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Iranian Military Commander Claims Rogue Nation Sending Elite Fighter’s to Infiltrate the US and Europe | A military commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has reportedly told the country’s state controlled media that Iran will soon be sending elite forces into the United States and Europe in an effort to thwart potential plots against the rogue Islamic Republic.
As the Washington Free Beacon has reported, the commander stated that at the direction of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the IRGC will soon send their elite forces to operate in both the US and Europe under the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime.
“The IRGC is [the] strong guardian of the Islamic Republic… The Fedayeen of Velayat [fighting force] are under the order of Iran’s Supreme leader. Defending and protecting the Velayat [the Supreme Leader] has no border and limit.” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison stated.
Abnoush’s provocative comments come at a time where Iran is actively upgrading their military hardware and attempting to strengthen their presence throughout the Middle East with funds provided by the Obama Administration.
Via Washington Free Beacon
“The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran’s Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC.
Iranian military and government officials have continued to advocate violence against the U.S. and its allies, despite the nuclear deal and several secret side agreements that gave Iran $1.7 billion in cash.
Iran accuses the U.S. of violating its end of the agreement by not helping the Islamic Republic gain further access to international banks and other markets.
“Our enemies have several projects to destroy our Islamic revolution, and have waged three wars against us to execute their plans against our Islamic Republic,” Abnoush said. “The IRGC has defeated enemies in several fronts. The enemy surrendered and accepted to negotiate with us.”
“And now all of our problems are being solved and our country is becoming stronger in all fronts. Some believe the holy defense ended,” the military leader added. “They are wrong; the holy defense continues, and today, it is more complicated than before.”
Another source who advises congressional leaders on Iran sanctions issues told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is blocking Congress from taking action to stop this type of infiltration by Iranian forces.
“Iran is ideologically, politically, and militarily committed to exporting the Islamic revolution through terrorism, which is why even the Obama administration says they’re the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” the source said. “Congress wants to act, but Obama officials keep saying that new laws are unnecessary because the U.S. has enough tools to block Iranian terror expansion. Instead of using those tools, though, they’re sending Iran billions of dollars in cash while Iran plants terror cells in Europe and here at home.”
| 1real |
Bad Jewish Losers Lament Trump’s Victory on BBC Newsnight | By Francis Carr Begbie
ERIC CANTOR , Republican politician, and LISSA MUSCATINE, Hillary Clinton’s former speech writer, were two of the many Jews given free rein to reflect on Donald Trump a few days ago before millions of BBC viewers.
“In the end one could not help noticing one interesting if rather awkward fact about that edition of BBC Newsnight. The editor, two out of three of the main presenters, and all seven of the main interviewees in Washington and London were JEWISH. Not bad for a group said to represent less than 0.4% of the British population.” — Francis Carr Begbie
You might think that after a disaster as humiliating as the election of Donald Trump that our anointed elites would take this opportunity for a bit of humility — that this would be an opportunity for introspection and some soul-searching self-reflection.
Well, the good news is that you would be wrong. For this would involve a level of self-awareness far beyond our narcissistic elites. All around they are demonstrating a complete inability to understand the forces behind their humiliation at the hands of a man they dismissed as a joke from day one and whose demise they predicted every inch of the way.
This self-deception was wonderfully on display in an immediate post-election edition of the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight , broadcast to the nation the day after and including a number of American interviewees. In a specially extended version of the show, programme editor Ian Katz dispatched Emily Maitlis , Mark Urban and David Grossman to find answers on the day after the result.
In both London and Washington a stellar line up of the finest brains from the media and the academy were assembled to help them chew it over.
Entertainingly, the vanity, narcissism and entitlement of the BBC presenter-ocracy was fully on view, proud and undented. To the accompaniment of the Beatles tune “Fool on the Hill” anchor Emily Maitlis could barely contain her rage and sputtered about how “a game show host and someone who owned a beauty pageant” could become president.
Populism, uprising, nationalism versus globalism; as with former President Bush’s puzzlement over “the vision thing,” they seemed to be able to mouth the words but comprehension was lacking.
With every guest, Emily Maitlis showed that old habits die hard or not at all. She dripped condescension from the outset, snapping at immigration traitor , pro-Israel fanatic former US Congressman Eric Cantor who was perhaps trying to redeem himself given the new winds in the Republican Party: “We talked about the vulgarity of this man … This is a man who talked of grabbing women by the pussy. Is that a man you are proud [of]?” An angry school teacher furious with the behaviour of her immature, irresponsible charges.
Easily the funniest moment in the programme came during a virtuoso splenetic performance from historian Simon Schama who seemed to think it was Germany in 1933 all over again. Race, he said, was more important factor in the election than the economic arguments. SIMON SCHAMA, ASHKENAZI JEW
Wriggling in his seat, as if it was subjected to regular electric shocks, he said.
“It is really weird to me how we pussyfoot around the toxic malodorous element of race which has played an important part of this. Anti-semitism has long been part of populism… [beginning] in the early twentieth century. Even today there were sinister references by the likes of senator Jeff Sessions to George Soros who was singled out as a particularly odious figure in this international banking conspiracy.”
(To which many people in the Alt Right might have replied: “couldn’t have put it better myself.”)
Schama almost lost it completely when co-interviewee and neocon stalwart Melanie Phillips told him to calm down a bit.
“It is not a moment for calm, it is not a moment for calm.” he screeched. MELANIE PHILLIPS, ASHKENZI JEW AND VIRULENT ZIONIST
Melanie knows very well what these anti-semitic dog whistles are like. This too is part of populism. We are facing a cataclysmic moment. Melanie is right to say it is a populist revolt. It is nothing to do with conservative republican politics. It amuses me to hear that Eric Cantor imagines that things are going to go on as they always did in the Republican party … [that they] will restrain Donald Trump. They won’t. George Washington warned about despotism and that is what we are facing.
Melanie Phillips, for her part, agreed the most important problem was anti-Semitism, but she saw it coming from a completely different quarter.
There are noxious elements around. … Clearly some of the people supporting Trump are anti-semitic and racists but that is also true of people on the left. There is no sign that he (Trump) personally is anti-semitic or racist. People call people racist when they want to restrict as he does, legal immigration. Anti-semitism is now at record levels at liberal universities overseen by liberal professors and liberal vice chancellors.
Studio presenter Evan Davies muttered about how they had to give up something to people worried about the loss of their traditional societies and really act on illegal immigration. But Schama wasn’t listening. He was worried about David Duke.
Donald Trump re-tweeted a neo-Nazi tweet. It is not a coincidence that David Duke, KKK Imperial Wizard, is exhilarated and rejoicing with the advent of Trump who is his man. We will see race crimes, hate crimes explode now. We will have a far-right supreme court which will reverse Roe [v.] Wade.
As a glimpse into the fevered imagination of at least one strongly identifying Jew, it could not have been more revealing. Before Schama actually self-detonated on air, the programme moved on to more heavyweights.
Neoconservative think tanker Danielle Pletka , senior vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, complained she had no idea what Trump’s policies were. Which was not very helpful.
Mary Kaldor , professor of global governance at the London School of Economics, complained that Trump was “wildly unpredictable” in his stated foreign policies. “He says ‘I love Israel,’ then he says he wants to be neutral between Israel and Palestine.” For her the real danger seemed to be peace. Or as she framed it, Trump getting friendly with Putin to create an “alliance of authoritarian right wing leaders.”
But it was the Pulitzer prize-winning historian of communism Anne Applebaum who painted the most apocalyptic scenario. Applebaum, who has never seen a “Deep State” she didn’t like, said that Trump had been disdainful for NATO and cannot understand why America needs to be in Europe. His admiration for Vladimir Putin as an ideal was very worrying. ANNE APPLEBAUM . . . ANOTHER ASHKENAZI JEW
Europeans need to start from the assumption that United States is not a reliable partner. We need to keep repeating that until it sinks into people’s brains.
She really said that.
Applebaum said Trump sees no need for a relationship with the UK. He said that Trump, who has spent millions developing his two golf courses, which include Turnberry, is, apparently, “not an anglophile and has no interest in Britain. Hillary Clinton does.” Surely, asked presenter Grossman, the Brexit referendum puts Britain and the USA on the same page? Applebaum: “No, no, no.”
Both these women think it makes the election of Marie le pen more likely. Likely correct, and thank god for that!
Alan Greenspan , former chairman of the Fed, was wheeled on to say that he, a lifelong Republican had not voted. He also explained that Trump would not be able to get rid of the current Federal Reserve Bank chair Janet Yellen without a complicated impeachment process.
Earlier in the show, Maitlis tried to get Republican Eric Cantor to condemn Trump but got no change. Cantor responded lamely about Trump’s promise to build a border wall. “I’m not so sure that is going to happen” — showing (not surprisingly) that he remains an immigration traitor at heart. And he continues to show his allegiance to Israel. Cantor said he was less interested in Trump’s immigration policies than his Middle East policies, including his intention to get rid of ISIS.
Lissa Muscatine , Hillary’s former speech writer, assured Maitlis that her old college friend had bounced back as strong as ever.
Elsewhere David Grossman did a breakdown of the vote to show that women and Hispanics had leaned to Trump in far greater numbers that anyone thought possible. (In fact, a solid majority of White women voted for Trump, proving Schama right: Trump voters are racists.) In the end one could not help noticing one interesting if rather awkward fact about that edition of BBC Newsnight . The editor, two out of three of the main presenters, and all seven of the main interviewees in Washington and London were Jewish. Not bad for a group said to represent less than 0.4% of the British population.
I should note, however, that there were a smattering of Vox pop style three-second sound-bite interviewees of men in baseball hats celebrating in bars and so on. There was also an abortive panel of a Hispanic man, black woman and Jewish New York Times reporter, and there was a Latvian politician down the line. But otherwise it was an extremely Kosher programme.
The BBC operates one of the most aggressive affirmative action policies in the Western world. In keeping with its position as the Vatican of political correctness, a finger is kept on the scales of employment opportunity to ensure that jobs are skewed heavily for favoured groups.
But given that self-awareness is one area where the elites are notably deficient, it might be s good idea to remind them of the massive Jewish overrepresentation on display here. This is one very privileged group indeed. Overrepresented and overprivileged, one might say. Like this? Share it now. | 1real |
Rosie O’Donnell Thinks Martial Law is in Order to Prevent a Trump Presidency | 21st Century Wire says Arguably irrelevant Hollywood personality, Rosie O Donnell has taken to social media to support the concept of the US Government imposing Martial Law on the nation to avoid a Trump presidency. The Hollywood personality, who by all accounts of her own should be in Canada by now, seems to have very little understanding of not only politics, but of the law as well. She, in caps-lock Tweet shouting, said that the inauguration should be delayed under martial law until Trump is cleared of all charges. Obviously she s referring to the dossier that was discredited as a fake within hours of its release by BuzzFeed and subsequent republication by many left leaning mainstream media outlets. Charges implies a legal case yet there was no legal case, no victim, no crime, nothing of substance at all because it was a fake document.Have a look at her whacky, ill fated attempts at affecting the political dialog on her social media output.I FULLY SUPPORT IMPOSING MARTIAL LAW DELAYING THE INAUGURATION UNTIL TRUMP IS "CLEARED" OF ALL CHARGES https://t.co/fUn8FZ8RTj ROSIE (@Rosie) January 12, 2017As though the high horsed Hollywood liberal echo chamber didn t get enough with the caps-locked illogical rant above, she followed with yet another cry to interrupt a legitimately elected US political official with a military take over and suspension of constitutional rights.delay the day do not swear him in until it is investigated for the love of god america we must stop the inaugruation @frankielucy ROSIE (@Rosie) January 12, 2017As the final days of the Obama administration tick away we continue to bear witness to many Hollywood celebs throwing tantrums and wearing their ignorance of political realities on their sleeves (and social media feeds.) Rosie is one of the ultimate examples of the hypocrisy that we ve been shown by others of her ilk such as Meryl Streep recently. These Hollywood celebs say they support equality, tolerance, and freedom out of one side of their mouth then push for totalitarian, military enforced, martial law and disruption of free elections when the elections don t go their way.Read More Election News at: 21st Century Wire Election CoverageSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER@ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
BOOM! WATCH TREY GOWDY Scorch FBI Director Comey In House Hearing On Hillary’s E-mail Scandal [Video] | FACT CHECK! Wow! No one knows how to question like Gowdy! | 1real |
New York probing Trump's closing of Trump Tower atrium for campaign events | (This May 31 story corrects atrium’s opening times in sixth paragraph: “between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.” instead of “between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.”) By Jonathan Allen NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City is investigating Donald Trump’s practice of closing down the public atrium in Trump Tower for presidential campaign events that are off limits to the public. In order to add more floors than zoning rules would otherwise allow, Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, agreed to create a two-story public atrium on the ground and lower floors of the building, which opened in 1983 on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. But security staff wearing Trump badges spent several hours shooing away a growing crowd of New Yorkers and tourists from the doors on Tuesday morning after Trump decided to hold a news conference in the atrium to discuss his fundraising for veterans groups. “Department of Buildings inspectors will be investigating the allegations that the (public atrium) was closed contrary to the building owner’s agreement with the city,” Joe Soldevere, a department spokesman, told Reuters on Tuesday. There are scores of “privately owned public spaces,” or POPS, throughout New York City, intended as a trade-off between developers who want to build taller and preserving space for the public in the city’s densest neighborhoods. In the case of Trump Tower, the 6,000-square-foot public atrium, which is lined with pink marble, must be open to the public between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. every day, a fact advertised in large gold letters over the building’s Fifth Avenue entrance. As with other such spaces, it can be closed up to four times a year for a private event after permission from city officials. Trump has held several events in the public areas of Trump Tower since launching his campaign in the atrium there last June. Officials at the Department of City Planning, which grants permission to close a POPS for an event, and the Department of Buildings, which investigates violations, said they had no record of Trump ever seeking or being granted permission to shut out the public for a campaign event. The investigation was prompted by media reports of the news conference. Inspectors will seek evidence that the public was denied access without the city’s permission, including testimony from anyone turned away. Violations carry a $4,000 fine. Michael Cohen, an executive vice president for the Trump Organization, said his staff was trying to locate the text of the agreement with the city, and could not immediately confirm or deny the suggestion that closing the atrium was a violation. Trump lives in a penthouse in the tower with his family and has his main office there. He previously battled with the city over the space, most recently after he replaced a bench there with a kiosk selling Trump merchandise. A city judge ruled the kiosk violated Trump’s agreement with the city, and Trump agreed to removed the kiosk in January and pay a $4,000 fine. | 0fake |
Canada PM congratulates Trump, wants to work on trade, security | OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday congratulated Donald Trump on winning the U.S. presidency and stressed the close friendship and ties between the two nations. Trudeau said in a statement that he looked forward to working very closely with Trump and his administration on trade, investment, international peace and security. | 0fake |
Boko Haram Jihadists Slay 15 Civilians in Ramadan Attacks in Northern Nigeria | Islamist militants from the Boko Haram terror group killed at least 15 civilians Wednesday night in coordinated attacks including three female suicide bombers in the large city of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria. [The militants launched their assault on the city’s suburbs with guns and suicide bombers, said Damian Chukwu, the police commissioner for Borno State. The attack was the most deadly assault by the Boko Haram group in the past year. At least 14 people were killed in three suicide bombings while another was slain by gunfire in the Jiddari Polo district as local residents tried to flee the assailants. One of the three suicide bombers detonated her explosive belt as Muslims were leaving the mosque in the neighborhood, killing herself along with six other people. A second bomber blew herself up near the offices of the Development Authorities of Lake Chad at 9:20pm, killing three people in addition to the suicide bomber herself. The third suicide bombing killed one more plus herself, and the three bombings injured an additional 24 people. According to testimonies from eyewitnesses, a group of Boko Haram militants began the attack on the camp of Aridawari, on the outskirts of Maiduguri, around 5:00pm. “The attackers arrived in the village carrying heavy weapons and began firing at the houses,” said Musa Umara, a resident of Aridawari. Local citizens “fled in all directions,” he added. The insurgents then traveled to a military base across the district, shooting at random, according to one resident, Salihu Abdallah. “The soldiers stopped them at the Giwa military barracks around 6:30pm,” he said. The attacks on the capital city of Borno State took place a day before the interim president Yemi Osinbajo was to inaugurate an important humanitarian project to help feed 1. 8 million displaced persons in the area. Aid agencies have estimated that some 1. 4 million people are affected by an emergency food shortage in the region, with 44, 000 people close to starvation. Last month, one of five Islamist militants released from prison in exchange for 82 high school girls from Chibok, had threatened to carry out a attack on Maiduguri in a video. The liberation of the Chibok girls, abducted more than three years ago by Boko Haram, as well as the restoration of peace in the Lake Chad district were priorities set by President Muhammadu Buhari on taking office in 2015. Buhari is currently on sick leave in London. Wednesday’s assault comes six months after President Muhammadu Buhari said that Boko Haram had “technically” been defeated, after armed forces forced many of the militants into the remote Sambisa forest, near the border with Cameroon. Boko Haram, which pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, has been responsible for more than 20, 000 deaths and 2. 6 million displaced persons since the beginning of this insurrection in 2009, according to reports. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 0fake |
China says hopes U.S. can 'help, not cause problems' in South China Sea | BEIJING (Reuters) - China hopes the United States can help and not cause problems in the disputed South China Sea, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Friday ahead of next week s visit to Beijing by President Donald Trump. The United States has criticized China s construction of islands and build-up of military facilities in the sea, and is concerned they could be used to restrict free nautical movement. U.S. Navy ships have also carried out freedom of navigation patrols in the area, angering China. Speaking to reporters about Trump s trip, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang said China has indisputable sovereignty over islands and surrounding waters in the South China Sea. The essence of the South China Sea problem is some regional countries illegal occupation of some of China s islands and reefs, Zheng said, adding China was willing to resolve issues peacefully through talks with countries directly involved. The South China Sea issue isn t an issue between China and the United States, he added. We hope that as an external party, the United States can plant more flowers and fewer thorns, help and not cause problems . Zheng said he said he hoped the United States could objectively view the positive developments in the South China Sea and respect efforts by China and Southeast Asian countries to safeguard peace and stability there. There is no issue with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and China opposed any parties using it as an excuse to harm China s sovereignty and security interests, he added. The Trump administration has vowed to conduct more robust South China Sea operations. China s claims in the area, through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes each year, are contested by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Speaking earlier in the day, another senior Chinese diplomat said China and Vietnam have agreed to manage their dispute in the South China Sea through friendly talks, following an ugly spat over the summer between the two communist neighbors. The countries have long been at loggerheads over the issue, with Vietnam having emerged as the most vocal opponent of China s claims to the majority of the regional sea. A scheduled meeting between their foreign ministers in August was canceled on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Manila amid an argument about militarization in the South China Sea and island-building. Hanoi and Beijing, however, have sought to get relations back on track, with a top Chinese leader telling his Vietnamese hosts in September that their two communist parties have a shared destiny . Speaking before Chinese President Xi Jinping goes to Vietnam next week for a state visit and to attend a summit of Asia Pacific leaders, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong said leaders of the two countries have had many deep, frank discussions on maritime issues. They reached an important consensus, Chen told a news briefing. Both sides will uphold the principle of friendly consultations and dialogue to jointly manage and control maritime disputes, and protect the bigger picture of developing Sino-Vietnam relations and stability in the South China Sea. | 0fake |
Two rich Italian regions vote for more autonomy - prelim results | MILAN (Reuters) - Two wealthy regions of northern Italy, Lombardy and Veneto, voted overwhelmingly on Sunday for more autonomy from the central government, according to preliminary results. Millions of people in the regions, both run by the once openly secessionist Lega Nord party, voted more than 90 percent for yes . Together, Lombardy and Veneto account for a third of the Italian economy. The party wants to use the results to persuade Rome to allow the regions to keep more of their taxes at home, though the referendums are not binding on the central government. | 0fake |
Final assault on Islamic State in Raqqa to start on Sunday -commander | RAQQA, Syria (Reuters) - A final assault on Islamic State s last line of defense in its former Syrian capital Raqqa should begin on Sunday night, a field commander for the U.S.-backed forces operating there said. The loss of Islamic State s remaining streets and buildings in Raqqa following its defeat in Iraq s Mosul this year and its retreat from swathes of territory in both countries, would mark a major milestone in the battle to destroy the jihadist group. The assault on militants in the center of the northern city will focus on surrounding the sports stadium there, said a field commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in western Raqqa, who gave his name as Ardal Raqqa. Daesh is massing there because this is the last stage. They will resist, or they will surrender or die, he said. This their last stand to the death. Islamic State declared a caliphate in 2014 and at the height of its power ruled over millions of people, from northern Syria to the outskirts of Iraq s capital Baghdad, but it has since endured a series of losses under attack from many sides. Raqqa was the group s de facto Syrian capital, a center of operations where it oversaw the management of much of eastern, central and northern Syria and planned attacks abroad. Now it is hemmed into a small area in the city center that includes the stadium, the National Hospital and a roundabout where Islamic State once displayed the heads of its enemies. In the hours before the expected launch of the final assault, which the commander said could take up to a week, the sound of gunfire sporadically rattled around the area near the hospital. The district had been flattened, with buildings completely gone. Coalition jets soared overhead and air strikes pounded at a higher rate than in recent days. Islamic State has lost most of its territory to the SDF, spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, and to a rival offensive by Syria s army and allied forces this year, and has fallen back on the fertile Euphrates valley area downstream of Raqqa. The army and its allies reached the city of Deir al-Zor in September after a months-long offensive across the Syrian desert, and have since then pushed down the Euphrates towards the border with Iraq. On Sunday a Syrian military source said they had encircled Islamic State fighters in the city of al-Mayadin, one of the jihadists last strongholds in the area. Units of our armed forces with the allied forces continue their advance on a number of fronts and axes in Deir al-Zor and its countryside... and encircle Daesh terrorists in the city of al-Mayadin, the military source said. However, the group has still been able to launch a series of effective counter attacks against the Syrian army in the central desert region over the past week, putting pressure on the main supply road to Deir al-Zor from the west. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is backed in the war by Russia, Iran and Shi ite militias including Lebanon s Hezbollah, and its campaign against Islamic State has mostly been on the west bank of the river. The U.S.-backed SDF campaign has mostly been on the east bank, where Raqqa is located, and has also advanced downstream to hold areas opposite Deir al-Zor. The United States and Russia have put in place channels to lessen the risk of fighting between the rival offensives they back. U.S. officials have previously said that Islamic State had relocated some of its diminished command and propaganda structures to al-Mayadin as it was forced from territory elsewhere. The spokeswoman for the SDF campaign in Raqqa, Jihan Sheikh Ahmad, said in a statement on a website for the campaign that it would announce the liberation of Raqqa in the coming few days after having captured 85 percent of the city. Commanders directing the battle in Raqqa have said that Islamic State fighters have taken civilian hostages and are using sniper fire, booby traps and tunnels to slow the SDF advance. The SDF began its campaign to isolate Raqqa early this year, pushing along several fronts to enclose the city against the Euphrates backed by coalition air strikes and special forces. Its attack on the city itself started in June and the fighting left much of Raqqa in ruins, as intense air strikes and street-to-street battles devastated buildings. | 0fake |
E.U. and U.S. Urge Erdogan to Show Restraint After Coup Attempt in Turkey - The New York Times | BRUSSELS — The United States and the European Union stepped up pressure on Monday on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to not use an attempted coup as an excuse for an authoritarian crackdown. Officials even suggested that Turkey’s continued membership in NATO and its aspirations of joining the European Union could be at stake. Meeting in Brussels, Secretary of State John Kerry and European Union foreign ministers called on Mr. Erdogan to show restraint in the wake of the failed coup, even as he continued to round up political opponents and as Turkey debated whether it should reinstate the death penalty to deal with the plotters. “Obviously, NATO also has a requirement with respect to democracy, and NATO will indeed measure very carefully what is happening,” Mr. Kerry said. “And my hope is that Turkey is going to move in ways that do respect what they have said to me many times is the bedrock of their country. ” On Monday, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, condemned the coup attempt but added, “Being part of a unique community of values, it is essential for Turkey, like all other allies, to ensure full respect for democracy and its institutions, the constitutional order, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. ” And the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called for “the full observance of Turkey’s constitutional order, and we, as the European Union, stress the importance for the rule of law prevailing in the country. ” Mr. Erdogan’s government has detained more than 6, 000 military personnel since an attempted coup Friday night, and there are signs he is using the moment to widen a crackdown on perceived enemies. Turkey has been a crucial ally in the region for the United States and NATO, and it has also long sought membership in the European Union. The aftermath of the coup could present European Union leaders with particularly vexing . In return for helping to curb the flow of migrants from Syria and other countries in the region into Western Europe, Turkey is expecting travel to the European Union for its citizens this year, but the country must first meet benchmarks on protecting freedoms and upholding the rule of law. The flow of migrants across the Aegean Sea to the European Union has slowed to a trickle since leaders of the bloc and the government in Ankara reached a deal this year that gives funds to aid organizations in Turkey, along with other concessions. But the scale of the crackdown in the wake of the attempted coup in Turkey has rattled Western leaders. Alongside the members of the military, the Turkish government also dismissed thousands of judges, who seemingly played no role in the military revolt. “Obviously a lot of people have been arrested and arrested very quickly,” Mr. Kerry said, appearing to echo allegations by some Europeans that the Turkish authorities had prepared lists of people for reprisals even before the coup. “I think the level of vigilance and scrutiny is obviously going to be significant in the days ahead, and we’ll work very closely, and hopefully we can work in a constructive way, that prevents a backsliding, and that is our hope. ” Mr. Erdogan has urged the United States to extradite one of his former allies, the cleric Fethullah Gulen, to Turkey. Mr. Erdogan has accused Mr. Gulen of inspiring the coup attempt, which Mr. Gulen has denied. “I made it clear to the foreign minister there is indeed a very formal process for that, and there has to be a formal extradition request submitted through the appropriate channels, legal channels,” Mr. Kerry said of his Turkish counterpart, adding that he had urged the Turkish authorities to “send us evidence, not allegations. ” Separately, the United States ambassador to Turkey, John R. Bass, denounced as “categorically untrue” speculation “that the United States in some way supported the coup attempt. ” As American officials sought to manage the situation in Turkey, European officials grappled with calls from Erdogan supporters to reintroduce the death penalty, which Turkey abolished in 2004. Negotiations to bring Turkey into the European Union are already proceeding at a glacial pace, and Ms. Mogherini said the reintroduction of the death penalty would be a as did a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. “No country can become an E. U. member state if it introduces the death penalty,” Ms. Mogherini said at the news conference. The death penalty would also be incompatible with Turkey’s membership in the Council of Europe, a human rights organization with nearly 50 member states that operates separately from the European Union, she said. Formal negotiations on Turkish membership in the bloc started a decade ago, but there has been resistance from France and Germany, among others, as well as strong opposition from Cyprus, a member of the union that has been divided since Turkey invaded the north of the island in 1974. Boris Johnson, the newly appointed British foreign secretary, told reporters before the ministers’ meeting that there needed to be “restraint and moderation on all sides” in Turkey. The meeting in Brussels is Mr. Johnson’s first as foreign secretary after his successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, in a referendum on June 23. He was named to the position by Prime Minister Theresa May last week. Mr. Johnson was a divisive figure during the referendum campaign well beyond Britain, after he compared efforts by the European Union to unite the Continent with those of Adolf Hitler. Ayrault, the French foreign minister, accused Mr. Johnson of telling lies to the British people during the campaign. On Monday, Mr. Johnson insisted that Britain would continue to play a part in shaping the region’s foreign policy, even without a formal tie to the European Union. “We have to give effect to the will of the people and leave the European Union, but that in no sense means that we are leaving Europe,” Mr. Johnson told reporters. “We not going to be in any way abandoning our leading role in European cooperation and participation of all kinds,” he said. Ms. Mogherini met briefly Sunday night with Mr. Johnson, and she emphasized that there could be no formal negotiations on a British departure from the bloc until the government began the legal process of leaving. Ms. Mogherini said that ministers were also expected to discuss the terrorist attack in Nice, France relations with China and the situation in Venezuela, as well as in Turkey. | 0fake |
Wall Street’s Calling The Sheep To The Slaughter……Again! | Wall Street's Calling The Sheep To The Slaughter Again! We return to the fiscal theme because one thing we are endeavoring to accomplish here at Contra Corner is to stay ahead of the shocks and surprises that neither Wall Street nor the mainstream media can seem to even remotely anticipate. In that regard, we believe that the shock of Donald Trump's election will soon be vastly exceeded by an even more shocking shutdown of Washington governance within days of the inauguration. | 1real |
Comment on Hillary supporter Justin Timberlake could face up to 30 days in jail for taking a selfie in the voting booth by Glenn47 | DCG | 5 Comments
Considering that Timberlake supports Hillary, he may not be the brightest bulb. We should at least be grateful that he’s not offering blowjobs to anyone voting for Hillary.
