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Exclusive—NFL Great Burgess Owens: The Left Destroyed Strong Black Communities - Breitbart | A member of the Oakland Raiders Super Bowl winning team told Breitbart News at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it is time for to reclaim their traditional conservatism. [“Today’s generation has been trained to think differently from my generation. We would stand for the flag in a heartbeat — because we realized the opportunities we had,” said Burgess Owens on Thursday. Owens was an safety at the University of Miami, who was drafted by the New York Jets in 1973 and played for the Jets until joining the Raiders for their run at Super Bowl XV. Owens was at CPAC to discuss with people his new book “Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps” and attend a book signing. “Today’s generation came from BET group — the BET has been talking down our country for the longest time. ” Black Entertainment Television is the top cable channel focused on the community. Today’s young have been twisted up by BET, he said. “They tend to be more racist. They tend to be more ” he said. “I was the third black American to be recruited by the University of Miami and I remember going down there — my goal was not to fail,” he said. “That was really what allowed our community to think,” he said. “We didn’t want to leave our families down. We didn’t want to let our race down. We would work as hard as we could, so we would not fail. ” Owens said that when he was coming of age in the late 1960s, there was always a racial consciousness that was trying to break through and disrupt the traditional ways of life. In those times in his hometown of Tallahassee, Florida, the black community was stronger than most other communities, black or white, he said. “The community as that time was totally committed to the family,” he said. “We had the highest percentage of men committed to marriage. We had the fastest growing in the country. ” Conservatism, with its emphasis on work, entrepreneurship, and faith traditions, is a natural fit for but somehow the narrative got switched up. Owens said he wrote his book because politics and policies have destroyed thriving black communities, but no one else seemed to want to talk about it. “Back in 1910, the NAACP, started by 21 white Marxist, socialist, atheist Democrats, began to intertwine the thought of liberalism into my community,” he said. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the most prominent of the civil rights organizations. “We started to pull away from the pillars that always made our country great and towards being and feeling like victims,” he said. “They taught our race that the real value was in being with the white race, instead of what we were doing at the time,” the father of six said. “I would say to a young man: Recognize who you are, let’s . Take the rolls you are supposed to take. Take care of your family. Respect women — big time — and we will be a great country again,” he said. His message to white Americans: “Don’t apologize anymore for who they are. We have a great society with great ancestors, who did their best. ” | 0fake |
HOW WE KNOW AMERICA IS FINALLY WINNING: Popular Leftist Publication Urges Anti-Trump Thugs To STOP Protesting | There hasn t been a time in decades when the Left has been so concerned about a presidential election. Sure, there have been times when the election has been close, but a strong get out the vote effort, a scheme to prevent our overseas military s vote from counting, coupled with a unparalled voter fraud network has always kept the Democrat contender in the race. With November only eight months away, is there going to be enough time to cast enough dead, illegal and mulitple votes from single voters to make up the difference in the massive number of voters Donald Trump will bring to the polls?The Left is panicking and the paid protesters who threatened Trump supporters and rioted in Chicago are proof they re losing their grip on the election. Donald Trump has them running scared, and that can only be a good thing, as America has never been in more trouble than we are today. Electing a candidate from the party who has intentionally divided and pitted Americans against each other for eight long years is no longer an option for anyone who loves our country.Here s a sample of what s happening today in Florida:#FloridaPrimary #SuperTuesday #Vote @realDonaldTrump #QueEstadosUnidosSeaGrandeOtraVez #TrumpTrain #MIAMI pic.twitter.com/CGKI6HqjvN Lady #MAGA~Bethany (@thetimewasthen) March 14, 2016Donald Trump s supporters aren t fazed by his decision to cancel an appearance at a Chicago rally over the weekend in fact, they are more likely to vote for him to be the Republican nominee because of it.That s according to a new poll of likely Republican voters conducted by Monmouth University. It confirms something I ve long suspected (and have argued in previous articles): the antics of left-wing agitators are driving ordinary people into the arms of Trump.The poll noted that pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces clashed in Chicago last Friday, which prompted Trump to cancel the event. It then asked respondents whether this fact made them more or less likely to support Trump. Just 11 percent said they were less likely to support Trump because of this decision. Another 22 percent said they were actually more likely to back Trump, and 66 percent said their views were unchanged.Leftist protesters who vehemently oppose Trump would do well to remember that in a free society, even contemptible speakers are permitted to be heard. As New York Magazine s Jonathan Chait wrote in a recent piece:But the whole premise of democracy is that rules need to be applied in every case without regard to the merit of the underlying cause to which it is attached. If you defend the morality of a tactic against Trump, then you should be prepared to defend its morality against any candidate. Now imagine that right-wing protesters had set out to disrupt Barack Obama s speeches in 2008. If you re not okay with that scenario, you should not be okay with protesters doing it to Trump.Indeed. But the Monmouth poll is good evidence that letting Trump speak is not merely the morally correct, philosophically consistent course of action: It s the tactically sound one as well. When the left stops Trump from speaking, Trump wins. He gets to tell his people that the forces of far-left activism and political correctness are trying to silence him. Implicitly, he is suggesting to his followers that when he becomes president, the tides will turn: see his promise to make it easier to sue newspapers for criticizing him. Trump supporters adore this shtick. Stop giving them ammunition.Via: Reason | 1real |
UH OH! STEPHANOPOULOS JOINED CLINTON ON ‘PEDO ISLAND’ | The main stream media has done a great job of covering up the story of Jeffrey Epstein and his friends in high places who joined him at what s now called Pedo Island . We now find out that Stephanopoulos was with Bill Clinton on the island where there s smoke Turns out George Stephanopoulos did more than just donate to the Clinton Foundation while working as an impartial media person for ABC. He also joined Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein at Lolita Island in 2010. Lolita Island is also known as Pedo Island . This one documented trip by George Stephanopoulos and Bill Clinton was in December of 2010. George Stephanopoulos was at ABC at the time. This was just two years before that ridiculous GOP debate where George Stephanopoulos badgered Mitt Romney about banning contraception. Now I know why it was such an issue for George Stephanopoulos.Also joining Epstein, Clinton and George Stephanopoulos on Pedo Island in December of 2010 was Woody Allen. You ve heard all the stories about him Jeffrey Epstein s Society Friends Close Ranks:On the evening of December 2nd, 2010, a handful of America s media and entertainment elite including TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedienne Chelsea Handler, and director Woody Allen convened around the dinner table of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn t just any dining room, but part of a sprawling nine-story townhouse that once housed an entire preparatory school. And it wasn t just any sex offender, but an enigmatic billionaire who had once flown the likes of former President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak around the world on his own Boeing 727. Last spring, Epstein completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Palm Beach. | 1real |
#FeelTheBern: GUY WHO WANTS TO CLEAN UP CORRUPTION In D.C. Accepts Thousands Of ILLEGAL Campaign Contributions | Hey Bernie The first step in fighting corruption by politicians might start with cleaning up the corruption in your own campaign Thousands of contributions to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders campaign in January violated federal campaign finance laws, election regulators said on Thursday.The Federal Election Commission sent a letter to the Democratic presidential candidate s campaign committee on Thursday with a 90-page spreadsheet listing 3,457 excessive, prohibited, and impermissible contributions. The campaign s January financial disclosure filing listed contributions from foreign nationals and unregistered political committees, the FEC said. Other contributions came from donors who exceeded the $2,700 per-election limit.Because behind that mask, you ll find the same corrupt kind of politician you ll find pretty much anywhere roaming the halls of Congress. You just get a little better at hiding it the more time you spend working as a public servant in D.C Although the Commission may take further legal action concerning the acceptance of [excessive or prohibited] contributions, your prompt action to refund the prohibited amount will be taken into consideration, the FEC told the campaign.Sanders campaign has relied on small-dollar individual contributions to a far greater extent than any other presidential campaign, including the Super PAC- and dark money-fueled efforts of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.The Vermont Senator and self-described socialist is running on a platform of transparency and campaign finance reform, contrasting his grassroots support with Clinton s high-dollar donors and use of loopholes in federal election laws that allow her campaign to coordinate with outside groups that can accept unlimited contributions.However, Sanders donors have also run afoul of federal campaign finance laws, and his financial disclosure reports have been riddled with errors.The FEC sent a letter to the Sanders campaign earlier this month flagging an additional 1,316 excessive, prohibited, and impermissible contributions in the fourth quarter of 2015.The commission also noted disbursements from the campaign that failed to include required documentation.The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Some of the campaign s legal problems stem from enthusiasm for Sanders candidacy from foreign nationals, many of whom have publicly revealed donations to the campaign in violation of U.S. election laws. I am German, live in Germany and just donated to Bernie Sanders campaign on www.BernieSanders.com simply using my credit card Is this illegal in any way? asked a user on the website Quora. Via: WFB | 1real |
Senate intelligence panel requests Trump campaign documents: Washington Post | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating Russian meddling in U.S. 2016 election, has asked President Donald Trump’s political organization to hand over all documents going back the campaign’s launch in June 2015, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing two people briefed on the request. The letter from the Senate panel seeking all documents, emails and telephone records arrived at Trump’s campaign committee last week and was addressed to its treasurer, the Post said. This marked the first time the Trump campaign organization has been drawn into the bipartisan committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, it said. Dozens of former campaign staffers are expected to be contacted soon to ensure they are aware of the request, the Post said, citing the two people. The letter was signed by Republican Senator Richard Burr, the committee’s chairman, and Senator Mark Warner, its top Democrat, according to the Post, which said representatives for Burr and Warner declined to comment. The Senate panel’s investigation is among several in Congress into Russian interference in the election, and is separate from a probe into the matter being led by a special counsel appointed last week by the Justice Department, former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller. Trump’s campaign committee, based at Trump Tower in New York, is now led by Michael Glassner, a former deputy campaign manager, and John Pence, a nephew of Vice President Mike Pence, the Post said. Glassner did not immediately respond to a request for comment and a White House representative had no immediate comment, the Post said. Trump’s administration has been dogged by concerns about its ties to Russia and questions over whether Trump associates may have cooperated with Russians as they sought to meddle in last year’s election on Trump’s behalf. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Moscow tried to sway the November vote in Trump’s favor. Russia has denied involvement, and Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia. Controversy has engulfed Trump since he fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9 as Comey oversaw an investigation into possible collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia. | 0fake |
ABORTION Employees Give GUT-WRENCHING Accounts Of LIVE BABY KILLINGS: “twisting the head off the neck with his own bare hands” [VIDEO] | On this anniversary of Roe VS Wade, it is so important for Americans to understand that just because 43 years ago today, a majority of Supreme Court Justices ruled that women can legally kill the babies God placed in their wombs it s still the taking of a life Remember the one that he did? That the baby the fetus came out, and it was alive and he had thought he had actually killed it already and the fetus opened up his eyes and grabbed his hand, his finger? A lot of times he would bring the big fetus that were over-age in a bag and we would say Oh my g*d, that s a big baby! It would take us over an hour to do an abortion that big. The women that go there [abortion clinic] have no idea what they re getting themselves into. And a lot of questions would want be, Does the baby feel? And I would think it would make me so mad because I would say Why does that matter to you, when you re coming in here to kill your baby?' | 1real |
Oculus Founder, at Center of Legal Battle Over VR, Departs Facebook - The New York Times | SAN FRANCISCO — Palmer Luckey, a founder of the technology company Oculus, has left Facebook three years after the social network acquired his company for close to $3 billion. Mr. Luckey’s departure was announced two months after a trial in federal court over allegations that he and several colleagues had stolen trade secrets from a publisher, ZeniMax Media, to create the Oculus technology. A jury found Facebook liable for $500 million in damages, in part for Mr. Luckey’s violation of a confidentiality agreement. “Palmer will be dearly missed,” Tera Randall, an Oculus spokeswoman, said in a statement. “His inventive spirit helped the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. ” Ms. Randall declined to disclose the terms of Mr. Luckey’s departure. The move adds another twist to Facebook’s bumpy foray into technology. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has bet big on virtual reality as part of the social network’s future, saying he envisioned social interactions between people will someday exist inside virtual worlds. Oculus, he has said, could be a catalyst for that. But from the start, Oculus has run into problems. Adoption of the Oculus technology and headsets has been slower than Facebook had anticipated. The selection of content made for VR headsets is still small, though growing. “These things end up being more complex than you think upfront,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in January while appearing in court for the ZeniMax trial. “If anything, we may have to invest even more money to get to the goals we had than we had thought upfront. ” Mr. Zuckerberg has committed to spending more than $3 billion over the next decade to get virtual reality off the ground and into the mainstream. Mr. Luckey has had other stumbles. In 2016, it became public that he had donated $10, 000 to Nimble America, a political organization that promoted memes and slogans on social media sites like Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. He has since apologized for the impact his actions had on Oculus and its partners. Mr. Luckey did not immediately respond to a Facebook message requesting comment. In January, Facebook appointed a new leader, Hugo Barra, to head up the company’s efforts, including Oculus. | 0fake |
El Salvador launches commission to find those missing from civil war | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - El Salvador on Wednesday launched the first commission to search for persons who went missing during its civil war, 25 years after the end of a conflict that left tens of thousands dead and hundreds of cases unresolved. The commission will seek victims who were killed or kidnapped by the military or rebels in order to help reunite them with families or return their remains People who lost relative have demanded such measures for decades. With this instrument we reaffirm our deep commitment to pay off the historical debt to the victims of forced disappearances in the country, said leftist President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, himself a former guerrilla leader. The 1980-1992 war in El Salvador between the U.S.-backed army and the Marxist guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now the ruling party, left 75,000 dead and 8,000 missing. We hope that this commission gives something to the mothers because what we want is at least for them to tell us what they did with them, said Sof a Hernandez, 74, who is looking for a daughter, two brothers and four nephews. Last year, the Supreme Court of Justice declared unconstitutional an amnesty law that has prevented since 1993 investigating and prosecuting those accused of war crimes in the impoverished Central American country. | 0fake |
ANTI-TRUMP CROWD CHANTS: “What’s Better Than 11 Dead Cops, 12 Dead Cops!”…Three Police Officers Ambushed The Same Weekend [Video] | And the guy who s behind all of this hate is dumping $10 million into pushing back against the use of hate crimes | 1real |
Five Things You Need to Know About CrowdStrike | . The Daily CallerThe Democratic Party and mainstream media have become increasingly consumed with the narrative that Donald Trump s election win is largely influenced by Russian hacking.The narrative is centered around two hacks the hack of a DNC server that led to the release of embarrassing emails during the Democratic National Convention, and the hack of John Podesta s email which led to several embarrassing moments for the Clinton campaign in October 2016. Both are supposedly the result of the Russians.The Russia story is back in the headlines once again after reports surrounding former President Barack Obama s attempts to punish Russia for its interference.However, there is still a cloud of doubt hanging over the DNC s Russia narrative on the breach of the DNC servers.The analysis that alleged that Russia was behind the DNC server breach was carried out not by the U.S. government, but by the private security group CrowdStrike.CrowdStrike is the sole source of this claim, with their June 2016 report, Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee being the basis of the DNC s Russian hacking allegations.Here are five key points about CrowdStrike that the mainstream media is ignoring:1. Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC2. The FBI Never Looked At The DNC s Servers Only CrowdStrike Did3. Comey Contradicted The DNC s Story On The FBI Asking To See The Server4. CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire5. CrowdStrike Is Funded By Clinton-Loving Google $$To read more about CrowdStrike and the five things you need to know, visit The Daily CallerREAD MORE SCI-TECH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Sci-Tech FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
After Islamic State, ruined Raqqa fears new strife | RAQQA, Syria (Reuters) - The morning after Islamic State s defeat in Raqqa, a local militia fighter stood in a square in the ruined, deserted city center. There will be more problems here, he said. The 19-year-old, who gave his name as Moro, was one of few Raqqa natives to witness the aftermath of the battle for the Syrian city. Victory celebrations by Kurdish forces felt muted - there were no civilians left. It was the liberation of a ghost town. Daesh is to blame for this, said Moro, an Arab who joined the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces militia alliance (SDF) to fight Islamic State, known pejoratively as Daesh, after fleeing Raqqa two years before. But not everyone will see it that way. If destruction remains, people will blame the coalition, and maybe us. The cost of the campaign to oust Islamic State from its former Syrian capital is the destruction of the city, the death and maiming of hundreds of civilians and displacement of tens of thousands. As the dust settles, Raqqa s traumatized population fears new violence. Rebuilding Raqqa, which resembles wrecked Syrian cities like Aleppo and Homs, will take years, meaning long-term homelessness for many - an issue already fuelling resentment against the forces that helped end Islamic State s detested caliphate . SDF supporters worry resentment will turn into unrest, pitting them against those who were more sympathetic to Islamic State, or who oppose what is increasingly perceived as Kurdish control of the majority Arab city. The flags of the Kurdish YPG militia that spearheads the SDF were the first to fly above former Islamic State strongholds in Raqqa. Fighters chanted Kurdish slogans. The SDF declared the city would become part of Kurdish-led autonomy plans for northern Syria. Many residents welcomed the U.S.-backed militias even as air strikes killed their relatives, saying the SDF at least treated them well. But euphoria is giving way to a realization there is nothing for most to go back to. The U.S. State Department says it could be months if not longer before mines and debris are cleared and people can return. Officials say frustration will be exploited by the SDF s enemies: Turkey, which is fighting a Kurdish insurgency of its own, and President Bashar al-Assad, who has vowed to retake all of Syria. Raqqa has in turn been controlled by Assad, rebel groups and then the jihadists in Syria s six-year-old conflict. The forces now in control promise democracy and the council staffed by locals plans to hold elections. We re done with Daesh. The regime can t return either, Moro said, referring to Assad s Damascus-based government. He stood at the spot where Islamic State whipped him 130 times for missing prayers. He and his brother spied on the group for the U.S. coalition by secretly filming key locations before his brother was found out and executed, he said. Signs of Islamic State s brutality litter Raqqa. Fighters last week searched a former prison set up underneath Raqqa stadium. Some cells were not big enough to sit up in. On Naeem roundabout, where jihadists held public executions, a local woman said she once counted 77 decapitated heads on spikes. Some 260,000 people fled the fighting. For now, most live in crowded camps and abandoned buildings with barely any water, electricity, food or medicine. Those who fled abroad are unlikely to return, relatives say. The few locals to see Raqqa after the expulsion of Islamic State include SDF fighters and civilians who did not flee. Others are desperate to get in. At a checkpoint on Raqqa s outskirts, a crowd of people displaced for months argued with militiamen, demanding to inspect their houses. They say the area s mined. It s not, people have been across. You need connections. Kurds are allowed in, Sara Hussein, 58, said. Has Raqqa not been freed? It s over. We saw the parades on TV - we want to go home. The SDF did not immediately comment but says it fairly represents all ethnicities in areas it controls. The residents wanted to fetch winter clothes, worrying properties would be looted. One man said the SDF questioned him and confiscated his papers. Others have been more thoroughly interrogated. They are among those Moro fears will resent the SDF. A former Islamic State employee, who gave his name as Abu Furqan, was pushed out of Raqqa on his wheelchair by neighbours as they fled. The 23-year-old had lost both legs in an air strike in August, and sat outside a mosque asking Red Crescent workers for painkillers. His wounds had been sewn up in an Islamic State clinic. Raqqa has no working hospitals. I did odd jobs for Daesh - manning police checkpoints, and driving around distributing water to fighters. Will I be interrogated again? he said. Islamic State wages were good, he said. He avoided questions about whether he still sympathized with jihadists or opposed the SDF, replying: When Daesh first came, some people were more afraid of what the U.S. reaction would be, a reference to air strikes. The final days of the battle for Raqqa were marked by tension between the coalition and tribal leaders who demanded air strikes stop for the sake of trapped civilians while they negotiated safe exit for some militants, council officials said. One tribal leader said the coalition should compensate bereaved families. For now, people just want to return. Moro kept muttering: It s destroyed. | 0fake |
Trey Gowdy Obliterates Critics Of FBI & Delivers Nasty Surprise For Hillary | Share This
After the FBI’s Friday announcement that they had reopened their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, many have been quick to attack director James Comey for the timing of his recent move. However, Trey Gowdy just obliterated the criticisms while also delivering a nasty surprise directly to Hillary herself.
The Democrats have come unhinged as they watch their candidate sink, with the FBI’s reopened investigation delivering a devastating blow to an already disastrous campaign. In fact, what’s coming out of their mouths as they enter panic mode is almost laughable. Take for instance Howard Dean’s claim that Comey is in cahoots with Vladimir Putin or Harry Reid’s suggestion that director Comey broke the law.
It’s rather ironic that he’s concerned about Comey following the law while, at the same time, basically suggesting Hillary should get a free pass. In fact, Reid is so concerned about the FBI director’s actions in investigating Hillary Clinton’s criminality that he had the nerve to write Comey, attempting to intimidate him. “I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election,” Reid wrote. “Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”
Luckily for us, Trey Gowdy was ready to call Reid out for his crap, and of course, it’s all on video for us to enjoy. Watch:
Gowdy wasn’t falling for the left’s excuses, and he said what we were all thinking. First, he laid into Huma Abedin’s excuse that she didn’t know how her emails could have ended up on a device she says belongs to her husband. As Gowdy points out, there aren’t that many ways it could happen, but it’s rather irrelevant since that’s not what the FBI is investigating.
Next, Gowdy took out John Podesta for his “blame the cops” play, and then came the nasty surprise for Hillary. Gowdy reminded viewers that Comey isn’t responsible for a single one of the facts , saying, “ He didn’t tell her to use a private server, he didn’t tell Huma not to turn over all of her devices, and God knows, he didn’t tell Anthony Weiner to send sexually explicit texts to allegedly underage people. ” Gowdy continued to put Hillary on blast, saying “ The timing is a direct and natural consequence of decisions Hillary Clinton made ,” reminding everyone of where our focus and blame should be. But, he wasn’t done there.
It was then Harry Reid’s turn to feel the Gowdy heat as the senator ripped into Reid’s asinine letter to Comey. “Thank God he’s leaving is my initial reaction,” Gowdy said about Reid before adding, “My second reaction is: I did not know Mormons used drugs, and anyone who is capable of sending out that press release has to be under the influence of something.”
Then, Gowdy went right back to putting the attention and blame where it needs to be — on Hillary Clinton. “ The person responsible for this fact pattern is Secretary Clinton ,” Gowdy explained. “Jim Comey did not tell her to use her private server. He did not say to mislead the public about whether or not you turned over all of your work emails. And he certainly didn’t say, Secretary Clinton, why don’t you say you neither sent nor received classified information.”
Trey Gowdy successfully obliterated any critics of the FBI and director James Comey while also delivering Hillary the nasty surprise she deserves. Although she’s used to skirting consequences, she has no one to blame for what’s happening besides herself, and it’s nice to see that there are those in Washington, D.C., who are more than willing to wrap up some personal accountability and drop it directly into the presidential candidate’s lap. Timing wouldn’t be an issue if her own actions didn’t lead our entire country down this path. Hillary Clinton has no one but herself to blame for what she’s facing. As for timing, now maybe Mrs. Clinton has a little idea what it’s like to be aborted just days before delivery. | 1real |
FBI Agent Accuses James Comey Of ‘Trampling On The Rule Of Law’ | Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Sir,
I am writing regarding your public statement in July, 2016 informing the American people that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton was being closed without referring it to a Federal Grand Jury or the Attorney General of the U. S. for a decision whether or not to indict her. Strangely, you eloquently laid out enough of the evidence deduced from the investigation to strongly indicate there was abundant evidence uncovered during the investigation and interview of her to not only indict but to convict her in Federal Court. However, you personally re-worded and soft-pedaled the actions she took as Secretary of State describing her actions as “extremely careless” in using a personal email and un-secured server for her communications while Secretary of State. You rewrote the statute, which is not your job.
As a retired Special Agent of the FBI, I have standing to write this letter. My thirty years in law enforcement, including 22 years as a Special Agent with the FBI have given me the knowledge, expertise and experience to question and confront you for your perplexing actions, which (as you well know) were outside the normal standard operating procedure of the FBI and Federal judicial procedures. Some of the finest people in the world proudly carry the credentials of FBI Agent and you have soiled them and not allowed them to speak. But I will not be silent.
Sorry, but NO SIR, MS Clinton was not merely careless or extremely careless. She was not even negligent or grossly negligent (as the statute requires). Hillary Clinton was knowingly purposeful in her decisions and actions to set up a server under her exclusive control and possession in order to control what information was available to the American public and Congress regarding her actions as Secretary of State. Furthermore, she took those government owned communications into her personal possession after leaving her position and knowingly and willingly attempted to destroy them so her nefarious actions could never be known or used as evidence of her corrupt moral character against her.
Sir, what possessed you? Did you cave in to political pressure to unilaterally come to this decision? I fear that is the case, and Rule of Law be damned. I am embarrassed for and ashamed of you. You have set a precedent that can never be rectified… and certainly not justified. Shame on you, Sir. You ought to resign right now in disgrace for what you have done to tarnish the reputation of the finest Law Enforcement Agency in the world… for entirely political reasons.
Normally, an investigation will be assigned to an agent, or team of agents with one being the Case agent, or the lead investigator. When the investigation is complete, an investigative report will be presented to the U.S. Attorney for the Federal District involved. It would be the U.S. Attorney who decides whether to decline prosecution for that investigation… NOT the FBI agent. But in the Clinton investigation, YOU (unilaterally) decided not to forward the investigation to the U.S. Attorney or the Attorney General of the U.S., but instead personally made the decision not to prosecute her or even provide the information to a Federal Grand Jury. You were wrong to take this upon yourself.
Sir, in order to indict a subject, only a preponderance of evidence, or 51% is needed for probable cause to exist. You did not think even that level of probability existed? Who do you think you are fooling? What judicial proceeding did you think you were following?
Throughout my years with the FBI, I (along with my fellow agents) took great pride in conducting each investigation in an unbiased manner regardless of the subject’s position or standing in the community.
All were treated equally under the law. But you, Sir, decided to allow this corrupt, evil and nasty human being to go free and unchallenged for her treasonous actions (yes, treasonous, in my opinion) which threatened the security of this nation. Furthermore, you stopped short of investigating the Clinton Foundation as a RICO case (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization. This is a RICO case ifthere ever were one. Even an untrained person can tell from the communications which were recovered that Hillary Clinton spent more time working for the Clinton Foundation while Secretary of State than on State Business. It may be argued that Hillary did not do any State business UNLESS the Clinton Foundation benefitted. You decided to just let this uncomfortable truth alone without addressing it.
I will conclude with this: Following my retirement from the FBI, I volunteered for a 12 month tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Law Enforcement Professional, embedded with U.S. forces as a subject matter expert in counter-terrorism investigations. For most of that year I operated “outside the wire” patrolling with the troops, interviewing witnesses to IED incidents and gathering evidence on the bad guys. The results of my work would then be reported through secure channels to the Commanding Officer. All reports and communications were required to be transmitted via secure and encrypted devices. Occasionally my remote location in the mountains of Afghanistan made transmission impossible and I would have to fly back to Bagram Air Base in order to securely report to the Commander of the battle space. It would have been convenient if I could have just called the Commander on my personal cell phone or written him an email on my personal laptop. But, had I done so I would have been reporting classified information via an unsecured device and it could have been compromised. These were, relative to Secretary of State communications, low level classifications of Secret. Had I ever sent even one in such a manner I would have been prosecuted and sent to Federal Prison for 20 years or so. That is how serious this violation is considered.
Now, because of you, Hillary Clinton is allowed to continue her RICO activities and is running for President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world. You have trampled on the Rule of Law and destroyed the trust of the American people in the FBI and in unbiased enforcement of the law. How do you sleep at night? It is time for you to go and work for the Clinton Foundation.
