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Kanye West Visits Donald Trump - The New York Times | After weeks of reports of severe exhaustion and ensuing hospitalization, Kanye West walked into Trump Tower on Tuesday morning. Journalists who caught a glimpse of the musician entering the tightly guarded building in Manhattan took to Twitter to document the strange spectacle. Mr. West’s appearance occurred shortly before former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was named as Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Energy Department — the same agency that Mr. Perry said during the 2012 presidential race that he wanted to abolish. For Mr. Trump, the visit was another stuffed into a series of more consequential events, including the possibility of a showdown with Republicans in Congress over intelligence reports that Russia may have interfered in the election. Once Mr. West returned to the lobby with Mr. Trump, he didn’t provide much information about the reasons for his visit. “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Mr. Trump told reporters. Asked what he and Mr. West talked about, he responded: “Life. We discussed life. ” Mr. West’s visit was probably a welcome one for the . It came hours after Mr. Trump’s announcement on Monday that he would refrain from any new business deals with his real estate company while in the Oval Office. In addition, the focus this past week has been on Mr. Trump’s potential conflicts of interest as president, which would include the growing cadre of billionaires and multimillionaires he wants to install in his cabinet. There is also substantial interest around his choice for secretary of state: Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who has friendly ties with the Russians. For his part, Mr. West dodged questions about the possibility of performing at Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January. The rapper only smiled at reporters and said, “I just want to take a picture right now. ” It is unclear why the musician and sometime fashion designer stepped out from a reported recovery and into the center of the media circus at Trump Tower, but Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, said in an email that Mr. West had requested the meeting. “The meeting was requested by Kanye and we were delighted to host him,” Ms. Hicks wrote, adding, “They had a very positive and productive conversation. ” She did not elaborate, but later in the afternoon, Mr. West said on Twitter that he wanted to meet with Mr. Trump to discuss “multicultural issues” that included “bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums and violence in Chicago. ” He added: “I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future President if we truly want change. ” Much about Mr. West’s public presence has been a mystery of late. He abruptly canceled his Saint Pablo tour in November after a series of unsettling concert appearances. He was hospitalized in what was characterized in dispatches as a “psychiatric emergency. ” In one rant a few weeks ago, Mr. West voiced his support for Mr. Trump and ended the performance, much to the shock and disappointment of his fans. “Yeah, I’m taking his lead,” Mr. West said of Mr. Trump, after spending some time railing against the news media and praising Mr. Trump’s policy against political correctness. His statements, some of which targeted his contemporaries in the music industry, including Jay Z and Beyoncé, came weeks after his wife, Kim Kardashian West, was robbed at gunpoint in a Paris apartment. Mr. West has expressed interest in politics before, declaring in a rambling speech last year that he wanted to run for president in 2020. He has also been an outspoken critic of politicians. In 2005, he lashed out at a sitting president on live TV, declaring during a for Hurricane Katrina victims, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people. ” Mr. Bush later called Mr. West’s criticism a “disgusting moment” for his presidency. On Tuesday, Mr. West’s relationship with the Trump administration seemed to be off to a rosier start. When the two said their goodbyes, Mr. Trump leaned in to say something to Mr. West, then headed back into the elevator with his daughter Ivanka. | 0fake |
Douchebag of the Day: Louie ‘Self Loathing Jews’ Gohmert | Nothing pisses me off more than a Republican professing their undying love for Israel and the Jewish people. I m old enough to remember the distant past of the early 2000 s when the phrase The Goddamn Jew Media and Those fucking Jews in Hollywood were bandied about by conservatives. Why, I even recall a time when the front runner for the Republican primaries actively courted the KKK and neo-Nazi vote. Oh wait, that s happening right f*cking now.As a Jew myself, I find it amazing that conservatives can keep a straight face when praising Israel. Especially southern Republicans that were raised on a steady diet of Antisemitism. Should Israel ever elect a liberal government, we d be right back to Republicans despising Jews. Even Sheldon Adelson s billions wouldn t be enough to hide their disdain for us.But in the meantime, we re witness to the spectacle of not only Republicans pretending to love Jews, but Republicans having the balls to call some Jews self-loathing. Earlier this week on The Joyce Kaufman Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert criticized President Obama and his Jewish supporters over a Wall Street Journal report about the administration s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dismissing the president s Jewish allies as self-hating.The Texas Republican said of Obama: He s never been able to stand Israel. He s never been able to get along with people who actually stood for Israel. Now he gets along fine with the Israel-haters, he continued. But, and it breaks my heart, but there are some children of Israel who just apparently seem to be self-loathing when it comes to Israel but yeah, those folks he gets along with fine. I have repeatedly anointed myself The World s Jew. I eat bacon. I celebrate Christmas. I mix meat and dairy. I literally only know Passover is coming when the supermarket puts matzoh bread on sale. Yet, the idea that I am a self-loathing Jew because I don t support the murderous right wing regime turning Israel in a full-fledged apartheid state is deeply offense. It s even more offensive coming from a person pretending not to hate Jews in the first place.The conflation of Israel and Jew is a deliberate and calculated move to shield Israel from criticism by leveling accusations of Antisemitism. But that doesn t exactly work on the millions of Jews like me around the world that are appalled at the violence and hatred perpetrated by Israel s government. So people try to label us self-loathing Jews.But I say that the only Jews who truly despise themselves are the ones that are rushing to embrace the same genocidal rage that brought us the Holocaust.In the meantime, Louie Gohmert can choke on a matzoh ball.Featured image by Gage Skidmore. | 1real |
Canada, U.S. join forces on tackling border asylum-seekers | OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian and U.S. officials are working on a plan to tackle asylum seekers crossing into Canada illegally, with American officials keen to discover how they entered the United States in the first place, said a source familiar with the matter. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is set to visit Canada this month for talks on the border and the influx of people, said the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Hundreds of people, mainly from Africa but also the Middle East, have walked across the border, seeking asylum. They are fleeing President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, migrants and refugees agencies say. It is not common to have so many asylum seekers based in the U.S. looking for refuge in Canada over such a short period. Scott Bardsley, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, said the majority of people crossing in recent weeks held valid passports and U.S. visas. The influx poses a political risk for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who faces pressure from the left, which wants him to let more in, and from the right, which fears an increased security risk. He must also ensure the issue does not complicate his relations with Trump. “We are talking with our counterparts in the United States to ensure that we’re addressing this situation properly,” Trudeau told reporters in Calgary, Alberta. Security experts have said the asylum-seekers could pose a threat if the flow picks up once the weather improves and authorities do not take additional steps. Canadian and U.S. officials speak daily about the border crossers and law enforcement agencies from both nations met in Montreal last month to plot strategies, the source said. The U.S. side asked Canada to provide details of the asylum seekers, in particular, how they had entered the United States and what their status was there. The Montreal summit grouped representatives from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canada Border Services Agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. RCMP spokeswoman Annie Delisle confirmed the meeting took place, and said the two sides agreed on an “action plan which outlines a collaborative approach to dealing with the influx”. An official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the crossings were very limited and did not represent a major security concern. “Frankly, it is far more embarrassing to this country than it is threatening,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The official, and a second person directly involved in border affairs, said U.S. authorities had not mounted a major effort to beef up border security, in part because they lack manpower and equipment. A senior Canadian security source classified the risk as medium- to long-term, since it was likely that those crossing the border really were seeking asylum. Vast stretches of the 5,500-mile (8,900-km) frontier are unguarded and the more images spread of people walking across, the more vulnerable Canada could become, said the source. “If we keep this up for a while, and it becomes known that the border really is porous, then people will use it as an opportunity to put (operatives) in,” said the source. Exact numbers are hard to calculate, since not all authorities release details. In January and February, 143 people walked illegally over the border into Manitoba, local police said. As of Feb. 13, some 3,800 people had made an asylum claim in 2017, up from the same period last year, said Bardsley. That number, though, includes all people seeking asylum, and the government would not break down the figures. | 0fake |
Cargo ship with 10 crew sinks in Black Sea, coast guard reports | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish cargo ship with 10 crew on board sank in the Black Sea near the Asian side of Istanbul early on Wednesday morning, according to the coast guard. The cause was still unclear. The ship, Bilal Bal, was carrying cast iron from Turkey s northwestern province of Bursa to the northern province of Zonguldak, the Dogan news agency reported. Unfortunately, one of our cargo ships sank in ... the Black Sea, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. Search and rescue operations were continuing, he said. Three boats, one helicopter and one plane belonging to the coast guard were conducting search and rescue operations, according the coast guard. Empty lifeboats had been found as well as some life jackets, the coast guard said. Five boats more were deployed to aid in the operations, as well as a remotely operated underwater vehicle from the Turkish naval forces, it said. | 0fake |
NEW POLL SHOWS DEMOCRATS Under 50 Prefer Old, White Marxists To Serial Criminals In Pants Suits | Nah nah nah nah hey hey hey good bye Support for Hillary Clinton among Democratic voters under 50 has tanked in the past month, according to a new Monmouth University poll.In December, she led fellow Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 52%-35% in that demographic. Now she trails him 39%-52%.She also has lost significant support among Democratic women, with her lead over Sanders shrinking from 45 points to 19 points in that group. Her support went from 64%-19% last month to 54%-35% now.Clinton still beats Sanders 52%-37% overall among Democrats, though Sanders gains have cut into her lead, Monmouth found. And she has considerable support among important primary voting blocs. Voters over 50 prefer Clinton 64%-24%, and black and Latino voters side with her 71%-21%. With a shrinking margin, a strong showing by Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire could cut Clinton s national lead even more, said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth survey. However, he would still have to overcome Clinton s demographic advantage in the ensuing contests. That means in places like South Carolina, Nevada and Super Tuesday states in the South where blacks and Latinos make up a sizable portion of the electorate. Murray points out that the same situation helped President Obama beat Clinton. It looks like the demographic that hurt Clinton in 2008 may be what helps her in 2016, he said.Last week, Sanders campaign announced it was launching a tour of historically black colleges and universities with stops in a number of Southern states.The Monmouth measurement of Sanders s support among young people resembles the results of a recent USA TODAY/Rock the Vote survey that found he leads Clinton 46%-35%, among millennial Democrats and independents. Via: USA TodayDear Hillary, Here s a message from every American who watched you lie about the 4 brave men you left to die in Benghazi: | 1real |
Trump Talk Rattles Aerospace Industry, Up and Down Supply Chain - The New York Times | CHEHALIS, Wash. — At this small factory south of Seattle, employees make one of the most specialized products in the aerospace industry: the rubber mats that Boeing workers stand on while assembling jets. As long as there are jets and Boeing, business would seem to be steady. But even here workers are bracing for bumps and economic uncertainty over the gritty details of where aviation parts get made and who makes them. President Trump has talked about border tariffs and new trade deals that many people in aerospace fear could raise the cost of American airplanes bought by foreign airlines or governments. And if Boeing’s sales or profits suffer, its supply chain — more than 13, 000 companies across the United States, and more than 1. 5 million jobs — would most likely feel the pain, too. At SmartCells, 50 employees and a few dozen temporary workers stamp out cushion pads on heavy machines. Executives work in a red building everyone calls the barn, and first names are the rule. Washington feels far away, but it is on just about everybody’s radar. “Let’s hit it with a and see how it reacts, then get a plan,” said Bob Bishop, the chief operations officer at SmartCells, describing Mr. Trump’s style. “That doesn’t always work. ” The anxiety, said Mr. Bishop, 46, a former deputy county sheriff who voted for Mr. Trump, centers not so much on politics as economics, specifically the intense competition with the French airplane maker Airbus, which competes toe to toe with Boeing for jet orders in countries around the world in a delicate game of narrow cost differences and giant contracts. Mr. Trump has said he would seek a 45 percent tariff on imports from China, for example, to protect American jobs, and a 20 percent tariff on goods from Mexico. If business costs for Boeing go up as a result, the company — the nation’s single largest exporter by dollar volume — probably would not be able to raise prices on its airplanes to make up the difference, because then it would lose customers to Airbus. For workers and suppliers, the fallout could be brutal. “So what does it mean? It means they may cut jobs,” said Kevin Michaels, the managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, a specialized market analysis company in Ann Arbor, Mich. “It’s a very complex field. ” And one that is already changing. Boeing’s commercial airplane division cut 8 percent of its work force, or over 6, 000 jobs, in the United States last year. Some companies in the supply chain, partly because of pressure by Boeing, have shrunk or merged. Since his election, Mr. Trump has tried to pit American aviation companies against one another over the costs of new fighter jets, and has harshly criticized Boeing’s high price tag for a new Air Force One presidential plane. Boeing, founded in Seattle in 1916, employs about 140, 000 people in the United States, about half of them in Washington State. “We’ve got such a huge network here — anything that curtails exports hurts the entire supply chain,” said John Thornquist, the director of the aerospace office at the Washington State Department of Commerce. “We’re very vulnerable. ” Companies that sell to Boeing, or sell to other companies that build Boeing components, said that even predicting a trade war was risky, with so many variables — politics, economics, multiple countries — all in play. A modern commercial jetliner can have up to six million components that must be engineered and tested to safety standards, even before assembly starts. “We’re trying to do our best due diligence to put together an assessment, but at this time, the best we can do is just monitor day by day,” said Maurizio Miozza, the vice president for development and strategic planning at Umbra Cuscinetti, an Italian company that makes precision parts for Boeing and that has about 100 employees north of Seattle. But, he added, “the picture is not rosy. ” “You prepare yourself for the worst and hope for the best,” he said. Other aerospace companies were hesitant to discuss their worries because it might draw unwanted attention — from competitors, the White House or foreign governments. It is not a good time, several said, to take chances. Boeing declined an interview request for this article, but said in an email statement that talks with the Trump administration were continuing. “The administration has made it clear that they are growth, including in exports and manufacturing jobs,” the company said. “We are engaged with the administration in direct and productive discussion. ” In any small business, optimism and practicality are lifeblood forces, and SmartCells’ president, Bryce L. Betteridge, a chemical engineer, says he believes the company’s future is bright. A mix of polymers and wafflelike molds creates the upward bounce of a SmartCells mat, which reduces fatigue for a standing person and can also prevent injuries in falls, he said. The company has already diversified. Amazon warehouse workers and Costco checkout clerks — both employed by companies that started out in the Seattle area — stand on SmartCells mats. And Mr. Betteridge mentioned other new markets and ideas with enthusiasm: rifle stocks, nursing home floors, playgrounds. No idea for a better cushion seems beyond reach. But he said the company’s strategy for the future was shifting on the assumption that international trade under Mr. Trump would become more difficult. For one thing, he said, he has now discarded any thought of expanding the company into China, Mexico or anywhere else where SmartCells’ products could be made and brought into the United States for sale. “That benefit is going to go away, I anticipate,” Mr. Betteridge said. And it is simply too expensive to export heavy, relatively products like cushion mats to other countries from Washington, he said. That means the company’s growth in foreign markets, when or if it happens, will probably come through licensing the technology to manufacturers abroad, which will then hire local workers. Sales and marketing positions might be added here in Chehalis, Mr. Betteridge said, but no added manufacturing jobs would be needed. But a pressure to “buy American” coming from the White House could also be a powerful force, he and other industry leaders said, if companies like Boeing ultimately shift a greater proportion of their airplane component purchases to suppliers in the United States. Currently, Boeing spends about 80 percent of its $40 billion annual budget in the United States, and exports about 75 percent of its products. “Some of the suppliers in Puget Sound might actually be rooting for this, because in the long run it could benefit them,” Mr. Michaels, the industry analyst, said. Kurt Mullins, 56, a former lumber millworker who has been at SmartCells for about a year and a half, often installs floor cushioning systems at Boeing, where he hears the worries of workers there, too. “I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Mr. Mullins said. | 0fake |
U.S. Air Force Runs Out Of Bombs To Drop On ISIS…Don’t Worry Though, Barry’s Got This | Bombs a-w oh, never mind Things must be going well in the war on terror, as the US Air Force just admitted that it is fast running out of bombs to drop on ISIS after B-1s have dropped bombs in record numbers. As ZeeNews reports, Air Force chief of staff General Mark Welsh said as America ramps up its military campaign against the Islamist terror group, the Air Force is now expending munitions faster than we can replenish them. The US Air Force is fast running out of bombs to drop on ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq after its pilots fired off over 20,000 missiles and bombs since the US bombing campaign against the terror group began 15 months ago, its chief has said. As ZeeNews reports, B-1s have dropped bombs in record numbers. F-15Es are in the fight because they are able to employ a wide range of weapons and do so with great flexibility. We need the funding in place to ensure we re prepared for the long fight, Welsh said in the statement. This is a critical need, he said.The bombing campaign has left the US Air Force with what an Air Force official described as munitions depot stocks below our desired objective. The Air Force has requested additional funding for Hellfire missiles and is developing plans to ramp up weapons production to replenish its stocks more quickly. But replenishing that stock can take up to four years from time of expenditure to asset resupply, the official told CNN. The precision today s wars requires demands the right equipment and capability to achieve desired effects. We need to ensure the necessary funding is in place to not only execute today s wars, but also tomorrow s challenges, the official said. As The Washington Times concludes, Russia has been bombing ISIS positions sporadically while France and Great Britain are now active in the American-led coalition which could relieve some pressure.Much larger potential adversaries like Russia or China most surely are following this development carefully. If the USAF cannot sustain a trickling battle against a poorly armed, medieval enemy, fighting a superpower military is obviously beyond its capability.Via: Zero Hedge | 1real |
SHOCKING GESTAPO TACTICS: P*ssed Off Patriot Removed From Delegate List For Supporting Trump [VIDEO] | I ve been a lifelong Republican all of my life. I m ashamed to call myself a Republican. https://youtu.be/MVc_hIKFmmE | 1real |
Beyonce’s Super Bowl Performance Had An Important Hidden Message You Need To Hear (VIDEO) | Beyonce is one of the most sought-after performers in the world, and she knows how to deliver an electrifying performance. She did exactly that during Super Bowl 50. In addition to her amazing lyrics and dancing, Beyonce also had an important message for the country, putting the Black Lives Matter Movement at center stage in front of hundreds of millions of people.Beyonce is no stranger to political activism. Appearing with Bruno Mars and Coldplay, she introduced her first song in more than a year entitled Formation. But, Formation is not just any song: it also happens to be an ode to the Black Lives Matter Movement, as evidenced by the song s newly-released music video.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5BPfRHX1SE]Beyonce begins the video by standing on top of a submerged car in a post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Then a small child in a black hoodie appears in front of a line of police officers only to be covered by the words Stop shooting us. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrCHz1gwzTo]Beyonce and her husbamd Jay-Z are known to be politically active, and it s not surprising that she would embrace and take on such an important issue. She and Jay-Z spent tens of thousands of dollars last year to bail out protesters in Baltimore.It s very important that the Black Lives Matter movement is known as well as embraced by the entire country. Beyonce s use of the Super Bowl as a platform has potentially reached hundreds of millions of people. Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Two Russian Compounds, Caught Up in History’s Echoes - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — A pair of luxurious waterfront compounds outside New York and Washington have for decades been a retreat for Russian diplomats, places to frolic in the water, play tennis and take lengthy steam baths. On Thursday, Obama administration officials described the compounds differently: as beachside spy nests sometimes used by Russian intelligence operatives to have long conversations on the sand to avoid being ensnared by American electronic surveillance. They ordered all Russians out of the compounds within 24 hours. The move was one of a number of retaliatory measures the White House announced in response to what it called a Russian campaign to wreak havoc on the presidential election, and to what it said was systemic harassment of American officials in Russia. Besides the shuttering of the two compounds, administration officials announced the expulsion by Sunday of 35 unnamed Russian officials — and their families — who they said were working undercover as spies. The announcement had echoes of the reprisals that were common during the Cold War, and the government of Vladimir V. Putin announced within hours that there would be a swift response. That seemingly ensured that the Obama administration’s final days would be consumed by escalating accusations and retaliation between Washington and Moscow. The Obama administration offered no proof on Thursday linking the two compounds or the Russians being expelled to intelligence activities, and veterans of the spy games offered mixed assessments of the administration’s actions. “I think these sanctions are pretty weak. It’s more perhaps symbolic,” said Steven Hall, a former senior C. I. A. official who ran Russia operations until his retirement in 2015. But Mr. Hall said that the other measures could cause more irritation in Moscow. He said that he could not recall a previous move similar to the shuttering of the two compounds — one on Long Island and the other on the Eastern Shore of Maryland — and that expelling the 35 officers and their families “will slow down Russia’s activities in the United States. ” One former senior American official said that the group, made up of officials working at the embassy in Washington and the consulate in San Francisco, makes up about a third of the suspected Russian intelligence officers operating in the United States under diplomatic cover. It is unclear how many of the expelled Russians spent time at the two compounds. The dismissals are believed to be the largest expulsion of Russian officials from the United States since 2001, when about 50 suspected Russian intelligence officers were forced to leave after Robert Hanssen, a senior F. B. I. official, was arrested and charged with spying for Moscow. “I would be flabbergasted if the Russians didn’t reciprocate and expel 35 American officials from Russia,” Mr. Hall said. The C. I. A. has long posted undercover officers in Russia — and nearly every other country in the world — who pose as diplomats, businessmen or other professionals. It is unclear whether any of the Russians being expelled played a part in the hacking that interfered with the American election. Law enforcement officials said that the White House and the State Department had come up with the number 35 and had then turned to the F. B. I. to list Russian officials in the United States who it believed were actually intelligence officers. While the expulsions send a powerful message, they will force the F. B. I. to go back to work trying to identify a new crop of spies the Russians will almost certainly send to the United States. After the expulsions were announced, officials described a pattern of harassment of American government employees working in Russia. In June, a uniformed officer with Russia’s Federal Security Service, called the F. S. B. attacked an employee of the United States Embassy in Moscow seemingly without provocation. “Our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year,” President Obama said in a statement on Thursday. Before this year, the most notable recent episode to become public was in 2013, when Russian officials arrested Ryan C. Fogle, an employee of the embassy in Moscow who the Russian government had discovered was a C. I. A. officer. Mr. Fogle, officially posted in Russia as the third secretary of the embassy’s political department, was picked up on the street wearing a blond wig under a baseball cap. He was carrying a knapsack holding a compass, a Moscow street atlas and $130, 000 in cash, money that Russian officials said was meant to be used to recruit a Russian security officer as a spy. The episode’s amusing details garnered much of the attention, but Mr. Fogle’s arrest and expulsion from Russia was a public indicator that the spying activity between the United States and Russia was heating up — and in many ways had never ended. The F. S. B. took the unusual step of releasing a video showing Mr. Fogle facedown on a street as a Russian officer pinned his hands behind his back. American law enforcement and intelligence agencies have little indication that the compounds in Maryland and New York played any role in the cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations. The Long Island retreat is a estate in Upper Brookville, known as Norwich House. Upper Brookville’s mayor, Elliot Conway, confirmed on Friday that the federal government had ordered the house shut. Federal agents could been seen on Friday morning in the estate’s driveway, shortly before four vehicles with diplomatic license plates drove away. A few of the people in the cars waved to reporters, in an apparent goodbye. The Russian government has owned the property, and another one nearby in Glen Cove, since the days of the Soviet Union, and relations between the owners and local residents have at times been strained. In 1982, Reagan administration officials said Russians were using the Glen Cove mansion to conduct electronic surveillance of Long Island’s defense and technology industries. The Glen Cove City Council responded by barring the Russians from obtaining free beach parking stickers and discounted tennis permits. The Council’s lone dissenting voice described taking away the tennis permits as “petty” and said that “it’s a matter the professionals at the State Department should handle. ” On Thursday, White House and F. B. I. officials said it was the Glen Cove estate, Killenworth Mansion, that was being shuttered. On Friday, they confirmed that it was in fact the Upper Brookville house. The Maryland compound is a sprawling complex of several buildings fronting the Corsica River in Centreville, including a brick mansion that has long been a retreat for Russia’s ambassador to Washington. It has a swimming pool, a soccer field and lighted tennis courts. Anatoly Dobrynin, who served as ambassador to Washington from the Kennedy administration to the Reagan administration, was frequently at the estate, and the Russian government held on to the property after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unlike on Long Island, relations between the Russians visiting the Maryland compound and local residents have generally been placid — even if the Russians did not always adopt the local folkways. Julie Patterson, 44, who has lived on a horse farm near the compound for 12 years, said the Russians largely kept to themselves but were cordial neighbors, inviting locals to an annual Labor Day party. She said that she believed that the property was largely used as a weekend retreat and that she often saw children, families and buses heading to the estate. She said people often held parties there and hosted a sailing club. In 1992, a Centreville resident told a reporter for The Associated Press that the Russians did not cook crabs the local way, by throwing live crabs into a pot of boiling water. “They stab them with a screwdriver, break the back shell off, clean them and then boil the body,” she said. | 0fake |
TREY GOWDY TO DEA CHIEF ON MISCONDUCT: “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU GET TO DO?!” | 1real | |
AMERICA STUNNED! — Mein Trumpf Storms into the White House | Political analyst of the Daily Mail Introduced by Lasha Darkmoon with additional comments (includes historic 20-minute video) “Most European leaders can barely bring themselves to look at him.” — Dominic Sandbrook LASHA DARKMOON’S INTRODUCTION : Only yesterday an esteemed political commentator on my site had these prophetic words to say: “Whoever wins, it’s going to be a shock to end all shocks. Half of America will be shocked by jubilant rapture, the other half by black despair. I’ve never know any other election like this.”
Like so any others who have ended up with egg on their faces, the same commentator had confidently predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton. These false prophets, among whom we can number the author of this present article, Dominic Sandbrook, were convinced that Hillary Clinton would soon be installed in the White House. Here is what our esteemed commentator told us yesterday. How hollow and even ridiculous his words sound today! I quote them only because they are so typical.
Listen buddies, you are my online friends and I hope you’re all gonna be made very happy tomorrow morning as Trump becomes the new Augustus of Pax Americana . But I have this sinking feeling in my gut that it ain’t gonna happen. Hillary is gonna win because all the cards are stacked in her favor.
Remember this, even if 70% of Americans vote for Trump, those Diebold voting machines are gonna turn real nasty and start spitting out fire and devil smoke.
And it’s gonna be Crazy Hillary and rapist Hubby Bill waltzing into the White House and up the gallery stairs into the hot tub on the top floor, with assorted nymphettes simpering among the bubbles and going “Oooh! . . . Ahhh! . . . take it easy sir, I’m only a Girl Scout!”
Ya can’t make this up. 🙂
Silly words? Obviously. If I’d said them myself, I’d now be blushing with shame for making such a fool of myself.
The fact is, we have all made fools of ourselves, not least the Republican Party that took the unprecedented step of disowning their own candidate, Donald Trump, and giving their support to his Democratic competitor Hillary Clinton. Here was a man, they alleged shamefully, who was was in the pocket of Vladimir Putin and took orders from the Kremlin. He was closer to the Kremlin than he was to Nato. If America elected this man, they spluttered, the trump of doom —no pun intended—would soon be reverberating from Washington to Vladivostok.
The man they spat upon and denigrated so treacherously is now their boss. Let’s hope he punishes them. Let’s hope he puts Hillary behind bars, as he promised .
If he now does a U-turn and cuddles up to the Establishment, and if his first trip abroad is to Tel Aviv, his millions of supporters will know they have been cruelly betrayed. Just as Tony Blair betrayed Britain, turning into one of the greatest liars and war criminals in British history, it remains to be seen if Trump is not going to do a similar U-turn by cuddling up to the enemies of America: to the Rothschilds and Soroses and Adelsons and the neoconservative warmongers who put Israel before America and pay regular visits to the Wailing Wall.
And so we come now to this “prophetic” article by Dominic Sandbrook, political sage of the Daily Mail . I wish it were satire. It is not. It is written, three days before the election on November 5, with a straight face. Fasten your seat belts, dear readers, and get ready for a good laugh. Here is the mainstream media at its most fatuous and farcical, spewing forth imbecilities for the semi-moronic masses. Oh, how sad! and how deeply sobering. [LD] WHAT IF TRUMP DID WIN? by Dominic Sandbrook
The 45th President of the United States reached his 1,000th day in office yesterday, and he marked it in characteristic style.
Rising shortly before lunch, the most powerful man in the world took a congratulatory phone call from his closest ally, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, before strolling into the White House Rose Garden, where a group of swimwear models were waiting with an enormous white and gold cake.
‘Thank you, Mr President,’ they chorused, ‘for making America great again!’
If the impromptu party was overshadowed by the chanting of thousands of protesters outside the perimeter, the President showed no sign of being particularly worried.
‘Take care of them,’ he told the head of his Russian bodyguard, who had replaced the Secret Service a few months ago. Then he nodded meaningfully at the models: ‘I’ll see you girls later . . .’
According to his spokesman, the President spent the afternoon closeted with his advisers in a private suite at his wife Melania’s $1,000-an-hour spa (formerly the White House’s East Wing), discussing the opening of his Senate impeachment trial in a few days’ time. Then he retired for the evening with some of his closest confidants, among them the actor Charlie Sheen, the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and the ex-wrestler Hulk Hogan.
To look at the President’s beaming, orange-skinned face, you would hardly know that Washington is in meltdown, that he faces multiple congressional investigations into his finances and that, every day, rival mobs of demonstrators do battle only steps from the White House.
Nor would you know that the American economy is in deep recession, its cities are ablaze after months of race riots, an undeclared war is raging on the Mexican border and a nuclear conflict now seems inevitable in the Pacific.
Never has the gap between image and reality been greater. Never has the world’s greatest republic plunged to such depths.
But then what did you expect from President Donald Trump?
The trouble started within moments of Mr Trump’s unexpected comeback victory in the election of Tuesday, November 8, 2016, when riots broke out in several cities, including Chicago, Boston, Miami and Los Angeles.
Thousands of buildings were burned, but the new president-elect nevertheless maintained that it had been the ‘greatest night’ in American history: ‘The greatest. Period.’
In his victory speech he broke with the traditional courtesies by openly pouring scorn on his defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton (‘a major-league loser’), and promising his supporters that ‘Crooked Hillary’ would shortly be facing a ‘long stretch in jail’. LD : Wrong! See the 20-minute video below in which Trump, doing his first apparent U-turn, lavishes words of praise on Hillary and tells Americans how grateful they should be to her for all her hard work and dedication. So what happened to all that talk of putting her behind bars?
In fact, Mrs Clinton remains very much at large.
Even though President Trump insisted that her criminal conviction would be one of his chief priorities, and immediately appointed a special prosecutor with a brief to investigate her activities dating back to the Seventies, the FBI are reportedly still trawling through thousands of emails, having unearthed yet another tranche last month.
There were more signs of the new era, meanwhile, at his inauguration ceremony in January 2017, when Mr Trump appeared on the stage waving his ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap, in front of a mock-classical façade in which his own surname was spelled out in gigantic, diamond-studded letters.
Unusually, the 45th President broke with precedent by refusing to deliver a prepared speech, preferring to ‘speak from the heart’, as he put it.
Returning to some familiar themes, he told his audience that his predecessor, Barack Obama, was a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘Muslim’, that most Mexicans were ‘rapists’ and ‘murderers’, that China was ‘in for a shock’ and that Nato was ‘a complete waste of time and money’.
Most foreign leaders were appalled. But one man who clearly approved was Vladimir Putin, who had been the first head of state to telephone his congratulations to the new president-elect.
After only two weeks in office, Mr Trump rewarded his new friend by making his first overseas trip to Moscow, where he assured the press that Mr Putin ‘couldn’t have been nicer’ and promised that under his administration, the Russians would be ‘our number one ally. Number One. I mean that’. LD : It remains to be seen whether Trump’s first trip abroad is to Moscow or Tel Aviv. That would be the litmus test.