From Daily Mail : Tennessee officials are investigating Justin Timberlake after the singer took a selfie in a voting booth.
In a photo posted to his Instagram account on Monday, the 35-year-old celebrity stands in front of a ballot machine and makes a scrunched up face. The caption reads: ‘Hey! You! Yeah, YOU! I just flew from LA to Memphis to #rockthevote !!! No excuses, my good people! There could be early voting in your town too. If not, November 8th! Choose to have a voice! If you don’t, then we can’t HEAR YOU! Get out and VOTE! #excerciseyourrighttovote.’
Taking a photo or recording audio in a voting booth is a crime in Tennessee, with a penalty of up to 30 days in prison and a $50 fine.
After the picture was posted on Monday, a representative from the Shelby County, Tennessee District Attorney’s office told TMZ that Timberlake’s actions are ‘under review’. The Tennessee law banning ballot selfies was passed last year and so far no one has been prosecuted for violating it.
An official for the election board where Justin voted told TMZ that the hitmaker should be lauded for calling on his more than 31million followers to vote.
Timberlake and his wife Jessica Biel hosted a $33,400-a-ticket fundraiser for Hillary Clinton last spring.
Laws nationwide are mixed on whether voters are allowed to take pictures of themselves in the act or of their ballots –‘ballot selfies’. Federal judges have struck down bans on selfies in New Hampshire and Indiana, and rules have been changed in places like California and Rhode Island, but in many states it’s still a violation that carries potential fines or jail terms.
There are laws against sharing any photo of your ballot in 18 states, while six other states bar photography in polling places but do allow photos of mail-in ballots.
Critics say such regulations have not kept up with technology and are confusing for voters and election workers. Some states that ban ballot selfies or have moved to block them cite concerns the photos could harm the integrity of the voting process by encouraging vote-buying or coercion, though some acknowledge there’s no evidence to support those fears.
DCG | 1real |
Preet Bharara: ’There’s Absolutely Evidence to Begin a Case’ for Obstruction of Justice Against Trump - Breitbart | Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” former U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, who was fired by President Donald Trump earlier this year, said he believed there was “absolutely evidence to begin a case” for obstruction of justice against Trump. Partial transcript as follows: And our first guest is a former prosecutor who’s worked with both Comey and Mueller, Preet Bharara, the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York until March when he was fired by President Trump. Now he’s a distinguished scholar at NYU. And this is his first television interview since the firing. Welcome to THIS WEEK. PREET BHARARA, FORMER U. S. ATTORNEY: Thank you, George. STEPHANOPOULOS: So I want to ask you about your encounters with President Trump later, but let’s begin with that hearing. You were in the hearing room … BHARARA: I was. STEPHANOPOULOS: — on Thursday. We have a picture of you right behind James Comey right there. And you’ve heard the president since coming out and saying — claiming vindication from James Comey, essentially, though, saying that James Comey lied under oath. Did he? BHARARA: It doesn’t appear that way. I mean you’ve got someone who has a reputation for probity, someone who has a reputation for telling the truth, someone who has contemporaneous notes of what happened in these meetings and in these conversations. On the other hand, I think a lot of people will tell you that the president himself sometimes makes accusations that turn out not to be true. I think he seems to have done that in a Tweet this morning. And when it comes down to who’s telling the truth and who’s not, I think most people would side reasonably with James Comey. STEPHANOPOULOS: You talked about the Tweets. The president did put out a Tweet this morning. I want to put it up on the screen right now. “I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal. Very cowardly. ” What’s the lie there? BHARARA: There’s a — there’s speculation and an accusation that there are other leaks and that’s going to come out at some point in the future. I think there have been other accusations that are made in a haphazard and unsubstantiated way by the president, including that his office was tapped or wiretapped and no evidence of that has ever materialized. He suggested on at least one occasion that maybe he had recorded conversations, refuses to answer questions about whether or not that is true. But I think the point is that accusations made in the heat of the moment in 140 characters on Twitter, based on the track record and history, are not to be taken very seriously. STEPHANOPOULOS: His whole team is doubling down on this idea that the leak that James Comey admitted to could be illegal. Corey Lewandowski told me on Friday on “GMA” that it’s possible that he could be prosecuted for this. Anything illegal in that leak to “The New York Times?” BHARARA: Yes. So I’m not in the business of making legal pronouncements on what is — what’s legal or what’s criminal anymore. But I will say, it sounds like more of a distraction. First of all, I think nothing that was in the memo or in the conversations that he had with his friend at Columbia Law School was classified. Second, I don’t understand what the privilege argument is. You know, the president’s team fully was aware that the memo was going to be discussed, and the conversations were going to be discussed at the hearing and had the opportunity, when many reporters asked if they would invoke executive power to try to prevent some of that from being talked about and they declined that opportunity. So I think the main point that people should be focusing on, from what I can see, is that you have — you have uncontroverted from someone who was under oath that on at least one occasion, the president of the United States cleared a room of his vice president and his attorney general, and told his director of the FBI that he should essentially drop a case against his former national security adviser. And whether or not that is impeachable or that’s indictable, that’s a very serious thing. And I’m not sure that people, you know, fully get that the standard is not just whether something is a crime or not, but there should — you know, whether or not it can be charged as a crime or Congress will impeach, it’s a very serious thing. And there’s a lot to be frightened about and a lot to be outraged about if you have a president who, A, may have done it, although I know he denies it, but he hasn’t done it under oath yet. And, B, he seems to suggest that even if he had done it or said words to that effect, there’s nothing wrong with that. And you have other people who seem to be excusing it. That’s an incredibly serious thing if people think that the president of the United States can tell heads of law enforcement agencies, based on his own whim or his own personal preferences or friendships, that they should or should not pursue particular criminal cases against individuals. That’s not how America works. STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to dig into that more in a minute. But let me just stay on this leak for just a second. Even if the going to a friend at “The New York Times” wasn’t illegal, was it a violation of FBI regulations, which would, in some cases, people say, require — before that revelation — getting advanced authorization from the FBI? BHARARA: Yes, you know, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be. You know, one could make the argument that it was not the best way to go about trying to bring this story into the open. I mean obviously, Jim Comey was comfortable, after being called to testify, to testify about the memos and about the conversations. And it was just his recollection. So, you know, I don’t really see what the major issue is. It may be that there was a better way to bring the information out like he did in the hearing ultimately. STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the other things the president’s supporters have said is that James Comey, if he really thought something was wrong in that meeting you just referred to, that Oval Office meeting where everybody else was kicked out, he should have said no to the president right there, or he should have reported this evidence of a crime back to the FBI or the Justice Department. BHARARA: Yes, but the — but — as I understand it, he did say no. And the no that he said was that — to himself and to his people that we were not going to do what the president had asked. He wasn’t going to drop the investigation. So I think, you know, he decided in his own mind he wasn’t going to follow the direction of the president. And he says he took it as a direction and that was that. STEPHANOPOULOS: One other thing on James Comey. He talked about that encounter with Loretta Lynch and the email investigation. She wanted it described as a “matter. ” He wanted it described as an investigation. He said that made him queasy. Does that make you queasy, too? BHARARA: Well, it wasn’t said to me. I think if you’re — if it’s true and you’re listening to it as a third party, it’s not the greatest instruction in the world. But if I could just say one other point on this issue of whether or not Donald Trump knew what he was doing, and I saw, I think, over the weekend, that Paul Ryan, who is, I think, in line to be president of the United States — he’s in the succession line — has been trying to excuse this behavior — again, putting aside whether it’s obstruction or impeachable — that the president of the United States is new to this and he’s new to protocols makes very, very little sense when the president became the president, in part, by campaigning at rally after rally after rally that I saw and Americans saw, on the issue of whether or not it was appropriate for the former attorney general, Loretta Lynch, to have a meeting on a tarmac with Bill Clinton. So he very well knew what the optics of that were and what the protocols were. And even though there is no evidence and no one has come forward to say anything untoward was discussed on that airplane at the tarmac, when an ongoing investigation was underway with respect to Hillary Clinton, he nevertheless said this is a reason why you should vote for me and not for that person. And for people to turn around and say now that there is evidence that the president of the United States himself had a private conversation, after kicking other high officials out of the room and told his FBI director confidentiality to do something about a criminal case that’s pending, I think that’s a big deal. And it can’t be excused as simply being a novice or new. STEPHANOPOULOS: The president’s defenders, like Alan Dershowitz, say there’s no grounds for obstruction. You talked about that. And he, in fact, says that presidents have the constitutional right to fire FBI directors and investigations as much as they want. One of the president’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, is coming up next. He says there’s no there there, no basis for obstruction. You are a former prosecutor. Is there evidence there that — to begin a case for obstruction? BHARARA: I think there’s absolutely evidence to begin a case. I think it’s very important for all sorts of armchair speculators in the law to be clear that no one knows right now whether there is a provable case of obstruction. It’s also true I think from based on what I see as a third party and out of government that there’s no basis to say there’s no obstruction. And this point on whether or not the president has legal authority to fire or to direct an investigation, I don’t really get it. It’s a little silly to me. The fact that you have authority to remove someone from office doesn’t automatically immunize that act from criminal responsibility. And I’ll give you an example of something from a different context. If it were to be true, and this is all made up for the sake of argument, if it were to be true that Michael Flynn offered a million dollars to Donald Trump and said I’m going to give you this million dollars and I’m giving it to you because I want you to fire Jim Comey and then Donald Trump fired Jim Comey, which everyone agrees he has the absolute authorization and authority to do, that would be an open and shut federal criminal case. It’s a quid pro quo and he be could charged (inaudible) president of the United States. So this argument that you keep hearing on the TV shows that the mere fact that the president can fire an official at will doesn’t solve the problem. STEPHANOPOULOS: In the end, though, as a prosecutor, what gets this beyond a he said case? BHARARA: I don’t know if there’s other evidence. I mean, we are heard people talk abouttapes and there’s a lot of cute game playing about whether or not there are tapes. That could prove it. But you have this in court all the time. And look at the surrounding circumstances and the indicia of truthfulness and those things include contemporaneous statements to other people. They include the track record of the witness. They include whether or not one of the hes in the he said has a track record for lying or not both on the air and in legal proceedings like depositions, and I believe there is such a track record with respect to one of the parties. So you make your arguments as you can. And it may be the case, like I’ve said, that no ultimate actual legal proceeding can be brought. I think people should keep an open mind about that. And I’m the first to say it and the only people, and we’ve going to make that decision, are the team that Bob Mueller is assembling. STEPHANOPOULOS: So, are you pretty confident now that there’s no question that President Trump will be investigating for obstruction by Bob Mueller? BHARARA: I don’t know. I’m not part of that team, but it seems — it seems reasonable that if Bob Mueller is looking at everything that you would expect him to look at, and good prosecutors look at everything. And this would seem to be one of those things that he was looking at. STEPHANOPOULOS: How far does the scope of a special prosecutor go in a situation like this? How far beyond the questions, the underlying collusion charges with Russia, the question of obstruction, is this something that could eventually get into the Trump Corporation businesses? Does the special counsel have that kind of leeway? BHARARA: I don’t know where he’ll go. I think that Bob Mueller by reputation is — proceeds with caution and doesn’t get over his skis ever, so I think he’ll have confidence that there will be a responsible investigation that goes where it needs to go and not beyond. STEPHANOPOULOS: And we heard the president say he wanted to testify, or willing to testify under oath. Any doubt that Bob Mueller would take him up on that. MUELLER: No, I think the way you do any kind of investigation that involves somebody who is a high official is you gather all the other evidence. We did investigations like this of high officials in New York State all the time. And what you do is you painfully and painstakingly gather evidence from as many witnesses as possible and documents and everything else and at the end of that typically, then, you interview the principal. STEPHANOPOULOS: You had several encounters with Trump before you were fired by President Trump back in March starting at the — during the transition he invited to youTrump Tower, asked you to stay on as U. S. attorney. BHARARA: He did. STEPHANOPOULOS: And then he followed that up with two phone calls as . BHARARA: He did. STEPHANOPOULOS: What happened in those phone calls? BHARARA: So they’re unusual phone calls and it sort of — when I’ve been reading the stories of how the president has been contacting Jim Comey over time, felt a little bit like deja vu. And I’m not the FBI director, but I was the chief federal law enforcement officer in Manhattan with jurisdiction over a lot of things including, you know, business interests and other things in New York. The number of times that President Obama called me in years was zero. The number of types I would have been expected to be called by the president of the United States would be zero because there has to be some kind of arm’s length relationship given the jurisdiction that various people had. STEPHANOPOULOS: What did he say? BHARARA: So he called me in December, ostensibly just to shoot the breeze and asked me how I was doing and wanted to make sure I was OK. It was similar to what Jim Comey testified to with respect to a call he got when he was getting on the helicopter. I didn’t say anything at the time to him. It was a little bit uncomfortable, but he was not the president, he was only the . He called me again two days before the inauguration, again seemingly to check in and shoot the breeze and then he called me a third time when he — after he became president and I refused to return the call. STEPHANOPOULOS That you didn’t take because he was president. But on those other phone calls, James Comey talked about the president trying to develop what he called a patronage relationship. Is that what you think was happening with you? BHARARA: That’s not the word I use. I was in discussions with my own folks, and in reporting the phone call to the chief of staff to the attorney general I said, it appeared to be that he was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship. And it may be hard for viewers of yours to understand if you’re a layperson and not in the Justice Department, you know, what’s wrong with that. The CEO of a company wants to call a field manager somewhere in the country because he thinks he’s an what’s wrong with that? The problem is the Justice Department is different. And for the same reasons that Donald Trump emphasized how it looked when there was that tarmac incident and you had a private conversation between someone who had an interest in an investigation and the person who was responsible for, you know, advancing or ending that investigation, it’s a very weird and peculiar thing for a conversation without the attorney general, without warning between the president and me or any United States attorney who has been asked to investigate various things and is in a position hypothetically to investigate business interests and associates of the president. STEPHANOPOULOS: Trump Corporation based in New York. BHARARA: Hypothetically there is the authority to investigate all sorts of interests relating to a president which is why there are strict guidelines in place about what can or cannot be talked about. Now I’m not saying that he was going to ask me about a case, although there was some evidence in the record now that after a period of time, given the Jim Comey testimony, there’s some evidence that Donald Trump didn’t think anything of asking a high level law enforcement official to take a particular action that he wanted for himself on a criminal case. STEPHANOPOULOS: And then when you were actual — when he was actually president, you refused to take the call, and I guess the next day you were fired. BHARARA: So the call came in. I got a message. We deliberated over it, thought it was inappropriate to return the call. And 22 hours later I was asked to resign along with 45 other people. STEPHANOPOULOS: And some Democrats, notably Elizabeth Warren, connecting that to the fact that you did have jurisdiction over Trump Tower. Do you think there’s any connection? BHARARA: I’m not drawing the connection. I’ve lived long enough to know that anything is possible and we’re seeing a lot of things going on now with respect to accusations that Jim Comey made under oath in a congressional hearing. So I don’t know. To this day I have no idea why I was fired. You know, it doesn’t bother me. I’m living a great good life, and very happily. But I have no idea. STEPHANOPOULOS: Preet Bharara, thanks for coming in today. BHARARA: Thank you. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Sweden stops some new aid for Cambodia in protest over crackdown | PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Sweden said on Tuesday it was stopping new aid for Cambodia, except in education and research, and would no longer support a reform programme after the main opposition party was outlawed by the Supreme Court at the government s request. The announcement marked the first concrete action by a European Union country in protest at a political crackdown in which veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen s main rival has also been arrested and civil rights groups and independent media attacked. The United States cut election funding and said it would take more punitive steps after last week s ban on the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). The European Union has also threatened action. Sweden s embassy in Phnom Penh said the country was reviewing its engagement with Cambodia. We will not initiate any new government-to-government development cooperation agreements, except in the areas of education and research, it said in a statement. As a consequence, it would be unable to support decentralisation reform in its current form. That reform aims to strengthen lower levels of government, such as local communes. The CNRP won control of more than 40 percent of the communes in elections in June, but has now had to give them up to the ruling Cambodian People s Party (CPP). The CNRP was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason. The government says he sought to take power with American help. He rejects that allegation as politically motivated, to allow Hun Sen to extend his more than three decades in power in next year s general election. Responding to the Swedish statement, a senior official said Cambodia welcomed friendship with Sweden or other countries, but said they must understand the CNRP had been banned because the courts found it had committed treason. People should respect the Cambodian people s decision in accordance with the principle of democracy and the rule of law, said Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the Interior Ministry. Sweden, which has given Cambodia an estimated $100 million in aid over five years, ranked third among individual EU member states in Cambodia s database of donors last year, after France and Germany. Swedish fashion group H&M is also a key buyer from Cambodia s garment factories - the country s main export earner. But Western donors have less sway than they once did since China has emerged as Cambodia s biggest aid donor and investor. Meeting on Monday on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Europe foreign ministers in Myanmar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhon that China supported the government s actions. China has repeatedly expressed its support for Cambodia, making no criticism of the government led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, who is one of Beijing s most important allies in Southeast Asia. (The story adds dropped word after in paragraph 1) | 0fake |
MCCAIN NEEDS TO GO! Makes Claim That Trump Is Trying To Be A Dictator But Was Silent On Obama | Sen. John McCain(R-Ariz.) dug himself into a hole on Meet The Press when he was asked to respond to this tweet by the President.The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017McCain essentially said that he in no way agrees with the President s position, and thinks an adversarial press is a natural thing. I guess the idea of an impartial press has been taken off the table altogether.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J_X0gn9Bk0As you can see, McCain got a taste of what President Trump has been experiencing near the end of the interview with the host attempting to twist his words.While we can admire the politician s optimism, the fact that the news media is biased doesn t go away just because you don t like the person who said it.(Source: The Hill) | 1real |
White House says Biden's visit is a good indication of U.S. support for Iraq | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday said Vice President Joe Biden’s unannounced visit to Iraq to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was a “good indication” of U.S. support of the prime minister’s efforts to unify that country. “This is a good indication of the United States continued support for Prime Minister Abadi’s efforts to unify the nation of Iraq to confront ISIL,” spokesman Josh Earnest said, using another name for Islamic State. | 0fake |
null | It’s 3446 KKK has killed in 86 years | 1real |
The Syrian Army's "Election Campaign" - Al Bab Or East-Aleppo? | The Syrian Army's "Election Campaign" - Al Bab Or East-Aleppo?
The Russian president Putin declared another unilateral ceasefire in east-Aleppo for Friday: "A decision was made to introduce a 'humanitarian pause' in Aleppo on November 4 from 9:00 am (0600 GMT) to 19:00," the chief of Russia's General Staff Valery Gerasimov said in a statement on Wednesday.
Gerasimov said the decision was approved by Syrian authorities and was meant to "prevent senseless casualties" by allowing civilians and armed combatants to quit rebel-held eastern Aleppo....Defence ministry Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that Russia had ceased air strikes on eastern Aleppo for 16 days, following criticism over a Russian-backed Syrian government assault that has killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed infrastructure, including hospitals.
This is probably the last ceasefire on offer before al-Qaeda and CIA proxy forces in east-Aleppo are attacked in full force.
These head-chopping "rebels" rejected the Russian offer: Rebel groups in Aleppo dismissed Russia's latest offer, with one of the groups describing it as a media stunt for "public consumption."
Yasser al-Youssef, a spokesman for the Nour el-Din el-Zinki rebel group, said Russia "is not serious" and its latest initiatives "don't concern us." He added that the Russian leader's comments do not reflect the reality on the ground.
The great "rebel" attack from Idleb in the west on Aleppo to open a corridor to the government besieged "rebel" area in east-Aleppo has failed. Local fighting is still ongoing but the main attack has stopped. Most of the major hardware of the attacking "rebels", tanks and multiple rocket launchers on trucks, have been destroyed by the Syrian and Russian artillery and air forces.
The Syrian Army and Russia have assembled major fresh forces in Aleppo. Syrian special forces are preparing for a big attack and Iran supported groups as well as some Russian units are on the ground. On Friday the Russian aircraft-carrier Kuznetsov will arrive on the Syrian coast. It adds some 30 fighter planes and attack helicopters to the assembled land based air forces. The carrier is accompanied by several destroyers and frigates as well as submarines. These add to the air defenses but can also launch salvos of cruise missiles.
But this whole build up may have a different purpose than an all out attack on east-Aleppo. bigger
North-east-east of Aleppo is Al-Bab, a city held by ISIS (grey) and campaign aim of Turkish (green) as well as Kurdish (yellow) forces. The Kurdish YPG forces (named SDF to disguise them as mixed Kurdish-Arab group) want to connect their areas in northwest-Syria to those in north east-Syria. They need the line from north-Aleppo through Al-Bab to the city of Manbij further east which is already in their hands. They are generally capable and well equipped but their forces are stretched and they lack major artillery and reliable air-support. From the north Turkish proxy "rebel" forces, supported by Turkish artillery from north of the Turkish-Syrian border, have moved south to prevent a Kurdish west-east uniting of their areas and to keep supply lines for ISIS to Turkey open. They are now on the geographic limits of the Turkish artillery support. The Turkish army is reluctant to move its artillery south of the border into Syria. The army is based on conscript forces and the Turkish people would start to make trouble for Erdogan if their drafted sons get killed in Syria. There is also no legal base for an invasion by regular Turkish forces.
The Turkish air force has been supporting the Turkish "rebel" proxies in central Syria. But after it recently bombed and killed about 100 Kurdish fighters northeast of Aleppo the Russian and Syrian air forces have warned it off. Any Turkish plane entering Syrian air space is a legitimate target. The Turks understood the warning and have since stayed out of Syrian airspace.
Turkish supported forces taking Al-Bab could be in preparation of an attack on Aleppo from the east, endangering the Syrian progress in the city. Kurdish forces are known for their notorious unreliability as allies. They change sides for minor bribes or issues. They could probably be trusted to take Al-Bab now without bothering the government forces in Aleppo but that could change any day.
The third possible power to take Al-Bab is the Syrian Arab Army (red on the map). Since it took the Qweiris airbase south of Al-Bab back from ISIS it is only some 10 kilometers away from the city. A second direction of attack could come from the eastern parts of Aleppo. Taking Al-Bab would consolidate the areas between Qweiris and Aleppo and would be a good position to prepare for a later attack on the ISIS "capital" Raqqa southeast of Al-Bab and east of Qweiris. Areas directly north of Al-Bab could be let open for the Kurds to bother with the Turkish supported forces. The Syrian government will not protest when those fight each other.
Starting this weekend we will probably see two Syrian government campaigns. A major bombing campaign against "rebel" positions in east-Aleppo as well as a ground attack by Syrian government forces against Al-Bab. I find this more plausible than an imminent ground attack on "rebels" in east-Aleppo that was not prepared so far by a major campaign from air and artillery forces.
Something big Syrian military "election campaign" will happen in Syria while the U.S. public, government and media are distracted by their election circus. Are the other forces fighting in Syria, the U.S. supported proxies, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Turks prepared for such a new Syrian government campaign? Do they have plausible counter moves in store? 2, 2016 at 03:49 PM | Permalink | 1real |
Donald or Hillary: A Decision Between Life and Death | Donald or Hillary: A Decision Between Life and Death November 08, 2016 Donald or Hillary: A Decision Between Life and Death
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have taken starkly different views on life and family issues. While both candidates may be "flawed" from the perspective of moral values, a breakdown of their positions shows clearly that America will go down one of two very different roads today.
Below are some of the candidates' more notable stances and quotes on moral issues, as well as the positions each party platform takes.
ABORTION
Hillary Clinton: supports taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. has promised to repeal the Hyde Amendment, the law prohibiting the use of tax dollars for Medicaid abortions. said she will stand with and fund Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider. defended partial-birth and late-term abortion in her final debate with Donald Trump. Here are some of her most notable abortion quotes: "The unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights." "Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources, and political will. Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed." "I believe that forcing a woman to carry a child who she knows will die is an assault..." "[Family] planning is an important part of women's health, and reproductive health includes access to abortion." "We've gotta continue to stand up for a woman's right to make these decisions--and to defend Planned Parenthood." "I support Roe v. Wade." "Roe v. Wade very clearly sets out that there can be regulations on abortion so long as the life and health of the mother are taken into account and when I voted as a senator [against banning partial-birth abortion], I did not think that that was [the] case." "The kinds of [abortion] cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make. I have met with women who toward the end of their pregnancy get the worst news one could get: that their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term, or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions for women. So, you can regulate if you are doing so with the life and health of the mother taken into account...this is one of the worst possible choices any woman and her family has to make." "I've been to countries where governments either forced women to have abortions like they used to do in China or force women to bear children like they used to do in Romania. And I can tell you the government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families in accordance with their faith, with medical advice, and I will stand up for that right." "Now, extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups, we expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world, but it’s a little hard to take from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States." "I’ve been proud to stand with Planned Parenthood for a long time, and, as president, I will always have your back." "I'm grateful to the entire Planned Parenthood family. You made this campaign your own...It belongs to the staff, the donors, and to the [abortion] providers...It is worth saying again: defending women’s health means defending access to abortion – not just in theory, but in reality...We need to stand up for access to affordable contraception without interference from politicians or employers. And let's invest in long-acting contraceptives, so every woman can choose the method that is best for her.”
Donald Trump: promised to sign the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful, gruesome late-term abortions. pledged to defund Planned Parenthood. says he will appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices. Here are some of Trump's more notable quotes on abortion: “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me because based on what she’s saying and based on where she's going and where she's been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day, and that’s not acceptable...Honestly, nobody has business doing what I just said, doing that as late as one or two or three or four days prior to birth, nobody has that." "I am, and will remain, pro-life." "Let me be clear — I am pro-life. I support that position with exceptions allowed for rape, incest or the life of the mother being at risk. I did not always hold this position, but I had a significant personal experience that brought the precious gift of life into perspective for me...Over time, our culture of life in this country has started sliding toward a culture of death. Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence to support this assertion is that since Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Count 43 years ago, over 50 million Americans never had the chance to enjoy the opportunities offered by this country. They never had the chance to become doctors, musicians, farmers, teachers, husbands, fathers, sons or daughters. They never had the chance to enrich the culture of this nation or to bring their skills, lives, loves or passions into the fabric of this country. They are missing, and they are missed. The Supreme Court in 1973 based its decision on imagining rights and liberties in the Constitution that are nowhere to be found...Public funding of abortion providers is an insult to people of conscience at the least and an affront to good governance at best...A culture of life is too important to let slip away for convenience or political correctness. It is by preserving our culture of life that we will Make America Great Again."
RELIGIOUS FREEEDOM
Hillary Clinton: has said "religious beliefs" against abortion "have to be changed." supports the Obama administration's HHS contraception and abortion mandate, which forces religious institutions and churches to fund abortions. Here are some of her more notable quotes on religious freedom: "Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources, and political will. Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed." “[The Hobby Lobby case is] the first time that our court has said that a closely held corporation has the rights of a person when it comes to religious freedom, which means the corporation’s … [‘closely held’] employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees, and, of course, denying women the right to contraceptives as part of a health care plan is exactly that. I find it deeply disturbing that we are going in that direction. It’s very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who need[s] contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception." "Every woman, no matter where she works, deserves birth control coverage. This shouldn't be a question."
Donald Trump: has promised to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which threatens churches with the loss of their tax statuses if they endorse political candidates. says he will fight on behalf of Christians in the Middle East who are facing genocide. Here are some of his more notable quotes on religious freedom: "I have a message for Catholics: I will be there for you. I will stand with you. I will fight for you. "As First Lady, US Senator, Secretary of State, and two-time presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton has been hostile to the core issues and policies of greatest concern to Catholics: life, religious liberty, Supreme Court nominations, affordable and quality healthcare, educational choice and home schooling. "For instance, Hillary Clinton supports forcing The Little Sisters of the Poor who have taken care of the elderly poor since 1839, to pay for contraceptives in their healthcare plan (even though they have never wanted them, never used them and never will), and having the government fine them heavily if they continue to refuse to abide by this onerous mandate. "This is a hostility to religious liberty you will never see in a Trump administration." "I will defend your religious liberties and the right to fully and freely practice your religion, as individuals, business owners and academic institutions. I will make absolutely certain religious orders like The Little Sisters of Poor are not bullied by the federal government because of their religious beliefs. I will protect and work to expand educational choice, the rights of homeschooling families, and end Common Core. I will repeal and replace Obamacare so you can have better and more affordable healthcare. I will keep our country and communities safe while respecting the dignity of each human being. I will help Catholic families and workers, and all families and workers, by bringing jobs back to our country where they belong. And I will appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench, like Justice Clarence Thomas and the late and beloved great Catholic thinker and jurist, Justice Antonin Scalia."
