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OBAMA COMMENCEMENT SPEECH To Black Graduates: You’re Just Lucky | Because getting something for nothing is all the rage with this President and the professors who spew this type of garbage to our children Earning a living is a totally foreign concept to this generation that is being taught it s better to receive than to give of one s self BEGIN TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Did you hear what Obama said? This happened when I was away. When this happened, when I heard about this, I almost got on the plane and flew 12 hours back here. I could have done it on the phone but I don t trust it.Obama in his commencement speech at Howard University, do you remember what he said? Here s what he said to the class of 2016 at Howard University: Yes, you ve worked hard, but you ve also been lucky, and that s a pet peeve of mine. People have been successful and don t realize they ve been lucky, that God may have blessed them. It wasn t nothing you did! Quote/unquote, Barack Obama, right out of the Elizabeth Warren playbook. Hey, you didn t build that! which Obama also has said.Can you imagine telling college graduates, You ve worked hard, but you ve been lucky, and so s every other successful person out there. They ve been lucky, and they don t realize it. Wasn t [any]thing you did. And that Nothing. Nothing. And that is how they lay the case for Big Government. To redistribute, to make things fair, to determine equality of outcomes, because it s just luck.Dick Gephardt, the successful are winners of life s lottery. I ll tell you, the American left, progressives, Democrats, are the greatest enemies of human greatness that we have to deal with. They really stand in the way of individual, group, whatever, human greatness, by disparaging it, by impugning it, by denying it. It s bad enough you think it, but to run around and send college graduates from a black university out into the world thinking that what they ve just accomplished was luck? (sigh) That s the kind of thing, you know, you walk out of a speech, people saying things like that. Via: Rushlimbaugh.com | 1real |
Most Russians wan to ignore criticism from the West | Most Russians wan to ignore criticism from the West 08.11.2016 | Source: AP photo One should not pay much attention to the criticism of Russia that comes from the West, more than half of Russians (59%) said in a recent opinion poll conducted by Levada Center, Interfax reports.The West perceives Russia as a competitor in an attempt to weaken the Russian Federation, 43% of respondents said. Thirty-five percent of respondents said that the criticism of the West was hostile. Every fourth (25%) respondent believes that Western critics often criticize Russia for what they should be criticized themselves . Every fifth respondent (21%) said that Europe and the US have little understanding of life in Russia, "but they still want to teach us."Critical remarks against Russia from Western countries are not worthy of attention, 30% of respondents said. The survey was conducted on October 21-24 among 1,600 people in 137 settlements of Russia.The majority of respondents 74% noted that the West wants to weaken and humiliate Russia by tightening sanctions against the country. According to 13 percent of respondent, the sanctions were imposed on Russia in an attempt to restore the geopolitical balance after Russia reunited with the Crimea. Another five percent believe that the sanctions policy of the West is aimed at ending the war in the east of Ukraine, while eight percent were undecided.At the same time, opinion polls conducted in the last days of October showed an increase in the ratings of the president and the government. The survey showed that the approval rating of the president rose from 78.7 to 81.8% from August to October. Positive assessments of the government's work increased from 53.6 to 58.3%.The Russian parliament's approval rating rose from 39.7% in September to 45.5%.Russia's armed forces have the support of 83.5% of the Russian population. The figure has doubled in ten years - from 44% in October 2006. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru Russians name their main enemies | 1real |
White House urges congressional action amid Flint water crisis | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Obama’s trip to Flint, Michigan next week is aimed at highlighting the ongoing need to help that community recover in the wake of its drinking water crisis, the White House said on Wednesday in urging the Republican-led Congress to take action. “There are a number of things that the administration has done, but there are significant underlying problems that can only be addressed through congressional action,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a daily briefing. | 0fake |
Putin on French presidential hopeful Fillon: 'Tough, but decent and real professional' - Russia News Now | This post was originally published on this site
sott.net/news
© Natalia Kolesnikova / Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has commented on the recent win of France’s Francois Fillon in the first round of the center-right party’s presidential primary, saying that his “personal relations” with Fillon have shown the politician to be a “decent man.”
“We worked together with Francois when he headed the French government, and I chaired the [Russian] government … we had a lot of meetings, and have developed certain personal relations, very kind ones,” Putin told reporters on Wednesday.
The French presidential hopeful, whose convincing win in the Sunday primary took many by surprise, is “very much different” from world politicians, Putin said.
Having characterized Fillon as a “closed up, non-public” person “at first sight,” the Russian leader said that his possible French counterpart “can be very tough in standing up for his point of view.”
“He’s a tough negotiator,” Putin said, adding that Fillon is “certainly an ultimate professional, and a decent man.”
The Russian president also pointed out that although he had no experience of working with Fillon’s rival in the Republican party, another ex-prime minister Alain Juppe, he “welcomes” both candidates’ rhetoric with regards to Russia.
Saying that both Fillon and Juppe have mentioned their plans “to restore Russian-French relations on a full scale,” Putin said that Moscow would facilitate the process on its part.
After Francois Fillon, who served as prime minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government from 2007 until 2012, won the first primary, French media labeled the unexpected presidential hopeful as “Vladimir Putin’s friend.” Citing the two politicians’ meetings on previous occasions, the media said the French politician “advocated a conciliatory position towards the Russia of Vladimir Putin” and compared his victory to the outcome of the recent presidential elections in the US.
After France’s ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy was thrown out of the race to be the French conservative nominee, he said he would back Fillon in the runoff. On November 27, Francois Fillon will face Alain Juppe in the Republicans’ second primary, which is widely believed to produce France’s next president in May elections. Related | 1real |
HEARTLESS DEMOCRATS Invite Illegals To Taunt Trump During Policy Speech While Trump’s Guests, Parents Of Children Murdered By Illegal Aliens, Endure Their Hate | Jessica Davis (right) and Susan Oliver (left) (pictured above) are the widows of two Northern California sheriff s deputies who were shot to death in 2014 by a convicted felon who had twice been deported to Mexico.Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes tried to plead guilty to the murders of Sacramento County Sheriff s Deputy Danny Oliver and Placer County Sheriff s Deputy Michael Davis Jr. but was ordered to stand trial in October.Jamiel Shaw Sr., the father of a Los Angeles teen who was killed by a gang member who was in the country illegally, will also attend and sit with First Lady Melania Trump. Shaw s son, a standout football player, was shot by Pedro Espinoza as he walked home. Espinoza was sentenced to death in 2012.Shaw strongly supported Trump during the election, speaking during the Republican National Convention and appearing with Trump at a rally in Costa Mesa. SHAW SPEAKING AT THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION:The other guests invited by the president to the speech are Maureen McCarthy Scalia, the widow of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; Megan Crowley, a young woman who was expected to die within a few years of being born; and Kenisha Merriweather, a low-income African-American woman who struggled in school before attending private school on scholarship and becoming the first person in her family to graduate high school and college. LA Times | 1real |
FAKE NEWS WEEK: How Mainstream Media ‘Fake News’ Led to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq | In response to the establishment media s contrived fake news crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE is running its own #FakeNewsWeek awareness campaign, where each day our editorial team at 21st Century Wire will feature media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of fake news throughout modern history MSM LIES: Judith Miller of the New York Times was a key media operative used to sell the Iraq War to the public. By Timothy Alexander GuzmanThe mainstream media (MSM) has declared war on alternative media websites labeling them Fake News ever since Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump. The New York Times editorial board expressed their frustration in an article calling for the censorship of alternative and social media Facebook and the Digital Virus Called Fake News, which claimed both social media platforms (Facebook and Google) has not been aggressive enough in blocking fake news sites: Most of the fake news stories are produced by scammers looking to make a quick buck. The vast majority of them take far-right positions. But a big part of the responsibility for this scourge rests with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users and have been slow to block it from their sites. Some of the websites named in a fake news list by Melissa Mish Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts including 21st Century Wire, Activist Post, Global Research.ca, Lew Rockwell.com, Natural News.com and ProjectVeritas (who released undercover videos of the DNC attempting to rig the elections) and others have exposed the lies by MSM [mainstream media] propaganda.The MSM has lost its credibility and at the same time lost viewers at unprecedented levels. on April 17, 2016, the Associated Press reported on how the U.S. population viewed the MSM Poll: Getting facts right key to Americans trust in media said that, Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public s view of other institutions. Now they want to stop the alternative media from becoming a credible source for news. The New York Times is calling for the censorship of the alternative and social media by blocking misinformation :Blocking misinformation will help protect the company s brand and credibility. Some platforms have suffered when they have failed to address users concerns. Twitter users, for instance, have backed away from that platform because of abusive trolling, threatening posts and hate speech, which the company hasn t been able to control.Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can help improve society. In a 2012 letter to investors, he said it could bring a more honest and transparent dialogue around government that could lead to more direct empowerment of people, more accountability for officials and better solutions to some of the biggest problems of our time. None of that will happen if he continues to let liars and con artists hijack his platform.Just to be clear, there are a number of websites that do spread misinformation including those in the alternative media, but it is fair to say that they never have caused the deaths of millions of people like The New York Times when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. A recent example is the U.S. led war against Iraq in 2003. After the September 11th attacks, the George W. Bush administration made a false accusation that the Iraq government had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) which led to a U.S. invasion eventually toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The U.S. led war turned out to be a calculated plan by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank who wrote the secretive blueprint called, Rebuilding America s Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century to remove Saddam Hussein and the Ba ath party from power. The blueprint was originally written for the neocon lunatics who served under then-President George W. Bush including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to establish an international Security order dominated by the United States. According to the document: In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. PNAC was founded by neoconservatives William Kristol, a political analyst, media commentator (FOX News, ABC News) and the founder and editor of The Weekly Standard and Robert Kagan, an author, columnist, and foreign-policy commentator who is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kagan is also the husband of Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs appointed by President Obama who helped orchestrate a coup against the Ukrainian government of the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The blueprint for regime change in Iraq was planned way before George W. Bush became President in 2001: Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. However, Judith Miller (who is currently an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute) and The New York Times played a crucial role for the Bush Administration. Miller wrote one of the main articles on Iraq s WMDs that justified the Bush Administration s agenda to topple Saddam Hussein and the Ba ath party. The article was not just fake news telling a lie that deceived the public, it destroyed a sovereign nation. The U.S. war against Iraq killed more than 1.4 million Iraqis (according to www.justforeignpolicy.org estimates) and more than 4,400 U.S. troops and tens of thousands permanently injured. The Iraq War also displaced millions of Iraqis thus creating a refugee crisis in neighboring countries including Syria. The destabilization of Iraq has also created a terrorist recruiting base that has spread throughout the Middle East including Syria.The New York Times published Miller s article on April 21st, 2003 AFTER EFFECTS: PROHIBITED WEAPONS; Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, An Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert which claimed that an Iraqi scientist confirmed that the Iraqi government had WMDs:They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq s illicit weapons programs. The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990 s, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said.The Americans said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein s government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990 s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq s giant weapons plantsOn April, 22, 2003, Miller appeared on the PBS News Hour and spoke about her evidence on what she described as a Silver Bullet from an Iraqi scientist who allegedly worked on Saddam s weapons program:RAY SUAREZ: The task of finding that definitive proof falls in part to specialized teams within the U.S. Military. New York Times correspondent Judith Miller is reporting on the search conducted by units of the 75th exploitation task force. And she joins us now by phone south of Baghdad. Judith Miller, welcome back to the program. Has the unit you ve been traveling with found any proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?JUDITH MILLER: Well, I think they found something more than a smoking gun. What they ve found is what is being called here by the members of MET Alpha that s Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha what they found is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual, a scientist, as we ve called him, who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand, and who has led MET Team Alpha people to some pretty startling conclusions that have kind of challenged the American intelligence community s under previous understanding of, you know, what we thought the Iraqis were doing.RAY SUAREZ: Does this confirm in a way the insistence coming from the U.S. government that after the war, various Iraqi tongues would loosen, and there might be people who would be willing to help?JUDITH MILLER: Yes, it clearly does. I mean, it s become pretty clear to those of us on the ground that the international inspectors, without actually controlling the territory and changing the political environment, would never have been able to get these people to step forward. I mean, you can only do that when you know there is not going to be a secret policeman at your door the next day, and that your family isn t going to suffer because you re talking. And that s what the Bush administration has finally done. They have changed the political environment, and they ve enabled people like the scientists that MET Alpha has found to come forth. Now, what initially the weapons hunters thought they were going to find were stockpiles of kind of chemical and biological agents. That s what they anticipated finding. We now know from the scientist that, in fact, that probably isn t what we re going to find. What they will find, and what they have found so far, are kind of precursors; that is, building blocks of what you would need to put together a chemical or a biological weapon.But those stockpiles that we ve heard about, well, those have either been destroyed by Saddam Hussein, according to the scientists, or they have been shipped to Syria for safekeeping. And what I think the interpretation of the MET Alpha people is, is why he did this. They believe that Saddam Hussein wanted to destroy the evidence of his unconventional weapons programs, and that s what he has done not only since 1995, but also in the weeks and months that led up to the war itself. There was mass destruction. And the scientist who has been cooperating with MET Alpha has actually said that he participated in he kind of watched, you know, a warehouse being burned that contained potentially incriminating biological equipment. So clearly what Saddam Hussein wanted to do was cover his weapons of mass destruction tracks. And that means that the whole shape of the hunt here on the ground for unconventional weapons is changing.The problem with Miller s assertion that Iraq had WMDs is that it relied on an Iraqi exile named Ahmed Chalabi who wanted regime change against Saddam Hussein s government. James Moore of The Guardian wrote, How Chalabi and the White House held the front page how The New York Times has burned its reputation on a pyre of lies about Iraq described Chalabi as a convicted criminal who embezzled millions from his Petra Bank in Amman, Jordan. Moore said the following: Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and authority on the Middle East for the NYT, appears to have been the most reliant on Chalabi. In an email exchange with the NYT s Baghdad bureau chief John Burns, Miller said Chalabi had provided most of the front page exclusives for our paper . She later said that this was an exaggeration, but in an earlier interview with me, Miller did not discount the value of Chalabi s insight. Of course, I talked with Chalabi, she said. But he was just one of many sources I used. Miller refused to say who those other sources were but, at Chalabi s behest, she interviewed various defectors from Saddam Hussein s regime, who claimed without substantiation that there was still a clandestine WMD programme operating inside Iraq. US investigators now believe that Chalabi sent these same Iraqi expatriates to at least eight Western spy agencies as part of a scheme to convince them to overthrow Saddam. Mr. Moore mentioned Miller s article which was co-written with Michael R. Gordon and published by The New York Times on September 8th, 2002 titled, THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE IRAQIS; U.S. SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS claiming that Saddam was building a uranium gas separator to develop nuclear material :If spies wanted a trophy to show what happens when their craft is perfectly executed, it would be a story written by Judith Miller on the front page of the New York Times on a Sunday morning in September 2002. She wrote that an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes, to be used for centrifuges, was evidence that Saddam was building a uranium gas separator to develop nuclear material.The story had an enormous impact, one amplified when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state Colin Powell and vice-president Dick Cheney all did appearances on the Sunday-morning talk shows, citing the first-rate journalism of the liberal NYT. No single story did more to advance the neoconservative cause.Here is the original excerpt from Miller s original September 8th 2002 New York Times article: More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped. According to Moore (and many other journalists, researchers and alternative media outlets), Judith Miller s story was completely false and that the the aluminum tubes were covered with an anodised coating, which rendered them useless for a centrifuge, according to a number of scientists who spoke publicly after Miller s story. Moore continued the tubes, in fact, were almost certainly intended for use as rocket bodies. Lastly, Moore quoted what Miller had told him about her sources which lead to the WMD hoax: I had no reason to believe what I reported was inaccurate, Miller told me. I believed the intelligence I had. We tried really hard to get more information and we vetted information very, very carefully. A few months after the aluminum tubes story, a former CIA analyst explained to me how simple it had been to manipulate the correspondent and her newspaper. The White House had a perfect deal with Miller, he said. Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated. She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi. Too bad Judy didn t spend a little more time talking to those of us who had information that contradicted almost everything Chalabi said. The New York Times was clearly embarrassed by Miller s articles after the fact that Miller was wrong all along about the WMDs that led up to the invasion of Iraq. Nothing was ever found. On May 26th, 2004, the editorial board admitted their wrongdoing. The article, FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq, stated that, We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq s weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists which blames U.S. and other intelligence agencies (which do share the blame to an extent).The editorial piece continued We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves. Well, they do turn the light on themselves, sort of: But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged or failed to emerge.The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on regime change in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week). Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations in particular, this one The New York Times admittance that their journalistic principals had failed was too little and too late. The MSM in particular The New York Times relied on fake evidence from Ahmad Chalabi for years (since 1991 to be exact). The MSM failed the Iraqi people who suffered enormously under a pack of lies that destroyed their country. When Washington uses propaganda or fake news reports against a sovereign nation, the outcome is always regime change that sometimes leads to an all-out war. The MSM has time and time again been guilty of perpetrating fake news stories to assist in Washington s Imperial agenda.The Iraq War was the biggest lie of the 21st century. What other fake news stories will appear on the MSM websites and newspapers in the future regarding Syria, Russia, China, Iran, the Palestinians, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and even the U.S. President-elect, Donald Trump?To answer that, we just don t know, but it is up to the alternative media to decipher the fake stories and bring out the truth. It is just a matter of time that the MSM will falsify another story; let s just hope it won t lead to another war in the process.*** Author Timothy Alexander Guzman is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on political, economic, media and historical spheres. He has been published in Global Research, The Progressive Mind, European Union Examiner, News Beacon Ireland, WhatReallyHappened.com, EIN News and a number of other alternative news sites. Areas of specialization include political issues, economic issues, media and history. This article was originally published at Silent Crow News.READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT: FAKE NEWS WEEKSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
“Not a word”…That’s What The Parents Of Beautiful Young Woman Murdered By Illegal Alien In Sanctuary City Have Heard From White House [VIDEO] | Kate Steinle is the wrong race, and she was killed by someone Obama is advocating for. If they can only get FOX News to stop reporting about it, this whole nightmare for Obama s executive amnesty/votes for Democrats program will go away The parents of Kathryn Steinle said Monday in a cable television news interview that they support a proposal to give mandatory prison time to deported people who return to the U.S. illegally. Steinle, 32, was walking along a waterfront in San Francisco when she was shot by a gun allegedly fired by Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, a Mexican national who was in the country illegally. Steinle s brother also appeared on Fox and revealed to Megyn Kelly that the White House hasn t even bothered to reach out to the family. Not heard a word, Brad Steinle said. Instead, he said, we find solace in the fact that Kate was doing what she loved and she was with the man she loved the most, my dad. WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH BILL O REILLY HERE:Sanchez, 45, who has pleaded not guilty, had been released from jail months before the shooting, despite a federal immigration order asking local authorities to hold him.Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan, of Pleasanton, California, were interviewed by Fox News talk-show host Bill O Reilly for a Monday segment on The O Reilly Factor.The death of their daughter has fueled a national debate on immigration, with advocates of stricter border control and even some Bay Area Democrats denouncing San Francisco as a city whose immigrant sanctuary protections harbor people who are in the country illegally.Supporters of sanctuary protections have jumped on O Reilly and others for politicizing the death. They say public safety is improved when immigrants can work with local police without fear of deportation.Steinle, who was at his daughter s side when she was shot, and his wife said the proposed Kate s Law would be a good way to keep her memory alive. O Reilly is collecting signatures for the petition, which would impose a mandatory five years in federal prison for people who are deported and return. We feel the federal, state and cities their laws are here to protect us, Jim Steinle said. But we feel that this particular set of circumstances and the people involved, the different agencies let us down. It ll be a legacy in her name and her death would not go unnoticed. The grieving parents said failings at multiple levels of government led to Sanchez being freed, but they re tired of finger-pointing. Ff Kate s Law saves one person, then it s all for good, said Steinle.Federal records show Sanchez had been deported three times before being sentenced to more than five years in federal prison. He had completed another four years in federal prison when he was shipped to San Francisco March 26 on an outstanding 1995 drug charge.The San Francisco District Attorney s office declined to prosecute, given the age of the case and the small amount of marijuana involved.Via: UK Daily Mail | 1real |
Toots Thielemans, Who Won Jazz Renown With the Harmonica, Dies at 94 - The New York Times | Toots Thielemans, one of the only musicians to have a successful career as a jazz harmonica player, died on Monday in Brussels. He was 94. The death was confirmed by Mr. Thielemans’s agency, which did not specify a cause. Mr. Thielemans, who retired in 2014 for health reasons, had been hospitalized recently with a broken arm. That Mr. Thielemans played jazz on the harmonica was unusual enough. Even more unusual was how he first gained international attention: by playing guitar and whistling in unison. He introduced this approach in 1961 on his recording of the wistful but jaunty jazz waltz “Bluesette,” which he wrote. The record became an international hit, and the song was his signature. It also became a jazz standard, recorded by numerous instrumentalists, among them Chet Atkins, Tito Puente and Mr. Thielemans himself, who went on to record it several more times. It was also recorded, with lyrics by Norman Gimbel, by Sarah Vaughan and other singers. But his distinctive sound on the chromatic harmonica was Mr. Thielemans’s primary claim to fame and, especially, to fortune. Although his name was well known in the jazz world — he performed with greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker — it was relatively unknown to the general public his playing, on the other hand, was virtually ubiquitous. It can be heard on the soundtracks of movies including “Midnight Cowboy” and “The Getaway. ” It was featured in television commercials and on records by, among many others, Ms. Fitzgerald, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones, who once called Mr. Thielemans “one of the greatest musicians of our time. ” For more than four decades, it has been heard in the opening theme music of “Sesame Street. ” Frédéric Isidore Thielemans was born on April 29, 1922, in Brussels, where his parents owned a cafe. He offered various explanations over the years for how he came to be known as Toots, sometimes saying he chose the name himself and at others saying it was given to him whatever the truth, the name was apparently borrowed from two American jazz musicians, Nuncio Mondello and Salvador Camarata, who both went by Toots. Musically inclined from an early age, he began playing the accordion at 3 and took up the harmonica in his teens. A few years later, inspired by Django Reinhardt, a fellow Belgian, he began playing guitar, as well. By the end of World War II he had become a musician. In 1949, he shared the stage with Charlie Parker at the Paris Jazz Festival, and a year later he toured Europe as the guitarist in a sextet led by Benny Goodman. He moved to the United States in 1951 and eventually became a citizen. From 1953 to 1959, he was a member of the British jazz pianist George Shearing’s popular quintet. He mostly played guitar with Mr. Shearing, but his harmonica work was featured on at least one number at every performance. It was also showcased on the handful of albums he recorded as a leader in those years. After leaving the Shearing group, Mr. Thielemans became a busy studio musician, even spending a few years on staff at ABC. But he remained active in jazz, with the harmonica now his main instrument. He toured frequently, and occasionally recorded as the leader of a small group, for the rest of his life. Most of his albums presented him in a straightforward jazz context, but late in his career they took on a more international color. On “The Brasil Project,” released in 1992, and a released the next year, he collaborated with Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil and other prominent Brazilian artists. And on the 1998 album “Chez Toots” he returned to his roots, leading a group of French and Belgian musicians in a program of French songs. Playing a set in New York a few months after turning 80, Mr. Thielemans “seemed dazzled by his glorious sunset, and found shelter under the umbrella of sophisticated schmaltz,” Ben Ratliff wrote in The New York Times, adding: “He’s in good shape, only losing wind at the end of a long string of notes but he finds rhythms, attaining a little bit of freedom, knocking his instrument from side to side for tremolos. ” Albert II, then the king of Belgium, bestowed on Mr. Thielemans the honorary title of baron in 2001. The country’s prime minister, Charles Michel, said on Monday, “We have lost a great musician, a warm personality. ” The National Endowment for the Arts named Mr. Thielemans a jazz master for 2009, the highest honor that can be accorded a jazz musician in the United States. “I accept this distinction with pride and emotion,” he said at the time, adding that he had only “played at music” until a Louis Armstrong record in 1940 provided “instant contamination” and changed the direction of his life. Mr. Thielemans lived in La Hulpe, a suburb of Brussels. Information on survivors was not immediately available. In March 2006, Mr. Thielemans was the guest of honor at an Carnegie Hall tribute concert, with the pianist Herbie Hancock and the clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera among the performers. Reviewing the concert for The Times, Nate Chinen praised both Mr. Thielemans’s “exuberantly expressive” playing and his infectious spirit. “No one stole the spotlight from Mr. Thielemans,” he wrote. “He was having giddy fun, and the feeling was contagious. ” | 0fake |
Low-Cost Wind Turbine to Power an Entire House for a Lifetime Starts Selling in India | By Amando Flavio For some time now, these words “for the cost of an iPhone, you can now buy a wind turbine that can power an entire house for a lifetime” have been trending on some alternative news... | 1real |
GOP Hilariously Tries Seeing The Future By Declaring Pence Winner Of VP Debate Before It Starts | Nobody can accuse the GOP of having it all together, but they are pretty good at having their press releases done ahead of time. Unfortunately for them, tonight s announcement was about the Vice Presidential debate, declaring Mike Pence the winner, well before the debate even started.Check it out below it s really amazing that they can see into the future:This is at least one Dewey Defeats Truman moment for the GOP. Back in 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumped the gun of the presidential election for that year and published that headline. Anybody who knows anything at all about American history should know we never had a President Dewey and the Tribune has yet to live that gaffe down.The GOP, though, won t deal in facts tonight. They ll declare Pence the winner even if he literally never says a single word. Notice what they highlighted: The economy and Hillary s emails. Tonight s debate started with presidential leadership, and what the VP must do with zero prep should the president become incapacitated.Pence did do every single thing he could to blame Hillary Clinton for weak foreign policy, including lying through his teeth about why we pulled our troops out of Iraq (he repeated the GOP line that Hillary chose to pull our troops out and ignored the fact that it was not our choice it was Iraq s choice). However, he s probably gotten some training from Trump s people, who try and turn even the most unrelated, irrelevant subjects into something about Hillary.Vox decided to be charitable with their evaluation of the GOP s premature ejaculation press release, saying it could be placeholder text on their site. But considering that they also said the other clear winner was Donald Trump, it s really, really hard to see this as anything other than what it is the GOP trying to control the narrative before anything even began.Featured image by Win McNamee/Getty Images | 1real |
Central Bank sees Russia’s moving up in Doing Business rating as good sign | Central Bank sees Russia’s moving up in Doing Business rating as good sign October 27, 2016 TASS Doing business in Russia , banks , ranking Russia moved up to the 40th position in the Doing Business-2017 rating. Source: Getty Images
The Central Bank sees Russia’s moving up in the Doing Business rating as a good sign, Deputy CEO of the Central Bank Vladimir Chistyukhin told reporters.
"That is a very significant leap and a very positive sign for us. It shows that the efforts we made in many fields, in particular in corporate management were not in vain," he said.
Earlier this week it was reported that Russia moved up to the 40th position in the Doing Business-2017 rating, which is annually prepared by the World Bank.
In 2012, Russia ranked 124th in that rating.
In his May decrees issued in 2012 President Vladimir Putin set the task for the country to reach the 20th position in the rating of the World Bank by 2018.
In 2016, Russia was on the 51st place in the Doing Business rating.