His European tour later in 2017, however, was a disaster.
After Mr Trump was recorded making remarks about Germany’s Angela Merkel that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper, he moved on to London, where he told Theresa May that she had a ‘massive Muslim problem’ and urged her to redevelop Chequers as a high-end golf course.
Today, the American republic’s reputation in the world has never been lower. Even at the United Nations it has become a laughing stock, especially after Mr Trump’s UN ambassador, Sarah Palin, gave a speech in which she confused Iraq and Iran, suggested Africa was a single country and joked about dropping a nuclear bomb on Saudi Arabia.
On the U.S.-Mexican border, however, things have gone well beyond a joke.
Work on what Mr Trump calls his ‘Great Wall’ began within days of his inauguration, though it is unlikely to be finished before he leaves office and will reportedly cost at least $25 billion.
After a series of sabotage attacks by Mexican protesters in mid-2018, Mr Trump abruptly lost patience and ordered the U.S. Marines to cross the border and occupy a strip some ten miles deep — which prompted the Mexican government to move its own troops to within a mile or two of the U.S. incursion.
As yet, the two sides have merely skirmished, though the death toll currently stands at almost 400 — a figure that would have been unthinkable three years ago.
It would take only one incident, one clash that gets completely out of hand, to trigger a full-scale war.
At home, meanwhile, Mr Trump’s authoritarian measures, such as his shambolic and callous attempt to deport 11 million undocumented migrants, have provoked outrage.
The summer of 2018 was marked by weeks of rioting in many major cities, while the President’s insistence on declaring the Left-wing activist group Black Lives Matter a ‘terrorist organisation’ sparked huge protests on campuses across the nation.
It was at this point that Congress, already enraged by Mr Trump’s reliance on high-handed and arguably unconstitutional executive orders, began discussing impeachment proceedings against the President.
But of course, this only enraged his loyal supporters, who maintain that he is the innocent victim of a conspiracy masterminded by Barack Obama, the Clintons and the American media.
Mr Trump himself remains remarkably unruffled by the prospect of impeachment, though some experts claim his famously unearthly hair is a lot thinner than it used to be.
He maintains his Congressional critics are ‘crooks’ and ‘liars’, and has made extraordinarily insulting remarks about the potency and masculinity of both the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, and the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
Recently, Mr Trump’s attacks on Congress have reached new heights. He now appears to believe that many leading politicians, both Democratic and Republican, have secretly converted to Islam.
‘How do we know that the Bushes aren’t Muslims?’ he demanded last week. ‘Why else were they so keen on going to Iraq?’
Genuine Muslims, however, have no place in Mr Trump’s America. He made that very clear within hours of taking the oath of office, when he signed an emergency executive order banning any Muslims from entering the United States.
Since he became President 1,000 days ago, attacks on Muslim Americans, including men and women who have worn their nation’s uniform, have reportedly increased tenfold.
There have been arson attacks on mosques in Boston, New York, Chicago and Detroit, all of which Mr Trump refused point-blank to visit afterwards.
All of this has naturally put him at odds with America’s traditional Nato allies. But Mr Trump’s disregard for Nato was well-known even before he took office.
Most European leaders can barely bring themselves to look at him.
Theresa May has reportedly not even said a word to him for more than a year. But as Mr Trump is fond of reminding people, ‘small-time’ countries such as Britain and Germany are ‘finished’. ‘My friend Vladimir,’ he says smugly, ‘is the strongest man in the world. Apart from myself, obviously.’
As it happens, the Russian President is scheduled to fly into Washington next week to express his solidarity at the beginning of his friend’s formal trial in the Senate. As usual, Putin is likely to arrive with a large military entourage, many of whom are expected to stay on in the U.S. capital as additional ‘security’ for his beleaguered ally.
As Mr Trump remarked last week, he has already arranged a suitable welcoming committee of young American female interns for his Russian counterpart.
‘All gorgeous,’ he said proudly. ‘I just start kissing them . . . and when you’re a president, they let you do it, you can do anything.’ “I can’t stop kissing them. When you’re a president, you can do anything !”
Those last words have been something of a motto for Mr Trump. Since his election as President, he has indeed done anything he wants.
The result, however, has not merely tarnished forever the image of the Presidency, driven the American economy into recession and destroyed relations between religions and races. It has shattered the Western alliance, allowed Vladimir Putin to rebuild the Soviet empire and left the United States on the brink of nuclear war with the world’s most populous country.
Yet even as American cities burn and Congress attempts to drive him from office, Mr Trump remains undaunted. HISTORIC — TRUMP’S VICTORY SPEECH VIDEO : 20 mins | 1real |
Egypt says it hit ISIS targets in Libya after killings | (CNN) Egypt's military carried out a series of airstrikes against ISIS militants in Libya on Monday in retaliation for the slaughter of 21 Egyptian Christians by the jihadist group.
The bombing raids pulled Egypt deeper into the widening international fight against ISIS and highlighted the extremists' growing presence in North Africa
The warplanes hit 10 targets used for training and storage in ISIS' Libyan stronghold of Derna, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN.
"Avenging Egyptian blood and punishing criminals and murderers is our right and duty," the Egyptian military said in a statement that was broadcast on state television.
There were conflicting claims about what the bombs had struck.
"These were surgical strikes based on very accurate intelligence and related to degrading the capabilities of ISIS within the city of Derna," Shoukry told CNN's Erin Burnett.
But an umbrella group of Islamist militias in Derna issued a statement saying that the city "woke up to a disaster today as Egyptian military jets targeted civilians in residential areas in the city."
The statement reported that the bombings had killed women and children, and it warned the Egyptian government of a "harsh and painful" response to come.
CNN couldn't independently verify what damage and casualties the airstrikes had caused.
The footage, bearing many of the hallmarks of previous ISIS videos of the killing of hostages, has intensified international concerns about ISIS' deepening reach into countries far beyond its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
The slickly produced video shows the apparent mass killing, with jihadists in black standing behind each of the victims, who are all dressed in orange jumpsuits with their hands cuffed behind them.
Twenty-one Egyptian Christians were kidnapped in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte in two separate incidents in December and January. They were reportedly from impoverished villages and went to Libya looking for work.
Although the ISIS video showed around a dozen men being beheaded, Egyptian officials said that all 21 Christians were believed to have been killed.
Some of the hostages cry out "Oh God" and "Oh Jesus" as they are pushed to their knees.
The five-minute video, released by ISIS' propaganda wing al-Hayat Media, includes a masked English-speaking jihadi who says, "The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah, we will mix it with your blood."
The video threatens Egypt, which shares a long border with Libya, and also Europe, whose shores lie across the Mediterranean Sea.
'The right of retaliation'
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had warned Sunday that his country "reserves the right of retaliation and with the methods and timing it sees fit for retribution for those murderers and criminals who are without the slightest humanity."
He also declared a week of mourning in the Muslim majority nation for the slain Christians.
In a statement, Egypt's Foreign Ministry called for other nations battling ISIS to support Egypt's efforts and to target terrorists in Libya, as well.
The U.S. government condemned the killings, saying ISIS' "barbarity knows no bounds." U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Sunday to offer condolences, the State Department said.
Concern has increased over ISIS' rising influence in Libya amid the power and security vacuum prevalent in the country since the 2011 uprising that overthrew former dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Jihadists with allegiance to ISIS had also expanded their presence westward along the Libyan coast, forming chapters in cities including Benghazi, Sirte and even Tripoli, the capital, according to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadist now involved in counterterrorism for the Quilliam Foundation.
"There's been a real radical Islamist presence in Libya for some time," said Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a retired U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. "What's worrying is now they are self-identifying with ISIS."
Questions remain over how much direct command and control the ISIS leadership in Syria and Iraq has over its North African affiliates.
The killings of the Egyptian Christians has filled in some of the detail. Before the grisly video was released, ISIS had released photos in its English-language magazine Dabiq, claiming they had been killed.
"There's certainly communication between the Libyan affiliate and the affiliate in Syria about matters of importance to both of them," said CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.
He said the ties between Libyan jihadists and ISIS' precursor, al Qaeda in Iraq, "go back a very long time."
"While we can come up with a military solution or a military operation in a restricted area like Syria and Iraq, what do we do when it expands to North Africa?" Francona asked. | 0fake |
Trump's limited appeal a warning sign for Republicans ahead of 2018 elections | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic election victories in Virginia and New Jersey showed Republicans losing more ground in suburban areas, where President Donald Trump’s unpopularity could cost them dearly in next year’s congressional races. The results from Tuesday, particularly in Virginia, suggest that Trump’s strategy of playing to a loyal but limited base has not enabled him to broaden support for his presidency or his party. Democrats were delighted, believing that control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, now both controlled by Republicans, might be up for grabs in next year’s elections. Some Republicans shared that view after their party’s candidates did poorly among independent, college-educated, women, and minority voters in suburban areas. “Unless we get our act together, we are going to lose heavily,” Republican Senator John McCain said on Wednesday. Democrats would need to pick up 24 seats next year to retake control of the House. Should that happen, Trump’s policy agenda would be effectively dead and the administration would come under greater scrutiny. The win by Democrat Phil Murphy in New Jersey’s governor’s race came as no surprise because of the unpopularity of outgoing Republican Governor Chris Christie. But Ralph Northam’s 9-point victory over Republican Ed Gillespie for governor in swing-state Virginia was larger than expected. Trump quickly tried to distance himself from Gillespie’s poor showing, saying on Twitter that the Republican candidate “worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for.” Still, Trump’s leadership record appeared to motivate Democrats to vote in record numbers in Virginia, with exit polls showing that many came out simply to express their displeasure with the president. “Trump is turning off more voters than he’s bringing in,” said Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist in Washington. “His base is strong, but it isn’t growing.” During his first year in office, Trump has consistently played to a base of passionate supporters, many of them older white men who live in rural areas declining in population, and has shown little inclination to reach out to the majority of voters who disapprove of him. Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster based in Virginia, said the party was on a risky track. “Republicans have traded fast-growing upscale suburban counties for slow-growing or declining rural areas. That is not a formula for long-term success.” There also may be signs of slippage in Trump’s political base. In Virginia, Gillespie campaigned hard on immigration and crime - two hot issues with the president’s supporters - but did worse than expected in some rural and suburban areas that Trump easily won last year. In rural Dickenson County, considered to be the heart of Trump country in Virginia, Gillespie’s margin over Northam was almost 7 percentage points less than Trump’s margin of victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton last year. Trump won the city of Virginia Beach in 2016 by 3 points, but Gillespie lost to Northam there by 5, a swing of eight points. More critically, Gillespie was blown out by Northam in northern Virginia’s populous suburbs, where Trump also struggled in the presidential race. “The suburbs came out in full force,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. “They appear to be very motivated to try and deliver a message to Trump.” In growing Loudoun County, outside of Washington, Democrat Barack Obama barely edged out Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. On Tuesday, Northam buried Gillespie there by almost 20 points. “I’m worried,” Ari Fleischer, a former White House spokesman for Republican President George W. Bush, told Fox News on Wednesday. “Democrats came out in huge numbers yesterday in the races and if they have that kind of enthusiasm going into 2018, it’s going to be very tough sailing for Republicans.” Gillespie, a longtime Washington insider and lobbyist, tried to keep his distance from Trump personally even as he adopted some of his more combative campaign rhetoric. It was a strategy that failed and Mackowiak said the result reflected Trump’s historically low approval rating. “I don’t think the White House was worried about that before, but now I think they have to be.” The five-day Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll has Trump hovering around 35 percent approval nationally, with close to 60 percent of respondents disapproving of his performance in office. A person familiar with Trump’s political operation dismissed the election results on Tuesday as having anything to do with the president, noting that both New Jersey and Virginia were won by Clinton in 2016. Andrew Surabian, an adviser to the pro-Trump political group Great America Alliance, said Gillespie lost because he was exactly the kind of establishment Republican that Trump voters have rejected. “Ed Gillespie’s campaign went down in flames because he failed to fully embrace the president or his agenda,” Surabian said, “and without a coherent message and an authentic messenger, Republican candidates will not be successful moving forward.” | 0fake |
Salesforce Shareholders Besiege Possible Twitter Deal - The New York Times | SAN FRANCISCO — The investor pressure began building on Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce. com, two weeks ago. On Sept. 23, news broke that Mr. Benioff’s company was in discussions to buy the troubled social media company Twitter. Inside the offices of hedge funds and mutual fund companies on Wall Street and elsewhere, investors in Salesforce immediately began to question the rationale for buying Twitter. They were not happy. The investors made their concerns known to Mr. Benioff. In emails and other communications, the shareholders told the chief executive and Salesforce’s investor relations team that they disapproved of a with Twitter. The effort was led by Fidelity Investments, the mutual fund firm that is Salesforce’s largest shareholder, with about 14 percent of the company. At least one Fidelity portfolio manager emailed Salesforce about the deal being a bad idea, according to people briefed on the correspondence, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the communications were private. Other Salesforce investors, including hedge funds, said they would sell the company’s stock, according to two people with knowledge of the communications. By this Wednesday, when Mr. Benioff spoke at an investor meeting at a San Francisco hotel, his language about any deal had turned conciliatory and defensive. “I read all of your notes, you probably know that,” Mr. Benioff said. “I also read your emails. And as I digest all of that information, this is actually the No. 1 thing that has been on my mind. In some cases we have been unusually surprised and we have had to do a reset. ” The pushback offers a window into how big investors can exert pressure on deals behind the scenes. Salesforce is particularly vulnerable to what its large institutional investors think because the unprofitable online software company relies heavily on its stock to make acquisitions and pay employee compensation. As a result, the company needs to keep investors happy for its share price to continue going up. Salesforce declined to comment, as did a representative from Fidelity. It is unclear whether or not Mr. Benioff will continue to pursue Twitter. One person involved in the negotiations said that, for now, Salesforce’s shareholders have halted a potential deal. For Twitter, that would mean that its options have narrowed. The social media company had been talking to potential buyers, as well as considering divestitures and layoffs to focus its business. But companies including Google, Apple and Disney are not interested in buying Twitter, people at those companies said, and Salesforce appeared to be one of the last interested parties. Twitter as well as Google and Apple declined to comment. Disney did not respond to calls. Recode earlier reported that Google, Apple and Disney would not make bids. Even though Salesforce is a company, in some ways Mr. Benioff still runs it like a making promises of boundless growth and equity riches for all employees. Salesforce does not have much cash on hand — just over $1 billion as of the end of July — compared with other tech companies, which makes it important that shareholders continue to buy its stock and enhance its value. Unlike behemoths like Microsoft, Apple and Oracle, which can turn to their cash hoards for deals, Salesforce must use a combination of stock and borrowed money to buy companies. If shareholders were to sell and drive down the value of Salesforce stock, that would hurt Mr. Benioff’s capabilities. Salesforce needs to aggressively acquire companies to keep its revenue growing as its core business, software, slows, said Mark Moerdler, a senior research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. The company’s reliance on stock can sometimes be a negative. Earlier this year, for example, Salesforce offered a higher per share price than rivals to buy the professional site LinkedIn. Yet LinkedIn ultimately took a lower offer from Microsoft that was all in cash. Salesforce also depends on stock to pay its employees. During the company’s fiscal year ended Jan. 31, it paid out $593. 6 million in compensation, about 8 percent of its total sales. The recent investor pushback puts Mr. Benioff, who has long been a shareholder darling, in an unfamiliar position. Salesforce shares have zoomed higher since pricing at $11 in its initial public offering to around $71 now, as investors clamored to own a piece of one of the first companies to successfully convince big enterprises to rent out software that is stored in the cloud, rather than own it and run it themselves. But after the Twitter news broke, investors pushed the stock down by as much as 8 percent over the next 10 days. On Wednesday, during Mr. Benioff’s investor meeting where he sometimes gazed upon his own image projected on an enormous screen above the crowd, he bristled at times over the shareholder reaction. “Well, what about this one deal right here!” Mr. Benioff said, using a shrill and mocking voice to imitate one shareholder email. “I mean the kind of things that I have been reading in the emails are so extreme I am like, Jesus, do they really think that we would do a deal at that level?” Mr. Benioff emphasized that he is a careful deal maker who is sensitive to what any acquisition might mean for Salesforce’s shareholders, which include large, influential institutions like T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Sands Capital Management and Harbor Funds. “I don’t believe in running the company like a lone wolf,” he said, pointing to his board members who sat in the front row. But he still left the door open, ever so slightly, for future acquisitions. “We believe innovation happens not just in Salesforce, but in other companies,” he said. | 0fake |
null | Florida had a mass ot election fraud in 2012 - did they do anything to prevent it this time or is it just business as usual for the Dems down there? | 1real |
Quick Update from The Event Chronicle | Hello Everyone,
I know many of you like to keep in touch with our website via Facebook. I’ve had several reports from people over the past week that Facebook has been censoring some of our posts again. Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do about that but I wanted you to know that I’m aware of it and keeping an eye on the situation.
Many of you may not know that Facebook changed their algorithm this past June to favor “friends and family”. What this means is that Facebook now shows you more posts specifically from your friends and family, which is great! But, you may not be seeing as many posts from news outlets or small businesses that you follow and want to keep in touch with. You can read more about Facebook’s algorithm change here .
There is a way to fix this! If you go to our Facebook page and click the triangle next to the ‘Liked’ button, you can click See First, and this will ensure that our posts make it onto your news feed.
Facebook does not show all posts to people who follow pages. The new algorithm changes the way posts show up in your feed based on how many likes and shares a post accumulates within a short timeframe after it is published. This means that you may not have the opportunity to view information you might be interested in.
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On a Personal Note It’s been a bit of a struggle to get the news out this week as my computer is getting old and the hard drive is beginning to fail. This is not something that’s fixable and it’s time to get a new computer. I’ve been crossing my fingers and saying a little prayer each morning when I wake my computer from sleep hoping it will turn on for another day. So far so good, but the day is quickly coming that it will no longer turn on.
If you enjoy reading our website, please see this page for more information about the computer problem and ways you can help. Even small donations of $5 or $10 add up and your help would be greatly appreciated.
Have a great weekend! I have a handful of posts scheduled in the queue to go out throughout the weekend. I’ll pop in here and there on social media to make sure I don’t miss anything important, but my focus this weekend will be on finishing up Volume 2 of The Event Handbook !
…as well as doing a bunch of vacuuming and laundry because it seems Miss Ellie has brought home a flea or two. I think I’ve caught it in time so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Does anyone know of any good natural remedies that are safe for cats? Please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
You wanna see some pictures of my cat? Of course you do!
Miss Ellie Thanks Everyone. I love you ALL! | 1real |
Republican healthcare bill imperiled with 22 million seen losing insurance | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty-two million Americans would lose insurance over the next decade under the U.S. Senate Republican healthcare bill, a nonpartisan congressional office said on Monday, complicating the path forward for the already-fraught legislation. After the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score, Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she could not support moving forward on the bill as written. Collins’ opposition highlights the delicate balance that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must strike as he tries to deliver a legislative win to President Donald Trump by reconciling the Republican Party’s moderate and conservative wings. Moderate senators are concerned about millions of people losing insurance. Key conservative senators have said the Senate bill does not do enough to repeal Obamacare. The CBO assessment that an additional 15 million people would be uninsured in 2018 under the bill and its prediction that insurance premiums would skyrocket over the first two years prompted concern from both sides. McConnell’s goal was to have a vote on the bill before the July 4 recess that starts at the end of this week. But several Republicans, including Collins, have said they would not approve a procedural motion that would clear the way for a vote. McConnell can afford to lose just two Republican senators from their 52-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, which would allow passage of the bill with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote. “If you are on the fence ... this CBO score didn’t help you, so I think it’s going to be harder to get to 50, not easier,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said of the bill’s prospects. The CBO score is also likely to amplify criticism from industry groups such as the American Medical Association, which said earlier on Monday that the Senate’s bill violated the doctors’ precept of “first, do no harm.” The CBO is only able to assess the impact of legislation within a 10-year window, but it said that insurance losses are expected to grow beyond 22 million due to deep cuts to the Medicaid insurance program for the poor and disabled that are not scheduled to go into effect until 2025. Trump and Republicans in Congress made repealing and replacing Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation, a central campaign promise. The pressure is on for them to deliver now that they control the White House, House of Representatives and Senate. Republicans view Obamacare as costly government intrusion and say that individual insurance markets are collapsing. Obamacare expanded health coverage to some 20 million Americans by expanding Medicaid and mandating that individuals obtain health insurance. The CBO score was released just hours after Republicans revised the bill, adding a measure that would penalize people who let their insurance coverage lapse for an extended period. The move followed criticism that the original bill would result in a sicker - and more expensive - insurance pool. At least four conservative Republicans - Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and Mike Lee - have expressed opposition to the Senate legislation. Moderate Republicans have warned against replacing Obamacare with legislation that is too similar to the version passed by the House, saying it would cause too many people, especially those with low incomes, to lose health coverage. The CBO estimated that the House bill would cause 23 million people to lose insurance. Trump had called the House bill “mean” and asked Senate Republicans to come up with “more generous” legislation. Democrats uniformly oppose both the House and Senate versions of the bill. “CBO’s report today makes clear that this bill is every bit as ‘mean as the House bill,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, told reporters. The White House in a statement on Monday criticized the CBO for issuing a “flawed report” and said its assessments should not be “trusted blindly.” Trump and McConnell have been working to shore up support. The president called key conservative senators over the weekend, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said. Both Cruz and Johnson said they were concerned about CBO estimates that insurance premiums would initially rise as much as 30 percent over the first two years before declining. “Doesn’t help the people whose premiums skyrocket next year,” Cruz told reporters. “Kind of a problem, isn’t it?” Johnson said of the short-term premium increase. Johnson and Paul have said they will oppose the procedural motion that would allow the Senate to move forward to a vote. Cruz is drafting suggested fixes. Paul remains opposed to the bill. The first moderate Republican to oppose the bill, Senator Dean Heller, is already facing political fallout. America First Policies, a political group run by former Trump campaign staffers, said it would air healthcare-related attack ads against Heller, who faces a competitive re-election race in Nevada next year. Senator Rob Portman, of Ohio, who has not said whether he supports the bill, was “dressed down” by McConnell during a Monday leadership meeting, a senior Republican aide told Reuters. Ohio participates in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and Republican Governor John Kasich has criticized the Senate bill. Portman’s office did not respond to a request to comment. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said his governor, fellow Republican Rick Scott, would be on Capitol Hill this week to discuss the bill’s impact on the state. Constituent and industry groups have been critical of the Senate bill’s proposal to reduce the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and point to the CBO analysis that it would disproportionately affect older adults. Under Senate rules, the bill must replicate savings projected in the House version that passed last month. It cleared that critical hurdle, with the CBO estimating it would decrease the budget deficit by $321 billion over 2017-2026. A revision to the bill that imposes a penalty for prolonged lapses in insurance coverage addresses the original bill’s provision to drop the Obamacare penalty on those who do not have insurance. Experts had warned that canceling the fine could lead to a sicker insurance pool because young and healthy people would not face consequences for failing to purchase insurance. The bill would impose a six-month waiting period for anyone who lets their health insurance lapse for over 63 days and then wants to re-enroll in a plan in the individual market. The 15 million people the CBO estimates would be uninsured in 2018 is largely due to the repeal of the penalty associated with being uninsured. The CBO did not evaluate the revised version that included the new waiting period. Insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield said it was encouraged by the inclusion of incentives for continuous coverage. Molina Healthcare said it preferred the Obamacare mandate, said that and the Senate bill, even after revised, would simply delay care. If the Senate passes a bill, it will either have to be approved by the House, the two chambers would have to reconcile their differences in a conference committee, or the House could pass a new version and bounce it back to the Senate. | 0fake |
Castro meets North Korea minister amid hope Cuba can defuse tensions | HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Raul Castro met with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Friday amid hopes the Communist-run island might be able to convince its Asian ally to avert a showdown with the United States. North Korea is facing unprecedented pressure from the United States and the international community to cease its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Cuba has maintained close diplomatic ties with North Korea since 1960 but is opposed to nuclear weapons. In the brotherly encounter, both sides commented on the historic friendship between the two nations and talked about international topics of mutual interest, Cuban state television said on its midday broadcast. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday he had discussed with Castro last year the possibility of working together to defuse global tensions with North Korea. Can we pass along messages through surprising conduits? Trudeau asked in a Q&A session after a speech. It was a topic of conversation when I met President Raul Castro last year. These are the kinds of things where Canada can, I think, play a role that the United States has chosen not to play, this past year. Canada had an interest in seeking solutions, not just because of regional security but also because the flight path of possible North Korean missiles would pass over its territory, Trudeau said. North Korea is working on developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, aiming to achieve what Ri has called a real balance of power with the United States . Ri met his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez this week and the ministers denounced U.S. unilateral and arbitrary lists and designations that led to coercive measures contrary to international law , according to Cuba s foreign ministry. The ministers called for respect for peoples sovereignty and the peaceful settlement of disputes , according to a ministry statement. President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Cuba since taking office, rolling back a detente begun by his predecessor Barack Obama and returning to the hostile rhetoric of the Cold War. North Korea and Cuba are the last countries in the world to maintain Soviet-style command economies, though under Raul Castro, the Caribbean nation has taken small steps toward the more market-oriented communism of China and Vietnam. Raul took over the presidency in 2008 from his older brother and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who died on Nov. 25 last year. Cuba is marking the anniversary on Saturday with vigils and concerts. [L8N1NS6SF] Cuba maintains an embassy in North Korea but trades mostly with South Korea. Last year, trade with the latter was $67 million and just $9 million with the North, the government said. | 0fake |
Trump rolls back parts of what he calls 'terrible' Obama Cuba policy | MIAMI (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday ordered tighter restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and a clampdown on U.S. business dealings with the Caribbean island’s military, saying he was canceling former President Barack Obama’s “terrible and misguided deal” with Havana. Laying out his new Cuba policy in a speech in Miami, Trump signed a presidential directive rolling back parts of Obama’s historic opening to the Communist-ruled country after a 2014 diplomatic breakthrough between the two former Cold War foes. But Trump left in place many of Obama’s changes, including the reopened U.S. embassy in Havana, even as he sought to show he was making good on a campaign promise to take a tougher line against Cuba, especially over its human rights record. “We will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer,” Trump told a cheering crowd in Miami’s Cuban-American enclave of Little Havana, including Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who helped forge the new restrictions on Cuba. “Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” Trump declared as he made a full-throated assault on the government of Cuban President Raul Castro. Cuba later denounced the move as a setback in U.S.-Cuban relations, saying Trump had been badly advised and was resorting to “coercive methods of the past” that were doomed to fail. The government remained willing to engage in “respectful dialogue,” it said in a statement. Trump’s revised approach calls for stricter enforcement of a longtime ban on Americans going to Cuba as tourists, and seeks to prevent U.S. dollars from being used to fund what the Trump administration sees as a repressive military-dominated government. (tmsnrt.rs/2rBfMTI) But, facing pressure from U.S. businesses and even some fellow Republicans to avoid turning back the clock completely in relations with Cuba, the president chose to leave intact some of his Democratic predecessor’s steps toward normalization. The new policy bans most U.S. business transactions with the Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group, a Cuban conglomerate involved in all sectors of the economy. But it makes some exceptions, including for air and sea travel, according to U.S. officials. This will essentially shield U.S. airlines and cruise lines serving the island. “We do not want U.S. dollars to prop up a military monopoly that exploits and abuses the citizens of Cuba,” Trump said, pledging that U.S. sanctions would not be lifted until Cuba frees political prisoners and holds free elections. While the changes are far-reaching, they appear to be less sweeping than many U.S. pro-engagement advocates had feared. Trump based his partial reversal of Obama’s Cuba measures largely on human rights grounds. His critics, however, have questioned why his administration is now singling out Cuba for human rights abuses but downplaying the issue in other parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally Trump visited last month where political parties and protests are banned. Trump, however, stopped short of breaking diplomatic relations restored in 2015 after more than five decades of hostilities. He also will not cut off recently resumed direct U.S.-Cuba commercial flights or cruise-ship travel, though his more restrictive policy seems certain to dampen new economic ties overall. The administration, according to one White House official, has no intention of “disrupting” existing business ventures such as one struck under Obama by Starwood Hotels Inc, which is owned by Marriott International Inc, to manage a historic Havana hotel. Nor does Trump plan to reinstate limits that Obama lifted on the amount of the island’s coveted rum and cigars that Americans can bring home for personal use. Still, it will be the latest attempt by Trump to overturn parts of Obama’s presidential legacy. He has already pulled the United States out of a major international climate treaty and is trying to scrap his predecessor’s landmark healthcare program. When Obama announced the detente in 2014, he said that decades of U.S. efforts to achieve change in Cuba by isolating the island had failed and it was time to try a new approach. Critics of the rapprochement said Obama was giving too much away without extracting concessions from the Cuban government. Castro’s government has clearly stated it does not intend to change its one-party political system. Trump aides say Obama’s efforts amounted to “appeasement” and have done nothing to advance political freedoms in Cuba, while benefiting the Cuban government financially. “It’s hard to think of a policy that makes less sense than the prior administration’s terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime,” Trump said in Miami. International human rights groups say, however, that renewed U.S. efforts to isolate the island could worsen the situation by empowering Cuban hard-liners. The Cuban government, which has made clear it will not be pressured into reforms, had no immediate comment. But ordinary Cubans said they were crestfallen to be returning to an era of frostier relations with the United States with potential economic fallout for them. “It’s like we are returning to the Cold War,” said Cuban designer Idania del Rio, who joined a group of friends in a hotel in Old Havana to watch the speech in English on CNN. Trump announced his new approach at the Manuel Artime Theater in the heart of the United States’ largest Cuban-American and Cuban exile community, whose support aides believe helped him win Florida in the election. The venue is named after a leader of the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 against Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government. “I have trust in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to Cuba,” said Jorge Saurez, 66, a retired physician in Little Havana. Trump’s vow to keep the broader decades-old U.S. economic embargo on Cuba firmly in place drew criticism from some U.S. farmers, especially growers of corn, soybeans and rice. Obama’s détente has already lifted exports and raised hopes for more gains, which they said were now in doubt. Mexico’s foreign ministry urged the United States and Cuba to resolve their differences “via dialogue.” But Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose leftist government is Cuba’s main regional ally, slammed Trump’s tightening of restrictions as an “offence” against Latin America. “His speech was aggressive and threatening, ... revealing his contempt and ignorance,” President Nicolas Maduro said in a speech. “We reject Donald Trump’s declarations against our brother Cuba. It is an offence against Latin America.” The biggest change in travel policy will be that Americans making educational people-to-people trips, one of the most popular authorized categories, can no longer go to the island on their own but only on group tours. Trump’s aides said the aim was to close off a path for Americans seeking beach vacations in a country where U.S. tourism is still officially banned. U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, one of the Republican Party’s most vocal advocates for easing rules on U.S. dealings with Cuba, called for a vote on legislation lifting restrictions on American travel there. But the Republican leadership in Congress has long blocked such a move, and it appears unlikely to budge. Under Trump’s order, the Treasury and Commerce departments will be given 30 days to begin writing new regulations, which will not take effect until they are complete. In contentious deliberations leading up to the new policy, some aides argued that Trump, a former real estate magnate who won the presidency vowing to unleash U.S. business, would have a hard time defending any moves that close off the Cuban market. But other advisers have contended that it is important to make good on a campaign promise to Cuban-Americans. | 0fake |
‘Not-Racist’ Trump Fan Goes On Hours-Long Twitter Rant About ‘Nigs’ And ‘Obamaphones’ (TWEETS) | If you ever need to know exactly how divisive Donald Trump has been, if you ever need a perfect example, you don t need to look much further than Donald Trump s Twitter timeline. While it is a cesspit of racist garbage on a good day, sometimes his fans stand out and one of them serves as a perfect reminder of what, exactly we are righting against.On Sunday, Trump bragged about his ratings in a desperate effort to distract from the fact that no one showed up to his party on Friday.Wow, television ratings just out: 31 million people watched the Inauguration, 11 million more than the very good ratings from 4 years ago! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017Meet Carl Tischer. Carl decided to put on his white-hooded battle armor and jump to The Donald s defense as seemingly the whole world was making fun of our Pussgrabber-in-chief. In response to legitimate criticism of The Donald, Tischer let everyone know that 30 million Americans just wanted to see Barack and Michelle (who is a man, according to this obviously well-educated cracker) leave the White House.@mikd33 @realDonaldTrump I certainly do . Thank God Barry and his hubby Moochel are gone . Now we can actually MAGA . TRUMPNATION . LOLOLOL. carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@KreaseChan @realDonaldTrump 30 mil were watching to see Barry and his hubby Moochel leave for good .It's time to MAGA . LOLOLOL.TRUMPNATION carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017In other replies to Trump s ratings announcement, Tischer shared his pearls of wisdom about niggas nugs and nigs. @fryan @realDonaldTrump @latimes 7 million fewer Niggas on welfare is why . They were waiting for their free Ohshitforbrains phone . MAGA . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@fryan @goldy_levy @realDonaldTrump @latimes you are right . 7 million niggas in line for their free Ohshitforbrains phone. TRUMPNATION MAGA carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@Mottel @realDonaldTrump @Variety we sure do miss all the nigs in the crowd waiting for their FREE Ohshitforbrains phones . LOL . MAGA MAGA carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@justinhendrix @realDonaldTrump @Variety We don't care .Who cares if 7 million nigs weren't there waiting for the free Ohshitforbrains phone carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@jules_su @realDonaldTrump The only ones home were the Nigs figuring out how to get their next free phone . LOL . TRUMPNATION . MAGA LOL . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@fryan @goldy_levy @realDonaldTrump @latimes Simple . Da Nugs have to tie their own shoes now and pay for their own phones . LOL . MAGA . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@Plaid_Undercat Good fo u nug whore . Now go turn your phone on and git to work.. LOL . MAGA . Barry and his hubby Moochel are gone . MAGA carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017This old fashioned hard worker (an apparent new slang term for racist ) seems really fixated on all these nug phones that are used to help sell crack :@fryan @realDonaldTrump @latimes Just an ol fashioned hard worker . No more Ohshitforbrains phones..Time to MAGA . TRUMPNATION . GIT TO WORK carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@CarlTSpeak Damn right its classy . No mo free phones . Time for the adults to take control . LOL . TRUMPNATION . MAGA . WORK WORK WORK . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@varona_jo @justinhendrix @realDonaldTrump @Variety Don't matter .They have made my own way ALL my life . NEVER HAD A FREE PHONE . LOL MAGA carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@uuuukewithme @fryan @goldy_levy @latimes Oh yeah It was a total compliment . NO MO FREE PHONES . MAGA . WORK WORK WORK . LOLOLLL. MAGA . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@uuuukewithme @fryan @goldy_levy @latimes The phones were to help sell the crack .You big dummy . Shut up. Adults are talking . MAGA . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@fryan @goldy_levy @realDonaldTrump @latimes POOR NUGS .GOT TO ACTUALLY WORK FOR A LIVING NOW . GONNA BE A BIG CHANGE . LOLOLOL . MAGA ! ! ! carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017Carl would be interested to know that the Safelink program what he calls Obamaphones actually began under George W. Bush, though Reagan deserves much of the credit for getting things rolling. But Carl isn t interested in facts. He wants to #MAGA or something. The perfectly sane, rational person, totally not unhinged rant continued for hours across Twitter, bringing us numerous examples of what it means to be a Trump fan:@alex_the_cynic @fryan @goldy_levy @realDonaldTrump @latimes Zero to do with skin color, dipshit. Nig is a nig no matter what color .wake up carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@TerriC324 wouldn't waste my money going to South Shitcago to see punk thugs . Please come see me . Omg talk about Fun . Slaughterhouse fun carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@alex_the_cynic @fryan @goldy_levy @realDonaldTrump @latimes All you Madonna loving pukes are retarded sore loosers.Lets blow up the WH.SMFH carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@BullCityVA @adrunkteacher Whore's like you need to get off your backs and get a real job Your back and legs must be sore.Oh that sore puzzy carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@itsjanaej1 @adrunkteacher. Here's one for ya Rather easy to understand . Fuck off and Blow me . MAGA TRUMPNATION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017But not to worry, folks. Carl s not a racist. YOU are:@YvetteC66 @fryan @realDonaldTrump @latimes There's where you are wrong . Nigs have 0 to do with color . NO MO FREE PHONES . LOL . MAGA . carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017@pulais2010 @TerriC324 Again I'd like to thank all you racist Fucks that bring up https://t.co/4yUxm63fiK at 33 followers.Nigga is not about color.Wake up carl tischer (@carltischer) January 22, 2017According to his Facebook, Tischer is retired and he must be, as he has seemingly all day to sit around spouting racist garbage in support of the most unpopular President to ever disgrace our great nation.When Trump supporters say make America great again, they don t mean it. It s a code phrase meaning kill the n******, Hispanics, and Muslims. That s literally all they care about.Featured image via Getty Images (Pool)/Twitter | 1real |
Why the death of GOP 'loyalty pledge' matters | Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich have all backed away from a pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee. The reasons go deeper than mere personal pique, to the soul of the party.
