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WATCH HILARIOUSLY AWKWARD Moment Between Rick Perry And Al Franken: “Oh my Lord!” [Video] | Franken asked Perry if he enjoyed a meeting they recently had at his office:Franken: Thank you so much for coming into my office. Did you enjoy meeting me? Perry: I hope you re as much fun on that dias as you were on your couch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxrKlVv4UDA | 1real |
OH LOOK! New Yorkers Don’t Hate Trump As Much As Media Says They Do…Trump Gets Surprising Reaction From Diners In NY Restaurant [VIDEO] | https://twitter.com/RiggsReport/status/798686224881950721Watch:https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/798738692705816576H/t Gateway Pundit | 1real |
FLASHBACK: GRAPHIC VIDEO SHOWS Hillary Supporters Beating “Deplorable”Trump Supporters Bloody | Did Hillary forget about her deplorable supporters who beat innocent Trump supporters bloody at one rally after another only a few months ago? But WE are the #BasketOfDeplorables? Share this. Because we aren't! pic.twitter.com/vRN2GqIYzo Black Women 4 Trump (@TallahForTrump) September 10, 2016 | 1real |
Rohingya grieve after baby dies in border crossing | SHAH PORIR DWIP, Bangladesh (Reuters) - A crying Rohingya mother in a yellow headscarf cradling her five-week-old infant son who died after their boat capsized is one of the most powerful Reuters images of Muslim refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar. Hamida, her husband Nasir Ahmed and their two young sons were among 18 refugees on a small fishing boat crossing the Bay of Bengal to the Bangladesh village of Shah Porir Dwip. As they neared the shore, the boat capsized and they were tossed into the murky water. Reuters photographer Mohammad Ponir Hossain was taking pictures of exhausted refugees on the beach when he heard an autorickshaw driver shouting that a boat had capsized. I rushed to the spot and found people crying over the dead body of a child, Ponir said. Click here for a photo essay - reut.rs/2wfJOUr He took a picture of Hamida, cradling the tiny pale body of her child, Abdul Masood. He appears to have died as the survivors scrambled through the crashing waves to shore. Another picture showed the anguish on the face of Nasir Ahmed as he carried his son away from the crowd. The couple s other son survived the accident. Around 400,000 Rohingya have arrived in Bangladesh in less than three weeks and people are still arriving, by land and sea, after attacks by Rohingya militants sparked a fierce counteroffensive by Myanmar s army. Senior United Nations officials have described the violence as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing . Hamida s family was among tens of thousands of Rohingya who embarked in a rickety fleet of small wooden fishing boats on the crossing from Myanmar s coast to southern Bangladesh, a journey that can take up to five hours. They are so desperate that they are risking their lives to escape Myanmar. The pictures show what is going on here, Ponir said. | 0fake |
Tillerson tells Myanmar army chief U.S. concerned about reported atrocities | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke on Thursday with Myanmar’s army chief and expressed concern over reported atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Tillerson urged the army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, to support the Myanmar government in ending the violence and allowing the safe return of ethnic Rohingya who have fled the area, the statement said. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine state in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh, since security forces responded to Rohingya militants’ attacks on Aug. 25 by launching a crackdown. The State Department is considering formally declaring the crackdown on Rohingya Muslims to be ethnic cleansing. In his call with Min Aung Hlaing, Tillerson also urged the Myanmar military to facilitate humanitarian aid for displaced people, allow media access and cooperate with a U.N. investigation into allegations of human rights abuses, the State Department said. Pressure has mounted for a tougher U.S. response to the Rohingya crisis ahead of President Donald Trump’s maiden visit to Asia next month when he will attend a summit of Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, in Manila. | 0fake |
New fires ravage Rohingya villages in northwest Myanmar: sources | YANGON (Reuters) - Up to eight villages were burned down on Friday in a part of northwest Myanmar where large numbers of Muslim Rohingya had been sheltering from a wave of violence engulfing the area, a witness and three sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. The fires were blazing in the ethnically mixed Rathedaung township, where populations of Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists live side by side. Today around 4 p.m., I saw the smoke coming from where the villages were burning ...I saw it from the Chin village where I am staying now, said a villager from the area contacted by Reuters by phone. It was unclear who set fire to the villages. Independent journalists are not allowed into the area, where Myanmar says its security forces are carrying out clearance operations to defend against extremist terrorists . Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Rakhine vigilantes have unleashed a campaign of arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population. The burning of more villages is likely to fuel an exodus of Rohingya to neighboring Bangladesh. Nearly 270,000 have fled in less than two weeks, creating a humanitarian crisis. Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday her government was doing its best to protect everyone, but she has drawn criticism from around the world for failing to speak out about the violence and the Muslim minority, including calls to revoke her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Rathedaung, the site of the latest fires, is the furthest Rohingya-inhabited area from the border with Bangladesh. Humanitarian workers had been concerned that a large number of the Muslims had been trapped there. The blazes were confirmed by sources including two monitors with a network of informants on the ground, and a local journalist based in the nearby town of Buthidaung. They said that among the torched villages were the hamlets of Ah Htet Nan Yar and Auk Nan Yar, some 65 km (40 miles) north of Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state. One source said a camp for internally displaced people in the area also went up in flames. One of the sources said 300 to 400 Rohingya who had escaped other burnings had been sheltering at Ah Htet Nan Yar until the day before the fire broke out. They had escaped before it started, the source said, quoting an eyewitness. The villagers were now hiding in the forest or attempting a perilous, days-long journey by foot in the monsoon rain toward the Maungdaw region and further west to the River Naf separating Myanmar and Bangladesh. The latest flight of Rohingya from their homes in Myanmar began two weeks ago after Rohingya insurgents attacked several police posts in Rakhine. That triggered an army counter-offensive in which at least 400 people were killed. | 0fake |
Miley Cyrus Crying Over Trump Victory (Video) | Miley Cyrus Crying Over Trump Victory (Video) 2 shares by Ike Mclean / November 11, 2016 / POLITICS /
After it was announced that Donald Trump would be the 45 th president of the United States, Miley Cyrus posted a video online of her crying over the results.
With tears rolling down her face Cyrus says, “So, probably like most people—well, maybe not, because given the result—maybe I really am different and maybe a lot of people that I’m surrounded by think with open minds and open hearts like I do. And I do want to say that I’ve been very vocal for my support for everyone besides Donald Trump. Heavily supported Bernie. Heavily supported Hillary. And I still think that in her lifetime she deserves to be the first female president, and that’s what makes me so sad.”
“I just wish that she had that opportunity. Because she fought for so long and because I believe her when she says that she loves this country. This is all she’s ever done. She’s given her life to make it better. But, like Donald Trump so ironically played after his speech, it said, ‘You can’t always get what you want.’ And happy hippies, we adjust and we accept everyone for who they are. And so Donald Trump, I accept you,” she said. “And this hurts to say, but I even accept you as the President of the United States, and that’s fine…because I think now I want to be hopeful.”
She then went on to thank Barack Obama for “everything he has done the past eight years,” and thanked Hillary “for inspiring us.”
The video of Miley crying can be seen below:
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Pence, Jordan's Abdullah discuss Islamic State, Syria, U.S. embassy in Israel: White House | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Jordan’s King Abdullah on Monday discussed a range of issues from speeding up the fight against Islamic State, the crisis in Syria, and efforts to reach an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, the White House said. Abdullah, the first Arab leader to hold talks with the new administration, also raised the issue of potential changes to the U.S. embassy in Israel, the White House said in a statement. President Donald Trump is expected to greet Abdullah at a prayer event in Washington on Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer separately told reporters in a daily briefing. | 0fake |
WATCH: ROBIN WILLIAMS Calls Out Hypocrisy Of Audience During His Politically Incorrect Comedy Act About Muslims, Jihad and The Quran | Robin Williams was a one-of-a-kind comedian. His brand of humor can never be replicated. Fortunately, there are video clips of his performances that can still be found on the internet.The video clip below shows Robin Williams poking fun at Muslims, jihad, 72 virgins, the Quran, and taxi drivers. The best part of the video is near the end, where Robin Williams actually calls out the audience for the reaction to his jokes, revealing their hypocrisy for bristling at his taxi joke because it was politically incorrect, while believing it was okay to laugh about beating the sh*t out of a Muslim terrorist.Only Robin Williams could have gotten away with calling his audience out not their ridiculous hypocrisy in the name of political correctness.Watch: Robin Williams on Jihad You are welcome #LaughOutLoud #SaturdayChillOutZone pic.twitter.com/WuZJIBGBB7 E I (@based4good) August 19, 2017 | 1real |
‘Hamilton’ Producers and Actors Reach Deal on Sharing Profits - The New York Times | The producers of “Hamilton,” a show that could well make hundreds of millions of dollars, on Friday bowed to pressure and said they would share some of the musical’s profits with original cast members. The deal, which was announced by a lawyer representing more than two dozen actors and dancers who were part of the show’s development and first productions, is a major victory for the cast and could have ripple effects in the theater industry, where the huge success of “Hamilton,” and the lack of catalyzed a growing debate about actor compensation. The agreement means that actors will have a piece of “the profit stream from the play,” Ronald H. Shechtman, a leading labor lawyer in the theater industry who represented the “Hamilton” performers, said in a statement. Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton,” a megahit now generating upward of $500, 000 in profit every week on Broadway, confirmed the agreement. Neither Mr. Seller nor Mr. Shechtman would discuss details, some of which remain to be hammered out, and Mr. Shechtman said that the performers were not ready to comment on the deal. Kate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity, the labor union representing theater performers, said that while the broader discussion about how actors are compensated for contributions to developing shows will continue, the “Hamilton” agreement was significant. “This should be a real moment of celebration for any actor who feels powerless,” she said. The agreement is unlikely to make any of the performers rich, but the money could make a significant difference in their lives the base salary for a Broadway performer is about $1, 900 a week (stars often make more) and many actors have significant periods of unemployment between jobs. Payments to actors in other shows with have varied from a few hundred dollars a year to a few thousand dollars a month. The profits from “Hamilton,” which will only multiply as it spins off tours in other cities and around the world, has prompted an uncomfortable debate within the theater industry about money and credit for performers who help create hit shows. The debate has been taking place in two settings: within the “Hamilton” company and at Actors’ Equity, which has been flooded with expressions of concern from its members. The union has scheduled a special meeting on Monday to hear from actors who have helped develop a number of recent shows. Mary McColl, the executive director of Actors’ Equity, said, “There should be a place for the actors to participate in the success of a project. ” The issue is already having an effect elsewhere in the business. Equity said that some of its members were unhappy, in the wake of “Hamilton,” to see that Disney is developing its coming “Frozen” stage musical in a way that will preclude by the actors initially involved, even though the process is the same one Disney has used for four previous musicals. And the Public Theater, the Off Broadway nonprofit where “Hamilton” was partly developed, said it had postponed a developmental chapter of a new musical because of an inability to reach an agreement with performers over potential future . The issue has a long and tortured history in theater, since the days of “A Chorus Line,” when the dancers involved in that show’s creation famously sold the rights to their life stories for $1 each, but about a year later reached an agreement with the that allowed them some share of the show’s financial success. In the decades since, some shows have granted performers involved in developing them small shares of future profits — often 1 percent, divided among the performers. The example, often cited by actors in the current debate, is “The Book of Mormon. ” The actors involved in the initial workshops for that show, which opened on Broadway in 2011, still get regular checks, in some cases for several thousand dollars a month, to reflect their contributions to its success. Two shows by Mr. Seller, “Rent” and “Avenue Q,” agreed to share a small part of their profits with performers involved in the development process. But more recently, producers have largely opted to pay actors who help develop shows more up front, in exchange for not granting them a share of profits if — as happens relatively rarely — the show becomes profitable. For years, many shows have been developed using an Equity workshop contract, under which actors are paid a flat rate of $631 for every workweek. The actors also get benefits, are entitled to a right of first refusal to their role — and to split 1 percent of any future royalty pool for 18 years. But, in more recent years, producers have tended to favor an alternative Equity contract, the developmental lab, under which actors are paid $1, 000 a week but have no right of refusal and no promise of royalty participation. In the early stages of “Hamilton,” which was written by and stars Miranda, Equity sought a workshop contract that would allow actors a share of future royalties, but parties could not reach an agreement. The actors instead signed modified lab contracts that gave them a right of first refusal to their roles, but not royalty participation. They began asking the producers to reconsider, and grant them a share of the profits, in August, as the show was opening on Broadway. | 0fake |
Republican healthcare bill would harm state finances: Moody's | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Republican-proposed bill to replace Obamacare would be a credit negative for U.S. states, according to Moody’s Investors Service, because it would shift a greater share of the cost of Medicaid to the states. The bill, known as the American Health Care Act, aims to replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. The bill proposes to shift federal funding for Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, from a state-match to a per capita cap, resulting in a greater financial burden on states, Moody’s reported. The proposal would also phase out funding for expanded Medicaid by 2020, leaving states to pick up the difference or to drop enrollees from their Medicaid programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the proposed reform would cut federal spending by $880 billion between 2017 and 2026, reaching a 25 percent lower level by 2026 compared to current-law projections. “States will face difficult decisions in this regard,” Moody’s reported on Friday. “If states maintain the expansion programs for non-elderly adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, they will be on the hook for a larger portion of expenses related to new enrollees.” Already, state Medicaid spending is expected to consume a larger portion of state revenues, growing by 28 percent of tax revenue by 2025, up from 24.5 percent in 2017, the rating agency estimated. | 0fake |
Kenya parliament passes controversial election law amendment | NAIROBI (Reuters) - The Kenyan parliament passed an amendment on Wednesday to the country s election laws, saying that if one candidate withdraws from a repeat presidential election, the other one would automatically win. The amendment was heavily criticized by the opposition, whose legislators boycotted the vote. Opposition leader Raila Odinga withdrew from a repeat presidential vote scheduled for Oct. 26 on Tuesday, citing concerns over fairness and transparency. The law must now be signed by the president. | 0fake |
Video Of Obama Encouraging Illegals To Vote: “Immigration” Will Not Investigate | 1real | |
Civilians leave IS-area in eastern Syria after evacuation deal: monitor | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of civilians left a besieged Islamic State enclave in central Syria after the Syrian government and Islamic State reached an evacuation deal, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday. The Syrian army could not be reached for comment but a Syrian military source quoted on state media later said that the army and its allies had captured several areas in the enclave. An insurgent source in northwestern Syria said the civilians - mostly shepherds - from the enclave, straddling the border between Hama and Homs provinces, had arrived in rebel-held Idlib province. The Syrian army - supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias - isolated the pocket, Islamic State s last presence in central Syria, in August during its eastward drive against the jihadists. The military source said the army had captured the areas of Mazin al-Baqr, al-Mushirfa al-Shomalia, Rasm al-Tawil and Jawra al-Nazal, . The Observatory reported that the government and Islamic State had finalised the deal on Thursday, allowing Islamic State fighters, their families and civilians to leave the pocket and cross government areas into areas held by Islamist groups. Some crossed to areas held by Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist alliance that includes the former Nusra Front group, in northern Hama and eastern Idlib provinces, it said. Others moved to camps set up west of the enclave in government-held areas in accordance with tribal deals, the British-based monitor said. Last week, jihadists launched an offensive against government-held parts of northern Hama province, advancing south from rebel-held Idlib. The Syrian government has responded with strikes on rebel-held positions. Russia, Iran and Turkey had previously struck a tripartite deal to deploy an observer force on the edge of a designated de-escalation zone in Idlib. The Islamist militants who hold sway in Idlib rejected the diplomatic effort. The Syrian army s main focus has been its offensive against Islamic State in the east of the country, where the Islamist group is also facing an offensive by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. | 0fake |
ISIS uses an industrial dough kneader to kill 250 children, roasts adults in a bakery oven in Douma, Syria | Email
ISIS barbarians used an industrial dough kneader to kill 250 children, and roasted adults in a bakery oven, according to a shocking new report.
In an interview with the humanitarian organization Roads of Success, Syrian mom Alice Assaf went into chilling detail about the atrocities the jihadists committed about two years ago in the town of Douma, explaining that some of the youngsters were even decapitated in front of their parents, according to the Express.
“We heard that the militants grabbed six strong men working at the bakery and burned them inside the oven. We knew them,” Assaf told Dr. Yvette Isaac, who works for the advocacy group, according to the UK Mirror.
“After that, they caught some 250 kids and kneaded them like dough in the bakery dough machine,” Assaf said, according to media reports. “They were put in the dough mixer, they were kneaded. The oldest one of them was four-years-old.”
ISIS transported hundreds of girls to the city of Douma, which has been at the center of the Syrian civil war, to be slaughtered. ISIS has been systematically killing non-Muslims, and the majority of its victims at the time were Christian.
Assaf said her own son, George, was killed by the radical militants after he refused to switch to a Muslim name.
“My son said to me, ‘No, mother, I don’t want to die with an identity not my own. I prefer to die with the name George,'” Assaf said, according to the Christian Post.
Assaf added, “I asked my son then to hide, but he refused and said, ‘I don’t want to hide myself. You are the one who taught me to follow what Christ said’ — ‘whoever denies me before man, I will also deny before my father who is in Heaven.'”
Dr. Isaac reported the savage slayings to a member of the UK Parliament, Fiona Bruce, who recently recounted the horrifying testimony to her colleagues in open chambers.
“She showed us recent film footage of herself talking with mothers–more than one– who had seen their own children crucified,” Bruce said.
“She told us of a mother with a two-month-old baby. When [ISIS] knocked at the front door of her house and ordered the entire family out, she pleaded with them to let her collect her child from another room,” Bruce said.
“She told us of a mother with a two-month-old baby,” Bruce continued. When [ISIS] knocked at the front door of her house and ordered the entire family out, she pleaded with them to let her collect her child from another room. They told her, ‘No. Go. It is ours now.’” | 1real |
American democracy is doomed | America's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.
Some day — not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies — there is going to be a collapse of the legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent. If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better, more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen.
Very few people agree with me about this, of course. When I say it, people generally think that I'm kidding. America is the richest, most successful country on earth. The basic structure of its government has survived contested elections and Great Depressions and civil rights movements and world wars and terrorist attacks and global pandemics. People figure that whatever political problems it might have will prove transient — just as happened before.
But voiced in another register, my outlandish thesis is actually the conventional wisdom in the United States. Back when George W. Bush was president and I was working at a liberal magazine, there was a very serious discussion in an editorial meeting about the fact that the United States was now exhibiting 11 of the 13 telltale signs of a fascist dictatorship. The idea that Bush was shredding the Constitution and trampling on congressional prerogatives was commonplace. When Obama took office, the partisan valence of the complaints shifted, but their basic tenor didn't. Conservative pundits — not the craziest, zaniest ones on talk radio, but the most serious and well-regarded — compare Obama's immigration moves to the actions of a Latin-American military dictator.
In the center, of course, it's an article of faith that when right and left talk like this they're simply both wrong. These are nothing but the overheated squeals of partisans and ideologues.
At the same time, when the center isn't complaining about the excessively vociferous complaints of the out-party of the day, it tends to be in full-blown panic about the state of American politics. And yet despite the popularity of alarmist rhetoric, few people act like they're actually alarmed. Accusations that Barack Obama or John Boehner or any other individual politician is failing as a leader are flung, and then abandoned when the next issue arises. In practice, the feeling seems to be that salvation is just one election away. Hillary Clinton even told Kara Swisherthat her agenda as a presidential candidate would be to end partisan gridlock.
It's not going to work.
The breakdown of American constitutional democracy is a contrarian view. But it's nothing more than the view that rather than everyone being wrong about the state of American politics, maybe everyone is right. Maybe Bush and Obama are dangerously exceeding norms of executive authority. Maybe legislative compromise really has broken down in an alarming way. And maybe the reason these complaints persist across different administrations and congresses led by members of different parties is that American politics is breaking down.
To understand the looming crisis in American politics, it's useful to think about Germany, Japan, Italy, and Austria. These are countries that were defeated by American military forces during the Second World War and given constitutions written by local leaders operating in close collaboration with occupation authorities. It's striking that even though the US Constitution is treated as a sacred text in America's political culture, we did not push any of these countries to adopt our basic framework of government.
In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government — but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."
The exact reasons for why are disputed among scholars — in part because you can't just randomly assign different governments to people. One issue here is that American-style systems are much more common in the Western Hemisphere and parliamentary ones are more common elsewhere. Latin-American countries have experienced many episodes of democratic breakdown, so distinguishing Latin-American cultural attributes from institutional characteristics is difficult.
Still, Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."
In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.
But within a presidential system, gridlock leads to a constitutional trainwreck with no resolution. The United States's recent government shutdowns and executive action on immigration are small examples of the kind of dynamic that's led to coups and putsches abroad.
There was, of course, the American exception to the problems of the checks-and-balances system. Linz observed on this score: "The uniquely diffuse character of American political parties — which, ironically, exasperates many American political scientists and leads them to call for responsible, ideologically disciplined parties — has something to do with it."
For much of American history, in other words, US political parties have been relatively un-ideological and un-disciplined. They are named after vague ideas rather than specific ideologies, and neither presidents nor legislative leaders can compel back-bench members to vote with them. This has often been bemoaned (famously, a 1950 report by the American Political Science Association called for a more rigorous party system) as the source of problems. It's also, according to Linz, helped avert the kind of zero-sum conflicts that have torn other structurally similar democracies apart. But that diffuse party structure is also a thing of the past.
American politics is much more polarized today than it was 25 or 50 years ago. But not everyone buys the theory that today's era of party polarization spells big trouble. Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein argues that it's "not some sort of freakish un-American phenomenon." The real exception, Bernstein says, the middle of the twentieth century, when the parties weren't polarized. Polarization is the norm, he says, and he's right.
A long line of research starting with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, political scientists at the University of Georgia and New York University respectively, records all congressional votes and then analyzes the types of political coalitions that emerge. This system, known as DW-NOMINATE, lets you measure the degree of party polarization precisely. When Democrats all vote one way and Republicans all vote the other way, politics is highly polarized. When votes frequently scramble the parties, it is less polarized.
What this research shows is that the steady march toward polarization over the past generation is a return to a situation that existed during an earlier period.
The story here, like so much in American politics, is race. Southern Democrats had a range of views on non-racial issues but monolithically supported white supremacy and held together in the Democratic Party to maximize their leverage in Congress. The result was that the Democratic Party included Northern liberals who supported civil rights and Southern conservatives who supported segregation. So polarization temporarily went away in Congress. But as segregation receded as an issue in American politics, the parties slowly but surely sorted themselves by ideology, and so today, there is no Republican in Congress more liberal than the most conservative Democrat, or vice-versa. American politics has re-polarized. According to Bernstein, this change may be discomfiting but it's nothing to worry about. American politics has been polarized before and it was fine.
What this story of reversion misses is the crucial role of ideology. Polarization and ideology are clearly related concepts, but simply counting congressional votes doesn't really tell us what those votes were about. Georgetown University Professor Hans Noel greatly improved our understanding of the relationship between the two by extending the DW-NOMINATE methodology to people who aren't elected officials.
For his book Political Parties and Political Ideologies in America, Noel constructs ideological space scores for writers and political pundits — people who address the same issues as elected officials but who are not serving on Capitol Hill.
What he found is that while Gilded Age members of Congress voted in a highly partisan way, their voting didn't reflect any polarization of ideas evident in broader American society. As Charles Calhoun, a leading scholar of Gilded Age politics has written, the main concern of actual members of Congress was not policy, but "patronage power, the privilege of placing one's political friends and supporters in in subordinate offices." In other words, a member of Congress would get to distribute federal jobs and contracts to his supporters and in exchange the beneficiaries of his patronage would support his party's ticket at all levels. For this reason, the obscure-sounding job of customs collector of the Port of New York was important enough in the 1870s that Chester A. Arthur leapt from it to the Vice Presidency. The first real filibuster was held over Whig efforts to assign a printing contract to friendly companies.
Even though party discipline was strict in these days, it was not really about much beyond who held the spoils.
Over the course of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s the rise of progressive and liberal ideology and the formation of a conservative ideology to counter it upended this system. So much so that by the 1970s it had become common to observe that American political parties were in decline. University of California Irvine political scientist Martin Wattenberg achieved the apogee of this literature with his 1985 classic The Decline of Political Parties in America (since updated in five subsequent editions), citing the waning influence of party professionals, the rise of single-issue pressure groups, and an attendant fall in voter turnout. But as historian Sam Rosenfeld writes, under-the-hood changes in the process for selecting presidential nominees and Congressional leaders "ultimately helped to create a newly receptive institutional setting for issue-based activism within the parties," leading to the parties' reconstitution around modern ideological lines.
Today's partisan polarization, in other words, is not the same as its Gilded Age predecessor. The old polarization was about control over jobs and money — the kind of thing where split-the-difference compromises are easiest. That polarization was eventually undermined by a new politics built around principles. For decades, politicians found themselves cross-pressured between their commitments to a national party network and to various ideological causes. Today, however, politicians are no longer cross-pressured. We have strong Gilded Age-style parties, but organized around questions of principle rather than questions of patronage.
You can take this theory too far, of course. There have been moments in American life where questions of principle sharply split American politics. We had ideological parties (or at least one) in the 1850s when the anti-slavery Republican Party rose to the fore. But the example is not enormously encouraging — the constitutional process collapsed and we had four years of civil war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and then, even after a Union victory, white supremacy was re-established in the South through a two-decade campaign of terrorism.
Not all breakdowns of constitutional processes are as violent as the American Civil War.
For a less catastrophic, more realistic view of the kind of thing that could happen here, it's useful to look to some less-familiar but more-recent events in Honduras. Back in late 2008, left-wing President Manuel Zelaya was locked in persistent conflict with an opposition-controlled congress. With neither side able to prevail within the context of the existing system, Zelaya decided he wanted to add a fourth question to the upcoming November 2009 election. In addition to voting for president, congress, and municipal offices, Zelaya would ask the voters whether they wanted to hold a constituent assembly to re-write the constitution — presumably to allow him to run for re-election.
Unfortunately for Zelaya, Honduras' existing constitution made no provision for re-writing the constitution by plebiscite. Consequently, in March 2009, Zelaya determined that the solution was to hold another plebiscite. On June 28, Hondurans would go to the polls to vote in a non-binding referendum on whether the constitutional question should be added to the November ballot. This, he hoped, would give him the democratic legitimacy needed to go forward with the constitutional revision.
Zelaya's opponents in congress, evidently concerned that the president would win, sued. They won a court case enjoining the president against holding the referendum. Zelaya pressed ahead regardless.
In Honduras, the military typically assists with election logistics, so Zelaya ordered the army to begin distributing ballots. General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, the chief the Honduran military, refused to comply. On May 24, Zelaya fired the general. Several other commanders quit in solidarity. The Supreme Court ruled that the dismissal was unconstitutional. Throughout June, the constitutional process essentially broke down with protests and counter-protests dominating the capital. On June 28, the military deposed Zelaya in a coup, retroactively justified by a back-dated Supreme Court ruling. Roberto Micheletti, the president of the National Congress, was installed in his stead.
The military quickly handed power over to a new group of civilians. The coup was legitimated by the National Congress and the Supreme Court. And its perpetrators argued with some justification that there was no constitutional alternative. Zelaya was trying to circumvent the rules, so they had no choice but to circumvent them too in response.
The deadlock was ultimately resolved by force rather than legal procedure. Zelaya did not have enough support to amend the constitution through the existing process, and Honduras' constitutional system created no legal mechanism for impeachment of a president. The Supreme Court arbitrarily ruled that Zelaya's effort to circumvent the amendment process via referendum was illegal, while Congress' effort to circumvent the impeachment process was fine. There were quite a few injuries as protesters clashed with security forces, but no massive bloodshed.
Honduras' coup is worth paying attention to not because the exact same scenario is likely to play out in the United States, but because it reveals how genuinely difficult it is to maintain constitutional politics in a presidential system.
Presidents feel themselves to be accountable for steering the nation. And all the evidence indicates that the public and the media do in fact hold presidents broadly accountable for national outcomes. Throughout the United States' 2012 presidential campaign, for example, it was universally assumed that good news for the American economy (or for America more broadly) would redound to Barack Obama's benefit even though control of policymaking was split between the White House and a GOP-dominated Congress.