However the methods of calculation of the World Bank’s rating changed earlier this year. Taking into account these changes Russia could have been on the 36th place already in 2015. | 1real |
‘Silent Fear’: Party of Davos Founder Plans Emergency D.C. Meeting to Discuss How to Handle Donald Trump - Breitbart | The World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of globalist political, financial and cultural elitists is underway in Davos, Switzerland, but the organization’s founder is planning an emergency Washington, D. C. meeting in 2017 for worried elites worldwide to discuss how to deal with Donald J. Trump. [“The World Economic Forum is listening to Donald Trump,” Bloomberg’s Stephen Morris and Erik Schatzker wrote on Sunday. “The organization will convene a special meeting in Washington this year to discuss issues raised during the ’s campaign and the populist wave that swept him to victory, WEF founder Klaus Schwab told Bloomberg Television on Sunday. The gathering will explore U. S. investment and opportunities for companies that participate in the forum, he said. ” Klaus Schwab, who in 1971 founded the group that eventually became the World Economic Forum which hosts the annual retreat for business, political and cultural elites in the Swiss Alps, told Bloomberg that the event in Washington, D. C. — which was previously not planned — is going to be meant to address globalist concerns with the rise of populism as evidenced by the election of Trump to the presidency. “It’s very natural that with the new administration we plan a major event in the U. S. to see what are the implications of the new president and how the business community could engage,” Schwab said, adding that in Davos in 2017 there are populists present who the globalists plan to hear from to try to assuage a “silent fear” of the masses. “People have become very emotionalized, this silent fear of what the new world will bring,” Schwab added. “We have populists here and we want to listen. We have to respond to these individuals’ fears and to offer solutions. It’s not just enough to listen we have to provide answers and that’s what we’re here for in Davos. ” Schwab said that the Davos gathering is not supposed to be about the glamorous parties and receptions for the elites present, or about the “outrageous excesses of life” exhibited by them there, but rather his goal is to create a “global village” where in the words of Morris and Schatzker “participants can mull weighty issues facing the world without the distractions of a large city. ” “My biggest fear is that we will believe there are very simple answers to very difficult questions,” Schwab said. “The right solution will require a lot of effort and many steps in the right direction. I am optimistic that in a new world we still have the notion of a joined and shared destiny. ” In 2017, the “Party of Davos” so to speak, the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering there in the Swiss Alps, is as Breitbart News has previously reported a gloomier event than usual. Last year, the world elites gathered in Davos were certain that British voters wouldn’t vote to Leave the European Union and that Donald J. Trump would never be elected president of the United States — and that all these fears of populist uprisings around the world would never materialize. But they were wrong, and now Davos attendees are scrambling to try to figure out why. | 0fake |
WILL HILLARY ATTEND? ‘CLOWN LIVES MATTER’ Rally To Be Held On Oct. 15th [Video] | Twitter users wrote: Clown Lives Matter is just an example of how people continue to make a mockery of Black Lives Matter. It s not funny & I m not here for it. Jacqueline Daniels tweeted: This clown lives matter bull**** anything to diminish black anguish. Anything to silence our voices. Anything to mock our reality. ABC: TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) Organizers are planning a Clown Lives Matter march for October 15 in Tucson in reaction to the recent spate of frightening incidents both real and imagined spread in the news and on social media.The march will be at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 15 on 4th Avenue in Tucson. Attendees are invited to show up wearing full clown makeup or masks.According to a flyer advertising the event, this is a peaceful way to show clowns are not psycho killers. We want the public to feel safe, and not be afraid. So come out, bring the family, meet a clown and get a hug! Via: ABC15Read more: Daily Mail | 1real |
SHOCK POLL In MUST WIN State Of FLORIDA: Hispanics Turn Backs On Crooked Hillary | Apparently the Black Lives Matter terror group hasn t managed to distract Florida voters from Crooked Hillary s untrustworthy record A new poll released from JMC Analytics in Florida (full pdf below) shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton 47% to 42%, and leading with Hispanic voters 49% to 36%.Some (particularly MSM) pundits will find these results quite shocking however, we do not. We ve repeatedly pointed out that Latino voters in Florida are very familiar with strong Patrone male figures within their family. Trump represents a very familiar cultural voice for them.This was abundantly evident in the primary race where Donald Trump won every county within Florida by exceptionally wide margins.You ll often hear the professional political punditry talk about the central (I-4) corridor and how the specific high population demographics influences elections. Central Florida, and South Central Florida are the inland growing regions for much of the state s agricultural industry. Look there and you can identify the Latino cultural support for Donald Trump.The coastal communities are diverse and representative of the larger U.S. electorate. Hillary Clinton predictably polls well in the same area where Marco Rubio won out in the Republican primary. However, Miami-Dade, while population strong, is less influential as the years have progressed and other coastal community populations have grown.Via: Conservative Treehouse | 1real |
Trump disputes account of his Supreme Court nominee's comments | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump castigated a Democratic senator on Thursday for saying U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch had voiced dismay in a private meeting over Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, while Republicans came forward to back up the lawmaker’s portrayal. The Republican president has publicly vented his frustration with a court order last week that temporarily halted his travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, criticizing the judge who issued the order, the appeals process and the wider judiciary. That has morphed into a dispute over comments made by his pick for the Supreme Court. Senator Richard Blumenthal said on Wednesday that Gorsuch had told him that Trump’s comments about the judiciary, which have included calling the judge who blocked his travel ban a “so-called judge,” were “disheartening and demoralizing.” On Thursday, Blumenthal urged Gorsuch to condemn Trump’s attacks “publicly, unequivocally and clearly.” Trump, in a Twitter post and in a later meeting with a bipartisan group of senators, accused Blumenthal of misrepresenting Gorsuch’s comments. White House spokesman Sean Spicer, at a briefing with reporters, defended Trump and said Gorsuch had not been commenting specifically about the president’s attacks on the judiciary. Blumenthal’s account of Gorsuch’s comments was backed up by Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and spokesman for the nominee, and by Kelly Ayotte, a Republican former senator who has accompanied the judge during meetings with lawmakers to build support for his Senate confirmation. Other senators, including Republican Ben Sasse and Democrat Chuck Schumer, also said Gorsuch made similar comments to them. In blasting Blumenthal, Trump sought to revive a years-old controversy over the senator’s military service during the Vietnam War era. “Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” Trump wrote in a Twitter post. Trump nominated Gorsuch, a conservative federal appeals court judge, on Jan. 31 as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left when Justice Antonin Scalia died a year ago. Democrats have said they will push to establish that Gorsuch can exercise independence if he is confirmed to the lifetime position on the country’s highest court. Blumenthal said there were numerous White House staffers in the room when Gorsuch made the comments. Ayotte said in a statement that Gorsuch, speaking in discussions with senators including Blumenthal, had said “he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing,” while making clear he “was not referring to any specific case.” Gorsuch has not made any public comment on the matter. Sasse, who has been critical of Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, described his meeting with Gorsuch. “I asked him about the ‘so-called judges’ comment because we don’t have so-called judges or so-called presidents or so-called senators,” Sasse said on MSNBC. He added that Gorsuch “welled up with some energy” and said any attack on his “brothers or sisters of the robe is an attack on all judges.” Spicer said the president had no regrets about his comments on the judiciary and that his behavior would not change. “The president is going to speak his mind,” he said. A federal judge in Seattle, James Robart, last Friday put on hold Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order that temporarily barred entry to the United States by people from seven Muslim-majority countries and by all refugees. An appeals court is considering Robart’s order and is expected to rule in the coming days. On Saturday, Trump called Robart a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” ruling “essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country.” On Wednesday, he stepped up his criticism of the judiciary, calling courts “so political” and describing the proceedings in the appeals court as “disgraceful.” Democrats have called Trump’s comments an attack on a core principle of American democracy by which the judiciary is independent and upholds the rule of law. Republican senators, who have the majority in the Senate, painted Gorsuch’s comments as evidence of his independence from the president. But Schumer, leader of the Senate Democrats, said the judge’s comments were “mild” at best and “insufficient” in terms of showing independence. “I think President Trump is going to harm both Judge Gorsuch’s chances at confirmation and his standing as president if he continues to undermine the independence of the judiciary,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons told CNN on Thursday. Trump’s spat with Blumenthal overshadowed a meeting with senators that was aimed at trying to build support for Gorsuch. If confirmed, the judge would restore a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. “Ask Senator Blumenthal about his Vietnam record,” Trump told reporters at the meeting. In 2010, while running for the Senate, Blumenthal said he had “misspoken about my service” by earlier stating he had served in Vietnam when he in fact got military deferments before joining the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in 1970, allowing him to avoid combat overseas. Blumenthal expressed regret over his previous comments but said he would proud of his service as a reservist. Trump himself received five deferments during the Vietnam War, including one for bone spurs in his heel, the New York Times reported last August, and never served in the military. | 0fake |
Trump Says Blacks Are In Worse Shape Than During SLAVERY (VIDEO) | Donald Trump has again made a huge mistake while referring to life experienced by many black Americans every day. The screw-up in question came as Trump seriously argued that the lives of blacks today are worse than they were during slavery and in the Jim Crow segregation era.Speaking at a rally in Kenansville, North Carolina, Trump again stumbled in an apparent attempt to endear himself to black voters. We re going to make our country safe again. We re going to rebuild our inner cities because our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they ve ever been in before, he said. Ever, ever, ever. The comment, made in a city named for a slave owner, is objectively untrue, and completely ignores that black people were once subjected to slavery and Jim Crow laws.While the media has largely viewed Trump s weird racial comments as a sign that he is reaching out to black voters, polls have actually shown that he is poised to do worse with that group than Mitt Romney or John McCain.Black voters have had an inherent distrust of Trump, which has been amplified thanks to his promotion of the racist birther conspiracy there for years.Trump also called for the death penalty for the Central Park 5, long after it had been proven that the young black men involved with the case had been proven innocent.Lately, Trump has argued that the black community in America is a desperate, infantile mess, relying on government welfare in order to simply get by. The image Trump has been spreading has not been for black audiences, but instead have been targeted to a conservative base, high on the idea that ethnic minorities always have their hands out.Black voters have found Trump s description of them insulting, particularly coming as the community has made huge strides forward.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Illegal miners in South Africa swallow gold in condoms | CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Illegal miners in South Africa are swallowing unrefined gold and platinum in condoms as a new tactic to avoid arrest for smuggling that is costing the industry $1.5 billion a year, the police told parliament on Friday. Illegal mining has plagued South Africa s mining sector for decades, and extends from small time pilfering to global organized crime networks. The crime costs the industry and government an estimated 20 billion rand ($1.5 billion) a year in lost sales, taxes and royalties, the Chamber of Mines, an industry body, says. They are ingesting the amalgam concealed in condoms and this is done for two principle reasons. One is to be able to bypass mine security and the other is also to prevent being robbed by opposing groups, Brigadier Ebrahim Kadwa, a commander in South Africa s Hawks organized crime unit, said, showing parliament slides of gold-filled condoms in miners x-rays. Potentially toxic clumps of mercury and gold concentrate can be refined to extract gold once passed through the body. Illegal mining in South Africa involves a complex criminal web that extends from desperate unemployed workers, many from neighboring countries, to gun-toting gang bosses and front companies exporting refined products to global markets. The threat posed by illicit mining and related crimes continues to proliferate across the country, Kadwa said, adding that the majority of incidents were in gold mines owned by Harmony Gold and Sibanye. However, hundreds of incidents occurred throughout the country and targeted other minerals such as diamonds and chrome. High rates of unemployment and a stagnant economy helped entice illegal miners to the dangerous work, which is also being driven by rising commodity prices. Kadwa said a weakening of the rand currency between December 2015 to April 2016, saw the relative gold price rise, encouraging illegal smuggling. In February, 22 illegal miners were given lengthy sentences after being found guilty of 577 charges, ranging from theft of gold to racketeering and money laundering. This is a landmark moment in the fight against illegal mining in the country, Kadwa said. | 0fake |
Wonder and Worry, as a Syrian Child Transforms - The New York Times | TORONTO — As soon as Bayan Mohammad, a Syrian refugee, arrived here last winter, she began her transformation. In her first hour of she managed to glide on her own. She made fast friends with girls different from any she had ever known. New to competitive sports, she propelled herself down the school track so fast that she was soon collecting ribbons. Bayan glued herself to the movie “Annie,” the ballet “Cinderella” and episodes of “Wheel of Fortune,” all stories of metamorphosis. As her English went from halting to chatty, she ticked off everything she hungered to do: An overnight school trip. Gymnastics lessons. Building a snowman — no, a . “I just want to be Canadian,” she said. The volunteers resettling her family — a group of teachers, pediatricians and other friends and neighbors spurred by devastating images of young refugees and casualties of war — watched Bayan with wonder. Her parents, Abdullah and Eman Mohammad, a former grocery store owner and a nurse from a rural village, felt both pride and alarm. Coming to Canada with their four children, they had braced themselves for the hostility that so many refugees were encountering around the world, including just across the border, where Donald J. Trump warned of the threat posed by Syrian refugees. Instead, they found a national movement to aid them. As Syria shattered, everyday citizens, called private sponsors, were adopting the newcomers, donating their time and thousands of dollars to help guide them through their first year. The volunteers attended to the family’s every need: an apartment, doctors, tips on finding a mosque and halal food. The sponsors even applied to bring other family members to Canada — and still they wanted to know what more they could do. The Mohammads were astonished and grateful. But over 10 months, the relationship was reshaping the family, rewriting roles and rules they had always followed. Abdullah and Eman found their marriage on new ground, the fundamental compact between them shifting. Bayan, their oldest child, was going from girl to adolescent, Middle Eastern to North American all at the same time. She was the one most likely to remember their life in Syria. On some days, her parents believed that she could meld her old and new identities on others, they feared her Syrianness was being erased. If the family had landed in Munich or Minneapolis, they would have encountered new cultural dilemmas, too. But Canada’s unusual private sponsorship system made them especially acute, because it was so intimate. The Canadians and Syrians were in and out of one another’s homes for tutoring, computer lessons or celebrations. They shared parental tasks like communication with teachers, since the Mohammads spoke little English. “What they gave us, a brother wouldn’t even give to his own brother,” Mr. Mohammad said. Still, when one sponsor took the children to a ballet performance, Bayan twirled her way home and then begged for lessons — which would involve revealing outfits that would make her parents uncomfortable. The sponsors invited the children to make gingerbread houses and sing carols. Did saying yes mean that the strict Muslim family would be celebrating a Christian holiday? “Sponsorship brings the tension between East and West so close,” said Sam Nammoura, a refugee advocate in Calgary, Alberta. The Mohammads had left Syria and then Jordan to safeguard their children — but once they arrived here, they were bewildered by what they found. Why were teenagers here allowed to stay out past midnight? Did children move away from home at 18 and never look back? How much control did parents even have? “Every day I have this dilemma,” Mrs. Mohammad said. “Am I letting the kids do the right thing?” In October, Bayan craved one item above all on her wish list: to join her school’s overnight trip. For three days at the end of the month, the whole fifth grade would travel to an island in Toronto’s harbor, exploring, conducting science experiments and sleeping in dorms. “I want to go but my dad said no,” Bayan said over a family lunch of chicken and stuffed cabbage rolls. Her parents felt their children belonged at home they had never been on a sleepover. “I want to go!” Bayan repeated. “I’m sad because my best friends are going. ” By Canadian or American standards, she was being polite: no or accusations. But in Syria, children are bound to respect the authority of their parents, even in adulthood. The rule had governed the Mohammad family for generations, backed up by relatives, friends, an entire culture. Within months of arriving in Canada, Bayan shocked her parents by beginning to question their decisions out loud. “She’s stronger now, here, and she tries to express herself more than in Syria,” her mother explained. Bayan knew she had a quiet ally at the lunch table that day: Kerry McLorg, the organizer of the sponsor group. Meticulous and restrained, Ms. McLorg never wanted to push the Mohammads, and when they asked for her advice, she tended to answer with clinical distance, lest her own preferences show. But she knew Bayan yearned for the adventure. She and the other sponsors saw it as another step in the girl’s integration into Canada. Her two children had gone on the trip years ago and still talked about the traditions — visiting a lighthouse, telling ghost stories. “Every kid in Toronto does this,” Ms. McLorg had told Bayan’s parents when they had asked. “Academically, it’s not important. But socially, it is very important. ” Mr. Mohammad told Bayan again: No trip. He was not an immigrant who set out to adapt to a new world he was a refugee trying to hold on to what had been ripped from him. “We’re forced to be here,” Mr. Mohammad said later. “We’re happy, but we’re forced to be here. ” He still had a shot at preserving the identity he wanted for Bayan, but he and his wife would have to be vigilant, willing to deny their daughter some of what she wanted. “I will do this for her,” he said. “God help us. ” Only one thing about Canada seemed to disconcert Bayan: its types of families she had never seen or even imagined. She was troubled by the concept of divorce, by classmates whose parents lived in separate homes. “My mom and dad, they will not do that,” she declared. The Mohammads were from a particularly conservative village in Daraa Province. Their union was arranged by their families and governed by clear tenets. Back home, Eman Mohammad, 36, did not leave the house without asking her husband’s permission. She did not socialize with men who were not relatives. Women in the village did not drive. Against the odds, and Abdullah’s initial reluctance, she had worked as a nurse, one of only a few women in her circle to be employed outside the home after having children. Now she was far more at home in Canada than he was. She attended her first modern dance performance, thrilled by the surprise and emotion. When her husband, 36, turned down a supermarket job this summer, unsure of what kind of work he wanted, she joked that she would take it. She was determined to get certified as a nurse again, even though that would require years of language instruction and coursework. Meanwhile, she found new purpose: helping lead a therapy group for Syrian women coping with trauma and displacement. Standing in front of a whiteboard, she peppered her presentations with motivational statements: “Nothing is impossible. ” “When we work, we are helping society around us, not ourselves alone. ” She earned about 70 Canadian dollars for each weekly session. Being in Canada “opened new doors for me that I didn’t even know existed,” Mrs. Mohammad said. Her husband, however, was having difficulty. In Syria, he a grocery store and two butcher shops, and had been the unquestioned head of the household. Now the sponsors were helping support his family, along with government subsidies. While his wife went to one of the therapy groups, he took care of Bayan and the younger children, and he had been helping in the kitchen. “Sometimes I feel weak doing these things,” he said. “It’s a woman’s job. ” He told himself that spending more time with his children would draw them closer. Bayan had ambitions for her father: to learn to swim, to drive, to buy a car with six seats. “I dream, like, all the time we have a big house and a pool,” she said. But Mr. Mohammad was nowhere near finding work that could support a family of six in an expensive city, and he felt torn about whether he should continue to study English full time or just get the best job he could. “I feel lost,” he had said. Because his wife’s language skills were better, he sometimes was left out of conversations. (The Mohammads asked not to be identified by their full surnames, because they feared reprisals against relatives still in Syria. This article uses part of their family name.) If Syria heals, Mr. Mohammad said, he definitely wants to go back. His wife countered: “My future and my kids’ future is in this country. ” Then they laughed. The marriages of many Syrians who had come to Canada were far more strained, they knew, the traditional arrangements difficult to replant on new soil. Mrs. Mohammad’s counseling groups were filled with women whose husbands had turned bitter at the changed circumstances. Some wives were finally reporting years of domestic abuse. The Mohammads tried to mitigate their differences with kindness. She found ways to telegraph respect for her husband’s authority — before buying a new dress, she texted him a photo and the price for approval. For fortitude with child care duties, he turned to Islamic teachings about the value of helping one’s wife. The two had long conversations about a new favorite word, “flexibility. ” Even as Eman Mohammad craved opportunities for herself, she was not sure how much freedom she wanted for Bayan. In Syria, the path was restrictive but clear. If the war had never happened, she would already be wearing a head scarf and attending a girls’ school. Most girls in her village married at 14 or 15, though the Mohammads would have waited until at least 18. Even if she pursued university there, she would not go on unsupervised dates, get offered a beer at a party, or live alone. Now that she was in Canada, her mother felt, there was no longer a map for her daughter’s life. “I want to try everything here,” Bayan said. On the day of the school trip, with her classmates off on Toronto Island in a freezing rain, the family moved on to their next cultural debate. “What is the meaning of Halloween?” Mrs. Mohammad asked. The holiday was four days away. Bayan burst with answers. It was about being frightened in a fun way, she said, dressing as skeletons and ghosts. “It has to be something scary,” she explained. She wanted to wear a devil costume. One of the sponsors had already arranged to take them . But what Mrs. Mohammad had heard about the holiday made her dubious. Her children would celebrate death and horror, after they had escaped the real thing? Should she worry that her daughter wanted to dress as a symbol of evil? Did Canadians really believe in people coming back from the dead? Just then, Ms. McLorg arrived at the family’s apartment with a giant pumpkin for the children to carve. Bayan had asked Ms. McLorg to join them for the coming date, but the sponsor did not realize how Mrs. Mohammad felt. Ms. McLorg was trying to introduce Canadian customs without imposing on the family’s own. “They should not have to change their essence in order to become Canadian,” Ms. McLorg said later. In fact, the country officially encourages new arrivals to maintain their own culture. In the end, they all celebrated Halloween. Another sponsor hosted them for dinner and cookies: long slivers of shortbread with red icing and almond nails, meant to look like bloody fingers. Ms. McLorg arrived in a pink bunny suit. On the costume question, Bayan and her mother had reached a middle ground: a zombie princess. Abdullah Mohammad headed home early Bayan pleaded to stay later. Her mother surveyed the spiderwebs and chains lacing the street, watching her children merge into the flowing highway of . Two weeks later, Mrs. Mohammad and her two daughters were propelled into a local Walmart by Bayan’s sheer force of will. She longed for a pair of sparkly purple sneakers, and begged, nagged and nearly cried until her mother agreed. As they navigated the aisles, mother and daughters looked like members of two different families. Mrs. Mohammad wore her head scarf, gown and shawl, while the girls were in leggings and skinny jeans. The question about when Bayan would start covering her head loomed over her and her parents. As they were in Canada, her mother was willing to postpone it until seventh grade. “No!” Bayan yelled when she overheard her mother talking about it. She looked ugly with her head covered, she thought. “When I’m in grade nine — maybe,” she said. But the next day, Bayan and her mother slipped inside a building a few blocks from their apartment, where the kicked off the sneakers and knelt. Her mother draped a thin scarf over her daughter’s head, expertly folding, tucking and pinning until it covered her hair without a strand showing. This was Islamic school at the mosque, a new fixture of Bayan’s Sundays. For several hours, she studied written Arabic, verses of the Quran and Islamic values with other children. It was the only activity of hers that the sponsors had not been involved in planning that day, they were taking the rest of the family to a Santa parade, which Bayan was disappointed to miss. Sunday mornings were a compromise between Bayan and her parents: the single time each week, for now, that she would cover her head. For the main lesson that day, the teacher, Maimoonah Ali, an whose parents came to Canada as refugees from Eritrea, passed out colored Popsicle sticks and instructed the students to snap them. The sound of splintering wood filled the room. “Sometimes there are tests in life,” she told the children. “And sometimes they break us. ” Then she collected the remaining sticks into a tight bundle. One by one, the students strained and failed to break them. “It’s really, really difficult to break things when they’re all together, right?” Ms. Ali asked. “And that’s exactly like us. ” But it was not clear how much the class was going to do to help secure Bayan’s Syrian identity. In English, she could read at “Cat in the Hat” level, but her Arabic reading was worse, because the war had interrupted her schooling. Bayan was supposed to repeat the verses that a classmate was saying that day, but her partner did not speak Arabic, and Bayan could barely understand her. She was the only Syrian in the school. Other classmates’ parents came from Algeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Mali. Half the population of Toronto is a reflection of Canada’s openness to immigrants. In her apartment building, Bayan has friends whose families are from Israel and China. When her father picked her up, she could not take off her hijab fast enough. During lunch at home, as she chatted in English, he interjected: “Arabic!” She continued in a mix of both. When she talked about the stick exercise, her father gave a look of recognition. “I was Bayan’s age when they told me the same story,” he said. Their childhoods seemed so disconnected from one another’s. The family left Syria when Bayan was 7 or 8 — they had foundered in Jordan before coming to Canada — and her memories of the home where her family had lived for three generations were dimming. She could picture playing with her cousins by the fountain and grapevines in the courtyard, and recall the way an adjacent garden produced enough mint for the whole neighborhood. But Bayan and her sister could no longer agree on how many olive trees stood there: 20? 100? (Eight, their mother said.) After the Mohammads left Syria, the house next door was shelled or bombed and collapsed on their own home. It was ruined now, the second story gone. The sponsors helped them use Google Maps to try to find what was left, but no one could quite pinpoint it. “I love that house,” Bayan had said a few days before. Suddenly, her confidence and determination kicked in. “We’re going to build it,” she said. “My siblings. All of us. ” | 0fake |
Washed Up Crazy Singer Accuses Saturday Night Live Of Worshipping Satan | Right-ing paranoid whackjob Pat Boone has declared SNL is now venerating Satan, because of a parody skit they ran called God is a Boob Man. The skit was making some light-hearted humor at recent attempts to pass anti-LGBT laws in many states. The skit is absolutely hilarious and is a parody of other recent Christian movie trailers for such films as God s not dead. It isn t clear how Boone saw the skit since he clearly hates SNL and shouldn t be watching it as a result. Perhaps he watches it just to get outraged. He certainly did get upset, though, when he took it upon himself to Godsplain God to the rest of us:God is not thin-skinned. But he does demand reverence. If you have any brains at all you don t pitch yourself against someone who created all things, the God of the Bible. They don t have to apologize to Christians [but] when you come against God and the Holy Spirit who are one and the same, you are bringing upon yourself eternal condemnation. Source: Right Wing WatchBoone went on to not only accuse SNL of being supporters of Satan, but he also outed SNL as a secret Jew-hating enterprise as well: Something can be devilishly funny, but this skit is diabolical. God has only one real enemy Satan. Satan ridicules faith, and they re taking Satan s side. They re also ridiculing me and the film, telling impressionable young people not to see it because it s ridiculous. Then they throw in that the lawyer is Jewish to make the Christian look even worse, but it s just anti-Semitic. Source: Fox NewsYeah, he sure nailed it. Saturday Night Live is secretly anti-Jew. Just think about how stupid that sounds for a few moments.Then, to prove that he s a couple cans short of a six-pack, Boone said he didn t feel that SNL needed to apologize to Christians followed a few moments later by him demanding that SNL apologizes to Christians. He literally real-time flip-flopped.Boone even went so far as to suggest that gay people should be offended at SNL for being portrayed as more bigoted than Christians. Notice he said more bigoted. He literally admitted that Christians like him are bigoted, by using the word more. As if this wasn t embarrassing enough, the producer of God s Not Dead 2, (they actually made 2 of these?) Michael Scott, also complained that SNL is not portraying his movie accurately proving that he has absolutely NO CLUE how parody or satire works.Scott also chimed in with another incredibly funny comment, saying that parody like the SNL skit goes too far and can cause divisions among us.Really? Anti-LGBT/Pro-discrimination law doesn t go too far, and bigoted irrational hate doesn t cause divisions. But, a parody skit on SNL is the great doom of humanity. You really couldn t intentionally make up something that sounds as stupid as the things fundie Christians say naturally, these days.Featured image via Fox News screen capture | 1real |
NEW VIDEO…ANTIFA Terror Group INFILTRATED…Transgender Leader: Use “Knives To Stab” Opponents…Have “AK-47’s Ready” To Shut Down Free Speech | Steven Crowder is an amazing and ALWAYS unafraid conservative comedian. He was present at the union battle for Right To Work in Michigan where he was famously punched in the face by a union thug, when he confronted union thugs and demanded they stop cutting down a massive tent with pro-Right-to-Work conservatives inside (including an elderly woman who was trapped inside, while in a wheelchair when the tent was cut down).Crowder is one of unafraid to take on the Islamification of our schools and small towns, while government officials and liberals persecute Christians and Christian groups in America. Crowder is also passionate about exposing the dangers of political correctness. Crowder uses his very popular videos to prove undeniable facts that support our free speech and gun rights.Steven Crowder s latest project should be on every news network across America, however, you will likely only find this blockbuster video confirming that Antifa is indeed, a domestic terror group on conservative sites like ours or on Twitter and other social media platforms. That s because the media has been going out of their way to soften the image of ANTIFA. They ve been working in unison to make ANTIFA look like a bunch of rabble-rousers who are simply helping to eradicate speech that Americans the Left doesn t agree with. They re just a group of concerned citizens who want to defeat Nazism Trump supporters in America. The leftist media has been begging their viewers to see things from ANTIFA s point of view after all, they re just a group of non-violent violent kids looking to solve the problems of the world through passionate activism violence, intimidation and yes, domestic terrorism.Watch ABC Nightline journalist Dan Harris gut-wrenching reaction to the video that clearly exposes ANTIFA as a domestic terror group: | 1real |
5 Classic Fall Recipes That Can Be Made Healthier | There’s something about the cooler fall weather that makes my family want to huddle up indoors and eat sweets. Humans are likely programmed to do just this, but let’s not let a change of seasons derail our healthy eating. Here are 5 modified classic fall recipes that will still make your house smell amazing and satisfy your sweet tooth—all without packing on the pounds.
5 Favorite Fall Recipes – the Healthy Way! 1. Pumpkin Pie Pumpkin pie defines the Thanksgiving holiday in my household—we eat it as a dessert, but we also eat the leftovers for breakfast. This version adds in rolled oats for fiber and has healthy ground flax, but the full-fat coconut milk means a rich, creamy pie that satisfies.
Ingredients:
1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree 1 (13.5oz) can full-fat coconut milk 1/4 cup gluten-free rolled oats 2 tbsp ground flax 1/4 cup coconut sugar 2 tbsp molasses 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice 1/2 tsp salt 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix the above ingredients together, then pour into a prepared pie crust in a 10-inch round pan. Bake for 30 minutes (it might still appear undercooked—don’t worry!). Let your pie cool, then refrigerate for at least 5 hours. 2. Apple Cider Ingredients:
6 cups of organic apple juice 1/4 cups of real maple syrup (you can use even less – let’s face it, apple juice is sweet on its own) 2 cinnamon sticks 6 whole cloves 6 whole allspice berries (optional)* 1 orange peel, cut into strips (optional)* 1 lemon peel, cut into strips (optional)* *Remember, the richness of flavor makes up for a lack of sugar—I’d rather have a spicier cider than one that is too syrupy sweet…
Instructions:
Pour the apple juice and maple syrup into a large stainless steel saucepan. Place the cinnamon sticks, cloves, allspice berries, orange peel and lemon peel in the center of a washed square of cheesecloth; fold up the sides of the cheesecloth to enclose the bundle, then tie it up with a length of kitchen string. Drop the spice bundle into the cider mixture. I’m not that concerned if it all sits in the broth loose – just be careful not to pour it into your mugs when you serve it. Place the saucepan over moderate heat for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the cider is very hot but not boiling. You can leave it on the lowest simmer during a party. Remove the cider from the heat. Discard the spice bundle. Ladle the cider into big cups or mugs, adding a fresh cinnamon stick to each serving if desired. 3. Slow Cooker Baked Apples I love using my slow cooker, especially during autumn. It’s so nice to throw some ingredients in during the morning and then to come home to a house that smells amazing. This simple dessert makes use of the natural sweetness of apples and leaves out much of the sugar.
Ingredients:
5 cups sliced peeled Granny Smith apples (4 medium) 5 cups sliced peeled Braeburn apples (4 medium) ¼ cup margarine (optional) 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice ¼ cup packed brown sugar (you can even use less or leave it out entirely—experiment to see what works the best for you) 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon ¼ cup apple cider Instructions:
Simply mix all ingredients and cook on low for 3-4 hours. If you’re going to be out all day make sure to set the timer on your slow cooker so the apples don’t get mushy. 4. Spiced Pear Cake This spiced pear cake is a crowd pleaser and a great way to use up your canned pears. We’re leaving off the icing in order to make this a healthier choice, but see this recipe for a richer, more decadent version.
Ingredients
For cake:
1 quart-size jar of canned spiced pears , drained (about 3 cups) 3 large eggs 1 1/2 cups of maple syrup 1 1⁄4 cups coconut oil 3 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped 2 teaspoons vanilla extract Instructions
Preheat oven to 350°. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs, 2 cups sugar, and oil until blended. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda, and add to egg mixture, stir slowly until blended. Fold in pears, chopped nuts, and vanilla extract. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch Bundt pan. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. 5. Pumpkin Spice Waffles Adding a little pumpkin spice is a surefire way to savor the fall weather (just ask Starbucks!). Working pumpkin into this traditional waffle recipe (and then tweaking to make it healthier) is a great way to make your breakfasts festive for the fall.
Ingredients
3/4 cup maple syrup 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1-1/4 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour 1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 2 teaspoon cinnamon 2 teaspoon ginger 1/4 teaspoon cloves 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 2 large eggs 1 cup 2% milk 1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and warm Instructions:
Lightly oil and preheat waffle iron. In a large bowl, combine brown sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl. Whisk together to break apart the cornstarch and blend. Add the remaining dry ingredients, and whisk to blend. Separate eggs: yolks go in a medium sized bowl and whites get set aside in a smaller bowl. In a medium bowl, add pumpkin, milk and egg yolks. Whisk to blend. In a small bowl, whip egg whites with a hand mixer on high until stiff peaks form. Set aside. Pour melted butter into pumpkin mixture. As you pour, whisk to combine. Add the pumpkin mixture to the dry ingredients, and mix together until just combined. Slide the whipped egg whites out of the bowl and onto the mixture you just prepared. Gently fold them in until completely mixed. Once the waffle iron is heated, pour batter and press down until ready – about 3 minutes. Pamela Bofferding is a native Texan who now lives with her husband and sons in New York City. She enjoys hiking, traveling, and playing with her dogs.