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND THE LGBT MOVEMENT
Hillary Clinton: touts herself as a champion of the "LGBT community." wants to criminalize therapy helping minors resolve unwanted same-sex attraction. will "protect transgender rights." says she will "fight for full federal equality for LGBT Americans" by making gender identity and sexual orientation federally protected classes. Here are a few of her many pro-LGBT statements: "Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights." "Thanks to the bravery of LGBT Americans like Jim Obergefell and Edie Windsor, and the determination and tireless organizing of the LGBT community and their allies, marriage equality became the law of the land in all 50 states...we've also seen how much work is still unfinished....Discriminatory laws in states like North Carolina highlight the need for full federal equality under the law for LGBT Americans." "Along with millions of Americans, I am celebrating today's landmark victory for marriage equality, and the generations of advocates and activists who fought to make it possible. From Stonewall to the Supreme Court, the courage and determination of the LGBT community has changed hearts and changed laws. "This ruling is an affirmation of the commitment of couples across the country who love one another. It reflects the will of the vast and growing multitude of Americans who believe that LGBT couples deserve to be recognized under the law and treated equally in the eyes of society. And it represents our country at its best: inclusive, open, and striving towards true equality. "But we know that the struggle for LGBT rights doesn't end with today's triumph. As love and joy flood our streets today, it is hard to imagine how anyone could deny the full protection of our laws to any of our fellow Americans—but there are those who would. So while we celebrate the progress won today, we must stand firm in our conviction to keep moving forward. For too many LGBT Americans who are subjected to discriminatory laws, true equality is still just out of reach. While we celebrate today, our work won't be finished until every American can not only marry, but live, work, pray, learn and raise a family free from discrimination and prejudice. We cannot settle for anything less." "I want a Supreme Court that will stick with marriage equality."
Donald Trump: says marriage is ultimately an issue that should be decided by the states. says he supports natural marriage. says that he will "fight" for the LGBT community, especially as he fights ISIS and radical Islam. Here are some of Trump's more notable quotes on same-sex "marriage" and the "LGBT community": “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.” "As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology." "We’re going to look at judges. They’ve got to be great judges. They’ve got to be conservative judges. We’re going to see how they stand depending on what their views are. But that would be my preference [that they oppose same-sex 'marriage]. I would prefer that they stand against, but we’ll see what happens. It depends on the judge." “I would strongly consider that, yes," in response to a question about whether he would appoint justices to overrule the Supreme Court's same-sex "marriage" decision. “[Marriage] should be a states rights issue. I can see changes coming down the line, frankly.”
THE CANDIDATE'S CAMPAIGN WEBSITES
From the official Hillary Clinton campaign site: "Hillary will work with Congress to pass the Equality Act, continue President Obama’s LGBT equality executive actions, and support efforts underway in the courts to protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in every aspect of public life...Hillary will end so-called 'conversion therapy' for minors, combat youth homelessness by ensuring adequate funding for safe and welcoming shelters, and take on bullying and harassment in schools. She’ll end discriminatory treatment of LGBT families in adoptions, and protect LGBT elders against discrimination....Hillary applauds the Pentagon’s decision to allow transgender personnel to serve openly, and as Commander-in-Chief, she will upgrade service records of LGBT veterans dismissed due to their sexual orientation...Hillary will work to protect transgender individuals from violence, make it easier for transgender Americans to change their gender marker on identification documents, and invest in law enforcement training focused on fair and impartial policing, including in interactions with LGBT people." "Hillary will promote LGBT human rights and ensure America’s foreign policy is inclusive of LGBT people, including increasing our investment in the Global Equality Fund to advance human rights." "In the U.S. Senate, Hillary championed legislation to address hate crimes, fought for federal non-discrimination legislation to protect LGBT Americans in the workplace, and advocated for an end to restrictions that blocked LGBT Americans from adopting children. "As secretary of state, Hillary advanced LGBT rights abroad and enforced stronger anti-discrimination regulations within the State Department, declaring on the global stage that 'gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.' She led the effort to pass the first-ever U.N. Resolution on LGBT Human Rights, launched the Global Equality Fund, ended State Department regulations that denied same-sex couples and their families equal rights, helped implement LGBT-friendly workplace policies, and updated the State Department’s policy so that transgender individuals’ passports reflect their true gender."
Donald Trump's official campaign website does not mention his stances on abortion or marriage.
THE PARTY PLATFORMS
Republican platform: Against abortion, against Planned Parenthood, pro-religious liberty, pro-marriage, pro-homeschooling, pro-sexual risk avoidance education “The Constitution’s guarantee that no one can 'be deprived of life, liberty or property' deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that 'all' are 'endowed by their Creator' with the inalienable right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and afrm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” “We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare.” “We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life." “We value the right of America’s religious leaders to preach, and Americans to speak freely, according to their faith. Republicans believe the federal government, specically the IRS, is constitutionally prohibited from policing or censoring speech based on religious convictions or beliefs, and therefore we urge the repeal of the Johnson Amendment.” “We support options for learning, including home-schooling, career and technical education, private or parochial schools, magnet schools, charter schools, online learning, and early-college high schools. We especially support the innovative nancing mechanisms that make options available to all children: education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tuition tax credits.” “We renew our call for replacing 'family planning' programs for teens with sexual risk avoidance education that sets abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior.” “We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to dene marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges….In Obergefell, ve unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to dene marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
Democrat platform: Taxpayer funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, pro-Planned Parenthood, pro-LGBT, pro-contraception sex ed “Democrats are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice. We believe unequivocally that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion—regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured. We believe that reproductive health is core to women’s, men’s, and young people’s health and wellbeing…. We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment.” “We will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers, which provide critical health services to millions of people.” “We will appoint judges who defend the constitutional principles of liberty and equality for all, protect a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion, curb billionaires’ inuence over elections because they understand that Citizens United has fundamentally damaged our democracy, and see the Constitution as a blueprint for progress.” “Democrats know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith in many forms and the countless acts of justice, mercy, and tolerance it inspires. We believe in lifting up and valuing the good work of people of faith and religious organizations and nding ways to support that work where possible." “Democrats are also committed to providing parents with high-quality public school options and expanding these options for low-income youth. We support great neighborhood public schools and high-quality public charter schools, and we will help them disseminate best practices to other school leaders and educators. Democrats oppose for-prot charter schools focused on making a prot off of public resources.” “We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care, evidence-based sex education, and a full range of family planning services help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies." “Democrats applaud last year’s decision by the Supreme Court that recognized LGBT people—like every other American—have the right to marry the person they love. But there is still much work to be done."
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5.4-magnitude earthquake jolts central Italy | The photo taken on October 4, 2016, shows destruction in the village of Amatrice that was rattled by an earthquake on August 24. (Photo by AFP)
An earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale has hit central Italy, including the capital Rome.
Italy's national geophysics institute said the quake struck at a depth of nine kilometers in the Macerata area of the central region of Marche on Wednesday.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) confirmed the magnitude, saying the epicenter was seven kilometers south-southwest of Visso village in Macerata.
There was no information immediately available about potential casualties or damage caused by the quake, which was felt in the towns of Pescara, Ancone and L'Aquila, which was jolted by a 6.3-magnitude quake in 2009 that killed over 300 people.
Wednesday’s quake rattled windows and doors in the capital of Rome.
The quake comes about two months after nearly 300 people were killed as a strong earthquake hit central Italy.
On August 24, a powerful earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale hit Italy, and almost flattened scores of towns and villages in the central parts. The quake was followed by a series of aftershocks, the strongest of which measured 4.2, rattling the already hit areas. Loading ... | 1real |
Democrats, civil rights groups disagree over levels of voter complaints | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Party officials said they were not seeing concerted, systemic voter suppression efforts on Tuesday as Americans continued to cast ballots in the tightly contested U.S. presidential election pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton. But civil rights groups reported higher levels of voter intimidation complaints than in prior presidential elections, based on more than 20,000 calls they had received from around the country to a voter complaint hotline as of Tuesday afternoon. | 0fake |
Governor Jerry Brown Just Made It Possible For Illegal Aliens To Vote…Coming To A State Near You? | Liberal California Governor Jerry Brown just signed the Motor Voter Act allowing non-citizens to be registered to vote. Is this coming to your state soon?Non-Citizens Will Now Vote In At Least One StateGovernor Jerry Brown just sold out the American vote in California. He signed a new version of the Motor Voter Act that will register every eligible California citizen who acquires a driver s license or renews a license at the Department of Motor Vehicles to vote.This is after he made all illegal aliens eligible for diver s licenses. Eleven states allow illegal aliens to get driver s licenses.In California, state officials specifically chose not to make noncitizen license holders searchable in their DMV database, said True the Vote spokesman Logan Churchwell, who called the newly signed bill unprecedented. The measure, Assembly Bill 1461, will effectively change the form of governance in California from a Republic whose elected officials are determined by United States citizens and will guarantee that noncitizens will participate in all California elections going forward, Election Integrity Project of California President Linda Paine said in a statement.It appears to be unconstitutional.This is what conservatives were afraid of and this is just one more example of a conspiracy theory come true. It will undoubtedly ramp up voter fraud in California.California s Secretary of State feels differently In a free society, the right to vote is fundamental, said Secretary of State Alex Padilla. The New Motor Voter Act will make our democracy stronger by removing a key barrier to voting for millions of California citizens. Via: Independent Sentinal | 1real |
PRESIDENT TRUMP BLASTS OBAMA: “Obamacare Was a Big, Big Lie! A Lie!… It Was a Lie by the President! …He said it 28 Times!” (VIDEO) | President Trump gathered the Senators in the State dining room today and let it rip on Obama Awesome!President Trump then called on GOP Senators to continue working through recess on repealing and replacing Obamacare:Trump calls on GOP Senators to continue working through August recess on repealing Obamacare: Frankly, I don t think we should leave town pic.twitter.com/wf8PWRqn8c BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) July 19, 2017It s a full court press from Trump! He thought the votes were there to pass this yesterday and has said he is very disappointed in the failure of the Senate to pass this Obamacare repeal and replace:In an impromptu White House presser during President Trump s lunch with Vice President Pence, Trump drove home how disappointed he is about health care: Let Obamacare fail, it will be a lot easier. And I think we re probably in that position where we ll just let Obamacare fail. We re not going to own it. I m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us. Why it matters: Trump is acknowledging defeat and now, rather than support Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell s push to repeal with out a replacement bill, he s decided to let Barack Obama s Affordable Care Act remain the law of the land. fast forward and McConnell s straight repeal plan collapses with 3 no votes. The three no votes came from three women who should really be in the D column: By Tuesday afternoon, three Republican senators all women had come out against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell s plan to push a vote on a clean Obamacare repeal bill enough to sink it altogether. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) confirmed they would not vote for a repeal bill that delayed enacting the policy by two years.Susan Collins needs to go!President Trump also said he was surprised when Senators Moran and Lee came out as No s last night. We thought they were in fairly good shape. For 7 years I ve been hearing repeal and replace and when we finally get a chance to repeal and replace, we can t. We are winning the war on the border, we re decimating ISIS we ve had a lot of victories but we haven t had a victory on health care. I m very disappointed. Once the Affordable Care Act fails, then everyone needs to come together and fix it, said Trump. Democrats have no ideas. They have no thought process. All they want to do is obstruct government and obstruct period. Obamacare isn t failing, it s failed. It s gone. | 1real |
‘I’m Going To Beat Your Ass!’ Trump Fan Arrested For Threatening Black Woman Just Waiting For A Cab | A Donald Trump supporter was arrested Monday after threatening to beat a black woman and calling her racial slurs outside a ShopRite store, according to the Albany police. 55-year-old Todd Warnken was told to leave the store after being disruptive inside, Albany police spokesman Steve Smith told the Albany Times-Union.Once Warnken left the store, he encountered a black woman who was waiting for a taxi. According to the police, he harassed the woman then proceeded to threaten physical harm.Smith told the paper that Warnken yelled to the woman, Trump is going to win and if you don t like it I m going to beat your ass, while using a racial slur. We can only imagine the language he used.Violence at Trump rallies has been well documented. In March, in Tucson, Arizona. A protester at a Trump rally was sucker-punched and kicked by a 32-year-old man. He was arrested on an assault charge. In March, a Trump supporter sucker-punched a black protester at a rally in North Carolina. The Trump supporter said later, Next time we might have to kill him. It s not just the violence at rallies. A Trump supporter in August was arrested for assaulting his 73-year-old Clinton-supporting wife.The list is endless, but here are two more examples:In March, two Wichita State University students said they were beaten in a convenience store parking lot by a man they said called them brown trash and told them Trump will make America great again. Two brothers in Boston were sentenced to prison in May for beating a homeless Mexican man because they thought he was an undocumented immigrant, telling police Trump was right about deporting all these illegals. There has been an uptick of attacks on Muslims, too. Don t call them deplorable, though, because that hurts their feelings. Donald Trump has called for his supporters to observe voters at the polls in an obvious attempt to intimidate minorities. Trump s favorability with African-Americans polls at a whopping zero percent.As for Warnken, he s been charged with misdemeanor aggravated harassment.Image via Albany Police Department. | 1real |
The Russian media just loves the campaign to demonize Putin | 250 Views November 03, 2016 1 Comment Analyses The Saker
Last May I wrote an article entitled Counter-propaganda, Russian style in which I explained that far from banning or censoring the western anti-Putin/anti-Russia campaign, the Russia media reported about it in meticulous detail. Half a year later, not only is this still true, but the level of coverage has now sharply increased. Check out this screenshot from the latest (and most watched) weekly news show: “Painting Putin” on Russian TV
Remember that roughly 80% plus of the audience watching this are strong supporters of President Putin. You can imagine what they think when they see these reports. The fully understand that the West hates Putin so much precisely because Putin is one of them, a real Russian who cares for the interests of the Russian people. So when the West demonizes Putin, it is really all the Russian people who are demonized and their conclusion is simple: the West does not hate Putin, the West hates *us*. As for “Blame it on Putin”– it has now become a real joke. Source: the (pro-Western) Levada Center
One of the main effects of this kind of demonization is that the Russian public fully understands that there is no way back. In practical terms, most Russians believe that even if Russia pulled out of Syria, stopped supporting the Donbass or even decided to hand Crimea to the Ukies, the West would still continue to demonize Russia and try to subdue her . Furthermore, the Russians remember that the only time when the West liked Russia was when she was run by the drunken Eltsin and his coterie of Jewish oligarchs who pillaged Russia and whose reign had consequences similar to what a major war would result in. Any other Russia is simply unacceptable to the AngloZionist Empire.
Seen in this light, the alliance of the West with both the Nazis in Kiev and the “moderate terrorists” in the Middle-East makes sense. This is not fundamentally different from the European’s alliance with the Ottomans during the Crimean War or the USA supported Japan against Russia in 1905 (only to then end up fighting against Japan a few years later). As long as X is anti-Russian, the West support X. It’s that primitive and that stupid.
The Ukronazi regime in Kiev has understood that it has only one “commodity” left which it can sell to the West: its rabid russophobia. And since they are desperate, they make desperate and, frankly, comical efforts. Check out the new symbol of the Ukie military intelligence service: The Ukies point a dagger at the heart of Russia
I don’t think I have ever seen the Ukie inferiority complex better illustrated. The Latin sentence “ Sapiens Dominabitur Astra ” (“the wise will rule the stars”) is a nice touch as it combines a non-cyrillic (Latin) alphabet, a reference to European astrology in the Middle Ages and a typically Ukrainian (cosmic) megalomania. Yet another proof, if needed, that all the Ukraine is is an “anti-Russia”.
Make no mistake though, there is absolutely no fear of the West in Russia. Most Russians believe that the Russian armed forces are more than enough to keep West in check. And they are quite correct. But there is this acute awareness that were in not for the Russian military, Russia would be treated just like Iraq.
In the meantime, the Russia media is gleefully feeding the Russian public every bit of russophobic propaganda produced in the West. Future generations will probably study this period and wonder at the absolutely mind-boggling stupidity of a western propaganda machine which is apparently completely oblivious at the impact of its propaganda on a nuclear superpower.
The Saker The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 1real |
POTUS Tweeted Less Abroad Because of Melania’s Presence: Report - Breitbart | Forget the team of lawyers. First Lady Melania Trump may be the best hope for White House advisers who are trying to convince President Donald Trump to tweet less or, at the very least, more judiciously. The First Lady was apparently a big reason why Trump did not tweet as much while he was abroad for his first foreign trip as President, according to Politico’s White House reporter Annie Karni. She tweeted, “I’ve been told a factor in the lack of tweeting abroad overall was the presence of Melania Trump. ” I’ve been told a factor in the lack of tweeting abroad overall was the presence of Melania Trump. https: . — Annie Karni (@anniekarni) May 27, 2017, Melania Trump is expected to move into the White House next month, Trump’s advisers have told media outlets in recent days that they may want lawyers to vet Trump’s tweets so they “don’t go from the president’s mind out to the universe. ” According to the New York Times, Trump has “been told by his lawyers to limit his posts. Each one, they argue privately, could be used as evidence in a legal case against him. ” The Times wrote that Trump “went through his entire overseas trip without posting a single incendiary message. ” After former House Speaker John Boehner — who reportedly, at the urging of Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus, called Trump and persuaded him to sign the most recent spending bill that Trump may have wanted to veto — said last week that Trump’s presidency was a “complete disaster,” Trump reportedly wanted to hammer him on Twitter but refrained from doing so. None other than media pioneer Matt Drudge wondered a few months ago if Melania Trump would be to Trump what Nancy Reagan was to Ronald Reagan once she moves into the White House. While making a rare radio appearance on Michael Savage’s radio show for Savage’s 75th birthday on March 31, Drudge wondered, “could this help soften some of Trump’s edges?” Drudge mentioned that Nancy Reagan was known as the “secret behind Ronnie” because she “soothed him … she played watchdog. ” During the 2016 campaign, when asked what advice she gives to her husband, Melania Trump often told media outlets that she told him to stay away from tweeting things that could “get him in trouble. ” When he arrived back at the White House on Sunday, Trump fired off a series of tweets denouncing the “fake media” and calling the mainstream media the “enemy. ” He also said he thought “it is very possible” that the “fake news” mainstream media are making up their sources to harm his presidency. … . it is very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017, It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017, Does anyone notice how the Montana Congressional race was such a big deal to Dems Fake News until the Republican won? V was poorly covered, — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017, | 0fake |
BOOM! WATCH Kids Learn Tough Lesson About Redistribution Of Wealth In This Great Halloween Video | Kids should be learning the benefits of capitalism in school. It s the reason America is both the most generous and prosperous nation on earth | 1real |
Trump Insists His Mexico Trip Was Successful For The Most Absurd Reason Ever | As we all know, Republican presidential nominee went to Mexico last week in an attempt to look presidential. While on the surface it may have seemed that he succeeded at first, we soon learned that this was not the case. When asked about whether or not he and President Enrique Pena Nieto discussed payment for Trump s infamous border wall, Trump lied, and President Pena Nieta called him on it via Twitter. There s that, and we saw a tale of two Trumps that day, as when the real estate tycoon returned to the United States to do a rally in Arizona, he went right back to his hardline stance with a vengeance so much so, in fact, that the Republican National Committee dropped plans to praise Trump because the speech was so hateful.Well, to hear Trump tell it, one event eclipses those mishaps to make Trump s trip a roaring success: the fact that one of the organizing officials of the trip from Mexico was just fired. Trump said Wednesday evening during NBC s Commander-in-Chief forum: We ve been badly hurt and if you look at the aftermath today, the people who arranged the trip in Mexico have been forced out of government. That s how well we did, and that s how well we have to do. No, Mr. Trump, this is not an indicator that your trip was a success; quite the opposite, in fact. The official who was forced out of office, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, left because the Mexican people have witnessed the appalling disrespect Trump has leveled at them throughout his travesty of a presidential campaign, and they did not want him in their country. Videgaray was a main champion of the Trump visit, and therefore it is damage control with the population of that country who are rightfully outraged that sparked this person s removal from office. That is the opposite of success.Then again, it s Trump, and therefore he can t help twisting the facts to make himself look good. So, no surprise there. The trip wasn t a success; in fact, it was clearly anything but.Featured image via by Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
MELANIA TRUMP Recites The Lord’s Prayer At Florida Rally…Crowd Loves It! [Video] | 1real | |
Push to expand FBI surveillance authority threatens U.S. email privacy bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An effort in the U.S. Senate to expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s authority to use a secretive surveillance order has delayed a vote on a popular email privacy bill, casting further doubt on whether the legislation will become law this year. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday postponed consideration of a measure that would require government authorities to obtain a search warrant before asking technology companies, such as Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google , to hand over old emails. A version of the Senate bill unanimously passed the House last month. Currently, federal agencies do not need a warrant to access emails or other digital communications more than 180 days old due to a provision in a 1986 law that considers them abandoned by the owner. But Republican party senators offered amendments Thursday that privacy advocates argued contravened the purpose of the underlying bill and would likely sink its chances of becoming law. Those amendments include one by Senator John Cornyn, the second ranking Republican in the Senate, that would broaden the FBI’s authority to deploy an administrative subpoena known as a National Security Letter to include electronic communications transaction records such as the times tamps of emails and their senders and recipients. Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, the Democratic and Republican authors of the email privacy bill, agreed to postpone the vote to give time to lawmakers to review the amendments and other provisions of the bill that have prompted disagreement. NSLs do not require a warrant and are almost always accompanied by a gag order preventing the service provider from sharing the request with a targeted user. The letters have existed since the 1970s, though the scope and frequency of their use expanded greatly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In 2015 requests for customer records via NSLs increased nearly 50 percent to 48,642 requests, up from 33,024 in 2014, according to a U.S. government transparency report. The Obama administration has for years lobbied for a change to how NSLs can be used, after a 2008 legal memo from the Justice Department said the law limits them largely to phone billing records. FBI Director James Comey has said the change needed essentially corrects a typo. The Senate Intelligence Committee this week passed a bill to fund the U.S. intelligence community that contains a similar provision that would allow NSLs to be used to gather email records. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, voted against the proposal and said it “takes a hatchet to important protections for Americans’ liberty.” | 0fake |
Senator McConnell says ending U.S. debt ceiling would be challenging | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell voiced doubt on Tuesday that the U.S. debt ceiling would be eliminated permanently, an idea floated by Democrats and embraced by Republican President Donald Trump last week. “As far as the debt ceiling is concerned, we will not be revisiting the debt ceiling until some time next year,” McConnell told reporters. “And getting Congress to give up a tool like that would probably be quite a challenging undertaking.” Congress must periodically raise the debt limit to keep the U.S. government borrowing and operating. Lawmakers sometimes take advantage of that need to push through policy or spending changes. Trump voiced support last week for the idea of eliminating the statutory cap on the U.S. Treasury Department’s authority to borrow, saying he discussed the possibility with congressional leaders. “It complicates things. It’s really not necessary,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. At a White House meeting a day earlier, Trump made a surprise deal with Democratic congressional leaders for extending the debt limit for three months tied to hurricane relief legislation and funding for government operations into December. In the meeting, which was also attended by top congressional Republicans and administration officials, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proposed eliminating the debt limit, and Trump and Vice President Mike Pence said they liked the idea, one person familiar with the meeting said. White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney told Fox News Channel that Trump was frustrated by the way the debt ceiling has been used and had asked him to “explore ways to sort of depoliticize it.” “We’ll continue to work on that. I don’t think the debt ceiling ... will be an issue until January, February of next year,” Mulvaney said. Some Republicans expressed opposition to Trump’s deal with the Democrats, and conservative groups accused the president of caving in rather than insisting on spending cuts to accompany the debt ceiling increase. But the House of Representatives and the Senate, which are both controlled by Republicans, quickly approved the deal, including about $15 billion in hurricane-related aid, and it was signed into law by Trump on Friday. | 0fake |
OOPS! MN: JUROR In Case Against Cop Who Killed Philando Castile Reveals How Only 2 Black Jurors On Case Voted…Liberal Heads Explode In 3…2…1 | The only two black jurors in the Philando Castile case were in favor of acquitting the cop responsible for his death, a juror explained Friday.Dennis Ploussard, one of the twelve jurors, said that the jury was broken down 10-2 for acquitting Officer Jeronimo Yanez of his manslaughter charges 10 jurors were in favor of clearing Officer Yanez and the other two were unconvinced.The two holdouts were not the only black members on the jury, Ploussard told the Associated Press. The jury discussed the culpable negligence for the manslaughter requirement, he said. Eventually, the two unconvinced came to agree to acquit Yanez.Yanez shot Castile seven times after he pulled him over for a broken tail light. Yanez claimed that Castile was reaching for his gun, although prosecution argued that Yanez acted too hastily in the exchange. Daily CallerThe white racists who let the cop go free narrative that liberals in the media will attempt to put forth, won t be worth much now that the only 2 black jurors voted to acquit Officer Yanez | 1real |
CHAOS In Chicago As Thousands Of Protesters Shut Down Trump Rally (VIDEOS) | A scheduled rally for 2016 republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was shut down over security concerns, on Friday.The announcement came after thousands of protesters gathered outside the University of Illinois pavilion, chanting Trump has got to go. Protesters occasionally clashed with supporters, as dozens of police officers worked to keep them on opposite sides of the street.According to NBC Chicago, local law enforcement officers met Trump at the airport, informing him of the situation.Inside the arena, thousands of Trump supporters waiting to hear him speak were instead informed that the rally was cancelled.An announcer thanked the crowd for their attendance, before saying, Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight s rally will be postponed until another date. Following the announcement, chaos erupted inside the arena, with boos and cheers rising through the arena.Some protesters, who were also present inside the pavilion, were seen being removed by security.NBC Chicago reports that scuffles broke out among those inside the pavilion, saying, Some people could be seen yelling at each other or making vulgar gestures; at least one punch was thrown. A man who took the podium was escorted away by officers. The announcer directed Trump supporters to alert security if they observed a protester, by holding a rally sign over the person s head and shouting Trump, Trump, Trump. Here s video of the moments immediately after the cancellation was announced, via Evan F. Moore on Twitter. Reaction to the Chicago Trump rally postponement.@DNAinfoCHIpic.twitter.com/GRQTdIypt4 Evan F. Moore (@evanFmoore) March 12, 2016Moore captured video of what he describes as a protester trying to fight with campus police, following the announcement. Protesters tries to fight with UIC cop. It didn t workout. @DNAinfoCHI pic.twitter.com/8PV5CIf7AW Evan F. Moore (@evanFmoore) March 12, 2016At least ten thousand anti-Trump protesters were expected to attend the rally, with thousands purchasing tickets. Some planned to cause disruptions inside the pavilion, while others planned to leave seats unfilled.Witnesses described the scene as total chaos. Evan F. Moore posted video of the scene to his Twitter account on Friday. More footage. @DNAinfoCHI pic.twitter.com/SX3CKdHUJY Evan F. Moore (@evanFmoore) March 12, 2016Moore also capture video of the chaos outside the pavilion, which he also posted to his Twitter account. More footage. @DNAinfoCHI pic.twitter.com/SX3CKdHUJY Evan F. Moore (@evanFmoore) March 12, 2016Image credit: video screen capture via Evan F. Moore on Twitter | 1real |
Factbox: Republicans to watch in U.S. Senate tax bill fight | WASHINGTON - Some key U.S. senators still had concerns about the Republican tax bill in the Senate, as a procedural motion to formally open debate on the measure was approved on Wednesday. Here is a list of Republicans pivotal to the bill’s fate. The moderate senator from Maine has qualms about Republicans’ plan to include in the tax bill a repeal of a federal fee imposed on people who do not comply with Obamacare’s “individual mandate.” The fee is meant to encourage young, healthy people to get health insurance so that premiums are affordable for old, sick people. Collins and others fear repealing the fine would drive up insurance premium costs, canceling out tax-cut gains that many of their constituents might get from the tax bill. Collins said Republican leaders had promised her to take up two healthcare provisions before the end of the year to help mitigate the impact of repealing the fee. Those provisions would help insurers cover expensive patients and continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people for two years. Collins has also prepared an amendment to the tax bill to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, a provision that is part of the House of Representatives’ tax bill. Both the Senate and House bills end deductibility of state and local tax income and sales tax. Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill ends property tax deductibility too. Collins sidestepped a question on whether she would vote for the tax bill. She said: “We’re doing this one step at a time.” The senator from Alaska will vote for the tax bill, she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening. Murkowski said a number of the bill’s features were “very attractive,” noting that it would lower tax rates, double the child tax credit and double the standard deduction. She said it also included a provision she had written, to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling. Murkowski said it was important to enact reforms separately to help stabilize the individual market in health insurance. The Montana Republican has concerns about the bill’s treatment of “Main Street” businesses. He said on Wednesday he had secured an agreement to increase a 17.4 percent deduction for owners of pass-through businesses to 20 percent. The senator from Wisconsin also has demanded more favorable treatment for “pass-through” businesses, which include sole proprietorships and partnerships, as a condition of his support. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, said on Tuesday he had the outlines of a deal adding a tax snap-back provision to the bill that would raise taxes automatically if economic growth targets are not hit in the future to offset a higher deficit. Corker said that arrangement would satisfy his concerns that the tax cuts could add too much to the national debt. As of Wednesday evening, the details had not been announced. The snap-back proposal also became a target of growing criticism among conservative Republicans and lobbyists. The tax bill was expected to add $1.4 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years. The Arizona conservative said on Wednesday he was more comfortable with the tax bill because of indications there would be provisions in it to protect against ballooning the deficit. Flake told National Public Radio he was concerned about “gimmicks,” but liked other parts of the bill, especially the corporate tax cut. The Arizona maverick and former presidential nominee sidestepped questions on Monday about how he would vote on the tax bill, telling reporters in the hallway to “stay tuned.” Like Corker and Flake, Oklahoma’s Lankford questions whether tax revenues from economic growth will compensate for the expected increase in the national debt under the tax plan. He has been working with them to “trigger” more revenues if needed. The Kansas lawmaker is also wary of the impact on the national debt, pointing to his own state’s recent experience of fiscal problems following tax cuts. | 0fake |