As Obama put it in a November 2014 press conference, "people are going to ask for greater accountability and more responsibility from me than from anybody else in this town." The problem is the president is not only held accountable for things that are in part outside his ability to control (gas prices, Ebola, or shark attacks) but for things that are actually under the control of his political adversaries. "I'm the guy who's elected by everybody," concluded Obama, "and they want me to push hard to close some of these divisions, break through some of the gridlock, and get stuff done." If you're going to be held accountable for outcomes, in other words, then you'd better act.
In a parliamentary system, this is simply democratic accountability in action. A head of government who strongly believes the nation needs actions the legislature won't approve can dissolve parliament and hold a new election to decide the issue. In Honduras' presidential system, the very act of trying to schedule a vote to resolve the deadlock was itself unconstitutional.
The United States, of course, is a long way from a coup. What we are witnessing instead is a rise in what Georgetown University Professor Mark Tushnet labeled "constitutional hardball" in a 2004 article.
Constitutional hardball describes legal and political moves "that are without much question within the bounds of existing constitutional doctrine and practice but that are nonetheless in some tension with existing pre-constitutional understanding." In other words, moves that do not violate the letter of the law, but do trample on our conventional understanding of how it is supposed to work.
Tushnet's article is vital reading today in part because the different partisan context in which it was written can help shock people out of their entrenched positions. His lead example is from the George W. Bush administration, when liberals were concerned about the president taking power away from Congress. Tushnet describes the "strained" argument offered by Republican senators in 2005 that Democratic Party filibusters of Bush's judicial nominees violated the constitution. At the time, of course, Democrats found the view that Republicans might simply ban the use of filibusters for this purpose outrageous. "The filibuster serves as a check on power," said Harry Reid, "that preserves our limited government." Joe Biden called the Republicans' attempt to end the fillibuster "an example of the arrogance of power."
But ultimately the hardball tactic for ending filibusters was used by Democrats in 2013 to halt Republican obstruction of Obama's nominees. Republicans, Reid said, "have done everything they can to deny the fact that Obama had been elected and then reelected." He argued he had no choice but to abandon a principle that just a few years ago he said was crucial to preserving American liberty. Meanwhile, Republicans who had supported the 2005 effort to weaken the filibuster executed a perfect flip-flop in the other direction.
Tushnet's other example from the mid-2000s — Texas' decision to redraw congressional district boundaries to advantage Republicans between censuses — seems almost adorably quaint by the standards of the Obama era.
From its very first months, Obama's presidency has been marked by essentially nothing but constitutional hardball. During the Bush years, Democratic senators sporadically employed a variety of unusual delaying tactics to stymie his agenda. In 2009, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans retaliated by using tons of them, constantly. Suddenly filibustering went from something a Senate minority could do to something it did on pretty much all motions. George Washington University congressional scholar Sarah Binder observes that "leaders in the 1970s rarely felt compelled to file for cloture [to break filibusters], averaging fewer than one per month in some years" while in recent years Reid has filed over once per week.
As Jim Manley, a former aide to the Democratic Senate leadership, explained to The Atlantic, the obstruction not only prevented many of Obama's more controversial measures from becoming law; it also drastically altered the process of even routine governance.
As a political strategy, McConnell's tactics were vindicated by the 2010 midterms, which showed that making the president look partisan, clumsy, and inept was a winning strategy.
Republicans in Congress subsequently moved beyond unusual acts of obstruction to an unprecedented use of the statutory debt ceiling into a vehicle for policymaking. Traditionally a bit of oddball American political theater immortalized in a funny West Wing scene, in 2011 the GOP threatened to provoke an unfathomable financial and constitutional crisis unless the Obama administration agreed to sweeping spending cuts. Again, there was nothing illegal about what Republicans in Congress did here — it was just, in its intent and its scope, unprecedented.
And it's fairly clear that these actions, while consistent with Republican Party electoral success, have not exactly produced a well-respected legislature. Congressional approval ratings are so low — and have been for so long — that it's become a subject of pollster humor. In 2013, Public Policy Polling found that congress was less popular than Genghis Khan, traffic jams, cockroaches, or Nickelback. In a less joking spirit, Gallup finds that the voters have less confidence in Congress than any other American institution, including big business, organized labor, banks, or television news.
As relations with Congress have worsened, the Obama administration has set about expanding executive authority over domestic policy to match Bush-era unilateralism in the national security domain. This came to the fore most publicly with Obama's decision to protect millions of unauthorized migrants from deportation without congressional agreement.
As Vox's Andrew Prokop has argued, the pattern is actually much broader. Obama's handling of K-12 education policy is in some ways an even more paradigmatic example of constitutional hardball. The George W. Bush-era education law No Child Left Behind laid out penalties for state education systems that didn't meet certain, rather unrealistic, targets. The law's authors assumed that when the law came up for reauthorization, the targets would be changed. In case Congress didn't act in time, the Secretary of Education also had the authority to issue waivers of the penalties. Since Congress no longer really functions, there has been no reauthorization of the law. So the Obama administration has issued waivers — but only to states that implement policy changes ordered by the Department of Education.
University of Chicago political scientist William Howell told Prokop this was a "new frontier" for executive policymaking. Yale Law School's Bruce Ackerman says Obama used "a waiver provision for modest experiments and transformed it into a platform for the redesign of the statute." Obama's actions are clearly legal — but they are just as clearly a decision to creatively exploit the letter of the law to vastly expand the scope of executive power over the law.
Those who like these actions on their merits comfort themselves with the thought that these uses of executive power are pretty clearly allowed by the terms of the existing laws. This is true as far as it goes. But it's also the case that Obama (or some future president) could have his political opponents murdered on the streets of Washington and then issue pardons to the perpetrators. This would be considerably more legal than a Zelaya-style effort to use a plebiscite to circumvent congressional obstruction — just a lot more morally outrageous. In either case, however, the practical issue would be not so much what is legal, but what people, including the people with guns, would actually tolerate.
America's escalating game of constitutional hardball isn't caused by personal idiosyncratic failings of individual people. Obama has made his share of mistakes, but the fundamental causes of hardball politics are structural, not personal. Personality-minded journalists often argue that a warmer executive would do a better job of building bridges to congress. But as Dartmouth's Brendan Nyhan points out, "Bill Clinton's more successful outreach to his opponents didn't keep him from getting impeached. Likewise, George W. Bush was more gregarious than Obama, but it didn't make him any more popular among Democrats once the post-9/11 glow had worn off."
There's a reason for this, and it gets to the core of who really runs American politics.
In a democratic society, elected officials are most directly accountable to the people who support them. And the people who support them are different than the people who don't care enough about politics to pay much attention, or the people who support the other side. They are more ideological, more partisan, and they want to see the policies they support passed into law. A leader who abandons his core supporters because what they want him to do won't be popular with most voters is likely, in modern American politics, to be destroyed in the next primary election.
The amateur ideological activists who eroded the power of the party professionals in the 1970s are now running the show. While Gilded Age activists traded support for patronage jobs, modern-day activists demand policy results in exchange for support. Presidents need to do everything within their legal ability to deliver the results that their supporters expect, and their opponents in Congress need to do everything possible to stop them. At one point, Republican congressional leaders were highly amenable to passing an immigration reform bill and the Obama administration insisted it had no means of circumventing the legislative process. But under pressure from their respective bases, Republicans found it impossible to compromise and Obama decided he had better find a way to go around Congress.
It is true that the mass public is not nearly as ideological as members of Congress. But the mass public is not necessarily active in democratic politics, either. Emory's Alan Abramowitz finds that "the American public has become more consistent and polarized in its policy preferences over the past several decades." He also writes that "this increase in consistency and polarization has been concentrated among the most politically engaged citizens."
This rise in ideological activism has a number of genuinely positive impacts. It makes politics less corrupt. The least-polarized state legislatures in America are in places like Rhode Island and Louisiana, bastions of corruption rather than good government. It's not a coincidence that the Tea Party surge led to the end of earmarked appropriations. But it heightened executive-legislative conflict and leads to what Linz termed "the zero-sum character of presidential elections."
Looking back at Bush's election in 2000, one of the most remarkable things is how little social disorder there was. The American public wanted Al Gore to be president, but a combination of the Electoral College rules, poor ballot design in Palm Beach County, and an adverse Supreme Court ruling, put Bush in office. The general presumption among elites at the time was that Democrats should accept this with good manners, and Bush would respond to the weak mandate with moderate, consensus-oriented governance. This was not in the cards. Not because of Bush's personal qualities (if anything, the Bush family and its circle are standard-bearers for the cause of relative moderation in the GOP), but because the era of the "partisan presidency" demands that the president try to implement the party's agenda, regardless of circumstances. That's how we got drastic tax cuts in 2001.
If the Bush years shattered the illusion that there's no difference between the parties, the Obama years underscore how much control of the White House matters in an era of gridlock. The broadly worded Clean Air Act, whose relevant provisions passed in 1970, has allowed Obama to be one of the most consequential environmental regulators of all time — even though he hasn't been able to pass a major new environmental bill. He's deployed executive discretion over immigration enforcement on an unprecedented scale. And he's left a legacy that could be rapidly reversed. A future Republican administration could not only turn back these executive actions, but substantially erode the Affordable Care Act.
The lessons of the 2000 and 2008 elections make it unnerving to imagine a Bush-Gore style recount occurring in 2015's political atmosphere. The stakes of presidential elections are sky-high. And the constitutional system provides no means for a compromise solution. There can be only one president. And once he's in office he has little reason to show restraint in the ambitions of the legislative — or non-legislative — agenda he pursues. In the event of another disputed election, it would be natural for both sides to push for victory with every legal or extra-legal means at their disposal.
Indeed, we ought to consider possibilities more disastrous than a repeat of the 2000 vote. What if a disputed presidential election coincided with a Supreme Court vacancy? What if the simultaneous deaths of the president and vice president brought to power a House Speaker from the opposite party? What if neither party secured a majority of electoral votes and a presidential election wound up being decided by a vote of the lame duck House of Representatives? What if highly partisan state legislatures start using their constitutional authority to rig the presidential contest? A system of undisciplined or non-ideological political parties has many flaws, but it is at least robust to a variety of shocks. Our current party alignment makes for a much more brittle situation, in which one of any number of crises where democratic norms and constitutional procedures diverge could bring us to a state of emergency.
The idea that America's constitutional system might be fundamentally flawed cuts deeply against the grain of our political culture. But the reality is that despite its durability, it has rarely functioned well by the standards of a modern democracy. The party system of the Gilded Age operated through systematic corruption. The less polarized era that followed was built on the systematic disenfranchisement of African-Americans. The newer system of more ideological politics has solved those problems and seems in many ways more attractive. But over the past 25 years, it's set America on a course of paralysis and crisis — government shutdowns, impeachment, debt ceiling crises, and constitutional hardball. Voters, understandably, are increasingly dissatisfied with the results and confidence in American institutions has been generally low and falling. But rather than leading to change, the dissatisfaction has tended to yield wild electoral swings that exacerbate the sense of permanent crisis.
As dysfunctional as American government may seem today, we've actually been lucky. No other presidential system has gone as long as ours without a major breakdown of the constitutional order. But the factors underlying that stability — first non-ideological parties and then non-disciplined ones — are gone. And it's worth considering the possibility that with them, so too has gone the American exception to the rule of presidential breakdown. If we seem to be unsustainably lurching from crisis to crisis, it's because we are unsustainably lurching from crisis to crisis. The breakdown may not be next year or even in the next five years, but over the next 20 or 30 years, will we really be able to resolve every one of these high-stakes showdowns without making any major mistakes? Do you really trust Congress that much?
The best we can hope for is that when the crisis does come, Americans will have the wisdom to do for ourselves what we did in the past for Germany and Japan and put a better system in place. | 0fake |
BREAKING: VIDEO OF YOUNG OBAMA EMERGES Discussing Mentor Frank Marshall Davis’ Advice About Growing Up In A White Racist World | Who needs family when you have a neighborhood mentor who can teach you the value of racism, communism and hate for America?In his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama never discussed the identity of the mysterious Frank who had given him important advice on growing up black in what was described as a white racist world. We learned in 2008 that Frank was Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party who was the subject of a 600-page FBI file. Still, the major media never asked Obama about this important relationship during his growing up years in Hawaii.Now, in an extraordinary development, video of Obama explicitly and openly identifying Frank as Frank Marshall Davis has suddenly surfaced on the Internet. The footage is said to have been recorded on September 20, 1995, with the program originally airing on Channel 37 Cambridge Municipal Television as an episode of the show, The Author Series. It s not clear how many saw this program when it aired. For some reason, this From the Vault Barack Obama presentation was just recently posted on YouTube. In the video, Obama is introduced as a Harvard Law School student and President of the Harvard Law Review. He discusses Frank as Frank Marshall Davis at about 8:37 in the video.In his remarks, Obama never identifies Davis as a communist or even a leftist. But the remarks do reflect the significant influence that Davis had over his young life as he was growing up in Hawaii. Obama talks about how Davis schools him on the subject of race relations. The term implies a teacher-student relationship the two of them had, confirming what we had reported back in 2008, that Davis had functioned as Obama s mentor. It s important to understand what Obama is saying here. Getting ready to read directly from his book, Dreams from My Father, Obama talks about the passages ending with me having a conversation with a close friend of my maternal grandfather, a close friend of gramps, a black man from Kansas, named Frank, actually at the time a fairly well-known poet named Frank Marshall Davis, who had moved to Hawaii and lived there, and so I have a discussion with him about the kinds of frustrations I m having, and he sorts of schools me that I should get used to these frustrations Davis was indeed a black poet. His works included attacks on Christianity. One Davis poem referred to Christ irreverently as a nigger. Davis was himself an atheist.However, Davis was better known as a communist propagandist whose work for the Communist Party in Hawaii earned him surveillance by the FBI and placement on its security index. Davis was also a pornographer who engaged in bizarre sexual practices, even pedophilia.Needless to say, Obama s willingness to identify Frank as Davis before this audience raises questions as to why Frank wasn t identified by his full name Frank Marshall Davis in the book itself. Obama made references to Frank 22 times throughout his book. Paul Kengor notes that Obama s audio version of Dreams from My Father omitted every reference to Frank that was in the book. Those omissions were clearly designed to keep people from asking questions about Frank, since Obama was considering a run for the presidency.Today, in 2015, discovering film of Obama identifying Frank as Davis is confirmation of the obvious. It doesn t make a lot of difference politically, since Obama is serving out his second term. But it could have made a difference seven years ago, in 2008, when we identified Frank as Davis, during Obama s campaign for his first term in office.The clip of Obama talking about Davis during his 1995 Cambridge presentation is important for other reasons, however.By his own admission, Obama was preoccupied with his own feelings and thoughts about race relations. He saw himself as an angry young man whose father was absent from his life. He said he was without father figures around who might guide and steer my anger. That s significant because it s clear, from the passages he reads, that Davis became that father figure. Davis was indeed picked by his white grandfather to be a role model or father figure for the young Barack Obama.In the passages he read back in 1995, Obama discussed inviting some white friends to a black party and seeing them squirm. They re trying to tap their foot to the beat and being extraordinarily friendly, he said. They are trying to fit in but they are uncomfortable and they tell Obama they want to leave. Obama concluded, What I have had to put up with every day of my life is something that they find so objectionable that they can t even put up with a day. This is like a revelation to Obama about the world of white racism. All of this he says triggers something in his head and he comprehends a new map of the world. He gets a sense of the anger and betrayal in society and even in his own family, where he is being raised by his white grandfather, Gramps, and white grandmother, Toot. This leads him to seek advice from Frank. Frank Marshall Davis then sort of schools me that I should get used to these frustrations, Obama says.The passages that he reads from the book before the Cambridge audience include a discussion of when his own white grandmother was accosted by a black panhandler. Davis told Obama that his grandmother was right to be scared and that She understands that black people have reason to hate. In other words, Davis did not encourage Obama to pursue racial harmony or reconciliation. He told Obama that blacks have a reason, or right, to hate.Via:AIM.comh/t Weasel Zippers | 1real |
George W. Bush reportedly rips Ted Cruz to Jeb Bush donors | Former President George W. Bush reportedly ripped into Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a weekend gathering of donors to his brother's presidential campaign, according to a published report Monday.
Politico reported that Bush said of Cruz, "I just don't like the guy," at the event, which was held Sunday night in Denver.
According to the report, which cited at least six donors who were at the event, Bush said he did not like Cruz's de facto alliance with Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has notably spared Cruz from the criticism he has ladled onto other members of the 15-candidate Republican field.
"He said he found it 'opportunistic' that Cruz was sucking up to Trump and just expecting all of his support to come to him in the end," one donor told Politico when asked to describe Bush's remarks about Cruz. The report added that the former president had been engaging with amiable discussions about the state of the GOP race when Cruz's name came up.
"I was like, 'Holy s---, did he just say that?'" the donor told Politico. "I remember looking around and seeing that other people were also looking around surprised."
The report also said that Bush warned the donors to not underestimate Cruz's strength in the South and in Texas, where his message of religious liberty is expected to play very well with voters.
Cruz, in a written statement put out by the campaign on Tuesday, said he would not be "reciprocating" after the comments.
"I have great respect for George W. Bush, and was proud to work on his 2000 campaign and in his administration," he said in the statement. "It's no surprise that President Bush is supporting his brother and attacking the candidates he believes pose a threat to his campaign. I have no intention of reciprocating. I met my wife Heidi working on his campaign, and so I will always be grateful to him."
Freddy Ford, a spokesman for George W. Bush, did not deny that the former president had made the disparaging remarks about Cruz when asked to comment by Politico.
"The first words out of President Bush's mouth [Sunday] were that Jeb is going to earn the nomination, win the election, and be a great President ... He does not view Senator Cruz as Governor Bush's most serious rival."
Ford denied further requests by Fox News to address Bush's reported "I just don't like the guy" remark.
Cruz joined George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser and helped put together the legal team that argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court in the aftermath of the controversial election. He later served as an associate deputy attorney general in the Justice Department before becoming Solicitor General of Texas in 2003.
Click for more from Politico.
Fox News' Mike Emanuel and Serafin Gomez contributed to this report. | 0fake |
The FBI’s October Surprise: What You’re Not Being Told | Corbett • 11/06/2016 • 1 Comment
On Friday, October 28th, 2016, FBI Director James Comey dropped a political bombshell just 10 days out from the presidential (s)election.
Many theories have so far been floated about why the FBI director issued this letter just days before a national (s)election. Some of them, including the idea that Comey is struggling against an internal insurrection of agents disgruntled by his earlier decision not to prosecute Clinton, seem to have a basis in reality. Others, including the idea that Comey is an agent of the Russians, working in collusion with Putin and Trump to put a Kremlin puppet in the White House, do not.
But what seemingly everyone has missed with regard to the letter is that it was issued just four days after another bombshell piece of information…
For the video version of this report, please CLICK HERE .
For full access to the subscriber newsletter, and to support this website, please become a member . Only site members can access this content.
Already a Member? | 1real |
Laura Bush hints she'd rather see Hillary as president | “I want our next president – whoever he or she might be – to be somebody who is interested in women in Afghanistan and who will continue US policies… that we continue to do what we're committed to do as a country,” she said, as she appeared on stage alongside her twin daughters Jenna and Barbara.
“That's who I want - or the kind of people that will do that and will pay attention to our history, and know what's what's happened before and know specifically how we can continue to do the good things that we do around the world.”
• Donald Trump endorsed by Rudy Giuliani in boost ahead of New York primary
Many in the packed auditorium took her words as a coded criticism of Mr Trump, whose foreign policy plans have been condemned as isolationist and weak on detail.
His closest rival Ted Cruz has also made clear that the US has no role in Afghanistan other than fighting terrorism.
In contrast, Mrs Clinton was among those who offered a cover endorsement for Mrs Bush's Afghan book. “For over a decade, Laura Bush has been an ally and advocate for the women of Afghanistan and, in particular, has worked to ensure that the voices of Afghan women are heard,” she wrote.
The two women share a special bond as former first ladies and are of a similar age: both know the struggles of working their way up in a male-dominated world. | 0fake |
Kid Has ‘Birthday Surprise’ For Church, Does The Unexpected While Inside | Kid Has ‘Birthday Surprise’ For Church, Does The Unexpected While Inside Alisha Rich in Religion Share This
A teenager recently celebrated his birthday in Harriman, Tennessee. However, the kid isn’t so fond of his yearly celebration and finally became fed up with it, devising a plan not many would consider. In fact, he came up with a “birthday surprise” for a local church, and onlookers spotted him doing the unexpected after he walked inside. Ryan Nelson
Ryan Nelson, 13, had explained to his parents that he didn’t want to celebrate his birthday. Although most kids would like to invite all of their friends, open gifts, and eat some birthday cake, Ryan didn’t want to spend his special day that way. Instead of having a huge ordeal for himself, he devised a plan that not many people would ever consider. He was going to give a “birthday surprise” to a church.
Ryan decided to take the money his parents would have spent on a party, as well as all of his birthday money, and he donated it to a local church. “He also packed up and donated canned soups, ramen noodles and lots of clothes and blankets,” according to WVLT . His donations will go to the M-14 Ministries’ “Dry Bones” shelter.
“The community, in my opinion, has given me so much,” Ryan explained. “So I think this year, on my birthday, it’s time to give back to the community.” Ryan’s donations
The director of the shelter, Dwayne Linger, was overwhelmed by Ryan’s generosity. “I just hope that other kids see what he’s done and follow his lead,” Linger said. “I think it’s a great blessing, what he’s done.” Ryan admitted that he came up with the idea after he watched his mother donate to another church earlier this year.