This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition
Originally published November 9th, 2016 Pumpkin Spice Waffles Spiced Pear Cake Warm Drinks for the Chilly Season 8 Delicious Things to Make With Pumpkin Guilt-Free Chocolate Fudge Brownies {gluten free and paleo} | 1real |
Jane Fawcett, British Decoder Who Helped Doom the Bismarck, Dies at 95 - The New York Times | Jane Fawcett, who was a reluctant London debutante when she went to work at Bletchley Park, the home of British during World War II, and was credited with identifying a message that led to a great Allied naval success, the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, died on May 21 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95. The death was confirmed by her son, James Fawcett. After the war, Ms. Fawcett had a career as a singer, and later as a preservationist. But she played her most significant historical role as an decoder in British wartime intelligence. In May 1941, the Bismarck, Germany’s mightiest warship, had become a prime target after it sank one of England’s most powerful vessels, the battle cruiser Hood, in the battle of the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland. Much of the British fleet was in search of the Bismarck, which was presumed to have withdrawn to the North Atlantic around Norway. Ms. Fawcett, then known as Jane Hughes, had just turned 20 and had been working for a time at Bletchley Park, the Buckinghamshire estate north of London where the intelligence operation known as the Government Code and Cypher School was located. Thousands of young women worked there during the war many, like Ms. Fawcett, had been recruited and hired from the upper social strata. They performed a variety of tasks assisting the mostly male chess geniuses, linguists, mathematicians and rogue intellectuals struggling to unscramble German military communications written in the devilishly complex disguise generated by Enigma machines. Enigma generated new codes daily, and though by 1941 the Allies had achieved some success in decrypting German missives, it remained work that required vigilance by a chain of operatives. At Bletchley, Ms. Fawcett worked in Hut 6, where the focus was on breaking codes emitted by the German Army and the German air force, the Luftwaffe. As described in a 2015 book, “The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories,” by Michael Smith, her station was in the decoding room, where she sat with a machine called a Typex, which had been modified to replicate an Enigma. When a daily Enigma code was broken, the keys to the code were passed along to Ms. Fawcett or another young woman in the decoding room. She would then plug the keys into her own Typex machine and type out the encoded messages. The Typex machines fed out a decoded script on strips of paper tape, and the first thing Ms. Fawcett and her colleagues needed to do was check to see that the decoded messages were in fact in recognizable German she had spent time in Switzerland, where she learned the language. The German messages were passed along to Hut 3 next door, where they were featured in intelligence reports. On May 25, 1941, Ms. Fawcett was among those in Hut 6 briefed on the search for the Bismarck. “We all knew we’d got the fleet out in the Atlantic trying to locate her because she was the Germans’ most important, latest battleship and had better guns and so on than anybody else, and she’d already sunk the Hood,” Ms. Fawcett recalled in the book. “So it was vitally important to find where she was and try to get rid of her. ” She was just over an hour into her shift when she typed out a message from the main Luftwaffe Enigma. Reading the message, she recognized that a Luftwaffe general whose son was on the Bismarck had sought to find out if he was all right and had been informed that the ship, damaged in the previous battle, was on its way to France — to the port of Brest, in Brittany — for repair. The message, passed instantly along the chain of command, was instrumental in finding the Bismarck, which was first spotted from the air by a seaplane and subsequently attacked by aircraft carrier torpedo bombers and swarmed by Royal Navy battleships and cruisers. It was sunk in the Atlantic west of Brest on May 27. Janet Carolin Hughes was born on March 4, 1921 — probably in Cambridge, where her paternal grandmother lived, her son said, though her family lived in London. (There is some uncertainty about her middle name Mr. Smith said that it was Caroline at birth and that Ms. Fawcett dropped the e later on, just as she dropped the t in Janet.) Her father, George Ravensworth Hughes, was a lawyer for the guild known as the Goldsmiths’ Company her mother, the former Peggy Graham, did charitable work as a prison visitor. As a girl, Jane aspired to be a ballet dancer and trained for a year at Sadler’s Wells, but at 17 she was deemed too tall for the company as a consolation, her parents sent her to Switzerland, where she spent six months studying German. Her mother called her back for debutante season, insisting it was time for her to come out in society. Resentful of this turn of events, she applied to work at Bletchley after receiving a letter from a school friend who was already there. It was the winter of 1940, and she was 18. She signed the Official Secrets Act, compelling her to keep the nature of her work to herself, and was dispatched to Hut 6. She told her parents that she had joined the Foreign Office, the government agency supporting British interests abroad, though she was going only 50 miles or so from home. “It was very bad accommodation,” she recalled in “The Debs of Bletchley Park. ” “Very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. No insulation of any kind except for blackout curtains. “We had horrid little trestle tables, which were very wobbly, and collapsible chairs, which were also very wobbly, very hard. There was very poor lighting single light bulbs hanging down from the ceiling. So we were really in semidarkness, which I expect is what the authorities wanted, better security. ” After the war, Ms. Fawcett trained as a singer at the Royal Academy of Music, and through the early 1960s she toured as a recital and opera singer. She joined the Victorian Society, formed to protect buildings, and won a famous battle against British Railways — which denounced her as “the furious Mrs. Fawcett” — to save the St. Pancras train station in London and, alongside it, the Midland Grand Hotel. She later taught building preservation at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. Ms. Fawcett met her future husband, Edward Fawcett, known as Ted, at a luncheon arranged for young naval officers to meet young women they married just after the war. Mr. Fawcett worked as director of publicity for the National Trust, a British charity devoted to conservation and protection of historic sites. He died in 2013. In addition to her son, Ms. Fawcett is survived by a daughter, Carolin Comberti, and five grandchildren. When Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, whose grandmother worked at Bletchley Park, appeared at the opening of the new museum there in 2014, Mr. Smith, who is an adviser to the Bletchley Park Trust, showed her around Hut 6 and introduced her to some of the women who had worked there during the war. “Jane, who was sat at a desk, was the first to be introduced,” Mr. Smith wrote in an email. When the duchess took her hand, to the horror of the chairman and the chief executive officer of the Bletchley Park Trust, Ms. Fawcett would not let go. “She kept the duchess talking and talking and talking while the C. E. O. was urging me to move the duchess on to the next lady, fearing his carefully planned schedule would fall apart. I don’t think many people ever managed to get Jane Fawcett to budge when she was in a determined mood. ” | 0fake |
“G#d d*mn America”: DISTURBING PHOTOS Illustrate Obama’s “Diplomacy” Failure In Iran | Yes this massive protest against America just happened today! Thousands of Iranians burned the American flag and chanted slogans Wednesday as they marked the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by militant students 36 years ago.The annual state-organized rally drew greater attention this year, as Iranian hard-liners look to counter moderate President Hassan Rouhani s outreach to the West following a landmark nuclear deal reached with world powers in July. An Iranian official also chose the occasion to announce the arrest of an unspecified number of allegedly pro-American writers.The hard-liners fear Rouhani s efforts to improve relations will pave the way for the United States to undermine and eventually dismantle the Islamic republic formed after the 1979 revolution.On Nov. 4, 1979, militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy compound and took 52 Americans hostage after Washington refused to hand over the toppled U.S.-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, for trial in Iran. The students held the hostages for 444 days, and the two countries have had no diplomatic relations since then.Protesters on Wednesday carried placards reading political and security penetration is forbidden. They pumped their fists in the air, shouting God damn America, and No compromise, no surrender to U.S. Others carried banners rejecting U.S. fast food chains McDonald s and Starbucks. Authorities recently closed a newly opened knock-off of KFC, saying it was unlicensed.Hard-liners view fast food outlets and other American products as part of a cultural invasion by the U.S. aimed at undermining Islamic rule and public morality.Foreign firms are poised to return to Iran following the lifting of international sanctions under the nuclear deal, but it remains unclear whether American brands will be allowed in.Iran s state TV showed similar demonstrations in other Iranian cities to mark the occasion, known as the National Day against Global Arrogance. Wednesday s rally in Tehran also saw State Prosecutor Ebrahim Raeisi announce that the intelligence department of the elite Revolutionary Guard had detained a number of writers. The intelligence and security forces identified and cracked down on a network of penetration in media and cyberspace and detained spies and writers hired by Americans, he told the rally, without elaborating. Under no circumstances will we allow penetration of Americans in economic, social and cultural areas, he added.Iran has arrested a number of activists, journalists and artists since Rouhani s 2013 election and currently holds four Iranians with U.S. citizenship, including a Washington Post reporter. Analysts say the arrests are the work of hard-liners in the judiciary and the security forces. Via: AP News | 1real |
‘Carrie’ Is Back. Like a Bloody Hand From the Grave. - The New York Times | Released a few days after Halloween in 1976, it’s considered one of the great American horror films. A hit with two Oscar nominations for acting, it contains one of the genre’s most memorable images and an ending that has been ripped off dozens of times. It also gave a career lift to a young novelist named Stephen King. Yet revisit “Carrie” 40 years later, as you can do on a new version from Shout! Factory, and you might think, “This . .. is not that scary. ” A high school drama, yes. A resonant look at the emotional damage caused by bullying, yes. But a horror movie? Not so much. “I never really approached it as a horror movie,” said its director, Brian De Palma, who scored his first hit with the film. “It’s more of a character piece. She does go berserk after she gets hit with the bucket of blood, but until then, not really. What made this really good — both the book and the film — is that it capsulized everyone’s high school experience of being an outsider. ” Mr. King’s first published novel, “Carrie” (1974) focuses on the teenage daughter of a repressed religious mother. She is a loner, a victim of constant mockery and, oh yes, able to move things with her mind. Carrie has her first period in the school shower and is assaulted by classmates. After she goes to the senior prom with one of the most popular boys, then is doused with pig’s blood as a prank, she goes on a telekinetic rampage. Mr. King has written many doorstoppers, but “Carrie” is one of his shortest novels. “It’s really a simple story,” Mr. King said. “And people saw Carrie as an extreme case of what they went through in high school. ” Fresh out of college when he started the book, teaching high school English by day, Mr. King said he understood “it from both sides of the desk. There was a visceral sense that I was writing about something that I understood and felt deeply at the time. ” In the few had heard of Mr. King, a teacher who had mainly published short stories in men’s magazines. Lawrence D. Cohen, then working for a movie producer in New York, had certainly never heard of him when he first came across the manuscript. He was later hired to write the screenplay after it was optioned by the producer Paul Monash. “I understood why critics were perplexed as to what genre ‘Carrie’ belonged to,” Mr. Cohen said. “Was it a high school movie, a novel, a horror piece, a psychological thriller?” The film eventually landed at United Artists with Mr. De Palma as director. Holding joint auditions with George Lucas, who was then casting “Star Wars,” Mr. De Palma found a relatively cast, including John Travolta, Betty Buckley, William Katt, Nancy Allen and Amy Irving. Though written in the novel as a “chunky girl” and a “frog among swans,” the screen Carrie was Sissy Spacek, who had starred in Terrence Malick’s first film, “Badlands” (1973). “The studio didn’t even want me to test Sissy,” Mr. De Palma said of Ms. Spacek, who had come to audition with Vaseline smeared in her hair to look greasy and unglamorous. “It’s probably the part she’ll be best remembered for even though she won an Oscar for another role. ” (Both Ms. Spacek and Piper Laurie, who played her mother, were nominated for “Carrie. ”) After decades of slasher flicks, films and movies, it’s surprising to see how much of “Carrie” is a naturalistic, compelling story about high school: shopping for prom clothes, cruising around town, serving detention, dancing first dances together. That bucket of blood doesn’t fall until the last 20 minutes. United Artists considered marketing it as a . “They wanted to change the title to ‘Pray for Carrie,’ which is a very title,” Mr. Cohen said. “And they ended up taking out an ad that was a poster of Carrie covered in blood, which was a spoiler before that word was used, but a clear way of selling the movie. I remember looking at it going, ‘They’ve lost their minds they’re giving away the whole movie. ’” In retrospect, the poster is a superb example of Alfred Hitchcock’s explanation of the difference between suspense and surprise — knowing a bomb will explode and tensing for it, versus having it blow up with no warning. Bloody Carrie is the bomb the audience saw before the movie even started. One reason “Carrie” is considered such an effective horror movie is its final two minutes, in which Ms. Irving’s good girl, Sue Snell, visits a grave and a hand shoots from the ground, sending audiences from the theater with one more scare. It was the last thing they remembered about the movie and the first thing they told friends. “What the ending did was establish Stephen King as a brand name for horror,” said Mr. Cohen, who also wrote a “Carrie” stage musical and the screenplay for the 2013 movie remake. The success of the original film boosted sales for the novel, and Mr. King’s next novel after the movie, “The Shining,” became his first hardcover best seller, and he was off. But Mr. King has never lost his view of high school as a place like the island in “Lord of the Flies. ” Those hallways are the true dark corridors, and you don’t need to add too much to make it scarier than it already is. “I tell people, ‘If you look back on high school as the high point of your life,’” you’re one American, Mr. King said, using rougher language. “Most of us look at high school as something we escaped. ” | 0fake |
Anti-Trump protests are paid and staged, Craigslist reveals | November 12, 2016 348 Ads on Craigslist reveal that paid anti-Trump protesters and Soros-sponsored staged demonstrations are continuing to fuel hate and division. Share on Facebook
It was reported previously on The Duran that MoveOn – a George Soros controlled NGO, is behind the organization of anti-Trump protests across the country. As the protests continue, however, Craigslist has become an important recruitment tool for some of these organizers, and here is what it reveals:
Fight the Trump Agenda! We’re hiring Full-Time Organizers 15/hr! – reads a Craigslist ad from Washington CAN in Seattle . Activists are promised Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), Paid Vacation, Paid Sick Days, Holidays, and Leave of Absence .
Washington CAN claims to be the state’s oldest and largest grassroots non-profit with over 35 years of organizational experience. It is unclear whether it has any direct ties to Soros’s MoveOn, but it certainly wouldn’t be a wild assumption to make under the circumstances.
In another instance, a Craigslist ad exposed paid Anti-Trump protesters being recruited for a staged event in Los Angeles. And this time the Soros link is quite clear and in the open. TruthFeed reports:
In this case, a Craigslist ad in Los Angeles shows that activists are wanted to block traffic in the heavy traffic intersection of Highlands and Hollywood.
Here’s an example of a Soros employee literally “posing” as a protester. Not all that “grass roots.”
Obviously, no one is disputing the fact that there are millions of people unhappy with the election results. Neither is there any doubt that thousands across the the country are protesting genuinely out of emotion and desire to express their discontent. What’s important is that these people realize that they are playing right into the hands of an establishment agenda that doesn’t have America’s best interests in mind.
The election is over and we have a clear winner. The losing side has conceded, admitting that the election was fair and calling for a peaceful transition of power. For all the smart folks out there this is a clear indication that it’s time to go home, back to school, back to work, back to your daily routine and stop trying to prolong the division and hate that has been eating away at this country for far too long. | 1real |
‘Flags of Our Fathers’ Author Now Doubts His Father Was in Iwo Jima Photo - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — It is an iconic photograph of American patriotism, depicting the heroism of service members raising the flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, which inspired the book and movie “Flags of Our Fathers. ” But while the image has become a symbol of the sacrifices of American troops, the Marine Corps has also had to defend it for 70 years against accusations that it was staged and that some of the men were misidentified. Now, the man who wrote the book, which chronicled how his father and five Marines came together to lift the flag in the famous photograph, has raised new doubts about the image, saying that he now believes his father is not actually in it. The author, James Bradley, revealed his conclusion in an interview on Tuesday, just days after the Marine Corps said that it had opened an inquiry into whether the identifications in the photograph were correct. He said that his father, John, a Navy corpsman, had participated in raising a flag on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945, but had not taken part in another the same day, which became the famous photograph. His father, he said, probably thought that the first was the one that was captured in the famous picture taken by Joe Rosenthal, a photographer for The Associated Press. Mr. Bradley’s doubts tell a story about the fog of war, the efforts of a son to memorialize his father and the apparent willingness of the Marines to at first brush aside questions about one of their most historic moments. Mr. Bradley said he had become convinced that his father was not in the photograph after studying evidence that was published in a 2014 article in The Omaha which described doubts raised by amateur historians who compared that photograph to images of the first . They found that the pants, headgear and cartridge belt on the Navy corpsman identified as John Bradley were different from the gear he wore that day. Mr. Bradley said he had waited a year to examine the evidence in the newspaper article because he was working on a new book in Vietnam, and then became ill. He did not come forward with his belief that his father was not in the photograph, he said, because there was little interest from the news media and the Marines. “It wasn’t top of mind,” Mr. Bradley said in the interview. “It wasn’t a priority. I was overseas, and this past fall I was recovering from a disease I got in New Guinea that almost killed me. Now there’s interest in this, and I’m talking about it. I didn’t have the energy to carry the water all by myself. ” The photograph, taken during one of the bloodiest battles of the war, was splashed across the front pages of newspapers throughout the country less than 48 hours after it was taken, exceptionally fast for the time. It was an immediate source of patriotism and controversy. President Harry S. Truman used it to sell bonds to fund the war, and Mr. Rosenthal brushed back accusations that it had been staged. And two years after the image was taken, one of the men identified as being in it hitchhiked to Texas from Arizona to tell the family of a man who died on Iwo Jima that the man had been incorrectly named as one of those depicted. That spurred a congressional investigation that led the military to acknowledge that it had misidentified one of the men. “Flags of Our Fathers,” first published in 2000, was on lists for nearly a year. It was later made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. The photograph was also the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. a statue in which six figures are depicted in the positions captured by Mr. Rosenthal. Mr. Bradley said that his father had met with the sculptor of the memorial, who based some of the figures on his body. All of the men identified in the photograph are dead. Three of the men died fighting the Japanese on Iwo Jima. John Bradley died in 1994. The 2014 article in the Omaha newspaper detailed how Stephen Foley, a man in Ireland who worked at a building supply company, and Eric Krelle, an historian, had concluded that Mr. Bradley was misidentified after poring over the images and studying uniforms worn on the island. At the time, however, the Marines and James Bradley discounted the research. “Listen, I wrote the book based on facts told to me by guys who had actually been there,” Mr. Bradley was quoted saying in the article. “That’s my research. That’s what I trust. ” He added: “At the end of the day, the truth is the truth. Everything is possible. But really?” The Marines said at the time that they “firmly” stood by the established accounts of who was in the photograph. Last year, Dustin Spence, a historian from California who made a documentary about the and Mr. Foley approached the Marines with findings that they said showed problems with the identifications, Mr. Spence said in a telephone interview. The Marines, Mr. Spence said, did not seriously look into their claims. “I believe it’s something difficult for some in the Marine Corps to swallow,” Mr. Spence said. The Smithsonian Channel said it had gone to the Marines after “months of thorough, scientific analysis” and had since been working closely with the service. It added that it would broadcast the findings this year. The Marine Corps acknowledged the inquiry in a statement, but provided few details. ”Our history is important to us, and even today, this iconic image still represents the fighting spirit of Marines and is a symbol of the tremendous accomplishments of our corps,” the Marines said. “As such, with the information and research provided by the Smithsonian Channel, who used advanced digital technology to examine battle footage, the Marine Corps decided to review their photo enhancements, film analysis and findings. ” It added, “Joe Rosenthal’s photo captured a single moment in the battle during which more than 6, 500 U. S. servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice, and it is representative of the more than 70, 000 U. S. Marines, sailors, soldiers and Coast Guardsmen that contributed to the battle. ” A summary on the paperback edition of “Flags of Our Fathers” reads: “Here is the true story behind the six flag raisers and the immortal photograph that came to symbolize the power and courage of America during World War II. In ‘Flags of Our Fathers,’ the son of one of the flag raisers captures the glory, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six ordinary boys who came together at a crucial moment in one of history’s bloodiest battles — and lifted the heart and spirit of a nation at war. ” | 0fake |
Clinton campaign hits Trump for seeing Brexit as boon to his business | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign accused Donald Trump on Sunday of caring more about how Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union would benefit his financial bottom line than how it would impact the U.S. economy. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook acknowledged parallels between the populist anger and anti-establishment fervor that fueled the Brexit vote and Trump’s rise to the nomination, but said the Republican candidate’s reaction showed he was not fit to occupy the White House. “Hillary Clinton looks at this through the lens of how it’s going to affect middle-class families, Donald Trump through the lens of how it will help his bottom line,” Mook said on “Fox News Sunday.” Without mentioning Trump by name, Clinton also warned that “bombastic comments in turbulent times can actually cause more turbulence” in a speech to a conference of city mayors in Indianapolis on Sunday afternoon. Her campaign released a national television advertisement earlier in the day, which featured the wealthy real estate developer’s comments on Friday that the fall of the British currency after the Brexit vote could mean more business for his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, where he was speaking. “Every president is tested by world events, but Donald Trump thinks about how his golf resort can profit from them,” said the 30-second video. Besides his currency comments, Trump had praised the Brexit result as an example of people “taking their country back.” He responded to the advertisement on Sunday by saying Clinton, whose staff had said she supported the United Kingdom remaining in the union, had poor judgment. “Clinton is trying to wash away her bad judgment call on BREXIT with big dollar ads,” ran a message on his Twitter account. “Disgraceful!” Paul Manafort, campaign manager for Trump, rejected what he called a “phony” charge by Clinton and said Trump was more in sync with the global economic frustration exemplified by the Brexit vote. In contrast, the Clinton ad showed her campaign’s “tone deafness” by focusing on things the American people did not care about, he said in an NBC interview. In her speech on Sunday, Clinton said the United States and the United Kingdom were different “economically, politically, demographically,” but still drew some parallels between the mood of American and British voters. “Just as we have seen, there are many frustrated people in Britain, we know there are frustrated people here at home, too,” she said. “I have seen it, I’ve heard it, I know it.” Global stock markets nosedived on Friday and economic experts warned of a potential global recession after the shocking British vote to pull out of the European Union. Markets prepared for the possibility of more pain on Monday. Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Brexit vote highlighted global anxieties about economic stagnation and immigration. “The genius of what’s happened with the candidacy of Donald Trump is he’s given voice to that, just as was given in the UK,” Corker, who has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick for Trump, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. He said he thought Trump’s appearance at his golf course in Scotland after the Brexit vote “was one of his best events” and his comments about the British currency and what it would mean for his businesses were just “an anecdotal statement” about its effects. “He was giving an example, which is obvious, that when the currency fluctuates, as it does, more Americans are going to be able to travel to the UK more cheaply,” he said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the Brexit vote showed people were tired of being dictated to by “unelected bureaucrats in Brussels,” and said there were parallels in the United States. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who built his White House campaign against Clinton around populist proposals to eradicate income inequality, remove big money from politics and rein in Wall Street, said the Brexit vote encapsulated many of those concerns. “What ordinary people are saying is ‘hey, give us an economy that works for all of us, not just the people on top,’” Sanders said on CNN. | 0fake |
How to Get Better Returns on Savings - The New York Times | Savers were encouraged last year when the Federal Reserve began raising rates. But interest paid on the federally insured accounts remains lackluster. Consumers willing to jump through some hoops, however, can get much better returns on their savings. In its annual review of checking accounts, the financial website Bankrate found that the average yield at banks and credit unions was 1. 65 percent, while nearly a dozen yielded 2 percent or more. By contrast, the average money market account yields just 0. 11 percent. Bankrate’s analysis looked at a sample of 56 banks and credit unions in to late February. But only about half of the accounts are available to consumers nationally, and all come with lots of strings attached. Most, for instance, require direct deposit and at least 10 debit transactions a month to earn the highest rate. Other requirements may include agreeing to receive monthly statements electronically and paying bills online. And a few banks say they offer the accounts nationally but still require an visit to a branch to open the account. “This is not something that’s going to work for everybody,” said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst. For consumers who have direct deposit and use debit cards a lot, however, opening one of the accounts could be worthwhile since interest rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit remain pedestrian. “All the more reason to be proactive,” he said, “ to make sure you’re getting the best return on your money. ” One example of a nationally available account is offered by Main Street Bank in Bingham Farms, Mich. The account offers 2. 25 percent on balances up to $25, 000 (the rate on balances over the cap is 0. 25 percent). In addition to a direct deposit or one automatic payment, the requirements include 12 debit transactions a month. Ken Tumin, founder of DepositAccounts. com, a website that tracks deposit rates, said many of his readers are older people looking to maximize returns on accounts, and some have multiple checking accounts. (He calls them reward checking accounts because they typically offer a “reward” like reimbursement of A. T. M. fees in addition to the higher rate.) One reader, he said, has at least 10 of these accounts. While managing them and making sure all the various requirements are met is a challenge for consumers, he said, “They’re serious in terms of maximizing their savings in a safe way. ” To get the most from the accounts, it’s best to think of them as a savings account, rather than a checking account, Mr. McBride said. The required debits should probably be for smaller amounts, he said, so the higher rate is applied to the largest balance possible. (A few banks require that the debit transactions hit a minimum purchase level, so be sure to check the details.) Here are some questions and answers about checking accounts: ■ What if I don’t make the required number of debit transactions? You won’t get the highest rate on your deposit for that month but will instead get a much lower, default interest rate. The average default rate is 0. 06 percent. The default rate isn’t permanent, however you can regain it by meeting the required debits the next month. And, Mr. Tumin said, the accounts typically have no monthly fee, so while you won’t earn the higher rate if you fail to meet the account’s criteria, you won’t be penalized with an additional charge. ■ Is there a limit on the balance that earns the higher rate? Usually, yes — and that can limit the money you earn on your funds. Consumers must weigh the rate along with the balance cap to determine which account would generate the most interest for them, Mr. McBride said. The caps range from a low of $500 to a high of $25, 000, with an average of about $16, 000, Bankrate found. Earning 2 percent on the average would earn more than $300 for the account holder. But of the 15 accounts, just one had a balance cap higher than $15, 000. Northpointe Bank in Grand Rapids, Mich. for instance, offers a yield of 5 percent, but it caps the balance eligible for the rate at $5, 000. Funds over the limit earn just 0. 1 percent. Mr. Tumin suggested that consumers with a relatively small amount of money to deposit choose the account with the highest rate, while those with a larger pot select an account with the highest cap. ■ What if I already have my paycheck deposited into another account? Some employers allow you to have your direct paycheck deposit split among multiple accounts, Mr. McBride said. So you could have a portion deposited into a main checking account, which you use to pay monthly bills, and have the rest deposited into the account to meet the criteria for the higher interest rate. In addition, some accounts allow deposits that use an automated clearing house electronic network for clearing financial transactions — A. C. H. transactions — to meet the criteria, Mr. Tumin said. So you could set up a recurring automatic transfer from an online savings account — say, one offered by the Ally Bank or Capital One 360 — to meet that requirement. | 0fake |
John Oliver Finally Takes Aim At Donald Trump, Destroys Him On EVERYTHING (VIDEO) | The one thing John Oliver hasn t talked about on his show so far is Donald Trump, but that changed on Sunday night.The HBO host devoted nearly his entire program to ripping apart the Republican billionaire as if he had been biding his time waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Our main story tonight and I can not believe I m saying this is Donald Trump, and I say that knowing that every time his name gets said out loud, he has a shattering orgasm, Oliver hilarious began.Like a small mole discovered on your back, Oliver continued, Trump has grown to the point where you have to start taking him seriously.Trump has not only won New Hampshire and South Carolina, he is now poised to win big on Super Tuesday, which could seal the nomination for him.But Oliver absolutely destroyed Trump and it became really obvious that he and his team did a lot of research in an effort to hit Trump as hard as possible. Donald Trump can seem appealing until you take a closer look, Oliver said. Much like the lunch buffet at a strip club. Or the NFL. Or having a pet chimpanzee. Sure, it seems fun, but someday Coco is going to rip your f*cking limbs off. Oliver took aim at Trump s net worth, which The Donald proudly claims is at least TEN BILLION DOLLARS. However, Oliver noted that in reality Trump is worth a mere $150 to $250 million dollars. Then it was time to take a closer look at Trump s claim that he is successful at everything he does, and even that doesn t hold water. From Trump Vodka to Trump Steaks to Trump University, Donald Trump has repeatedly failed in multiple business ventures. He s even incredibly thin-skinned, as Oliver discovered when he pointed out that Trump sends an occasional letter to Vanity Fair with a picture of his hand highlighting the length of his fingers after the magazine claimed that he has tiny, cocktail sausage fingers. The in-depth mockery of Trump by Oliver was simply amazing over the full 21 minutes the segment lasted, which hilariously concluded with the comedian reaching back into Trump s family history to find out that Trump s real last name is Drumpf. And that inspired Oliver to buy www.donaldjdrumpf.com to Make Donald Drumpf Again.Here s the video via YouTube:Oliver also summed up Trump s candidacy as a bullshit artist selling a shitty lifestyle to the American people.We may have had to wait a long time to see Oliver take on Trump, but it sure was worth the wait.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Oxford Fellow GLORIOUSLY Buries Trump For Trying To Discredit CBO Report On Trumpcare | Donald Trump just got owned.On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office graded the GOP healthcare bill that they dubiously named the American Healthcare Act. And the results were not good at all.Despite Trump calling the bill wonderful and claiming that everybody in America will have health insurance coverage, the CBO pointed out that the bill would cause 24 million Americans to lose their healthcare and would make the price of healthcare skyrocket.Of course, Trump administration officials immediately attacked the CBO report. We disagree strenuously with the report that was put out, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said. It s just not believable, is what we would suggest, Price continued, insisting that the GOP healthcare plan will cover more people and make healthcare more affordable.Trump s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney also dismissed the report and attacked the CBO. This is exactly what we thought the CBO would come forth with, he said. They re terrible at counting coverage. The CBO report is full of errors not errors, they re just bad assumptions like that. It s the only way you can get to these bizarre numbers. The reaction from Trump s administration was predictable, and Oxford Fellow Brian Klaas brilliantly prepared for it by pointing out at least 13 instances where Trump used CBO reports to attack President Obama.Trump s team will try to discredit the CBO assessment of its health care bill this week.Here are 13x he used CBO estimates to attack Obama pic.twitter.com/bAEyxubnXv Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 13, 2017You know, because Trump is a hypocrite.And Trump can t say that the CBO is wrong just because it gave him a report he doesn t like.As it turns out, Trump s Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and his Republican colleagues in Congress picked the official who currently runs the Congressional Budget Office.The CBO is *the* trusted expert; it is led by a Republican. Price helped pick the director. And Trump used CBO stats 13x to attack Obama. https://t.co/QMdy3fLEfq Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 13, 2017Here s Trump s Health Secretary praising the selection of the *Republican* HE HELPED PICK to run the CBO. Now he s attacking CBO estimates. https://t.co/QdHx8RBGpm Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 14, 2017The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan agency that is tasked with providing Congress with objective analysis of bills relating to economic and budgetary decisions.What Trump and Republicans got from the CBO report is the facts. But they don t like the facts so they are attacking the CBO despite the fact that they picked the guy who runs it. Apparently, they expected him to be biased and run it dishonestly.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
LOW FLUSH TOILETS, DELTA SMELT, PAYOFFS, NEIGHBORHOOD SNITCHES AND STATISTS…Why The Radical Left Is Lying About A Water Crisis In CA | Dr. Gina Loudon is hands down one of our favorite conservative writers. She nails it with this piece about the truth behind the lies of the California drought I found it supremely ironic this week that two of the big stories were about a man-made lack of water in California, and a man lost in a vast sea off of Florida.Gov. Jerry Moonbeam Brown announced the dire circumstances, not from the Capitol in Sacramento, but from the dramatic backdrop of a mountaintop. His narrative held that there should be five feet of snow pack, but alas, there was none. Brown, and the radical Marxists, couched as environmentalists he represents, have convinced most Americans to hold two radically opposing views simultaneously. Ostensibly, California is in danger of being flooded by rising sea levels caused by global warming and melting polar ice caps, and it is also utterly out of water.There is no shortage of water. This is an environmentalist-created drought that is costing billions.I waver between utter disgust and admiration when I watch how the leftists sell these things, always with straight faces. Every major news outlet in America and many around the world swallowed the narrative like fish on a baited hook. They tell us there is no water, no snow to provide water for the summer, and the farmers are taking too much so people must suffer. There is an all-out war on grass, and no one is safe. Sorry, Shaggy, your grass is to blame as well.There is hand wringing in every club house as the boards are told they are coming for the rough grass, your fairways and greens are safe, for now. Evil rich guys in colorful knickers and almond farmers in overalls are the scourge of California. Off with their heads! Oh, and you can forget about the luxury of children playing on the lawn. If you want that, you breeders should move to flyover land! Don t you dare sneak and water the backyard after dark; Brown makes it easy for your neighbors to snitch on you. I m not making this up. They really have a state hotline for that.Those of us who pay attention know well the proverb, Where there is no vision, the people perish. The people who built California into the greatest agricultural producer in America gave us dams, canals, reservoirs and all kinds of conveyance of water. They harnessed the rivers that reach from the Pacific Northwest down well into Northern California and even draw water to the Golden State from the Colorado River. That was then. Nothing has changed since then, except political power.For the last several decades, the radical fringe has taken full control of California, and it hates people. Dennis Prager observed that statists love humanity but hate humans. Watch how they latch onto dreams of egalitarian states but begin the execution of their plans by marginalizing, isolating and then executing anyone who disagrees with them. They dine in the finest restaurants in San Francisco, the likes of Brown, Pelosi, Boxer and Feinstein, planning lawsuits to cut the flow of water to the farms of Central California and the people in Southern California, caring not a wit that 40,000 agricultural workers, mostly Hispanic, are unemployed.Just this week, in the middle of a human crisis, federal fish agents ordered the release of billions of gallons of water purportedly to save six fish. You read that right. Not to save six species of fish, but literally, six fish. Apparently, these special six stood their, err ground, and when 29 of their compadres rode the 10 billion gallon man-made wave to the ocean in March, they refused to go with the flow (sorry).You can t make this stuff up. But when you do, people actually believe it.So Obama administration agents want a second toilet flush to give these hard-headed steelheads a second nudge. The idea that nature itself may be holding the fish where they are is of no concern to statists who love telling both man and beast what they think is good for them. Sadly, this latest mind-boggling atrocity is getting very little media coverage. I found excellent coverage in the Manteca Bulletin. Why hasn t the Los Angeles Times reported on this?The current shortage is based primarily on the release of billions of gallons daily into the San Francisco Bay to sustain the bait fish known as the Delta smelt. This is a simple distribution issue; there is plenty of water.Prior to the statists taking over California, massive pumps were diverting water from rivers into the canal system (built before Brown and his ilk took control of the state). They have all but turned these pumps off to protect the fish from their Darwinian demise, and billions upon billions of gallons of fresh water is continuously dumped into the ocean.For the people-hating San Francisco cabal, cutting off water from the people is the real goal. They want fewer people to begin with, but the ultimate goal is control. Few environmentalists admit it publicly, but they want zero farming in the central valley, preferring to allow land to return to its prehistoric state. The cabal wants to control water so they can control people. Brown is just the messenger today. He is telling America that water access is a privilege, he has the power to pick winners and losers, and we have to just take it.If Brown decides tomorrow that he wants to withhold water from almond farmers, Americans will just have to accept it. Have you ever wondered why any business owner would give campaign donations to Marxist, business-hating politicians? Now you know why. They must give to buy protection. Business owners do not donate to Brown, Pelosi or Harry Reid because those politicians are good for business; they give to be sure they are not the next targets.The problem with all of this is that water is a limitless natural resource. Just ask the sailor who faced drowning daily or the people in the Midwest who were deluged this week. It is one thing to argue for conservation of animals, or even trees, or green space, but water? Water is a limitless natural resource. Not even the most self-important leftist believes he could make water go away, no matter how hard he tried. How did they convince us to accept this lie?They got us to buy the lie that water is scarce by telling it often enough and pounding it into generations of schoolchildren. Using federal law and acts of Congress, they forced people from water-soaked regions to accept low flush or what some call two flush toilets the same as desert-dwelling Californians. And we fell for it. At least the Democrats among us fell for it.Thus it is that Brown got to have his cake and eat it, too. He told Californians, and really all Americans and the world, that lack of water was not his fault for lacking the vision to feed the distribution system created by the real men who built California. He repeats that it is not the fault of the Marxists Endangered Species Act that prefers hard-headed fish over people. The lack of water is the result of the lack of snow pack, which is the result of climate change, which is the result of greedy people being well, people. The Delta smelt and steelhead trout must live and we mere humans should all just die.Meanwhile, Jerry Brown is committed to spending $100 billion for trains, but he has made zero commitment to allowing water to flow to people instead of fish, and zero commitment to finding funding for his twin tunnels alternate solution. And why would he? We are cutting back our water use, ratting on our neighbors and accepting higher produce prices across America. The Marxists in San Francisco are toasting total victory. The farmers and country club board members are suing for peace. Lord help usVia: WND | 1real |
BOOM! MATH SHOWS Trump Would Have Beaten Obama In Romney-Obama Election » 100percentfedUp.com | Email For Republican politicians like Ohio Governor John Kasich who refused to get behind Donald J. Trump…it turns out Trump was right…he didn’t need you. In spite of the massive media force who came out against him, and the ‘never Trumpers’ from his own party who worked very hard to defeat him, if Obama was running against Donald J. Trump today, Trump would have beaten him…
It’s easy to glance at Tuesday’s popular vote — which, with 92 percent of all precincts reporting, shows Hillary Clinton with six million fewer votes than Barack Obama won in 2012 – and reach the conclusion that Clinton lost the White House because she failed to turn out the Democratic base. But the truth is much more complicated. While she underperformed relative to Obama’s 2012 totals in several Midwestern states — Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin — Clinton ran virtually even with Obama in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. What’s more, she far surpassed Obama’s 2012 vote total in Florida, the country’s biggest swing state. Yet somehow, while Obama carried Florida, Clinton lost it. Which brings us to an important question: Was Donald Trump just good enough to beat a bad Democratic opponent on Tuesday, or does he deserve far more credit? Could he, for instance, have competed with the vaunted Obama machine? The answer, somewhat shockingly, is yes.