Sincerely, | 1real |
Donald Trump Gambles on Immigration but Sends Conflicting Signals - The New York Times | Donald J. Trump made an audacious attempt on Wednesday to remake his image on the divisive issue of immigration, shelving his plan to deport 11 million undocumented people and arguing that a Trump administration and Mexico would secure the border together. In a spirited bid for undecided American voters to see him anew, Mr. Trump swept into Mexico City to make overtures to a nation he has repeatedly denigrated, then flew to Phoenix to outline in his usual bullying tone his latest priorities on immigration. Yet the juxtaposition of Mr. Trump’s dual performances was so jarring that his true vision and intentions on immigration were hard to discern. He displayed an almost unrecognizable demeanor during his afternoon in Mexico, appearing measured and diplomatic, while hours later he took the stage at his campaign rally and denounced illegal immigrants on the whole as a criminally minded and dangerous group that sows terror in communities and commits murders, rapes and other heinous violence. Mr. Trump’s mixed messages on whom he would deport and when, and how the government would go about removing people from the country, were further muddled by the incendiary language in the Phoenix speech — a deliberate effort by campaign advisers to draw attention to his criticism of illegal immigrants rather than the specifics of his plan. In his speech, Mr. Trump fervently tried to depict himself as an ally of average workers, saying their economic interests were far more important than the needs of undocumented workers. But he left unclear what would happen to those millions of illegal immigrants, saying only that “the appropriate disposition of those individuals” will take place at some future date after the criminals are deported and his border wall is built. Deporting all illegal immigrants had been his signature political issue for much of the presidential race, but his caustic tone and harsh approach has turned off many Republicans and independents, particularly women. His language was still fiery in Phoenix, yet he also said that the fate of most illegal immigrants would be handled humanely, and not right away. “That discussion can only take place in an atmosphere in which illegal immigration is a memory of the past, no longer with us, allowing us to weigh the different options available based on the new circumstances at the time,” Mr. Trump said, using the sort of vague phrasing that he once criticized. Never had Mr. Trump gambled quite like this. Aiming to appear statesmanlike, he traveled to politically hostile territory to meet with a president who might have surprised him with a rebuke, and he also risked support from some conservatives who do not want him cozying up to Mexico or softening his immigration plans. The trip to Mexico City was not without snags. Standing beside President Peña Nieto, Mr. Trump indicated that he had pulled a punch and chosen not to discuss his campaign promise to compel Mexico to pay for the wall. Yet Mr. Peña Nieto saw it somewhat differently, saying later on Twitter that at the start of their meeting, “I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall. ” Mr. Peña Nieto did not dispute Mr. Trump at their news conference, however, and Mexican officials said that the two men did not dwell on the wall and that their meeting was conciliatory. Still, campaign advisers to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, accused Mr. Trump of lying, and the Trump campaign issued a statement saying that the meeting was “not a negotiation” and that “it is unsurprising that they hold two different views on this issue. ” In Phoenix, Mr. Trump responded to Mr. Peña Nieto with the hectoring language that has long been part of his strategy to whip up his crowds. “Mexico will pay for the wall, believe me — 100 percent — they don’t know it yet, but they will pay for the wall,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re great people, and great leaders, but they will pay for the wall. ” Mr. Trump had billed the Phoenix speech as a major address on immigration, and many Republican leaders and voters had hoped for more clarity about his positions. Mr. Trump outlined several steps that he would take to deport criminals and those who overstayed their visas and end sanctuary cities, while saying that “the one route and only route” for others to obtain legal status would be “to return home and apply for . ” “We will treat everyone living or residing in our country with great dignity — so important,” Mr. Trump said, noting that the status of most illegal immigrants was no longer a “core issue” for him. Mr. Trump also invited a group of Americans to the stage who, one by one, shared the names of relatives who they said were killed by illegal immigrants and insisted that only Mr. Trump could protect the country by securing its borders and moving swiftly to deport immigrants with criminal records. Yet for all the fiery language and stagecraft, it was far from clear if Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters would stick by him as he moves away from his original policy on immigration, or if he would win over many undecided voters with his new approach. But Mr. Trump went to great lengths to urge voters to view the presidential race as an epochal moment. “We are in the middle of a jobs crisis, a border crisis, and a terrorism crisis,” he said. “This election is our last chance to secure the border, stop illegal immigration, and reform our laws to make your life better. This is it. We won’t get another opportunity — it will be too late. ” The whirlwind day started after Mr. Trump accepted an invitation from Mr. Peña Nieto to meet him at the presidential palace to discuss economic and border concerns. For the most part they managed to sidestep combustible issues and ignore raging hostility from average Mexicans. Mr. Trump has called them rapists and drug dealers, and he did not apologize for those remarks during a joint news conference when a reporter pressed him for any regrets. Instead, as an impassive Mr. Peña Nieto looked on, Mr. Trump sounded conciliatory themes about working together to improve border security. Gone, at least for this foreign trip, were the threats about American interests and superiority that have defined Mr. Trump’s candidacy and electrified his supporters. “I think it was an excellent meeting,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Peña Nieto, who pointedly emphasized goals like “mutual respect” and “constructive” relations several times in his remarks, did Mr. Trump some favors with his respectful treatment: The Mexican president acknowledged that every country had a “right” to protect its own border, and suggested that Mr. Trump wanted to move on from his antagonistic remarks of the past. “The Mexican people felt aggrieved by those comments,” Mr. Peña Nieto said. “But I am certain that he has a genuine interest in building a relationship that would lead us to provide better conditions to our people. ” Mr. Trump’s unexpected trip to Mexico was timed to steer attention from his significant shifts on immigration policy. He flew to Mexico just hours before he was scheduled to deliver a major speech on immigration after more than a week of mixed signals about his immigration views, which he said were “softening” and then “hardening” in the space of two days last week. On a more personal level, Mr. Trump also wanted to show undecided voters that he had the temperament and of a statesman — qualities that many doubt he has — and also demonstrate that Americans did not need to worry every time he opened his mouth in a foreign country. He also hoped to show that he could acquit himself well on the world stage, something that is a clear strength of Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state, senator and first lady. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has described Mr. Trump’s trip as a hollow gesture, but it was unclear whether Mrs. Clinton herself will deliver a more pointed critique of her opponent during his travels. Mr. Trump, who has little experience with foreign policy statecraft or news conferences with heads of state, made no obvious mistakes during his trip to Mexico, nor did he breach any protocol during his public appearance with Mr. Peña Nieto on a small stage at the presidential palace. As Mr. Peña Nieto made lengthy opening remarks in Spanish, Mr. Trump clasped his hands at times, and tapped them against his thighs as he nodded slightly at other points as he listened to a woman beside him translate the remarks into English. Mr. Peña Nieto came across as civil and stolid, defending the North American Free Trade Agreement — a frequent target of criticism by Mr. Trump — and noting that weak border security also allowed weapons and cash often to flow from the United States to Mexican gangs and drug cartels. But for the most part the president took a position of neutrality, neither chastising Mr. Trump nor indicating that he favored one American presidential candidate over another. Yet Mr. Trump, who is known for insisting that only he can fix America’s problems, also suggested that he wanted Mexico to be a partner on border security. “I really believe that the president and I will solve those problems,” Mr. Trump said. “We will get them solved. Illegal immigration is a problem for Mexico as well as for us. Drugs are a tremendous problem from Mexico as well as us. I mean it’s not a street. ” | 0fake |
Clinton opposition to Asia trade pact 'close call': hacked emails | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s campaign was worried about the “hard balance” she would need to strike as the presidential candidate prepared to oppose a Pacific trade pact championed by President Barack Obama that she once supported, according to emails published on Tuesday by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks released its latest batch of apparently hacked personal emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta with exactly four weeks left in the 2016 presidential campaign before the Nov. 8 election. White House hopefuls have made trade a key theme of their campaigns, with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a prime target for criticism by both Democrat Clinton and Republican opponent Donald Trump. In an Oct. 6, 2015, email the day after the Obama administration finalized the details of the TPP, Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin circulated a new draft of a statement the campaign was preparing about Clinton’s position, according to WikiLeaks. “This is indeed a hard balance to strike,” Schwerin wrote in the email to a handful of top advisers, “since we don’t want to invite mockery for being too enthusiastically opposed to a deal she once championed, or over-claiming how bad it is, since it’s a very close call on the merits.” The next day, as she campaigned in Iowa, the first state to pick candidates during the nominating contest, the campaign released a statement from Clinton saying the pact did not meet the “very high” bar she had set to earn her support. The Clinton campaign declined to verify the authenticity of the latest batch of Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks. Podesta told reporters on Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation notified him it is investigating the “criminal” hack of his emails published by WikiLeaks as part of a broader political hacking probe. The U.S. government last week formally accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party organizations in an effort to influence the presidential election, a charge Russia has denied. As a result, Clinton campaign officials and supporters have warned that such email releases could include fraudulent or misleading documents among genuine emails. Clinton’s October 2015 announcement on the TPP came just a week before the first debate in her primary race against U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a vocal opponent of the deal. Key Democratic constituencies, such as progressives and organized labor, have also criticized the pact. Clinton had previously declined to say whether she would support the TPP, a main tenet of Obama’s strategic pivot to Asia that began when she was his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, explaining that she wanted to wait to assess the final negotiated terms. “I accept the position we’re taking but she has generally been more pro-trade than anti,” Clinton strategist Joel Benenson responded to the draft from Schwerin. “While we’re opposing this, don’t we want to say something generally about ensuring American manufacturers can compete around the world?” Clinton’s nascent campaign began meeting with advisers to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren even before Clinton announced her second White House bid, according to the hacked emails. In a January 2015 email sent three months before Clinton officially launched her campaign, Schwerin briefed close aides about a meeting with a longtime policy adviser to Warren, a firebrand leader of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. Warren’s team was concerned that Clinton would staff her campaign with economic advisers that were too closely associated with the centrist policies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, such as those championed by his Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin. The Warren adviser, Dan Geldon, “laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers, was very critical of the Obama administration’s choices,” Schwerin wrote. Schwerin said he and Geldon went over a list of recommended hires that Warren had sent to Clinton. Geldon told him they would be “watching carefully” to see how Clinton staffed her campaign, Schwerin wrote. “They seem wary - and pretty convinced that the Rubin folks have the inside track with us whether we realize it yet or not,” Schwerin wrote of Warren’s advisers. Geldon declined to comment on the email. Schwerin also added that Geldon expressed “some flexibility on Glass-Steagall,” a Depression-era law that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in risky trading activities that was repealed during Bill Clinton’s administration. “Said too big too fail is the bigger issue,” Schwerin wrote. Many Democratic activists believe that reinstating Glass-Steagall would help prevent future financial crises such as the one that rocked the U.S. economy in 2008. Warren has said that there are two ways to break up too-big banks, either based on size alone or by instituting a modern version of Glass-Steagall. She introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to reinstate a version of the law. Clinton weighed supporting a new Glass-Steagall law but eventually rejected that route, announcing a risk-based approach for breaking up banks, according to an email WikiLeaks released on Monday. | 0fake |
PROACTIVE PRESIDENT TRUMP Just Took Huge Step To Make America Safe…While Democrats Are Determined To Make Us More Like France, UK | 1[1pro-]: relating to, caused by, or being interference between previous learning and the recall or performance of later learning proactive inhibition of memory2[2pro- + reactive]: acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changesLate in the day on Thursday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let the revised travel ban take effect.The administration filed two emergency applications with the nine Court justices seeking to block two lower court rulings that blocked President Trump s executive order.In the filing, the Justice Department argued that the appeals court in Richmond, Va. made several mistakes in ruling against Trump s travel order.Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the ban is lawful.The Justice Department is confident that President Trump s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism, Flores said. The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States. The order barred entry for people from six Muslim majority nations, including Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the U.S. implements stricter visa screenings.The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called the national security concerns an after-the-fact justification for a policy that was intended to bar Muslims from this country. Rights groups that have been fighting the policy in the courts said the justices should not allow the travel and refugee bans to take effect. Again and again, our nation s courts have found that President Trump s Muslim ban is unconstitutional. We will continue to defend our plaintiffs right to live free from fear of discriminatory treatment by the federal government, said Karen Tumlin, legal director of the National Immigration Law Center. FOX News | 1real |
Spanish police occupy Catalan tech hub before banned vote | MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police have occupied the Catalan government s communications hub on the eve of a banned independence referendum which Madrid is attempting to thwart, the regional authority said on Saturday. Tens of thousands of Catalans are expected to vote in a ballot that will have no legal status as it has been blocked by Spain s Constitutional Court and Madrid has sent thousands of police to the northeastern region to stop it taking place. But Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont told Reuters on Friday that the referendum would go ahead regardless. Everything is prepared at the more than 2,000 voting points so they have ballot boxes and voting slips, and have everything people need to express their opinion, Puigdemont said. On Saturday a Catalan government spokesman said at least four police officers had entered the center in Barcelona which controls the regional government s telecommunications and IT and were expected to stay there for two days. This followed an order by Catalonia s High Court on Friday for police to prevent electronic voting taking place. The court also instructed Google to delete an application it said was being used to spread information on the vote. Police and Spain s interior ministry did not confirm the action. The head of the Catalan regional police has ordered officers to evacuate and close polling stations by 6 a.m. on Sunday, before the voting is due to open at 9 a.m. At a closing rally for the independence campaign in Barcelona on Friday, people formed the slogan Referendum is democracy in large white letters on a stage in front of a cheering crowd, many draped in the red-and-yellow Catalan flag. Other Catalans camped out in polling stations in order to defy court orders to close them. | 0fake |
Putin complains Russian media abroad face unacceptable pressure | MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of Russia s Security Council on Friday that Russian media outlets working abroad were facing growing and unacceptable pressure, Dmitry Peskov, his spokesman, said. It was stressed that such pressure on Russian media is unacceptable, Peskov told a conference call with reporters. He did not name the countries where the Kremlin was concerned Russian media were coming under pressure. Earlier this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Washington of putting unwarranted pressure on the U.S operations of Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, and warned that Moscow could take tit-for-tat measures. Russia s communications regulator accused U.S. TV channel CNN International of violating Russian media law earlier on Friday and said it had summoned the broadcaster s representatives in connection with the matter. | 0fake |
UK lawmakers back government's proposed timetable for debate of EU withdrawal bill | LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers on Tuesday voted in favor of the government s proposed timetable for debating legislation designed to sever political, financial and legal ties with the European Union. Many had complained that the eight days set out by the government for line-by-line scrutiny of the EU withdrawal bill was not long enough for such an important piece of legislation. But lawmakers voted by 318 to 301 to support the so-called program motion, which sets out the timetable for the remaining stages of the bill s progress through parliament s lower House of Commons. | 0fake |
WHO cancer agency under fire for withholding ‘carcinogenic glyphosate’ documents | WHO cancer agency under fire for withholding ‘carcinogenic glyphosate’ documents Published time: 27 Oct, 2016 01:32 Get short URL © Philippe Huguen / AFP The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), facing criticism over its classification of carcinogens, has reportedly been advising its scientific experts not to publish internal research data on its 2015 report on “probably carcinogenic” glyphosate.
The IARC urged its scientists not to publish research documents on its 2015 weedkiller glyphosate review, according to Reuters. The agency told Reuters on Tuesday that it tried to protect the study from “external interference,” as well as protect its intellectual rights, since it was “the sole owner of such materials.”
The scientists had been asked earlier to release all the documentation on the 2015 report under US freedom of information laws.
The groundbreaking review, published in March 2015 by the IARC – a semi-autonomous agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) – labeled the glyphosate herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Glyphosate is a key ingredient of Monsanto’s flagship weedkiller well-known under the trade name ‘Roundup.' It is one of the most heavily used herbicides in the world and is designed to go along with genetically-modified “Roundup Ready” crops, also produced by Monsanto. Read more EU may ban Monsanto weedkiller over health concerns
The IARC’s report caused problems for both the notorious agrochemical giant and the agency itself.
The report sparked a heated debate around the use of Roundup, and caused several EU countries – including France, Sweden, and the Netherlands – to object to the renewal of the glyphosate’s EU license. The vote on prolonging the glyphosate license for 15 years failed several times in June 2016, but the license was temporarily extended for 18 months during last hours before its expiration.
The controversial report has seemingly made the IARC a target for attacks from multiple directions, and raised scientific, legal, and financial questions.
Various critics, including those in the chemical industry, said the IARC's evaluations are fuel for “unnecessary health scares,” since the IARC allegedly studies the potentially harmful substance itself, and not a “typical human” exposure to it. It remained unclear whether the critics urged a WHO body to test the potentially carcinogenic chemical on humans.
The critics also brought up other controversial statements from the IARC, over whether such things as mobile phones, coffee, red meat, and processed meat could cause cancer.
The agency defended its methods as scientifically sound and “widely respected for their scientific rigor, standardized and transparent process and...freedom from conflicts of interest.” Numerous freedom of information requests by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a US conservative advocacy group, have since been turned down with this reasoning. Read more Bayer vows not to use reputation to impose Monsanto’s GM crops on Europe
E&E Legal told Reuters that it is pushing a legal challenge over whether the documents in question belong to the IARC or to the US federal and state institutions where some of the experts work. Basically, it’s being decided whether the IARC, as part of the WHO, is truly independent and free from “conflicts of interest.”
According to Reuters, officials from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be questioned by a congressional committee about why American taxpayers fund the cancer agency, which faces much criticism over its allegedly faulty classification of carcinogens.
“IARC’s standards and determinations for classifying substances as carcinogenic, and therefore cancer-causing, appear inconsistent with other scientific research, and have generated much controversy and alarm,” a letter from US Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to NIH director Francis Collins states, as quoted by Reuters.
The Oversight Committee demanded a full disclosure of NIH funding of the IARC, and even money spent in relation to the cancer agency’s activities.
READ MORE: Conflict of interest? Members of UN panel on glyphosate have Monsanto ties
IARC opponents from scientific circles vowed to provide their data on the matter. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which believes glyphosate is “unlikely pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans,” promised to release its raw data on the subject as part of its “commitment to open risk assessment.” The food safety watchdog made this statement in late September, and still has to deliver the promised information. | 1real |
Amid Tide of Red on Electoral Map, West Coast Stays Defiantly Blue - The New York Times | SAN FRANCISCO — The West Coast has long prided itself as an engine for reinvention and progressive ideals, distinct from the rest of the country. But after Tuesday’s election, the states bordering the Pacific Ocean feel increasingly like an island unto its own. While large parts of the American electoral map, particularly in the industrial Rust Belt, turned more Republican in Tuesday’s election, California went more Democratic, with 61. 5 percent of voters choosing Hillary Clinton, the highest percentage for a Democratic presidential nominee since the of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. On social policies, the election made the Rockies look more like a border than a mountain range. In a raft of ballot measures, voters embraced causes like bilingual education, stricter gun control and taxes on sugary drinks. Amid Donald J. Trump’s promises to slash taxes, voters in the West decided the opposite, raising taxes and voting to pour billions of dollars into schools and transportation. And the entire West Coast has legalized marijuana, now that California joined Washington and Oregon. While there have been gestures of conciliation in Washington toward Mr. Trump, political leaders in the West were defiant. Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, said the election inspired him to team up with “enlightened” leaders in the West to “push back aggressively” against policies on immigration and the environment from the future Trump administration. “We are a nation state,” Mr. Newsom said, referring to the state’s diversity and vast, dynamic economy. “In so many ways, we are America,” he said. “But we are just ahead of the curve. ” The election of Mr. Trump prompted street protesters in the liberal bastions of California to call for secession from the union — and a promise from Shervin Pishevar, a Silicon Valley investor, to fund a #calexit campaign, as it has become known on social media. A petition for Oregon to secede was filed with the Oregon secretary of state’s office on Thursday, allowing backers to start gathering signatures. The notion of West Coast states leaving the United States is fanciful and often . But it reflects a sentiment here that after Mr. Trump’s unexpected victory on Tuesday, the West increasingly sees itself as separate — a place of innovation, economic dynamism and a belief that government can be an agent of change. Abby Ginzberg, a documentary filmmaker who lives in Albany, Calif. said she felt both deflated by the result but somewhat insulated from its consequences. “Right now, I am depressed and upset and aware we live in a bubble,” she said. “Thank god for the bubble!” In Oregon and Washington, Mrs. Clinton’s margin of victory was close to President Obama’s four years ago. She received about 73 percent of the vote in Oregon’s biggest urban county, Multnomah, which includes the Portland area — with most of the votes counted in an election. In Washington, the concentrations of blue intensified from the last presidential election. In King County, which includes Seattle and is the most populous in the state, Mrs. Clinton did better than Mr. Obama, with nearly three out of four residents voting for her, compared with 69 percent for Mr. Obama in 2012. Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle, a Democrat, described his city in recent days as almost like a fortress under siege, scanning for attack on the ramparts. Fighting, he said — in defense or offense — seems inevitable. “This country has elected a president who, during the campaign, demonstrated outright misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, nationalism, racism and authoritarian tendencies,” he said. “We also have to challenge what we believe is wrong. ” Mr. Murray, the city’s first openly gay mayor, said he believed Mr. Trump, based on his comments as a candidate, could also aim to “trim back” gains that places like Seattle have made in gay rights. “Let me tell you, this city is committed that we will not lose the things that we have gained, the rings that we wear on our fingers,” the mayor said. Not every result was so liberal. Californians voted to keep the death penalty, and some inland counties clearly supported the Trump candidacy. Still, one reason Mr. Trump’s populist revolt bypassed the West is that the economic landscape did not reflect decades of decay and job losses. Yes, there are areas of anger and strain, from the ranches of eastern Oregon to coal towns in northwestern Colorado to strawberry farms in the Central Valley of California to steel towns struggling to reinvent themselves. But there are also new solar and wind farms, tourist towns and cities from Denver to San Jose, Calif. to Seattle that are buzzing with businesses, construction cranes and swarms of new residents. “Places like Colorado, we have a robust economy,” said Representative Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents the Denver area. “What you see in the West is the development of a new economy that they’re not seeing the Midwest and the South. ” Over all, Colorado sided narrowly with the Democrats on Tuesday, but the state embraced liberal ballot measures like a rise in minimum wage and a law allowing medical assistance in dying for terminally ill people. Voters rejected a health care system, however. Like states across the nation, California is unsure to what extent Mr. Trump’s promises to slash government programs such as the Affordable Care Act will be carried out. Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco and for decades a major player in state Democratic Party politics, said he did not believe California would be singled out for its support of Mrs. Clinton. “I don’t think there will be a Trump jihad on California,” he said. “He’s not so much into policy. He’s into saying what he thinks people want to hear. ” Kevin de León, Senate president pro tem of California, said that his staff was not taking any chances and had begun a “comprehensive review” of all federal programs that had an impact on California, and that it was looking at the impact that “draconian cuts” would have. Kamala Harris, California’s newly elected senator and a Democrat, said on Thursday that she would fight to protect immigrants and push back against Mr. Trump’s proposed policies. Some mayors in the West vowed to push ahead with plans to protect salmon, to limit greenhouse gases, to feed undocumented immigrants and to outlaw discrimination against gay and transgender residents. “Our agenda here in Colorado, our agenda here in Denver, does not change,” said Michael B. Hancock, the mayor of Denver. “We’re trying to design policies that are more inclusive. States like Colorado, cities like Denver, are ahead of the curve. We’re trying to forge a future where we say, ‘How do we not leave people behind? ’” Other West Coast political leaders said they did not necessarily envision a war with the Trump administration and its allies but more a kind of competition for hearts and minds. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who was elected to her first term in Congress on Tuesday representing part of Seattle, said that whispers of what might be called West Coast values — particularly a higher minimum wage — found echoes on Tuesday in states like Arizona that also voted for Mr. Trump. West Coast states, she said, should look for those allies and cultivate them. Voters in Colorado, Maine and Washington State also voted to raise their minimum wages. “I absolutely believe that we can pull people toward this model,” said Ms. Jayapal, the first woman to serve in Congress. “I think we are showing how to do things — we passed gun control legislation for the second time in three years on the ballot. We passed a statewide increase, the highest in the country. ” On Thursday, as Mr. Trump visited the White House for the first time as city officials in Portland, Ore. and environmental activists met to discuss a restriction on export terminals for coal, oil and other fossil fuels. “Regardless of whether we have climate deniers in charge at the national government, it doesn’t change the facts,” said Mayor Charlie Hales of Portland. He said he was “heartsick” over the election, calling it a “national catastrophe. ” “Rivers flood. Droughts persist. We don’t have the luxury of living in an ideological bubble on this,” he said. The Obama years had given Portland a close partner in Washington. That relationship could be upended if Mr. Trump follows through on promises to cut off all federal funding for cities deemed to be “sanctuary cities” for undocumented immigrants. Federal money flows to everything from rail lines to crime fighting to school lunch programs for poor children. “We’ve built a better place, and the world is beating a path to our door,” Mr. Hales said. “We’ll figure out how to feed people with or without the federal government’s help. ” In other liberal towns across the West, students joined protests against Mr. Trump, chanting what has now become a familiar motto, “Not Our President. ” In Portland, some of the protests turned violent on Thursday night. In Boulder, Colo. Mrs. Clinton had a bigger win than Mr. Obama four years earlier. High school students streamed out of classes on Wednesday afternoon there to protest the election results, as they have in a several secondary schools across the West. On the pedestrian Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Heidi Ames, 41, kept a lonely vigil with a sign that said, “Trump Is Not My President. ” “There are a lot of shocked and depressed people right now,” she said. “I wanted to show other liberal people I’m doing something. I’m not just talking on Facebook. ” On the day after the election, Mr. de León, of the California Senate, sent out a statement written with a colleague in the Legislature that said the victory of Mr. Trump made them feel like “strangers in a foreign land. ” In an interview on Thursday, Mr. de León said he felt a mix of disillusionment and defiance. “California has long set an example for other states to follow,” he said. “We are not going to allow one election to reverse generations of progress. ” | 0fake |
World Markets Rally with Glee After Hillary Email Dismissal | World Markets Rally with Glee After Hillary Email Dismissal November 07, 2016 World Markets Rally with Glee After Hillary Email Dismissal
Global equity markets surged on Monday, as did the U.S. dollar, putting them on track for their biggest gains in weeks after the FBI stood by its view that no criminal charges were warranted against Hillary Clinton. The news lifted a cloud over the Democrat's presidential campaign and gave it new momentum just two days before the U.S. election It also sent the benchmark S&P 500 index up more than 1 percent. The index was on pace to snap a nine-day losing skid, its longest in more than 35 years, and to post its best daily performance in over four months. European stocks were up 1.4 percent and many of the safe-haven assets that had performed so strongly last week when polls showed Republican candidate Donald Trump closing the gap reversed course as gold and bonds fell.
Investors had been unnerved in recent days by signs of a tightening presidential race, preferring what is seen as a known quantity in Clinton, over the politcal wild card, Trump. | 1real |
Did Hillary Clinton Cheat At The Debate? (VIDEO) | in: Multimedia , Politics I know the debate was a couple of weeks ago, but I just came across this video that certainly makes a good case for the fact that someone may have been feeding her answers, statistics, and information. If she can’t even ad lib a televised debate against Donald Trump, how are negotiations with foreign powers going to go when someone takes away her tablet or other telepromptish device? Not only did Trump win the last debate , he won it without reading the answers and information that someone else was feeding him. Really, with Hillary Clinton, is there any type of dishonesty that seems too far-fetched? See for yourself and let me know in the comments what you think. Article first posted at DaisyLuther.com Submit your review | 1real |
Fact Checking the House Benghazi Committee’s Findings - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The House Select Committee on Benghazi released its report on Tuesday detailing the attacks in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The committee found no evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state. Here is a selection of summarized findings in the report, with fact checks: This criticism is not particularly new. Senior Pentagon officials have consistently said that they were constrained by the “tyranny of time and distance” — that is, that the military could not have sent troops or planes in time to have made a difference. The report and Republican critics have always countered that had the White House and Pentagon acted more swiftly, they might have mitigated the later attack on the compound’s C. I. A. annex. But it is unclear what forces might have made a difference there. _____ This sounds like dithering that might have cost American lives. But the uniform swaps reflect the chaos and confusion in sorting out what was going on in Benghazi, and whether American forces should arrive identifiable as United States military personnel or be less noticeable in civilian clothes. Even the report acknowledges the challenges facing the FAST teams: These troops did not have their own planes, which meant delays waiting for flights did not travel with their own vehicles (they would need to find some in Benghazi when they landed) and were designed to deploy before a crisis hit, not during hostilities. _____ This suggests that the Obama administration was not treating the crisis seriously. But the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr. was not a critical player in the drama. He was only one of many senior officials involved in managing the crisis, and was briefed after his dinner. There were many other senior White House, State Department and Pentagon officials, both in Washington and overseas, dealing with the crisis throughout the night. An independent inquiry in December 2012, among others, came to a similar conclusion. That report faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from the American Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, for more guards at the Benghazi mission and for failing to make sufficient safety upgrades. As security in Libya worsened in the summer of 2012, the State Department remained committed to a security strategy to deploy a modest American security force and then increasingly rely on trained Libyan personnel to protect American diplomats. That strategy, which had been set a year earlier after the fall of Col. Muammar ’s government, failed. Warning signs were indeed flashing red for months before the attack. The Obama administration received intelligence reports that Islamic extremist groups were operating training camps in the mountains near Benghazi. By June, the city had experienced a string of assassinations, as well as attacks on the Red Cross and on a British envoy’s motorcade. Mr. Stevens emailed his superiors in Washington in August, alerting them to “a security vacuum” in the city. | 0fake |
State Officials Demand Pastor’s Sermons in Massive Breach of His Rights | BREAKING: FBI Dir. Announces Shock “Database” to Monitor Cops
However, after a county Democrat official who was also a gay activist received one complaint about Walsh, Walsh was summarily fired by the agency.
Walsh responded by filing a lawsuit against the state, alleging discrimination, which in turn met with an official demand that he turn over all of his sermons , related notes and a host of other documents, a demand he is resisting and that his legal team called “an excessive display of the government overreaching its authority and violating the sanctity of the church.”
A statement from Walsh read: “No government has the right to require a pastor to turn over his sermons. I cannot and will not give up my sermons unless I am forced to do so.” Advertisement - story continues below
Walsh has been supported in his resistance by Dave Welch , one of the Houston pastors who was similarly targeted, who stated, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Georgia’s demand is even worse than when the mayor of Houston demanded 17 different categories of materials, including sermons, from … us.”
“First, this is state government coming after a pastor, not just a rogue mayor in one city,” Welch explained. “Also, the state is demanding much more material: sermons, sermon notes, all documents without even topical or time limits. It could even include margin notes in this pastor’s preaching Bible. It’s almost as if they are ransacking the pastor’s study.”
“This sweeping demand is ominous and a threat to every pastor, every church, every denomination and every citizen of faith in America,” he added.