How SNL's 'the bubble' sketch about polarization is all too true
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves as he walks onstage before speaking at a campaign event at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., on Wednesday, March 30.
When Donald Trump signed a “loyalty pledge” with great fanfare last September promising to support the eventual Republican presidential nominee, few took him seriously.
Because no one tells Mr. Trump what to do. He even said so at the time.
Now Trump has formally rescinded his pledge, and the remaining GOP competitors – Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich – have come close, refusing to say whether they would honor their own loyalty pledges at a CNN town hall Tuesday night.
In a way, the death of the pledge is merely symbolic. It’s already been clear for some time that the Grand Old Party is coming apart at the seams, with a presidential front-runner who barely adheres to Republican philosophy and yet commands a big, loyal following.
But that symbolism is important. After all, what is the point of having a political party, if its members don’t intend to support one another?
The unraveling of the pledge is “clarifying,” says Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “It tells us how much these men can’t stand each other.”
The reasons go deeper than mere personal pique. The end of the pledge speaks to the hollowness in the very soul of the Republican Party. A sizable slice of GOP voters are so fed up with business as usual they’re willing to take a chance on a political novice with some unorthodox views (for a Republican) and whom many women and minorities find offensive.
The pledge’s demise is premised on the possibility of a Trump nomination. When asked about the pledge in the CNN town hall, Cruz said he was “not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and attacks my family.” Kasich also hedged: "If the nominee is somebody that I think is really hurting the country, and dividing the country, I can't stand behind them, but we have a ways to go."
A logical answer might be for Cruz and Kasich to form a strategic alliance, in an effort to knock out Trump. But that’s not in the works. Each believes he should be the nominee, coming out of a contested convention. And they’re not a good fit stylistically or ideologically: Cruz is a hard-line conservative who does not brook compromise, while Kasich is more mainstream, with a history of working across the aisle.
Taken as a group, the three remaining GOP candidates represent a microcosm of today’s fractious Republican Party – and given the underlying animosity, there’s little hope for comity.
“This is a party that looks like it’s headed for a crackup,” says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “They’re not going to support one another, and if they issued a new pledge it wouldn’t mean anything.”
“If Trump gets the nomination, millions of mainstream Republicans will not vote for him,” Professor Sabato adds. “If Cruz gets it, millions of Trump supporters will not vote for him.”
Normally, loyalty pledges don’t even come up during presidential primaries. Loyalty is assumed, and a given. But this cycle isn’t normal. Trump’s incursion into the race brought the issue to the fore, amid speculation that he would run as an independent if he didn’t get the nomination - and didn’t feel the Republican National Committee was treating him “fairly.”
Trump’s definition of “unfair” implies a scenario in which he goes into the convention with the most delegates (but not a majority) and does not win the nomination. That could happen. But whether Trump is willing to spend the money and mount the organization necessary to pull off a credible independent bid is an open question.
So for now, it would appear, “loyalty” has given way to “every man for himself.” And it's the Republican Party that loses. | 0fake |
Exclusive: Democratic Party slams GOP candidates on climate change | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Democratic Party released a video on Sunday slamming Republican presidential hopefuls for their opposition to action on climate change, suggesting the views clash with the reality of rising sea levels and shifting weather patterns. The video features Republican front-runner Donald Trump and his two closest rivals, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, denying man-made global warming, juxtaposed with images of U.S. flooding, wildfires, droughts and heat waves. “I’m not a believer in climate change,” Trump says during a television news interview featured in the clip. The video can be seen at bit.ly/1Qm5iB8. “Satellite data show there’s been no warming whatsoever,” Cruz, a U.S. senator of Texas, says in another news clip. Rubio, a U.S. senator of Florida, says, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” The video aims to put the environmental issue center stage in the November race for the White House. Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both laid out plans to combat climate change, while all five Republican presidential contenders have argued that the problem doesn’t exist or have discounted the scope of the issue. The video also draws a link between environmental issues and the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court following the surprise death this month of Justice Antonin Scalia. President Barack Obama has said he plans to nominate a replacement for Scalia before the November election, but Republicans in Congress have vowed to block the effort. “With so many issues at stake now, with so much potentially heading before the court on clean energy and climate change, we simply can’t afford for our nation’s highest court to be crippled,” a few Democratic members of Congress say in the video. An official for the Democratic Party said the video would be circulated on social media. (Reporting by Luciana Lopez; Additional reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Leslie Adler) 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 |
Trump vice presidential search narrowed to four or five politicians | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday said he had narrowed his search for a vice presidential running mate down to four or five unnamed establishment politicians, including one former rival who has not endorsed him, according to a Bloomberg interview. “I’d like to save it, give it the old fashioned way, right?” Trump said of not announcing his choice until the Republican National Convention in July. | 0fake |
First Arrest Made in Gang Rape Case in Brazil - The New York Times | The police in Brazil said on Saturday that they had made the first arrest in the search for more than 30 possible attackers in the gang rape of a girl, a case that has prompted widespread outrage and vows by the federal government to combat crimes against women, news agencies reported. Brazilians reacted with shock after the May 21 assault came to light last week. Graphic photos and videos of the unconscious, naked teenager were posted on Twitter, and several men joked online about the attack. The authorities said the teenager had been raped in the São João shantytown on the west side of Rio de Janeiro as she was visiting her boyfriend, The Associated Press reported. The girl told the police that she was briefly alone with him but remembered nothing until she woke up naked the next day in another building among dozens of men who had guns. The first arrest came after the military police fanned out in search of four suspects who had been identified, the news organization Agence reported. The police said they did not know if the boyfriend was one of the attackers, though he was being sought. The case has rocked Brazil, Latin America’s largest nation, and highlighted its problem of violence against women. President Michel Temer promised to create a federal police unit to address crimes against women, The Associated Press reported. “It’s absurd that in the 21st century we have to live with barbarous crimes like this,” said Mr. Temer, who also called an emergency meeting of the security ministers for each of Brazil’s states to consider crimes. Demonstrators gathered in downtown Rio on Friday night with signs that said “Machismo kills” and “No means no,” Agence reported. In São Paulo, protesters made a mural with messages that included “I like to wear necklines, that’s not an invitation to rape me. ” The girl, in brief comments to the O Globo newspaper, said: “It’s the stigma that hurts me the most. It is as if people are saying: ‘It’s her fault. She was using scanty clothes.’ I want people to know that it is not the woman’s fault. You can’t blame a robbery victim for being robbed. ” At a news conference on Friday, the police said the girl had reported being raped by 33 men officials said they had been unable to confirm how many men might have taken part. Rio’s police chief, Fernando Veloso, said that if images had not been posted online, the authorities might not have learned of the attack. The Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies found that more than 92, 000 women were killed in crimes, including rape and domestic abuse, from 1980 to 2010. | 0fake |
WATCH RUDY GIULIANI Rock The Crowd In Cleveland With A Barnburner Of A Speech! [Video] | In case you missed this Rudy Giuliani delivered a fantastic speech at the RNC in Cleveland! It s good old fashioned barnburner of a speech: | 1real |
Donald Trump Never Met A Disaster He Couldn’t Make Much Worse | Back when conservative politics were actually political, rather than social, there was a guy by the actual real name of Grover Norquist who summed up the aim of Republican politicians:I don t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.Yes, back in the days before Nazis invaded America, Republicans and neo-conservatives focused on just three things. They wanted endless war, tax breaks for the rich, and to dismantle government regulations. Norquist s quote is from 2001, but it sounds a little like he s been skulking around the White House or something because the actual conservatives surrounding Donald Trump appear to be pushing back to that agenda.Oh, and speaking of drowning, that s what happens when you remove safety standards those mean old nasty gub mint regulations. So why would anyone do that? Well, the short answer is money. It s always money, and fewer regulations mean faster, cheaper work. Normally, a politician can t come out and just say We re getting rid of safety so rich people can have more money. But Trump can, because his base is made up of equal parts Nazis, people too busy making Biblical excuses for him to notice, and just plain dumbasses.There wasn t really a chance to test this version of the shoot someone on 5th Avenue theory, though. Trump s announcement that he was revoking rules protecting the environment in order to speed up cheap infrastructure was cloaked by his simultaneous defense of the Nazis who murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville.The rule change that delivers on the promise of this article s headline is one that used to require federal construction to account for rising sea levels when planning and building a project. That s great for constructing a highway that should take three years in less than one. It s not so great for the people living next to it, or the cities it runs through. The change is to an Obama rule that mandated construction two feet above future flood levels, which means that without that requirement, those fast, cheap roads could be underwater following even a mild natural disaster.FEMA has a few things to say about flooding that it s the leading cause of death among natural disasters in America, that 85% of all emergency declarations are due to floods, that it costs the government billions to recover from major flooding but why not take it from me? I know from floods: I live in a town that used to flood every single year. Until our city hunkered down and made some riverfront construction rules, that is. The first year that I moved to this tiny hamlet in the Pacific Northwest, I found myself sandbagging a river with my new neighbors by November. My roommates and I ended up at one of their parents house 10 miles away, because the water came four feet up the stairs to our apartment.Why did I live in the floodplain? Because I was poor. In fact, people in relative or severe poverty make up the largest percentage of those who live in the path of floods. So it s not only states that will have to pay for flooding damage due to this rule reversal. The hardest-hit by this will be those least able to recover from it.Featured image via Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images | 1real |
Supreme Court Hears Case on Fatal Border Shooting - Breitbart | WASHINGTON, D. C. — How a U. S. Border Patrol argent’s use of lethal force at the U. border implicates constitutional rights and foreign affairs dominated arguments at the U. S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in Hernandez v. Mesa. The lawyer arguing that the agent should be held liable had a rough day in front of the justices. [Both sides agree that while standing on American soil at the border on June 7, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa fatally shot Sergio Hernandez, a Mexican national standing on the Mexican side. But then the factual accounts diverge. According to Hernandez’s family, the teenager was playing with his friends near the border opposite El Paso, Texas, where the border runs through the middle of a concrete culvert. There is a fence on the U. S. side of the culvert. According to Mesa and the federal government, Mesa was detaining one of Hernandez’s companions on the U. S. side of the border, when Hernandez and the other teenagers started throwing rocks at Hernandez. Mesa claims that the rocks posed a danger to his safety. He repeatedly ordered then to stop and back away, but they persisted. Finally Mesa fired in what he claims is fatally striking Hernandez. Hernandez’s family sued, and Mesa filed a motion to dismiss. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, when considering a motion to dismiss, a federal court must consider the plaintiff’s allegations as true when deciding whether to throw out the lawsuit versus letting it continue. The parties later present evidence to prove their version of the facts if the lawsuit goes forward, but when deciding whether to end the case before it gets started, judges must consider only plaintiff’s version. The justices must decide three issues in this case. First, whether someone on foreign soil can raise a Fourth Amendment claim here, where the agent’s action of pulling the trigger took place on U. S. soil but the alleged constitutional injury occurred on Mexican soil when the bullet struck Hernandez. Second, whether Mesa is entitled to qualified immunity here when certain keys facts were unknowable at the time of the incident. And third, whether the family can sue Mesa personally under a contested Supreme Court precedent called Bivens, going after his personal assets such as his home and retirement. Chief Justice John Roberts led the tough questioning of Hernadez’s lawyer, who seemed out of his depth in the High Court. “It seems to me that the principles you’re arguing for can’t be narrowly confined,” said Roberts, expressing concern that the plaintiff’s argument could be used against the U. S. military acting overseas. “How do you analyze the case of a drone strike in Iraq where the plane is piloted from Nevada? Why wouldn’t the same analysis apply in that case?” Justice Stephen Breyer — a justice appointed by Bill Clinton — agreed. “What words do we write so that this opinion doesn’t affect the drone strike? ,” he asked. Justice Samuel Alito likewise pressed the lawyer, peppering him with questions such as if Hernandez were 19 instead of 15, or armed but with his hands up instead of unarmed, or 200 yards inside Mexico instead of at the literal border, or if the U. S. officer stepped across the border into Mexico instead of being on U. S. soil, asking each time where the line would be drawn for this newfound constitutional claim. “You’ve indicated that there’s a problem all along the border,” added Justice Anthony Kennedy, expressing concern about whether the courts should be deciding these things. “Why doesn’t that counsel us that this is one of the most sensitive areas of foreign affairs where the political branches should discuss with Mexico what the solution ought to be?” The more liberal justices asked tough questions of all the lawyers and did not clearly indicate which way they would rule. The more conservative justices seemed to favor the federal government’s position. A decision is expected by late June. Hernandez v. Mesa is No. on the Supreme Court docket. Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 0fake |
Fox News Rushes To ID Mosque Attacker As Moroccan Muslim — He’s A White, Christian, Nazi Trump Fan (TWEETS) | Want evidence that Fox News is a functional mouthpiece for the Trump administration? On Monday, the most watched news network in America lied to you. While it may see shocking that an American news agency would push blatant lies, they seem to have had a direct source the Trump White House.White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer kicked off his press conference by claiming (falsely) that the attacker was both a Muslim and from Morocco. It s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the President is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation s safety and security, Spicer said at this afternoon s briefing when speaking of the Quebec City attack.Fox News reported the same information despite that it was never confirmed, tweeting it out in an almost celebratory fashion:Naturally, things got a bit embarrassing for the network and Spicer, who is already dealing with the aftermath of saying that it s not only right but necessary to handcuff 5-year-old Muslim children and treat them like terrorists when information surfaced that he wasn t from Morocco or a Muslim. In fact, he s a huge fan of Donald J. Trump:The actual shooting suspect is 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, a white French Canadian who is, by all appearances, a rabid anti-immigrant nationalist. A leader of a local immigration rights groups, Fran ois Deschamps, told a local paper he recognized his photo as an anti-immigrant far-right troll who has been hostile to the group online. And Bisonnette s Facebook page now taken down but still archived lists among its likes the far right French nationalist Marine Le Pen, Islam critics Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the Israeli Defense Forces, and Donald J. Trump (he also likes the liberal Canadian Party NDP along with more neutral likes such as Tom Hanks, the Sopranos and Katy Perry).Fox News responded by changing a few lines in their original report and never actually issuing a retraction or apology. In fact, as of 7:06 P.M. EST, the tweet is still live:Suspect in Quebec mosque terror attack was of Moroccan origin, reports show https://t.co/oRzxGHEXDm pic.twitter.com/aEsEtccMvi Fox News (@FoxNews) January 30, 2017While it is true that police did question a Moroccan man, the guy was a worshiper and a witness to the attack not a suspect as conservatives have been saying. In fact, as the person who called the cops in the first place, he was never treated by police as anything other than a witness. Conservative media, on the other hand, just went with it.Naturally, Fox News, Spicer, and all who believed their wacky story found themselves facing, well, quite a bit of mockery for this desperate attempt to blame the deadly attack on Muslims:Fox News was only tryin' to be polite givin' the Moroccan suspect top billin'. Bissonnette liked Trump and Le Pen on Facebook. pic.twitter.com/S1a3tuQhwK Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) January 30, 2017The Moroccan man who people ran with as the suspect was actually a worshipper and witness. I can't imagine what things are like for him. Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths) January 31, 2017@FoxNews You forgot the part about the suspect NOT being Moroccan but that's probably not fitting your narrative anyway. Carry on, Faux. Untamable Shrew (@bluesunshine43) January 31, 2017@FoxNews it is irresponsible and libelous to leave this tweet up. The shooter was NOT Moroccan. Read your own article! Michelle (@mbrittmehlisch) January 31, 2017The actual shooter in Quebec is a white French Canadian who appears to be rabidly anti-immigrant nationalist.https://t.co/1thlfCohbo #altfax Hannah Lantos (@LantosH14) January 31, 2017In case u were misinformed by literally lying mainstream media saying the mosque shooter was Muslim Moroccan He's a white Trump supporter. Mikhael (@mitchualdevice) January 30, 2017Alt-Right trolls & websites deleting those "Moroccan Muslim" hot takes: #QuebecShooting pic.twitter.com/LgGwrUzsGk #J20 (@Delo_Taylor) January 30, 2017This is the sort of honesty we can expect from the Trump White House and their propaganda outlets. They took an innocent man who called the police during a terrifying attack that left six people dead, smeared him as the attacker, then did all they could to distract from the true perpetrator of the crime: someone just like them who genuinely believes in Donald Trump and his terrifying mission.Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Study finds that alcohol is worse for mental health than psychedelics | Study finds that alcohol is worse for mental health than psychedelics Nov 15, 2016 1 0
( Minds ) A study by the Research Council of Norway has concluded that psychedelics do not link to mental health problems or suicidal behavior. A study of roughly 130,000 adult citizens in the United States found no “evidence that psychedelic use is an independent risk factor for mental health problems.”
Of the 135,095 randomly selected people, 19,299 of them had used either lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin or mescalin, and no links were found to “increased likelihood of past year serious psychological distress, mental health treatment, suicidal thoughts, suicidal plans and suicide attempt, depression and anxiety.”
Overall, the study concluded that “it is difficult to see how prohibition of psychedelics can be justified as a public health measure.”
As information is allowed to run free through the internet, it has become openly apparent that many psychedelic drugs are not the danger the profit-driven media had portrayed them to be. Often, they are one of the greatest medicines to overcome addiction. There is, however, a direct link between alcohol abuse and suicide.
According to the US National Library of Medicine, “Alcohol abuse may lead to suicidality through disinhibition, impulsiveness and impaired judgment, but it may also be used as a means to ease the distress associated with committing an act of suicide.”
Renowned author, Sam Harris, discusses the virtures of some specific psychedelic drugs:
Sources: | 1real |
Kim Dotcom: "I know where Hillary Clintons deleted emails are and how to get them legally" | Kim Dotcom: "I know where Hillary Clintons deleted emails are and how to get them legally" Kim Dotcom ‏@KimDotcom 22s22 seconds agoI know where Hillary Clintons deleted emails are and how to get them legally @TGowdySC @seanhannity @realDonaldTrump. 100% true. Retweet. John 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. | 1real |
Trump sets out strong trade message at Asia-Pacific meeting | DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump set out a strong message on trade at a meeting of Asia-Pacific countries in Vietnam on Friday, saying the United States could no longer tolerate chronic trade abuses and would insist on fair and equal trade policies. Trump said the United States was ready to make a bilateral deal with any country in the Indo-Pacific region, but only on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit . Although he was addressing a meeting alongside the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders, he repeatedly referred to the Indo-Pacific region and mentioned the importance of India in his speech. Referring to North Korea, he said the region must not be held hostage to a dictator s twisted fantasies . | 0fake |
U.S. Senator McCain wins Arizona Republican nominating contest | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain survived a Tea Party challenge when he won Arizona’s Republican nominating contest on Tuesday, enabling him to seek a sixth term as U.S. senator from the southwestern state, according to media projections. McCain, 80, defeated former Arizona state Senator Kelli Ward and is slated to defend his Senate seat against Democratic Representative Ann Kirkpatrick in the Nov. 8 election. | 0fake |
UN special rapporteur on Palestine blasts Israe | UN special rapporteur on Palestine blasts Israe By Stephen Lendman
How many years of illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine are too many? How long will the international community tolerate its vicious persecution of millions of defenseless people?
How long will its longstanding slow-motion genocide policy be allowed to continue unchallenged?
Every day is Kristallnacht in Palestine, especially in lawlessly blockaded Gaza under siege, subject to Israeli terror-bombing and incursions at its discretion, slaughtering civilians indiscriminately because who’ll intervene responsibly to stop the horrors Palestinians endure.
In his first report to the UN General Assembly, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Palestine Michael Lynk described deplorable conditions, unacceptable, yet persisting, with nothing in prospect likely to change things without international community intervention.
Calling for an end to nearly half a century of illegal occupation, he said that “[t]he Palestinian economy is without parallel in the modern world. Israel’s occupation is denying Palestine’s right to development and severely hampering its ability to attain even the minimum targets of the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs ).”
Israel systematically breaches fundamental international laws unaccountably. Apartheid worse than South Africa’s is institutionalized. State terror is official policy. Israel treats Palestinians the way Hitler persecuted Jews.
“Poverty is rising,” said Lynk. “Unemployment is rising to epic levels. Food insecurity is becoming more acute. The Palestinian economy is becoming more stifled and less viable under the occupation. Israel’s deliberate fragmentation of [Occupied Palestine] and lack of development has negatively impacted human rights.”
Conditions are “seriously deficient in its respect for the legal principles and obligations embedded within the right to development.”
“The deepening of the occupation, the constriction of basic human rights and the utter absence of a political horizon leading to self-determination for the Palestinians have reinforced an atmosphere of despair and hopelessness.”
Praising regional human rights groups for their courage and commitment to justice, Lynk explained that “[t]hey face scorn and worse . . . If a just and compassionate peace is ever to come to the Middle East, we will owe much to these fearless advocates.”
In mid-October, in testimony before Security Council members, B’Tselem Executive Director Hagai El-Ad called for UN action to end nearly half a century of illegal Israeli occupation.
Israeli UN envoy Danny Danon accused him of “defam[ing] us in front of the international community.” Israel threatened to revoke his citizenship.
Human rights workers for Palestinian liberation risk life and liberty. El-Ad concluded his remarks, saying: “For most of my country’s existence, the world has allowed it to occupy another people. I have lived my entire life, every single day of it, with that reality.”
“Millions of Israelis and Palestinians know no other reality. We need your help. Fifty years of ‘temporary’ occupation are too long for even a single person on this planet to accept such a contradiction in terms.”
“The rights of Palestinians must be realized; the occupation must end; the UN Security Council must act; and the time is now.”
