to back it up, that Japan along with South Korea is becoming a territory for the deployment of elements of the U.S. global missile defense system which is being rolled out in that region under the pretext of the North Korea threat, Lavrov said. We have no problems directly with Japan, we do not see risks there. We see risks because of the proliferation of a global U.S. missile defense system on the territory of countries that neighbor Russia, including Japan. He said that in the past few weeks the United States had conducted military exercises in the region and adopted additional sanctions despite the absence of provocation from Pyongyang. We are alarmed that in the last two months when North Korea conducted no tests or rocket launches, it seemed that Washington was not happy about that, and tried to do things that would irritate and provoke Pyongyang, Lavrov said. Referring to U.S. officials, he said: It s as if they are hoping that they (the North Koreans) will lash out again, and then it would be possible to engage in military options. As you know, the U.S. leadership has said many times that all options are on the table, including military options, and we note that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a meeting with President Trump in early November, said that he supports the American position 100 percent, Lavrov said. Japanese Foreign Minister Kono, after listening to Lavrov s remarks, responded that Japan and its allies were not seeking regime change in North Korea. He said Tokyo had to act to defend itself after Pyongyang test-fired missiles which flew over Japan s territory. This is unprecedented, the most important and most pressing threat not just to Japan and Russia but to the international community as a whole. It s absolutely unacceptable, Kono said, speaking through an interpreter. We believe it s necessary to use all possible means and to increase the pressure on North Korea as much as possible to stop its nuclear program and the rocket launches, he said. Japan welcomes the position of the United States, which is that to protect Japan and South Korea, all means of deterrence will be used. Earlier this year, Japan s Abe expressed hope of a breakthrough in Tokyo s dispute with Moscow over a group of islands in the Pacific, but that prospect has now dimmed. The islands are known in Japan as the northern territories and in Russia as the Kurile islands. At the end of World War Two, Soviet forces took control over the islands from Japan. The island dispute has meant that Moscow and Tokyo have still not signed a formal peace agreement to end war-time hostilities. Lavrov and Kono said at their talks that they had made progress on measures to boost Russian-Japanese economic cooperation on the islands, and to ease access for Japanese people wanting to visit. They offered no details about any progress on resolving the core of the dispute, about who has sovereignty over the islands.
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Team Trump has reportedly been involved in a heated battle with Walt Disney World over the speech given by the president s robotic likeness at Disney s The Hall of Presidents exhibit.A source told Vice that there has been a back-and-forth with Trump s aides and Disney. Trump s team has insisted that they will write the speech given by the president s robot at the attraction.The source explained to Vice, When Disney tried to get this process started earlier this year, Trump s people said, We ll be writing the speech that the president s audio-animatronic figure will be saying.' For the last two decades, a robot of the current president gives a speech at the end of the attraction. In the past, Disney employees have worked together with presidential teams to write appropriate addresses. The source explained to Vice that: The Imagineers [the researchers and developers behind Disney s theme park attractions] tried to point out that they re typically involved with this process. That they directly collaborated with Clinton, Bush, and Obama s people when it came to figuring out what the president s audio-animatronic figure would say. Trump s people said, No. We re writing this speech. You guys have no input on this.' Vice s source says that Disney is afraid of a park boycott of Trump decided to take his disagreement out to Twitter. They d particularly like to avoid him tweeting about this situation. It would most likely result in a call for conservatives to boycott Walt Disney World, which is the company s biggest fear. Disney has denied the report and insists they are working with the White House to schedule a recording session.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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