title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
U.S. voting commission vice chair urged new voting restrictions | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The vice chairman of a voter fraud panel set up by U.S. President Donald Trump began soon after the election to draft legislative changes that would allow states to require voters to prove their citizenship when registering, court records show. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been on the panel since its creation in May, exchanged emails on the matter with Trump’s transition team the day after the November presidential election, according to records unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday. Kobach, who like Trump is a Republican, was ordered to release the records as part of a legal challenge that has enjoined a state law that required Kansans to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The records showed that by the day after the election, Kobach had already started drafting legislative changes that would permit all states to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements by amending the National Voter Registration Act, which lets Americans register to vote when they apply for driver’s licenses. The records shed light on a photograph taken several days after the election that showed Kobach, then a contender for a Cabinet post, standing with Trump and holding a document partially obscured by his arm and titled “Department of Homeland Security Kobach Strategic Plan for first 365 days.” Kobach fought the public release of the documents, which included a heavily redacted version of the document in the photograph, for months in federal court. He and his spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Any changes to the National Voter Registration Act, or “motor-voter law,” require congressional approval. Civil rights groups said they fear Kobach is using the Trump voting panel to drum up fake proof of widespread non-citizen voter fraud to persuade Congress to change the law. Trump has said without evidence that there was widespread voter fraud in the November election. Most state election officials and election law experts say U.S. voter fraud is rare. Requiring people to show birth certificates or other proof-of-citizenship when registering would be overly burdensome and would discourage young people, such as college students, said Dale Ho, director of the voting project at the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU sued Kobach over the Kansas law, which it said blocked more than 35,000 people, nearly 14 percent of new registered voters, from voting over two years. | 0fake |
South Korea approves $8 million aid to North Korea, timing to be decided later | SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea approved a plan on Thursday to send $8 million worth of humanitarian aid to North Korea, the South s Unification Ministry said, as part of an aid policy that the government says remains unaffected by geopolitical tensions with the North. The aid decision was made after a meeting of government officials chaired by Unification Minister Cho Myong-gyon. It comes after the United Nations approved new sanctions against North Korea for its sixth nuclear test earlier this month. The South said it aims to send $4.5 million worth of nutritional products for children and pregnant women through the World Food Programme and $3.5 million worth of vaccines and medicinal treatments through UNICEF. The exact timing of when the aid will be sent, as well as its size, will be confirmed later, the ministry said in a statement. The WFP and UNICEF had approached the South Korean government in May and July this year to contribute in aiding North Korea, the statement added. We have consistently said we would pursue humanitarian aid for North Korea in consideration of the poor conditions children and pregnant women are in there, apart from political issues, said Cho in opening remarks at the meeting. Ahead of the meeting, UNICEF s regional director for East Asia and the Pacific Karin Hulshof said in a statement the problems North Korean children face are all too real . Today, we estimate that around 200,000 children are affected by acute malnutrition, heightening their risk of death and increasing rates of stunting, Hulshof said. Food and essential medicines and equipment to treat young children are in short supply. Cho s ministry had said earlier this month they were looking into giving North Korea aid, which launched a backlash of disapproval from both the public and opposition parties. It has dragged down South Korean President Moon Jae-in s approval rating. Realmeter, a South Korean polling organization, said on Thursday Moon s approval rating stood at 65.7 percent, weakening for a fourth straight month. Although the approval rate is still high, those surveyed said Moon had fallen out of favor due to North Korea s continued provocations and the government s decision to consider sending aid to North Korea, Realmeter said. South Korea s decision to mull over fresh aid to the North has also caused a rift of concern in neighboring Japan and the United States, according to government officials there, leading Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to bring up the issue during a phone call with Moon last week. Moon had said aid was something to be considered separately from political issues, quoted by his office. South Korean humanitarian aid efforts to North Korea had been halted since North Korea s fourth nuclear test in January last year. The last time the South had sent aid to the North was in December 2015 through the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) under ex-president Park Geun-hye. North Korea has conducted two more nuclear tests since then, with its most recent and largest taking place early this month. Pyongyang has launched numerous missiles as well, including two intercontinental ballistic missiles and two other rockets that have flown over Japan. Such provocations have sparked strong disapproval from the international community, especially from the United States and Japan. | 0fake |
FORMER MEXICAN PREZ Sends “Middle Finger” To TRUMP Days Before “Apology”: “Don’t play around with us…We can jump walls…We can swim rivers…And we can defend ourselves” | Wow these sound exactly like the type of people we want living next door to us. It s not so hard to see why so many Americans are enthusiastic about Trump s promise to build the wall BUILD THE WALL!The Huffington Post has published a photograph (above) of former Mexican president Vicente Fox giving Donald Trump the finger, taken a day before Fox apologized to Trump in an interview with Breitbart News.The photograph was originally shared on social media by Ben Mathis, host of the KickAss Politics podcast, which interviewed Fox last Tuesday. Breitbart News interviewed Fox the following day in Santa Monica, California.Mathis posted the photograph with the message: Vicente Fox & I have a message for Donald Trump. Listen to a preview of his most controversial interview yet, recorded just one day before his apology to Trump aired on Breitbart. On Twitter, KickAss politics teased the interview as Fox responding to Trump though the two had already responded to each other, with Fox apologizing via Breitbart and Trump accepting the apology the following day.KickAss politics also added the NeverTrump hashtag.In most controversial interview yet @VicenteFoxQue responds to @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/9AYIuVmJoo #NeverTrump pic.twitter.com/jFRkw5o8I7 Kickass News (@KickassNewsPod) May 9, 2016According to Huffington Post overnight editor Ed Mazza, Fox told Mathis that Trump is an ugly American and hated gringo, and reiterated that he would not pay for the fucking wall on the border, adding: And please don t take out the fucking full word. Mazza adds:In the Kickass Politics conversation, Fox was anything but apologetic. He called the presumptive Republican presidential nominee crazy and a false prophet, and compared him to Latin American demagogues who destroy economies. He also said some of Trump s proposals could lead to war. Don t play around with us, Fox said. We can jump walls. We can swim rivers. And we can defend ourselves. The following day, Fox told Breitbart: I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader. You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor. Update: The Huffington Post has attached its mandatory disclaimer on all Trump stories:Editor s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims 1.6 billion members of an entire religion from entering the U.S.For entire story: Breitbart News | 1real |
Why Christopher Kimball Is Moving On From America’s Test Kitchen - The New York Times | BOSTON — Christopher Kimball spent much of the last year as the dark prince of the recipe world, a brooding exile who had left his America’s Test Kitchen empire in a painful split he hadn’t seen coming. Now he is moving on. Instead of polishing his carefully created New England sensibility and hovering over the obsessive platform on which he built Cook’s Illustrated magazine and its offspring, Mr. Kimball is loosening his bow tie and shifting his culinary worldview. His new project is called Milk Street Kitchen. With $6 million from investors and more at the ready, Mr. Kimball is remodeling the ground floor of the Flour Grain Exchange building on Milk Street in the financial district here in Boston. In the fall, he plans to publish a new magazine, shoot a public television series and begin writing books. He’ll start a cooking school, and promote the whole enterprise at a dozen live road shows. He is even designing a chef’s knife to sell. The big idea is to bring techniques from the world’s kitchens to America’s Wednesday night dinner table. It’s a bold pivot for a man whose magazines rarely showcased ethnic recipes. “It’s not looking around the world and doing a tagine or a couscous dish,” he said of the concept. “It’s looking around the world and seeing how people are thinking about food. ” Instead of using Eurocentric techniques that rely on concentrating flavors through long applications of heat, Mr. Kimball is exploring ways to build dishes that rely on texture, spice and freshness. Instead of making chicken stock like a frugal French cook who simmers bones and scraps for hours, why not boil a whole chicken for just an hour like a Chinese cook, using ginger, scallions and herbs to elicit a more delicate flavor? Mr. Kimball, who lives in Boston and Vermont, has been cooking this way at home for the last few years. He has become a student of spice and of authors like Yotam Ottolenghi. He has taken inspiration from his travels, too. Sliced oranges coated in cold caramel sauce flavored with star anise — a dessert inspired by a trip to Rome with his four children — is much more interesting to him these days than apple pie. “I don’t think I have anything left to add about how to make an oatmeal cookie,” he said. If it works, Mr. Kimball will cement his reputation as an intellectual and business powerhouse of American recipes. But if it fails? “What’s the worst that can happen?” he asked over dinner in Cambridge one evening. “Public humiliation?” The move is certainly a gamble. Mr. Kimball, who is worth tens of millions of dollars, turns 65 this month. Although he can be tender in person, his public demeanor is stern and sometimes awkward. He is the guy in the room who always knows more than you, a fan of rabbit hunting and classic literature who is more closely associated with roast turkey and root vegetables than with Mexican street food and Israeli hummus. Even he worries how that persona will translate into a new brand focused on global flavors. He doesn’t want to come off as a latecomer in a nation that has already moved past its perspective. It doesn’t help that cooks like Rick Bayless, the white chef who has become an authority on Mexican cooking, are being swept up in a battle over cultural appropriation. “We’re not translating the ethnic soul of a community,” Mr. Kimball said. “We’re just saying this is a good idea. You need someone who knows a fair amount about cooking to do this, who has the thoughtfulness and testing to translate Thai cooking to our kitchens. ” Corby Kummer, the food writer, has never been a big fan. “He has a tendency to flatten things out, and that can be dull,” Mr. Kummer said. But, he added, Mr. Kimball has great value as someone who offers authority and reassurance. “If he can do that with newer flavors and make the cooks who look to him for that reassurance understand a new way to cook, more power to him,” he said. Mr. Kimball is building his venture with a small crew who followed him out of America’s Test Kitchen, chief among them Melissa Baldino, a former executive producer who was once his assistant. She married Mr. Kimball a year after he divorced his second wife in 2012. It’s a loyal team, and veterans are betting that Milk Street Kitchen will succeed. “It’s a huge mistake to write off Chris Kimball,” said Rux Martin, the cookbook editor who has her own imprint at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “He’s always been really good at following where the money is coming from, based on what people want. ” Mr. Kimball’s first venture publishing reliable recipes with a wonky specificity came in 1980, when he used $100, 000 from investors to start Cook’s Magazine. He went on to sell it for a big profit to Condé Nast Publications, which later shut it down. He bought back the title for $175 and reintroduced it as Cook’s Illustrated in 1993. It was a antithesis of Gourmet magazine and took no ads. It still doesn’t. If you wanted to know how to make perfect Bolognese in a slow cooker or a foolproof pie crust (pro tip: use vodka) here it was. His approach ushered in an era of intellectual cookbook authors who preferred analysis to romance. Among the magazine’s alumni are Mark Bittman, a former New York Times columnist, and J. Kenji the author of “The Food Lab,” who developed the vodka pie crust during his time at Cook’s Illustrated. America’s Test Kitchen, which includes the magazine Cook’s Country as well as radio and television programs, is built on a culture of testing so rigorous that it can border on fetish. And when other food websites were offering free content, Mr. Kimball insisted on paid subscriptions. “It all comes from Chris’s idea that you can’t give anything away,” said John Willoughby, the first executive editor of Cook’s Illustrated and now its executive editor for magazines. The schism, by all accounts, was painful. Mr. Kimball said he saw it coming during a board meeting last July. The company had grown to 180 people, and the board of Boston Common Press, which owns America’s Test Kitchen, thought a new management style was in order. Although America’s Test Kitchen was doing very well financially, the initial investors wanted more profit. They added new board members who were aligned with that goal. David Nussbaum, a former media and executive, was hired as the company’s chief executive, outranking Mr. Kimball. “Quite frankly, the owners realized Chris is about 65, and they had to think of a succession plan,” Mr. Nussbaum said in an interview. “These owners were very clear they wanted someone to come and run the business for their heirs. ” They asked Mr. Kimball to continue hosting the television and radio shows, and suggested that he write a memoir, Mr. Kimball said. As an owner, he would reap the financial rewards of the company’s expansion. Mr. Kimball balked. “You end up as the guy in the white suit standing in front of the bucket of chicken,” he said. Things got worse fast. One day last August, Mr. Kimball walked into Mr. Willoughby’s office. “I got fired,” he said. “I didn’t think you could,” Mr. Willoughby said. “I didn’t think I could, either,” Mr. Kimball replied. The new leadership put some of its product reviews outside the subscription pay wall. Editors began creating a free digital magazine and a traveling road show based on the success of the 2012 book “The Science of Good Cooking. ” The hunt is on to find a bigger space and hire more digitally savvy employees. Mr. Nussbaum said America’s Test Kitchen, with its 50 recipe testers, would stay close to what he called a Consumer Reports point of view, but “having said that, the world in which we eat has continued to change, and America’s Test Kitchen wants to participate in that change. ” He and Mr. Kimball continue to speak well of each other, at least to a reporter. They had lunch recently. Mr. Kimball may do work for America’s Test Kitchen, which still provides much of his income. He seems happy to be starting something new. “I like to get up in the morning and go to work,” he said. “And I think there is still a substantial audience for that work. ” | 0fake |
Dems Slam Bernie Sanders Over Party Chair Race: ’He Isn’t Even in Our Party!’ - Breitbart | Democrats in Congress are fuming at independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for injecting himself into the race for the next Democrat Party Chairman, with many wondering why he deserves a say at all since he won’t join the Democrat Party. [The Democrat candidate for president has been solidly behind Minnesota Congressman and Muslim Keith Ellison, but recently a swell of support for former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez has been seen among many Democrats turned off by Ellison’s laudatory comments about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. One of Perez’ newest and biggest supporters is no less than from former Vice President Joe Biden. This week Biden came out with a formal endorsement of Perez, giving the former Obama appointee his biggest boost yet in the hunt for the Chairmanship of the Democrat National Committee. But in a February 1 Facebook post, Sanders slammed Biden and his endorsement saying it is only another example of the “failed approach” to lead the party. “Joe Biden is a friend of mine and I have a lot of respect for Tom Perez. In terms of the next chair of the DNC, however, the question is simple,” Sanders wrote in his post. “Do we stay with a failed approach or do we go forward with a fundamental restructuring of the Democratic Party? I say we go forward and create a grassroots party which speaks for working people and is prepared to stand up to the top 1 percent. That’s why we have to support Keith Ellison. ” Sanders’ divisive approach runs contrary to his own candidate’s claims to want to bring the Democrat Party together. But many Democrats are even wondering why Sanders thinks he has a say in the matter since he has steadfastly refused to even join the Democrat Party in the first place. Texas Democratic chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, for instance, said Sanders’ meddling was “very concerning,” The Hill reported. “It is very concerning that Bernie Sanders is so intent on taking over a party that he’s not even a member of — that he’d insult the beloved vice president — and really the president — about a failed status quo approach,” Hinojosa said. The Texan went on to wonder why Sanders should even be concerning himself with the race for party chair. “This is coming from a man who is not even a member of our party,” Hinojosa said. “We lost an election and all of a sudden we’re all a part of a failed status quo? When he puts Joe Biden and Tom Perez in this category and paints with a broad brush he insults all of us. This is an election between loyal, qualified Democrats who love our party and the country. There’s no need for him to lower himself to that level. ” Democrat strategist Jamal Simmons agreed, according to the paper. “He doesn’t get to set the standard for a party he’s not a member of,” Simmons said. DNC vice chairman R. T. Rybak also questioned Sanders’ rhetoric, saying that the next party chairman needs to be “looking forward, not back. ” Other Democrats lashed out at Sanders for his “egoism” and for attempting to open up old primary wounds. One Clinton ally reportedly griped, “He’s opening these old wounds and it looks to me also like his ego is at play. Perez and Ellison are cut from the same progressive cloth. Either one would be a strong leader. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0fake |
Boehner: Trump has been 'complete disaster' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s time in office has been a “complete disaster” aside from foreign affairs, fellow Republican and former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said at an energy conference. The former Ohio congressman said he has been friends with Trump for 15 years but never thought he would occupy the White House. And while he praised Trump’s aggressive steps to challenge the Islamic State militant group and other moves in international affairs, he was highly critical of the president’s other early efforts. “Everything else he’s done has been a complete disaster,” Boehner said at the energy conference in Houston on Wednesday, according to the energy publication Rigzone. “He’s still learning how to be president.” A spokesman for Boehner confirmed the comments. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Boehner’s remarks. The former House speaker, who resigned from Congress in 2015, was also highly critical of efforts by the administration and his former Republican colleagues in Congress to advance sweeping healthcare and tax reform plans. He said Republicans should never have tried to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, even after the House narrowly passed an overhaul measure. The Senate is considering its own version of the package. And he dismissed tax reform efforts, which form a cornerstone of the Republican policy agenda, as “just a bunch of happy talk.” While Boehner’s successor, Speaker Paul Ryan, tries to include a border adjustment tax, a tax on imports, as a key piece of any tax code overhaul, Boehner declared it “deader than a doornail” amid opposition from fellow Republicans and the White House. Boehner also supported efforts to “get to the bottom” of any potential interactions between Trump associates and the Russian government. However, he described any calls to impeach Trump as the purview of “the crazy left-wing Democratic colleagues of mine.” Democratic Representative Al Green has formally introduced articles of impeachment for Trump, but such an effort has not been embraced by most Democratic lawmakers as the investigation continues. | 0fake |
[VIDEO] HILLARY’S VAN BLOWS BY ELDERLY PEOPLE IN WHEELCHAIRS Waiting To See Her On Way To Manufactured Event | Hillary s for all Everyday Americans just not the elderly ones in wheelchairs Hillary Clinton wants to meet everyday Americans so badly, she drove right past many waiting in front of her event in Iowa.In the now-viral clip of reporters chasing after Clinton s Scooby van, the Clinton camp drove to the back entrance, surprising both reporters and many of her supporters waiting to get a glimpse of the candidate. I think what you don t see in that clip, which is one of the most surprising things is there were actually a ton of people waiting for her at the front of that college, said Financial Times reporter Megan Murphy. There were elderly people in wheelchairs, there were people and they just cruised right on by to the back. The news that Clinton symbolically drove past ordinary voters while driving their own everyday Americans to the event will certainly reflect poorly on the campaign. The incident draws parallels to the man Clinton hopes to succeed in the Oval Office when he drove past disabled veterans in Phoenix.The Democratic front-runner had already snubbed everyday Americans when she parked at a handicapped spot for her convenience at one event and did not include differently-abled citizens in her announcement video. Those were the everyday Americans. Those were the everyday Iowans and guess what they were lined up in front of that community college, Murphy said.Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski was appalled after hearing the story. Earlier in the day, she criticized the Clinton campaign for her evasive and inaccessible approach to the campaign roll out which has left Clinton looking stale and flat. Joe Scarborough, on the other hand, laughed and said the story proved the narrative of an inauthentic Clinton campaign. The former congressman said it was not surprising Clinton did not want to meet the elderly people on wheelchairs because her staff did not get to vet them first. Because they want the everyday Americans that they had talked to for 30 minutes about how to act like an everyday American, Scarborough said.With senior citizens making up a quarter of all voters in 2014, up from 21 percent in 2010, Clinton may face an uphill battle in gaining the trust of the most reliable voting block to turn out on Election Day.Via: WFB | 1real |
Former DEA Prescription Head Drops a Bombshell — Congress Protects Big Pharma & Fuels Opioid Crisis |
By Claire Bernish
Congress would rather protect the profits of pharmaceutical companies than the health of those addicted to dangerous opioid drugs, says a former head of the DEA responsible for preventing abuse of medications.
Joseph Rannazzisi, former Deputy Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, asserts Big Pharma and its lobbyists have a “stranglehold” on legislators in Congress and have engineered the protection of a $9 billion per year industry over the health of American citizens, according to a report from the Guardian .
“Congress would rather listen to people who had a profit motive rather than a public health and safety motive,” he said, according to the outlet. “As long as the industry has this stranglehold through lobbyists, nothing’s going to change.”
Rannazzisi explained lobbyists have spent millions thwarting legislative and policy efforts to provide guidelines for reducing the prescribing of opioid medications closely related to heroin — and helped limit the DEA’s powers to discipline those who dispense unusually high dosages of the same.
A pharmacist himself, Rannazzisi severely criticized lawmakers he claims hold a double standard — publicly vowing to combat the opioid epidemic, while essentially working on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to ensure the industry’s profits.
“These congressmen and senators who are using this because they are up for re-election, it’s a sham,” he told the Guardian . “The congressmen and senators who are championing this fight, the ones who really believe in what they’re doing, their voices are drowned out because the industry has too much influence.”
With the unique insight of having been an insider, Rannazzisi excoriated the duplicity evidenced between legislators’ public lamentation of addiction and deaths from the opioid crisis during election years, and private efforts to protect drugmakers from liability.
And he would know. According to Rannazzisi’s LinkedIn profile, as Chief of Diversion, he had been tasked with “oversight and control of all regulatory compliance inspections and civil and criminal investigations of approximately 1.6 million DEA registrants” — but if the standards are lowered by Congress to allow greater leeway in prescribing opioids, the threshold of criminality is raised.
As the Guardian points out, legislation to fight the opioid epidemic, Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act , did, in fact, pass in July — but partisan controversy erupted when Republicans failed to provide funding to give the law sharp teeth. Democrats then issued a report titled “ Dying Waiting for Treatment ” in response, which “likened the Republican response to the opioid crisis to ‘using a piece of chewing gum to patch a cracked dam.’”
Indeed the report sharply criticized the bill, equating its policies to ‘empty promises’ for the lack of financial follow-through.
As the Washington Post detailed in a report earlier this month, the DEA launched an aggressive campaign to rein in distribution of opioids by pharmaceutical manufacturers to illegal ‘pill mills’ and corrupt pharmacies, who cared little whether the drugs wound up on the streets.
Headed by Rannazzisi, the Office of Diversion Control sent investigators into the field, and began issuing hefty fines and filing lawsuits against the distributors responsible for the proliferation of opioids on the streets.
But the disproportionately powerful pharmaceutical industry — fearing a potential significant loss in profits — fought back. Hard.
According to the Post , the deputy attorney general summoned Rannazzisi to a meeting in 2012, concerning the cases of two unnamed major drug companies.
“That meeting was to chastise me for going after industry, and that’s all that meeting was about,” the now-retired DEA official told the Post .
Then, in 2014, came what constituted a hand out to the pharmaceutical industry by the Department of Justice and congressional legislators: the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act — legislation initiated by the Healthcare Distribution Management Association — the industry group representing distributors at the heart of the controversy.
An analysis of lobbying records by the Post found “the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, spent $13 million lobbying House and Senate members and their staffs on the legislation and other issues between 2014 and 2016.”
Rannazzisi argued his case to congressional staffers in a phone conference in July 2014, and recalled telling them, “This bill passes the way it’s written we won’t be able to get immediate suspension orders, we won’t be able to stop the hemorrhaging of these drugs out of these bad pharmacies and these bad corporations.”
Stunned at the massive — and ultimately successful — effort to take the bite out of DEA attempts to hold distributors and drugmakers responsible for their role in an epidemic estimated to take 19,000 lives every year, Rannazzisi likened the legislation to a “free pass” for legal drug pushers.
“This doesn’t ensure patient access and it doesn’t help drug enforcement at all,” he told the Guardian. “What this bill does has nothing to do with the medical process. What this bill does is take away DEA’s ability to go after a pharmacist, a wholesaler, manufacturer or distributor.”
“This was a gift. A gift to the industry,” he added.
After heading the diversion office for a decade, Rannazzisi retired in 2015 — likely disgusted over legislators’ dedication to the legal drug industry, rather than the people whose interests they’re ostensibly obligated to protect.
“The bill passed because ‘Big Pharma’ wanted it to pass,” he told the Guardian in no uncertain terms. “The DEA is both an enforcement agency and a regulatory agency. When I was in charge what I tried to do was explain to my investigators and my agents that our job was to regulate the industry and they’re not going to like being regulated.”
Big Pharma relies overwhelmingly on lobbyists filling the coffers of politicians to ensure they ignore the crisis gripping the nation. As the Center for Public Integrity found , the Guardian noted, Purdue Pharma — at the heart of the epidemic for its highly-addictive drug introduced in the late 1990s, OxyContin — spent a breathtaking $740 million in the last ten years on congressional lobbying efforts.
However, Big Pharma’s power to influence policy and legislation extends far beyond simple but effective lobbying — the government-run Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC) has been accused by Sen. Ron Wyden of being a tool to “weaken” CDC guidelines for limiting overprescribing of opioids.
Wyden wrote to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell of his concerns the IPRCC had been staffed with ‘experts’ with conflicts of interest for their close ties to Big Pharma, including a scientist with a $1.5 million endowment from Purdue, reported the Guardian .
“You’ve got a panel that’s certainly got a fair number of people that have a vested interest in this problem of overprescribing. That’s something you’ve got to root out,” Wyden asserted . “The role of the pharmaceutical companies on these advisory panels troubles me greatly. Science is getting short shrift compared to the political clout of these influential interests.”
Families of countless addicts and victims of the opioid industry would undoubtedly find the direct influence of Big Pharma’s pro-opioid cash appalling — yet it continues to this day. Policies and legislation have not yet been given the appropriate funding needed to effectively combat the problem, which swirls out of control while politicians and drugmakers reap blood-tainted profits.
“Corporations have no conscience,” Rannazzisi flatly told the Guardian . “Unfortunately, with my job, I was the guy who had to go out and talk to families that lost kids. If one of those CEOs went out there and talked to anybody, or if one of those CEOs happened to lose a kid to this horrible, horrible domestic tragedy we have, I’d bet you they’d change their mind.
“When you sit with a parent who can’t understand why there’s so many pharmaceuticals out in the illicit marketplace, and why isn’t the government doing anything, well the DEA was doing something. Unfortunately what we’re trying to do is thwarted by people who are writing laws.” Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).
Contributed by The Free Thought Project of thefreethoughtproject.com .
The Free Thought Project is dedicated to holding those who claim authority over our lives accountable. | 1real |
This is an Anthem for Our Times | This is an Anthem for Our Times Share on Facebook Tweet I think the world deserves to see the truth about #NoDAPL I tried my best to portray what I felt at camp, I felt LOVE. Love for all people, all living things, Mother Earth herself, and concern for future generations. I felt what this world needs at this time, Unity beyond race, concern for one another, and togetherness. I felt peace and calm. Then when the police came I felt the opposite, I... read more
I think the world deserves to see the truth about #NoDAPL
I tried my best to portray what I felt at camp, I felt LOVE. Love for all people, all living things, Mother Earth herself, and concern for future generations. I felt what this world needs at this time, Unity beyond race, concern for one another, and togetherness. I felt peace and calm. Then when the police came I felt the opposite, I felt lies, setups, and oppression, but I'm trying not to dwell on the negative. My only wishes with this video is that it helps in some way. Wasn't sure how to help so I just started filming. Much love to everyone on the front lines!! Much love Standing Rock, Oceti Sakowin, Turtle Island, all Indigenous Nations overseas, all spiritual leaders, and all beautiful Human Beings of all colors (Black, Red, White, Yellow, Pink, and Orange haha! jk). You are all important and I love you all equally! When I was at camp I got the feeling that this is the beginning of something new, something that excited me and woke me up, learning a new way to fight injustice, something bigger than what I thought it was, and it's beautiful. The energy, courage, and unity I felt at camp is inspirational. To EVERYONE at home let's keep spreading truth for those on the front lines! If anyone seeing this goes to Standing Rock, I would encourage you to be humble, sit by the microphone where they talk and feed, and listen to the leadership teach good things. It's a beautiful happening, don't go to lead, go to help... Peace love and prayers to all including the police, sheriff, gov, and ETP, maybe they will have a change of heart. And if not I'll see you on the front lines! hahaha!!!