It’s great to see that some of those in the younger generation can think about someone other than themselves. We need to ensure that our children realize how much of an impact their beliefs and actions will have on our country’s future. | 1real |
Trump: Intelligence Briefing Shows ‘Absolutely No Effect’ of Cyber Attacks on Election Results - Breitbart | Donald Trump asserted that cyber attacks had “absolutely no effect” on the results of the election, after he received an intelligence briefing at Trump Tower on Friday. [“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines,” Trump said in a statement sent to reporters. He added that although there were attempts to hack the RNC, they had the proper security defense to ward off the attacks. Trump was briefed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James B. Comey, and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency and U. S. Cyber Command. After the meeting, Trump appeared eager to put the controversy behind him, praising the intelligence community for their efforts. “I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation,” he said. He also promised to have an aggressive plan to secure the country from cyber attacks, vowing a plan within 90 days of taking the office of the presidency. “The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm,” he said. “Two weeks from today I will take the oath of office and America’s safety and security will be my number one priority. ” | 0fake |
House panel chair introduces $81 billion disaster aid bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee introduced a bill on Monday to provide $81 billion in emergency aid for recent hurricanes and wildfires. The legislation includes $27.6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $26.1 billion for community development block grants, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen said in a statement. President Donald Trump had requested $44 billion last month, which was widely criticized by lawmakers as being insufficient. | 0fake |
SCOTT BAIO FILES POLICE REPORT: Physically Attacked By Wife Of Famous Rock Band Member Over Support For Trump…Screamed Vulgarities In Front Of Kids At Elementary School Function | Scott Baio became a teen idol starring as Chachi Arcola on Happy Days from 1977-1984 and he worked pretty consistently until a few years ago, most recently as star and producer of See Dad Run on Nick at Nite. Baio spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about being a conservative in famously liberal Hollywood.Donald Trump has had some gaffes recently, like insulting the Khan family. Do you think they are actual gaffes or media hype?Well, let s put that up against someone who should be indicted, according to James Comey, the FBI director. It s amazing. I mean, I don t know where you stand politically you work for The Hollywood Reporter so I m sure you lean left. But it s incredible to me that she lied about people dying in Benghazi, and she is still lying about her emails, and Donald Trump says something about this couple and it s taken completely out of context. I was around for Romney and I thought that was bad, but this is insane. I don t know who the Clintons made a deal with, but the media is, so bad. How do you fight that? Hollywood Reporter On Monday, Scott Baio filed a police report claiming the wife of the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer went nuts on him at a function with their elementary school kids physically attacking him over his support of Donald Trump.Law enforcement tells TMZ, Baio says he was at an event with his daughter Saturday in Thousand Oaks, CA, when Nancy Mack confronted him. Mack, who s married to drummer Chad Smith, is a vocal anti-Trump supporter who has called the Prez-elect racist began berating and cursing Baio, one of Trump s strongest celebrity supporters.We re told Baio told cops he asked her to quiet down because kids were present, but Mack was undeterred, asking him how he could support a man who said, Grab em by the pussy. Baio claims she repeatedly screamed, Grab em by the pussy. Baio asked Nancy to stop, but he claims she kept repeating the comment because she felt everyone needed to hear it, cause Trump used it. Baio told cops at that point Mack attacked him, grabbing him under his arms and then shaking and pushing him.For entire story: TMZ | 1real |
FAKE NEWS: Sean Spicer Trashes New York Times ’Bathrobe’ Report - Breitbart | White House press secretary Sean Spicer ridiculed a story published by the New York Times that reported that President Donald Trump spends a lot of time in the White House watching television in his bathrobe. [“I don’t think the president owns a bathrobe,” Spicer told reporters aboard Air Force One in response to the story. “He definitely doesn’t wear one. ” The story reported that Trump was struggling being “cloistered” inside the White House, and that his senior aides were having difficulty adjusting to their new roles in the White House — and to each other. But Spicer accused the reporters of getting the story horribly wrong, calling it “literally the epitome of fake news. ” “That story was so riddled with inaccuracies and lies that they owe the president an apology,” he said. “Literally blatant factual errors and it’s unacceptable to see that kind of reporting or reporting. ” Spicer accused the New York Times reporters of failing their readers by printing unsubstantiated rumors. “From top to bottom it made up stories that don’t exist and I think that’s unfortunate for people that look to news institutions like that for their news,” he said. | 0fake |
The Lights Are On in Detroit - The New York Times | DETROIT — Just before the holidays, on a dark street a few blocks from downtown, a group of public officials crowded onto a makeshift stage before a shivering crowd, flipped a big switch — and the last of this city’s 65, 000 new streetlights blazed on. For years, urban decline here was encapsulated in headlines about Detroit’s lights going out. Nowadays, tales of the city’s slow recovery tend to focus on plucky hipsters from Los Angeles or Brooklyn colonizing abandoned spaces, opening pickle companies or tilling little urban agriculture plots. Glossy magazines acclaim Detroit as the next Berlin never mind that Germany’s reunified capital has always floated on a bed of cushy federal subsidies. Let’s hope that if anyone writes a history of Detroit’s rejuvenation, a chapter is devoted to the lights returning. Like picking up the trash, fixing potholes and responding to emergencies, these efforts signal that no matter where you live in Detroit, you are no longer forgotten — that government here can finally keep its basic promises. The city, postbankruptcy, is led by Mike Duggan, a strong mayor. Its most solid indicator of progress may come this year, with the release of census figures, Mr. Duggan told me. After generations of white and black flight, there’s hope the numbers will reveal, for the first time in decades, the population holding steady or even rising. So far, much news about growth has focused on downtown, where Dan Gilbert, the billionaire owner of Quicken Loans, is a vocal booster, and on Midtown, home to businesses like the luxury brand Shinola. A light rail under construction will soon link the two neighborhoods, doubling down on their redevelopment. All that said, Detroit is a large city with limited resources. It sprawls across 139 square miles (two and a half times the size of Miami) a preponderance of which remain blighted and empty, with few prospects for prosperity. I made a pilgrimage to Sister Pie, a cozy corner bakery opened a few years ago by a gifted Brooklyn transplant in the troubled West Village area, where more new shops and restaurants have lately settled. West Village is being advertised as another pocket of resurgence. You sometimes even hear the G word — gentrification — bandied around. But drive a block or so from Sister Pie and you’ll still find street after street of houses. This is where the new lights come in. They’re spread all across town. The project cost $185 million, paid by the city and the state. The Public Lighting Authority of Detroit, backed by the mayor, received a critical assist from the Obama administration: Energy Department experts advised local officials to swap out the old, costly, sodium lamps, which vandals had been stripping bare for copper wire. They recommended LED technology. Investments by the Obama administration in lighting have reduced costs, making LEDs feasible for a city like Detroit. Three years ago, nearly half the 88, 000 streetlights in the city were out of commission. The more potent LED lights allow the authority to replace those 88, 000 old fixtures with 65, 000 new ones, strong enough for you to read one of those glossy magazines after dark. The whole thing came in under budget and on time. When was the last time anyone could say that about a major infrastructure project in Detroit? “An example of how good government should work,” as Lorna L. Thomas, chairwoman of the lighting authority, put it at the ceremony. It’s also an example of how one smart decision can have ripple effects. Some residents here grumbled about fewer lights. That said, the stronger new ones turn out to save Detroit nearly $3 million in electric bills. They use aluminum wiring, which nobody wants to strip, discouraging crime. The technology even cuts carbon emissions by more than 40, 000 tons a year — equivalent to “taking 11, 000 cars off of your streets,” Shaun Donovan, Mr. Obama’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, pointed out at the lighting event, as well as “putting more money in the city’s pockets to do more good things. ” Good things like investing in development beyond the core. I met with the city’s new planning and housing chiefs, who outlined a bold agenda to target dense areas, like the one around Livernois Avenue, between Seven Mile Road and Eight Mile Road, the city’s former luxury fashion district. Homegrown entrepreneurs like Rufus Bartell, catering to a young, more population, are reviving the avenue. Mr. Bartell and his family have opened nearly a dozen businesses along Livernois, including Kuzzo’s Chicken Waffles, where he and I convened one recent morning over breakfast. The place was mobbed, as usual. Businesses like Kuzzo’s pretty much had to shut down by dinnertime during the winter when the lights were out, Mr. Bartell told me. “People didn’t want to go out to eat or shop after the sun went down,” he said. He gestured out the window toward a shop across the street. “I own a store that sells furs and leather goods, with a customer base that skews older. Foot traffic almost fell to zero after dark. Since the lights came on, it’s up 15 percent across this neighborhood. ” Back at Sister Pie, I talked with Shannon Smith, 26, another Detroit native, who said he had grown up in Cody Rouge, an area on the northwest side of the city where getting to and from the bus stop as a teenager was a nightmare when streetlights failed. He and other schoolchildren all across town waited in the dark for buses that often didn’t arrive on schedule. “I was especially vulnerable whenever it snowed, because the city didn’t clear the sidewalks,” Mr. Smith recalled. City officials told me that since 2014, using federal Department of Transportation funding, Detroit has added 80 buses, hired dozens of drivers and increased ridership by approximately 100, 000 trips a week. Buses are critical to bringing together the areas of newly targeted development. It’s one of the cruel (many here say racist) burdens of life in Detroit that automobile insurance rates for city residents are through the roof many can’t afford a car. Like the streetlights, buses restore the fabric of the streets and a base line of normalcy. I made one last stop, at Louisiana Creole Gumbo, a restaurant near downtown. Joe Spencer has owned Louisiana Creole since the early 1980s. It catered to neighborhood workers before drug dealers moved in and the lights went out. Now the lights are on, Mr. Spencer said, and diners are returning at night. But more important, he said, the lights demonstrate that City Hall followed through on a promise: “Residents stopped trusting government, and without trust people won’t want to settle here or start a business. The mayor said he’d turn the lights back on. He did. ” Among ripple effects, trust may be the most invaluable. As I said, one smart design move. | 0fake |
France's Macron says his job not 'cool', cites talks with Turkey's Erdogan | PARIS (Reuters) - France s young new president, Emmanuel Macron, said life as a world leader is less cool than it might seem, citing talks with Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan as an example. Asked by Le Point magazine in an interview if he was trying to be the new cool kid on the global stage, Macron replied: The global stage is not really a cool scene, you know. Asked to give an example, he said: I am the one who has to talk with Erdogan every 10 days. He did not elaborate. Erdogan is often criticized by leaders in Western Europe and he has clashed with the European Union over human rights and other issues. The last known conversation between Macron and Erdogan was on Aug. 27, when they discussed the fate of a French journalist jailed in Turkey. An aide to Macron later said the French president had not meant to mock or criticize his Turkish counterpart. The conversations with Mr. Erdogan are always very serious, the aide explained. | 0fake |
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder Could Face Manslaughter Charges Over Flint Water Poisoning | The people of Flint, Michigan are suffering from a man-made disaster, and someone should pay the consequences for it.A special investigator is looking into tragedy that has gripped the major Michigan community since 2014 when state officials chose to switch Flint s water supply from Lake Huron to the poisoned river.Ever since, there have been multiple cases of lead poisoning, and ten people have already died from Legionnaires disease. Kids can now expect to deal with neurological issues as they get older because of the high levels of lead found in their bloodstream.Special Investigator Todd Flood has been brought in along with the former head of the Detroit FBI office and other former law enforcement officials to figure out who knew what and when they knew it. Flood says that manslaughter charges could be on the table. We re here to investigate what possible crimes there are, anything [from] involuntary manslaughter or death that may have happened to some young person or old person because of this poisoning, to misconduct in office, Flood said. We take this very seriously. Indeed, he should. The Flint River had been abandoned as a water source for decades by the city precisely because the water was known to be toxic and unsafe for human consumption. This is public knowledge and officials should have known better.But Governor Snyder, who has made it his personal mission to take over city after city and appoint emergency managers to do his bidding in an effort to save the state money, has ignored the crisis until very recently when he called it his Katrina. Switching to the river was a money-saving scheme that has now backfired into a multi-million dollar catastrophe.And Snyder s emails aren t exactly helping him avoid prison.As the Washington Post reports, emails have been released showing that Snyder s office knew of the Legionnaires outbreak more than nine months before the governor announced the problem this January. Snyder s office was even heavily involved in the vote the Flint City Council made to make the switch to the river.Perhaps most damning is Congressional testimony by EPA acting water chief, Joel Beauvais, who claimed Snyder and his agencies ignored federal advice to treat Flint s water for corrosive elements, which are believed to have eroded old lead pipes and contaminated drinking water, and that the state delayed for months in telling the public about the health risks. Even Rachel Maddow has shamed Snyder and his administration for their actions and inactions that let the tragedy happen.But Snyder is not the only public official who should be held responsible for poisoning the residents of Flint. Multiple city and state officials ignored the unfolding tragedy for months and even had the nerve to tell residents that the drinking water was perfectly safe even as scientific testing revealed that wasn t the case.As Todd Flood and his team investigate the crisis alongside a federal team conducting a separate investigation of their own, we could end up seeing a line of public officials being handcuffed and fitted for an orange jumpsuit when all is said and done. And that includes Rick Snyder, who frankly should have resigned by now.Ultimately, the buck stops at his desk. He is responsible for protecting the citizens of the state and of overseeing the state health and environmental agencies. It s hard to believe that he knew nothing of this problem for two years.The people of Flint deserve justice. Those who have died because of this deserve justice. The kids who will likely grow up with severe neurological issues deserve justice. And if justice cannot be delivered to Flint, nothing stops public officials from being just as irresponsible in other states.Featured Image: Flickr | 1real |
#BoycottStarbucks…CEO Puts Leftist Agenda Over Company Profits…Plans To Hire 10,000 Refugees In Response To Trump’s 4 Month Refugee Moratorium…IGNORED Obama’s 6 Month Ban On Refugees | Starbucks has pledged to hire 10,000 refugees in response to President Donald Trump s controversial immigrant ban. CEO Howard Schultz said in a letter to employees Sunday the company would hire refugees from 75 different countries over a five-year period. We are living in an unprecedented time, one in which we are witness to the conscience of our country, and the promise of the American Dream, being called into question. These uncertain times call for different measures and communication tools than we have used in the past, Schultz said in the letter. dailybeastObama banned all Iraqi refugees for six months in 2011. Even those who aided our military. Media said nothing. #MAGA #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/rtaYPornLx Ed Reshevsky (@CPO45) January 28, 2017Howard Schultz (Chair) William W. Bradley Mary N. Dillon Robert M. Gates Mellody Hobson Kevin R. Johnson Joshua Cooper Ramo James G. Shennan, Jr. Clara Shih Javier G. Teruel Myron E. Ullman, III (Lead Independent Director) Craig E. WeatherupDon t they have some obligation to their stockholders to do everything in their power to make a profit? Do they really believe that making a public statement that they ll hire refugees before American citizens will help their business? | 1real |
In Break With Precedent, Obama Envoys Are Denied Extensions Past Inauguration Day - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods. The mandate — issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with children, to remain in place for weeks or months. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has taken a hard line against leaving any of President Obama’s political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20 with a mission of dismantling many of his predecessor’s signature foreign and domestic policy achievements. “Political” ambassadors, many of them major donors who are nominated by virtue of close ties with the president, almost always leave at the end of his term ambassadors who are career diplomats often remain in their posts. A senior Trump transition official said there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring that Mr. Obama’s overseas appointees leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal deliberations, said the ambassadors should not be surprised about being held to a hard end date. The directive has nonetheless upended the personal lives of many ambassadors, who are scrambling to secure living arrangements and acquire visas allowing them to remain in their countries so their children can remain in school, the diplomats said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. In Costa Rica, Ambassador Stafford Fitzgerald Haney is hunting for a house or an apartment as his family — which includes four children and his wife, who has been battling breast cancer — struggles to figure out how to avoid a move back to the United States with five months left in the school year, according to the diplomats. In the Czech Republic, they said, Ambassador Andrew H. Schapiro is seeking housing in Prague as well as lobbying his children’s school to break with policy and accept them back midyear. In Brussels and Geneva, Denise Bauer, the United States ambassador to Belgium, and Pamela Hamamoto, the permanent representative to the United Nations, are both trying to find a way to keep daughters from having to move just months before their high school graduation. Ronald E. Neumann, the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a nonprofit association for former ambassadors and senior diplomats, said it was reasonable to expect ambassadors to return at the end of a term, given that they are direct representatives of the president with broad grants of authority. But he could not recall an occasion on which such a strict timeline had been applied. “When you have people out there whose only reason for being an ambassador is their political connection to the outgoing president of a different party, it’s pretty logical to say they should leave,” said Mr. Neumann, a career Foreign Service officer who held ambassadorships in Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan. “But I don’t recollect there was ever a guillotine in January where it was just, ‘Everybody out of the pool immediately. ’” W. Robert Pearson, a former ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the rule was “quite extraordinary,” adding that it could undermine American interests and signal a hasty change in direction that exacerbates jitters among allies about their relationships with the new administration. With the world already primed to be worrying about such an abrupt change, “this is just a very concrete signal that it is going to happen,” Mr. Pearson said. At a White House farewell reception that Mr. Obama held on Wednesday night for noncareer ambassadors, many of them commiserated, attendees said, comparing notes about how to handle the situation. Some expressed dismay that Mr. Trump, whose wife, Melania, has chosen to stay in New York to avoid moving the couple’s son, Barron, to a new school midyear, would not ensure that such allowances were made for American ambassadors. They are weighing a direct appeal to Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, or other top transition officials to reconsider the policy. Derek Shearer, a professor of diplomacy at Occidental College who is a former United States ambassador to Finland, said it was difficult to see a rationale for the decision. “It feels like there’s an element just of spite and payback in it,” he said. “I don’t see a higher policy motive. ” The State Department informed all politically appointed ambassadors in a letter the day after the election that they were to submit letters of resignation effective Jan. 20. It instructed those who wanted to seek extensions to submit formal requests explaining their justifications. Incoming presidents of both parties have often made exceptions to allow ambassadors to wrap up personal affairs and important diplomatic business while their successors were in the confirmation process, which can take months. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Mr. Obama all granted extensions for a few politically appointed ambassadors. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell offered particularly wide latitude to ambassadors facing family issues, said Marc Grossman, a longtime diplomat and former top State Department official who is vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a Washington consultancy. “This was something that was important to Secretary Powell because of his own experience living and serving all over the world, so when people asked him, ‘Could I stay another couple of weeks, couple of months my kids are finishing school,’ he was very accommodating,” Mr. Grossman said, adding that his flexibility was an “exception” to the general practice. “He was trying to, I think, send a message that family was important. ” | 0fake |
Republican senators criticize CBO, welcome health-care plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the Congressional Budget Office report on a Republican healthcare plan indicated a path to lower insurance premiums, a lower deficit and significant entitlement reform. McConnnell said the Senate would bring up the House of Representatives legislation and have it open to amendment before passing it. At the same news briefing, Republican Senator Roy Blunt said the CBO is “notoriously bad” at anticipating what will happen in the marketplace. McConnell also said lawmakers would talk to the Treasury secretary about timing but “obviously we will raise the debt ceiling.” | 0fake |
Hot dogs, bacon and other processed meats cause cancer, World Health Organization declares | A research division of the World Health Organization announced Monday that bacon, sausage and other processed meats cause cancer and that red meat probably does, too.
The report by the influential group stakes out one of the most aggressive stances against meat taken by a major health organization, and it is expected to face stiff criticism in the United States.
The WHO findings were drafted by a panel of 22 international experts who reviewed decades of research on the link between red meat, processed meats and cancer. The panel reviewed animal experiments, studies of human diet and health, and cell processes that could explain how red meat might cause cancer.
But the panel’s decision was not unanimous, and by raising lethal concerns about a food that anchors countless American meals, it will be controversial.
The $95 billion U.S. beef industry has been preparing for months to mount a response, and some scientists, including some unaffiliated with the meat industry, have questioned whether the evidence is substantial enough to draw the strong conclusions that the WHO panel did.
In reaching its conclusion, the panel sought to quantify the risks, and compared to carcinogens such as cigarettes, the magnitude of the danger appears small, experts said. The WHO panel cited studies suggesting that an additional 3.5 ounces of red meat everyday raises the risk of colorectal cancer by 17 percent; eating an additional 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily raises the risk by 18 percent, according to the research cited.
“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” says Kurt Straif, an official with the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which produced the report. “In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance.”
About 34,000 cancer deaths a year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meats, according to figures cited by the panel.
[WHO says hot dogs, bacon cause cancer. Does this mean we should all become vegetarians?]
The research into a possible link between eating red meat and cancer has been the subject of scientific debate for decades, with colorectal cancer being a long-standing area of concern. But by concluding that processed meat causes cancer, and that red meat “probably” causes cancer, the WHO findings go well beyond the tentative associations that some other groups have reported.
The American Cancer Society, for example, notes that many studies have found “a link” between eating red meat and heightened risks of colorectal cancer. But it stops short of telling people that the meats cause cancer. Some diets that have lots of vegetables and fruits and lesser amounts of red and processed meats have been associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, the American Cancer Society says, but “it’s not exactly clear” which factors of that diet are important.
Likewise, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. government’s advice compendium, encourage the consumption of protein-containing foods such as lean meats as part of a healthy diet. Regarding processed meats, though, the Dietary Guidelines offer a tentative warning: “Moderate evidence suggests an association between the increased intake of processed meats (e.g., franks, sausage, and bacon) and increased risk of colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease.” The Dietary Guidelines do not assert that processed meats cause cancer.
Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is updating the Dietary Guidelines with the USDA, have not yet reviewed the WHO report, a spokesperson said.
[95 percent of the world's people may be wrong about salt]
For consumers, the WHO announcement offers scant practical advice even while casting aspersions over a wide array of foods. Red meat includes beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton and goat. Processed meat includes hot dogs, ham, sausages, corned beef and beef jerky — or any other meat that has been cured, smoked, salted or otherwise changed to enhance flavor or improve preservation.
How much of those is it safe to eat? The group doesn’t offer much guidance: “The data available for evaluation did not permit a conclusion about whether a safe level exists.”
Should we be vegetarians? Again, the group does not hazard an answer.
And how exactly does red meat and processed meat cause cancer? The group names a handful of chemicals involved in cooking and processing meat, most of them nearly unpronounceable, and some believed to be carcinogenic.
“But despite the knowledge it is not yet fully understood how cancer risk is increased by red meat or processed meat,” the group wrote.
Despite the voids in the science, the WHO findings might cast a pall over diners and those who serve them.
At The Pig Restaurant on 14th Street NW in Washington, where the menu includes an array of pork products - kielbasa, prosciutto, pork cheek, etc - a worker sweeping the tables outside encouraged a reporter to look elsewhere for comments about cancer and red meat. Around the corner, outside the Whole Foods grocery, shoppers evinced a weary of fatalism regarding authoritative diet advice.
“It makes some sense,” said Nassrin Farzaneh, a development consultant, carrying a bag out of the store, said of the WHO finding on processed meat. “But they say one thing and then two or three years later they something that contradicts it. It goes on and on.”
“Everything causes cancer,” said Caroline Rourke, an energy policy analyst, also on her way out of the grocery. “Life causes cancer. Who cares what food does? Life is terminal, isn’t it?"
[Another food to worry about? Honey not as healthy as we think.]
In recent years, meat consumption has been the target of multi-faceted social criticism, with debates erupting not just over its role on human health, but the impact of feedlots on the environment and on animal welfare. The public debate over the WHO’s findings will probably play out with political lobbying and in marketing messages for consumers.
An industry group, the North American Meat Institute, called the WHO report “dramatic and alarmist overreach,” and it mocked the panel’s previous work for approving a substance found in yoga pants and treating coffee, sunlight and wine as potential cancer hazards.
The WHO panel “says you can enjoy your yoga class, but don’t breathe air (Class I carcinogen), sit near a sun-filled window (Class I), apply aloe vera (Class 2B) if you get a sunburn, drink wine or coffee (Class I and Class 2B), or eat grilled food (Class 2A),” said Betsy Booren, vice president of scientific affairs for the group.
“We simply don’t think the evidence supports any causal link between any red meat and any type of cancer,” said Shalene McNeill, executive director of human nutrition at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
But at its core, the issue revolves around science, and in particular the difficulty that arises whenever scientists try to link any food to a chronic disease.
Experiments to test whether a food causes cancer pose a massive logistical challenge: they require controlling the diets of thousands of test subjects over a course of many years. For example, one group might be assigned to eat lots of meat and another less, or none. But for a variety of reasons involving cost and finding test subjects, such experiments are rarely conducted, and scientists instead often use other less direct methods, known as epidemiological or observational studies, to draw their conclusions.
“I understand that people may be skeptical about this report on meat because the experimental data is not terribly strong,” said Paolo Boffetta, a professor of Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who has served on similar WHO panels. “But in this case the epidemiological evidence is very strong.”
[Why the Bureau of Prisons stripped pork from the menu for federal inmates]
Some scientists, however, have criticized the epidemiological studies for too often reaching “false positives,” that is, concluding that something causes cancer when it doesn’t.
“Is everything we eat associated with cancer?” asked a much noted 2012 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
That paper reviewed the academic studies conducted on common cookbook ingredients. Of the 50 ingredients considered, 40 had been studied for their relation to cancer. Individually, most of those studies found that consumption of the food was correlated with cancer. But when the research on any given ingredient was considered collectively, those effects typically shrank or disappeared.
“Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak,” the authors concluded.
Although epidemiological studies were critical in proving the dangers of cigarettes, the magnitude of the reported meat risk is much smaller, and it is hard for scientists to rule out statistical confounding as the cause of the apparent danger.
Moreover, some skeptics noted that two experiments that tested diets with reduced meat consumption, the Polyp Prevention Trial and the Women’s Health Initiative, found that people who reduced their meat intake did not appear to have a lower cancer risk. It is possible, though, that the reductions in animal flesh were too small to have an effect.
“It might be a good idea not to be an excessive consumer of meat,” said Jonathan Schoenfeld, the co-author of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article and an assistant professor in radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School. “But the effects of eating meat may be minimal, if anything.”
Was it wrong that the government steered people away from whole milk for decades?
How Coca-Cola has tricked everyone into drinking so much of it
What Americans do with fish is shocking
Why Americans are falling out of love with one of their favorite fruits
Whole milk, butter and eggs are now okay to eat. What's next? | 0fake |
Iran ‘Will Respond’ if US Moves to Designate Revolutionary Guard as ‘Terrorist Group’ | Fresh off its humiliating six-year-long debacle in Syria, and with very few viable wars within its grasp, the Pentagon, along with the Israeli Lobby-led US Congress and Senate are now trying to tighten the noose on Iran.For the last 3 weeks, hawkish Republican Senators have been pressuring President Donald Trump to decertify the Iran nuclear deal in October, and to reimpose harsh sanctions despite the fact that Iran is in full compliance with the international P5+1 brokered nuclear containment agreement.According to the terms of the deal as recognized by Congress, the President must re-certify the deal every 90 days.LITTLE MARCO: It s clear that Marco Rubio is firmly in the pocket of the Israeli Lobby.Chief among the Israeli-led Senators is Florida Senator Marco Rubio. During the Presidential campaign, Rubio was humiliated by Trump who dubbed him Little Marco. Soon after, the slighted Senator was forced to drop out of the race due to a lack of support for his campaign.SEE ALSO: Retired US General Picks Apart Sen. Cotton s Scarlet Letter to IranOn its face, Trump and the Israel First hawks policy to crush the JCPOA Nuclear Agreement makes little sense. Business Insider explains:John Glaser and Emma Ashford respond to Trump s latest attack on the nuclear deal: Iran is clearly abiding by the deal s requirements, as President Trump himself has twice formally acknowledged. But the President appears determined to ignore U.S. allies, his own intelligence community and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has affirmed eight separate times in detailed reports that Iran is in compliance with the deal.As is usually the case, the US hawks (also supported by Iran s economic and geopolitical regional rival Saudi Arabia) are hoping to trigger retaliatory rhetoric from the Iranian hawks and use those words to justify a call for escalation of tension, and a full range of new sanctions against Iran:This desire to withdraw from the JCPOA is difficult to explain. Whatever Trump s reasoning, this much is clear: All of America s options outside the JCPOA carry unacceptably high risks and threaten to exacerbate the very behavior Iran hawks hope to forestall.Desperate to fabricate their case against Iran, the US (instructed by the Israeli Lobby) are now trying to brand Iran s military as an international terrorist organisation.RT International reports Iran has vowed a firm and crushing reaction should Washington decide to include the elite wing of its army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on its list of terrorist organizations, according to the country s foreign ministry.The comments came from Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi on Monday as cited by Tasnim news agency. We are hopeful that the United States does not make this strategic mistake, Qasemi stated during a news conference. If they do, Iran s reaction would be firm, decisive and crushing, he said, adding that the US would have to accept the consequences.Earlier it was reported that Washington is preparing tougher sanctions on Tehran, including the possible designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group.US President Donald Trump has taken a tough stance on the Islamic Republic, criticizing it for supporting terrorism and vowing to put an end to Iran s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. On Sunday, IRGC chief Mohammad Ali Jafari warned that if the reports are confirmed, the military wing will treat US troops, especially in the Middle East, as they would Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists. If the news is correct about the stupidity of the American government in considering the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group, then the Revolutionary Guards will consider the American Army to be like Islamic State all around the world, particularly in the Middle East, Jafari stated.Washington s reported threats have prompted France to speak against actions that could exacerbate the current crises in the face of regional instability. With this in mind, regional states have a specific role to play and must show restraint and a sense of responsibility, French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne stressed, when asked whether Paris would endorse such a step.The landmark Iranian nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed by the P5+1 group (China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the US) and the European Union in 2015. According to the deal, Iran is to limit its nuclear program for 15 years in exchange for easing the pre-existing sanctions.READ MORE: World will change : Trump likely to pull out of Iran nuclear deal next week German FMDuring his election campaign Trump repeatedly vowed to scrap the agreement, and during his presidency he has continued to accuse Iran of violating the spirit of the deal. This week the US leader is expected to re-certify the agreement, but there are concerns that he may decide to stick to his campaign promises.Other parties to the agreement, including Germany and the EU, have voiced concerns over the possible scuppering of the deal.READ MORE IRAN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Iran FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
For Cuomo and Christie, Parallel Paths to the Top, and Trouble When They Got There - The New York Times | It might be hard to remember now, with one governor embroiled in a corruption scandal for the last three years and his counterpart across the Hudson River plunging headlong into another, but Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew M. Cuomo of New York were once lionized for relentlessly prosecuting bad behavior in government. The wars they waged against corrupt politicians, as the attorney general of New York (Mr. Cuomo) and the United States attorney for New Jersey (Mr. Christie) won them bipartisan kudos and, eventually, smooth ascents to their states’ highest offices. After the ethical morasses that swamped figures such as former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York and Alan Hevesi, the state’s former comptroller, and former Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey in the 2000s, Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Christie — each a tough prosecutor with White House aspirations — looked more immaculate than ever. Those were the days. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, spent Thursday reeling at the arrest of one of his closest friends, confidants and former aides, as well as the arrests of several other close advisers and donors. Prosecutors had accused them of involvement in a bribery scheme whose many grubby details included the fact that two of the governor’s former aides referred gleefully to corrupt payoffs as “ziti,” à la “The Sopranos,” and to one skittish ziti contributor as “fat boy. ” (As in: “Handle fat boy carefully. We don’t need an interruption in that Zitti delivery or else well really be up the creek. ”) Over in New Jersey, Mr. Christie, a Republican, is up a very unpleasant creek of his own. A former top aide and a former political ally are on trial over their roles in the 2013 scandal that elevated a traffic jam on access lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge into an immortal symbol of political payback. Having helped puncture Mr. Christie’s presidential hopes earlier this year, the episode later went on to help sink his bid to join the Donald J. Trump ticket. The trial, which began last Monday, has been no kinder to the governor: Prosecutors waited exactly zero days before asserting, during opening statements, that Mr. Christie knew three of his aides and allies were involved in the plot as it was unfolding. Neither governor is accused of breaking the law. But for two men who once prided themselves on managing administrations, claiming to have been blind to alleged acts of petty revenge and bribery at the highest levels of state government seems bad enough. As they campaigned for the governor’s office, each promised to cut through what they called partisan nonsense, bureaucratic inertia and dodgy dealing to get real results for residents in their states. Each had the trophy case to back it up. As state attorney general, Mr. Cuomo took aim at the other two statewide elected officials, both fellow Democrats: Mr. Spitzer, whose administration’s misuse of state troopers to target a political rival Mr. Cuomo helped uncover, and Mr. Hevesi, who went to prison after a Cuomo investigation found that he had accepted personal benefits in exchange for approving a state pension fund investment. In New Jersey, where Mr. Christie was appointed a United States attorney by President George W. Bush in 2002, the young prosecutor quickly dispelled questions about his readiness for the job by pursuing corruption charges against dozens of local officials and leading inquiries that implicated several more. They were sane. Smart. Clean. Capable. Determined. And smug. “I am putting each and every one of you on notice,” Mr. Christie said in a 2002 speech, taking aim at his home state’s notoriously debased political culture. “We are going to root this stuff out, and I expect all of you to help me. ” By 2009, as a virtual political neophyte and a Republican in a blue state, he had managed to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon S. Corzine. “Job 1 is going to be to clean up Albany and make the government work for the people,” Mr. Cuomo said in 2010, kicking off his campaign for governor on the steps of Manhattan’s Tweed Courthouse, New York’s monument to political corruption. (He also vowed to run the “most transparent” administration in state history.) But as the fallout from each scandal has made clear, the professionalism and integrity of their offices were compromised almost from the start by aides and advisers who seemed far more interested in their own endgames — whether political, financial or both — than in serving a state. In both cases, they were empowered by Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo themselves. Each man had cultivated a small group of trusted advisers who, driven by unshakable tribal loyalty and a hunger to see their bosses taste the White House one day, enforced the governor’s will, punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. For Mr. Christie, they included Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, the two former officials currently on trial, and Bill Stepien, his former top lieutenant, an old friend and political operative who left ears ringing across New Jersey on the governor’s behalf. They met for strategy sessions around Mr. Christie’s kitchen table in Mendham and mingled at N. F. L. games. They worked together to single out local officials who supported the governor’s 2013 bid for perks and to mete out revenge to those who did not — including Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee, N. J. a Democrat who, having declined to endorse the governor, got a catastrophic traffic jam in return, prosecutors say. Their equivalents in Albany were a group of stalwarts who had marched at Mr. Cuomo’s side, in some cases as far back as the administration of Mr. Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who became governor in 1983. The men, and they were all men, even had a “term of endearment” for one another, according to the federal criminal complaint released on Thursday: “Herb. ” (It remains unclear why.) Chief among them was Joseph Percoco, who had started working for the elder Mr. Cuomo when he was 19. So high was his place in the family firmament that during Mr. Cuomo’s eulogy for his father in January 2015, he called Mr. Percoco “my father’s third son, who I sometimes think he loved the most. ” It was Mr. Percoco who, everyone in New York’s political establishment understood, woke Mr. Cuomo up in the morning, dispensed threats for him during the day and put him to bed at night. It was also Mr. Percoco, working with another “Herb” and former Cuomo aide, Todd R. Howe, who shook down a developer and an energy company for at least $315, 000 in bribes in exchange for putting his considerable power at their service, prosecutors say. There was the legal opinion that Mr. Percoco got reversed. The energy policy decisions, made by state experts, that he overrode. The $5, 700 raise, the criminal complaint says, that he berated staff at the governor’s office into approving for the son of an executive who had paid him off. And there was the fact, apparent from the complaint, that no one in state government questioned his authority to do so. These days, there is no avoiding the central question: How could the governors not have known? Mr. Christie has said that while he took ultimate responsibility for the lane closings, it was impossible for him to keep tabs on 65, 000 state employees. He was “disturbed,” he said, by Mr. Stepien’s behavior, while Ms. Kelly was “stupid” and “a liar. ” Mr. Cuomo, too, has been moved to muse on personal betrayal. “The central plank of my administration has always been about public integrity and zero tolerance for any waste, fraud or abuse. If anything, I hold a friend to a higher standard,” he said in Buffalo on Friday. “It’s the first time since we lost my father that I didn’t miss him being here yesterday, because it would’ve broken his heart. ” | 0fake |
West covering up crimes of Bahraini regime: Analyst | Interviews A protester throws a glass bottle containing paint at a police armored personnel carrier during anti-regime demos in the village of Sitra, south of Manama, February 14, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
The Fourth High Criminal Court of Bahrain has sentenced 15 political opponents to long jail terms and also revoked the citizenship of all of them. While several international rights groups have criticized the Al Khalifa regime’s harsh crackdown on the Bahraini opposition, the Western powers turn a blind eye to the Arab state’s violations of human rights.