Walsh has also received support from the Concerned Women for America organization, with CEO Penny Nance saying, “The words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that ‘(i)njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ still reverberate today – especially as we witness the Gestapo-like tactics of his native state.” Advertisement - story continues below | 1real |
UK's Farage says PM May might not last until Christmas | BERLIN (Reuters) - Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage said on Friday that British Prime Minister Theresa May might be out of a job by Christmas unless she manages to get her party behind her and take charge of Brexit negotiations. Speaking at an election campaign event for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Berlin, Farage said May needed to rapidly assert her authority over her Conservatives and also over the Brexit negotiations. If she doesn t do those two things - doesn t get some sense of order back into her own party and direction back into where the negotiations are going then I think the whispering campaign will go from something that is being done in private to being done in public and she might not last til Christmas, he said. At a citadel on the outskirts of Germany s capital, Farage said leading British ministers have been contradicting each other on a weekly basis so the government looked rudderless. She has to stamp her authority on the party and do so pretty damn quickly, said Farage, who while leader of the anti-EU UKIP Party played an important role in pressuring then-Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the Brexit referendum. | 0fake |
FEEL THE BERN….How Hillary Walked Away From NH With More Super Delegates Than Sanders | First she won the coin toss in Iowa, and now Hillary walks away a WINNER even though she lost in a landslide to Marxist Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders. Never underestimate the power of the Clinton machine If you thought Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, you d be mistaken. He won the popular vote by 22 percent, but New Hampshire has Super Delegates who don t have to answer to the voters and they re going with Hillary!No wonder the Hillary campaign looked like they were throwing a massive party after last night s crushing defeat at the polls.Sanders won 60 percent of the vote, but thanks to the Democratic Party s nominating system, he leaves the Granite State with at least 13 delegates while she leaves with at least 15 delegates.New Hampshire has 24 pledged delegates, which are allotted based on the popular vote. Sanders has 13, and Clinton has 9, with 2 currently allotted to neither.But under Democratic National Committee rules, New Hampshire also has 8 superdelegates, party officials who are free to commit to whomever they like, regardless of how their state votes. Their votes count the same as delegates won through the primary.And they call themsleves the Democratic party.UPDATE:The fix is in for Hillary. If you followed the link to the article, at the bottom is says after a razor-thin victory in Iowa and a shellacking in New Hampshire, Clinton has 394 delegates and Sanders has 42. Via: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
ILLINOIS: ENTIRE TEAM OF 8-Yr Old Kids Perform Disgusting Act of Disrespect For Our Flag and Law Enforcement Under Guidance Of Coach | Every player on the Cahokia Quarterback Club football team (8 and under) took a knee during the national anthem ahead of Sunday s game at Little Devil s Field in Belleville. One of the kids asked me if I saw (people) protesting and rioting in St. Louis. I said yes; I said, Do you know why they are doing it? said Coach Orlando Gooden.Coach Gooden said his player responded, Because black people are getting killed and nobody s going to jail. Gooden, who played football at Mizzou, said the kids knew about the Jason Stockley decision. I felt like it was a good teaching moment for me to circle the team and have a meeting, he said.Watch:Here are just a few shocking statistics the coach could have shared with his players about neighboring E. St. Louis, IL:WND- Before Ferguson exploded in reaction to the August shooting of black teen Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, the St. Louis police chief raised eyebrows when he called for the use of drones to monitor high-crime areas.The proposal was a response to what St. Louis police authorities called subhuman, antisocial, urban terrorist behavior by criminals.St. Louis also is homeof the notorious Knockout Game, a random but racially motivated assault that has claimed at least six lives.St. Louis is 44 percent white and 49 percent black, but statistics shows a racial imbalance in crime. Based on the city s official crime data for 2012 the most recent year which data are available 97.6 percent of those arrested for murder were black and 2.4 percent were white. More than 82 percent of those arrested for serious crimes like murder, aggravated assault and larceny were black, while just 17.5 percent arrested were white.Black males in St. Louis were responsible for the vast majority (63.5 percent) of crimes committed. Other groups contribute significantly less to the serious crimes in St. Louis. White males made up 17 percent of arrests, black females were 14 percent of arrests and white females only 5.3 percent of arrests.There are other strange imbalances in arrests: Black females were arrested for 14 murders compared with three white males arrested for murder. Black females were arrested for more robberies, aggravated assaults and larcenies than white males.These are just a few of the lowlights in a city on the verge of becoming, as U.S. News said, the most dangerous city in America.Consider one violent night in St. Louis last June when 18 people were shot in seven different shootings. Bloody Night Leaves Many in St. Louis Outraged read one headline.However, some of the shooting victims were not outraged enough to cooperate with law enforcement. St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay described the no snitchin mentality of many crime victims: These are disputes, and there are victims who won t talk to the police, the mayor said. Trying to make an arrest isn t that simple. In one case, they ve got (multiple) people shot and not one of them would identify the shooter. Slay remarked, In the vast majority of these cases, people are using their guns to settle their own petty feuds, and that s really what s very unfortunate and outrageous about this. Local news reported on a shooting in a housing complex involving an AK-47 in which a black male armed with the AK-47 came around the corner [and] started shooting at an 18-year-old woman and four of her friends.Juanita Sparks, 60, of St. Louis told reporters, I am tired of thugs. Colin Gordon, author of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, calls St. Louis the poster child of white flight. However, middle- and upper-middle class blacks are also leaving the city in significant numbers.The Cahokia football coach, who had the perfect opportunity to educate these young minds about getting a good education and staying away from a dead-end life of crime, instead, took the opportunity to disrespect the law enforcement officers tasked with protecting these crime-ridden neighborhoods. The coach said he spoke to them about that and other situations that have happened in our country. He then explained why former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the anthem. Fox 2 | 1real |
LOL! CROWD CHANTS “CNN Sucks” At Trump Rally While CNN Broadcasts Live [VIDEO] | President Trump skipped the White House Correspondents Dinner to hold a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania instead. How could anyone blame him for wanting to be as far away from that group of piranhas as possible?President Donald Trump railed against the media at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, just as the annual White House Correspondents Dinner was set to begin in Washington, DC.In case anyone was wondering if Trump had any facts to back up his assertion that he was and continues to be under siege by the media, he reminded the crowd of a recent poll from MRC:He then went on to mock the White House Correspondents Dinner by reminding his audience who he chose not to spend his evening with: A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation s capital right now, he said. They are gathered together for the White House Correspondents Dinner without the president. He continued: And I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be 100 miles away from Washington s swamp, spending my evening with all of you and with a much, much larger crowd and much better people. He also proved that the American people who elected him have not grown any fonder or become more trusting of leftist attack dog media outlets like CNN and MSNBC. Watch as he mentions CNN during their live broadcast and the audience chants, CNN sucks! https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/858500275916738560 | 1real |
Sanders, Dem establishment battle boils over | With the Democratic presidential primary in its twilight, frustration within the ranks over the party's handling of the primary process spilled out this week as Bernie Sanders supporters lashed out at party leaders, arguing that their candidate has been treated unfairly.
The public outpouring of anger began last weekend at the Nevada Democratic Party convention, where Sanders supporters who said Hillary Clinton's backers had subverted party rules shouted down pro-Clinton speakers and sent threatening messages to state party Chairwoman Roberta Lange after posting her phone number and address on social media.
That led Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other top party leaders to demand an apology and publicly ruminate on the possibility of violence at the Democratic National Convention in July as they prepare for a general election battle with Donald Trump.
Obama administration officials on Wednesday played down concerns about escalating tensions, likening the race to the 2008 primary fight between Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama.
But Sanders isn't backing down. A campaign spokesman said Wednesday that the campaign was "looking into" whether to ask for a recount in Kentucky, where Sanders narrowly lost on Tuesday night, and he fired up his crowd in Southern California Tuesday night by calling out the Democratic establishment.
The Sanders campaign on Tuesday did condemn unruly behavior from supporters and those who made threats to party leaders, but made clear it is sticking with its stance that the party is subverting the process in a way that benefits Clinton.
"These claims that our campaign is sort of fomenting violence in some way are absolute nonsense," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Tuesday night, adding that the campaign "absolutely, categorically" condemns any threatening behavior.
The breakdown in civility comes after what has otherwise been a comparatively polite campaign season for Democrats, but the frustration exposes a rift in the party and undercuts the notion that Clinton will be able to march into the Democratic convention this summer with a party unified behind her.
"The problem is that there are long-simmering concerns about unfair treatment out in the Nevada Democratic Party," Weaver added. "We are not going to allow the millions of people who supported Bernie Sanders to be sort of rolled over in places like Nevada by the way they handled that convention."
Earlier on Tuesday, Sanders released a statement suggesting that his supporters were justified in feeling like the party has given them a raw deal.
"If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned," Sanders' statement read. "Unfortunately, that was not the case at the Nevada convention. At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place."
In an interview with CNN, Wasserman Schultz said that statement wasn't enough.
"I was deeply disturbed," she said. "The senator's response was anything but acceptable. It certainly did not condemn his supporters for acting violently or engaging in intimidation tactics and instead added more fuel the fire."
The DNC chairwoman, however, said she has not spoken directly with Sanders, but that her staff has been in touch with the Vermont senator's campaign. She also pushed back against Sanders' accusation that the party had rigged the system against him.
"We've had the same rules in place that elected Barack Obama. These rules were adopted for state parties all across the country in 2014," she said. "They were followed and even if the Sanders supporters were frustrated, there is never, under any circumstances, a place for violence and intimidation to be resorted to in response."
On CNN's "New Day" Wednesday morning, Weaver accused the DNC chairwoman of "throwing shade."
"We can have a long conversation about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and how she's been throwing shade on the Sanders campaign," Weaver said.
"I gotta say it's not the DNC," he added. "By and large the DNC has been very good to us, but not Debbie Wasserman Schultz."
Wasserman Schultz brushed off Weaver's comments later in the day.
"My response to that is hashtag SMH (shake my head)," Wasserman Schultz told Blitzer on "Wolf." "We need to focus on one thing: get through this primary and work to prepare for the general election and make sure that we can continue to draw the contrasts between either one of our really fine candidates who are focused on helping people reach the middle class and make sure that we get equal pay for equal work and create jobs and not let the Republicans take health care away from 20 million Americans."
'He should get things under control'
Speaking to reporters in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden said if such disruption happens again, "He's going to have to be more aggressive in speaking out about it."
"But here we are in May, as was pointed out," Biden continued. "Hillary was still in this in May, in June. I'm confident that Bernie will be supportive if Hillary wins, which the numbers indicate will happen. So I'm not worried. There's no fundamental split in the Democratic Party."
Leading congressional Democrats also pushed Sanders to rein in his supporters. Reid called Sanders' response "a test of leadership" for Sanders, and a source in his office told CNN that the Nevada senator is waiting to hear from the senator himself on the matter.
"The convention was Saturday. It's now Wednesday afternoon. And he hasn't spoken about it," the source said.
California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who spoke on behalf of Clinton at the Nevada convention, condemned the behavior.
"He should get things under control," Boxer said. "We're in a race that is very critical. We have to be united."
"This is a character moment for Bernie Sanders. He's got to figure out how he's true to his values and his ideals fully," said CNN political commentator Van Jones.
"I think Hillary and Bernie both misunderstand this movement. I think Hillary just sees it as just a bunch of rowdy kids that at some point will just calm down and fall into line," he said, later adding, "I think Bernie actually only sees the good in his followers. I think Bernie really misunderstands there is a nasty edge to his following that he's not taking seriously enough."
Sen. Tim Kaine criticized Sanders' responses in the wake of reports that Democrats felt threatened at and following the convention.
"What he did yesterday was sort of say it's the party's fault," Kaine told CNN. "That deflection of responsibility is not leadership."
Kaine added that the angry protests could be "dirty tricksters in the crowd" and not just Sanders' supporters.
"I don't think we should assume that all of the people raising hell are Bernie people," Kaine said.
Sanders goes after the establishment in fiery speech
Speaking in Southern California Tuesday night, Sanders fired up the crowd by calling out the Democratic leadership.
"The Democratic Party is going to have to make a very, very, profound and important decision. It can do the right thing and open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change. That is the Democratic Party I want to see." Sanders said.
"I say to the leadership of the Democratic Party: Open the doors, let the people in! Or the other option for the Democratic Party, which I see as a very sad and tragic option is to choose and maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy," he said.
The crowd responded by chanting, "Bernie or Bust!" the equivalent of the Republican #NeverTrump slogan for the Democratic race.
His speech barreled through his list of Clinton contrasts, comparing his stances with her (and criticizing those stances) on minimum wage, fracking, breaking up the big banks, and her use of super PACs.
In response to the chaos in Nevada, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook simultaneously praised the passion and participation of Sanders' supporters while adding that Clinton believes that "no one should be intimidated, harassed or threatened in this process." He called on them to focus that energy on unifying the party, a task that could be difficult given the raw feelings many Sanders supporters have for Clinton after the primary.
"Supporters of both Clinton and Sanders deserve respect for the work they have put into their campaigns," Mook said. Ultimately, we are confident that the passion and energy from the primary will be united in a common purpose -- to move forward the ideals of our party and keep the White House out of Donald Trump's hands."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Wednesday downplayed any tensions between the two campaigns.
He recalled a similar "tenor" to the 2008 contest between Clinton and Obama, saying those tensions were "no less intense" and didn't lead to a negative result in the general election.
"I think one of the lessons of 2008 is not to confuse passion in primary for disinterest in the general election," he said, adding that "highly motivated" supporters were good for democracy.
While the spotlight this year was on the Republican primary and prospect for a contested convention and protests at the national convention in Cleveland, some Democrats now worry about that happening at their convention in Philadelphia.
Wasserman Schultz said the incidents in Nevada would result in the DNC reviewing its procedures for Philadelphia.
"As a result of this happening this weekend, we will have conversations both at the staff level as well as my having conversations with the candidates so that we can make sure that both campaigns are focused on making sure that we can allow this process for the duration of the primary to play out in a civil and orderly way," she said.
But the DNC chairwoman said she wasn't worried about violence happening at the convention.
"This was absolutely a serious concern, which is why I said what needed to be said yesterday and others have said that there was real concern," Wasserman Schultz told Blitzer Wednesday afternoon. "But it is important and I am confident that the candidates take the messages to heart about making sure that we respond and conduct ourselves in a civil and orderly way."
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, however, warned that Sanders' intention to take his candidacy to the Democratic convention could spark unrest similar to the chaotic 1968 convention in Chicago and the riots surrounding it.
"It worries me a great deal," Feinstein told CNN's Manu Raju. "You know, I don't want to go back to the '68 convention, because I worry about what it does to the electorate as a whole -- and he should, too."
And Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois also said he's concerned about violence in Philadelphia.
"We saw what happened at the Trump rallies, which broke into violence, people punching one another. I don't want to see that happen at the Democratic Party," Durbin told CNN. "I call on Bernie to say to his supporters: be fervent, be committed but be sensible. Don't engage in any violence."
Weaver pledged Tuesday night that the convention will be peaceful.
"There's not going to be any violence in Philadelphia, Wolf, I guarantee you that," he said on CNN. "We hope for a fair and orderly convention." | 0fake |
WATCH: President Obama’s Dignified Response To Belgium Attacks Puts Republicans To Shame | President Obama s response to the attacks on Belgium were dignified and hopeful, and it was exactly the opposite of the divisive and racist rhetoric of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who took turns describing the frightening things they would do to Muslims if one of them is elected president. At a baseball game in Cuba, the president said: It s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage. You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation. But the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people s ordinary lives and one of my most powerful memories and one of my proudest moments as president was when I watched Boston respond after the marathon. Unlike the president, Ted Cruz s response was venomous and hateful and he had a sickening new plan, calling for Muslim neighborhoods to be under police watch. He said: We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS. Then of course there is the crazy Donald Trump. Instead of sending condolences and creating unity, here s what he had to say: I ve been talking about this for a long time. Brussels was a beautiful place. Zero crime, and now it s a disaster city. It s a total disaster and we have to be very careful as to who we allow into this country. As usual, nothing but opportunistic Republican politicians looking to cash in on a tragedy. But the president s words resonated hope. He continued by saying: They cannot defeat America. They don t produce anything. They don t have a message that appeals to the vast majority of Muslims or the vast majority of people around the world. What they can do is scare and make people afraid and disrupt our daily lives and divide us and as long as we don t allow that to happen, we re gonna be okay. Cruz and Trump are clearly falling into the trap of what terror is designed to do. Let s hope they don t succeed because if they do, that means that terror has succeeded.Watch Video Here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdTiKLhCcc] Featured image via Wikimedia Commons. | 1real |
WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP Hilariously Exposes Hypocrisy Of Democrats, Media Allies On Comey Firing In One PERFECT Video | Before Trump, Democrats and their allies in the leftist media rarely had to worry about being called out for their hypocrisy. First of all, there wasn t an opposing voice in the media and politicians in the Republican Party, most especially the President of the United States, certainly weren t going to call them out. Before Donald J. Trump, Republicans were under the false impression that they needed the press in their corner. That was before Donald J. Trump shattered the old rules that protected the media class from scrutiny and allowed them to fully control the narrative.Fortunately for every American, there s a new sheriff in town, who is hell-bent on holding Democrats and the leftist media s feet to the fire when it comes to their hypocrisy. President Trump posted this hilarious video to Twitter yesterday that has already received over 77K likes .President Trump tweeted this message yesterday:Dems have been complaining for months & months about Dir. Comey. Now that he has been fired they PRETEND to be aggrieved. Phony hypocrites! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017President Trump followed it up with this hilarious video only 5 hours later in this tweet: The Democrats should be ashamed. This is a disgrace! #DrainTheSwampThe Democrats should be ashamed. This is a disgrace!#DrainTheSwamp pic.twitter.com/UfbKEECm2V Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017 | 1real |
Sanders meets with Obama, says president will remain neutral in primary race | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders had a rare Oval Office meeting on Wednesday with President Barack Obama, days after Obama praised Hillary Clinton, Sanders’ rival and front-runner in the race to be the Democratic presidential candidate in the Nov. 8 election. Emerging from the White House after an hour, Sanders said the meeting was “constructive” and that Obama was trying to be as “even-handed” as possible in the race, dismissing commentary that Obama was favoring Clinton, his former secretary of state. “I know there was some discussion the other day about a Politico interview, where he was tipping the scale toward Secretary Clinton - I don’t believe that at all,” the Vermont lawmaker told reporters on the White House driveway. While Obama has not explicitly endorsed a candidate, he showered praise on Clinton’s experience in the interview with Politico while noting that Sanders had the “luxury of being a complete long shot.” Obama suggested Sanders had not faced intense scrutiny and would need to broaden his populist message to go further in the race for the nomination. The Sanders-Obama meeting came just before the first contests to pick the Democratic and Republican nominees: Iowa, on Monday, and New Hampshire, on Feb. 9. While Sanders has surged in recent opinion polls, Clinton still has the edge nationally. Sanders said he received an overview of foreign policy issues from Obama and that the two talked “a little politics.” Asked whether Obama, who beat Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008, had given him advice on how to defeat her, Sanders laughed and said: “No, no.” Obama said he had a “good meeting” with Sanders and noted that he had previously met with Clinton during the campaign. “The goal is to make sure that all the Democrats, or folks running in the Democratic primary, are focused on continuing the progress that we have made,” Obama said in an interview with an NBC affiliate in Richmond, Virginia. Obama and his aides have regular contact with Clinton and her staff, which includes former Obama White House staffers. Clinton dropped by the White House for an informal lunch on Dec. 7 and had an hourlong chat in March. The White House visitor logs show Sanders making only one previous solo visit with Obama in the Oval Office, on Dec. 15, 2014. The White House said the meeting with Sanders had been in the works since Sanders asked Obama for some face time when he saw him a month ago at a holiday party for lawmakers. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is a distant third in Democratic polls. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he was unaware of any request from O’Malley to meet with Obama but that Obama would try to make time for him, if asked. (Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Susan Heavey, Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
Mike Huckabee Thinks Poor Americans Benefit From Treating Them Like We ‘Train Dogs’ (VIDEO) | Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, in predictable conservative fashion, has just said something extremely offensive about people who aren t wealthy white men like him.During Thursday night s GOP undercard debate, Huckabee stated that it was only common sense to treat poor people with the same punishment/reward techniques that people use to train dogs if we want to improve the economy. Huckabee claimed that because the tax system punishes them, the current system made it impossible for Americans to really get ahead. He said: If you work really hard and you start moving up the economic ladder, you get bumped into a different tax bracket so the government thinks it deserves more of your hard work than you do. It s time for something big. As an alternative, the former governor of Arkansas suggested the Fair Tax plan, which would enforce a national flat sales tax of 10 percent. It s built on the common sense with which we raised our kids and train dogs. You reward behavior you want more of. And you punish behavior you want less of. That s how I raise kids, it s how I trained our dogs. And folks, it s not that difficult. Even if you remove all offensiveness and privilege from Huckabee s suggestion that poor taxpayers should be treated with the same systems we use to train our pet dogs, Huckabee s 10 percent tax suggestion is still an awful one. Last year, the Tax Policy Center put the theory to the test and determined that Huckabee s proposed alternative would actually be more detrimental and punish the nation s poorest Americans (no surprise there). The Tax Policy Center observed: The problem is that very high-income households spend only a fraction of their income, while low- and middle-income people spend all or most of what they make. A sales tax, by design, exempts a large share of income at the top. If it includes a prebate to protect people at the bottom and doesn t add to the deficit, then it must raise taxes on people in the middle. Here s the debate footage where Huckabee talks about treating poor people like dogs:Huckabee s attitude toward poor people echoes the rest of the GOP s line of thinking. Struggling Americans are nothing to the Republican Party, and are often looked over and cast aside. If you learned anything from last night s Republican presidential debate, it s that the GOP candidates only have certain interests at heart: their own.Featured image is a screenshot | 1real |
Trump speaks by phone to Russia's Putin: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Trump spoke by phone on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a statement about their conversation will be released later in the day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. President Trump spoke with Putin earlier today and a read out will be sent later tonight, she said in an emailed statement. | 0fake |
In Myanmar's Rakhine, aid workers blocked from entering Muslim camp amid tension | YANGON/SITTWE (Reuters) - Buddhists in Myanmar on Wednesday blocked aid workers from visiting a camp for displaced Muslims in the central part of Rakhine State, where the United Nations fears the spread of violence that has already displaced hundreds of thousands. More than 600,000 of Myanmar s largely stateless Rohingya minority have crossed to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants sparked a military crackdown beset by allegations of killings, rape and arson by security forces. The U.N. has called the army operation ethnic cleansing . Myanmar has denied the majority of allegations and said it will accept the return of those who can prove they are residents. A regional administrator and an activist told Reuters a group of about 10 Myanmar nationals working for U.S.- and Britain- based charity Relief International (R.I.) was forced to turn back when residents of the mostly Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community staged a protest in the town of Myebon. Reuters reported this month that activists among the town s Buddhist majority had stepped up efforts to segregate Buddhists and Muslims, instructing Rakhines not to trade with Muslims, for fear of militancy. Deliveries of food aid to Myebon s Muslims have been delayed and only allowed in after inspections by Buddhist community representatives. The R.I. group were trying to go to the camp and the locals blocked the way, said Tin Shwe, the town s administrator, adding that the aid workers returned to their office after Wednesday s incident. Samir Maleh, country director for Relief International in Myanmar, declined to comment on the incident. Leaders of the Rakhine Buddhist community have long bristled at international agencies and NGOs whom they accuse of favoring the Rohingya with their support. Aid workers and U.N. staff have told Reuters they fear enforced segregation may trigger further displacement in Rakhine, either through fresh violence or as Muslims flee on boats to Malaysia and Thailand, fuelling a new stage of crisis in the Bay of Bengal. Wednesday s incident was the latest example of the numerous obstacles that humanitarian organizations face in Rakhine State, said Pierre Peron, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Of course we respect that any group should be able to exercise their rights of freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, but the simple fact here is that life-saving aid is being blocked from reaching vulnerable people who desperately need it, including children and the elderly. About 3,000 Muslims - including Rohingya and those accepted as Myanmar citizens - have been confined to a camp for displaced people in Myebon since communal violence swept Rakhine in 2012. Photos posted on social media site Facebook on Wednesday showed about two dozen women sitting down to block a small street, with a smaller group of men standing behind. Khin Thein, a leader of a regional branch of the Arakan Women s Network, said her group joined the protest after authorities told the community the NGO would provide education about gender-based violence, hygiene and sanitation to Muslims. They have food, they have shelter to live, she told Reuters. We can t accept these kinds of excess things for them. We will not allow them to pass through our township. We already protested several times in the past. We have suspicions about them. We don t trust foreigners, international people. | 0fake |
WATCH: ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN Pollster Tries Desperately To Turn Alabama Voters Against Roy Moore…Gets BIG Surprise | Establishment Republican pollster Frank Luntz looked more like a CNN host than a Republican pollster in a room full of committed Roy Moore voters. Luntz was obviously frustrated, as Alabama voters dug in their heels, and refused to back down on their support for Judge Roy Moore in today s Senate election to fill AG Jeff Sessions seat in Alabama.MONTGOMERY, Alabama Frank Luntz, a GOP establishment messaging consultant, was visibly flabbergasted as every single one of his focus group participants in a Birmingham area Vice News-produced panel backed Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate. Titled Why These Alabama Voters Are Sticking By Roy Moore, Luntz s Vice News focus group aired on Vice News Tonight on Dec. 8 on HBO. Are you all Christians here? Luntz opens the seven-and-a-half-minute long segment. Yes, all of the focus group participants, who joined Luntz in a Birmingham area restaurant, replied. Is Roy Moore a good Christian? he followed up. Yes, one woman replied. Absolutely, another said. Absolutely? Luntz followed up in disbelief. Yes, the woman shot back. Without any doubt whatsoever? Luntz asked again.After some more back and forth, a man in the focus group spoke up. Scottie Porter, a real estate developer, said:He s not my choice, I m not voting for him because I like him. I m voting for him because I don t want Doug Jones. But Roy Moore is entitled to the presumption of innocence in the law and in the Bible just like anybody else should be. There are only accusations. There have been no charges filed. All you have is a group of women who have come forward. How many? How many? Luntz pressed Porter. Seven, he replied. There s really only three, one woman yelled out. How many women have to come forward before you say wait a minute, where there s smoke there s fire ? Luntz asked the group.Chuck Moore, a retired sales consultant, replied: It s about the legitimacy, not just how many. How many are not being paid? Or being coerced to do this? How many of them do you think are being paid? Luntz asked the group. All of them, some replied in unison. By a show of hands, how many of you think all the women are being paid? Luntz asked the full group.Three hands in the group went up. Seriously? Luntz asked in disbelief, before the camera turned to homemaker Jane Wade. To me, there are only two women that have a smoking gun but the women s their reputations are questionable at the time, Wade said. Is this how you want to be treated as a woman if something were to happen to you? Do you want to be dismissed that way? Luntz asked Gina Doran, a retired school bus driver. You better have proof, Doran fired back at Luntz.Watch: Breitbart News | 1real |
Hillary Clinton to Portray Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions as Dangerous - The New York Times | Hillary Clinton plans to deliver a scorching assessment of Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy prescriptions on Thursday, casting her likely Republican rival as a threat to decades of bipartisan tenets of American diplomacy and declaring him unfit for the presidency. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides said the speech, which she will deliver in San Diego, would be the start of a persistent assault to portray a potential Trump presidency as a dangerous proposition that would weaken American alliances and embolden enemies. The argument will include specific criticism of comments Mr. Trump has made about rethinking the United States’s support of NATO his proposal to allow Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons his vow to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the United States and his pledge to advance the use of torture and kill the families of suspected terrorists. But Mrs. Clinton will also invoke her experiences as secretary of state, including in 2011 when she supported President Obama’s decision to send Navy SEALs on a raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, to make the case that Mr. Trump does not have the temperament to make such decisions. “Donald Trump is unlike any presidential candidate we’ve seen, maybe ever, certainly in decades, in that he does not cross the threshold of fitness for the job,” said Jake Sullivan, Mrs. Clinton’s top policy adviser, who helped draft the speech. Mrs. Clinton will deliver the address on her final campaign swing before California holds its Democratic primary on Tuesday, when she is widely expected to reach the threshold of delegates needed to secure her party’s nomination. But in choosing to raise concerns about Mr. Trump’s foreign policy stances, she will be speaking to swing voters in general election battleground states who have doubts about a Trump presidency. While Mrs. Clinton must be cautious not to alienate liberal Democrats who oppose some of her hawkish foreign policy stances, her campaign says national security could be the catalyst that drives independents and wavering Republicans to support her this fall. Roughly 21 percent of independent voters and 32 percent of Republican voters said the most important issue this election was terrorism and national security, compared with 16 percent of Democrats, according to a Suffolk Today poll conducted last month. At the same time, 61 percent of registered voters said a Trump presidency would make America’s image in the world worse, according to the latest New York News poll. “There are many Republicans concerned about this,” R. Nicholas Burns, an American ambassador to NATO during the George W. Bush administration who also served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, said of Mr. Trump. “They find his policy positions beyond the pale, and they’re also turned off by his vulgarity. ” To that end, the Clinton campaign and its outside advisers have embarked on an effort to reach out to prominent moderate Republicans who could endorse Mrs. Clinton, largely making the case for foreign policy . Those calls have included to an aide of the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and to Nicholas F. Brady, who served as secretary of the Treasury under Mr. Reagan and the elder Mr. Bush, with plans to reach out to James A. Baker III, a White House chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan and secretary of state under President George Bush. In her debates with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mrs. Clinton has defended her foreign policy decisions, including urging the Obama administration to join a coalition to oust Col. Muammar in Libya and her 2002 vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, which she later said was a mistake. In an interview Wednesday night, Mr. Trump criticized Mrs. Clinton’s early support for the Iraq war, which he said he opposed, and questioned her judgment in Libya. “Bernie Sanders said it and I’m going to use it all over the place because it’s true,” Mr. Trump said. “She is a woman who is to be president because she has bad judgment. ” As each candidate argues the other is unfit to occupy the Oval Office, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers are preparing to make a case against Mr. Trump that will be jarringly different from the sparring of past presidential campaigns over foreign policy. “It’s not like the campaign against McCain or Romney, which was two competing visions,” said Derek Chollet, a former White House and Pentagon official under President Obama. Instead, he said, Mrs. Clinton will remind voters that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the North Korean government of Kim have expressed support for Mr. Trump, who has suggested a willingness to talk directly with Mr. Kim, a pariah worldwide. Mrs. Clinton will also accuse Mr. Trump of bluster and oratory that is in direct opposition to the bipartisan pillars of American diplomacy that every president has adhered to since World War II. Julianne Smith, a former deputy national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pointed to Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the United States rethink its involvement in NATO, the coalition of European nations. Mrs. Clinton, she added, needed to explain to voters that “every single president over the last couple decades has understood the value of alliances” and that “playing by the rules makes sense for all of us. ” Mr. Trump said Mrs. Clinton was “fraudulent” in her misrepresentation of his foreign policy positions, explaining that he supported global alliances, but believed that the United States should shoulder less of the financial burden. “Our country can’t afford to protect the world anymore, and at least not get reimbursed for it,” he said. Mrs. Clinton has delivered a series of foreign policy speeches over the course of the nominating fight that included calling for accelerating the operation to defeat the Islamic State, ending the economic embargo against Cuba, and pledging unwavering support of Israel. And she had already begun to lay the groundwork against what she called Mr. Trump’s “reckless actions” on foreign policy. The San Diego speech, to be delivered in a city known for its military presence at a time when Mr. Trump is facing scrutiny over his donations to veterans’ groups, will present a more sweeping — and fearsome — portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in the coming months. “There’s not a lot of room left in terms of new proposals,” Mr. Sullivan said. “This is a speech about a vision and principle and purpose, not individual policy proposals. ” The prospect of a foreign policy debate not centered on policy differences has confounded Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, who in a more traditional election would be facing questions about Mrs. Clinton’s call for a zone with coalition forces to protect Syrians or how she would handle the flood of migrants to Europe. But Mr. Trump, in addressing foreign policy, has largely relied on gut instinct and appealing to voters’ emotional concerns that America has lost its standing in the world. “You do get the sense that he’s in a dialogue with a part of the electorate — and I consider it a minority — that couldn’t be less interested in facts or realities,” said Daniel Benjamin, coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department under Mrs. Clinton. “That’s a really challenging task that most of us were unprepared for in many ways. ” | 0fake |