- Prolific The Rapper
Follow Red Warrior Camp , Sacred Stone Camp , Dr0ne2bwild Photography & Video and others for the latest news daily!!.... [watch video below] | 1real |
Fox News To Black Hamilton Actor: Shut Up And ‘Stick To Hip Hop’ (VIDEO) | In a convenient distraction from Trump s recent $25 million settlement in fraud lawsuits connected to his fake university, virulently homophobic Indiana Governor and future Vice President Mike Pence decided to go see a Broadway show.Naturally, Pence s appearance at Hamilton was not well-received, with the crowd booing him as he entered and the cast taking some time at the end of the show to have a come to Jesus moment with the man who thinks many of them should be electrocuted, imprisoned, or killed.Now to many of Trump s followers who are, shall we say, not exactly fans of Abraham Lincoln, this was the worst thing to ever happen in a theatre in the history of ever. But to the rest of us, a much-needed message was delivered: that he should be there to represent all Americans, not just the ones he likes.This message to Pence sent the conservative world nosediving into Lake Stupidity, with many of them vowing to boycott the musical (which is sold out until seemingly six generations from now) and one particularly deplorable Trump fan decided to cause a scene that lasted through multiple musical numbers (the cast was praised for acting like he wasn t even there).While Pence himself was not offended by the cast s message, Fox News Jeanine Pirro joins Donald Trump in being irrationally furious about the nontroversy. What happened in that theater one block from this studio was out-and-out reverse racism and teed-up hate! Pirro said on her show Saturday, accusing the actors of using a play about our American history as a political bully pulpit an ironic statement given Pence s numerous horrific remarks about women, they gay community, and many other groups of Americans (not to mention that Trump has become one of the most notorious internet trolls in history).Pirro demanded to know why the cast did not lecture Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, who are not terrible people, for being terrible people when they attended the production. Last night violates everything that you say that you stand for, she raged. You re Hamiltonians, you re students of American history. Why not hip hop about the electoral college or is that the part of the Constitution that you just want to ignore? Maybe you want to dance about Hamilton, why not dance about that! Pirro continued as she dissolved into a greater degree of madness than normal. And I ve got news for you. Don t lecture this man. You may know a little about hip hop and dancing around a stage. I majored in American history and I saw the play Hamilton and I loved it, she said as he rant ended. But you just took the fun, the enjoyment and the memory of that play right out of me, which might explain why the number one hashtag is that s trending right now is #BoycottHamilton. Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Game Of Thrones Creator Has Been Watching Trump And Clinton Ads; There’s One VERY Stark Difference (VIDEO) | George R.R. Martin, who is best known as the writer of Game of Thrones, knows a little something about liars and bad leaders. He s written more than his share. He also knows that Trump would be one of them. In fact, in an OpEd in LiveJournal, entitled A Simple Observation, Martin pretty much gave Trump the blogging equivalent of one of Game of Thrones bloodiest shows. Okay, perhaps that s an exaggeration, but he wasn t kind to Trump.Martin lives in New Mexico. He s concerned because the state, which has been pretty safely blue in recent history, is now in play (although FiveThirtyEight puts New Mexico s five electoral votes pretty firmly in Hillary s camp). Because of that, Martin has had a chance to see a lot of political ads from the presidential candidates. Despite the media s insistence that both candidates are somehow equally flawed, Martin sees big differences, even just in their ads. He sees one big difference and this is coming from someone who makes at least part of his living in producing videos.First, he talked about the Trump commercials, which are very negative and frankly, pretty standard fare, with the exception of Trump s vulgar and ugly language:The Trump commercials are all fairly standard political attack ads. You ve seen a thousand like them. Find some bad pictures of the opponent, in this case Hillary, pictures that make them look ugly or angry or crazed (easily done, there are thousands of unflattering pictures of any public figure floating around these days). If they are not bad enough, put them up in black & white, which always seems to make them worse. Juxtapose them with negative imagery, maybe some out of context headlines. Use a faceless narrator s voice over the pictures telling us that the candidate is corrupt or a liar or too extreme. The latest Trump ad manages to add Anthony Weiner, who is called Pervert Anthony Weiner. The blatant name-calling flinging around words like pervert and crooked is not something we have often seen before in American politics, unless you go back to the 18th and 19th centuries; that s Trump s own original ugly contribution to lowering the tenor of political discourse. The rest, however, is Attack Ad 101.Martin goes on to call Trump s ads mostly assertion, innuendo, and name-calling, but with no substance.Here s on sample:Now on to Clinton, and this says something pretty amazing about her in general. Her ads are honest.Clinton s ads are something else. Very different, and to my mind much more truthful. The star of all the Clinton ads in Donald J. Trump. There are no deliberately unflattering photographs, however. Nothing in black and white. Just video clips, full color, professional footage from news cameras at his rallies, interviews, television appearances. There s no name-calling either. Clinton doesn t need to label Trump as crooked or a liar or link him with perverts. Clinton s ads just show Trump being Trump.So what we have here is not Smith claiming that Jones said terrible things. What we have is actual footage of Jones saying and doing those things. No one has to accuse Trump of anything, he has laid it all out there in public for the world to see.Here s an example:G-d knows there s enough footage out there. Martin mentioned Trump mocking a disabled reporter. He mentioned the pussy grabbing video. Really, it goes on and on because nearly every time Trump opens his mouth, something controversial and offensive comes out.Martin goes on to talk specifically about the candidates, and his opinion of Trump is anything but favorable.He didn t say much about Hillary, but he did say this:You don t need to like Hillary. You don t need to listen to what Hillary says about Trump, or what I say about Trump. You just need to listen to Trump. If you can do that, and still consider voting for him well Oooh oooh, I can finish that sentence. If you can listen to Trump and still consider voting for him well you don t really give a crap about the future of the country. Well, perhaps Martin had something more eloquent in mind.Featured image via Kevin Winter/Getty Images. | 1real |
Russia's Lavrov, Tillerson to meet at U.N. General Assembly: TASS | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, TASS news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Tuesday. | 0fake |
Villager’s Execution in China Ignites Uproar Over Inequality of Justice - The New York Times | BEIJING — Zhou Yunfei, a technology executive who owns a villa in eastern China, did not have much in common with an impoverished farmer more than 500 miles away who was convicted of murdering a village chief with a nail gun. But when Mr. Zhou heard last week that the Chinese government had executed the farmer, Jia Jinglong, he was furious. He saw it as a sign that the ruling Communist Party was imposing harsh punishments on the most vulnerable members of society while coddling the elite. “The legal system isn’t fair,” Mr. Zhou, 57, said, adding that local officials had “turned against the common people. ” President Xi Jinping has made restoring confidence in Chinese courts a centerpiece of his rule, vowing to promote “social justice and equality” in a legal system long plagued by favoritism and abuse. Since coming to power in 2012, he has led a campaign against corruption, ensnaring thousands of officials and even some of the party’s most senior leaders. But the furor over the execution of Mr. Jia, who had sought revenge on officials for demolishing his home, has raised doubts about Mr. Xi’s efforts, with people across the country publicly assailing inequities in the justice system and asking why officials often escape the death penalty. “The perception is that the people are powerless and vulnerable against corrupt officials,” said Fu Hualing, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “What is surprising is that Xi Jinping has been in power for four years, and that narrative has not changed. ” The uproar has placed the party, which is working to tighten its grip on courts while promoting the idea of fairness, in an awkward position. Mr. Xi has cultivated an image as a champion of the people willing to take on corrupt officials of any stripe. Yet Mr. Jia’s case has reawakened concerns, especially among rural residents and members of the urban working class, that the Communist Party is protecting its own members. In fiery social media posts and conversations, some have argued for making punishments against corrupt officials more severe. Others have suggested that China, believed to be the world’s top executioner, should substantially reduce its use of the death penalty against impoverished citizens. China’s leaders seem conflicted about how to respond to complaints of unfair treatment, which have plagued the judiciary for decades but have taken on new urgency as Mr. Xi attempts a overhaul of the system. On the one hand, party leaders might be wary of exacerbating the anger felt by many Chinese people, who often side with villagers like Mr. Jia, seeing them as folk heroes standing up against venal forces. At the same time, Beijing might not want to be seen as endorsing an attack on a government official. And some party leaders may not like the idea of setting a precedent for using the death penalty against senior officials, at a time when critics of Mr. Xi say he is using the anticorruption campaign to go after political enemies. “There’s a strong incentive for the elite within the party to protect itself,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a New York University law professor. “People realize today they’re free, but tomorrow they could be the targets. ” In recent days, the party’s hesitation has seeped into public view. The government at first appeared to tolerate, and even encourage, debate about Mr. Jia’s case. Lawyers issued open letters pointing to flaws in the prosecution’s argument, and state media outlets published sanctimonious editorials calling for the court to show humanity. But as discontent spread on social media in the days leading up to Mr. Jia’s execution, the government reversed course and began censoring some online discussions about the case. media organizations adopted a scolding tone, warning that public opinion had “hijacked” the case. People’s Daily, the party’s flagship newspaper, went a step further, arguing that citizens should not express contrarian views about court cases in public. “We can see that online public opinion can deviate from reason and even become a terrifying tool that kills humanity and conscience,” an editorial in the newspaper said. While the government has historically tolerated some debate about judicial decisions, Mr. Xi has generally sought to rein in dissent, especially when it gathers force online. Li Wei, an activist in Beijing who was imprisoned for two years under Mr. Xi for helping organize protests demanding financial disclosures from party leaders, circulated a petition online in late October calling for Mr. Jia to be spared and for the government to adopt a “more humane” justice system. Soon his cellphone was buzzing with messages from university students, professors, security guards and others. He gathered 1, 274 signatures over a few days, he said, before the authorities shut down his social media accounts. “The anticorruption campaign is not genuine,” Mr. Li, 45, said in an interview at a Beijing teahouse. “The reason why they were doing this is because they want to salvage the Communist Party regime. ” Chinese leaders appear to be working to counter perceptions that officials are being treated with kid gloves. Over the past year, party leaders have vowed to consider punishing officials who commit grave crimes, including stealing more than about $436, 000, with the death penalty. They have also introduced new forms of punishment aimed at corrupt officials, including lifetime jail sentences without the possibility of parole. But the government has yet to systematically invoke any of those punishments against prominent officials. And critics can point to a raft of recent cases in which powerful people and their families escaped the death penalty. There is the example of Zhou Yongkang, China’s former security chief, who was sentenced to life in prison last year for taking bribes and revealing state secrets he was the most senior leader to be jailed for corruption in more than 65 years of Communist rule. And many people note the case of Gu Kailai, the wife of one of China’s most prominent politicians, whose death sentence for the murder of a British business associate was commuted to life in prison last year. Fan Zhewang, 42, a teacher of Maoism at Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications in central China, said the treatment of Ms. Gu epitomized the inequities in the system. Mr. Fan said that while the government’s decision to execute Mr. Jia was legal, he was concerned that a lingering sense of injustice and resentment among villagers would prompt more violence against officials. “In the future,” Mr. Fan said, “I worry that people will just kill whole families of village chiefs. ” On Wednesday, a day after Mr. Jia was executed, a farmer in Yan’an, a northwestern city celebrated as a stronghold of the Communist revolution, was arrested and charged with killing a village official and several of his relatives, according to local reports. The man was said to be angry after officials seized his land. In the days after the execution of Mr. Jia, friends and relatives in his village in the northern province of Hebei circulated a poem he wrote while in prison in which he described being in a dreamlike state. “I’ll miss the smell of flowers,” he wrote, “and the serenity of grass, something I love. ” Villagers said they did not want to talk about the case anymore. A man who gave his last name as Li said residents had grown accustomed to suffering injustices at the hands of wealthy government officials. “Who do you turn to in order to vent your anger?” he said. “There’s no one we can seek help from. ” “Many people are angry,” he added, “but we don’t dare speak up. ” | 0fake |
WHOA! Mainstream Media Has Officially DECLARED WAR On Crooked Hillary: “Far and away the most devastating 10 minutes on Hillary Clinton you will EVER see” [VIDEO] | Even the most militant supporters of Crooked Hillary are (reluctantly) exposing the truth about her. Fake black guy, journalist and Black Lives Matter terror group activist, Shaun King tweeted a scathing video exposing Hillary and the lies she can t escape Leftist Chuck Todd begrudgingly admits, Because of this breach, for instance, I don t think she could be confirmed for instance, as Attorney General. The best part of the video is when Mika asks looney leftist Andrea Mitchell, who has been carrying the Clinton s water for decades, I really, don t want to be the one delivering this, but, I gotta tell ya it s really hard to believe. It feels like she s lying straight up. Andrea Mitchell is she [Hillary] lying? Andrea panics then responds, I can t say that uh I would let the viewer, I would let the voter uh make those determinations. The libs are in panic mode, as they should be. Hillary cannot lie her way out of this and these leftist journalists are running out of options to cover for her.https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/736067250105372673And finally Chuck Todd has this to say about Crooked Hillary and her crooked husband, Like so many of these Clinton scandals, it s impossible to imagine that this wasn t going to surface. | 1real |
French Senate vote is blow to Macron, Conservatives keep majority | PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron suffered his first electoral setback on Sunday when his Republic on the Move (LREM) party won fewer seats than expected in elections for the French Senate. What was at stake was whether Macron s LREM and allies would win enough seats to give him a three-fifths majority vote in both houses of parliament, which he needs for constitutional reforms, including plans to overhaul parliament. The vote, in which about 171 of the Senate s 348 seats were up for grabs, consolidated the Senate s existing conservative majority. But the Socialist party, which was crushed in last June s legislative elections, did well in the vote, provisional results provided by the French Senate showed. The results could complicate Macron s plans for constitutional reforms and come as his popularity is declining, just four months after his election in May. His approval ratings have dropped considerably in opinion polls, dragged down by labor reforms and planned budget cuts, including a decrease in housing aid for students. LREM, which hoped to win 40-50 Senators, ended up securing 23, and will be counting on alliances with lawmakers from other parties to back the government on a case by case basis. The Senate s conservative majority is now composed of some 150 members of The Republicans party, confirming the Senate as a counterweight to Macron, even if the National Assembly, where Macron has a clear majority, has the final say on legislation. Voters clearly showed they wanted a parliamentary counterweight, which is in my view vital to a balanced democracy, Gerard Larcher, the President of the French Senate said in a public address. Macron s LREM was not expected to win a majority partly because of the electoral system. In elections for the Senate, only mayors and regional councilors and not the general public vote and Macron has plans that are unpopular with many local councilors. A number of local officials are unhappy with his plans to cut subsidies to local authorities. Jean Leonetti, a former The Republicans minister said on Twitter: First setback for Emmanuel Macron . It was not immediately clear if Macron will be able to secure a three-fifths majority in both houses of parliament as it might require negotiations with other groups, including some members of The Republicans party. Macron s party would need 180 seats in the Senate to reach the three-fifths majority in both houses of parliament. | 0fake |
Commerce Secretary says Trump-Xi talks will address trade imbalances | BEIJING (Reuters) - Meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week will focus on addressing trade imbalances between the two countries, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday. Ross was speaking at a signing ceremony in the Chinese capital for commercial deals worth about $9 billion on Trump s visit. Trump has ratcheted up his criticism of China s massive trade surplus with the U.S. - calling it embarrassing and horrible last week - and has accused Beijing of unfair trade practices, fuelling worries of increased tension between the world s two largest trading countries. Addressing the imbalance in China trade has been the central focus of collaborative discussions between President Trump and President Xi and achieving fair and reciprocal treatment for the companies is a shared objective, Ross said. Data on Wednesday showed China s exports to the U.S. rose 8.3 percent in October on the year, while imports grew 4.3 percent. That led to a trade surplus of $26.62 billion with the U.S. last month, down from September s record $28.08 billion, but higher than recent trends. Deals signed on Wednesday included a pledge by Chinese ecommerce company JD.com to buy more than $2 billion of food products from the U.S. over three years and a pact for Reignwood International to buy additional helicopters from U.S. firm Bell Helicopter. While 19 deals were signed on Wednesday, some in the U.S. business community have expressed worry that contract wins could come at the expense of resolving long-standing complaints over market access restrictions in China. At the ceremony, China s vice premier Wang Yang said deals signed between China and U.S. firms would contribute to the stabilization of the general and overall economic relations between the two countries . The ceremony was a prelude to a more important signing ceremony set for Thursday, he added. Among the companies expected to sign deals on Thursday are Qualcomm, Boeing and Goldman Sachs. Chinese commerce minister Zhong Shan also attended the event in the Great Hall of the People next to Tiananmen Square. | 0fake |
Largest Pipeline in US Explodes, Kills and Injures Workers Trying to Make Repairs | By Whitney Webb A mistake during repairs to the Colonial pipeline, which ruptured in September, resulted in a massive explosion and started a wildfire, prompting Alabama’s governor to declare a... | 1real |
Steve Pieczenik: Wikileaks Revelations A Counter Coup To America’s Takeover (VIDEO) | in: Government , Multimedia , Special Interests November 8th’s election in the United States is perhaps the most important ever in the history of the country. It is not just an election to choose a President and some Senators and Representatives, it is perhaps the last true election that Americans will see. There is much more than just voting at stake. There are issues that are much more important than selecting judges for the Supreme Court. The election of 2016 may be the culmination of what previous American presidents warned: an internal takeover for the complete destruction of the country. Apparently, the attempt to, once a for all, strip Americans away from their Constitutional Rights has already been noticed by members of the intelligence community, who have launched a counter coup to stop the big American takeover led by Hillary and Bill Clinton. “Hillary and Bill Clinton are attempting a takeover of the United States and will stop at nothing,” warns former US government official, Steve Pieczenik. “A coup d’état of this magnitude has never been affected in such a subtly calculated way,” he explains in a video posted on his account on Youtube. In his video, Pieczenik explains that the Coup in which the Clintons are participating has been done silently and via the use of two methods: corruption and co-optation. “The Clintons have been involved in co-opting our White House, our Judiciary, our CIA, our Federal Bureau of Investigation, our Attorney General Loretta Lynch and our Director of the FBI, James Comey,” Pieczenik says. He says that the people and organizations cited above were made part of a group that was directed through political cronyism. Pieczenik says that him and other former members of the intelligence community have now launched a counter coup operation with the collaboration of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The former government official announced that the revelation of new emails contained in a laptop computer that belonged to Anthony Weiner was the first step, the first warning, that the counter coup had started. Speaking directly to those who he believes are carrying out the Coup d’Etat against the American people, Pieczenik said: “We are going to stop you from making Hillary the president of the United States.” He also announced that his group would indict the president of the United States, Loretta Lynch and others who, according to Pieczenik, are involved in the cover-up of the massive corruption going on at the Clinton Foundation. You can watch Steve Pieczenik’s video below: Submit your review | 1real |
Member Of Congress Educates Trump: ‘Our Job Is To Check You, Not Protect You’ (TWEETS) | Donald Trump has been on an absolute tear on Twitter regarding the Russia investigation. At one point during his unhinged Twitter rant, Trump whined that the GOP-controlled Congress should be doing more to protect him from the political and legal consequences of the investigation. Well, Congressman Ted Lieu of California had a bit of bad news for the clearly constitutionally-challenged Trump: It s not Congress s job to protect him. Quite the opposite, in fact. Rep. Lieu said to Trump: Dear @realDonaldTrump: Under our Constitution, the job of Congress is not to protect you. It is to be a check and balance on you. Dear @realDonaldTrump: Under our Constitution, the job of Congress is not to protect you. It is to be a check and balance on you. https://t.co/eE56pjA6Z0 Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) July 24, 2017Now, of course that matters not to Trump. He has operated outside the bounds of the law his entire life, and has continued to do so since the second he took his hand off that Bible after reciting the oath of office. One could even argue that the Republicans in Congress ARE protecting Trump, considering that they won t do anything about him.Many regularly go on television and refuse to criticize Trump regarding Russia or anything else. This is true even when the evidence that he obstructed justice, colluded with the Russians, is self-dealing from the Oval Office, or committing any number of other crimes is nothing short of damning. That s to say nothing of his clear and dangerous incompetence, and his daily disgracing of the office we all hold so dear as a nation.If for no other reason than what Rep. Lieu just told Trump, we should do all we can to flip Congress in 2018. Then we can have a REAL check on this freak that is currently occupying the White House.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
TRUMP MAKES BIG ANNOUNCEMENT After FOX News Says They’ll Keep Megan Kelly On As Debate Moderator | Do you agree with Trump s decision? Will Trump s non-appearance at the upcoming debate hurt him in the polls?Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Tuesday night that he is backing out of Thursday s primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, which will be broadcast by Fox News Channel. The decision comes with just days until the Iowa caucuses, which polls show very competitive between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)Trump had been publicly mulling the move for a few days, complaining that Fox News host Megyn Kelly, one of three moderators for the event, is biased against him.Via: Washington Post | 1real |
Judges Find Wisconsin Redistricting Unfairly Favored Republicans - The New York Times | A panel of three federal judges said on Monday that the Wisconsin Legislature’s 2011 redrawing of State Assembly districts to favor Republicans was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, the first such ruling in three decades of pitched legal battles over the issue. Federal courts have struck down gerrymanders on racial grounds, but not on grounds that they unfairly give advantage to a political party — the more common form of gerrymandering. The case could now go directly to the Supreme Court, where its fate may rest with a single justice, Anthony M. Kennedy, who has expressed a willingness to strike down partisan gerrymanders but has yet to accept a rationale for it. Should the court affirm the ruling, it could upend the next round of state redistricting, in 2021, for congressional and state elections nationwide, most of which is likely to be conducted by legislatures that have swept into power in recent years. “It is a huge deal,” said Heather Gerken, a Yale Law School professor and an expert on election law. “For years, everyone has waited for the Supreme Court to do something on this front. Now one of the lower courts has the debate. “If this were to be a nationwide standard, 2021 would look quite different,” she said, “especially for the Democrats. ” Several scholars said the ruling was especially significant because it offered, for the first time, a clear mathematical formula for measuring partisanship in a district, something that had been missing in previous assaults on gerrymandering. The ruling by the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin said that the Legislature’s remapping violated both the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it aimed to deprive Democratic voters of their right to be represented. “Although Wisconsin’s natural political geography plays some role in the apportionment process,” the court wrote, “it simply does not explain adequately the sizable disparate effect” of Republican gains in the State Assembly after the boundaries were redrawn. The judges who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, Kenneth Ripple and Barbara Crabb, were nominated to the bench by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Judge William Griesbach, nominated by President George W. Bush, dissented. The boundaries of both federal and state legislative districts are redrawn every 10 years after the census to ensure that each district contains roughly the same number of people, a standard the Supreme Court set with its ruling in 1962. But both Republican and Democratic majorities in statehouses often remap districts to favor themselves, either by cramming opposition voters into a single district or by dividing them so they are the majority in fewer districts, tactics called “packing and cracking. ” Courts have generally agreed that some partisan advantage in redistricting is tolerable, in part because voters themselves are not spread equally across a state or district by party. But the plaintiffs in the case, 12 state Democrats represented by the Campaign Legal Center, had argued that the Wisconsin remapping was among the most sharply partisan in the nation. Their lawsuit said that in the 2012 elections for the Assembly, Wisconsin Republicans won 48. 6 percent of the vote but took 61 percent of the Assembly’s 99 seats. A key question in Monday’s ruling, as in past challenges to redistricting, was whether that division was unacceptably partisan, a question that previous courts have stumbled over. “Nobody has come up with a standard to measure constitutionality — how to distinguish between malevolent, evil partisanship that’s manipulative, versus the natural advantage one party might have as a result of where voters happened to live,” said Edward Foley, the director of the Election Law Project at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. In Monday’s ruling, the court was swayed by a new and simple mathematical formula to measure the extent of partisan gerrymandering, called the efficiency gap. The formula divides the difference between the two parties’ “wasted votes” — votes beyond those needed by a winning side, and votes cast by a losing side — by the total number of votes cast. When both parties waste the same number of votes, the result is zero — an ideal solution. But as a winning party wastes fewer and fewer votes than its opponent, its score rises. A truly efficient gerrymander spreads a winning party’s votes so evenly over districts that very few votes are wasted. A review of four decades of state redistricting plans concluded that any party with an efficiency gap of 7 percent or more was likely to keep its majority during the 10 years before new districts were drawn. In Wisconsin, experts testified, Republicans scored an efficiency gap rating of 11. 69 percent to 13 percent in the first election after the maps were redrawn in 2011. Some experts said the efficiency gap gives gerrymandering opponents their most promising chance yet to persuade a majority of the Supreme Court to limit partisan redistricting. “It does almost exactly what Justice Kennedy said he was looking for back in the ’80s, a clear threshold for deciding what is acceptable,” said Barry C. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of . Under procedural rules, cases like redistricting lawsuits that are heard by panels in District Court are appealed directly to the Supreme Court, skipping the Federal Court of Appeals. But it remains unclear whether Wisconsin will file an appeal or accept the ruling and limit its impact to a single state. Were the Supreme Court to hear the case, the effect could be profound, regardless of the decision. Republicans have more than doubled their control of state legislatures since 2010, and with gains from this month’s election they now control both legislative chambers in a record 32 states — 33 if Nebraska, which has a nominally nonpartisan, unicameral legislature, is included. Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a University of Chicago law professor and the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said on Monday that a number of state redistricting plans, including those in Virginia, North Carolina and Michigan, have efficiency gap scores rivaling those of Wisconsin. | 0fake |
Disgusted Republicans Unable To Reach UNHINGED Trump, Forced To Tweet Their Complaints At Him (IMAGES) | Donald Trump is already making the Republican Party insane, and it hasn t even been a week yet. While many GOPers found Trump s Twitter use concerning, it s reached an entirely new level considering that Trump is unavailable to them by all other means.On Wednesday, the Republican Party suffered another humiliating blow when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was forced to go on Twitter and beg Trump in front of everyone to force his executive branch to answer Senators requests so that oversight could be performed. Grassley tweeted: Pres Trump pls issue order to all in ur executive branch ppl to answer all Senator requests for RECORDS so we can do oversight. This was followed by several pathetic attempts to get Trump to respond, probably because Trump and his team wouldn t play by the rules and answer more conventional methods of communication (no surprise there).Grassley tried everything to get Trump s attention he even tried to educate the 45th President of the United States about how important oversight is, probably because Grassley realizes Trump doesn t know anything about how the government actually works Grassley even tried to diss former President Barack Obama in hopes that Trump would respond! Hours later, Grassley s pleas for Trump to do his job had gone unanswered, and things got a little testy:Damn! But honestly, what did the GOP expect from Trump, the guy who took the weekend off from being president after his inauguration?! This is a man who obviously doesn t care about doing the work of a president; he just wanted the title.Trump s first week has been such a disaster, and it s not even over. He s not only becoming a nightmare for all of Americans and Democrats he s a liability to his own party. The fact that a Republican senator had to publicly tweet at Trump in order to get his attention is extremely embarrassing, but that s what they signed up for when they nominated him.Featured image via Steve Pope/Getty Images | 1real |
SO DECEITFUL! According to #PodestaEmails20, Hillary hid her email scandal from her OWN TEAM | SO DECEITFUL! According to #PodestaEmails20, Hillary hid her email scandal from her OWN TEAM Posted at 11:58 am on October 27, 2016 by Sam J.
Hillary is so dishonest she didn’t even tell her own team about the email scandal, she hid it from them. Now if she did nothing wrong, why the heck would she not just tell them about it?