FLAG DAY 2015: 10 FACTS TO KNOW ABOUT THE STARS AND STRIPES | Flag Day was established in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson and in 1949 Congress declared June 14 a national holiday: Let us on that day rededicate ourselves to the nation, he wrote in his proclamation, one and inseparable from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers first vows in independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded and in which we shall stand with united hearts, for an America which no man can corrupt, no influence draw away from its ideals, no force divide against itself a nation signally distinguished among all the nations of mankind for its clear, individual conception alike of its duties and its privileges, its obligations and its rights. 1. Bernard J. Cigrand is considered the father of Flag Day. In 1885, as a young teacher at a high school in Waubeka, Wisconsin, Cigrand put a small flag on his desk and told his students to write essays about it. He fought for the rest of his life to formally establish the holiday, according to the National Flag Day Foundation. 2. The flag has been changed 27 times. The final star, for Hawaii, was added in 1960. 3. The first time the flag was flown after being adopted was on Aug. 3, 1777 in Rome, New York. 4. The flag s colors have become significant over time. The white is for purity, the red is for valor and the blue is for justice, according to usflag.org. 5. President George Washington described the design like this: We take the stars from heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing liberty. 6. The first flag was probably created by Francis Hopkinson, who signed the Declaration of Independence. He requested a quarter cask of the public wine as payment for his design. He was rejected. 7. Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag according to a pattern, which was likely Hopkinson s. Legend has it she changed the six-point stars he d drawn to five-point ones because they were easier to stitch. 8. Sea captain William Driver gave the flag its Old Glory nickname in 1831, according to usacitylink.com. 9. The current design of the U.S. flag was created by Robert G. Heft, who made the pattern for a high school project. He earned a B- at first, but when the government chose it, his teacher raised the grade to an A. 10. There are six American flags on the moon. Five are standing, but Neil Armstrong s fell over.Via: ibtimes | 1real |
How to Plan Your Next Vacation With a Chatbot - The New York Times | Need to book a hotel on the go, or a friendly dinner recommendation while exploring a new city? There’s a bot for that. In fact, there are now chatbots for all kinds of things, from weather updates to health advice, as the popularity of smartphone messaging apps driven by artificial intelligence grows. Mobile messaging apps were used by 1. 6 billion people in 2016, and will reach two billion in 2018, or 80 percent of all smartphone users, according to the digital data researcher eMarketer. Another sign of their growing influence was evident last April, when Facebook announced it was opening its Messenger app to any outside company that wants to integrate its own bots into the chat program. Now, the booking services Expedia, Kayak, Skyscanner and many others are allowing potential customers to seek recommendations on hotel rooms and flights and book them via Facebook Messenger. Several other bots have sprung up in recent months, providing services like bookings and tips for activities, with a robotic touch. The technology is young, and while most of these chatbots have yet to become viable alternatives to existing travel planning options like Trip Advisor and traditional guides, it could be only a matter of time before our culture embraces booking by text. Here is what three of the more interesting options have to offer so far: SnapTravel aims to find you a hotel based on your budget and preferences via SMS, Facebook Messenger or Slack. It uses a combination of artificial and human intelligence to search Expedia, Priceline and more than 100 other sites for the best deal, and claims to have “secret deals” of its own. The bot first asks for your travel city and dates, whether you have a specific hotel brand in mind and if you have any neighborhood preferences in the city. I texted SnapTravel while I was looking to book a few nights in my hometown, Binghamton, N. Y. during Thanksgiving week. Based on my initial responses, SnapTravel gave me a cost estimate for and hotels in the area. After another series of questions regarding my budget, brand preference and more, I was told to hang tight and it would get back to me with hotel options within an hour. Seven minutes later, I was sent what it deemed my four best options, with photos and links to more details and booking options for each hotel, a link to a map with more options, and I was asked if I wanted to be put in touch with one of its travel agents (who can offer some human insight). The entire process from start to finish took 16 minutes. But it felt more like an automated phone call with a cable company than a typical text conversation. I thanked the bot, and was pleased that it did not bug me later on, something I had expected. The hotel recommendations were a mixed bag. I told the bot that I prefer Marriott hotels, and it included a Courtyard Marriott within my budget. The other three included a a local resort and a Homewood Suites by Hilton. Points for variety, but another Marriott choice would have been nice. Meanwhile the map with more options had only two additional hotels. As far as the deals themselves, they seemed legitimate when compared with the prices seen on discount booking websites like Hotwire. com. When you click on the hotel’s link on SnapTravel, you get its rates, are told whether there is a cancellation fee and are given the opportunity to compare its rate for that hotel with other booking sites. While you won’t get a comprehensive list to shop from, SnapTravel mostly did what it claims it can do, and in a timely manner. A spinoff from the Hipmunk booking website and smartphone app, Hello Hipmunk offers up a cute chipmunk to help you book travel from Facebook Messenger, Slack or Skype. Just be careful what you ask for. You will need to be specific if you want to get relevant results. I used Messenger to converse with Hipmunk, and before I had a chance to say hello, the critter asked me what airport I usually fly from. I said La Guardia, assuming it would understand that I meant La Guardia Airport in New York City. But it came back with: “Looks like you’re planning a getaway from Laguardia, Spain. ” I tried again, asking for some flight deals from New York to Chicago for the next week. He came back with: “You’re looking for the best time to go from New York City, NY, to Chicago, IL. Hold on, I’m digging through the data now. :)” Not really there, but we’re getting closer, and I appreciate the service with a smile. Next I tried: “I need a flight from New York to Chicago, leaving tomorrow and coming back on October 9. ” That seemed to do it. “Ready to jet? I’m finding you flights from New York City, NY, to Chicago, IL, on October 05, coming back on October 09,” the Hipmunk bot said. “I searched 736 itineraries. The least agonizing itinerary flies from LGA to ORD. ” Below were nine itineraries, rated one to nine in order of “least agonizing” with times and prices. This bot is fun to play with if you have the time, but it has a ways to go in the accuracy department. For the business traveler, there is Pana, which, like SnapTravel, combines artificial and human intelligence to plan your trip. The human factor seems to play a more significant role than it did with the other bots I tried. You don’t need to be a business traveler to benefit, but you do need to be a traveler to justify the cost: $49 per month ($499 annually) for its “concierge” plan. But there is a free trial to start. The involvement of humans may have explained the short delay in Pana’s response to my initial text (three minutes felt like an eternity compared with the other bots) but it also ultimately led to better results. After signing up and giving some basic information, including your email and phone number, Pana asks you for a quick phone call to get to know you a little better. But in keeping with the spirit of avoiding as much human interaction as possible, I passed on that and sought out its A. I. guidance. Pana gives you three ways to start: through email, SMS or its app. I chose SMS and received an introductory hello. I then texted that I wanted to fly from New York to Chicago, leaving next Monday and returning Friday. I got a response from “Jo” and learned that she is “a Canadian transplant in Hong Kong, avoiding the snow and loving the urban island life. ” Jo promised to look into my flight options and send them to me shortly. About an hour later, I received four flight itinerary options, sorted by price from lowest to highest. This was as far as I took it, but Pana is designed to be a relationship. Your virtual travel agent can check you into flights and suggest hotels, and then can pivot to to recommend restaurants and activities in your destination city. | 0fake |
SOMEONE CALL THE Waaambulance! Glenn Beck Warns He’ll Be On Suicide Watch If Cruz Loses Indiana…You Better Buckle Up Beck…THE RESULTS ARE IN [VIDEO] | Hey Glenn, suicide is no laughing matter, and you really needs to start ratcheting down your role as America s conservative drama queen. Seriously is America witnessing the melt down of a man who used to be one of the most prominent conservative voices in America? A few days ago, Glenn Beck posted a special video posted to his website, where he addressed news reports of the latest mass layoffs at his troubled media empire. Watch the video HERE. Something is not quite right in the fake oval office. Maybe Beck just needs a long vacation Glenn Beck rolled his face in Cheetos last week And no one stopped him.Glenn Beck pleaded with Indiana voters on Monday. If you guys screw this up, I ll be on suicide watch. .@GlennBeck to Hoosiers: "If you guys screw this up, I'm going to be pissed at you. I will be suicidal." Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) May 2, 2016But that not have been the craziest thing he said all day.Ouch, Glenn Beck: Tell me another time in our nation s history that you have witnessed where Indiana matters. Glenn Beck: God Prolonged GOP Primary So Every State Could Choose Between Good or Evil https://t.co/eK60lNkIbU pic.twitter.com/ez9moGDOMJ Cris (@ThePatriot143) May 3, 2016Well Glenn it s been a tough year, but the results are in and it looks like Trump ran the tables in Indiana:Wins 30 statewide delegates May win all of the 27 remaining district delegatesVia: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
‘On Contact’: Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin on the U.S.-Saudi Alliance | ‘On Contact’: Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin on the U.S.-Saudi Alliance
On this week’s episode of RT’s “On Contact,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin, author of “ Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection ,” explore why Saudi Arabia remains one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East despite the monarchy’s record of human rights abuses, including public executions, mistreatment of women, and the promotion of a fundamentalist religion that “sanctifies violence,” as Hedges says.
RT Correspondent Anya Parampil reviews the long alliance between the two countries. | 1real |
Saudi Arabia to behead disabled man for taking part in protests | Posted on November 5, 2016 by DCG | 3 Comments
From The Independent : Saudi Arabia is set to behead a disabled man for taking part in anti-government protests.
A specialised criminal court in Riyadh , the Arab kingdom’s capital, sentenced Munir al-Adam, to death for “attacks on police” and other offences they said took place during protests in the Shia-dominated east in late 2011 .
The 23-year-old is partially blind and was already partially deaf at the time of arrest; he alleges he is now completely deaf in one ear as a result of being severely beaten by police. His family issued a statement rejecting the verdict and claiming that Mr. Adam was tortured into confessing, The Times reported.
The steel cable worker said he had only signed a document admitting the offences after being repeatedly beaten. He said he had been accused of “sending texts” when he was too poor to own a mobile phone.
Forty-seven protesters and alleged supporters of al-Qaeda were executed in a single day in January. In July, the number of beheadings in Saudi Arabia reached 108 this year, putting the country, which has a population of nearly 29 million people, on track to exceed its 2015 execution total.
Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most prolific executioners. Research last year by human rights organisation Reprieve found that, of those identified as facing execution in Saudi Arabia, some 72 per cent were sentenced to death for non-violent alleged crimes, while torture and forced confessions were common.
“Munir Adam’s appalling case illustrates how the Saudi authorities are all too happy to subject the most vulnerable people to the swordsman’s blade,” said Maya Foa, of Reprieve. “Saudi Arabia’s close allies, including the UK, must urge the kingdom to release Munir, along with juveniles and others who were sentenced to death for protesting.”
The traditionally close relationship between Saudi Arabia and Britain has become strained in the past year as people in the West have protested against the use of the death penalty, including against minors. Protests also erupted across the Middle East in January.
Sara Hashah, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa spokesperson, said Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran were responsible for 90 per cent of all recorded executions globally and were out of step with the rest of the world .
“In Saudi Arabia, where people are routinely sentenced to death after grossly unfair trials, we have seen a dramatic surge in the number of executions in the past two years which has shown no sign of abating in 2016,” she told The Independent in July.
“This clearly demonstrates that Saudi Arabia’s authorities are increasingly out of step with a global trend of states moving away from the death penalty. “Saudi Arabia’s authorities must end their reliance on this cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment immediately.”
Mr. Adam was reportedly detained in February 2012 for taking part in protests in his home town of Qatif the previous year, when he was 18 years old.
Read the rest of the story here .
DCG | 1real |
Germany condemns latest North Korea missile test in strongest terms | BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany said on Friday it condemned North Korea s latest missile test in the strongest terms. North Korea fired a missile that flew over Japan s northern Hokkaido far out into the Pacific Ocean earlier on Friday, South Korean and Japanese officials said, deepening tension after Pyongyang s recent test of its most powerful nuclear bomb. The government condemns the latest missile test from North Korea in the strongest terms, a government spokesman told a regular government news conference. | 0fake |
This Texas Pro-Cop Facebook Page Shared This Racist Image And It Went Viral (IMAGES) | For the entirety of the last week, there has been an endless string of politicians and pundits filling the internet and airwaves with accusations that the Black Lives Matter movement has created a negative view of police officers across the United States. Even President Obama scolded social media commentators, asking those that communicate there to not give into over generalizations about the police.Oddly enough, those same people have been very quiet about the extremely racist rhetoric coming from both police officers and their supporters (whatever that means).Take for example this extremely racist and inappropriate post that the Texas Sheriff s Deputies Facebook page shared just after the shooting in Dallas, Texas that resulted in the deaths of five police officers:This isn t an over generalization. It isn t just a funny post that was posted by those trying to find humor to cope with stress, hurt, and anger as one of the admins claims. It is an incredibly racist, inappropriate, and misinformed image macro. During a time when racial tensions in the United States are at a boiling point, when people are seriously concerned there is going to be a full-blown race war, a pro-cop page shares something like this. There are a plethora of examples of police officers, saying, writing, and sharing racist things on the internet or elsewhere.Police officers and their supporters need to think twice about what they post online. There is no justification for this type of humor ever but especially right now in this precarious time. One cannot support or be a good cop and support inflammatory racist messaging like this. Right now, more than ever, police officers need to take a cue from homeland security if you see something, say something.Featured image from screenshots | 1real |
Tillerson Signs Docs with Climate Change Statement, Insisting U.S. ’Still Reviewing’ Policy - Breitbart | As a member of the Arctic Council, the United States has signed onto two agreements that include efforts to protect the Arctic from climate change, linking it to human activity and calling on global efforts to reduce its effects, including enforcement of the Paris Agreement. [“The Arctic Council, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, has proven to be an indispensable forum in which we can pursue cooperation,” Tillerson said in remarks to the council. “I want to affirm that the United States will continue to be an active member in this council. ” “Foreign ministers of the eight Arctic States signed the third binding agreement negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council, the ‘Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation,’ which will help to facilitate entry and exit of persons, equipment, and material access to research infrastructure and facilities access to research areas the use of traditional and local knowledge and education, career development, and training opportunities for students and scientists,” the council press release said. The ministers, including Tillerson, also signed the Fairbanks Declaration, which states, in part: Reaffirming our commitment to the of the inhabitants of the Arctic, to sustainable development and to the protection of the Arctic environment, Recognizing the rights of Arctic indigenous peoples and the unique role of the Permanent Participants within the Arctic Council, as well as the commitment to consult and cooperate in good faith with Arctic indigenous peoples and to support their meaningful engagement in Arctic Council activities, Acknowledging the contributions of local authorities, and the interests of all Arctic residents and communities in the work of the Arctic Council, Further recognizing that activities taking place outside the Arctic region, including activities occurring in Arctic States, are the main contributors to climate change effects and pollution in the Arctic, and underlining the need for action at all levels, Noting with concern that the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the global average, resulting in widespread social, environmental, and economic impacts in the Arctic and worldwide, and the pressing and increasing need for mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience, Noting the entry into force of the Paris Agreement on climate change and its implementation, and reiterating the need for global action to reduce both greenhouse gases and climate pollutants. The White House has not taken an official position yet as to whether it will stick with the Paris Agreement or withdraw, and Tillerson did not comment directly on the matter while in Alaska, the New York Times reported, despite his signing the document in favor of it. “No decision is imminent, and in his remarks on Thursday, Mr. Tillerson presented the delay as necessary to gain the viewpoints of parties outside the White House and even outside the United States, including the other Arctic nations,” The Times reported. “We are taking time to understand your concerns,” Tillerson told the members of the council, which in addition to the U. S. is comprised of Canada, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Russia. “But we’re not going to rush,” Tillerson said. “We’re going to work to make the right decision for the United States. ” “The council members approved, with little fuss, an agreement on scientific cooperation in the region,” The Times reported. “But the meeting’s closing statement, known as the Fairbanks Declaration, had been the subject of a flurry of negotiations on Wednesday. ” “We came here to Fairbanks believing that the declaration language was agreed,” Rene Soderman, the senior Arctic official for Finland, said, noting that the U. S. objected to some language, but that the overall council prevailed in its efforts. “We were able to push the U. S. back as much as possible,” Soderman said. “And they were able to go back as much as possible. ” “It’s a decent declaration and contains all the essential issues for all the eight countries,” Soderman said. Protesters were on hand at the venue chanting slogans, The Times reported, noting Tillerson’s previous job as CEO of ExxonMobil. Terry Chapin, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, was one of the protesters who is critical of the council’s need for unanimous decisions on matters. “They’re constrained in the action they can take because they depend on the consensus from participating countries,” Chapin said. “So if the United States is not going to provide consensus on the climate action that’s needed, their hands are tied. “I think we really need to speak to people like Tillerson to say that this is the kind of action that’s needed,” Chapin said. “While the council only has the power to issue advisories, the language in the statement signed by Tillerson comes in stark contrast to statements and promises made by President Trump about climate change,” ABC reported, noting at the same time that Tillerson “endorsed” the Fairbanks Declaration. The Associated Press describes the Arctic Council as “an advisory body that promotes cooperation among member nations and indigenous groups,” and a “focus is sustainable development and environmental protection of the Arctic. ” “It does not make policy or allocate resources, and its decisions must be unanimous,” according to AP. The gathering marked the end of the U. S. chairmanship of the council, which was passed on to Finland. | 0fake |
Ethics Office Praises Donald Trump for a Move He Hasn’t Committed To - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The Office of Government Ethics has informed lawyers for Donald J. Trump that only a divestiture of his financial stake in his sprawling real estate business will resolve ethical concerns about conflicts of interest as he assumes the office of the presidency. The revelation from the normally secretive federal agency came Wednesday in a bizarre series of oddly informal postings on its Twitter account after officials apparently concluded, erroneously, that Mr. Trump had committed on his own Twitter account to divesting his assets. “As we discussed with your counsel, divestiture is the way to resolve these conflicts,” the office wrote on Twitter, revealing legal advice that would normally be confidential and adding in a separate post: “Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest. Good call!” In fact, Mr. Trump had made no such commitment, at least publicly. In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Trump said he would separate himself from the operations of his vast global business empire. Mr. Trump provided few details in his posts and did not say whether he would divest his assets. But he promised to hold a “major news conference” with his adult children in two weeks to reveal legal documents that would remove him from what he called the “business operations” of his company. He vowed to leave the Trump Organization “in total” to focus on running the country. But his vague promise to “in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses” drew an immediate rebuke from legal and ethics experts in Washington, who said that a close reading of the actual words in the posts suggested that Mr. Trump was not planning to take sufficient steps to eliminate conflicts. The emphasis on “business operations,” not on ownership, hinted that Mr. Trump was not ruling out retaining a financial stake in the Trump Organization or putting his children in control. Ethics experts said such moves would leave Mr. Trump vulnerable to accusations that his official actions were motivated by personal financial interests. “Although it is of course important that he have no involvement in Trump business operations, in order to avoid conflicts he must also exit the ownership of his businesses through using a blind trust or equivalent,” Norman L. Eisen, who was a White House ethics lawyer in the Obama administration, and Richard W. Painter, an ethics lawyer in the Bush administration, said in a joint statement to The New York Times. Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group that promotes ethics in government, said: “Unless his solution is to sell the business outside the family and put the proceeds in a blind trust, he’s not really doing anything to solve the problem. Just because you say something on Twitter doesn’t make it so. ” Every president in the past four decades, Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter noted, has taken personal holdings he had before being elected and put them into a blind trust in which the assets were controlled by an independent party. If Mr. Trump were willing to sell his assets, one option would be to seek a certificate of divestiture from the Office of Government Ethics, which would allow him to sell his real estate holdings and other businesses with an enormous tax advantage. This system was set up to allow wealthy Americans to take jobs in the government and avoid conflicts of interest without a large financial impact. It allows incoming government officials to defer paying capital gains taxes on any earnings on the investment. This could generate an enormous windfall for Mr. Trump, given his vast real estate holdings. After Henry Paulson was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as Treasury secretary, he left a job at Goldman Sachs and took advantage of this provision, avoiding conflicts of interest by selling an estimated $500 million in Goldman stock. Money generated from the liquidation of Mr. Trump’s assets would have to be invested in “permitted property,” which is limited to Treasury bonds or diversified mutual funds, ending the real estate ventures that are so tied to the Trump family’s identity. Still, that is what the Office of Government Ethics has said he should do. The office is normally a staid agency that rarely talks to reporters on the record, but Wednesday’s Twitter posts were oddly enthusiastic. The series of nine posts suggested that officials were celebrating what they thought was a decision by Mr. Trump to accept their legal advice. In their posts, officials at the ethics agency referred to a 1983 legal opinion in which the office urged presidents to “conduct themselves as if they were” bound by conflict of interest laws, even though such laws do not apply to occupants of the Oval Office. In a statement, Seth Jaffe, an agency spokesman, said that officials there were “excited” by Mr. Trump’s announcements on conflicts of interest and that the messages were not based on any information about the ’s plans beyond what was shared on his Twitter feed. Asked later about the disclosure of the advice that the Office of Government Ethics had given to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Mr. Jaffe said he could not provide additional comment. But the agency has left the posts on its official government account. Officials for Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment about the disclosures from the agency. And Reince Priebus, who will be the White House chief of staff, said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that he was not ready to provide any more information about the legal discussions. “You should know that he’s got the best people in the world working on it,” Mr. Priebus said. In fact, the ’s plan to deal with conflicts remains unclear. Simply removing Mr. Trump from control of business decisions could still allow him to benefit financially from payments made to his companies by foreign governments, which may be prohibited by the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Mr. Eisen said. And Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts said nothing about whether his children, who serve as advisers on his presidential transition committee, would continue to have roles in his administration. If Mr. Trump’s business is run by his children, they must be entirely separated from government operations, Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter said. That means they could not participate in meetings with world leaders, like the prime minister of Japan, as Ivanka Trump did last month. “Without an ethics firewall that is set up at once and continues into the administration, scandal is sure to follow,” Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter said in their statement. Democrats on Capitol Hill immediately questioned on Wednesday whether Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts indicated a significant change in his plans, and called for a formal investigation by the House Judiciary Committee. A letter sent by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and signed by 15 other Democrats on the committee, said Mr. Trump’s posts raised “a number of questions,” including whether Mr. Trump intends to transfer ownership of his assets. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump emphasized the appearances he would need to maintain as president, saying he believed it was “visually important” to avoid conflicts between his government role and his businesses. Mr. Trump insisted, as he has before, that he is not legally required to take any steps to divest himself of his financial ties. In an interview with The Times last week, he said, “The law is totally on my side, meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest. ” He also said in the interview, “I would like to try and formalize something, because I don’t care about my business. ” Divesting could be costly and complicated. “That’s a very hard thing to do, you know what, because I have real estate. I have real estate all over the world,” he said in the interview. “Selling real estate isn’t like selling stock. Selling real estate is much different. It’s in a much different world. ” | 0fake |
South Carolina seeks $100 million from U.S. over plutonium removal | CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - South Carolina is suing the U.S. government to recover $100 million in fines it says the Department of Energy owes the state for failing to remove one metric ton of plutonium stored there, state Attorney General Alan Wilson said on Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, is the state’s largest case ever against the U.S. government, Wilson said in a news release. Congress approved fines of $1 million per day for the first 100 days of each year through 2021, beginning last year, if the weapons-grade plutonium was not removed from the Savannah River Site at the state’s border with Georgia, the attorney general’s office said. The lawsuit seeks money owed this year. The state is still working on a claim for 2016 fines as well, Wilson said. The federal government cannot break its obligations and “leave South Carolina as the permanent dumping ground for weapons-grade plutonium,” Wilson, a Republican, said in the complaint. A Department of Energy spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. Built in the 1950s, the U.S.-owned Savannah River Site processes and stores nuclear materials in support of national defense and U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts. A U.S. treaty with Russia in 2000 required each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, left over from the Cold War. The United States began building a mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility, known as the MOX project, at the Savannah River Site to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium by mixing it with uranium to form safer fuel pellets for use in commercial nuclear reactors. But the project is years overdue and billions over budget, and the technology for the new fuel fabrication is not fully developed. Russian President Vladimir Putin last October pulled out of the plutonium pact amid rising tensions over Ukraine and Syria. The Trump administration proposed in the fiscal year 2018 budget to scrap the project and pursue diluting the plutonium and disposing it underground, an alternative called for by the Obama administration. | 0fake |
Deputy attorney general seeks meeting with top senators: Politico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has asked to meet with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Politico reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Politico said Rosenstein was seen in the vicinity of the panel, which was holding a separate meeting on security issues. Rosenstein’s reported request comes days after President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey in a move that the White House has said followed a memo from Rosenstein. | 0fake |
New York governor unveils South Bronx highway rebuilding plan | (Reuters) - New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday unveiled a $1.8 billion highway reconstruction plan in New York City’s South Bronx aimed at benefiting one of the world’s biggest food markets and an area once seen as a symbol of urban blight. It was the latest public works plan announced by Cuomo at a time when such projects are increasingly on the national agenda. Republican President Donald Trump has vowed to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, which the American Society of Civil Engineers has given a near-failing grade. Cuomo’s highway project in the Bronx, the poorest of New York’s five boroughs, would rebuild the Bruckner-Sheridan highway interchange to allow the area’s largely black and Hispanic residents easier access to parkland and the Bronx River on the other side, Cuomo said. The plan also calls for new highway ramps to give vehicles direct access to the Hunts Point Market, one of the biggest food distribution sites in the world. Residents have long complained of respiratory problems from the 13,000 trucks daily that spew exhaust as they rumble through local streets. “The best future for the Bronx is ahead and we’re going to lead a Bronx that is better than any Bronx that has ever been,” Cuomo said in announcing the project. The project is expected to generate 4,250 jobs and will be completed in multiple phases, he said. Cuomo has earmarked the $700 million needed for the first stage in this year’s state budget, which is expected to be voted on April 1. Cuomo’s emphasis on public works projects includes a stage of New York’s Second Avenue Subway, renovation of LaGuardia Airport and replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River. Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic Party strategist, said in a telephone interview that the South Bronx project would boost Cuomo at the local, state and national levels. The second-term governor faces re-election in 2018 and has been floated as a potential presidential candidate in 2020. “It makes him the guy people have to pay attention to nationally on urban issues,” Sheinkopf said of Cuomo, son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. New stores and housing have helped the South Bronx recover somewhat from its reputation in the 1970s for crime and urban decay. In its annual “52 Places to Go” travel list last month, the New York Times listed the area at 51. | 0fake |
7 Ways To Prepare For An Economic Crisis | Bill White November 7, 2016 7 Ways To Prepare For An Economic Crisis
Using the past economic collapses as an example, we can see that people’s lifestyles changed dramatically. Even those who managed to keep their jobs and businesses have to make radical adjustments in their lies, just to be able to survive.