Immigration Hawks Ascend to Senior DHS Positions | Two leading advocates for reforming illegal and legal immigration enforcement were appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as senior advisors for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). [Jon Feere, the former legal analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, and Julie Kirchner, the previous executive director for the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) have both been appointed to senior positions. Feere, who work with the Trump campaign and transition team on immigration policy, will serve as the senior adviser to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency Director Thomas Homan. Kirchner, a campaign alum as well, will serve as the senior adviser to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan. Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian told Breitbart Texas that the Trump Administration appointed a person who “knows the ins and outs” of immigration when they chose Feere to serve. “ICE needs somebody like Jon because he’s worked on immigration policy for many years,” Krikorian said. “After eight years of Obama, there were civil servants and people at ICE who weren’t as quite up to date on immigration enforcement. ” FAIR spokesperson Ira Mehlman told Breitbart Texas that Kirchner’s appointment is welcome news. “They’re both people with long experience and deep knowledge and they’re highly qualified for their positions,” Mehlman said. Both the Center for Immigration Studies and FAIR have long been advocates for increased border security, a wall, reforming foreign guest worker visas and lower levels of legal immigration to help American wages to rise. The appointments have come with the usual media backlash that the Trump Administration has grown accustomed to. CNN, for instance, has written that Feere and Kirchner’s appointments have “alarmed” the open borders lobby. The network propped up opposition to the appointments through the Southern Poverty Law Center, with Director Heidi Beirich claiming that that the Center for Immigration Studies and FAIR publish “racist” and “xenophobic” reports. Krikorian, though, said the open borders lobby is only outraged because they know how effective both nominees could be. “This isn’t a complaint about qualification,” Krikorian told Breitbart Texas. “Jon and these others know what they’re doing and that’s what the groups are afraid of. ” John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
Trump says will announce decision on Paris climate deal soon | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he will announce his decision “very soon” on whether he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate deal. Responding to shouted questions from reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he had been hearing from people on both sides of the issue, but he declined to indicate whether he had made up his mind. “I’m hearing from a lot of people, both ways. Both ways,” Trump said. | 0fake |
WATCH: Trump’s Deplorable Fans Attack Mom And Her Disabled Daughter For Leaving Rally | She was there to learn more about Donald Trump in order to decide who to vote for, but after the way Trump s fans treated her in front of her disabled daughter it s clear she won t be voting for him.Jennifer Mau took her daughter Chloe to a Trump rally in Colorado in an effort to make a more informed decision on Election Day. Mau is an independent voter and is unsure about who she wants to vote for, so she decided to attend the rally to hear Trump speak.Mau and her daughter sat with a group of disabled people during the rally, but Mau didn t stay long.After 20 minutes, it became clear that Trump wasn t the right candidate for her. But when she attempted to leave with her daughter, she was soon under siege from some really hateful supporters of the Republican nominee, some of whom were also disabled. When we were leaving, somebody said, Why are you leaving? and basically struck a nerve, Mau recounted in an interview with Denver 7 News. I said, Why are you here? He makes fun of people like you. Mau was referencing an outrageous incident of Trump mocking a disabled reporter.According to Mau, Trump s supporters tried to make excuses for their candidate, but Mau s mind remained unchanged.Trump s supporters harassed her and yelled at her, and one even went so far as to tell her that she doesn t love her daughter if she doesn t support Trump. This lady is following me, screaming and yelling at me that if I loved my daughter I would vote for Trump and I need to get educated because he didn t mock somebody on purpose. It made me sad, made me want to vomit. Here s the video via YouTube.The Secret Service was forced to step in and escort Mau and her daughter out of the rally safely, but the ordeal left her daughter shaken.However, Trump lost more than one potential voter that day. As it turns out, some people actually walked out of the rally with Mau in disgust on how his hardcore supporters treated her.And while we don t know for sure who Mau will be voting for on November 8th, we can be sure that it won t be for Donald Trump.Once again, Trump s supporters prove that Hillary Clinton was right to call them deplorable.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
Donald Trump the Philanthropist Is Known for His Reluctance - The New York Times | When Donald J. Trump made an appearance this spring at the New York Military Academy, his high school alma mater in he spoke of it with gratitude and in glowing terms, describing it as “one of the really great military academies. ” “I had such incredible experiences here,” Mr. Trump told a crowd during a campaign stop in April. But six years ago, when it was on the verge of closing under the weight of debt, and a small group from the school came to Trump Tower seeking financial assistance, Mr. Trump gave a swift and firm response: No. “We were disappointed,” said Rich Pezzullo, an alumnus who attended the meeting, which took place as Mr. Trump was participating in an online real estate auction and ended when the winner of his Miss USA pageant showed up. “We thought he’d open up his checkbook,” Mr. Pezzullo said. Over the years, Mr. Trump has billed himself as an “ardent philanthropist,” and his official biography says that he is “involved with numerous civic and charitable organizations. ” But the depiction of Mr. Trump as a generous benefactor has recently come into question amid a series of reports raising doubts about whether he has followed through on his lavish pledges, whether he misused the foundation that bears his name and whether he financially supports it at all. Interviews with people who have worked with or solicited money from him, as well as years of publicly available charity records, paint a picture of Mr. Trump as a reluctant giver despite his wealth. Donations from his foundation, which in recent years has been exclusively financed by others, sometimes served his own needs while helping the recipients. Jack O’Donnell, who was president and chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel Casino in the late 1980s, said Mr. Trump would question the need for donations, even those as small as a couple thousand dollars. “He’d say ‘Why are we doing this?’ or ‘Do we have to give this much?’ ” said Mr. O’Donnell, who parted ways with Mr. Trump on bad terms and was described by the Trump campaign as a disgruntled former employee. “I don’t know how else to put it: He’s cheap. ” Mr. Trump’s philanthropic endeavors over the past four decades have been dotted with pledges to donate the proceeds from books or speeches. Sometimes, Mr. Trump has stepped in to help a person in need, with the cameras rolling. And Mr. Trump, usually accompanied by his wife, Melania, has been a familiar face at benefit galas in New York and Florida, where the rich and famous mingle and are seen. He has also more quietly supported other causes over the years. He has donated to and sits on the board of the Police Athletic League, a youth sports organization in New York. And Mr. Trump has won a lifetime achievement award from the American Cancer Society for his giving. “At the end of the day, in my narrow world, he’s a board member who has consistently contributed to us,” said Frederick Watts, the executive director of the Police Athletic League. Mr. Trump’s campaign, in response to questions about his giving practices, called him “extremely generous with both his time and his money. ” “Mr. Trump regularly makes personal contributions to worthy charitable causes and organizations, but does not seek recognition,” his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in an email. “Mr. Trump has made several significant contributions to the Trump Foundation, including an initial lump sum at its inception. Since then he has made personal contributions, and regularly waives fees for appearances, speeches and publicity rights instead encouraging the donations be made to charity. ” In 1987 Mr. Trump started the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a nonprofit through which his own donations and those of others are channeled to causes and institutions. Through 2014, according to the foundation’s tax filings, he had donated $5. 4 million to the foundation, a small fraction of his net worth of billions of dollars. Mr. Trump and his aides say that in addition to what the foundation gives, he writes personal checks directly to charities. His personal tax returns would reveal his deductions for charitable giving, but he has refused to release those returns. Hillary and Bill Clinton’s returns show deductions for $23 million in donations since 2001, about 10 percent of their income. A series of reports in recent weeks, most notably in The Washington Post, have revealed that Mr. Trump has stopped giving money to his own foundation in recent years. Instead, the foundation has been relying exclusively on the donations of others. Mr. Trump has then given that money away, sometimes claiming credit for these donations. The Post also reported that it had not been able to turn up evidence that Mr. Trump had delivered on most of his pledges to donate income from speeches and books. Mr. Trump has also used the foundation’s money in questionable ways, including a donation to a political action committee aligned with the attorney general of Florida while she was considering whether to bring legal action against his Trump University. That led to a $2, 500 penalty by the Internal Revenue Service for improperly using the foundation for political purposes. The Trump campaign has called the $25, 000 donation a clerical error. The Post also reported this week that two donations totaling $258, 000 had been made from the foundation to settle legal disputes involving Mr. Trump’s businesses. “This story was not accurate,” Ms. Hicks said in a statement. The attorney general of New York is currently investigating how the foundation’s money is spent neither Mr. Trump nor the foundation have been charged or penalized for any wrongdoing beyond the $2, 500. Other donations have been directed to organizations aligned with Mr. Trump’s politics. The foundation contributed $100, 000 to support Citizens United, the conservative watchdog group that, among other things, has sued for access to records from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. The foundation also gave $25, 000 to a foundation affiliated with the conservative monthly The American Spectator. (Neither recipient was a political action committee.) Foundation tax records for 2014 illustrate how Mr. Trump has recently used its money. The Citizens United gift was the largest donation. The foundation gave $50, 000 each to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in West Palm Beach, and to the private school his son Barron attends. Four other charities — the Police Athletic League, two health organizations and the League — received about $100, 000 between them, and a collection of other groups received smaller grants totaling about $200, 000. His high school alma mater received roughly $30, 000 from the foundation over the years, but those contributions ended in 2005. When the academy contingent — which included Theodore Dobias, a former coach and administrator at the academy whom Mr. Trump has described as a major influence in his life — came by his office in 2010, Mr. Trump made clear that he did not view the school as a worthwhile investment given its dire financial straits, Mr. Pezzullo, the alumnus, said. The school would eventually declare bankruptcy and was close to closing before an investor bought it at auction last year. Even when donations were effectively made with other people’s money, Mr. Trump sometimes received the attention. In 2012, his foundation made a $10, 000 contribution to the charitable arm of the Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects as part of its 100th anniversary. The group had solicited the owners of Florida buildings it highlighted as great architecture, including Mr. Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, which was honored as the top historic structure in the state. In return for their donations, the owners “got great publicity,” said Vicki Long, the association’s vice president and chief executive. The same year, foundation tax records show, it gave $50, 000 to the Child Mind Institute in New York, which bought Mr. Trump and his wife seats at the organization’s gala dinner. They also attended a gala for Operation Smile, a nonprofit that treats cleft palates and lips, and to which the foundation gave $100, 000. Mr. Trump’s meshing of charity and publicity goes back decades, including an episode in 1986 when he helped a Georgia widow save her farm from foreclosure. After the woman’s husband had committed suicide, Mr. Trump solicited donations on her behalf and made one of his own. When their goal was reached, he held a news conference at Trump Tower at which the widow did a symbolic burning of the mortgage papers. Frank Argenbright, an Atlanta businessman who was part of the effort, recalled Mr. Trump paying great attention to the details of the event, including what cigarette lighter to use. “He said ‘I don’t want to go down there in front of the cameras and not have it work,’ ” Mr. Argenbright said. | 0fake |
Britain's May wins Brexit reprieve, faces tough weeks ahead | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May won a modest reprieve in stalled Brexit talks on Friday, with European Union leaders signaling their readiness to move the negotiations forward in the coming months. But despite a more positive tone, a weakened May now faces a delicate political balancing act as she tries to meet EU demands for more concrete pledges on Britain s divorce bill without stoking a backlash from Brexit campaigners at home, some of whom would prefer she walk away from the talks. EU leaders said at a summit in Brussels that they would begin preparations to move into phase two of the Brexit negotiations in December, a step forward that would allow London to discuss its future trade relationship with the bloc. Yet they also made clear that May would have to move between now and the end of the year on settling a financial bill that EU officials have estimated at around 60 billion euros. I think it is very clear what additional steps need to be taken, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference at the end of the summit, saying movement on the financial settlement was crucial for progress in December. French President Emmanuel Macron was tougher, saying the two sides had not yet completed even half of the work on the financial settlement and accusing Britain of bluffing by using the media to suggest there could be no deal. A lot is in the hands of Theresa May, he said. An EU official said it took just 90 seconds for the 27 other leaders to adopt their Brexit conclusions at the end of the meeting, underlining how united they are. May has said she cannot provide a specific financial pledge until she knows the shape of the future relationship. The EU is insisting that the two sides agree on an exit bill, the rights of EU citizens in a post-Brexit world and Irish border issues before delving into future ties. Asked whether she had improved an offer of about 20 billion euros, May said she had repeated commitments she made in a speech in Italy last month, when she said the bloc would not be out of pocket when it came to its budget which runs until 2020. What I made clear to my EU counterparts in relation to financial contributions... is that nobody need be concerned for the current budget plans ... and that we will honor the commitments that we have made during our membership, she told a news conference before returning to Britain. Now there has to be detailed work on those commitments... we are going through them line by line and we will continue to go through them line by line. The final text from the EU-27 read: The European Union ... notes that, while the UK has stated that it will honor its financial obligations taken during its membership, this has not yet been translated into a firm and concrete commitment from the UK to settle all of these obligations. Still, the leaders held open the hope of reaching a deal at the next regular summit in December. And in a move that could save weeks of delay, they ordered EU negotiators to start preparing for what Brussels will want in a transition period. Uncertainty over the final shape of a Brexit deal has unsettled businesses on both sides of the Channel. Terry Scuoler, CEO of the British manufacturers association (EEF), welcomed the warmer words from EU leaders, but said industry needed more than a hint of progress . All the EU leaders worked hard to strike a positive tone at the summit after May used a dinner late on Thursday to appeal to the other 27 leaders to help her silence critics at home by offering a signal that the talks would move on. Many were upbeat and May struck up an animated and friendly conversation at the beginning of the summit with Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who are both seen in Britain as hardliners in the talks. That might be enough for May to calm immediate concerns at home after Brexit campaigners urged the British prime minister to signal her readiness to leave the EU without a deal and to rely on World Trade Organization rules. But she faces a major dilemma as she gears up for the next EU summit in December. The next eight weeks will be the most challenging for ... Theresa May and the most consequential for Brexit, said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at Eurasia Group. The chair of the summit Donald Tusk said there would need to be a more positive narrative to reach a Brexit deal in December - a sentiment echoed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. We have some details but we don t have all the details we need, he said. It s not my working assumption that we ll have no deal. | 0fake |
INFLUENTIAL HOLLYWOOD LEFTIST Looks Forward To Racist Comedian, Chris Rock’s SMACK DOWN Of Whites At Oscars | How very progressive Not since the Civil Rights movement of the 60 s has America seen such a racial divide. Of course, we all know who s behind the manufactured race war in America. Barack Obama is working in unison with race agitators and Hollywood idiots like Harvey Weinstein who are willing to suffer the consequences of being humiliated by a racist comedian in front of millions, if it means they are absolved of the sins of not hiring enough black people.The co-chief of The Weinstein Co. acknowledges that the Academy has a poor track record when it comes to films about people of color including his own but he feels the blame belongs on studios and distributors, not on people who ve worked so hard all their lives and prize that Academy card and have reached that zenith and then go on to retirement. I just can imagine Chris Rock s opening remarks, Harvey Weinstein, the co-chief of The Weinstein Co., says as we sit down to record an episode of the Awards Chatter podcast days ahead of Sunday s Rock-hosted 88th Academy Awards. If anybody s [planning on] boycotting the Oscars, don t, because Chris Rock is gonna annihilate every one of us [leaders of Hollywood studios/distribution companies] in the first 20 minutes of the show, and it will be well worth watching. It will be an Oscars to remember. This year, for the first time since 2008 and one of the few times in the last 25 years, none of Weinstein s films are nominated for best picture Carol and The Hateful Eight came up short but he s still going to the show, hoping for a best original score win for Hateful composer Ennio Morricone, among others associated with Weinstein Co. films, as well as a best actor win for my buddy Leo [DiCaprio] for The Revenant. That film, like the last two best picture Oscar winners 12 Years a Slave and Birdman, was guided to fruition by New Regency president/CEO Brad Weston, who used to be co-president of The Weinstein Co. s Dimension Films division.Here s an example of Chris Rock on one of his racist rants:Weinstein says he understands, from experience, the frustrations of the people calling for a boycott of the Oscars over the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, and feels they have made a difference but he does not support their ultimate objective. It s that voice, actually, that gets people motivated, he says, because you don t want the boycott. That s how people use their personal power to force change. So I look at that and go, Great, because everybody s thinking about that now. I thought about it a couple of years ago because it had bugged me over the years that the films that I did about ethnic diversity never got anything. So I said, I m gonna stack the deck for myself: I m gonna put out The Butler, Mandela and Fruitvale Station in the same year, okay? We got one nomination for U2 out of three movies. Was race the driving consideration? I have no idea, he says, but it has to make you think. He continues, And then, that year, there was 12 Years a Slave, and I said, What is it, only one?' Via: Hollywood Reporter | 1real |
UK's Johnson makes fuller apology for remarks on jailed aid worker in Iran | LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson issued a second, fuller apology on Monday for remarks about an Iranian-British aid worker jailed in Iran that critics said might have prompted Iran to extend her prison sentence. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was sentenced to five years after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. Johnson told a parliamentary committee on Nov. 1 that she had been teaching people journalism before her arrest in April 2016, contradicting her and her employer, who said she had been on holiday visiting her family. It was my mistake. I should have been clearer. I apologize for the distress and anguish that has been caused to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family, Johnson told lawmakers on Monday. Our priority now is to do everything we can to get her out of Iran on humanitarian grounds. On Nov. 7 Johnson said in the course of an exchange with an opposition MP in parliament that I am sorry if any words of mine have been so taken out of context and so misconstrued as to cause any kind of anxiety for the family. Opposition British lawmakers had said the remarks could land the aid worker a longer term in jail. Johnson, whose job has come under pressure over the case, said he would meet Zaghari-Ratcliffe s husband this week, adding that the issue was casting a shadow over relations with Iran. I shall travel to Iran myself later this year to review the full state of our bilateral relations and to drive home the strength of feeling in this House and in the country at large, Johnson said. Earlier on Monday, the government said it was considering granting diplomatic protection to Zaghari-Ratcliffe as part of an effort to secure her release from jail. It is unclear how such protection could be offered retrospectively to a dual Iranian-British citizen, or whether such a move could help to secure her release, but a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said it was one option being considered. The prime minister has been involved with this case from the outset, she s raised it with the Iranian president on at least two occasions, the entire government is working towards securing her release as quickly as possible, he said. A legal opinion prepared for the human rights charity Redress on Zaghari-Ratcliffe s case said the British government could grant her diplomatic protection as she is predominantly a British citizen who has been denied a fair trial. It is unclear how Tehran would view such a step, which would explicitly make Zaghari-Ratcliffe s fate an issue in state-to-state relations rather than a purely consular case. Zaghari-Ratcliffe s fate become a major political issue in Britain after Johnson made remarks on Nov. 1 that appeared to cast doubt on statements from her employer. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News, said she had been on holiday and had not been teaching journalism in Iran. Iranian state television said Johnson s comments showed Zaghari-Ratcliffe s guilt and that she was involved in spying. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said the case had become a bargaining chip for Iran in its relations with Britain, and that it would not be helpful for Johnson to resign. He has asked to come with Johnson on a trip to Tehran planned for later this year and called for her to be given diplomatic protection. Nazanin is being held because she is British and is being used as a bargaining chip against the UK, now justified by your words, he said in an article in the Evening Standard newspaper. Nazanin is no longer simply a consular case as she has been endangered in a deeper way, he wrote. He added the uncertainty had affected his wife s health and she had gone to hospital for tests after finding lumps on her breasts, which the specialist thought were benign and stress-related. British ministers have rallied round Johnson but one of his allies, Environment Secretary Michael Gove, was accused of muddying the waters in a television interview on Sunday when he said he did not know what Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran. | 0fake |
President Trump Not Expected to Endorse Paul Ryan’s Obamacare-Lite Package in Congressional Address - Breitbart | President Donald Trump is not expected to endorse the Obamacare fix proposed by Speaker Paul Ryan (R. .) in his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, sources told Breitbart News. [A senior White House aide confirmed to Breitbart News that the president’s speech will highlight his promise to repeal and replace the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) but Trump will not endorse the Ryan plan or a modified version — known now on Capitol Hill as or . Politico reported the White House Press Secretary told Republican officials that there will be no endorsement of an individual proposal: “He’s going to outline the broad contours,” Spicer said about health care, explaining the president would not embrace a specific plan. Instead, Trump will make a bipartisan pitch to encourage Democrats to work with Republicans on fixing Obamacare, building infrastructure and crafting an immigration reform bill. Central to the speaker’s proposal is a negative income tax, which gives tax credits for insurance premiums, whether or not the individual pays income taxes. Ryan‘s plan is strongly opposed by the House Freedom Caucus and Sen. Rand Paul (R. .) who seek more structural reforms to the health insurance industry. Members of the House Freedom Caucus and other Capitol Hill conservatives are livid with Ryan after he presented his own Obamacare fix as the official replacement for the PPACA. Many conservatives, such as Sen. Michael Lee (R. ) are pushing the idea that Obamacare should be repealed whether or not a replacement is in place. A senior Senate aide told Breitbart News not to expect the president to endorse any specific healthcare plan. Another White House source familiar with the drafting of the president’s speech told Breitbart News that Trump insists Congress must repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system that expands choice, increases access, and lowers costs. The president is also committed to protecting Americans with conditions who must have coverage and giving governors the flexibility and resources they need to ensure no one slips through the cracks, the source said. As these speeches go, there is often into the teleprompter as a president is delivering the address to Congress. Breitbart Political Editor Matthew Boyle contributed to this report. | 0fake |
WHEW! AMB JOHN BOLTON Will Make Your Day With Just Two Words: “He’s History” [Video] | .@AmbJohnBolton on Obama legacy: He s history. We re just waiting for the calendar to turn. Any exec order he signs can be reversed #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/UOBwUS5K96 Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) January 4, 2017 | 1real |
Report Shows Trump’s Golf Course Is Paying Migrants Slave Wages | It would make sense why Trump claimed wages are too high as is, and why he supports getting rid of minimum wages standards and hates foreigners.A report-turned-documentary on HBO s Vice shows that the Trump International Golf Club in Dubai has been recruiting migrants from countries like Pakistan, promising them $3 an hour, but instead paying them just half of that. If a migrant is lucky, they will make only $231 a month.Also documented was the inhumane treatment and near enslavement of these migrants, including the confiscation of their passports so they cannot leave, and packing 20 or more migrants at a time in a small room for hours on end. Their rooms, miles outside the city and sitting in the dark desert, are infested with rats, mold and mildew.Sharing one kitchen for 100 people, and forced to bathe in troughs, the migrants are forced to relieve themselves where they wash. The bathrooms, as described in the documentary, are not fit for human use.Promising them standard eight hour shifts with the possibility of two hours overtime and a decent salary, the migrants were interested. But as the documentary shows, non of the promises were delivered.And of course Donald Trump declined to be interviewed, and instead had his organization release a statement saying Trump himself has no idea what s going on and that he doesn t take direction action in supervising, hiring, or building of entities he lends his name and brand to.When asked if they preferred working in Dubai or living in Pakistan, they responded with the latter.With his workers being treated with such little dignity, it s no wonder Trump has no problem being a war-hungry, xenophobic, racist monster.How can he claim to value life when his organization enslaves hard working migrants who just want to have a decent salary?Here is a clip form the documentary detailing just a sliver of the conditions:Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images | 1real |
HILLARY CLINTON FINALLY MAKES HISTORY…But It’s Not The Kind Of History She Was Hoping To Make | Democrats were hoping yesterday s Electoral Vote would end with electors rejecting Republican Donald Trump in droves.It didn t work out that way. in fact Hillary Clinton lost more electors than Donald J. Trump.Trump lost two electors: One to Ron Paul and one to Governor John Kasich. Hillary Clinton lost Five electors.8 Clinton defectors 4 WA (successful) 1 HI (successful) 1 MN (attempted) 1 ME (attempted) 1 CO (attempted)2 Trump defectors TX (successful)In fact Hillary Clinton lost more electors than any politician in the last 100 years.Not since 1912 has a candidate lost more electors. GP | 1real |
(Video) Joe Biden Thinks China Is In North America | Joe Biden was at Miami Dade College speaking when he made this big mistake: | 1real |
Drivers in at Least 21 States Claim ’Covfefe’ Vanity Plates - Breitbart | Drivers across the country are racing to their local Department of Motor Vehicles offices to claim “covfefe” vanity license plates just days following President Trump’s tweetwhere he meant to type “negative press coverage” and instead wrote “covfefe. ”[Drivers have already claimed their “covfefe” vanity plate in at least 21 states, including California, North Carolina, Maine, and Nebraska since Trump sent out his tweet early Wednesday morning, CNN reported. Greg Cooper, a California attorney, was one of the first in the nation to claim his state’s “covfefe” license plate. His daughter, Tayla, posted a photo of him with the plate design to Twitter, which received over 97, 000 likes and has been retweeted over 20, 000 times. Cooper, who was with family when he saw Trump’s tweet and thought it would be funny to buy a “covfefe” vanity plate, said he has not decided whether he will attach the license plate to his car when it arrives in 12 weeks. Evan Milton, 26, of Nebraska, claimed his state’s “covfefe” vanity plate for $40 just five hours after Trump tweeted the word. Milton told the Lincoln that he applied for the license plate through his state’s DMV website around 4 a. m. because he wanted a vanity plate on his car that came from a meme. Trump himself has poked fun of his original tweet, where he wrote about the “constant negative press covfefe,” in a tweet: “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’? ?? Enjoy!” Who can figure out the true meaning of ”covfefe” ? ?? Enjoy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017, “Covfefe” also became the number one trending topic on Twitter within the hour after Trump posted his original tweet, giving birth to a new meme. As of Monday afternoon, there are still seven states where drivers can order a “covfefe” vanity plate. The states still to be claimed are New Hampshire, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. | 0fake |
Gulf media promotes emigre Qatari royals as feud sours | DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar s Arab critics are targeting a new pressure point in their feud with Doha - the tiny country s ruling family - permitting state-linked media outlets to portray two little-known Qatari princes living abroad as distinguished statesmen. The publicity, in which the two men are lauded by media in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as talented decision-makers capable of solving the rift, is widely seen as a dig at the prestige of Doha s current leadership. Despite Saudi Arabia and the UAE insisting they do not seek regime change, the publicity appears aimed at upping pressure on Doha, which they accuse of long meddling in their own domestic affairs. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut political and trade ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of supporting terrorism and their arch-foe Iran - charges Doha denies. The two men hailing from a branch of the ruling Al-Thani family, silver-haired Sheikh Abdullah bin Ali based in London but now living in Riyadh, and his younger nephew Sheikh Sultan bin Suhaim, now feature regularly on Saudi and UAE channels. Praising Saudi King Salman and his powerful son Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, they both called this week to convene a meeting of the Qatari ruling family to discuss the crisis. Because of the government s current policy that allowed hateful and bitter people to infiltrate Qatar and to spread their poison everywhere, we have now reached the abyss, Sheikh Sultan, based in Paris, said in a statement carried by UAE-based Sky News Arabia TV. While the princes do not expressly present themselves as replacements to Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, analysts believe their sudden prominence is designed to undermine him - an uphill task for men few Qataris had heard of until recently. For such a strategy to work, you need to find an alternative that already has a popular base, said Jean-Marc Rickli, head of global risk and resilience at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. The move is eye-catching because it appears to test a Gulf taboo: while many Gulf ruling families, including the al-Thani of Qatar, have a record of palace intrigue, fellow dynasties in neighboring states rarely interfere in each other s internal family politics for fear of attracting intrusion in return. The crisis has pressured Qatar s economy, squeezing company revenues and forcing costly rerouting of trade and air transport that once ran easily through their neighbors skies and waters. Doha has responded by stepping up trade with Turkey and Iran, handing diplomatic gains to two countries with whom Riyadh and its allies vie for regional influence. Qatar s refusal to accede to 13 demands, including that it shutter popular news channel Al Jazeera, downgrade ties with Tehran and expel Islamist leaders from Doha, may have driven its adversaries to train their sights on the ruling family. An environment where Qatar becomes a permanent partner for Iran and Turkey would be viewed as highly problematic for the leadership in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, said Ayham Kamel of the Eurasia Group consultancy. The Arab quartet is still focused on pressuring Qatar to concede on parts of the 13 demands, but Qatari intransigence is encouraging these states to consider other options. | 0fake |