Inquiring minds wanna know.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 27, 2016
What sort of evil person can ask so many to work for her and then set them up by not giving them the full picture. Trending | 1real |
Fiorina blames environmentalists for California drought | The party looks to Kamala Harris, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Duckworth and Maggie Hassan to help lead it out of the abyss. | 0fake |
null | It is interesting that Duterte got something like 3 billion from China, and now he is getting money from Japan. He seems to be getting a lot of money for his country. I just hope he does not sell out the Philippine resources, minerals, water way rights etc. Duterte really should not blame America for all the problems in the Philippines. What caused the Philippines a lot of problems was the corruption and bribery that took hold of his country. | 1real |
'Fierce and formidable' Dlamini-Zuma eyes South Africa's presidency | JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is a fierce campaigner against racial inequality whose hostility to big business has rattled investors in South Africa. She is also one of two front runners to be the country s next president. The 68-year-old is vying to succeed her ex-husband, President Jacob Zuma, as leader of the ruling African National Congress at a party vote this weekend, an outcome that would make her favorite for the presidency after a parliamentary election due in 2019. A medical doctor and former chair of the Commission of the African Union, a pan-continental grouping, Dlamini-Zuma has pledged during her campaign to radically tackle the racial inequality that persists in South Africa 23 years after the end of white minority rule. Backers of her main rival, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, say she is peddling populist rhetoric and would rule in the mould of her former husband, whose decade in power has been plagued by corruption scandals. Dlamini-Zuma declined to be interviewed for this story. The choice between Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa will influence South Africa s economic policy trajectory, as well the country s role in Africa and beyond. Graphic: ANC election in South Africa - here Graphic: South African economy - here Investors are worried by Dlamini-Zuma s hostility toward international companies, which she says form part of a white monopoly capital cabal dominating South Africa s wealth. A Dlamini-Zuma victory would signal a sharp rhetorical shift toward more leftist economic policy, said John Ashbourne, an Africa-focused economist at Capital Economics. A further credit ratings downgrade would be almost inevitable. Yet Dlamini-Zuma s supporters point to a commitment to changing the lives of South Africa s black majority. Lynne Jones, a psychiatrist and author who lived with Dlamini-Zuma when they were students together in the English city of Bristol in the 1970s, says her determination to fight injustice is rooted in her own personal story. Jones remembers a day four decades ago when Dlamini-Zuma lay on her bed and wept after being forced to miss her brother s funeral because the apartheid-era security services had hounded her out of South Africa. She was fiercely intelligent and determined, said Jones. Here was someone who had put their whole life on the line and given up home and family for what they believed. It was eye-opening. The race between Ramaphosa, a unionist-turned-millionaire businessman, and Dlamini-Zuma is too close to call, political analysts say. Her campaign team told Reuters in written comments it was confident she would be elected ANC leader. Ramaphosa, who is popular among swathes of the ANC disillusioned with Zuma, is promising to end corruption, boost a flatlining economy and deliver jobs to the poor in a country where more than a quarter of the population is unemployed. Dlamini-Zuma, by contrast, is an African nationalist and has the support of the influential ANC youth and women s leagues, which both tend to support socialist policies. Known for her fierce temper and hostility toward the West, she was described in one 2001 U.S. diplomatic cable on WikiLeaks as a truculent and petulant foreign minister . Another cable to Washington suggested she could be charming. Belying her reputation as fierce and formidable, the Minister was soft spoken and smiling in this meeting - articulate but gentle, candid but warm, Donald Gips, then U.S. ambassador to South Africa, wrote in 2010. The most common criticism of Dlamini-Zuma is that she is beholden to Zuma and his powerful patronage network. Zuma has publicly endorsed her. She is bold and you can t fool her. She is someone you can trust, Zuma told a rally recently. The couple met in Swaziland in the 1980s, when they were both in the ANC underground. They were married for more than a decade and have four children together. In a rare interview last month, Dlamini-Zuma challenged her opponents to find any evidence of corruption in her long political career. I don t loot government coffers. I ve never done so, and I will not do so, she told ANN7 television. But for some senior figures in the ANC, she has not done enough to distance herself from the corruption scandals that have dogged President Zuma. She has not said anything on state capture , ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told Reuters, using a South African term to describe private interests unduly controlling government funds. Dlamini-Zuma says accusations that she is piggy-backing off Zuma are insulting given her career, first as a doctor to ANC leaders fighting apartheid and then as a cabinet minister under every South African president since 1994. As health minister in Nelson Mandela s cabinet, she laid the foundations for free public healthcare for the poor, took a hard line on smoking and made medicines more accessible. As foreign minister she fostered friendships with African countries and emerging economies like China, even when this angered the West. But she also made errors of judgment. In 1996, Dlamini-Zuma awarded a contract for more than $3 million to a friend for a play, Sarafina II, to raise awareness about AIDS and was later found to have ignored tender rules. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said that paled in comparison to recent government malpractice. He said: 14 million rand in the Sarafina scandal now seems like peanuts when compared with the looting under Zuma. | 0fake |
Mongolian parliament ousts prime minister in latest reshuffle | ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - Mongolia s parliament voted to oust Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, its website said late on Thursday, after his ruling Mongolian People s Party (MPP) was defeated in a July presidential election. No prime minister of Mongolia, a thinly populated and mineral-rich country sandwiched between Russia and China, has completed a four-year term since 2004. Of 73 members of parliament attending the vote, 42 were in favor of Erdenebat s removal. The outgoing prime minister noted that the country had seen 13 governments in the last 25 years. The resignation of a government in a democratic parliament is a normal occurrence, but it can be harmful if a good thing goes beyond its norms, Erdenebat said in a statement on parliament s website. A former Soviet satellite, Mongolia transitioned to a parliamentary democracy in 1990. I believe that dismissing government is a mistake that hinders the development of the country, rather than a positive mechanism of accountability, Erdenebat said. The MPP gained power in mid-2016 in elections in which it won 65 of parliament s 76 seats. It is expected to hold a party congress to choose new leadership, said Dale Choi, an analyst and head of Altan Bumba Financial Group in Ulaanbaatar. I don t think it means instability for the government, he said. I think it means internal party politics. It s clearing the party s decks after a monumental, unexpected presidential loss. Last month, some 30 members of the parliament, or State Ikh Khural, signed a petition calling for Erdenebat s resignation in the aftermath of the presidential vote, which was won by populist former martial arts star and businessman Khaltmaa Battulga of the opposition Democratic Party. The defeat was seen as a rejection of the MPP government s austerity policies and a reaction to allegations of corruption. In Mongolia s parliamentary democracy, the prime minister is the leader of the government, and the president has limited powers including the ability to veto legislation and to propose laws to parliament. Higher coal prices this year have helped the resource-dependent economy gain momentum. But earlier this year, a slump in foreign investment and declining commodity prices forced Mongolia to agree to a $5.5 billion economic bailout led by the International Monetary Fund, to relieve fiscal strains and try to restore investor confidence. | 0fake |
Huge 'Hillary For Prison' Sign at World Series Game | Huge 'Hillary For Prison' Sign at World Series Game # Isotrop 0
Baseball fans held up a large "Hillary for Prison" sign during the World Series Postgame Show which was impossible to ignore. Liberals quickly destroyed the sign. Tags | 1real |
Fox News Just Proved Trump Is Using Fake Video To Try To Start War With Iran | On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted a dire warning about Iran test-firing a missile, and proclaiming that the country was working with North Korea, whatever that means. The tweet was easy to overlook, since it was part of a litany of unhinged rants about Obamacare, Alabama s special election, a basketball player, the National Football League, and his idea of patriotism.Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North Korea.Not much of an agreement we have! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017Literally 21 minutes later, Trump was back to talking about repealing healthcare for millions of Americans and calling John McCain a coward, and 5 minutes after that, Trump was back to the NFL. Like I said, I don t blame you if you missed it.Thankfully, the tweet is still there. That could come in handy, should anyone decide to do anything about the fact that he was either lying or a complete moron. Or even more disturbingly, that the President of the United States is using fake video to start a war with Iran. Or perhaps Donald Trump simply didn t recognize the exact same footage that he put Iran on notice for at the beginning of February:Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017Fox News, the President s very favorite for of media, is now reporting that the missile launch that Trump was referring to on Saturday was in fact video from a launch in January. There was no missile fired on Saturday Iranian media was simply showing what the missile they included in a parade that day was capable of.Conducting international affairs via social media is nothing new for Donald Trump. It was scarcely hours before he had casually threatened North Korea with total nuclear annihilation via Twitter. By tomorrow, the US may find itself embroiled in World War Three if someone doesn t take that idiot s cell phone away from him.Sadly, nothing would make Trump happier than a new conflict, since wartime presidents are far more popular and important than those who govern peacefully over periods of expansion and global goodwill.That s what war would mean to Donald Trump: Ratings.Featured image via Majid/Getty Images | 1real |
Fed may face unnerving shake-up under Trump administration | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Change at the Federal Reserve could come quickly with President-elect Donald Trump’s team pledging to promptly fill high-level central bank jobs and roll out a tax and fiscal plan that could rewrite policymakers’ core economic assumptions. Fed officials already say their plan to gradually increase interest rates may need to be accelerated to accommodate the new administration’s economic proposals, which could push inflation higher. The concerns for Fed Chair Janet Yellen are broader as she faces a 14-month window to preserve her legacy and try to ensure the central bank’s independence in the face of a possible four or more Trump appointees to its seven-member Board of Governors. Yellen’s term as Fed chief expires in February 2018, and Trump is likely to name a successor in synch with his desire to cut financial regulation, lower corporate taxes, reorder fiscal policy, and possibly impose some of the constraints on the Fed that Republicans in Congress have long advocated. Yellen, 70, a ranking Fed official for the past 12 years and the top U.S. central banker since 2014, laid out a long list of concerns during recent questioning before Congress: that any fiscal boost not blow up the deficit and be tailored to improve growth and productivity; that the regulations crafted after the 2007-2009 financial crisis not be trashed; that the Fed not be hamstrung by policy rules or political pressure. “There is clear evidence of better outcomes in countries where central banks can take the long view, are not subject to short-term political pressures,” Yellen said in her testimony. “Sometimes central banks need to do things that are not immediately popular.” Fed officials would not comment on whether Trump and Yellen have spoken, or describe the contact so far between the central bank and the Republican businessman’s transition team. Trump transition officials could not be reached for comment. It remains unclear how deep a stamp Trump wants to put on the Fed, or what he feels about issues like central bank independence that are fundamental to Yellen and her peers. Trump’s sharp comments about Yellen during the presidential campaign, when he accused her of setting monetary policy to help Democrats, rattled Fed officials who felt he had crossed a line. But it is not known whether he’ll be content to merely change personnel - Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer’s term also runs out in 2018 - or whether he hopes to infuse the central bank with a different operating philosophy altogether. Congressional Republicans are expected to push legislation forcing more oversight of the central bank, possibly tying it to a monetary policy rule that more mechanically sets rates. Among the candidates mentioned as Yellen’s possible replacement is Stanford University economics professor John Taylor, whose “Taylor Rule” is often used in analysis and as a reference point in debate over the usefulness of rules in general. In his first comments after being named as Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin indicated in a Fox Business interview that the new administration’s plans could quickly alter the collegial and consensus-driven dynamic Yellen has tried to mold. The plan is to move soon to fill two open board seats at the Fed, and appointing one of those as a vice chair of supervision “will be a big priority,” said Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and Hollywood financier. Many analysts feel such a move could prompt the resignation of Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo ahead of the expiry of his term in 2022, giving Trump a fifth board seat to fill. A former Clinton administration economic advisor appointed to the Fed by President Barack Obama, Tarullo currently handles regulatory issues but has never been formally named vice chair. He would not comment on his plans in a public appearance last month. Financial markets, which had been spooked by Trump’s anti-trade comments during the campaign, so far appear to expect smooth sailing and a sober version of Trumpism. The prospect of major tax reform has bolstered U.S. stocks, especially in the financial sector where regulations are expected to be eased, and the dollar has rallied against major currencies. Yet for the Fed, Trump’s victory brings a new and possibly unnerving sort of uncertainty. The Fed has the equivalent of a university full of PhD economists who can employ sophisticated models to gauge how new tax or fiscal policies might change growth, inflation and unemployment. What they can’t model is the fallout if a major trade agreement is summarily ripped up, or if Trump follows through on campaign threats to declare China a currency manipulator. “Do you think the ideologue or the pragmatist prevails?” said Cornerstone Macro analyst Roberto Perli, who like many in the markets argues that Trump’s most volatile rhetoric won’t find its way into practice. Fed officials have so far struck a cautious note. “It is time to be patient and see how things unfold,” Governor Jerome Powell said at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Wednesday. But some feel that policymakers may need to get on top of the coming wave. “Fed officials can’t simply dismiss the prospect of legislative reforms anymore,” Dartmouth University economics professor and former Fed adviser Andrew Levin said. “It seems practically inevitable.” | 0fake |
President Obama and India’s Modi Forge an Unlikely Friendship - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — There are few relationships between President Obama and another world leader more unlikely than the one he has with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. The two have a public warmth — or “chemistry,” as the Indian news media like to describe it — and that is likely to be on display Tuesday when Mr. Modi visits the White House for the second time in two years. It will be the seventh time the two leaders have met. There are compelling reasons the leaders of the world’s largest democracies would find common cause. The United States is encouraging the rise of India as a giant Asian partner to balance China, and India is trying to accelerate its economy with an injection of investment from American companies. “It is true that Obama and I have a special friendship, a special wavelength,” Mr. Modi said last month in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, said on Saturday that the two leaders “have each invested in developing a close relationship. ” It is worth recounting just how unlikely such a friendship is. The nation’s first black president, Mr. Obama has made the protection of minorities a central pillar of his life. And he has argued that criticism and dissent are core tenets of democracy. Mr. Modi, by contrast, spent much of his life rising through the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a paramilitary organization that campaigns forcefully for India’s Hindu majority. Mr. Modi was in charge of the state of Gujarat when rioting in 2002 cost the lives of more than 1, 000 people, most of them Muslims. Just last week, 24 people were convicted of massacring Muslims during the riots, and pending cases are attempting to prove that Mr. Modi, who has so far escaped judicial censure, was part of a conspiracy to encourage the killings. Generally poorer and less educated than India’s Hindus, Muslims are about 14 percent of the population, about the same proportion as in the United States. In India, Mr. Modi’s reputation among Muslims could broadly be compared to that of a Southern segregationist from the 1950s. Perhaps just as troubling, Mr. Modi’s government has increasingly used the country’s broad and vague laws restricting free speech to stifle dissent, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. Other laws have been used to intimidate and even shut down nongovernmental organizations, such as Greenpeace. Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Modi is given to displaying affection. Both avoid the socializing common in their capitals. And while Mr. Obama is a doting father and dutiful husband who maintains close bonds with his childhood friends, Mr. Modi abandoned his arranged marriage decades ago and has no children or any public friendships. Some political analysts have expressed deep skepticism that the two leaders have any real fondness for each other. Mr. Modi is part of a class of “populist, electable, narcissistic autocrats whose appeal is that they pander to majoritarian anger,” said Kanti Prasad Bajpai, a professor of Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. “Obama is the opposite of that, so it is hard to see how close they can be,” Mr. Bajpai said. Others see similarities that extend beyond political beliefs. Both men rose from modest circumstances, had difficult relationships with their fathers and were widely considered transformational figures when elected. (Mr. Modi’s humble origins, largely government and intense focus on winning foreign investment are sharp breaks from his predecessor.) And parts of Mr. Modi’s political operation, in particular its effective use of social media, were based on Mr. Obama’s model. Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said both men “are remarkably warm and have a personal graciousness about them that is very evident in personal encounters. ” Raymond E. Vickery, a former United States assistant secretary of commerce who has met Mr. Modi, said both had grown up as outsiders and valued frankness. “Modi is a really guy who tries to answer your questions and doesn’t just go to talking points,” Mr. Vickery said. Mr. Obama made the first significant gesture in the relationship when, during Mr. Modi’s first official visit to Washington in 2014, the president left his White House staff behind to give a personal tour of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Mr. Modi responded by inviting Mr. Obama to be his guest at the annual Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi in January 2015. When Mr. Obama arrived, Mr. Modi broke with protocol to greet the president at the airport with a hug. And at a later appearance, Mr. Modi referred to the president as Barack and thanked him for his “deep personal commitment” to their friendship. In a toast at a state dinner, Mr. Obama called Mr. Modi “my partner and friend. ” “The hours they’ve spent together,” Mr. Rhodes said Saturday, “have allowed them to have a good understanding of their respective worldviews and domestic circumstances, and made it possible to deepen defense ties, advance our civil nuclear cooperation and achieve a breakthrough on climate change. ” He added, “It’s also an indication of how important President Obama thinks our relationship is with India, as the world’s largest democracy and an increasingly important partner. ” On Tuesday, White House officials said, the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and clean energy partnerships, security cooperation, and economic growth. Analysts said the leaders might announce a new defense logistics agreement, further progress on India’s efforts to phase out hydrofluorocarbons and perhaps a deal for Westinghouse Electric Corporation to build nuclear power plants in India in a fulfillment of a pact first struck in 2006. A shared interest in clean power and climate change is central to their personal bond, some analysts said. “These two guys get very little political traction at home for being climate champions, but they are anyway, and I think they respect each other for that,” said Andrew Light, a former senior adviser to the United States special envoy on climate change. Tavleen Singh, an Indian commentator and admirer of Mr. Modi, said the prime minister’s sanitation campaign and his efforts to improve the status of women would also endear him to Mr. Obama. Still, she said she doubted that the two men were truly affectionate. Zia Haq, an assistant editor at The Hindustan Times in India, was also skeptical. “I refuse to believe the two men could be very good personal friends deep down, because Modi is all things Obama can’t possibly be,” Mr. Haq wrote in an email. | 0fake |
On Hillary Clinton’s Rough Day, Republicans Rue Missed Chance - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — As the Republican strategist Brian Walsh watched the nonstop cable news coverage Tuesday from his K Street office, he thought he was seeing the stuff of his party’s dreams. A week after former President Bill Clinton lit a political firestorm by strolling onto Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch’s plane for a private conversation, the director of the F. B. I. announced that the bureau would not recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information. And then, just three hours later, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton emerged arm in arm from Air Force One in North Carolina for their first joint campaign rally. But this politically pregnant convergence of events was not met with a battalion of Republican law enforcement and national security officials flooding the television airwaves to raise questions about the inquiry and hammer Mrs. Clinton. Nor was there any video contrasting what the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, called Mrs. Clinton’s “extremely careless” handling of 110 classified emails with the former secretary of state’s shifting explanations over the last year about her use of a private email server. There were not even any talking points sent to leading Republican members of Congress offering guidance on the best lines of attack against Mrs. Clinton in the aftermath of what was a remarkably harsh assessment of her conduct. “Instead we’re relying on somebody who’s tweeting with exclamation points,” said Mr. Walsh, referring to Donald J. Trump’s initial response to Mr. Comey’s news conference. Mr. Trump’s improvisational response to the conclusion of an F. B. I. investigation against his opponent that had been months in the making illustrated the lingering deficiencies of his skeletal campaign and the lack of Republicans with foreign policy experience who are willing to speak on his behalf. For many in the party it also was a painful reminder of what could have been — how a different could have capitalized on one of the most difficult days Mrs. Clinton has faced as a candidate. For the Republican establishment, the months since Mr. Trump began closing in on the presidential nomination have been a season of dismay and frustration: Handed a historically weak Democratic opponent to run against, the party’s voters responded by nominating a candidate even more unpopular and toxic than Mrs. Clinton. But there have been few days during this cycle of disbelief in which the sense of regret has been as palpable for Republican strategists and policy makers as when Mr. Comey jolted the political world back to life after a long holiday weekend. “Imagine Jeb Bush looking disappointed and talking about the importance of following the rules and a society ruled by law with a government that is held accountable,” said Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a national security aide in George W. Bush’s administration who is now backing Mrs. Clinton. “This should be a really great moment for a Republican nominee. But there’s no way in the world Donald Trump could pull that off. ” Mr. Trump’s campaign did, in fact, issue a longer statement regarding Mrs. Clinton’s email use beyond his initial assessment of “very very unfair!” and he used his own rally Tuesday night in North Carolina to assail his Democratic rival. “We are talking about the safety of our people,” he told a crowd in Raleigh. “The laws are very explicit. Stupidity is not a reason that you’re going to be innocent. ” Yet for many in his own party, there was deep angst over the possibility that they could lose to a Democratic candidate who was just deemed by one of the country’s most highly respected law enforcement officials to have presided over a State Department whose lackadaisical security culture invited foreign hackers. “He’s making somebody who should be sitting in a jail cell look like the sane choice for president,” said John Noonan, a former Air Force officer who served as a national security aide to Mitt Romney in 2012 and in Mr. Bush’s campaign this year. “This should have been a putt. But Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And that’s what we’ve done. ” What was especially exasperating to so many in the party was that the turn of events over the last week was only the latest opportunity in a month for Mr. Trump to go on the offensive. The Islamic rampage in Orlando, Fla. and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union offered him prime political moments, but he unnecessarily inserted himself into each story and saw no improvement in his standing in the polls. “Trump overtakes news cycles at every turn,” complained Mr. Walsh. “My God, he was on his golf course saying what a good thing the pound’s collapse would be for his bottom line. ” (Some Republicans feared Mr. Trump was again frittering away an opportunity when, rather than focusing entirely on the F. B. I. probe, he used his speech on Tuesday night to offer praise for Saddam Hussein.) However, in a campaign year animated by a voter revolt against Washington and the perceived of an political class there may be no more of a gift than what Mr. Comey delivered to an outsider candidate like Mr. Trump, whose jeremiads against what he calls a “rigged” system have been central to his improbable rise. “This is an example of what voters are totally fed up with,” said Liesl Hickey, the former executive director of the House Republican campaign arm, alluding to the F. B. I. ’s decision to not recommend charges. But Ms. Hickey, pointing out that Mr. Trump refuses to release his income tax returns, noted that the candidate also bore his own baggage on the very argument he is making against Mrs. Clinton. “Americans also think the system is rigged for the top 1 percent, so they think the system could be rigged for him, too,” she said. Whether it is with his taxes, his pronouncements or his willingness to raise money and create a sophisticated organization, Mr. Trump has gleefully flouted convention. “He doesn’t think traditional campaigns matter as much anymore, that he can do this on social media,” said Jim Merrill, a New Republican strategist. “But the truth is, running a campaign still matters a great deal. And if we had nominated anyone else we’d be up on Hillary. But we’re down because we’ve got an incompetent candidate who has alienated large swaths of the electorate. ” For his part, Mr. Walsh was just flabbergasted that his party had a nominee whose war room often seems to begin and end with the candidate’s Twitter feed. “Why would he rush out a tweet as his primary response?” wondered Mr. Walsh. “He’s just demonstrating he is unable or unwilling to appear presidential at moments like this, when it’s required. ” | 0fake |
Stung By Clinton Allegations, Trump Claims He Used No Undocumented Workers in DC Hotel | By Hrafnkell Haraldsson on Thu, Oct 27th, 2016 at 7:56 am Trump used undocumented labor to build Trump Tower and workers told The Washington Post in 2015 they were working on his hotel illegally
So Donald Trump has responded to Hillary Clinton’s accusation that he used undocumented workers to build his new D.C. hotel, a 263-room luxury hotel just blocks from the White House. Trump claims he used no undocumented workers – and as we saw earlier , oh yeah, Hillary Clinton sleeps three days at a time.
Trump’s decision to attend the grand opening rather than campaign raised many eyebrows, not just in the Clinton camp. Republican strategist Steve Schmidt told MSNBC,
“He is not doing any of the normal activities that you’d be doing 13 days out in a presidential race for somebody who’s competitive. You don’t take a time-out to tend to your business interests.”
As Libby Nelson wrote at Vox , “Clinton is making her closing argument. Trump is making infomercials.”
All this seems to have stung the thin-skinned Trump, who previously set aside his campaign to open a golf course in Scotland. As CBS News’ Sopan Deb tweets , Trump’s defense was a little odd, to say the least: Trump's riff on his hotel is worth your time to read. Denies ever using undocumented immigrants and says Clinton sleeps for 3 days at a time pic.twitter.com/Rlsbebzk2Y
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) October 27, 2016
The Republican nominee protested to CNN’s Dana Bash , “For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting because Hillary Clinton does one stop, and then she goes home and sleeps.” It is literally impossible for Trump to hear criticism without responding by attacking somebody else.
Trump’s defense reveals a man who is overly sensitive to criticism: he “works all the time” while Clinton sleeps “for three days.” He says he took “an hour off” (it was a bit more than that) to open his new hotel while “she wants to sleep all the time.”
He says Clinton gives one speech and then sleeps for three days. In fact, Clinton made two “Get Out the Vote” stops in Florida yesterday; she makes an appearance with the president and first lady today in North Carolina and has two appearances scheduled in Iowa for the day after.
And Trump’s heated denial of using undocumented workers is unconvincing, considering his track record in that regard.
It is a fact, as Hillary Clinton said yesterday, that Donald Trump “once again” used undocumented labor to build a hotel. He used undocumented labor to build Trump Tower . And The Washington Post reports that “Trump’s new downtown D.C. hotel was built thanks to the efforts of a large workforce that included Hispanic construction workers, including some workers who say they are undocumented .” Said one worker in 2015, “The majority of us are Hispanics, many who came illegally.”
The old saw about the man who protests too much comes to mind, in reading Trump’s denial. This is a man who has a history of exploiting undocumented immigrants and according to the workers themselves, this remains true.
Nonsensical talk about his opponent sleeping for three days straight is pure deflection, and it won’t work. Trump already has his clothing lines made in China, Mexico, and elsewhere, and he has used undocumented labor even while railing against the loss of American jobs.