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is “ Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III .” Visit his blog at sjlendman.blogspot.com . Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 1real |
‘That was some weird sh*t’…A Very Rude Hillary Continues Her Overseas Bashing Of Trump With Nasty Claims About The Inauguration [Video] | Hillary Clinton continued her overseas trashing of our president with her latest claim that former President Bush said some rude things about the ceremony. She s so bitter that it s embarrassing. She s the poster child for what a liberal elitist pig looks like. Check out this video of Clinton describing how she tried to get out of going to the inauguration:Can you believe this hateful woman? She claims that after other former presidents announced they were going that he and Bill looked at each other and said, Well, we gotta go .Clinton continued to insinuate that the elder Bush might not have been sick but just didn t want to go to the inauguration. Then she said the rudest thing of all: It was reported George W. Bush said, That was some weird shit, The crowd roared with laughter What a shame that former First Lady Hillary Clinton would stoop so low. But we have come to expect low budget moves from the Clinton grifters who will do just about anything for a buck. It has also been reported that Hillary has a nasty mouth and treated others poorly during her time in the White House and as Secretary of State under Obama.Remember how Elizabeth Warren called liberal women Nasty women during the 2016 campaign? Well, we think we found the queen of nasty women in Hillary Clinton.OUR LATEST ON THE CLINTON OVERSEAS BOOK TOUR THAT S BEEN A TOTAL FLOP: Hillary Clinton got a dose of boos and heckles while hawking her book overseas. Protesters greeted her at her latest event:Around 20 protestors unhappy at Hillary Clinton's visit to Swansea University.They heckle attendees: "Search your conscience boycott it" pic.twitter.com/p9ZiKvr9QJ Adam Hale (@AdamRHale) October 14, 2017She likes to say President Trump is damaging U.S. relations across the globe, but if the reception she received in Britain on Saturday is any indication, she wouldn t have done any better.She s overseas promoting her book, What Happened, where she blames Russia, the FBI, female voters and a myriad of others for her loss to Trump last November.As Clinton visited Swansea University to collect an honor, a woman told Hillary, Bernie would have won. OUCH!(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));Welsh woman meets Hillary Clinton. Tells her 'Bernie would have won' and 'Only you could lose to Trump'#HillaryClinton #donaldtrump #berniesanders #swanseaPosted by Nye Bevan News on Saturday, October 14, 2017Her assistant even got jeers as she entered the venue for the event. As Hillary emerged from her Mercedes, she got a mix of cheers and boos:Hillary Clinton arrives at Swansea University to a mix of cheers and boos ahead of receiving her honorary award pic.twitter.com/v0Ay3SlKQu Adam Hale (@AdamRHale) October 14, 2017It s pretty pitiful that she was given an award for human rights when she singlehandedly turned the Middle East into an even worse place for its citizens with terrorism and chaos.SHE APPEARED ON BRITISH TV TO BE INTERVIEWED AND WAS ASKED IF SHE S STILL BLAMING EVERYONE BUT HERSELF FOR THE ELECTION LOSS: Your dynastic appeal or perhaps it was the opposite: The fact that you were called Clinton the fact that you were first lady basically trumped any novelty if you forgive the term of being the first female president of the United States, he said. People looked at your name and your legacy more than they looked at your gender. Clinton answered in her usual delusional way by laying out the amount of support she THINKS she received and then blaming former FBI director James Comey and the Russians for her defeat: That doesn t explain why I led all the way through, why I won the primary by 4 million votes, why I was winning, we had a great convention, she said. I was thought to have won all three debates. That doesn t explain it, Matt, so that s why I had to really dig deep. And, yes, I take responsibility. Obviously, there were things I must have been able to do differently in order to have won, Clinton continued. But at the end, there was this really perfect storm, and so you had the Comey letter and you had the enormous impact of the Russian theft of emails, the release of them by WikiLeaks, basically now a part of the Russian intelligence apparatus, and the weaponization of that. These were all new phenomena. So you re still blaming others more than yourself? Frei asked I DON T BLAME OTHERS ??? No, I take ultimate responsibility, I don t blame others, but I think it s important that people understand what happened, Clinton said. It easy to say, You know she wasn t a good candidate. Then why did lead all the way to the end, why did I get nominated overwhelmingly? Did people lie at the polls? Frei interjected. No, I think there were intervening events that caused people to worry, to have second thoughts, she said.Read more: WFB | 1real |
44th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: Texans to Meet at State Capitol | Last weekend, Women’s Marches were held in cities all over the globe but women were not welcome. activists in Texas will be convening at Texas’ Capitol this weekend to demonstrate their convictions during the 44th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. [The march in Washington, D. C. this past weekend “[d]espite its lip service to ‘diversity,’” “turned out to be just another front for the abortion lobby, promoted by Planned Parenthood and its cronies,” reported Breitbart News. It was “nothing more than a front for the U. S. abortion lobby” that “quashed attempts of feminists to participate. ” Breitbart News reported that the event pitched as a “’grassroots effort,’ in reality, [was] a massive choreographed assembly paid for by major donors such as George Soros and Planned Parenthood. ” The list of “Partners” of the event in the nation’s capitol included: Catholics for Choice, the Center for Reproductive Rights, The Coalition of Nasty Women, EMILY’s List, Free the Nipple, GLAAD, NARAL America Foundation, National Abortion Federation, National Center for Lesbian Rights, National Institute for Reproductive Health, Pussyhat Project, and Planned Parenthood. Although only women were allowed to officially participate in the march, Breitbart News reported that the president of America’s largest organization of youth “crashed” the march. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, wrote on her Facebook page — “Yeah so they wouldn’t let us in their march so we just ran ahead and got in the front. ” She did so after she posted a photo of her group holding a banner “Abortion Betrays Women: # . org. ” This weekend women, men, and families will be traveling from all over the state to attend the 2017 Texas Rally for Life on the south steps of the Texas Capitol in Austin. According to the event website, www. TexasRallyforLife. org, more than 57 million unborn children have been aborted since that 1973 U. S. Supreme Court decision. A schedule of the time of the event, and where to to march to the Texas Capitol, is on the website. The rally will be held from 2:00 to 3:00 on the south side of the capital building. Melissa Ohden, an abortion attempt survivor and the author of the book, “You Carried Me,” is the keynote speaker at the rally this Saturday. “The Texas Rally for Life commemorates the tragic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. That decision struck down Texas law protecting unborn babies from abortion, a law that had been on the books since 1865. We expect thousands of Texans from across the state to converge at the Capitol in Austin to show the Legislature and the media that Texas is . More than 40 organizations across the state have formed a host committee to sponsor and promote this event. Texas Alliance for Life is proud to be one of them,” Joe Pojman, Ph. D. executive director for Texas Alliance for Life told Breitbart Texas. On January “Over 200 students from across Texas will converge in Austin, Texas for the fourth annual Boots on the Ground Conference,” Melissa Conway, director for external relations for Texas Right to Life told Breitbart Texas. The Texas Right to Life spokeswoman said, “This year’s conference theme focuses on uniting diverse groups on one common cause: to make abortion unthinkable. Promoting the equal right to life for all human beings, including the is a message that these students plan to voice by their participation in the Rally for Life. ” Conway said that the students will be carrying #DismemberRoe signs that show the importance of protecting the and ending the atrocity of abortion. Texas Right to Life is proud to lead the way for Life by equipping and empowering college students with the knowledge and tools needed to advance the Culture of Life in local communities and college campuses across the state. Texas State Representative Briscoe Cain ( Park) told Breitbart Texas, “On Saturday, Texans will be gathering on the Capitol grounds to march united against the abortion cartel. I stand with them in the Texas Capitol. ” Many of the representatives in Texas are and Texas has been a leader in passing legislation. As reported by Breitbart Texas last June, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision which was a significant blow to Texas abortion law by striking down Texas House Bill 2 (HB 2). In a decision, the nation’s highest court struck the legislation signed into law in 2013. The case of Whole Woman’s Health et al. v. Hellerstedt overturned provisions that Texas representatives said were designed to improve the quality of care for women and improve the sanitary conditions of surgical centers used to provide women’s health services. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, and Baltimore Ravens tight end Benjamin Watson, are headlining the 2017 March for Life that will be held Friday in Washington, D. C. on the national mall, as reported by Breitbart News. The march will begin at the mall and end at the U. S. Supreme Court building. Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2. | 0fake |
Graham: I Have a Reason to Believe a Conversation I Had with a Foreign Leader Was Unmasked - Breitbart | Friday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Sen. Lindsey Graham ( ) said he had reason to believe his conversations with foreign leaders were requested to be “unmasked. ” Graham said, “I have reason to believe that a conversation I had was picked up with some foreign leader or some foreign person and somebody requested that my conversation be unmasked. I’ve been told that by people in the intelligence community. All I can say is there are 1, 950 collections on American citizens talking to people that were foreign agents being surveilled either by the CIA, FBI or the NSA. ” Watch: “Here is the concern: Did the people in the Obama administration listen in to these conversations?” He continued. “Was there a politicizing of the intelligence gathering processes? Here is what I want to know of the 1, 950 collections on American citizens. How many of them involved presidential candidates, members of Congress from either party and if these conversations were unmasked, who made the request? I want to know everything there is about unmasking, how it works and who requested unmasking of conversations between foreign people and American members of Congress. ” He added, “I’ve got information to suggest that I was incidentally collected. I don’t know if I was unmasked or not. I’ve sent a letter to the NSA, FBI and the CIA requesting any collection on Lindsey Graham. If you have reason to believe a member of Congress is committing a crime, you go get a warrant to follow us around like you would any other citizen. I meet with foreign leaders all the time. And I would be upset if any executive branch agency listened in on my conversations, because I’m in another branch of government. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Trump to nominate attorney Sullivan for deputy secretary of state | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump plans to nominate attorney John J. Sullivan of Maryland to be deputy Secretary of State, the White House said on Tuesday. It said in a statement he would also serve as deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. Sullivan, 57, served in the Bush administration as deputy secretary of the Commerce Department and as deputy general counsel in the Defense Department. | 0fake |
Dear Liberal, Why I’m So Hostile…And How “Your political beliefs are a threat to liberty – not just for me, but for my three boys” | WOW! This is a powerful, must read letter that should be shared with every American Lately, I must admit that my hostility towards your political ilk has ramped up, pretty dramatically. No, it s not because we, at this point in my life, have a half-black president in the White House, and I m some closet racist who is becoming increasingly frustrated at the prospects of the White Man s power slipping through my fingers. I know that you ve accused our side of such nonsense, and the thought keeps you warm at night, but I can assure you that it is a comfortable fiction of which you should probably divest yourself.Now before I waste too much of your time, let s establish who I m talking to. If you believe that we live in an evil, imperialist nation from its founding, and you believe that it should be fundamentally transformed , lend me your ears. If you believe that the free market is the source of the vast majority of society s ills and wish to have more government intervention into it, I m talking to you. If you believe that health care is a basic human right and that government should provide it to everyone, you re the guy I m screaming at. If you think minorities cannot possibly survive in this inherently racist country without handouts and government mandated diversity quotas, you re my guy. If you believe that rich people are that way because they ve exploited their workers and acquired wealth on the backs of the poor, keep reading. Pretty much, if you trust government more than your fellow American, this post is for you.First of all, let me say that we probably agree on more things than you think. Even between Tea Party Patriots and Occupy Wall-Streeters, I ve observed a common hatred of the insidious alliance between big business and big government. As Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) so correctly noted, government should never be in the business of picking winners and losers in corporate America, and no person, organization, union, or corporation should have their own key to the back door of our government.Second, contrary to popular belief, conservatives really are concerned with the plight of the poor in this nation. You accuse us of being uncompassionate, hateful, racist, and greedy, but studies have shown that when it comes to charitable giving, conservatives are at least (if not more, depending on the study you read) as generous as liberals in caring for the poor. The difference between us is not in our attitude towards the problem it s our attitude towards the solution. We believe that the government does practically nothing well (since without competition or a profit motive there is no incentive to do well) and has made the plight of the poor far worse than it would have ever been had government never gotten involved. For a stark example of this, look no farther than the condition of the black family in America since the War on Poverty began. You believe that more government is the answer, and that if we only throw more money at the problem, the problem will go away. We believe, as Reagan so aptly stated,Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.Third, as people who might actually have to avail ourselves of a doctor s services at some point in our lives, we are just as concerned with the condition of America s healthcare system as you are. While we believe that America has the world s most capable physicians, has the world s most innovative pharmaceutical industry, and is on the cutting edge of medical technology, we also understand that the delivery system is far from perfect. However, unlike you, we see a grave danger in turning the administration of that delivery system over to the same entity that is responsible for giving us the United States Postal Service. There are private sector solutions that should certainly be explored before we kill the system, altogether, by giving it to the government to run.Now that we ve touched on a couple of points of common ground, allow me to explain my aggressiveness towards your efforts to implement your progressive agenda. First, let s talk about the word progressive , since you now seem to prefer that word to liberal . In order to label something as progressive or regressive, one must have some idea as to what constitutes progress. What is the ideal towards which you are striving? An idea is considered progressive if it moves us closer to the ideal and regressive if it moves us further away. So, what is your ideal society?Though I can t begin to discern the thoughts of every liberal who may read this, nor can I assume that every liberal has the same notion of an ideal society, in my arguments with liberals over the years, I couldn t help but notice the influence that FDR s Second Bill of Rights has had in shaping the beliefs of the modern liberal with regards to domestic policy. The rights that FDR cited are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.At this point, you re probably screaming, Right on!! , and who can blame you? What sane person in the world doesn t want everyone to be gainfully employed, adequately fed, smartly clothed, appropriately sheltered, and properly educated? These are the goals of every moral society on the planet, however we cannot ignore the fundamental question of, At what cost? I m not sure whether FDR was a shallow thinker or simply a shrewd, Machiavellian politician, but the fact that he framed each of these ideals as a human right should be troubling to every freedom-loving person in America. After all, what does it mean for something to be a human right? Doesn t it mean that it s something to which you are entitled simply by virtue of your being human? Let s think about some of the basic rights that the real Bill of Rights delineates: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to petition the government, freedom to bear arms, freedom from illegal search and seizure, etc.If you re moderately intelligent and intellectually honest, you ll quickly see what separates the rights laid out in the real Bill of Rights from those laid out in FDR s misguided list none of the rights listed above require the time, treasure, or talents of another human being.Your right to speak requires nothing from anyone else. Your right to practice your religion requires nothing from any of your fellow citizens. Your right to bear arms means that you are allowed to possess weapons to defend yourself and your family, but it makes no demand that a weapon be provided to you by anyone. A true human right is one that you possess, even if you re the only person on the entire planet and it is unconditional.FDR s list is no Bill of Rights . It s a list of demands. If I have a right to a job, doesn t that mean that one must be provided to me? If I have a right to adequate food, clothing, and recreation, doesn t that mean that I am entitled to those things, and someone should provide them to me? If I have an inherent right to a decent home, once again, doesn t that mean it should be provided to me, regardless of my ability to afford one or build one for myself?You might protest that FDR only meant that we have the right to pursue those things, but that s not what he said, and why would he? If we live in a free society, our right to pursue those things is self-evident, is it not? Besides, if he only believed in our right to pursue those things, he would not have felt the need to implement the New Deal.You may be getting anxious, now, wondering what FDR s Second Bill of Rights has to do with my antipathy towards your political philosophy. It s quite simple your political beliefs are a threat to liberty not just for me, but for my three boys and their children as well. I care much less about the America that I m living in at this very moment than I do about the one that I m leaving Nathaniel, Charlie, and Jackson.How does your political bent threaten my and my sons personal liberty, you ask? In your irrational attempt to classify things such as clothing, shelter, health care, employment, and income as basic human rights, you are placing a demand upon my time, my treasure, and my talents. If you believe that you have a right to health care, and you are successful in persuading enough shallow thinkers to think as you do, then it will place a demand upon me to provide it to you. If you believe that you have a right to a job, and more than half of America agrees with you, as a business owner, I am obligated to provide one to you, even if it means making my business less profitable.The fact is, you can rail against my conservatism all you wish. You can make fun of my Tea Party gatherings, and you can ridicule patriots in tri-corner hats until you wet yourself from mirth, but one thing is for certain: my political philosophy will NEVER be a threat to your freedom. If you feel a burning responsibility to the poor, conservatism will never prevent you from working 80 hours per week and donating all of your income to charity. If you feel a strong sense of pity for a family who cannot afford health insurance, my political philosophy will never prevent you from purchasing health insurance for this family or raising money to do so, if you cannot afford it, personally. If you are moved with compassion for a family who is homeless, a conservative will never use the police power of government to prevent you from taking that family in to your own home or mobilizing your community to build one for them.However, you cannot say the same for liberalism. If I choose not to give to the poor for whatever reason, you won t simply try to persuade me on the merits of the idea you will seek to use the government as an instrument of plunder to force me to give to the poor. If we are walking down the street together and we spot a homeless person, using this logic, you would not simply be content with giving him $20 from your own pocket you would hold a gun to my head and force me to give him $20, as well.Everything that modern liberalism accomplishes is accomplished at the barrel of a government rifle. You do not trust in the generosity of the American people to provide, through private charity, things such as clothing, food, shelter, and health care, so you empower the government to take from them and spend the money on wasteful, inefficient, and inadequate government entitlement programs. You do not trust in the personal responsibility of the average American to wield firearms in defense of themselves and their families, so you seek to empower the government to criminalize the use and possession of firearms by private citizens. Everytime you empower the government, you lose more of your personal liberty it s an axiomatic truth.What angers me the most about you is the eagerness with which you allow the incremental enslavement to occur. You are the cliched and proverbial frog in the pot who has actually convinced himself that he s discovered a big, silver jacuzzi. Somehow, you re naive enough to believe that one more degree of heat won t really matter that much.I have the utmost respect for a slave who is continuously seeking a path to freedom. What I cannot stomach is a free man who is continuous seeking a path to servitude by willingly trading his freedom for the false sense of security that government will provide.I am reminded of Samuel Adams impassioned speech where he stated: If ye love wealth (or security) better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen! Servitude can exist in a free society, but freedom cannot exist in a slave nation. In a free country, you have the liberty to join with others of your political ilk and realize whatever collectivist ideals you can dream up. You can start your own little commune where the sign at the front gate says, From each according to his ability; to each according to his need , and everyone can work for the mutual benefit of everyone else. In my society, you have the freedom to do that.In your society, I don t have the same freedom. If your collectivism offends me, I am not free to start my own free society within its borders. In order for collectivism to work, everyone must be on board, even those who oppose it why do you think there was a Berlin Wall?In conclusion, just know that the harder you push to enact your agenda, the more hostile I will become the harder I will fight you. It s nothing personal, necessarily. If you want to become a slave to an all-powerful central government, be my guest. But if you are planning to take me and my family down with you, as we say down here in the South, I will stomp a mud-hole in your chest and walk it dry.Bring it.Jeremy N. Choateh/t Zero Hedge | 1real |
U.S. West Point academy set for first woman dean in two century history | (Reuters) - The United States Military Academy is poised to have its first woman dean in its 216-year history after President Barack Obama nominated to the post a West Point graduate who currently leads the school’s Department of Social Sciences. Colonel Cindy Jebb, who holds a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University, needs confirmation from the U.S. Senate to take on the post. If approved, she would be promoted to brigadier general and serve as West Point’s dean of the Academic Board, the U.S. Military Academy said in a statement on Friday. “She’s revered amongst the faculty and cadets and we’re lucky to have her,” West Point superintendent, Lieutenant General Robert Caslen, said in the statement. The military academy in New York state was founded in 1802 and its graduates typically serve as Army officers. It accepted its first female cadets in 1976. In January, the academy swore in it first female commandant of cadets. | 0fake |
Chicago’s Top Prosecutor Minces No Words on His Way Out - The New York Times | On his last day in office, the chief federal prosecutor in Chicago made an impassioned plea for big changes to combat the city’s soaring violence, departing from the Justice Department’s usual tone to criticize the local political culture, federal budget cuts and reformers. In a statement issued as he resigned on Monday, Zachary Fardon, the United States attorney for Northern Illinois, outlined a plan for taking on crime and the ills of the Chicago Police Department, including a pattern of excessive force that was documented by the Justice Department in January. Most of all, he said, the Chicago police need a major increase in resources and a consent decree, with a monitor, to make sure change occurs. “For decades, C. P. D. has been run on the cheap,” Mr. Fardon wrote. “Officers don’t have the training, the supervision, the equipment or the culture they need and deserve. “If you leave correcting those deficiencies to the vagaries of city politics, then you likely lose the fight. ” Chicago police officials outlined a plan for improvement on Tuesday that they pledged to follow even if the Justice Department does not pursue a consent decree. Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that the police training program would be overhauled, that supervision would be improved by having fewer officers assigned to each sergeant, and that a new policy would soon be finalized. “We’re not just saying we’re going to reform — we’re showing you that we’re reforming,” Mr. Johnson said. “If you go out there right now, C. P. D. is different than it was this time last year. So we don’t need a piece of paper to ensure that we do it. We’re doing it. ” Mr. Fardon was one of 46 United States attorneys whom the Trump administration told on Friday to resign immediately. The suddenness was unusual new presidents routinely remove the prosecutors but often keep them on while searching for their replacements. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, refused to step down and was fired. His counterpart in Montana, Michael W. Cotter, resigned but called the administration’s handling of the matter “very unprofessional. ” A few others called it abrupt and unnecessary. Mr. Fardon’s parting message was different, raising no objection to his ouster. Instead, it was a call to address a surge of violence in Chicago that has defied the efforts of police officers who “in their quiet moments struggled with their own sense of frustration and despair. ” Mr. Johnson called Mr. Fardon “a great partner” to the Police Department and said he agreed with Mr. Fardon’s call for more prosecutions on federal gun laws. He also addressed Mr. Fardon’s claim that police officers had become hamstrung and too passive on patrol. “Listen, there are things within C. P. D. that we did need to fundamentally change, and we’re changing them,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that officers were focusing on arresting gun offenders and other serious criminals. “I think that the understand that we have a job to do,” he said. “You know, we swore an oath to protect the citizens of the city, and that’s what we’re going to do. ” Donovan Price, an activist who agreed with parts of Mr. Fardon’s statement, said, “I believe he shed some tears when he wrote this. ” Consent decrees and federal oversight, favorite tools of the Obama administration and police critics, are opposed by many conservatives, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr. Fardon criticized budget cuts that have thinned the ranks of federal prosecutors. He called for a significant increase and better cooperation among federal law enforcement agencies. But he also said that criticism of the police, and efforts to restrain them, had undermined morale and contributed to the rise in crime — a claim often made by conservatives but rejected by liberal advocates of police reform. Mr. Fardon took particular aim at a 2015 agreement between the police and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois that sharply curtailed the number of people — primarily black men — the police could stop on Chicago’s streets. He wrote that the settlement had told officers, “If you go talk to those kids on the corner, you’re going to have to take 40 minutes to fill out a form. ” He said that change, along with the firing of a police superintendent and the release of a video showing an officer shooting a Laquan McDonald, 16 times, had created a morale crisis. As officers made fewer stops, he said, “kids started shooting more. ” Karen Sheley, director of police practices for the A. C. L. U. of Illinois, said Mr. Fardon had overstated the burden of the 2015 agreement, adding, “Trying to blame reform for a rise in crime is a mistake. ” Many cities had increases in violent crime last year, but Chicago stood out as homicides jumped more than 50 percent, to 762, more than New York and Los Angeles combined. Mr. Fardon wrote that communities needed a far bigger police presence and more programs to divert young people from gangs. And he called for an aggressive crackdown on social media, where people air grievances that escalate to gunfire. These prescriptions require money, so their prospects are unsure, at best, in a city and state with serious financial challenges and under an administration in Washington that has promised to cut spending. Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, a law enforcement research group, praised some of the ideas and was hesitant about others. But he said it was important that Mr. Fardon had aired them. “There are a lot of people that work in the criminal justice system that feel deeply and personally about these issues, but the public doesn’t hear that very often,” Mr. Bueermann said. “I think more prosecutors and police chiefs should do what he did. ” | 0fake |
Pack Your Bags: 18 Celebs Who Said They Would Leave If Trump Won | Since even before the presidential primaries began, the idea of a Donald Trump presidency made some celebrities threaten they would leave the country if it happened. Here are 18 celebrities who pledged to flee the United States and live in exile in the event of a Trump win. Let’s make them to stick to it!
Via Yournewswire 1. Barbra Streisand
“I can’t believe it. I’m either coming to your country if you’ll let me in, or Canada,” the singer told 60 Minutes in an interview in August. Streisand has been a vocal supporter of Clinton’s candidacy, and appeared at a high-profile fundraiser for the candidate in New York City earlier this year.
2. Bryan Cranston
“I would definitely move. It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t,” Cranston said in October of the possibility of a Trump victory. The Breaking Bad star suggested he would take a permanent vacation to Vancouver.
3. Miley Cyrus
The young pop star said she would “move out da country” if Trump, whom she called a “ f*cking nightmare ” were to win the election.
“My heart is broken into a 1 pieces…I am moving if this is my president! I don’t say things I don’t mean!” she wrote in an Instagram post.
4. Lena Dunham
The Girls star said there is a “ 100 percent chance ” she will pick up and move to Canada if Trump prevails on Election Day.
“I love Canada. I think that it’s a great place, and there’s an area in Vancouver that I find beautiful and appealing, and I can conduct business from there,” the actress and Clinton surrogate said.
5. Amy Schumer
The comedian and Trainwreck actress said Spain would be her destination of choice if Trump wins the presidency.
“My act will change because I will need to learn to speak Spanish,” Schumer said in an appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight in September. “Because I will move to Spain or somewhere. It’s beyond my comprehension if Trump won. It’s just too crazy.”
6. Jon Stewart
The former Daily Show funnyman may want to connect with billionaire space pioneer Elon Musk if Trump wins; he told People magazine last year that he would consider “getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planet’s gone bonkers.”
7. Cher
The same goes for pop icon Cher, who wrote on Twitter that she would be moving to Jupiter if Trump wins. The “Believe” singer has appeared with Hillary Clinton at campaign events this year.
8. Chelsea Handler
The comedian and talk-show host said she had already made a contingency plan in the event of a Trump win.
“I did buy a house in another country just in case,” Handler said in an interview on ABC’s Live with Kelly and Michael in May. “So all these people that threaten to leave the country and then don’t — I actually will leave that country.”
9. Samuel L. Jackson
“If that motherf*cker becomes president, I’m moving my black ass to South Africa,” he later told Jimmy Kimmel.
10. Whoopi Goldberg
The comedian and The View co-host has repeatedly trashed Trump on the ABC daytime talk show.
“Listen, he can be whatever party he wants to be,” she said during an episode in January. “What he can’t be is he can’t be the guy that says it’s your fault stuff isn’t working. That’s not the president I want. Find a way to make stuff work.”
“Maybe it’s time for me to move, you know. I can afford to go,” she added.
11. Neve Campbell
The Scream and House of Cards actress said she would move back to her native Canada if Trump wins the election.
“They see someone off the cuff and broad, and they think ‘ok, that’s the voice we need, just someone honest,’” Campbell told the Huffington Post of the motivation behind the Republican candidate’s support. “But his honesty is terrifying.”
12. Keegan-Michael Key
The Key and Peele star also said he’d flee north to Canada in the event of a Trump presidency.
“It’s like, 10 minutes from Detroit,” the comedian told TMZ in January. “That’s where I’m from; my mom lives there. It’d make her happy too.”
13. George Lopez
“If he wins, he won’t have to worry about immigration. We’ll all go back,” the Latino comedian and TV star told TMZ shortly after Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.
14. Ne-Yo
The R&B singer said he’d be moving to Canada “straight away” if Trump wins.
“Me and Drake gonna be neighbors if Donald Trump becomes president,” the singer told TMZ in October.
15. Rev. Al Sharpton
The civil rights activist told attendees at a Center for American Progress event in February that he would be looking for flight reservations if Clinton did not triumph on Election Day.
“I’m also reserving my ticket to get out of here if he wins. Only because he’d probably have me deported anyhow,” Sharpton said.
16. Raven Symoné
The former View co-host and Disney Channel star is probably already on a flight out. During a February episode of the talk show, the actress said she would move to Canada “if any Republican gets nominated.”
17. Amber Rose
Where would she move? Unspecified.
“I can’t even think about it! I’m moving, I’m out! I can’t. And I am taking my son with me!” she told US Weekly.
18. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The Supreme Court Justice claimed she will move to New Zealand.
“I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president… Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,” she told The New York Times.