A review of vote totals in the past two elections reveals that Trump 2016 would have defeated Obama 2012 in the electoral college. (Disclaimer: This obviously is an apples-to-oranges exercise because no two elections are the same, nor are any two electorates. Still, unlike debating whether the 2016 Cubs would defeat the 1927 Yankees, this is not an entirely abstract argument; a comparison of their respective performances in the country’s most competitive states shows Trump edging Obama in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.) The math might seem impossible. After all, Obama won nearly 66 million votes in 2012; Trump is currently at 59.5 million and should finish around 60 million, which will actually be one million fewer votes than Mitt Romney won. How, then, could Trump have topped Obama in the electoral college? The answer: Republican turnout lagged in certain parts of the country but shot through the roof in the nation’s most critical battleground states. Let’s look at them individually, in descending order by population, and do the electoral-vote math. The 2016 totals aren’t yet final because not all precincts have reported.
FLORIDA — 29 EVs — 98 percent reporting
Obama 2012: 4,235,270
Clinton 2016: 4,485,745 TRENDING ON 100% Fed Up | 1real |
Pentagon says diplomatic tension with Turkey not affecting military operations | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A diplomatic dispute between Turkey and the United States has not affected military operations or personnel out of Turkey, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. I can confirm that these developments have not impacted our operations or personnel, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters. The Turkish air force base in Incirlik continues to fulfill an important role supporting NATO and coalition efforts. He said that Turkey was a close NATO ally and the U.S. would continue to coordinate joint and separate military activities with Ankara. | 0fake |
Prison employee pleaded not guilty to aiding escape of two murderers | The female prison employee at the center of an investigation into the escape of two killers pleaded not guilty Friday night to helping them flee the maximum security facility.
Prison tailor shop instructor Joyce Mitchell, 51, was arraigned on a felony charge of promoting prison contraband and misdemeanor count of criminal facilitation, authorities said.
Mitchell is accused of aiding in the escape of inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt from the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York last week.
She entered the court room with her hands cuffed in front of her, clad jeans and a lime green top looking terrified. She did not speak. She was ordered held in jail on $100,000 cash bail or $200,000 bond on felony county and is due back in court Monday morning.
District Attorney Andrew Wylie said earlier Friday the contraband did not include the power tools used by the men as they cut holes in their cell walls and a steam pipe to escape through a manhole last weekend.
Wylie didn't elaborate on the charges Friday as more than 800 officers continued to search for the escapees, concentrating in a rural area around the prison in the Adirondacks near the Canadian border. Earlier residents reported seeing tow men jumping a stone wall outside Dannemora.
Maj. Charles Guess of the New York State gave a stern warning to the convicts at an evening press conference,
"We're coming for you and will not stop until you are caught," he said.
He added that Mitchell's arrest represented "one large piece of the puzzle in our quest" to find the men.
Asked about any clues to the escapees' whereabouts, Guess said there was no "conclusive evidence" that either had left the area. None of the reports of possible sightings has been confirmed, he added.
"It's day six," he said, "and if they have not escaped the area, you've got to assume they're cold, wet, tired and hungry."
As to whether they split up, Guess said, "there's no reason to believe they're not together but we're planning for both eventualities."
Earlier, Wylie said Mitchell, a supervisor in the prison's tailoring shop, brought "contraband" into the prison but he declined to elaborate on what, specifically, she gave the men.
The Albany Times-Union reported late Thursday that Mitchell told New York State Police she gave Matt, 48, and Sweat, 34, access to a cell phone and smuggled tools into the prison.
A police source close to the investigation confirmed to Fox News Friday that Mitchell planned to provide a getaway car for the two convicted murderers but had a change of heart at the last minute. Mitchell instead checked herself into a hospital some 40 miles away from the prison, complaining of panic attacks, according to law enforcement.
Mitchell joined the prison staff in March of 2008 and earned $57,697 a year. She was suspended without pay, effective Friday.
Police, meanwhile, said Friday that two men believed to be the inmates were spotted jumping over a stone wall in the woods in Saranac, a few miles from the prison, the Buffalo News reported. According to the newspaper, a law enforcement officer said he believes he saw the two at 7:30 a.m. Friday and authorities converged on the area.
Colleen Cringle, who lives on Cringle road in Saranac, told the newspaper police were using her home as a staging area to search for the killers.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has vowed that state law would come down hard on any prison system employee who crosses the line with inmates.
"If you do it, you will be convicted, and then you'll be on the other side of the prison that you've been policing, and that is not a pleasant place to be," Cuomo said. The governor also said investigators are "talking to several people who may have facilitated the escape."
The Times-Union also reported that Mitchell had been investigated in recent months by the state corrections department's inspector general after a fellow prison worker complained that she had gotten too close to Sweat and Matt. That investigation did not result in any discipline.
Prison employees and correction officers are prohibited from having relationships with inmates or performing favors for them.
Matt was serving 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of Matt's 76-year-old former boss, whose body was found in pieces in a river.
Matt and an accomplice stuffed William Rickerson in a car trunk in his pajamas and drove around with him for 27 hours because he wouldn't tell them the location of large sums of money he was believed to have.
According to testimony, Matt bent back the elderly man's fingers until they broke and later snapped Rickerson's neck with his bare hands.
After the killing, Matt fled to Mexico, where he killed a man outside a bar.
Sweat was doing life without parole for his part in the 2002 killing of sheriff's Deputy Kevin Tarsia, who was shot 15 times and run over after discovering Sweat and two accomplices transferring stolen guns between vehicles.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from The Albany Times-Union | 0fake |
Obama Calls on Putin to Help Reduce Violence in Syria After Peace Talks Stall - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — President Obama had “an intense conversation” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday in which he expressed concern on the eve of his visit to the Middle East and Europe about the fragile Syrian peace talks and increased violence in Ukraine, White House officials said. In a strongly worded statement, the White House said that Mr. Obama had urged Mr. Putin to use his influence with President Bashar of Syria to press him to stop attacks against opposition forces and abide by his commitment to a partial . The cessation of hostilities, brokered by Russia and the United States in February, has shown signs of crumbling in recent days, with increasing ground clashes and airstrikes. Syrian government forces have been mounting an offensive near the northern city of Aleppo, while rebel groups have reportedly made advances against government positions in the areas of Latakia in the north and Hama in the center of the country. A statement released by the office of Mr. Putin said he had stressed the need for moderate opposition leaders in Syria to distance themselves from the Islamic State and other extremist groups. On Monday, efforts to negotiate a political settlement to the conflict grew more difficult when opposition representatives pulled out of formal talks in Geneva. The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said that the opposition High Negotiating Committee had told him that it was suspending its participation because of the surge in fighting and a decline in deliveries of humanitarian aid. “Since these talks began in Geneva, the Assad regime has worsened the situation on the ground,” Salem a spokesman for the opposition coalition, said in a statement. “The progress in Geneva is directly connected to the realities faced by our people in Syria. If the ground situation is not improved, it will affect the advancement of the political process. ” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said that while the call between Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin was “intense,” there was not an impasse between them over Syria. “It’s an opportunity for the president to, once again, make the case to President Putin that he should use his influence with the Assad regime to live up to the commitments that they’ve made in the context of the cessation of hostilities,” Mr. Earnest told reporters. For Mr. Obama, the phone call with Mr. Putin offered a chance before his arrival in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to demonstrate his resolve in moving toward a political solution in Syria. Mr. Obama is expected to urge Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations to renew their focus on helping to end the Syria conflict and fight the Islamic State. Last week, Rob Malley, the president’s top Middle East adviser, said in a briefing for reporters that the “has held so far,” adding that “we’re far from having achieved the goals that we set, but the trend line is positive. ” Mr. Obama’s call with Mr. Putin appears to have been less optimistic. In describing the exchange, Mr. Earnest cast blame on Mr. Assad, saying that “unfortunately, we’ve seen that the cessation of hostilities continues to be fragile and increasingly threatened due to continued violations by the regime. ” The statement from the Kremlin said that the two leaders had “reiterated their commitment to strengthening the ” and that “additional measures will be put in place for rapid response to violations of the . ” The latest round of indirect talks in Geneva, the third so far, began last week and had been focused on a political transition. Extremist groups like the Islamic State and the Nusra Front are not included. Mr. de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy, told journalists that the peace process would continue and that opposition negotiators would stay in Geneva for “technical discussions. ” He said that on Friday he would take stock of the prospects for continuing the talks, adding that “ups and downs” in the peace process were to be expected. Mr. de Mistura said there was hope that aid convoys would be able to head for besieged areas. In the political talks, though, “the gap is clearly wide,” he said. Opposition negotiators flatly rejected an idea floated by Mr. de Mistura on Friday that would allow Mr. Assad to remain as president, with three vice presidents nominated by the opposition. The coalition representatives have insisted that any transitional government exclude Mr. Assad. During the phone call on Monday, Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin also discussed the situation in Ukraine, where fighting has continued between government troops and separatists. A in Ukraine has reduced the violence, but a political resolution, known as the Minsk agreement, has yet to be fully put in place. Mr. Obama is also traveling this week to Britain and Germany, where the situation in Ukraine is expected to top a list of European challenges he will discuss. The president urged Mr. Putin to end what the White House called a “significant uptick in fighting” in eastern Ukraine, along the border with Russia. The Kremlin said that Mr. Putin had told Mr. Obama that he hoped the Ukrainian government would “finally start taking concrete steps towards implementing the Minsk agreements of Feb. 12, 2015. ” | 0fake |
LIBERAL DUMMY GARY JOHNSON Can’t Name One Foreign Leader [VIDEO] | Maybe comedy is a better career choice for Gary Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee for president, had been raring for Wednesday night s town hall on MSNBC. He had been cut from the first televised debate after missing the polling threshold, and he had not been invited when the network hosted a commander-in-chief forum with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This was their consolation prize, Johnson told The Washington Post this week when asked about the MSNBC special. It was put to us that, look, you weren t in this initial program. Here s what we d like to offer in lieu of being with the two major-party candidates. And I said, An hour of prime time Chris Matthews? I ll take it. But the hour didn t go as planned. Johnson, who had been pilloried for blanking on the relevance of the Syrian city of Aleppo in another MSNBC interview, whiffed his way through an even easier foreign policy question. Who s your favorite foreign leader? Matthews asked. Who s my favorite? Johnson replied. Anywhere in the continents, Matthews said. Any country. Name one foreign leader that you look up to. William Weld, Johnson s running mate, chimed in with an assist: I m with Shimon Peres. I m talking about living, okay? Matthews said. You gotta do this. Any continent. Canada, Mexico? I guess I m having an Aleppo moment, Johnson said. In the whole world! Matthews said. Anybody in the world. I know, I know, Johnson said. Pick any leader, Matthews said. The former president of Mexico, Johnson said. Which one? Matthews said. I m having a brain freeze, Johnson said.Weld, who had left the governor s office in Massachusetts in an unsuccessful attempt to become ambassador to Mexico, began naming the country s former presidents. Fox? Zedillo? Calderon? Fox, Johnson said with a combination of jubilation and relief. He was terrific. | 1real |
Jay Clayton sworn in as chairman of the U.S. SEC | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wall Street attorney Jay Clayton was officially sworn in as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Thursday, the agency announced. As head of the SEC, which polices U.S. financial markets, Clayton is expected to focus on ways to reduce regulatory burdens to help pave the way for more initial public offerings. With Clayton’s arrival, it will make it easier for the SEC to get more rule-writing done now that it has three members, instead of two. President Donald Trump has yet to nominate the other two commissioners to help round out the five-member panel. | 0fake |
He Got Thousands Of U.S. Soldiers Killed, And Now He Backs Trump (VIDEO) | Donald Rumsfeld is widely regarded as one of the worst secretaries of defense to serve in the United States. Despite that fact, on Fox News he is still regarded as a credible voice on national security and he appeared on the conservative network on Wednesday night to announce his support for Donald Trump.Rumsfeld told host Greta Van Susteren that Trump was a known unknown and that he could not vote for Hillary Clinton.His statement was an insensitive joke, alluding to his claim in 2002 that there were known unknowns about the alleged links between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. Those non-existent links were later used as a pretext for Rumsfeld s then-boss, President George W. Bush, to invade Iraq in 2003.Rumsfeld joins former Vice President Dick Cheney in supporting Trump as stalwarts of the Bush administration. By comparison, Bush himself is not supporting Trump, nor are his father, former First Lady Barbara Bush, Trump s primary rival Governor Jeb Bush, or former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.Rumsfeld s tenure as Secretary of Defense was marred by a series of blunders and lies that lead directly to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqis. He ridiculed requests before the war began for a larger invasion force, which led to resources being stretched to the breaking point when the bloody Iraqi insurgency rose up against the troops.Under Rumsfeld, the U.S. military set up a torture site at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, a black mark on the American record that has been cited by hundreds of terrorists and their allies as a justification for aggression towards the west.Rumsfeld also oversaw the turnover of many key American military functions to private contractors, who often engaged in torture and abuse while being paid by taxpayers.In 2006, an unprecedented General s revolt of retired generals and admirals called for Rumsfeld to be fired from his position. President Bush defended Rumsfeld until Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in fall of 2006, after which his resignation was accepted.Donald Trump has promised that as president he would increase the American use of torture, including waterboarding, a reversal of policy from President Obama but a return to techniques favored by his latest supporter Donald Rumsfeld.Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
White House to Democratic leaders: 'stop the political grandstanding' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will proceed as planned to meet with Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday and criticized Democratic leaders for bowing out, the White House said. “The president’s invitation to the Democrat leaders still stands and he encourages them to put aside their pettiness, stop the political grandstanding, show up and get to work,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement. | 0fake |
Intent on a Reckoning With Georgetown’s Slavery-Stained Past - The New York Times | MARINGOUIN, La. — The rental car sped past acres of farmland and across a muddy bayou to an old plantation rippling with sugar cane. Stepping out was John J. DeGioia, the president of Georgetown University, who was on the most unusual journey of his tenure. Nearly two centuries ago, scores of slaves were shipped here in a sale that helped save Georgetown from financial ruin. Last month, Mr. DeGioia stood in the cane fields where they once labored, visited the cemetery where they buried their dead and met for hours with their descendants. Mr. DeGioia oversees one of the nation’s elite universities, managing more than 17, 500 students campuses in Washington and Doha, Qatar and an endowment of about $1. 5 billion. But on this scorching summer day, his mission was to help Georgetown begin the uneasy process of reckoning with its past. “I think all of us need to get it right this time,” Mr. DeGioia said as he stood beside Maxine Crump, whose was sold in 1838 along with 271 other enslaved . College presidents are increasingly grappling with the legacy of slavery as student protests and scholarly research illuminate how many universities participated in and profited from the domestic slave trade. In March, Harvard’s president described the institution as “directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage” and days later commemorated four slaves who had worked in the households of two of its early leaders. In April, representatives from a consortium of nearly 20 colleges — including the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary and Roanoke College — met to discuss their efforts to study and memorialize the enslaved blacks whose forced labor on campus had been mostly forgotten. The new initiatives have been greeted with both cheers and consternation. Some applaud efforts to bring a largely untold history to light. Others argue that the focus on the past exacerbates racial tensions on campuses and distracts from more pressing matters. “People said it’s not enough or it’s too late or there should have been a different take,” said Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard, describing the range of reactions to her proposals, which she said were generally well received. She has convened a committee of historians to identify university sites linked to this history and will host a national conference on universities and slavery next year. “What’s difficult about it is that we want this discussion to be one that ultimately unifies and doesn’t divide,” Dr. Faust said of the conundrum facing many of her peers. At Georgetown, founded by Jesuit priests in 1789, Mr. DeGioia contends that his university will not overcome its past without addressing and making amends for its role in slavery, which he often describes as the nation’s “original evil. ” Over the past several weeks, he has traveled to Spokane, Wash. New Orleans Baton Rouge, La. and the rural Louisiana community of Maringouin to meet with dozens of descendants of the slaves who were sold. He has also addressed alumni on the subject, convening a panel to discuss the efforts of his working group on slavery. The group spent months studying the university’s history and weighing whether Georgetown should apologize for profiting from slavery, create a memorial to the slaves and offer scholarships to their descendants, among other options. Historians believe this is the first time that the president of an elite university has met with the descendants of slaves who had labored on a college campus or were sold to benefit one. The working group’s report is expected to be released this summer. Several faculty members and administrators described the reaction to Mr. DeGioia’s efforts as overwhelmingly positive, pointing out that he is also creating the university’s first department of studies and a center for researching racial injustice. “I think he’s a very moral man and I think he sees a moral obligation in this,” Maurice Jackson, a historian at the university and a member of the working group on slavery, said of Mr. DeGioia, who is a practicing Catholic. “He wanted us to get together, to effect change and to use the past to make the present better. ” But some alumni have voiced concern that by focusing on the wrongs of the 19th century, Mr. DeGioia is unnecessarily besmirching the reputation of a venerable institution. His decision to support student protesters and the members of his working group who called for renaming two buildings on campus raised eyebrows among some graduates. Even some members of his executive board, which supports Mr. DeGioia’s efforts to address Georgetown’s history, raised questions at first. The buildings had carried the names of the two Georgetown presidents who organized the slave sale in 1838. “People have had questions: Where are we going with this? Are we going to be changing the names of every building?” said Paul Tagliabue, the former commissioner of the National Football League and the vice chairman of the university’s board. Mr. Tagliabue, who described Mr. DeGioia as a leader who prides himself on building consensus, said the college president answered the questions. “Everyone gets it,” he said, referring to fellow board members. Mr. DeGioia, who at age 59 is Georgetown’s president, said he knew there were lingering doubts among some alumni. “‘Why is there a need to resurface the pain and the agony of this part of our history? ’” he said, recalling their concerns. “‘Haven’t we moved beyond this? ’” But he said that the nation’s racial divisions, highlighted by the string of killings of black men by the police and persistent racial disparities, suggested that Americans have yet to come to terms with their roots in legalized discrimination and slavery. “I don’t think we can say we’ve sufficiently moved beyond it,” said Mr. DeGioia, who became the university’s first lay president in 2001. Georgetown relied on enslaved labor for decades. The Jesuit priests, who owned the slaves and ran the college, used their plantations in Maryland to help finance operations. And the institution’s portion of the slave sale’s profits — about $500, 000 in today’s dollars — helped pay off Georgetown’s debts. In August, Mr. DeGioia announced the creation of his working group and called for a campuswide discussion about slavery after reopening a building named after one of the early presidents involved in the slave sale. After student protests in November, a Georgetown alumnus, Richard J. Cellini, established the Georgetown Memory Project and hired a team of genealogists to identify and locate the descendants of the people who had been sold. Last month, dozens of those descendants gathered to meet with Mr. DeGioia. Some brought older relatives and photographs of grandparents and . Ms. Crump and her siblings invited him to their family home here, where he fielded questions over cold lemonade and spicy jambalaya. “It means so much to me to have this door opened to my past,” Ms. Crump said. Most people welcomed him warmly, but there were also flashes of anger, Mr. DeGioia said, and some skepticism. Sandra Green Thomas, who met with Mr. DeGioia in New Orleans, noted that he was short on specifics about how — or whether — he would make tangible amends to descendants by offering them scholarships or financing other educational opportunities. “Is this a way to pat us on the head and send us on our way?” she wondered. “Or is this a way to do something really meaningful?” Mr. DeGioia said he was just beginning the process of engaging with families and addressing their concerns. He told the descendants that he hoped Georgetown could help reknit families torn apart by the sale, providing them with access to records about the Jesuit slaves in the university archives and possibly hosting a gathering of descendants on campus. Jessica Tilson wanted something more. She asked Mr. DeGioia to issue a declaration of posthumous manumission, granting the slaves their freedom. Then she handed him several jars of soil. She has been haunted in recent weeks by the knowledge that her died without returning to their birthplace in Maryland. So she dug up soil from the old plantation here — symbols of her enslaved forbears — and asked him to help her ancestors get back home. Before he boarded his flight back to Washington, Mr. DeGioia shipped the jars to Georgetown. | 0fake |
Bryan Cranston to Play Howard Beale on Stage in ‘Network’ - The New York Times | LONDON — The Emmy and Tony Award winner Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) will star as Howard Beale in a new stage adaptation of the bitingly satirical film “Network” scheduled to open at the National Theater in London this year, the theater announced on Friday. Ivo van Hove, the acclaimed international theater director, will stage the play, about executives at a struggling TV network and their Machiavellian maneuvers for higher ratings — including the manipulation of Mr. Cranston’s character, the “mad as hell” television host that Peter Finch played in the film. Lee Hall, the screenwriter of “Billy Elliot,” is adapting the screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. Mr. van Hove, who won a Tony last year for directing a revival of “A View from the Bridge” on Broadway, is set to open the show in November on the National’s Lyttelton stage. The theater also announced that its hit production of “People, Places and Things” would travel to St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York in October. The actress Denise Gough earned reviews when she played the lead role, Emma, at the National in 2015, and later in London’s West End. She will travel to New York with the show. The theater announced the plays as part of a broader lineup for 2017 and 2018. Other productions include the world premiere of “Saint George and the Dragon” by Rory Mullarkey, which will be directed by Lyndsey Turner, who staged a production of “Hamlet” in 2015 starring Benedict Cumberbatch and a production of “Macbeth” starring Rory Kinnear. “Saint George” will open in October, and “Macbeth” in the spring of 2018. | 0fake |
Are you shitting me !! A dindu flavor 24 - 'Jack Bauer?? | Are you shitting me !! A dindu flavor 24 - 'Jack Bauer?? ..PASS!!! 01/31/07 5 01/12/09 11 Mail with questions or comments about this site. "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ Website Design Copyright © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.006s (8 queries) | 1real |
Tucker Carlson slams Vox.com over ‘Fake News’ | 21st Century Wire says The mainstream media continues to deflect from its own collapse in credibility in the wake of Hillary Clinton s epic electoral meltdown by inventing a synthetic fake news crisis and scapegoating Clinton s loss on bloggers and cheap eastern European hoax websites. In addition to mainstream media constantly pushing out actual fake news, corporate media giants have also created their own fake alternative media as well. Here are a number of media operatives appearing on TV pretending to be alternative media but in reality are really funded by the major broadcast media empires. One of these is a political news website called Vox.com. It s designed to look like an edgy alternative news source, but in reality, Vox is just another establishment consensus reality-building tool. Silicon Valley investors have pumped tens of millions of dollars into this media outlet, with the lead investor being none other than NBC Universal who are one of the biggest peddlers of actual fake news globally (just ask their phony news anchor Brian Williams). Watch as FOX host Tucker Carlson takes apart hypocritical Vox staffer Timothy Lee over the issue of fake news circulating on the internet, revealing how Vox is also a producer of fake news too. As Carlson rightly points out this issue really boils down to freedom of speech.Caveat: Certainly, FOX News is not immune to pushing their own brand of fake news, especially when it comes to promoting US wars overseas, but it does have a number of capable pundits who have exposed a number of key revelations during the course of this historic 2016 Election. Special thanks to High Energy for this clip:. READ MORE MSM FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Fake News FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Trump asked Putin if allegations of Russian meddling were true: RIA | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Donald Trump directly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin during their talks at a weekend summit in Vietnam whether allegations of Russian meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election were true, RIA news agency reported on Sunday. The U.S. president said on Saturday he believed Putin’s denial of the accusations despite the view of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian interference did take place. Trump later distanced himself from his remarks. According to RIA, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked how Trump had raised the question about alleged Russian meddling, said: “In fact, Trump asked whether that information could be true, how true it could be, and President Putin, for his part, explained his position, which is that Russia did not interfere in any election and this could not be the case.” Putin also said he did not understand “the groundless statements on the issue being made in the United States”, Peskov added. The Russian issue has clouded Trump’s first year in office. Trump’s initial comments on Saturday drew criticism at home because U.S. intelligence agencies have long since concluded there was Russian meddling through hacking and the release of emails to embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. On Sunday, Trump was careful to make clear he sided with the intelligence agencies under his own leadership. He has previously called the allegations of election campaign collusion with Moscow a hoax. | 0fake |
Trump Just Praised Fox News’ Ratings And Attacked CNN Again Then Got CRUSHED By Twitter (TWEETS) | If you haven t yet heard that Fox News came out on top in ratings during Donald Trump s inauguration, all you need to do is check President Asterisk s Twitter timeline. After a rousing first few days of working toward dismantling Obamacare, endangering the health of women and girls worldwide, and signing our environment away for a few short-term construction jobs, The Donald hopped on Twitter to get right back to what appears to be his real job: attacking news agencies that report unflattering details about him. Congratulations to @FoxNews for being number one in inauguration ratings, Trump tweeted. They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS @CNN public is smart! Congratulations to @FoxNews for being number one in inauguration ratings. They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS @CNN public is smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017Neilson estimates that 30.6 million people tuned in to watch the trainwreck that was Trump s sparsely-attended inauguration millions fewer than Barack Obama s first swearing-in (maybe that s why he just threatened to send the feds to march on Chicago). Trump is correct that more people watched Fox News than any other individual news station, but he is also correct that the public is smart. What he fails to realize is that the majority of the smart public didn t watch Fox.Mediaite reported Monday that during the peak coverage block of 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST, Fox News drew 8.77 million viewers. This may seem like a lot, but NBC brought in 5.90 million people, ABC attracted 4.90 million, CBS had about 4.65 million viewers, 2.61 million watched CNN, and 1.38 million tuned in to MSNBC. In other words, the smart people watched different networks than the vapid, meth-addled freaks who enjoyed Trump s victory with the whitest news team on television.Naturally, the Internet wasn t about to tolerate the President* attacking legitimate news agencies:@realDonaldTrump This is beyond sad. Turn off the TV and start running the country. Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) January 25, 2017@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @CNN Yes, we are smart. We see you for who you are, you orange huckster. Ben Berkon (@BenBerkon) January 25, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Well you didn't last a week. Back to insulting people again. Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 25, 2017@JordanJamie @JordanUhl @realDonaldTrump His Majesty has spoken. pic.twitter.com/KmvwqFhVxX Wm Bruce Murdock (@Bruce466177) January 25, 2017@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @CNN Nobody intelligent respects Fox News. Tommy Campbell (@MrTommyCampbell) January 25, 2017@pourmecoffee a very reliable source tells me Fox News' US ratings are fake and they're actually Kenyan ratings. Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 25, 2017Just a reminder of something he wants to forget: the Women s March in D.C. alone drew 750,000 (three million nationwide), many times The Donald s sh*tty inauguration numbers. Public is smart!Featured image via Getty Images (Chip Somodevilla)/screengrab | 1real |
NBC CORRESPONDENT Tells Panel Of Extremely BIASED Journalists: “Journalists Aren’t Biased”…Goes On To Totally Trash President Trump With Other BIASED News Hosts [VIDEO] | Watch as Katy Tur tries to hilariously convince the audience that the press doesn t have any biases: If we have any bias, it s a bias towards the facts . She then goes on to convince the audience what a horrible human being Donald Trump is, He didn t appeal to their better demons of voters in this country. He appealed to their most base fears and their most base frustrations and anger and that worked for him. Watch:During a news conference in July of 2016, NBC News correspondent Katy Tur asked Trump whether he has any qualms about asking a foreign government to hack into a system of anybody s in this country after Trump said he hoped Russia would find more emails from Hillary Clinton or the DNC. Hey, you know what gives me more pause, that a person in our government, crooked Hillary Clinton here s what gives me more pause, Trump said, as Tur tried to ask follow-ups. Be quiet, I know you want to, you know, save her. That a person in our government, Katy, would delete or get rid of 33,000 emails. That gives me a big problem. After she gets a subpoena. She gets subpoenaed, and she gets rid of 33,000 emails. That gives me a problem. Now, if Russia or China or any other country has those emails, I mean to be honest with you, I d love to see them. As Tur asked another question a few minutes later, mentioning Trump s poll numbers, Trump once again mocked her. Katy just said that, many polls show you are winning. Are you Katy Tur of NBC? It s a disguise, he said.This is far from the first time Trump has picked on Tur. In June, Trump told Fox & Friends that his campaign don t even let her in or let people talk to her because she s not a very good reporter. In December, Trump called out Tur in the middle of a rally, leading Trump supporters to point at her and boo. Little Katy, third-rate journalist, Trump said, as he complained about the news media.Watch candidate Trump tell Katy to Be quiet : If you want to know why the press is obsessed with taking down Donald Trump, watch this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymoGq82Mhjw | 1real |
There’s Something Hokey About Ted | 21st Century Wire says At some point, the political theatric become too much. Read my lips.Amid mixed reviews, we ve seen this new genre on YouTube before, but it really came into its own when the creators produced this parody on Republican presidential candidate Rafael Edward Cruz, commonly known in the media as Ted .What is it about Cruz that lends itself to such a hokey spoof? Could it be Cruz s crusading televangelist schtick?Watch: | 1real |
ATF misfire? Guide indicates bullets at center of firestorm already banned; agency blames 'error' | It looked like the fix was in. But the ATF says it was just a misfire.