Trump is a hypocrite, and hissy fits and deflection are no answer to the allegations against him, and certainly no recommendation for the office of president. | 1real |
Russia confirms Putin-Trump talk on joint cyber unit | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia confirmed on Monday that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had discussed forming a joint Russian-U.S. group on cyber security, an idea that has provoked uproar in Washington, but said it was only a tentative proposal. Trump said on Twitter early on Sunday the two leaders discussed forming “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” when they met at the Hamburg G20 summit. The idea was greeted with incredulity by some senior Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted - and the U.S. president later in the day tweeted that he did not think it could happen. “The heads of state did talk about such a possibility,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters on Monday. “Nothing was promised to each other,” he added. “What is positive, they stated their readiness to work in this direction.” The conversation had been “about the possibility of forming such a group”, he said. “Whether it will be created or not, time will show.” Svetlana Lukash, a Russian official who was at the Hamburg summit, told a news conference earlier on Monday Putin and Trump’s discussion of cyber security had taken up 40 minutes of their meeting, which lasted more than two hours. “President Putin proposed creating a working group,” she said. “This does not mean it should start working immediately, virtually tomorrow.” She added: “The main thing is, this matter was discussed, the United States is ready to consider cooperation in this sphere, and then we will see. “Maybe this will be a working group, maybe this will be cooperation on the floor of the United Nations. But in any case, our two countries will need to discuss these questions. This is namely what the presidents agreed upon.” She said of the landmark talks between the two men in Hamburg: “Nobody, except the participants of that meeting, knows how that proposal was formulated and how President Trump reacted.” Some media reports may have prematurely assumed that the creation of a joint commission on cyber security was already decided, she said. “That was a proposal. Probably, he (Trump) is not ready yet for this specific initiative at this stage,” Lukash said. Trump’s administration has been dogged by investigations into allegations of Russian interference in last year’s U.S. election and ties with his campaign. Peskov also told reporters on Monday the Kremlin did not know the identity of the Russian lawyer who allegedly met Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s election campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, last year. The New York Times said on Sunday that Trump’s associates met with the Kremlin-linked lawyer after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The newspaper identified the lawyer as Natalia Veselnitskaya. It said the meeting had taken place in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Trump won the Republican nomination. “No, we don’t know who it is and, certainly, we cannot track down all movements of all Russian lawyers both within Russia and abroad,” Peskov said. | 0fake |
Closed Afghan-Pakistani Border Is Becoming ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ - The New York Times | KABUL, Afghanistan — Pakistan has kept its border crossings with Afghanistan sealed for more than two weeks, with thousands of Afghan visitors stranded in Pakistan and traders unable to move their vegetables and fruit across. After a suicide bombing at a shrine in Pakistan’s Sindh Province on Feb. 16, which killed more than 80 people, the Pakistani military shut its borders with Afghanistan, saying the terrorists behind the attack had sanctuaries in the country. It also carried out shelling into Afghanistan. Omar Zakhilwal, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, said Sunday that if the border did not open soon, his government would be forced to airlift its stranded citizens, which could be a new low in the relationship between the neighboring countries. Their border has long been a contentious issue. Ever since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, Afghan and Western officials have said that the Afghan insurgency’s leadership maintains havens in Pakistan, particularly in the city of Quetta. The free movement across the border has helped the militants avoid defeat in a war led by the United States. In recent years, the Pakistani authorities have said the leaders of the militant groups waging deadly attacks inside their territory are based across the border in Afghanistan. Mr. Zakhilwal, the Afghan ambassador, said some leaders of these attacks on Pakistan might be in Afghanistan, but they mostly operate in areas controlled by the Afghan Taliban. He said his government, along with the United coalition, had targeted Pakistani militants in Afghanistan, including the mastermind of a massacre of children in a Pakistani school in 2014. Imran Khan, an opposition leader in Pakistan, said on Saturday that the border closing was “building into a humanitarian crisis. ” He called on both governments to resolve the crisis so “those with valid travel documents and perishable goods” could cross. Afghan officials have protested the closing, saying that Pakistan has used the shrine attack as a pretext to pressure Afghanistan economically. Mr. Zakhilwal said Pakistan was making a “flawed connection” between the shrine attack and the border. The assault on the shrine was claimed by the Islamic State, whose regional chapter is largely made up of fighters from the Pakistani tribal areas. Afghan forces in the east have been fighting the group, which has also carried out deadly attacks inside Afghanistan, for nearly two years. If the reason for blocking the border is to stop the flow of terrorists into Pakistan, Mr. Zakhilwal said it made no sense to prevent the return of the thousands of Afghans stranded in Pakistan, many of whom had traveled there for medical reasons. The long border is porous, and Pakistan is focusing only on the formal crossing points. In Kabul, the toll of the border closing is evident in the markets, with the price of fruit and vegetables imported from Pakistan more than doubling. But the price for many other goods has been unaffected, because Afghanistan also imports from Iran and some Central Asian nations. Nasir Ahmad, a shopkeeper at Kabul’s vegetable market, said a crate of oranges that used to be $4 had increased to $12. A box of bananas, which used to be about $12, is now about $25. Khanjan Alokozay, the deputy chairman of the Afghan chamber of commerce, estimated that traders from both countries were losing about $4 million a day because of the border closing. Pakistani traders are bearing about 80 percent of those losses, because during the winter Pakistani exports of fruit and vegetables to Afghanistan increase. Mr. Alokozay said thousands of trucks on both sides of the border had remained stranded, and Afghan businessmen have been urged to find other routes to transport their goods. Since the closing, Afghan border officials said that Pakistan was allowing only funeral processions to cross over. Some of those stranded have resorted to paying smugglers and taking dangerous mountain passes to return home. “Pakistanis are not allowing anyone to cross the border, and they order their forces to shoot anyone who is trying to cross the border,” said Haji Iqbal, an Afghan who recently returned from Pakistan with the help of friends who asked Pakistani forces to let him cross through a mountain pass. “I walked for two hours. ” | 0fake |
JUDICIAL BIAS? LATINA SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Declares Her Shockingly Racist View On Ethnicity And Sex When Judging | I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn t lived that life Supreme Court Justice SotomayorAs the main stream media does a hit job on Donald Trump for expressing his view that the presiding judge in the Trump University case is biased against him because of Trump s views on immigration, we have a RACIST Latina Supreme Court Justice who s openly declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge makes a difference in their judging! So which is it? The left wants to have it both ways but they re being outed as total hypocrites! Unreal! Judge Sotomayor questioned whether achieving impartiality is possible in all, or even, in most, cases. She added, And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. AND THEY RE CALLING TRUMP A RACIST?WASHINGTON In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge may and will make a difference in our judging. In her speech, Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O Connor that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases. I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn t lived that life, said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.Her remarks, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, were not the only instance in which she has publicly described her view of judging in terms that could provoke sharp questioning in a confirmation hearing.This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a court of appeals is where policy is made. She then immediately adds: And I know I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I m not promoting it. I m not advocating it. I m you know. The video was of a panel discussion for law students interested in becoming clerks, and she was explaining the different experiences gained when working at district courts and appeals courts. Her remarks caught the eye of conservative bloggers who accused her of being a judicial activist, although Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University law school, argued that critics were reading far too much into those remarks.Republicans have signaled that they intend to put the eventual nominee under a microscope, and they say they were put on guard by Mr. Obama s statement that judges should have empathy, a word they suggest could be code for injecting liberal ideology into the law.Judge Sotomayor has given several speeches about the importance of diversity. But her 2001 remarks at Berkeley, which were published by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, went further, asserting that judges identities will affect legal outcomes. Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Her remarks came in the context of reflecting her own life experiences as a Hispanic female judge and on how the increasing diversity on the federal bench will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging. In making her argument, Judge Sotomayor sounded many cautionary notes. She said there was no uniform perspective that all women or members of a minority group have, and emphasized that she was not talking about any individual case.She also noted that the Supreme Court was uniformly white and male when it delivered historic rulings against racial and sexual discrimination. And she said she tried to question her own opinions, sympathies and prejudices, and aspired to impartiality.Still, Judge Sotomayor questioned whether achieving impartiality is possible in all, or even, in most, cases. She added, And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Read more: NYT | 1real |
U.S. creating 'sensational hype' over China's military modernization: ministry | BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has created sensational hype over China s military modernization, the defense ministry has said in reaction to a White House report branding China a competitor seeking to challenge U.S. power. U.S. President Donald Trump s administration on Monday laid out a national security strategy based on Trump s America First vision, singling out of China and Russia as revisionist powers seeking not only to challenge U.S. power but to erode its security and prosperity. China s foreign ministry said on Tuesday cooperation between China and the United States was the only correct choice. The spokesman for its defense ministry, Ren Guoqiang, said in a statement posted on the ministry website late on Wednesday that the U.S. strategy had without regard for the facts, created sensational hype over the modernization of China s defenses . Ren also said the strategy had called into question the intentions of China s military development plan and that it ran counter to peace worldwide and the development of China s relations with the United States. China s contribution to world peace was plain for all to see, he said. Attempts by any country or any document to distort the facts or cast aspersions will be in vain, Ren said. China s armed forces, the world s largest, are in the midst of an ambitious modernization program, which includes investment in technology and new equipment such as stealth fighters and aircraft carriers, as well as cuts to troop numbers. The tough U.S. national security strategy comes after Trump has sought to build strong relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump has called upon Xi to ensure China does more to help the United States rein in North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. administration cited China s growing military might and its efforts to build military bases on manmade islands in the contested South China Sea as evidence of Chinese attempts to alter the status quo. China says its expansion of islets in the South China Sea is for peaceful purposes only and that, as it has irrefutable sovereignty there, no other country has the right to question its actions. | 0fake |
A Toilet, but No Proper Plumbing: A Reality in 500,000 U.S. Homes - The New York Times | TYLER, Ala. — The hard clay soil in this rural Southern county has twice cursed Dorothy Rudolph. It is good for growing cotton and cucumbers, the crops she worked as a child and hated. And it is bad for burying things — in particular, septic tanks. So Ms. Rudolph, 64, did what many people around here do. She ran a plastic pipe from her toilet under her yard and into the woods behind her house. Paying to put in a septic tank would cost around $6, 000 — a little more than half of her family’s annual income. “It was a whole lot of money,” she said. “It still is. ” Here in Lowndes County, part of a strip of mostly poor, counties that cuts through the rural center of Alabama, less than half of the population is on a municipal sewer line. While that is not a hardship for more affluent communities — about one in five American homes are not on city sewer lines — the legacy of rural poverty has left its imprint here: Many people have failing septic tanks and are too poor to fix them. Others, like Ms. Rudolph, have nothing at all. That is not so uncommon. Nearly half a million households in the United States lack the basic dignity of hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, or a working flush toilet, according to the Census Bureau. The absence has implications for public health in the very population that is the most vulnerable. Crumbling infrastructure has been a theme of this country’s reinvigorated public conversation about race — for instance, a botched fix for old pipes in Flint, Mich. that contaminated the city’s drinking water with lead. But in poor, rural places like Lowndes County, there has never been much infrastructure to begin with. “We didn’t have anything — no running water, no inside bathrooms,” said John Jackson, a former mayor of White Hall, a town of about 800 in Lowndes that is more than 90 percent black and did not have running water until the early 1980s. “Those were things we were struggling for. ” There is no formal count of residents without proper plumbing in Lowndes, but Kevin White, an environmental engineering professor at the University of South Alabama, said that a survey that he did in a neighboring county years ago found that about 35 percent of homes had septic systems that were failing, with raw sewage on the ground. Another 15 percent had nothing. “The bottom line is, I can’t afford a septic system,” said Cheryl Ball, a former cook who had a heart attack several years ago and receives disability payments. She lives in a grassy field on which only three of seven homes have septic tanks. Most banks now require proof that a home has proper sewage disposal before lending, but Ms. Ball paid cash for her mobile home — $4, 000. This area, known as the Black Belt (so called more for its soil, than its demographics) is haunted by its history of white violence toward and a deep, biting poverty. Lowndes is one of the poorest counties in the country, and its rural population, whose trailers and small houses dot the lush green landscape, often cannot afford the thousands of dollars it costs to put in a tank. Municipalities, with low tax bases, cannot afford extensive sewer lines. Ms. Rudolph, a retired seamstress, and her husband, a carpenter, live in a tiny, white clapboard house that he built after he, his parents and his siblings fled their home on land owned by a white man who forbade the family to vote. She remembers, as a young girl in the 1950s, not having electricity. They obtained running water in the early 1990s, she said, and used an outhouse until the . So their white toilet with a fuzzy green cover was a marker of progress. A plastic pipe carries its contents outside and empties into a wooded area not far from the house. There is no visible pooling of sewage, but there are other problems. “The smell gets so bad,” said Ms. Rudolph, sitting on her porch guarding her chicken coop against a marauding fox. When it rains, she wages war with her toilet. One recent downpour brought its contents gurgling up to the rim. “I was sitting there looking at it and got me a plunger,” she said. “It took me some plunging to get it clear. I was scared it was going to come back and go on the floor. Horrible. ” She added, “There’s nothing we can do. ” The problem is prickly for the state. Parrish Pugh, an official with the Alabama Department of Public Health, agrees that money plays a part. “That’s where the rubber hits the road,” he said. But Alabama law forbids the use of “insanitary sewage collection,” and the responsibility for that rests squarely with the homeowner,” Mr. Pugh said. Resisting is not only illegal, but could have health consequences: Raw sewage can taint drinking water and cause health problems. “‘My parents had a pipe that ran into the woods, and that’s good enough for me,’” Mr. Pugh said, explaining a common argument. “But we didn’t know as much about disease back then. People are more educated nowadays. They are more concerned. ” The state health department begs, cajoles, and eventually cites people who have problems and do not fix them. In the early 2000s, the authorities even tried arresting people. That prompted a public outcry and the practice soon stopped, but one person spent a weekend in jail and others were left with criminal records. The department cited about 700 people in the 12 months that ended in March, often because someone complained. The clay soil makes the problem worse. “Rural wastewater is usually managed with a septic tank and a drain field, which slowly infiltrates the wastewater into the ground,” Professor White said. “Well, it won’t go into the ground here. Period. ” He added: “There are some options that may be available, but it’s going to cost thousands of dollars, and most people here can’t afford it. The answer, quite frankly, is not out there yet. ” Experts and advocates have tried to find one. Grants from the state and federal governments to study the problem have come and gone, as have academics wielding surveys. There was even talk of toilets. “It’s like we’re going in circles,” said Perman Hardy, a cook in Tyler who even did a urinalysis for a study of health effects. For years, her sewage backed up every time it rained. In December, she spent all the money she had saved for Christmas presents on a new septic tank. Some change is happening. The town of White Hall recently received funding to connect about 50 homes to sewer lines, the first in its history. Town officials are thrilled: City sewer lines are critical to attract businesses that would bring jobs. But the pace is glacial. Eli Seaborn, 73, a White Hall councilman, said progress would be slow, like the pace of civil rights gains, where legal discrimination is gone but lingers in other forms. Similar patience is required for sewage, he added. “Time is going to be the only thing that solves this problem,” he said. “It took more than 50 years for it to happen. But hopefully, it won’t take more than 50 years to fix it. ” | 0fake |
Opinion: Hillary Clinton, a mistake for 2016 - .com | Democrats seem poised to choose their next presidential nominee the way Republicans often choose theirs: according to the principle of "next in line."
Hillary Clinton came second in the nomination fight of 2008. If she were a Republican, that would make her a near-certainty to be nominated in 2016. Five of the past six Republican nominees had finished second in the previous round of primaries. (The sixth was George W. Bush, son of the most recent Republican president.)
Democrats, by contrast, prefer newcomers. Six of their eight nominees since 1972 had never sought national office before.
Obviously, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Democrats chose the next guy in line in 2000 -- Vice President Al Gore -- and they may well do so again. But speaking from across the aisle, it's just this one observer's opinion that Democrats would be poorly served by following the Republican example when President Obama's term ends.
Hillary Clinton is 14 years older than Barack Obama. A party has never nominated a leader that much older than his immediate predecessor. (The previous record-holder was James Buchanan, 13 years older than Franklin Pierce when the Democrats chose him in 1856. Runner-up: Dwight Eisenhower, 12 years older than his predecessor, Thomas Dewey.)
Parties have good reasons to avoid reaching back to politicians of prior generations. When they do, they bring forward not only the ideas of the past, but also the personalities and the quarrels of the past.
One particular quarrel that a Hillary Clinton nomination would bring forward is the quarrel over the ethical standards of the Clinton White House -- and, maybe even more, of the Clintons' post-White House careers. Relying on Hillary Clinton's annual financial disclosure reports, CNN reported last year that former President Bill Clinton had earned $89 million in speaking fees since leaving the White House in 2001. Many of these earnings came from foreign sources. In 2011 alone, the former president earned $6.1 million from 16 speeches in 11 foreign countries.
Is it an ethical problem for the husband of the person charged with the foreign affairs of the United States to earn so much foreign-sourced income? Let's rephrase that question: How much time do Democrats wish to spend arguing the ethics of Bill Clinton's foreign earnings over the 2016 political cycle?
Yet the biggest risk to Democrats from a Hillary Clinton nomination is not that it would be generationally backward-looking -- or that it would reopen embarrassing ethical disputes -- but that it would short-circuit the necessary work of party renewal.
After eight years in the White House, a party requires a self-appraisal and a debate over its way forward. Bill Clinton offered Democrats just such a debate in 1992 with his "New Democrat" ideas. Barack Obama offered another in 2008 with his careful but unmistakable criticism of Clinton-era domestic policies and Hillary Clinton's Iraq war vote. But if Hillary Clinton glides into the nomination in 2016 on the strength of money, name recognition, and a generalized feeling of "It's her turn," then Democrats will forgo this necessary renewal.
Here's what could happen instead in 2016:
One candidate could seek the Democratic nomination on a platform of keeping faith with the ideals of the pre-presidential Obama: closing Guantanamo, ending targeted killings, and so on.
Another Democrat could run to represent those Democrats who supported Bill Clinton back in the 1990s, and who worry that the Obama administration has drifted too far to the left: spending too much, ignoring budget deficits, getting into too many fights with business.
Yet another could run as a full-throated defender of the Obama legacy, updating the 1988 George H.W. Bush "stay the course" message.
This would be a real debate that would summon forth hard thinking about how Democrats might govern their country if returned for a third presidential term (as could very well happen, given the continuing political weakness of the GOP).
A Hillary Clinton campaign would want to shut down any such debate before it starts. It would want to inherit the Democratic nomination and then the presidency as an estate in reversion: a debt long owed, now collected. If successful, it would arrive in office without a platform and without much of a mandate. That's not a formula for an effective presidency -- or a healthy democracy. | 0fake |
U.N. war crimes court that prosecuted Milosevic closes doors | THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes court that prosecuted atrocities committed during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and put former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on trial, closed its doors on Thursday after two decades. Today it s common for the U.N. Security Council to call for perpetrators of the worst crimes be held responsible. .... Accountability has taken root in our collective conscience, said U.N. Secretary General Ant nio Guterres of the court s legacy at a ceremony in The Hague. When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was set up in 1993, the Balkan wars were still raging and few thought it stood much chance of success. But it went on through international co-operation to capture and try every one of the 161 suspects it indicted who didn t die first. It was the first serious attempt to hold war criminals responsible for their actions since the Nuremberg trials after World War Two. Now the idea that international courts or special tribunals will be set up to try war crimes after conflicts has become commonplace. The ICTY had begun to fade from popular consciousness outside of the Balkans until the conviction last month of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic of genocide for the massacre of thousands of unarmed men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995. Days later, Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak committed suicide in the courtroom by drinking a cyanide potion moments after his conviction and 20-year sentence were upheld. A low came in 2006 when Milosevic, whose trial had dragged on for years, died of a heart attack in his cell in 2006 before a verdict was reached in his case. Victims attended the closing ceremony, notably Munira Subasic, representing the Mothers of Srebrenica group who lobbied for justice for the more than 8,000 boys and men who were massacred by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995. Prominent figures included Bosnian Serb military leader Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years, and Ratko Mladic, convicted last month and sentenced to life. Both are appealing their convictions. The court s architects hoped that establishing what happened during the war and punishing its worst offenders would help reconcile Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. However, Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said while the court brought justice for some, it had not brought the communities together. Throughout the region war criminals are seen as heroes and victims are ignored , he said. At the bittersweet closing ceremony, Alfons Orie, the presiding judge in Mladic s case, performed part of Handel s oratio Solomon , singing the part of Solomon. | 0fake |
Should Christians Celebrate Halloween? | Whether or not Christians should celebrate Halloween has been a controversial topic for decades. Some view dressing up, eating candy and enjoying the festivities harmless and innocent, while others view it as an offense to their faith. Americans spend nearly $6.9 billion yearly making it the second largest commercial holiday in the country. As commercialized as the celebration has become, many of its roots are completely paganist. Is this a cause for Christians to avoid the entire celebration?
This is a time of year filled with debate, but not necessarily politics. Many Christians are convinced that Halloween is a satanic holiday while the rest of the world has found their sweet spot complete with costumes and candy. Children and adults have the opportunity to dress in accordance with their imagination, confirming from its haunted history to modern festivities, this holiday is a big deal. With decorations, candy, parties, and costumes, the average American spends up to $75 in the spirit of celebration.
Halloween is the holiday that links the seasons of fall and winter. Reportedly, it originated with one of the ancient Celtic festivals; an event where people would wear various costumes and light bonfires in hopes of warding off roaming ghosts. However, by the late 1800s, Americans shifted the theory of Halloween into a holiday centered on community and fun events. The focus, for many, has transitioned from witchcraft and ghosts to neighborhood celebratory events. With the evolving of the focal point, should Christians change their stance to celebrate the holiday?
Despite having at least partial roots from a Christian tradition, the relationship between Halloween and Christians has long been complicated. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther essentially started the Protestant Reformation in Wittenberg, Germany, when he nailed his 95 Theses to a door. Many of the early Christian groups that came to America rejected this holiday as pagan. The Protestant Reformation heavily influenced the Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, and Baptists causing the great majority to frown upon it. However, that did not prevent Halloween from finding its way to American shores.
In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III dedicated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs. The holiday became widely recognized as All Saints’ Day. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve, which later became Halloween. The word “hallow” originated from the Old English word for “holy” and “e’en” is an abbreviation of “evening.” As such, Halloween represented the night before All Saints Day.
Over time, Halloween advanced into a secular, community-based holiday branded by child-friendly activities that include costumes, neighborhood trick-or-treating, and more recently, trunk-or-treating. Along with a variety of pumpkin-flavored foods, Parties for both children and adults have become a very common way to celebrate the holiday. Some Christians still choose to lock themselves indoors with the lights off, but others have found freedom in their faith and are at liberty to decide when and how to participate.
In multiple countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to escort the winter season in with candy-coated gatherings and a wide range of costumes. Halloween is a celebration that allows people of all ages to participate. Nonetheless, the question remains, “Should Christians celebrate?”
Due to the efforts of community leaders and parents, Halloween has lost most of its illogical and religious undertones and is now more about imagination than spooky interpretation. There is nothing sinful about a Christian dressing up and participating in fun, non-threatening, celebrations. As a result, many Christians find no harm in dressing in costumes, attending parties and festivals as well as allowing their children to participate in school and local activities.
By Cherese Jackson (Virginia)
Sources:
History: Halloween
Kidsville News: Around the World – October 2015
Grace to You: Christians and Halloween
Photo Credits:
Top Image Courtesy of Billy Wilson – Flickr License
Inline Image (1) Courtesy of Richard Vignola – Flickr License
Inline Image (2) Courtesy of The Forum News – Flickr License
Featured Image Courtesy of John Nakamura – Flickr License christianity , halloween | 1real |
New Analysis Finds SIGNIFICANT Voting Anomalies In Wisconsin – Recount To Begin Today | It turns out that there are a few new reasons for Wisconsin to proceed with their recount, and they have nothing to do with Jill Stein s recount petition. Yes, she filed the petition and yes, she paid the fee, but the state needed to do this even without Stein s request. A new analysis in the Washington Post discovered significant voting anomalies in several wards.Trump now leads Hillary by just over 22,000 votes in Wisconsin. The WaPo analysis didn t look at precincts or counties they looked at wards, which are the smallest unit where votes are counted. This helped create a more detailed picture of what s happening there.Walter Mebane, an associate researcher at the Center for Political Studies and a professor of political science and statistics at the University of Michigan, looked at small wards that used optical scanning technology, and found that certain features in the vote tabulations reveal the possibility that these counts were tampered with.For instance, using a method called last digit diagnostics, Mebane found that the tabulations he looked at should have last digits that, when averaged together, show a mean of around 4.5. Lower could mean that the counts were manipulated.In the small wards he looked at where optical scanning tech was used, the last digit diagnostics reveal a mean average much lower than 4.5.Another statistic Mebane looked at was how often the last digit of a vote tabulation was zero, or five. If there are no problems, then the mean average of that variable should be around 0.2. Larger could mean someone was sloppy, and smaller could mean votes were manipulated.In these small wards, that number was significantly smaller than .2 for Hillary, meaning that the vote counts show a last digit of zero or five far less often than they should.He also found evidence of something called signaling in the tabulations, which is when fraudsters leave a type of trail that more or less claims credit for the fraud. Mebane points out that this is actually a fairly common tactic amongst fraudsters in Russia.Finally, a simple test revealed something called multimodality, which could show that someone was receiving fraudulent votes. These small wards exhibited that anomaly, too.None of this is absolute proof of election fraud or vote fraud in Wisconsin, and Mebane is careful to note that. However, it gives credence to the need for a recount, whatever Jill Stein s motivations are. If nothing else, conducting a thorough recount will lend further legitimacy to our democratic process or concretely reveal problems that need to be fixed. It might also serve to weaken Trump s efforts to undermine our democracy by repeatedly crying FRAUD!! FRAUD EVERYWHERE!! The recount begins today.Featured image by Darren Hauck via Getty Images | 1real |
Trump considers plan to replace Tillerson with CIA chief: U.S. officials | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is considering a plan to oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose relationship has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other differences, senior administration officials said on Thursday. Tillerson would be replaced within weeks by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist and foreign policy hard-liner, under a White House plan to carry out the most significant staff shake-up so far of the Trump administration. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress, would be tapped to replace Pompeo at the Central Intelligence Agency, the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was not immediately clear whether Trump had given final approval to the reshuffle, but one of the officials said the president asked for the plan to be put together. Tillerson’s long-rumored departure would end a troubled tenure for the former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive, who has been increasingly at odds with Trump over issues such as North Korea and under fire for planned cuts at the State Department. Tillerson was reported in October to have privately called Trump a “moron,” something the secretary of state sought to dismiss. That followed a tweet by Trump that Tillerson should not waste his time by seeking negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear and missile program, widely seen as a sign of the secretary of state being marginalized. Trump has soured on Tillerson mostly because of the “moron” report, his less confrontational approach on North Korea and differences over the Qatar crisis, one senior U.S. official said. His slow approach to filling diplomatic openings at the State Department is also a factor, another official said. Trump asked John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to develop the transition strategy, and it has been discussed with other officials, one administration source said. Under the plan, which has been in the works for weeks and was first reported by the New York Times, the reshuffle would happen around the end of the year or shortly afterward, the official said. Asked whether he wanted Tillerson to remain in his job, Trump sidestepped the question, telling reporters at the White House: “He’s here. Rex is here.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Kelly told Tillerson’s chief of staff on Thursday the reports on Tillerson being replaced were not true. Nauert added that Tillerson “serves at the pleasure of the president.” Asked about Tillerson, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the secretary of state remained in his post. “When the president loses confidence in someone, they will no longer serve here,” she said. Pompeo, a former congressman, has moved to the forefront as he has gained Trump’s trust on national security matters. Tillerson, 65, has spent much of his tenure trying to smooth the rough edges of Trump’s unilateralist “America First” foreign policy, with limited success. On several occasions, the president publicly undercut his diplomatic initiatives. A source familiar with Tillerson’s thinking said the secretary of state’s original plan when he took the job was to leave in February. If carried out, the staff changes would be the latest in a string of firings or resignations in the Trump administration including the departures of the chief of staff, national security adviser and FBI director. Pompeo, 53, has taken tough foreign policy stands, especially on Iran, and talked about how his agency is becoming more aggressive and how he has been focusing on deploying more CIA officers overseas. He has offered effusive praise for Trump despite the president’s criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies, some of which concluded that Russia conducted an influence campaign to boost Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Tillerson has at times put distance between himself and Trump’s positions. At a private dinner of foreign policy veterans last month, a senior White House official criticized Tillerson for failing to support the president’s agenda, according to a person familiar with the matter. Tillerson joined Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in pressing Trump not to pull the United States out of an agreement with Iran and world powers over Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Tillerson has taken a more hawkish view than Trump on Russia and tried to mediate a dispute after four Arab nations launched a boycott of Qatar. In September in Beijing, Tillerson said Washington was probing North Korea to see whether it was interested in dialogue, and had multiple direct channels of communication with Pyongyang. The next day, Trump appeared to dismiss those efforts in a tweet, telling Tillerson he was “wasting his time.” Tensions have also run high between Tillerson and veteran diplomats who oppose his proposed staff and budget cuts. | 0fake |
Lest We Forget: ‘Independent’ Mueller is Part of Establishment That Helped Sell Iraq War | 21st Century Wire says While the mainstream press can t wait to find out (or get illegally leaked Grand Jury details) about the next target of Russian Collusion investigator and special counsel Robert Mueller, lest we forget that back in February 2003 it was Mueller who helped W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the neocon establishment sell the Iraq War.In May of this year, just days after the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Director Mueller was appointed special counsel to the investigation. The reception was conspicuously enthusiastic and praised across all mainstream media outlets as well as inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway.This cogent video analysis by TYT Politics demonstrates that things may not be what they seem. In fact, as the evidence is presented here, far from it: Recent history, however, suggests that whenever the political media class appears united in praise for anything .there s reason for concern. WATCH: READ MORE NEOCON NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Neocon FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Donald Trump Assails ‘Rigged’ Delegate System, Saying He Chooses Not to Exploit It - The New York Times | Join us for New York primary live updates. Insisting that the delegate selection process is “corrupt and crooked,” Donald J. Trump offered a vivid example on Sunday to prove his point. Imagine being wooed by Mr. Trump. “Look, nobody has better toys than I do,” he told reporters at a hotel on Staten Island, where he pressed his case that the system was rigged against him. “I can put them in the best planes and bring them to the best resorts anywhere in the world. ” But Mr. Trump said that was unseemly. “You’re basically buying these people,” he added. “You’re basically saying, ‘Delegate, listen, we’re going to send you to on a Boeing 757, you’re going to use the spa, you’re going to this, you’re going to that, we want your vote.’ That’s a corrupt system. ” Mr. Trump’s comments were the latest salvo in an escalating war against the Republican National Committee over how delegates were being selected in the presidential race. On Sunday, two days before New York’s primaries, Mr. Trump was the only Republican presidential candidate to campaign in the state, where polls showed him with a wide lead. During his visit to Staten Island, a stronghold of his support, he accepted an award from the New York Veteran Police Association and spoke at a party brunch. At a rally in Poughkeepsie, he berated party officials once again. Still, speaking to reporters on Staten Island, Mr. Trump said he hoped that the July convention “doesn’t involve violence. ” “And I don’t think it will,” he said. “But I will say this: It’s a rigged system. It’s a crooked system. It’s 100 percent crooked. ” On the Democratic side, where the primary is expected to be closer, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders spent the day trying to drum up support. Polls have shown Mrs. Clinton with an edge over Mr. Sanders, but Mr. Sanders is hoping for an unexpectedly strong performance that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton on her adopted turf. Both candidates were knocked off balance this weekend when questioned about an issue with particular relevance in New York: a bill that would allow foreign governments to be held responsible in American courts for having a role in terrorist attacks, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The New York Times reported on Friday that Saudi Arabia had told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it would sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passed the bill. The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, The Times reported. In television interviews broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton said they needed more information to say where they stood on the bill. But after Mrs. Clinton’s interview aired, her campaign released a statement breaking with the Obama administration. The statement said Mrs. Clinton supported efforts “to secure the ability of families and other victims of terrorist acts to hold accountable those responsible. ” Later in the day, Mr. Sanders’s campaign also issued a statement in support of the legislation. Mrs. Clinton made several stops in New York on Sunday. In Mount Vernon, she spoke at a Baptist church, saying she was the candidate most willing to take stands in favor of gun control, while in Upper Manhattan she danced at a block party in Washington Heights. She also held a rally on Staten Island. At a block party in the section of Brooklyn, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged New Yorkers to help turn out votes for her, and Mrs. Clinton greeted him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Anybody see the debate?” she asked, addressing the crowd from the bed of a Ford pickup truck and referring to the Democratic debate on Thursday in Brooklyn. “We talked about the greed and recklessness of Wall Street. I take a back seat to no one in taking them on. ” After hosting packed rallies around the state, Mr. Sanders turned his attention on Sunday to courting black voters in New York City, visiting a predominantly black church in Harlem and a Brownsville housing project. Mr. Sanders also had a rally in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which his campaign said drew more than 28, 000 people, the largest crowd of his presidential bid. In Brownsville, Mr. Sanders toured the Howard Houses along with some local elected officials, and his campaign later released a plan for affordable housing. “This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world,” Mr. Sanders said. “People should not be forced to live in dilapidated housing. ” As Mr. Sanders walked across the complex, several residents happily shouted at him. But others pointedly criticized him for using the apartments for what they viewed as a photo opportunity. Anthony Portis, 34, a construction worker, called the senator’s visit “a political stunt to gain all the black votes in the neighborhood. ” “This area always feels like we are left out,” he said. Mr. Sanders said that he understood that some would be apprehensive about his visit but that he wanted to call attention to the issues faced by people in housing projects. “Believe me, I can understand the cynicism,” he said. “But my understanding is that not too many presidential candidates have come to Brownsville housing projects. ” | 0fake |