Edward Corrigan, an international human rights lawyer, told Press TV’s Top 5 program that the Western powers are trying to whitewash the crimes committed by the Arab dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region because such regimes are considered the West’s “lap dogs.”
“There is a double standard,” Corrigan said, explaining that Western powers say, “‘If you are a friend of ours and do what we want and give us oil and invest your money into European or American economy, we won’t question your human rights violations.’”
According to the analyst, “There is hypocrisy, double standards and this is really a big political game. Our dictatorships and allies are OK but somebody else that we don’t like for whatever reason, we magnify their crimes and even create false flags and do other things to try to discredit them.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Corrigan said the definition of terrorism in Bahrain covers any kind of opposition, because the regime does “not want to allow any sort of political movements there to try to reform the system, to redress this massive discrimination against the Shia population, and to have any sort of voice for democracy; so, all of that is ‘terrorism.’”
He added, “It is against the international law to remove people’s nationality from them and this is an extreme sort of punishment, very draconian, as they’re condemned by the international human rights organizations and other organizations.”
Manama has been cracking down on dissent since February 2011, when an uprising began against the regime. Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of Al Khalifah regime’s harsh crackdown on anti-regime activists. Loading ... | 1real |
Factbox: Candidate platforms in Chile presidential runoff | SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Center-left Senator Alejandro Guillier and conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera will go head to head in a runoff for Chile s presidency on Sunday, after securing the top two spots in the Nov. 19 first-round vote. There have been no major polls in the past month, leaving few indications of who will succeed outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet in the world s top copper producer. Below are the main proposals from both candidates: - The former journalist, elected to the Senate in 2013, has promised to deepen the progressive tax, education and labor reforms of ideological ally Bachelet. His spending plan includes investments in housing and infrastructure and carries a price tag of $10 billion. - Guillier has pledged to diversify Chile s economy away from copper, or add value to exports by processing the metal at home. He would seek a plebiscite in 2018 to rewrite the dictatorship-era constitution to include more protections for workers and indigenous communities. - Since the first round, Guillier and Pinera have both endorsed a public option to compete with Chile s private pension funds. Once widely praised worldwide, they have been criticized for delivering too-small payouts. Guillier has also recommended a new, mandatory contribution from employers. - Guillier and Pinera have both called for repeal of state-run copper producer Codelco s mandatory contribution of 10 percent of profits to the military. Guillier has signaled he would seek to maintain the government s strong ties with Codelco workers, something that has spared the company from strikes that have hit private miners under Bachelet. - The billionaire businessman, who served as president from 2010 to 2014, has promised to make Chile the first country in Latin America to achieve developed nation status in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based club of wealthy nations. - Pinera, the investor favorite, would cut corporate taxes to increase investment. He said his policies would double Chile s economic growth and eliminate poverty by 2025. - Pinera s $14 billion, four-year spending plan includes an overhaul of Bachelet s tax reform, and $2.7 billion in new investments in infrastructure and hospitals. Pinera said he would pay for his proposals by cutting unnecessary government spending and simplifying the tax code. - Pinera wants to revitalize and increase competition in Chile s private pension system. His plan includes new subsidies to raise pensions for women and the middle class, as well as incentives to encourage workers to retire later. - He wants Codelco to deploy a realistic investment plan using existing resources and to focus on existing assets rather than new projects. | 0fake |
House Dem Wants GOP On Record: Stop Gov’t Spending At Trump Properties | Early next month, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives will take up a spending bill that provides funding for nearly every department in the federal government. It s a must-pass bill because, without it, the government will shut down. That s a non-starter for many Republicans, who still feel the pain of the last time there was a government shutdown. Republicans were largely unable to shift blame to the Democrats as they attempted to do, and their popularity suffered as a result. But despite the GOP s absolute grip on Congress, the bill is still subject to amendments, and one Democrat from Tennessee has a doozy in mind.Representative Steve Cohen is introducing amendments to the spending plan that would ban the use of federal funds at Trump-branded properties. It covers every business listed on Trump s financial disclosure form, including hotels, country clubs, and resorts. That means events like the ones at Mar-a-Lago where Trump has hosted dignitaries and foreign leaders would either be held elsewhere, or Trump would have to provide accommodations free of charge.Such an arrangement would have prevented the Secret Service from having to stay in a trailer outside Trump Tower, where they moved after price negotiations fell apart over them staying inside while protecting the president. It also would have precluded the State Department from spending upwards of $15,000 on rooms at a hotel that Trump recently opened in Vancouver. Most of all, it might reduce the amount of money you and I pay for the president to spend more than 20% of his time in office (so far) at his own resorts.In a statement Cohen released Wednesday morning, he said:Congress should not allow the President to use his office to profit himself and his family. The President s refusal to divest from his privately owned businesses creates a conflict of interest when steering federal spending to his resorts and other businesses The American people should have total confidence that the President is serving their interest, not his own financial enrichment. President Trump s refusal to disclose information to Congress or seek Congress s authorization for accepting profits from foreign governments stemming from his sprawling foreign financial interests is a brazen violation of the Constitution and a danger to our democracy.We couldn t agree more, Congressman. And while these amendments stand about a snowball s chance in hell of passing or possibly even being brought up for a vote it will be nice to see you force Republicans to go on record and either declare their allegiance to Donald Trump, or to the principles of conservatism.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
POLICE UNION Threatens 49er’s With BOYCOTT: TAKE ACTION Against Bench-Warmer Kaepernick’s “Inappropriate Behavior” Or We May Choose To “Not Work At Your Facilities” | Dear San Francisco Police Union: We wanted you to know that if you decide to boycott the 49er s, America supports you 100%. If the 49er s are unable to speak out against this sickening bench-warmers anti-american,and anti-law enforcement antics, they can figure out how to protect themselves at their next home game. Maybe they could ask the Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter thugs to patrol the stadium I m sure the fans would love that idea LOL!The union for police officers who work San Francisco home games says its members may boycott policing the stadium if the 49ers don t discipline Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand during the national anthem and for his statements about law enforcement.A letter from the Santa Clara Police Officers Association sent to the 49ers was obtained Friday by KNTV-TV, the NBC affiliate in San Jose.It says that Kaepernick s protest has threatened our harmonious working relationship with the 49ers. About 70 officers from the Santa Clara Police Department patrol Levi s Stadium when the 49ers play there. If the 49ers organization fails to take action to stop this type of inappropriate behavior it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities, the letter reads. The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officer s Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior. It also criticized what it called anti-police statements made by Kaepernick, calling them insulting, inaccurate and completely unsupported by any facts. ABC News | 1real |
Russia designates Radio Free Europe and Voice of America as 'foreign agents' | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia designated Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA) as foreign agents on Tuesday, a move aimed at complicating their work in retaliation for what Moscow says is unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. Russia s broadside is likely to further sour battered U.S.-Russia relations and is part of the fallout from allegations that the Kremlin meddled in the U.S. presidential election last year in Donald Trump s favor, something Moscow denies. U.S. intelligence officials accused the Kremlin of using Russian media it finances to influence U.S. voters, and Russian state broadcaster RT last month reluctantly complied with a U.S. request to register a U.S.-based affiliate as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. The Kremlin called the move an attack on free speech and says the new media law in Russia, which Western critics have called a disproportionate response, is retaliation. Moscow s response was widely trailed. Russian lawmakers rushed through the necessary legislation last month and President Vladimir Putin signed off on it on Nov. 25. Russia s justice ministry said in a statement on its website on Tuesday it had now formally designated U.S. government-sponsored VOA and RFE/RL, along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by RFE/RL, as fulfilling the role of foreign agents . RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said in a video statement his organization was committed to continuing its journalistic work in Russia, but was expecting even more limitations on the work of our company . So far the full nature of these limitations is unknown, said Kent. We will study carefully all communications from the ministry and other Russian official organizations. VOA Director Amanda Bennett told Reuters her organization also thought it was unclear what new curbs it would face. The new designation subjects affected U.S.-backed news outlets to the same requirements that are applied to foreign-funded non-governmental organizations under a 2012 law. Under that law, foreign agents must include in any information they publish or broadcast to Russian audiences a mention of their foreign agent designation. They also must apply for inclusion in a government register, submit regular reports on their sources of funding, on their objectives, on how they spend their money, and who their managers are. They can be subject to spot checks by the authorities to make sure they comply with the rules, according to the 2012 law, which has forced some NGOs to close. One of the seven outlets on the justice ministry list provides news on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, one on Siberia, and one on the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region. Another covers provincial Russia, one is an online TV station, another covers the mostly Muslim region of Tatarstan, and the other is a news portal that fact-checks the statements of Russian officials. | 0fake |
FBI Arrest Cliven Bundy at Portland Airport – Charged with Federal Conspiracy | Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireCliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher at the center of the federal standoff in Bunkerville in 2014, was arrested by FBI agents at around 10pm Wednesday evening as he touched down at Portland International Airport. Bundy, 74 yrs old, of Bunkerville, Nevada, was taken to Oregon s Multnomah County detention center and charged with conspiracy to interfere with a federal officer the same federal felony charge made two weeks ago against of his two sons, Ammon and Ryan Bundy.According to Oregon Live, Cliven Bundy, also faces weapons charges, dating back to the original standoff in April 2014.READ THE FULL FEDERAL COMPLAINT AGAINST CLIVEN BUNDY HERE. Police Mug Shot: Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was arrested in Portland last night.Bundy s dramatic arrest came as he was planning to meet up with staunch Bundy supporter, Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, for a Q & A press conference in Portland scheduled for early Thursday morning, presumably to advocate for the Bundy sons and others currently under federal incarceration, and to help mediate a peaceful resolution for the remaining 4 occupiers still held-up at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge outside of Burns, Oregon.The timeline of these events is particularly interesting. Before Cliven Bundy touched down in Portland, Fiore (photo, left) had already arrived in town, but was immediately confronted with a breaking situation on Wednesday afternoon, where reports indicate that there were likely dozens of heavily armed federal tactical and state SWAT members positioned at various points around the perimeter of the occupied federal refuge office building. On Wednesday evening, law enforcement appeared to have decided to make their move to end the occupation by re-taking the protest site and remove its occupants. Fiore then headed to Burns while engaged in a 4 hour-long phone call with the protesters live-streamed on YouTube with nearly 60,000 listeners on the call.Clearly, the FBI had plenty of foreknowledge of Cliven Bundy and Michele Fiore s potentially explosive media spectacle scheduled for this morning. FBI agents appear to have preempted this national (and global) press event by Bundy and Fiore, quickly moving on the protest, and then taking Cliven Bundy out of the equation, or off the street , as it were. This chain of events over the last 24 hours indicates that the federal government had made decisive moves at key moments in order to temporarily control the media and political narratives, and by extension, the course of events which have followed. That reality was echoed by Portland attorney, Mike Arnold, currently representing Ammon Bundy, who said earlier today: It s terribly unfortunate the timing of his arrest, given all the progress Assemblywoman Fiore made this evening. In addition to Fiore and Cliven Bundy arriving in Oregon this week, Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, posted on Facebook that he had been talking with the four holdouts for a week, at their request and at the request of the FBI , and was said to be heading for Burns to witness a peaceful resolution. Early on Thursday, Graham stated the following: I am on my way there Please keep them, law enforcement officials, and all involved in your prayers, that everyone will be safe. Presently, federal forces are still at the gates of the refuge, with occupiers still inside. According to the Oregonian, the remaining occupiers are 27-year-old David Fry, the man running the refuge protest YouTube livestream, along with married couple Sean and Sandy Anderson, and one other man known by the name of Jeff Banta. It s not completely clear if all the occupants are armed, and there have been some mixed messages over the last two weeks as to what their exact intentions were, and what concessions were possible through negotiations.UPDATE: 4 holdouts all in FBI custody as occupation endsIn an overwhelming show of force, the FBI have surrounded the small one story detached Malheur office building with MRAP armored vehicles and other assets, including multiple surveillance drones positioned overhead. It s not known exactly how many federal agents are in position at the refuge and the surrounding area, but based on similar events, the number could be at least 300, not including state and other law enforcement agents.At the end of January, a team of federal and state agents shot and killed the protest s spokesman, Arizona rancher, Robert Lavoy Finicum, in what can only be described as a well-organize, federal and state ambush, involving dozens of vehicles and armed agents (including snipers) positioned along an isolated rural stretch of Oregon highway 395. The mainstream media are still disingenuously referring to the event as a traffic stop incident in what appears to be a well-coordinated PR effort to minimize any accusations of over-reach on the part of the federal agencies.The left-wing arm of the media, and a virtual army of anti-Bundy activists online will certainly be celebrating this latest development as a government victory .With the iconic face of the public lands issue, Cliven Bundy, now in custody, this will either stir the burgeoning Constitutionalist movement, or it will further demoralize it.Cliven Bundy is expected to appear in a Portland federal court this afternoon.Watch this space.READ MORE OREGON STANDOFF NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Oregon Files | 1real |
Tony Blair helpfully describes Remain voters as ‘insurgents’ | Tony Blair helpfully describes Remain voters as ‘insurgents’ 28-10-16
TONY Blair has helped out British politics by calling Remain voters ‘insurgents’ who must ‘mobilise’.
Both sides of the Brexit debate have thanked the former prime minister for framing it in loaded terms that will bring out the best in everyone.
Healthcare worker Helen Archer said: “Let’s see. So on one side we’ve got the Brexit crew already calling anything they don’t like treason and waving flags.
“On the left we’ve got the disturbed followers of a cultish messiah who want the result of a popular vote to be overturned, followed by the overthrow of capitalism.
“And a deposed ruler who started two unending wars for the sake of his ego is telling us it’s a war?
“Great. No problem. Just checking I know where we’re headed.”
Blair said: “My primary role, in and out of government, has been to boost sales for the UK arms industry and that will not change.”
Share: | 1real |
WATCH: Trump Supporters Believe These BIZARRE Campaign Ads Are Real (VIDEO) | During a segment of Triumph s Summer Election Special, Donald Trump supporters got trolled hard. A group of Trump supporters volunteered to be a part of a focus group. As far as the Trump supporters know, they have been selected to watch and review potential Trump campaign video advertisements.What they don t know is that the campaign ads they are watching are entirely fictional. The point of the prank is to test the supporter s loyalty to their chosen candidate. We decided to assemble a group of them for an unfiltered view at how they connect with Trump s vision for America, as Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog puts it.The phony ads they watch are rather extreme bizarre even. During the ad, a Trump impersonator says that they will build a giant electrified fence as a temporary way to keep any illegals out while they construct the real wall that Trump has promised to build if he is elected president.The people in the focus group also watch an ad where Trump calls out Hillary Clinton, demanding that she reveal to the world that she is a man pretending to be a woman.Another ad features Trump s solution to helping women feel more secure in bathrooms. Rather than banning transgender individuals from using the restroom, Trump will provide every woman who uses a public bathroom with a firearm.Spoiler alert: The Trump supporters totally fall for the gag, believing they are real. Now, it is important to keep in mind that research has shown that people tend to offer opinions about subjects that are ridiculous. However, given just how extreme the advertisements are, it s still rather pathetic not to mention hilarious.You can watch the video in full, below.Featured image from video screenshot | 1real |
Teachers Strike Allowing Children To Sample The Kind Of Free Time They’ll Have On The Dole | 0 Add Comment
WITH 400 schools shut and 200,000 students not attending lessons, striking teachers have provided children with an insight into what their life will be like on the dole after they leave school.
“It obviously wasn’t the ASTI’s intention, but it’s an interesting lesson for my three lads, sitting around on the couch, bored out of their holes thinking ‘is this it? Is this all I can do?’ That’s basically the dole like. Things being largely out of your control. Good to get training in early,” shared concerned parent Olwyn Nelligan.
As youth unemployment remains worryingly high in Ireland at over 15%, teachers striking for better pay have inadvertently given their students a window into what life will be like post-second level education for many of them as despite being keen to learn and further themselves all they have is free time on their hands.
“Teachers are striking for better pay, and if they were granted it, it would could serve as a way for the government to show it cares about education standards in Ireland and those who provide it,” explained one teacher on strike, pleading with the government to show the education sector the respect it deserves.
A government spokesman did respond when we put the teacher’s concerns to them earlier today.
“We. Don’t. Care. I thought that was pretty obvious. Have you not being paying attention to our policies for the last few years at all?” the spokesman responded.
“Having said that teachers are the rock bed of the foundation of the first steps of a child’s life, blah, blah, blah,” the spokesman added.
The government refused to comment on ongoing funding concerns with several IT colleges, or lengthy waiting lists for third level students wishing to access counselling services.
Some 99% of the country was backing the ASTI’s bid to be paid for supervision work until they learned it may require an increase in their taxes in order to fund it. | 1real |
المغاربة يذهلون العالم ويبتكرون طريقة لتجفيف الملاعب بإضرام النار فيها - RT Arabic | المغاربة يذهلون العالم ويبتكرون طريقة لتجفيف الملاعب بإضرام النار فيها
تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 13:27 GMT | انسخ الرابط http://ar.rt.com/i5g7 فاجأ المنظمون لبطولة الدار البيضاء للتنس "Challenger" الجميع، عندما سكبوا البنزين على أحد ملاعب البطولة وأضرموا النار في أرضيته الرملية لتجفيفها بسرعة من مياه الأمطار.
فبعد الأمطار الغزيرة التي هطلت على الملعب، قرر المنظمون سكب البنزين وإضرام النار على الأرض الرملية من أجل تجفيفها بسرعة، لاستكمال مباراة في التنس عن الدور نصف النهائي للبطولة، جمعت بين البلجيكي أرتور دي غريف والفرنسي ماكسيم جانفيه.
تجدر الإشارة إلى أن جانفيه حقق الفوز في هذه المواجهة بمجموعتين نظيفتين بواقع: (6-4) و(6-3).
المصدر: lenta.ru | 1real |
Putin: Crimean Integration Into Russian Legal Framework Goes Forward | Get short URL 0 23 0 0 The integration of Crimea into the Russian legal and administrative systems is a complex process, but the majority of the key issues have already been addressed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.
YALTA (Russia), (Sputnik) — During the All-Russia People's Front forum in Crimea, Putin said: "There are a lot of questions and small problems, which are invisible at first glance. The federal authorities try to do something themselves, but they do not know the local conditions… That's why the question of entering, as I said, the Russian legal and administrative framework has turned out to be a difficult process, but we have practically overcome the main issues."
The president also noted that one of the main impediments to progress has been the fact that local authorities, who have volunteered to oversee the integration, "do not know how the laws and the system of Russia are organized." Putin: Drinking Water Issue in Crimea No Longer Acute The two-day regional All-Russia People's Front forum, called the 'Forum of action. Crimea,' covered issues of energy, gas supplies, development of agricultural industry and other promising sectors of the economy.
Crimea , Russia's historical southern region, seceded from Ukraine to rejoin Russia in March 2014. Almost 97 percent of the region's population voted for reunification in a referendum. Sevastopol, which has a federal city status, supported the move by 95.6 percent of votes. The referendum was held after a coup in Ukraine in February 2014. ... | 1real |
Slovenian government faces test in pre-election investment referendum | LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Slovenians vote in a referendum on Sunday on whether the government should pursue construction of a 1-billion-euro ($1.20 billion) railway to its main Adriatic port - a test of the government s popularity ahead of elections next year. Given the opposition s lead in opinion polls and criticism of the project as too expensive, analysts see possible changes in the center-left coalition government ahead of the elections in June or July 2018 if the railway gets a thumbs-down in the referendum. If (it) is rejected that would be a strong blow to the government, particularly the leading party SMC (Party of the Modern Centre), Meta Roglic, political analyst at the daily Dnevnik, told Reuters. Opinion polls have forecast varying outcomes of the referendum but suggest turnout might not be sufficient to block the railway project. A poll published by daily Delo said voters would narrowly reject the project, while another released by Dnevnik said voters would back it by a 53-29 percent margin. Under Slovenian law, a minimum 20 percent of some 1.7 million eligible voters would be needed to sink the project, in addition to a majority of those voting. Civil society group Taxpayers Don t Give Up and the leading opposition group, the center-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), pushed for the referendum, saying the railway line as projected by the government is too costly. The government says the 27-km (17-mile) rail link between Koper and the town of Divaca is necessary to speed up freight traffic to and from Slovenia s only port and improve the port s competitiveness. The government has received 44.3 million euros in EU funding for preparation of the track while neighboring Hungary said it is willing to invest about 200 million euros as it relies on Koper for much of its seaborne freight. The opposition SDS has led in opinion polls for most of the past year. But government parties hope to improve their ratings by advancing the railway project, raising family subsidies and the lowest tier of wages, and injecting more money into the state health sector in the coming months. | 0fake |
GOP Delegate: Trump Primary Wins 'Absolutely Irrelevant' At Convention | Just how far could Republicans go to deny Donald Trump the party's nomination?
A delegate to this summer's convention in Cleveland asserts that the GOP gathering could do anything it wants.
Curly Haugland, a GOP national committeeman from North Dakota, told Morning Edition on Thursday of his interpretation of party rules. Not for the first time, Haugland declared that party rules do not bind any delegate to vote for any particular candidate. He argues that even delegates who are "pledged" to Trump or other contenders due to state primary results are, in reality, free to do as they like.
Custom, Haugland said, may dictate that delegates should support the winners of their state primaries. But the reality of the rules is that primary votes are "absolutely irrelevant" come convention time.
"No matter what the popular belief might be," he said, "there is no connection between primaries and the actual convention."
In our interview and in other conversations, Haugland has cited the GOP's convention Rules 37 and 38. He interprets these convoluted rules to mean that delegates may "vote their conscience." The rules do not explicitly say this. Rule 37 is a detailed explanation of the procedure for roll call votes. However, Rule 38 does say that no delegate may be "bound" by the "unit rule," meaning that delegates from a state can't all be forced to vote the same way.
Haugland's interpretation is by no means a unanimous view. It's more widely accepted that delegates currently pledged to Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, or others must support them at least on the first ballot. But if no candidate received a majority, delegates would necessarily vote in different ways on later ballots in order to resolve the impasse.
Another of Haugland's points is indisputable: "When the convention convenes," he said, "the delegates adopt their own rules, which haven't been adopted yet." There is a standard template for conventions, but delegates could tweak the template, changing the game in any way that they want. The only real constraint is that their actions would be publicly known and therefore open to criticism.
The latitude afforded delegates explains why it's considered significant that Senator Ted Cruz has outmaneuvered Trump in several states, ensuring that as many delegates as possible are Cruz supporters.
Haugland says his personal goal is to adopt a rule that assures delegates the chance to choose from a wide range of alternatives, including candidates such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio who have suspended their campaigns.
Listen to our conversation at the link above. | 0fake |
SYRIAN MUSLIM MAN WHOSE Family Perished On Trip So He Could Get Free Dental Care Has New Spokesperson Role | Who better than a man who risked the lives of his wife and children to get free dental care to ask taxpayers in Europe and America to open their doors to more freeloading Muslims? THE father of a little boy who drowned while fleeing Syria has pleaded with the world to open its doors to refugees.Three-year-old Alan Kurdi died along with his mother Rehanna and five-year-old brother Ghalib in September.They paid cruel people smugglers thousands to reach Greece by boat after fleeing their war-ravaged homeland.But pictures of his lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach forced politicians to tackle the refugee crisis.His father Abdullah Kurdi said: My message is I d like the whole world to open its doors to Syrians. If a person shuts a door in someone s face, this is very difficult. When a door is opened they no longer feel humiliated. He added: At this time of year I would like to ask you all to think about the pain of fathers, mothers and children who are seeking peace and security. We ask just for a little bit of sympathy from you. Via: ExpressUK | 1real |
Hillary Is The Perfection of a Corrupt System |
Exposing the Clintons’ perfection of a corrupt political system won’t change the conditions and incentives that created the Clintons’ harvester of corruption.
Let’s set aside Hillary Clinton as an individual and consider her as the perfection of a corrupt political system. As I noted yesterday, Politics As Usual Is Dead , and Hillary Clinton is the ultimate product of the political system that is disintegrating before our eyes.
The corruption of pay-to-play and the commingling of public and private influence is not the failing of an individual–it is the logical conclusion of a thoroughly corrupt political system.
Given the incentives built into politics as usual , public/private pay-to-play doesn’t just make sense–it is the only possible maximization of the political system .
Cobble together a multi-million dollar private foundation, millions of dollars in speaking fees from big-money contributors, conflicts of interest, the secrecy of private email servers, pay-to-play schemes and corrupted loyalists planted in the Department of Justice, and the inevitable result is a politics as usual money-harvesting machine that lays waste to the nation, supporters and critics alike.
All the Clintons did is assemble the parts more effectively than anyone else. Now that the machine has scooped up hundreds of millions of dollars in “contributions” and other loot, vested interests and corrupted loyalists within the federal government will do anything to protect the machine and its vast flow of funds.
The nation’s political system needs a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. Exposing the Clintons’ perfection of politics as usual won’t change the conditions and incentives that created the Clintons’ harvester of corruption.