Italy's 5-Star sheds anti-EU image, calls for reform | ROME (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement supports the European Union and wants significant law-making powers transferred from governments to the European Parliament, its leader Luigi Di Maio told Reuters. 5-Star, which leads opinion polls ahead of an election to be held by May, is trying to reassure Italy s partners and financial markets that it can be trusted in government, and distance itself from its previously eurosceptic positions. We are pro-EU and we intend to contribute to creating the future of Europe, the 31-year-old lower house deputy, who was elected in September as 5-Star s leader and prime minister candidate, said in an interview. He said if 5-Star wins power it will negotiate with Italy s partners to try to set up EU-wide welfare policies to tackle growing poverty and inequality in many countries in the bloc, including Italy, the EU s fourth largest economy. If it reforms, the EU can be a solution to many of our problems, Di Maio said, calling for more law-making powers for the European Parliament as the only directly elected EU body. He said 5-Star s stance on Europe and the euro had shifted since 2014, when it lobbied for a referendum to take Italy out of the common currency zone and joined the eurosceptic group of Britain s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the European Parliament. He said the defeat of traditional parties in France and the difficulties in forming stable, majority governments in Germany, Spain and Portugal meant there is no longer the wide EU support for austerity policies that 5-Star has opposed. It has not totally withdrawn the idea of a referendum on the euro, but it now calls it a last resort to be employed only if Italy wins no concessions on EU governance from its partners. We set out with strong opposition to the euro because back then there was too much difference between our positions and the monolithic, pro-austerity position promoted by Germany which dominated in Europe, he said. But now things have changed. 5-Star tried this year to leave the UKIP group in the European Parliament to join the pro-Europe Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), but the switch fell through due to resistance from some ALDE members. Di Maio said that after the next European elections in 2019 5-Star would avoid linking up with any extremist, populist, xenophobic or old-style leftist movements. Domestically, 5-Star bases its support on an anti-corruption drive and policies that bridge the traditional left-right divide such as clean energy, tax cuts for small businesses and more public investment in infrastructure and education. As part of a charm offensive as the election nears, last month Di Maio visited Washington to burnish 5-Star s image with the U.S. administration, and party officials met in Rome with representatives of large international banks and hedge funds. He spoke to Reuters on the sidelines of a conference organized by Italian media website EUnews. 5-Star, which shuns alliances with Italy s traditional parties, leads opinion polls with around 28 percent of the vote, some 3 points ahead of the ruling Democratic Party, but it seems sure to fall well short of a parliamentary majority. Di Maio said 5-Star s plan was to form a minority government and seek support from other parties for its policies on a case-by-case basis. | 0fake |
Limbaugh: ’It Isn’t Unreasonable at All for Donald Trump to Suspect That He’s Being Tapped’ - Breitbart | Monday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh addressed President Donald Trump’s tweets over the weekend accusing the Obama administration of wiretapping Trump Tower before the presidential election. Partial transcript as follows: RUSH LIMBAUGH, HOST: Let me ask you a question. Is it unreasonable, is it unreasonable that President Trump would suspect he’s being spied on? It’s not unreasonable, is it? Telephone calls that he’s made to presidents of other countries have been leaked, transcripts have been leaked … So a lot to try to explain here today, and it all makes sense when it is explained in not just necessarily a timeline format, but just when you provide and when you learn the information of things that are going on, all of this makes sense. It all seems reasonable. It all seems like it could be happening. We know, for example, that there has been an effort on the part of what I’ve been calling the deep state, this is embedded Obamaites that are in the bureaucracy that have been trying to sabotage and undermine the Trump administration ever since he was elected and through the transition into the inauguration and up to now. I mean, this is undeniable. These various leaks, many of them are criminal. How are people getting this information? How are people acquiring the information that they are disseminating? I have here, ladies and gentlemen, I went and looked and I’ve got a copy here of the actual New York Times front page on January 20th of this year. And the primary story, the lead story, “Trump Arrives, Set to Assume Power. ” But right next to it is this headline: “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides. ” Well, the New York Times has a story back in January admitting that wiretapped data has been used in an inquiry of Trump aides. And this article goes on to say “intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House. ” So it isn’t unreasonable at all for Donald Trump to suspect that he’s being tapped, that his aides are being tapped, at Trump Tower. We know that there were two FISA warrants that were issued starting last summer and then another one in October, and I want to walk you through those as the program unfolds today. It’s kind of unsettling. I mean, you don’t want to think things like this happen, but you know that they do, and so you have to face it. And we are in a polarized circumstance in our country. We are really divided, and the gap is wide. The partisanship is profound and it’s worsening here, to the point that there isn’t any common ground and crossing the aisle and shaking hands and cooperating. This is a war that’s going to result in somebody winning and somebody losing, within a political context, of course. And what’s new about this one is we have a Republican president for the first time in my lifetime fighting back. Well, I can’t exclude Ronald Reagan from that. And I actually think a part of this — and I can’t substantiate this, ’cause it goes to motive — but I think part of what President Trump is doing by tweeting out on Saturday that he believes the Obama administration’s wiretapping him, I think he’s not just tweeting to the American public and tweeting to the news media. I think Trump confounds these people because he’s always a step or two ahead. Trump plays the long game. And I think in addition to whatever else these tweets are intended to accomplish, it’s also a direct line to the Democrat Party and Obama and members of the Obama administration that Trump is signaling, “You don’t face the usual feckless bunch of opponents who never fight you back. You’ve got me here, and if you’re gonna start lying about me, if you’re gonna keep lying about me, I’m not gonna sit here and take it. ” Now, why might Trump think that he’s been bugged? Why might he believe that Trump Tower has been bugged? Well, folks, from the moment that Donald Trump won the election back in November, there have been leaks, illegal leaks that were no question hopefully damaging. There has been a sabotage effort to undermine Trump and his administration since the election. We’ve talked about it ever since it began. I’ve had various names for it, the deep state, Friday called it silent coup or whatever, but there isn’t any doubt in my mind that this is going on. The media is complicit in it, that there is an effort to undermine the Trump administration. We have these protests that come up out of nowhere, and they appear instantly. So I think it’s totally reasonable to believe that something like this could be happening. It would be unreasonable to think that this is crazy, unreasonable to think that this is absurd, unreasonable to think that this is nothing more than a big batch of conspiracy theories stitched together for whatever purpose. ( RCP Video) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Health experts share the top home remedies for fighting a cold | Health experts share the top home remedies for fighting a cold
Tuesday, November 01, 2016 by: Amy Goodrich Tags: cold symptoms , natural remedies , immune booster (NaturalNews) Stay well during the colder months with these simple, time-tested home remedies to prevent a common cold, help shorten the duration and get you feeling better in no time. A common cold is caused by a virus, so there is no point in taking antibiotics which only kill bacteria. While there is a host of over-the-counter remedies available to soothe the symptoms of a common cold, nature offers far better and safer solutions.We all know the prevention drill. Load up on immune boosting foods rich in vitamin C , exercise regularly and wash your hands often. But what else is there you can do to avoid a runny nose, sore throat or a cough? Seven Health editors reveal their sickness-preventing secrets. Gargle salt water If you feel the first signs of a scratchy throat, Jeannie Kim, executive deputy editor, recommends a salt-water gargle. She is convinced that it has stopped countless of her colds. To soothe a sore throat and kill the sick-making germs, combine half a teaspoon salt with one cup of water and gargle. Repeat several times a day until scratchiness disappears. Create some heat According to Clare McHugh, editor-in-chief, a hot bath or shower is the thing you need. She explains that viruses that cause a common cold don't like the heat and are discouraged to multiply if you keep your body warm. And why not add immune boosting and cold fighting essential oils to your bathtub to enhance the healing effect?Furthermore, you could try the good old hot water bottle to help loosen phlegm and deep congestions in the chest. Swallow raw garlic If you don't mind to sweat it out and have a garlic breath, Lisa Lombardi, executive editor, recommends eating or swallowing raw garlic. While the next day her symptoms usually get worse, she feels better in 3 days.If you cannot stomach garlic's taste and spiciness, then you might want to go with the traditional garlic cure which consists of garlic, lemon, and honey. Crush one clove of garlic and add it to a cup of warm water with one teaspoon of honey and the juice of one lemon. Give it a good stir and repeat this remedy two to three times a day for the duration of your symptoms. Take Echinacea Michael Gollust, the research editor, swears by echinacea lozenges. He says that while they don't stop a cold in its tracks, they definitely reduce the severity of the symptoms. The BBC, however, reports on a comprehensive review that scanned the literature and included only the very best studies, showing that people who use echinacea may also have 10 to 20 percent less chance to catch a common cold. Stay hydrated Most Health experts agree that hydration is essential for a speedy recovery. Anthea Levi, the editorial assistant, adds that if you are struggling with blocked sinuses, adding lemon juice and cayenne pepper to your glass of water is all you need to breathe freely again. Go to bed early They often say sleep is one the best natural doctors. Tomoko Takeda Canel, the acting beauty director, couldn't agree more. When she gets sick, she cancels all her plans, has a light meal and then prioritizes an early bedtime to get better.Next time you get a cold, keep these tips and tricks in mind, and you won't need over-the-counter drugs that can do more harm than good. Sources: | 1real |
HANNITY TEARS IT UP IN HIS BEST EVER RANT: ‘Hillary Clinton and Her Husband Sold Out America to the Russians!’ [Video] | Sean Hannity was on fire with his opening comments on the Clinton-Uranium One deal bombshell last night. He ripped the Clintons and called on Trump s intelligence and law officials to investigate the scandal. It s a classic Hannity rant: After President Trump won in November, President Obama and his administration they were telling anyone who would listen, Russia! Russia! Russia! Russia interfered with our election. Russia was creating a direct threat to American democracy Hannity mocked. Well if that s the case, why when they have mountains of evidence that we will reveal tonight of Russian bribery going back to 2009, why then would the Obama administration and Hillary in particular sign off on the sale of 20% of America s uranium to Vladimir Putin and the Russians? Tonight, with this new evidence, what we have discovered is that the evidence against the Clintons is overwhelming, it is incontrovertible, Hannity continued. Hillary Clinton and her husband sold out America to the Russians while millions of dollars flowed to their family foundation. And in the process, Clinton created a massive national security risk for every man, woman, and child giving Vladimir Putin control over American uranium. IN CASE YOU HAVEN T HEARD ABOUT THE LATEST ON THE CLINTON-URANIUM ONE BOMBSHELL:Yesterday, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange sent a cryptic tweet that contained a series of number and letters. Someone out there knows what that code means, and they are very likely shaking in their boots today.4767 5774 6a7a 4d6c 6330 666b 314a 3453 0000 0907 84b4 f787 7616 86f7 a737 5707 5736 Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) October 15, 2017On another front, two writers from separate publications were set to publish what Sean Hannity was calling a huge bombshell story that was due to break today.Last night on Fox News Hannity show, Sean Hannity warned that a huge bombshell would be breaking today. Sean told his audience that Circa News Sara Carter and The Hill s John Solomon have HUGE BREAKING NEWS. Hannity told his audience, Let me put it this way, if I m Hillary or fake news, I won t be sleeping well tonight. Watch:.@seanhannity TICK TOCK Tonight Folks Get ready @HillaryClinton pic.twitter.com/PxbRCgyPwm 'GITMO' BAMA (@President1Trump) October 17, 2017Well, John Solomon and Alison Spann s story did indeed break first thing today in The Hill, and it s a doozy. Will justice finally be delivered to these corrupt, anti-American, self-serving and lying players? Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them. The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking. Former House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI)The Hill Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.They also obtained an eyewitness account backed by documents indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.The racketeering scheme was conducted with the consent of higher level officials in Russia who shared the proceeds from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefitting Putin s commercial nuclear ambitions.The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America s uranium supply.When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she never intervened on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter. In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program. The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions, a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.The Obama administration s decision to approve Rosatom s purchase of Uranium One has been a source of political controversy since 2015.That s when conservative author Peter Schweitzer and The New York Times documented how Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees and his charitable foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the deal while Hillary Clinton presided on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions at the time, insisting there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for any member of the committee to oppose the Uranium One deal.But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI, in fact, had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee s decision that Vadim Mikerin the main Russian overseeing Putin s nuclear expansion inside the United States was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved. Multiple current and former government officials told The Hill they did not know whether the FBI or DOJ ever alerted committee members to the criminal activity they uncovered.Spokesmen for Holder and Clinton did not return calls seeking comment. The Justice Department also didn t comment.Mikerin was a director of Rosatom s Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, where he oversaw Rosatom s nuclear collaboration with the United States under the Megatons to Megwatts program and its commercial uranium sales to other countries. In 2010, Mikerin was dispatched to the U.S. on a work visa approved by the Obama administration to open Rosatom s new American arm called Tenam.Between 2009 and January 2012, Mikerin did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire confederate and agree with other persons to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion, a November 2014 indictment stated.His illegal conduct was captured with the help of a confidential witness, an American businessman, who began making kickback payments at Mikerin s direction and with the permission of the FBI. The first kickback payment recorded by the FBI through its informant was dated Nov. 27, 2009, the records show. The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.On August 6, 2017, The Washington Times questioned Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein s fishing expedition aimed at digging up dirt on President Trump in his investigation in the Trump-Russia investigation. The special counsel is subject to the rules and regulations of the Department of Justice, and we don t engage in fishing expeditions, Mr. Rosenstein said on Fox News Sunday. In his first Sunday show interview, Mr. Rosenstein added that special counsel Robert Mueller understands and I understand the specific scope of the investigation and so, it s not a fishing expedition. Mr. Rosenstein s comments come amid reports citing unnamed sources that the investigation has expanded into Mr. Trump s finances unrelated to possible Russian interference in last year s election.Mr. Rosenstein played down the reports: That s not anything that I ve said. That s not anything Director Mueller has said. We don t know who s saying it or how credible those sources are. Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven collusion between Russia and Donald Trump s campaign during the 2016 election.McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI.The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey, who Trump fired earlier this year.Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency s cap.But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.The only public statement occurred an entire year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered.On Dec. 15, 2015, the Justice Department put out a release stating that Mikerin, a former Russian official residing in Maryland was sentenced today to 48 months in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $2.1 million.Ronald Hosko, who served as the assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases when the investigation was underway, told The Hill he did not recall ever being briefed about Mikerin s case by the counterintelligence side of the bureau despite the criminal charges that were being lodged. I had no idea this case was being conducted, a surprised Hosko said in an interview.Meanwhile, Julian Assange is jumping on the bandwagon, as he teases that he has a major announcement of his own that is coming soon Russian nuclear bribery investigation reveals that Russia routed millions to the Clintons https://t.co/ti7ycn7auf Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) October 17, 2017 | 1real |
President Trump’s Extreme Vetting Takes the Next Step…But Is It Enough? | Will the new policy for face-to-face interviews with applicants for citizenship be enough to weed out terrorists who only plan on harming Americans?It s being reported that many seeking citizenship and asylum have converted to Christianity to better their chances of making it into their desired country:Breitbart News reported:Muslims migrating from Syria have admitted to converting to Christianity in a bid to boost their chances of being given asylum in the West, despite the risks associated with apostasy. Two Muslim Syrians living in Lebanon have told The Telegraph that they and their families have converted to Christianity because they believe it gives them a better chance of gaining asylum in the West, and because they can better access aid from Christian charities.Ibrahim Ali, who became homeless after moving to Beirut, told the paper: A lot of people are doing it to get to Europe, the US and Canada. While I plan to stay in Lebanon, I know hundreds who been baptised just to help their applications. They would do anything to have security for their family. The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it will soon require more people to undergo in-person interviews before they can gain a firmer legal footing in the U.S., carrying out yet another part of President Trump s extreme vetting executive order.While the so-called travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries has garnered most of the attention, it was just a temporary measure designed to give the government the space to stiffen its regular checks so it could be more adept at denying potential terrorists entry.U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced one of those new policies Monday, saying it wants more people to have to face in-person interviews before they re giving permanent status in the country. Read more: WT | 1real |
Watch How White Supremacists Are Working To Win The Iowa Caucus For Trump (VIDEO) | If the current national Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump wins the Iowa caucuses, he may have to send a thank you card to a group of white supremacists.A super PAC set up by white nationalists (thanks to the conservative majority on the Supreme Court for that, by the way) is now doing robocalls on behalf of the Trump campaign to Iowa voters.https://www.facebook.com/david.dwyer.501/videos/10205589938852221/ I urge you to vote for Donald Trump because he is the one candidate who points out that we should accept immigrants who are good for America, Jared Taylor said on the robocall, paid for by the American National Super PAC. We don t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump. Taylor is the founder of the white supremacist magazine American Renaissance. The robocall included two more endorsements from a conservative Christian talk show host and the head of the white nationalist American Freedom Party.Since he launched his presidential campaign by blaming Mexicans for rape and murder and encouraged his supporters to rough up protesters for the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump has attracted growing support from the white nationalist movement. They view his candidacy with its explicit appeal to white power enthusiasts as the first such outwardly racially bigoted campaign within the two major parties in U.S. history.Trump has also, of course, signaled that a presidency underneath his control would operate in a fascistic manner, banning travel to the United States by Muslims and also creating a national database of Muslims similar to the types of records created by Hitler s Nazi regime in Germany.Despite the outward support for Trump with figures like former Klansman David Duke and those otherwise aligned with the movement in favor of white supremacy, the mainstream media has largely shied away from labeling Trump supporters as bigots. Instead multiple mainstream articles and news reports insist that Trump s base of support comes from those concerned about economic inequality. Of course, Senator Bernie Sanders has made the fight to rectify that inequality as the centerpiece of his campaign, explicitly rejecting the racial and religious hatred embraced by Trump and so far not condemned by the party itself.Featured image via flickr | 1real |
France's Hollande congratulates Trump, warns of period of uncertainty | PARIS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday congratulated Donald Trump on his shock victory in the U.S presidential election, but warned the result would open up a period of uncertainty. “I congratulate him as is natural between two democratic heads of state,” said Hollande. “This American election opens a period of uncertainty.” France would be vigilant and frank in its talks with the new administration on international issues, he said, adding that Trump’s victory showed that France needed to be stronger and that Europe needed to be united. A presidential official said Hollande had spoken to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before making his declaration. | 0fake |
Merkel: U.S. attack on Syria is understandable given Syrian suffering | BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday an attack by the United States on a Syrian airbase from which it said a chemical weapons attack was launched this week was understandable given the Syrian people’s suffering. “The attack of the United States is understandable given the dimension of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people, and given the blockage in the U.N. Security Council,” Merkel said. She described the strikes as “limited and targeted”. | 0fake |
Two Reuters journalists arrested in Myanmar, face official secrets charges | YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s government said on Wednesday that police had arrested two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. The reporters had been working on stories about a military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rahkine State that has caused almost 650,000 people to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. The Ministry of Information said in a statement on its Facebook page that the journalists and two policemen face charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, said the statement, which was accompanied by a photo of the pair in handcuffs. It said they were detained at a police station on the outskirts of Yangon, the southeast Asian nation s main city. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo went missing on Tuesday evening after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at Battalion 8 s compound at around 8 pm and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say their exodus from the mainly Buddhist nation was triggered by a military counter-offensive in Rakhine state that the United Nations has branded a textbook example of ethnic cleansing . Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been reporting on events of global importance in Myanmar, and we learned today that they have been arrested in connection with their work, said Stephen J. Adler, president and editor-in-chief of Reuters. We are outraged by this blatant attack on press freedom. We call for authorities to release them immediately, he said. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed that the two journalists had been arrested. Not only your reporters, but also the policemen who were involved in that case, spokesman Zaw Htay said. We will take action against those policemen and also the reporters. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert emphasized that the agency was following this closely. She said that U.S. Ambassador Scot Marciel on Wednesday had a conversation with two government officials in Myanmar who seemed genuinely unaware of the situation. We care about the safety and security of international reporters who are simply just trying to do their jobs. So we re going to continue to try to stay on that, Nauert said. The U.S. embassy in Yangon said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday it was deeply concerned by the highly irregular arrests of two Reuters reporters after they were invited to meet with police officials in Yangon last night . For a democracy to succeed, journalists need to be able to do their jobs freely, the embassy said. We urge the government to explain these arrests and allow immediate access to the journalists. The European Union s mission in Yangon also voiced concern. The EU delegation is closely following their case and we call on the Myanmar authorities to ensure the full protection of their rights, it said in a statement. Media freedom is the foundation of any democracy. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for the reporters immediate and unconditional release. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance, said Shawn Crispin, CPJ s senior Southeast Asia representative. Wa Lone, who joined Reuters in July 2016, has covered a range of stories, including the flight of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine in 2016 and, in much larger numbers, this year. He has written about military land grabs and the killing of ruling party lawyer Ko Ni in January. This year he jointly won an honorable mention from the Society of Publishers in Asia for Reuters coverage of the Rakhine crisis in 2016. He previously worked for The Myanmar Times, where he covered Myanmar s historic 2015 elections, and People s Age, a local weekly newspaper, where his editor was Myanmar s current Minister of Information Pe Myint. Kyaw Soe Oo, an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist from state capital Sittwe, has worked with Reuters since September. He has covered the impact of the Aug. 25 attacks on police and army posts in the northern Rakhine, and reported from the central part of the state where local Buddhists have been enforcing segregation between Rohingya and Rakhine communities. He previously worked for Root Investigation Agency, a local news outlet focused on Rakhine issues. I have been arrest were the four words that Wa Lone texted to Reuters Myanmar Bureau Chief Antoni Slodkowski on Tuesday evening to let him know what was happening. Very soon after that Wa Lone s phone appeared to have been switched off. Over the next 24 hours, Reuters colleagues in Yangon filed a missing persons report, went to three police stations, and asked a series of government officials what had happened to the two reporters. They got no official information until Wednesday evening. | 0fake |
BREAKING VIDEO Of Hillary Supporter And #BlackLivesMatter Activist Vandalizing Trump’s Brand New DC Hotel [VIDEO] | Hillary has been stirring up the hateful movement Obama, Eric Holder and Al Sharpton started years ago, as a means to encourage blacks to come out to the polls on her behalf on November 8th. American voters need to ask themselves what kind of a person stirs up hate and division between races for the sake of getting votes? What kind of person is okay with dividing a nation just to obtain the ultimate power position in politics? The worst criminal to ever run for President of the United States .Crooked Hillary Clinton that s who.Watch her shamelessly pander to the worst common denominator for votes:Watch Hillary encourage Black Lives Matter terrorists to take their action to a new level:Oh look Black Lives Matter is actually listening to Hillary. Last night they vandalized one of the most beautiful buildings in Washington DC that just happens to being to Hillary s opponent:Trump's new DC hotel vandalized this morning w/ Black Lives Matter graffiti. I have a feeling this isn't going to be isolated. Smh. pic.twitter.com/r9T6o9DfgT Tara Setmayer (@TaraSetmayer) October 2, 2016Here is another picture that was taken of the graffiti painted on Trump s amazing hotel in downtown DC:Meanwhile in DC protesters seem to have defaced the Trump International Hotel. Workers just covered the graffiti. pic.twitter.com/gIOpB6dCmY Jazmin Bailey (@JazminMBailey) October 1, 2016 | 1real |
Seeking to Improve Ties With Russia, Turkey Apologizes for Downing Warplane - The New York Times | ISTANBUL — Turkey continued its diplomatic fence mending on Monday, apologizing for downing a Russian jet near its border with Syria last year. In a letter to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday, the same day Turkey announced a rapprochement with Israel, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed regret about the November episode, in which Turkish forces shot down a Russian warplane that Turkey said had violated its airspace. The downing infuriated Russia and paralyzed relations between the two countries: The Kremlin ordered sanctions on Turkish food imports, stopped travel for Turks and barred Turkish tour operators from offering Russian tourists vacation packages. Mr. Erdogan has become isolated diplomatically after adopting an increasingly authoritarian stand, a combative position with Europe regarding the international migrant crisis, and a newly muscular foreign policy, including a failed strategy in Syria. The outreach on Monday can be viewed as an effort to repair some of that damage. “Turkey had been going through a deep sense of isolation for the past few years, having switched from its famous ‘zero problems with neighbors’ policy to a place where they had no neighbors without problems,” said Asli Aydintasbas, an expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “This was the loneliest point in the history of the republic — Qatar and Saudi Arabia looking like the government’s only real friends. ” Under Mr. Erdogan, Turkey has tried to establish friendships with its Muslim neighbors, a shift from the past. But some experts argue that Turkey miscalculated, especially in Syria, where, until recently, it pushed for the ouster of President Bashar . It has also opposed the United States there over Kurdish rebels fighting the Islamic State, and has been criticized for letting fighters pass freely across its border with Syria. In the case of Russia, economics trumped political posturing, Ms. Aydintasbas said. Trade between the two countries had been substantially in Russia’s favor, largely because it sells considerable amounts of oil and gas to Turkey. But Turkey also benefited: More than three million Russians visit each year, the group of foreign travelers after Germans, and their absence has taken a painful toll on Turkey’s tourism industry. In his letter to Mr. Putin, Mr. Erdogan said he “would like to inform the family of the deceased Russian pilot that I share their pain and to offer my condolences to them,” according to a statement from Turkey’s presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin. The effort to repair relations with Russia began the same day that Turkey and Israel announced an agreement to resume full diplomatic relations, ending a bitter rift between the regional allies. The two countries had fallen out over a 2010 Israeli military raid on a Turkish boat, the Mavi Marmara, which was bringing aid to Gaza. Ten Turkish activists were killed. The deal provided an opening for lucrative natural gas projects: for Israel to sell natural gas reserves to Turkey, and via Turkey to Europe. Louis Fishman, an assistant professor at Brooklyn College who specializes in affairs, said that, for Turkey, the resumption of relations was “not merely about cutting a natural gas deal with Israel, which certainly tops its agenda, but also an attempt to regain regional clout. ” Turkey also announced on Monday that it would prosecute a Turkish man suspected of killing the pilot of the Russian jet after his plane was shot down in November, Reuters reported. Russia had been demanding the prosecution of the man, Alparslan Celik, who was fighting in northern Syria at the time. It is unclear why the reconciliation with Russia is happening now. Mr. Erdogan, a charismatic leader who has tapped into rising populism in Turkey, has grown increasingly autocratic, prompting criticism from liberals at home and from some allies abroad. Experts said he was trying to change his positions abroad in order to burnish his image and authority. “At the core of the decision to mend ties with Israel and Russia is an existential need for survival,” Ms. Aydintasbas said. Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party is “the top and has just won elections,” she said, “but with a serious homegrown insurgency, a frail economy and a long list of foes, it is hard to rule a country. ” Cengiz Candar, a visiting scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies, said: “We’re seeing the contours of Erdogan’s pragmatism. Now they can say: ‘See, we are improving our relations in our neighborhood. We’re on the right track.’ ” | 0fake |
Myanmar to grant families access to two Reuters journalists after remand period expires: media | YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar will be allowed to meet their families once their first 14-day period of remand expires, according to local media reports. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in detention for 11 days in an undisclosed location and have had no access to their families, lawyers or colleagues. They were arrested after being invited to meet police officials over dinner on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon on Dec. 12. The authorities are investigating whether they violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which has a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. After the first remand (expires), they will be able to meet their families. They will be sent to the court for testimonies, Tin Myint, permanent secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs, was quoted as saying by Radio Free Asia. In Myanmar, those remanded must be brought to court within 14 days. But it s not immediately clear when the pair was first remanded and whether the authorities will seek court approval to remand them for a second 14-day period. The Home Affairs Ministry did not responded to several requests for comments. Family members of the two journalists say they have not received any official communication about the question of remand or the investigation, and neither has Reuters. Tin Myint said the case against the two Reuters reporters will be transparent and the authorities will follow the rule of law, according to Daily Eleven newspaper. Major governments, including the United States, Britain and Canada, leading international political figures and top United Nations officials are among those who have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week told Reuters that the police had almost completed their investigation and the two reporters will be treated in line with the law. The Ministry of Information said last week that Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media . | 0fake |
WATCH HUGE CROWD CHEER When Asked If Trump Should “Win For America” [Video] | 1real | |
Trump's attack on Senator Gillibrand 'nasty': Senator Schumer | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s tweeted attack on Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was “nasty,” but Schumer did not join Gillibrand’s call for Trump to resign the presidency over sexual misconduct accusations. “That tweet was nasty, unbecoming of a president,” Schumer told reporters. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, on Monday called for Trump to resign over sexual misconduct allegations. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances, which he has denied. Trump lambasted Gillibrand on Twitter on Tuesday writing, “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.” | 0fake |
Hillary Admits In Leaked Email That Clinton Donors Are Funding ISIL | In an email between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, the former first lady and secretary of state cites “ Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region ” to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of “ providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS]and other radical Sunni groups in the region .”