| 1real |
Tillerson Challenges China to ’Fulfill Its Obligations’ on North Korea in Tokyo Briefing - Breitbart | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has arrived in Tokyo, Japan, for the first leg of his tour of Asia, emphasizing the need for a new approach to curbing North Korea and pressuring China to take a stronger economic stand against the rogue regime in Pyongyang. [Tillerson’s first public engagement in Japan was a joint press conference with his Japanese counterpart, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. Tillerson branded the approach to Pyongyang by both the Obama and Bush administrations a failure, noting that “the United States provided $1. 35 billion in assistance to North Korea as an encouragement to take a different pathway” and got no results on moderating the communist Kim regime. He directed the government of China, North Korea’s closest and most formidable ally, to pressure North Korea into adhering to international legal standards. “We look to China to fulfill its obligations and fully implement the sanctions called for,” he told reporters. “In the face of this threat, it is clear that a different approach is required,” Tillerson told reporters. “The purpose of — part of the purpose of my visit to the region is to exchange views on a new approach. ” Tillerson also emphasized the need for “trilateral cooperation” with an increasingly unstable South Korea, which just impeached president Park and is set to elect leftist rival Moon in a special May presidential election. “Trilateral cooperation allows our three nations to coordinate actions on major regional and global problems, and more effectively counter the threats posed by North Korea,” Tillerson said. President Donald Trump has personally emphasized the need for strengthening bilateral ties and rejected the use of multilateral talks as a diplomatic device. On his end, Kishida emphasized that, during talks with Tillerson, the two chief diplomats were “in sync” on how to approach the region’s most complicated problems. “On North Korean question, we shared the position that we absolutely cannot condone nuclear as well as missile development by North Korea,” Kishida said, adding that both sides “discussed on [sic] the important role that China can play in this regard. ” Kishida also thanked Tillerson and the U. S. government generally for their support in the East China Sea where Beijing has claimed the Japanese Senkaku Islands. Tillerson will meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday before flying to South Korea. Tillerson will arrive in China on Saturday, March 18, and meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. He is expected to bring the same message of responsibility for the North Korean regime to Beijing as he did to Japan. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, however, is attempting to convince reporters that they expect minimal conflict during Tillerson’s visit. During a press event on Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang said he was “optimistic about the future of relations” and insisted China is committed to enforcing United Nations resolutions against North Korea. “It is true that recently the situation on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia more generally has become tense,” Li said, urging “all the parties concerned will work together to the situation, get issues back on the track of dialogue and try to find lasting solutions. It’s common sense that no one wants to see turbulence at his doorstep. ” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying was clearer in condemning both North Korea and South Korea — and, by proxy, the United States — for escalating tensions in the region. “The current situation on the Korean Peninsula is highly sensitive and complex. If relevant sides truly hope to see peace and stability in this region, they should apply the brake and put out the fire, instead of adding fuel to the flame,” she told reporters Tuesday, clearly intending to exclude China from her list of “relevant parties. ” As usual, Chinese state media outlets went further in claiming China has only a small role to play in controlling North Korea. “Some Western media outlets blamed the current chaos on China’s friendly policy toward North Korea, arguing that Beijing should impose tougher sanctions on Pyongyang to curb the latter’s nuclear ambitions. This is unfair and groundless,” the Global Times protested this week. “By shifting the full responsibility on Beijing, the Western countries, especially the US, attempt to exploit the nuclear issue to strategically contain China in the region. This makes the already chaotic situation more sensitive and complicated. ” “The US cares more about its strategic aims than regional peace, and has failed to play an active role that it is supposed to as a major power in promoting peace and stability on the peninsula,” the Times concludes. China provides North Korea with “90 percent of its fuel and 80 percent of its general use goods,” according to recent reports. Beijing recently halted all shipments of coal from North Korea for the rest of the year, claiming it a necessary move to adhere to UN sanctions. The announcement followed the assassination of Kim dictator Kim ’s brother, in Malaysia using VX agent, a weapon of mass destruction. Malaysian authorities have traced the killers’ ties back to North Korea. | 0fake |
'A better future' - Britain's May tries to rally her Conservatives | LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will set out plans to build a road to a better future for Britain at her Conservative Party conference next week, hoping to head off a rebellion over her handling of Brexit and the June election. Weakened by the loss of the Conservatives parliamentary majority in that election, which prompted some members to call for her to go, May will try to show she is still the right person to lead the party and Britain. She will set out her vision of a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few . May first made that promise on the steps of her Downing Street office when she became prime minister just over a year ago after Britain voted to leave the European Union and her predecessor David Cameron stepped down. She will be keen to play down divisions in her cabinet of ministers over the Brexit divorce talks with the EU, which has given the opposition Labour Party ammunition to criticize a squabbling government. Instead, she will go on the offensive against Labour, which has won over voters by making a similar promise to govern for the many, not the few . Labour came second in the election, but did far better than mainstream expectations. The standing of it leader, leftist Jeremy Corbyn, was raised considerably. Our party meets in Manchester this week, and our message to you is simple. As Conservatives, we have a vision of a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few precisely the direction I set when I became prime minister last year, May said in a statement before the conference begins on Sunday. I understand the concerns raised, particularly by young people, during what was a disappointing election for my party. So my determination to act on those concerns, and crucially, to fulfill the promise of my first speech on the steps of Downing Street, is greater than ever. After Labour staged a conference this week at which it sounded triumphant, May hopes to fire up thousands of members who feel let down by what some describe as an awful election campaign, when their leader was dubbed the Maybot for her repetition of catchphrases. May is now dependent on a small Northern Irish party to be sure of passing legislation in parliament, and opinion polls indicate that Labour is a growing threat, persuading rivals in the party not to try to topple her quite yet. May will also be careful in Manchester to present a united front and keep a lid on divisions in her cabinet after arguments over her Brexit strategy and vision of future ties with the EU, and over austerity, broke out into the open. So this week we ll be setting out our road to a better future for you (voters) and your family. Yes, we have to get the best Brexit deal but we must also take action here at home to make this a fairer place to live for ordinary working people, she said. And for people considering the alternative, we have a clear message too. The Labour Party is simply not fit to govern and have already gone back on their promises about things like student debt. She offered no details of her plan to take the initiative in a domestic debate that has been dominated by Labour s criticism of economic austerity. Its criticism of public sector cuts and pay caps for nurses, police and firefighters has caught the mood of the public. Many people have seen wages stagnate for nearly a decade as prices rise, and this has helped Labour close the gap in the opinion polls. Conservative members say May must try to re-engage voters and modernize a party that some say has been overly dependent on older voters and swathes of southern England, which are now being targeted by Labour. This week in Manchester you ll see more of our plan for a country that truly works for everyone, she said. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Once Took Away A Sick Baby’s Medical Because Of A Family Feud | It s undeniable that Donald Trump is a giant asshat. His entire campaign built upon the exploitation of American conservatives racism, and faux populist rhetoric that is completely at odds with his economic policies that he has put forward. But Trump s asshattery isn t just reserved for people he can exploit for political gain.The New York Times recently ran an article that detailed the relationship between Trump and his brother Freddy. Trump s younger brother was an alcoholic who died at the age of 43. Freddy s alcoholism caused a major rift to form in the two brothers relationship. One of the most scandalous revelations in the piece is that Trump once revoked medical benefits to his nephew s sick infant son. Trump had promised that he would pay for Fred III (Trump s nephew) child s medical care. But a feud over an inheritance dispute devolved, that changed all of that.The New York Times reports: Then came the unveiling of Fred Sr. s will, which Donald had helped draft. It divided the bulk of the inheritance, at least $20 million, among his children and their descendants, other than my son Fred C. Trump Jr. Freddy s children sued, claiming that an earlier version of the will had entitled them to their father s share of the estate, but that Donald and his siblings had used undue influence over their grandfather, who had dementia, to cut them out.A week later, Mr. Trump retaliated by withdrawing the medical benefits critical to his nephew s infant child. Trump s family did not want to talk to the media about the matter. Trump offered the New York Times an explanation for his actions during an interview, saying, I was angry because they sued. Trump claims the whole thing was eventually settled very amicably. Trump s villainy has officially reached daytime soap opera levels. For sure, much of Trump s hateful antics are a campaign tactic that he is using to get free media coverage. However, when a story like this come out, it shows that Trump actually is a terrible, vindictive person.Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons | 1real |
Pence denies eyeing presidential bid amid distance with Trump over Russia | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday denied that he is preparing for a presidential election run in 2020, saying the suggestion is “disgraceful and offensive.” Pence was responding to a New York Times report that some Republicans were moving to form a “shadow campaign” as though President Donald Trump were not involved. It said multiple advisers to Pence “have already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump did not.” The report said Pence had not only kept a full political calendar but also had created his own independent power base, including a political fund-raising group called the “Great America Committee.” But Pence called the article “fake news” and said his entire team was focused on advancing Trump’s agenda and seeing him re-elected in 2020. “The allegations in this article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this Administration,” Pence said in a statement. The Times stood by its coverage. “We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting and will let the story speak for itself,” New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email. Pence has good relations with conservative political groups and some of the Republican Party’s big donors, including billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. He is also a Trump loyalist, and there is typically little distinction between his public statements and the policies of the president. But as investigations deepen into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible ties to members of Trump’s campaign, Pence has put some distance between himself and the president on the best way to approach Moscow. On a trip to Eastern Europe last week, Pence condemned Russia’s presence in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, with which Moscow fought a brief war in 2008. He also said ties with Russia would not improve until Moscow changed its stance on Ukraine and withdrew support for countries like Iran, Syria and North Korea. The U.S. Congress recently passed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia with overwhelming bipartisan support, but Trump signed it into law last week with reluctance. “Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low,” Trump wrote on Twitter after signing the bill. “You can thank Congress.” Trump has described probes into his campaign’s ties to Russia, including those under way in Congress and a Justice Department investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as a “witch hunt.” The president has also sent mixed messages on whether he agrees with U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia tried to intervene in the 2016 election to boost his chances of beating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday also dismissed the idea that Pence was looking at running for president in 2020. “It is absolutely true that the vice president is getting ready for 2020 - for re-election as vice president,” Conway told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “Vice President Pence is a very loyal, very dutiful, but also incredibly effective vice president, and active vice president,” said Conway, adding that she had worked for Pence for a decade as his pollster and senior adviser. | 0fake |
Uber Drivers Found To Discriminate By Gender, Race - The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Nation Puts 2016 Election Into Perspective By Reminding Itself Some Species Of Sea Turtles Get Eaten By Birds Just Seconds After They Hatch WASHINGTON—Saying they felt anxious and overwhelmed just days before heading to the polls to decide a historically fraught presidential race, Americans throughout the country reportedly took a moment Thursday to put the 2016 election into perspective by reminding themselves that some species of sea turtles are eaten by birds just seconds after they hatch. Cleveland Indians Worried Team Cursed After Building Franchise On Old Native American Stereotype CLEVELAND—Having watched in horror as their team crumbled after a 3-1 World Series lead, members of the Cleveland Indians expressed concern Thursday that the organization has been cursed for building their franchise on an incredibly old Native American stereotype. Report: Election Day Most Americans’ Only Time In 2016 Being In Same Room With Person Supporting Other Candidate WASHINGTON—According to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, Election Day 2016 will, for the majority of Americans, mark the only time this year they will occupy the same room as a person who supports a different presidential candidate. Nurse Reminds Elderly Man She’s Just Down The Hall If He Starts To Die DES PLAINES, IL—Assuring him that she’d be at his side in a jiffy, local nurse Wendy Kaufman reminded an elderly resident at the Briarwood Assisted Living Community that she was just down the hall if he started to die, sources reported Tuesday. | 1real |
India's Modi goes to Washington as U.S. partner, but not yet full ally | NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two years ago there were questions over whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could get a visa to enter the United States. Next week he visits Washington as one of President Barack Obama’s closest international partners. Obama invited Modi for one of the last big visits by a world leader before his term ends in January. Although the trip won’t feature a lavish state dinner, the Indian leader will address both houses of Congress, considered a rare honor. This will be their seventh meeting since Modi became prime minister in May 2014, an impressive tally for a U.S. president and a leader who is not a formal ally, said Ashley Tellis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister ... is really one of the unanticipated surprises of the past two years,” said Tellis, an expert on India. The developing relationship is seen as an Obama foreign policy success. Washington views India as an important part of its rebalance to Asia and as a counterweight to China. The two countries are finalizing agreements that would make it possible for their militaries to cooperate more closely, and for U.S. defense manufacturers to both sell and make high-tech weaponry in India. A deal on logistics would govern issues such as how the two countries account for costs of military exercises. Another involves encrypted communications and geospatial data transfer. A history of colonial rule followed by decades of non-alignment has, however, made New Delhi wary of an embrace by the more powerful United States, which has overtaken Russia as India’s top arms supplier. “It is neither a strategic partnership nor an alliance,” said Nitin Gokhale, founder of defense portal Bharat Shakti. “It can be a long-term arrangement, but to call it a strategic partnership would be premature.” There are frustrations, too, on the U.S. side. The two countries reached a civil nuclear agreement in 2005, but it has yet to yield any contracts for U.S.-based companies. Only now is Westinghouse, a unit of Japan’s Toshiba, approaching the finish line on a deal to build six reactors in India. The visit gives Modi a chance to network with U.S. lawmakers who may feature in a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton administration but, as it coincides with the California primary, he is not expected to meet either. Modi is generally popular with U.S. lawmakers, who extended his invitation to address Congress. But they criticize what they see as lingering unfriendliness to U.S. firms and a stifling bureaucracy, and question New Delhi’s record on human rights. “The economic engagement between our two countries should increase and it should be more accessible for U.S. companies,” Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview. Obama and Modi are expected to discuss India’s desire to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-member club of nuclear trading nations. India was shut out for decades because of its weapons program, and the civil nuclear agreement with the United States gave it access to foreign suppliers without giving up its arms. Obama administration officials have said they backed India’s desire to join the group, but the idea faces resistance among some on Capitol Hill, as well as from China, an ally of India’s arch-rival Pakistan. “Existing NSG guidelines were established to guard against nuclear proliferation, and we should not create exceptions for particular countries,” Corker said. There is lingering concern in Washington over Modi’s handling of communal riots in 2002 that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in Gujarat. Modi was chief minister of the state at the time and, though a court-ordered inquiry found insufficient evidence to prosecute him, the issue prevented him from getting a U.S. visa for years. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised human rights on a visit to New Delhi this week, saying the two largest democracies had “special obligations” to set the highest standards. Congress’ Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission has scheduled a hearing on India for June 7, the day Modi arrives in Washington and the day before his address to the combined House of Representatives and Senate. He leaves the United States on June 8. Corker promised to asked Modi about India’s record on human trafficking, which he brought up recently in an emotional Senate hearing with Obama administration officials. “The country we believe has 12-14 million slaves, which is close to half the number we believe exists worldwide,” Corker said. “It’s obviously a very significant issue and when he’s here, it’s one I certainly plan to raise.” | 0fake |
Factbox: State-by-state poll closing times for U.S. election | (Reuters) - The following table lists each state’s poll closing time for the U.S. presidential election. Times are shown in U.S. eastern standard time (US EST), Greenwich mean time (GMT), Singapore time and Tokyo time. Several states have two poll closing times because the state straddles two U.S. time zones. In addition, the number of electoral votes (EV) for each state is listed next to its name. To see a map of poll closing times click: tmsnrt.rs/2eZtIEy | 0fake |
Will Trump make America great again? | Will Trump make America great again? 03.11.2016 A few days are left before the presidential election in the United States. For the time being, Hillary Clinton has a slight advantage over her rival in the race, Republican candidate Donald Trump . In electoral votes, Clinton has 259 vs. Trump's 164 votes (270 votes are required for victory). It will be up to six doubting states to decide the outcome of the presidential election - Utah, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida and Ohio. Many experts believe that Trump will win the vote. Will he? First off, the United States is fed up with Obama and the Democrats, and it could be very well seen in the mid-term elections for Congress in 2014, when Democrats lost seven states and gave the vast majority of Congress seats to Republicans. The outgoing president had given many eloquent promises, but has not been able to keep them. Hillary Clinton is the successor of the dubious legacy of Barack Obama. She was part of Obama's government during his first four years as Secretary of State. The infamous Islamic State terrorist organization (banned in Russia) appeared during her stay in power. It was during Clinton's stay in power, when Putin started winning in the game against the USA, when the US Ambassador in Benghazi was killed and when the devastating Arab Spring started gathering pace. Print version Font Size A study conducted by Pew Research found that the highest approval rating of Obama (64 percent in February 2009) was the lowest for any US president since Eisenhower, that is, since the end of World War II. Also read: The many suspicious suicides surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton Secondly, Clinton lies and makes mistakes all the time. She made her biggest mistake in her professional activities. She used her private email for officials messages, which is strictly forbidden in the USA. The FBI resumed investigation into the case a week before the election, having caused irreparable damage to Clinton's rating. Thirdly, a lot will depend on the turnout. Real wages of the middle class in the United States have not increased since 2008. The people who make the core of the USA want change that Obama has not given to them. "Who's the candidate with the most rabid supporters? Whose crazed fans are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, kicking ass all day long, all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Bob and Joe and Billy Bob and Billy Joe and Billy Bob Joe) has cast his ballot? That's right.." US film director Michael Moore wrote. Fourth, Trump personifies the American dream in real life. Donald Trump has made his name himself. Hillary Clinton amassed her fortune when in public service and lecturing Wall Street bankers. Trump's program says what the American people want to hear. The program raises such relevant issues as job losses, terrorist threat, immigration problems. Angry white Americans do not like the fact that various minorities in their country act as if they are a majority. Trump represents the conservative America. Therefore, immigration law, abortion ban, protection of military veterans, the revival of industry - these issues worry most Americans, especially those who go to church on Sundays and honor the commandments. Fifth, the Americans may vote contrary to propaganda. A man approached Michael Moore after a show, the director wrote in his article. "Coming back to the hotel after appearing on Bill Maher's Republican Convention special this week on HBO, a man stopped me. "Mike," he said, "we have to vote for Trump. We HAVE to shake things up." That was it. That was enough for him. To "shake things up," Michael Moore wrote. Also read: Hillary plays Russian roulette in US presidential election Sixthly, 16 Republican candidates and the Republican establishment have tried all kinds of methods to fight against Trump , but nothing could stop him. Trump does not use anything but Twitter and meetings with electors in his election campaign, but he is still very close to Hillary Clinton. "I think that Trump has very good chances to win. In fact, he has already left Clinton behind," Oleg Soskin, Ukrainian politician, economist and political scientist told Pravda.Ru. In this case, the expert believes, major geopolitical, geo-economic and strategic changes will take place as Trump's victory will bring in completely new people, forces, organizations, structures, systems, etc. For Ukraine, Trump's victory woud mark a political death for Poroshenko and his team. Germany and France will experience major changes as well, while the Baltic States will find themsleves in a difficult situation, because they completely depend on the United States. Tectonic changes will occur inside NATO as well," Oleg Soskin said. "Clinton, if she wins, will protect the interests of global financial capital," Dmitry Mosyakov, the head of the Center for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Doctor of Historical Sciences, told Pravda.Ru. - Trump's coming to power will entail serious changes for East Asia and the Pacific region. Trump says that America should pursue its own interests in the first place in both political and economic fields. I think that Trump will win, if the election is held honestly. He says truly Republican things to revive America's own businesses," the expert told Pravda.Ru. Also read: Donald Trump and the genius of idiocy "The things that we can see happening in the USA now confirm my long-standing assumption of significant divisions of elites in the country," Karine Gevorgyan, a political scientist, expert on Iran, orientalist told Pravda.Ru. "The hegemonic role of the United States has led to chaos both in domestic and foreign policies. Therefore, a serious split inside the administration may aggravate further no matter who eventually takes office as president," the expert added. Lyuba Lulko | 1real |
House ethics panel probing Rep. Farenthold over harassment allegations | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Thursday it was investigating Republican Representative Blake Farenthold over allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation involving a former female staff member. The panel said in a statement it was also looking into whether the Corpus Christi, Texas, congressman made inappropriate statements to other members of his official staff. Farenthold, 55, said in a statement he was relieved that the ethics panel was going to look into the allegations. “Once all the facts are released, I’m confident this matter will once and for all be settled and resolved,” he said. Politico reported last week that the U.S. Congress’ Office of Compliance had paid $84,000 from a public fund on behalf of Farenthold for a sexual harassment claim. In 2014, Farenthold’s former communications director Lauren Greene sued him, alleging a hostile work environment, gender discrimination and retaliation, court documents showed. Farenthold and Greene reached a mediated agreement in 2015 to avoid costly litigation, but the settlement’s details were confidential, according to a statement released at the time, where Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing. Farenthold told KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi on Monday that he would return the sum. Capitol Hill has been rocked in recent weeks by allegations of sexual misconduct by lawmakers, and outrage that public money may have been paid to settle harassment suits against members of Congress. Three lawmakers said this week they would resign amid sexual harassment allegations: Democratic Senator Al Franken, Democratic Representative John Conyers and Republican Representative Trent Franks. | 0fake |
Greek police, protesters clash in Athens during Obama visit | ATHENS (Reuters) - Riot police fired teargas on Tuesday at protesters demonstrating just a few kilometers (miles) from the presidential mansion where Greek leaders were hosting a state banquet for visiting U.S. President Barack Obama. About 7,000 people, among them many hooded protesters and members of the Communist-affiliated group PAME, marched through the streets of central Athens holding banners reading “Unwanted!” The police clashed with the protesters after they tried to break through cordon lines to reach the parliament building and the U.S. embassy. Some demonstrators threw two petrol bombs at police before dispersing into nearby streets close to Athens’s main Syntagma Square. In a separate protest in the northern city of Thessaloniki, protesters burned a U.S. flag. The visit comes only two days before the anniversary of a bloody 1973 student revolt that helped topple the 1967-1974 military junta which was backed by the U.S. government. Obama, who will be succeeded in January by Donald Trump, arrived in Greece on Tuesday on his last foreign tour as president of the United States. | 0fake |
Harvard’s Tribe: Trump Must Be Impeached - ’He Regards Himself as Above the Law’ - Breitbart | .@tribelaw says Pres. Trump must be impeached: ”He has shown no respect for the rule of law. He regards himself as above the law.” #ThisWeek pic. twitter. Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said President Donald Trump must be impeached. Tribe said, “He’s shown no respect for the rule of law. He regards himself as above the law. He thinks it’s appropriate to essentially have a job interview with the FBI director. As we now know, the FBI director wanted to be reappointed. And the president essentially told him, ‘well, we’ll see. It depends, will you plead loyalty to me?’ Well, kings and monarchs and dictators seek that kind of loyalty. He essentially said, if you assure me that this meddlesome Russia investigation will go away, maybe I’ll keep you on. ” “That’s obstruction of justice,” he continued. “Even within the technical term of the criminal code. But they’re not relevant. The most relevant thing, because impeachment is our system’s last resort for someone who treats himself or herself as above the law, most relevant thing is whether this president, by his recent course of action, on top of his violations of the foreign corruption or Emoluments Clause, this president has shown that he cannot be trusted to remain within the law. And our constitution’s last resort for situations of that kind is to get the person out of office. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
Woman Born In NAZI GERMANY Says Trump Doesn’t Remind Her Of Hitler….Rioting Leftists Trying To Shut Down Free Speech Does | A woman who was born in Nazi Germany says that what reminds her of Hitler more than anything else isn t Donald Trump, but the rioting leftists who are attempting to shut down free speech on college campuses.Ing Andrews lived in Dusseldorf, Germany during the Second World War and spent time hiding in air raid shelters and helping to clean up rubble from destroyed buildings. InfowarsIf anyone is in a position to have an opinion on the left s hysterical comparison of Donald Trump and Hitler, it s Inga. Here s what she told the Independent Review Journal | 1real |
THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY HILLARY Is The Only Candidate Who Travels With A Full-Time Physician | This news should be enough to end Hillary s obsession with becoming our next President. The Democrats may be willing to ignore all of her criminal and immoral activities, but are they willing to accept Hillary and Bill turning our White House into an assisted living facility? Is Hillary Clinton fit to be president?Putting aside her various scandals and shoddy record as secretary of state, what about her health? Is she physically up to the job?In my new book, Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary, I devote five pages to Hillary s health. As far as I can tell, however, I am the only journalist who is interested in this important subject.Given the immense stress and strain of being president, Hillary s health is an issue that demands a thorough exploration.Last July, Hillary s longtime personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, released a short, two-page letter that appeared to give Hillary a clean bill of health. She does not smoke and drinks alcohol occasionally, Bardack wrote. She does not use illicit drugs or tobacco products. She eats a diet rich in lean protein, vegetables and fruits. She exercises regularly, including yoga, swimming, walking and weight training. According to Dr. Bardack, Hillary had completely recovered from the fainting spell, concussion and blood clot in her brain that she suffered while she was secretary of state.But Dr. Bardack s letter was hardly a detailed medical history. According to sources close to Bill and Hillary Clinton, the letter wasn t the full story then and it s not the full story now.To this day, Hillary still suffers from many of the troubling symptoms that I wrote about in Unlikeable: blinding headaches, exhaustion, insomnia, and a tremor in her hands. As a precaution against the spectacle of fainting in public, which could easily doom her candidacy, Hillary now travels with a personal physician on all her major campaign trips.There have been several incidents in which she has nearly collapsed. For example, after her 11-hour testimony before the Trey Gowdy Benghazi committee, Hillary swooned as she walked to a waiting car. She had to be supported in the arms of her aides and helped into the back seat.Tension headaches continue to plague her and often make it hard for her to maintain her grueling schedule. Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff and her closest adviser, frequently orders campaign aides to alter Hillary s schedule at the last moment so the candidate can catch her breath and take out time for naps. This may explain why Hillary is often as much as two hours late for a campaign appearance. She no longer has the stamina for 18-hour campaign days that she was once capable of doing, said a source close to Hillary.Via: NewsMax We all know that getting Hillary to release her full medical records to the public is about as likely as Hillary telling the truth about what happened in Benghazi | 1real |
Presidential elections in Bulgaria and Moldova show a turn toward Moscow* | November 14, 2016 - Fort Russ News -
Fabrizio Poggi, in Contropiano , translated from Italian by Tom Winter
Igor Dodon, President-elect of Moldova
Moldova and Bulgaria: Something new in the East
Rumen Radev, President-elect of Bulgaria
In the east - not everywhere, sadly - there is a turn towards Moscow. The newly elected presidents of Moldavia and Bulgaria seem to want to go in that direction.
In Kishinev, where two weeks ago, no candidate had a majority in round one, the Socialist Party leader, Igor Dodon, has 52.6% of the votes (not including expatriate votes from US and Canada, but these can not overturn the result) against the pro-EU Maia Sandu, leader of the Action and Solidarity Party, with 47.3% and who, in Yankee fashion, is now threatening "mass demonstrations," not recognizing the result.
Maia Sandu Dodon congratulated Sandu for the "honorable result" and invited her to discussions, without destabilizing the country. It seems (though not official at this time of writing) that the turnout was respectable; this was the first direct election of the president of the republic since 1996; since 2000 in fact, the President was elected by Parliament. There was even shortage of ballots, in particular in various stations abroad: Bologna, Parma, Paris, Moscow, Bucharest; Portugal appears to have lost the entire st of ballots.
On the eve of the vote Dodon, an experienced office-holder, (Deputy Prime Minister in 2008-2009 and Minister of Economy in 2006-2009) said that if he won, his first visit abroad would would be to Moscow, "to start working out a strategic partnership agreement" and to renew exports to Russia, which were limited after the signing of the association and free trade agreement with the EU.
Dodon has always said he was "confident of victory. People are tired of the seven years of EU coalition, poverty, corruption, lawlessness, and want to live in a state of their own and not in some province of another country."
The socialist leader has also called for the Russian peacekeepers to remain in Transnistria, until the complete solution of the political events through the federalization of Moldova, which Sandu opposes. According to Tass, all candidates had based their election campaign primarily on foreign issues: pointing on one side to the "hand of the Kremlin," and, on the other to "Washington's Regional Committee," a side which was still floating a union with Romania. The Socialists pointed to Maia Sandu as "a puppet of the US" - where she studied and worked at the World Bank, and tied her to Angela Merkel, Donald Tusk, and Jean-Claude Juncker, apparently even to former Romanian President, Traian Băsescu, who got himself awarded Moldovan citizenship [! -tr] in order to vote for Maia Sandu.
On the other side Sandu was proposing, along with strategic partnership with Washington, close contacts with Kiev, even a future union with Romania.
As expected, there are the threats of yet another "Orange Revolution," like the one in 2009 after the Communist Party won the election in Moldova, under the flags of EU and Romania, with rioting which brought broken windows and arson to the Parliament and the presidential residence.
Obviously, Brussels was on the "orange" side: the results of seven years of EU-line coalition are also seen in the demonstrations a year ago against the oligarchy in power, in the rejection of government policy on the part of 80% of the population, and in those favoring integration with Brussels falling from 70% to 37%.
In addition, the Donald Trump victory seems to have played a role also in Kishinev: "The geopolitical color of the Moldovan leadership will become less important for the United States," Andrei Popov said in a NewsMaker interview. Popov, former Deputy Foreign Minister of Moldova, added that Washington will renounce a whole series of Moldovan projects that were initiated by the Clinton circle.
Also, in Bulgaria, the coalition headed by the Socialist Party prevailed in the second presidential round of the general election: Air Force General Rumen Radev topped his opponent Tsetska Tsačeva by 4-5% (the result is not final). Tsačeva was the candidate of the pro-government coalition GERB ("Citizens for European development of Bulgaria)."
In the first round, Sunday, Nov. 6, no candidate reached the 30% necessary for the election: Radev was at 25.4% and Tsačeva at 21.9%.
The now president-elect said he was opposed to Bulgaria's permanence in NATO (of which the country has been a member since 2004) and in the EU, and has spoken out for closer relations with Russia.
The Prime Minister, the hawk Boyko Borissov had promised to resign if Radev won, while he was still hoping for a Tsačeva victory, seems to have kept his word, opening a crisis that does not seem easy to solve.
In opposition to the overtly anti-Russian, phil-atlantic policies of former President Rosen Plevneliev and Boyko Borissov, Radev said that "deepening the dialogue with Russia will reduce confrontation and tension, and hopefully lead to the normalization of the situation in Syria and Ukraine."
With regard to the anti-Russian sanctions, he stressed that this "is a matter of the government's responsibility. But, as President, I am committed to dialogue, to seek a solution with EU colleagues." As for internal affairs, he said "despite threats of the apocalypse," the voters "voted for change and democracy, overcoming apathy and fear."
An entity that in contrast does not change policy towards Russia is the European Union. Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, said that Brussels does not intend to change its own position on Russia, even if the White House, after the arrival of Donald Trump, pursues a rapprochement with the Kremlin.
The EU, as Mogherini spelled it out, "has a principled stand on the issue of the annexation of the Crimea and on the situation in Ukraine, and will not change it, regardless of any changes of position by other countries, including the United States.
"Ipse dixit et salvavit eos**; of course, the "Russian aggression!
* A view from the Italian Communist Party on-line journal; for the take of Eduard Popov on these two election victories, click.
** "She herself has said it, and saved them" [Correcting to "ipsa"] -- an apparent reference to the Catholic confessional "dixi et salvavi animam" -- I have spoken and saved my soul."
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Congress approves permanent Internet access tax ban | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed legislation placing a permanent ban on states’ taxing Internet access, sending the measure to President Barack Obama for signing into law. By a vote of 75-20, the Senate gave final approval to a bill toughening enforcement of U.S. duties on foreign goods, which contains the permanent extension of the “Internet Tax Freedom Act.” The measure also would ban some taxes on digital goods and services and will put an end to a series of temporary extensions on the tax prohibitions. “Most Americans pay $0 in taxes to connect to the Internet. And thanks to a bill that passed today, you will never have to pay taxes just to get online, or pay more taxes for goods and services just because they’re bought online,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement. The legislation, however, fails to address calls for better enforcement of state sales tax collections related to Internet purchases, something that brick-and-mortar businesses have long sought. Separate legislation on this could be considered by Congress later this year, according to Senate aides. Most U.S. states have imposed sales taxes on online purchases, but the actual collection is spotty. | 0fake |
Hundreds sacked from Uzbek FinMin in 'rat' purge | TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbekistan s Finance Ministry has sacked 562 employees after President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ordered it to root out inefficiency and get rid of what he had called rats tarnishing its reputation, the state news agency UzA reported on Wednesday. The purge followed criticism of the ministry by Mirziyoyev last week over what he described as a poorly drafted state budget, failure to finance important projects in various provinces and embellishing economic data. The ministry employs about 3,000 people and a further 13,000 in subordinate agencies such as the state pension fund. According to the UzA report, the sacked officials were holdovers from a previous minister , a clear reference to Rustam Azimov, former minister of finance and deputy prime minister sacked by Mirziyoyev in June. The report did not identify Azimov by name. Mirziyoyev was elected president last December following the death in September 2016 of Islam Karimov, who had ruled the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He has reshuffled the cabinet during his first year in power and implemented some economic reforms such as the liberalisation of foreign exchange regulations. Mirziyoyev named Djamshid Kuchkarov finance minister last month, replacing his previous appointee Botir Khodjayev who took over the Economy Ministry instead. | 0fake |
UAE says Egyptian ex-premier Shafik left for Egypt, family still in UAE | DUBAI (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik has left the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for Egypt but his family has remained behind, UAE news agency WAM reported on Saturday. General Ahmed Shafik s family is still in the country in the gracious care of the state of the United Arab Emirates, the agency said, quoting an official UAE source. | 0fake |
Christie slammed on social media, New Jersey press urges resignation | NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie took a drubbing on social media for his demeanor in an appearance with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump at a televised victory speech and news conference on Super Tuesday. Adding to his woes, six New Jersey newspapers called on Christie to resign, partly for endorsing Trump after dropping out of the race to become the Republican Party’s candidate in November’s election. A Christie spokesman, Brian Murray, declined to comment immediately on the editorial, which appeared in newspapers owned by Gannett Co Inc (GCI.N). Christie surprisingly endorsed Trump on Friday, calling the billionaire New York businessman “the best person to beat Hillary Clinton in November.” Some questioned whether Christie’s enthusiasm was genuine following his appearance at Trump’s event in Palm Beach, Florida on Tuesday night. Trump appeared before TV cameras after news media organizations declared him the winner of some of the state-by-state primaries and caucuses and as Super Tuesday results continued rolling in. Christie introduced Trump, then stood behind and just to the right of the brash billionaire. The governor stared blankly ahead, at times looking troubled, as Trump took reporters’ questions. The reaction to Christie’s demeanor was swift and unforgiving on social media. “This is what a man collapsing under the weight of his own shame looks like,” Sean D. Illing (@sean_illing) tweeted on Tuesday. “Did #ChrisChristie look pathetic standing behind #Trump, or what?!?” Karen Walz (@khwalz) tweeted on Wednesday. News website BuzzFeed on Tuesday evening tweeted a clip of the video footage set to the classic Simon and Garfunkel song “Sounds of Silence,” with the caption “Hello darkness, my old friend,” a lyric from the song. Christie spokesman Murray would not comment on the social media reaction, saying in an email, “I’ll let you know when we opt to slide down into that muck.” In the editorial calling on Christie to resign, the six newspapers, including the Asbury Park Press, called his endorsement hypocritical. “We’re disgusted with (Christie’s) endorsement of Donald Trump after he spent months on the campaign trail trashing him, calling him unqualified by temperament and experience to be president,” the editorial read. Christie, serving the second of two four-year terms, is not slated to leave office until December 2017. (Reporting By Amy Tennery in New York; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York) 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 YOU GO: HILLARY’S E-MAILS FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE | Here are the e-mails released last night that confirm what we all knew from way back Hillary is a total elitist who has everyone do just about EVERYTHING for her. It s really pitiful that we had a Secretary of State who behaves this way. In addition, Hillary is clearly vindictive and petty. In some of the e-mails she discusses taking down Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: STILL WAITING FOR THE YOGA E-MAILS Here you go: HILLARY S E-MAILS Here s another great source from the WSJ | 1real |
NUT JOB GLENN BECK Joins Liberal, Foul-Mouthed Whack Job Samantha Bee In Unified Effort To Fight “TRUMPISM” [VIDEO] | Glenn Beck, a man once described by Forbes as someone who s managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth, has (seemingly) had a profound change of heart. Following his call for conservatives to empathize with Black Lives Matter activists in a New York Times op-ed back in September, the Blaze founder joined Samantha Bee on Full Frontal on Monday to declare a common enemy: the Precedent-elect, a.k.a. Mr. Brexit, a.k.a. the former Apprentice host.Complex | 1real |
Roger Federer Welcomes the End ... Of a Layoff, Not His Career - The New York Times | The Federer family has shared many a road trip, but in this unusually settled period, the patriarch and primary breadwinner has been fielding more and more questions. “The kids were asking, ‘When are we leaving again? ’” Roger Federer said in an extended interview from Dubai on Friday. “Because they were happy to get back on the road. It was like, when are we going the next time to Australia or the next time to New York? And I’ve been saying, ‘Not for a while. ’” But the next family business trip is now fast approaching. Federer is set to return to action next month in Perth, Australia, at the Hopman Cup team event before returning in earnest at the Australian Open in Melbourne. Federer has not played a match since July 8, when he lost in five sets to Milos Raonic in the semifinals at Wimbledon. In the last set, he took an awkward and uncharacteristic tumble on the grass that was too easy to see as a metaphor for the decline of a great, balletic champion. Federer landed on his left knee, which in February had required him to have surgery for the first time in his career, keeping him out for more than two months. Though he got up slowly at Wimbledon and finished the match, he did not finish the season. He even missed the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which had long been one of his major targets. While his longtime rivals Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic duked it out for the No. 1 ranking and his Swiss countryman Stan Wawrinka won the United States Open, Federer got a taste of retirement with his longest break from the tour since he turned professional in 1998. Now, he will try his hand at a staple of modern tennis: the comeback. And he will do so with a world ranking of No. 16, his lowest since 2001. “It actually felt like I had my first real comeback in April when I came back in Monaco, especially having had surgery, because I never had surgery before,” Federer said. “So that felt like a real comeback to me, but this one feels bigger, obviously, because two months is not like six months. Clearly this comeback is going to have a different place in my career, for sure. ” Federer, 35, has little left to prove. He has already won a record 17 Grand Slam singles titles and 71 lesser titles. He has maintained a standard of excellence for far longer than most tennis champions do. Although he said he had treasured his time away from the tour with his wife, Mirka, and their four young children, he insisted that no consideration had been given to making the break permanent. “Mirka is totally committed, totally happy,” he said. “The kids love it, and I’m still hungry, and now I’m even refreshed and rejuvenated. ” The question of retirement never came up. For Federer, the questions were instead: “Can I still do it? As a player, can my body still do it? Can my mind still do it?” Those are particularly intriguing questions at a moment when so much talent — both rising and established — seems to be converging in the men’s game. Federer, as much a tennis aficionado as a tennis maestro, is well aware of the story lines. The old guard on the men’s tour remains with Federer and Rafael Nadal, who at age 30 is returning from more injury problems of his own with a new coach in his team: Carlos Moyá. The new wave is full of promise, led by Dominic Thiem, Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios, all of whom have already beaten Federer. There are also many established stars in their primes: from Raonic, Kei Nishikori and Juan Martín del Potro to the multiple Grand Slam champions Wawrinka, Murray and Djokovic. Federer, even in absentia, said he had kept checking the scores on his phone as Murray dueled with Djokovic down the stretch in November to secure the No. 1 ranking. “I was very surprised just because when a guy starts a season the way Novak does, achieves his dream by winning the French and his fourth Slam in a row, of course there’s no way in the world that anybody, even the players, start thinking another guy could actually finish No. 1,” Federer said. “Novak, let’s be honest, actually didn’t play too bad in the second half. He won Toronto. He played finals in many other tournaments: U. S. Open, the World Tour Finals. You would think that that’s going to be enough, but what it required was something extraordinary, and Murray was able to deliver that, and that’s where I take my hat off. ” Federer did not experience a letdown in 2009 after winning the French Open, the only major singles title he had lacked. But he said he could certainly comprehend the perils of Djokovic’s emotional journey in 2016. “Maybe it’s only human and understandable that Novak had a letdown, because he achieved everything he wanted to,” Federer said. “You have to maybe reinvent yourself or whatever you have to do. But it’s nice to see that maybe it doesn’t always come so easy for everybody for so long. “And I think it actually creates a great story for next year. Andy’s a great story. Novak’s a great story. Rafa, obviously, is always going to be a good story. Me coming back is hopefully going to be a nice story to follow, too. I think the beginning of the year, especially the Australian summer, is going to be epic. ” Federer said his decision to end his season after Wimbledon had been made out of a desire to get the most out of what remains of his career. “Maybe I could have, should have taken more time after the Australian Open once I had surgery,” he said. “Possibly, but I was well. I was training full on in Dubai. ” After withdrawing from the French Open, ending his consecutive streak of Grand Slam appearances at 65, Federer came back for the season and Wimbledon knowing his knee was not quite right. “I don’t think it cost me the rest of the season by playing on the grass,” he said. “I just think the knee and the body needed a break, and taking six months off, I could take the time the body and knee required to heal. Now I can look back and say: ‘Look, if now it doesn’t go well, I did everything I possibly could. There are no regrets. ’” He said he had taken a particularly conservative approach this time around. “Especially the first three months, I was working out maybe one hour a day,” he said. When he did turn up the intensity with his longtime fitness coach Pierre Paganini, Federer said, he often avoided training on consecutive days. He started playing points again in early October, but he said he had not resumed full sessions until late November after he left Switzerland for Dubai, his usual training base. He has been practicing there frequently with the rising Frenchman Lucas Pouille, and on Thursday Federer planned to broadcast their practice session live on Periscope to give his fans an update on his progress. “I just felt I needed to start filling in people on how I’m doing as we get closer to the beginning of the season,” he said. The real test of how he is playing will have to wait for Australia, where his preview of life without the tennis circuit will officially come to an end. “I did get that taste of retirement,” Federer said. “All of the sudden, I could be organized and say: ‘O. K. we’re going to be four weeks at home in a row in the same place. Who do you want to go for dinner with, Mirka? Or who shall we catch up with?” Federer enjoyed having that time with his family and the predictability of being in one place for more than a week at a time. Fortunately, he said, his knee held up, and he was able to make the most of it. “I think that was really exciting and good for us to have that time,” he said. “And it felt good, you know? It did feel good, but it can totally wait. No problem for me. It can totally wait. ” | 0fake |
Bill Clinton on Pedophile Island — Human Slavery & Sex Trafficking in the Elite's World | Bill Clinton on Pedophile Island — Human Slavery & Sex Trafficking in the Elite's World Journalist Benn Swann exposes pedophilia in the highest government circles. In the following video... http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/bill-clinton-on-pedophile-island-human.html Journalist Benn Swann exposes pedophilia in the highest government circles. In the following video, billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, his relationship with Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and other famous names and their connection to a high-level sex scandal is exposed by Conchita and Cristina Sarnoff. The video (below) also looks at slavery and human sex trafficking in the modern world — and more. Lawyers for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein touted his close relationship with Bill Clinton and also claimed in a 2007 letter to the Florida State Attorney’s office, that he helped start the Clinton’s family foundation. ( Source ) American Patriot reports: Jeffrey Epstein, the “billionaire pedophile” who was accused of keeping under aged girls as sex slaves on his private island, was long known to be friendly with former President Bill Clinton. The extent of that relationship, however, has never been made clear. But new records indicate the former leader of the free world was much cozier with Epstein than originally known. All aboard the ‘Lolita Express’: Flight logs reveal the many trips Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz took on pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet with anonymous women Flight logs for Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane dubbed the ‘Lolita Express’ were published for the first time on Thursday They show that former President Bill Clinton boarded the plane with women believed to have been involved in creating underage sex slave ring Alleged victim Virginia Roberts says she was recruited as a slave when she was 15, and that she was forced to have sex with both Prince Andrew and Harvard law profession Alan Dershowitz The latter, she says, molested her mid-flight on the private jet Both the Duke of York and Dershowitz have fiercely denied their involvement in the ring. Records obtained by Fox News show that Clinton “was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender’s infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the ‘Lolita Express’– even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights.” Original reports had Clinton on Epstein’s personal 727 only 11 times, however the flight logs obtained by Fox have him flying more than twice that amount. Fox News reports: “Bill Clinton… associated with a man like Jeffrey Epstein, who everyone in New York, certainly within his inner circles, knew was a pedophile,” said Conchita Sarnoff, of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, and author of a book on the Epstein case called “TrafficKing.”“Why would a former president associate with a man like that?” (…) Official flight logs filed with the Federal Aviation Administration show Clinton traveled on some of the trips with as many as 10 U.S. Secret Service agents. However, on a five-leg Asia trip between May 22 and May 25, 2002, not a single Secret Service agent is listed. The U.S. Secret Service has declined to answer multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed by FoxNews.com seeking information on these trips. Clinton would have been required to file a form to dismiss the agent detail, a former Secret Service agent told FoxNews.com. Virginia Roberts pictured with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York: Claims: Virginia Roberts says she was recruited to work as a sex slave for Epstein when she was just 15, and has named Dershowitz and Prince Andrew as two of the men she was forced to have sex with. Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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Iraqis think the U.S. is in cahoots with the Islamic State, and it is hurting the war | On the front lines of the battle against the Islamic State, suspicion of the United States runs deep. Iraqi fighters say they have all seen the videos purportedly showing U.S. helicopters airdropping weapons to the militants, and many claim they have friends and relatives who have witnessed similar instances of collusion.
Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting the Islamic State for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.
“It is not in doubt,” said Mustafa Saadi, who says his friend saw U.S. helicopters delivering bottled water to Islamic State positions. He is a commander in one of the Shiite militias that last month helped push the militants out of the oil refinery near Baiji in northern Iraq alongside the Iraqi army.
The Islamic State is “almost finished,” he said. “They are weak. If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days.”
[Inside the surreal world of the Islamic State’s propaganda machine]
U.S. military officials say the charges are too far-fetched to merit a response. “It’s beyond ridiculous,” said Col. Steve Warren, the military’s Baghdad-based spokesman. “There’s clearly no one in the West who buys it, but unfortunately, this is something that a segment of the Iraqi population believes.”
The perception among Iraqis that the United States is somehow in cahoots with the militants it claims to be fighting appears, however, to be widespread across the country’s Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide, and it speaks to more than just the troubling legacy of mistrust that has clouded the United States’ relationship with Iraq since the 2003 invasion and the subsequent withdrawal eight years later.
At a time when attacks by the Islamic State in Paris and elsewhere have intensified calls for tougher action on the ground, such is the level of suspicion with which the United States is viewed in Iraq that it is unclear whether the Obama administration would be able to significantly escalate its involvement even if it wanted to.
“What influence can we have if they think we are supporting the terrorists?” asked Kirk Sowell, an analyst based in neighboring Jordan who publishes the newsletter Inside Iraqi Politics.
In one example of how little leverage the United States now has, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi pushed back swiftly against an announcement Tuesday by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter that an expeditionary force of U.S. troops will be dispatched to Iraq to conduct raids, free hostages and capture Islamic State leaders.
[Is it too late to solve the mess in the Middle East?]
Iraq’s semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, where support for the United States remains strong, has said it would welcome more troops. But Abadi indicated they would not be needed.
“There is no need for foreign ground combat troops,” he said in a statement. “Any such support and special operations anywhere in Iraq can only be deployed subject to the approval of the Iraqi Government and in coordination with the Iraqi forces and with full respect to Iraqi sovereignty.”
The allegations of U.S. collusion with the Islamic State are aired regularly in parliament by Shiite politicians and promoted in postings on social media. They are persistent enough to suggest a deliberate campaign on the part of Iran’s allies in Iraq to erode American influence, U.S. officials say.
In one typical recent video that appeared on the Facebook page of a Shiite militia, a lawmaker with the country’s biggest militia group, the Badr Organization, waves apparently new U.S military MREs (meals ready to eat) — one of them chicken and dumplings — allegedly found at a recently captured Islamic State base in Baiji, offering proof, he said, of U.S. support.
“The Iranians and the Iranian-backed Shiite militias are really pushing this line of propaganda, that the United States is supporting ISIL,” Warren said. “It’s part of the Iranian propaganda machine.”
The perception plays into a widening rift within Iraq’s ruling Shiite elite over whether to pivot more toward Iran or the United States. Those pushing the allegations “want to create a narrative that Iran is our ally and the United States is our enemy, and this undermines Abadi, who is America’s ally,” Sowell said.
[Police call him an ISIS recruiter. He says he’s just an outspoken preacher.]
Iraqi government officials say they don’t believe the charges and point out that Abadi regularly pushes back against them. But Abadi’s own position has weakened in recent months. He is battling for his political survival against a variety of Shiite militia leaders whose power has been bolstered by the increasingly dominant role played on the battlefield by the militias, collectively known as Hashd al-Shaabi, or popular mobilization units.
Iraqi officials complain that their task is hampered by what is universally perceived as the lackluster U.S. response to the threat posed by the Islamic State.
“We don’t believe the Americans support Daesh,” said Naseer Nouri, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “But it is true that most people are saying they do, and they are right to believe that the Americans should be doing much more than they are. It’s because America is so slow that most people believe they are supporting Daesh.”
U.S. warplanes routinely fail to respond to requests for air support because of U.S. rules of engagement that preclude strikes if there is a risk civilians may be hit, he said. According to Warren, that standard frequently is not met. The United States has conducted more than 3,768 strikes in Iraq as of Nov. 19, according to the U.S. military, and the tempo of strikes has increased lately, U.S. officials say.
But it also appears that the fighters are unaware when they do receive U.S. air support. The U.S. military reported near-daily strikes in support of the offensive to recapture Baiji last month and continues to respond regularly to requests for strikes in the vicinity, Warren said.
[In the fight against the Islamic State, Iraq’s leader begins to look shaky]
The fighters there insist there have been no strikes by the Americans at all. “We’d be better off without them,” said 1st Lt. Murtada Fadl, who is serving with the Iraqi elite forces in Baiji. He said that the only air support had come from the Iraqi air force and that he wishes the government would ask the Russians to replace the Americans.
In a part of the world where outcomes are often confused with intentions and regional complexities enable conspiracy theories to thrive, the notion that the United States is colluding with the Islamic State holds a certain logic, according to Mustafa Alani, director of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. Most Arabs are too in awe of American might to believe that the United States is deliberately adopting a minimalist approach, he said.
“The reason is that the Americans aren’t doing the job people expect them to do,” he said. “Mosul was lost and the Americans did nothing. Syria was lost and the Americans did nothing. Paris is attacked and the Americans aren’t doing much. So people believe this is a deliberate policy. They can’t believe the American leadership fails to understand the developments in the region, and so the only other explanation is that this is part of a conspiracy.”
On the streets of Baghdad, most Iraqis see no other explanation.
“The image of the U.S. was damaged in the region, so they created Daesh in order to fight them and restore their image,” said Mohammed Abdul Khaleq, a journalist for a local TV station who was drinking coffee in a cafe favored by writers, most of whom said they agreed.
A rare dissenting voice was offered by Hassan Abdul-Wahab, 23, selling luggage in a nearby shop. “It is true that most people believe that,” he said. “But it’s not based on reason. It’s based on racism — because Iraqis don’t like Americans in the first place.”
Did these tweets encourage a Chicago teen to try joining the Islamic State?
Why the Islamic State leaves tech companies torn between free speech and security
With fight against the Islamic State in Iraq stalled, U.S. looks to Syria for gains | 0fake |
BILLIONAIRE, Leftist Author Of Harry Potter Books Apologizes For Making Up, Spreading Fake News About President Trump and Disabled Boy | Big-mouth billionaire and leftist author of the highly successful Harry Potter books, has finally taken responsibility for an awful rumor she started about President Trump and a disabled boy after the disabled boy s mother came out on Facebook to tell the truth about what really happened when President Trump met her disabled son.Author J.K. Rowling issued an apology Monday after falsely accusing President Donald Trump of refusing to shake hands with a disabled boy by sharing an edited video clip on her social media account over the weekend.The boy s mother lashed out at Rowling, saying that the Harry Potter scribe wrongly said Trump ignored and refused to shake her disabled son s hand during a recent meet-and-greet. If someone can please get a message to JK Rowling: Trump didn t snub my son & Monty wasn t even trying to shake his hand, Ms. Kelly Weer wrote in a post on Facebook, slamming Rowling s inaccurate description of a video showing her son meeting President Trump. 1. He s 3 and hand shaking is not his thing 2. he was showing off his newly acquired secret service patch). Thanks, Weer wrote.Rowling, a regular critic of the president, blasted Trump and claimed he deliberately ignored the boy, Monty Weer, who suffers from spina bifida. Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition, she tweeted over the weekend. My mother used a wheelchair. I witnessed people uncomfortable around her disability, but if they had a shred of decency they got over it, Rowling wrote on Twitter. So, yes, that clip of Trump looking deliberately over a disabled child s head, ignoring his outstretched hand, has touched me on the raw. That man occupies the most powerful office in the free world and his daily outrages against civilised norms are having a corrosive effect, the author continued. How stunning, and how horrible, that Trump cannot bring himself to shake the hand of a small boy who only wanted to touch the President. However, a White House video clearly shows President Trump bending down and graciously greeting his young fan as he approached the podium.Rowling faced intense criticism on social media, with many users urging she delete the series of tweets that included the false claims.Pictures posted on Twitter on June 26th, show Melania hosting the little disabled boy that JK Rowling accused President Trump of ignoring, during a visit to the White House in his wheelchair. It appears he also got a little extra special attention from the First Lady. Happy belated 3rd bday (yesterday) sweet Monty! Thank you for visiting us at @WhiteHouse today! pic.twitter.com/ZnENYjB7zE Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) June 27, 2017British journalist Piers Morgan led the charge blasting Rowling and Chelsea Clinton, who had retweeted Rowling and later apologized for refusing to delete her tweets.Rowling finally deleted her tweets and apologized to the boy and his family for spreading false claims, but did not apologize to President Trump. A spokesperson for Rowling apparently refused to confirm to CNN s Oliver Darcy whether or not the author would apologize to Trump. Re: my tweets about the small boy in a wheelchair whose proferred hand the president appeared to ignore in press footage, Rowling wrote. [M]ultiple sources have informed me that that was not a full or accurate representation of their interaction. I very clearly projected my own sensitivities around the issue of disabled people being overlooked or ignored onto the images I saw and if that caused any distress to that boy or his family, I apologise unreservedly. These tweets will remain, but I will delete the previous ones on the subject. Breitbart News | 1real |
LEFTIST ANTIFA Attacks Boston Police…Shows Their True Colors in Violent Display Against Free Speech [Video] | HATE IS WHAT ANTIFA DOES SO WELL DOES THE LEFT REALLY WANT TO ASSOCIATE WITH THESE VIOLENT ANARCHISTS?Leftist protestors follow Boston police officers yelling cruel and vile language at them. This is sick. pic.twitter.com/LQlb7Uj2hu The Rouser (@RouserNews) August 19, 2017ANTIFA THREW URINE AT THE POLICE OFFICERS AND OTHERS BOSTON POLICE TRYING TO KEEP ANTIFA FROM RUSHING THEMBoston police taking down Antifa members who keep rushing them. pic.twitter.com/W8QJK89QUS The Rouser (@RouserNews) August 19, 2017This really looks like love, Boston. People harassing police officers for doing their jobs. Sick. pic.twitter.com/8O5MykshlP The Rouser (@RouserNews) August 19, 2017THEY CARRIED STICKS WITH NAILS IN THEMNotice the nails in the ends of Antifa sticks? That s called a weapon. They use them to stab police horses. pic.twitter.com/dsU0wPoIVU CHIEF (@texashabanero) August 19, 2017 | 1real |
Ann Coulter Mocks Slain Soldier’s Dad – Simply For Being Muslim | Just when you thought Ann Coulter couldn t be any more vile than she s shown herself to be, she showed herself yet again to be the lowest form of human scum.The 50-something washed up Trump supporter decided that the only way her miserable self could get attention was to make fun of a slain soldier s dad, simply because he s Muslim.I thought Republicans were all about supporting the troops and their families? I guess not.This is the tweet the mean spirited New Yorker sent out:You know what this convention really needed? An angry Muslim with a thick accent like Fareed Zacaria. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 29, 2016Coulter is referring to Khizr Khan, whose son, a Purple Heart recipient, died in 2004 while fighting for his country in Iraq after a suicide bomber attacked his unit.And still, after all that, Republicans found a way to make fun of someone who dares to be different than them.In the eyes of conservatives, it doesn t matter who someone is and why they re on stage the only thing they focus on is their race, their religion, and their skin color.If this is the best Republicans can do, attacking military families, they are in for a rude awakening come November. They are finally being exposed as the faux patriotic, racist demogauges they have always truly been.Congrats, GOP. A 10 times New York Times bestseller has sunk so low as to be worst than pond scum. You have a truly great ally in this fight not.November can t come fast enough. Once Trump loses (assuming Democrats are inspired enough to actually get out and vote) racism can be finally put on the back burner as the country will move on and continue to progress, and loser conservatives like Ann Coulter will no longer have any legitimacy.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
Report on MH370 finds 'initially similar' route on pilot's flight simulator | SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The captain of the Malaysian Airlines aircraft that vanished somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean with 239 people on board had flown a route on his home flight simulator six weeks earlier that was initially similar to the one actually taken, Australian authorities said on Tuesday. The details were contained in a 440-page final report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on the unsuccessful search for flight MH370. The disappearance of the Boeing 777 on March 8, 2014, on a flight to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, has become one of the world s greatest aviation mysteries. The report concluded that the reasons for the loss of the aircraft could not be established with certainty until the aircraft was found. It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era...for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board, the ATSB said. The aircraft was thought to have been diverted thousands of miles off course out over the southern Indian Ocean before crashing off the coast of Western Australia. Australia, which led the underwater hunt, and Malaysia and China called off a A$200 million ($160 million) search for the plane in January, despite the protests of families of those onboard. Six weeks before the aircraft s disappearance, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah used his home simulator to fly a route that was initially similar to part of the route flown by MH370 up the Strait of Malacca, with a left-hand turn and track into the southern Indian Ocean, the ATSB said in its report. By the last data point the aircraft had flown approximately 4,200 nautical miles, the report said. This was further than was possible with the fuel loaded on board the aircraft for flight MH370. The simulated aircraft track was also inconsistent with those modeled using satellite signal data from MH370, the report said. However, the ATSB said there were enough similarities to the flight path of MH370 for the agency to carefully consider the possible implications for the underwater search area, including whether it glided after fuel exhaustion or was ditched in a controlled manner. Aircraft debris found later indicated the flaps were most likely retracted, which wasn t consistent with a controlled ditching, the report said. Australia s main scientific agency said in August it believes with unprecedented precision and certainty that the plane crashed northeast of the search zone. But those findings were dismissed by Australia s government at the time as not specific enough, and the search has not been re-opened. Doing so depends on finding credible, new evidence about the plane s whereabouts. The ATSB report published on Tuesday detailed the unsuccessful 1,046-day hunt for the plane, above and below the surface of the Indian Ocean, and scientific analyses of satellite pictures, sea currents and even barnacles found clinging to a piece of the plane found on Reunion Island. The understanding of where MH370 may be located is better now than it has ever been. The underwater search has eliminated most of the high probability areas, the ATSB said. We...deeply regret that we have not been able to locate the aircraft, nor those 239 souls on board that remain missing. It recommends aircraft and aircraft equipment manufacturers investigate providing better methods of automated satellite tracking for planes if they encounter problems during flight in future. Malaysia has continued to investigate the plane s whereabouts and in August said it received an offer from a private seabed exploration firm, Ocean Infinity, to resume the search. Malaysian investigators said in 2015 there was nothing suspicious in the financial, medical or personal histories of pilots or crew. (For a graphic on The world's largest search, click tmsnrt.rs/2xbonEn) | 0fake |
U.S. Finds Itself on Shakier Ground as Erdogan Confronts Mutiny - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — With all the crises in the Middle East, the Obama administration took solace in the fact that there was one reliable, democratically elected strongman — a stalwart member of NATO — that Washington could depend on: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. No matter how the coup attempt against Mr. Erdogan plays out over the next hours and days, that certainty is shattered. Until midafternoon Friday, American officials thought Mr. Erdogan had tightened his iron grip on his country. He had purged the judiciary jailed insouciant senior military officers three years ago and installed seemingly compliant successors and cracked down on the opposition and the news media. As one senior American diplomat said Friday evening, no one had come to work that day at the White House, the State Department or the C. I. A. expecting to see Mr. Erdogan turn to FaceTime on his iPhone to plead with the Turkish people to take to the streets in his defense. Even though the coup attempt appeared to be failing by early Saturday morning in Turkey, the country had suddenly become another tumultuous one in a region that knows no end of turmoil. Mr. Erdogan would almost certainly have to begin a purge of the plotters and probably hunt for other challengers to his authority — extending a streak of ruthlessness that has left many of his NATO allies gasping. Friday’s events could leave in limbo some of the top priorities of the United States and Europe. They rely on Turkey to help battle the Islamic State, to contain the flow of migrants out of Syria, and to host American intelligence agencies and NATO forces seeking to grapple with upheaval in the Middle East. The coup attempt “presents a dilemma to the United States and European governments: Do you support a nondemocratic coup,” or an “increasingly nondemocratic leader?” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, where Mr. Erdogan has often come to talk with Americans influential in the relationship between the two countries. To many in Washington, that dilemma is secondary to the question of whether Turkey will be a reliable partner in the battle against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, a willing host to American forces and a stable player in the world’s most volatile corner. American officials say the next 24 to 48 hours will be crucial in determining whether the coup attempt will have lasting repercussions. Unlike past bloodless coups in Turkey, this one does not have the implicitly understood support of the public, which appears to be divided over the military intervention. “The danger here is this could spiral out of control and turn into a civil war,” Eric S. Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey and former leading Pentagon official under President George W. Bush, said in a telephone interview on Friday. A military that appeared, on the surface, to be largely under the thumb of Mr. Erdogan is clearly riven with divisions so severe that the chief of staff appears to have been be detained while officers put tanks on the streets of Istanbul and the air force over Ankara, the capital. Mr. Erdogan has plenty of enemies, eager to see him weakened or removed from power. Among them are Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah who took power in a coup three years ago. The Russians, led by President Vladimir V. Putin, have tense relations with Mr. Erdogan, who has helped try to depose President Bashar of Syria. And Mr. Assad himself would likely be both pleased and amazed if he held onto power longer than Mr. Erdogan. Europeans would have plenty to worry about: Just a few months ago they struck a deal with Mr. Erdogan, paying Turkey more than $6 billion to hold onto Syrian migrants rather than let them flow into Western Europe, where many others had settled. It was the migrant crisis more than anything else, the Europeans believe, that led to Britain’s decision to exit the European Union. A failure to stem the flow, they feared, could lead to the breakup of Europe — a fear that American officials, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, shared. Of the many intelligence failures that surrounded the Arab Spring uprisings five years ago, the coup in Turkey may soon be added to the list. A senior administration official who deals with Middle Eastern issues said that American diplomats and intelligence agencies were, before Friday, near unanimous in their view that a coup attempt was highly unlikely there. Mr. Erdogan, in their view, was secure, the official said, bemoaning the state of American intelligence gathering in Turkey. In fact, diplomatic cables and intelligence reports written as recently as this month concluded that Mr. Erdogan had won enough support in the upper ranks of the military to head off any possible plots before they materialized, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reporting. Officials will spend a lot of time determining what they missed. But as Cengiz Candar, a Turkey expert with an online news outlet, noted on Friday evening, Mr. Erdogan “made a Faustian bargain with the military, and now the military is back. ” “It was an alliance,” Mr. Candar said, “but the military is not his friend — not emotionally, not institutionally, not ideologically. ” Washington had its own problems with Mr. Erdogan and the crosscurrents of Turkish politics. Mr. Erdogan came to power a seeming reformist, and for a while the country seemed to be a flowering democracy. It was not too many years ago that Turkey was cited by many in the United States as a model for the Islamic world, a country that, like Indonesia, could find the right mix of moderate Islamism and democracy. But for the past three years Mr. Erdogan’s crackdowns have become an increasing embarrassment to his NATO allies. His efforts to veer toward Islamism and crack down on the news media and opposition groups have left American officials caught between their instincts to support democracy and their reliance on an increasingly authoritarian leader. The State Department human rights report, updated last month, complained about new laws allowing the government “to restrict freedom of expression, the press and the internet,” and the arrests of more than 30 journalists. It reported on arbitrary arrests and the denial of fair trials. It complained that Mr. Erdogan’s campaign against the Kurds, and the government’s fear of the Kurdish separatist movement, meant that one NATO ally was bombing rebel groups in Syria while the United States and others were funding — and depending — on those same groups. Any prolonged instability in Turkey could impede Mr. Kerry’s latest effort to bring a to Syria, and perhaps threaten the American ability to operate from the major air base at Incirlik, where many of the operations against the Islamic State are launched. | 0fake |
Brandon Turbeville Interview With Voices Network: Serena Shim, Syria, Imperialism | diogenes on Poverty Rose in 96% of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency Contact Us We read all emails sent to us, but are too busy to respond to many. We greatly appreciate feedback and leads. to contact us. Learn more about us here . Syndication If you wish to reproduce any essays from this site:
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Why We Expect Health Disclosures From Presidential Candidates - The New York Times | As with so many elements of this presidential campaign, the way in which Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump have handled their medical histories feels strange, secretive and theatrical (Dr. Oz, anyone? ). But there’s a long and rich history of candidates concealing — even lying about — the details of their health. In the latest episode of The we talk to John Dickerson, a history buff, columnist at Slate and moderator of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” who recalls the United States’ pivotal brush with a president’s ailment: the heart attack of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955. Mr. Dickerson, the author of “Whistlestop,” a new book about the history of presidential campaigns, explains how the White House’s initial resistance to disclose the incident triggered something new in American public life: a deluge of deeply private medical information about the commander in chief. We also speak with the doctor who, more than anyone else, is responsible for our modern expectation that candidates give detailed disclosures about their health: Lawrence K. Altman, a reporter at The New York Times who was the first to interview candidates about their medical histories. Mr. Altman recalls his tough and sadly prescient question to Ronald Reagan when he was a candidate in 1980 about a potential condition that would later haunt him. We also hear from voters in Times Square about whether they even care about candidates’ health. Short answer: not particularly. One voter told us he’d be going with Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump. Was there anything about her health that might change that? “I’m pretty sure he’s crazy,” the man said, “and that’s more dangerous than her dying in office. ” From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link might help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 0fake |
UNREAL! HOUSE MOVES TO BAN SALE OR DISPLAY OF CONFEDERATE FLAG IN FEDERAL CEMETERIES | WHAT THE HECK! What s happened to the Southern leaders? Confederate flags should be placed on the graves of Civil War soldiers. This is way over the top and a knee-jerk reaction to the shooting in Charleston, SC.The House has voted to ban the display of Confederate flags at historic federal cemeteries in the deep South.The low-profile move came late Tuesday after a brief debate on a measure funding the National Park Service, which maintains 14 national cemeteries, most of which contain graves of Civil War soldiers.The proposal by California Democrat Jared Huffman would block the Park Service from allowing private groups from decorating the graves of southern soldiers with Confederate flags in states that commemorate Confederate Memorial Day. The cemeteries affected are the Andersonville and Vicksburg cemeteries in Georgia and Mississippi.Pressure has mounted to ban display of the flag on state and federal property in the wake of last month s tragic murders at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.SELLING CONFEDERATE FLAGS BANNED TOO:The House voted to affirm that stores on federal lands operated by the National Park Service cannot sell Confederate flags, in light of a new policy announced in the aftermath of the shooting in Charleston, S.C.Adoption of the amendment to the 2016 Interior Department appropriations bill came easily on a voice vote after just six minutes of debate, where no one spoke in opposition. The amendment reflects a policy announced by the National Park Service in June to ban the sale of Confederate flag merchandise from its gift shops and bookstores.Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the author of the amendment, said it was important that Congress prevent the sale of the Confederate image on federal property. This House now has an opportunity to add its voice, by ending the promotion of the cruel, racist legacy of the Confederacy, Huffman said. While many concessionaires have agreed to do this, I am dismayed by reports that some will continue to sell items with Confederate flag imagery. Read more: The Hill | 1real |
Trump supports free press but will call out false reports: Pence | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump believes in a free and independent press but he will not hesitate to point out flawed reporting, the U.S Vice President Mike Pence said on Monday. “Rest assured the president and I both strongly support a free and independent press but you can anticipate that the president and all of us will continue to call out the media when they play fast and loose with the facts,” Pence told a news conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. “When the media gets it wrong, President Trump will take his case straight to the American people to set the record straight,” he added. | 0fake |
Exclusive: Trump team seeks agency records on border barriers, surveillance | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a wide-ranging request for documents and analysis, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team asked the Department of Homeland Security last month to assess all assets available for border wall and barrier construction. The team also asked about the department’s capacity for expanding immigrant detention and about an aerial surveillance program that was scaled back by the Obama administration but remains popular with immigration hardliners. And it asked whether federal workers have altered biographic information kept by the department about immigrants out of concern for their civil liberties. DON'T MISS: Megyn Kelly leaving Fox News to join NBC Reuters TV: Trump fears grow in Mexico valley where dollar is king The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump’s transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials, according to an internal agency memo reviewed by Reuters. The document offers a glimpse into the president-elect’s strategy for securing the U.S. borders and reversing polices put in place by the Obama administration. Trump’s transition team did not comment in response to Reuters inquiries. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment. In response to the transition team request, U.S. Customs and Border Protection staffers identified more than 400 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, and about the same distance along the U.S.-Canada border, where new fencing could be erected, according to a document seen by Reuters. Reuters could not determine whether the Trump team is considering a northern border barrier. During the campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall and expand fencing on parts of the U.S.-Mexico border but said he sees no need to build a wall on the border with Canada. One program the transition team asked about, according to the email summary, was Operation Phalanx, an aerial surveillance program that authorizes 1,200 Army National Guard airmen to monitor the southern border for drug trafficking and illegal migration. The program once deployed 6,000 airmen under President George W. Bush but was downsized by Barack Obama, a move blasted by some conservatives who argue the surveillance is vital to border security. The transition team also asked for copies of every executive order and directive sent to immigration agents since Obama took office in 2009, according to the memo summarizing the meeting. Trump has said he intends to undo Obama’s executive actions on immigration, including a 2012 order to allow children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents to remain in the country on temporary authorizations that allow them to attend college and work. The program, known as DACA, collected information including participants’ addresses that could theoretically be used to locate and deport them if the policy is reversed. Another request of the transition team was for information about whether any migrant records have been changed for any reason, including for civil rights or civil liberties concerns, according to the internal memo seen by Reuters. A Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency interpreted the request to mean the transition team wanted to make sure that federal workers were not tampering with information to protect DACA recipients and other migrants from deportation. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to deport more undocumented immigrants, a promise that may have prompted the transition team’s request for information about the feasibility of expanding temporary detention facilities. The internal memo summarizing the meeting between Trump’s transition team and U.S. Customs and Border protection said the team had requested a comprehensive picture of border security as well as resources available for walls and barriers. The Department of Homeland Security official said agency representatives who attended the meeting believed the request to include both the northern and southern borders. U.S. Customs and Border Protection then prepared a report on specific locations and costs of building a fence along the U.S.-Canada border. Reuters reviewed a copy of the report, which estimated the cost of building fencing along the northern border fence would be $3.3 billion and cover 452 miles along border of Canada and the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Adding 413 miles of fencing on the southwest border would be more expensive, according to the estimate of $11.37 billion, because it would be aimed at keeping pedestrians as well as vehicles from crossing. Pedestrian fences require more staff and would cost $11.2 million per mile versus $4.1 million per mile to build to build, according to the report. In fiscal year 2015, the latest year for which data is available, border patrol agents apprehended 2,626 illegal migrants on the U.S.-Canada border compared to 331,333 apprehended on the U.S.-Mexico border. | 0fake |
Public vs. Media on War | Email
A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the U.S. public and the U.S. media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.