That will require rooting out the incentives that made the Clintons’ perfection of corruption both logical and inevitable. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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Contributed by Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds . | 1real |
American Express disowns Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters because of pro-Palestinian views | American Express disowns Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters because of pro-Palestinian views 11/03/2016
MONDOWEISS When it comes to aiding Israeli Apartheid, American Express is just another brick in The Wall, according to a new report. Roger Waters, lead singer behind Pink Floyd, lost a multimillion dollar American Express sponsorship for his 2017 US+Them tour after expressing solidarity this month with Palestinian students trying to end Israel’s apartheid system of military occupation using the same protest tactic that helped dismantle South African Apartheid (and, earlier, America’s Jim Crow): Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS. “I’m going to send out all of my most heartfelt love and support to all those young people on the campuses of the universities of California who are standing up for their brothers and sisters in Palestine and supporting the BDS movement,” Rogers said, according to CBS News , “in the hope that we may encourage the government of Israel to end the occupation.” American Express decided it would be a good idea to leak the cancellation of the contract to the New York Post , where Page Six’s Emily Smith has the exclusive story . “Roger is putting on a huge show. The company was asked to sponsor his tour for $4 million, but pulled out because it did not want to be part of his anti-Israel rhetoric,” an American Express spokesman told the paper. “We never committed to sponsoring Roger Waters’ upcoming tour. When we were approached with the options, we passed on making a bid.” American Express had helped sponsor Waters’ Oldchella Desert Trip festival (Coachella for the senior set featuring Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and the Rolling Stones) where he made the comments expressing support for human rights. But without anybody even asking them, American Express decided it had to go out of its way to bash Waters for “putting on a huge show.” Noteworthy about American Express’s decision is that it comes even as Waters included more mainstream political views, like featuring in the performance a line of children wearing shirts that said “Derriba el muro,” (Tear down the wall). He also showed Trump in a Klan outfit, and the show featured a floating pig balloon that calls the Republican candidate an “Ignorant, lying, racist, sexist pig,” CBS reported. Waters more mainstream kinds of leftist protest didn’t make up for his audacious display of solidarity with his fellow human beings living and dying under a ceaseless occupation. American Express has also sponsored Beyonce’s performances, where she has used art to make reference to police oppression of communities of color . But AmEx lost its nerve when Waters brought up Palestinian rights. According to the New York Post , Waters has known that there are consequences for standing up against the occupation, and that keeps others silent. “I have been accused of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite for the past 10 years. My industry has been particularly recalcitrant in even raising a voice [against Israel] . . . I’ve talked to a lot of them, and they are scared s – – tless. If they say something in public, they will no longer have a career. They will be destroyed,” he said, according to the Post. But Waters is already famous, and 75, so the stakes aren’t the same as for young artists. Update (11/1/16) This article originally quoted the New York Post as saying that Citi had assumed sponsorship of the tour after American Express dropped out, but after publication a representative of Citi contacted us with this clarification: In your article “ American Express disowns Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters because of pro-Palestinian views ”, it mentions that “Citibank grabbed the opportunity to sponsor one of the biggest and best acts of the 20th century.” However, Citi is not a sponsor of Roger Waters’ upcoming tour. Two weeks ago, Citi offered a limited time pre-sale of tickets for cardmembers for select shows, as we do for thousands of concerts by different artists every year. The pre-sale has ended and we have no plans to work with this artist in the future.
– See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/american-express-palestinian/#sthash.cGAw7DW9.dpuf | 1real |
According to activity on Facebook Donald Trump will sweep 42 of 50 states in this election! | « Previous - Next » According to activity on Facebook Donald Trump will sweep 42 of 50 states in this election!
For weeks now all that has been posted with regards to the Presidential election is the lead that Hillary Clinton holds against Republican challenger Donald Trump. The mainstream press leads each day with an article or two on how Donald Trump has no electoral path to the White House. Could the political predictors working for the major networks and newspapers all be wrong?
Yes, they are completely wrong, and wrong based on a basic and simple fact not being factored into their forgone conclusion. The fact being ignored is Donald Trump is winning the battle fought on the social media battleground. When
Analyzed properly, it is clear that Donald Trump is getting all the attention on Facebook. Granted about half the comments he receives are positive, but Hillary Clinton's comments are almost entirely on the negative end of the commentary spectrum.
Based on a thorough analysis of the Facebook chatter, it is predicted that Donald Trump will win 42 of the 50 states, including New York. This outcome is not only a landslide but an outright slaughter. Also understand that much of this data has been accrued before Hillary Clinton's current issues surfacing such as the Project Veritas Videos showing the DNC cheating machine in motion, the Wiki-leaks revelations, and the FBI reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton passing classified information on her private email server. All these scandals combined will only further erode any support she might find among the truly undecided .
Another factor not being widely explained is that many of the polls affording Hillary Clinton her huge lead are also over sampling both Democrats and Independents. It is also not clear with regards to the learning of the Independents which is more likely than not, left of center. It will take a lot of dead voters and stuffed ballot boxes to bring Hillary Clinton close to the victory predicted by the mainstream media.
This article (According to activity on Facebook Donald Trump will sweep 42 of 50 states in this election! ) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles | 1real |
At Least 9 Civilians Killed as Coalition Strikes Taliban Arsenal, Officials Say - The New York Times | KABUL, Afghanistan — Officials in Afghanistan said on Sunday they were investigating claims that at least nine civilians, including six children, had been killed when Afghan and coalition forces blew up a Taliban weapons depot in southern Helmand Province. Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, said troops on a joint military operation in the Malgir area of Gereshk district, just outside the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, had found the cache of munitions late on Saturday. “They set up explosives to detonate the cache, and it damaged the house where the civilians were staying,” Mr. Zwak said. Capt. Bill Salvin, a spokesman for the coalition in Afghanistan, said on Sunday: “We have seen the reports of civilian casualties in southern Helmand last night. We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously, and we will convene an inquiry into this allegation. ” Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said investigators had been sent to Helmand to investigate the claims. The owner of the house that collapsed, Haji Mohammed Sadiq, said it was being used by a family that had been taking care of his farm for him since he moved to Lashkar Gah, to escape the fighting. The concrete building next door housed a clinic before the Taliban moved in, Mr. Sadiq said. “Last night, Afghan forces, along with foreign forces, raided the clinic around 11:30 p. m. and arrested some 40 to 50 villagers, and took them to the desert, and only left women and children in the houses,” he said. “They put explosives over the clinic and detonated it, and the mud house next to the clinic collapsed. ” Mr. Sadiq said that he rushed to the scene in the morning, but that the police had not initially let any civilians near the collapsed house. When they were finally allowed to do so, he said, they pulled nine bodies from the debris, including two older adults, their and six grandchildren. One child was unaccounted for, Mr. Sadiq said. Of the family, he said, “the only person who survived is the son who had gone to Herat Province for work. ” Civilians have continued to bear the brunt of much of the violence from both sides amid the intensifying conflict in Helmand, with many repeatedly displaced by the fighting. According to local residents, in February, American bombings in the Sangin district killed at least 22 civilians. The NATO mission to Afghanistan said it was investigating the deaths. The war is expected to escalate further this spring as the portion of Helmand controlled by the Afghan government continues to shrink. According to provincial leaders, the Taliban now hold seven of the 14 districts that make up the province, the country’s largest in land area. The Afghan government fully controls only two districts and the provincial capital the remaining five are contested, with the government generally controlling only the district centers. | 0fake |
Tom Cotton: ’Susan Rice Is the Typhoid Mary of the Obama Administration’ - Breitbart | Tuesday on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show, Sen. Tom Cotton ( ) commented on a report that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice for President Barack Obama was behind the unmasking of the identities of members of Donald Trump’s transition team. Cotton noted Rice’s involvement in this story and her involvement in what he suggested were other Obama administration foreign policy missteps and likened her to “Typhoid Mary. ” “Susan Rice is the Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration foreign policy,” Cotton said. “Every time something went wrong, she seemed to turn up in the middle of it, whether it was these allegations of improper unmasking, intentional or improper surveillance, whether it’s Benghazi or the other fiascos over the eight years of the Obama administration. ” “If Eli Lake’s reporting is correct, it is hard to square what Susan Rice said in that PBS interview,” he added. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0fake |
Protesters Just Trolled Trump’s ‘Deploraball’ SO F*cking Hard You Have To See It To Believe It (VIDEO) | Trump supporters sure were in for a surprise at the aptly-named Deploraball on Thursday, when protesters projected an unflattering message on the side of the National Press Club just as supporters attempted to sieg heil The Donald without any interruption from those who exist outside their hateful little bubble.As white supremacists, people who love white supremacists, and pro-Trump Sheriff David Clarke joined together in a diverse crowd of white people to celebrate Trump s ascension to Grand Wizard of the U.S. of A., protesters outside had a little bit of fun with technology, projecting the sort of messaging that sends their leader into an uncontrollable Twitter rage.Messages projected on the side of the building where alt-right ball is being held: "Impeach the predatory president" pic.twitter.com/uJiYZGgzey Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) January 20, 2017"Impeach predatory president" projected onto National Press Club as #DeploraBall parties #DisruptJ20 pic.twitter.com/fi5As7UOLp Alexander Rubinstein (@AlexR_DC) January 20, 2017"Impeach the predatory president" pic.twitter.com/reYjg6DCaK Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) January 20, 2017On the building: "Impeach the predatory president." #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/HQRWI7DZHI Heidi Groover (@heidigroover) January 20, 2017 Resist, protect, create, one message read. Another urged our leaders to impeach the predatory President. One of them, which Trump fans would describe as crazy light pictures what has some of them words on them, reminded everyone that Trump routinely brags about grabbing women by their genitals.During these next four years, it is important that we never allow a white supremacist party for a President who got where he by is sowing seeds of fear and spewing hate speech to become normal. Every time this sort of thing happens, it is our duty to our country to show up and denounce it. It s going to be rough for us for quite some time, but if we fight hard against the Deplorables and their sick ideology, we can ensure a brighter future for our country some time after 2020.Featured image via Twitter | 1real |
[VIDEO] SHOCKING CONSEQUENCES OF OPEN IMMIGRATION: Christians Organize To Fight Back Against Islamization Of Britain | This video shows what happens when a large population of muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate with the culture of residents living in the country where they have immigrated. Instead, muslims in Britain and in countries all over the world are demanding the citizens who have been living there for centuries conform to their extreme radical religious views. In May, new census data published by the British government showed that Islam is set to become the dominant religion in Britain within the next generation.On being informed that the girl did not want to get married, Mohammed Shahid Akhtar, Imam of Birmingham s Central Jamia Masjid Ghamkol Sharif Mosque, said, She s 14. By Sharia, grace of Allah, she s legal to get married. The Muslim population of Britain topped 3.3 million by the end of 2013 to become around 5.2% of the overall population of 63 million, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.At the same time, opinion surveys consistently show that voters in Britain view Islam and the question of Muslim immigration as a top-ranked public concern. The British public, it seems, is increasingly worried about the establishment of a parallel Muslim society there.But government efforts to push back against the Islamization of Britain have been halting and half-hearted.What follows is a chronological review of some of the main stories involving the rise of Islam in Britain during 2013.In January, Muslim gangs were filmed loitering on streets in London and demanding that passersby conform to Islamic Sharia law. In a series of videos, the self-proclaimed vigilantes who call themselves Muslim London Patrol are seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians and repeatedly shouting this is a Muslim area. One video records the men shouting: Allah is the greatest! Islam is here, whether you like it or not. We are here! We are here! What we need is Islam! What we need is Sharia! The video continues: We are the Muslim Patrol. We are in north London, we are in south London, in east London and west London. We command good and forbid evil. Islam is here in London. [Prime Minister] David Cameron, Mr. Police Officer, whether you like it or not, we will command good and forbid evil. You will never get us. You can go to hell! This is not a Christian country. To hell with Christianity. Isa [Jesus] was a messenger of Allah. Muslim Patrol will never die. Allah is great! Allah is great! We are coming! In a January 23 interview with the online newspaper International Business Times, Anjem Choudary, a radical preacher who has long called for Sharia law to be implemented in Britain and other European countries, defended the gang, saying: This is a wake-up call for society to ask, where are we headed? There is a clash between Islam and liberal democracy in hotspot areas of London. Choudary has previously led a campaign, known as the Islamic Emirates Project, to turn twelve British cities including what he calls Londonistan into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves, ruled by Sharia law and governed entirely outside British jurisprudence.In February, Choudary was filmed urging his followers to quit their jobs and claim unemployment benefits so they have more time to plan holy war against non-Muslims.Excerpts of the speech, published by the London-based newspaper The Sun on February 17, drew renewed attention to the growing problem of Muslims in Britain and elsewhere who are exploiting European welfare systems.In the video, Choudary is recorded as saying that Muslims are justified in taking money from non-Muslims, whom he mocks for working in nine-to-five jobs their whole lives. He says: You find people are busy working the whole of their life. They wake up at 7 o clock. They go to work at 9 o clock. They work for eight, nine hours a day. They come home at 7 o clock, watch EastEnders [a British soap opera], sleep, and they do that for 40 years of their life. That is called slavery. . . . What kind of life is that? That is the life of the kuffar [a non-Muslim]. Choudary urges fellow Muslims to learn from revered figures in Islamic history who only worked one or two days a year. The rest of the year they were busy with jihad [holy war] and things like that, he says. People will say, Ah, but you are not working. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar. So we take Jihad Seeker s Allowance. In March, the London-based newspaper The Independent reported that at least 100 British Muslims are currently active as jihadists fighting in Syria, which has replaced Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as the main destination for militant Islamists seeking to obtain immediate combat experience with little or no official scrutiny.Also in March, St. John s Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, Scotland, became the first church in the United Kingdom to share its premises with Muslim worshippers. Church officials now welcome hundreds of Muslims praying five times a day in their building because the nearby mosque is filled to overcapacity and Muslim worshippers are forced to pray outside. Via: American Renaissance Here is how muslims treat homosexuals walking through muslim areas in Britain:https://youtu.be/yYRl_9QUjk4Britain First is a Christian organization committed to stopping the Islamization of Britain. | 1real |
(VIDEO) TED CRUZ SLAMS JORGE RAMOS ON THE RULE OF LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION | This is so great! Ted Cruz knows his Constitution! | 1real |
Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy : Information | Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy Reform always provokes rage on the part of those who profit by the old order. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order
By Paul Craig Roberts
Who are the anti-Trump protesters besmirching the name of progressives by pretending to be progressives and by refusing to accept the outcome of the presidential election? They look like, and are acting worse than, the white trash that they are denouncing.
I think I know who they are. They are thugs for hire and are paid by the Oligarchy to delegitimize Trumps presidency in the way that Washington and the German Marshall Fund paid students in Kiev to protest the democratically elected Ukrainian government in order to prepare the way for a coup.
The organization, change.org, which claims to be a progressive group, but might be a front, along with other progressive groups, for the Oligarchy, is destroying the reputation of all progressives by circulating a petition that directs the electors of the Electoral Collage to annul the election by casting their votes for Hillary. Remember how upset progressives were when Trump said he might not accept the election result if there was evidence that the vote was rigged? Now progressives are doing what they damned Trump for saying he might do under certain conditions.
The Western presstitutes used the protests in Kiev to delegitimize a democratically elected government and to set it up for a coup. The protest pay was good enough that non-Ukrainians came from nearby countries to participate in the protest in order to collect the money. At the time I posted the amounts paid daily to protesters. Reports came in to me from Eastern and Western Europe from people who were not Ukrainian but were paid to protest as if they were Ukrainians.
The same thing is going on with the Trump protests. CNN reports that for many Americans across the country, Donald Trumps victory is an outcome they simply refuse to accept. Tens of thousands filled the streets in at least 25 US cities overnight. This is the exact reporting that the Oligarchy desired from its presstitutes and got.
I hope no one thinks that simultaneous protests in 25 cities were a spontaneous event. How did 25 independent protests manage to come up with the same slogans and the same signs on the same night following the election?
What is the point of the protests, and what interest is served by them? As the Romans always asked, who benefits?
There is only one answer: The Oligarchy and only the Oligarchy benefits.
Trump is a threat to the Oligarchy, because he intends to stop the giveaway of American jobs to foreigners. The jobs giveaway, sanctified by the neoliberal junk economists as free trade, is one of the main reasons for the 21st century worsening of the US income distribution. Money that was formerly paid in middle class wages and salaries to American manufacturing employees and college graduates has been re-routed to the pockets of the One Percent.
When US corporations move their production of goods and services sold to Americans offshore to Asian countries, such as China and India, their wage bill falls. The money formerly paid in middle class incomes goes instead into executive bonuses and dividends and capital gains to shareholders. The ladders of upward mobility that had made America the land of opportunity were dismantled for the sole purpose of making a handful of people multi-billionaires.
Trump is a threat to the Oligarchy, because he intends peaceful relations with Russia. In order to replace the profitable Soviet Threat, the Oligarchy and their neoconservative agents worked overtime to recreate the Russian Threat by demonizing Russia.
Accustomed to many decades of excess profits from the profitable Cold War, the military/security complex was angry when President Reagan brought the Cold War to an end. Before these leaches on American taxpayers could get the Cold War going again, the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of a right-wing coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The military/security complex and their zionist neoconservative agents cooked up the war on terror to keep the money flowing to the One Percent. But as hard as the presstitute media worked to create fear of the Muslim threat, even insouciant Americans knew that the Muslims did not have thousands of ICBMs carrying powerful thermo-nuclear weapons capable of destroying the entirety of the United States in a few minutes. Neither did the Muslims have the Red Army capable of overrunning all of Europe in a couple of days. Indeed, the Muslims havent needed an army. Refugees from Washingtons wars enabled by Europeans are overrunning Europe.
The excuse for the annual trillion dollar ($1,000 billion ) military/security budget was missing. So the Oligarchy created the New Hitler in Russia. Hillary was the Oligarchys principle agent for heating up the new Cold War.
Hillary is the tool, enriched by the Oligarchy, whose job as President was to protect and to increase the trillion dollar budget of the military/security complex. With Hillary in the White House, the looting of the American taxpayers in behalf of the wealth of the One Percent could go forward unimpeded. But if Trump resolves the Russian threat, the Oligarchy takes an income hit.
Hillarys job as President was also to privatize Social Security in order that her Wall Street benefactors can rip off Americans the way that Americans have been ripped off by the insurance companies under Obamacare.
Those Americans who do not pay attention think, mistakenly, that the FBI cleared Hillary of violating National Security protocols with her email practices. The FBI said that Hillary did violate National Security, but that it was a result of carelessness or ignorance. She got off from indictment, because the FBI concluded that she did not intentionally violate National Security protocols. The investigation of the Clinton Foundation continues.
In other words, in order to protect Hillary the FBI fell back on the ancient common law rule that there can be no crime without intent. (See PCR and Lawrence Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions .)
One would think that protesters, if they were legitimate, would be celebrating Trumps victory. He, unlike Hillary, promises to reduce tensions with powerful Russia, and we hope also with China. Unlike Hillary, Trump says he is concerned with the absence of careers for those very people protesting in the streets of 25 cities against him.
In other words, the protests against the American people for electing Trump as their president are pointless. The protests are happening for one reason only. The Oligarchy intends to delegitimize the Trump Presidency. Once President Trump is delegitimized, it will be easier for the Oligarchy to assassinate him. Unless the Oligarchy can appoint and control Trumps government, Trump is a prime candidate for assassination.
The protests against Trump are suspicious for another reason. Unlike Hillary, Obama, and George W. Bush, Donald Trump has not slaughtered and dislocated millions of peoples in seven countries, sending millions of refugees from the Oligarchys wars to overrun Europe.
Trump earned his fortune, and if by hook or crook, not by selling US government influence to foreign agents as Bill and Hillary did.
So what are the protesters protesting?
There is no answer except that they are hired to protest. Just as the Maidan protesters in Kiev were hired to protest by US and German financed NGOs.
The protests in Kiev were equally pointless, because presidential elections were only months away. If Ukrainians really believed that their president was conspiring with Russia to keep Ukraine from becoming a Western puppet state and wished to become a puppet state regardless of the costs, the opportunity to vote the government out was at hand. The only reason for the protests was to orchestrate a coup. The US did succeed in putting their agent in control of the new Ukrainian government as Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev confirmed in their telephone conversation that is available on the Internet.
The Maidan protests were pointless except for making a coup possible. The protests were without any doubt arranged by Washington through Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a neoconservative brought into the State Department by Hillary Clinton for the purpose of creating conflict with Russia.
Trump is being protested in order to make him vulnerable in the event he proves to be the threat to the Oligarchy that he is thought to be.
Trump won the presidency, but the Oligarchy is still in power, which makes any real reforms difficult to achieve. Symbolic reforms can be the product of the contest between President Trump and the oligarchs.
Karl Marx learned from historical experience, and Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot learned from Karl Marx, that change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington.
Washington has conspired with traditional elites to remove the elected presidents of Honduras on a number of occasions. Recently, Washington helped elites evict the female presidents of Argentina and Brazil. The presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia are in the crosshairs and are unlikely to survive. Washington is determined to get its hands on Julian Assange. To achieve this Washington intends to overthrow the Ecuadoran government that, in defiance of Washington, gave Julian Assange political asylum.
Hugo Chavez had the power to exile or to exterminate the Spanish ruling class in Venezuela when the ruling class participated in a CIA coup against Chavez. But before the CIA could kill Chavez, the people and the military forced his release. Instead of punishing the criminals who would have murdered him, Chavez let them go.
According to Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, this is the classic mistake of the revolutionary. To rely on good will from the overthrown ruling class is the certain road to the defeat of the revolution.
Latin American has proved itself unable to learn this lesson: Revolutions cannot be conciliatory.
Trump is a dealmaker. The Oligarchy can permit him the sheen of success in exchange for no real change.
Trump is not perfect. He might fail on his own. But we should back him on the two most important elements in his program: to reduce tensions between the major nuclear powers, and to halt Washingtons policy of permitting globalism to destroy Americans economic prospects.
If tensions between nuclear powers worsen, we wont be here to worry about other problems. The combination of the economy hollowed out by globalism and immigration is an economic nightmare. That Trump understands this is reason to support him.
Note: Some believe that Trump is a ruse conducted by the Oligarchy. However, as Hillary is the bought-and-paid-for representative of the Oligarchy, such an elaborate ruse is unnecessary. It is preferable for the Oligarchy to win on its own platform than to install a president on the opposite platform and then change him around. Another sellout increases the anger of the people. If Hillary had won, the Oligarchy would have had the voters mandate for their platform.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . | 1real |
After U.S. veto, U.N. General Assembly to meet on Jerusalem status | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-member United Nations General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, sparking a warning from Washington that it will take names. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for Trump s declaration to be withdrawn, which was vetoed by the United States in the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Monday. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. Mansour said on Monday he hoped there would be overwhelming support in the General Assembly for the resolution. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that the United States would remember those who voted for the resolution criticizing the U.S. decision. The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue, Haley wrote. She echoed that call in a Twitter post: The U.S. will be taking names. Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures if the Security Council fails to act. Only 10 such sessions have been convened, and the last time the General Assembly met in such a session was in 2009 on occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian territories. Thursday s meeting will be a resumption of that session. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington s Western allies. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls on all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Haley said on Monday that the resolution was vetoed in the Security Council in defense of U.S. sovereignty and the U.S. role in the Middle East peace process. She criticized it as an insult to Washington and an embarrassment to council members. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. | 0fake |
Kremlin says Senate sanctions move an attempt to prolong U.S.-Russia enmity | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Proposed Senate legislation to impose sanctions on Russia over allegations it tried to influence the U.S. presidential election are an attempt to prolong the harm already done to U.S.-Russian ties, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. “That’s the internal affair of the United States but we see continuing attempts to exclude any kind of dialogue between our two countries and attempts, blow-by-blow, to do further harm to the prospects for our bilateral relations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters when asked about the legislation. Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senators Ben Cardin and Robert Menendez said on Monday they would introduce legislation to impose “comprehensive” sanctions on Russia over its attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election. Peskov said separate U.S. sanctions announced on Monday, on several Russian officials linked to the so-called Magnitsky Affair, were fresh steps towards the “degradation of relations” between Moscow and Washington. | 0fake |
Don’t Root, Root, Root for the Racist, Red-Face Team from Cleveland | Don’t Root, Root, Root for the Racist, Red-Face Team from Cleveland Paul Thornton, Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2016
How I wish it were the Dodgers who took the field Tuesday night in Cleveland. Yes, we’re all sad in Los Angeles that our team is now one year closer to celebrating the 30th anniversary of its last World Series appearance, but this goes beyond provincialism and wounded civil pride.
The Dodgers deserved the chance to humiliate a Cleveland baseball team that not only persists in identifying itself as the “Indians,” but also resurrected the laughably racist, red-faced mascot Chief Wahoo just in time for the playoffs.
For those who haven’t kept up with the baseball drama, here’s a summary: The Cleveland team drew the curtain on its regular-season minstrel show in the spring, having replaced Chief Wahoo on its caps with a vintage red “C.” It never officially retired the offending mascot, but Wahoo remained confined only to uniform sleeves throughout the regular season, leading reasonable people to believe that the team ownership had finally seen the light where other franchises such as the NFL’s Washington Redskins remained defiantly in the dark, and was easing its fans into the post-“Indians” era.
Or so we thought. Chief Wahoo reappeared when the Cleveland team began its impressive playoff run against the Boston Red Sox, and he hasn’t left. He remained stitched on hats and held aloft by adoring Cleveland fans as the team convincingly defeated the Toronto Blue Jays, even surviving a legal attack by advocates of Canada’s indigenous peoples that threatened to forbid even so much as the use of the term “Indians” while the team was on Canadian soil.
{snip}
It’s tempting to look past all this and take pity on a city that’s had it as rough as Cleveland. The Cubs’ championship drought has famously lasted for 107 baseball seasons, but the Cleveland team boasts a pitiable 67 years without a World Series title. Beyond sports, Cleveland’s decline as an important American metropolis is arguably unmatched, having tumbled from a population peak of 900,000-plus in 1950 to less than 400,000 today. {snip}
But Cleveland? Hey, I know some generous, wonderfully caring people from that part of Ohio, which makes wishing for their team’s brutal defeat personally difficult. But being on the right side of a moral dispute isn’t supposed to be easy, especially when the team in question isn’t the evil Washington Redskins and its infernal owner, Daniel Snyder. Cleveland’s municipal misery doesn’t excuse the disgraceful exalting of Chief Wahoo any more than white men’s economic hardship makes Donald Trump’s popularity OK.
{snip} | 1real |
Quality care for vets more important than wait times, says VA secretary | Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald says wait times aren't the best measure of whether care at VA hospitals is improving. Satisfaction matters more.
“From crisis comes opportunity,” says Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald. “The deeper the crisis, the bigger the changes that can be made.”
Secretary McDonald has had the opportunity to test that theory. A West Point graduate and former chairman and CEO of Procter and Gamble, McDonald was nominated by President Obama to run the VA in wake of a 2014 scandal at its Phoenix hospital. Critics charged that as many as 40 patients died as a result of waiting for treatment in Phoenix and that some VA employees there falsified records on how long patients actually waited.
At a Monitor-hosted breakfast with reporters in the lead up to Memorial Day, the secretary was questioned about why the VA does not publicly report when veterans first ask for an appointment, known as the “create date.” The information can be used to calculate how long vets had to wait for an appointment.
“The days to an appointment is really not what we should be measuring. What we should be measuring is the veteran’s satisfaction,” McDonald said. “What really counts is how does the veteran feel about their encounter with the VA? When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? What is important is, what is your satisfaction with the experience.”
The secretary added, “what I would like to move to actually is that kind of measure. We are in the process of creating that kind of measure, validating that kind of measure.”
The reference to Disney theme parks prompted House Speaker Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin to respond to McDonald’s breakfast comments with a tweet: “This is not make-believe, Mr. Secretary. Veterans have died waiting in those lines.”
Secretary McDonald was also asked about a recent column in Roll Call newspaper, suggesting that Hillary Clinton should consider him as her running mate. Columnist Jonathan Allen argued that McDonald “trumps [Donald] Trump’s business-world experience” and “took on the thankless task of reshaping the broken bureaucracy of the VA….”
McDonald responded, “The way I look at all these things is just as I looked at when the White House contacted me about this job. I went to West Point. My life’s mission has been to help improve the lives of others and if I am asked to serve I certainly will consider it.”
With the Obama administration coming to end in January 2017, McDonald is trying to deliver on what he calls 12 “breakthrough priorities” before the end of this year, including improving the experience veterans have dealing with the VA, increasing access to health care, developing a simplified appeals process, and reducing veterans homelessness.
The secretary cited gains in a variety of areas. In the past 12 months, the VA completed 1.6 million more appointments than in the previous year. Average wait times are now five days for primary care, six days for specialty care, and three days for mental health care, he said.
But McDonald admits that those average wait times are not the experience for vets in all of its facilities. “There are tails at the end of that distribution and some of those tails are what we are trying to deal with.” For example, he said, veterans have been part of the general movement of the population to the South, and the VA needs to build facilities there.
He added that “we know we have an issue getting people in. We know that and we are working hard on it.”
The VA is a massive management challenge. It runs the largest integrated health care system in the US. It operates 1,200 health care facilities, has 350,000 employees, including 25,000 physicians who serve nine million patients. If it were a business weighed in the Fortune 500 rankings, McDonald said, it would rank sixth.
When asked what issues would confront his successor, McDonald noted that, “one of the things we have committed to here is same-day resolution of a medical issue for any veteran…. It may not solve the issue, but we will get them the help they need that same day. We already do that at about 25 percent of our facilities.”