Citing the need to “ use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets ,” the candidate told Podesta the current developments in the Middle East were “ important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country .” In the same email, Clinton seemed to claim Turkey needed to be reassured of America’s willingness to “ take serious actions, ” an effort that “ [could]be sustained to protect our national interests ” in the region.
In another piece of correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai , claimed the Ambassador from Qatar would “ like to see [Bill Clinton] ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for [his]birthday in 2011 ,” adding that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would “ welcome [the Clinton Foundation’s]suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health .” Desai added that while Qatar had already “ allocated most of their $20 million … [they were]happy to consider projects we suggest .”
Al Jazeera , a Qatar-based, state-funded news organization, recently ran a list of “ revealing, juicy and quirky emails ” leaked by WikiLeaks. In its list, the news organization went over the “pay-for-play” scheme involving the Clinton Foundation, going so far as to mention an email confirming the king of Morocco offered $12m “for the endowment” — as long as Clinton was willing to take part in a meeting.
Nevertheless, the state-funded broadcaster failed to bring up the Qatar connection. Unfortunately for the organization, Wikileaks promptly noticed the omission.
In a post on Facebook , the WikiLeaks official page said, “ Al Jazeera’s list of juiciest Wikileaks forgets to mention the revelation that Qatar funds both ISIS & Bill Clinton. ”
On Twitter, the convenient lapse wasn’t forgiven. Promptly after WikiLeaks pointed out the omission, users began pressuring Al Jazeera to explain why the publication failed to link Qatar to ISIS and Clinton.
Al Jazeera's list of juiciest WikiLeaks forgets to mention the revelation that Qatar funds both ISIS & Bill Clinton: https://t.co/aBIuF861kk
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) October 25, 2016
@MaxAbrahms @wikileaks You mean @AlJazeera is not critical of Qatar? That is utterly shocking haha pic.twitter.com/4XSmuHXQ98
— Eddie Mejia (@MeBeEddie) October 25, 2016
Despite the public outrage, few, if any, news organizations reported on Al Jazeera ’s bias.
In a period of America’s history in which news organizations parrot what one of the most powerful political dynasties in the country keeps on repeating to exhaustion — accusing foreign governments of “rigging” the U.S. election without offering any proof to back their claims — it’s interesting to observe that the mainstream media failed to pick up on this story.
Is it that Qatar’s and Saudi Arabia’s involvement with ISIS — while backing their favorite candidate — is a difficult issue to report on? Or is the media’s refusal to cover this topic rooted in fear that thoroughly addressing it will help her lose the presidential election?
Only time will tell.
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| 1real |
Federal Court Strikes Down Racist Texas Voter ID Law | Just in time for the election! The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit based in New Orleans found what Democrats have known for months: Texas voter ID law, the strictest in the country, violates the Voting Rights Act because it places an undue burden on minority voters in the state more specifically black and Hispanic voters.When the law was passed in 2011, over 600,000 Texas lacked the identification necessary to vote. As the Court correctly pointed out, the overwhelming majority of these voters were non-white.According to the New York Times:It was the fourth time in nearly four years that a federal court found that the Texas law discriminated against or disproportionately affected black and Hispanic voters.The ruling did not strike down the law in its entirety, leaving in place the heart of the law but requiring the state to accommodate those who will have a harder time obtaining the identification necessary.The Fifth Circuit also sent back to the lower courts a reconsideration as to whether or not the Texas legislature acted with intentional discrimination. Should it be discovered that it did, judicial oversight would be required if Texas sought to change their voting laws.It should also be noted that the Fifth Circuit is considered one of the most conservative Appeals courts in the country, with 12 out of 17 seats being occupied by Republican appointees, and four out of seven senior judges being Republican appointees.Of the 15 judges, senior and active, who heard the case, nine (including 5 Republican appointees) voted in favor of the people, not the racist government of Texas. When the majority of the majority opinion are Republican and tell you your state is racist, you might want to take a step back.The state of Texas has not confirmed if it will be appealing to the Supreme Court, which in April decided to leave the law intact but revert back to the lower courts, the Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court did, however, issue a warning: should the law be muddied by the lower courts (yet again), the Supreme Court would not come to its aid.The Fifth Circuit s decision may be the final nail in the coffin to a shameful, racist, hateful law that had one purpose: purge as many blacks and Hispanics off the voter rolls as possible.Once again, voting rights have been protected. Will Republicans learn from it? Not at all. But are Republicans now weakened heading into the general election? Absolutely.Over 600,000 people were given back their rights, now they need to exercise them in November.Featured image via Stephanie Keith/Getty Images | 1real |
California Officially Filed U.N. Paperwork, Secession ACTUALLY Happening | Conservative Daily Post |
Posted by Martin Walsh | Nov 23, 2016 | Breaking News If they want to go, we will let them
This feeling of a President Trump is a breathe of fresh air. You can feel it in your communities all across the country and in your own life. You can feel yourself imagining things that you want to accomplish because Trump has already instilled a cultural change that breeds toughness and hard work.
Democrats and the lying media slammed Donald Trump for months when he argued that he may not accept the results of the election. Now that he has won, ironically, it has been the media and Hillary’s supporters that are refusing to accept the results of the election.
Aside from thousands of whiny, entitled liberals flooding the streets with their violence and tears because they just cannot deal with a President that has said mean things, the state of California has made a major announcement.
Fox News has reported that the state of California has filed a measure with the state’s attorney general to have a question appear on the 2018 election ballot asking whether the state should secede from the United States. CONFIRMED: #Calexit independence plebiscite ballot measure sponsored by #YesCalifornia has been accepted by the California Attorney General.
— Yes California (@YesCalifornia) November 21, 2016
Marcus Evans, the vice president of a secessionist organization called Yes California , told the Sacramento Bee that he filed paperwork with the government in order to allow the state the opportunity to succeed from the United States.
The group only needs 500,000 signatures of California residents for the question to appear on the ballot.
The large group argues that California would be the world’s sixth-largest economy, and that he and his fellow citizens have been subsidizing other states through their federal taxes while their own infrastructure has taken a hit.
The group said they plan to seek independence through the United Nations over apprehension that Congress will not be warm to the proposal. Still waiting on Clinton, Obama, and Democrats to denounce the violence and riots. Maybe if they had jobs they wouldn't have time to riot…
— Martin Walsh (@mrwalsh8) November 21, 2016
“We’re not ashamed about going around Washington to achieve it,” group president Louis Marinelli said, “Congress can’t tie its shoes.”
Let one thing remain crystal clear: if California wants to secede from the United States, they should get ready to go.
For starters, they house the most illegal immigrants in the entire country, making the entire state a Sanctuary City. They would lose billions in federal funding from that alone. If California were to secede, they would also guarantee that Republicans would effortlessly win the White House every four years.
California is also forgetting that the United States would tax them at very high rates on food, water, and everything else they need to survive. If California still wants to secede, then they can gear up and get ready for a war they will never win.
President Trump can alter the structure of the wall, as well. Should they officially secede, we can build a wall across their eastern and northern borders in order to isolate them off from the entire country. We don’t need them
We would also be able to better control drugs and cartels. If California wants to accept and protect millions of illegal immigrants, they can keep them. It would make the United States that much safer.
The United States does not need the state of California. They do not provide anything that we do not already have–they have zero leverage. They would be a Nation that cannot survive without assistance from others.
If they really want to leave this great Nation, let’s help them out. Sign the petition and help spread the word. | 1real |
Aristocracy’s Immunity From Prosecution Disturbs TARP’s I.G. | Posted on October 26, 2016 by Eric Zuesse. Eric Zuesse For the very first time, on October 25th, a high federal official, the “SIGTARP” or Special Inspector General for the TARP program that bailed out the largest financial institutions and their top investors after the 2008 economic crash, is now making a specific proposal to hold the top-level crooks accountable for the incentive-systems they had put into place motivating their employees to pump-and-dump ‘investments’ during the growth-phase of the ‘free market’ Ponzi game that existed since 2000 when the end of the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act and the start of totally unregulated financial marketeering went wild after 2005 and came crashing down in 2008. Despite the deregulation that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (and both political parties in Congress) instituted, there still remained on the books some laws that high financial executives were breaking, but the SIGTARP has now come to an impasse in trying to obtain the evidence that will enable investigations to proceed against the top executives, and so she is coming out to urge cooperation of the rest of the government in order to enable it to happen. The SIGTARP, Christy Goldsmith Romero, urges : A PROPOSAL TO BRING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE “INSULATED CEO” I propose that Congress remove the insulation around Wall Street CEOs and other high-level officials by requiring the CEO, CFO and certain other senior executives to sign an annual certification that they have conducted due diligence within their organization and can certify that that there is no criminal conduct or civil fraud in their organization. According to a Reuters report from Patrick Rucker, titled “Wall St. Rescue Fund Watchdog Says U.S. Bank Heads Too Insulated” , “Wall Street executives are too shielded from prosecution and should answer for misdeeds committed by underlings, the watchdog for a multibillion-dollar [federal-government] bailout [of the mega-banks] said on Wednesday.” This article, dated Wednesday October 25th, continued: “Senior banking officials should attest each year that their companies are free of criminal fraud and civil abuse, said Christy Goldsmith Romero, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. ‘Every executive should be able to conduct due diligence,’ she told Reuters in an interview. ‘If they are too big to do that, then they are too big, period.’” That policy, if honestly placed into practice, would likely result in lengthy prison terms for many of the people who are the big-dollar political donors; and so it can’t possibly happen. But the very fact that someone in a federal-government capacity has finally said publicly that it needs to happen is shocking enough. The article continues: “U.S. taxpayers have invested more than $400 billion since the crisis, mostly in large Wall Street banks. Goldsmith Romero leads a staff of roughly 140 investigators examining possible abuse of the TARP program.” Romero on Wednesday sent to Congress her agency’s 550-page investigative report (not linked-to by Reuters but here ) on that subject, and Rucker continued: “Goldsmith Romero said the report also described cases where executives are complicit in fraud but the highest-ranking officials are walled off. ‘The knowledge stops,’ she said. ‘It resides at lower levels and stops there. And in many cases, I think that’s by intentional design.’” The reporter, Mr. Rucker, makes clear how grave this situation really is: “Goldsmith Romero has never before suggested a reform of the financial system. She said that she felt compelled to speak up this time after facing so many cases where senior executives seemed out of reach from prosecutions.” So: although the aristocrats’ immunity will not be removed, a federal official has now had the courage to state that it must be removed. Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. Senator who held off from making any endorsement during the Presidential primaries, is now campaigning for Hillary Clinton to become President — the same candidate that Wall Street executives are overwhelmingly funding to win the Presidency — but Warren is already verbally supportive of what Romero is urging. On September 15th, David Dayen at The Intercept bannered, “Elizabeth Warren Asks Newly Chatty FBI Director to Explain Why DOJ Didn’t Prosecute Banksters” , and he reported that on that day: “Warren released two highly provocative letters demanding some explanations. One is to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, requesting a review of how federal law enforcement managed to whiff on all 11 substantive criminal referrals submitted by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), a panel set up to examine the causes of the 2008 meltdown. The other is to FBI Director James Comey, asking him to release all FBI investigations and deliberations related to those referrals.” Warren’s campaigning for Clinton, who has always been against accountability at the top in the U.S., is drastically inconsistent with this public display of supporting such accountability, and is therefore untrustworthy. I (who until now had always voted only for Democrats) earlier reported the fundamental dishonesty of the Democratic Party’s elite about precisely this matter: — Privately, Obama had told Wall Street executives that he would protect them. On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House and he assured them that he would cover their backs; he promised “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks” . It’s not on the White House website; it was leaked out, which is one of the reasons Obama hates leakers (including such heroes as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange). What the DOJ’s IG indicated was, in effect, that Obama had kept his secret promise to them. Here is the context in which Obama said that (from page 234 of Ron Suskind’s 2011 book, Confidence Men ): The CEOs went into their traditional stance. “It’s almost impossible to set caps [to their bonuses]; it’s never worked, and you lose your best people,” said one. “We’re competing for talent on an international market,” said another. Obama cut them off. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that,” he said. “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word. But then Obama’s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem,” he said. “And I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.” According to one of the participants, he then said, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.” No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn’t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit. After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show. He had been lying to the public, all along. Not only would he not prosecute the banksters, but he would treat them as if all they had was “an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem.” And he thought that the people who wanted them prosecuted were like the KKK who had chased Blacks with pitchforks before lynching. According to the DOJ , their Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF) was “established by President Barack Obama in November 2009 to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.” But, according to the Department’s IG , it was all a fraud: a fraud that according to the DOJ itself had been going on since at least November 2009. — If this matter that Romero is raising will be coming up during a Hillary Clinton Administration, the lying about it will simply continue, that’s all. Barack Obama is no less vicious a liar than Hillary Clinton is, but she’s not nearly as skillful a deceiver as he is, but that’s the only real difference between them. She’ll get the job done for the political megadonors, just the same, like she always has. However, if Donald Trump is to be President, then no one can intelligently say what his policy on accountability would be — other than that he’ll work with Congress to get an independent prosecutor to investigate the criminal allegations against Hillary Clinton, including the ones that the untrustworthy FBI alleges that it has already investigated in an impartial manner. Regarding the specific issue that Romero is implicitly also urging, the reinstatement of the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act, which Bill Clinton and the Republicans terminated in 2000 and which had limited bank-size, Trump is on record as demanding that it be done . (That’s one of the reasons why he has been receiving far less from Wall Street than Hillary Clinton has been. Wall Street loathes Trump. Almost everything in this ‘election’ is nearly the opposite of what is commonly presumed.) For the first time in recent memory, there really is an important difference between the two major-Party Presidential candidates. The last time it happened was 2000, when the far-right candidate, George W. Bush ‘won’. This time around, it seems likely to be repeated (and maybe this time by a landslide): the far-right candidate Hillary Clinton will probably win — same result, just different nominal parties this time around. In an important sense, this year’s George W. Bush is Hillary Clinton. (He demanded regime-change in Iraq; she demands regime-change in Russia.) This year’s Al Gore is Donald Trump. Except that this time the big issue isn’t global warming, but instead nuclear war against Russia. Of course, GW Bush was bad on both issues (denying climate-change, and demanding “regime-change in Iraq” where the Moscow-friendly dictator Saddam Hussein ruled). But so too is Hillary (who followed up her ardent advocacy for regime-change in Iraq, by regime-change in Moscow-friendly Libya, and regime-change in Moscow-friendly Ukraine, and regime-change in Moscow-allied Syria; and who is now pushing for regime-change in Russia itself, and thus unchallenged U.S.-aristocracy control over every other nation’s aristocracy). All of this election-year, the supposedly big issue was bigotry, but the thing that’s actually destroying this country and the entire world is class — rich versus poor; the super-rich crushing everyone else — and the ‘news’ media are controlled not by the many poor but by the very few super-rich. And this is why Romero’s call for justice is, sadly, just a cry into the wind. Regarding politics, one has no reason to trust what one hears from the politicians, reads in the newspapers and magazines, or hears or sees on radio and TV. The elite scams are overwhelming from all of the Establishment sides. But finally, an obscure federal official, Ms. Romero, the SIGTARP, has spoken her conscience, despite knowing that she’ll only be punished for it once she’s out of office. Unlike the Democratic Party politicians, she’s not grandstanding. She’s instead truly heroic, speaking truth to power, and really meaning it — and ready to face the consequences for having done it. It’s remarkable. It’s Quixotic, in a really heroic way: pathbreaking, even if that path leads only to a brick wall. At least it will expose to the public the extent to which the system itself is their enemy. Not Mexicans. Not Blacks. Not Whites. Not Muslims. Not Christians. Not Jews. Not Russians. Not men. Not women. Not even (though bigots are dangerous fools) bigots against any such group. The system, right here in the U.S., needs to be changed. Nothing can authentically be blamed on any “not us” target — either for invasion, or otherwise. Romero wants to cancel the immunity of aristocrats — the people who control this country . | 1real |
Brexit Encourages UK to Trade With Non-EU States, Including Russia | Britain and EU After Brexit ( 31 ) 0 13 0 0 Brexit prompts the Unietd Kingdom to facilitate trade relations with non-EU states including Russia, the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) chairman told Sputnik.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Leaving the European Union and losing access to the single market encourages Britain to develop trade with Russia and other non-EU states, Roger Munnings, the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC) chairman, told Sputnik on Wednesday. "There are at least two years to go before we leave the European Union, but I think the way Britain is looking at it is that it gives us a chance to be completely open to all countries in the world, including Russia. We’ll need to look for other trading partners rather than being confined to the European Union by virtue of the free trade arrangement, so we will be very keen to do trade with Russia," Munnings said on the sidelines of the RBCC RussiaTALK Investment Forum in Moscow.
He added that although there was sanctions regime in place against Moscow, at the same time the British government encourages trade with Russia. © Photo: PIxabay UK FinMin Upholds Economic Stimuli to Quell Concerns Over ‘Hard Brexit’ On June 23, the United Kingdom voted on referendum to leave the European Union . On October 2, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that the country would trigger Article 50 of the EU Lisbon Treaty by the end of March 2017 to start the official procedures to cease its EU membership.
A number of EU leaders have already stated that the United Kingdom will lose its access to the single market unless it keeps freedom of movement rules. May, meanwhile, suggested at the Conservative party conference in early October that the country’s exit from the European Union would be a "hard" rather than "soft" Brexit, meaning that control over immigration would be prioritized over the access to the European single market. ... | 1real |
Throwing off the shackles | Headlined to H3 10/26/16 - Advertisement - Philippines president Duterte announces 'separation' from US during China visit Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte announced his 'separation' from the United States, expressing his desire for the Philippines to become more dependent ... License DMCA
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in Beijing, China announcing separation from the United States Considering US belligerence in the world particularly since 9/11, the idea of a countries elected leader standing up and defying the US hyper power is something to behold. The latest leader to exercise his countries right of sovereignty is Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte speaking during a state visit to Beijing, China announced, "Your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States...both in military and economics also".[1] He said, "America has lost" while announcing a new alliance the Philippines, China and Russia, "there are three of us against the world". Of course Duterte is not the first leader to poke his middle finger at the US imperialist. Fidel Castro did it with Cuba in 1959, as did Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999. Two at least who spoke truth to power, put his people first at great risk to himself when they separated their country from US hegemony over them, survived many US attempts to undermine or assassinate and overthrow them. There's too many others to mention here that didn't survive or were overthrown in CIA initiated coups, color revolutions, regime change et al. Is this somehow subversive coming from an American extolling foreign leaders that have defied the US? Or is it an acknowledgement that we, the US, can't dictate to the world. That it's a countries elected leaders purpose to exercise his judgment to do right by his people, follow an independent course to best serve his people, not be subservient and dictated to by the US. If the people disagree with such a leader they can elect someone else or impeach him for felonious behavior. Maybe that's a bit naive, too ideal for the complex world we live in today. - Advertisement - But we as a country have completely lost our way, been an imperialist bully, initiating illegal wars and occupations, aggression against countries that are no threat, imminent or otherwise to America. Authorized torture, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, kill innocents in drone strikes and missile attacks, order the targeted assassination of anyone, anywhere, including American citizens if the president alone so decides. Initiate coups and regime change against any country that defies the US while conducting surveillance of ALL electronic communications of everyone in the world. This is not the behavior of a country capable of having mutual respect for others particularly those countries taking an independent course and not bowing to US diktat. We Americans can close our eyes, pretend or ignore what we have become; a rogue actor on the world stage. Yes rogue. What gave us the right to be the "indispensible country", exceptional, entitled, run roughshod against any leader-Putin being the leader now most demonized in US crosshairs. As for the Philippines, we took it as well as Cuba and Puerto Rico; booty from Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish American war of 1898. - Advertisement - Of course earlier in our countries inglorious history we stole much of what is now California, Texas and the southwest from Mexico while committing genocide and stealing most of the arable and tribal lands of the indigenous native peoples all in the name of "manifest destiny", as if it was some benign, natural, yet inexorable happenstance. Yeah right. Let's admit it. Today we're the beneficiaries of our countries earlier "successful" aggression against the indigenous peoples as well as a country built on slavery; peoples the government has never formally apologized to. We can ignore the truth of this aggressive history, believe it to have been the inevitable consequence overthrowing British colonialism and ridding the country of what the government and most white people then referred to as Indian "savages". Then later came the masses of millions of mostly European immigrants; those ancestors who came to America, a consequence of repression, lack of opportunity, religious intolerance they suffered in their native countries. And with them the American demographic changed forever from its colonial past. So now we're a mass of different peoples, mostly adapted to our earlier British colonial heritage, "connected" to those who threw off British tyranny, declared their independence, formed a union and soon thereafter a formal constitution of rights under the rule of law. A country that began not wanting to engage in foreign entanglements, fiercely independent, embracing the protestant work ethic, most probably considered inward looking by today's standards. It feels quaint, distant, a different sort of people than most in America now. | 1real |
Democrats to join Trump, Republicans in talks to avert government shutdown | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in Congress on Monday accepted an invitation to meet U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans for talks to avert a government shutdown this week, even as the Democrats pressed demands on funding priorities and protecting young immigrants. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who canceled a meeting with Trump last week after he posted a disparaging note about them on Twitter, said on Monday they hoped the president would remain open-minded about reaching a deal with Democrats. “We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement. “There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.” The meeting was scheduled for Thursday, a day before funding for the federal government is due to run out. House Republicans over the weekend introduced a stopgap measure that would fund the government at current levels until Dec. 22 to give lawmakers time to reach a deal on a longer-term bill. Congress is expected to vote on the measure this week. Conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus asked House Republican leaders to extend the duration of the stopgap measure through Dec. 30 in exchange for their votes for the House to go to conference with the Senate on tax legislation, which moved Congress closer to a final bill for a major tax overhaul. “There is a better chance of going to the 30th than the 22nd, but no commitment,” Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters. The House Republican leadership agreed to consider the Dec. 30 date and talk to the Senate leadership about it, a House Republican leadership aide said. Trump is scheduled to have lunch with Republican members of the Senate at the White House on Tuesday. Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate. But they will need some Democratic support to get the spending bill past Senate procedural hurdles that require 60 votes, since there are only 52 Republicans in the 100-member chamber. Schumer said on Monday that everyone should be working to avoid a shutdown, and he did not believe Republican congressional leaders wanted one. “The only one at the moment who’s flirted with a shutdown is President Trump, who tweeted earlier this year that ‘we could use a good shutdown to fix the mess,’” Schumer said. The Republican bill will provide some short-term help for states that are running out of money to finance a health insurance program for lower-income children, Republican aides said. Schumer and Pelosi on Monday listed that program among their priorities, which also included the opioid crisis, pension plans, rural infrastructure and protection for young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, known as “Dreamers.” Those young immigrants must be taken care of now, Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin declared on the Senate floor. He said Democrats had offered in return to toughen border security, a Republican priority. “How can we in good conscience pass a spending bill giving authority and resources to this administration to go out and arrest and deport these young people - and not address the underlying issue of their legality and future in the United States?” Durbin asked. | 0fake |
AWESOME! DENNIS MILLER Goes After The #NeverTrumpers | DENNIS MILLER IS HAS A FANTASTIC WAY OF DRILLING DOWN A TOPIC TO GEWT TO THE HEART OF IT WITH A COMEDIC TWIST Now Actor-comedian Dennis Miller is going after the #NeverTrumpers:Don t kid yourself. At this point, any vote for anyone that is not Donald Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton. Also, both Presidential boxes left blank is a vote for Hillary Clinton because as mindless as Liberals can be even they don t enter into suicide pacts with that petulant, whiny part of themselves. As that is your wont, fine do it! But don t bullshit yourself. You re electing Hillary Clinton because you want to elect Hillary Clinton. | 1real |
After Obamacare: The next Democratic health agenda | The Affordable Care Act has now survived three Supreme Court challenges and countless Republican repeal votes in the House. With Obamacare's place seemingly cemented in history, the law's architects are quietly crafting the next Democratic health-care agenda: lowering costs.
A half-dozen key Democratic policy influencers, from the head of Hillary Clinton's 2008 policy team to former Obama administration officials, are starting to plan for a post-Obamacare Washington. In recent interviews, they describe twin goals — improving quality of care while making it cheaper — that will require building a coalition quite different from the one that supported health reform in 2010.
"The ACA is here to stay and we should assume that, but that doesn't mean everyone is satisfied," says Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, who has close ties to Hillary Clinton after running her policy staff in 2008. "Health expenditures are a big problem from the individual perspective. If you look at public opinion and what people are most anxious about, it's still health care costs."
"The ACA is here to stay, but that doesn't mean everyone is satisfied"
Obamacare faced ferocious opposition from the right, but the underlying idea — get more people signed up for coverage — was one that public health advocates and liberals could rally behind. Now, as the priority shifts to quality and cost, the policy problems become much more difficult to tackle and the solutions less clear.
Policies that reduce cost systemwide often leave consumers paying more out-of-pocket for health care. That can split coalitions that came together around the more unifying goal of covering the uninsured.
"We're trying to get groups that represent consumer-type constituencies to begin a much more significant focus on quality and cost," says Ron Pollack, president of the non-profit Families USA, a group that was instrumental in organizing advocates and industry in support of the Affordable Care Act.
the policy problems will become more difficult — and solutions less clear
Building coalitions in the multi-billion health-care industry, where each stakeholder has different priorities, is excruciating work. A litany of failed attempts at health reform (including Hillary Clinton's own 1994 efforts) provide a gloomy backdrop. So some are skeptical that, after the Obamacare battle left many badly bruised, health care will become a prominent agenda item on the next Democratic president's docket.
"They will do everything they can to not use the phrase health care, Obamacare, Medicare, period," says Bob Kocher, a former Obama administration official. "The standard talking points will be that we're proud we expanded coverage to all Americans and that we want to protect that."
There are myriad thorny health policy issues that Democrats could tackle, everything from getting coverage to the millions of Americans still uninsured to reforming medical malpractice laws. But the increasing consensus is that the next effort will have to focus on reducing costs for one simple reason. Health care in the United States is expensive. Insanely, outlandishly expensive.
The United States spends $2.8 trillion on healthcare annually. That works out to about one-sixth of the total economy and more than $8,500 per person — and way more than any other country. The average American spends $735 annually on out-of-pocket health care costs (which is spending above and beyond monthly premiums).
The past five years have brought a glimmer of good news: health-care costs have grown at a slower pace. After years of rising faster than the economy, health spending has grown at the same rate as other sectors since 2009.
But consumer advocates are concerned that the individuals aren't seeing enough of that slowdown show up in their wallets — that health insurers and hospitals, rather than consumers, have reaped most of the benefits.
Workers' contributions to their insurance benefits have increased 81 percent over the past decade, the Kaiser Family Foundation recently found. Employers' contributions rose too, but more slowly (65 percent).
The percent of workers in a plan with a deductible over $1,000 has risen from 6 percent in 2006 to 32 percent in 2014, the same study showed.
This is the paradox of cost control in the health-care system: so much of the spending is hidden from patients, and so many of the cost-control efforts rely on making that spending more visible to patients, that successful efforts to cut costs can feel to patients like cost increases.
"We want to ensure that the benefits of slower cost growth actually drive towards individuals," Tanden says. "They're the only people who aren't benefiting right now."
Just like Obamacare, the battle to lower costs will require new coalition building, and risks turning one-time friends into enemies. The doctors and hospitals who benefit from expanded coverage — and a wave of new consumers — are the exact same constituencies that stand to lose the most if America spends less on medicine.
In the lead-up to the Affordable Care Act debate, Families USA organized a series of "strange bedfellows" meetings with health care groups across the political spectrum. This helped get everyone from unions to insurers to doctors onboard behind the concept of expanding coverage.
Four years later, in 2013, Pollack quietly worked on what he calls a "mini-version" of the same meetings. He held about a dozen meetings with Karen Ignagni, chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, and officials from the Pacific Business Group on Health, which represents employers.
"Some of these groups aren't necessarily the ones who were our strongest allies on the Affordable Care Act," Pollack says. Insurers were a bit leery of the health reform effort, which would force them to accept the very sick customers that their individual market plans typically rejected.
"the bedfellows get re-arranged depending on what is going on"
But in this new round of reform, insurers arguably stand to be one of the biggest winners. They benefit if costs go down because they can sell less expensive coverage — and that makes them the more natural partner of Democrats in this new era of reform.
"This is an issue where the bedfellows get re-arranged depending on what is going on," says Zeke Emanuel, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former Obama advisor on health policy. "Doctors and hospitals are a big part of the area where we have to reduce costs. They may not be so friendly to every industry on that score."
The hospitals who embraced Obamacare quickly may approach this new effort skeptically: cuts to overall health spending could translate into cuts to their bottom lines.
Exactly how to control health care costs will be a matter of debate among policy experts over coming months, but some ideas are already beginning to emerge in advance of the 2016 election.