There is no reason for us to think that things will be any different here in the United States, than they were in Argentina; in fact, they could very well end up being worse.
The reason I say it could be worse is that there will be nobody to bail out the United States, as has been done with other countries. We know from the 2009 housing collapse that anything negative that happens in the U.S. economy has a worldwide effect.
Since other countries will end up suffering as well, there is no way that they will be able to help us.
Liberals have touted the idea of redistributing the wealth of the wealthy in order to take care of our country’s woes. I’m not going to discuss the morality or ideology of that right now; but I will say this: if you were to take all the wealth of the 100 richest people in the United States and add it together, it wouldn’t pay our federal government’s bills from January 1 st till tax day.
Of course, since their wealth isn’t really in cash, but rather in ownership of properties and companies, there’s no way of using it to pay the government’s costs or debts.
The other thing that could make the collapse worse here in the United States is that most Americans aren’t prepared to live without all of our comforts. If you go to other countries, people are more accustomed to doing things themselves, instead of expecting society to do them. They know how to do basic things like slaughter a hog and pluck a chicken ; things that the average American hasn’t had to do for generations.
Here are a number of lifestyle changes which can help your family to be ready to survive the meltdown:
Pay off Your Home
Home mortgages are dangerous in a financial crisis . If you don’t have enough income coming in to make the payment on your home, then you could very easily lose it. No matter how prepared you are, if you don’t have your home, you’re going to be in trouble.
There are a number of strategies around for paying off your home mortgage early. I won’t go into them here, because this really isn’t a book about personal finances.
You can find the necessary information on how to pay off your home early in a number of places. I highly recommend looking into Dave Ramsey’s teachings on the subject.
Another option you may want to consider is downsizing. By selling your existing home and moving into something smaller, you might be able to reduce your mortgage payments or even the length of your mortgage. That would help you to get rid of your mortgage sooner.
In the case of the financial crash coming before you manage to pay it off (which is very likely), your payments will be smaller, making it easier for you to keep making those payments.
Pay off All Other Debts
Any debt is a liability, enslaving your family’s finances to others. By paying off your outstanding debt, you eliminate the risk of lenders coming to take what you have. While other debt is not as important as your home mortgage, paying it off can make it easier to pay off your mortgage quicker.
Paying off your debt also reduces your monthly cost of living, freeing up more money for use in preparing for the pending crash or some other activity your family wants to do.
The vast majority of Americans have too much debt, which greatly limits their options and the decisions that they can make.
Learn to Do Things without Electricity
So much of our modern lifestyle depends upon electricity. We are used to using it for literally everything; from preserving our food to entertaining us. However, loss of electricity is a common problem during times of economic meltdown.
Oh, the electricity probably won’t go out and stay out, but you can count on a lot of service interruptions.
When service is lost, many of the things which we take for granted are lost as well. Our ability to store and cook food is compromised, as well as our ability to work. Lighting is gone, as well as most of our communications. For many people, the loss of electricity means the loss of being able to work as well.
For everything you use in your life that is electric powered, you need an alternative. That means having something that you can use to do the same job, should the power go out. In some cases, you might be able to do without that thing, but you need to analyze that and make that determination, not just accept it as an assumption.
Re-do Your Budget
Probably one of the best things you can do to prepare for a financial meltdown is to re-do your budget, establishing a more frugal lifestyle. Chances are, when the economic collapse happens, you’re going to have to be living that more frugal lifestyle.
By establishing it ahead of time, you not only train yourself and your family to be more careful of how you use your money, but you also save money which you can then use to buy and stockpile necessary supplies .
Many people today live from paycheck to paycheck. That doesn’t mean that they’re using their money wisely though. Their budget may include eating out three times a week, spending $400 per month on their cell phones and another $300 per month on entertainment. Yet they complain about not having enough money to buy some basic emergency supplies.
There are a lot of places where the average family spends more than they need to. Buying new cars is another one. Banks and the auto industry make a lot of money off of families who are making payments on two cars at a time. For some, their combined car payments are higher than their house payment.
While reliable vehicles are a necessity, having two car payments every month isn’t. It would be better to buy older cars and not have those high payments to make.
Eat Healthy
How can eating healthy be part of preparing for a financial meltdown? Easy; the most expensive things that most of us eat are junk food. As a nation, we spend a fortune on prepared foods, snack foods and sweets.
When the financial meltdown comes, you probably won’t be able to afford all that junk. You’ll end up eating much simpler foods, which carry more nutrition.
At the same time, eating all that junk food is not good for your health. Medical expenses can be extremely high, especially for those who have ignored eating healthy.
While it may sound a bit extreme, eating healthy can make the difference between life and death , by helping protect you from a life-threatening medical problem.
Get in Shape
This one goes hand-in-hand with eating healthy. People who are in good physical condition are much less likely to have medical problems, especially high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol; all of which can become life-threatening.
However, there’s another part to this as well. That is, preparing your body for the physical rigors of survival.
Living without all the modern conveniences requires much more physical work than living with them. That’s why so many of us are out of shape. We’ve become accustomed to allowing machines to do the things that we used to do ourselves. We’ve become softer.
Many of us can’t do the physical work necessary for surviving without all those modern machines.
Find Like-Minded People
Many experts on survival and preparedness recommend banding together with other like-minded people and forming a prepping community . The idea is that in the wake of a disaster, the community would gather in one place to live and work together. Each member of the team would have their assigned area of responsibility, based upon their unique skills.
There are many advantages of working together in a prepping community. The right community can increase your chances of survival.
However, the wrong one can cause severe problems, with people leaving the group and taking most of the supplies with them.
Be careful what group you join, investigating the morals and personalities of the people first, to make an informed decision about whether the group will stick together to help each other, or become selfish and steal from each other.
Our ancestors survived harsh times and their secrets can help you survive during the most treacherous conditions if the world is struck with a tragedy.
Bill White for Survivopedia. 155 total views, 155 views today | 1real |
BRAVE PRO-TRUMP REPORTER Grabs Microphone At Climate March…Tells Liberal Crowd To Chant “Bill Clinton Is A Rapist!” [Video] | A Conservative Reporter was brave enough to grab the mic at the Climate March and instruct people to yell Bill Clinton is a rapist! Everybody raise ya fist Everybody raise ya fist Bill Clinton is a rapist Bill Clinton is a rapistThe crowd wasn t too happy! You ll see in the video below Props to Jack Posobiec! Grabbed the mic and trolled the #ClimateMarch into singing Bill Clinton is a Rapist Grabbed the mic and trolled the #ClimateMarch into singing Bill Clinton is a Rapist pic.twitter.com/E8kSzbtd4K Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 29, 2017 | 1real |
Senado de México analiza designación de nuevo fiscal general | (actualizada a las 20:39 26.10.2016) URL corto 0 29 1 0 CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (Sputnik) — El Senado de México analiza la propuesta enviada por el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto para reemplazar al fiscal general de la República, Arely Gómez, por Raúl Cervantes, expresidente de la cámara alta.
En un enroque en dos altos cargos del Estado, la iniciativa contempla que la procuradora saliente, quien también es senadora con licencia para desempeñar el cargo de fiscal, ha sido designada a la Secretaría de la Función Pública, cargo que también debe analizar el Senado. Renuncia secretario federal de la Función Pública de México La titular saliente de la Procuradora General de la República (PGR Fiscalía federal), asumió el cargo a principios de 2005, en remplazo de Jesús Murillo, que fracasó cuando se derrumbó la llamada "verdad histórica" sobre la llamada Masacre de Iguala , perpetrada por policías y sicarios confabulados contra estudiantes de la escuela rural de Atoyotzinapa, que sigue sin esclarecerse.
En aquella ocasión, Gómez expresó que la PGR heredada era "un desastre" como institución federal contra el crimen.
Ese cargo federal se encarga de auditar el desempeño de los funcionarios públicos con criterios de transparencia, vacante desde julio pasado cuando un amigo del presidente, Virgilio Andrade dejó el cargo anticorrupción.
Más: Presidente Peña pide perdón a México por la "Casa Blanca" de su esposa
Andrade dejó ese despacho cuando se aprobó el nuevo Sistema Nacional Anticorrupción , entre críticas de la oposición por haber exonerado al presidente mexicano en una investigación interna, por la llamada Casa Blanca de la primera dama, Angélica Rivera, una mansión de casi 4 millones de dólares construida y financiada por un amigo contratista del gobierno.
El enroque Se forma una "tormenta perfecta" al final del mandato de Peña Nieto en México Gómez ha encarado otros casos paradigmáticos, como la fuga del jefe de Cartel de Sinaloa, Joaquín Guzmán , alias El Chapo, que se fugó por un túnel cavado hasta la celda del mafioso, cuando la procuradora fue fotografiada desconcertada, examinando la boca del pasadizo subterráneo del escape.
Una de las tareas inconclusas que deja Gómez es un paquete de juicios por corrupción que involucran a media docena de exgobernadores del gobernante Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), pero también uno de la oposición, que están prófugos por millonarias malversaciones al erario y sin rastro de ellos.
Si es aprobado, el legislador Cervantes, de 53 años y con dos décadas de militancia en el PRI tendrá en su despacho los expedientes de líderes políticos caídos en desgracia de la clase política, cuyos hilos llegan a las alturas del poder.
La aprobación del enroque en los cargos es inminente: por ejemplo, el líder del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, centroderecha) en el Senado, Fernando Herrera, ya le deseó al designado "éxito en su nueva encomienda".
A su turno, el coordinador de la bancada del Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD, centroizquierda), Miguel Barbosa, dijo que como senador se desempeñó con "profesionalismo y capacidad", cuando fue presidente de la Cámara alta.
El líder del PRI en el senado Emilio Gamboa, dijo que Cervantes "representó siempre a todas y a todos los legisladores", para desenredar "temas tan complicados como los que se discutieron", durante la aprobación de las reformas estructurales al inicio del mandato de Peña Nieto en 2013. "Cervantes es un gran constitucionalista y respetuoso de las leyes", que contribuyó a establecer el nuevo Sistema Nacional Anticorrupción, dijo el líder del PRI.
Senadores calculan que la corrupción cuesta el 10% del gasto público, es decir de 20.000 a 25.000 millones de dólares, otros organismos lo calculan como porcentaje del Producto Interno Bruto, y oscilan desde el 2 al 10% del PIB.
En cuanto al crimen, Gómez deja la Fiscalía cuando las estadísticas oficiales sobre homicidio dolosos en ocho meses de 2016, registran un amento anual de 20%. ... | 1real |
WOW! BLACK DALLAS Police Sergeant Sues Obama, Hillary, George Soros, Sharpton, Black Lives Matter And More For INCITING RACE WAR | Read the list of people and organizations this brave Dallas Police Sergeant is suing and tell us if you think he missed anyone who s responsible for starting a race war in America. The head of a Dallas police organization is suing a collection of Black Lives Matter figureheads and other prominent individuals for allegedly inciting racial violence against American police officers. Dallas Police Department Sergeant Demetrick Pennie, President of the Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation, filed an amended federal complaint September 16 against more than a dozen defendant institutions and individuals to build a class action case on behalf of police officers and other law enforcement persons of all races and ethnicities including but not limited to Jews, Christians and Caucasians for inciting race riots and related violence.The suit hopes to produce damages and an injunction placed against alleged threats of racially-motived violence going forward.The defendants represent a who s who of public figures in both racial and general political matters. Apart from founding members and public faces related to Black Lives Matter, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network; Malik Zulu Shabazz and the New Black Panthers; George Soros; President Barack Obama; former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; and Democrat Nominee Hillary Clinton are all included in the suit.The 66-page federal complaint alleges that each defendant individual and organization repeatedly incited their supporters and others to engage in threats and attacks against police officers around the nation, culminating in the July killings of five Dallas area officers with nine others wounded at a Black Lives Matter gathering. The complaint singles out George Soros as the financier of the BLM Defendants and similar organizations with the goal of inciting a race war and advocating violence against whites and Jews.Defendants Obama and Clinton are blamed for repeatedly endorsing behaviors carried out and surrounding Black Lives Matter.Sgt. Pennie is being represented by Larry Klayman of FreedomWatch. Layman previously founded the conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch. VIA: Breitbart | 1real |
Review: ‘The Night Of’ Takes a Cab Ride to Hell - The New York Times | In the beginning, there was the procedural. “Dragnet,” “Law Order” and the like set the template for television crime stories that took viewers briskly though the process by which bad guys get caught. “The Night Of,” the tense and exquisite limited series on HBO, beginning on Sunday, is also a deeply detailed procedural, but with a difference. It has more in common philosophically with the podcast “Serial” (whose first subject, Adnan Syed, was just granted a new trial) Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” and this year’s two O. J. Simpson series — stories that suggest that who is locked up, for what, is largely a matter of resources and random fate. In the fictional “The Night Of,” as in those stories, someone dies, and someone goes to trial, but the biggest suspect is the notion of egalitarian justice. The worst night of Nasir Khan’s life begins with promise. The studious, sexually inexperienced son of Pakistani immigrants, Naz, as he is known, drives his father’s cab from Queens to Manhattan, headed to a party. He’s told there will be girls. He never makes it. Andrea (Sofia ’Elia) a young woman with sad, faraway eyes, mistakes him for a working cabby and hails a ride. It leads to conversation, a connection, a ride back to her townhouse. And then to drugs, sex — and Naz’s waking up to find her stabbed to death. Naz (Riz Ahmed) is picked up for the murder, smeared with DNA evidence. In retrospect, you see how the creators, Steven Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) and Richard Price (“The Wire”) staged Naz’s last night of freedom — a college kid’s walk on the wild side — as a pit of circumstantial quicksand: the casual encounters that will become eyewitness testimony the chain of bad breaks, bad timing and bad decisions. Mind your armrests when you watch it all unfold you may clutch them right through the upholstery. Naz is interrogated by Detective Dennis Box (Bill Camp) a glum loner whose eyes tell him that the case is even as his gut says something’s off. Naz’s defense falls to John Stone (John Turturro) — a rumpled “precinct crawler” trolling the lockup for work — who lays out the stakes for a young Muslim in jail for killing a rich white girl. “Not to sound like a teabagger,” he says, “but how do you feel about America?” Stone’s part was meant for James Gandolfini (still listed as a producer). It would have been fascinating to see that bearish actor play a courthouse sad sack, but Mr. Turturro is a fine fit, as is Mr. Camp. They’re a pair of scuffed shoes on opposite feet of the law. The early episodes have a theaterlike intimacy, and they pay close attention to the particulars of arrest and processing. Mr. Ahmed deftly shows Naz’s dawning terror as his world becomes ever smaller the cinematography conveys the isolation, the disorientation, the feeling of being funneled down a dank, chute into the system. It’s a slow ride to hell, last stop Rikers Island. A corrections officer asks Naz if he belongs to a gang he doesn’t, but it turns out that “yes” would have been the better answer. “Well, then, good luck to you,” the officer says. Prison is its own confounding gantlet, overseen by an imperious inmate, Freddy (Michael Kenneth Williams, characteristically smoldering) who may matter more to Naz’s survival than any judge. The later episodes become a more conventional legal story, as Stone patches together a defense, and the case becomes Nancy in the media. There are nods to TV legal series throughout. When Stone prints graphics at a copy shop, the clerk asks if he works for “Law Order” prisoners at Rikers spend break time watching daytime court shows. The series excels at laying out the snowballing costs of a case, financial and psychological. Naz’s parents, who lose their livelihood when the cab is impounded, can’t afford a modest defense fee and have to make decisions on the fly. They also lose a measure of trust in their son they want to believe him, but like us, they didn’t see him not commit the murder, either. And Naz’s experience in prison suggests that, convicted or acquitted, he will be permanently changed. As a legal procedural, “The Night Of” is richly detailed but profoundly unglamorous. A running subplot involves Stone’s unappetizing case of foot eczema. His journey from doctor to herbal healer to doctor, looking for a cure, becomes a symbol for the befuddling process of navigating the legal system. Justice, in this grand, grim story, has feet not of clay but of gross, itchy, mortal flesh. But still it must stumble forward. | 0fake |
Republican lawmakers: health plan tax credit changes likely to help seniors | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republicans’ proposed healthcare plan to unravel Obamacare likely will be changed to adjust its tax credits to help older Americans buy health insurance coverage, two Republican lawmakers said on Friday. House Budget Committee Chairman Diane Black said it was very likely there would be such changes to do more for older, lower-income people. U.S. Representative Tom Cole said House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier on Friday had “pretty much committed” to altering the plan’s tax credits to help older Americans. | 0fake |
Facebook's political influence under a microscope | (Reuters) - As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, Facebook Inc is going out of its way to show its neutrality - an increasingly urgent matter for the social network as evidence of its power continues to emerge. Recent studies have shown the site has extraordinary influence. According to research scheduled to be published in August in the Journal of Communication, when people tagged their friends on Facebook in voting reminders, turnout increased by 15 to 24 percent. During U.S. presidential primary elections this year, a Facebook reminder that informed people when their state’s voter registration deadline was approaching and provided a link helped produce a surge of nearly 650,000 new voter registrations in California alone, according to Secretary of State Alex Padilla. In the United Kingdom, a Facebook reminder days before the deadline to register to vote on whether the country should exit the European Union led to 186,000 people registering online to vote, according to the government. “Generally, getting people out to vote could swing a national election,” said Katherine Haenschen, a PhD student at the University of Texas, Austin and author of the upcoming Journal of Communications study. Facebook is eager to show that its political involvement is limited to seemingly neutral activities such as encouraging voting. The company this week released some of the guidelines that govern its all-important News Feed - the place most people see postings on Facebook - and has pushed back hard against recent allegations of political bias in its “Trending Topics” module. At the same time Facebook has embraced its role as a “new town hall” for politics, hosting events and helping candidates more effectively leverage their platforms, said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director Her team helps candidates by answering their questions and providing advice, such as how to use Facebook Live and how to increase engagement on their pages. Still, concerns about Facebook’s role in shaping political attitudes are unlikely to abate anytime soon. Some people object even to voter-registration drives. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for example, alleged this week that Google and Facebook were trying to encourage a “remain” vote in Britain’s referendum on European Union membership by encouraging voting, asserting that media users are disproportionately youthful and pro-Europe. A more common complaint is that Facebook and other social networks serve as an echo chamber of ideas and beliefs, as users decide which people and pages they will follow and customize their News Feed. A 2015 study in Science showed that Facebook users tended to interact and click on content that was more in line with their ideological views. Facebook customer Tom Steinberg wrote in a post this week -one that quickly spread over Twitter - that he had actively looked on Facebook for people celebrating Britain’s vote to exit the European Union last week but could not find any. Steinberg, who said he was in favor of remaining in the European Union, urged tech leaders to do more to address the echo chamber on social media. “To not act on this problem now is tantamount to actively supporting and funding the tearing apart of the fabric of our societies,” Steinberg wrote. “We’re getting countries where one half just doesn’t know anything at all about the other.” Adam Mosseri, vice president of product management for News Feed, said the team tries to help users find new pages to follow, though he did not cite any specific efforts aimed at encouraging people to diversify their feeds. | 0fake |
How the GOP can take back the White House | As Republicans jockey for their party’s top spot in the 2016 presidential election, more than two dozen GOP governors are meeting in Las Vegas to discuss how best to promote and capitalize on their executive winning streaks at the national level.
With a slight advantage over Republicans in electoral votes and growing support from Hispanic and Asian-American voters, conventional wisdom holds that Democrats are favored to win the White House in 2016. But President Obama will leave few coattails in 2016 – only 27 percent of registered voters would vote for him again, giving Republicans a meaningful shot at making gains at the state and national level.
The dissatisfied majority of American voters will be looking for real change in 2016. They want a leader they can support – someone who understands the economy and will support job creation, not create broad, business-choking rules often overturned by federal courts.
The eventual GOP presidential nominee has an opportunity to capitalize on this era of public discontent and lead our country forward, united behind a shared goal of economic prosperity and growth. And he or she should start by taking cues from the Republican chief executives leading some of the most prosperous states in the nation.
Over the last four years, the GOP has excelled at the state level. In the last election cycle, Republicans picked up seven governorships, including swing states won by President Obama – Maine, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin – and true blue states like Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts. Since 2006, 44 of the 50 states have had a Republican governor. And the trend continues. On Nov. 3, voters in Kentucky elected their second Republican governor in four decades, Matt Bevin, in a big upset.
Voters increasingly look to governors to make tough choices against special-interest groups. That’s why presidential contenders should take a cue from them. If Republicans present a vision of the American Dream boosted by free-market innovation, choice in jobs, choice in providers of services and a well-run government making tough decisions for a better future for our children, they will capture and inspire American voters.
Between 2011 and 2014, GOP governors cut taxes by $36 billion, while Democratic governors raised them by $58 billion. And Republican governors are pushing back against unions by eliminating mandatory union membership, government union-dues collection, union-mandated labor for government projects and the protection of incompetent teachers. The 10 most business-friendly states in America are run by Republican governors.
Republican executive leadership is about more than just fiscal competence, however. It’s rooted in a philosophy that citizens are adults and can make decisions on what they want better than government can.
This GOP message of choice should resonate with voters across the political spectrum. Republicans support choice in doctors and health care savings accounts, choice in urban schools, choice for workers on whether to join unions, choice in construction workers for government projects, discretion in sentencing for nonviolent crimes and choice of taxicabs or Uber, hotels or Airbnb. This message works. In the November election, voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have made it much harder for Airbnb to operate in the city.
Too often, the left speaks with a unified voice, but their loyalty to interest groups such as teachers, unions and trial lawyers means they often struggle to affect change through choice or challenge the status quo.
Democratic presidential hopefuls are selling smoke and mirrors, pushing for new and broader regulations and new taxes. They’ll promise a cornucopia of seemingly free gifts – college tuition, student-loan forgiveness, greater entitlements and more unemployment compensation.
Today, more Americans identify as independents than with either major party – a trend that is accelerating. A Gallup poll released in January found the number of self-identifying independents had grown to 43 percent of the electorate, up from 35 percent in 2008. That increase in the number of independents is concomitant with an overall decline among respondents self-identifying as Democrats or Republicans.
As the GOP finalizes its national party platforms, Republicans should focus on the benefits of the sharing economy, greater use of technology, data-based decision making, less litigation, clear and simple regulations, and empowering Americans and free markets. These are the critical issues driving our economy and sure to drive American voters to the polls next November.
Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™, the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies, and author of the New York Times best-selling books, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. His views are his own. Connect with him on Twitter: @GaryShapiro | 0fake |
Florida Is About To Make Murder Legal – Yes, Really | Soon, if you live in Florida, it will become very difficult to prosecute for murder.Florida s loose murder laws became national headlines with the death of Trayvon Martin, in which a 17-year-old African-American boy was caught in the act of walking at night. George Zimmerman, who was nothing more than a self-appointed neighborhood watch officer, killed Zimmerman in 2012. After more than a year of right-wing media thoroughly trashing the victim, Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder. A Zimmerman of today would find it even easier, assuming the bill passes.If the measure becomes law, the state would again be at the forefront of expanding self-defense laws. Florida would become the first state to apply a tougher standard to the law during the pretrial hearing. Under the measure, the burden of proof would be shifted to prosecutors and defendants would no longer have to present evidence, typically by taking the stand, to prove their claim of self-defense.Instead, prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the highest legal standard that the use of force was not justified. Prosecutors have fiercely opposed the measure, saying it runs counter to the traditional workings of the criminal justice system. Typically, when defendants seek the dismissal of charges at a hearing arguing entrapment, for example it is up to them to present evidence and persuade the court, not the other way around.The new standard would require prosecutors to essentially put on a nonjury mini-trial, requiring victims and witnesses to testify twice and delaying the actual trial, prosecutors said. And with defendants no longer required to offer evidence which usually means taking the stand there will be little, if any downside, for them to claim a Stand Your Ground defense.Source: New York TimesCurrent Stand Your Ground laws make already make it easy to get away with murder, if you re white. In states with Stand Your Ground laws, there has been an eight percent increase in murder and in non-negligent manslaughter. In other words, more people are dying and more people are getting away with it.Getting away with murder isn t for everyone, though. According to studies, whites who kill blacks in Stand Your Ground states are far more likely to be found justified in their killings. In non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent. This proposed Florida law would only make things worse. When the burden of proof lies entirely with the dead guy in murder cases, it s difficult enough to prove, but when you add to the fact that the victim is black, well, you know how things will turn out. As they say, dead men tell no tales. To far too many, though, a dead black man has the presumption of guilt.Featured image via Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
ON FIRE! Sarah Sanders Shuts Down April Ryan: “Your mind is in the gutter” [Video] | If you watched this live, you had to be loving Sarah Sanders. She was on fire!APRIL RYAN BROUGHT UP THE TWEET FROM POTUS (see below) earlier today that has gotten so much attention from the left. The liberal media went crazy when President Trump tweeted that Senator Gillibrand would come to his office and do anything to get a donation from him.Fast forward and you have April Ryan trying to get in the gutter by claiming Trump s comment was sexist in nature. Sarah Sanders shot back that you would believe that only if your mind is in the gutter Sarah Huckabee SandersWRECKS Gutter Girl April Ryan Only if your mind is in the gutter would u interpret it that way. She was referring to saying Senator Gillibrand would do anything for a contribution. U don't need to read into that. #PressBriefingpic.twitter.com/sLX90wrDPg STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterVIP) December 12, 2017HERE S WHAT PRESIDENT TRUMP TWEETED:Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017Anyone who knows Washington should know that donations do buy access. It s the truth.SARAH SANDERS JUST SHUT DOWN CNN S JIM ACOSTA IN AN EPIC BACK AND FORTH: I M NOT FINISHED Sarah Huckabee Sanders was hot today when she went off on CNN s Jim Acosta over the fake news that s been constant the past few days. Jim Acosta also would not be quiet so Sanders had to get loud and forceful: I m not finished Sanders was making a point about reporters making a mistake vs when they report fake news on purpose There is a big difference.Go Sarah! There s a big difference between making honest mistakes and purposely misleading the American people something that happens regularly. Sarah Huckabee SandersFox News Insider reports:White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders battled CNN reporter Jim Acosta, accusing the mainstream media of purposefully putting out false information.As he began a question, Acosta told Sanders at Monday s press briefing that journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn t mean it s fake news. Sanders started to answer but Acosta and another reported interjected. I m sorry. I m not finished! she countered. There s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly, she shot back.Acosta asked for an example of a story that was intentionally false and meant to mislead Americans.Sanders called out the false report by ABC News Brian Ross on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which earned Ross a four-week suspension.She called it very telling that Ross was suspended. Acosta kept pushing Sanders to let him ask his original question about allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, but she refused. | 1real |
Six Corporations Will Soon Rule the Planet |
The corporate elite ruling the planet.
We know that six corporations control 98% of the media. It works pretty much the same in any industry or part of the economy.
We are fast approaching a border-less world where government will soon become extinct. And when we were not paying attention we lost our country and our planet. What will that day look like? The following video lays it all out.