This poll was commissioned by that notorious leftwing hotbed of peaceniks, the Charles Koch Institute, along with the Center for the National Interest (previously the Nixon Center, and before that the humorously named Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom). The poll was conducted by Survey Sampling International.
They polled 1,000 registered voters from across the U.S. and across the political spectrum but slanted slightly toward older age groups. They asked:
“Over the last 15 years, do you think U.S. foreign policy has made Americans more or less safe?”
What, dear reader, do you say?
If you say less safe, you not only agree with dozens of top U.S. officials the week after they retire, but you agree with 52.5% of the people polled. Those who said “more safe” add up to 14%, while 25.2% said “about the same” and 8.3% just didn’t know.
Well, at least all these humanitarian wars to spread democracy and eliminate weapons and destroy terror have benefited the rest of the world, right?
Not according to the statistics that show terrorism on the rise during the war on terrorism, and not according to 50.5% of poll respondents who said U.S. foreign policy has made the world less safe. Meanwhile 12.6% said “more safe” while 24.1% said it was about the same and 12.8% didn’t know.
Asked about four wars in particular, registered U.S. voters said each of them had made the U.S. less secure, by a margin of 49.6% to 20.9% on Iraq, 42.2% to 18.9% on Libya, 42.2% to 24.3% on Afghanistan, and 40.8% to 32.1% on bombing ISIS in Syria.
These answers should not immediately be taken to prove that the U.S. public is universally wise and well informed, and (not coincidentally) at odds with U.S. media. Not only is that margin pretty slim on ISIS, but 43.3% of those polled said ISIS was the greatest threat the United States faces. Meanwhile 14.1% named Russia, 8.5% North Korea, 8.1% the national debt, 7.9% domestic terrorists, and bringing up the rear with the correct answer of global warming as the greatest threat were a grand total of 4.6% of those polled.
A survey of U.S. news reports would certainly suggest a point of agreement here between the public and the media. But here is where it gets interesting. Although the public believes the hype about danger emanating from these foreign forces, it does not favor the solution it is endlessly offered by the media and the U.S. government. When asked if, compared to last 15 years, the next president should use the U.S. military abroad less, 51.1% agreed, while 24.2% said it should be used more. And 80.0% said that any president should be required to get congressional authorization before committing the U.S. to military action, while 10.2% rejected that radical idea that’s been in the U.S. Constitution since day 1.
The U.S. public may look quite depressingly ignorant in a quick survey of Youtube videos, but check this out: Asked if the U.S. government should deploy U.S. troops on the ground in Syria 51.1% said no, compared to 23.5% who said yes. Only 10% said yes on Yemen, while 22.8% said no — however, 40.7% said the U.S. government should keep “supporting” Saudi Arabia in that war.
Good majorities also oppose Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, Germany acquiring nuclear weapons, or the U.S. defending Taiwan against a Chinese attack. (Who invents these scenarios?)
This moderately encouraging survey of public sentiment stands in stark contrast to U.S. media coverage of wars in general and Syria in particular. The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is ready for a bigger war as are columnists in the Washington Post and USA Today, as well as, of course Chuck Todd and other televised talking head. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton’s comment to Goldman Sachs that a “no fly zone” would require “killing a lot of Syrians” has received dramatically less press than her brave calls for creating a humanitarian no fly zone, and the steady depiction of that proposal as “doing something”— in contrast to the only other option: “doing nothing.”
The public, however, rejects the only “something” that’s on offer and just might leap at the opportunity to try something else, if anyone ever proposed anything else. | 1real |
HILLARY’S VP NOMINEE PANDERS TO BLACKS: “I done apologized for slavery” | Yes, he did say that bad grammar and all! Can you believe a man running for VP said something like that? Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., drew applause Thursday at the National Urban League conference in Baltimore for saying black lives are every bit as important and worthy of commemoration as the lives of the early American settlers, and for noting his public apology for slavery.VP Kaine wants to memorialize the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves at Jamestown because Black Lives Matter.Everybody is equal, he said. No kidding. As governor of Virginia, I did something that no other governor done: I officially apologized on behalf of the commonwealth of Virginia for slavery, he added. I done the same thing as mayor of Richmond. I worked to plan, fundraise and then construct and unveil a civil rights memorial on our capital grounds, he boasted.Aside from the bad grammar, why is he apologizing for something he didn t do for people who had nothing to do with slavery to people who were never enslaved? It s an apology for one purpose only to pander.Maybe he should apologize for the Crusades and the the Great Depression while he s at it. It makes as much sense.The far-left candidate s remarks were part of a larger address focused on criminal justice reform and social justice. Read more: Independent Sentinal | 1real |
CLASSLESS CLINTONS Spew Coordinated Lies Against Trump On Late Night Shows: Imply Trump is a Dictator [Video] | Bill Clinton went on the Conan show and spewed bitterness towards President Trump At one point, he insinuated that Trump is a member of the dictator s Club . He and Conan are both guilty of slamming our president while he s overseas trying to deal with the North Koreans and Chinese. The left will never stop with their bashing of Trump on a very personal level. It s not about policy but about name calling and nasty political games. Can you imagine if Obama had been treated even remotely like this? At one point in the interview Clinton says he thinks Trump is winging it What a jack wagon! This is a coordinated effort between the former president and his grifter wife to bash Trump. See the video below where Hillary claims she s worried about Trump s government Sure she is Did you catch the propaganda Clinton spewed about how America needs to import more immigrants ? This globalist is a traitor to Americans who are jobless. Do we really need to import more needy people? No! Bill and Hillary Clinton both went on late night shows to spew hate for President Trump. No class! These two grifters have been fleecing the American people for over 25 years! Can they just go away already? HILLARY SAYS SHE S WORRIED ABOUT TRUMP S GOVERNMENT: This was obviously a coordinated effort to bash Trump as inept. Shame on her!Did you notice the arrogance with both of these grifters? It s sickening! | 1real |
Kaspersky works with Interpol; Kremlin dismisses claims against firm | (Reuters) - Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday that it has expanded its relationship with global law enforcement agency Interpol, agreeing to share threat data to help police fight cyber crime. The company disclosed the agreement as the Kremlin dismissed claims by several U.S. newspapers that Israeli intelligence officials had determined that Russian government hackers were using Kaspersky s software for espionage. The reports were the latest in a series alleging the company and its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, have close ties to the Kremlin. Reuters has not been able to validate those claims. Kaspersky has repeatedly said it has not helped Russia or any other government engage in espionage. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday the Russian government believes the allegations against Kaspersky are without merit. He said that allegations, in articles in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, were absurd. The government has not had and does not have any connection to such activity, he said. The accusations are ungrounded and unproven. | 0fake |
Ex-FLOTUS Michelle Obama: Trump Wants to Feed ’Crap’ to Your Kids | lady Michelle Obama is calling into question the “motives” of those who oppose her bland, tasteless, and universally hated school lunch rules, insisting that those who oppose her ideas don’t care about kids and don’t mind if they “eat crap. ”[Speaking at the annual Partnership for a Healthier America conference, Michelle Obama responded with venom to critics of her school lunch program. Warming to her reply, Mrs. Obama slammed anyone who stood against her policy and characterized critics as people who don’t want kids to be healthy. Michelle Obama criticizes Trump administration’s decision on school lunch rules: “Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap. ” pic. twitter. — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 12, 2017, Saying, “This is where you have to look at motives,” Obama also hinted that she felt the only reason people opposed her nutrition rules is because people opposed her husband on a political level. “It’s not politics, it’s parenting,” she insisted. “You have to stop and think, ‘Why don’t you want our kids to have good food at school? What is wrong with you and why is that a partisan issue?” Obama said. “Why would that be political?” “Moms, think about this. I don’t care what state you live in, take me out of the equation, like me, don’t like me, but think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap,” the former first lady continued. “Because here’s the secret: If somebody is doing that, they don’t care about your kid, and we need to demand everyone to care deeply about our kids,” Obama exclaimed. “Every elected official on this planet should understand, don’t play with our children, don’t do it,” she concluded. Nowhere in the discussion did Obama note that it is the role of parents to guide their children’s eating habits, not that of the government. In another part of her appearance, Obama ran contrary to the penchant of liberals who constantly insist that children should be given the same power as adults. At one point, Michelle Obama claimed that kids should not have any say in the foods they eat at school. “How about we stop asking kids how they feel about their food? Kids, my kids included, if they could eat pizza and french fries every day with ice cream on top and a soda, they would think they were happy until they got sick,” she said during the session. “That to me is one of the most ridiculous things we talk about in this movement, that the kids aren’t happy. Well, you know what? Kids don’t like math, either. So what are we going to do, stop teaching math? We gonna cut history out because there are kids who are bored with history? We are the adults in the room, you know? They look to us. So let’s just stop with that. I’m good if kids are mad at me,” she concluded. Obama is unhappy that the Trump administration has begun the process of rolling back the unappetizing food restrictions the former first lady put into place during her husband’s tenure in the White House. Late last month, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue began easing some of the restrictions Obama worked to enforce in school lunch programs throughout the country. Perdue put in place an interim rule for the school year that suspended Obama’s requirements for sodium reduction and whole grains. The new rules also once again permitted flavored milk in school cafeterias. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0fake |
CASTRO IGNORES DISASTROUS COMMUNIST POLICIES That Destroyed Cubans: Blames World Leaders At UN Assembly For Allowing Millions To Go Hungry | If Obama had a communist friend he d be this poor victim Raul Castro the champion of human rights and justice What a dog and pony show.Cuban leader Raul Castro used his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly to lash out at the international body, saying Monday that member states have failed to produce much beyond an illusion of the human rights, justice and development promised in the charter.Castro made scant mention of last summer s landmark restoration of ties with the United States after a five-decade break, instead delivering a searing indictment of world superpowers for allowing millions to remain hungry, illiterate and at risk of death by curable illnesses while annual military expenses worldwide amount to more than $1.7 trillion. Barely a fraction of that figure could resolve the most pressing problems afflicting humanity, Castro said.Castro received warm applause and scattered cheers when he made his U.N. debut, and several Latin American and African leaders gave him a standing ovation at the end of his remarks, in apparent approval of his narrative that Western colonialism and imperialism are at the roots of today s conflicts. He didn t name names, but his allusions to the United States and its allies were clear as he criticized invasions and overthrows, the selective and discriminatory approach to human rights, and the threat of climate change stemming from an irrational and unsustainable consumerism. There have constantly been wars of aggression and interference in the internal affairs of the states, the ousting of sovereign governments by force, the so-called soft coups and the recolonization of territories, Castro said.Via: McClatchyDC | 1real |
Phyllis Chesler Disinvited from Academic Conference on Middle East Honor Killings - Breitbart | Scholar Phyllis Chesler was disinvited from a speaking event on honor killings at the University of Arkansas due to articles she has published on Breitbart News. [Chesler was slated to appear as a part of a conference at the University of Arkansas Law School’s King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies on honor killings, but was ultimately disinvited after concerns arose over Chesler’s alleged “Islamophobia. ” Three professors that work at the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies wrote a letter denouncing Chesler. In the letter, which was addressed to King Fahd Center Director Thomas Paradise, Professors Joel Gordon, Ted Swedenburg, and Mohja Kahf called Chesler a “bigot” and a “prominent Islamophobe” for her commentary on Islam. They expressed concerns that Chesler had her writings published by Breitbart News. Dear Tom: It has come to our attention that MEST is Phyllis Chesler to lecture via Skype at the University of Arkansas Law School’s symposium about honor killings on 14 April 2017. Chesler’s writings frequently feature on the Breitbart forum as well as many other platforms. They continued, claiming that Chesler’s perspective on Islam would violate the school’s mission to educate students on the Middle East. “Our work is to educate students on the Middle East, not to promote bigotry,” they wrote. “While we welcome respectful debate and diverse opinions, we believe that bigotry should not be promoted on this campus. ” Chesler was ultimately disinvited in response to the criticisms. You can read the letter in its entirety below: Dear Tom: It has come to our attention that MEST is Phyllis Chesler to lecture via Skype at the University of Arkansas Law School’s symposium about honor killings on 14 April 2017. Chesler’s writings frequently feature on the Breitbart forum as well as many other platforms. One disturbing example is the pamphlet, The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam, that Chesler in 2007 with Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, who is is considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be “one of America’s most prolific and vociferous propagandists. ” The pamphlet was published by David Horowitz’ Freedom Center, which frequently targets students and scholars for speaking out about justice for Palestinians. The pamphlet is a catalogue of horrors inflicted on women that are said to be the outcome of Islam’s essential nature. “Islamic gender apartheid,” Chesler and Spencer write, “is not caused by western imperialism, colonialism, or racism. It is indigenous to Islam both theologically and historically. ” Retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right, [except when] a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring” (section o1. ). Chesler has also said, “It’s easy to say, yes, the Muslims are against everyone who is not a Muslim. [ … ] The West, and that means Jews and Israelis, would like to lead sweet and peaceful lives. We’re up against an enemy now that is dying to kill us, that lives to kill, and that at best merely wishes to impose on the rest of us its laws and strictures. ” (Fern Sidman, “Israel Today Always: Breaking Ranks — An Interview With Phyllis Chesler,” The Jewish Press, August 15, 2007) Our work is to educate students on the Middle East, not to promote bigotry. The Executive Travel Order of February 2017 (which we all know is a xenophobic, Islamophobic, travesty of justice) specifically mentions as a means of differentiating Muslims and in so doing, it capitalizes on fear of Muslims, Honor killings are part of rape culture. Any manifestation of rape culture in any society, including the U. S. is reprehensible. Condemning rape culture and honor killings must not be tainted with bigotry and Islamophobia. While we welcome respectful debate and diverse opinions, we believe that bigotry should not be promoted on this campus. Our program in particular has the responsibility not to be the sponsor of an event featuring a prominent Islamophobe. Sponsoring an event with Chesler on the program sends the opposite message to our students. Sponsoring such a speaker also contributes to an unsafe environment for students on our campus already at risk for violence. We have asked that MEST provide, via Skype, a qualified speaker to follow Chesler’s remarks. This was deemed not feasible. We ask that MEST publicly withdraw its sponsorship from this symposium. We ask that MEST provide copies of the Islamophobia Is Racism syllabus, created by a collective of academics inspired by the Ferguson syllabus, for distribution at the symposium. We ask that MEST release a statement condemning Islamophobia and bigotry, and affirming its commitment to gender justice and diversity, and that this statement be read at the symposium. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 0fake |
WHY THIS BLUE-COLLAR DEMOCRAT STRONGHOLD County Is Still Fighting For Trump: “He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse” [VIDEO] | AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office; mining companies have added 1,200 jobs across the country since his inauguration, more than 180 of them in Kentucky. But industry analysts say that was tied largely to market forces and dismiss Trump s repeated pledges to resuscitate the coal industry as pie in the sky. Coal has been on the decline for many decades for many reasons outside of regulation: far cheaper natural gas, mechanization, thinning Appalachian seams. With the opposition he s had, I think he s pulling the plow pretty good, offers Wes Lewis from the card table. A few months ago, he says, he saw four brand-new coal rigs going through town. For the longest time, under Obama, all we saw were trucks being pulled on wreckers, because people turned belly up, they went broke. Lewis says he s heard about friends of friends being called back to work. He s noticed new trucks in people s driveways, too, which he takes as evidence that his neighbors are feeling confident about their futures. These tiny signs stack up to him as proof. Lewis fishes the tag out of the bib of his overalls: Made in Mexico, it reads. Trump s bringing them back, he says.Lewis, a registered Democrat, trusts Trump because he trusts his values. And because of that, he trusts Trump s other promises so strongly he can t think of anything that would shake that faith in him. If the factories and mines don t come back, he ll blame the opposition. If there isn t a wall on the Mexico border, he says, it won t be because Trump didn t try. If investigators find his campaign colluded with Russians, it s because so many people are so determined to bring him down.Go HERE to read entire story. | 1real |
Arvind Kejriwal promises to make Delhi pollution-free once he is made the Prime Minister | Arvind Kejriwal promises to make Delhi pollution-free once he is made the Prime Minister Posted on Tweet
Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal who has off late come a under lot of pressure on the crumbling state of the Indian capital due to severe air pollution has promised his critics to clean up the air in the capital once he is elected as the prime minister of India. The AAP supremo claims that an imandar sarkar at the center will ensure that the future Delhi state government gets in line thereby making Delhi a smog free city.
“Doston, the center is not allowing the state to function and that’s why I need to become the PM to perform the duties of the CM. Once I become the PM of India, I’ll have all the power to rule the capital and so, besides cleaning its air, several new flyovers would be made, there would be no traffic jams, 15 lakh CCTVs would be installed, free Wi-Fi will be provided for all, new DTC buses would be inducted, Yamuna would cleaned and most importantly Delhi would attain full statehood,” said Kejriwal.
“Even corrupt Sheila ji could clean Delhi’s air significantly by decongesting Delhi through flyovers and metro and it was only possible because she had support from the corrupt center. Corrupt-Corrupt mil ke kaam kar lete they [Corrupt and corrupt worked together] . Once I become the PM, I will give all the support to the city just like the old times,” he added, while speaking at a press conference wearing a gas mask.
On a question regarding state and center relations, Kejriwal said, “ Aisa bhi ho sakta hai [It might happen] that the future Delhi CM might not cooperate, but since we will be honest and strict, we will get the CM in line and make him perform all that we are not able to do now. In short I would not be a weak PM like Modiji,” said Kejriwal, and added, “And if the situation gets really bad, I can get Delhi under the center. And in the worst case scenario, I’ll become Delhi’s CM again. Whatever the case may be, I’ll ensure that Delhi becomes a clean and green city.”
AAP leaders have unanimously supported Arvind’s view point and claimed that they too need central ministry positions to solve all the problems of Delhi.
“If you want to fix the Delhi once and for all, the first step would be to help Kajariwal win the Punjab election and make him its CM. Once that is done we will take the next step and win the UP election and Kajariwal will be its CM also. Everyone knows that the party who wins the UP bags the center and thus by the 2019 he will become the prime minister of India to solve all the problems of Delhi state including air pollusion,” said AAP stalwart, Ashutosh.
(DMAN aka Divyamaan is the author of the spoof book ‘The Bogus Read’ ) Tweet About D-MAN
A jack of many trades who now wants to master some. Born wisecracker who makes every effort to get the maximum out of life. He facebooks here and tweets here . | 1real |
null | GUYS THE PURGE WONT HAPPEN ITS A MOVIE ITS FAKE IDIOTS | 1real |
WATCH: Trump Supporter Claims Confederate Flag Is Not Racist And Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery | It s truly sad that southern conservatives don t even know their own history.During a Donald Trump rally in Florida a group displayed a Confederate flag at the venue and were quickly told it had to be removed. The flag had a Trump 2016 message on it.When asked by CNN why he displayed it, Brandon Partin explained that he bought the flag because they were being sold outside the rally and he thought Donald Trump would approve of it being flown at the rally.And then Partin defended the flag as not racist and suggested the Civil War was not fought because of racism and slavery. Most people in our country don t understand the full history behind the flag. So, I understand that the media and a lot of other people are going to turn it into something that it s not, you know, say that it s a racist thing or, you know, white supremacist. I am not a white supremacist. And it was about the North and the South. It wasn t about racism at all. The North had African-Americans fighting for them and the South had them for them, too. So for people who spin it in that direction is just completely false. I think that on a personal level between my beliefs and Trump s beliefs, I don t think he would have a problem with it at all because he probably understands the history and that s why we re all here. Here s the video via YouTube:First of all, the idea that slaves willingly fought for the Confederacy is ludicrous. The slave-holding Confederates feared giving firearms to slaves. Plus, slaves would have been forced to fight because they would not have freely fought for their own continued enslavement. Also, the Confederacy only approved of forcing blacks to fight for them on March 13, 1865 in an act of desperation. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. Partin is right that a very small percentage of black people in the South were soldiers in the Confederacy, but that s only because they were pressed into service by their tyrant masters and didn t want to be slaughtered for disobeying.Furthermore, the Civil War and the Confederate flag was all about slavery and racism. As evidence, in their Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, South Carolinians prominently cited slavery as the major cause of the decision to leave the Union and begin the process of seizing control of forts and other United States government property.A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free, and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.In addition, Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens made it clear in his Cornerstone Speech that the Confederate government was founded on the belief that black people are an inferior race and that slavery is the cornerstone of the South. Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. In short, the Confederate flag waving morons are trying to re-write history to make the Confederacy look like it was this great paradise that the evil Union unjustly fought a war against in 1861-1865. The war of Northern aggression some conservatives call it. Except that the South fired the first shots at Fort Sumter in an effort to forcibly seize US Government property.It s time for conservatives to face facts. The Confederate flag is racist. The Civil War was fought over slavery. And the Confederates were a bunch of traitors whose descendants are still whining about a war they lost and are now supporting Trump because they believe he ll help them revive the cause, which again is all about subjugation, hatred, and oppression of people who don t have white skin.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
Breitbart News Releases e-Book: ’The First 100 Days of Trump’ | Breitbart News has released a new The First 100 Days of Trump, providing a concise yet comprehensive summary of each day’s events at the outset of the 45th presidency. [Written by Breitbart Senior Joel B. Pollak, the offers readers an overview of an historic, and often controversial, administration — from the early slew of executive orders, to the confirmation battle over Neil Gorsuch, to the air strike against Syria, and beyond. the Trump administration’s dramatic start, and have the facts at your disposal as you consider its progress so far and its prospects for the future. Click the following link to download the for free: Breitbart Special Report: The First 100 Days of Trump | 0fake |
BREAKING: LIBERAL MEDIA’S WORST NIGHTMARE Comes True…Kellyanne Conway Lands Top Position On Trump’s Team | Kellyanne Conway will be joining the White House as counselor to the president, the Trump transition team announced Thursday.Conway, Donald Trump s final campaign manager, has been a fierce advocate for the president-elect. Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory, Trump said in a statement. She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message. I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing, he added.Watch Conway as she masterfully deconstructs CNN s New Day host Alisyn Camerota s false accusations about Trump and exposes her overt and unprofessional allegiance to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign:Conway joins incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon in making up the most senior advisers in the Trump White House. NYP | 1real |
Obama running out of time to Pardon Clinton | Obama running out of time to Pardon Clinton 02.11.2016 AP photo By Michael Wells Friday, 11 days before the American Presidential election, FBI Director James Comey announced that he has re-opened the criminal investigation into Hillary Rodham Clinton , former American First Lady, regarding the private email server that she used to illegally circumvent the government's official, secure digital record storage and retrieval systems. Why she needs to be pardoned During the 4 years that she was Secretary of State under the Obama Administration, she admittedly diverted all official electronic communications that she sent or received through her own email server, which was not secured properly to store sensitive government information. This left the information vulnerable to hacking by criminals or other governments. Moreover, the server was in her non-approved basement location, which even left the digital records subject to possible physical theft. Print version Font Size She controlled which official communications got passed on to the government and which were selectively held back from the historic record of our country, with common sense telling us that the ones that incriminated her never made it to the official record. The collection, removal, or storage of sensitive government documents in an insecure location constitutes espionage under American law, and Clinton's dereliction of duty in securing the electronic documents is all that is needed to prove a crime. Even if she had "accidentally" left the information unsecured, her negligence would still constitute espionage . Not done with her yet The announcement by Comey on Friday that the investigation was once again open (based on newly discovered emails that were recovered from a laptop in an unrelated investigation of the husband of one of Clinton's aides) was a serious blow to the Clinton campaign, casting light once again on Clinton's deceptive and megalomaniacal character . (Note: the case was never "closed." It was technically still "open," pending finalizations and administrative procedures, but the investigation had completed and the case would have been closed pending those finalizations). Comey had originally declared the case against Clinton closed in July, stating that while Clinton had obviously broken laws, he felt that there was no reason to prosecute. This was a truly baffling decision, as the publicly-known facts of the case alone are enough to bring a successful espionage indictment. Not only had Clinton secretly housed and controlled government documents at her home, she actively destroyed subpoenaed documents . Clinton and her aides showed clear intent to mislead investigators in the face of a " mountain of evidence of her criminal behavior ." "Although there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," Comey stated in July when he originally "closed" the case. Equal treatment under the law Any other person in America who was investigated for mishandling state secrets, and there was "evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information," would face a swift and unpleasant prosecution for the Capital offense of espionage. They would be held in prison while the investigation and trial proceeded. One Navy submariner was recently charged with espionage for taking selfies in the engine room where he worked. Once he realized he was being investigated, he destroyed a laptop, cell phone, and memory card. He was charged under the Espionage Act and pleaded guilty to Retaining Classified Information on his phone, but the Obstruction of Justice charged was dropped. Even so, he faces 10 years in prison. By comparison, Clinton removed thousands of government documents, controlled which ones the government had access to, and housed them at her home for years exposed to hackers. According to the U. S. Code , this crime carries varying levels of prison time and monetary fines, with a maximum penalty of death, at the judge's disposal based on the actual specifics and severity of the case. The re-opening of the case is based on the recovery of several thousand new email messages, and it is going to take time to review and analyze the new material. This is not a task that will be completed before the Presidential election on November 8. Therefore, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the first Presidential candidate in history to be under criminal investigation for espionage by the FBI at the time of the election... unless she is pardoned first . It seems that the only chance her campaign has of winning now is if she receives a Presidential pardon, and quickly. This would completely absolve Clinton of any wrongdoing concerning her email server, and prevent her from being subject to prosecution for the crime or any related crimes, now or in the future. Her espionage crimes against the country would vanish, as though she had never done anything wrong. The Clinton Family would simply walk away from Hillary's 4-year international crime spree that resulted in the deaths of many of our most loyal Americans, while she represented the United States of America and wielded all the power that comes with being the Head of State to her personal gain. Obama had better hurry The sooner President Obama pardons her, the better the chance of Clinton's campaign successfully righting itself by feeding lies to the voters and attacking her opponent, Donald Trump . Having been pardoned will restore much of her credibility with her voters, who would tend to see it as a statement of innocence. With only 10 days until the election, Obama will need to act quickly to save his magnificent successor and seal his legacy as the true enabler of the most corrupt politician in history .President Obama pardoned 98 people Thursday, bringing the total number of people that he has expunged of guilt this year to 688. According to USA Today , this is "the most commutations ever granted by a president in a single year." It sounds like President Obama is quite familiar with the process of "officially forgiving" criminals for their digressions against humanity. Why wouldn't he forgive yet another career criminal, then, in a desperate bid to keep his political party in power? It's obvious that he will . He is too much of a pawn for the Clinton Machine to rise up against their power. That's why the world witnessed the head of the Justice Department (Loretta Lynch) improperly meet with Bill Clinton (the husband of the subject of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation) in a jet in Phoenix. That's why Lynch promised to accept the findings of the FBI during the first Clinton investigation, no matter what conclusion they reached - even though she had never done that before. And that's why you saw James Comey buckle and "close" the case the first time. It was (obviously, to the layman) a badly orchestrated "pretend Hillary didn't break the law" order that came down from Obama. James Comey stopped his investigation, as he was instructed, and came up with the "she's guilty but we're not going to prosecute" line. Director Comey has finally stood up to Clinton by "re-opening" the case, and he's playing a dangerous game by investigating her again. It is a widely accepted notion that crossing the Clintons can result in one's death , usually with "suicide" or "unusual circumstances" listed as the cause. Of course, there are rarely and suspects charged in these cases. Keep them out In my opinion, the world would be a better place without the Clintons in power, and America should keep them out of the Whitehouse at all costs. The FBI won't have time to indict Hillary before Obama pardons her, and the most corrupt politician in history will be cleansed of all wrongdoing, ready to destroy the most powerful office in the world with her greed and sense of entitlement. Michael J Wells | 1real |
SIX PROMINENT DEMOCRATS WHO CALLED FOR VIOLENCE Against Americans That Don’t Agree With Their Politics [VIDEO] | Today s act of terror against a GOP Congressional baseball team by a Bernie Sanders supporter was about as ugly and hateful as anyone could imagine. But no one should be surprised by this violent act, given how many leaders in the Democrat Party have been calling for violence against anyone who disagrees with their radical progressive agenda, starting with our former president and community organizer, Barack Obama. Below, is a list of 6 prominent Democrats who have called for violence against Americans who disagree with them. Of course, their actions have largely been ignored and deemed acceptable behavior by their allies in the mainstream media #1. President Obama s grassroots Organizing for Action, in a message to supporters, said that voters turned their back on them and it is time respond by fighting harder than we ever have before. That Barack Obama would suggest Democrats fight harder than ever before should come as no surprise to anyone who s been paying attention. The former president and community organizer is no stranger to calling for violence against anyone who doesn t agree with him.In 2008, he made a comment about rubbing out his opponents the Chicago way when he suggested If they [Republicans] bring a knife to the fight, we [Democrats] bring a gun. Obama also joked about rubbing out his opponents #TheChicagoWay:"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun, #Obama, Philly, 2008 John Kass (@John_Kass) August 10, 2016Here s a video highlighting some of our former community organizer in chief s violent comments:Scrapping any intention to work with the new administration, the message from OFA s BarackObama.com said, we re not backing down. The email to supporters was a clear rallying cry to fight the incoming Trump administration, despite Obama s pledge to help the new team.OFA s Jeremy Bird said, If you re anything like me, you re still sorting through the events of the past week and a half. It s hard there s no way to sugarcoat that. Vulnerable communities are feeling like this country has turned its back on them. And years of hard work are on the chopping block, seemingly overnight. Maybe you re feeling disillusioned, cynical, or frustrated. But now is not the time to walk away now is the time to get in the ring and fight harder than we ever have before. Washington Examiner#2. Hillary Clinton s former running mate Tim Kaine called for Democrats to fight in the streets against Trump. Kaine, whose son was recently charged for his involvement in a riot during a pro-Trump event, had appeared on MSNBC in January, calling for members of his party to fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box. Kaine s 24-year-old son Linwood Kaine was charged in May with fleeing police on foot, concealing his identity in a public place, and obstructing legal process, after a masked group he was with threw smoke bombs into a pro-Trump rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota in March.#2. Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch posted a video urging people to march, bleed, and die in the streets.In February, Obama s attorney general posted a video in which she urged people to march and bleed in the streets to resist the president and his administration. It has been people, individuals who have banded together, ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came together and supported those ideals who have made the difference. They ve marched, they ve bled and yes, some of them died. This is hard. Every good thing is. We have done this before. We can do this again, Lynch stated.#3. Hillary Clinton made a video where she told Democrats to RESIST and to stay engaged through activism. She praised the people who were marching and protesting against anyone who doesn t agree with their progressive agenda. Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and for our country. Clinton wrapped up her video by telling Democrats to, Keep fighting! Watch:#4. Madonna tells women s march that she fantasizes about blowing up the White House.During the unhinged aging pop star s vulgar speech at the rally, she demanded that this was the beginning of a revolution, and called Trump s win a horrific moment of darkness. Yes, I m angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, Madonna said. But I know that this won t change anything. We cannot fall into despair. -Big League Politics#5. Comedian Kathy Griffin made a career-ending decision to hold an ISIS inspired bloodied, decapitated head of President Trump up for a video, as part of a comedy act . No one but Kathy and some hate-filled Democrats thought it was funny:#6. Three weeks before President Trump s inauguration, another unhinged comedian Rosie O Donnell tweeted: DONALD TRUMP IS MENTALLY UNSTABLE. She added, LESS THAN 3 WEEKS TO STOP HIM AMERICA. Stop him? Was Rosie calling for someone to harm or to take out Donald Trump before his inauguration? It sure sounds like it to us! | 1real |
Factbox: Key policies of Austria's conservative/far-right coalition | VIENNA (Reuters) - Ministers from Austria s main conservative People s Party (OVP) and the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) were sworn in on Monday, making it the only western European country with a far-right component in its governing coalition. Below are some of the policies that new chancellor Sebastian Kurz s OVP and Heinz-Christian Strache s FPO have already agreed on. For the entire program in German please click [here] ** Oppose deeper political integration among EU members states, seek to have more powers returned to national governments. Oppose Turkey s bid to join the EU. ** Rule out a referendum on Austrian membership of the EU. ** Move some departments that deal with European affairs, including the task force preparing Austria s EU presidency in the second half of 2018, to the chancellery headed by Kurz. (The FPO will take control of the Foreign Ministry). ** Push for more relaxed relationship between West and Russia. ** Introduce tougher minimum sentences for violent and sex crimes. ** Make fighting political Islam a priority. ** Secure Austria s borders nationally to stop illegal immigration until the EU has secured external frontiers. ** Put around 2,100 more policemen on the streets. ** Extend the maximum working day to 12 hours from 10. ** Facilitate immigration only for qualified workers in sectors that are struggling to find suitable Austrian employees. ** Simplify administrative framework in highly federalized Austria. ** Support construction of third runway at Vienna Airport. ** Focus on improving test results in basic skills such as reading, writing and numeracy, allow children to start school only if their German is good enough. ** Cut social benefits for parents who fail to comply with certain requirements, like ensuring attendance and that their child speaks German well enough. ** Cut public spending to fund tax cuts. Kurz and Strache repeatedly said during their campaigns that they planned to cut public spending by around 12 billion euros ($14.1 billion). ** Reduce corporate tax burden, for example by exempting profit reinvested in Austria. ** Not introduce wealth or inheritance taxes. ** Introduce public debt brake in the constitution. ** Push, also at a European level, for higher taxes on online transactions with foreign companies. ** Block newcomers from accessing many social services in Austria in their first five years in the country. ** Cap the main basic benefit payment at 1,500 euros a month for families and provide refugees with a light version of regular benefits. ** Cut benefits for refugees and turn cash payments into benefits in kind so as to minimize what they say is a pull factor attracting immigrants to the country. ** Reform the state pension system to reflect Austria s ageing population. ** Give families a tax cut worth 1,500 euros per child per year. ** Merge Austria s 22 public health and other social security funds into five entities to cut administrative costs. ** Produce 100 percent of Austria s power from renewable sources by 2030, compared with roughly 33 percent at present, and keep the national ban on nuclear power plants. ** Gradual introduction of legislation to allow a referendum to take place if at least 900,000 voters support the issue. ** Rule out referendums on Austrian membership of the EU; support the European-Canadian trade deal CETA. ** Overturn a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants that is due to come into effect in May 2018. ($1 = 0.8497 euros) | 0fake |
JPMorgan Pays $264 Million Fine For Bribing Chinese Officials | JPMorgan is, once again, paying money out to federal regulators for its chronic criminal activity. The latest payment of $264 million comes after it was discovered that the Too Big To Fail/Jail bank hired the relatives of Chinese government officials to win business in China—a clear violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
According to the Department of Justice, JPMorgan will pay a $72 million criminal penalty to the Department of Justice, a civil penalty of $61.9 million assessed by the Federal Reserve, and a $130.5 million disgorgement to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for a total of $264.4 million in fines.