Families USA outlined its priorities in a January 2015 paper tiled "Health Reform 2.0," which included ideas like giving public programs the authority to negotiate lower drug prices and putting lower caps on deductibles in Obamacare plans.
Tanden says CAP will release a similar paper later this year, though she declined to comment on particular policy approaches until then. But there is a paper that Tanden and many other CAP fellows co-authored in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2012, which gives some clues about their current thinking.
The list of 23 authors on the paper, titled "A Systemic Approach to Containing Health Care Spending," reads like a who's who of the Democratic health policy establishment. At least half have spent time in the Obama administration. It suggests full transparency on health care prices, allowing the government to competitively bid for the medical equipment it buys Medicare patients, and increasing the scope-of-practice for lower-level providers like nurse practitioners.
"To effectively contain costs," they write, "solutions must target the drivers of both the level of costs and the growth in costs. Solutions will need to reduce costs not only for public payers but also private payers. Finally, solutions will need to root out administrative costs that do not improve health status."
Papers like this come out all the time in Washington. But one with so many CAP co-authors is especially important because of the think tank's close ties to Hillaryland. Its founder, John Podesta, has already been announced as the chair of her not-yet-existent campaign. And Tanden was policy director for Clinton's 2008 campaign.
Most groups, CAP included, are also enthusiastic about proposals that would tether more health care dollars to the quality of care that patients receive — an idea the Obama administration has taken up in recent months. In January, Health and Human Services set a goal of having at least 90 percent of all Medicare payments related to quality by 2018.
A new Democratic administration would likely take leadership on how to make sure hospitals and doctors actually hit that benchmark.
How quickly Democrats could — or would – move on health care remains an area of debate. The president and Democratic legislators have had to spend five years now dealing with the fallout of passing a divisive law that has not become more popular since the day it passed.
But others argue that health care is an inevitable agenda item for any president, Democratic or Republican. The fact that health care costs consume one-sixth of the American economy makes them a huge budgeting concern — whether a president is enthusiastic about the inevitable political battles or not.
"There is sometimes a Washington perspective that 'the Democrats did health care,'" Emanuel says. "You don't 'do' health care once. You do health care forever. It's not a marathon. It's life." | 0fake |
Your dog probably has better healthcare than you do | Below is a short email that my friend Sam posted this morning to his Facebook page about his surprisingly positive experience with the US healthcare system.
I thought it a fantastic read, and I wanted to pass it along to you:
I had to run to the emergency room today for what may be a neurological issue. Dizziness, staggering, loss of balance, that kind of thing.
I’m in San Diego, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and I have no insurance. I figured I was screwed.
But instead, the experience was unreal.
I got seen immediately. I didn’t even have time to sit down, they just whisked me into an examination room.
The doctor and nurse were ON IT, and they took their time with the exam and consultation.
The visit ultimately involved staying the whole day for observation, all kinds of tests, sedation and reversal, blood pressure check, a full blood panel work up (results tomorrow, yes TOMORROW keep your fingers crossed) and having both ears cleaned and flushed.
The bill was a mere $374.63.
Do I have some insane insurance plan? Nope.
Am I being super-subsidized by the rest of America? Nope.
Am I a privileged politician with a special “bosses only” healthcare plan? Don’t make me laugh.
It turns out that the care was for my dog, not for me. And we didn’t go to a ‘people’ hospital– I obviously took my dog to an animal hospital.
She and I are both biological machines, mammals made mostly of water (though she sheds more than I do).
The only other real difference is that the government is regulating the hell out of healthcare for people, while (relatively speaking), leaving healthcare for animals alone.
And that, my friends, is the reason Obamacare has flopped, and why your healthcare costs will keep going up.
It’s not greed. It’s not the drug companies. It’s not anything other than the application of government intervention in what should be a free market.
Simon again.
It’s not exactly controversial these days to suggest that the US healthcare system is in bad shape.
According to data collected by numerous independent agencies like the Institute of Medicine, Commonwealth Fund, and Kaiser Family Foundation, the US still ranks dead last among advanced economies in overall quality of its healthcare system.
In fact, the US healthcare system has the worst record in the number of deaths caused by mistakes or inefficient care.
And wait times in the US for urgent care and primary care visits rank lower than every other developed nation.
Americans pay at least 50% more for healthcare in terms of annual spending than people in other advanced nations, yet they receive less care as measured by the number of doctor visits.
Sure, it’s great that there are fewer uninsured people than ever before in the US, but this is a measure of QUANTITY, not a measure of QUALITY.
Undoubtedly the US is home to some of the finest medical professionals in the world.
But they’ve been buried under an expensive, over-regulated bureaucracy that continues to erode overall quality in the system.
A 2015 report from the National Academy of Sciences summed it up by stating, “For Americans, health care costs and expenditures are the highest in the world, yet health outcomes and care quality are below average by many measures.”
But instead of trying to understand WHY the system is so slow, bureaucratic, and expensive to begin with, politicians try to ‘fix’ it by creating more regulations.
It’s as if they believe they can legislate their way to a quality, efficient medical care system, just as they believe they can legislate their way to a better education system or economic prosperity.
This almost never works.
After all, the people who come up with these rules are notoriously unqualified and have rarely ever held a job outside of their giant government bureaucracy.
So despite what may be some very good intentions to fix the system, they invariably make things worse.
The end result is that your pet probably has access to more efficient healthcare than you do. | 1real |
EP #15: Patrick Henningsen LIVE – ‘Crisis of American Liberalism’ with guest Caleb Maupin | Join Patrick every Wednesday at Independent Talk 1100 KFNX and globally at Alternate Current Radio for the very best in news, views and analysis on all top stories domestically and abroad THIS WEEK: Episode 15 This week we cover the America s turbulent transition of power, as President Trump continues to search for his political mojo in Washington DC Tonight, host Patrick Henningsen is joined by special guest, author and roving correspondent for RT News International and author, Calib Maupin, to talk about his new book, The 2016 Elections & The Crisis of American Liberalism, and how the new shifting political landscape in America is shaping up Trump, Soros and how the old Left-Right binary system is searching for a new coherence. Listen Listen to EP 15: Patrick Henningsen LIVE with Caleb Maupin on Spreaker.This program broadcasts LIVE every Wednesday night from 9pm to 10pm MST, post-drive time and after the Savage Nation, on Independent Talk 1100 KFNX over the terrestrial AM band across the greater Phoenix and central Arizona region, and live over global satellite and online via www.1100kfnx.com.LISTEN TO MORE INTERVIEWS AT PATRICK HENNINGSEN LIVE SHOW ARCHIVESSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
State Department memo shows unconstitutionality of Trump travel ban: ACLU | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internal State Department instructions to implement President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban on citizens of six Muslim-majority nations help demonstrate that the ban violates the constitution, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in court filings late on Thursday. The ACLU made the argument as part of its lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of California on behalf of three student visa holders against Trump’s March 6 executive order barring travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days and refugees for four months. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, says the order discriminates against Muslims. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued instructions to implement Trump’s order in a series of four cables to consular officers worldwide last month, which were first revealed by Reuters. The ACLU pointed to language from one of the cables that directs consular officers to assess whether applicants from the six countries “found otherwise eligible” for U.S. visas could still be denied visas based on Trump’s order. The ACLU said the guidance “amounts to an unconstitutional amendment of existing law.” Tillerson issued the cable on March 10, and followed it with another set of instructions on March 15, the day before the ban was supposed to go into effect. After federal courts blocked the central tenets of Trump’s order, Tillerson issued two other cables that rescinded many of his previous instructions but left some tighter visa vetting procedures in place. A State Department official declined to comment on the litigation or the cables. The Department of Justice also declined to comment. The Trump administration has said that the travel ban and increased screening of foreigners are crucial to protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. The government is arguing in court that the president has broad authority under the law to make immigration decisions when there are concerns about national security. The March executive order replaced a more sweeping travel ban that Trump signed on Jan. 27, which sparked chaos and protests at airports and was challenged by more than two dozen lawsuits. The original ban had covered citizens of Iraq, as well as the six countries also included in the revised ban. Iraq was dropped from the revised order, as was an indefinite ban on all refugees from Syria. The revised ban aimed to overcome legal hurdles by excluding legal permanent residents and allowing for waivers for people with ties to the United States. The ACLU, in its claims that the order discriminates against Muslims, points to calls by Trump on the campaign trail for a “Muslim ban” and to a speech he made last month calling the new ban a “watered-down” version of the first. | 0fake |
Is This Trump’s Biggest Financial Con Yet? | One of the biggest mysteries about the long con of Donald Trump's presidential campaign is how he has convinced millions of middle-class white Americans that he truly gives a shit about them. How can it be, I’ve often wondered, that a billionaire who lives in a pink-marble triplex high above Fifth Avenue, one who flies around in his own aging Boeing 757 and who owns a weekend home in Palm Beach and property in New Jersey horse country, can somehow become the hero of the people left in the wake of the new digital economy? These voters, indeed, have every right to wonder what happened to their American dream. They have every right to be worried about their livelihood and their future. They have every right to be equally terrified and aggrieved about the slow growth of the real economy, and how it has made the life that we have come to expect for generations all but unattainable.
Trump, of course, has never quite evidenced sympathy for the common man. According to a recent bombshell report in The Washington Post, in fact, we now know that Trump’s own foundation reportedly spent $20,000 to purchase a six-foot portrait of Trump himself. Perhaps Trump’s appeal to the Rust Belt results, in part, from the fact that he is a former television star, who showed up in our living rooms every week in a fictitious corporate boardroom. Sara Flynn, a 55-year-old mother of four sons in Hebron, Kentucky, recently explained to reporters from The New York Times that she has liked Trump ever since she watched him on The Apprentice. She said that she believes Trump when he says he can “make America great again.” She seemed wistful. “That’s a bygone era, that’s when America was great,” she said of the old days. “It hasn’t been like that for me.”
I suspect part of the reason that Flynn and others like her feel an affinity for Trump is because of the promises he makes in his speeches, like the one he gave on Thursday to the Economic Club of New York, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, which is now owned by a Chinese insurance company. The speech was likely written by one of the Reagan-era economic disciples who whisper in Trump’s ears these days. Maybe it was Larry Kudlow, the ex–Bear Stearns economist and CNBC veteran (he was on the dais over Trump’s right shoulder)? Or maybe it was Stephen Moore, formerly a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, who is now a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation? Trump’s words certainly sounded a bit like Reagan’s. Fresh from his two-hour photo-op in Flint, Michigan, the day before, he told the invitation-only crowd in New York, “It used to be cars were made in Flint, and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint.”
It’s a good line, and Trump presumably knew it. He had, in fact, also used it in Flint the day before. Like some of what Trump says, it is funny. But like much of what he says, it isn't true. We make millions of cars, and car parts, in America. A recent study by the Center for Automotive Research, in fact, revealed that the auto industry accounts for about 3 percent, or nearly $75 billion, of all foreign direct investment in the United States.
But Trump’s brand depends upon fever dreams more than realities. Trump laid the promises on thick at the Waldorf. “We are going to turn this around,” he continued. “My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving, and that our economy can never grow as it did once before. We reject the pessimism that says our standard of living can no longer rise, and that all that’s left to do is divide up and redistribute our shrinking resources. Everything that is broken today can be fixed, and every failure can be turned into a great success.”
Trump subsequently promised to create 25 million new jobs—more jobs than certain credible economists believe that there will be workers to fill. He promised to cut taxes. He promised to cut regulations. He promised to repatriate the trillions of dollars in corporate profit—he estimated the figure at $5 trillion—and to make child-care costs tax deductible. He promised to rip up the trade agreements that he despises, NAFTA and the T.P.P. He promised that the economy, which has been stuck at around 2 percent annual economic growth for the last 10 years or so, would start growing at 3.5 percent per year, and maybe 4 percent per year if everything goes as he predicts it will. Should that happen, Trump suggested, our $600 billion annual deficit would decrease.
He also promised to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from the current 35 percent. “An explosion of new business and new jobs will be created,” he said. “It will be amazing to watch.” He then engaged in a little voodoo economics. “We are proposing a $4.4 trillion tax cut that will score as $2.6 trillion under a dynamic growth model, which is how taxes should be scored,” he said. (If Larry Kudlow is around, could he please translate that sentence into a language one of Trump’s supporters, or even mere journalists, might understand?) Trump then promised to put coal miners and steel workers back to work, despite the fact that so many of the companies that operate in the coal sector face existential struggles; and those that operate in the steel sector are a shadow of their former selves. | 0fake |
[PHOTOS] SECOND FAKE BLACK ACTIVIST EMERGES: #BlackLivesMatter ORGANIZER CLAIMED HE WAS TERRORIZED BY “decades old racial tensions” | Are these faux blacks cashing in on victim status or simply taking white guilt too far?An investigative blogger has accused Shaun King, a key figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, of misleading media icon Oprah Winfrey by pretending to be biracial in order to qualify for an Oprah scholarship to historically black Morehouse College. The blogger says King is white and has been lying about his ethnicity for years. King is a high-profile campaigner against police brutality and justice correspondent for the liberal Daily Kos website who told Rebel magazine in 2012 that he was biracial, with the magazine reporting that he is the son of a Caucasian mother and an African-American father. He has also described himself as mixed with a black family on Twitter.King has been lionised by the press, praised as hero of civil rights and social activism. He has written extensively about a childhood in which he was terrorised by decades old racial tensions. He claims to have been the focus of constant abuse of the resident rednecks of my school. Yet, in recent weeks, rumours have been circulating about his ethnicity. A 1995 police incident report lists Shaun King s ethnicity as white. And blogger Vicki Pate, who has been assembling forensic accounts of Shaun King s background and family tree on her blog, Re-NewsIt!, has published her findings.She claims that King is entirely white and says a birth certificate, which Breitbart has since independently acquired from the Kentucky Office of Vital Statistics, names a white man as his father. King s case echoes that of Rachel Dolezal, a civil rights activist from Washington who claimed to be biracial while in fact being of caucasian origin. Dolezal continues to insist she identifies as black, despite her parents revealing that she is entirely white.If Pate is right, Shaun King, who often uses black and white photographs of himself online rather than colour images, may have misled African-American hero Winfrey by applying for and accepting an Oprah Scholarship to the historically black Morehouse College. Oprah Scholarships are given exclusively to black men.In his Daily Kos diary, King refers to himself as a brother, writing: Oprah Winfrey paid my way through Morehouse. The leadership scholarship that I received from her is why I have a college degree today. Five hundred other brothers have the exact same story. Shaun King s biography has attracted the attention of bloggers and journalists thanks to several bizarre inconsistencies in his public claims. He often struggles when asked to recall basic facts about his own life. For instance, in August 2014, King wrote on Twitter that he was father to three black girls, while, six months earlier, he claimed to be father to four.It is of course possible that a family tragedy is responsible for the inconsistency, but the unexplained change in biographical details is not a one-off. In October 2009, King claimed to have endured four spinal surgeries. By February 2010, the number of surgeries had shrunk to three. There is also some confusion about when an alleged car crash may or may not have happened.As it turns out, these explosive new racial allegations are just the latest in a string of controversies surrounding Shaun King: on July 21, a conservative blog reported that his account of a brutal, racially-motivated beating in 1995, which at least two reports have described as Kentucky s first hate crime, did not match up with a police report from the case. King, 35, has related the story of the hate crime on his blogs and in his recent self-help book, seemingly to bolster his credibility as an activist and as a self-help guru, wrote the Daily Caller s Chuck Ross. While King has said that he was attacked by up to a dozen racist and redneck students, official records show that the altercation involved only one other student. And while King has claimed that he suffered a brutal beating that left him clinging to life, the police report characterized King s injuries as minor, Ross reported.This month, more details have emerged from King s account that do not match up with the police report or eyewitness accounts from journalists who noticed that King s public claims did not square with reality.Remarkably, King s own publication the Daily Kos, at which he is listed as a staff writer, ran a provocatively titled blog post in July of this year: Is there something fishy about Shaun King? The post alleged that people had been asking questions about King for some time and linked to the earlier Daily Caller report. While I know that it s in a right-wing publication, there was something that prevented me from instantly dismissing the article I ve seen a number of people on Daily Kos complain that Shaun plays fast and loose with the truth, wrote contributor Burt Miles. So I started to do some digging on the Internet and found a lot of information which, if true, makes me very concerned about Shaun, his motives, and how his actions could reflect badly on this site and be used to smear the Black Lives Matter movement. Miles continued: Is there anything to all this, or is it some kind of organized smear campaign? And, if it is a smear campaign, how does it involve so many different sites, publications and individuals? It was around the same time that Breitbart contacted Vicki Pate, who has been investigating King s claims for several years. Pate provided key documents that appear to show that King has two white parents and that he has been lying to the public about his race. Here is a picture of Shaun King (left) with his mother and brother(left) via: RenewsitOne of them is his birth certificate, listing his parents as Naomi Kay Fleming and Jeffery Wayne King and a birth date of September 17, 1979 in Versailles, Kentucky. King had already told journalists his mother was white. So all that remained for Pate to determine was whether his father was white too.King has always claimed that his father is black. But King s father, Jeffery, is white, says Pate. She points to a man born 11 November 1955 in Campbell, Kentucky who has been the subject of multiple arrests, including for motoring and drug offences. That birth date would make him 23 at the time of Shaun King s birth, the same age given on Shaun s birth certificate.The Jeffery Wayne King whose name and date of birth concord with Shaun King s birth certificate is pictured below, in a 2007 police mug shot. Various documents give his name as Jeffery and Jeffrey Wayne King, names which are common variants of one another, but King Snr s date of birth and place of residence is the same in all records. Jeffrey King, King s alleged father, who he has claimed in the past is black (top); King s brother Jason is pictured (bottom)What s more, Pate says she has definitively linked the man pictured in these mugshots to Shaun King via Shaun s brother, Kentucky Air Guard Russ King, who is also clearly caucasian. Finally, public records show only one J Wayne King in the state.By 2015, Shaun King had finessed his account of growing up black and suffering discrimination. I was raised in rural Kentucky, he told the blog Generation Progress. It was actually pretty rough. African Americans faced a lot of racism and discrimination growing up. I never really experienced overt racism myself until high school, he claimed. I was put into a weird position when a huge group of students (who called themselves rednecks ) hated me for no reason. King must have known while giving interviews as late as 2015 that Vicki Pate was tracking down his family history. But he continued to deliver craftily-worded answers to interview questions that gave the impression he was a person of color and that he had been the victim of hate crimes.Neither is true, says Pate. She told Breitbart last night that King has never denied her accusations. Shaun King has not denied the story to me, or anyone else, as far as I know, she said. Whenever it is mentioned on Twitter he simply blocks whoever is asking and reports them for harassment. He did reply to one person but only to say, Haters gonna hate. I myself have been suspended from Twitter just for posing the question. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
NUT JOB GLENN BECK Joins Liberal, Foul-Mouthed Whack Job Samantha Bee In Unified Effort To Fight “TRUMPISM” [VIDEO] | Glenn Beck, a man once described by Forbes as someone who s managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth, has (seemingly) had a profound change of heart. Following his call for conservatives to empathize with Black Lives Matter activists in a New York Times op-ed back in September, the Blaze founder joined Samantha Bee on Full Frontal on Monday to declare a common enemy: the Precedent-elect, a.k.a. Mr. Brexit, a.k.a. the former Apprentice host.Complex | 1real |
Kevin McCarthy is a total dope: This bumbling yahoo is about to be second in line to the presidency | But then the sobering realization sets in: these are elected members of perhaps most prestigious governing body in the world.
Let this sink in for a moment: each of these dolts is chosen by voters to be one of 535 elites who are tasked with authoring and voting on legislation that impacts the entire country and beyond. Think about that. Louie Gohmert, who once said the “wall of separation” between church and state is “a one way wall,” whatever the hell that means, gets to vote on laws that could potentially and irreversibly alter the course of your life.
Our only possible defense against being utterly confounded and horrified by the power granted to men and women who have no business wielding such power, is to laugh at their flaming stupidity. Otherwise, it’d be way too easy lapse into inextricable despair and, in some cases, moron-induced alcoholism.
In spite of the rapid dumbing-down of the GOP (see also Mr. Trump), they continue to churn out more dummies.
Enter Kevin McCarthy. The Bakersfield, California Republican is the most likely conservative white-guy to ascend into John Boehner’s post as Speaker of the House. And he shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near Congress, much less a leadership post.
By now, we’re all aware of McCarthy’s admission that the congressional select committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks is almost exclusively designed to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations.
They say gaffes are merely the truths spoken out loud. This was certainly the case with McCarthy. By the way, we should underscore at this point how McCarthy isn’t just another ambitious member of Congress. He’s the House Majority Leader. So, yes, the House Majority Leader accidentally spilled the beans on one of the longest running scams in congressional history — one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money since Ken Starr’s probe into President Clinton’s pants-parties.
Either McCarthy is incapable of reading, or he has the worst speech-writing staff in the history of American politics — and that includes Sarah Palin’s self-authored Patriotic Mad Libs. Three days after Boehner announced his resignation from Congress, McCarthy was propped up for a foreign policy speech before the John Hay Initiative. The ostensible goal was to burnish McCarthy’s political heft, but the exact opposite happened and, frankly, even the dumbest Republicans ought to be embarrassed to caucus with this idiot.
Here are some highlights:
War of radical Islam? “On” or “against” makes more sense, of course. And shouldn’t it be “lives” and not “life?” Honestly, the rest of the quotes will make this passage seem comparatively Shakespearean.
There’s no such phrase as “stem a flow.” There’s something called “stemflow.” One can also stem the flow of something, which is possibly what he meant. But “politically strategy” is just ridiculous.