A second issue his successor will face is the need to “get the appeals backlog down,” McDonald said. There currently are 440,000 appeals of VA benefits decisions pending. “In order to get that backlog down, there is only one thing we can do and that is pass legislation that changes the 80 year-old law that governs appeals,” he said. The law currently allows vets to file unlimited amendments to their claims. | 0fake |
On Deck With China’s Last Junk Builders, Masters of an Ebbing Craft - The New York Times | PEARL RIVER DELTA, China — As Wong stands on the deck of the traditional Chinese wooden junk he is building in Shenwan, a cluster of fish ponds and factories in the Pearl River Delta of southern China, he shouts to be heard over the shriek of metalwork from steel ships that are being worked on nearby. “It’s like a piece of art,” said Mr. Wong, a bronzed with stony hands and a quick grin, describing what he loves about the boats with the batwing sails that he so rarely gets to build. A native of the delta region, Mr. Wong in 1982 swam for two hours from nearby Zhuhai, on China’s mainland, to what was then the Portuguese colony of Macau to escape China’s strict Communist government. Once there he set up an early incarnation of Yi Hap Shipyard, a builder of wooden junks, which symbolize the delta and the maritime culture that drove China’s early growth. “Not many people are wooden junks anymore,” Mr. Wong said. “I wish more people would. ” Within the next few months, the junk, the Dai Cheung Po — also known as the Aqua Luna II — will unfurl its sails above its high stern and low bow and join its smaller sister, the Cheung Po Tsai, or the Aqua Luna I, already in Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong, to offer parties and dinners. It is one of a few of these traditional ships with sails being made by one of the last remaining junk builders in China. “The building tradition is more or less moribund,” said Stephen Davies, a former director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Yet the style remains traditional, “insofar as they are still doing what Grandpa did, and before him,” he said. The new junk is made of Southeast Asian ironwood and teak and cost about $1. 3 million to build. It was commissioned by a restaurant group in Hong Kong, which lies about 50 miles east of Shenwan on the edge of the delta where the river’s silty water turns ocean blue. Also in Hong Kong is the Dukling, a classic, junk that dates from 1955. It sank once and was recently refurbished. Since June, its owners have offered tours of Hong Kong’s waters, reflecting how junks today are used mostly for tourism and private parties. They are three of only a handful of junks that remain in the delta, replaced long ago by stouter wooden fishing vessels without sails, speedboats and huge container ships. The pirate Cheung Po Tsai, or Cheung Po “the Kid,” who crisscrossed the delta pillaging and later joined the Qing dynasty imperial navy, sailed a ship that looked similar to his namesakes, though its sails may have been a yellow woven bamboo, not red. The red color is largely a flourish, Mr. Davies said. The life of the delta is partly interlaced because of junks, which were once numerous with their fanlike silhouettes, trading down into Southeast Asia and up the coast of China. The junk — the word’s origins are murky, with Chinese, Malay and Portuguese cited as influences — may have assumed its iconic, curved hull and sails about 1, 000 years ago, during the Song dynasty, though written records are scarce. Captivated by the junk’s beauty, David Yeo, the founder and owner of Aqua Restaurant Group, commissioned a Hong Kong master boat builder, Au Wai, to conceptualize and direct the construction of the Aqua Lunas and to work with Mr. Wong in Shenwan. The first was launched in 2006, and unlike junks of the past, both are and their sails are decorative. “He has made more commercial junk boats than anyone else in Hong Kong. He is a master of a true art form,” Mr. Yeo said in an email. “An art form that is sadly dying out in Hong Kong today. ” Mr. Au’s life reflects the sweep of delta geography. He is unsure where he was born but knows his father was from Guangdong Province in China, through which the Pearl River runs. Known as Ah Sin — the honorific and name translate as Dear Magician, for his talent — Mr. Au, 85, grew up poor in Hong Kong. In his boatyard on Hong Kong Island, in the eastern district of Shau Kei Wan, he points to photographs of wooden ships of all kinds that he has built since being apprenticed to an uncle at the age of 13: simple “ ” motorboats and corporate junks that carry some design elements of the traditional junk but without sails. Beyond the wood shavings, the harbor glitters in the sun. Fishing boats draw up outside to deliver their catch to the Shau Kei Wan wholesale fish market. “I was very naughty as a boy, and no one could control me,” Mr. Au said in Cantonese, the local language. Barely a teenager, he sold fish on the streets. “I did what I wanted. So my family said, ‘You should look for a special skill,’” he said. “An uncle was the owner of a shipyard and also a member of the ship association. ” His son, Au Sai Kit, works with him, but because his son has no children, the family tradition will probably end there. Hardly anyone in Hong Kong is willing to do manual labor, the elder Mr. Au said, so he has to look to places like Shenwan, where he and his son travel regularly to confer with Mr. Wong and his team of workers. Building a luxury junk is a labor of love, Mr. Au said. “We take the wood piece by piece, fit them together in a curve, measure each piece and cut it,” he said. Copper nails are used to hammer the hull together. No other metal or artificial materials are used. It takes about a year to build a traditional junk, Mr. Wong said. Once junks were made from camphor wood and pine from Fujian Province, said Mr. Davies, the former museum director. “They were simple to build. That was the genius of the hull design,” he said. But they had flaws. “The hull is only joined together by nails, so you can’t have one high sail. You need rigging,” he said. “They had to keep adding sails to make the junk sail in a straight line. ” The idea of a Chinese junk has been romanticized, Mr. Davies said. “Junks were brutally hard work. The grunt work — it took 14 members of crew to work the sails. It was pure sweat,” he said. But Mr. Davies concedes that the traditional Chinese junk remains iconic. “That sweep down to the bow, the fan in profile, with the masts that create this beautiful arc along the top. The fully battened, standing rigging. There is just a beautiful harmony in looking at it,” he said. | 0fake |
Trump under pressure to assure NATO allies he has their back | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Standing in front of a memorial made of remnants of the World Trade Center, U.S. President Donald Trump will have a powerful symbolic opportunity in Brussels next Thursday to make clear how he really feels about NATO. But as controversies swirl around Trump over alleged ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, it is unclear whether the Republican president - who slammed the post-World War Two military alliance as “obsolete” when he was running for office - will say the words that whipsawed NATO partners really want to hear. Alarmed by Russian aggression in Ukraine and wary of the U.S. administration’s efforts to build friendlier ties with Moscow, European partners want to know if they have Trump’s staunch support. While the White House says Trump will reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the alliance in his remarks at NATO, allies also want a full-throated endorsement of Article 5 of the treaty - the principal that an attack against one member is treated as an attack against all. The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was formed in 1949 during the Cold War, has invoked the collective defense article only once - after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that leveled the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York, Trump’s hometown. Trump plans to dedicate a memorial to the invocation of Article 5 at the new NATO headquarters. “The problem in the plan is that President Trump is the only president who has not yet explicitly endorsed Article 5,” said Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution think tank. “I understand that is not an accident.” On the campaign trail, Trump accused NATO allies of not paying their fair share for defense and not focusing enough on the fight against terrorism. Since last November’s election, Trump and his aides have tempered those remarks. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis - who will travel with Trump to Brussels - has pledged support to Article 5, as has Vice President Mike Pence. Trump has said publicly his views on NATO have changed, telling reporters during a White House visit with NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that NATO was “no longer obsolete.” “He has never said, like Pence, like Mattis, that U.S. commitment to Article 5 is rock solid, and allies want to hear that at this summit,” said Julie Smith, national security aide to former Vice President Joe Biden. While abroad, Trump will be shadowed by the political tumult that ensued after his firing earlier this month of FBI Director James Comey. The U.S. Justice Department has named a special counsel to probe possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, which Trump denies. He said on Thursday he was the victim of a political witch hunt. Trump, who took office in January, departs on Friday for his first foreign trip as president and will visit Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican and Sicily in addition to Brussels. A senior White House official said Trump would press his demands for NATO partners to step up their defense spending. The message may undercut any effort to offer reassurance to NATO allies about the commitment to the alliance and to Europe, said Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the United States and Britain. Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a frequent Trump critic, expressed frustration with the president’s NATO stance. Asked by a reporter what he would like to see Trump do to reassure NATO allies, McCain laughed, saying: “Talk about his commitment to NATO - that would be an opener.” | 0fake |
MAN WALKS OFF JOB With Buffalo Bills After 30 Years After NFL Players Disrespect “Our Veterans That Fight and Die For Us” | Stadium worker Erich Nikischer quit his job at New Era Field after almost 30 years. I waited until the National Anthem ended, I took off my shirt, threw my Bills hat on the ground, walked out, Nikischer said in a sit-down interview with Channel 2 at his West Seneca home.Nikischer says he has no problem with players protesting before the National Anthem. It s when the kneeling continued into the song that strong feelings took over. During the National Anthem the song that is about our country, our veterans that fight and die for us, it s just something I feel you shouldn t disrespect that way, he said. I believe people have the right to protest; I just don t believe that s the proper venue for it. He s not alone in that latter sentiment. Safety Jordan Poyer s fianc says that s how the couple feels, and that Saturday night, they decided he wouldn t partake in an on the field protest. I feel like there s a certain time or place where you should make a stand for something, and we both agree that it s not in your workforce, your work field, Rachel Bush said. So yeah, I agree there s something that should be done, but we both mutually don t agree that it should be done during their work during their football season. Nikischer said it was a hard decision, and that he will miss those he worked with. I will never step foot in that place again, I will never watch an NFL football game again until this ends, Nikischer said.Watch his interview here: WGRZ | 1real |
ANGRY COMMENTATOR THREATENS TRUMP: “Government’s gonna kill this guy” [Video] | Wow! Open threats that government will kill the president had to be clarified by Jake Tapper. BUT Please listen to this unhinged commentator on CNN and tell us the Deep State doesn t exist:I found the actual for video You guys decide if this is okay or not. Change agents=threats. Words like this on National TV is not right. pic.twitter.com/dQKksW47ef Bobby Axelrod (@SirBobbyAxelrod) August 10, 2017These CNN commentators were discussing the fact that Putin fired embassy employees in Russia. We reported (see video below) that President Trump said it s fine that Putin fired the employees because it saves the U.S. money. These loose cannons went ballistic and said that government will kill him. Even if it s not literally to kill, it s still a very threatening message! The entire commentary is disturbing!Here s what the panel was referring to: This is priceless! President Trump just gave the best response ever to a reporter s question! He said he wanted to thank Russian President Vladimir Putin for reducing his payroll by firing U.S. embassy staff in Moscow. Hysterical and so quick! Watch how Trump doesn t skip a beat with his response:After Sanctions on Russia were put in place in July, Putin ordered 755 embassy personnel out of Russia.President Trump was asked today during a press conference what he thought of the firing. His response was quick and decisive. He said he wanted to thank Putin for the firing: No. I want to thank him, because we re trying to cut down on payroll. And as far as I m concerned, I m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll. He continued: There s no real reason for them to go back. So I greatly appreciate the fact that they have been able to cut our payroll for the United States. We ll save a lot of money. THE TRUTH IS THAT THE CNN PANEL KNOWS NOTHING! THE TRUTH IS THAT MOST OF THESE EMPLOYEES ARE RUSSIAN!SOURCE: BBC | 1real |
EPIC CONSERVATIVE Take Down After CNN Ambush Of Radio Host [Video] | 1real | |
Architecture is More Than a Clever Arrangement of Bricks: This Man Transforms it Into a Healing Process | Architecture means many things to many people: It’s a form of creative expression, a tool for meticulous construction, a craft, a profession. In short, it’s much more than just perfectly placing bricks to form a building.
In this Ted Talk , Michael Murphy discusses how his father’s brush with death ultimately opened the doors to his own life path of architecture, but not just as a profession, and not just as a creative expression.
When designing, Murphy and his team go beyond the blueprint, considering things like how like airflow and light can produce both a healthy community and gorgeous structures.
He shows us his projects in countries like Rwanda and Haiti, and covers his plan for creating The Memorial to Peace and Justice, which mainly aims to heal hearts in the American South.
“ Why was it that the best architects, the greatest architecture — a ll beautiful and visionary and innovative — is also so rare, and seems to serve so very few? And more to the point: With all of this creative talent, what more could we do?” Murphy poses in his talk.
He broke into the very soul of his work when he came to the realization that buildings are actually making people sicker.
“ In this hospital in South Africa, patients that came in with, say, a broken leg, to wait in this unventilated hallway, walked out with a multidrug-resistant strand of tuberculosis. Simple designs for infection control had not been thought about, and people had died because of it.”
With the revelation that hospitals are making patients sicker, he thought of designing one that flips the hallways on the outside, allowing people to walk in the exterior. “ If mechanical systems rarely work, what if we could design a hospital that could breathe through natural ventilation, and meanwhile reduce its environmental footprint?” he said.
He then discussed the incredible community aspect of following through with his healing niche in the architecture world.
“ We worked with Bruce Nizeye, a brilliant engineer, and he thought about construction differently than I had been taught in school. When we had to excavate this enormous hilltop and a bulldozer was expensive and hard to get to site, Bruce suggested doing it by hand, using a method in Rwanda called “Ubudehe,” which means “community works for the community.” Hundreds of people came with shovels and hoes, and we excavated that hill in half the time and half the cost of that bulldozer. Instead of importing furniture, Bruce started a guild, and he brought in master carpenters to train others in how to make furniture by hand. And on this job site, 15 years after the Rwandan genocide, Bruce insisted that we bring on labor from all backgrounds, and that half of them be women. “
Ultimately, the healing journey became twofold, as it was both the process of building to heal as well as allowing an entire community to heal.
“We call this the locally fabricated way of building, or ‘lo-fab,’ and it has four pillars: hire locally, source regionally, train where you can and most importantly, think about every design decision as an opportunity to invest in the dignity of the places where you serve. Think of it like the local food movement, but for architecture. And we’re convinced that this way of building can be replicated across the world, and change the way we talk about and evaluate architecture,” he explained.
In his talk, Murphy reveals how he learned that architecture is more than what it seems. It “can be a transformative engine for change.”
Watch the full talk below. Perhaps it will show you how your work can be more than what it seems, too.
| 1real |
BITTER RADICAL ERIC HOLDER Goes After ‘ORANGE MAN’ President Trump In Scorching Interview: ‘We want the America of Barack Obama’ | The information below is disturbing and should be a wake up call for Americans that the left isn t taking losing lying down. This is war A war for the heart of America!The quote below from Steve Bannon also goes for the left and the radical elitists like Holder He continuously mocks President Trump in the interview below by calling him orange man . Holder is seething with contempt and hate. It s shameful behavior from a man who was once a very powerful member of a presidential administration in America. He exposes himself for the hateful racist we knew he was. This is scary and should be a big reminder that the war isn t over with these people. Keep up the fight!Bannon is 100% correct on this:Former Attorney General Eric Holder says he is glad to be unshackled from his old job because employment with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee lets him lash out at Republicans like orange man President Trump.Politico recently went on the road with the NDRC s chairman in Virginia for get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor.An interview at Rising Mount Zion Baptist Church in Richmond covered everything from NDRC s efforts to raise over $30 million for gubernatorial races to Mr. Trump s alleged role in empowering neo-Nazis and white nationalists. I probably would not have [attacked Republicans like] that while I was attorney general, he continued. I didn t have an orange man who I was serving under, but, I mean, I would not have said that about a former president, for instance, while I was attorney general. But now, I m just a citizen and I ve got the full range of my voice back. The former attorney general also told Rising Mount Zion congregants that Mr. Northam s battle with Republican Ed Gillespie was important because debts have to be repaid. Read more: WT | 1real |
HOW PAUL RYAN JUST Made A Mockery Of Trump’s Promise To Protect Blue-Collar Jobs From Foreign Workers | The bipartisan congressional language creates a headache for Trump and his deputies because it flips the politically difficult problem from Congress to the Department of Homeland Security of deciding whether to provide extra wage-cutting H-2B contract workers to companies or else to improve job opportunities for Trump s blue-collar voters.The new rule helps business groups offset rising pressure for wage increases, just 18 months before the mid-term elections when voters will vet the success or not of Trump s Buy American, Hire American policies.The H-2B language was hidden deep in the draft 2017 supplemental budget which is to face House and Senate votes this week and it surprised opponents of the legislation. In December 2016, Ryan had agreed to trim the program when the partial 2017 budget deal was announced just one month after blue-collar voters backed Donald Trump s campaign promise of a low-immigration, high-wage national economic policy.Apparently nothing is going to change, as long as Speaker Ryan remains at the helm. Watch: Immigration expert Mark Krikorian tweeted aboutHere's the text of the #H2B "returning workers" loophole that makes a mockery of the law's numerical "limits". https://t.co/G7dc1Qpmaz pic.twitter.com/Hf4UPjwJB4 Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) May 1, 2017The language in the 2017 budget says the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to exceed the supposed 66,000 annual cap on H-2B outsourcing visas by a number equal to the maximum number of workers who benefited from an earlier exemption, dubbed the returning worker exemption. Via: Breitbart | 1real |
Iraq declares final victory over Islamic State | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over Islamic State on Saturday after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq s territory. The announcement comes two days after the Russian military announced the defeat of the militants in neighboring Syria, where Moscow is backing Syrian government forces. Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria, the military said. Honorable Iraqis: your land has been completely liberated. The dream of liberation is now a reality, Abadi said in a televised address. He was speaking with five Iraqi flags and dozens of servicemen from different branches behind him. We have accomplished a very difficult mission. Our heroes have reached the final strongholds of Daesh and purified it. The Iraqi flag flies high today over all Iraqi lands. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Several squadrons of Iraqi helicopters flew over Baghdad carrying Iraqi flags at noon, in an apparent rehearsal for a victory parade that Iraq is planning to hold in coming days. The government said the declaration meant Iraqi forces had secured the western desert and the entire Iraq-Syria border, and marked the end of the war against Islamic State. Abadi declared Dec. 10 a national holiday to be celebrated every year. State television aired celebratory songs praising government forces and militias, and showed scenes of celebration on the streets of Baghdad and other provinces. The U.S.-led coalition that has been supporting the Iraqi forces against Islamic State welcomed the news, as did Brett McGurk, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy to the coalition. We congratulate the Prime Minister and all the Iraqi people on this significant achievement, which many thought impossible, he said in a series of tweets. We honor the sacrifices of the Iraqi people, its security forces, and the Kurdish Peshmerga, and admire the unity in their ranks that had made this day possible. The U.S. State Department also issued a statement of congratulation. Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, fell in July after a grueling nine-month campaign backed by a U.S.-led coalition that saw much of the northern Iraqi city destroyed. Islamic State s Syrian capital Raqqa also fell to a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led coalition in September. The forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare, a tactic the militants have already shown themselves capable of. Abadi said Iraq had entered the post-victory over Daesh phase and must be prepared for future threats. Daesh s dream is over and we must erase all its effect and not allow terrorism to return. Despite announcing final victory, we must remain vigilant and prepared against any terrorist attempt on our country, for terrorism is an eternal enemy. The war has had a devastating impact on the areas previously controlled by the militants. About 3.2 million people remain displaced, a U.N. statement said on Saturday. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who in 2014 declared in Mosul the founding of a new Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria, released an audio recording on Sept. 28 indicating he was alive following several reports of his death. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks. Baghdadi is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert in the border area. His followers imposed a reign of terror on the populations they controlled, alienating even many of those Sunni Muslims who had supported the group as allies against the heavy-handed rule of the Shi ite majority-led government of the time. The militants took thousands of women from the Yazidi minority, which lives in a mountain west of Mosul, as sex slaves and killed the men. Driven from Mosul and Raqqa, Islamic State was progressively squeezed this year into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert, straddling the frontier between the two countries, by enemies that include regional states and global powers. In Iraq, the group faced mainly U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and Iranian-trained Shi ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation. Abadi praised the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and Iraq s top Shi ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose fatwa calling volunteers to fight Islamic State led to PMF s creation. Still, the prime minister said the state should have a monopoly on the use of arms. Disarming the PMF is seen as Abadi s most difficult test after Islamic State s defeat. Weapons should only be in the state s hands. The rule of law and respect for it are the way to build the state and achieve justice, equality, and stability, he said. Abadi called for unity, which he said was the main reason for the victory, a reference to the contribution of different communities, including Sunni tribal fighters. However, Iraq faces a fresh internal conflict after it retaliated economically and militarily against the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government for holding a referendum on independence despite Baghdad s opposition. The joy of victory is complete with Iraq s unity after it was on the verge of division. The unity of Iraq and its people is the most important and greatest accomplishment, he said. | 0fake |
PELOSI GIGGLES NERVOUSLY: “After I Met President Trump I Prayed For America” [Video] | Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with Joy Reid that after she met President Trump she prayed for America She giggled nervously. This is the usual Pelosi act where she giggles and then says something so bitter and mean that you just can t believe it.We have quite a collection of Pelosi-isms Keep it up Nancy!NANCY CAN T CALL TRUMP HER PRESIDENT GIGGLE, GIGGLE Nancy Pelosi couldn t sink any lower than this. She was doing a question and answer when she giggled and said she can t call Donald Trump president Trump. The oddest behavior comes after the giggles. She goes on to brag about her position in the Democrat Party and how she was so looking forward to Hillary s win. It s quite a delusional rant.How can the Democrats be taken seriously when they behave this way? Pelosi isn t the only one. Maxine Waters is a very close second in the wacky category. See the video below this one where she goes ballistic on a woman who said I love my president .PELOSI GIGGLES LIKE A CHILD: | 1real |
Trump Humiliated As DACA Decision Practically Kills His Presidency (DETAILS) | As we saw with his Muslim travel ban as well as his attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, every time Donald Trump puts forth one of his disastrous ideas, it blows up in his face and delivers a devastating blow to his already failing presidency.Each time Trump introduces an unpopular policy or idea, his already historically low approval rating takes another nosedive. This week, Trump only managed to make things worse for himself when he decided to end former President Obama s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program. Here s the problem most Americans disagree with him.According to a recent survey from Morning Consult/Politico, almost 80% (76% to be exact) of Americans do not believe that Dreamers (the undocumented immigrants that were brought into the United States illegally as kids) should be forced to return to their countries. The majority of Americans are far more humane than Trump, and believe that these immigrants should have the opportunity to become citizens, as most have been productive members and have contributed greatly to American society.Trump is especially in trouble because his decision to end DACA only offers more proof that he is a racist a**hole. As MSNBC s Joy Reid perfectly pointed out, there is no economic, national security or social cohesion rationale for ending DACA: Trump might say that he has great love for the immigrants that are living in America, but his decision proves the exact opposite. Trump wants to strip Dreamers of the lives and progress they have made for themselves in this country and force them to return to countries they are unfamiliar with, where they will have nothing.With this decision, Trump is not only screwing himself over by killing his presidency, but he is also basically putting the GOP in great danger in future elections by excluding one of the fastest-growing voting demographics. Trump is sinking the Republican Party and his presidency at record speed.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Pourquoi les EAU financeraient la campagne du FN? | 7 845 7 5 La campagne présidentielle du Front National financée par les Émirats Arabes Unis ? L’hypothèse est moins surprenante qu’il n’y paraît. Elle pose néanmoins les questions de l’indépendance du Front vis-à-vis de son éventuel sponsor et du jeu d’influence que joueraient les EAU.
La campagne de Marine Le Pen financée par Les Émirats Arabes Unis? C'est Médiapart qui a lancé l'info vendredi, bientôt reprise par toute la presse. Alors on peut bien sur se demander pourquoi le premier parti de France aux régionales et dans les intentions de vote à la présidentielle en est à rechercher des financements à l'étranger. On peut aussi trouver curieux qu'un parti que d'aucuns qualifient de xénophobe reçoive des fonds de pays arabes.
Pourtant, ce rapprochement entre le Parti frontiste et les émiratis n'a rien de surprenant. © AP Photo/ Ariel Schalit Primaire de la droite: Jean-Frédéric Poisson sera-t-il exclu pour ses propos polémiques à l'occasion des « estivales de Fréjus» en septembre dernier, Wallerand de St-Just, le trésorier du Front National avait été clair au micro de France 3:
« S'il faut aller emprunter à l'étranger, nous irons emprunter à l'étranger, il n'y a aucune exclusive àça. Que ce soit en Russie en Argentine ou aux États-Unis […] Et pourquoi pas au Moyen-Orient. »
Rappelons aussi que c'est déjà faute de trouver des banques françaises prêteuses que le FN avait emprunté 2 et 9 millions d'euros à des banques russes en 2014. D'ailleurs, le financement du FN n'est pas épargné par les péripéties juridiques. En septembre 2015, Wallerand de Saint-Just et Jean-François Jalkh, l'un des vice-présidents du parti, avaient été mis en examen pour recel d'abus de biens sociaux dans le cadre du financement de la campagne des présidentielles et des législatives de 2012, via le micro parti « Jeanne ».
A propos du financement du FN, nous avons interrogé Gaëtan Dussausaye. Le Directeur national du Front National de la Jeunesse (FNJ) décrit une position claire et sans ambiguïté, qui ne dépend pas « des nécessités de financement » de la campagne électorale:
« Ce financement, nous le cherchons partout. Comme les banques françaises se refusent à prêter de l'argent à un parti politique — ce qui en soit est un véritable déni de démocratie — bien évidemment, on est contraints, on est obligés, d'aller chercher des financements à l'étranger ».
Des financements qui ne sont pas dénués d'arrière-pensées, selon Médiapart, qui mentionne une source proche de Marine Le Pen. Cette source aurait affirmé que les émiratis voulaient, en échange de leur soutien financier, que Marine le Pen évince le Qatar pour travailler avec eux si elle était élue.
Gaëtan Dussausaye estime qu'il y a peu de chances que la candidate du FN accepte le marché:
« Le Front National est par définition un parti patriote. Nous sommes pour la souveraineté et l'indépendance de la France. On ne va pas chercher à se défaire des liens — poreux — qui existent avec l'Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar du fait des mandats de François Hollande et Nicolas Sarkozy […] pour se remettre sous l'influence d'un autre pays étranger. »
Evincer le Qatar à leur profit serait en tout cas cohérent pour les Émirats Arabes Unis. En effet, le Qatar et les Frères musulmans figurent au tableau des ennemis héréditaires d'Abu Dhabi. De son côté, le FN oppose volontiers les EAU au Qatar et à l'Arabie Saoudite. Ces deux pétromonarchies ont particulièrement renforcés leurs liens économiques, politiques et diplomatiques avec la France sous les mandats respectifs de Nicolas Sarkozy et de François Hollande. Du pain béni pour le Front National, qui dénonce les collusions entre ces pays et les groupes extrémistes d'engeance wahhabite qui déchirent le Moyen-Orient. © AFP 2016 BERTRAND LANGLOIS Face au FN, Robert Ménard "Oz sa droite" Une opposition qui lui a d'ailleurs valu des déboires avec la Justice française:
En avril 2015, le Qatar avait porté plainte pour diffamation contre Florian Philippot, vice-président du Front national. Sa faute? Avoir critiqué le Qatar et l'Arabie Saoudite « Ces pays financent l'islamisme qui tue» sur Radio Classique et LCI, au lendemain des attentats de Charlie Hebdo. La plainte n'avait finalement pas aboutie, le Parlement européen refusant de lever l'immunité parlementaire de l'eurodéputé.
Dans ce contexte, il n'apparait donc pas étonnant que le Front National s'en tienne à la ligne que nous expose Gaëtan Dussausaye:
« Nous avons vu, au profit de l'émergence de Daech, un certain engagement de ces pays à lutter contre ce nouveau totalitarisme du XXIème siècle. Là où des pétromonarchies telles que le Qatar ou l'Arabie Saoudite jouent un jeu trouble, de la même manière qu'un pays à la porte de l'Europe comme la Turquie de monsieur Erdogan. Donc évidemment nous préférons être en relation avec des pays qui ont des engagements dans la lutte contre Daech beaucoup plus clairs, beaucoup plus transparents. » © AFP 2016 Kirill Kudryavsev Présidentielles: rien ne peut fléchir Nicolas Sarkozy, même un scandale financier En tout état de cause, il est certain que l'Arabie saoudite, le Qatar et les EAU mènent une vraie lutte d'influence en France à coups de pétrodollars. Les EAU sont même en tête des investissements privés en provenance du Golfe en France, alors que le Qatar et l'Arabie saoudite exercent plus leur emprise dans les milieux politiques et parfois diplomatiques. Une emprise dénoncée en mars dans un dossier-choc de Marianne .