In its statement, the SEC claimed “investment bankers at JPMorgan’s subsidiary in Asia created a client referral hiring program that bypassed the firm’s normal hiring process and rewarded job candidates referred by client executives and influential government officials with well-paying, career-building JPMorgan employment. During a seven-year period, JPMorgan hired approximately 100 interns and full-time employees at the request of foreign government officials, enabling the firm to win or retain business resulting in more than $100 million in revenues to JPMorgan.”
Amazingly, the corrupt practices were so common at JPMorgan that company executives used “Referral Hires vs Revenue” spreadsheets to show how the bribes were paying off. Not a single referral was denied, even though many of the children, relatives, and friends of the Chinese elite were not qualified for the jobs they received.
In fact, some of the hires were so incompetent they were referred to within JPMorgan as “photocopiers.” So much for meritocracy.
JPMorgan executives certainly knew they were violating FCPA, but the money was just too good. And, given the Justice Department’s track record of not prosecuting individual law breakers on Wall Street, what did they have to lose? JPMorgan’s criminality is pretty rational when analyzed fully.
While US regulators are happy to celebrate the fines, the Chinese government appears less-than-enthusiastic about diving into the scandal. The Financial Times speculates this may be because the Chinese anti-corruption authority, known as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), has no idea where an investigation into the hiring program will take them.
Given the large amount of Chinese government business steered JPMorgan’s way (over $100 million) it seems likely the Chinese officials involved are people of considerable influence. CCDI typically targets lower-level officials and, when it goes high, it has the support of the Communist Party, which is, after all, the ruling authority in China.
Like most countries, China does not have the ridiculous light touch for corruption that the US has. If cited for corruption in China, a government official or businessperson is likely to go to jail. JPMorgan has broken the law perpetually and has yet to face serious consequences, despite a new 2015 directive at the Justice Department to hold individual corporate executives accountable for wrongdoing.
The post JPMorgan Pays $264 Million Fine For Bribing Chinese Officials appeared first on Shadowproof .
| 1real |
Trump Budget Proposal Reflects Working-Class Resentment of the Poor - The New York Times | You could almost hear the gasps from both sides of the ideological divide when President Trump unveiled the outline of his first budget late last month, proposing to slice $54 billion from the discretionary civilian budget next year to pay for a defense. That part of the budget pays for pretty much everything the government does other than the military, pensions and health insurance for older people. And it has been slashed repeatedly already. It adds up to only some $500 billion, hardly the best place to balance a $4 trillion federal budget. After Mr. Trump’s proposed cuts it would be 25 percent smaller than it was in 2010, adjusted for inflation. Even Republicans in Congress, no friends of government spending, argued that the math made little sense. While they share Mr. Trump’s twin goals of balancing the budget and slashing taxes, they would prefer to square the circle by cutting the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare. And yet Mr. Trump’s approach possesses a powerful political logic: The frazzled, anxious men and women who voted for him like Social Security, Medicare and defense. Other government spending, not so much. Notably, there is little political cost for Mr. Trump — in fact, potential benefit — in going after programs for the poor. These programs appeal to two constituencies that voters show little affinity for: the poor and urban liberal elites who can express enormous sympathy for the disenfranchised while ignoring the struggle of the white working class. While Mr. Trump is not the first Republican to propose cutting programs to pay for tax cuts, his bluntness breaks, at least rhetorically, with a Republican establishment that insists it cares about poverty. His political calculation could, paradoxically, protect Social Security and Medicare, entitlements that the Republican Party has tried so hard to rein in. But in areas as diverse as food stamps and housing assistance, education for the disadvantaged and Head Start, it could further fray the rest of America’s threadbare social safety net. In “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America,” due out in May from Harvard Business Review Press, Joan C. Williams argues that white workers’ resentment of the safety net should not be surprising: They get next to no benefit from it. Ms. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, writes that these struggling workers resent not only the poor beneficiaries of the government’s largess but also the liberal policy makers who seem to believe that only the poor are deserving of help. And they bristle at the perceived condescension of a liberal elite that seems to blame them for their failure to acquire the necessary skills to rise to the professional class. By contrast, they see themselves as citizens who struggle to make ends meet, only to be left out of many of the government programs their taxes pay for. Over all, 61 percent of poor Americans draw from one benefit program or another, according to an analysis by the Census Bureau. But among families with incomes above the poverty line — many of which are barely better off, making just over $24, 000 for a family of four — only 13 percent do. Struggling families may not understand that welfare programs are so meager that the poor hardly get any help. But they can directly understand that they missed out on the tax credit because their family income hit $50, 000. It is not surprising that harried working mothers resent that 30 percent of families using child care receive some form of subsidy while families get next to nothing. “All they see is their daily lives, and they resent subsidies and sympathy available to the poor,” Professor Williams wrote. President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act — the most significant expansion of the safety net since the War on Poverty in the 1960s — has unsurprisingly bred class resentment, too. Many disgruntled workers see it as another program for poor people that just pushed up their own premiums, offering little of benefit. The whites who turned out so enthusiastically for Mr. Trump include people like Lee Sherman, 82, from Louisiana, living precariously on Social Security after a life of hard and dangerous work fitting pipes, and exposed to all manner of toxic chemicals, at a petrochemical plant. Aversion to the safety net is built into his moral view of the world. “He knew liberal Democrats wanted him to care more about welfare recipients,” wrote the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who portrayed Mr. Sherman in her book “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” (The New Press). “But he didn’t want their P. C. rules telling him who to feel sorry for. ” To people like Mr. Sherman, government benefits tied to work, like Social Security and unemployment insurance, are legitimate rewards for one’s effort. Welfare recipients, by contrast, just “lazed around days and partied at nights,” he told Professor Hochschild. Racial mistrust is never far from the surface: Only 13 percent of whites draw benefits from programs, according to the Census Bureau analysis, compared with 42 percent of and 36 percent of Hispanics. So while most beneficiaries of welfare programs are white, many whites perceive them as schemes to hand their tax dollars to minorities. Mr. Trump’s agenda serves both race and class resentment: Whites are twice as likely as blacks to prefer a smaller government, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Among Americans, 56 percent would like the government to be smaller and offer fewer services, while among the poor, only 38 percent would like the government to shrink. It is the whites whom Mr. Trump has promised to serve. These resentments are hard to swallow on the left of the political spectrum. Since the 1960s, at least, liberal activists have held to the belief that a grand progressive alliance was possible: working men and women, the poor, immigrants, racial and other minorities coming together in a coalition to counter conservatives and their corporate allies. November’s election — when whites without a college degree voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton by 39 percentage points — pretty much drove a stake into those hopes. But could they be revived? As the president takes an ax to much of the government, the pressing question for liberals is whether a coalition can be built to protect the meager social safety net that remains. Could they draw back in the white voters who rejected them so soundly in November? These voters care less about gender rights and minorities. They may not share liberal views on abortion rights. They are unlikely to support a safety net that allows a poor woman to stay at home while offering nothing to a couple day and night shifts to care for their children. But, Professor Williams notes, the liberal goal can’t be saved without them: “If America’s policy makers better understood white anger against the social safety net, they might have a shot at creating programs that don’t get gutted in this way. ” | 0fake |
Colombia’s President, Juan Manuel Santos, Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize - The New York Times | The president of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with a leftist rebel group, the war in the Americas, just five days after Colombians rejected the agreement in a shocking referendum result. The decision to give the prize to President Juan Manuel Santos may revive hopes for the agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with whom the country has been waging the last major guerrilla struggle in Latin America. Mr. Santos said he was told of the Nobel committee’s decision by his son Martín, who woke him before dawn on Friday. The winner dedicated the prize to his fellow Colombians, especially the victims of the long conflict, and called on the opponents of the peace deal to join him in securing an end to hostilities. “I invite everyone to join our strength, our minds and our hearts in this great national endeavor so that we can win the most important prize of all: peace in Colombia,” he said alongside his wife during his first public appearance since the Nobel announcement. But Colombians are so deeply polarized over the issue, it was not clear the prize would do much to shift public opinion. If anything, voters seemed to dig into their positions after the announcement. “They rushed in giving him this prize,” said Marianella Suárez, 36, who works at a shoe warehouse in Bogotá and voted against the peace deal. “This didn’t seem the right moment. He hasn’t achieved peace, and we don’t know if the FARC will accept jail time for their crimes. ” Jairo Rodríguez, a driver who supported the deal, said he hoped the prize would ease the renegotiation and soften the stances of like Álvaro Uribe, Mr. Santos’s predecessor as president, who led the campaign against the deal. “We all want peace,” he said. Colombian voters threw out the peace deal just days after the government invited world leaders to a celebratory signing ceremony, leaving the fate of the agreement — along with Mr. Santos’s legacy — in limbo. Despite the setback, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized Mr. Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than civil war to an end. ” In announcing the award, Kaci Kullmann Five, the chairwoman of the committee, commended Mr. Santos for starting the process, even as she acknowledged that the people of Colombia had rejected the outcome. She said she hoped that awarding the prize to Mr. Santos would act as a spur for a future agreement. “The committee hopes that the peace prize will give him strength to succeed in this demanding task,” she said. “Further, it is the committee’s hope that in the years to come, the Colombian people will reap the fruits of the reconciliation process. ” While it remains hard to say what effect it will have, Juan Cristóbal, who researches public opinion and political campaigns at Javeriana University in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, said the main outcome would be to lift morale among the deal’s supporters and the government negotiators. “It gives more legitimacy to continue this process whose results have left the government exhausted,” he said. “It says to the government: ‘Yes, continue your work. ’” News of the award stirred excitement on Friday in Colombia, where Mr. Santos is the second man from his country to win a Nobel Prize, after the novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who won the literature prize in 1982. Even some who had opposed Mr. Santos in the peace deal offered him well wishes, though they quickly spun the news to their own ends. “I congratulate President Santos for the Nobel,” Mr. Uribe said . “I want him to lead to change these peace accords that are damaging to democracy. ” Others saw the prize as a blow to opponents like Mr. Uribe. “It’s a call to all those who have, through deception, wanted to throw this process to the ground — that they stop this and that they join this national reconciliation,” said Ivan Cépeda, a senator who was involved in the negotiations. The prize appeared to breathe life into hopes among supporters that a deal could yet be clinched. “This has given us a boost to push us to keep working for peace,” Silvia Berrocal, the leader of a group backing the deal, said on a radio station Friday morning. The committee members, whose deliberations are conducted in strict secrecy, have a reputation for surprises, and this year was no exception. While Mr. Santos had been mentioned as a possibility, to many the leading candidate was the White Helmets volunteer group in Syria. On Friday, its proponents expressed their disappointment on Twitter, even as the group itself sent a note of congratulations to Mr. Santos. A United economist from a wealthy family in Bogotá, Mr. Santos rose to power as the defense minister under Mr. Uribe. In that capacity, he organized an intense counterinsurgency campaign that diminished the FARC and wiped out many of its commanders. As president, Mr. Santos staked his legacy on ending the war. The peace accord, announced in August, was the culmination of four years of negotiations in Havana, as the Colombian government and the rebels worked their way through a series of impasses. It outlined a timetable for the rebels to abandon their arms and set out a pathway for former fighters to civilian life — and, in some cases, run for office. The war has claimed about 220, 000 lives and displaced more than five million people. The peace talks brought back old scars, from kidnappings, to the rape of women in rebel camps, to decades of drug trafficking as the FARC muscled its way into the cocaine trade. Mr. Santos resisted calls for tough prison sentences for the FARC, saying that would push them away from the table and back to the war. The first signs of resistance to the accord emerged this spring, when Mr. Uribe mounted rallies against it and portrayed the president as a “traitor” willing to excuse the FARC’s crimes just to get a deal. Apparently, many Colombians agreed, although they were unwilling to admit as much to pollsters, who had predicted the referendum would win by a wide margin. In the end, it failed narrowly, with 50. 2 percent voting against it. In an interview last month, Mr. Santos said he had struck the right balance in the agreement. “We need to achieve the maximum justice possible, but that would allow us peace,” he said. “I think we struck that equilibrium. ” But he acknowledged lingering concerns about the deal. “Making peace is much more difficult than making war because you need to change sentiments of people, people who have suffered, to try to persuade them to forgive,” he said. This week, Mr. Santos searched for ways to save the pact, meeting with Mr. Uribe and other opponents. Experts say the two sides may either seek quick changes to the agreement — probably including jail time for some rebel leaders — or engage in a protracted renegotiation. Mr. Santos has warned that a with the rebels will expire on Oct. 31. Asked why the committee had not extended the award to other parties to the negotiation, notably the FARC commander in chief, Rodrigo Londoño, known by his nom de guerre, Timoleón Jiménez, Ms. Kullmann Five said the committee never commented on those who did not receive the award. But she said that there “are strong reasons to put a light on the president himself,” and that “his role as president” and “the keeper of the process” had been instrumental in securing a deal. Mr. Londoño, who has pledged to pursue a political solution to the conflict despite the referendum setback, congratulated Mr. Santos and thanked other Latin American countries for aiding the talks. The committee made its selection from 376 candidates, a record. Of the candidates, 228 were individuals and 148 were organizations. Candidates can be nominated by heads of state, top government officials and lawmakers certain judges and professors past winners of the prize and former and current members of the committee, among others. The prize amount this year is 8 million Swedish kronor, or about $930, 000. | 0fake |
Clinton, Kasich win New York Times endorsement in U.S. presidential race | (Reuters) - The New York Times’s editorial board endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John Kasich as they seek to become their parties’ nominees in the U.S. presidential election, calling Clinton one of the most “deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.” Clinton, a front-runner facing a strong challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders, and Kasich, who has only dimly registered in the polls, received the endorsements from one of the nation’s largest newspapers two days before voters in Iowa hold the first nominating contest for the Nov. 8 election. “Mr Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs Clinton offers,” the board wrote, after praising him for making important points about economic inequality and foreign policy. The board praised Clinton’s term as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, and said she had shown a lifelong commitment to American workers, particularly women. The board criticized her as too quick to propose using military force abroad, but said she still would be a better military leader than her Republican rivals. The Times editorial board previously endorsed Clinton in 2008, when she ran against Barack Obama. In that endorsement, it also argued that Clinton had more experience and had presented more detailed policy ideas than her rival. Kasich, the governor of Ohio, was the only candidate in the crowded Republican field the board said it was able to stomach. “Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, though a distinct underdog, is the only plausible choice for Republicans tired of the extremism and inexperience on display in this race,” the board wrote. It said Kasich had “been capable of compromise and believes in the ability of government to improve lives.” The board said that front-runner Donald Trump did not have experience of international issues or interest in learning about them. It said Ted Cruz would “say anything to win.” (Reporting by Mary Milliken; Editing by Kevin Liffey) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
Trump signs memo directing Pentagon to implement transgender ban | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that directs the U.S. military not to accept transgender men and women as recruits and halts the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgeries for active personnel unless the process is already underway. The memo, released by the White House, laid out in more detail a ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. armed forces that Trump announced via Twitter last month, reversing a policy shift started under his predecessor, President Barack Obama. In it, Trump directed the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to stop using government funds for sex-reassignment procedures unless it is necessary “to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex,” the memo said. The order requires Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to determine in the coming months how to handle transgender individuals currently serving in the military using criteria including “military effectiveness and lethality,” budget constraints and law. A White House official who briefed reporters about the memo declined to specify whether transgender service men and women who are currently active in the military could continue to serve based on such criteria. The official said Trump decided the Obama administration had not identified a sufficient basis for changing what was then long-standing policy on transgender troops. The memo called on Mattis to submit a plan to Trump by February 21, 2018, on how to implement the changes. Trump’s decision appealed to some in his conservative political base while creating uncertainty for thousands of transgender service members, many of whom came out after the Pentagon said in 2016 it would allow transgender people to serve openly. The change drew swift criticism from advocates of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. “The President’s order to remove transgender service members from the United States armed forces and deny them healthcare is nothing less than a purge,” Matt Thorn, executive director of OutServe-SLDN, a group dedicated to LGBT equality in the military, said in a statement. “Our military is strongest when all people who are fit to serve have the opportunity to do so. This unprecedented policy amounts to a purge of qualified, contributing troops, and will serve only to undermine unit cohesion and weaken military readiness,” said Jennifer Levi, an official at the gay rights group GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders) in a statement. Asked how the policy squared with Trump’s pledge to stand up for gay rights, the White House official said the president would ensure that such rights were protected but had been critical previously of the transgender changes under the Obama administration. | 0fake |
Brexit Lost: Scuppered By May and High Court | Home | World | Brexit Lost: Scuppered By May and High Court Brexit Lost: Scuppered By May and High Court By Mr. Charrington 03/11/2016 11:48:44
LONDON – England – The High Court decision today to deny the EU Referendum result is a sign that we are not living in a democracy or a sovereign country.
Today is a very sad day for democracy within the UK, and Theresa May a Remain supporter is instrumental in denying the will of the British people to leave the EU.
Dithering and Delaying Tactics
Through numerous delaying tactics , and the installation of key government posts of Remain campaign MPs, the Brexit referendum was thwarted.
If the government had repealed the 1972 European Communities Act immediately the EU referendum result would be well on the way to materialising.
The total nonchalance and denial of the EU referendum result is firmly on Theresa May’s head and her appointment of Hammond as Chancellor of the Exchequer was a further sign that May was not serious about the EU referendum result.
Injustice
The High Court ruling today which is intrusive and false, as well as being undemocratic is a further signal that we are currently not living in a sovereign nation and it is totally controlled by Brussels.
During the EU Referendum, MPs had their say , MPs campaigned, and when it came to vote in the referendum, they voted. Therefore, parliament has already had a say in the EU referendum, and by going to the High Court, these traitors have sought to annul a democratic vote which was held on June 23 2016.
This ruling is a shameful reminder that Britain has lost all sovereign status to the EU entity, it is a sad day for democracy, for the will of the people and ultimately for the country.
17.5 Million People Will Vote on Election Day
In these circumstances, we must as a people show our displeasure at being circumvented by not voting during the next election for any MP or party who is EU centric.
This is not over. | 1real |
Five Reasons the New York Democratic Primary Felt Competitive | NEW YORK, N.Y. — If Hillary Clinton is winning the Democratic presidential race, why has it felt like she’s losing? Yes, Mrs. Clinton scored an important victory in New York Tuesday, winning her adopted home state in the primary. But should the outcome ever have been in doubt?As a former senator from New York she […] | 0fake |
Republican Congress takes on Washington, D.C., laws to local outrage | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A vote by U.S. House Republicans on Monday to strike down a Washington, D.C., law that would allow doctor-assisted suicide has put the conservative Congress on a collision course with the liberal city that hosts it, local officials said. In the District of Columbia, where just 4 percent of the population voted for President Donald Trump, city leaders worry that Republicans will overturn progressive laws on issues like gun control and abortion, to the outrage of locals who have long complained of curtailed rights. One of the most liberal U.S. cities, Washington is unique in that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the option to block its legislative moves. Its 680,000 residents pay federal income taxes but have no voting representative in Congress. “This is yet another attempt by this House committee to trample the autonomy of the D.C. Government and undermine our local control,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who signed the assisted suicide law in December, said in a statement after the signing. Monday’s vote by the House Oversight Committee, headed by Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, took the first step in overturning the measure letting doctors help terminally ill patients end their lives. The full House and Senate would now have to vote and Trump would have to sign a repeal by Friday, the 30-day deadline for Congress to act. “Congressman Jason Chaffetz has sent a signal to D.C. residents that Congress has zero respect or concern for their will or the will of their elected officials,” Bowser said. Bowser called the vote a power grab by legislators who espouse states’ right to make their own laws but differ when the heavily Democratic city is involved. The vote was the first in a series of Republican-sponsored measures taking on city laws. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida last month introduced legislation that would bar city lawmakers from passing gun control laws and repeal local firearm registration requirements. Rubio said the measure, aimed at Washington, was needed to protect residents’ constitutional right to bear arms. The House also has approved a bill that would permanently ban the District from using local tax funds for abortions for poor women. Congress granted the 68-square-mile (117-square-km) enclave a mayor and council in the 1970s and has voided only a handful of District laws since then. But Chaffetz has pledged to intensify scrutiny, saying at Monday’s hearing that the assisted suicide law could create “a marketplace for death.” Washington’s city council has passed laws in recent years on issues dear to liberal Democrats nationally. These include a $15-an-hour minimum wage, legalized recreational marijuana and one of the country’s most generous family leave laws. “The District is a progressive jurisdiction in the midst of a conservative Congress,” Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s congressional representative, said in a phone interview. Washington leaders have relied on the Senate, which has long had less appetite than the House to interfere with District laws. The city also had an ally in Democratic President Barack Obama. That protection is gone, Norton said. | 0fake |
‘Obviously, Marital Vows Mean Nothing to Him’ - The New York Times | Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment. 1. “ ‘And when you’re a star they let you do it,’ Mr. Trump says. ‘You can do anything.’ ” Pay no taxes. Insult whomever you wish. Shoot an immigrant on Fifth Avenue. Fire the losers who support you. — SBMD in Florida, reacting to an article about a tape that captures Donald J. Trump speaking in vulgar terms about groping women. 2. A private conversation which reflects his public behavior. The man has no discretion. Other presidents may have been equally interested in scoring with women but they had the grace not to demean them in public. Obviously, marital vows mean nothing to him, which raises the question what vows will he keep, i. e. [to] uphold the Constitution and fulfill the duties of office of the presidency, so help me God? — Angela Mogin in San Mateo, Calif. 3. Trump paid exactly what was required of him by law, so what’s the issue? Should he have offered to pay more than what was owed? How many people on here can say that come tax time they wish to pay over and above what they owe? — Tom Langlais on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to our reporting about Mr. Trump’s 1995 taxes, which showed a $916 million loss, enough to enable Mr. Trump to avoid paying federal income tax for up to 18 years. This comment received more than 700 likes. 4. It is nobody’s obligation to pay more tax than the law demands. If Donald Trump could order his affairs in such a way that his income tax responsibility was ZERO for any particular year, or series of years, that’s fine with me. But whether or not Donald Trump pays taxes is NOT the issue. The issue is whether or not the tax system is fair. If the law is such that Donald Trump could have the kind of money he has and actually owe no federal income tax, then the law needs to be changed drastically. So ask yourself: Which party, and which candidate, do you think is sincerely interested in changing the income tax laws to make them fairer for the vast majority of us, rather than something to be manipulated by the wealthy? — Boneisha in Atlanta. 5. Mr. Kaine brilliantly phrased the only question worth asking when he repeatedly grilled Mr. Pence, “Why don’t you trust women to make this choice?” I was (surprisingly) moved to tears to hear a man say these words with so much force and conviction. In my 45 years I have never heard a politician stick his neck out for women’s rights like he did. — Alibumbayay in Washington, reacting to an essay by Katha Pollitt about the debate and the candidates’ views on abortion and women’s rights. This comment received more than 1, 700 reader recommendations. 6. It was so refreshing to hear Mike Pence speak about his position and not apologize for his beliefs. Some may not see this as the most important factor for voting for a presidential candidate but many of us still feel it is necessary to discuss abortion and the threat to innocent human life. To me it is very important and I want my president to respect and value life. I wish the Democrats cared about abortion and the destruction it causes as much as they do about other political issues such as free education and health care. — KMW in New York. This comment received more than 40 reader responses. 7. Far from being a distraction from “real issues,” I think looking at the candidates’ marriage histories tells us a lot about how they may govern as president. My takeaway is that Hillary sees all that is good inside a flawed relationship, and instead of abandoning it when unpleasant truths emerge, she confronts the problem, and works to figure out how to save what’s good and change the bad. That’s exactly her approach to governing. Trump, in contrast, appears to view marriage like car ownership. He loves to show it off, and really enjoys the ride, but upgrades to a newer model every six years or so. That same mentality is evident in his policy prescriptions for international treaties, trade agreements, and public policy. Once something stops being 100% favorable to him, it’s time to replace it with something brand new, without any real analysis or thought to consequences. I think any voter, regardless of party, who has survived and flourished in a relationship will clearly recognize how meaningful the wisdom and tolerance, and empathy, and capacity for compromise that marriage engenders is perhaps the most telling qualification for serving as president. — DavidH in Brooklyn, responding to an article about Hillary Clinton’s reactions to Bill Clinton’s affairs during their political careers. This comment received more than 700 reader recommendations. 8. I really hope that common ground can be found. A telescope is no power plant and while it certainly has environmental impacts, those impacts can be reduced to a minimum, when given a little attention and foresight. I believe the protests against this particular telescope, and the telescopes in general, are more of a symptom of how the native [Hawaiians] feel about their general treatment and how little they have been involved in processes affecting their cultural and historical backgrounds. This is a possibility for them to shine some light on their situation and get media attention. If both sides are a solution can surely be found. — Pierre Markuse in Germany, reacting to an article about a clash between astronomers and native Hawaiians over a proposed telescope, which would be the biggest and most expensive of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere. 9. My mom, when she feels she has been served well, loves to ask for the manager. She then compliments like crazy, whoever it was that was kind to her. Whether it’s the porter in her building, a waiter, a store clerk or a receptionist, she is sure to inform their boss. “People are so fast to complain,” she likes to say, “but it’s so easy to take the time to be thankful. ” Mr. DeMarco’s letter reminds me of my mom. No matter the circumstance, acknowledge and appreciate a job well done. — Forbes in New York, reacting to an article about a letter sent to the hospital staff by a man after his wife died following an asthma attack, thanking them for caring for her, their families and himself. 10. A man goes for a walk and finds a bottle on a beach. When he pops the cork a genie appears and says, “I shall grant you one wish. ” The man says, “I want to see peace in the Middle East. ” He then hands the genie a map of the Middle East. The genie studies the map for a while and finally says, “What you wish for is impossible. So I shall grant you another wish. ” The man says, “I’ve always wanted to see the Cubs in a World Series. ” The genie replies, “Let me see that map again. ” — Marianne in Edmonds, Wash. reacting to an article about whether the Chicago Cubs might win a World Series title for the first time since 1908. | 0fake |
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