As the ATF faces a firestorm of controversy for seeking public comment on a proposal to ban a popular type of bullet, critics last week claimed the agency may have decided in advance how it would rule.
They pointed to the ATF's latest "Firearms Regulation Reference Guide," released in January 2015. The guide, curiously, did not contain an exemption for popular ".223 M855 'green tip' ammunition" that was included in earlier guides. Without that exemption, the ammunition is illegal to sell. (The change in language was first noticed by Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com.)
So did the ATF already make up its mind?
No, the agency claims. The ATF has responded that the reference guide is not legally binding, so the bullets have not actually been banned yet, and has apologized for leaving the exemptions out of the guide. They say it was an innocent mistake. And the proposed ban is apparently still under consideration.
"[It] was an error which has no legal impact on the validity of the exemptions," ATF public affairs chief Ginger Colbrun told FoxNews.com in an emailed statement, adding that it will be corrected soon.
"The 2014 Regulation Guide will be corrected in PDF format to include the listing of armor piercing ammunition exemptions and posted shortly... ATF apologizes for any confusion caused by this publishing error."
As of Monday, the 2014 guide with the error was no longer available on the ATF website.
Case closed? Perhaps. Gun-rights supporters say that such errors are common for the ATF -- but that it could also have been a tip-of-the-hand that the administration already had reached a decision on banning the bullets.
"This is either real incompetence or ATF got caught with their pants down. With this administration it could be both," Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation told FoxNews.com.
The controversy comes on the heels of a letter from a hundreds of lawmakers urging the ATF not to ban the popular ammunition, which is the focus of regulatory efforts because it can pierce bulletproof vests used by law enforcement.
These lawmakers say the regulation would interfere with Americans' Second Amendment rights.
"This attack on the Second Amendment is wrong and should be overturned," Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who started the petition, said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "Now 239 bipartisan Members of Congress -- a clear, sizeable majority of the House -- agree," he noted.
Although the ATF previously approved the bullets in 1986, the agency now says that because handguns have been designed that can also fire the bullets, police officers are more likely to encounter them.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest backed up the agency's proposal at a press conference last Monday.
"We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and women in law enforcement... This seems to be an area where everyone should agree that if there are armor-piercing bullets available that can fit into easily concealed weapons, that it puts our law enforcement at considerably more risk," Earnest said.
But gun-rights groups such as the National Rifle Association note that almost all rifle bullets can pierce armor, and say that this is just an excuse for limiting civilian gun use.
"The claim that this is done out of a concern for law enforcement safety is a lie. The director of the Fraternal Order of Police has said this is not an issue of concern. And according to the FBI, not one single law enforcement officer has been killed with M855 ammunition fired from a handgun," Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, told FoxNews.com.
Some law enforcement groups reached by FoxNews.com also say that they see no need for the regulation.
"The notion that all of a sudden a new pistol requires banning what had long been perfectly legal ammunition doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to many officers," William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, told FoxNews.com.
NAPO represents over 1,000 police units and associations and 241,000 law enforcement officers around the country.
But some law enforcement experts support the ban.
"I am definitely for the banning of these rounds... officers worry about them all the time," former NYPD detective Harry Houck told FoxNews.com, though he added that a ban might not actually keep criminals from getting the ammunition.
"We understand why law enforcement has always been concerned about the threat of armor-piercing bullets," Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told FoxNews.com.
Lawmakers warn that the regulation -- especially as it follows on the heels of attempts to restrict lead bullets -- will "result in drastically reduced options for lawful ammunition users." Already, the ammunition has been cleared from many store shelves by gun owners looking to stock up in anticipation of the ban. The proposed regulation would not prohibit owning the bullets, but it would stop anyone from manufacturing or importing them.
The ATF has announced that it is currently taking public comments on the regulation until March 16, when it will prepare to issue a final regulation. Comments can be sent to APAComments@atf.gov.
The author, Maxim Lott, can be reached on Facebook or at maxim.lott@foxnews.com | 0fake |
Texas Mayor Announces That She Is Transgender - The New York Times | Just days before a public town meeting on Tuesday night, Jess Herbst, the mayor of New Hope, Tex. had an official announcement. “I am transgender. ” The statement said that she had transitioned and would no longer use the name Jeff. The message was a few hundred words long and appeared on the home screen of the official website of New Hope, a town of more than 630 residents about 40 miles north of Dallas. But she appeared to break barriers for the state. “As far as I know, I am the first openly transgender mayor on record in the state of Texas there could be others who never came out,” Ms. Herbst said in an interview on Wednesday. “But I am the first to say, ‘Yes I am transgender and a seated mayor.’ ” Ms. Herbst informed residents in a statement on the town’s website about the change, and the joys of her life as a woman, including her preference in pronouns and the endurance of her marriage. “As your mayor I must tell you about something that has been with me since my earliest memories,” Ms. Herbst wrote. “I am Transgender. Two years ago, with the support of my wife, daughters and I began hormone replacement therapy (HRT). “At the time, I did not imagine I would hold the mayor’s position, but here I am. ” Ms. Herbst has been active in local government since 2003 as an elected alderman, road commissioner and mayor pro tempore. In 2016, she was appointed New Hope’s mayor after the previous official in that post died. As of Wednesday morning, the New Hope town website was still referring to her as Mayor Jeff Herbst. But Ms. Herbst implied in her statement that she was patient: “I’m not especially sensitive to the pronoun I’m called, and I expect people to take time to make the change. I use the name Jess, a simple change from Jeff. ” “I live my life as a female now, and I will be performing my duties to the town as such,” she wrote. On the town website, she also invited the public to make comments in the town’s public meeting on Jan 31. Ms. Herbst, 58, said in a telephone interview that after posting her statement on Jan. 23, she attended the council meeting for the first time dressed as a woman.’ ”“It was phenomenally positive everyone was supportive,” she said. “We had a fairly packed crowd for a tiny town — there were 15 or 20 people there. I explained to the people who had not just had a chance to see the website, and everybody said, ‘O. K.,’ and we went on and had a meeting. ”” ’But as an elected official who was later appointed as mayor, Ms. Herbst said that she was given a “very stern lecture” by the town attorney about laws that govern elections and canvassing, and that she was told not to change her name before the coming election cycle. Ms. Herbst also said she has received thousands of messages of support, and three negative ones. Replies to announcements on her Facebook page and the town’s website appear to be supportive, with residents praising her for coming forward in a state where, in most parts, it is legal to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In January, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, one of the most powerful Republican officials in the state, put Texas on the front lines of the nation’s culture wars when he announced the filing of a bill that would require people in government buildings and public schools to use the bathroom that corresponds with their “biological sex. ” Critics said the bill discriminated against transgender people. Terri Burke, the executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said Mayor Herbst was showing “tremendous courage in discussing her identity with the public. “We applaud Mayor Herbst’s decision to serve her community openly in public office and take a stand against hateful rhetoric coming from some of our legislators,” Ms. Burke said in an email. “Some Texas lawmakers are attempting to exclude transgender Texans from public spaces with legislation like SB6, but we should be making it easier for them to share their skills and talents with us, not pushing them out of public restrooms and public life. ” Ms. Herbst suggested on the city’s website that the culture was changing in the United States and directed constituents to her personal website, where she has kept a diary over the years. It included a gallery of photos titled, “Who I am now,” juxtaposed with a section called who “I used to be,” with images of her life as Jeff. Ms. Herbst said that she had the support of her family. Her wife grew up in New Hope, and the couple have lived in the town with their two daughters since 1999. “It is gender identity, not sexual preference that applies to me,” the mayor wrote. “I love my wife, and she loves me. We have no intention of change. My daughters have been adamant supporters of me and are proud to tell people their father is transgender. ” In the interview Wednesday, Ms. Herbst said she began living full time as Jess toward the end of September, and gradually broke the news to friends, family and . Finally, there was no one left to tell but the wider town population, and that was when she made the announcement. “I am being who I am and doing what I have to do,” she said. “I am not trying to make some sort of big statement. ” | 0fake |
Media Scoundrel Trump Bashing Continues Hot and Heavy | Dispatches from STEPHEN LENDMAN N ever in the history of US presidential politics have media scoundrels allied more overwhelmingly for one aspirant over the other. Bias substituting for legitimate journalism is bad enough, disgracefully worse by featuring misinformation, distortions and lies about one candidate, while effusively praising the other undeservedly – highlighting nonexistent virtues for Hillary, suppressing negatives disqualifying her for any public office.
Why haven’t other major media reported the news Fox News anchor Bret Baier broke Wednesday night about likely indictment(s) from the FBI’s Clinton Foundation probe – though not before it’s completed weeks or months from now? The New York Times and Washington Post continue as lead Trump antagonists, one-sidedly promoting Hillary’s candidacy, acting as virtual press agents. Times columnist Charles Blow calls him “an existential threat” – based solely on his rhetoric. As a businessman, he has no public record – unlike clear evidence of Hillary’s war crimes, racketeering and perjury. Lately, he’s been staying on point in the campaign’s late stages, diverging from his earlier bombast, apparently gaining support as November 8 approaches – likely why intense bashing persists along with drowning out negatives about Hillary, especially multiple FBI probes of her email scandal and racketeering foundation. Focusing solely on Trump, Blow writes as follows: Donald Trump is a bigot. Donald Trump is a demagogue. Donald Trump is a sexist, misogynist, chauvinist pig. Donald Trump is a bully. Donald Trump is a cheat. Donald Trump is a pathological liar. Donald Trump is a nativist. Donald Trump’s campaign (attracts) anti-Semites, Nazis and white nationalists… Donald Trump (is a sexual molester), an unrepentant predator. …Donald Trump is a lowlife degenerate…” Phew!
Blow apparently believes Hillary is America’s sweetheart, saying she’s “tolerant.” He’s “intoleran(t).” She’s “respect(ful).” He’s “disrespect(ful).” She’s “a politician with some flaws.” He’s “a flaw threatening our politics…America’s existential threat.” No legitimate editor would touch Blow’s rubbish. Times editors featured it.
WaPo editors claim “the only way Trump can win” is if voters forget or ignore what he’s said. Despite lots of bombast earlier in the campaign, he’s toned down his rhetoric, staying disciplined late in the campaign, and presented ideas on how he’ll govern if elected, agree or disagree with him.
No duopoly power aspirants for congressional seats and the nation’s highest office represent popular interests – no matter what they say. With rare exceptions proving the rule, they all represent dirty business as usual. Voters have to decide from a deplorable array of unpalatable choices, especially for president.
Trump’s main virtue is he’s not Hillary. She threatens humanity with possible nuclear war. He’d rather profit from planet earth than destroy it – and his business enterprises along with it. What type leader do you prefer at the most perilous time in world history? A simple choice for anyone valuing life over possible mass annihilation. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS ABOUT THE AUTHOR STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com . =SUBSCRIBE | 1real |
Oregon Militant Flips Over His Vehicle, Breaks More Laws – Guess What The Cops Do (IMAGE) | A man affiliated with the illegal occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the Oregon standoff with police was out and about driving around town in his white 2003 Ford van, when he ended up crashing his vehicle into a barb-wire fence, completely flipping the car over in the process.We re not sure if he was out looking for snacks, but The Oregon State Police posted a picture of the crash on their Twitter page on Sunday. Now, get this not only was he being an unsafe driver on icy roads (propelling the car more than 150 ft. away from the road), but he was also driving without a license! Fortunately, he wasn t injured (we wouldn t wish that on anyone) but safety issues aside, all the police did was cite him for operating a motor vehicle without a license. That s it. He wasn t arrested, as many would presume.State Police Spokesman Bill Fugate wouldn t provide more details about the incident, other than to say: Oregon only cites for No Operator s License, we do not arrest. Pic via Twitter.It looks like the police aren t too concerned with Mr. Burke s activities of occupying federal property. Perhaps one reason is that he wasn t driving a federal van from the property; it appears to be his own.Just a few days ago, another militant by the name of Kenneth Medenback left the compound for a snack run. State police decided to arrest him for theft of two government vehicles, not the occupation itself. And, that was the very first arrest of the occupation so far. At this rate it s going to take forever to arrest all these guys. So, while law enforcement doesn t appear to be taking an active stance of ending the illegal protest itself, they are still somewhat concerned with upholding some of the laws on the books. That s some good news, at least.Featured image via Twitter. | 1real |
Trump's choice for national security adviser had early exposure to Iran | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As a teenager in the early 1970s retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward played football and basketball, was popular with classmates and, like many American high school students, was known for partying. But Harward, to whom President Donald Trump has offered the post of U.S. national security adviser, to succeed Michael Flynn, spent his teenage years not in his native Rhode Island, but in pre-revolutionary Iran, where his father, a Navy captain, advised the Iranian military. During his teenage years, Harward lived in an Iranian neighborhood, attended school with Iranian-American students and played sports against Iranian teams. Those experiences gave him an unusual familiarity with Iran’s culture and people in the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the pro-American Shah. “During very formative years of his life, he was exposed to everything that was Iran,” said Joseph Condrill, who knew Harward, known by his classmates as Bobby, when they were students at the Tehran American School. “Iran was one of our homes, and we got to know the Iranian people very well, in a very intimate way.” The Trump administration has offered Harward the job of national security adviser, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if Harward had accepted, the sources said. A White House spokesperson had no immediate comment. Harward would carry his experience into the Trump White House, charged with coordinating national security policy and responding to threats including Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for militant groups in the Middle East. While Flynn put Iran “on notice,” and Trump has tweeted that Iran is “playing with fire,” Harward’s experience with Iran is more personal. The revolution that brought Iran’s theocratic government to power forced the closure of the Tehran American School and cut short the tours of American families living in Iran. Rather than being isolated on a military base, Harward and other Americans at that time lived among Iranians, rode local buses, and were exposed to Iran’s attractions through field trips, his classmates said. “It was not a completely isolated culture for us,” said John Martin, 61, of Reston, Virginia, who was in Harward’s high school class and attended the U.S. Naval Academy with him. Harward even picked up fluent Persian while he was in Iran, Martin said. “For those of us that had once lived in Iran, there’s an after-effect, the effect of the Islamic Revolution,” Condrill said. “There is definitely a sense of suspicion, if you will ... based upon that experience of the Iran that we once knew.” It is not clear, however, how Harward’s memories might influence U.S. policy, because the national security adviser’s job is to coordinate, not make, policy. In addition, administration officials said, Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller have closer ties to the president than Harward would have and would present a rival power center. In 2012, as deputy head of the U.S. Central Command, he told a conference that “Iran’s well-established past pattern of deceit and reckless behavior have progressively increased the potential for miscalculation that could spark a regional, if not a global conflict.” At the same event, he recalled with some wistfulness his own experience living in the region. “I think back to the days when I graduated from the Tehran American School in 1974, where as a Westerner I could freely travel through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other countries in the region and be greeted, and welcomed, because of the policies and strategy the West employed in the region,” he said. “Yet I look today, we are in a much different world.” Harward did not respond to a request for comment and officials at Lockheed Martin, where he is a top executive, declined to comment. After graduating from high school in 1974, Harward returned to the United States, joined the Navy, became an elite SEAL and rose through the ranks, eventually serving as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East. He served there under General Jim Mattis, now the U.S. defense secretary. Earlier in his career, Harward worked on counterterrorism as a military officer on the National Security Council, an assignment seen as a marker of a rising star. Several former U.S. officials who worked with Harward described him as experienced and smart, but not known for his personal experience with Iran. He is well-liked and respected and seen as unpretentious despite his distinguished military service, according to people who have worked with him. “He was a very good and effective bureaucratic player,” said Derek Chollet, an assistant secretary of defense under the Obama administration. “He understands the role the military plays within the broader tool set of American policy.” When Harward was a commanding officer in Afghanistan, he was known for making his rounds without full body armor to send a message that Afghanistan was safe, said a U.S. official who worked under Harward there. “He had no ego,” the official said, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. | 0fake |
RUSSIA’S RED LINE: Moscow Announces End to US ‘Deconfliction’ Cooperation Over Syria | IMAGE: Air defense and satellite tracking center in Russia.21st Century Wire says As of June 19th, the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced that it will be ending cooperation with the United States over Syria. Up until that time, the two country s deconfliction communications agreement has prevented the two super-powers from crossing swords during their respective military air operations over the Syrian skies.The Russian statement comes following news this week that a US F/A-18E Super Hornet shot down a Syrian SU-22 fighter jet 40 km from the city of Raqqa. Washington claimed it as an act of collective self-defense in protecting its US-backed SDF forces. The Syrian pilot was able to eject from his plane.The situation is serious. Russia has drawn a clear red line, with officials stating that all aircraft of the US-led coalition in the area of Russian and Syrian combat missions over Syria will be tracked by Russian defense systems as air targets. US F/A-18E Super Hornet.It s worth noting that at the moment of the US downing of the Syria jet, the Syrian Army was carrying out operations against ISIS. This is another in a now long list of US military incitements inside of Syria s borders, leaving both Syria and Russia to conclude that this latest US provocation is nothing short of a prelude to war.Pressure on the CoalitionIt seems that other countries are already taking notice. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) announced today that it will be suspending further flights over Syria, although not over Iraq. Australia s Department of Defense said: As a precautionary measure, Australian Defence Force (ADF) strike operations into Syria have temporarily ceased. As yet, there have been no further statements from the other US partners in air operations over Syria like the UK, France, Germany and Norway. Will others follow Australia s lead and head for the exit, or will they be forced to dig their heals into a position which is already in violation of their domestic and international law?Once again, Russia has countered an irrational and unhanded action in Syria by the US by making a rational and deliberate move.Will this situation climb-down, or escalate? That answer seems to be up to the US now.More on this from RT RTThe Russian Defense Ministry announced it is halting cooperation with its US counterparts in the framework of the Memorandum on the Prevention of Incidents and Ensuring Air Safety in Syria following the coalition s downing of a Syrian warplane.The ministry has demanded a thorough investigation by the US military command into the incident with the Syrian government military jet, with the results to be shared with the Russian side. In the areas of combat missions of Russian air fleet in Syrian skies, any airborne objects, including aircraft and unmanned vehicles of the [US-led] international coalition, located to the west of the Euphrates River, will be tracked by Russian ground and air defense forces as air targets, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated.Downing the military jet within Syrian airspace cynically violates the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, Russian military said.The actions of the US Air Force are in fact military aggression against Syria, the statement adds.The ministry emphasized that Russian warplanes were on a mission in Syrian airspace during the US-led coalition s attack on the Syrian Su-22, while the coalition failed to use the communication line to prevent an incident. The command of the coalition forces did not use the existing communication channel between the air commands of Al Udeid Airbase (in Qatar) and the Khmeimim Airbase to prevent incidents in Syrian airspace. The ministry considers the move a conscious failure to comply with the obligations under the Memorandum on the Prevention of Incidents and Ensuring Air Safety in Syria, and is thus halting cooperation with the US within the memorandum framework as of June 19, the statement concluded.Earlier Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov condemned the attack, branding it an act of aggression which actually helped the terrorists the US is fighting against .Continue this story at RTREAD MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
WATCH: Donald Trump Promises He Will Declare War On ISIS, But There’s One GIANT Problem | The Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves.During an interview with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes which will air on Sunday evening, Donald Trump once again blamed President Obama for ISIS and vowed to declare war on the terrorist organization since Obama will not. We re going to declare war against ISIS, Trump said. We have to wipe out ISIS. There s just one big problem with that promise. It s blatantly unconstitutional.For some reason every Republican in America seems to think that President Obama has the power to declare war. And that means none of the Republicans who proudly carry pocket versions of the Constitution with them have never actually read it.Article I, Section 8 clearly states that ONLY Congress has the power to declare war. The Congress shall have Power . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water That s what the Constitution says.But just like Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who somehow became an attorney and judge, said on Friday when she whined about President Obama not declaring war on ISIS, Trump seems to think the president has that power.It s asinine, and it is something most people learn in middle school. If he wants to blame anyone for not declaring war he should blame Republicans in Congress. It s their job and if they are really that scared of ISIS they should do it.Oh, but there s more.President Obama can only do so much to fight ISIS without a declaration of war from the lazy bums who control Congress right now and he s doing it by ordering airstrikes, sending military advisers, gathering intelligence, authorizing drone strikes, and working with our allies. All of this is combating ISIS to the point where they are close to being forced underground and their recruiting and finances are suffering.And to hear Trump talk, that s all he plans to do as well. Trump avoided saying he would use troops in a ground war against ISIS but bragged that his intelligence network would somehow be stronger even though the American intelligence apparatus is the strongest it has ever been. I am going to have very few troops on the ground. Trump said. We re going to have unbelievable intelligence, which we need; which, right now, we don t have. We don t have the people over there. Trump also seems to think beating ISIS is as easy as surrounding them as if they are a country and he claims he ll get NATO involved. We re going to have surrounding states and, very importantly, get NATO involved because we support NATO far more than we should, frankly, because you have a lot of countries that aren t doing what they re supposed to be doing. We have to wipe out ISIS. First of all, ISIS is present in several countries. You can t just surround them. It s more complicated then that. Beating ISIS isn t going to happen in days, weeks, or even months. It s going to take a long time. We are talking about an organization that is scattered around.And no American president can just force NATO to do anything. And threatening to pull money or support from NATO just because you aren t getting your way isn t how international cooperation works. That s how spoiled brats act.Mike Pence then chimed in by blaming President Obama and Hillary Clinton for ISIS. The larger issue here is declining American power in the world. I truly do believe that history teaches that weakness arouses evil. And whether it be the horrific attack in France, the inspired attacks here in the United States, the instability in Turkey that led to a coup I think that is all a result of a foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that has led from behind and that has sent an inexact, unclear message, about American resolve. Here s the video via YouTube.But President Obama did not create the atmosphere in the Middle East that allowed ISIS to rise in the first place. That responsibility falls at the feet of President Bush, who pushed for war in Iraq and the Republican-controlled Congress that approved it.The unnecessary war with Iraq destabilized the region and created a power vacuum that ISIS took advantage of. Plus, it was President Bush who signed the status of forces agreement with Iraq that led to the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq.So not only does Trump fail at American government, he fails at American history, too.Featured image via Screenshot | 1real |
Three dead after Sudan clashes over Bashir visit to south Darfur: U.N. | KHARTOUM (Reuters) - At least three people were killed and more than 20 wounded when Sudanese troops clashed at a South Darfur refugee camp with displaced people protesting against a visit by President Omar Al-Bashir, the United Nations mission said on Friday. The United Nations said clashes erupted when troops dispersed protesters as Bashir visited the Shatia area, where the government has been accused of ethnic cleansing, in his first trip there since the conflict in Darfur war broke out in 2003. Bashir traveled to Darfur to show progress before a U.S. decision in October on lifting sanctions in return for Sudan meeting conditions, including resolving conflicts and improving humanitarian efforts on the ground. At least three displaced people were killed and 26 more wounded when troops cleared protesters at the Kalma camp, the joint U.N., African Union peacekeeping mission, known as UNAMID, said in a statement. I call upon everyone involved in this situation to restore calm as soon as possible. A peaceful resolution of differences is the only way forward for the Darfuri people, said UNAMID Joint Special Representative, Jeremiah Mamabolo. Sudan s government in South Darfur later said in a statement that two had died in clashes between displaced people at the camp opposed to Bashir s visit and those who supported him. It said some had opened fire on security forces. Conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when mainly non-Arab tribes took up arms against Sudan s Arab-led government. Fighting between the army and rebels in the southern Kordofan and Blue Nile regions also broke out again in 2011, when South Sudan declared independence. Short term truces have been announced last year. | 0fake |
WATCH: Dem Senator BLASTS Trump, Calls Him A Liar Live On Air | Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) has about had it with Donald Trump trying to mislead the American people with conspiracy theories, crazy tweets, and outright lies. Appearing on CNN s OutFront with Erin Burnett, Senator Booker lit into Trump and his staff s habit of blatantly lying to the American public. Booker told the host: A week in office and we have seen the President of the United States and his officials repeatedly lying to the American public and pushing out what could be called what we ve seen in other regimes throughout history what can be called propaganda to mislead the public. He needs to be called out on it, and we, as an American public, should not accept a president that routinely lies, blatantly, to the American people. When Burnett asked if Senator Booker felt the same way as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) that Trump is actually delusional, Booker didn t hedge at all, and called Trump a liar: I don t know his mental state. What I do know is he a liar, repeatedly so. Senator Booker also said that he thinks that Trump s message and actions are championing an agenda that is not in concert with honor or with the facts. Senator Booker is correct. This is the same kind of thing that autocrats do everywhere. They lie to the public, sow discord, division, and fear, and do all they can to discredit any and all other sources of information that do not support their narrative. If we want to survive a Trump presidency with our democracy in tact, we must continue to call Trump and his team out for the lying propagandists that they are.Thank you Senator Booker, for doing what is right. Don t worry about Trump attacking you on Twitter because we, the members of The Resistance, have your back.Watch the video of Senator Booker s comments below:.@CoryBooker: President Trump is spreading lies and propaganda https://t.co/E08soXjHaZ OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) January 27, 2017Featured image via Mike Coppola / Staff/Getty Images | 1real |
State Department vetted Bill Clinton’s contacts, emails show | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clinton Foundation on multiple occasions during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state asked senior U.S. government officials to vet her husband’s contacts with potentially controversial international figures, according to emails released by the State Department. The emails, reviewed by Reuters, were part of a batch of nearly 400 messages recently released by the State Department after requests from the conservative group Citizens United, a group that has long been critical of the Clintons. The exchanges show a top foreign policy adviser to the foundation sought guidance from the State Department on former President Bill Clinton’s interactions with people including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian government officials and business leaders, and Gulnara Karimova, the socialite daughter of Uzbekistan’s late president. The emails offer a glimpse of the intricate relationship between a private charity with a broad global mission and the State Department under the leadership of a secretary who is married to a former president. Former government officials reached by Reuters said there was nothing inappropriate in the interactions of the foundation with the State Department over the potential meetings, some of which did not occur. The latest batch of emails likely represents only a partial view of all the exchanges between the State Department and the foundation. It is unclear how frequently the foundation sought advice from the State Department on meetings involving Bill Clinton. In one instance, the emails show Amitabh Desai, a foreign policy adviser to the foundation and to Bill Clinton, raised the possibility in 2009 of a meeting between Bill Clinton and Syrian President Assad. At the time, Assad wanted better ties with the West. “Would this be concerning for State?” Desai wrote in an email alerting Hillary Clinton aide Jake Sullivan to the possible meeting. “The Syrians expressed a keen interest in facilitating this,” Desai said in an email a few days later. The Syria visit was proposed to be tacked onto a forum Bill Clinton was invited to attend in Israel in November 2009, according to the emails. The meeting never happened, according to Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who helped to organize the trip. The State Department sometimes communicates with charities, such as about circumstances that might involve the safety of Americans or highly sensitive diplomatic situations, but it typically does not vet their contacts with foreign leaders to this extent. State Department spokesman Elizabeth Trudeau said officials occasionally provide talking points and briefings to ex-presidents. Much of Bill Clinton’s communications with the State Department stemmed from an ethics agreement that was put in place when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was aimed at avoiding conflicts of interests stemming from contributions to the foundation and Bill Clinton’s paid speeches and consulting. Trudeau said these were “voluntary steps” taken to avoid “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Angel Urena, press secretary for Bill Clinton, said the requests for State Department input on potential meetings, talking points and other information “was done in order to inform the administration of President Clinton’s interactions with foreign governments and dignitaries, so that the administration could in turn offer advice or voice any concerns.” Urena said Bill Clinton had sought advice on his activities since he left office in 2001. The Clinton Foundation referred questions to Urena. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign declined to comment. Clinton’s campaign to win the Nov. 8 presidential election has been dogged by criticism of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a global philanthropic organization. The foundation has said it will stop accepting at least some foreign and corporate donations if Hillary Clinton becomes president and that Bill Clinton would resign from the foundation’s board. In one previously unreported email exchange, Desai wrote to the State Department in May 2012 informing officials that Bill Clinton would travel to Monaco to raise money for the foundation at an event where he might cross paths with the elder daughter of the Uzbekistan president. Gulnara Karimova, a businesswoman and pop star, was described in a 2005 cable from a U.S. embassy official as the “single most hated person in Uzbekistan” because of her flamboyant lifestyle in an authoritarian country. She has since come under investigation in an international bribery scandal. Ahead of the event in Monaco, Desai wrote that the organizers had invited Karimova to be one of the event’s sponsors “apparently without our approval.” The Uzbekistan president’s daughter “will be listed in the program and will see (Bill Clinton),” he said. “Would (the U.S. government) have concerns? If so, we can go back to organizer and ask them to return her sponsorship and disinvite her, however I assume that would ruffle some feathers,” Desai said. The emails released to Citizens United don’t contain a reply to Desai’s inquiry. However, a collection of photos from the Monaco event posted on the internet show Karimova attended it. They do not show any pictures of her with Bill Clinton. | 0fake |
U.S. calls on China to use 'powerful tool' of oil to sway North Korea | LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday he was hopeful that China would come to its own decision to decide to use the powerful tool of oil supplies to persuade North Korea to reconsider its current path . On a visit to London where he met British Prime Minister Theresa May and foreign minister, Boris Johnson, Tillerson said the United States had wanted to see a much stronger resolution from the United Nations which agreed a new round of sanctions on Monday. It s clear that with respect to oil, and a complete embargo on oil from the U.N. Security Council, that s going to be very difficult, he said. In effect, that is directed at China alone because China supplies essentially all of North Korea s oil, he told a joint news conference with Johnson. I am hopeful that China, as a great country, a world power, will decide on their own, will take it upon themselves to use that very powerful tool of oil supply to persuade North Korea to reconsider its current path toward weapons development, reconsider its approach to dialogue and negotiations in the future. | 0fake |