“We have isolated Israel, while bolding places like Iran.” “The absence of leadership over the past six years has had a horrific consequences all across the globe.” Was anyone fired for this? How the hell is he still a contender for Speaker? “In the past few years alone, I have visited Poland, Hungria, Estonia, Russia and Georgia…” Hungria. Which is north of Freedonia and adjacent to that fake island where Balki from “Perfect Strangers” came from. “It defies belief that the president would allow the ban on Iranian oil exports to be lifted. And also stand by while Russia blackmails an entire continent, all the while keeping the place of the band on America.” I have no idea what any of that means. Which continent? Let’s get real here: we should amend the Constitution so that when any elected politician mutilates the English language this badly, their desk chair turns into an ejector-seat that summarily launches them out of Congress. Let’s get on this now before it’s too late. “We don’t have the same as difficult decision that this White House is managing the decline and putting us in tough decisions for the future.” To be fair, gaffes are part of being a public figure. Spend enough time in front of a microphone and weird crap will inevitably fall out. However, a “stem a flow” of gaffes like this is inexcusable for a leader who’s stepping into an office that’s two heartbeats away from the presidency. Again, was it his speechwriter? Was he unable to read the prepared remarks? Why was he incapable of correcting the remarks on-the-fly? Was he having a stroke? Even the party of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin should, in a sane world, stand up and in a unified voice block this nincompoop from becoming Speaker. They won’t, of course, and Boehner will likely hand his gavel over to the guy who, with a straight face, said he visited a place called “Hungria.” The good news, on the other hand, is that we’ll all have another GOP doofus to kick around for a while. Silver linings, etc. Ever since Karl Rove and the Bush administration systematically altered the political landscape making it perfectly acceptable to be completely incompetent and still get re-elected by low-information voters who think politicians shouldn’t be any smarter than the people who elect them: we’ve mostly settled for idiots. Sadly, the demystification of the presidency and electoral politics has convinced us that anyone can hold these jobs and that leaders should be “just like us.” Sorry, but the guy you might want to have a beer with shouldn’t control the nuclear launch codes or the destiny of the free world. We should demand leaders who are devastatingly smart, engaged, disciplined, centered and intellectually curious. We should be gravitationally drawn to leaders with impeccable schooling and robust speaking skills. The salient question is this: Why don’t Republicans want the same? Why are they so willing to settle for feckless trolls like Donald Trump or marble-mouthed dilettantes like Kevin McCarthy? It might be somewhat acceptable if they actually took responsibility for putting us all in tough decisions for the future, but the party of personal responsibility will never do that. And it’s hurting America. | 0fake |
Syria producing more energy after army recaptures gas fields - ministry | DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria s government has produced much more power in recent months as the army recaptured natural gas fields from militants, the electricity ministry said on Tuesday. Bassam Darwish, head of the electricity ministry s planning unit, told Reuters that the amount of gas the petroleum ministry provided to fuel power plants has nearly doubled since last winter. There had been a very big problem with securing fuel and we went through a difficult winter... We have seen an improvement, Darwish said. After the liberation of any area, the workers of the energy sector directly go in and repair facilities. With the help of Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, the army has driven rebels from Syria s main urban centers in western Syria and marched eastwards against Islamic State. Syrian troops with their allies pushed into the oil-rich province of Deir al-Zor last month, after steady advances against Islamic State insurgents across the central and eastern desert. Several gas fields have fallen back under government control since last year. Electricity supply has been highly restricted and irregular across various parts of the country during the six-year war. Improving it would help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad restore economic growth in territory the government controls. Since early in Syria s multi-sided conflict, Damascus and the electricity ministry have worked with friendly states to help keep the power system running, Darwish said. Contracts were signed with Russia, with China, with Iran... that enabled us to continue working in the past, he said. Earlier this month, Iran signed deals with Damascus to repair and build power plants, a potentially lucrative move for Tehran that points to its deepening economic role. During the visit by Syria s electricity minister to Tehran, the two sides signed a memorandum of understanding that includes restoring a main control centre for the Syrian power grid. The deals also involve a contract to supply power to Aleppo city. Darwish said the meeting led to signing very important contracts with Iranian energy company MAPNA, with strong support from the Islamic Republic. Under the deals, Iran will make payment easy for the Syrian government, whose economy has been battered by war and Western sanctions, he said. The contracts...are based on payment facilities from the Iranian side, he added. We expect very big contracts to come out of the MoU that was signed... very large numbers, always with preferential terms for the Syrian side. Shunned by Western powers, Damascus has been looking to friendly states to play a major role in rebuilding the country. Iran will build an oil refinery in Syria after the war ends, the head of downstream technologies at Iran s Research Institute of the Petroleum Industry was quoted as saying on Tuesday. In January, Iran s government and entities close to its elite Revolutionary Guards signed major telecommunications and mining deals with Damascus. Since at least 2012, Iran has provided critical military support to the Damascus government, helping it regain swathes of the country. Iran experts say Tehran is now looking to reap a financial dividend. Before the war in Syria, power cuts and blackouts were almost non-existent, Darwish said. The government produced less than 20 billion kilowatt hour last year, down from 50 billion in 2011, he said. It was constantly declining because of the lack of fuel, in addition to destruction in the electric system and energy sector, including power plants and oil wells, he said. Darwish estimated that direct damages in the power sector throughout the war amounted to between $4 and 5 billion. Indirect losses resulting from the lack of electricity to various sectors, residential zones, and institutions, had reached nearly $60 billion, he said. This shows us...the scale of the efforts that will have to be very big to restore the electric system, which will also require very large investments, he said. This issue is related to the availability of funding, which is currently the main obstacle, he said. The government was doing all it could, but the size of the damages is big. | 0fake |
Senate banking panel Democrats seek action on Obama nominees | (Reuters) - Senate Banking Committee Democrats on Monday asked the panel’s Republican chairman in a letter to “clear the backlog” of 16 nominations by President Barack Obama to posts related to financial oversight, national security and other areas. The committee, led by Republican Senator Richard Shelby, has “failed to carry out one of its basic duties” for more than a year, the 10 Democratic banking committee senators wrote in the Feb. 22 letter. It is the only Senate committee that did not act on any nominees last year, the Democrats wrote. Of the 16 nominations pending before the committee, four have been waiting for action for more than a year while others have been “in limbo” for more than nine months, the Democratic senators wrote. Shelby must “stop obstructing” the nominations, they wrote in a separate statement. All 10 Democrats on the committee signed the letter, including Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Charles Schumer of New York. A spokeswoman for Shelby did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shelby has said he is concerned that Obama has not nominated anyone as the U.S. Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, a post created by the Dodd Frank financial reform law, but which has never been filled. “We are aware of your concern that the Administration has not nominated anyone to serve as Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, but the response to one vacancy should not be the creation of 16 more,” the Democratic banking committee senators wrote. It was unclear why President Obama has not appointed a nominee for the Fed post. A White House spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The Senate Banking Committee backlog includes Lisa Fairfax and Hester Peirce, Obama’s two nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Adam Szubin, nominated as the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes. | 0fake |
BREAKING: GOP Chairman Grassley Has Had Enough, DEMANDS Trump Jr. Testimony | Donald Trump s White House is in chaos, and they are trying to cover it up. Their Russia problems are mounting by the hour, and they refuse to acknowledge that there are problems surrounding all of this. To them, it s fake news, or a hoax. However, the facts bear things out differently, and it seems that there are now cracks in the Congressional public leadership.Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, is fed up. He is now demanding that Donald Trump, Jr. and former 2016 Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort testify before his committee regarding the now infamous shady meeting between Donald Trump and the shady Russian lawyer who promised dirt on 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In fact, this information is due, well, NOW. This demand sends a few signals to team Trump most notably that they should not fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller under any circumstances, despite the fact that it seems that this seems to be what Trump s White House is laying the groundwork, so to speak, to do as we speak.Here is the tweet regarding Grassley s warning:Also, anyone who thinks that Senator Grassley and the rest of the Senate are not serious about this only needs to look at the warning that has already been given: Trump Jr. and Manafort will either follow orders, or be served with subpoenas that force them to comply. If they refuse, they will be held in contempt of Congress, which carries with it serious jail time.Even the cruel, craven creatures within the GOP are sick of Donald Trump s corruption and his scandal-ridden White House. They are angry that he staged a hostile takeover of their party, first with birtherism and giving them a permanently racist label all while decimating all efforts that were made to pretend the Republican Party isn t a hotbed of racism, and while turning their worlds upside down, and with it, the nation. It seems that old-timers like Grassley, who are clearly sick of Trump s bullshit, just might be the ones who could save the republic. All they need is a bit of courage.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 1real |
Strategic Culture | Donald Trump and Potential Russia-West Break Points The state of challenged Russia-West (especially US-Russia) relations is something questioned by Western realists and some alternative others. Donald Trump made it to the US presidency, despite saying some things that run counter to the biases against Russia, evident in the American political establishment... | 1real |
They Said What?!: Find Out What Amy Adams, Khloé Kardashian, And Neil deGrasse Tyson Have To Say | Email Ever wonder what’s on the mind of today’s most notable people? Well, don’t miss our unbelievable roundup of the best and most talked about quotes of the day: “ Halloween is an important day for me because it marks the anniversary of the first time I dressed up as a seahorse. ” —Amy Adams On Halloween “ Pretty much the only place I can escape the paparazzi these days is the mouth of a volcano. And then I’m dealing with lava, which I call ‘mountain paparazzi.’ So I am pretty stressed out most of the time. ” —Khloé Kardashian On fame “ A lot of people don’t know: The bed isn’t the reason chocolate melts when you’re in bed. It’s actually your hands holding the chocolate, squeezing it close to your chest while you read under the covers. Some part of the equation had to give. Eventually I decided that I get the floor, the chocolate gets the bed, and I get my chocolate. The perfect calculation. ” —Neil deGrasse Tyson | 1real |
Revealed: Loretta Lynch Given Talking Points for Secret Clinton ‘Tarmac Meeting’ | 21st Century Wire says Clearly, below the surface of current events, the 2016 election process is still ongoing, and a partisan war is going on for control of the White House. This latest news could very well be used as a bargaining chip by Trump s faction behind the scenes.Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch claims her secret meeting with Bill Clinton was about golf and grand kids. It seems like this was simply part of her prepared talking points, which would indicate that Lynch was lying to the public about the true nature of that crucial conversation ABC15 PhoenixPHOENIX Newly released documents reveal former Attorney General Loretta Lynch was prepared for questions about the now-infamous tarmac meeting at Sky Harbor International Airport with former President Bill Clinton.The private meeting happened in Phoenix on the evening of June 27, 2016, a matter of hours before the Obama Department of Justice decision on whether then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had revealed classified information when using a private email account while secretary of state.ABC15 s Christopher Sign broke the story of the tarmac meeting two days later, prompting a chain of events that would include an unprecedented news conference by then-FBI Director James Comey.Documents reveal Department of Justice staffers were given a heads-up that ABC15 had learned about the meeting, and assisted the Attorney General on how to address any potential questions from reporters Large portions of the hundreds of emails have been redacted, but what remains gives rare insight into the crisis-mode reaction by the DOJ. At least ten high-level staffers were involved in an e-mail chain discussing how to handle the situation, crafting talking points for the Attorney General Continue this exclusive story at ABC15READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Clinton camp says FBI should say what it knows about Trump's Russia ties | WASHINGTON/FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) - A top aide to Hillary Clinton urged the FBI on Tuesday to disclose what it knows about any ties between Donald Trump and Russia, accusing the agency of unfairly publicizing its inquiry into Clinton’s email practices while staying quiet about the Republican presidential candidate. The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a preliminary inquiry in recent months into allegations that Trump or his associates might have had questionable dealings with Russian people or businesses, but found no evidence to warrant opening a full investigation, according to sources familiar with the matter. The agency has not publicly discussed the probe. A week before Election Day, the Clinton campaign was trying to contain damage from the announcement by FBI Director James Comey on Friday that his agency was looking into newly discovered emails that might relate to Clinton’s use of a private server while she was secretary of state. Clinton has voiced confidence the FBI will not find anything problematic. She campaigned on Tuesday in the battleground state of Florida, where she was joined in Dade City by former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom Trump had mocked for gaining weight. Chants of “Lock her up!” from dozens of Trump supporters gathered nearby could be faintly heard while Clinton spoke. In Ft. Lauderdale, a young man who yelled, “She’s a liar” was escorted out of the rally. Several other protesters removed during the course of her speech. “I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and behavior from people who support Donald Trump,” Clinton said as another protester was removed from the rally. Trump and other Republicans have seized on Comey’s announcement, which did not indicate any wrongdoing by Clinton, to ratchet up criticism of the Democratic candidate. She leads in most opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Trump urged people on Tuesday who voted early for his Democratic rival to cancel their ballots and switch to him. “This is a message for any Democratic voters who have already cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton and who are having a bad case of buyer’s remorse, in other words you want to change your vote,” Trump told a Wisconsin rally. “So if you live here or in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Minnesota, you can change your vote to Donald Trump.” Several states, including those cited by Trump, have a process to allow voters who cast early ballots to change their votes, either by submitting new ballots or showing up at their polling place on Election Day. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook questioned why the FBI director had not released any information about the agency’s Russia inquiries. “If you’re in the business of releasing information about investigations on presidential candidates, release everything you have on Donald Trump. Release the information on his connections to the Russians,” Mook said on CNN. The FBI inquiry reviewed allegations that Trump or his associates might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or engaged in contacts or commerce with people in Russia who are subject to U.S. or international financial sanctions. The U.S. government has blamed Russia for cyber attacks on Democratic Party organizations. Democrats criticize Trump for taking what they say is a pro-Russia foreign policy stance. Russia’s possible role in the campaign again came into focus when online magazine Slate said a group of computer scientists had been alarmed by records showing thousands of apparent connection attempts between an email server operated on behalf of the Trump Organization and computers inside a Russian company, Alfa Bank in Moscow. Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said the server, which had been used to send out hotel marketing material, had been dormant for years. Prominent U.S. cyber security company FireEye said it had been hired by Alfa Bank to investigate the records and had been granted access to the bank’s systems in Moscow to look for evidence of any relationship with Trump’s company or any signs of hacking or infection. FireEye said so far it had found no emails being sent back and forth or any other link. Opinion polls showed Clinton’s lead has narrowed slightly since early last week but it was too early to say whether the email controversy was hurting her. Clinton led businessman Trump in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely voters released on Monday, by 44 percent to 39 percent. Clinton, hoping to be the first woman elected president, strengthened her lead over Trump in polls after the release last month of a 2005 video in which the Republican bragged in vulgar terms about groping women. But in a dramatic twist, Comey told Congress in a letter on Friday that the FBI was reviewing the newly discovered emails. Comey had announced in July that the FBI had completed a probe into the email practices, concluding there were no grounds to bring any charges. Clinton’s team has been pressing the FBI to provide details on the new trove of emails, which Comey said may or may not be significant in the case. Little is publicly known yet about the emails, other than that they were found during an unrelated probe into former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Comey’s letter has provided Republicans with fresh fodder for attack in the waning days of the campaign. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that a Clinton presidency would bog down in “scandal baggage.” Congressional Republicans, who had been concerned Trump risked damaging their majorities in the House and Senate, were also encouraged by his recent statements on efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. A campaign aide said if Trump wins, he would ask Congress to begin working on legislation to repeal the law before the Jan. 20 inauguration. | 0fake |
Duterte’s Free Birth-Control Order Is Latest Skirmish With Catholic Church - The New York Times | MANILA — When Lizel Torreras, 35, became pregnant with her third child, she mixed a tincture of bitter herbs and mahogany bark, a home remedy said to induce abortion. Her husband, who worked as a garbage scavenger, did not make enough money to buy a regular supply of birth control pills, much less raise another child. “With just two kids, we were already struggling,” she said. “The children were going to have a hard time. We might not have been able to send them to school. ” But after three attempts, Ms. Torreras, a churchgoing Catholic, could not bring herself to drink the potion. Like millions of other women in the Philippines who have no access to contraception, Ms. Torreras had the baby. Then another one. The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, signed an executive order this month calling for the full and immediate enforcement of a 2012 law that would give six million women like Ms. Torreras free contraception and reproductive health services. Mr. Duterte portrayed the order as an antipoverty measure, with an official calling it “ and development. ” But the order was also Mr. Duterte’s latest jab at the Roman Catholic Church, which wields significant power in the Philippines and has fought for years to keep the law from taking effect. Under the law, government agencies will provide modern family planning services, including free contraceptives and prenatal care to all women and families. The measure also mandates that sex education be taught in schools and that companies offer reproductive health services to their employees. But the law, which took more than 13 years to be passed by Congress before being signed into law in 2012, has yet to fully take effect, a testament to the power of the Catholic Church, groups and allied lawmakers. The church and other contraception opponents filed petitions with the Supreme Court, which issued several rulings blocking parts of the law. The court continues to prevent the Health Department from procuring, distributing or selling birth control implants, a ban that women’s health groups fear could be extended to the pill and other forms of hormonal birth control when existing certifications expire in 2018. Last year, Congress cut the Health Department’s budget for contraceptives, citing the court order halting the distribution of implants. Local agencies have administered the law differently in different districts, and sex education in particular has varied widely by school district. This month, Vicente Sotto III, the Senate majority leader, vowed to stop the distribution of condoms in high schools, arguing that they encouraged promiscuity. The battle is not over, but Mr. Duterte’s order provides clear guidance to government agencies and local health officials that they should uphold the law, eliminating some of the ambiguity the various court decisions have caused. And while the church still opposes the law in principle, it has scaled back its public campaign against it. Two archbishops, in interviews, acknowledged defeat. The Duterte administration says it can provide desperately needed services that are vital to lifting millions of people out of poverty. It estimates that there are six million women, two million of whom are poor, who do not have access to modern forms of contraception. Mr. Duterte’s order aims to achieve “zero unmet need for family planning” by 2018, helping to meet his goal of reducing the poverty rate to 14 percent by the end of his administration in 2022, down from the 2015 level of 21. 6 percent. Sex education, advocates say, has been a failure. The Philippines is the only country in Asia where teenage pregnancy increased over the last two decades, according to the United Nations Population Fund. “A lot of the existing education in the Philippines is abstinence only, and this contributes to teenage pregnancy,” said Hope project coordinator for Likhaan, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to women’s health. Stephanie Carmen, 15, is the kind of teenager Ms. has in mind. Ms. Carmen, who has a daughter, says she did not know that sex could result in pregnancy. She has learned the hard way, and says she will get an intrauterine device from Likhaan, which distributes free birth control using private funds and cooperation from the Health Department, as soon as she heals from the birth. “I don’t want any more children,” she said. “It hurts too much. ” Mr. Duterte’s executive order is not his first clash with the church in his seven months in office. He has called the church “the most hypocritical institution,” accusing priests and bishops of graft, corruption and taking mistresses. He called Pope Francis a son of a whore (and later apologized) openly accused the church of pedophilia and claimed to have been sexually abused by a priest as a teenager. And he has accused the church of doing nothing to combat drugs, which he sees as the country’s biggest problem. For its part, the church has opposed his push to reinstate the death penalty and has begun to publicly criticize his antidrug campaign, which has left more than 3, 600 people dead. “We will continue to oppose those because they are inhuman,” said Archbishop Ramón Argüelles of Lipa. He added, of Mr. Duterte, “I think whether he knows it or not, whenever we do anything bad, you are the tool of the devil. If you bring harm to others, you are the devil’s tool. ” Priests across the Philippines have urged citizens to speak out against the killings in the drug campaign. In the days before Christmas, the Redemptorist Church of Baclaran in Manila mounted a photo exhibition of its victims, corpses strewn in the streets and grieving families, aimed to prick a sense of outrage among churchgoers. Fighting the church is not without risk. More than 80 percent of Filipinos identify as Catholic, and the church was instrumental in toppling two presidents, Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001. But Mr. Duterte appears to be winning this fight. Rather than repelling Catholics with his sacrilegious outbursts, his willingness to confront the church has endeared him to Filipinos. According to a pair of 2016 polls by Pulse Asia, 86 percent of Filipinos support reproductive health services, and 55 percent want the administration to prioritize programs to combat poverty. While the church may have lost this battle, Archbishop Argüelles says Mr. Duterte has not won the war. “He said he was going to destroy the church,” the archbishop said. “The only thing I can tell him is that Hitler tried to do that, Bismarck tried to do that, Napoleon tried to do that. The church is still there, all these people are gone. ” | 0fake |
Saudi Arabia arrests 46 for stirring divisions: state media | DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi authorities said on Wednesday they had arrested 22 people, including a Qatari national, for using social media to spread dissent. Another 24 people were detained in the northern Hail region for stirring tribal divisions, the state news agency SPA reported. Neither report went into the details of the offenses. The announcements came days after a order from King Salman lifting a ban on women driving in the conservative Islamic kingdom. Saudi Arabia, alongside the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, has also cut diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar accusing it of supporting militants and Iran - charges Doha denies. Citing a source in the newly-created Presidency of State Security, the counter-terrorism and domestic intelligence body, SPA said the 22 had been detained after authorities spotted videos on social media inciting against public order . The online postings stirred up feelings towards issues that are still under consideration, and incited people to commit crimes, SPA said. Separately, SPA carried a statement from the interior ministry saying that during unspecified investigations in Hail, people linked to the case were promoting lies and exaggerations about their circumstances in order to provoke sedition and tribal tensions . Soon after the two reports, Saudi Arabia s top clerical body, the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, issued a statement saying: Anyone who tried to harm the kingdom security and the unity of its people has committed a dangerous crime . | 0fake |
REPORTER TO CLINTON: ‘So you still blame others more than yourself for loss?’ [VIDEO] | British TV journalist Matt Frei asked Hillary Clinton if she s still blaming other more than herself in an interview Friday: Your dynastic appeal or perhaps it was the opposite: The fact that you were called Clinton the fact that you were first lady basically trumped any novelty if you forgive the term of being the first female president of the United States, he said. People looked at your name and your legacy more than they looked at your gender. Clinton answered in her usual delusional way by laying out the amount of support she THINKS she received and then blaming former FBI director James Comey and the Russians for her defeat: That doesn t explain why I led all the way through, why I won the primary by 4 million votes, why I was winning, we had a great convention, she said. I was thought to have won all three debates. That doesn t explain it, Matt, so that s why I had to really dig deep. And, yes, I take responsibility. Obviously, there were things I must have been able to do differently in order to have won, Clinton continued. But at the end, there was this really perfect storm, and so you had the Comey letter and you had the enormous impact of the Russian theft of emails, the release of them by WikiLeaks, basically now a part of the Russian intelligence apparatus, and the weaponization of that. These were all new phenomena. So you re still blaming others more than yourself? Frei asked I DON T BLAME OTHERS ??? No, I take ultimate responsibility, I don t blame others, but I think it s important that people understand what happened, Clinton said. It easy to say, You know she wasn t a good candidate. Then why did lead all the way to the end, why did I get nominated overwhelmingly? Did people lie at the polls? Frei interjected. No, I think there were intervening events that caused people to worry, to have second thoughts, she said.Read more: WFB | 1real |
U.S. Boycotts UN Rights Council Debate on Israel, Palestinians | GENEVA (AP) — The State Department says the United States is boycotting a session at the U. N. Human Rights Council that focuses on Palestine and other Arab occupied territories, saying it is biased against Israel. [State Department spokesman Mark Toner in a statement took aim at a recurring agenda item at the council, which focuses on Israel and the Palestinian territories — the only one of its kind to focus on a single country at every HRC session. It was taking place Monday. Toner also said the United States would vote against every resolution that might be put forward under the agenda item. Earlier, the U. N.’s special rapporteur on rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, Michael Lynk, decried how “illegal settlement enterprise has moved at an alarming pace” this year. | 0fake |
Justice Clarence Thomas Describes Washington DC As “Broken” | WATCH: CNN Hack Humiliates Self, Tells Viewers U.S. Reps Are Term-Limited Already (They’re Not)
That breakdown in communication in Washington is exactly what has fueled the rise of Trump . People are sick and tired of nothing getting done, at least nothing good, so they want a new leader who can actually accomplish great things.
“I think that we have decided that rather than confront the disagreement and differences of opinion, we’ll just simply annihilate the person who disagrees with us,” Thomas said.
Unfortunately he is exactly right. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of preferring to demonize their opponents rather than engaging in meaningful discussion.
This sort of polarization doesn’t help America. All it does is increase the frustration the American people have with Congress when they see nothing happening for years.
Trump has a history of making compromises and hammering out complex deals in the business world. Unlike Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump has a history of making things work.
If Trump can bring about some real change in Washington, he can finally turn this country around.
Share this on Facebook and Twitter and let us know if you think electing Trump will be enough to fix what is broken in our capitol. | 1real |
France Lets Workers Turn Off, Tune Out and Live Life - The New York Times | PARIS — If the world does not envy the French enough already for their generous vacations, universal health care and fine food and wine, the arrival of 2017 brings this: a newly created “right to disconnect. ” Though ridiculed in some quarters as a ban on email after hours, it is not quite that. But it is born of the enlightened view that it is actually beneficial for people not to work all the time, and that workers have the right to occasionally draw the line when their employer’s demands intrude on evenings at home, treasured vacations or Sundays with friends and family. “Employees are more and more connected during hours outside of the office,” Myriam El Khomri, the minister of labor, said last year in justifying the need for the law. “The boundary between professional and personal life has become tenuous,” and cases of burnout are becoming more prevalent, she said. The measure is one of a raft of new laws that took effect with the beginning of the new year and that exemplify the search for compromises between preserving French traditions and making concessions to the realities of the modern world. The new provision in the labor law does not ban emails, but does require that companies with more than 50 employees negotiate a new protocol to ensure that work does not spill into days off or hours. Some consultants have recommended that employees and managers avoid the “reply all” function on emails to groups so that only one person is being asked to read an email and respond, rather than half the office. Another approach recommends setting a time each evening after which employees are not expected to reply — several firms have designated the 10 hours between 9 p. m. and 7 a. m. others the 12 hours between 7 p. m. and 7 a. m. As a country with Catholic roots, but also a commitment to personal liberties, France has had an ambivalent approach to divorce. It has long been legal, but not necessarily speedy. A new nod to modernity in French laws eases the rules for people who want to divorce. While historically France has been far more flexible than Ireland or Italy, it still required a judge to rule on each divorce. The procedure routinely took as long as a year, and sometimes far longer, because cases were backed up awaiting the judicial signature. Now, if both members of the couple agree on the divorce, lawyers can draw up the divorce agreement, jointly sign the papers and have them notarized. No judges need be involved. Smoking is another area in which French habits have changed relatively little in recent years — 27 to 28 percent of the population still lights up — but the country is now following many others in requiring “neutral packaging” for tobacco products: Instead of advertising a brand, cigarette packs sport only health warnings and photos of illnesses caused by smoking. At least two new laws demonstrate the country’s gradual move toward more sustainable products. Instead of thin plastic bags, French supermarkets and fruit vendors must substitute either bags made with a synthetic called amidon that is mixed with plastic, a thicker type of plastic bag that could be reused, or paper bags. At Monoprix, a supermarket chain, paper bags have won out and stacks of them perch precariously on stands at the ends of fruit counters. More radical is the edict that went into effect on Sunday banning the use of pesticides in public gardens and along public highways. It promises to make public green spaces safer for birds and other small animals, which are especially vulnerable to the poisons used in pest killers. It will not be easy for the gardeners employed by cities to turn to more sustainable methods. When the city of Lyon abandoned pesticides voluntarily nine years ago, it took quite some time to change the culture, although Lyon is now considered a model. In 2019, the antipesticide law will expand to include amateur gardeners — a challenge not only for the French with backyard rows of dahlias and daisies, but also for those who nurse roses in their window boxes. A new law is sure to please the French because it plays to their immense pride in local comestibles: It allows prepared foods, like frozen dinners, to be labeled “produit d’origine française” only if the item is made with 100 percent French meat or milk. Any product with more than 8 percent foreign meat must say where the animal was born, raised and butchered. A product with more than 50 percent foreign milk must say where it was collected and turned into the product being sold. It seems that the French version of “Made in America” is “Raised in France. ” | 0fake |
Rand Paul Mocks Trump Critics on Paris Accord Withdrawal - ’Mass Extinction, Really?’ - Breitbart | Thursday on CNN, Sen. Rand Paul ( ) said the reactions on the left to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change were “alarmist” and “ridiculous. ” Paul said, “We should try to constrain pollution. We should try to control pollution. I think we’ve been doing that for 50 or 60 years. And I think we should continue. But your previous guest sounded like, my goodness, the sky is falling, mass extinction. Really? I don’t think we should be alarmists about this. The planet is 4. 5 billion years old. We have gone through great extremes of climate change natural and now we may have influence as well. ” “But these people, the question I always ask the alarmists is how much is nature and how much is man?” he continued. “They act as if it’s a given that man is the only source of climate change. My goodness, the great climate changes in our history happened before the industrial revolution. So is there climate change could man have an impact? Yes, but let’s not be such alarmists that if we don’t sign the Paris accord that there’s going to be mass extinction? That’s a ridiculous statement. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Fascism? Environmentalists Force Coal Plant Closure. Town’s Economy Hit HARD… | Louder With Crowder October 27, 2016
Sometimes a thin layer of crust accumulates on the surface of the ocean, mostly made up of fecal matter and trash. It’s where environmentalists come from.
They are, effectively, the pits. Also, environmentalists hate people (see Top 5 Environmentalists Who Openly Support Killing Off Humans ). A side effect of being sad, soggy little bottom dwellers. So it’s no surprise they want to kill off coal mines in Montana , despite the fact that said coal mines are pillars which help support the economy and the town’s well being. Also electric cars , but whatever:
The 2,300 residents in Southeast Montana face an uphill battle to keep the city alive against an onslaught of legal battles and a major anti-coal crusade launched by outsiders.
An out of court agreement was reached to close two of the four units of Colstrip’s coal-fired power plant by 2022. The Sierra Club and the Montana Environmental Information Center, which sued the plant, see the closure as a victory.
Plant operators came to an agreement with activists [because] Oregon Democratic Gov. signed legislation mandating the state be coal-free by 2030…
Consequences.
It’s a win for everybody. Except the people employed by the coal plant… Also, Colstrip’s entire economy. Coal plant workers make money, then spend that money at other businesses. Except now all those lads will be jobless, which means they won’t be spending money or helping to boost the economy as much anymore, which means other businesses will suffer. Thanks environmentalists.
By the way, “Green Earth” SJWs tend to also be fans of the Indians . The people, not the baseball team. Racist. That wee tidbit is worth noting, considering how their eco-friendly plan isn’t very native-friendly…
“You lose two of those units, and you are shutting down half the town,” Small said. “This closure will have an economic impact on the reservations, throughout the County and across the State…” Small is of North Cheyenne descent. He’s made an extra effort to recruit American Indian students… Nearly three dozen Northern Cheyenne work at the Colstrip plant, and three times that figure work in the coal fields.
A double header. Bad for the economy, bad for the indigenous people.
As mentioned above, the coal plant never stood a chance. Thanks to impending regulations, the plant has long seen the end drawing near. Possibly because they would rather close indefinitely in order to be spared from ever having to hear another squawking lobbyist attempt to “talk” them into seeing things their way. Whatever the reason, environmentalists and the state teamed up to bully the coal plant into shutting down. Now the future of an entire town lies in jeopardy.
Environmentalists happily stomped their cloven hooves all over people’s livelihoods. But hey, less smog. #Caring
Also, man–made climate change of the hot hots is a myth. Stop it. This article was posted: Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 5:55 am Share this article | 1real |
John McCain: Trump’s Attacks On The Press Are ‘How Dictators Get Started’ (VIDEO) | Donald Trump has declared the media to be the enemy, but John McCain has a stark warning about Trump s most recent declaration of war: suppressing the free press is how dictators get started. During a Sunday morning interview on Meet the Press, the Republican senator told NBC s Chuck Todd that if we want to preserve democracy, then we have to have a free press. Period. I hate the press. I hate you especially, McCain joked. But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It s vital. If you want to preserve I m very serious now if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press, McCain said. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That s how dictators get started. Trump went on a Twitter rant and attacked the free press yet again on Friday, declaring that the media is the enemy of the American people. 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 said that while becoming a dictator isn t necessarily Trump s goal, he does think we need to look at history and learn from it to avoid making the same mistakes we have made in the past. And what history shows us is that dictators get started by suppressing free press. In other words, a consolidation of power when you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history. Here s the video:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Scientists Say Universe Is Part Of 4th Dimension Born From Black Hole | A new scientific theory claims our universe was born from an Event Horizon event as part of a second dimension in an enormous black hole gobbling up other universes in the fourth dimension.
Via YourNewsWire
At the very beginning of time, around 13.8 billion years ago, there was a hot dense energetic point where the laws of physics did not apply – something scientists today refer to as a ‘singularity’. The only other place where a singularity occurs in the Universe and all the known laws of physics are temporarily abandoned is at the event horizon of a black hole – which scientists cannot explain.
Scroll Down For Video Below What is odd about black holes is that the even horizon is two-dimensional in an otherwise completely three-dimensional universe. This means that there is something that we are unable to perceive and the theory, which was first suggested in 2014 and is now under serious scrutinisation, claims that our Universe is the result of a singularity of a huge black hole.
In simpler terms, there is a possibility that our three-dimensional Universe is surrounding the event horizon of a four-dimensional Universe. A 2014 study from the Perimeter Institute and University of Waterloo stated: “In this scenario, our Universe burst into being when a star in a four-dimensional universe collapsed into a black hole.
Re-visiting the theory recently, Ethan Siegel, a professor of physics and astronomy at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, explained how a black hole could have formed in another universe which led matter to “fall” into our Universe.
Dr Siegel wrote for Forbes: “As the black hole first formed, from a star’s core imploding and collapsing, the event horizon first came to be, then rapidly expanded and continued to grow in area as more and more matter continued to fall in.
“If you were to put a coordinate grid down on this two-dimensional wrapping, you would find that it originated where the gridlines were very close together, then expanded rapidly as the black hole formed, and then expanded more and more slowly as matter fell in at a much lower rate.
“This matches, at least conceptually, what we observe for the expansion rate of our three-dimensional Universe.”
| 1real |
Japan Inc sees damaged security, less U.S. trade in Trump presidency: Reuters poll | TOKYO (Reuters) - Most Japanese firms think a Donald Trump presidency would harm the Japan-U.S. security alliance and make the United States a less attractive place to invest, a Reuters poll showed, in a further sign of international angst about his candidacy. The Republican frontrunner, known for his unpredictable style and fiery rhetoric, would also cause bilateral trade to shrink if he became president, a majority of respondents said. Portraying Japan as a free-rider on security, Trump has suggested that the U.S. ally might need nuclear weapons to ease U.S. financial commitment to its defense - anathema to the only country ever attacked by atomic bombs. Trump has also said he might withdraw U.S. troops from Japan unless it pays more to feed and house the 50,000 it hosts, and he has accused Japan of stealing U.S. jobs. His comments have only fueled simmering worries amongst some Japanese in recent years about whether Washington would defend Tokyo in a crisis under their alliance - the lynchpin of Japan’s security policy for decades. The Reuters Corporate Survey, conducted April 1-15, found 78 percent of firms thought Japan’s security environment would deteriorate under Trump. The remainder said it would not change much. Not one firm thought it would improve. The monthly poll surveyed 510 big and mid-size firms. Around 230 answered questions on the U.S. presidential race. In written comments, companies voiced concerns that uncertainty would grow over U.S. diplomacy and that protectionism would rise, with some saying a President Trump would embolden China as it struggles to exert its influence in the South China Sea and other parts of Asia. “It is very easy to imagine China taking advantage of the power vacuum to step up military operations in the region,” wrote a manager at an electronics maker. In particular, Tokyo and Beijing have long been at odds over tiny islands claimed by both in the East China Sea. “We worry that geopolitical risk would heighten a lot and Sino-Japanese relations would be extremely strained, which could result in a very negative impact on the Japanese economy,” the manager added. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks did not respond to requests for comment. While the possibility of a President Trump has triggered alarm among some foreign diplomats, economists and business executives, he has moved closer to the Republican nomination after winning a commanding victory in New York state’s presidential nominating contests on Tuesday. Some respondents to the survey said, however, that they see Trump’s comments as mere posturing and did not expect any real change in policy even if he won the Nov. 8 election. Managers answered on condition of anonymity in the survey which was conducted for Reuters by Nikkei Research. Around 55 percent of firms said that Trump would be bad for business in the United States, that Japanese corporate appetite for investing in the U.S. would wane, and that trade between the two countries would decline. The amount of Japan-U.S. trade has grown by about a quarter in the past two decades to be worth around $215 billion, accounting for 15 percent of Japan’s overall trade. The United States is Japan’s No. 2 trading partner after China, while Japan is the United States’ fourth-largest trading partner. In contrast to Trump, more than 80 percent of Japanese firms believe Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Clinton would keep a steady hand on economic relations and maintain the status quo on security. The White House has described Trump’s suggestions on Japan adopting nuclear arms as destabilizing. Representatives for Clinton did not respond to requests for comment. “She would adopt realistic policies. It would lack freshness and stage no surprise, which would be a relief to us,” wrote a manager at a construction firm. ($1 = 109.04 yen) | 0fake |
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