Biden rues 'damaging' tone against Mexico in U.S. presidential race | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday said he felt “almost obliged” to say sorry for verbal attacks on Mexico in the U.S. presidential campaign, in which Republican front-runner Donald Trump has labeled Mexican migrants rapists and drug runners. Speaking alongside Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto during a visit to Mexico City, Biden never mentioned Trump, who nonetheless loomed large over the proceedings. “There’s been a lot of damaging and incredibly inaccurate rhetoric, and I would argue, I feel almost obliged to apologize for some of what my political colleagues have said ... about Mexico, about the Mexican people,” said Biden, a Democrat. Property mogul Trump, who has built up a big early lead in the race to become Republican nominee, has vowed to make Mexico pay for a wall to seal off the United States from its southern neighbor, prompting widespread criticism in both countries. “I just want you to know, Mr. President, that the most heated rhetoric you’ve heard from some of the competitors for the nomination for president, is not who we are as the American people .... It’s the exact opposite,” Biden added. Without naming Trump, Pena Nieto also weighed in, saying “building walls is just isolating oneself.” The 2016 U.S. presidential election is on Nov. 8. At an event earlier on Thursday, Biden had expressed concern about what the election race said about views held in the United States, calling some of the Republican campaign language “dangerous, damaging and incredibly ill-advised.” “The message that is coming out of the United States as a consequence of the presidential campaign, about American attitudes toward Mexicans and Mexico generally, (and) the entire hemisphere and our place in the world, is disturbing,” he said. Trump, 69, has vowed to deport the 11 million migrants living illegally in the United States, a position shared by his younger Republican rival, the Texas Senator Ted Cruz. For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, "Tales from the Trail" (here). (Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein; Editing by Richard Chang) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0fake |
HERE’S HOW HILLARY’S VP PICK Has Just Proven He’s An Anti-American Job Destroyer | Hillary s VP pick is proving himself to be a anti-American job destroyer in a couple different ways. He s willing to legalize millions of illegals and he sided with Wall Street in a bid to bring in cheap foreign labor to replace American workers. What a guy...PHILADELPHIA Sen. Tim Kaine, who told Telemundo in Spanish that he and Hillary Clinton would push legalize 12 million illegals in their first 100 days in the White House, is also a proponent of bringing up to 1.8 million more foreign workers sought by U.S. outsourcing companies.Kaine, who on Wednesday is expected to win the nomination as the Democratic vice presidential candidate here, was one of several co-sponsors of S. 169, the so-called I-Squared Act, that would have boosted visas for high-tech workers from 65,000 to 300,000 a year.Because the H-1B employment visas last six years, that bill and a similar one currently under consideration in the Senate could bring in 1.8 million new workers.The visas have become controversial because many big firms who apply for the visas are replacing higher-wage American workers with cheaper foreign help.Read more: WE | 1real |
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Set for Clash on Gun Control - The New York Times | If more people were armed, Donald J. Trump says at rallies, mass shootings like those in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. would be less deadly. If you have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, he wants to make it valid in all 50 states, as simple as a driver’s license. And Mr. Trump himself has a permit to carry a concealed handgun, which he is not shy about mentioning. “Somebody attacks me, oh, they’re gonna be shocked,” he warned last year. Mr. Trump, who promises to “totally protect” the Second Amendment, is scheduled to speak on Friday at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association, on the cusp of a general election in which gun issues are expected to be more prominent than in recent presidential races. His address should signal how far he is likely to go in pressing gun rights to energize the Republican base in the fall campaign. Whereas President Obama gun control in both his national runs, Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is signaling a greater appetite to clash with Mr. Trump on the issue. In a Twitter message last week, Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, would force schools “to allow guns in classrooms on his first day in office. ” “This issue is at a tipping point,” said Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, citing Mrs. Clinton’s politically effective framing of gun issues that put Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the defensive in the Democratic primary campaign. “You’re going to hear about it as differentiator for the first time in decades” in the general election, Mr. Gross said. Mrs. Clinton’s appearances in black churches, where she cited the grim statistics of gun violence and surrounded herself with families of victims, helped her win crucial voters. She relentlessly criticized Mr. Sanders for his votes against gun control in the Senate. On the other hand, Mrs. Clinton avoided speaking about gun control in rural white regions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, whose voters will be desperately fought for by any Democratic nominee against Mr. Trump. A disparaging comment by Mr. Obama in 2008, who said that these voters cling to guns and religion, did much damage. As Mrs. Clinton turns to the general election, she plans to highlight the issue in swing districts like Northern Virginia and the Philadelphia suburbs, a campaign official said, where changing demographics are tipping support for gun control, especially among women. Mr. Trump’s naming of 11 potential Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed no coincidence: On the eve of the N. R. A. ’s meeting, the group’s concern for the court’s conservative tilt is likely to outweigh any hesitations about Mr. Trump’s reversal from earlier liberal positions on gun control. A statement on gun rights was one of the first detailed policy papers Mr. Trump issued last year after announcing his candidacy. He accused Mrs. Clinton this month of seeking to “abolish the Second Amendment. ” And just as he argues that casualties from the terrorist attacks in Paris last year would have been lower if civilians had been armed, he has proposed abolishing zones at military bases and at schools. “I will get rid of zones on schools, and — you have to — and on military bases,” Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail in January. “My first day, it gets signed, O. K.? My first day. There’s no more zones. ” A federal law from the 1990s established school zones. It could not be reversed by executive order, as Mr. Trump seems to imply. (His campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his gun policies.) “Trump would not be able to eliminate zones by executive order,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an expert on the Second Amendment. “That law can only be repealed by Congress. ” Mr. Trump opposes almost all recent actions aimed at reducing gun violence proposed by Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress, who have sought gun regulations after horrific shootings in recent years. Each has failed in the face of Republican opposition. The measures included expanding background checks to people buying firearms at gun shows and online limiting the capacity of magazines and banning assault weapons. “Gun and magazine bans are a total failure,” Mr. Trump wrote in his position paper. “The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own. ” Those positions represent a reversal from where he stood about 15 years ago when he first contemplated a run for president. In a 2000 book, Mr. Trump supported a ban on assault weapons and a “slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. ” He also criticized the power of the gun lobby. “The Republicans walk the N. R. A. line and refuse even limited restrictions,” he wrote. Bob Barr, an N. R. A. board member, said that despite Mr. Trump’s inconsistencies, he was preferable to Mrs. Clinton, who has said that a 2008 Supreme Court ruling overturning a handgun ban in Washington was wrongly decided. “We’re all very familiar with the fact Mr. Trump does change his positions over time, sometimes over a very short period of time,” said Mr. Barr, a former Georgia congressman. “The most important question in my mind is would he be better than Hillary Clinton, and the answer is absolutely yes. ” In polls, a majority of voters align with Democrats’ positions on gun control, though political strategists often say that only opponents care passionately enough about the issue to guide their vote. A New York News poll in January found that 57 percent of respondents wanted stricter laws governing gun sales, and 88 percent favored background checks for all purchases. Mr. Trump goes against that grain. “What we don’t need to do is expand a broken system,” he wrote in his policy paper. One area in which Mr. Trump does part ways with gun rights activists is on preventing people on the government’s terrorist watch list from buying weapons. “If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it’s an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely,” he said in an interview with ABC News last year. Senate Democrats pushed for such a bill, which many of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals opposed. As a lifelong resident of New York City, which has some of the strictest gun laws on the books, Mr. Trump is an unlikely supporter of gun rights in a party that usually aligns with the cause because of libertarianism or roots in rural hunting. In addition to Mr. Trump’s permit to carry a handgun, his two sons are hunters. Photographs of the two men from a hunting trip in Africa resurfaced last year, stirring criticism from animal rights activists for their poses with exotic animal conquests, including an elephant, a crocodile and a leopard. At the N. R. A. convention a year ago, Mr. Trump brought out his sons, Eric and Donald Jr. “These are our people,” Donald Trump Jr. said. “These are things we do on the weekends, in our free time. ” | 0fake |
Cruz Supporter Blasts Trump’s Wife For Being Foreign, Makes Sexist Attack (VIDEO) | Ted Cruz s presidential campaign is gaining a reputation of going into the gutter during the Republican primary so far, and it appears that his supporters making media appearances are going there as well.Appearing on Fox Business, Cruz booster Andrea McWilliams argued that especially in light of the recent death of First Lady Nancy Reagan, Republican primary voters should consider the potential first ladies in the field, and went on to attack Donald Trump s wife, Melania. If Donald trump is elected, Mrs. Trump will be the first first lady that has ever posed nude; the first first lady that s the third wife [of the president]; and the first foreign-born first lady in this century. She said, by contrast, Cruz s wife Heidi would be the first pro-life first lady. Taken aback by the claim, host Neil Cavuto pressed McWilliams to expound on her attack.Asked by Cavuto what difference any of it made, McWilliams said it was critically important. You ve been covering Nancy Reagan, look at what an influencer she was to her husband. I think posing nude speaks to character, she said.It s also worth noting that McWilliams seemed to be concerned that Melania Trump is foreign born. She is originally from Slovenia. She married Trump in 2005, and is his third wife.When she was dating Trump she was still a model, and posed in a nude photo shoot for GQ magazine inside and on Trump s private jet.It s interesting for a Cruz supporter to go this route, as his campaign has been the closest associated with risqu content so far. A few weeks ago his campaign released an ad featuring an adult film star, and when it was revealed the panicked campaign pulled the ad. The woman in question there recently announced on CNN that she would be backing Donald Trump.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
JAPANESE SCHOOLS DON’T EMPLOY JANITORS…Why Americans Should Demand Our Schools Adopt The Same Policy [VIDEO] | Watch NPR employee and Afghanistan refugee (who was eventually arrested) join others as they block our newly appointed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos from entering a school in DC on her first day on the job:Back in 2011, Newt Gingrich was running for president, and he proposed a radical idea to help schools cut costs: Fire the janitors and pay students to do the cleaning.Needless to say, the idea to turn students into moonlighting janitors had about as much support as Gingrich s presidential campaign.But ask Kim De Costa and she ll say there isn t anything radical about asking students to clean up after themselves. At her school, there are no janitors. Instead, students in grades 6-12 meet in teams once or twice a week to clean assigned areas.De Costa is the executive director of the Armadillo Technical Institute. It s a public charter school in Phoenix, Ore., a few miles from the California border.For 30 minutes after lunch, students sweep, mop, take out the trash and even clean the bathrooms but responsibilities rotate so no one is stuck scrubbing toilets more than two or three times a year.De Costa says it s easy to encourage students to respect their environment when they re the ones responsible for preserving it. We really wanted a school where the students took ownership and made it their own, says De Costa, who helped found ATI in 1999.The school still has maintenance staff for the difficult or dangerous work. But for the most part, students at ATI handle the daily upkeep. And with a little help from peer pressure, the school stays clean.Eden Cox, a 10th-grader, says that recently she had to confront a classmate after he left a mess behind. I got on to him and said, Can you please throw your trash away so I don t have to, Cox recalls. After all, it s our school, she says, with an emphasis on our. Places like ATI that build cleanup into the curriculum are rare in the United States.But in Japan, there s a long tradition of students cleaning their own schools.There, school is not just for learning from a book, says Michael Auslin a former English teacher in Japan. It s about learning how to become a member of society and taking responsibility for oneself, says Auslin, who is now a resident scholar and director of Japan studies at the American Enterprise Institute.To make cleaning easier, Japanese students put on slippers before entering the classroom to prevent dirt from being dragged into the room.Many Hands Make Light WorkAt Brentwood Academy outside Nashville, Tenn., keeping the school spick-and-span is just part of the daily routine for students.Each day before P.E., students at the private prep school report for 10 minutes of clean-up duty in their assigned areas.Susan Shafer, the school s director of communications, considers clean-up an additional component of the school s mission of educating the whole person. We re trying to train them for life, says Shafer. They re all going to go to college. No one is going to clean their dorm room for them. Maddie Jarrard, an 11th-grader, is responsible for dusting a classroom every day. She says even after sports games, Brentwood players are expected to stay behind to pick up any trash left in the stands. They re not only trying to keep the place clean, says Jarrard, referring to Brentwood s staff. But they re also trying to build character in each student. While some parents might balk at the idea of a school taking time away from class to make students push a broom, educators at both ATI and Brentwood both say that parents have shown overwhelming support. NPR | 1real |
Venezuela's former ambassador to U.N. leaves the United States: source | HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela s former ambassador to the United Nations, Rafael Ramirez, has left the United States after being forced to resign by President Nicolas Maduro s government, according to a source with knowledge of his travel plan. Ramirez, who for more than a decade ran OPEC member Venezuela s massive oil industry, said earlier on Tuesday he was removed because of his opinions. | 0fake |
Failed GOP Candidates Remembered In Hilarious Mocking Eulogies (VIDEO) | Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee, it s time to remember all those other candidates who tried so hard to beat him in the race to the White House. After all, how can we forget all the missteps, gaffes, weirdness, and sheer idiocies of such candidates as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina?There s a video making the rounds on Twitter that does just that, and eulogizes three of these failed candidates as though they re dead (and the GOP itself might as well be dead at this point anyway). Appropriately titled, A Eulogy for the GOP, people make short speeches about each of these candidates.Once past the man who actually says Jeb Bush was qualified to be president, there are fake tears, with journalist and comedienne Francesca Fiorentini saying: Dearly beloved, we re gathered here today to commemorate the candidates that are no longer with us. One man, speaking to an amusing, circus-y rendition of Chopin s Funeral March, remembers Jeb this way: Jeb, we hardly knew ye. It s too bad that your policies couldn t find their way out of the Republican morass. Indeed, it was like Jeb and his policies were invisible sometimes, although many felt that he would win the nomination early on. His best performances often came during debates, when he d get into out-and-out fights with Donald Trump over virtually everything under the sun. He also had a bad habit of defending his brother s actions in Iraq, memorably saying, As it relates to my brother, there s one thing I know for sure: He kept us safe. Moving on to Marco Rubio, Fiorentini herself says: He was called so many things: Young, charming, Lil Marco.' That last nickname is, of course, a reference to Trump s penchant for name-calling. Then, a man speaking Spanish remembers Rubio this way: Marco, why aren t you a normal boy? Another said that his involvement in the Gang of Eight immigration bill killed him as a candidate, to which Fiorentini replies: Some people die of gang violence. He died of Gang of Eight violence. The makers of this video saved the absolute best for last, of course, which is Ben Carson. On our dear Dr. Carson, one of the speakers says: He would gently rock me to sleep with his monotone voice. Carson was especially well known for seemingly being asleep half the time. If we saw his eyes open wide, it was surprising, and likely because he was surprised himself. His voice is soft, his speech is slow, and it really can be hard to stay awake while he s talking. Imagine him giving a State of the Union address!To see the whole video, especially the spectacular ending after Carson s eulogy, watch below:Take a moment to say your g byes to these GOP candidates. ? https://t.co/6O70bl9zV8 AJ+ (@ajplus) May 7, 2016 Featured image via screen capture from embedded video | 1real |
Scenes From Hurricane Matthew’s Capricious Path - The New York Times | It was first noticed as a bit of meteorological arcana. An alert from the National Hurricane Center at 2 p. m. on Sept. 22 noted that a tropical wave had been detected moving off the west coast of Africa but gave it little likelihood of developing into a major storm. Still, develop it did, becoming a textbook example of how storms follow no textbook. It then mushroomed into the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic since Hurricane Felix in 2007, killing, by some estimates, more than 800 people in Haiti, slamming into the Bahamas and then skirting a razor’s edge that, had it been a few miles south and west, could have caused catastrophic damage in Florida. By Saturday, it was barely a hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour, but it still had the potential to bring heavy rain and flooding to the Carolinas. Dieulifaite Derlus, Maria Ageeb, Ed Kelley and Todd Neville had nothing in common — until the storm hit, leaving behind stories of disaster and disaster narrowly averted. Here are some of them. His family safe, Mr. Derlus carefully retraced his steps atop the back wall behind his home on Tuesday, making one final trip to save a few valuables. But the wind was too strong, knocking him off the ledge and into the rush of muddy water below. Before he could get up, the wall fell, too, unable to withstand the . p. h. gusts. It toppled right on top of him. Neighbors spotted Mr. Derlus, 62, and carried him, semiconscious, from hospital to hospital. Each one turned him away. There were no doctors to help. As he approached the third hospital, he died in the neighbors’ arms. “He was the pillar of our family,” said Maude Levius, his wife, holed up with their five children in the one room of the house that was not destroyed. They don’t know where they will bury him, or how they will pay for it. Their furniture, clothes and other possessions were washed away in the storm. “We have no idea what we’re going to do now,” Ms. Levius, 56, said. Mr. Derlus was the family’s sole bread winner, his job as a driver for a government agency providing for all seven of them. “I don’t know how God will provide for us. ” When the shingles started popping off the roof and she realized she could not make it to the main house, Ms. Ageeb thought she knew where she would be safe — in the bathroom of the apartment where she lived behind the house where she and her three brothers had grown up. Ms. Ageeb, 34, a lawyer, recalled what happened next on Thursday around 11 a. m. as the peak of the storm’s fury was hitting. “Suddenly, half of the ceiling just lifted up and blew right off,” she said. “Luckily, I had already packed my passport and valuables in a backpack, just in case. All I had to do was grab it and go. ” She fought her way down the external stairs in the middle of winds nearing 140 m. p. h. and was sure at one point that she would be blown away. “The wind started pushing me from side to side,” she said. “It almost pulled my glasses off my face and I stumbled, trying to grab hold of them, because without them, I’m blind. I made it to the bottom, and my brothers helped me. ” From their house, they watched as the other half of the roof was blown away and everything she owned was exposed to the storm. Ms. Ageeb’s home is one of many that were badly damaged in the area. Homes, shops and service stations lost roofs and windows, sea walls collapsed and several areas were severe flooded. There has been no official report of the extent of the damage. Ms. Ageeb captured the aftermath on a video. “I can’t stop shaking,’’ she said. “I’m still a nervous wreck. I just want this to stop so we can just get on with cleaning up and trying to see what we can salvage. ” “Our country, this island, is going to need a lot of help,” Ms. Ageeb added. “We’ve always helped all the other islands, and I think this time now we’re definitely going to need help. I don’t know from who or from where, but we’re definitely going to need help. ” The authorities in Volusia County were urging people to evacuate from their beachfront communities. The storm was lurking, threatening, frightening. But for a time, Mr. Kelley, the mayor of Ormond Beach, had no plans to leave. “Originally, we weren’t going to board it up,” Mr. Kelley said of his home, which is a few miles inland and not far from Daytona Beach, the typically stock car racing hub. “We just thought we’d take a chance. ” But Mr. Kelley ultimately had a realization, pushed along by the demands of his children: Maybe, as a local government official, he should follow the recommendations of a local government. “Why are we telling people to leave? Because it’s dangerous,” Mr. Kelley said. “When did you decide? When you start thinking: ‘Well, we’re telling everybody else to leave. Why am I here? ’” So, he concluded, “We actually heeded the advice that was given by us and others. ” By the time Mr. Kelley left the city on Thursday, he said that he had also recognized that the storm might leave him out of reach at a perilous moment for Ormond Beach, a city of about 41, 000 where the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller used to spend winters. “I don’t know what I was going to do staying there because we knew, absolutely, that we were going to lose power,” Mr. Kelley said in an interview from Gainesville, where he had taken refuge and, by Friday afternoon, acknowledged that an evacuation had been a wise choice. “The preparations were done,” he said. “There was no decision that I would have had to make that couldn’t have been from here. ” Mr. Neville, an accountant in St. Augustine, watched the damage unfold. As water rushed into his city, he glimpsed a partly submerged white sport utility vehicle. He listened as the palm trees twisted and as the rain pounded a roof. But Mr. Neville was nowhere near St. Augustine. Instead, from a haven on the other side of the state, he used his cellphone to watch the ravaging of a city in real time. It is one way technology is taking at least some of the uncertainty out of disastrous storms. You cannot control the weather, but you can see its damage even when you’re elsewhere. Mr. Neville’s ability to keep watch on St. Augustine was born of gadgetry and fraternity: The images that poured onto his cellphone often came from surveillance cameras that he and other members of his regular Friday morning breakfast group at Georgie’s Diner had installed at their homes and offices. On the Friday morning when Hurricane Matthew passed about 30 miles from St. Augustine, Mr. Neville was safe and dry near Tampa. The updates still flowed. There was the panning video from a jeweler that showed nature’s disconcerting powers, and an image from a friend named Chris that showed the floodwaters rising around the pumps of a Shell gas station that shares a parking lot with Georgie’s. Yet Mr. Neville said he knew the destruction could have been far worse in a city that was the capital of Florida before it was a state. It would have been worse, Mr. Neville knew, had some forecasts held and the storm edged any closer to land. “I remember looking at the 5 a. m. update and thinking, ‘Thank goodness it’s 35 miles offshore,’” Mr. Neville said. “Until that 5 a. m. update, for the last three days, we’ve had the bull’ on us. ” St. Augustine is a city accustomed to storms and floodwaters: St. Johns County, of which St. Augustine is the seat, notes on its website that residents are reminded annually “of the vulnerability of our coastal community. ” But Hurricane Matthew’s timing was especially worrisome. “It hit St. Augustine right at high tide,” Mr. Neville said. “During a high tide, we’ll get minor flooding just from that. And then you throw in a storm surge, and it’s unbelievable. ” But technology has its limits. As the storm reached peak intensity on Friday, the power went out and the battery backups blinked off. As night fell across Florida on Friday, Mr. Neville’s surveillance camera had not switched on again. | 0fake |
Why You Should Drink Carrot Juice Daily? How to Make Your Own? | 2 cups carrots, roughly chopped 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice 1 tsp fresh ginger, peeled 3⁄4 cup ice cubes
Directions:
Add all ingredients and blend it.
Enjoy. Health Benefits of Drinking Carrot Juice Prevents Cancer
Eating antioxidant-rich foods helps in fighting against these free radicals and thereby preventing the possibilities of the development of cancerous cells. Studies reveal that carrots juice is great sources of Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin B, which collectively help in the fight against free radicals. Protects Brain Health
Carrots and carrot juice benefits brain health by helping to prevent against Alzheimer’s disease, improving memory, and defending against other types of cognitive decline. This is due to carrot’s ability to lower oxidative stress in the brain that can weaken nerve signaling capacity. Increases Metabolism
Phosphorous in carrot juice boosts the body’s metabolic rate, ensures optimal use of energy in the body, and decreases pain after a workout. Carrot juice contains a large amount of vitamin B complex, which helps in breaking down glucose, fat, and protein. It helps in building muscle and increasing metabolism, thus helping in weight loss. Cleanses The Liver
Carrot juice can cleanse and detoxifies the liver. The regular consumption of this tasty juice can help in releasing toxins from the liver. The bloodstream cannot rid the body of toxins and bile through the kidneys. They have to be ejected from the skin. Carrot juice aids this process and ensures that the harmful bile is removed from the body. Prevents Aging
The beta-carotenoid in carrots instantly turns into vitamin A once it enters the body. Therefore, drinking carrot juice can help in reducing cell degeneration, and it can also slow down the aging process. Control Cholesterol & Blood Sugar
Carrot juice works like a miracle in maintaining cholesterol and blood sugar levels, thanks to its potassium content. It is low in calories, and sugar content, and the essential vitamins and minerals present in it collectively work to prevent diabetes. Treats Macular Degeneration
Drinking carrot juice regularly can help elderly people avoid the risks of macular degeneration. Carrots are rich in beta-carotene, which splits itself via an enzymatic reaction that leads to the formation of provitamin A. Strengthens the Bones
The vitamin K present in carrot juice contributes in the protein building process of the body. Aside from that, it also supports the binding of calcium, that can result in faster healing, especially if you have broken bones.
Sources: | 1real |
Sen. Cotton’s Intern Caught On Tape Calling Brits ‘F****ts’ And Declaring Paul Ryan A ‘Cuck’ (AUDIO) | *Hey Justin, I don t have another title and was told this one goes too far. Hoping you can come up with something that works.*Republican Senator Tom Cotton s intern thinks that the British are faggots and House Speaker Paul Ryan is a cuck. And apparently, he isn t afraid to say it because he actually made these repugnant remarks to a reporter.The intern, who Mediaite is referring to only by his first name, Nate, because they want to keep his name clean from any future employer s Google search (insert angry eye roll here), was recorded saying Paul Ryan is a cuck, he s a cuck, get him out and Paul Ryan: cuck first and Yankee second. In case you don t know what a cuck is, Mediaite was happy to explain, even if they refuse to fully out the loudmouthed intern.The term cuck originated in political spaces during 2015, as white nationalists and the far-right began calling Republicans they deemed too moderate cuckservatives. The word is racially charged, as cuck that Joan Walsh described as a pornographic genre in which a white husband, either in shame or lust, watches his wife be taken by a black man. The alt-right, otherwise known as white supremacists and neo-Nazis, have used the term to reference Ryan for a while now and he was even named Cuck of The Year For 2016. The intern also told the reporter that, as our military record shows, Americans are the superior race to everyone in the world . . . we re superior people. As he continued to rant, he said the British are faggots and then he deemed Benedict Arnold a homosexual. Nate is a big fan of Donald Trump s stupid wall and the xenophobia behind his bigoted immigration parties. He told the reporter that they say we need to lax our immigration system and let more of these people in, fuck no! Am I a bigot [towards Muslims]? I guess damn so! Nate added.Nate, who interned with Cotton for more than six months, also weighed in on the health care debate, insisting that the argument that health care is a human right is garbage and fundamentally wrong. You will die in the streets if you are an idiot . . . we believe in Social Darwinism, the idiots will get fucked, he said.The news that Nate is a raging bigot should come as no surprise to Sen. Cotton, assuming they vetted him even a little. Mediaite reports that his Facebook page is full of derogatory terms such as faggot, fag, and tranny. And he has made a habit of shouting his offensive rhetoric through the halls of Congress.Mediaite contacted Sen. Cotton s office for a comment. Certainly, they must have something to say for themselves, right? Well, not so much. A spokesperson said only that Nate is no longer an intern in Senator Cotton s office. Beyond that, I cannot comment on personnel matters. You can listen to Nate s disgusting remarks here: Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 1real |
Clinton emails: FBI chief may have broken law, says top Democrat | October 31, 2016 Clinton emails: FBI chief may have broken law, says top Democrat The Democratic leader in the US Senate says the head of the FBI may have broken the law by revealing the bureau was investigating emails possibly linked to Hillary Clinton.
Harry Reid accused FBI director James Comey of violating an act which bars officials from influencing an election.
News of the FBI inquiry comes less than two weeks before the US election.
The bureau has meanwhile obtained a warrant to search a cache of emails belonging to a top Clinton aide.
Emails from Huma Abedin are believed to have been found on the laptop of her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner.
There are reportedly 650,000 emails to search through on the laptop, making it unlikely investigators can give a verdict on them before election day.
Mr Reid also accused Mr Comey of withholding “explosive information about close ties between [Republican candidate] Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government”. | 1real |
NEW Donna Brazile email shows more questions given to Hillary in advance. | NEW Donna Brazile email shows more questions given to Hillary in advance. | Print This
Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint. Folks, I did a service project today. It's so tragic. And what's worse, some homes have not been tested and it's important to encourage seniors to also get tested. Sent from Donna's I Pad. Follow me on twitter @donnabrazile
Download raw source Delivered-To: john.podesta@gmail.com Received: by 10.25.88.78 with SMTP id m75csp785144lfb; Sat, 5 Mar 2016 15:16:36 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.107.10.20 with SMTP id u20mr15455469ioi.160.1457219796322; Sat, 05 Mar 2016 15:16:36 -0800 (PST) Return-Path: <donna@brazileassociates.com> Received: from smtp94.ord1c.emailsrvr.com (smtp94.ord1c.emailsrvr.com. [108.166.43.94]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id x1si5748423igl.20.2016.03.05.15.16.35 for <john.podesta@gmail.com> (version=TLS1 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128/128); Sat, 05 Mar 2016 15:16:36 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 108.166.43.94 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of ) client-ip=108.166.43.94; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 108.166.43.94 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of ) smtp.mailfrom=donna@brazileassociates.com Received: from smtp12.relay.ord1c.emailsrvr.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by smtp12.relay.ord1c.emailsrvr.com (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id AEA0E380181; Sat, 5 Mar 2016 18:16:35 -0500 (EST) Received: from smtp192.mex05.mlsrvr.com (unknown [184.106.31.85]) by smtp12.relay.ord1c.emailsrvr.com (SMTP Server) with ESMTPS id A1E6C380171; Sat, 5 Mar 2016 18:16:35 -0500 (EST) X-Sender-Id: Received: from smtp192.mex05.mlsrvr.com ([UNAVAILABLE]. [184.106.31.85]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA) by 0.0.0.0:25 (trex/5.5.4); Sat, 05 Mar 2016 18:16:35 -0500 Received: from ORD2MBX03G.mex05.mlsrvr.com ([fe80::92e2:baff:fe20:be50]) by ORD2HUB27.mex05.mlsrvr.com ([fe80::be30:5bff:fef5:1eb8%15]) with mapi id 14.03.0235.001; Sat, 5 Mar 2016 17:16:35 -0600 From: Donna Brazile <donna@brazileassociates.com> To: "john.podesta@gmail.com" <john.podesta@gmail.com>, Jennifer Palmieri <jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com> CC: Adrienne Elrod <aelrod@hillaryclinton.com>, Minyon Moore <Minyon.Moore@deweysquare.com> Subject: One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash Thread-Topic: One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash Thread-Index: AdF3NQ9ZgXjJ0bvXRrqmqv8rTKbGbA== Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 23:16:34 +0000 Message-ID: <088DA582-5DFC-46B9-8767-0EB2FE42E57D@brazileassociates.com> Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <87E4B303477C2E41BFCAF7FE920279AB@mex05.mlsrvr.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary= do as president to help the ppl of Flint. Folks, I did a service project today. It's so tragic. And what's worse, som= e homes have not been tested and it's important to encourage seniors to als= o get tested. Sent from Donna's I Pad. Follow me on twitter @donnabrazile Share This Article... | 1real |
Transport minister doesn't think Britain will leave EU without a deal | LONDON (Reuters) - British transport minister Chris Grayling said on Sunday he didn t think Britain would leave the European Union without a negotiated deal with the bloc. Negotiations are deadlocked between Prime Minister Theresa May s government and the EU on securing a divorce settlement and agreement on future relations, raising the prospect that Britain could walk away from talks without a deal. I don t think we ll get to that position, Grayling, a leading campaigner for Leave at least year s referendum, told the BBC when asked what the consequences of leaving without a deal would be. Grayling also said he thought there was no danger of Brexit stopping airlines being able to fly into and out of the country. He said he believed Britain would end up remaining a member of the European Aviation Safety Agency, which oversees safety legislation. I m of the view that at the end of the negotiations I would expect that to be the case, he said when asked whether Britain would remain a member of the organization. | 0fake |
Soledad O’Brien SLAMS Media For Supporting White Supremacy (VIDEO) | On Sunday, former CNN host Soledad O Brien appeared on CNN s Reliable Sources, where she claimed that CNN and the mainstream media in general, have helped Donald Trump normalize white supremacy through their coverage of his campaign. If you look at Hillary Clinton s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done actually quite well has normalized white supremacy. I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful.I ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates, and they do a five-minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that. O Brien continued to voice her objections to the type of coverage the press has given Trump over the course of his campaign run, saying: Donald Trump will say, Hillary Clinton, she s a bigot. And it s covered, the journalist part comes in, They trade barbs. He said she s a bigot and she points out that he might be appealing to racists. It only becomes he said, she said. When in actuality, the fact that Donald Trump said she s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence, which if you looked at Hillary Clinton s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal. O Brien is voicing critiques of the media that have come up recently regarding the way media organizations handle their bias towards objectivity. Similar criticisms of mainstream media companies have arisen in the past over a wide variety of issues most notably, when covering issues relating to climate change. For example, in an effort to appear objective, news and editorial shows will have a climate scientist come on their program as well as a climate change denier.It isn t at all fair to have a climate change denier be given airtime when they represent an incredibly small fraction of the population of experts. Especially when you take into consideration that their views are generally considered to be demonstrably false by all available scientific evidence.The same goes for Trump and those involved with his campaign. They represent an overall tiny segment of population keep in mind that less than 10% of the eligible U.S. population voted for any candidate in the presidential primary and they generally have put out views that are hateful and even bizarre.You can watch the video of the exchange below:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Planned Parenthood gets over $500 million annually in public funds. Here's where it goes. | Republican legislators have repeatedly tried to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood — questioning why the non-profit gets money from the government in the first place.