Japan PM urges North Korea to refrain from more provocative actions | TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged North Korea on Monday to refrain from taking further provocative actions, comply with U.N. resolutions and abandon its nuclear missile development. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have escalated as U.S. President Donald Trump takes a hard rhetorical line with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has rebuffed admonitions from China and proceeded with missile tests. North Korea launched a ballistic missile on Sunday but it blew up almost immediately, the U.S. Pacific Command said. Abe told parliament he would exchange views on North Korea with Russian President Vladimir Putin when they hold a summit meeting later this month. He also said the government was considering measures to respond to contingencies stemming from a potential crisis on the Korean peninsula, including floods of refugees and how to evacuate Japanese citizens from South Korea. “We assume a series of responses in case of evacuees into Japan, such as protecting them, a process of landing, housing facilities and their management, and a screening whether our nation should protect them,” Abe said. Japan’s National Security Council discussed how to evacuate its nearly 60,000 citizens from South Korea in the event of a crisis, a government official said on Friday amid rising concern over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited the demilitarized border between North and South Korea on Monday and reiterated that the U.S. “era of strategic patience” with Pyongyang was over. | 0fake |
Volkswagen Reaches Deal in U.S. Over Emissions Scandal - The New York Times | Volkswagen agreed on Thursday to fix or buy back nearly 500, 000 diesel cars in the United States that are equipped with illegal emissions software. But a settlement announced in federal court in San Francisco left open numerous legal and financial issues stemming from the carmaker’s admission that it rigged diesel vehicles to cheat on pollution tests. Lawyers in the case are still negotiating the fines that Volkswagen must pay, as well as the compensation that owners will receive. Judge Charles R. Breyer set June 21 as the deadline for Volkswagen to settle those questions with the federal government as well as lawyers for vehicle owners. “There is still a lot of work to be done,” Judge Breyer said. It is already clear, though, that Volkswagen will have to increase the amount it has set aside to cover costs of the emissions scandal, which will easily run into billions of dollars. Kelley Blue Book, a research firm, has estimated the cost of buying back all the cars in the United States at $7 billion. The company is certain to face additional billions in fines and compensation paid to owners beyond the costs of repairs or buybacks in the United States. And there are many more faulty cars in Europe and elsewhere in the world still to be dealt with. Volkswagen has set aside only 6. 7 billion euros, or $7. 6 billion, against the eventual global costs from the scandal. “If they agree to buy back the cars, the costs will be higher than the current provisions,” said Matthias Hellstern, managing director for corporate finance at Moody’s Investors Service in Frankfurt. Kevin Helmich, owner of a 2010 Audi A3 with a diesel engine, said on Thursday that he would lean toward having the company buy his car back rather than get it repaired. Volkswagen is “making a real effort to do right by customers,” said Mr. Helmich, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. But he added, “I probably wouldn’t buy another car from them. ” Volkswagen faces a theoretical maximum government fine of $18 billion in the United States. Legal experts expect the legal penalties to be much lower, but still in the billions. Judge Breyer said that owners would also receive “substantial compensation. ” And the company could still be hit with criminal charges by the Justice Department, which is investigating Volkswagen’s cheating. Under the agreement announced Thursday, the company will offset some of the environmental damage caused by the cars by investing in clean technologies. The judge did not give details about the form the investment might take. In a statement, Volkswagen said it “intends to compensate its customers fully and to remediate any impact on the environment from excess diesel emissions. ” While many questions remain unanswered, the court hearing on Thursday suggested that Volkswagen and those with claims against it had made substantial progress toward a settlement that would clear up some of the company’s financial uncertainty. It should also help Volkswagen restore some good will with owners of 480, 000 Volkswagens and Audi A3 models with the affected diesel engines. The models with the cheating software in the United States include Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche cars with or diesel engines from the model years . Owners will have the option either to get their cars fixed so they are compliant with laws, or sell them back to the company. People who have leased vehicles will be able to cancel their contracts without penalty. But a solution for about 100, 000 cars with diesel engines, including Audi and Porsche models, has not yet been agreed to, the judge indicated. “I wish we had more details, and I wish we could get back to the business of selling” diesel models, said Alan Brown, owner of a Volkswagen dealership in Lewisville, Tex. “But it’s great to see we’ve got movement. Without customers, none of us dealers has a business. ” Many more European cars, over 10 million, are also affected by the Volkswagen cheating. But the company’s financial fines and any consumer liabilities in Europe are not expected to be nearly as high because of differences in regulations and laws. Given the uncertainties over the potential costs of the United States settlement, Volkswagen has delayed earnings reports for the last two quarters. That has impaired the company’s ability to raise money on debt markets because it could not provide financial information demanded by investors. And even when the details of Thursday’s announced settlement emerge, the company’s troubles will be far from over. It faces official investigations and possible criminal proceedings in other countries, including Britain, France, Germany and South Korea. And owners of its models in Europe, who account for a vast majority of the 11 million diesel vehicles with the cheating software, are angry that they are not receiving any compensation. Volkswagen is recalling the cars in Europe to reprogram the engine software and, in some cases, to install a plastic part that is supposed to help lower emissions. But it has balked at offering European owners money. Analysts at the investment bank UBS had estimated the total cost of the scandal for Volkswagen at 38 billion euros, or about $43. 1 billion, of which €14 billion was for expenses outside the United States. Judge Breyer had given Volkswagen until Thursday to reach a settlement with the federal government and with vehicle owners in the United States. The judge had expressed dissatisfaction that the cars were still on the road emitting illegal levels of pollution seven months after the cheating became public. The defeat device allowed Volkswagen to cheat on the emissions tests in the United States by recognizing when cars were being monitored and changing the exhaust settings. In testing, the cars increased pollution controls. But on the road, pollution controls were scaled back to enhance performance and fuel mileage, and to protect emissions equipment from wear. When that happened, the cars spewed as much as 40 times the allowed amounts of nitrogen oxides, a pollutant that poses health hazards. Judge Breyer is overseeing almost all of the litigation in the United States, including claims filed by federal and state governments as well as Volkswagen owners. The company still faces separate suits by Volkswagen dealers and by dealers of competing brands, who say the cheating gave Volkswagen an unfair advantage in the market. Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, said Thursday’s announcement “does not in any way resolve” claims being pursued by a coalition, which he said would continue its investigation and pursuit of penalties. The states have not yet filed a suit against Volkswagen. Volkswagen’s legal troubles were focused in the United States because limits on nitrogen oxides are more stringent and the penalties more severe than in Europe. In addition, United States law gives owners significant scope to seek redress in court. Rob Martens, a retired musician in Boulder, Colo. said he was eager to have Volkswagen buy back his 2015 Passat diesel. While he likes the car’s roominess and ride, he’s not happy to be driving a car that emits more pollutants than it should. On top of that, the car’s electronics have given him headaches — its infotainment system often freezes up and its rearview camera sometimes goes out. “This is not what they call German engineering,” Mr. Martens said. “I can’t wait to dump it. ” | 0fake |
Maverick state governor takes aim at Mexican presidency | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The first man in modern Mexican history to win a gubernatorial election as an independent said on Wednesday he aimed to run in the 2018 presidential election, putting pressure on the leading anti-establishment contender, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Jaime Rodriguez ruptured the political status quo by capturing the wealthy northern state of Nuevo Leon by a landslide in 2015 after he broke with President Enrique Pena Nieto s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Rodriguez adds to a fragmented landscape of contenders led by twice presidential runner-up Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who has spent years pitching himself as the only solution to ongoing political corruption and chronic inequality. I want to give it a try, and I want to show that the people are tired of political parties and the politicians themselves, Rodriguez, 59, told Mexican broadcaster Radio Formula. Known as El Bronco due to his blunt style, Rodriguez has trailed far behind Lopez Obrador in early opinion polls. However, his entry into the race could eat away at anti-establishment support for Lopez Obrador, a leftist with nationalist leanings. That, in turn, could help the PRI. The avid horseman said he planned to register on Saturday and will have four months to gather 866,593 signatures - or one percent of the electorate - in at least 17 regions of Mexico to qualify as an independent ahead of the July 2018 vote. Voter surveys show all presidential hopefuls struggling to win the backing of as much as one third of the electorate. In June, the PRI was able to exploit those divisions, winning a tight gubernatorial race in the State of Mexico, the country s most populous region, with barely a third of the vote. Leading PRI officials say privately the party hopes to take advantage of that fragmentation again to eke out victory in 2018. However, it is still unclear who will be the party s candidate. Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking re-election. Further crowding the pool of anti-systemic candidates, Senator Armando Rios Piter, an independent former member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), also registered a run for the presidency on Wednesday. The PRD was once led by Lopez Obrador, but he turned his back on it to found a new leftist movement in 2014, frequently accusing his former allies as being lackeys of the PRI. The PRD meanwhile, has decided to forge a broad front with the main center-right opposition party, the National Action Party (PAN), to defeat the PRI. Officials from both parties say they could back an independent candidate to lead their bid. All told, ten independents have so far registered, according to the National Electoral Institute (INE). Three of those contenders failed to meet initial requirements, the INE said. Lopez Obrador has attacked Rodriguez s independent credentials, describing him as a tool of the PRI, and helping to fuel an increasingly bitter rivalry between the two. According to him (Lopez Obrador), he s the only good guy in the country, Rodriguez told Radio Formula. We re all devils in the rest of the country, he s the only saint. | 0fake |
American Workers Finally Fighting Back Against Corporations Replacing Them With Cheaper Foreign Labor | THE H-1B VISA PROGRAM IS KILLING JOBS FOR NATIVE AMERICANS! It was just reported in the recent jobs numbers that native-born Americans are losing jobs while immigrant employment is up. Corporations like Disney are bringing in foreign workers with the H-1B visa and having the American employees train the foreign worker for their job. Talk about adding insult to injury! This needs to stop but Washington lobbyists and the Chamber of Commerce really can t help themselves they love that cheap labor. The discrimination against Americans is very real and it s about time the workers fought back!Some U.S. IT workers who have been replaced with H-1B contractors are alleging discrimination and are going to court. They are doing so in increasing numbers.There are at least seven IT workers at Disney who are pursuing, or plan to pursue, federal and state discrimination administrative complaints over their layoffs. Another Disney worker, still employed by the firm, has filed a state administrative discrimination complaint in California. These complaints are a first step to litigation.Separately, there are ongoing court cases alleging discrimination against two of the largest India-based IT services firms, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services. The federal judges in each of cases have given a green light for the plaintiffs to proceed after rejecting dismissal efforts.There may be federal interest in examining this issue. The U.S. Department of Justice s Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices was asked by 10 U.S. senators in April to examine the IT layoffs at Southern California Edison (SCE) and to determine whether SCE or its contractors were engaged in prohibited citizenship status discrimination. What s being challenged, in sum, is the job replacement system created by the H-1B program. U.S. IT workers, as a condition for their severance, are being made to train H-1B visa-holding contractor replacements to take over their jobs.The contractors often work for IT services firms that employ large numbers of H-1B workers. Most of these workers are from India and regional countries. This practice of replacing U.S. workers with foreign workers constitutes national origin discrimination, say its critics.The court case against Tata, whose plaintiffs include a former SCE employee, alleges that some 95% of its employees are South Asian or mostly Indian. Tata has called the allegations baseless.The Disney IT workers were terminated because they were American citizens and all their replacements were foreign-born Indians, said Sara Blackwell, a Florida attorney, who is representing seven of the Disney workers at its parks and resort division. She has set up an organizationto challenge the practice. Other discrimination claims, including age and disability, will be made as well. Those complaints are being filed with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, which sees if a settlement is possible prior to any lawsuit.Disney did not respond immediately for comment. We need to protect American workers, said James Otto, a California attorney who is representing a Disney ABC Television Group employee in that state. This complaint is being filed in California under the state s Fair Employment and Housing Act, which Otto said is similar to the federal process, but with more protections.Otto s client still works at Disney and had been targeted for an earlier layoff, but Disney rescinded those layoffs. Nonetheless, the complaints being made include a hostile workforce and national origin discrimination.Read more: Computer World | 1real |
Growing feud: Trump, Cruz escalate attacks on each other | MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (Reuters) - The growing feud between Republican front-runner Donald Trump and his central rival Ted Cruz intensified on Saturday with tit-for-tat attacks that put to rest any notion that their debate night fight was a solitary engagement. The split between the two is evidence of the closeness of the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, particularly in Iowa. Polls there show a neck-and-neck battle with little more than two weeks to go until Iowa on Feb. 1 stages the first nominating contest on the road to the Nov. 8 election. Trump, who needs a victory in Iowa to set a winning tone to his campaign, kept up his attempt to undermine Cruz’s attempt to portray himself as an outsider to the political establishment. Trump seized on a report in The New York Times that said Cruz had failed to disclose a second loan, from Citibank, that helped bankroll his 2012 Senate campaign. The Times earlier had reported that Cruz had not disclosed a loan from Goldman Sachs for the same campaign. Cruz’s campaign has said the failure to report the loan was a paperwork error. “He didn’t report his bank loans,” Trump told delegates to the South Carolina Tea Party Convention. Some booed Trump for criticizing Cruz since they had cheered Cruz when he spoke to the group earlier. “Say whatever you want,” Trump said in response to the boos. “He didn’t report his bank loans... And then he acts like Robin Hood. Say whatever you want..” Cruz did not mention Trump to the Tea Party event but talking to reporters in Fort Mill, S.C., earlier in the day he was unsparing. He suggested the New York billionaire and former reality TV star lacks the temperament to be president, pointing to his frequent Twitter assaults on his adversaries. He said Trump had attacked him because Cruz was a threat to him in Iowa. “I think in terms of a commander-in-chief, we ought to have someone who isn’t springing out of bed to tweet in a frantic response to the latest polls,” Cruz said. “I think the American people are looking for a commander-in-chief who is stable and steady and a calm hand to keep this country safe.” Trying to prove Trump is not the conservative he says he is, Cruz’s campaign released a video entitled “Donald Trump’s New York Values” that linked to a 1999 interview Trump did on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in which Trump declared he favored a woman’s right to abortion and supported gay marriage. The two candidates had clashed at the last Republican debate, on Thursday in Charleston, over the issue of “New York values” with Trump saying Cruz had insulted the city that absorbed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and rebounded. Trump brought up the issue again at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., hours before a scheduled address at the South Carolina Tea Party Convention in Myrtle Beach. Cruz’s criticism of New York, he said, was a “total disgrace.” (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
Trump Jr., Kushner met with Russian lawyer: New York Times | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and former election campaign manager met with a Russian lawyer linked to the Kremlin soon after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan on June 9, 2016, was the first confirmed private meeting between members of the president’s inner circle and a Russian national, the newspaper reported, citing confidential government records and interviews with people familiar with the documents. Donald Trump Jr. confirmed the get-together in a statement, describing it as “a short introductory meeting” that focused mainly on the issue of child adoption. He said he also asked Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort to take part in the meeting. A lawyer for Kushner said Trump’s son-in-law “briefly attended” the meeting. A federal special counsel and several congressional committees are investigating possible contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian representatives, as part of a larger probe into allegations that Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The Times article appeared a day after Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the allegations of election meddling during the summit of leaders from the Group of 20 major economies in Hamburg, Germany. Donald Trump Jr. said the meeting was held primarily to discuss a popular program to help Americans adopt Russian children, which the Russian government had ended. “But it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up,” he said in the statement. “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.” Kushner attorney Jamie Gorelick said Trump’s son-in-law “briefly attended” the meeting, adding that Kushner had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives from more than 20 countries during the campaign and post-election transition. “As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows,” Gorelick said in a statement. A spokesman for Manafort did not respond to a Reuters query. The Times said the Russian lawyer at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is known for campaigning against a U.S. law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law enraged Putin, who retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children, the newspaper reported. The Times said the adoption issue is a frequently used talking point for opponents of the U.S. law. | 0fake |
“RACIST” President Jackson To Be Replaced With Black Female Representing “Struggle For Racial Equality” On $20 Bill | Obama has filled his cabinet with radical yes men and women who hold similar anti-American, leftist views. His radical Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew is no exception. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is expected to announce this week that Alexander Hamilton s face will remain on the front of the $10 bill and a woman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20 bill, a senior government source told CNN on Saturday.Lew announced last summer that he was considering redesigning the $10 bill to include the portrait of a woman. The decision to make the historic change at the expense of Hamilton drew angry rebukes from fans of the former Treasury Secretary. The pro-Hamilton movement gained steam after the smash success of the hip-hop Broadway musical about his life this year.Those pressures led Lew to determine that Hamilton should remain on the front of the bill. Instead, a mural-style depiction of the women s suffrage movement including images of leaders such as Susan B. Anthony will be featured on the back of the bill.Along those lines, Lew also plans to announce this week that Andrew Jackson a less beloved former president whose face graces the front of the $20 bill will be removed in favor of a female representing the struggle for racial equality, according to the government source.That decision would place a female on one of the most widely circulated bills in the world. But the historic change placing a female on the front of the $20 note won t come for more than a decade, the source said, since the process for changing the design of that note is still in the early stages.While some pointed to the many accomplishments and qualities of Hamilton for why he should stay on the currency printed by the very Treasury the man created, the more popular argument for the Founding Father s retention was an argument about how awful the man on the $20 dollar bill was.The Daily Beast described Jackson as villainous and linked to a February article that called him a mass murderer. The New York Post argued that Old Hickory may well have been our most racist president and was a vicious, power-mad kook. So a lot of folks really don t like the victor of the Battle of New Orleans. They hate him for owning slaves. They hate him for taking the side of the masses against financial experts. They hate him for ignoring laws and enforcing his own will when it came to policy decisions.And they hate Jackson most of all for his treatment of American Indians.These are pretty strong views, but Jackson s critics usually fail to comprehend important aspects of U.S. history in their denunciations of the rough-and-tumble general.For one, Jackson was not the only important American to own slaves. Far from it. For example, as most people should know, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slaveholders. Both Washington and Jefferson are respectively featured on two different forms of currency and have large, imposing monuments dedicated to their memory in Washington D.C.There are no calls for their erasure from our coins or demolishing their monuments.Fewer people know that the Cherokee victims of Jackson s Indian Removal Act also owned slaves.There are no calls for renaming places and monuments designed to honor the Cherokee people.When it comes to Jackson s controversial handling of the Second Bank of the United States, it helps to realize the motives behind the president s actions. Jackson was opposed to the Central Bank not out of cookery but because he saw it as an undemocratic institution which did not care for the interests of the common man. Via: Daily Caller The soonest that a new $20 note will be issued is 2030, the source said, citing a lengthy process convened by the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence steering committee, which includes representatives from the U.S. Secret Service, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve. Via: CNN News | 1real |
Trump proposes deep U.S. spending cuts in Mexico, Central America | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed drastically slashing U.S. foreign aid spending in Mexico and Central America, which are struggling with drug violence, graft and poverty that prompts many from the troubled region to migrate north. Trump’s austere 2018 budget proposal, which seeks to trim $3.6 trillion from government spending over the next decade and is unlikely to get legislative approval in its current form, envisages steep cuts in most federal departments, but particularly the State Department. Ever since launching his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has attacked Mexico, threatening to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement, build a Mexico-funded southern border wall and ramp up deportations of those living without documents in the United States. Tuesday’s proposal foresees 2018 Mexican aid of $87.66 million, down more than 45 percent from the 2016 outlay. The proposed spending cuts comes as the United States leans on Mexico to do more to prop up its poor Central American neighbors, where poverty and gangs are the main drivers pushing migrants to the United States. The budget proposes scrapping most U.S. money for the Mexican military, along with counterterrorism funds and some governance programs. Narcotics and law enforcement spending would fall from $100 million in 2016 to $60 million. In Guatemala, U.S. aid would drop almost 40 percent from 2016, to $80.66 million, while in Honduras and El Salvador it would fall nearly a third. In a call with reporters, U.S. officials stressed the cuts would not prevent them from tackling their regional objectives. “That is a reduction. However it really prioritizes our programs that focus on disrupting the activities of transnational criminal organizations, strengthening border security and combating corruption … we’re going to continue addressing those root causes as part of our Central America strategy,” an official said. Mexico, which is struggling with rising crime, will be co-hosting a June meeting in Miami where the U.S. government hopes to drum up more private sector support to improve employment and security conditions in Central America. Although the number of migrants arriving on the southern U.S. border has fallen drastically since Trump took office, history suggests the decline may prove short-lived if he fails to realize his tough policies. Well over 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006, and the 2017 murder tally could be the highest ever as legacy drug cartels splinter into ever more violent factions. | 0fake |
Denver sued by homeless over 'sweeps' as vagrant camps return | Denver sued by homeless over 'sweeps' as vagrant camps return Published time: 27 Oct, 2016 01:02 Get short URL © Tami Chappell / Reuters Denver seems to be losing its battle with homelessness, as sporadic camps reportedly resurfaced after a major clean-up in March. On top of that, the city is battling through a lawsuit from homeless people claiming they were subjected to unlawful “sweeps.”
“Since the beginning of the summer it seems like there are more people on the streets and sidewalks,” a local woman, Stephanie Mills, told KCNC. “It just seems to be getting worse and worse as the weeks go by.” Read more Church faces daily $100 fine for housing homeless on its lot, battles with neighbors
It has been half-a-year since Denver started its crackdown on numerous homeless campsites. Citing health concerns, city officials started clearing out camps that blocked public sidewalks. However, the order did not last long.
According to KCNC, the city receives complaints about homeless camps daily, but it cannot do anything to fix the problem.
“We’ll get calls from people who have one homeless person and they want us to ‘Beam them up, Scotty,’” Bennie Milliner, executive director of Denver’s Road Home, told the news channel.
According to Milliner, Denver has enough shelters to accommodate its homeless population, but not everyone wants to go there. Instead, many are willing to remain on the street, especially downtown.
Those sleeping rough are not willing to give up easily. They have high hopes of winning a class-action lawsuit filed in August, challenging the city’s so-called “homeless sweeps.” This month, the case made it to a federal court.
“These ongoing sweeps are conducted without notice or with inadequate notice and in a manner that prevents Plaintiffs and Plaintiff Class from retrieving their property,” the lawsuit reads, stating that the way the sweeps are conducted “shock[s] the consciences.”
“It is difficult to imagine what it must feel like to be already homeless and suffering, then be forced to watch as everything you own in the world is thrown into a dump truck while you are afforded no means to contest the seizure and destruction of your property,” a defense team representing the homeless wrote. Lawsuit Challenges Denver’s Sweeps Of The Homeless https://t.co/HrMa6dVlSY pic.twitter.com/A2SdfwddeE — CBSDenver (@CBSDenver) October 26, 2016
They argue that Denver has no legal basis for treating “this vulnerable class as though their civil rights were non-existent.”
The lawsuit, which speaks on behalf of thousands of homeless people, also names a number of individual officials, including Mayor Michael Hancock and Police Chief Robert White as main violators. Attorney representing homeless class action suit, addresses media b4 1st hearing at 9am & Denver homeless gather 2 voice concern @CBSDenver pic.twitter.com/UZivcRLPLv — Jamie Leary (@JamieALeary) October 12, 2016
It will be up to the court to decide whether Hancock, White, and other city officials have violated any rights during more than two years of clearings.
Approximately 5,500 of Denver’s residents are homeless, according to the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, the lawsuit states. | 1real |
A Trump presidency will have implications for NATO | A Trump presidency will have implications for NATO Donald Trump could reassess America’s foreign policy priorities, and that would almost certainly lead to a new strategic role for NATO – including a greater emphasis on fighting terrorism abroad Donald Trump could reassess America’s foreign policy priorities, and that would almost certainly lead to a new strategic role for NATO – including a greater emphasis on fighting terrorism abroad.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg responds to a question about the U.S. elections at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Nov. 9. Photo: AP
Shortly before the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. , when most European and American politicians expected the victory of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton , NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced his plans to increase the combat readiness of the Alliance’s troops in Europe.
In addition, he said that NATO should respond to the policy of its key opponent, Russia. However after the victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the American presidential race, Stoltenberg changed his priorities and called on NATO to fight with terrorism first and foremost, relegating the containment of Russia to the secondary agenda. ;
With Trump coming to the White House, Washington is likely to reassess its foreign policy priorities, which also could lead to changes in NATO’s military strategy. Will the North Atlantic Treaty Organization deploy rapid deployment troops? Most importantly, who will pay for this under Trump?
Read the Q&A with Dmitri Trenin: " Trump's presidency and the future of US-Russia relations " Anyway, there are some controversial ideas in the pre-election statements of the U.S. President-elect on the country’s national security and the necessity to reassess its military doctrine. Specifically, the new American leader admitted the possibility of using torture in the cases of those suspected of terrorism. Moreover, he said that using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Greater Syria (ISIS) would be a potential option. At the same time, he criticized Obama’s policy toward Iran and North Korea , two states that could pose nuclear challenges to the world.
Amidst this rhetoric, Trump’s statements about security look very disjointed. According to his logic, security is never free and every country should pay for it by itself. At the same time, he believes that America should not impose its universal values on those who don’t agree with them.
So, Trump is an outsider, a populist and a contrarian. He is alien to the American establishment. That’s why he can afford to violate the rules of the current political system – but only up to a point. Such a wanton approach is more difficult when it comes to foreign policy. However, the U.S.-President-elect identified himself as a pragmatist. He has not ruled out that he will be driven by pragmatic calculations in his defense politics. And establishing a European defense system will test his pragmatism.
If Europeans seek an American-led defense, they will have to pay for it. If the European Union believes that Moscow poses a threat to Eastern Europe, it is Brussels that should create the necessary infrastructure for the deployment of American forces. According to Trump’s logic, NATO itself should be more self-reliant in fostering European security.
So, Trump looks like a typical and cynical realist. He repeatedly criticized the Obama administration’s policy in Syria and Iraq: The U.S. campaign against ISIS failed, and now the prospects for the Mosul military operation against the terrorists are in limbo. Most importantly, American troops are fighting in Iraq.
Probably, Trump expects the EU to play a greater role in the international coalition against ISIS and more rigorously shoulder the burden of the war in the Middle East . It is not ruled out that the new American president will fight with Islamic terrorism with greater tenacity and will try to involve other stakeholders, including Russia. Such an approach will allow him to boost his rankings amidst the failures of the previous administration to tackle terrorism. After all, it could be interpreted as his decisiveness in defending the American national interest.
It is quite likely that Trump will agree on constructive and large-scale cooperation with the Kremlin in Syria and will try to bring NATO's forces to the operation. In this context, the prompt creation of additional forces of rapid deployment, which would be ready to take part in clashes in the Middle East by spring 2017, would surely benefit Trump.
Notwithstanding the paradox, the force structure proposed by Stoltenberg cannot seriously threaten Russia. It is likely that both NATO's Secretary General and the Head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, understand this. While the latter recently called once again for the creation of a European army , it will also be incapable of changing the situation and influencing the balance of power in the region.
In case of Russia's intervention in Eastern Europe or NATO's attack on Russia, the war will be rapid and mobile with nuclear deterrence weapons playing the key role. According to the forecasts of Western military experts, the Baltic capitals might fall in two-three days while Prague and Warsaw could fall in 7-10 days after the beginning of the conflict.
It is also seems unlikely that NATO would deploy thousands of its military on Russian borders to pressure the Kremlin or threaten it in case of escalation in Ukraine or the Baltic States . The countries of Eastern Europe simply do not have an infrastructure to accommodate such a large number of forces. Not more than 100,000 people took part in the largest NATO military drills in Eastern Europe over the last 25 years. And they were located in different countries.
Recommended: " Why Russia has no reason to celebrate a Trump presidency yet " Creating such infrastructure, which would be vulnerable to tactical nuclear weapons due to the close proximity to Russian borders, might take more than a year. Although Lithuania and Estonia are already financing the bases in Sauliai and Ämari, the number of airplanes located there is not high.
Thus, the new American leader might carry out a very pragmatic policy regardless of his populist rhetoric. He is likely to attempt a reset in Washington's relations with Moscow and might change the U.S. policy in Ukraine.
At the same time it is not correct to consider Trump a "friend of the Kremlin" as some Russian politicians do. Trump is protecting U.S. national interests, not Russia's and is following the principles of Realpolitik .
He seeks to extricate his country from unnecessary expenditures, the threat of terrorism and boost the U.S. economy. If Russia can partly contribute to these efforts, the cooperation will be possible. If American national interests clash with those of Russia, then cooperation will not be possible.
Trump will not forget about Europe, which the U.S. has guarded since 1945. He will act pragmatically because cooperation with Brussels in the Middle East is important for fighting terrorism. In addition, Brussels will remain an irreplaceable partner for the U.S. in case of escalation of tensions with Russia over Ukraine.
That's why the creation of new rapid deployment contingents and system of European forces coordination, as well as increasing their mobilization capability, will be beneficial for Trump. Of course, if it will be Brussels that funds these initiatives, not Washington.
The ;opinion ;of the author may not necessarily reflect the position of Russia Direct or its staff. | 1real |
SARAH SANDERS Slams Cowgirl Congresswoman’s Criticism of Trump: ‘Appalling’ [Video] | White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Wednesday blasted Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson s criticism of the president s call to a fallen soldier s widow as appalling and disgusting, even as the congresswoman stood by her account. I think it s appalling what the congresswoman has done and the way she s politicized this issue and the way that she s trying to make this about something that it isn t, Sanders said during the White House press briefing.The dispute has steadily escalated puncuated by claims and counter-claims via Twitter, briefings and interviews ever since Wilson, D-Fla., claimed Tuesday that President Trump told the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson during a phone call that he knew what he signed up for. Johnson was among four service members killed earlier this month during an ambush in Niger. Wilson called Trump s remarks in the phone call insensitive.Johnson s mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, later backed up the congresswoman s account, telling The Associated Press that Trump showed disrespect. But Sanders defended the president s tone. This was a president who loves our country very much, who has the greatest level of respect for men and women in the uniform and wanted to call and offer condolences to the family. And I think to try to create something from that that the congresswoman is doing is frankly appalling and disgusting, she told reporters.Read more: Fox News | 1real |
Bill Clinton Wants to be Called Something Completely Ridiculous if Hillary is Elected | 0 comments
With the possibility that America may elect the first female president in history, there has been much speculation surrounding what we would call her husband.
During the 2008 election, Todd Palin joked that he liked to be referred to as the “First Dude” when his wife was Governor of Alaska, and the term could be brought to the White House.
But while speaking with the Daily Mail in North Carolina on Tuesday, Bill Clinton had another idea.