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At least 65 media workers killed doing their jobs in 2017: Reporters Without Borders | BERLIN (Reuters) - At least 65 media workers around the world have been killed doing their jobs this year, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday. Among the dead were 50 professional journalists, seven citizen journalists and eight other media workers. The five most dangerous countries were Syria, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines. Of those killed, 35 died in regions where armed conflict is ongoing while 30 were killed outside of such areas. Thirty-nine of those killed were targeted for their journalistic work such as reporting on political corruption or organized crime while the other 26 were killed while working due to shelling and bomb attacks, for example. It s alarming that so many journalists were murdered outside of war zones, said Katja Gloger, a board member of Reporters Without Borders. In far too many countries perpetrators can assume they ll get off scot-free if they re violent towards media professionals, she added. The organization said more than 300 media workers were currently in prison, with around half of those in five countries, namely Turkey, China, Syria, Iran and Vietnam. | 0fake |
Turkey Arrests Hundreds in Sweeping Raids Against ISIS - The New York Times | ISTANBUL — Several hundred people suspected of being Islamic State operatives were arrested in a series of coordinated raids by the Turkish police on Sunday, in what constitutes one of Turkey’s largest operations against the jihadist group on the country’s soil. Nearly 450 suspects were rounded up in the early hours of Sunday, according to the Anadolu Agency, a news wire. Independent television reports later said 690 suspects had been held by the end of the day. At least one attack was said to have been thwarted in the process, according to Anadolu. The operation was distinct from crackdowns on those accused of being supporters of last summer’s failed coup, and on members of the country’s political opposition. More than 130, 000 Turks have been arrested or fired from government posts in the past seven months as part of those efforts, according to government data. Sunday’s raids were the latest salvo in a conflict between Turkey and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In the early years of the Syrian revolution, Turkey was accused of turning a blind eye to the movement of thousands of Islamic State fighters over its southern border with Syria, where they joined the war against the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar . But the Turkish Army is now in direct conflict with the group in northern Syria, where Turkey is leading attempts to expel the Islamic State from the strategically important city of Al Bab. Turkey has suffered numerous attacks linked to the Islamic State since 2014, most recently in the early hours of this year, when a fighter killed 39 people at a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city. The group is also believed to be behind an October 2015 bombing in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, that killed more than 100 people, and was accused of organizing the killing of 45 people at Istanbul’s main airport last summer. This weekend’s raids occurred across an unusually wide area, with suspects seized in 18 provinces. The move is a change in strategy by the Turkish police, who have usually detained only small numbers of jihadists at a time, said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat, and an analyst who focuses on Turkey for Carnegie Europe, a think tank. But the detentions may not necessarily lead to court cases. “Over all, Turkey’s efforts to combat the influence and network of the Islamic State at home is still handicapped by discrepancies between the different arms of the Turkish state,” Mr. Ulgen said. “An effort led by law enforcement is sometimes handicapped by the decisions of the Turkish judiciary, which as we have seen in the recent past has let go people associated with the Islamic State. ” Ahmet Yayla, a former counterterrorism chief in Turkey and a critic of the Turkish government, also questioned the effectiveness of such a large raid, which he argued could overwhelm the capacity of the counterterrorism police. Officers may not be able to properly handle the paperwork, interrogations and bureaucracy associated with processing more than 50 suspects, said Dr. Yayla, who headed counterterrorism operations in a southeast Turkish province from 2010 to 2012. “It is impossible to process that many terrorists in one operation,” said Dr. Yayla, who now lives in the United States, and who began to publicly criticize the Turkish government after his teenage son was jailed on suspicion of a connection to the coup attempt. | 0fake |
Exclusive: Pat Buchanan Calls Watergate Comparisons ’Grossly Invalid’ - Breitbart | Pat Buchanan, an adviser to Richard Nixon, presidential candidate, and original rallying point of the American movement spoke with Breitbart News Wednesday to discuss the myriad Watergate comparisons making the rounds in Washington. [Since FBI Director James Comey’s ouster last week, the common Washington trope of Watergate comparisons has reached a fever pitch. Within hours of the announcement, a George W. Bush administration ethics attorney was telling Rolling Stone the Trump White House was now “worse than Watergate. ” The trend continued, even among Republicans, into the next week as the “Comey Memo” posited that Trump had told the Director to “let it go” in regard to already fired National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Sen. John McCain ( ) said Tuesday night that “I think it’s reaching the point where it’s of Watergate size and scale. ” Buchanan was known as a voice of the conservative base inside the Nixon White House, where he served as a senior adviser to the president throughout the more than scandal that ended in the only presidential resignation in American history. As fate would have it, Buchanan released his second volume of political memoirs of the Nixon era, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever, covering those very years, on the day of Comey’s dismissal. In conversation with Breitbart News, Buchanan rejected the idea we were at anything like the “smoking gun” moment of August 5, 1974: I think the comparison is grossly invalid for this reason, I don’t think there’s any crime in what I have read that Comey wrote. If Comey believed that the President of the United States had engaged in an obstruction of justice, he had a moral and a legal obligation to go to the Deputy Attorney General and tell him exactly what had transpired … He did nothing like that. He just put it in his files. Commentators, especially those on the left, rushed to invoke the “smoking gun tape” in explaining the Comey Memo Tuesday and Wednesday, a reference to the commonly used name for the recording of a 1972 conversation between President Nixon and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman. President Nixon’s own voice ordering Haldeman to have the CIA prevent the FBI from following up on areas of their Watergate investigation was the “smoking gun” of presidential obstruction of justice. Its release in the summer of 1974, more than two years after the sensational at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington, DC’s Watergate development, finally made defense of President Nixon untenable and led swiftly to his resignation. Convicted Nixon Attorney John Dean told CNN Tuesday that Comey’s Memo was a “direct parallel” to the smoking gun tape. Former Bill Clinton Speechwriter Bill Waldman argued roughly the same on the Daily Beast Wednesday. Buchanan found the comparisons “absurd,” explaining the context in which the smoking gun tapes became public: If you’re talking about the smoking gun tapes, that was revealed when I was at Camp David before Nixon’s resignation … That was 18 months into a Watergate crisis that had all manner of allegations of felonies and misdemeanors, and convictions, and trials. Since March of 1973 all the way through August of ’74. By the period described, over a dozen people had been indicted on serious charges relating to the initial and subsequent including several administration officials like Haldeman. Some, like G. Gordon Liddy, were already serving lengthy federal prison terms. Buchanan stressed that nothing of the sort occured to lend significance to Trump’s alleged comments to Comey. “So where is the crime?” Buchanan pondered. “There is no crime thus far. In this supposed hacking, there is no crime attributed to Donald Trump or his staff and no indictment in his alleged collusion with the Russians, because no collusion has been established. ” “To suggest that because Donald Trump said, ‘look, take it easy on General Flynn, he’s had a rough time’ that this is some crime, I think it’s absurd,” Buchanan argued. Even assuming the Comey Memo’s allegations are completely true, Buchanan was wary of comparing them to the deliberate interference in a fruitful criminal investigation by President Nixon: You’ve got a handful of words here. What exactly has [Trump] obstructed? What action did he take? He asks the FBI basically, “can you cut some slack for a guy who’s a good guy, and is in trouble, and has resigned from the White House. ” I don’t see any comparison at all. The comparison to the smoking gun tape was not the first attempt by some commentators to compare Comey’s dismissal to supposed Watergate equivalents. Comey’s ouster itself has been continually compared to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973, where both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General Bill Ruckelshaus resigned rather than obey Nixon’s direction to fire the special prosecutor appointed to investigate Watergate Archibald Cox, who eventually was fired by Solicitor General Robert Bork. Senator Ed Markey ( ) John Podesta, and newfound liberal hero former acting Attorney General Sally Yates have all publicly drawn the comparison to Trump’s decision to dismiss Comey — an act, unlike firing a special prosecutor like Cox, well within a president’s authority to take unilaterally. Buchanan himself wrote on the inevitable comparison on Monday. While he concluded that the media’s “hysteria” over a “constitutional crisis” from Comey’s firing did remind him of the Saturday Night Massacre, he explained Breitbart News Wednesday that the facts do not: I was in the Oval Office when Archibald Cox was fired. Here’s the comparison, when Archibald Cox was fired on the Saturday massacre, the Attorney General Resigned, the Deputy Attorney General resigned, the special prosecutor, Cox, was fired, the special prosecutor’s office was shut down, and we were already six months into the whole Watergate crisis. And there were resolutions of impeachment the next week, 20 of them on the floor of the House. We have here what? An FBI director has been fired, who says the president had a perfect right to fire him. And the investigation by the FBI into the connection, which has produced zero fruit to date, continues on unimpeded. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s Wednesday decision to appoint a special counsel in the person of Director Robert Mueller further isolates the Russia investigation from Trump’s dismissal of Comey. The probe will now be out of the normal FBI which Trump’s nominee to replace Comey will head. Asked to compare the political climate in Washington to that of the Watergate years, Buchanan explained: Because of the nature of media today, and the extraordinary contentiousness, virialence, and viciousness of the politics in the last four months, the mood in town and in the media … you’re getting to similar levels of heat and intensity and hostility that you had back then, but the substance is not there. “Most Americans weren’t even alive back in 1972, 73, 74. I can understand why some people rush and compare one thing to another,” Buchanan said, seeking to explain the prevalence of such comparisons. “There’s a gross exaggeration and something approaching a sense of insecurity and panic here in town when, again, it’s not justified by the reality. ” As for the likelihood of impeachment in the near future, as Rep. Al Green ( ) called for on the House floor Wednesday, Buchanan was skeptical. “The Republican Party that controls the House is not going to start House hearings on impeachment,” he said. Asked if he had any advice for the current generation of populist conservatives in the White House, Buchanan suggested unity and better information sharing among the president and his staff: The whole White House, they’ve got to get it together and organized … some of the staff has been pounded mercilessly and in most cases they’ve simply been left uninformed or been sent out uninformed of what the reality is and they awaken to new tweets. “It just is not working like a traditional White House and I think it really needs to be buttoned up,” Buchanan concluded. | 0fake |
Suicide bomber kills at least 18 at police academy in Somalia's capital | MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A suicide bomber disguised as a policeman blew himself up inside a police training camp in Somalia s capital Mogadishu on Thursday and killed at least 18 officers, officials said. Police spokesman Major Mohamed Hussein said the attacker strapped explosives to his body and infiltrated the General Kahiye Police Training Academy during an early morning parade. Police were preparing for the 74th anniversary of police day. As they wanted to start exercise, a suicide bomber came in and blew up himself. We lost 18 police officers and 15 others were injured, Muktar Hussein Afrah, Somalia s deputy police commander, told reporters at the blast scene. Police will always continue their work despite death. Police earlier put the death toll at 15. Reuters witnesses who attempted to visit the site of the blast said police had sealed it off. Hours later when they were allowed in, a witness saw body parts suspected to be from the bomber on the ground in the field where police officers had been training. The witness said the ground nearby had also been washed to remove blood stains and people were burying bodies at the police academy. The militant Islamist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack and gave a higher death toll. We killed 27 police (officers) and injured more, Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group s military operations spokesman, told Reuters. Al Shabaab carries out frequent bombings in Mogadishu and other towns. The group, which is allied to al Qaeda, is waging an insurgency against the U.N.-backed government and its African Union allies in a bid to topple the weak administration and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam. The militants were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 and have since been steadily losing territory to the combined forces of African Union peacekeepers and Somali security forces. On Tuesday, the U.S. Africom said the U.S. military had conducted an air strike on a vehicle they said was strapped with explosives some 65 km southwest of Mogadishu. Thursday s attack comes at a time when the African Union is finalizing plans to trim its peacekeeping mission called AMISOM. The 22,000-strong AU force is scheduled to leave by 2020 and some security experts say al Shabaab could find it easier to stage attacks as the peacekeeping forces are reduced because government forces will find it hard to replicate their work. At the same time, Somalia could become a safe haven for militants linked to al Qaeda currently in Yemen, the experts said. The peacekeepers were deployed to help secure a government that has struggled to establish central control in a country that plunged into civil war in the early 1990s. | 0fake |
Trump committed to fair U.S. elections free from any interference: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is committed to ensuring that U.S. elections are conducted fairly and protected from interference from anyone, the White House said on Thursday. “The president takes our elections very seriously,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters during a briefing. Separately, she added that current sanctions against Moscow would remain in place until the Ukraine crisis was resolved. | 0fake |
Did you vote to #DrainTheSwamp? Take the #TrumpPledge! | Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Do you have the sinking feeling that Trump may start backing off his promises now that he’s in power. Is there the niggling doubt that the banksters, criminals and party insiders he’s surrounding himself with may not follow through on that draining of the swamp? Never fear! You can show you’re a person of integrity by taking the #TrumpPledge.
SHOW NOTES | 1real |
Resilience in Baltimore: A Bottom-Up Example of People Taking Charge | (42 fans) - Advertisement - In my research of what is happening in our communities regarding resilience from the insanity of today's corporate and government behaviors, I came across this Maryland Community Pilot study. This study is listed as being written this year, 2016. This makes the research fresh. To give credence to this movement, consider some of the investigators for the study. People like: * Karen Akerlof, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University * Fredrika Moser, Maryland Sea Grant * Kristin Baja, Office of Sustainability I could continue on and on. My point is, the people involved are professionals and not whacked out "greenies". There are four Maryland neighborhoods involved in the study. Some of the neighborhood climate risks entail: Flooding and sewage overflows from storm water run-off, urban heat island effects, pollen allergens, increased air pollution, storms, riverine flooding (in Westport). - Advertisement - The vulnerabilities include: Low socioeconomic populations, racial disparities, vacant housing, poor health and air quality (Baltimore), industrial facilities (Westport) The site further states that Communities are beginning to plan efforts to consider adaptation strategies to build their resilience (NRC, 2010), yet many lack the political capital or access to information and resources that would allow them to prepare for chronic flooding, catastrophic storm events, and losses of economically important natural resources. Frequently, it is underserved and underrepresented communities that lack these resources and are most vulnerable to the effects of changing environmental conditions (Douglas et al., 2011; Melillo, Richmond, & Yohe,2014). Storm events are particularly devastating to socially vulnerable communities, even when controlling for infrastructure characteristics (Highfield, Peacock, & Zandt, 2014). - Advertisement - Meeting the needs of high-risk/low-resource communities is one of the most critical challenges in achieving resilience nationally (NRC, 2010), but little tailored information exists to guide program development specifically for these contexts (NOAA, 2015). Moreover, our understanding of the conditions under which audiences are most likely to engage in successful decision-making to reduce vulnerabilities is still evolving (Webler, Tuler, Dow, Whitehead, & Kettle, 2014). "Build resistance to what?" you may ask. Personally I use the term resilience. It's more positive. Resilience as I define it is the adoption of behaviors and programs that lead to a supportive and clean environment, healthy families and a vibrant you. | 1real |
Peru's president pardons ex-leader Fujimori, citing his health | LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori late on Sunday, clearing him of convictions for human rights crimes and graft before completion of a 25-year prison sentence. Kuczynski s office said in a statement that a medical review showed that Fujimori, 79, who governed Peru from 1990 to 2000, suffered from a progressive, degenerative and incurable disease. The pardon comes just days after a faction of Fujimori s supporters in the opposition-controlled Congress saved Kuczynski from a motion that would have forced him from office in the wake of a graft scandal. [nL1N1OL160] | 0fake |
JUST IN: MUELLER’S “Right Hand Man” Represented IT Staffer Who Destroyed Hillary’s Blackberrys With A Hammer! | You just can t make this stuff up Yet another key member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe appears to have deep ties to the Democratic Party.From PJ Media: Aaron Zebley served previously as Mueller s chief of staff at the FBI and as a senior counselor in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the National Security and Terrorism Unit in Alexandria, Virginia.Also, in 2015 when he was a lawyer, he represented Justin Cooper, the IT staffer who personally set up Hillary Clinton s unsecured server in her Chappaqua home, Fox News Tucker Carlson revealed on his show Thursday.Cooper, it so happens, is also the aide who destroyed Clinton s old BlackBerries with a hammer.Watch the brilliant television ad Ted Cruz s team made during the election, that mocked Hillary Clinton and Justin Cooper for destroying evidence of her crimes, when they smashed her Blackberrys with a hammer:Documents obtained by Fox News show that Senate investigators grew frustrated with Zebley after being repeatedly stonewalled when they were trying to set up a meeting with Cooper. Mr. Zebley telephoned Homeland Security [Committee] staff to inform them that Cooper had chosen to cancel the interview, the documents said.In a letter to Cooper, congressional investigators complained: We are troubled by your attorney s [referring to Zebley] complete refusal to engage the committee in a discussion about how to further assuage your concerns. Let this sink in. The same attorney who played a defensive role for Hillary Clinton was tapped by Mueller in June to play an offensive role against Clinton opponent Trump.But Zebley isn t the only questionable hire. Out of a team of fifteen lawyers, nine of them have donated to Democratic candidates. None of them seem to have Republican leanings.Jeannie Rhee, who was hired by Mueller last summer to work on the probe, was the personal attorney of Ben Rhodes and also represented the Clinton Foundation, Fox News Laura Ingraham reported on Wednesday. | 1real |
China extends national anthem 'disrespect' law to Hong Kong | BEIJING (Reuters) - China s largely rubber-stamp parliament formally extended a law banning disrespect of the national anthem on Saturday to cover Hong Kong, a move that critics have said undermined the Chinese-ruled city s autonomy and freedoms. In the past few years, some Hong Kong football fans have booed the national anthem during World Cup qualifiers and other matches, mirroring protests in the United States where football players knelt during the national anthem, a practice denounced by U.S. President Donald Trump. China passed a new law in September mandating up to 15 days in police detention for those who mock the March of the Volunteers national anthem, a law that also covers the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau but was not immediately given a legal basis for enforcement there. The National Anthem Law, which went into effect on Oct. 1, has now been included in an annex of Hong Kong s Basic Law, or mini constitution, state news agency Xinhua said. It will also be included in an annex of Macau s Basic Law, Xinhua reported. He Shaoren, spokesman for the National People s Congress Standing Committee, said in a news conference on Saturday that it was up to the Hong Kong government to enact a local law to abide by the amendment in a timely manner. A Hong Kong official said on Wednesday that the Special Administrative Region would enact such a law as soon as possible . Hong Kong is a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a so-called one country, two systems formula that promises the city a high degree of autonomy, including an independent judiciary. China s growing reach into Hong Kong s affairs has, however, stoked tensions and mass protests including the 2014 Occupy civil disobedience movement that blocked major roads in the city for 79 days to pressure China to allow full democracy. Chinese authorities have strived to instill greater patriotism into Hong Kong, while condemning a push from democracy activists to distance Hong Kong. China s national legislature on Saturday also passed an amendment to its criminal law that extends punishments for publicly desecrating the national flag and emblem to disrespecting the national anthem. Punishments include jail terms of up to three years, Xinhua reported. This law does not appear to apply to Hong Kong or Macau. | 0fake |
More Than 1/4 Trillion In New Debt In 30 Days | More Than 1/4 Trillion In New Debt In 30 Days The Daily History of the Debt Results
Historical returns from 09/25/2016 through 10/25/2016
The data for the total public debt outstanding is published each business day. If there is no debt value for the date(s) you requested, the value for the preceding business day will be displayed. | 1real |
Palestinians say ‘oui’ to Paris peace conference after Israel balks | November 8, 2016 Palestinians say ‘oui’ to Paris peace conference after Israel balks
Palestinians on Monday welcomed a French plan to hold an international conference on the two-state solution in Paris at the end of December.
“We have encouraged France to go ahead with its initiative and supported its efforts to have a multilateral conference before the end of the year,” PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said after meeting with French envoy Pierre Vimont in Ramallah.
Email (will not be published) (required) Website Sow a seed to help the Jewish people Follow Endtime Copyright © 2016 All Rights Reserved Endtime Ministries | End of the Age | Irvin Baxter Endtime Ministries, Inc. PO Box 940729 Plano, TX 75094 Toll Free: 1.800.363.8463 DON'T JUST READ THE NEWS... understand it from a biblical perspective. Your Information will never be shared with any third party. Get a 2-year subscription, normally $29, now just $20.15. ONLY 500 deals are still available. Offer available while supplies last or it expires on December 31, 2015. close We are a small non-profit that runs a high-traffic website, a daily TV and radio program, a bi-monthly magazine, the prophecy college in Jerusalem, and more. Although we only have 35 team members, we are able to serve tens of millions of people each month; and have costs like other world-wide organizations. We have very few third-party ads and we don’t receive government funding. We survive on the goodness of God, product sales, and donations from our wonderful partners. Dear Readers, X close We have experienced tremendous growth in our web presence over the last five years. In fact, in 2010 we averaged 228,000 pageviews per month. Last year we averaged just over 2,000,000 pageviews per month. That’s an increase of 777% in five years! However, our servers and software are outdated, which causes downtime on occasion for many of you and additional work hours and finances to maintain for us at Endtime. Updating our servers and software as well as maintaining service for a year will cost us $42,000. If each person reading this gave at least $10, our bill to provide FREE broadcasting and resources to the world via our website would be covered for over a year! Learn more - Click Here ► Dear Readers, | 1real |
Clinton's lead over Trump narrows to less than three points: Reuters/Ipsos poll | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead over Republican rival Donald Trump narrowed to less than 3 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday, down from nearly eight points on Monday. About 42 percent of likely voters favored Clinton, to Trump’s 39 percent, according to the July 31-Aug. 4 online poll of 1,154 likely voters. The poll had a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points, meaning that the results suggest the race is roughly even. Among registered voters over the same period, Clinton held a lead of five percentage points, down from eight percentage points on Monday, according to the poll. The reasons behind the shift were unclear. Clinton had pulled well ahead of Trump on the heels of the Democratic National Convention last week, where she became the first woman to accept the U.S. presidential nomination from a major political party. Since then, Trump has engaged in a days-long feud with the family of an American soldier killed in Iraq and squabbled with the Republican leadership over his comments and leadership turmoil within his campaign. Trump, in recent days, however, has sought to refocus. On Friday he announced his economic policy advisory team, said he would deliver an economic policy speech early next week, and was expected to endorse U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the top U.S. elected Republican, who is seeking his 10th term in Congress. An average of polls aggregated by Real Clear Politics showed Clinton ahead of Trump by 6.8 percentage points on Friday, up from 3.9 on Aug. 1. | 0fake |
Jewish groups in Germany urge crackdown on anti-Semitic acts | BERLIN (Reuters) - Jewish groups in Germany are pressing the authorities to crack down on anti-Semitic acts following the burning of Jewish symbols and Israeli flags at protests. The American Jewish Committee Berlin, the JSUD group of Jewish university students, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and the German-Israeli Society have called for tougher law enforcement and for new laws to make it easier to ban or disband anti-Semitic demonstrations. Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top German officials have condemned anti-Semitic acts seen at demonstrations against U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and vowed to prosecute illegal acts. The American Jewish Committee Berlin said a new study by an Indiana University professor showed broader efforts were also needed to fight anti-Semitic attitudes among Muslim migrants from Syria and Iraq. German has opened its borders to more than 1 million migrants mainly fleeing Middle East wars since 2015, sparking concerns about a further bump in already increasing anti-Semitism. Politicians must guarantee that anti-Semitic attitudes will not be tolerated and that infractions to laws and regulations will be prosecuted, said the group s director, Deidre Berger. She reiterated a longstanding call for the German government to appoint an anti-Semitism commissioner to focus attention on the issue. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas and Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller vowed during a menorah lighting at the Brandenburg Gate on Tuesday to combat all forms of anti-Semitism, while demonstrators continued to voice anger at the U.S. move at a separate event near Berlin s main train station. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany has also condemned anti-Semitic actions. Indiana University s Guenther Jikeli, the author of the study, said group interviews of 68 migrants aged 18 to 52 conducted last year revealed widespread anti-Semitic attitudes. They showed rejection of the state of Israel and ignorance about the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe by the Nazis during World War Two, he said. There are strong anti-Semitic views among refugees that need to be addressed because otherwise they could become the norm, he told Reuters TV. Kurds and other refugees persecuted as minorities in their home countries had more nuanced views and more clearly rejected anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli perspectives, he said. Fabian Weissbarth, spokesman for AJC, said the study should spur efforts to tackle anti-Semitism among migrants to ensure the findings were not misused by anti-immigrant far-right groups like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. If we don t address it as a society, then the AfD will, and that will lead to hate and incitement, he said. We need a differentiated view that recognizes that not all refugees are the same, and we need to look at solutions, such as integration measures, what needs to be included in integration courses, and changes in how social workers and politicians react. | 0fake |