In the wake of sting videos taped inside Planned Parenthood clinics, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) promised to use "all legislative vehicles at his disposal" to force a vote defunding the organization. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made similar promises to file an amendment that would, according to the Hill, "eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood."
Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million annually in government funding, mostly through Medicaid and grants. Most of this money goes toward providing low-income women with family planning services like STD screening and contraceptive coverage. Planned Parenthood is, without a doubt, one of the largest providers in this space: Of the 6.7 million women who rely on public programs to pay for contraceptives, 2.4 million of them — 36 percent — do so at Planned Parenthood's 817 clinics across the country.
If Congress did defund Planned Parenthood, it would be a huge blow to the group: About 40 percent of its budget comes from government grants, and much of that spending gets done on the federal level. Because Planned Parenthood is such a large provider in this space, it's hard to see other clinics stepping in to fill the gap that it would leave.
Just over 40 percent of Planned Parenthood's budget comes from government grants and reimbursements, the organization's most recent budget report shows. Between June 2013 and 2014, Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million in public funding, a big chunk of its $1.3 billion national budget.
That $528.4 million figure covers both state and federal funding, and Planned Parenthood does not publicly break out how much money it gets just from federal funding. The best estimate arguably comes from the Government Accountability Office, which estimated that Planned Parenthood received $105 million in federal funding in 2012.
There are two main ways Planned Parenthood receives public funds. One is through Medicaid, the public health insurance program that covers 71 million low-income Americans. Whenever a Medicaid patient has an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic, the nonprofit will bill the health plan for whatever services the patient uses.
The other source of funding is grants, largely through the Title X Family Planning Program — the only domestic grant program dedicated to family planning. Organizations like Planned Parenthood often use Title X grants to subsidize birth control, STD screenings, and other reproductive health services for low-income patients who may lack health insurance coverage.
Planned Parenthood receives Title X funds both directly from the federal government and from states, which will sometimes make the nonprofit's health center a subgrantee for the dollars they receive from the federal government.
Both Title X and Medicaid provide low- to middle-income women with financial assistance to cover family planning costs. Medicaid might, for example, reimburse Planned Parenthood when it provides a patient with an HPV vaccine. And a Planned Parenthood clinic could use Title X grants to subsidize the placement of an IUD, which can cost upward of $500 for an uninsured patient.
The exact family planning benefits that Medicaid covers varies from state to state. But generally, many states will cover contraceptives, STD screenings, HPV vaccines, and cancer screenings as well as sterilization and reversal procedures — and will reimburse Planned Parenthood when it is the provider.
Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have Medicaid programs that will pay for abortions, although those health plans are barred from using federal dollars — and have to use the state's share of funding to pay for the procedure.
Title X often covers the same type of services as Medicaid, except for women who are not on the public program. One important difference: Title X funds are never available to be used for abortions, even in states where the Medicaid program covers the procedure.
Federal law expressly prohibits the use of Title X funds to pay for abortions — while abortion providers like Planned Parenthood can qualify for grants, the government requires that no federal dollars go toward the termination of pregnancies.
No legislation to defund Planned Parenthood has ever passed, so its a bit hard to know — and even how, exactly, Planned Parenthood would lose its fund varies in different legislative proposals.
Historically, when congressional Republicans have talked about "defunding Planned Parenthood," they've meant barring the group from receiving Title X funds.
This is the type of bill the House passed in 2011. It would have disallowed any abortion providers — Planned Parenthood clinics or otherwise — from getting Title X grant funds.
That type of bill would put a dent in Planned Parenthood's budget, but it would be far from ending the group's federal funding. They would still receive funding through Medicaid, a much larger program than Title X — and near certainly a bigger chunk of Planned Parenthood's budget.
Planned Parenthood does not provide a breakdown of its government funding, but separate data suggests it almost certainly gets way more public revenue from the Medicaid patients it sees. One analysis from the Guttmacher Institute shows that Medicaid, a program jointly funded by states and the federal government, pays for 75 percent of publicly funded family planning services in the United States — while Title X covers 10 percent.
In order to fully defund Planned Parenthood, Congress would need to pass a law that bars Medicaid from reimbursing its clinics for patient visits there. This type of amendment hasn't historically come up in congressional debates about cutting Planned Parenthood's budget, perhaps because it's a much more drastic move than proposing cuts to Planned Parenthood's Title X funding. | 0fake |
Ben Carson Just Called Slaves ‘Immigrants’ As Part Of Anti-Immigrant Speech (VIDEO) | Trump s newly confirmed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development just dropped a doozy on us. No, not the one about Harriet Tubman. This is a new WTF moment for the sleepy-eyed Ben Carson. In a talk with department employees, Carson referred to slaves as immigrants dreaming of a better life, The Hill reports. Sure, except slaves didn t want to come to this country. They had families, homes, a life and a country. Slaves were shackled and brought to the U.S. in deplorable circumstances, beaten within an inch of their lives. That s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity, Carson said, while inadvertently touting the very reason we should allow refugees to enter our borders. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. Ben Carson at HUD: There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. pic.twitter.com/VfH9YCbleM Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 6, 2017 But they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land, Carson added.Watch:Samuel Jackson weighed in on Carson s comparison:OK!! Ben Carson .I can't! Immigrants ? In the bottom of SLAVE SHIPS??!! MUTHAFUKKA PLEASE!!!#dickheadedtom Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) March 6, 2017During his bid for the GOP nomination for president, Carson compared abortion to slavery. During slavery and I know that s one of those words you re not supposed to say, but I m saying it during slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to the slave, Carson said in October of 2015. What if the abolitionists had said, I don t believe in slavery, I think it s wrong, but you guys do whatever you want to do? Carson added. The retired neurosurgeon does not believe in abortion even in cases of incest or rape. Abortion is a choice. Slavery is not.Wow, just wow. How did this man ever become a neurosurgeon? You know what slavery was really like? Slavery. Slaves did not seek to be imprisoned and they weren t employees. Geez.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
NURSE FROM One Of Nation’s Largest Hospitals Tweets: “Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son”…Their Sons “should be sacrificed to the wolves b___”” | It s hard to imagine, and very sad, that a hospital could hire someone who is so filled with hate and obsessed with race, to care for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.A controversial tweet allegedly posted Friday by a nurse at one of the largest hospital systems in the nation has sparked an internal investigation.The tweet came from an account named Night Nurse, linked to Indiana University Health employee Taiyesha Baker, FOX59 reported. Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son. Someone with the HIGHEST propensity to be a terrorist, rapist, racist, killer, and domestic violence all star. Historically every son you had should be sacrificed to the wolves b___, the tweet read.An IU Health spokesman confirmed to FOX59 that Baker is a registered nurse, but declined to reveal the hospital where she is currently employed. IU Health is aware of several troubling posts on social media which appear to be from a recently hired IU Health employee, the hospital said in a statement. Our HR department continues to investigate the situation and the authenticity of the posts. During the investigation, that employee (who does not work at Riley Hospital for Children) will have no access to patient care. Baker claimed to work in pediatrics in previously deleted tweets.According to public records obtained by FOX59, Baker was most recently issued a nursing license on Oct. 30.The Twitter account behind the controversial messages, @tai_fieri, was originally deleted after the post sparked a firestorm, but now appears to have been created by a different user who is posting new tweets, the IndyStar reported. FOX News | 1real |
Anti-Assad nations say no to Syria reconstruction until political process on track | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States, Britain and other countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not support the reconstruction of the country until there is a political transition “away from Assad,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Monday. The “Friends of Syria” group, an alliance of mainly Western and Gulf Arab countries, met in New York on Monday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly at a time when the conflict in Syria, now in its seventh year, appears to be less urgent with attention focused on the North Korean nuclear threat and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal. “We believe that the only way forward is to get a political process going and to make it clear to the Iranians, Russians and Assad regime that we, the like-minded group, will not support the reconstruction of Syria until there is such a political process and that means, as Resolution 2254 says, to a transition away from Assad,” Johnson said. He was speaking after a meeting of about 14 countries that back the Syrian opposition including France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States. The U.N. Security Council has adopted a Syria transition road map through a Geneva-led process. Russia joined the war on Assad’s behalf in 2015, turning the momentum in his favor. Assad also enjoys robust support from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the moderate Syrian opposition is moribund and the United States has largely stepped back from a leading role in Syrian diplomacy. Earlier this year the Trump administration also halted the CIA’s covert program to equip and train certain rebel groups fighting Assad. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Satterfield, said all those at the meeting agreed that “there has got to be a political process if there is to be any international participation in the reconstruction of Syria.” “The regime and the regime supporters cannot declare a victory solely based on a map and colors of positions on the ground,” Satterfield said. “The reconstruction of Syria depends very much on that credible political process. That political process is focused on Geneva and the role of the United Nations.” The meeting on Monday was in stark contrast to last year’s which took place after a ceasefire deal between the United States and Russia effectively collapsed when an aid convoy was bombed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Aleppo is now in the hands of Assad’s forces and Assad himself is in a much stronger position, thanks to Russian and Iranian support. The last major international attempt to resolve the crisis ended in failure when the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), which included Iran, was cast aside after Syrian government forces retook the rebel stronghold of Aleppo in 2016. Russia, Turkey and Iran have been negotiating separately for months in Astana to try to reduce the violence on the ground by creating de-escalation zones across the country, although those talks do not cover a long-term political solution “We discussed here how to bring it back to the U.N.-led process and Geneva,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström told Reuters. Asked if there was consensus on that, she said “I would say so.” “It’s good if the Astana process leads to de-escalation and a reduction of the violence but it has to lead into the political process.” Earlier on Monday, France warned that the status quo in Syria risked leading to the country’s permanent fragmentation and opening the door to new radical Islamist groups. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters in New York he would hold a meeting with the four other permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, Russia and the United States - on Thursday to persuade them to create a contact group to give new impetus to end the seven-year conflict. Le Drian said “realism” dictated that Assad could not stay in power after millions of Syrians had fled the country due to the war, but that it was vital major powers worked together to help revive U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva. Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the French contact group proposal was not discussed at the Friends of Syria meeting. But Riyad Hijab, a prominent Syrian opposition leader, said he told French President Emmanuel Macron that the initiative was important in part because “of American withdrawal and Russia is dominating the entire process. So Mr. Macron’s initiative is the right way to fix this because it’s vital all five (permanent Security Council members) are involved in the process.” | 0fake |
Trump Voter Beaten By Black Mob: “You Voted Trump. You Gonna Pay For That Sh*t” |
This article was written by Paul Joseph Watson and originally published at Infowars.com .
Editor’s Comment: Violence and retribution for the election of Trump has proven to be the result of a media-driven attack on his character. For months now, the pundits and columnists have done nothing but tell the population that Trump supporters are racists, etc. and now racially-motivated beatings are taking place in the street without any other pretext or provocation.
Are they proud of themselves yet? And how far will this violence spread?
Shock Video: Black Mob Viciously Beats White Trump Voter
by Paul Joseph Watson
Shocking video out of Chicago shows a mob of young black men viciously beating an older white man because he voted for Donald Trump, dragging him through the streets as he hangs out of the back of his car.
The clip shows the thugs repeatedly screaming, “you voted Donald Trump” as they assault the victim from every angle while others steal his belongings.
“You voted Trump,” the mob screams, “You gonna pay for that sh*t.”
Another woman shouts “beat his ass,” while another man is heard laughing before remarking, “Don’t vote Trump.”
A second video of the incident which is dubbed with the “F**k Donald Trump” song, a phrase now being chanted by “protesters” across the country, shows one of the attackers driving away in the man’s vehicle while his hand is still stuck in the window as the car drags him down the street.
“The scene is frankly reminiscent of a lynching,” remarks Chris Menahan .
It is not even clear if the victim was a Trump supporter. Presumably, the mob used that as an excuse to beat and rob him.
YouTube quickly deleted the video, but it has been mirrored on numerous different websites.
If the roles had been reversed, and Trump supporters had been caught on tape viciously beating a black Hillary voter, this would be a national news story right now.
As it is, you won’t see this on CNN any time soon.
——
This article was written by Paul Joseph Watson and originally published at Infowars.com .
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com . | 1real |
“MAKE AMERICA MEXICO AGAIN”…The Movement Is Real And Organized | There are people within the Obama administration and within the Mexican government who are fans of the movement to make America and Mexico a fluid nation. After you read the information below, we hope you ll ask your congressman why the heck we re even giving money to LaRaza! THE WHITE HOUSE TRIPLED FUNDING TO LARAZA! Cecilia Munoz is Obama s director of Domestic Policy Council. She is married to a human rights attorney, who is a former counselor to George Soros Open Society Institute, which spends billions to make open borders a reality. She is a former chair of the Center for Community Change, another Soros-funded activist group. The short story is that Munoz moved to the White House from her position as a vice president at La Raza. Once she made the move, taxpayer funding of La Raza soared doubled almost tripled.It s a movement that s real and organized:A number of observers have commented on the proliferation of Mexican flags at rallies in favor of amnesty and open borders, as well as at anti-Trump demonstrations.They ve also noticed the Make America Mexico Again slogan showing up on signs, hats, and hashtags supposedly as a humorous meme, but almost certainly one that exhibits more than a grain of serious intent behind it, even though such an intent would be ironic in the extreme. OBAMA GIVES $30 MILLION TO LA RAZA AFFILIATE Radical Hispanic organization known as The Race Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institution fellow, as well as a writer, historian, and keen observer of current events, put it best when he noted that, Disrupters at a Trump rally in California likewise jumped the shark when some waved the flag of Mexico or bore placards with slogans such as Make America Mexico Again. If the protest was directed against Trump s pledges to deport undocumented immigrants to Mexico, then it made little sense to celebrate the country to which protesters did not wish immigrants to return, or to suggest that immigrants new home should become identical to the old home that they had chosen to leave. But, of course, he s being logical, and logic often has little to do with such matters.Even so, it is sobering to realize that there are organized efforts on the part of overt open borders advocates to recruit as many aliens as possible to naturalize in these last months leading up to the election, with the sole purpose of attempting to steer the election away from presumptive Republican nominee Trump and into the Democratic camp.More disturbing is that the federal government may be lending itself to this effort. It would not be the first time that a Democratic administration has used the organs of government to try to skew voter rolls by adding to them in egregious numbers before an election, and in the process steamrolling proper vetting procedures to be sure it gets done.Most disturbing of all is that the Mexican government itself has now leaped onto this same stage in a shameless attempt at interfering in an American domestic political matter of the first consequence: the election of our next leader (see here and here). If the United States were to attempt to do this in a Mexican election, we would be condemned globally in all quarters, and shouts of !Fuera Yanquis! (Yankees Out!) would resound from the voices of thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Mexico City.Read more: CIS | 1real |
Ex-State Staffer Who Advocated Spying On Trump Boasted ’Getting Winks From Inside’ Obama Admin | Evelyn Farkas, a former top Obama administration official, has denied that she had access to inside information when she made remarks as a contributor to MSNBC last month that seemed to acknowledge efforts by members of the Obama administration to collect intelligence on Donald Trump and members of his 2016 presidential campaign. [However, the news media has largely failed to note that on February 16, about two weeks prior to her statements on MSNBC, Farkas revealed in an interview that she was “getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here” — referring to Trump officials’ alleged ties to Russia. She stated that she was “first made aware of all this stuff” during the summer. On March 2, Farkas stated on MSNBC that she told former Obama administration colleagues to collect intelligence on Trump and campaign officials. “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration,” stated Farkas. She continued: Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left, so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy … that the Trump folks — if they found out how we knew what we knew about their … the Trump staff dealing with Russians — that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence. After her remarks resurfaced and were subsequently used by the White House to bolster the charge that Trump was under illicit surveillance during the campaign, Farkas gave interviews denying that she had any inside information when she made those comments to MSNBC. She told the Daily Caller last week that she had no access to any intelligence. “I had no intelligence whatsoever, I wasn’t in government anymore and didn’t have access to any,” she said. Speaking to the Washington Post, Farkas denied being a source of any leaks. The Post reported: Farkas, in an interview with The Post, said she “didn’t give anybody anything except advice,” was not a source for any stories and had nothing to leak. Noting that she left government in October 2015, she said, “I was just watching like anybody else, like a regular spectator” as initial reports of Russia contacts began to surface after the election. However, on February 16, Farkas told Ezra Klein at Vox. com that she was “getting winks and hints from inside” about alleged Russia ties. The interview was also highlighted by the Gateway Pundit blog. Farkas was asked by Klein about her “level of alarm after the resignation of Michael Flynn,” who stepped down in February as Trump’s national security adviser. Regarding her “level of alarm,” Farkas replied: It’s lower than it’s been since the summer, when I was first made aware of all this stuff. I’m like, finally, everybody else sees it! Seriously. The reason I was so upset last summer was that I was getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here. I was agitated because I knew the Clinton campaign and the world didn’t know. But I didn’t think it would happen this fast. I didn’t think Flynn would survive a year, but I thought it would be most of the year. The fact that Flynn is gone is constructive from the perspective of US foreign policy. He was getting it wrong on combating terrorism and Russia. So I feel relieved that he will not be whispering his policy prescriptions in the president’s ear. On the bigger issue, the intelligence community, the bureaucracy, patriotic Americans, and some members of Congress are making it impossible for the White House to sweep whatever they are trying to hide under the rug. And the White House is clearly trying to hide something, or the president would have said, on day one, that he would support the investigations that began under his predecessor. This past week, Breitbart News first reported that at a conference last October, held two weeks before the presidential election, Farkas predicted that if Trump won the presidency he would “be impeached pretty quickly or somebody else would have to take over government. ” Breitbart News also first reported that at the same conference, Farkas warned that more must be done to counter the forces of nationalism and populism that have been entering the mainstream with the rise of Trump and nationalist movements across Europe. Farkas currently serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia and has released numerous reports and briefs about Russian aggression. The Council is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. the U. S. State Department and NATO ACT. Another Council funder is the Ploughshares Fund, which in turn has received financing from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Farkas serves on the Atlantic Council alongside Dmitri Alperovitch, of CrowdStrike, the company utilized by the FBI to make its assessment about alleged Russian hacking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Last month, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency never had direct access to the DNC’s servers to confirm the hacking. “Well, we never got direct access to the machines themselves,” he stated. “The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system. ” National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers also stated the NSA never asked for access to the DNC hardware: “The NSA didn’t ask for access. That’s not in our job. ” Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Joshua Klein. | 0fake |
Donald Trump, President Obama, J.K. Rowling: Your Friday Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Sessions offered attorney general post. Donald J. Trump has chosen Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama for the cabinet position. While Mr. Sessions, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, is well liked in the Senate, his record as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s may become an issue for Democrats and civil rights groups. Also today, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas was picked to run the C. I. A. He’s a former Army officer who gained prominence during the hearings into the 2012 attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya. The news follows a report from a top official who says Mr. Trump has asked Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn to be his national security adviser. General Flynn has helped shape the ’s view that the U. S. is at “world war” with Islamist militants. • More transition news. Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet this weekend with someone who once called him a “phony”: Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. The meeting comes as Mr. Trump’s Jared Kushner, seeks a way to join the administration without violating laws. • What does “America First” mean? The slogan used by Mr. Trump to describe his philosophy on governing is being put to the test. We look at the challenges the faces on Iran, North Korea and Syria and in Europe. Separately, Mr. Trump said on Twitter Thursday night that he helped save a Ford plant from leaving for Mexico. The company, though, never planned to move the factory. Meanwhile, President Obama is meeting with European leaders today in Berlin and will then head to Peru for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting. • A tale of two nations. Our reporters and photographers spent the past week gauging the feelings of Americans. “They returned with a portrait of a country at odds with itself,” our magazine editor says. Our graphics team took a different approach: They created two maps that represent the divide between Republicans and Democrats. • Finding hope after hate. You may have read this week about a recent wave of reports of attacks. But the violence has been countered by acts of public support and solidarity, as in the case of an Iraqi family in Maryland after they found a threat taped to their door. • Potential agricultural breakthrough. Scientists announced a discovery that could increase the world’s food supply. Using genetic engineering to tinker with photosynthesis, they were able to boost a plant’s productivity as much as 20 percent. One scientist said gains of 50 percent were possible. • Social media’s role in U. S. politics, and the fake news sometimes used to sway voters, is now in the spotlight, but other nations have been dealing with the problem for years. Chatbots releasing false information on Twitter were used to disrupt political discussions in the U. S. a new study found. • In memoriam: Ruth Baron Ziff, 92, a sociologist and trailblazer in the advertising world of the 1950s. Her work influenced the famous “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” toilet paper commercials. • Worried about what you can’t control? Our personal finance columnist offers ways to cope with anxieties over the economy and politics. • U. S. stocks were up on Thursday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Chasing pirates on the Amazon. Piracy is a growing menace in South America. Join a police force on a patrol in Brazil. • New at the movies. We review “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” a footnote to the films based on J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. “This time out the wizard isn’t a boy on the verge of manhood but a man idling in boyhood,” our critic writes. Navigating the teenage years is at the heart of “The Edge of Seventeen. ” The comedy, our critic says, “can hold its own” with movies like “Clueless” that have raised the bar for teenage films. • A lost world is found. Archaeologists hit the jackpot this fall in the Black Sea. The discovery of a sunken medieval ship led to finding dozens more shipwrecks off Bulgaria’s coast. “We can expect some real contributions to our understanding of ancient trade routes,” one researcher said. • The American Thanksgiving. The country will celebrate one of its most cherished holidays next week. Fifteen families showed us the dishes they make that speak most eloquently about their traditions. Their stories, our food editor writes, tell “the story of who we are. ” • Recipe of the day. Make tonight a taco night. Try versions with fish or pork. Over the weekend, brush up on how to cook brussels sprouts. Brazil is celebrating an important holiday on Sunday, though it’s one that may be unfamiliar outside the country: Black Consciousness Day. Slavery existed in Brazil until 1888, making it the last country in the Americas to abolish the practice. More than five million slaves were sent to Brazil through the Atlantic trade, compared with about 300, 000 in mainland North America, according to one of the most thoroughly researched academic estimates. Today the nation has more residents of African heritage than any other country outside Africa. The population has historically been underrepresented in government, but a rise in citizens identifying as black or mixed race is helping to chip away at economic and educational inequalities. Black Consciousness Day was established in 2003, featuring the “Freedom Walk” — parades around the country meant to show the size of the black population. The date, Nov. 20, was set for the anniversary of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares, one of the great black heroes of the Americas. He led a small kingdom founded by runaway slaves. He was killed by the Portuguese in 1695, after they overran his republic. But the power of his story has only grown as the country embraces its African roots. A researcher with the Museum in São Paulo sees more progress ahead: “We Brazilian blacks are finally learning to be black. ” _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning. What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes. com. You can sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox. | 0fake |
The real reason Hillary Clinton's VP shortlist is so short | Sherrod Brown looks in some ways like a very tempting vice presidential pick for Hillary Clinton.
He doesn't have an enormous national profile, but inside the Beltway he's known as a stalwart of the liberal wing of the party's congressional caucus. Unlike Bernie Sanders, he's a loyal party man. But he has a similar disheveled populist anti-fashion to go along with an extensive track record of support for labor unions and skepticism of the forces of globalization.
And as a white dude from Ohio, he's ideally suited in demographic terms to help Clinton stem her losses of working-class whites in the Midwest — a key area of weakness vis-à-vis Donald Trump.
But there's a huge problem. Ohio has a Republican governor, so creating a vacancy would cost Democrats a Senate seat. Elizabeth Warren has the same problem. So does Tammy Baldwin. And Cory Booker. And Debbie Stabenow.
Fear of losing a Senate seat with a VP pick isn't unique to the 2016 election, of course. But with polarization in Congress steadily rising, it's an increasingly important consideration — particularly in a year when Democrats are hoping to retake a Senate.
And Clinton's problem is that Democrats right now are doing terribly in terms of winning state and local elections. The Southwestern swing states of Nevada and New Mexico are in Republican hands. So are Iowa and Ohio, the Midwestern swingers. So is Florida. But so are a bunch of blue states, ranging from Michigan and Pennsylvania to comically safe states like Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey.
This severely constrains the roster of senators she can responsibly select, while also directly denuding the party of governors who could fill the job.
Trump, by contrast, has a smorgasbord of plausible options with conventional political résumés. He could pick a moderate Latino like Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval* or a more conventionally conservative one like Marco Rubio. He could pick an old-school hard-right Southern senator like Jeff Sessions, or a young African-American hard-right senator like Tim Scott, or a swing state governor like Rick Scott, or a deeply conservative governor of a blue-leaning state like Scott Walker. Or he could avoid men named Scott altogether!
Clinton's very short shortlist likely won't make a huge difference in November. Much was made over the course of 2015 of the Republican Party's deep bench in the presidential field, and the GOP ended up with Trump.
VP picks do matter. It's very common for a vice president to go on to become president or at least his party's nominee. The generally dismal standing of the overall party during Obama-era midterms cut short the careers of many seemingly talented politicians.
Clinton's limited range of choices and inevitable need to mix substantive and political considerations in making her choice reduces the chances that a truly excellent figure will be available. Landslide GOP wins in 2010 and 2014 have consequences that not only continue through today but will keep ricocheting forward into future cycles.
* Correction: The governor of Nevada is Brian Sandoval. Richard Sandoval is the chef behind El Centro D.F. and other restaurants. | 0fake |
Kerry says confident on Philippines ties, hopes to visit again | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday he remained confident about the future of the U.S.-Philippines relationship despite “a difference here or there” and that he hoped to visit Manila again before leaving office. New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has thrown Manila’s long-standing alliance with Washington into question since taking office in June with a series of insults and threats to cut ties with the former colonial power. Speaking at a swearing-in ceremony for the new U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Sung Kim, Kerry called the alliance between the two peoples “indelible.” Kerry recalled shared resistance to Japan in World War Two and noted that nearly 4 million people of Philippine descent live in the United States while almost a quarter of a million Americans live in the Philippines. “I am confident about the future of our bilateral relations, notwithstanding a difference here or there about one thing or another,” he said. Kerry did not mention Duterte by name but said all needed to have the wisdom to adjust to change brought about by democratic elections. He noted that Sung Kim had tackled “some really tough, complex challenges” in the past, given his previous assignments dealing with North Korea. Kerry said the United States and the Philippines would “continue to consult openly and honestly” and added: “I very much hope to visit there before leaving my term of office as secretary of state.” Kerry’s term officially ends on Jan. 20 after Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, although he could be asked to stay on temporarily under the future administration. He said he told Duterte on a visit to the Philippines in July of Washington’s “ironclad commitment to the sovereignty and independence and security of the Philippines.” “We will continue to cooperate in efforts to maintain peace and stability and to promote shared prosperity in the Asia Pacific,” Kerry said, adding that Washington would continue to help the Philippines in the event of national emergencies. Daniel Russel, the senior U.S. diplomat for East Asia, who visited the Philippines last month, conceded that the relationship was “going through a bit of a rough patch - some growing pains. “There been some name-calling coming out of Manila; some questions raised about what the future holds,” he told a news briefing. “But ... the deep, deep roots between the United States and the Philippines ... will over the long term ensure stability in the relationship.” Russel, an assistant secretary of state, said all the senior officials he met in Manila told him they saw value in continued defense cooperation and he was not aware of any action that had “significantly affected our ability to cooperate.” “I am not saying that can’t happen, but I hope it doesn’t,” he said. In his latest outburst, Duterte chided the United States on Wednesday for the halt of a planned sale of 26,000 rifles to his country, calling those behind the decision “fools” and “monkeys” and indicating he might turn to Russia and China instead. | 0fake |
NY Times: Trump’s Deportation Efforts ’Not So Unusual’ | President Donald Trump’s deportation of hundreds of criminal illegal immigrants during his first month in office is “no so unusual,” according to The New York Times. [In analysis by the New York Times, Trump’s deportation effort to prioritize the removal of criminal illegal immigrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency shows that the enforcement actions are “not unprecedented”: Last week, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested more than 680 people in at least 12 states, shown below, stoking fears that the Trump administration is increasing the arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. But a comparison of last week’s arrests and similar ones during the first four years of the Obama presidency show that the recent level of enforcement activity is not unprecedented. It is unclear, however, if the numbers are an actual increase in enforcement, because information on operations in only 12 states was disclosed. The New York Times analysis then described how Trump’s deportation efforts are on par with Obama’s, citing that the Obama administration “arrested an average of 675 immigrants a week in ‘community arrests’. ” In Obama’s first term in office, the analysis notes that ICE agents arrested over 35, 000 illegal immigrants, more arrests than any year in the previous four years of former President George W. Bush: The weekly average of such arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement fugitive teams under President Obama rose to 771 in 2011 and declined slightly to 719 the next year. Data after 2012 are not readily available, but in more recent years, the number of ICE apprehensions and removals decreased overall, especially after the Obama administration began to focus on convicted criminals. In Mr. Obama’s two terms in office, there were at least six known operations in which more than 500 people were arrested, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Opponents of Trump’s plans, though, told the New York Times that the difference between Obama’s deportation efforts and the current model, is that Trump uses a “broader definition” when referring to criminal illegal immigrants. The Obama administration was careful to say that only people who had very serious charges or were recent arrivals were priorities for enforcement, but now, everyone is a priority, Mr. Capps said. Under Obama, nearly 90 percent of the illegal immigrants deported by ICE were convicted criminals. Trump, on the other hand, takes into consideration illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, misdemeanors and those who have simply crossed the border. Some 75 percent of the 680 illegal immigrants arrested by ICE last week were convicted of crimes. The raids also included those who had illegally the U. S. and who had been ordered for removal. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
‘On Contact’: Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin on the U.S.-Saudi Alliance | ‘On Contact’: Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin on the U.S.-Saudi Alliance
On this week’s episode of RT’s “On Contact,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges and Medea Benjamin, author of “ Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection ,” explore why Saudi Arabia remains one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East despite the monarchy’s record of human rights abuses, including public executions, mistreatment of women, and the promotion of a fundamentalist religion that “sanctifies violence,” as Hedges says.