“What I hope I’ll be is the first volunteer,” the former president said. “I hope to be the best free labor she’s got.” | 1real |
Arab Intel Official Warns Israel, Jordan, Syria Borders at Risk of Becoming an Iranian Stronghold | TEL AVIV — There is fear that further advances by the Syrian army, assisted by the Hezbollah and elite Iranian troops, may turn the border area into an Iranian proxy base, an Arab intelligence officer said. [“It’s not so much the possibility that it happens, but the prospects of an Israeli retaliation if Iranian forces come near its border,” he said. “Israel made it clear, publicly and behind the scenes, that it would not tolerate Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards’ presence along its border. ” “Iran has exploited the campaign against Nusra Front and the Islamic State to take root in the border area,” he said. “Jordan and Israel too would like to see these organizations out, but not to the point that Hezbollah and Iran fill the void. ” Lately, Israel and Jordan have cooperated closely on the matter, he stated. “Israel knows that Jordan needs to act against extremist elements but both want to prevent Iran from taking advantage of it. ” “It is also in [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s best interest to keep the Iranians out,” the official contended. “True, he has stated that the Golan Heights would be liberated by force, and he relies heavily on Hezbollah and Iran. But at some point he’d wish to rule over his own border areas, which is something Jordan can live with. But not Iran. ” He added that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards tried several times in the past to gain a foothold in Jordan. “But these cells were unveiled and dismantled before they became operational. ” He added that the joint operation room of the Syrian opposition groups has become almost completely inactive. “Its activity has been dramatically reduced,” he said of the operation room. “There are no more operational and tactical plans and directives. The world wants first and foremost to remove the jihadist threat, but the elements in the region believe that the jihadi threat will be replaced by an Iranian one. ” He said that Jordan has rebuffed Iranian proposals to increase economic cooperation despite the financial dire straits in which the Kingdom finds itself. “They want to prevent Iran from having any kind of foothold in the kingdom. ” | 0fake |
Donald Trump Honors ’Beloved President’ Andrew Jackson in Nashville - Breitbart | President Donald Trump honored former President Andrew Jackson, celebrating his 250th birthday by visiting Hermitage, Jackson’s home in Nashville, Tennessee. [“Look what he was able to do, look what he was able to build,” Trump marveled as he told the story of Jackson, who was orphaned as a young boy before fighting in the Revolutionary War. “Andrew Jackson was a military hero and genius and a beloved president, but he was also a flawed and imperfect man, the product of his time,” Trump said. Trump told the story of Jackson being captured by the British during the Revolutionary War as a boy and being slashed with a saber when he refused to shine an officer’s boots. “It was during the revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Trump said. “Does that sound familiar to you?” “Oh, I know the feeling, Andrew,” Trump smiled as he shook his head. Trump explained that since the event, Jackson defied elites and authority figures throughout his life. “Jackson’s victories shook the establishment like an earthquake,” Trump said. He quoted Henry Clay calling Jackson’s victory as president “mortifying” and “sickening. ” “Oh boy, does this sound familiar,” Trump grinned, as the audience laughed loudly. Trump told the audience that Jackson removed ten percent of the federal workforce, expanded veterans benefits, rooted out corruption, imposed tariffs to protect American workers — something he was also committed to doing. “Wait till you see what’s happening pretty soon folks,” he said. The president reminded the spectators that he brought the Andrew Jackson portrait into the Oval Office, adding that he can see the Magnolia tree planted on the South Lawn by Jackson. “Now we must work in our time … to expand the blessings of America to every citizen in our land and when we do, watch us grow,” Trump said. “We will truly be one nation. ” | 0fake |
F.D.A. Will Allow 23andMe to Sell Genetic Tests for Disease Risk to Consumers - The New York Times | For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration said it would allow a company to sell genetic tests for disease risk directly to consumers, providing people with information about the likelihood that they could develop various conditions, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The move on Thursday is a turnaround for the agency, which had imposed a moratorium in 2013 on disease tests sold by the company, 23andMe, which is based in Mountain View, Calif. The decision is expected to open the floodgates for more tests for disease risks, drawing a road map for other companies to do the same thing. 23andMe will now be reporting telltale markers for 10 diseases. Most, like factor XI deficiency, a blood clotting disorder, and Gaucher disease type 1, an organ and tissue illness, and celiac disease are rare. Anyone who buys the $199 Ancestry and Health test from the company will automatically learn if they have mutations increasing their risk for those diseases. Risk genes for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are treated separately. Customers will have to specifically say that they want that information. The company’s website offers links to genetic counselors for those who are weighing whether to be tested. If they want those results they will be included at no extra charge, though patients have to pay for the counseling separately. Until now, the only way for people to get such genetic tests was to see a medical professional who would order a test and later deliver the results to patients. Often, patients were required to see a genetic counselor before getting a test. The process for customers is simple. A customer spits into a tube and then mails it to 23andMe. The company’s lab extracts DNA from the saliva cells and tests it with probes that find genetic markers using a special chip for genotyping. In about six to eight weeks the company sends the customer an email saying the results are in. By logging onto an online account, the customer can see the report and its interpretation. It will include not just the genes for disease risk, but also reports of ancestry and results on things like how much the person is likely to weigh and whether alcohol will elicit flushing of the face, shoulders and neck, or even the entire body. This is not the first foray by 23andMe into disease risk testing several years ago it marketed tests to consumers claiming it could provide genetic information for a variety of diseases from a simple saliva sample. But when the F. D. A. shut that endeavor down in 2013, it told the company it had to prove that its tests were accurate, and that customers understood their results. The F. D. A. established on Thursday what it called “special controls” to permit the company to sell the tests, and future ones, if it met those requirements. The company did that and Tara Goodin, a spokeswoman for the F. D. A. said the agency now intends to issue a new exemption allowing other companies to market similar tests under the same conditions. While some applaud the F. D. A. ’s move, saying people do not always need the intervention of medical professionals and genetic counselors to learn their risk for certain diseases, others worry that it sets a dangerous precedent. People often need genetic counseling before deciding they want to know if they are at risk for Parkinson’s disease, said James Beck, chief scientific officer of the Parkinson’s Foundation. “Once you get the test and read the results, there is no going back,” Dr. Beck said. But Dr. Robert Green, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, said that most people who want to get such information on their own are able to handle it just fine. He has studied tests for Alzheimer’s risk in rigorous studies, asking if patients who simply got their results, without counseling, understood what they were doing and were able to handle the information. The vast majority were, he said. “I do not want to be cavalier,” Dr. Green added. “In some cases people did not realize what they were saying yes to and others did not realize the psychological impact it would have on them. There is some potential for distress, but it is much, much smaller than was anticipated. ” The test’s results do not by any means guarantee that a person will get the disease. Instead, they mean the disease is only more likely. With Alzheimer’s, for example, the test looks for a gene variant called ApoE4. Those with one copy of that gene have a threefold increased risk of Alzheimer’s. Those with two ApoE4 genes have a increased risk. The actual risk depends on age, but even having two copies of ApoE4 does not foreordain the disease, Dr. Green emphasized. For Parkinson’s disease, the company looks for two mutations, LRRK2 and GBA, each of which increases risk. The LRRK2 increases it by 25 percent and GBA increases it fourfold. But if a person of Ashkenazi Jewish background inherits LRRK2, the risk increases to eightfold. But those risks must be put in perspective said Dr. Beck of the Parkinson’s Foundation. Parkinson’s disease is rare — about one million Americans, out of about 330 million — have it. The new test approval comes just two years after 23andMe got approval for a different kind of testing that determines whether people carry certain gene mutations for diseases. In 2015, the F. D. A. allowed the company to tell customers if they had a copy of a mutated gene for a disease like cystic fibrosis that would not affect them — you need two copies of such mutated genes to get the disease — but could affect their future children. If a person with one copy of a cystic fibrosis gene, for example, has children with a partner who also has one copy of the mutated gene, each child has one chance in four of inheriting a mutated gene fromeach parent. If that happens, the child would get the disease. But the new approval takes the testing a giant step forward. “The difference between then and now is that we now have authorization to tell you about your personal risk,” said Anne Wojcicki, chief executive at 23andMe. 23andMe has been providing the same genetic tests the F. D. A. just authorized to customers in Britain and Canada, which have more lenient regulations, since 2014. The company says it has followed more than 20, 000 customers in Britain who got their genetic risk results. “There were no untoward incidents,” Ms. Wojcicki said. But nothing is easy in this new world of direct to consumer genetics, noted Dr. Gail P. Jarvik, head of the division of medical genetics at the University of Washington, in an email. “If people know what they are purchasing and understand the results, then I support such tests,” she said. “It is in the execution that my concerns lie and I will be following that. We have seen patients who did not understand tests they purchased from this company in the past. Hopefully, this information will be delivered in a way that has value to the person purchasing the service and does not cause unneeded medical visits. Many of these tests indicate risk of getting disease, not the certainty of getting it. And that, she said, “can be a challenging concept to communicate. ” | 0fake |
CNN Talker Famous for Saying 'Pu***' on Air Lashes Out at Newt for Saying Megyn's 'Obsessed with Sex' | Share on Twitter The Wildfire is an opinion platform and any opinions or information put forth by contributors are exclusive to them and do not represent the views of IJR.
During a panel discussion on Wednesday's “Anderson Cooper 360,” Republican strategist and CNN regular Ana Navarro went off on Newt Gingrich over his meltdown on “The Kelly File”— during which he angrily accused Kelly of being “ fascinated with sex .”
After Cooper referred to Gingrich's rant as “ironic,” Navarro jumped to take issue, 'correcting' the host before torching Gingrich over the treatment of his wife:
“I think the word you were looking for was ‘hypocritical.' Remember Newt Gingrich’s wife? When he was running in 2012, told all of us, told the media [...] Gingrich offered her the choice between an open marriage or a divorce.
So maybe, just maybe, if all of that baggage is on your shoulders, maybe you shouldn’t be the surrogate out there wagging your finger and accusing the woman who was reporting on sexual assault.
Let me explain it slowly — sexual assault and sex are two things. One is unwanted. One is wanted. So maybe they need to understand that to begin with.”
Navarro told uber-Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes that Gingrich shouldn't be used by the campaign in any capacity, given his past. Image Credit: Screenshot/CNN YouTube
Incidentally, following the release of the now-infamous leaked 2005 video in which Trump brags about grabbing women by the p***y, Navarro angrily yelled the word during a CNN panel discussion after Hughes chastised her for saying it on-air.
We'll go ahead and put Ana down as a “maybe” for Trump. | 1real |
ICE Deporting 199 Iraqis after Trump Inks Repatriation Deal | Immigration officials are set to deport 199 Iraqi nationals after their home country agreed to accept deportees as part of President Donald Trump’s negotiations regarding the travel ban executive order. Prior to order, Iraq refused repatriation. [U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) officers carried out targeted arrest operations over the past few weeks leading to the arrest of 199 Iraqi criminal aliens. Most of the 199 Iraqis, 114, were arrested in the Detroit area, ICE officials stated. The arrested Iraqis have criminal records in the U. S. for homicide, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, and a host of other crimes. As part of the ongoing operations by ICE to deliver on President Trumps campaign promise to remove criminal aliens, ERO officers have been working diligently to increase their number of arrests. “According to federal data, there are at least 2 million criminal aliens now inside the country,” candidate Trump said in an August speech in Phoenix. “We will begin moving them out day one, in joint operations with local, state and federal law enforcement. Beyond the 2 million, there are a vast number of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled or evaded justice. But their days on the run will soon be over. ” During the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, ICE arrests were up nearly 40 percent over the previous year, Breitbart Texas reported. “The operation in this region was specifically conducted to address the very real public safety threat represented by the criminal aliens arrested,” Detroit ERO Field Officer Director Rebecca Adducci said in a written statement. “The vast majority of those arrested in the Detroit metropolitan area have very serious felony convictions, multiple felony convictions in many cases. I applaud the efforts of the law enforcement personnel who, day in and day out, put their lives on the line to protect this community. ” ICE officials had previously been blocked from deporting Iraqi citizens because their home country refused to accept American deportees. However, during the negotiations to remove Iraq from President Trump’s travel ban, the country conceded. “(S) ince May 2017, the agency has arrested 199 Iraqi nationals nationwide, the overwhelming majority of whom had criminal convictions for crimes including homicide, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, drug trafficking, robbery, sex assault, weapons violations and other offenses,” ICE’s Michigan Information Officer Khaalid H. Walls wrote in a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas. “Two individuals did not have criminal convictions but have pending criminal charges for drug trafficking, receiving stolen property and multiple arrests for domestic violence. One individual is a with a final order of removal. ” He directly attributed the arrests to the president’s negotiations with Iraq. As of nearly 1, 500 Iraqi nationals have final orders of removal issued by an immigration judge that were previously unenforceable. Following the agreement, ERO officers began executing operations to reduce that number. Over the past several weeks, ICE officers arrested 85 Iraqi nationals in cities across the nation. Over this past weekend, ERO officers conducted targeted arrests in the Detroit area resulting in the 114 arrests. “Since the March 12, 2017 agreement with the Government of Iraq regarding removals, eight Iraqi nationals have been removed to Iraq,” Walls stated. Following the arrests of these violent criminal aliens, activists in the Detroit area are planning a lawsuit to block their deportations, Mlive reported. “We are filing our class action immigrant rights lawsuit to halt the death deportations of over a dozen Chaldean, Muslim and other immigrants who were picked up during the ICE raids over the weekend,” By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) national coordinator and lead attorney Shanta Driver said in a written statement. BAMN is a “ militant group” that played a leading role in the violent protests at U. C. Berkley earlier this year, Breitbart News wrote. Breitbart News also reported on the group’s violent tendencies in February, stating: BAMN sees no distinction between admitted white supremecists and people who support President Trump, and considers both valid targets for attacks. Last summer, members of the group the Traditionalist Workers Party on a permitted march were physically attacked by a group of about 400 protesters organized by BAMN. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 0fake |
IS RESIGNATION OF FBI DIRECTOR IMMINENT, As Obama Appears To Be Protecting Hillary From Prosecution? | FBI insiders are spreading the word, Hillary Clinton deliberately broke the law and charges are warranted. However, there is little confidence the Obama administration will actually indict her.Hillary Clinton broke the law, knowingly sending and receiving classified information on a private server, according to FBI insiders. However, this isn t the right question. Instead, the right question is, why are FBI insiders spreading rumors?The answer is because they do not think the political establishment will play its role in any case, leaving Hillary Clinton to get away with thumbing her nose at the law. Via: Catholic OnlineAccording to the Daily Mail Any evidence that the FBI uncovered has still not been made public.The government says no final decision has been made, however the case is clearly progressing as Clinton aide Bryan Pagliano, who worked on her private server, was granted immunity by the Justice Department earlier this month. You don t start granting people close to Clinton immunity unless you are seriously looking at charges against your target, one of Gasparino s sources said.Clinton has publicly said that using a private email account attached to a homebrew server was a mistake. Mainly because it s caused all this uproar and commotion. As FBI director, however, Comey can only recommend charges to the Justice Department, led by Obama appointee, Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Insiders told the New York Post that evidence would have to be overwhelming for Comey to make such recommendations and for Obama s Justice Department to pursue them.But agents also suggest that the investigation is solid enough for Comey to quit if the Justice Department doesn t listen to him on the matter of Clinton.Barack Obama s decision to publicly ask donors to support Hillary speaks volumes about his decision to back her as the Democrat Party s Presidential candidate. Barack s former AG, Eric Holder s endorsement of Hillary Clinton is further proof that Hillary has the full backing of this corrupt administration:Eric Holder I think what people have to understand is that what we have to do is protect the Obama legacy. We ve made really substantial progress in the last eight years it ll be eight years at the end of 2016 and the question is who is best situated to protect that legacy and not let the progress that we have made get rolled back. And there is no question that there are going to be attempts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, they sent [President Obama] a bill the week before last that he had to veto. There will certainly be efforts to counter the executive actions that he s taken on immigration issues, when it comes to gun safety issues and his foreign policy. You need somebody who s got a record on those issues that s consistent with the positions that the president took, and Hillary Clinton is that person, there s no question. They are in lockstep when it comes to gun safety issues. Sen. [Bernie] Sanders, quite frankly, is not. So to the extent that people are a bit of a nostalgic, wistful feeling, I think that ought to be converted into a concern for the future and for the preservation of all the great work that President Obama and his administration did. Here s the only clear record that Hillary has to show for her decades of public service : | 1real |
WWN Guide To Blowing Your Hand Off With A Firework | 0 Add Comment
SOME people fail to plan their purchase and use of fireworks to such an extent that they don’t have the most basic knowledge on how to blow their hand or the hand of a friend, family member or stranger off.
Luckily WWN has compiled a handy guide on the matter, leaving no one in doubt as to how to make counting to 10 on your hands that much harder.
Where to buy
If you want to guarantee your hand will be blown off, any lad selling fireworks out of the back of a van should do the trick. Not only are the prices low, but he will enforce a strict ‘if you lose a finger, I’ll be fucked if it’s my fault’ policy.
Name brands
Make sure to buy cheap name brands with the fake CE quality mark. The less it looks like the really trustworthy brand’s logo the better. And if your local firework merchant has the latest ‘massive yoke and that makes a huge bang and that’ from China, be sure to purchase 10 and strap them together.
Don’t go up the North
The drive up can be a hassle, there’s a lad we know, who knows the lad selling them out the back of his van, you’d be mad to buy them in an actual shop.
Cut the fuse shorter to add a bit of danger into your life
The fuses on fireworks and bangers are notoriously long, the wait for the bang and fizz can be agonising. Why not add the threat of a life changing injury into proceedings and reduce that fuse.
Still don’t feel the buzz of the danger?
You could always glue that firework to your hand before lighting it. | 1real |
Apple shares are one reason hedge funds lag mutual funds in 2016 | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds may have taken too big a bite of Apple Inc (AAPL.O). Shares of the iPhone maker are one of the biggest bets among hedge funds, with 47 of them listing Apple among their ten largest holdings as of the end of 2015, according to a report from Goldman Sachs on March 18. At the same time, mutual funds are going the opposite direction: Apple is their second-largest underweight holding, meaning the funds invest less of their portfolio in the company than its percentage weighting in the benchmark S&P 500 index. The difference of opinion on Apple, with shares flat year to date, is one reason hedge funds are again lagging. The average hedge fund was down 3.3 percent through February, while the average large-cap core mutual fund fell just 0.8 percent, according to data from fund tracker Morningstar. Mutual funds, meanwhile, have benefited from being overweight in Facebook Inc (FB.O), CVS Health Corp (CVS.N), and Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), according to Goldman. Mutual fund managers believe Apple no longer enjoys the outsized prospects it had in the past. “We’ve done very well with this company for a long time but it’s so large now that it’s becoming impossible for it to move the needle meaningfully” in terms of revenue growth or profits, said one fund manager from a well-known firm. The manager, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, sold all of his shares in the company. Shares of Apple fell 6.5 percent on Jan. 27, the day after the company reported its slowest-ever rise in iPhone shipments and forecast quarterly sales declining for the first time in 13 years. The stock dipped 0.7 percent to $105.32 on Thursday. With the higher concentration of hedge funds owning the stock, Apple should brace for more activist calls to raise its dividend, offer more share buybacks, or acquire more companies to increase short-term returns, said Todd Rosenbluth, director of mutual fund research at S&P Capital IQ. “Your typical mutual fund manager is going to have more patience than your typical hedge fund manager, who if they have a sizeable stake are going to push for structural or corporate changes to enhance shareholder value,” he said. Hedge fund Bridgewater Associates increased its stake in Apple by 19 percent during the fourth quarter of 2015, while Tiger Global Management initiated a position, buying 10.6 million shares in the same period, according to SEC filings. At the same time, well-known activists such as Carl Icahn and David Einhorn have trimmed their positions.. Hedge fund manager Morris Mark, whose firm Mark Asset Management oversees $500 million in assets, said he is maintaining a large position in Apple, even as the shares flat line. He sees the iPhone as the gateway into new home-based products. “They’re going to come out with more services layered on top of this incredible franchise, and you are going to see their entire ecosystem grow,” he said. | 0fake |
“This Is TOTALLY FAKE!” Tucker Loses His Temper on Russia Conspiracy Hack [Video] | Tucker Carlson debates the Russia conspiracy with Mustafa Tameez, former consultant for the Department of Homeland Security. Oh boy! It gets so heated but Tucker gets his point across to this political hack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4xzSKcArdcThe Democrats so desperately want to take down this president that it s getting out of control. Just listen to this former consultant and his spin on the firing of Sally Yates and the Russia investigation. The reason they fired her isn t really the reason they say they fired her? Huh? It s like they can t keep up with all of the made up conspiracy theories. Tameez claims Trump is intimidating the people investigating him Oy vey! Tucker goes off the rails after this political hack tries to pull the same Democrat talking points I m done! | 1real |
Watch Confused Trump Wander Aimlessly Away From Limo (VIDEO) | Amid news of the Russian scandal and Congress dystopian agenda, one fact keeps staring the American people right in the eye and Republicans are choosing to ignore it. Donald Trump is mentally unfit to be President. There s even a movement beginning in Congress that would invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to declare Trump mentally unfit and remove him from office. A video of Trump wandering off of Air Force One and away from his limo won t help his cause.In the video, Trump is seen exiting the airplane, and despite the fact that the limo is adorned with American flags, and despite the fact that it s parked right at the bottom of the steps he just descended, Trump wandered right by and his Secret Service agents had to wrangle the visibly confused 45 back.Here s the video:Twitter users are genuinely concerned that this man is in charge of the country:I swear to God Trump is sundowning. Here he is, confused, wandering away from his limo. He had to be redirected.#25thAmendmentNow pic.twitter.com/0ZZOMTMd1k Holly O Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) July 4, 2017Trump was furious when Twitter called him incompetent. UPDATE: He just got lost walking from his plane to his limo https://t.co/d7zlw0iwiJ The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 5, 2017It s comforting that Trump also sees a limo with the presidential seal and thinks, That can t possibly be for Donald Trump. https://t.co/fd5HIVwLQJ Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) July 4, 2017Trump s mental health is a serious question. Here he is, lost and confused, searching for his limo that was right in front of him. pic.twitter.com/u5JJ1qNBie Hosseh Enad (@ehosseh) July 4, 2017OMG. How could anyone miss a limo the size of a tank? That s incredible. Something has to be wrong with Trump. https://t.co/R0oxCeImiK John Oberlin (@OMGno2trump) July 5, 2017And then there was this:Remember when HRC stumbled into her limo and Trump claimed unfit to be pres? She had the flu. What s his excuse for this lack of awareness? https://t.co/rY6Keub5Ns Linda (@maaddmomm) July 4, 2017#Trump: Dude, where s my car?#Aide: Sir, it s that big black thing.#Trump: I only see Gold memo paint limo pic.twitter.com/mgKj3QVhij DaTruth (@DaWholeTwuth) July 5, 2017That Presidential moment as you stroll down the steps of Airforce1 to your Limo @CNN @cnnbrk @realDonaldTrump #Trump #USA pic.twitter.com/PNCPXZAdao chris24turner (@chris24turner) July 5, 2017On the bright side, if Trump can t find a limo that s right in front of him, he probably won t be able to find the nuclear codes.#FakePOTUS Captain Truth (@TruthTeamOne) July 5, 2017Some noted other times Trump seemed disoriented:Everybody calm down. Sure, Trump wandered away from his limo but it s not like he has a history of this kinda thing. pic.twitter.com/Mm7fXP1THL Dab Aggin (@DabAggin) July 4, 2017Aside from giving the 25th Amendment people a little more ammo out of this, it does open one other possibility. Trump is a man of great, sometimes debilitating and self-destructive pride, which is why he s so horrible at his current job. If videos like this keep surfacing, Trump may resign just to save himself the inevitable humiliation of mental deterioration. It s also important to note that Trump s father had Alzheimer s.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 1real |
EPIC: Obama RIPS Trump And The GOP To SHREDS In First Big Speech Of 2016 Election (VIDEO, TWEETS) | President Obama made what was billed as an economic speech in Elkhart, Indiana but in reality it was his first speech of the presidential campaign and was a preview of the sort of case he will make against Donald Trump this fall.Obama made it clear he was speaking about Trump, telling the crowd, If we fall for a bunch of okeydoke just because it sounds funny or the tweets are provocative then we re not going to build on the progress that we started. Echoing the speaking style that led him to back-to-back presidential victories, Obama picked apart, step by step, many of the Republican complaints about his administration.Obama told the crowd he would do some mythbusting, to loud applause. He pointed out that Donald Trump s claim that other countries are killing us on trade and that immigrants are taking American jobs are just completely myths. He also explained that he wanted to bust this myth of crazy liberal government spending hurting economic growth.He pointed out that in nearly every measure of the economy, compared to how it was before he came into office, things are much improved.The White House released a series of tweets and graphs pointing out over and over how his leadership has transformed the economy for the better: Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs." @POTUS in Elkhart pic.twitter.com/BYknKBnaa0 The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2016 For the first time ever, more than ninety percent of the country has health insurance. @POTUS on Elkhart pic.twitter.com/MsHaN1fnHh The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2016 Our deficits haven t grown these past seven and a half years; we ve cut them by almost 75%. @POTUS pic.twitter.com/k24EI0FGQ6 The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2016Obama also pointed out that Republicans have been wrapped up this cult of small government, when in reality the government has a role to play in helping to keep the economy going. The President pointed out as well that Trump s proposal to weaken regulations on Wall Street is crazy. Discussing economic inequality and worker s rights, Obama explained that these issues were better addressed when more families belonged to unions, and that the move from 1 in 4 families being in unions to now it being 1 in 10 has hurt wage growth. Obama noted, It s not a coincidence that as union membership shrank, inequality grew and wages stagnated . He added, America shouldn t be changing our laws to make it harder for workers to organize. Repeatedly during the speech, Obama encouraged journalists to fact check his claims, and told the audience if they doubted his statements they should look it up. The election has begun, and President Obama is on the trail. Watch out, Trump.Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
FLYNN: Critics Call Nuclear Scientist Miss USA ’Dumb’ After She Disses Feminism and Calls Health Care a ’Privilege’ - Breitbart | Kara McCullough made the Miss USA pageant great again — just not in the way the contest’s organizers intended. [Twenty months after Donald Trump sold the contest to the pageant made every effort to separate itself from its former owner — a move not lost on the media covering the event. The Associated Press, for instance, reported: “The pageant included a field of five new immigrants who spoke on air about the importance of diversity — as if to refute US President Donald Trump’s less than welcoming stand toward some immigrants and refugees. ” McCullough, an born in Italy, looked the part but refused to play it this weekend. Miss D. C. rejected feminism for equality. “So as a woman scientist in the government, I’d like to lately transpose the word ‘feminism’ to ‘equalism,’” she explained. “I don’t really want to consider myself — try not to consider myself like this you know, like, ‘Oh, I don’t really care about men.’ But one thing I’m going to say, though, is women, we are just as equal as men when it comes to opportunity in the workplace. ” She further ran afoul of the politically correct when she described health care as an earned “privilege” rather than an awarded “right. ” She told her questioners, “I’m definitely going to say it’s a privilege. As a government employee, I am granted health care. And I see firsthand that for one to have health care, you need to have jobs. ” She won the judges but lost the judgmental. Calling the Miss USA’s answers “dumb” and “ill informed,” the appropriately named Linda Stasi of the New York Daily News charged that “McCullough did all women a disservice with her remarks on healthcare, but she did more damage with her dismissal of feminism. ” Other cultural commissars carped. It’s incredibly sad that in 2017, a woman is striving to occupy a position of influence no understanding of what feminism is. #MissUSA, — courtney (@seecourttweet) May 15, 2017, Dear #kara mccullough You are sadly mistaken. Everyone has a right to healthcare. Maybe you should be stripped of yours. The ACA helps many! — Kizzy (@TrulyKizzo) May 15, 2017, Happy to see a woman of color crowned Miss USA two years in a row, but Kara McCullough has some problematic views on healthcare and feminism, — mama cass (@_femalien) May 15, 2017, It’s a beauty pageant. The job requirements don’t call for a nuclear scientist. But it helps that Miss USA works a nuclear scientist. | 0fake |
Being an Indian Patriot means Defending India’s Economy | Katehon think tank. Geopolitics & Tradition | Home » Being an Indian Patriot means Defending India’s Economy Being an Indian Patriot means Defending India’s Economy Adnan Aboobacker
The demonetization of the currency notes of five hundred and a thousand rupees could control wide-scale corruption, counterfeit money, illegal tax collectors in insurgent provinces, anti-national money systems, and black money utilized by criminal networks. Government income increases through tax collection. But we also need diverse programs to observe and monitor the black money deposits of big fish in foreign banks and control criminal networks sponsored by alternative money exchanges and banking methods in foreign countries. In addition, there should be strict observation and monitoring of multilevel chain network marketing companies under the corporate umbrella.
Enemy countries are utilizing international criminal networks to destabilize the Indian economy through printing and circulating large amounts of counterfeits across borders and transporting counterfeits by air and sea through improper channels and criminal organizations. But they are using religions like Islam and Islamic symbols for their tasks. Real Muslims don’t help the criminal networks to propagate terrorism in india.
Controlling the criminal networks throughout India by specially trained forces is the best option for strengthening the Indian economy. The digitalization of data and wealth under the American imperialists and the trade and investment bonds connected to foreign share markets can badly affect the Indian economy when a sudden crisis occurs. India should change its economic policy from a liberal and globalist point of view and seek another alternative, an independent Indian economic policy which can help India develop and become a superpower with a sustainable economy.
Traditional forms of transactions made in certain sections of Indian ethical society should be protected through strict monitoring. Opportunities should be opened for Muslim communities to operate with real Islamic banking under government control which can invite large amounts of investments from Muslims who fear mortgage-based banking programs that are not suitable for them. This fear factor is utilized by criminal networks, black marketers, anti-nationals, and other enemies who wish to destroy the Indian economy. The economic ideology of different political parties in India is different, so the liberal, globalist, digital economic code may not be received by all communities in India.