A Wheelchair on Broadway Isn’t Exploitation. It’s Progress. - The New York Times | There’s a wheelchair onstage at the Belasco Theater, and it’s drawing an abundance of attention. There’s also a wheelchair onstage at a small theater not far away, and it’s drawing practically no attention at all. The gulf between the two says quite a lot. At the Belasco, the Broadway house on West 44th Street, the wheelchair is one of the conspicuous elaborations the director Sam Gold has brought to his production of “The Glass Menagerie,” the beloved Tennessee Williams drama. The chair isn’t just a prop it’s a necessity for the actress playing Laura, Madison Ferris, who has muscular dystrophy. That bit of casting is, of course, a significant change from the shy girl with a limp that Williams called for in his play. And Mr. Gold’s staging leaves no doubt that Ms. Ferris is not some actress pretending to have a disability. He has her enter by painstakingly climbing stairs, one of several times that he takes her out of the wheelchair and confronts the audience with the difficulties of having severely limited mobility. Some leading critics have objected to the transformation of Williams’s subtle play about a family enveloped in denial into something more strident. The kindest objections say that Mr. Gold’s interpretation simply doesn’t mesh well with the text harsher ones on theater chat boards have called his use of Ms. Ferris exploitative. Perhaps these detractors are focusing on moments like the one in which Amanda, Laura’s mother, tells her: “You’re not crippled. You just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even!” How can such a line make sense when there’s a wheelchair onstage? For one thing, this is a “memory play,” told through the recollections of Laura’s brother, Tom (played by Joe Mantello). And memory is an interpretation of the past, not a literal playback of it. But, more than that, to live with a child with a disability is to be both isolated — as this family is — and susceptible to what seems to others like an unreality. My own daughter, who has a serious disability called Rett syndrome, is just three years younger than the Laura. Is it easy for me to imagine a parent who sees a vastly different child than the outside world sees? You bet. As for the charge of exploitation, I read that as, “It was unpleasant to see Ms. Ferris pull herself along the floor by her arms I prefer that people with disabilities remain invisible, as they so often are. ” Broadway audiences are accustomed to seeing perfect bodies doing entertaining dance steps. Guess what, Broadway? One in five Americans has a disability, according to the census bureau. Nine blocks north and four blocks west of the Belasco, at the A. R. T. York Theaters, Theater Breaking Through Barriers has a program of shorts running through Sunday. The company, which has been around since 1979, stages productions using actors with disabilities as well as actors. The five plays on its current program include works by Neil LaBute and Bekah Brunstetter, a producer of the TV series “This Is Us. ” Nicholas Viselli, the company’s artistic director, has put quirky interstitials between the plays — a song, some monologues. Ryan Haddad, who is gay and has cerebral palsy, steals the show with a funny, deeply personal piece called “Hi, Are You Single?” This is the type of production that’s most likely to showcase actors with disabilities: intimate theater, small audience, $25 ticket. The program (which is called “The Other Plays: Short Plays About Diversity and Otherness”) is but it feels 1, 000 miles from the mainstream represented by the Belasco, where the best seat for “The Glass Menagerie” can set you back more than $200. Mr. Gold’s brashest stroke in a production full of them may be the bridging of that divide — taking a theatrical universe that has existed for some time on the outskirts and putting it on a Broadway marquee featuring the names of Mr. Mantello and Sally Field, who plays Amanda. He’s not the first to do so — think back, for instance, to the breathtaking Deaf West reimagining of “Big River” in 2003, featuring a lot of deaf and actors and sign language, or to the same company’s 2015 “Spring Awakening” (which also had an actor who uses a wheelchair). But it remains a rare occurrence, and as a result Broadway remains unrepresentative of the full range of humanity. So do television, film and most other forms, though inroads are being made there, too. Does the casting of an actor with cerebral palsy to play a character with cerebral palsy on the ABC sitcom “Speechless” seem manipulative? How about the coming introduction of a character with autism on “Sesame Street?” Sometimes, what seems a cheesy gimmick or instance of exploitation is really just the front edge of needed change. Some theatergoers were probably outraged the first time a black Juliet was cast against a white Romeo. Did that change how some of Shakespeare’s lines registered and imbue the play with new meanings? Sure. Is casting now widely accepted and the theatergoing experience richer for it? Yes. Mr. Gold’s production is hardly perfect. If you figure out that thing with keeping the house lights up for a third of the show, let me know. But at least with the Laura character, he has done what he intended. “I’m not very interested in pretend,” he has said. “I’m interested in putting people onstage. I want people. And I want a world that reflects the real world. ” It’s worth contemplating what that means from the audience’s perspective. On those chat boards, some writers have complained that Ms. Ferris isn’t very good. Here’s the thing: We have been conditioned to define good acting in terms of facial expressions, comic timing, physical bits. An actor with a disability, especially one involving muscle control or cognitive impairment, isn’t necessarily going to be able to give the kind of performance we’re used to. Will Ms. Ferris impress someone looking for that kind of performance? Probably not. But she gives the most realistic portrayal of a person with muscular dystrophy that I’ve ever seen. In any case, the overall package worked for me and showed me a different play, just as Deaf West did with “Big River,” one of my favorite musicals. The Amanda of this “Menagerie” is more in denial than other Amandas the gentleman caller, played by Finn Wittrock, who sees past Laura’s disability, is all the nobler. And — especially given the time frame of the play, an era before curb cuts and the Americans With Disabilities Act, Tom’s decision to leave his family is not so much a personal liberation as a cruel abandonment. I don’t really care whether this is what Williams intended. What I admire is the attempt, and the fact that this production has people talking about something other than whether Ms. Field’s Amanda is better or worse than Cherry Jones’s in 2013 or Jessica Lange’s in 2005. Debates like that are the product of a theater of complacency. Debates like the one Mr. Gold has unleashed are what keep theater vigorous and challenging. | 0fake |
In 2017, America’s liberal abortion agenda looks a lot like Nazi Eugenics | 21st Century Wire says Here s an unusual, but extremely thought-provoking political take on the events of last week in Charlottesville in the context of America, and western society as a whole.What you are about to read will be considered very controversial by many people. This is an uncomfortable topic which generally no one enjoys talking about. Many readers may not want to hear it. You may not want to hear it either. It s a caustic conversation for sure. You might think the author is being over-dramatic, or maybe you won t But it s a discussion which at least half of America wants to have.The publication, The Blaze, touts itself as Christian conservative and regularly exaggerate and politicizes its content, and frequently applies a moralistic or evangelical spin to it. For those reasons, it would be convenient for some to simply dismiss the article below because of its source. However, the fundamental comparison presented should be seriously considered and really should be discussed more in mainstream forums. In 2017, any challenging commentary regarding the topic of abortion is fiercely opposed by progressive gatekeepers, and women s rights activists who will often cite the 1973 US Supreme Court decision of Roe vs Wade as a cue to end any debate on the issue. This subject is also suppressed in most public and academic forums and it s strictly off-limits in the liberal mainstream corporate media. But society cannot continually sweep this under the rug America has to have this conversation, because it goes to the heart of the question. What kind of society do we live in ? . By Matt WalshIt was interesting timing. On Monday, CBS published an article touting Iceland s miracle cure for Down syndrome. Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion, the headline read. Of course, it leaves out an important word. Iceland is eliminating Down syndrome people not Down syndrome itself by killing anyone who has the condition. Many countries, including our own, have discovered an identical treatment plan.The next day, Oregon was the beneficiary of similarly sanitized headlines. The governor of Oregon signed legislation expanding reproductive health access, the media reported. But the reports are misleading. The law actually forces all residents in the state to pay for abortions for anyone who wants them, including illegal aliens. The bill has nothing at all to do with reproduction. Its goal is precisely to stop reproduction. Or at least to prevent the products of reproduction from ever seeing the light of day.I said the reports of these atrocities are interestingly timed because they come amidst a national panic over neo-Nazism. We are right to be disgusted and horrified by the few dozen white supremacist losers who carried Tiki torches through Charlottesville on Saturday. And we are right to demand justice for the woman who was killed by a skinhead terrorist during that same rally. But we are ridiculous for acting as if these racist nerds represent some threat to our national existence. Until there is even a shred of proof to the contrary, I am going to remain confident that the vast, vast, vast majority of our citizens do not sympathize with Nazism outright. Even one neo-Nazi is too many. A whole parade of them is a travesty. But we ought not lose our grip on reality. A little perspective is all I m suggesting.Now, the reader may have noted the conspicuous qualifier in the previous paragraph. The majority of our citizens do not sympathize with Nazism outright. Many, however, sympathize with some of the primary goals and most brutal tactics of the Nazi party. Though they may not think of it in those terms, they still celebrate the achievement of eliminating medical conditions by killing the babies who have it, and they applaud governments that expand reproductive health access by forcing helpless citizens to fund the mass extermination of human beings. They may not march through the streets waving swastikas around, but they look with indifference or approval at our own version of the Nazi death camp. Indeed, with all due respect to the skinheads who only play pretend Nazi, the spirit of the Nazi movement really lives on in the abortion industry. Planned Parenthood may not hang the Nazi flag on the doors of its clinics, but it has enough blood on its hands to impress even the most prolific concentration camp executioner.I made this point yesterday, and I was informed even by some conservative folk that it is utterly inappropriate and insensitive for me to make such comparisons, especially when a woman was just killed by a neo-Nazi. Well, I feel terribly for that woman s family and I hope for the swiftest and harshest judgment allowed under the law to be done upon her murderer. But I also feel terribly for the 17,000 or so human beings who were executed in abortion clinics since Saturday, and the 60 million who ve been exterminated since 1973. I don t think there is ever an inappropriate time to acknowledge them, particularly when so many of us have dedicated ourselves to never acknowledging them, and especially during a week when the very people who support the continued legalization and tax funding of abortion death camps are running around accusing everyone else of condoning Nazism.I m sorry, but I just cannot physically stomach a You should be more forceful in condemning Nazism lecture from someone who has spent the last 40 years demanding that we applaud while millions of people have their skulls crushed by abortionists. Even less can I tolerate someone who wants to protect the innocent by tearing down historical statues, but cries about human rights violations when someone vandalizes a building where actual human beings are butchered and sold for parts.I do not pretend that all of the political goals of the pro-abortion left line up completely with the political goals of Nazis in 1940 s Germany. There are some striking similarities particularly the politicization of public health, the focus on environmental conservation, and the total disregard for free speech but that is not the point. I say that abortion enthusiasts have the spirit of Nazism because that spirit is, more than anything, one of brutality, moral indifference, and absolute disregard for human life. It is a spirit that leads to mass exterminations and bloodshed on a scale that can hardly be fathomed. It is a spirit that compels a people to strive for collective perfection by killing the undesirables. Nazis exterminated the disabled, just as we do. And they killed Jews and Poles and Catholics and many other groups. Our focus is not racial cleansing but economic. We kill poor children, unwanted children, defective children; children who, we ve decided, will be more trouble than they re worth. They are a burden on society, we say, echoing Nazi propaganda almost verbatim.And we build facilities which we dedicate to carrying out this cleansing. The Nazi death camp was never abolished, you see. It was simply relocated and rebranded. Today we call it a reproductive health clinic, but what happens inside more closely resembles Auschwitz than it does your pediatrician s office.So, yes, speak out against those ridiculous bigots who ve latched onto Nazism in their desperate quest for purpose and attention. But if you want to oppose what they stand for, you need to look beyond them and towards that Planned Parenthood clinic you drive by every day on the way to work. And if those Nazi wannabes in Charlottesville intend to be the ones in our country who best emulate their Nazi role models, it must be said that they are lagging far behind, especially in terms of body counts. Right now the tally is about 60 million to one, last I checked.They have a lot of catching up to do.This article was originally published at The Blaze. To see more from Matt Walsh, visit his channel here.READ MORE ALT RIGHT NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire ALT RIGHT FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Thousands of Indonesians join anti-Myanmar rally in Jakarta | JAKARTA (Reuters) - Thousands of Indonesians, led by Islamist groups, held a rally near the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta on Wednesday to protest against the treatment of Rohingya Muslims and demand the snapping of ties between the two countries. Indonesia has the world s largest population of Muslims and there have been several anti-Myanmar protests in Jakarta and the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur over the treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar s roughly 1.1 million Rohingyas. Roads were blocked and barbed wire barriers put up around the embassy, in a leafy district of the capital, which was patrolled by police in riot gear who set up water cannons. Some protesters chanted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest), while others shouted slogans such as Slaughter Myanmar and Burn the embassy . Buddhists should respect Muslims in Myanmar in the same way that Muslims respected Buddhists in Indonesia, one speaker told the crowd, using a loud-hailer. Almost 125,000 Rohingyas have been forced to flee clashes between Rohingya insurgents and the army in Myanmar s northwestern state of Rakhine. Tens of thousands have crossed the border into neighboring Bangladesh. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi met Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and top security officials this week to urge a halt to the bloodshed. Marsudi also visited Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh on Tuesday, to offer help in tackling the crisis. Some protesters at the Jakarta rally called for the expulsion of the Myanmar ambassador over the issue, as well as for diplomatic ties between the two countries to be severed. Myanmar embassy staff would be safe, however, said a foreign ministry spokesman, Armanatha Nasir. It is the responsibility of the host countries to ensure the safety of all diplomatic missions and their personnel, the spokesman said. Indonesia takes this responsibility seriously. At the weekend, a petrol bomb was thrown at the embassy causing a small fire. Indonesian police have also pledged to bar Islamist groups from staging a rally on Friday at the Borobudur Buddhist temple in central Java to protest against the treatment of Myanmar s Rohingya Muslims. | 0fake |
MUST WATCH: Trump Supporter Unleashes Truth On Fox Pundits: “Americans are tired of fighting other people for jobs!” | Brunell Donald-Kyei: We want tougher immigration. To make sure that our borders are safe! That we are not fighting illegal aliens and refugees for jobs! Americans are tired of fighting other people for jobs! That frustration is real. That hurt is real. And for the pols and different people to dismiss that? It s not right! The most important issue to me is economics. Because the last eight years the economy the poor people of this nation have suffered. The middle class has suffered. And let me tell you something: The American people don t want to be dealing with a President going into office with all the baggage, with all the investigations that are going to be on top of Hillary Clinton.Our nation needs to heal. We want to heal. We want peace between the races. We want to make sure that our youth, whether they re white, black, Hispanic have jobs! We want to make sure that the Constitution is protected! Those are American issues! that has absolutely nothing to do with your race. That s to protect this nation! And we want tougher immigration. To make sure that our borders are safe! That we are not fighting illegal aliens and refugees for jobs! Americans are tired of fighting other people for jobs! That frustration is real. That hurt is real. And for the pols and different people to dismiss that? It s not right! TRUST US! YOU WILL LOVE THIS!Americas Sweetheart @brunelldonald jus took down Krauthammer Elitist Panel! Everything u need 2know on why Donald Trump NOT Hillary Clinton pic.twitter.com/tnKEXjWmSJ DEPLORABLE TRUMPCAT (@Darren32895836) October 26, 2016Via: GP | 1real |
TERRORISM EXPERT SEBASTIAN GORKA On What Next After London Terror Attack [Video] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Tn4gi_Os8 | 1real |
MARK STEYN NAILS IT ON SYRIA STRATEGY: “Last night was inauguration day. America is back in the world.” [Video] | MARK STEYN ON TRUMP S MOVE LAST NIGHT: @MarkSteynOnline pic.twitter.com/CM21gVlFWW FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) April 7, 2017Gen. Jack Keane said this is a major setback for Russia and Iran, close allies of the regime of Syrian President Bashar-al Assad. These airstrikes are a sign that the U.S. is open to taking a more aggressive role in the Syrian civil war. This is an incredible message. It should have been sent many years ago by the Obama administration. MARK STEYN NAILS IT ON INTERVENTION IN SYRIA:Mark Steyn nailed it when he said that President Trump should be cautious about using American power to overthrow a dictator without a very clear endgame: To go back to the Democrats most notorious debacle, Hillary thought knocking off Gaddafi in Libya would be easy and cost-free. What we know now is that it left a power vacuum and further destabilized the Middle East. You ve got to have an endgame here. You ve got to know what you want Syria to look like after Assad, or it s a waste of time. Trump has been very clear that he regards running around Afghanistan for 15 years as a complete waste of time. He doesn t want to get into a similar situation. THE COMMENTS BEGIN ON SYRIA AT THE 3:00 MARK: | 1real |
The Clinton FBI Investigation Just Got Real | The FBI is now “actively and aggressively” probing into Clinton Foundation corruption. The Clinton campaign is going down. The FBI seems to be sick of the DoJ’s favoritism.
Via YourNewsWire
Two separate sources have told Fox News about serious new breaks in the investigation. The fact that this is being reported on an MSM site is huge, bigger than huge.
Did you catch that? The laptops that everyone THOUGHT the FBI destroyed were NOT, in fact, destroyed. Anyone who is caught lying has voided their immunity deals. (cough, Cheryl Mills, cough) There are new, not-seen-before emails, even though Clinton said she disclosed them all. It’s goin’ down. Right now. All of those people who were prepared to take one for Team Clinton might want to reconsider. It’s hard to imagine even Teflon-coated Hillary Clinton getting out of this mess.
Watch this video and try to keep from jumping up and down with excitement:
| 1real |
SHEILA JACKSON LEE Gets Into It With MSNBC Host Over Conyers: ‘Let me be clear!’ [Video] | A conversation with MSNBC host Craig Melvin got heated today when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) refused to say Thursday whether her Democratic colleague Rep. John Conyers (Mich.) should resign. She was all over the map and was confused about what she thinks about Conyers saying, Congress should instead focus on how to change the system. Straddling the fence has never been more fun to watch with these leftists who don t know what the hell to do. My brain hurt after watching this interview What did she just say except to repeatedly say she s not taking a back seat over and over again We hear ya Sheila but what does that have to do with Conyers resigning? MSNBC host Craig Melvin repeatedly asked the congresswoman about sexual harassment allegations against Conyers, but Jackson Lee steadfastly refused to say her colleague should step down: I believe the decision to go or come will be the decision of that member, she said. As I understand it, Mr. Conyers is with his family. I m praying for them. I m praying for the women, and I m praying for them to make their decision. But all those decisions are usually at the behest of the member and I expect that to be the case here. Melvin asked if she thought the Democratic Party was sacrificing its credibility on standing up for women by not pushing out Conyers. Jackson Lee denied that was the case.NICE PIVOT BY LEE TO BLAST TRUMP BUT WE RE NOT BUYING IT: Craig, absolutely not, because the story is not near concluded, she said before shifting to say what is appalling are the allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and President Donald Trump.Melvin pressed Jackson Lee further on her position about the women who have come forward against Conyers, bringing up an African-American accuser who was on the Today show Thursday morning. The Texas Democrat said Melvin was mishearing her because she is not taking a backseat on matters of sexual harassment. She said Democrats would not be wimps on this issue.THE TRUTH WAS RIGHT THERE:WHEN CRAIG SAID THE CONYERS VICTIM LOOKS JUST LIKE US IT WAS ON!Jackson-Lee repeated AGAIN that she s not taking a backseat on matters of sexual harassment Yada, yada, yada | 1real |
BAHA! CBS REPORTER ASKS HILLARY Why She’s So Unlikeable [Video] | This is a rare moment of uncomfortable questioning by CBS Scott Pelley asks what we ve all wanted to ask Hillary. It s a pretty hysterical TV moment IN A ROBOTIC KIND OF WAY | 1real |
Saudi Arabia, U.S. play down reports of curbs on military support | RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and the United States on Sunday played down media reports that Washington had decided to limit military support, including planned arms sales to the kingdom, over its war in Yemen. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that Riyadh had not been officially informed of such decisions, which he described as contradicting the reality, while visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested the issue related more to a long procurement process than restrictions on military support. U.S. officials have said Washington decided to curb backing for Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen, including halting the supply of some precision-guided munitions, because of concerns over widespread civilian casualties. Yemen’s 20-month-old war has killed more than 10,000 people and triggered humanitarian crises, including chronic food shortages, in the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula. Jubeir, speaking in Arabic, told a joint news conference with Kerry: “This news that has been leaked contradicts reality. The reality is that converting regular bombs to smart bombs would be welcome because smart bombs are more accurate. “The kingdom has received nothing official from the American government in this regard,” he said in answer to a question on reported delays of U.S. weapons supplies. Kerry appeared to play down the reports of delays to weapons supplies, suggesting procurement was often a slow process, and adding he had worked hard to move sales “forward”. Kerry also said that he agreed in talks with Jubeir and other Gulf Arab foreign ministers to push for a “cessation of hostilities, which we all will work on in the next several days with hopes that within two weeks it might be possible to achieve it ...”. Saudi Arabia has been leading an Arab coalition that has been fighting against Iran-aligned Houthis who forced Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi from power nearly two years ago. The conflict has displaced some three million people, according to the United Nations. “Our immediate priority is to end the bloodshed and that’s why reestabilishing the ceasefire is so critical,” Kerry told the news conference. “We think we’ve found the path to move forward and invite the parties, President Hadi, the Houthis and the supporters of both sides to take advantage of this moment to try to come to the table and to try to frame an end,” he added. Saudi Arabia has been subjected to frequent cross-border raids and missile attacks by the Houthi movement. Responding to a question on whether Saudi Arabia was reconsidering its investment strategy over risks in the United States related to Donald Trump’s election and potential lawsuits under the U.S. Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, Jubeir said: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has tremendous investments in the United States and we review those investments on a regular basis. There are issues associated with risk, but our objective is to increase those investments. We won’t decrease them.” Jubeir also said he had spent time in the United States recently to try to get to know the policies and positions of the next administration. He also said he had dealt with Congress to press for amendments of the JASTA law, which grants an exception to the legal principle of sovereign immunity in cases of terrorism on U.S. soil, clearing the way for lawsuits seeking damages from the Saudi government. | 0fake |
Munich prosecutors arrest ex-Porsche executive in Audi emissions probe: source | MUNICH (Reuters) - Munich prosecutors have arrested a former board member of Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) unit Porsche in connection with an emissions scandal at carmaker Audi, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Wolfgang Hatz, former Research and Development chief at Porsche and head of powertrain development at Audi and parent Volkswagen in previous roles, was taken into custody, the person said, marking the first arrest of a former board member of one of Volkswagen s units in Germany. A lawyer representing Hatz declined to confirm the arrest and also declined any further comment. Hatz left Porsche last year, having been suspended since Volkswagen s emissions test-cheating scandal broke in September 2015. Investigations found no evidence against him, Porsche said in May 2016. Munich prosecutors earlier said they had arrested a second suspect and widened the number of suspects in their investigation. They did not disclose the suspect s identity. Prosecutors have also searched personal premises, a spokeswoman for the Munich prosecutors said, adding that corporate locations were not part of the raid. Audi has no knowledge of the arrest and continues to cooperate with authorities, a spokesman said. German business daily Handelsblatt first reported the arrest and Sueddeutsche Zeitung disclosed Hatz s identity. Audi admitted in November 2015, two months after parent Volkswagen s diesel emissions scandal broke, that its 3.0 liter V6 diesel engines were fitted with an auxiliary control device deemed illegal in the United States. In March, Munich prosecutors searched offices at the carmaker s Ingolstadt base, where about 44,000 workers are employed, and the premises of Jones Day, a U.S. law firm hired by Volkswagen to lead an investigation into the emissions scandal. Four months later the U.S. Justice Department said it had charged a former Audi manager with directing employees at the company to design software to cheat U.S. emissions tests in thousands of Audi diesel cars. The former Audi manager, Italian citizen Giovanni Pamio, was subsequently arrested by Munich prosecutors on suspicion of fraud and false advertising in connection with the carmaker s emissions scandal. Pamio remains in custody pending ongoing German investigations and an extradition request by U.S. authorities. Pamio s lawyers said he is cooperating fully with prosecutors and has denied the allegations. | 0fake |
Time: Investigating Hillary is an Attack on All Women | Time: Investigating Hillary is an Attack on All Women November 1, 2016
Good morning. It's Tuesday.
Who's up for another silly attempt to claim that Hillary Clinton is only being investigated for her rogue email setup because she's a woman? This gem comes from Robin Lakoff, a Berkeley professor in sustained incoherence and special pleading.
Hillary Clinton’s Emailgate Is an Attack on Women
'It's not about emails; it's about public communication by a woman’
I am mad. I am mad because I am scared. And if you are a woman, you should be, too. Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us.
The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female. Can you imagine this happening to a man?
His name was General Petraeus. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere. There is so much of that going around.
That escalated quickly. And incoherently. Also I'm pretty sure it's not the 20s or whatever decade Robin is parodying or channeling. But yes, Hillary Clinton is only in this mess because she's a woman. It has nothing to do with anything else. That must be why Albright and Rice weren't in the center of similar scandals.
If the candidate were male, there would be no scolding and no “scandal.” Those very ideas would be absurd. Men have a nearly absolute right to freedom of speech. In theory, so do women, but that, as the creationists like to say, is only a theory.
Emailing classified information on your server to avoid transparency regulations is not free speech. It's illegal for both public officials of both genders.
But here’s Hillary Rodham Clinton, the very public stand-in for all bossy, uppity and ambitious women. Here are her emails. And since it’s a woman, doing what decent women should never do—engaging in high-level public communication—well, there must be something wrong with that, even if we can’t quite find that something.