RT Correspondent Anya Parampil reviews the long alliance between the two countries. | 1real |
TRUCK DRIVER Attaches Hysterical Deterrents To His Truck Designed To Keep Illegal Muslim Refugees From Hitching Rides [VIDEO] | Truck drivers are 100% Fed Up with illegal Muslim refugees attempting to get across France border to UK by breaking into their trucks as they approach the border. Click HERE to watch violent attacks on drivers and their trucks by refugees who are desperate to get into semi-radicalized UK. A video has emerged on social media of a truck that is destined for Britain on which the driver has attached raw pork to keep Muslim migrants for climbing aboard.The video shows a German truck waiting at Calais with at least four parts of the pig attached to its rear bumper.https://youtu.be/MENmWXQ_0U0The driver is believed to have impaled them on the body of the 18-wheeler in an attempt to keep desperate migrants from approaching his vehicle.Pig flesh, particularly the eating of such, is strongly forbidden in Islam.The meat chunks are seen secured to the foot of the truck s opening hatch, through the likes of which hundreds of determined Syrians displaced by war have snuck inside to secure an illegal passage into the UK.Drivers caught by border patrol with stowaways hidden in their cargo can face hefty fines and even imprisonment.Via:Breaking 911 | 1real |
Pilger Interview: Julian Assange Lifts the Veil on Hillary Clinton and the Globalist Conspiracy | 21st Century Wire says Today, RT International released a 24 min segment from a stunning interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, conducted by award-winning Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger.In his recent piece entitled, Why Hillary Clinton is Responsible for US Failures in Libya and Syria, 21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen notes the true significance of Clinton s role in fomenting geopolitical uncrest during her term as US Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton is the architect of US foreign policy failures in Libya and Syria. We ve heard this statement made a lot over this US election cycle, but exactly how much truth is there to it? After researching this issue, not only is it true, it s an understatement. She wasn t just an architect, she was a chief instigator. Filmed at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, this exclusive piece reveals many of the inner workings of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Clinton Foundation, her tenure as Secretary of State, the Obama White House and a summary of the Podesta emails. This is a must watch: This interview was provided to RT by John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
FED UP FAN Confronts College Basketball Player For Shooting Baskets During National Anthem Because Of His Islamic Faith…Gets Standing Ovation From Crowd | Has America reached a tipping point? Will more and more fed up Americans begin to object to athletes who choose to blatantly disrespect our flag during the national anthem? Should athletes be allowed to disrespect our flag during school-sponsored events? We d love to hear what you think in the comment section below.Todd Starnes of FOX News broke the story about 74-year old Jim Howard, of Garden City, Kansas is a red-blooded, American patriot and a faithful supporter of the athletic program at the local community college.For 32 years he s volunteered with the booster club keeping scorebooks, holding fundraisers, running the chain gang for football and even providing a place for players to have a Thanksgiving meal.He was in the stands on Nov. 1 for the season-opener of the Garden City Broncbusters basketball team. And when the announcer asked everyone to stand for the national anthem, he dutifully joined the crowd and stood at attention.That s when he noticed a lone player seated on a bench at courtside Rasool Samir, a 19-year-old Muslim red-shirt.It was unusual because there s a team rule that the entire basketball team was supposed to stay inside the locker room until after the national anthem had concluded.But as the crowd began singing about the bombs bursting in air and the rocket s red glare, the Muslim basketball player grabbed a ball, walked onto the court and began shooting baskets. It was an in your face slam, he said.Mr. Howard decided enough was enough. He was tired of people disrespecting the national anthem. So at the conclusion of the song, he walked onto the court and confronted Samir. I walked onto the floor and I told the guy he should respect the flag and if he s not going to respect the flag, he should get off the court and get out of the gym, Mr. Howard told the Todd Starnes Show. You should respect the flag. If you don t respect the flag, just stay seated. Don t make a big scene, he said. At least respect the people that paid for your scholarship to get you on this campus like myself and everyone else in that gym. The Garden City Telegram reported that a police officer broke up the confrontation telling Mr. Howard to return to his seat and escorting the player off the court.When that happened, a number of people in the stands gave Mr. Howard a standing ovation and some fans even came over to shake the man s hand.It seems, they too had had enough. Everyone around town was patting me on my back and saying thank you, he said.The following day Samir was dismissed from the team.However, there are two versions as to what happened. The local newspaper says it was Samir s decision to leave. But the American Civil Liberties Union claims the young man was kicked off the team.The Kansas chapter of the ACLU fired off a letter to the community college demanding answers and claiming that Samir s constitutional rights were violated. He refrained from participating in the national anthem because he is a Muslim and his faith prohibits acts of reverence to anything but God, the ACLU wrote in a letter to the school.Well, if that s the case, why didn t Samir stay inside the locker room with the rest of the team during the national anthem? | 1real |
Dios crea otro huracán sólo para ver qué nombre le ponen | Dios crea otro huracán sólo para ver qué nombre le ponen LOS METEORÓLOGOS LO HAN LLAMADO “HURACÁN NANCY” COMO A TODOS LOS DEMÁS terremoto
Con la intención de vencer el aburrimiento, Dios Nuestro Señor, ha decidido enviar un huracán de categoría 5 a la Tierra sólo para comprobar qué nombre se inventan los meteorólogos para referirse a él. Según han informado fuentes cercanas al Altísimo, Dios confía en que si genera suficientes huracanes en el planeta, los meteorólogos se verán obligados a recurrir a nombre rebuscados y divertidos como “Huracán Turbo” o “Huracán Papufro”.
“Estaba sentado sin nada que hacer y he pensado en enviar un huracán a ver si le llaman Carlos o Katrina o Niño”, ha declarado el creador de todas las cosas. “Los hombres se inventan unas cosas que te partes de risa. Si el nombre me gusta, lo subo de categoría 5 a categoría 6, para que sea más famoso”, ha admitido el Santo Padre.
“Ojalá le pongan ‘Huracán Mistetas'”, ha declarado Dios entre risas. Imagina que con dos millones de huracanes más los hombres acabarían bautizando con ese nombre a algún huracán especialmente mortífero.
Por ahora, los meteorólogos han bautizado este tifón como “Sin título número 1” hasta que les llegue la inspiración, aunque no descartan llamarlo “Huracán Nancy”, como han llamado a los quince anteriores. El protocolo marca que hasta que no disponen de un nombre atractivo no pueden alertar a la población de la llegada del huracán.
Al cierre de la edición, las fuentes han informado que Dios sigue aburrido y está planeando generar un terremoto para ver qué nota le ponen. | 1real |
REVELATION THAT WILL SHOCK International Security World: VIDEO Captured From Inside Sophisticated ISLAMIC TERROR Technology Lab | Remote controlled car bombs are being constructed for countries where suicide bombers are scarce. The only thing they need are some radical Islamists to set the vehicles in motion. With our wide open borders and generous Refugee Resettlement Program (which brings hundreds of thousands of men and woman coming from countries who hate us to live in America on our dime) it shouldn t be too hard to implement their terror plans. Terror group Islamic State is employing scientists and weapons experts to train jihadists to carry out sophisticated spectacular attacks in Europe, while also modifying weapons systems capable of targeting passenger jets and military aircraft.From a jihadi university in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the scientists have stunned western weapons experts by producing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles.It had been regarded as a virtually impossible feat for terror groups working without a military infrastructure.But footage exclusively obtained by Sky News shows that IS can now recommission thousands of missiles assumed by western governments to have been redundant through old age.Heat-seeking warheads can be used to attack passenger and military aircraft. They are 99% accurate once locked on.For decades terror groups, including the IRA, had these weapons but storing them and maintaining the thermal battery a key component to the warhead was very difficult.It seems that IS scientists have got round the problem, and that revelation will shock the world of international security.The IS research and development team has produced fully working remote controlled cars to act as mobile bombs, while they have fitted the cars with drivers ; mannequins with self-regulating thermostats to produce the heat signature of humans, allowing the car bombs to evade sophisticated scanning machines that protect military and government buildings in the West.Here is a stunning video actually showing Islamic State terrorists testing their inventions:The group trained fighters from a variety of countries to carry out attacks and to train more jihadists in their own countries.An IS trainer with more than eight hours of unedited training videos was captured by the remnants of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as he headed north through Turkey towards Europe.The FSA passed the material to Sky News but was not aware of the importance of the videos, described by a weapons adviser to the British military as an intelligence gold mine .Using aerial and satellite imagery Sky News has identified the location of the university and pieced together the apparently random collection of video files to reveal the true extent of IS s sophisticated development and training team.Although this type of activity had been widely suspected by western intelligence services, this is the first concrete evidence that it is taking place.Crucially, it is far more developed than had previously been thought possible.Groups of trainees from a range of countries including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Egypt and Pakistan were given terror training courses using science labs and facilities based around the former Equestrian Centre in Raqqa. Via: Skye News | 1real |
Hillary Clinton's Postapocalyptic Hellscape Plan?? | Hillary Clinton's Postapocalyptic Hellscape Plan?? "Important we avoid age of peace..." Re: Hillary Clinton's Postapocalyptic Hellscape Plan?? That has to be BS..look at the email.. even the .com is wrong, and is ;comdingdangaramaramaflimflam?? Mail with questions or comments about this site. "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ Website Design Copyright © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.007s (7 queries) | 1real |
Iran calls on Muslim nations to step up efforts against Trump's Jerusalem decision | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday all Muslim nations should work together to defend the rights of Palestinians against Donald Trump s decision last week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Speaking in an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Turkey s Istanbul city, Rouhani said the Muslim countries should resolve their internal disputes through dialogue and called for unity against Israel. Rouhani said Israel had planted seeds of tension in the crisis-hit region. | 0fake |
49 Year Old “Political Refugee” Flies To Dubai Days Before Trial For RAPE Of Grade School Girl In Washington | How does a refugee who is facing trial for the rape of a school aged girl board a plane in America and fly overseas to another country? The little girl who was allegedly raped by this man probably wishes she had a plane she could ve boarded to get away from him. A 49-year-old man reportedly boarded a flight for the United Arab Emirates two days before he was to stand trial in Kennewick on charges of raping and molesting a grade-school girl.A nationwide arrest warrant was issued this week for Khalid A. Fathey after he was a no-show at his Benton County Superior Court trial.The U.S. Marshals Service then discovered that Fathey left Seattle on July 23 on a plane bound for Dubai, said Deputy Prosecutor Anita Petra.Fathey was free on his personal recognizance since being charged with the sex crimes in May 2015. He now faces a new charge of bail jumping.Judge Vic VanderSchoor waited 1 1/2 hours Monday in case Fathey had car trouble or another problem before calling off the trial, releasing the jurors and ordering the arrest warrant.Kennewick attorney Kevin Holt, who was hired by Fathey, said he met with his client for about eight hours on July 21 and then prepared for the trial. He assured me that he would be here Monday morning, Holt said.Holt said his client is from northern Iraq. Fathey had been in the military and worked with the United States government after the 2003 invasion, he said.Since Fathey was no longer welcome in Iraq under the new regime, he sought political asylum and came to the United States with his wife and children as political refugees, Holt said.Fathey and his wife were paid by the state for four years to be full-time caregivers for a Tri-City woman who had medical issues, he said.Fathey contends the sex crimes did not happen and were made up by the girl s family. Fathey and his family had to move to Spokane from Kennewick about six months ago because they were afraid for their safety in the Tri-Cities, especially after someone reportedly set fire to their car, said Holt.Prosecutors allege the girl s mother became suspicious in December 2014 when she found the girl and Fathey together, and Fathey appeared nervous. The girl later disclosed to her mother that Fathey allegedly kissed her and touched her sexually several times over a six-month period. Fathey told (the girl) never to tell or she was going to get in trouble, documents said.Before the police were involved, Fathey called his religious leader, who had them sit down together with the girl s parents, court documents said. Fathey admitted to the inappropriate touching but would not elaborate, documents said.The girl s mother fainted during the meeting, and police were called.Fathey is charged with one count of first-degree rape of a child and two counts of first-degree child molestation. All three counts include the aggravating circumstance that he used a position of trust to commit the crimes.Read more here: Tri-City Herald | 1real |
Indians Rush Frantically to Launder Their ‘Black Money’ - The New York Times | MUMBAI, India — Indians’ ingenuity is being mightily tested as they rush to save their “black money,” stashes of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of rupees they have accumulated without paying taxes. For decades, Indians have stuffed their mattresses with and notes, the most widely circulated bills, worth the equivalent of a few dollars. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to tax that money. His strategy was to force Indians to reveal what they had been hoarding. How? He banned the bills and told people that they had to exchange them for new ones. The ban, which was announced on Nov. 8, has thrown the economy into chaos and sent Indians on a desperate search for some way, any way, to launder their accumulated money and avoid a financially disastrous loss. People can exchange the banned notes through the end of the year for smaller denominations or new bills that are being created. Because more affluent Indians are allowed to deposit only 250, 000 rupees, or about $3, 700, without proof that they paid taxes, some are handing wads of cash to poor people, paying them a fee to hold the money in their accounts and return it later. Others are thronging jewelry stores and designer boutiques, carrying suitcases of banned currency notes, begging to buy something with backdated receipts. “People felt, rather than turn my money into toilet paper, let me have a beautiful outfit,” Tina Tahiliani Parikh, the executive director of the Ensemble group of Indian fashion stores, said in an interview. Some have thrown in the towel, rather than risking an investigation into their taxes, filling pillowcases and paper bags with the old currency and dumping them in the trash. Notes of 1, 000 rupees, the equivalent of about $15, have been spotted floating down the Ganges River. About a third of all business in India is carried out using black money. Whole industries, like real estate, trading, luxury retailing and wedding services, have been fueled by black money for decades. They have slumped. Indians line up for hours in a quest for the notes that they are allowed to receive in exchange at banks and the 2, 500 rupees that they can withdraw from A. T. M.s each day to pay for necessities. They often wait hours only to find that the bank or A. T. M. has run out of notes, which are scarce because the new ones are still being printed. The Supreme Court of India on Friday refused to block cases being brought in lower courts challenging Mr. Modi’s currency ban. The court said that people were frantic, and that the cases were a sign of a serious problem. The chairman of the Indian Banks’ Association said on Friday that all of the nation’s banks would limit the exchange of banned notes to older citizens and their own customers on Saturday so the staff could focus on normal banking. To a certain extent, analysts say, the Indian economy is so dependent on black money that economic dislocation was unavoidable if India was to seriously attack the problem. “In an emerging market economy like India, where corruption was deep rooted and long lasting, there is no way to put in place reform without significant disruption in the short run,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University. A Mumbai novelist, Namita Devidayal, in a Times of India column last week, described the efforts by many of India’s wealthy women to salvage “those happy little bundles which she would whip out of her cupboard safe. ” Some were trying to pay their maids a year’s salary upfront, using the old notes, which the maids could ostensibly convert to new currency at the bank because the total was under the $3, 700 limit. Others were paying for a year’s hairdressing services in the old notes. Still others were pressing personal trainers, yoga teachers and children’s tutors to take cash upfront for months of services. Ms. Devidayal argued in an interview that the wealthy were “always trying to find some bargain by saving on taxes” and were by far the biggest exploiters of the system. “I know wealthy women so used to handling cash they can tell how much money there is by the weight of a bundle,” she said. Ms. Parikh said some customers had shown up with suitcases of cash, beseeching her staff to pretend that the purchases were made days earlier, which the staff refused to do. Some other luxury goods stores not only obliged customers but solicited them, sensing an opportunity, Ms. Parikh said. “Everyone has tricks up their sleeves, backdating bills,” she said. Real estate has been particularly hard hit by the ban on black money, since sale documents filed with the government typically reflect only the portion of the sale price paid by check. As a result, the sellers have no way of explaining to the tax authorities how they received the cash, which can account for as much as 60 percent of the deal. People who had just sold property were particularly out of luck, since they have not had a chance to spend or invest the cash they received. One man who had just received 3. 5 million rupees, or about $51, 000, in a real estate sale said he was hiring 14 people to deposit the 250, 000 rupees in old notes that they are allowed to put into their accounts without raising questions. Such tactics, called bundling, are illegal in the United States. Whether these schemes are successful will depend on the scrutiny of bank officials and the tax authorities. The Modi administration has said it will exercise extreme vigilance to prevent them, but the Indian government’s record in the area of corruption is not strong. Nevertheless, the pledge to crack down has ignited such fear of future income tax investigations that some people have been dumping cash. Several garbage pickers in Mumbai have found pillow cases and sacks filled with cash in recent days, said Saumya Roy, the chief executive of the nonprofit Vandana Foundation, which makes loans to the garbage pickers, among other residents in Mumbai and elsewhere. In a country where government oversight is weak, it has been easy to transact business in cash and to avoid taxes. Paying cash was also a way of avoiding the scrutiny of tax authorities who might question where a family, particularly that of a politician or wealthy business owner, had amassed the resources to spend enormous amounts of money on real estate or a wedding. “India is so crazy and complicated,” Ms. Devidayal said. “The option of not having black money is very much there, but because it’s so habitual and easy, and you can just say, ‘I had to do it,’ many people did. ” Cash had become so ingrained in the real estate industry that it was difficult to make a deal without paying some portion under the table. When Ramanan Laxminarayan, a Princeton University senior research scholar, tried to buy an apartment in the New Delhi area, he was told that he would have to provide 60 percent of the purchase price, about $420, 000, in cash to close the deal. Unable to raise such sums, he gave up trying to buy. “I said, ‘Is it legal?’ They said, ‘Of course not,’” Mr. Laxminarayan said. India’s lavish weddings have taken a big hit. Families that had stashed large amounts of black money to spend in the coming wedding season, which starts in December, are scrambling to make contingency plans. “This whole business is largely in cash,” from the caterer and musicians to the jeweler and ornate saris, said Satish Arora, a caterer and decorator in Faridabad, a city near Delhi. Several marriages planned for hotels have been downscaled, he said. Now, the best many can manage is “a simple joint reception. ” The luxury goods market also has been flattened. Business at some of Ms. Parikh’s Ensemble shops has dropped 60 percent since Mr. Modi announced his ban, she said. “We don’t know what will be normal in the future,” she said. | 0fake |
Poll: Majority Of Americans HATE Trump’s Unconstitutional Executive Orders | While President Trump s approval rating continues to fall to embarrassing ans unprecedented levels, new polling has come out that shows dismal numbers of support towards his hateful, unconstitutional executive orders.According to Gallup Polling, the majority of the American public has an unfavorable view towards Trump s most controversial orders, including the ban on immigration refuge from seven majority-Muslim countries.Here s what the poll found:The poll also found that President Trump s approval rating 43% while his disapproval rating stands at 52 percent, a net negative 9 points. Only 41 percent of independent voters approve of Trump s performance as president, along with 83 percent of Republicans.Almost half of America believes Trump is acting too fast in his first days in office.Simply put: Trump is (still) hated by the American public and so are his most controversial executive actions. The only people that seem to like him are the Republicans that voted him in. Still, over one-sixth of the GOP doesn t seem to like him at this point.As Gallup s analysis concludes:Trump is not enjoying the type of honeymoon that the American public accorded his predecessors in their first weeks in office. Trump s initial job approval rating was the lowest in Gallup history, and a majority of Americans continue to disapprove of the job he is doing. No other president going back to Dwight Eisenhower had majority disapproval in his first several months in office. A majority of Americans, in similar fashion, disapprove of several of the high-visibility executive actions Trump has taken within his first 10 days in the White House.This polarization of opinion most likely reflects not only Trump himself his style and the actions he has taken but also the prevailing political environment today.The only thing Trump cares about is how people feel about him. His numbers aren t getting better, and they have for the better part of two years been embarrassingly low (in the mid forties).Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 1real |
Illegal Immigrants Filing Tax Returns Dropping under Trump | While Americans are scrambling to meet the 2016 tax filing deadline, the number of illegal immigrants submitting their returns in the present climate are reportedly down significantly. Also, a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report exposing significant refund fraud has “most certainly contributed to it,” says the taxpayer advocate department within the IRS. [The Internal Revenue Service stated that millions of people who do not have Social Security numbers (SSN) most of these illegal aliens, filed federal tax returns last year, reported NPR the day before the tax deadline. Many of those who are ineligible for SSN use “ITIN,” or Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers when filing. The Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent organization within the IRS, reports that “Without ITINs, approximately 4. 6 million taxpayers would not be able to comply with their annual tax filing and payment obligations, or receive tax benefits to which they are legally entitled. ” The advocate service states that ITIN applications and “associated return filings” “have dropped precipitously, down 58 percent between 2011 and 2014. ” They write that the “general economic climate and immigration trends” explain part of this drop, but the “IRS ITIN procedures have most certainly contributed to it. ” After the TIGTA report “alleging significant refund fraud connected to ITINS,” in 2012 the IRS made what its independent advocacy service calls “sweeping changes that require applicants to submit original identification documents (subject to a few alternatives). ” The IRS has also continued its policy of requiring applicants to apply for an ITIN with a paper tax return. The new requirements led to delays for the ITIN applicants and associated large backlogs, the Taxpayer Advocate Services says. The independent arm charges that “While concerns about refund fraud are legitimate, the IRS’s solutions do not effectively target the fraud nor do they balance the regime with the taxpayer’s need for a process no more intrusive than necessary, part of a taxpayer’s right to privacy. ” Moreover, NPR reported that tax preparers in the sanctuary city San Francisco area told them there is approximately a 20 percent decline in the number of people filing with ITIN numbers. A tax law professor at the University of Nevada said that tax preparers in other parts of the United States are making similar claims. “Sending in a tax return with your current address and information is very unnerving to a population that wants to comply with the law and is actually leaving significant refunds on the table by not filing tax returns,” educator Francine Lipman said. The IRS is barred from giving information it has obtained to other United States agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security. They may share information only under “limited circumstances” NPR reported. The professor says that those bearing ITIN numbers must decide “whether to trust that firewall. ” “Many of our clients are telling us that in years past they felt more hope and more of ability to have a pathway toward citizenship and lately there’s a lot less hope,” Max the head of a tax program at the Mission Economic Development Agency told NPR. Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2. | 0fake |
LOL! GEORGE LOPEZ Booed Off Stage At Children’s Diabetes Charity After Audience Rejects His Anti-Trump Jokes | George Lopez was hired to be the emcee for the Children s Diabetes Foundation s Carousel Ball. Lopez thought it would be a good idea to turn what should have been an event to help sick children into an opportunity to express his hate for President Trump and his supporters. Bad idea Here s the promotion for Lopez from the Children s Diabetes Foundation on Twitter:We are excited to announce that commedian & acotor @georgelopez will be the emcee for this year's #CarouselBall! https://t.co/cO9eHKviPO pic.twitter.com/aCpAI9F22a CDF (@CDFdiabetes) September 21, 2017Comic George Lopez was booed off stage at a gala for juvenile diabetes in Denver last week, over an anti-Donald Trump routine that fell flat with the crowd.We re told the flap began when Trump backer and Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei donated $250,000 but requested that Lopez cool it with the anti-Trump jokes at the Carousel Ball.An attendee at the event where tables sold from $5,000 to $100,000 to benefit the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes commented on a YouTube video that George was asked nicely to stop making Trump jokes by a man in front row [Maffei] who just donated $250K. But George doesn t, continues. Gets booed. We re told that Lopez responded to Maffei, Thank you for changing my opinion on old white men, but it doesn t change the way I feel about orange men. Trying to recover and sensing the audience turn, Lopez said, Listen, it s about the kids . . . I apologize for bringing politics to an event. This is America it still is. So I apologize to your white privilege. We re told Lopez also told a joke about Trump s proposed border wall with Mexico, saying, I guess you can get some Mexicans to do it cheaper and they wouldn t crush the tunnels underneath. When the audience did not respond well, he quipped, Are you El Chapo people? in reference to the drug kingpin who has used tunnels to evade authorities.Lopez then announced a video segment but he did not return to the stage, and a local newscaster took over the hosting duties.Host of HUGE charity #CarouselBall, @georgelopez , makes political comments about Trump, drops f-bomb and is escorted out. J R (@DrumIntuition) October 14, 2017TV host Chris Parente posted on Twitter, big controversy: host of HUGE charity #CarouselBall, @georgelopez, makes political comments about Trump, drops f-bomb and is escorted out. Page SixChris Parente s tweet has since been deleted. | 1real |
Freeport Indonesia mine access road reopened after shooting: spokesman | JAKARTA (Reuters) - The Indonesian unit of Freeport-McMoRan Inc has reopened the main supply route to its Papuan mine, a company spokesman said on Monday, after the road was closed on Sunday following a shooting incident in the area. It was already open this morning, Freeport Indonesia spokesman Riza Pratama told Reuters, when asked about the road. He said the closure had had no impact on production at the world s second biggest copper mine. | 0fake |
American won't resume Miami service until Tuesday at earliest | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American Airlines Group Inc will not resume commercial flights at its Miami International Airport hub on Monday but may operate flights to bring in staff and supplies. The airline said earlier on Sunday it planned to begin limited operations on Monday after 5 p.m. (2100 GMT), but reversed course after the Miami airport said it would remain closed on Monday. The airport may reopen on Tuesday but it did not confirm the plans. American now plans to resume limited operations when the airport reopens, the airline said, noting federal agencies must assess whether the airport can reopen. The Fort Worth-based airline canceled all flights at the Miami airport starting on Friday evening in anticipation of Hurricane Irma, along with flights at three other south Florida airports. All American flights remain canceled through Monday at 12 other Florida airports, as well as Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. | 0fake |
Trump says democracy must be restored in Venezuela soon | NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted democracy restored soon in Venezuela and warned that the United States might take additional measures to apply pressure on the oil-producing nation. At a dinner with Latin American leaders on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump said the Venezuelan people were starving and their country, once one of the wealthiest, was collapsing. Brazilian President Michel Temer told reporters afterwards that all present at the dinner agreed on the need to ramp up international pressure on the Socialist government of President Nicol s Maduro but without intervening directly in Venezuela. The United States has applied financial sanctions against Venezuela, the supplier of 10 percent of the oil it consumes, and Trump said his government is prepared to take additional steps if Maduro continues on a path to authoritarian rule. Saying the situation in Venezuela was completely unacceptable, Trump called for a full restoration of democracy and political freedoms. We want it to happen very soon. Besides Temer, Trump invited presidents Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, Juan Carlos Varela of Panama and Argentine Vice President Gabriela Michetti to the dinner with their foreign ministers. At least 125 people have been killed in four months of protests against the Maduro government, which has resisted calls to bring forward the presidential election and instead set up a pro-Maduro legislative superbody called a Constituent Assembly that has overruled the country s opposition-led Congress. To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own people stealing power from their elected representatives to preserve his disastrous rule, Trump said at the dinner. Maduro has blamed Venezuela s financial troubles on an alleged economic war by domestic opponents and the United States. Latin American governments have called for negotiations to resolve the crisis through a peaceful transition to democracy, especially Colombia and Brazil which have long borders with Venezuela and are receiving tens of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing the economic chaos and political turmoil. While the Trump administration has imposed financial sanctions and Trump has called for tougher action, Latin American leaders have stuck to diplomatic sanctions and ruled out a military intervention, an option Trump has mentioned. Evidently, everyone at the table wants a democratic solution in Venezuela, but no one wants a foreign intervention, Temer said. Sanctions were not discussed at the dinner, the Brazilian leader said. We are talking about verbal sanctions, with democratic words, diplomatic words, Temer said. | 0fake |
Mike Ditka Slams Obama - ’No Leadership at All’ - Breitbart | During Thursday’s “The Bernie and Sid Show” on New York’s WABC Radio, legendary NFL coach and player Mike Ditka slammed former President Barack Obama, saying he lacked leadership. “If [Trump] can possibly screw it up half as much as Obama, I’ll be surprised,” Ditka said. He added, “No leadership at all. None. Zero. Ditka went on to weigh in on San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest, calling him “unintelligent” for disrespecting the game that made him a public figure. “He doesn’t play for me ever again. Period,” Ditka said if one of his players knees for the national anthem. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0fake |
GREAT NEWS! House GOP Moderates Threaten “You may see some Main Street members (RINO’s) retire” If We Don’t Get Paul Ryan For Speaker | It looks like there is more than one good reason to not elect Paul Ryan as the next Speaker Of The House. This is the best news we ve heard all week..The moderate wing of the GOP is concerned that if the House cannot coalesce behind Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) or someone like him as speaker, some of the more pragmatic members of the caucus will retire, the National Journal reported Monday. De pend ing on how this shakes out, you may see some Main Street mem bers re tire, Sarah Cham ber lain chief op er at ing and fin an cial of ficer for the Republic an Main Street Part ner ship, which supports moderate GOP lawmakers told the National Journal. They re hop ing for a Ry an-type can did ate. But if it s not and it be comes a huge mess, why be sit ting here? Two of the most vocal GOP critics of the conservative hardliners who have been roiling House leadership suggested to National Journal that the thought of retirement was weighing on members minds, even if they themselves weren t currently considering stepping down. A lot has been put on hold in both ways people de cid ing to run again, or not run again, Rep. Pete King (R-NY) told National Journal, while saying he personally is not considering retiring be cause you can t give in. Likewise, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) said he was pre par ing as if I m run ning for reelec tion right now. But we ll see what hap pens. The next two months are go ing to be pretty intense, Dent said. via: Talking Points Memo | 1real |
Hillary: I’m ’Part of the Resistance’ - Breitbart | Hillary Clinton: “I’m now back to being an activist citizen, and part of the resistance. ” https: . https: . During an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said, “I’m now back to being an activist citizen, and part of the resistance. ” Hillary said, “I can’t be anything other than who I am, and I’ve spent decades learning about what it would take to move our country forward, including people who clearly didn’t vote for me. To try to make sure that we dealt with a lot of these hard issues that are right around the corner, like robotics and artificial intelligence, and things that are really going to be upending the economy, for the vast majority of Americans, to say nothing of the rest of the world. So, I’m now back to being an activist citizen, and part of the resistance. ” ( Grabien) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
White House targets leakers, may restructure communications: Scaramucci | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s new communications director Anthony Scaramucci said on Tuesday he would probably restructure the communications operation at the White House and would fire staff if leaks did not cease. “If the leaks continue, then I’ve got to let everybody go,” he told reporters on Air Force One after Trump’s trip to Ohio. Scaramucci said there were no immediate plans to fire anyone else following the resignation of senior assistant press secretary Michael Short earlier on Tuesday. He said he would take some time to look at the communications operation at the White House. “We will probably restructure,” he said. Both he and Trump were adamant that leaks needed to be stopped, Scaramucci said. “We’ve got a plan,” he said, without offering details. | 0fake |
America gives Grand Piano to horse | Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Lucas Wilde America gives Grand Piano to horse
America has given a grand piano to a horse and is expecting some quality tunes.