Un investissement des EAU sur le FN pourrait constituer un moyen pour eux de peser —à terme — sur la politique française. Mais au vu des chances plus que minces de Marine le Pen aux présidentielles de 2017, les EAU ne vont-ils pas se décourager? Affaire à suivre.
Les opinions exprimées dans ce contenu n'engagent que la responsabilité de l'auteur. ... | 1real |
U.S. diplomacy with North Korea to continue until 'first bomb drops': Tillerson | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that President Donald Trump had instructed him to continue diplomatic efforts to calm rising tensions with North Korea, saying “those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.” Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Tillerson downplayed messages that President Trump had previously posted on Twitter suggesting Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with “Little Rocket Man,” a derogatory nickname Trump has coined for North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. Trump “has made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts,” Tillerson said. Tillerson’s comments Sunday come amid soaring tensions between the United States and North Korea following a series of weapons tests by Pyongyang and a war of words between the two countries’ leaders. North Korea has conducted a series of nuclear tests in recent weeks and ago and launched two missiles over Japan. Tillerson has been in talks with China to enlist its help on getting North Korea to back down. But Trump’s recent Twitter messages appeared to undercut Tillerson’s efforts, prompting the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker to complain that Trump was publicly castrating Tillerson and hurting diplomatic talks. Tillerson downplayed those tweets Sunday, telling CNN that Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping have an extremely close relationship and that China understands the U.S. position. “Rest assured that the Chinese are not confused in any way” about the American policy towards North Korea, he added. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Infuriates Women With Disgusting ‘Rape’ Comment (VIDEO) | Donald Trump can barely go a day without saying or doing something truly offensive to women. Further pushing away women voters (as he has been successfully doing during his entire campaign), Trump decided to make light of sexual abuse over the weekend by comparing the United States relationship with China to rape.Trump made these misogynistic comments at a rally on Sunday, where he said: We can t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that s what they re doing. It s the greatest theft in the history of the world. Hardly an appropriate comparison; the rape Trump is talking about is the trade deficit between the two countries and anyone could agree that a sexually violent act is a truly disgusting way to describe an economic relationship between nations. Nearly as soon as Trump spewed those shameful, disrespectful words, he began receiving massive backlash from advocates against sexual violence.Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who has been heavily involved in addressing rape on college campuses and introduced the International Violence Against Women Act, was one of the first to shut the Republican frontrunner down. She said: When you use a violent and heinous crime like rape as a metaphor, it is an affront to all sexual assault survivors. Donald Trump should find another way to express himself. Colleen Daly, a spokeswoman for the group End Rape on Campus, added: Using the word rape to describe anything other than sexual violence trivializes the experience of survivors. The statement perpetuates our cultural indifference to rape and desensitizes us to all forms of sexual violence. In just one sentence, Trump has disrespected 300,000 people that s roughly how many people are sexually assaulted in the United States every year. This isn t even the first time Trump has been completely insensitive about rape. Trump has previously been accused of raping his ex-wife Ivana, and his lawyer defended The Donald by making the despicable and completely false argument that you cannot rape your spouse. The truth is that over half of all women that report being raped say that their partner was the perpetrator and Trump and his lawyer single-handedly tried to invalidate that reality.You can watch Trump make his disgusting rape comments below:It s no secret that Trump, with his long history of being a misogynist and disrespecting women, is having trouble winning over women voters. If his sexist comments about Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton playing the woman card didn t turn more female voters away, his comments about rape surely will. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) pointed out Trump s problem with women perfectly: Whether it s attacking women or minorities his vulgar remarks have no place in our political discourse. Women are watching and they don t like what they see. Hopefully women will continue to show Trump that misogyny will not be tolerated by refusing to vote for him.Featured image via Joe Raedle / Getty Images | 1real |
Trump invites UK's May to visit 'as soon as possible' | LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump invited Theresa May to visit him as soon as possible during their first telephone call since his election victory, the British prime minister’s office said on Thursday. May and Trump agreed that the U.S.-British relationship was “very important and very special, and that building on this would be a priority for them both”, a statement said. “President-elect Trump set out his close and personal connections with, and warmth for, the UK. He said he was confident that the special relationship would go from strength to strength,” it added. May, who was appointed prime minister shortly after Britain voted to leave the EU in June, also told Trump that she hoped to strengthen bilateral trade and investment with the United States as the country leaves the bloc. | 0fake |
Teenager Seeks to Honor Veterans of War by Preserving Their Stories - The New York Times | As nations honored their war veterans on Friday — Armistice Day and Veterans Day — a in California is trying to preserve as many voices of World War II veterans in the United States as he can. Many of the veterans are in their twilight years, with ages in the late 80s and the 90s. The teenager, Rishi Sharma, has started a nonprofit organization, Heroes of the Second World War, to record video interviews with them for posterity. Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, about 620, 000 are still alive, and 372 die each day, according to the National World War II Museum. The teenager, who graduated last year from Agoura High School outside Los Angeles, wrote on a crowdfunding page that there is “no commercial aspect” to the project. He said he’s putting off many of the typical priorities of like going to college, finding a job or dating, so that he can focus on the project. “These men are my biggest heroes and my closest friends,” Mr. Sharma wrote. “I am just trying to get a better understanding of what they had to go through in order for me and so many others to be here today and to get a better appreciation for how good I have it. ” Mr. Sharma received an influx of donations on Friday as the United States commemorated Veterans Day. Across the country, Americans — including President Obama, who laid a wreath in Arlington Cemetery in Washington — led tributes to past and present military members. Several countries also honored their veterans on Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I, with two minutes of silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. | 0fake |
Hillary’s Message To Former Miss Universe Called ‘Miss Piggy’ By Trump Is PERFECT (TWEET) | Miss Universe 1996 Alicia Machado is now an American citizen and will be voting for the first time this November, and it s become apparent who she ll likely be voting for, and it s not Donald Trump.You see, after Machado won her crown she gained a little bit of weight, which apparently did not please Trump, who is the man behind the pageant. He even called her Miss Piggy and said that she must be somebody that likes to eat. He then forced her to work out and try to lose weight.When asked if she d vote for Trump this fall, all Machado could do was laugh.When Hillary Clinton heard about the insults and the response to if Machado would vote for Trump, she tweeted out: Congratulations on becoming a U.S. citizen, Alicia. Enjoy casting that vote. Congratulations on becoming a U.S. citizen, Alicia. Enjoy casting that vote. https://t.co/jewmwZrrOA Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 20, 2016Very clearly insinuating that Machado will be voting against Trump, and most likely for Hillary Clinton.And honestly, what better revenge is that? That s called karma, Mr. Trump, and it s best served cold.Trump is as good for women as he is for hair care products he clearly doesn t give a damn about either, and will say and do as he pleases no matter how ugly.Good on you Machado for standing up against Trump, and kudos to you, Hillary for embracing her.Featured Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images video screen capture | 1real |
CA DEMOCRATS HAVE SOLUTION TO MASSIVE Health Care Costs…Assisted Suicide | When a state has legislated themselves into an unrecoverable financial crisis, and they re offering health care to 170,000 illegal immigrants the only solution is to find a way to start eliminating costs. While most people would turn to cutting unnecessary government programs, compassionate Californians instead, turn to finding ways to eliminate humans who are a drain on the system.The Democrats appear to have found a solution to the massive costs of caring for humans. If you re living outside of the womb (we already know you have no rights if you re living inside the womb in CA) and are a burden on society, you might want to consider packing your bags and making a quick exit out of Communist California Democrats in California might have found a solution for the burgeoning costs of Medi-Cal which still doesn t provide any palliative care and offers only one in every three a chance of getting cancer treatments. The solution they ve come up with is doctor-assisted suicide also known as euthanasia. That s right, they re going to end the lives of some people on the program.They are willing to put their money where their mouths are and Governor Moonbeam Brown, in addition to putting it in the budget, will allow this expansion to take place before the new proposed law even takes effect.It s hard to remember a case where they were this enthusiastic and worked this fast.The lethal drugs will cost $5400 per patient but it s a lot cheaper than keeping them alive and providing care.The proponents claim it has nothing to do with saving costs but they said it during the session called to address the ever-growing deficit in Medi-Cal.Enthusiastically, Governor Moonbeam put $2.3 million into the budget to off 443 Medi-Cal patients. The doctor of death only has to visit twice and only nine of the planned 443 targeted patients will be sent for mental health evaluations.The proponents want another quarter million to hire staff to help with the Euthanasia regulations and DHCS wants another $323,000 to set up a database.One of the original authors of the bill, Senator Bill Monning (D-Carmel), has proposed a toll-free number for the public to find out how to arrange suicide with the help of a doctor.No effort will be too small to get this sure-fire deficit buster going. Liberals love this sort of thing.Leftist Robert Reich on assisted suicide:Dr. Kevorkian once went to jail for this.California just extended Medi-Cal to 170,000 illegal immigrant children and they want to extend it to all illegal immigrants. They will have to end a lot of lives to cover the costs. Liberals don t worry about costs until after the program is implemented. Now that Daddy Government is in charge of your healthcare, he s also in charge of your death. Weasel Zippers Via: Independent Sentinel | 1real |
BOOM! TREY GOWDY Hammers Ex-CIA Chief [Video] | Trey Gowdy asked a pointed question of former CIA Director Brennan: Did you have evidence of a connection between the Trump campaign and Russian state actors? Brennan replied: As I said, Mr. Gowdy, I don t do evidence. BOOM! ANOTHER EPIC FAIL FOR THE DEEP STATE AS TREY GOWDY MAKES A COMPLETE FOOL OF JOHN BRENNAN:ANOTHER EPIC FAIL For the Resistance as Trey Gowdy makes a complete fool of John BrennanAGAIN, ZERO EVIDENCE Trump Colluded w/ Russia pic.twitter.com/iCzNaEMT9C STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterUSA) May 23, 2017 BRENNAN WAS ASKED BY ADAM SCHIFF AND REPLIED THAT TRUMP NEVER PRESSURED TO HAVE THE FLYNN INVESTIGATION DROPPED: EX-CIA Chief John Brennan testified today before the House today and dropped a bomb of truth that President Trump didn t pressure the intelligence community to drop the Flynn investigation: Adam Schiff: With respect to the allegations made recently that the President or his aides may have sought to enlist the member of the IC or Director Comey himself to drop the Flynn investigation, uh have any members of the IC shared with you their concerns that the President was attempting to enlist the help of the people in the intelligence community to drop the Flynn investigation? Brennan: No, sir. Adam Schiff: Are you aware of any efforts the President has made who enlist the support of the intelligence community personnel to push back on a narrative involving the collusion issue that Mr. Rooney was asking about? Brennan: I am unaware of it. NOT A GOOD DAY FOR POLITICAL HACK JOHN BRENNAN! | 1real |
Influence Peddling Scheme Hits President Park in Korea | Influence Peddling Scheme Hits President Park in Korea November 07, 2016 Influence Peddling Scheme Hits President Park in Korea
A South Korean court said on Sunday it had issued arrest warrants for two former presidential aides under investigation in an influence peddling scandal that has sent President Park Geun-hye's approval rating to a record low. Tens of thousands of South Koreans demonstrated at a rally on Saturday evening in central Seoul demanding that Park resign over the scandal involving an old friend, Choi Soon-sil, who is alleged to have used her closeness to the president to meddle in state affairs. Park's approval rating has fallen to just 5 percent, the lowest since such polling began in 1988, according to a Gallup Korea survey released on Friday. The Seoul Central District Court said in a statement that it granted a warrant to prosecutors to arrest An Chong-bum, a former senior advisor for Park, who faces charges of abuse of power and attempted extortion. An was already in custody under an emergency detention order.
Prosecutors are looking into allegations that An and Choi forced South Korean conglomerates to donate funds to non-profit foundations.
The court said it also issued an arrest warrant for a second former presidential aide, Jeong Ho-seong, who also had already been held in temporary custody.
Prosecutors apprehended Jeong late on Thursday on suspicion of leaking classified information.
An and Jeong both stepped down late last month amid the deepening crisis. Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! | 1real |
CHILDISH CNN HOST Refuses To Call Trump Her President: “He’s YOUR President” [Video] | Low blow! Political hack Angela Rye refused to say that President Trump is the president of the United States during a CNN interview this morning. This bitter woman is truly childish. This is the same former exec director of the CBC who said Trump gained success off the backs of poor people (SEE VIDEO BELOW).Arguing with former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), Rye said, There are a lot of things that your president has done to defy logic. Your president, too, Angela. Your president too, Kingston responded with a smile. He s YOUR president, Rye shot back. The president of the United States, CNN host John Berman said as he concluded the segment, seemingly agreeing with Kingston.The tone from liberals on Trump s legitimacy differs greatly from the president s own attitude toward former President Obama. Speaking at CPAC in 2011, Trump told the anti-Obama crowd that He is our president. THIS IS THE SAME WOMAN WHO SAID REPARATIONS AREN T UNAMERICAN: Angela Rye, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, is one angry woman! She spews racist talking points like crazy without much rebuke from Carl Higbie. Rye makes a claim that Trump achieved his success off of the backs of poor people : The very people who you re talking about who you think are looking for free gifts and handouts are people who have been disenfranchised since they got off the slave ship in this country. Angela RyeCNN NEEDS TO DITCH THIS ANGRY WOMAN FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN MAKE VALID POINTS: | 1real |
LAWS ARE FOR THE COMMON MAN…NOT FOR BARRY SOETORO: Obama Gives Work Permits To 2,000 After Judge Ordered Him To Stop | It was all an accident. It s good to King The Obama administration continues to ignore the law and do pretty much whatever the hell it wants.From The Hill:The government erroneously doled out about 2,000 expanded immigrant work permit authorizations under President Obama s controversial executive actions, even after a federal judge blocked the move, the Justice Department says. The Government sincerely regrets these circumstances and is taking immediate steps to remedy these erroneous three-year terms, the Department of Justice wrote in a court advisory filed late Thursday in the Southern District of Texas.The advisory comes after District Court Judge Andrew Hanen halted the implementation of the executive actions, which defer deportations for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and provide them with expanded access to work permits, until the courts could decide whether the policies are constitutional.While the old policies authorize a two-year renewal of work permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the new program would allow for a three-year renewal.The DOJ added in the advisory that the Department of Homeland Security is converting the three-year renewals into two-year terms and that DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson has asked the agency s inspector general to investigate.Oh good they re investigating, I m sure they ll be fair and honest, right? If we can t trust them to follow a judge s ruling then why should we trust them about any immigration policy they might seek in the future? This is just pathetic. And of course it s released on Friday afternoon, knowing that the complicit moron media will barely report it.Via: The Right Scoop | 1real |
Putin says could meet Trump in Slovenia, but choice not Moscow's alone | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Slovenia would be a good place for a first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, Russia’s Vladimir Putin said on Friday, but he said the choice of venue would not be Moscow’s alone. Putin made the comments after Slovenian President Borut Pahor offered Ljubljana, his country’s capital, as a venue for a meeting between the Russian and U.S. leaders who have not met since Trump’s inauguration last month. Trump and Putin have both said they would like to try to mend battered U.S.-Russia ties, which fell to their lowest level since the Cold War after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. Putin made it clear that no date for such a meeting had yet been agreed, but said he was keen to try to restore Russian-U.S. relations in full. “As regards Ljubljana, Slovenia in general, it is of course a brilliant place to have a dialogue of such a sort. But it doesn’t depend only on us, it depends on a whole series of circumstances,” Putin told reporters after meeting Pahor in Moscow. “If these meetings ever happen, we don’t have anything against Ljubljana,” Putin said. European Union member state Slovenia was the venue for the first meeting between George W. Bush and Putin in 2001 where the then American leader made what became a famous comment about looking Putin in the eye and getting “a sense of his soul.” It is also where Melania Trump, the U.S. president’s wife, grew up. The Kremlin sees Slovenia as an ally in its quest to end Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict. Russia was a big export market for Slovenian food products before the Ukraine crisis, and Slovenia remains keen to be a transit country for Russian gas supplies to southern Europe. | 0fake |
IMF's Lagarde tells Ukraine president to speed up reforms | KIEV (Reuters) - The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said she had a constructive phone call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko late on Thursday in which she urged him to speed up the fight against corruption. Perceived backsliding on reform commitments, including delays in establishing an independent court to handle corruption cases, has held up billions of dollars in loans under Ukraine s $17.5 billion IMF program. Action by parliament and prosecutors against existing anti-corruption institutions such as the NABU investigative bureau also provoked a wave of criticism this week from reformists in Ukraine and its foreign backers, including the IMF. I had a constructive and open discussion with President Poroshenko on Ukraine s efforts to fight corruption, Lagarde said in a statement. Lagarde said she and Poroshenko discussed the need to safeguard the independence of NABU and similar institutions and that they agreed on the urgency of establishing an anti-corruption court. I assured the President that the IMF stands ready to continue to support Ukraine, along with other international partners, in the fight against corruption and encouraged the authorities to accelerate the implementation of reforms, she said. | 0fake |
Vermont fights the opioid epidemic by limiting prescribed painkillers | Vermont fights the opioid epidemic by limiting prescribed painkillers
Thursday, October 27, 2016 by: Daniel Barker Tags: prescriptions , opioids , Vermont (NaturalNews) Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin is planning to combat his state's opioid problem by limiting the number of painkillers that can be prescribed.The governor's proposal is part of his strategy to address what has become a severe crisis in Vermont over the past few years.In a statement, Shumlin said:"Vermont, and the rest of America, will not get a handle on the opiate and heroin addiction crisis until we confront head-on the source of the problem: FDA-approved opiates that are handed out like candy."Vermont doctors and providers have been on the leading edge of curbing the irrational exuberance with which opiates are handed out. These proposed limits will solidify that progress and help Vermont continue to lead the nation when it comes to combating this crisis." OxyContin 'lit the match that ignited America's opiate and heroin addiction crisis' Shumlin has been outspoken regarding the opioid epidemic , and believes that the easy availability of drugs like OxyContin and other powerful opioid painkillers is the driving factor behind the problem.In this year's State of the State address, Shumlin castigated the FDA and Big Pharma over OxyContin, a drug which he said, "lit the match that ignited America's opiate and heroin addiction crisis.""Just a few months ago, the FDA approved OxyContin for kids," he said. "You can't make this stuff up. The $11 billion a year opiate industry in America knows no shame."The new guidelines are intended to limit the number of pills that can be prescribed ; after a minor procedure, only nine to 12 pills would be included in the first prescription.Without such restrictions, the amount of pills prescribed can vary widely, according to state health commissioner, Harry Chen. This can lead to addiction or the potential for overdose. Chen said that in 2015, enough opioids were prescribed in Vermont to give every man, woman and child a bottle of 100 oxycodone tablets.The proposal would also require doctors to discuss the risks of opioid use with patients, and gain informed consent before prescribing painkillers. Doctors will be expected to discuss alternatives with their patients, "requiring them to consider other treatments before opioids are prescribed, rather than as a last resort," said Chen. How Big Pharma created 2.1 million opioid addicts Waiting for the federal government to effectively tackle the opioid epidemic is a waste of time. For decades, the FDA and DEA looked the other way while Big Pharma quietly began turning a significant portion of the American public into drug addicts.Aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies led to the widespread use of opioids to manage long-term chronic pain – as opposed to using opioids only for acute pain or palliative purposes.Purdue – the maker of OxyContin – lied to the public, saying that the time-release properties of its drug made it less addictive than other opioids. In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty to having misled regulators, physicians and patients, and ended up paying $634 million in fines, but the epidemic continues.Opioid prescriptions in the U.S. more than doubled between 2000 and 2014, and there are an estimated 2.1 million American opioid abusers. More than 40 Americans die each day from prescription opioids, and all the federal government does is drag its feet and make promises.In fact, the FDA seems to be trying to make opioids even more available – to children, no less!In 2015, the FDA approved the "limited" use of OxyContin for children between the ages of 11 and 16.None of this may seem too surprising when one takes into account the fact that Big Pharma spent nearly $900 million in lobbying and campaign contributions between 2006 and 2015.Until we can stop the flow of money from opioid sales into the pockets of drug-makers and politicians, we should expect the epidemic to continue unabated. Sources: | 1real |
Today in History: Harry Truman Defies State Department, Recognizes Israel - Breitbart | On May 14, 1948, U. S. President Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel — over the vehement objections of the State Department, which was partial to the Arab states and lacked confidence that the Jewish state could defend itself. [Truman declared: This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional Government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel. Truman’s brief telegram was an act of immense political courage. For months, his leading foreign policy advisers, including Secretary of State George C. Marshall, had been urging him not to recognize Israel, but rather to consider a prolonged “trusteeship” of Palestine after the British Mandate had expired. In brazen tactics reminiscent of the “deep state” methods being used by the federal bureaucracy against President Donald Trump today, the State Department even tried to tie Truman’s hands. As one of his advisers, Clark Clifford, later recalled: My fears about the State Department had crystallized after a bitter incident in March, when, without informing the President, it had permit ted the American delegation to the UN to reverse its support for partition and switch to trusteeship for Palestine — a contradiction of a personal commitment the President had given the previous day to Chaim Weiz mann, the Zionist leader who would later become the first President of Israel. Furious and depressed when he learned what had happened, Presi dent Truman wrote on his calendar for March 19, 1948: “The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today … . The first I know about it is what I see in the papers! Isn’t that hell? I am now in the position of a liar and a . I’ve never felt so low in my life. There are people on the third and fourth level of the State Dept. who have always wanted to cut my throat. They’ve succeeded in doing it. ” The State Deparment’s arrogance merely strengthened Truman’s resolve on the issue. Truman wrote to his sister on March 21, 1948 that the State Department’s “striped pants conspirators” had “balled up” the issue, but added that “it may work out anyway in spite of them. ” On May 12, Truman presided over a decisive meeting in the Oval Office. The State Department presented its case against Israel. Clifford was there, and spoke in favor of recognition. Secretary Marshall objected to his presence, adding: “If you follow Clifford’s advice and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you. ” President Truman did not make his decision known until the fateful day itself. The president’s staff made clear to the State Department that if it opposed him, Truman was prepared to fight a political war against it. Finally, the bureaucrats backed down. The diplomats at the United Nations were taken by surprise. Clifford notes their reaction in his memoir: “As The New York Times reported the next morn ing, ‘the first reaction was that someone was making a terrible joke, and some diplomats broke into skeptical laughs. ’” But reality soon set in. The United States had recognized Israel — and the Soviet Union did the same a few days later. Since then, the State Department has generally retained an bias — partly because of the oil reserves controlled by Israel’s enemies, and partly because of the sheer number of Arab and Muslim states, which allows them to exert disproportionate power in many international institutions. The left’s embrace of the Palestinian cause has also affected the political culture in Washington. The consensus in the foreign policy community is that moves such as relocating the U. S. embassy to Jerusalem would launch — indeed, almost justify — a “third intifada. ” But for Truman, the issue of recognizing Israel was fundamentally a moral one. And he was not going to let any bureaucrat, or any foreign threat, stand in his way. As he wrote to his brother on March 22, 1948: “I think the proper thing to do, and the thing I have been doing, is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell. ” Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 0fake |
Trump Accidentally Says He Wants Single Payer In Latest Tweet – Twitter Lets Him Know (TWEETS) | It can easily be said that Donald Trump is a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and he just proved that fact once again with his latest tweet.Trump, since the start of his campaign, has been telling everyone that he s going to get rid of Obamacare and replace it with something better, and quite honestly if his latest tweet is what he wants liberals will likely get on board. However, in his idiocy, he probably doesn t realize what he just said.Trump tweeted out: Of course the Australians have better healthcare than we do everybody does. ObamaCare is dead! But our healthcare will soon be great. Of course the Australians have better healthcare than we do everybody does. ObamaCare is dead! But our healthcare will soon be great. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2017If Trump wants to give us what the rest of the industrialized world has, have at it! Please do!!Australia has a Medicare for all program for their citizens, and nations around the world have similar health systems that provide care for their nation s citizens. They take out the middleman of for-profit insurance, and give direct, affordable care, only increasing taxes slightly, and you no longer have the added expense of insurance premiums. AND EVERYONE IS COVERED.Now, this isn t likely what Trump meant to say, but it is what he said.The American Health Care Act, better known as Trumpcare, that passed yesterday in the House is simply a gift to the wealthy while stripping insurance and necessary benefits from those who need it most. That s NOT what Australia has, and would be far worse than anything else in the world.Twitter quickly reminded Trump that he s a moron:@realDonaldTrump Australia is part of the rest of the civilized world that has Universal HC.We can do better.#AHCA#FridayFeeling #TheResistance pic.twitter.com/X1K7f6mAg3 Holly O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) May 5, 2017@realDonaldTrump And why do you think that everybody else has better healthcare than we do? Could it perhaps be because of universal coverage? Simon Hedlin (@simonhedlin) May 5, 2017@realDonaldTrump Here is the health insurance coverage rate in America compared with other countries before Obamacare. Yes, let's turn back the clock! pic.twitter.com/FNetX0NBnd Simon Hedlin (@simonhedlin) May 5, 2017@realDonaldTrump THEY HAVE GOVERNMENT FUNDED UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE pic.twitter.com/z1OX0e0Mf7 Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) May 5, 2017@realDonaldTrump What's the one thing pretty much every industrialized nation has with regards to healthcare that we don't? Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) May 5, 2017@realDonaldTrump So you're now FOR Tax payer funded Universal Healthcare??? make it happen, then!! Kyle McMahon (@KMacMusic) May 5, 2017@realDonaldTrump Will you promise the American people right now to support an Australian-style healthcare system? Dave Hogg ? (@Stareagle) May 5, 2017We ll likely see Trump denying he said what he said in this tweet later today, but in the meantime, let s pretend he wants Universal coverage so we all can have a little hope back in our lives.Featured Photo by Getty Images | 1real |
Kurdish rebel leader Talabani sought Iraqi unity as president | ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who died on Tuesday aged 83, spent decades fighting for his people s independence but then became president of Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and struggled to unite the deeply fractured country. His death, in Germany, came barely a week after the Kurds of northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum condemned by Baghdad and Iraq s powerful neighbors Turkey and Iran who fear it will destabilize the wider region. A veteran of the Kurdish guerrilla movement, Talabani survived wars, exile and political infighting among the Kurds to become Iraq s first non-Arab president in 2005, two years after the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam. The Iraqi presidency post-Saddam is a largely ceremonial post, but Talabani, forceful yet charming, proved a pivotal mediator among Iraq s fractious Shi ite, Sunni and Kurdish parties, and he stayed on as head of state until 2014. Despite his calls for Iraqi national unity, the man known affectionately among Kurds as Mam or uncle was always a fierce champion of the Kurdish cause, fighting Saddam for decades and pushing for federalism to benefit the semi-autonomous region in the north. While sectarianism and attacks by al Qaeda engulfed most of Iraq after 2003, triggering a civil war between Shi ites and Sunnis, the Kurdish north remained relatively stable and safe. Iraq s Kurds are now closer than ever to realizing their dream of independence after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein, followed by years of tensions with the Baghdad government over oil and other issues. However, Talabani s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - and his wife and companion in political struggle, Hero - voiced only lukewarm support for the Sept. 25 referendum. Talabani was too ill by then to comment publicly on the vote. The referendum was organized by Talabani s longtime rival Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The split between Barzani s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Talabani s PUK raises questions over the future of Iraqi Kurdish politics. Talabani s PUK, unlike Barzani, has traditionally good ties with Tehran. Iranian-backed Shi ite groups wield considerable power in Iraq. Born in 1933, Talabani studied law at Baghdad University, joined the KDP in 1946 and by his mid-twenties was a member of the inner circle, a top lieutenant to the independence movement s patriarch, Mullah Mustafa Barzani. He split from the party and formed the PUK in 1974. A damaging rivalry developed with Barzani and his son, Massoud. Talabani regarded himself as a modern, socialist and urban alternative to the tribal authority wielded by the elder Barzani and much of the PUK s support comes from the urban elite. Talabani s harshest lesson came in 1988 when Iraq gassed Kurdish towns near the Iranian border during an Iranian-PUK offensive in the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war. In the brutal seven-month Anfal campaigns, Kurds accused Iraqi forces of killing tens of thousands of men, women and children and relocating many more. Many remain missing, despite the discovery of mass graves, and no one knows for sure how many were Anfalised as Kurds call the killings and disappearances. Most independent estimates put the figure at about 100,000. Many Kurdish leaders put it at more than 180,000. Following their uprising against Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war, Iraqi Kurds saw their first shot at self-rule go up in smoke when Talabani and Barzani sparred over control of a provisional north Iraq government elected in 1992. That bickering escalated into a civil war that saw the KDP enlist Baghdad s help against the Iranian-backed PUK. A U.S.-sponsored truce backed with the threat of a diplomatic embargo took hold in 1998 and the two factions developed parallel, cooperating administrations. Talabani s speeches often reminded Kurds of their suffering at the hands of Saddam Hussein. But he and other Kurdish leaders faced unrest from Kurds more concerned with poor services in their towns and villages than the painful past. Talabani suffered a stroke in 2012 while still serving as Iraqi president and underwent lengthy medical treatment, mostly in Germany. One of his sons, Qubad, is the current deputy prime minister of the KRG in northern Iraq. | 0fake |
Feminism Has Lost The Minds Of Young Women | Home This Month Popular Feminism Has Lost The Minds Of Young Women Feminism Has Lost The Minds Of Young Women Maximus Decimus Meridius
Maximus is a Man, capital M, period. Love. Truth. Justice. Liberty. Respect. These are the lodestones pointing true to magnetic masculinity in a polarized feminist west. His goal for writing on ROK is to be the gadfly that provokes thought and counters groupthink. October 29, 2016 The Sexes
The idea that feminism is dead is gaining ground all across the west. One would like to think it is because of the trail blazing of the man-o-sphere, and to a great degree it is. But truly, the root of feminism’s death was in Man, capital M, from the very beginning. One look at Conan is all a man needs to know this truth.
Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead.
The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. It’s just like Mean Girls.
If they had listened to me they could have gotten the ship steered in the right direction. My wing of feminism—the pro-sex wing—was silenced. I was practically lynched for endorsing The Rolling Stones. Susan Faludi is still saying I’m not a feminist. Who made her pope?
Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.
~ Camille Paglia on Rob Ford, Rihanna and rape culture for MacLeans.ca
Neurotic women indeed.
Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars/Prison Planet fame was bang on in his assessment of feminism at the end of 2014. But he may have underestimated his conclusions in my opinion. Feminists did not just lose the debate, they lost the war.
The feminist attempt to demonize normal male/female behaviour in public— men initiating contact with a female with a hello and attempt to strike up a conversation —backfired in less than a month.
When you have a woman volunteer to walk down the street as Princess Leia, the QUEEN of 70’s patriarchal sexist ‘misogyny’, to ridicule feminists, you have lost the war for hearts and minds.
And when I say hearts and minds… I mean the silent majority of young women who want NOTHING to do with feminism.
Leia makes it clear in this video that boys will be boys. So too will jawas, Darth Vader and even Yoda apparently, that sly dude. Who knew?
And that’s a good thing! Men and women are meant to interact and engage in romantic courtship. Feminists may hate this, but the vast majority of women still prefer, and expect, the man to take the initiative to get the girl. This is how men and women were created and evolved, you can’t fight Darwin and God and come out on top.
This video shows that the majority of NORMAL women LOVE male attention. They WANT men to look at them. They WANT men to notice them. Why?
THEY WANT A MAN!!!
I realized this is the case when I decided to google the fast rising phenomenon of women against feminism .
This image from the Women Against Feminism Tumblr page really hits home the loss for feminism. This woman was raped. She is not running around spreading lies like the UVA RAPE HOAX story that Rolling Stone ran and had to retract . She justs wants to go back to living a normal life. She does not want to be angry at ALL men for the crime of ONE of them. She does not want to demonize all men in some sad attempt to get revenge. She does not want to be a victim. Feminists have lost the female youth of Millenials, the very generation that is supposed to obliterate the patriarchy completely in the 21st century.
I understand some men who are still angry over feminism may proclaim these women are doing nothing more than crying for sympathy and attention now that Millenial men have become vocal, blunt and merciless in their attacks against feminism and the current generation of ‘women’ it has reared . The problem with this type of knee-jerk reaction is just that—you’re being a jerk. Yes, far too many western women for comfort are no good for a relationship anymore. But, that does not also translate into there being no young women who are not just as frustrated and angry at feminism as you are and the feminists who claim to speak for them.
Young women might not think about it as much since feminism has clearly made the road to independence (an illusion) easier for them to choose, but these women are taking note that men are completely ignoring them now that they have surpassed men in almost all aspects of western society.
Case in point.
I met a wonderful young Russian blonde a little while back. Twenty-three. Tight. Feminine. So freaking perfect. We hit it off immediately on first contact. Having myself only traveled outside the west twice, I still primarily meet foreign women in my own country and every time I do, I am blown away by their immediate friendliness and ease in my company compared to western girls. As I conversed with this well educated and refined young Russian lady, she told me she was attending university and so naturally, I asked her what she noticed most about the boys on campus compared to back home.
Her answer was revealing… Boys? They completely ignore the girls. Don’t even look at them. Just walk on by.
This really surprised her. Being a feminine Russian girl who expects men to look at women, this behaviour by western men was completely alien to her.
Men, young boys, in their prime 20s, completely ignoring women on campus as they go about their day.
According to Wikipedia, women against feminism started on Tumblr in 2013 . I see #WomenAgainstFeminism as a sign that many young women are fed up with feminism and male bashing in western society. It is not a sign of women speaking with two faces and trying to work both sides of the gender war to their advantage. All you have to do is look into the eyes of this young woman to know just how desperate these girls are for a real relationship, one with love and respect . I don’t think men realize how significant a movement like women against feminism is.
As men, we are naturally comfortable with open conflict and expressing not just dissenting, but offensive opinions. The very existence of women openly declaring they are rejecting feminism, and risking social ostracism in a wholly feminist dominated university climate, is why feminists are hyperventilating and going into ape-shit, mentally insane overdrive mode to try and salvage what support they have left . Here are just a few mainstream articles trying to push the meme feminism is not dead and just needs a ‘generational’ adjustment. | 1real |
DOJ CONTINUES OBSESSION WITH DISCREDITING FERGUSON POLICE With This Ridiculous New Report | No word on when Soros will be put on trial for paying protestors to riot or when Al Sharpton will be charged with inciting the riots with his inflammatory racist rhetoric (All comments in italics are opinions of 100% FED Up!)According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, police responding to race-related protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer made a series of missteps, including antagonizing crowds with attack dogs and military-style tactics.Yeah..because the people inciting riots, burning down businesses and threatening anyone who dared to drive through Ferguson are probably pretty credible witnesses when it comes to missteps by the Ferguson Police Department. The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, is a draft summary of a document the DOJ plans to release in the coming weeks evaluating law enforcement actions. A Justice Department spokesperson said the after-action assessment will convey the findings and lessons learned. The report focuses on the tactics of police from Ferguson, St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the Missouri Highway Patrol. All four agencies tried to quell the protests and riots that broke out after a white Ferguson police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on Aug. 9, 2014. We are always willing to engage in constructive dialogue about best practices, the St. Louis department said in a statement. We are interested in the final report to identify what we did well and what we may need to improve upon. How improving number of arrests made for arsonists/rioters who burn down businesses to make a statement? The Justice Department draft report, which covers actions over the 17 days following the shooting, found that police lacked effective protocols, were not adequately trained, struggled with communication and coordination, and made mistakes that sometimes heightened tensions.The use of dogs for crowd control during the Ferguson protests incited fear and anger in the crowd, according to the report, while the use of teargas on people without warning was also a problem.In addition, police were inconsistent in using force and making arrests, and some officers removed their nameplates to evade accountability for their actions, the Justice Department said.The report also criticized police for positioning snipers atop armored vehicles to monitor the crowd through rifle sights, saying the tactic served only to exacerbate tensions. Yeah because why would the cops in Ferguson be concerned about their own safety when clowns like this are openly walking around advocating for violence against Officer Wilson?It found that law enforcement agencies set a negative tone with the media by initially offering limited public information about Brown s shooting. The report also said police inhibited protesters constitutional right to free speech.In all, the report lists 45 findings along with recommendations for improvements.Via: Reuters | 1real |
Bernie Sanders Hits Back At The Media In The Most Brilliant Way | On Wednesday, The Washington Post published a harsh editorial that ripped Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for his progressive politics.The article, entitled Bernie Sanders Fiction-filled Campaign, said that the Vermont senator was guilty of making fantastical claims and peddling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it, insulting the millions of Americans that support the anti-establishment candidate. The vicious piece ends with, It merely proves that many progressives like being told everything they want to hear. The piece predictably gathered tons of support and backlash alike. Alternet even noted that the Post was probably somewhat biased against Sanders because its owner, Jeff Bezos, is an arch-libertarian worth $53.2 billion and has a whole host of investments in private health care. But regardless of others defense of Sanders, the Vermont senator himself had the most brutal message of all. On Thursday morning at a Bloomberg Politics event, Sanders was asked about the piece and he didn t hold back. He absolutely ripped the Post s Editorial Board: That s not a new argument. We ve been hearing that months and months, and that s in a sense what this campaign is about. People are telling us, whether it s the Washington Post editorial board or anybody else, our ideas are too ambitious can t happen. Too bold really? Well, here s something which is really bold. In the last 30 years, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and working families of this country. The middle class has become poorer and trillions of dollars have been transferred to the top one-tenth of 1 percent Where was The Washington Post to express concern that the middle class was shrinking? Where was The Washington Post talking about this radical transformation of America? And he was just getting started. When the discussion went to foreign policy, Sanders took another opportunity to slam the media source. Sanders unloaded on the Post s previous record with the Iraq War, which had already received tons of criticism. Sanders quipped, Check out where all the geniuses on the editorial page were with regard to the invasion of Iraq. In 2014, it was discovered that the media source had published more than 140 stories aggressively promoting to war months before the invasion. That was a powerful comment from Sanders, as he had nearly stood alone in Congress when he voted against the Iraq War.Featured image is a screenshot via Comedy Central | 1real |
Ann Coulter Turns On Trump Over His Immigration Flip Flop | Just as her new book praising Donald Trump, In Trump We Must, hits the shelves, Ann Coulter appears to now be souring on the Republican nominee she calls our only hope. After Trump appeared to flip flop on one of his biggest campaign promises deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants Coulter, who has made immigration her number one issue, sent out a frenzy of tweets mocking Trump for his perceived weakness on the issue:Only part he left out was the hoops they ll have to jump through! Trump: No citizenship. Let me go a step further they ll pay back-taxes Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 25, 2016 Trump: they have to pay taxes, there s no amnesty [Pro Tip: Back taxes means we pay illegals $30k apiece in EITC.} Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 25, 2016It s not amnesty. It s comprehensive immigration reform !!!! Trump: they have to pay taxes, there s no amnesty. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 25, 2016 Well, if it s hard, then nevermind. Trump: to take a person who s been here for 15 or 20 years .It s a very, very hard thing. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 25, 2016It s hard to deport someone who s been here FOUR YEARS! https://t.co/Ajbon3TcDP Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 25, 2016Coulter also told reporters that if Trump continues to back down on his immigration promises made during the primaries, she would cease her upcoming book tour for In Trump We Must. On MSNBC s Hardball Coulter told Chris Matthews that his softening tone was a mistake and said it sounds like it s coming from advisors. Trump is in big trouble. Ann Coulter is basically severing ties with the xenophobic billionaire, and if Ann Coulter can t support you, then there goes a chunk of right-wing support.The impending Coulter-Trump war is a glorious gift from the political gods and it could not have come at a better time. Trump is already having a hard time getting GOP support. A tiff with Coulter and other right-wing ideologues is not the best idea.Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Getty Images | 1real |
Freezing Migrant Rescued by Border Patrol Agents | A migrant attempting to cross the border into Texas had to be rescued by Border Patrol agents after succumbing to frigid water in Rio Grande River. [Border Patrol agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Sector in south Texas responded to possible illegal activity along the river. When they arrived, they discovered a man stranded in the frigid water having failed to make a successful crossing. An agent who is also an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and others rescued the man from the river and determined he was suffering from hypothermia — a potentially deadly condition where the person’s core body temperature drops, causing the brain to shut down critical organs. The man was transported to Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center for treatment, information obtained from U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials stated. The rescue took place around sunrise on Monday. The man, later identified only as a Honduran national, was released from the hospital following treatment. Agents took custody of the illegal immigrant and transported him to the Eagle Pass South Border Patrol Station where he will be processed in accordance with local policies. Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials warned that while the climate in south Texas is generally warm, the cold water can act quickly on the body creating a dangerous situation. “The winter months can bring about environmental hazards that all individuals must heed,” CBP officials wrote. “Immersion in water and exposure to cool air will accelerate the progression of hypothermia and possible death. ” “This event highlights the environmental hazards that undocumented immigrants face,” Del Rio Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Matthew J. Hudak said in a written statement. “Thanks to the agents’ quick thinking and training this story didn’t end in tragedy. ” “Being a Border Patrol agent means more than just enforcing the law,” Hudak continued. “It means being able to handle any situation with the commitment to preserve human life. ” Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX. | 0fake |
Soros-Backed Blogger Under Fire For Anti-Semitic Tweets | An influential French blogger has come in for heavy criticism after thousands of antisemitic, threatening and homophobic tweets he published under a pseudonym resurfaced over the weekend, sparking fierce debate. [The tweets included threats against Front National leader Marine Le Pen, who he threatened to kill, but their author Medhi Meklat, 24, and his supporters have shrugged them off as a joke. “I am going to slit your throat Muslim style” read the tweet threatening Le Pen. Another called for “Hitler to kill all the Jews” while a third said he wanted to “rape” former Charlie Hebdo Charb, one of the victims of the January 2015 terror attacks, with a “Laguiole knife”. The tweets were published under the pseudonym ‘Marcelin Deschamps’ described by Meklat as a “shameful” “fictional character” whose thoughts were “quite the opposite” of his own. ” But they remained on the account after Meklat switched it to his name in 2015. This weekend they were outed by a fellow Twitter user who was outraged after seeing Meklat on TV promoting his new book, Le Monde has reported. On Saturday Meklat cleaned the account, deleting around 50, 000 tweets spanning back over a number of years to leave just 503 remaining. He also used the platform to issue an apology, writing “I’m sorry if these tweets shocked some of you. they are obsolete” adding “through Marcelin Deschamps, I was questioning the notion of excess and provocation. ” But his claims have not convinced everyone. The secularist organisation Printemps Republicain [Republican Spring] have slammed the tweets as “serious” and “within the scope of the law”. They have accused the media of bearing some responsibility for the tweets, having “promoted” and “praised” Meklat. Had he been a member of France’s National Front, they said, Meklat “would have been instantly and quite rightly pilloried by the same media, and would certainly have found himself in court” they added in a statement. And they dismissed claims that Meklat, under the pseudonym Deschamps, was acting satirically in the same vein as the provocative magazine Charlie Hebdo arguing that Meklat had “only attacked certain categories of people [ … ] Charlie Hebdo attacks everyone. ” Born in the notorious Paris suburb of where riots have recently been raging, Meklat gained prominence through his writing for the Bondy Blog, a blog set up following the 2005 Paris riots and financed by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Lauded as the authentic voice of France’s migrant communities, Meklat has capitalised on his media exposure to escape the banlieues, spending summers aboard yatchs in Los Angeles, and networking with esteemed institutions such as the Cartier Foundation to work on joint projects. | 0fake |
France’s Macron and Le Pen to Face Off in Crucial Pre-Election TV Debate | PARIS (AP) — Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are preparing for their televised French presidential election debate, with much at stake for both contenders. [advertisement | 0fake |
Gingrich Says Biggest Fear About Trump Administration Is That They Might ’Lose Their Nerve’ - Breitbart | Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing his concerns over what will happen once Donald Trump is in office, former Speaker Newt Gingrich expressed his concern that the administration “will lose their nerve. ” When asked what he fears the most during the Trump presidency Gingrich said,”That they will lose their nerve. I mean, look, they’re going to arrive in Washington and for them to be successful, they have to stake out positions that Donna will not like and the left will hate. My deepest concern is that they’re going to arrive, you’re going to have the greens going crazy over at EPA and Interior. You’re going to have the government employees going crazy about civil service reform. You’re going to have the teachers union going crazy over school choice. And these are pretty nonnegotiable. I mean, if you’re serious about school choice, there is no agreement with the teachers union. ” He added, “I’m worried when they realize how big the problem is that they decide that they’re just going to do the best they can and give in. ” ( ABC News) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Democrats pick Perez to lead party against Trump | ATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S. Democrats elected former Labor Secretary Tom Perez as chairman on Saturday, choosing a veteran of the Obama administration to lead the daunting task of rebuilding the party and heading the opposition to Republican President Donald Trump. Members of the Democratic National Committee, the administrative and fundraising arm of the party, picked Perez on the second round of voting over U.S. Representative Keith Ellison, a liberal from Minnesota. Following one of the most crowded and competitive party leadership elections in decades, Perez faces a challenge in unifying and rejuvenating a party still reeling from the Nov. 8 loss of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He immediately made Ellison his deputy. After losing the presidency and failing to recapture majorities in Congress, party leaders are anxious to channel the growing grassroots resistance to Trump into political support for Democrats at all levels of government across the country. “We are suffering from a crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance,” Perez, a favorite of former Obama administration officials, told DNC members. He promised to lead the fight against Trump and change the DNC’s culture to make it a more grassroots operation. Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants who was considered a potential running mate for Clinton, overcame a strong challenge from Ellison and prevailed on a 235-200 second-round vote. Ellison, who is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, was backed by liberal leader U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The showdown between candidates backed by the establishment and progressive wings of the party echoed the bitter 2016 primary between Clinton and Sanders, a rift Democrats will try to put behind them as they turn their focus to fighting Trump. Those divisions persisted through the months-long race for chair, as many in the party’s liberal wing were suspicious of Perez’s ties to the establishment and some Democrats raised questions about possible anti-Semitism in Ellison’s past. Some Ellison supporters chanted “Not big money, party for the people” after the result was announced. But both Perez and Ellison moved quickly to bring the rival factions together. At Perez’s urging, the DNC suspended the rules after the vote and appointed Ellison the deputy chairman of the party. “I am asking you to give everything you’ve got to support Chairman Perez,” Ellison told DNC members after the vote. “We don’t have the luxury, folks, to walk out of this room divided.” Perez said the party would come together. “We are one family, and I know we will leave here united today,” Perez said. “A united Democratic Party is not only our best hope, it is Donald Trump’s nightmare.” Trump took a dig at Perez and Democrats in a tweet offering his congratulations on the election. “I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!” Trump said. Perez and Ellison wore each other’s campaign buttons and stood shoulder-to-shoulder at a news conference after the vote. Perez said the two had talked “for some time” about teaming up, and Ellison said they had “good synergy.” “We need to do more to collaborate with our partners in the progressive movement,” Perez said, adding he and Ellison would look for ways to “channel this incredible momentum” in the protests against Trump and against Republican efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan. Sanders issued a statement congratulating Perez and urging changes at the DNC. “It is imperative that Tom understands that the same-old, same-old is not working,” Sanders said. “We must open the doors of the party to working people and young people in a way that has never been done before.” The election offered the DNC a fresh start after last year’s forced resignation of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who stepped aside when the release of hacked emails appeared to show DNC officials trying to help Clinton defeat Sanders in the primaries. Both Perez and Ellison have pledged to focus on a bottom-up reconstruction of the party, which has lost hundreds of statehouse seats under Obama and faces an uphill task in trying to reclaim majorities in Congress in next year’s midterm elections. Perez said he would redefine the role of the DNC to make it work not just to elect Democrats to the White House but in races ranging from local school boards to the U.S. Senate, pledging to “organize, organize, organize.” “I recognize I have a lot of work to do,” he said. “I will be out there listening and learning in the weeks ahead.” Perez fell one vote short of the simple majority of 214.5 votes needed for election in the first round of voting, getting 213.5 votes to Ellison’s 200. Also on the first ballot were four other candidates — Idaho Democratic Party Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown, election lawyer Peter Peckarsky, and activists Jehmu Greene and Sam Ronan. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, withdrew just before the voting, while Brown, Greene and Ronan dropped out after the first round. | 0fake |
Knicks Invent New Type of Loss as Owner Banishes Charles Oakley - The New York Times | The Knicks, who were already raising dysfunction to an art form with bad basketball and Twitter posts from their famous team president, moved further into the surreal on Friday when the team’s owner announced that he was indefinitely barring one of the most popular players in franchise history from Madison Square Garden. The owner, James L. Dolan, can go years without engaging with the news media. But on Friday, he went on the radio to say that Charles Oakley, a stalwart member of some outstanding Knicks teams from the 1990s, would not be let into the Garden as a result of an altercation on Wednesday night that ended with Oakley being led from the arena in handcuffs while fans chanted his name. It was hard to find precedent for the Knicks’ decision — former players are normally treated like celebrities, not told they will not be allowed into a game even if they buy their own ticket — but it fit the almost bizarre image the franchise now seems to be busy creating for itself. Dolan, who announced the decision on Michael Kay’s afternoon program on ESPN Radio, said he was taking the step to bar Oakley out of concern for the safety of the team’s other paying customers. “We need to keep the Garden a place that’s comfortable and safe for everybody who goes there,” Dolan said. “So anybody who comes to the Garden — whether they’ve been drinking too much alcohol, they’re looking for a fight, they’re abusive, disrespectful to the staff and then fans — they’re going to be ejected and they’re going to be banned. ” Several times over the course of the interview, Dolan described Oakley’s behavior on Wednesday night as out of line. Dolan also said that Oakley “may have a problem with alcohol” and that Oakley needed to seek help to control his anger. If Oakley were to address his behavioral issues, Dolan said, the Garden would most likely welcome him back. Oakley, 53, has long been estranged from the Knicks and has had an adversarial relationship with Dolan. But he has insisted he was not acting inappropriately on Wednesday night when he sat down not far from Dolan to watch the Knicks play the Los Angeles Clippers. A number of fans who were sitting near Oakley said they had not seen or heard him being belligerent. Other fans suggested that he seemed somewhat combative. In any case, after security guards approached him, a shoving match ensued, and that was followed by the sight of Oakley being grabbed and led away. But many things with the Knicks are not easy to fathom. Their starting point guard, Derrick Rose, went AWOL for a day. The team itself has lost 20 of its past 26 games, continuing a run of futility that has dominated Dolan’s two decades as owner. And the team president, Phil Jackson, mimicking Dolan, has not spoken with reporters who cover the team since September. Jackson’s few communications have come via an isolated interview or two and occasional Twitter posts, some of them cryptic. But despite the little that he has said, he has still managed, at various moments, to anger both LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. And although he seems intent on trading away Anthony, the Knicks’ only star, Jackson has a problem: Anthony’s clause. Asked about Jackson during the radio interview, Dolan asserted that he would stay out of his way despite the dismal results Jackson has produced in his nearly three years as team president. He said he would honor Jackson’s contract “all the way to the end. ” But while Dolan has long been unpopular in New York and Jackson does not have many admirers these days, Oakley has plenty of support. The incident on Wednesday led to an outpouring of acclaim for him, not only from the team’s frustrated fans but also from current and former N. B. A. players, who have long admired the tough work ethic that Oakley displayed on the court. Given all the negative fallout from Oakley’s ejection, Dolan was asked in the interview whether the organization now felt embarrassed. “Well, I certainly think Charles should be embarrassed,” he said. Oakley, who was reached by telephone after Dolan’s radio interview concluded, said that he had not listened to the broadcast but had already heard about some of Dolan’s comments. “Nothing they’re doing makes sense,” Oakley said. “I mean, this man, something’s wrong with him. He crossed a bridge the first night, and then he’s been crossing another bridge every day since. ” Oakley, who has acknowledged that he had a couple of drinks before he arrived at Wednesday’s game, declined to address Dolan’s statement that he might have problems with alcohol. “I don’t talk about that stuff,” he said. “I have no comment on that. I don’t have to defend myself on that. The people around me know if I have a drinking problem or not. ” Asked if he planned to pursue legal action against Dolan or the organization, Oakley said, “We’ll see what happens. ’’ Oakley later wrote on Twitter that he was planning to hold a news conference next week. Meanwhile, neither Oakley nor those backing him are liable to take kindly to repeated suggestions by the Knicks — the first came in a statement on Wednesday night — that Oakley needs some kind of “help” for his behavior. Instead, there was more support for Oakley, with Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, weighing in after Dolan’s interview. “Painful to believe that my last image of Oak at MSG is him dragged out of the arena,” Roberts wrote on Twitter. “Is that how we remember our Legends? #NoBan. ” Dolan said he hoped that Oakley would not be barred forever. He said he would love to honor Oakley at midcourt along with several of his former teammates — again, provided that he seeks help. “But his behavior, it just doesn’t work with that,” Dolan said. “Until he can address it and get it under control, then we probably won’t be able to do it. ’’ Dolan said it was clear to him that Oakley had gone to Wednesday’s game with an “agenda” to be disruptive. Oakley never should have been allowed to take his seat, Dolan said, which he cited as one of his reasons for firing Frank Benedetto, the Garden’s senior vice president for security, on Friday morning. Benedetto, who previously served with the United States Secret Service, could not be reached for comment. Dolan recalled how, during the first quarter of Wednesday’s game, a security guard approached him to relate that he and his were having difficulties with Oakley. Dolan said he had asked if they could wait to deal with the problem between quarters to avoid a big scene on national television. The security guard agreed with him, Dolan said, but the situation escalated. “And I said, ‘You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,’” Dolan said. “It wasn’t until it was pointed out to me that he was behind us, I sort of opened my ear and started to hear and what I heard was terrible,’’ Dolan added. At one point during the radio interview, Dolan was reminded that he does not give many interviews. “No,” he said, “this isn’t my favorite thing. ” Nor, no doubt, is watching his team lose again, which the Knicks did on Friday night at the Garden, falling to the Denver Nuggets, . Dolan sat in his customary seat near the court. Oakley, meanwhile, was absent, except for the chants bearing his name. | 0fake |
California Proposes to Tax Space Travel - Breitbart | The California taxman wants add to taxes on space travel on top of taxing land, buildings, businesses, income, transportation and the air we breathe. [Not satisfied with being the state in the nation, the clever folks at the Franchise Tax Board disclosed their intention to begin taxing the “Apportionment and Allocation of Income of Space Transportation Companies” under a new addition to the state tax collection enforce “Code of Regulations. ” With space is internationally defined as all the infinity that is 62 miles or more above the earth, the 21st century commercial opportunities for the development of space seem to be creating a new lust among California lawmakers to find a whole new source of revenue. The Franchise Tax Board is proposing to tax the movement or attempted movement of people or property — including, without limitation, launch vehicles, satellites, payloads, cargo, refuse, or any other property — to space. In November, California voters passed Proposition 55 to extend the “temporary” 13. 3 percent top state tax rate on earners until 2030, helping the state retain the highest marginal tax rate in the nation. But the state also has the highest collections in the nation for property tax, sales tax, business tax, cap and trade tax and tax on aiplanes during the minutes that they travel in the state’s airspace. California’s local governments have also been clever in tacking on novel new revenue schemes from such items as soda and plastic (or paper) bags. In 1966, the Beatles’ George Harrison wrote lyrics for the song “Taxman,” which appeared as the first track on the Revolver album. It became the theme song for a U. K. rebellion against the British Labour Party, which had set an astronomical top income tax rate and surcharge of 98 percent while Harold Wilson was Prime Minister in 1974. Those high tax rates led to most of the members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other top stars of the 1960s British music scene going into a form of tax exile out of the country. Harrison’s most iconic lyrics iconic include: If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street, If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat. If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet. Don’t ask me what I want it forIf you don’t want to pay some more‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman, The current space tax is supposedly designed to only hit companies operating in California that generate at least 50 percent of revenue from space transportation. But the tax, if enacted, will undoubtedly be expanded later, and it would also apply to any company that launches a missile from the Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex. Vandenberg launches have big advantages for commercial space missions because they fly southward, allowing payloads to be placed in polar and orbit. That allows full global coverage that is difficult to achieve through launches at Cape Canaveral’s Kennedy Space Center, where missiles must fly eastward to avoid risks to major population centers. | 0fake |
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