Illegally... emailing... classified... information. | 1real |
WHO NEEDS NANCY PELOSI WHEN CONGRESS HAS PAUL RYAN: “It’s [Obamatrade deal] declassified and made public once it’s agreed to” | Why do we even need a Congress anymore? We have a King, and it appears the majority his council are there at his behest. In fact, why do we even need a Constitution or elections? Chief Obamatrade proponent House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted during Congressional testimony on Wednesday evening that despite tons of claims from him and other Obamatrade supporters to the contrary, the process is highly secretive.He also made a gaffe in his House Rules Committee testimony on par with former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi s (D-CA) push to pass Obamacare, in which she said infamously said: we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. It s declassified and made public once it s agreed to, Ryan said of Obamatrade in Rules Committee testimony on Wednesday during questioning from Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX).What Ryan is trying to convince House Republicans to do is vote for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) which would fast-track at least three highly secretive trade deals specifically the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and potentially more deals.Right now, TiSA and T-TIP text are completely secretive and unavailable for even members of Congress to read while TPP text is available for members to review although they need to go to a secret room inside the Capitol where only members of Congress and certain staffers high-level security clearances, who can only go when members are present, can read the bill.Ryan s exchange in which he made this gaffe came as Burgess, who opposes Obamatrade, and Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)65% , who stands with Ryan supporting it, were discussing the secrecy of the deal with him. It came right after an incredible exchange where Ryan attempted a ploy to try to save immigration provisions contained within the Obamatrade package as a whole specifically TiSA that were exposed by Breitbart News earlier on Wednesday, a problem for which he put forward a phony non-solution designed to get more votes for his Obamatrade agenda but not stop the immigration provisions. I would like to add and I stated this up front, that the gentleman Mr. Ryan worked well with not only myself but other members to address specific ideas, concerns, issues and you have done an outstanding job to make sure instead of saying, well that s not a problem, no I m not going to get into that, you ve bent over backwards Mr. Ryan, Sessions said. I ve watched you do this and working with us, whether it be a request from the United States Senate that was done on a bipartisan basis or whether it be one of our members, we have tried to work with those things. This, Dr. Burgess, this is why I can tout this agreement because we ve tried to go in whether it s the areas that I ve talked about foreign policy, dispute resolution, climate change, sovereignty, immigration, currency, transparency, fast-track, presidential power and more that haven t previously been addressed we ve tried to thoughtfully articulate a good answer and Mr. Ryan has done that most favorably and I think his articulation today is evidence of his knowledge of those parameters therein. After Sessions pitch, Burgess jumped back in to make another point. And I appreciate all of that but again, you read through this language down in the secret room and I welcome the day when people can read it Burgess said, before Ryan cut him off. By the way, TPA it s declassified and made public once it s agreed to, Ryan said.What Ryan is technically referring to is that TPP will become public if TPA is agreed to but Congress will lose much of its ability to have oversight over and influence on the process, since TPP is, in many respects, already negotiated. It s 800 pages long, and on fast-track, Congress will only get an up-or-down vote and won t be able to offer amendments. The Senate vote threshold also drops down to a simple majority rather than normally having a 60-vote threshold, or in the case of treaties, a 67-vote threshold.Burgess then moved forward with his point. But this is really tough sledding and it s not an area where I have a lot of familiarity and I m sorry, Burgess said. The language as its written looks to me as if it is something that could be exploited. I appreciate all the safeguards you ve tried to put in place. And with this administration you can leave no stone unturned as far as putting in safeguards but I m not convinced that we again I can t get into the specifics of what I ve read because of the agreement that I signed downstairs but it concerns me and I ll just leave it at that and I ll yield back. Sessions then jumped in to say he and Ryan are available to answer any questions about this matter whenever anyone wants yet Sessions committee staff is publicly refusing to answer any detailed questions from Breitbart News on Obamatrade at this time. I thank the gentleman, Sessions said.. In fact the gentleman, Mr. Levin is correct there will be some changes that have to go back to the United States Senate but I would like to say with great confidence to my dear friend the gentleman from Lewisville, Texas, that if you still have reservations from your reading of anything I would encourage you to engage the gentleman Mr. Ryan or myself, Dr. Burgess, any time you d like. I m available. Mr. Ryan s available. We ve made ourselves available with specifics on the same level. Burgess noted how the process seeking fast-track in the Bush administration was much more transparent than it is now. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I promised to be on my best behavior today and I am really trying it took a long time for me to even be able to see the agreement down in the secret room even though I was willing to sign the release that said I wouldn t talk about it. It took me a long time to get an audience with the U.S. Trade Representative, Burgess said. It should not have done that. Ten years ago we did CAFTA [Central American Free Trade Agreement], Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH)56% was in my office he lived there. I couldn t get rid of him. This time, I couldn t get a it was an act of Congress literally to get him to come and talk to my subcommittee on Energy and Commerce, which is the subcommittee of Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade. That s how difficult this has been, so please I thank you for the work you ve done in trying to make this an open and fair process but my confidence in this administration has been and remains at an all time low and I appreciate what we ve heard today but I can t tell you that I m mollified by Ryan then interrupted Burgess again to argue that his concerns over the secrecy are why Republicans should relent and support Obamatrade. All I would say is all the more reason to pass TPA, Ryan said. First of all, yes this administration is different and I can jump on the bash bandwagon better than anybody else as far as how they conduct themselves. Via: Matthew Boyle Breitbart News | 1real |
How to Have a Relaxing Vacation in a City - The New York Times | Beach and spa vacations are typically associated with relaxation while urban getaways tend to be all go, go, go, but that doesn’t always have to be the case, according to Michael Bonsor, the hotel manager of Rosewood London. “You can absolutely head to a city for a relaxing vacation,” he said. Here, Mr. Bonsor shares his tips on how to have a trip in a busy city setting: SET THE MOOD BEFOREHAND Use the journey to your destination as an opportunity to get into vacation mode: If you’re flying, use a pair of headphones and order a glass of Champagne or another drink you enjoy when you get on board. And watch movies or listen to music on your iPad or on the airline’s entertainment system. If you’re driving, plan to hit the road when it isn’t rush hour, so you don’t spend hours sitting in traffic have a playlist on hand with your favorite songs and carry indulgent snacks such as a bar of good chocolate. The idea, Mr. Bonsor said, is to start unwinding before your vacation starts. PICK A MANAGEABLE CITY Large cities like New York City, Paris and Tokyo usually don’t lend themselves to relaxation because visitors are often overwhelmed by the number of attractions and can tire themselves out trying to take them all in. Smaller cities such as Vancouver, British Columbia San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Washington, while still appealing, are more manageable. “You might want to hit a site or two, but there’s not that feeling of sensory overload that comes with larger urban settings,” Mr. Bonsor said. HOTEL LOCATION MATTERS Maximize your getaway by staying in a neighborhood you want to explore — you will probably be able to get around by walking or biking and won’t waste time commuting to other parts of town. If you like shopping, choose a property in the city’s main shopping district. If art is of interest, go for a hotel near art museums or galleries. BOOK A SPA TREATMENT UPON ARRIVAL There is nothing like a massage or a spa treatment to help you and set the tone for a relaxing getaway. In advance of your trip, make an appointment for the day you arrive at your hotel’s spa or one nearby. And if there are particular techniques that the destination is known for, ask for these so you get a greater sense of place. PLAN FOR RELAXATION Give yourself plenty of unscheduled time to decompress by napping or reading by the hotel pool, at cafes, lingering at wine bars and wandering through the streets soaking up the surroundings. Of course, you should hit tourist sites, but plan to visit them early in the day when they tend to be less crowded. | 0fake |
What Will Happen to Your Guns Under President Trump? | 21st Century Wire says Legacy note to Obama s ghost writer: Barack Hussein Obama will go down in the record books as the greatest gun salesmen of all time. Both Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder embarked on one of the most aggressive, multi-pronged gun restriction political campaigns in US history. Hence, under President Obama, gun sales sky rocketed driving up demand along with record levels on purchasing prices.That s right Obama did more for the gun industry than Charlton Heston ever could.In the aftermath that bull market however, guns, both news and used, have since adopted some of the attributes of a commodity.As the market settles under a new Administration, expect a little more predicability Josh Levine AZ CentralNow that we re more than a month into the Trump era, I m eager to see how the new administration, controversial legislation, and even heated Twitter exchanges about gun control affects firearm sales in the secondary market.Logic would tell me that sales will slow down. After all, gun sales soared during President Obama s eight years in office. A recent USA Today article I read stated that since Nov. 4, 2008, both Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. and Sturm, Ruger & Co. stock rose more than 1,000 percent. A similar trend was seen during the Clinton Administration as well.On the contrary, a recent Time article stated that gun ownership in the U.S. is the lowest it has been since 1978. Don t believe it? Apparently, the gun sales rose during the past eight years among gun owners buying more guns.Effects on AuctionsSo, how does this all shake out for the auction industry?You have to remember that the secondary market is different than retail. I think bidders will continue to seek out sporting, collectible, recreational and defensive guns at auctions because they know they can find quality firearms at a good value.There s also the matter of trust. Auction houses are FFL holders, and they must adhere to all state and federal laws.So far, it has been business as usual at our auction house, and prices for collectible guns continue to be strong.A 6 inch Colt Python.As an example, recently we sold a Colt Python that realized $3,000 with buyer s premium. They just continue to command top dollar.I m also seeing more Western guns selling at auction. Recently, we sold a Colt Single Action Army that realized $3,120 with buyer s premium. It had condition issues, but still performed well.These examples are Colt. However, other brands are fairing just as well. Browning, Remington, local favorite Ruger and Beretta have all been performing admirably.Even though gun owners and buyers may relax a lot under President Trump s tenure, I m not anticipating a sudden drop of interest in the guns we sell at auction. The Baby Boomers and older are downsizing and selling off their collections. And, no amount of tweets or controversial public policies will change that fact.The buyers may have been motivated by fear when it appeared that Hillary Clinton might win, but now I think they re motivated by pure collecting passion.Tips before purchaseIf you re in the market to purchase antique firearms, check used gun prices in the Blue Book of Gun Values as well as sites like LiveAuctioneers and Gunbrokers.com before placing a bid.Check the gun s condition in person or ask for the auction house to provide photos and a condition report if you are purchasing it online.Also, make sure you will clear a background check as most major auction houses will require a Federal background or NICS check, as it s known.If you re selling, don t despair. I don t think this new Trump era will make prices in the secondary market plummet. They may not be huge or the best, but I think they ll continue to be decent.Josh Levine owns J. Levine Auction & Appraisal in Scottsdale. Contact: josh@jlevines.com or @jlevines1 on Twitter.READ MORE 2nd AMENDMENT NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2nd Amendment Files | 1real |
JUST IN: “Pit Bull” Attorney For Special Counsel Robert Mueller Attended Hillary’s Election Night Party | Is there a single person left on Robert Mueller s Trump-Russian collusion team who isn t in bed with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?An attorney for special counsel Robert Mueller attended Hillary Clinton s election night party in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.Andrew Weissmann s attendance at the party is one of many signs pointing to a troubling bias from the attorney. Weissmann has been described by The New York Times as Mueller s lieutenant and pit bull. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained an email Tuesday that revealed Weissmann praised former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates defiance of Trump. I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects, Weissmann wrote to Yates on Jan. 30. The email followed Yates instruction to the DOJ not to defend an executive order banning immigration from seven nations, an act that led to her dismissal by President Trump.Weissmann is one of several Democratic donors that have been hired by Mueller, a registered Republican. The special counsel s pit bull donated a combined $6,600 to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.The special counsel s probe has been criticized by Trump s allies, but the White House maintains Trump has no intention to fire Mueller. Daily Caller | 1real |
DIRTY POOL! FBI AND DOJ Just Affirmed They Spied On Trump WITHOUT Proving Dossier’s Authenticity | How dirty is this? The powers-that-be at the intelligence agencies didn t follow the proper channels before opening up spying on the Trump campaign! They needed proof that the Trump dossier is authentic but never received that proof. They moved forward with the spying anyway! What dirty rats these Democrats are!FBI and Justice Department officials have told congressional investigators in recent days that they have not been able to verify or corroborate the substantive allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign outlined in the Trump dossier.The FBI received the first installment of the dossier in July 2016. It received later installments as they were written at the height of the presidential campaign, which means the bureau has had more than a year to investigate the allegations in the document.The dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.An August 24, 2017 subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee to the FBI and Justice Department asked for information on the bureau s efforts to validate the dossier. Specifically, the subpoena demanded any documents, if they exist, that memorialize DOJ and/or FBI efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate information provided by Mr. Steele and/or sub-sources and/or contained in the Trump Dossier. According to sources familiar with the matter, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has provided documents in response to that part of the committee s subpoena. But in face-to-face briefings with congressional staff, according to those sources, FBI and DOJ officials have said they cannot verify the dossier s charges of a conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.Read more: WE | 1real |
'This is not a life': migrants stranded on Greek island | LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) - Syrian migrant Bashar Wakaa and his heavily pregnant wife are days away from the birth of their third child, stranded on the Greek island of Lesbos in a muddy, garbage-strewn olive grove with no running water or toilets. Nearby, three Syrian men share a flimsy tent designed for two. Like the expectant couple, they arrived by rubber dinghy from Turkey only to find the island s migrant camp in a disused military base was severely overcrowded. This is not a life for humans, said 23-year-old Anas Bakour, one of the men who shares the rain-sodden tent. The animals have a better life. The hundreds sleeping in the woods are among more than 8,500 asylum-seekers stuck on Lesbos, where facilities for migrants were only designed to accommodate about 3,000. Thousands more are on four other Greek islands close to Turkey. A deal between the European Union and Turkey struck in 2016 stemmed the uncontrolled exodus of nearly a million people across the Aegean Sea the year before. Under the agreement, anyone crossing to Greece from Turkey who does not qualify for asylum must be deported. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras discussed cooperation on migration with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who arrived in Athens on Thursday for the first visit to the country by a Turkish head of state since 1952. Though arrivals collapsed in 2016 following the deal, they have recently ticked up. In the four months to November, 15,800 asylum-seekers arrived on Greek islands, up 27 percent from last year, according to data from the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR). The data does not give monthly arrivals by country of origin but a UNHCR spokesman in Greece said most were Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, as has been the case throughout the crisis. Aid groups and experts on Europe s migration crisis say the main problem is a lack of political will to improve conditions on the Greek islands, in the hope of dissuading more migrants from risking the sea crossing. "No one will admit it but it's a discouraging factor, a discouraging message for anyone who may want to come," said Konstantinos Filis, research director at Greece's Institute for International Relations. (For a graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2AABfSV) Aid workers say there is now an acute shortage of medical care, the conditions are horrendous and more and more depressed asylum-seekers are cutting themselves or attempting suicide. Camp residents say gangs, some armed with knives, roam at night, drugs and alcohol circulate freely and women cower in their shelters for fear of attack. Any girl in this camp expects at any moment that she will be attacked, said Shahed Naji, 22, an Iraqi woman. The EU-Turkey deal does not explicitly forbid asylum-seekers from leaving the islands until claims are assessed but the process takes months and stranded asylum-seekers grow desperate and frustrated, said charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). People need to get off the island as soon as possible, said Aria Danika, MSF s field coordinator in Lesbos. Turkish officials said the increase in crossings to the Greek islands in recent months did not reflect any slippage on their part in implementing its agreement with the EU. Some camp residents on Lesbos said they were not aware of the deal blocking their journey onwards to northern Europe. Others said they left Turkey because they could not find work and found life unbearable. No one puts his life in danger to come by small boat if Turkey is good and he can live there, said Amal Adwan, a Palestinian born in Syria now on Lesbos. Adwan, who made seven attempted sea crossings before reaching Lesbos, said she might have had second thoughts if she had know what the conditions were like. If I knew before, maybe I wouldn t have come, she said. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told Reuters there was a certain general resistance to moving people from the islands, not to create a pull factor . Greece s migration ministry, which manages the Lesbos camp, has said it is trying to ease overcrowding but could not remove people in large numbers because of the EU-Turkey pact. It declined to give an immediate comment on conditions on Lesbos and other islands. Ahead of Erdogan s visit, Prime Minister Tsipras told a Turkish news agency on Wednesday that the EU-Turkey deal was difficult but necessary . The European Commission, which has offered Greece millions in emergency aid, said on Thursday it was working on a daily basis with the Greek authorities to try to improve the conditions on the islands but more needed to be done. I have earlier, also in Athens, expressed my frustration over the fact that although we have put so much money at the disposal of all the authorities, that still the situation on some of the islands is unacceptable, the Commission s First Vice-President Frans Timmermans told reporters. On Lesbos, the once-welcoming community is fed up. On Saturday, residents used cars to try to block a ferry from unloading containers intended to house more refugees. The island s mayor, Spyros Galinos, said EU policies had turned the island into an open prison and called for protests and strikes against the deal. Sitting in his office overlooking the port, he compared Lesbos to a weightlifter being asked to lift heavier and heavier barbells: Today, we re buckling. When we get crushed the situation will be completely unmanageable and explosive. Back in the olive grove, Wakaa and his pregnant wife are despondent. If they can t accommodate these people then why are they accepting them in the first place? Wakaa asked. Let them drown in the sea. At least they will die and rest. (For photo essay from Lesbos: reut.rs/2AYs5Ci) | 0fake |
Spotify and Apple Music: The Goth vs. the Stoner - The New York Times | In this episode, we depart from the familiar format for a dive into the world of music streaming services. It is a topic that fascinates the Haggler, who can still barely fathom that for a mere $10 a month, he can get access to just about any musical recording on the planet. But which streaming app is the best? The Haggler has been mulling this question for a while, and after a lot of dabbling he regards Spotify as the gold standard. It is sturdy and remarkably fast when you play a song from the cloud, it starts so quickly it seems to be waiting for you. The system is also easy to use. Streaming services, at least to the Haggler, are all about creating playlists — grabbing albums and songs and putting them in a place where you can find them quickly. That process is simple and intuitive on Spotify. If the system has a weakness, it is a user interface, which is black and a Halloweenish shade of green — a little too goth for the Haggler’s tastes. Far more important, it isn’t great at introducing you to new albums and acts. It has features and algorithms designed to help you find undiscovered music, but they aren’t compelling or visually appealing enough to be much help. The Haggler winds up listening to the same stuff over and over. This is why the Haggler has been rooting for Apple Music since an Android version of it was unveiled in November. The user interface is gorgeous — bright, airy and dominated by album art — and it is the finest new music introduction system ever created. It’s like a professional matchmaker who never sleeps. It is always trying to find you something to love. But for all its upsides, Apple Music for iOS has been criticized for randomly deleting both songs and playlists. On Android, though, the app behaves even more weirdly. It took the Haggler a while to figure out what was happening. Then, a few weeks ago, it all became clear: Apple Music is stoned. Not stoned, either. Apple Music is fried. It has the kind of “Where am I?” buzz that should worry its friends. To wit: When the Haggler tries to turn an album into a playlist, only half the songs make the journey. Or all the songs make the journey but there are three copies of many. Or two copies. Sometimes, inexplicably, the songs are arranged alphabetically. “Heh heh heh,” says Apple Music, or so it seems to the Haggler’s ears. “I’m really high right now. ” You sure are! Just as bad, the system is supposed to learn what music you like, but no matter how many times the Haggler presses the “I don’t like this suggestion” button on jazz albums, Apple Music keeps serving up Chet Baker and Bill Evans in a “For you” list on the main menu. That’s especially vexing because each time that button is pressed, up pops this message: “Got it. We’ll keep that in mind. ” But Apple Music forgets. Do you know why? It’s totally baked. When someone consumes this amount of weed, for so long, it’s time for an intervention, and fortunately Apple Music just completed one. On July 8, the company updated the program, promising a fix for an assortment of bugs. A fix for the iOS version was released a few weeks ago. The Haggler doesn’t own an iPhone, so he can’t comment on whether it has improved, though the “My music has vanished!” online complaints do seem to have died down. But he is happy to report that on his Android smartphone, the fixes work. Since the program update, playlists have been rationally sorted. No more triple copies, no more alphabetized albums. So is it time to ditch Spotify? Not so fast. Apple Music is still missing essential features. It doesn’t let users make and share their own playlists, à la Spotify, which is how the Haggler got to know every song from the HBO show “Silicon Valley. ” (Some fan of the show just made a compilation.) Apple Music also lacks crossfade, which allows the next song to fade in, over a customizable number of seconds, as the last song fades out. This is invaluable if you listen to music in part to block out the noise made by the rest of the universe. Also, while it’s off recreational drugs, Apple Music is still balkier than Spotify, and is more likely to leave you staring at a spinning red line as it gathers its wits and looks for songs. And Apple Music has failed to streamline its playlist adding system. On Spotify, a playlist of Drake’s album “Views” is automatically designated “Drake — Views. ” On Apple Music, when you create a new playlist, it has no idea what to call it. The name is blank. So you have to type it yourself. This isn’t exactly hard labor. But it adds to the sense that Apple Music needs more tweaks. The Haggler contacted Apple, but the company would not discuss whether any of these tweaks were coming, because it generally does not discuss future iterations of products. What’s odd is that Apple is the user interface master of the world. If anything, you would expect it to take the bar established by Spotify and then leap over it. Instead, at least in a few crucial areas, it’s lagging. Yet recently, after a few hours of rummaging around the “Radio” section of Apple Music — a bunch of shows curated by artists and D. J. s — the Haggler fell hard for a fantastic indie band from Oklahoma called Broncho and its song “Class Historian. ” On Dr. Dre’s radio station, the Pharmacy, he was reacquainted with A Tribe Called Quest’s “Oh My God” which he hadn’t heard in years. The “For you” list last week included an album of Beethoven’s string trios that the Haggler will never again live without. If only someone could splice together the best parts of Apple Music and the best parts of Spotify, and then subtract each of their flaws. Unlikely, yes. But the Haggler can dream. | 0fake |
Hillary has built the biggest big-money operation ever | Email
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — More than 100 of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors crowded into the home of Casey and Laura Wasserman here on Thursday night, each having written a check for at least $33,400 to snag a ticket. The Hollywood glitterati in attendance — Elton John performed on the piano; Barbra Streisand mingled in the crowd — were sending her off for the home stretch of the campaign with north of $5 million in fresh funding.
It was a fitting capstone to a remarkable 18 months for Clinton on the lucrative California fundraising circuit, this final event anchored by a host committee of billionaires, Hollywood executives, media moguls and tech investors — Sean Parker, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Haim Saban, Chris Sacca — that each directed $416,000 to Clinton’s efforts.
Clinton calls them her “Hillblazers,” campaign bundlers who have given or raised at least $100,000 for her campaign. And she has erected an unparalleled and unprecedented infrastructure of 1,133 such people — nearly double the number of any past presidential candidate, including President Obama four years ago.
While Clinton and her advisers like to tout her small online donors, it is these bundlers in more than 40 states and four foreign countries who form the true backbone of her financial operation. Combined, this elite $100,000-and-up club has amassed a minimum of $113 million for Clinton and the Democratic Party — and the actual figure is likely far, far higher than that. (The biggest bundlers typically collect millions for campaigns.)
“We had the best base of donors and bundlers and raisers ever in 2008. It was even better in 2012. And it’s much better in 2016 than 2012,” said Wade Randlett, a San Francisco-based Democrat who has raised money for Clinton, Obama and Democratic causes for decades. “The Obama people basically 100 percent in are favor of Hillary. There’s really no loss because of ideology or bad blood. And she has added an enormous number of people, especially women.”
Among her bundlers are celebrities (Will Smith) and sports stars (Earvin “Magic” Johnson), Hollywood directors (Steven Spielberg and George Lucas) and corporate executives (Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg), Wall Street-types (Marc Lasry), media executives (Haim Saban and Anna Wintour) and members of Congress, including her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, who helped raise more than $100,000 for Clinton before he joined the ticket in July.
The Clinton campaign said 45 percent of its bundlers are women.
There are also federal lobbyists, from whom the Democratic Party under Obama refused to accept money, a prohibition that has since been rolled back.
This club has expanded to the point where Clinton would now struggle to fit all of these bundlers into a single ballroom. As of the end of June, she counted 496 such individuals and couples. By the end of July, it was 871. On August 31, it was 1,133.
It includes billionaires George Soros, Warren Buffett and Tom Steyer, super lobbyists like Steve Elmendorf and bold-faced names like Calvin Klein and J.J. Abrams. There is also a sprinkling of longtime Clinton family advisers, such as Vernon Jordan. | 1real |
NYC MAYOR DEBLASIO SAYS ‘Something is changing in America” ANNOUNCES NEW “Communist Manifesto” AGENDA | Why would anyone expect anything else from a mayor who criticized Barack Obama for being too conservative and too afraid to take the bold kind of action that President Roosevelt took during the Great Depression MISS ME YET?Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a 13-point national Progressive Agenda that is being touted as the liberal Contract with America. The aim is for the Progressive Agenda to become the basis for the Democratic Party s main economic policies, including those of its 2016 presidential candidate.De Blasio has compared his plan to the Contract with America, a document released by the Republican Party during the 1994 congressional election and drawn up by future House Speaker Newt Gingrich to serve as the GOP policy agenda.Now WND documents that most of the 13 points in de Blasio s Progressive Agenda can also be found in the manifestos and literature of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Party USA.The full progressive plan, entitled, The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality, can be found on the agenda s new website.Here is a comparison of the Agenda s plan with literature from the manifestos and writings of the Community Party USA, or CPUSA, and the Socialist Party USA, or SPUSA. Progressive Agenda: Raise the federal minimum wage, so that it reaches $15/hour, while indexing it to inflation. SPUSA: We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living. CPUSA: Calls for struggles for peace, equality for the racially and nationally oppressed, equality for women job creation programs, increased minimum wage. Even with ultra-right control of the Federal government, peoples legislative victories, such as increasing the minimum wage, can be won on an issue-by-issue basis locally, statewide, and even nationally. Progressive Agenda: Pass comprehensive immigration reform to grow the economy and protect against exploitation of low-wage workers. SPUSA: We defend the rights of all immigrants to education, health care, and full civil and legal rights and call for an unconditional amnesty program for all undocumented people. We oppose the imposition of any fees on those receiving amnesty. We call for full citizenship rights upon demonstrating residency for six months. CPUSA: Declares the struggle for immigrant rights is a key component of the struggle for working class unity in our country today. Progressive Agenda: Make Pre-K, after-school programs and childcare universal. SPUSA: We support public child care starting from infancy, and public education starting at age three, with caregivers and teachers of young children receiving training, wages, and benefits comparable to that of teachers at every other level of the educational system. Progressive Agenda: Earned Income Tax Credit. Implement the Buffett Rule so millionaires pay their fair share. SPUSA: We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax. CPUSA: No taxes for workers and low and middle income people; progressive taxation of the wealthy and private corporations. Dems hail beginning of revolution De Blasio criticized Obama as too conservative to assert a progressive economic vision and too afraid to take the bold kind of action that President Roosevelt took during the Great Depression, reported the liberal news network.Speaking at the Progressive Agenda launch event outside the Capitol building last Tuesday, de Blasio said something is changing in America. It s time to take that energy and crystallize it into an agenda that will make a difference, he said. We ll be calling on leaders and candidates to address these issues, to stiffen their backbones, to be clear and to champion these progressive policies. Read more at WND | 1real |
Trump to Republican senators: Don't leave town until pass healthcare legislation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump urged Republican senators on Wednesday to work out their differences and pass healthcare legislation before leaving Washington for their August recess. A day after the latest version of legislation to replace Obamacare fell victim to squabbling among Republicans who control the Senate, Trump gathered Republican senators for a lunch and told them, “We are so close.” He said Republicans had promised Americans they would repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law for seven years and that now is the time to act. “We have to stay here. We shouldn’t leave town,” Trump said. | 0fake |
[Video] US VETERAN FINDS FLAG HE CARRIRED ON TOUR DESECRATED IN FRONT YARD | The war on the American flag continues.Retired mounted an American flag in front of his house, the same flag that he carried with him on duty across five continents.One morning last week, the vet woke up to find his car smashed with the flag pole and the flag desecrated with a marker. The message that I would like to say is America is still the greatest country in the world, Hernandez Garcia said on Fox and Friends Weekend. It s not something that we are just brainwashed with. We are still the greatest country. We got problems. Everybody does. The flag represents freedom. When you step on the flag, you really are stepping on those veterans that have really fought for you. And everybody else, including your own parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and so forth, Hernandez Garcia said. So, if you are watching this, I would like to tell you, come and talk to me. Let s talk about things. Let s not destroy things. Our country needs dialogue more than violence. He said that social media has a major influence on people, so maybe someone saw the recent stomp the flag challenge and was inspired.Tucker Carlson and Ainsley Earhardt revealed that America s Mighty Warriors, a group that helps support military families, will be paying for the damages to Hernandez Garcia s car and flagpole, plus paying for a weekend vacation for two. In addition to that, a flag will be flown over the U.S. Capitol in honor of his service.Via: Fox and Friends | 1real |
Trump Whines About The Size Of His Inauguration Crowd, Threatens Media For Reporting Accurate Numbers | Rather than do the damn job he swore to do, Donald Trump is now obsessed with complaining about media estimates of his inauguration crowd size.Trump had predicted that his inauguration would draw a record-breaking crowd. To break the record, which is held by President Obama in 2008, Trump would have had to get over 1.8 million people to show up.But he didn t even get half a million as aerial photographs and reports from the DC Metro show that Trump s audience left a hell of a lot of empty space in the National Mall.During a visit to the CIA, Trump complained about the media reports and claimed that his crowd numbered at least 1.5 million. We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed, Trump claimed. I get up this morning and I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I said, Wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out. The field was it looked like a million, a million and a half people, Trump said. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. They said, Donald Trump did not draw well. It looked honestly like a million and a half people, whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument and I turn on, by mistake, I get this network, and it showed an empty field. Said we drew 250,000 people. Now, that s not bad. But it s a lie. We had 250,000 people in the little ball that we constructed. Trump then insisted that the entire National Mall was packed all the way to the Washington Monument and then warned the media that they will pay a price for accurately reporting the numbers.Here s the video via Twitter:President Trump on crowd size at inauguration: It looked like a million and a half people. https://t.co/U5pWhBBMzt https://t.co/NX6vI6UTHR CNN (@CNN) January 21, 2017Yes, up near the Capitol where Trump spoke was clearly packed, but the National Mall definitely was not.In fact, we can compare Trump s inauguration attendance to President Obama s in 2009 with photographs taken at the same time just before the inaugural address was delivered.For those saying Trump can t be that hated, look at the size of the crowd #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/Sczp6Feta5 Stefan Kay (@5tefanK) January 20, 2017What is shown is that President Obama s crowd reaches all the way to the Washington Monument in the photo on the left, while Trump s crowd is, indeed, sparse and does NOT reach the Washington Monument as he claims.Apparently, Trump is thinking of President Obama s inauguration crowd instead of his own.And the DC Metro statistics corroborate the photos.Metro Ridership: As of 11am, 193k trips taken so far today. (11am 1/20/13 = 317k, 11am 1/20/09 = 513k, 11am 1/20/05 = 197k) #wmata Metro (@wmata) January 20, 2017The fact is that simply by looking at the photo it is possible to estimate the crowd size, and Trump s claim just doesn t match up with reality.Furthermore, it s incredibly disturbing that Trump continues to threaten the media for telling the truth about him, especially when there is photographic evidence that proves him wrong.Trump owes the media a public apology and then he needs to focus on the presidency instead of engaging in petty feuds with the free press.He s just mad because the size of the Women s March in Washington dwarfs his crowd size.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
FOX News Just Announced Moderators For Next GOP Debate…This Could Be YUGE! | Will Megyn Kelly be working towards a gotcha moment that has the press talking about her the next day, or will she focus on more serious issues facing Americans? Fox News Megyn Kelly will moderate her second GOP presidential primary debate on Jan. 28, just days before the Iowa caucuses, the network announced Monday.The seventh scheduled showdown between the GOP candidates, which will be held at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, will air at 9:00 p.m. EST.The network hasn t explained yet how candidates can qualify to participate in the last debate before the Iowa caucuses.Fox s Bret Baier and Chris Wallace will also return for a second time to moderate along with Kelly. The three anchors moderated the first GOP debate on Aug. 6, which ended with Trump accusing Kelly of unfair treatment. Via: Washington Examiner | 1real |
CodeSOD: Dollar Dollar Dollar Dollar Underscore | Ellis Morning Editor
An Anonymous source sends us some Java code with really special variable naming conventions. I can only assume this came from a plucky startup hoping to attract venture capital. import java.util.*; import java.awt.*; import javax.swing.*; import java.awt.event.*; public class Array implements ActionListener, MouseMotionListener, MouseListener { int $$_, _$$, $$$,$_$; JFrame $$$__$$$ = new JFrame(); boolean draw = true; JButton $$1 = new JButton("Line"), $$2 = new JButton("Rectangle"), $$3 = new JButton("Clear"); ArrayList = new ArrayList<>(); JPanel aa$$aa = new JPanel(), _$$_$_ = new JPanel(), $0$0$ = new JPanel() { @Override public void paintComponent(Graphics g) { super.paintComponent(g); for (Shape i : ) { if (i.$s$ == true) { g.setColor(Color.green); g.drawLine(i.$$_,i._$$,i.$$$,i.$_$); } else { g.setColor(Color.red); g.fillPolygon(new int[] {i.$$_,i.$$_,i.$$$,i.$$$}, new int[] {i._$$,i.$_$,i.$_$,i._$$}, 4); } } if (draw) { g.setColor(Color.green); g.drawLine($$_,_$$,$$$,$_$); } else { g.setColor(Color.red); g.fillPolygon(new int[] {$$_,$$_,$$$,$$$}, new int[] {_$$,$_$,$_$,_$$}, 4); } } }; public Array () { aa$$aa.setLayout(new BoxLayout(aa$$aa, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS)); _$$_$_.add($$1); $$1.addActionListener(this); _$$_$_.add($$2); $$2.addActionListener(this); _$$_$_.add($$3); $$3.addActionListener(this); $0$0$.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(200, 200)); aa$$aa.add($0$0$); $0$0$.addMouseListener(this); $0$0$.addMouseMotionListener(this); aa$$aa.add(_$$_$_); $$$__$$$.add(aa$$aa); $$$__$$$.setSize(new Dimension(400, 400)); $$$__$$$.setVisible(true); $$$__$$$.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); } public static void main(String[] args) { new Array(); } public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { if (e.getSource() == $$1) { draw = true; } else if (e.getSource() == $$2) { draw = false; } else if (e.getSource() == $$3) { .clear(); } $$_ = 0; _$$ = 0; $$$ = 0; $_$ = 0; $$$__$$$.repaint(); } public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) { $$_ = e.getX(); _$$ = e.getY(); $0$0$.repaint(); } public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) { $$$ = e.getX(); $_$ = e.getY(); .add(new Shape($$_,_$$,$$$,$_$, draw)); $$_=0; _$$=0; $_$=0; $_$=0; $$$__$$$.repaint(); } public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) { $$$__$$$.repaint(); } public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) { $$$__$$$.repaint(); } public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) { $$$__$$$.repaint(); } public void mouseMoved(MouseEvent e) { $$$__$$$.repaint(); } public void mouseDragged(MouseEvent e) { $$$ = e.getX(); $_$ = e.getY(); $$$__$$$.repaint(); } class Shape { int $$_,_$$,$$$,$_$; boolean $s$; Shape(int xx, int yy, int x$, int y$, boolean tp) { $$_ = xx; _$$ = yy; $$$ = x$; $_$ = y$; $s$ = tp; } public String toString() { return ""+$$_+" "+_$$+" "+$$$+" "+$_$; } } } [Advertisement] Infrastructure as Code built from the start with first-class Windows functionality and an intuitive, visual user interface. Download Otter today! | 1real |
EXPOSED! Plot To Bring In Cheap Foreign Labor Exposed – No U.S. Labor Shortage [Video] | Here you have it! Jeff Sessions has been a hero in his continued effort to expose the cost to Americans when cheap foreign labor is brought in to take over American jobs: | 1real |
FIRE THIS MAN! STATE DEPARTMENT ASSHAT Mocks Reporters And Obama’s “Transparency” At Briefing [Video] | How unfunny! Does this not tell you something about the jackwagons in the Obama State Department? Unreal! | 1real |
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