“I’m particularly looking forward to Beethoven’s Ninth,” beamed horse supporter and piano enthusiast, Jay Cooper.
“A horse has never been given a piano before because, frankly, the establishment wouldn’t allow it.
“Now, at last, change has come, and America will change for the better.
“There are a lot of doubters out there, and those doubters will soon be silenced by the graceful notes of Chopin, Mozart and maybe even Little Richard.”
Horse, Dobbin Williams, said, “I’m not really sure what’s expected of me here.
“I’m a horse. I am absolutely not qualified to play a piano.
“I mean… Look at these hooves and the way I am in general. I can’t even sit on the chair properly.
“Why on earth did anyone think this was a good idea?”
Cooper grinned, “We did it. We’ve made pianos great again.”
Democrat, Elizabeth King, said “We wanted to get a pianist of low-to-medium standard for the piano.
“She wouldn’t have thumped out anything exciting, but it would have been perfectly reasonable background music.
“But the people have spoken, and the people wanted a horse.
“God Bless America.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently witterings below - why not add your own? | 1real |
IS THIS WHY COMEY BROKE: A STACK OF RESIGNATION LETTERS FROM FURIOUS FBI AGENTS | Home › POLITICS › IS THIS WHY COMEY BROKE: A STACK OF RESIGNATION LETTERS FROM FURIOUS FBI AGENTS IS THIS WHY COMEY BROKE: A STACK OF RESIGNATION LETTERS FROM FURIOUS FBI AGENTS 0 SHARES
[10/31/16] Conspiracy theories have swirled in recent days as to why FBI Director James Comey reopened Hillary’s email investigation after just closing it back in July concluding that, although Hillary had demonstrated gross negligence in her establishment of a private email server, that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against her. Democrats, after lavishing Comey with praise for months on concluding his investigation in an “impartial” way, have since lashed out at him for seeking to influence the 2016 election cycle with Hillary herself describing his recent actions as “deeply troubling”. Republicans, on the other hand, have praised Comey’s recent efforts as an attempt to correct a corrupt investigation that seemingly ignored critical evidence while granting numerous immunity agreements to Clinton staffers.
According to the Daily Mail , and a source close to James Comey, the decision, at least in part, came after he “could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI” who “felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.”
James Comey’s decision to revive the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server and her handling of classified material came after he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI , including some of his top deputies, according to a source close to the embattled FBI director.
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.
‘The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him,’ the source continued. ‘And that includes his wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state.
Though we’re sure there are many facets behind Comey’s decision making process, we can all be quite certain, at this point, that he’s not motivated by a desire to make friends having now alienated just about everyone in Washington, both in law enforcement and in both political parties. In fact, after Tim Kaine just last week praised Comey as a “wonderful” career public servant with the “highest standards of integrity” …. Post navigation | 1real |
In record year for political ads, media buyers see tight market | (Reuters) - Media buyers expect record political ad spending driven by the U.S. presidential race will create a tight market for advertisers and drive up rates. Super PACs, which rose to prominence after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court campaign finance decision in 2010, are preparing to buy national ads and to spend more once the nominees for each party are chosen at the political conventions in July, media buyers who work with these groups told Reuters. “The campaigns are more sophisticated and are raising more money than ever before,” said Kyle Roberts, president and chief executive of Smart Media Group, an Alexandria, VA-based media buyer that works with Republican candidates. “It is much easier today for outside groups to raise money to influence national elections.” The bulk of political ad spending typically is in local markets. But networks are already seeing more national ad buys by the Super PACs, a shift that could benefit television networks. The election also has brought a ratings boon to television, which had been losing audience to Internet streaming. Fox News Channel said Wednesday it was No. 1 among basic cable networks last quarter for the first time.. CNN had the best quarter in seven years. “We have seen a little bit of the Super PAC money come in,” said Katrina Cukaj executive vice president of portfolio sales and client partnerships at Turner ad sales, part of Time Warner Inc (TWX.N), which owns CNN. “We haven’t seen the full force of it yet. That will come when we know who the candidates are.” The frenzy in political ad spending is expected to reshape advertiser behavior. Media buyers predict the presidential election will result in an increase in spending at this year’s so-called upfronts, where the networks present their fall line-ups and woo big advertisers with swanky parties and celebrity appearances. Upfronts run through May. “The Super PACs are not afraid to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few local stations, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the national election is going to have a real impact on the upfronts,” said Barry Lowenthal, president of The Media Kitchen, a New York-based media buyer. Lowenthal expects pricing for advertising to go up as a result of the Super PAC spending. More advertisers are expected to lock in ad spots for the fourth quarter, rather than face price increases later or risk getting shut out of the market. Media buyers say they expect up to a 5 percent increase in spending for this year’s upfronts – the first increase in two years. That could mean a jump in spending of up to $8.9 billion for prime time spots alone, based on data from Media Dynamics. Presidential ad spending for cable and broadcast television and radio in 2016 has already surpassed the $300 million mark, up more than 200 percent from the same period in the 2012 election cycle, according to data from Smart Media Group. “This is going to be a very good year for us,” said CBS Chair and CEO Les Moonves at an investment conference in February. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on Donald. Keep going,” Moonves said, referring to the Republican GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump. | 0fake |
FOX NEWS’ SHEPARD SMITH Has Liberal Meltdown Over Trump Press Conference [VIDEO]…#FireShepardSmith | Like Megyn Kelly, who lost her supporters when she became obsessed with destroying Donald Trump, it s time for Shepard Smith to go. Let s face it, he would be much better suited for the small audiences of liberal viewers on CNN or MNSBC.It s time to go Shep and today s rant is a perfect example of why:Clip: @ShepNewsTeam sticks up for CNN's Jim @Acosta & went further pic.twitter.com/iITXqAzXXF johnny dollar (@johnnydollar01) February 16, 2017Remember the time Shepard Smith cut off his guest s mic when they attempted to tie Black Lives Matter to the kidnapping and torture of the young special needs white man by 4 young black thugs?It s not the first time Hillary supporter Shepard Smith went off on an anti-Trump tangent. Watch him go off on Trump here and tell him what he needs to do to win the election. Great advice Shep. I guess it s pretty clear Trump didn t need your advice. LOL!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcaoVuTvvoE | 1real |
Under Trump plan, refugees from 11 countries face additional U.S. barriers | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Trump administration will temporarily delay processing of most refugees from 11 countries identified as high-risk, while resuming refugee admissions for other countries, government officials said on Tuesday. Most of the affected countries are in the Middle East and Africa, according to documents seen by Reuters. The administration also will place on hold a program that allows for family reunification for some refugees resettled in the United States, according to a Trump administration memo seen by Reuters and sent to Congress on Tuesday. The resettling of so-called following-to-join refugees will resume, according to the memo, once screening enhancements have been implemented. U.S. officials said the changes were aimed at protecting U.S. national security, but refugee advocates said they amounted to a de facto ban on refugees from the 11 countries and were unnecessary, since refugees are already heavily vetted. The changes come at the close of a 120-day ban on most refugees ordered by President Donald Trump to allow a review of vetting processes. The 120 days ended on Tuesday, and Trump issued an executive order allowing the general resumption of the U.S. refugee program. The memo expressed concerns about admitting refugees from the 11 countries and said the government will conduct a 90-day review to determine what additional safeguards, if any, are necessary to ensure ... the security and welfare of the United States. Trump took office in January with a goal of sharply cutting refugee admissions, in line with promises he made during the 2016 election campaign. He quickly issued temporary bans on refugees and travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, which were challenged in court. Opponents of the bans argued that the policies were aimed at barring Muslims from the United States. The administration has denied any intent to discriminate and says its travel ban and security changes are meant to protect the United States from terrorist acts. The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed the last remaining challenge to an earlier version of Trump s travel ban. The 11 countries to face further hurdles are those whose refugees are currently required to undergo higher-level security screening known as Security Advisory Opinions, or SAOs. As of the end of 2016, SAOs were required for most adult male refugees who were nationals of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, as well as Palestinians who lived in those countries, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters. Three sources familiar with refugee processing said that list was still current. Officials declined to name the 11 countries. A senior U.S. official told reporters on condition of anonymity that during the 90-day review period, refugees from the 11 countries can still be admitted to the United States on a case-by-case basis, if it s deemed to be in the national interest and they pose no threat. But the administration s memo, signed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, said the government will reallocate resources used to process refugees from SAO countries to those from other locations where the processing may not be as resource intensive. Refugees International, an advocacy group, said the decision amounted to a new and near-total ban on admission of refugees from 11 nationality groups. Citizens of the 11 countries comprised 44 percent of the nearly 54,000 refugees admitted into the United States in the 2017 fiscal year, according to State Department data. Of the countries, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Iran sent by far the most refugees to the United States. All but two of the countries, North Korea and South Sudan, are majority Muslim, though many of the refugees that come from those countries are religious minorities in their own states. Of nearly 2,600 Iranian refugees resettled in the United States last year, for instance, a majority were Christian, according to State Department data. The follow-to-join refugee program being put on hold allows refugees who have entered the United States to apply for close family members to join them. About 2,000 such refugee family members came to the United States in 2015, according to DHS data. In a separate State Department memo seen by Reuters and issued this week, the administration also laid out additional screening for all refugees seeking admission into the United States, including details of their whereabouts going back a decade, twice as long as before. Refugees will also have to provide more detailed information about their family members. The new requirements could put an additional burden on refugees fleeing war, famine or ethnic cleansing, whose lives have often been upended and whose family members may be scattered across the world, refugee advocates said. | 0fake |
Fed Officials See Faster Economic Growth Under Trump, but No Boom - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials expect Donald J. Trump’s election to result in somewhat faster economic growth over the next several years, but they see little chance of the boom Mr. Trump has promised, according to an account of the Fed’s most recent meeting in . That is in part because the Fed plans to raise interest rates more quickly if growth accelerates. For now, however, Fed officials plan to wait and see what happens next, the account said. “While the Fed signaled that it would likely respond to expansionary fiscal policies with a faster pace of rate hikes, the Fed believes it is too early to embed this into its baseline,” Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays, wrote on Wednesday following the release of the minutes. “Any real shift in the stance of monetary policy will require more clarity on the stance of fiscal policy. ” At the December meeting, the Fed raised its benchmark rate for just the second time since 2008, citing the continued expansion of the economy and the steady decline of unemployment. The Fed debated and delayed that increase for most of last year, but the account published on Wednesday — after a standard delay — described the final decision as uncontroversial. Officials instead spent the meeting talking about what comes next. Mr. Trump has promised a bevy of major changes in economic policy, including tax cuts and spending increases, reductions in regulation, and restrictions on trade and immigration. As a result, the account said, Fed officials regard both faster growth and slower growth as more likely than before the election, when the economy seemed locked into its longstanding pattern of slow and steady growth. “The job of conducting U. S. monetary policy has not become any easier over recent months,” said James Marple, senior economist at TD Bank, referring to the increased uncertainty. The Fed, led by Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman, predicted in December that it would raise rates three times this year. The account said officials were not yet ready to predict how the pace of rate increases might change as a result of new policies pursued by Mr. Trump and Congress. “Participants emphasized their uncertainty about the timing, size and composition of any future fiscal and other economic policy initiatives as well as about how those policies might affect aggregate demand and supply,” the minutes said. The Fed’s committee, the Federal Open Market Committee, has 17 members, 10 of whom cast votes on monetary policy. The Fed’s caution amounts to a bias in favor of growth. The economy is expanding at roughly the pace Fed officials regard as sustainable. The work force is growing slowly as more baby boomers retire, and productivity is rising slowly. Two percent growth may be about as good as it gets. Ms. Yellen has warned that fiscal stimulus, like a tax cut or a spending increase, could increase economic growth to an unsustainable pace in the near term, resulting in increased inflation. The Fed quite likely would seek to offset such policies by raising interest rates more quickly. Instead of acting the Fed is choosing to wait for more information. But the minutes said officials were concerned about the challenge of communicating their increased uncertainty. They want to be clear that the Fed’s prediction about the pace of rate increases depends on its prediction about economic growth. Faster growth will mean faster increases. The account said Fed officials were confident in their ability to raise rates quickly enough to prevent overheating, seeing “only a modest risk” of a “sharp acceleration in prices. ” By holding rates at low levels, the Fed has sought to increase economic growth by encouraging borrowing and higher rates reduce the stimulative effect. The benchmark rate now sits in a range from 0. 5 percent to 0. 75 percent, still very low by historical standards. “Consumers have no reason to panic about the rate hike last month, or even about additional rate increases in 2017,” said Alan MacEachin, chief corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. He noted that the last rate hike would add $1 to the monthly payment on a $5, 000 credit card balance. The economic forecast prepared by the Fed’s staff for the December meeting anticipated that Mr. Trump’s election would result in “slightly higher” growth over the next several years. It said a likely increase in fiscal stimulus would be “substantially counterbalanced” by higher interest rates and a stronger dollar, which would reduce exports of American goods and services. Several Fed officials reported that Mr. Trump’s election had increased optimism among business executives in their districts. “Some contacts thought that their businesses could benefit from possible changes in federal spending, tax and regulatory policies,” the minutes said. The minutes also noted, however, that some executives were concerned about the negative impact of proposed policy changes. In a recent interview, John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said many executives in his district, which encompasses the western United States, worried about the potential impact of restrictions on immigration and on foreign trade, both of which have been important drivers of regional growth. Businesses across the country also reported increased difficulty in hiring qualified workers, the minutes said. The unemployment rate fell to just 4. 6 percent in November. The lack of readily available workers could further limit the benefits of a fiscal stimulus. | 0fake |
Suicide Bombings Hit 3 Cities in Saudi Arabia, One Near a Holy Site - The New York Times | BEIRUT, Lebanon — Bombings rocked three cities across Saudi Arabia on Monday, including near the Prophet’s Mosque in the holy city of Medina, raising the specter of increasingly coordinated attacks by militants seeking to destabilize the monarchy. A suicide bomber struck near the United States Consulate in the coastal city of Jidda in the morning, wounding two security officers. Then, near dusk, when Muslims were ending their daily Ramadan fasts, other blasts struck near a Shiite mosque in the country’s east and at a security post in Medina, killing four guards, according to the Al Arabiya television network. The blasts in Saudi Arabia followed a bloody week in which terrorist attacks caused mass casualties in the largest cities of three predominantly Muslim countries: Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in Baghdad, and it is suspected of carrying out the one in Istanbul. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Saudi bombings, although Islamic State extremists have attacked the kingdom repeatedly in recent years, mostly targeting the Shiite minority and state security personnel. The attacks occurred amid fears that extremists had planned further violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and for the holiday that celebrates its conclusion this week, Eid . The Medina attack struck the security office of the mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is said to be buried, an important stop for millions of pilgrims who visit the holy cities each year. Four security officers died in the attack, Al Arabiya said, in addition to a suicide bomber. The other evening attack was near a Shiite mosque in the eastern region of Qatif and killed no one but the bomber, according to witnesses quoted by the Reuters news agency. The Jidda attack took place when security officers confronted a man acting suspiciously near the United States Consulate. He detonated his explosives, killing himself and wounding two guards, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The United States Embassy in Riyadh, the capital, said in a statement that none of its consular staff members in Jidda had been wounded, and it warned American citizens to limit nonessential travel to the kingdom and to remain cautious inside it. An attack by Al Qaeda on the consulate in 2004 left five staff members and four gunmen dead. In neighboring Kuwait, officials announced the arrest of four people accused of plotting two attacks in the country and said they had repatriated a Kuwaiti family who had joined the Islamic State in Syria, according to the KUNA news agency. One of the suspects is a young Kuwaiti man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and was planning to bomb a mosque during Eid the report said. The man said after his arrest that he had received instructions from an Islamic State operative abroad, the agency reported, to send a young recruit with no security record to obtain explosives and guns for the attack. Two Kuwaitis and a man from an unspecified Asian country were arrested in the second plot and had two assault rifles, ammunition and the black flag of the Islamic State, the report said. Kuwait also said it had arrested and repatriated a Kuwaiti man who had joined the Islamic State in Syria, as well as his mother and son. The man had studied petroleum engineering in Britain and had moved to Syria to work in oil production for the Islamic State after his older brother was killed while fighting for the group in Iraq, the report said. Kuwait is predominantly Sunni, but Sunnis and Shiites live together with few sectarian tensions. An Islamic State suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in Kuwait City killed 27 a year ago. The bomber was a Saudi citizen. | 0fake |
In Pearl Harbor Visit, a Symbol of Reconciliation in Japan - The New York Times | TOKYO — As recently as five years ago, a Japanese prime minister was in Hawaii for an economic summit meeting, but pointedly stayed away from Pearl Harbor. In the coming week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will fly to Hawaii for the express purpose of visiting the site of the surprise attack on a United States naval base 75 years ago that killed 2, 400 Americans and drew the country into World War II. It is a sign of how far public opinion in Japan has moved that Mr. Abe can make the trip to the memorial, accompanied by President Obama, to offer condolences to the victims. For decades, Japan has struggled to reckon with its wartime history, and the Pearl Harbor attack has been cast as a tragic but inevitable response to an oil embargo that would have devastated the Japanese imperial empire. Because of domestic political opposition, it has been all but impossible for Japanese leaders to visit Pearl Harbor until now. In 1994, when Emperor Akihito tried to visit the memorial, atop the remains of the U. S. S. Arizona, the American battleship on which the worst losses occurred, protests from Japan’s nationalist right wing prompted him to alter his plans. But after Mr. Abe, who is a conservative politician with strong ties to nationalist groups, announced his plans this month, the reception in Japan was largely positive. Even the Sankei newspaper — though grumbling that Mr. Abe should first revisit Yasukuni, a shrine in Tokyo where war criminals are enshrined — described Mr. Abe’s trip to Hawaii as “an opportunity to refresh a commitment to deepen the U. S. friendship and contribute peace to the world through a tranquil ceremony. ” Some Japanese news media suggested that the Pearl Harbor trip could even lift Mr. Abe’s approval ratings and give him the confidence to call an election in January. The Japanese public is also aware of the importance of a symbolic visit to Pearl Harbor at a time of uncertainty in its country’s relationship with the United States. Although the premier’s visit to Pearl Harbor was in the planning stages even before the American presidential election, Donald J. Trump’s win scared Japanese leaders because he had spent time on the campaign trail castigating Japan for not paying enough for its own defense. And when Mr. Obama made a visit to Hiroshima in May, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter: “Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he’s in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. ” Mr. Abe is not the first sitting prime minister to visit the Pearl Harbor memorial (Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida apparently visited the memorial during a stop in Hawaii in 1951) but he will be the first to participate in a public ceremony there. He is not expected to apologize for the attacks, much as Mr. Obama did not apologize for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Instead, Mr. Abe will most likely repeat the repentance and condolences he offered in April 2015 when he addressed Congress. Although it was 75 years in the making, Mr. Abe’s trip to Pearl Harbor is in some ways the easiest gesture of reconciliation that Japan could make as it confronts its wartime past. Asia has long been plagued by an inability among the war’s combatants to move beyond its events and enmities. South Korea and China remain angered by what they see as Japanese efforts to ignore or sugarcoat atrocities. By contrast, the relationship between Japan and the United States long ago overcame such difficulties. “I think that’s because the United States was a good winner and Japan was a good loser,” said Tamaki Tsukada, a spokesman at the Japanese Embassy in Washington. “The United States was magnanimous after defeating Japan. It did not impose harsh terms. If anything, the U. S. provided very generous support, humanitarian and economic. ” The Japanese accepted the American postwar occupation peacefully. Even in the United States, where “Remember Pearl Harbor” was once a rallying cry, the sense of outrage about what was viewed as a sneaky and disreputable attack has largely dissipated, said Daniel Martinez, the chief historian at the Pearl Harbor memorial. Part of that is time, and also sympathetic popular culture portrayals of Japanese attackers in movies like “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and “Pearl Harbor,” Mr. Martinez said. “I never hated the Japanese, and I don’t need an apology,” said Stu Hedley, 95, who was a seaman on the battleship West Virginia, which settled to the bottom of the harbor after the attack. “I welcome this visit. ” In Japan, Pearl Harbor is often defined as one bookend of a war that ended with the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which some Japanese see as morally absolving the country of its aggression. Guidelines from the Ministry of Education for teaching history stipulate that students learn that “Japan caused tremendous damage to many countries, especially in Asia, and that Japan also suffered unprecedented damages in the Tokyo air raids, the Battle of Okinawa and in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ” While most Japanese students visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki at least once during their school years, Pearl Harbor merits just one or two lines in most textbooks. “The younger generation knows the term Pearl Harbor, but they don’t know much about it,” said Katsutoshi Chujo, a middle school history teacher near Tokyo. “Most young people don’t know much about the war. They know about Japan as a victim in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Tokyo air raids. ” Several textbooks used in public schools describe it as a surprise attack on the United States that followed a long campaign in China. But a textbook that takes a more nationalist view and that has been approved by the Education Ministry portrays the attacks as being forced by American demands and describes Japan as waging a war of “ . ” Some historians worry that Mr. Abe’s visit to Pearl Harbor will forestall broader atonement for Japan’s wartime aggression in Asia. “By commemorating Pearl Harbor, if the whole society marginalizes the whole process that led to Pearl Harbor, that commemoration becomes an act of forgetting as well,” said Yujin Yaguchi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tokyo. In the complex and highly choreographed world of war memory, scholars say, Mr. Abe’s trip to Pearl Harbor is an important, if early, step. “There is a chronology to public memory,” said Carol Gluck, a professor of history at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. “Everybody doesn’t remember what they ought to remember in some abstract moral calculus. It’s very political, and the domestic political calculus comes first. ” With some on the left in Japan calling for Mr. Abe to visit important war memorials in South Korea or China, analysts say political leaders need to build trust and share broader strategic goals before such symbolic gestures can take place. While Japan has a strong alliance with the United States, it does not share that kind of trust with China, and its relationship with South Korea is still shaky. “These visits don’t cause reconciliation,” said Jennifer Lind, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and the author of “Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. ” “It’s the exact opposite. Reconciliation causes these visits. ” | 0fake |
‘Who Appointed You to the Supreme Court?’: Senator DESTROYS Yates For Defying Trump Travel Ban [Video] | Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates was grilled about her refusal to defend the president s travel executive order She made huge mistake by assuming what Trump said during the campaign could be admissible in court IT CAN T!In a hearing centered on Russian interference in the election, one senator took the opportunity to question the former attorney general who was fired for refusing to defend President Trump s travel ban.Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) asked former acting Attorney General Sally Yates why she refused to defend Trump s initial executive order barring travel from several Mideast nations. I believed any argument [the Justice Department] would have to make in its defense would not be grounded in the truth, Yates said. We would have to argue that it had nothing to do with religion, she said.Kennedy asked whether there was no reasonable argument that could be made to defend the order any other way.Yates said she believed the intent of the order was to discriminate against Muslims trying to come to the United States.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqsrx0LpTcHere s what former US Attorney Joe DiGenova said about Sally Yates: This is a person of the extreme Left who should not have been anywhere near the decision-making process for this president. Yates was fired and should have been! | 1real |
Markets cheer as Chile's Pinera gets strong mandate for presidency | SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Billionaire conservative Sebastian Pinera will begin a second term as Chile s president in March with a strong mandate after trouncing his center-left opponent in Sunday s election, and local markets soared on hopes of more investor-friendly policies. Still, Pinera will face a divided Congress and an upstart leftist coalition that has promised to fight his plans to lower taxes and refine the progressive policies undertaken by outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet. Pinera s previous stint as president, from 2010 to 2014, was marked by huge student protests. Speaking to reporters after meeting with Bachelet on Monday, Pinera struck a tone of unity, saying he would work to form a broad cabinet, of continuity and change. Chile s peso strengthened more than 2 percentage points against the dollar on Monday, while the IPSA stock index hit an all-time high and was up nearly 7 percent, as investors bet on more business-friendly policies under a Pinera administration. Chile is the world s top copper producer and the country s vast mining industry is also counting on Pinera s support. The business magnate has promised to cut red tape and has pledged support and stable funding for state-run miner Codelco, saying the company is reinventing itself and needs investment. Codelco needs strong management and must improve its efficiency, he told reporters. With his nine-percentage point win over center-left senator Alejandro Guillier in Sunday s runoff presidential election, Pinera, 68, won more votes than any presidential candidate since Chile s return to democracy in 1990. It was the biggest ever loss for the center-left coalition that has dominated Chile s politics since the end of Augusto Pinochet s dictatorship. Other South American countries including Argentina, Peru and Brazil have also shifted to the political right in recent years. The results of a first round vote and a congressional election last month pointed to a more divided country, however. Far-left candidate Beatriz Sanchez captured 20 percent of votes, nearly as many as the more moderate Guillier, suggesting some dissatisfaction with Chile s long-standing free-market model. Guillier on Sunday acknowledged the harsh defeat and urged his supporters to defend Bachelet s progressive policies, which have included overhauls of tax, labor and education laws in an effort to fight persistent inequality in one of South America s most developed economies. Pinera said Bachelet had confirmed she plans to present parliament with a bill to recast Chile s dictatorship-era constitution before her term ends in March. Such a change was also a key campaign promise of Guillier. Pinera said he agreed on perfecting it (the constitution) but in a climate of unity. Pinera s Chile Vamos party has 72 of 155 representatives in the lower house, more than any other bloc. Still, without an outright majority in either chamber of the legislature, Pinera s supporters will have to form alliances to pass most laws. Sanchez s coalition earned its first senate seat and around 20 seats in the lower house in November s election. The Frente Amplio commits to continuing to work for a changing Chile, with more rights and more democracy, she wrote in a tweet congratulating Pinera, referring to the leftist Broad Front party. Efforts by Pinera s ideological allies in Brazil and Argentina to reduce fiscal deficits by cutting spending and reforming pension systems have faced political opposition and sparked protests in recent months. What I think he s going to do is perfect Bachelet s reforms, make them more effective, more efficient, maybe help out business a little bit more, said analyst Kenneth Bunker, of political research group Tresquintos. But he ll be cutting around the edges, he s not going to have power in Congress to do everything he would otherwise. Pinera has sought to strike a conciliatory tone. In a speech at his home following his meeting with Bachelet, he said, Yesterday Chileans handed us a great victory. But I will be the president of all the Chileans, both those who voted for me and those who voted for Alejandro Guillier. | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.