Digital banking robbery conducted by international criminals world wide poses a real threat. Strict monitoring by the government and new alternatives are very urgent in this moment. The weakness of the Indian opposition is celebrated by the Indian right wing and invites Indians to embrace patriotism. Indians wish to become independent from foreign economic interventions. Economic emergencies are also a test for Indian citizens on the right. Related links | 1real |
Australia Plans to Revoke Passports of Child Sex Offenders - Breitbart | The Australian government is planning to revoke the passports of child sex offenders as part of a new law aimed at cracking down on pedophiles who engage in child sex tourism. [The proposed law, which was unveiled by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop Tuesday, would affect approximately 20, 000 registered sex offenders who already served their sentences but must periodically report to authorities if they are still under supervision, NPR reported. The Associated Press reports 2, 500 newly convicted pedophiles are estimated to be added to the sex offender registry every year and would be required to forfeit their passports. Approximately 3, 200 serious offenders would be banned from travel outside the country for life, but less serious offenders would be able to get themselves off the registry if they report to the authorities regularly and comply with the law for several years and renew their passports. “This new legislation represents the toughest crackdown on child sex tourism by any government, anywhere,” Bishop said. Bishop added that the nation is “determined to prevent the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young children overseas. ” The law prohibits child sex offenders from traveling to what Bishop says are “vulnerable countries” where children susceptible to being harmed are not under the jurisdiction of Australian law enforcement. Child sex tourism can be defined as “the exchange of cash, clothes, food or some other form of consideration to a child or to a third party for sexual contact,” according to ECPAT International, a that aims to combat sexual exploitation of children. NPR reports that in 2016 alone, 800 child sex offenders traveled abroad, and half of them traveled to southeast Asia, where these types of crimes are rampant. Lawmakers in the group of countries called on Australia to do something about the issue. Australia’s ABC reports that sex offenders are required under the current law to tell authorities about any overseas travel, but many do not report their travel to authorities. The law will be introduced in Parliament this week. | 0fake |
Iran Said to Have Deal With Boeing to Buy Passenger Planes - The New York Times | Iran has reached an agreement with the Boeing Company for the acquisition of new passenger planes to help modernize its outdated fleet, Iranian news media reported on Tuesday. Such an agreement, if completed, would potentially be worth many billions of dollars to Boeing and amount to the most prominent commercial transaction between an American company and Iran since sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear program were lifted six months ago. It also would send a strong signal that Iran and the United States, despite decades of antipathy, might be moving toward normalized ties. Numerous obstacles remain to such an agreement, most notably other American sanctions on Iran that are not related to the Tehran’s nuclear program, including a ban on using dollars in trade with the country. The restraints have dissuaded many international banks and financial companies, fearful of running afoul of American laws, from venturing into the Iranian market. Many Republican lawmakers and others who opposed the nuclear agreement, and who have long warned of any reconciliation with Iran, could object to a Boeing deal. Also unclear is whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who often describes the United States as his country’s most dangerous threat, would countenance such an agreement. Nonetheless, Boeing, with the United States government’s permission, has been in discussions for months with Iranian aviation officials about their dire needs for new airplanes. Iranian officials have said they will need to acquire at least 400 planes in coming years to replace their commercial fleet, one of the world’s oldest. It includes some Boeing models that predate the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah. Iran’s minister of roads and urban development, Abbas Akhoundi, was quoted by Iranian news agencies on Tuesday as saying that a deal with Boeing had been completed and that details would be “announced within the next few days. ” Asked about Mr. Akhoundi’s assertion, a spokesman for Boeing at the company’s Chicago headquarters, John Dern, did not deny it. In an emailed response, Mr. Dern said, “We do not discuss details of ongoing conversations we are having with customers, and our standard practice is to let customers announce any agreements that are reached. ” Mr. Dern’s statement also cautioned: “Any agreements reached will be contingent on U. S. government approval. ” Boeing’s most important foreign competitor, Airbus, announced a deal worth roughly $27 billion in January to sell Iran 118 aircraft. There has been speculation that Boeing has been negotiating a similar transaction involving roughly 100 planes. But the Airbus agreement has not been completed, partly because it also requires United States regulatory approval since a significant portion of Airbus plane components are American. Asked about the status of the Airbus deal, a spokesman, Justin Dubon, said in an emailed response, “As with any agreement, it takes some time to finalize. ” Some American critics of Iran expressed skepticism about the Iranian reports of a Boeing deal, describing them as an exaggeration and part of what they called Iran’s attempts to portray itself as a legitimate economic partner. “These deals are more aspirational than a reality,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group that is highly critical of Iran. Mr. Dubowitz said aircraft deals with Iran were tricky in part because some areas of the country’s civilian aviation industry were controlled by Iranian businesses linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which remain subject to American sanctions. “It’s a nightmare,” he said, “not just for the companies but for the banks that finance the deals. ” At the same time, Mr. Dubowitz and others also noted that President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, an architect of the nuclear agreement, will be up for next year and needs to show that the agreement has been economically beneficial. Under that agreement, completed in January with the United States and other world powers, many economic restraints on Iran were rescinded or relaxed in exchange for verifiable guarantees by Iran that it is engaged in only peaceful atomic work. Mr. Rouhani’s promised benefits, however, have been slow in coming. Iranian officials have complained that nonnuclear American sanctions remain a major impediment, dissuading many foreign companies from investing in and trading with Iran. “The Boeing deal would be really important,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting company. Proponents of the nuclear deal, Mr. Kupchan said, have been wagering that it will help Iran evolve in a direction less hostile to the United States and other Western powers. “For that, Iranian elites have to know that the U. S. wants constructive interaction,” he said. “If Boeing sells 100 planes to Iran, it would send exactly the right vibe. ” United Against Nuclear Iran, a based advocacy organization, has claimed some responsibility for Iran’s frustration, through a campaign that warns companies that they could risk incurring American legal problems by engaging in business with Iranian entities. The organization claimed responsibility for the cancellation of an international forum on opportunities in Iran’s natural gas industry that had been scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Barcelona, Spain. Anthony Bright, operations manager for INconnect, a Czech company that had organized the forum, said in an emailed statement that it had been postponed until December. Mr. Bright did not provide a reason. | 0fake |
'Safer than London!' North Korea opens door to Russian tourists | MOSCOW (Reuters) - North Korea has opened its doors to Russian tourists, issuing a license for the first travel agency in Moscow to promise clients full immersion in the nation s culture and enjoyment safer than an evening walk in London . NKOREAN.RU, a Russian company licensed by North Korea s government, offers organized tours for groups of up to 10 people or individuals to show the travelers the multi-faceted life of this most closed of countries . Guests to North Korea must necessarily be checked before their trip and will always be accompanied by a guide who will monitor the adequate behavior of the tourist and guarantee his safety. Pictures of strategic and military facilities are banned and long talks with locals are not recommended . North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and dozens of missile tests since the beginning of last year, significantly raising tension on the heavily militarized Korean peninsula and in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Two tests of inter-continental ballistic missiles in July triggered a new round of tougher global sanctions. Faced with economic problems made harder by multiple sanctions, the Pyongyang government is keen to develop tourism to earn cash. The most pricey tour, 15 days full immersion in the culture of North Korea costing 118,090 rubles ($1,997), includes visits to a farm, a mineral water factory, a Buddhist temple, walks in the mountains and an introduction to national cuisine. Visits to numerous museums to founding leader Kim Il-Sung are also on offer. Other less demanding tours include relaxation on a beach, an aviation show and even a beer festival. It is unclear how popular these trips will be among Russians who have already developed a fondness for visiting Europe and the affordable resorts of Turkey and Thailand. | 0fake |
Apple Offers Free App to Teach Children Coding (iPads Sold Separately) - The New York Times | Apple plans to release a free coding education app on Tuesday that it developed with students in mind, in the latest salvo among technology companies to gain share in the education market and to nurture early product loyalty among children. Apple’s app, called Swift Playgrounds, introduces basic computer programming concepts, like sequencing logic, by asking students to use word commands to move cartoon avatars through a fanciful, animated world. Unlike some children’s apps, which employ blocks to teach coding, the Apple program uses Swift, a professional programming language that the company introduced in 2014. “When you learn to code with Swift Playgrounds, you are learning the same language used by professional developers,” Brian Croll, Apple’s vice president of product marketing, said in a telephone interview. “It’s easy to take the next step and learn to write a real app. ” The introduction of Apple’s app coincides with a larger Silicon Valley campaign to press public schools to teach coding. Tech executives have argued that such training could help address differences among students, by providing them with marketable job skills. In January, President Obama said he was asking Congress to provide $4 billion in the budget for a computer science initiative in public schools. (Congress has not yet passed a budget.) “We believe every student should have the opportunity to code,” Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, said during a company event last week to introduce the iPhone 7. Tech companies are in heated competition for the education market. Apple devices and ones based on the Microsoft Windows software have recently lost market share at United States public schools to Chromebooks, inexpensive laptops that run on the Google Chrome operating system. The Apple coding app is free, but it requires an iPad, the company’s tablet computer, which has declining sales and which many schools and families may not be able to afford. “How much of the motivation is for selling of product, and what does that do for schools that cannot afford this technology?” asked Jane Margolis, a senior researcher at the Graduate School of Education Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied disparities in computer science education for more than two decades. “The threat is that it is going to replicate current inequities. ” Mr. Croll of Apple said the company was making the app free so that the coding lessons are accessible. While it is available for use in schools, individual students, parents and consumers could also use the app to teach themselves to code at home, he said. He added that Apple had created the app for the iPad to ensure a user experience. Apple said that more than 100 schools and districts worldwide had agreed to try the coding app with their students. “We are hoping it will be a good transition between and ” said Trang Lai, the director of educational services at the Fullerton School District, a public school system in Fullerton, Calif. Her district provides an iPad for every student in grades five through eight. Ms. Lai said the district had previously bought coding apps that did not work well on iPads, and that it was now eager to try Swift Playgrounds. “Right now, that is what is current,” she said. “That is what is available, and that is what is free. ” | 0fake |
How Ryan decided to ditch Trump | "One should not insist on nailing [Trump] into positions that he had taken in the campaign," he said. | 0fake |
Pokemon GO Revelations/ Open Lines | Pokemon GO Revelations/ Open Lines Pokemon GO Revelations/ Open Lines Date Friday - November 18, 2016 Host Jimmy Church
Filling in for George, Jimmy Church ( ) will be joined by Bryan Lunduke , a technology journalist for Network World, an author of nerdy books, podcaster, and creator of absurd videos. He'll discuss how the Pokemon GO app was developed by In-Q-Tel corporation which is the venture capital firm of the CIA, and how downloading the app, opens phones and provides the CIA access to all the personal data they contain. Followed by Open Lines in the latter half. Website(s): | 1real |
Mexico finance minister to resign as presidency race looms: sources | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican finance minister Jose Antonio Meade will step down on Monday, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday, as the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) gears up to pick its candidate for the 2018 presidential election. One of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Meade would announce his intention to seek the presidency for the PRI when resigning. The office of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto late on Sunday said it would hold an event at 10.00 a.m. local time on Monday, without specifying what it entailed. Several Mexican media said Meade would announce his resignation at 10.00 a.m. A spokesman for Meade s office said he was unaware of any plans for the minister to resign on Monday. Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking a second term, and his party faces a major challenge from twice presidential runner-up former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has led early polls for the July 2018 election. Meade would be replaced as finance minister by Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya, currently head of state oil firm Pemex, one of the two people familiar with the situation said. Meade has for months been one of the favorites to be the PRI candidate, both due to his reputation for competence as a minister across two rival administrations, and because he has avoided the taint of corruption that has battered the party. The 48-year-old has also been a top pick to succeed the departing Agustin Carstens at the helm of the Mexican central bank. The second person said if Meade was not stepping down to run for the PRI, he would be going into that job. Meade is not a member of the centrist PRI, which changed its statutes in August to make it easier for outsiders to run for the presidency. Officials say his reputation for honesty and cross-party appeal will be vital if he hopes to defeat Lopez Obrador. On Thursday, the PRI announced it would begin registering presidential hopefuls on Dec. 3, and that a national convention would formally elect the candidate on Feb. 18. Education Minister Aurelio Nuno, 39, Pena Nieto s former chief of staff and one of his closest allies, as well as health minister Jose Narro, are the most likely alternatives to Meade if he does not seek the candidacy, senior officials say. | 0fake |
Tens of thousands march for abortion rights in Ireland | DUBLIN (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people marched in Dublin on Saturday to demand the loosening of some of the strictest abortion laws in the world ahead of a 2018 referendum on the issue. Abortion remains a divisive issue in once stridently Catholic Ireland, where a complete ban on the procedure was only lifted in 2013 to allow terminations in cases where the mother s life was in danger. In 2016 over 3,000 Irish women traveled to England for abortions, according to the British Department of Health, but activists say the real number is far higher. The government has promised to hold a referendum next May or June, but it has yet to decide exactly what question to put to the Irish people. The human rights arms of the United Nations and Council of Europe have pressed the government to decriminalize abortion and widen the law to allow for the procedure in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape or incest. But pro-choice activists want a more liberal regime, closer to that of England, which allows terminations to be carried out up to 24 weeks after conception. Opinion polls show a large majority of voters want some change. Government ministers have suggested only the most restrictive terms will pass, but I think the people want more than that, said Sarah Murphy, a 26-year-old recruitment professional. Ireland is changing. I don t think you would have seen a march like this a few years ago, she said. Like many at the march she was wearing a black jumper with the word Repeal in white, a reference to a campaign to repeal the eighth amendment of the Irish constitution, which gives the unborn child equal rights to those of the mother. A panel of citizens called together to advise government on the issue voted overwhelmingly that the eighth amendment should be changed. An all-party committee in parliament is now considering those recommendations and is due to report to parliament by the end of the year. Some of the crowd, which marched across the city before assembling outside the office of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, chanted Get your rosaries off our ovaries in reference to the influence the Catholic Church has long had on social policy in Ireland, while others held posters demanding Repeal now. The growing pro-choice movement is seen as a sign that the Catholic church, which has dominated Irish life for centuries, is continuing to lose influence. Ireland was the first country to adopt gay marriage by popular vote in 2015, approving it by 62 percent to 38 percent despite the opposition of the church. | 0fake |
MAN BRUTALLY ASSAULTED At CA Trump Rally Tells Horrific Story Of Attack By Domestic Terrorists [VIDEO] | This video would be on a 24/7 mainstream media loop if the man who was brutally attacked by an angry mob was a Bernie Sanders or Hillary supporter. Will we ever see the faces or know the names of the 17 people arrested at this violent anti-Trump riot? When will these people be treated like the domestic terrorists they are? Injured Trump Supporter Cole Bartiromo Tells How He Was Brutally Assaulted by a group of 20-30 Anti-Trump Protestershttps://t.co/8daEcRGW9s Trump's Got My Vote (@veganvecoh) May 1, 2016 | 1real |
U.S.-backed Syrian forces, Iraqi army coordinate at border: SDF | BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S.-backed militias in Syria said they have formed a joint military center with the Iraqi army to protect their common border region after ousting Islamic State militants. Commanders of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, met with Iraqi military leaders on Sunday. They discussed protecting the Syrian-Iraqi border in the region adjacent to Deir al-Zor province, and how to finally eradicate Daesh mercenaries there, the SDF said in a statement. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. The two sides decided to form a joint coordination center to guarantee the security of the border, it said. Last week, the SDF declared victory in its assault in Syria s Deir al-Zor, which borders Iraq. The offensive focused on seizing territory east of the Euphrates river that bisects the oil-rich province. The Kurdish-led SDF has been battling for months with the help of jets and special forces from the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State (IS). On the other side, Iraqi forces recaptured the last swathes of territory still under Islamic State control along the frontier with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert. It marked the end of the war against IS, three years after they overran about a third of Iraq s territory. Iraqi forces who fought IS came from the army, air force, police, elite counter-terrorism forces as well as Shi ite and Sunni paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. They received key air support from the U.S.-led global coalition. Syrian government forces and their allies, backed by Russian air power, have taken most of the remaining areas of Deir al-Zor province. They are mostly on the western side of the Euphrates, while the SDF is on the eastern bank. Russia and the United States set up a communications channel to reduce the chance of fighting between the two rival campaigns against Islamic State. Forces arrayed against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now anticipate a new phase of guerrilla warfare. Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the coalition, said Iraqi security forces and the SDF had linked up at their shared stretch of the frontier on Sunday. Secure international border protects Iraqis (and) Syrians from remnant Daesh movement into (and) across the region as terrorist fighters/leaders attempt to flee the battlefield, he wrote on Twitter. | 0fake |
Kenyan police fire tear gas at opposition leader's car: Reuters witness | NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan police fired tear gas at opposition leader Raila Odinga s car, a Reuters witness said. Earlier, police and supporters of Odinga had fought running battles on Friday along the main road to Nairobi s international airport before Odinga landed from an overseas trip. | 0fake |
Using Special Forces Against Terrorism, Trump Seeks to Avoid Big Ground Wars - The New York Times | MARA, Chad — From Yemen to Syria to here in Central Africa, the Trump administration is relying on Special Operations forces to intensify its promised fight against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups as senior officials embrace an strategy to minimize the American military’s footprint overseas. In Africa, President Trump is expected to soon approve a Pentagon proposal to remove constraints on Special Operations airstrikes and raids in parts of Somalia to target suspected militants with the Shabab, an extremist group linked to Al Qaeda. Critics say that the change — in one of the few rejections of President Barack Obama’s guidelines for the elite forces — would bypass rules that seek to prevent civilian deaths from drone attacks and commando operations. But in their two months in office, Trump officials have shown few other signs that they want to back away from Mr. Obama’s strategy to train, equip and otherwise support indigenous armies and security forces to fight their own wars instead of having to deploy large American forces to hot spots. “Africans are at war we’re not,” said Col. Kelly Smith, 47, a Green Beret commander who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a director of a counterterrorism exercise in Chad this month involving about 2, 000 African and Western troops and trainers. “But we have a strategic interest in the success of partners. ” Mr. Trump came to office without a clearly articulated philosophy for using the military to fight terrorist groups. He had promised to be more aggressive in taking on the Islamic State — even suggesting during the presidential campaign that he had a secret plan — but had also signaled a desire to rein in the notion of the United States as the world’s peacekeeper and claimed at various points to have opposed the ground invasion of Iraq. Now, surrounded by generals who have been at the center of a shift to rely on Special Operations forces to project power without the risks and costs of large ground wars, he is choosing to maintain the same approach but giving the Pentagon more latitude. That leeway carries its own perils. Last week, the Pentagon went to unusual lengths to defend an airstrike in Syria that United States officials said killed dozens of Qaeda operatives at a meeting place — and not civilians at a mosque, as activists and local residents maintain. It was yet another example of the mixed success Mr. Trump’s forays with special operators have had so far. An raid in January by the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 against Qaeda fighters in Yemen marred the president’s first counterterrorism mission, five days after he became commander in chief. In Mosul, however, Special Operations advisers are the American troops closest to the fight in Iraq to oust the Islamic State from its stronghold there. That is also likely to be the case in the impending battle to reclaim Raqqa in eastern Syria. Mr. Trump is largely relying on the policies of his two immediate predecessors, Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush, who were also great advocates of Special Operations forces. On Mr. Obama’s orders, SEAL Team 6 commandos killed Osama bin Laden in his in Pakistan in 2011. But Mr. Trump seems to have taken that appreciation and reliance to another level. He appointed a retired Marine Corps general, Jim Mattis, as defense secretary, and a Army officer, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, as his national security adviser. Both men have extensive experience with Special Operations forces. And the National Security Council’s new senior director for counterterrorism, Christopher P. Costa, is a retired Special Forces intelligence officer. Sharing an unusual window into the private conversations between Mr. Trump and his senior commanders, Army Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of the military’s Special Operations Command, said the president had made clear his urgent priority for counterterrorism missions conducted by the military’s elite forces during a visit to military headquarters in Tampa, Fla. last month. “There were some pretty pointed questions about what winning looks like, and how are you going to get there,” General Thomas told a Special Operations conference outside Washington after the presidential visit. And while the Pentagon could eventually send a few thousand more conventional troops to the fights in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, General Thomas warned that senior commanders feared that “more troops on the ground may mean you own the problem when you’re done with it. ” That concern gives weight to arguments for greater reliance on special operators as the Trump administration for now eschews larger deployments of conventional troops and proposes deep cuts in foreign aid and State Department budgets. The global reach of special operators is widening. During the peak of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly 13, 000 Special Operations forces were deployed on missions across the globe, but a large majority were assigned to those two countries. Now, more than half of the 8, 600 elite troops overseas are posted outside the Middle East or South Asia, operating in 97 countries, according to the Special Operations Command. Still, about of the 6, 000 American troops currently in Iraq and Syria are special operators, many of whom are advising local troops and militias on the front lines. About a quarter of the 8, 400 American troops in Afghanistan are special operators. In Africa, about of the nearly 6, 000 overall troops are Special Operations forces. The only permanent American installation on the continent is Camp Lemonnier, a sprawling base of 4, 000 United States service members and civilians in Djibouti that serves as a hub for counterterrorism operations and training. The United States Air Force flies surveillance drones from small bases in Niger and Cameroon. Elsewhere in Africa, the roles of special operators are varied, and their ranks are small, typically measured in the low dozens for specific missions. Between 200 and 300 Navy SEALs and other special operators work with African allies to hunt shadowy Shabab terrorists in Somalia. As many as 100 Special Forces soldiers help African troops pursue the notorious leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. And Navy SEALs are training Nigerian commandos for action in the delta. The United States is building a $50 million drone base in Agadez, Niger, that is likely to open sometime next year to monitor Islamic State insurgents in a vast area on the southern flank of the Sahara that stretches from Senegal to Chad. Mr. Trump’s tough talk on terrorism has been well received here in Chad, where American Special Operations and military instructors from several Western nations finished an annual counterterrorism training exercise last week. Many African soldiers and security forces said they would welcome an even larger United States military presence to help combat myriad extremist threats. “Of course we’d like more,” said Hassan Zakari Mahamadou, a police commissioner from Niger. “U. S. forces enhance us. ” The Pentagon has allocated about $250 million over two years to help train the armies and security forces of North, Central and West African countries. But American aid and training alone — along with occasional secret unilateral strikes — will not be enough to defeat groups like Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Islamic State, officials say. “We could knock off all the ISIL and Boko Haram this afternoon,” Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the leader of the military’s Africa Command, told the Senate this month, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “But by the end week, so to speak, those ranks would be filled. ” Here on the outskirts of the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, last week, four boats with mounted machine guns roared down the Chari River. The boats pulled up along the riverbank, just opposite neighboring Cameroon, and disgorged Chadian Special Antiterrorism Group forces and their American trainers. In a hail of gunfire, shooting blanks, they stormed the thatched huts of a suspected Boko Haram bomb maker seized laptops, cellphones and other material inside for clues on terrorist operations and dashed back to the river, fending off a mock ambush on the way. Piling back into their boats under covering fire, the Chadian commandos sped off in a drill that American and Chadian officers often play out for real in the nearby Lake Chad Basin area. “Extremism is like a cancer,” said Brig. Gen. Zakaria Ngobongue, a senior Chadian officer who has trained in France and at Hurlburt Field, Fla. and was helping oversee the exercise. “We need to continue to fight it. ” | 0fake |
Liberal groups urge non-violent movement to stop Trump | NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. liberal groups, divided in their support of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have urged a united, active opposition to Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner. In an open letter released on Tuesday, a group of liberal organizations called for a “non-violent movement” to thwart Trump’s candidacy for November’s general election, calling the New York billionaire a “hate-peddling bigot who openly incites violence.” “This is a five-alarm fire for our democracy,” said the letter, which was signed by the leaders of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, a supporter of Sanders, and the Service Employees International Union, a major labor union that is backing Clinton. Representatives of 20 other groups signed the letter, which was published online as Americans in five states voted in the latest round of primary contests to pick party nominees for the Nov. 8 election. Trump has alarmed many in America, not just liberals, with his campaign rhetoric, from calling Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers to his proposal to ban Muslims temporarily from entering the United States. Protests have become a recurring, noisy feature at Trump’s rallies and in recent days, tensions have risen sharply as a few of Trump’s mostly white supporters have punched or bloodied protesters, many of whom are black or Latino, in scuffles in or outside campaign venues. The open letter urged Americans to use tactics familiar from the civil-rights movement to oppose Trump, including large public marches and prayer vigils. It told Americans to ask “every media outlet, corporation, and office-holder” whether they will condemn what the letter described as Trump’s “racism, misogyny and xenophobia.” The letter also called for efforts to increase voter turn-out in November, hoping to beat Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee. Some Republican politicians, including the party’s presidential nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney, have also called for efforts to prevent Trump winning the party’s nomination in July, including tactical voting. A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Trump has said in media interviews he does not condone violence, but at rallies he has sometimes encouraged people to use force on protesters, drawing condemnation from both Democratic and Republican politicians. Many protesters have told journalists they are supporters of Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, and Clinton, a former secretary of state. Trump, who canceled a rally in Chicago last week after hundreds of protesters got inside the venue, has said it is unfair that his events are disrupted more than those of any other candidate. | 0fake |
Boiler Room EP #121 – Google vs The Red Pill & The Great Witch Hunt | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and (Virtual) Spore along side Daniel Spaulding from Soul of the East, Andy Nowicki (the Alt Right Novelist) and FunkSoul & Randy J (21WIRE & ACR contributors), for the hundred and twenty first episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on the show the ACR Brain-Trust is back with another meeting of the Social Reject Club in the No Friends Left Zone and the gang is discussing a future dystopia full of sex robots that come complete with shy mode artificial intelligence aspects, Daniel Spaulding joins for an update on American swamp politics and to scoff away the North Korea is a nuclear threat propaganda. FunkSoul and Andy Nowicki bring their brands of analysis to the James Damore story and more.Direct Download Episode #121Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 1real |
Congress faces tricky path to avoid government shutdown | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is struggling through another contentious week as infighting over defense spending, healthcare and other matters complicates the drive to pass a temporary spending bill by midnight on Friday to avert a partial government shutdown. In a week when President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress are hoping to celebrate the passage of tax overhaul legislation, many in the party showed little appetite for a government shutdown at week’s end. But they sounded resigned to having to navigate through some drama over a package that includes so many disparate components, which could make for a messy process. “I’m going to vote for whatever I need to, to keep the government open,” Republican Representative Chris Collins told reporters. The last time government agencies had to shut down because Washington could not pay its bills was in October 2013. Leading Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives expressed optimism that a funding bill, coupled with a large new disaster aid package, would pass by Friday’s deadline. But some were predicting that lawmakers would bump right up against the cutoff. The House could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation that extends most funding for domestic programs through Jan. 19. Democrats are likely to mainly oppose the bill, arguing that their priorities are being ignored. Conservative Republicans are insisting on higher military funding through the rest of the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30 as part of the House bill. Democrats in the Senate are expected to block that formula if, as expected, it does not also have more money for non-defense programs. The House measure would also include $81 billion in disaster funding to help Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and several U.S. states recover from hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. That price tag has made some Republicans uneasy. Some Republicans are also worried about a Senate strategy to add a bipartisan healthcare proposal to the government funding bill, in keeping with a promise Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made in order to coax Republican Senator Susan Collins to vote for the tax legislation. Conservative House Republicans do not like the bipartisan healthcare proposal because it would fund subsidies for low-income participants in the Obamacare health insurance program, and does not include language that restricts federal funds for abortion. McConnell’s promise to Collins “means squat over here,” said Representative Mark Walker, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest group of conservatives in the House. Some conservatives may vote against the funding bill in protest, he told reporters outside the House. The House bill also would extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program for five years. If Democrats continue to withhold their support for the stopgap spending bill and some Republicans peel off, Congress could find itself struggling to pass a bill as the clock ticks toward midnight on Friday. | 0fake |
An ANGRY Morning Joe SKEWERS Trump Minion General Michael Flynn For Sharing Fake News | In the wake of a gunman terrorizing a pizza place in response to a fake story about Hillary Clinton, Joe Scarborough strongly condemned General Michael Flynn for helping these conspiracies grow.Right-wing conspiracy nut Alex Jones first pushed the claim that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of the Comet pizza place in Washington DC. It s a totally false story with zero evidence to support it. But conservatives spread it anyway.And Michael Flynn, who is about to become Donald Trump s national security adviser spread the false story.U decide NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc MUST READ! https://t.co/O0bVJT3QDr General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 3, 2016Flynn s own son also pushed the lie and still refuses to admit that the story is false.Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it ll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many coincidences tied to it. https://t.co/8HA9y30Yfp Michael G Flynn?? (@mflynnJR) December 5, 2016On Monday, a visibly angry Joe Scarborough demanded that Flynn apologize for all the harmful fake news and tweets he has shared or posted to attack Muslims, Jews, Hispanics and Trump s political opponents. He has left a trail of crap behind him with retweets, retweeting something about Jews, retweeting something about Muslims, retweeting fake news. He needs to clean this up. He needs to step up and clean this up. He needs to apologize to Americans. He is in one of the most important positions in the White House. On Jan. 20, he needs to apologize for what he has done, unrelated to this fake news story but with the other fake news stories, the retweets about Jews, the retweets about Muslims. Mark Halperin agreed with Scarborough and said Flynn needs to explain all of this in a way that s detailed, because again, he s not subject to Senate confirmation. Here s the video via Twitter..@JoeNBC on Gen. Flynn s controversial tweets: He needs to clean this up He needs to apologize to Americans https://t.co/bkNY13ocnx Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 5, 2016Once again, false stories pushed by conservatives drove a right-winger to grab his gun and start shooting up a place. This is the danger Trump and right-wing media pose to this country. They will make up any lie to attack political opponents and then push followers who are already on the edge to commit acts of violence. This is right-wing terrorism and it s going to happen more over the next four years.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
They Want Trump to Make the G.O.P. a Workers’ Party - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — By riding his appeal among whites to the top of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump has emboldened conservative thinkers to press their party of business and the privileged to reshape its economic canon to more directly benefit poorer workers it has often taken for granted. The policy prescriptions of these reform conservatives, or “reformocons,” would not only break with some longtime Republican orthodoxy — disavowing tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, for example — they would also counter more recent stances by Mr. Trump on trade and immigration. And because of a lack of policy specifics in Mr. Trump’s campaign, reform conservatives see an opening through which to push their prescriptions. “What it means to be a conservative is up for grabs,” said Reihan Salam, the executive editor of the conservative National Review. Whether Mr. Trump prevails or the party is left to rebuild from defeat, these conservatives in think tanks, advocacy groups and the news media — and a few in political office — will be pressing for a new agenda: to update the playbook with an eye to voters without a college education who form the Republican base. Ronald Reagan’s notions that policies that benefit the rich and big business lift all incomes now appear outmoded in an era of rising wealth inequality and stagnant wages. The challenge to the party could be every bit as contentious as Mr. Trump’s ascent has been. Beyond conservative think tanks and activist circles, the new breed of conservatives has not made significant inroads among House Republicans, for instance. And even these Republicans do not agree on everything. But some common ideas suggest their proposed road map for the party: • Reject additional tax cuts for those making more than $250, 000 a year, but expand breaks for and workers through tax credits for children, the tax credit or a new wage subsidy using tax dollars to bring low wages toward the local median level. • Promote the benefits of global trade agreements, but help displaced workers. • Rule out fully privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and reassure workers they will be exempt from . • Acknowledge that universal health care is here to stay, but push for changes. • Disavow mass deportations and promote the economic benefits of legalizing longtime workers who are in the country illegally, but reduce the legal entry of immigrants. “What we have going on right now, and Trump’s position in the Republican Party, makes this recalibration that much more important, that much more urgent,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. “Some within the party,” he added, “have been all too willing to wear the label of the Republican Party as being the party of Wall Street, or the party of the top 1 percent. ” Although most of them oppose Mr. Trump’s candidacy — Mr. Salam called him “an overwhelmingly noxious and negative force” — these conservatives do credit him with engaging voters and dealing them into the economic conversation. “The biggest thing that Trump offers these voters is finally somebody paying attention,” said Henry Olsen, a scholar at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Imagine that they’re the wallflowers at the high school dance and they’re sitting off, ignored by everybody. Suddenly, the football hero comes up and says, ‘Come dance with me.’ That’s intoxicating. ” Led by younger conservatives, the push for new approaches began in the past decade, as big spending and military interventions by the Bush administration and a Congress vexed many in the party. Capturing the ferment was a 2008 book, “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream,” by Mr. Salam and Ross Douthat, who is now a columnist for The New York Times. “The Trump phenomenon has really opened things up — people are more inclined to listen, elites within the party are more inclined to listen,” said Mr. Salam, who, with Mr. Douthat, recently updated their book’s theme in an opinion article in The Times. The authors wrote in their that Mr. Trump’s white supporters were “clearly voting against a party leadership that pays them lip service while ignoring their concerns” — a revulsion that will not disappear even if Mr. Trump does. Proponents of a new conservative agenda have critics in both parties. Democrats dismiss their ideas as repackaging a familiar agenda. Some Republicans and conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh condemn their cause as a return of moderate Republicanism or a capitulation to liberalism. Michael A. Needham, the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, said reform conservatives and Tea organizations like his are allies in their desire to rewrite a “stale” economic agenda tilted to Republican donors. But he acknowledged differences in tactics and substance. His group and its allies favor conflict, like government shutdowns, for instance. And they still want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut taxes for everyone. Yet conservative agitators were mostly talking among themselves until Mr. Trump toppled the party establishment, along the way flouting longstanding party dogma on taxes, trade and immigration. Democrats have long charged that white Americans who vote heavily Republican do so against their economic interests. A new poll for The Wall Street Journal and NBC News had Hillary Clinton ahead over all but trailing Mr. Trump by 13 percentage points among whites without a college education and by 21 points among men in that group. Past polls had her even further behind with those voters, however. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week that the Democratic Party bore some responsibility. While its policies may be geared toward workers, he said, “The Democratic Party over all hasn’t spoken enough to those voters” — the “ordinary people busting their necks. ” It was an echo of the Republican now playing out. For all of Mr. Trump’s outreach to whites, Robert VerBruggen, the managing editor of The American Conservative, said the party platform that emerged from the Republican convention was further evidence of the gap between the party’s support from white workers and its agenda that all but ignores them. “The breakdown of the working class was neglected,” he wrote in his magazine. “There seems to have been little discussion of the economic anxieties of working families, the safety net or the drug epidemic sweeping rural America. ” “Instead,” Mr. VerBruggen wrote, “their focus on the bottom half of the economic spectrum seems to have been limited to a debate about the purchase of unhealthy snacks with food stamps. ” Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the former domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, even suggested that Republicans look for ways to harness labor unions for constructive relationships. He also predicted more openness among conservatives to raising taxes when justified. “It’s hard to imagine the Grover Norquist tax pledge having the salience it once did,” Mr. Cass said, referring to the longstanding vow that most Republican candidates take. “That model of ‘no tax increases, ever, under any circumstances’ I think is probably on its way out or gone. ” Mr. Norquist scoffed at the suggestion. “The pledge came out in ’86,” he said. “Every six months from then somebody has said, ‘Oh, the pledge won’t hold.’ ” It is, he added, “nonnegotiable. ” | 0fake |
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