title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2 classes |
|---|---|---|
Extreme rhetoric helping Cruz, Trump, Duke leaders say | The use of extreme rhetoric by presidential candidates has sparked nationwide debates about American political polarization.
Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have been the center of media attention for their use of inflammatory language, notably when Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug traffickers and when Cruz called for the carpet-bombing of the Islamic State group. Although news coverage of candidates’ rhetoric may be polarizing Americans and deepening the partisan divide, it has also arguably contributed to the current success of Trump and Cruz in the presidential race, explained Duke faculty and student leaders.
“There’s a kind of anxiety in the air probably across the country, but certainly with certain populations in the U.S. that Cruz and Trump are tapping into,” said Frederick Mayer, professor of public policy, political science and environment. “Both of those candidates have found a way to frame their message that’s really resonating with the anxieties about American decline, threats from terrorists abroad and at home, perceived threats to the American way of life.”
In last Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama assured Americans that the country is not in decline, despite inflammatory claims.
“I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air,” he said. “Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. Let me tell you something—the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth, period.”
Mayer noted that factors such as low unemployment, low crime levels and fewer instances of terrorism on American soil should also ease the anxiety of Americans.
“It’s ironic because you can make the claim that we have less to fear today than just about any people in any time in history,” he said. “All these factors that should make us feel good.”
Junior Adam Lemon, president of the Duke College Republicans, said that extreme rhetoric was necessary for the success of Trump and Cruz in a field of more than 15 candidates, where standing out in any way was imperative. He also noted that cable news has used stories about Trump to boost ratings.
“I think part of the reason that [Donald Trump] is polling so high is that his name is just so ubiquitous through all of the news media,” said freshman Steve Hassey, communications director for Duke Democrats. “Him being such a polarizing figure makes the mass coverage of him even more polarizing.”
Both Lemon and Mayer discussed how news can have a negative impact when it focuses on polarizing comments.
However, Mayer said he was optimistic that bipartisan reform is possible and will occur on certain issues. On campus, there have been a few bipartisan discussions, such as the Battle of the Brains debate between college Democrats and Republicans hosted by Duke Student Government last November in which students discussed issues ranging from racial discrimination to the national debt.
Although there have been bipartisan discussions, Lemon noted that there are barriers to fostering discussion between students of opposing political parties on campus.
“There are a lot more liberals on campus than conservatives,” Lemon said. “Liberals tend to talk amongst themselves. Conservatives are afraid to express their opinions, so they don’t really talk and neither side is really willing to engage too much.”
Mayer attributed the polarization and the lack of engagement between the two sides to something more than just extreme rhetoric.
“At some deep level, many of the problems we’ve been talking about are really manifestations of a loss of trust in each other, in our institutions and the like,” he said. “This whole dysfunction is a trust problem. We stopped trusting institutions. We don’t trust politicians. A world where you have very little trust is a much less functional world.” | 0fake |
Mexican Cartel Kills Activist Mom Searching for Mass Graves | Cartel gunmen have murdered a woman who led the search for her daughter’s remains and other victims in northern Mexico. The gunmen killed her on the day Mexico celebrates Mother’s Day. [Mexican authorities have confirmed the murder of Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez Martinez, on the night of May 10 in the city of San Fernando, Tamaulipas. As Breitbart Texas reported, San Fernando has a long history of being a stronghold of Los Zetas Cartel, one of the most ruthless criminal organizations in Mexico. Two former Tamaulipas governors are wanted by the U. S. Department of Justice on money laundering charges for their roles as surrogates of the Los Zetas. One of those politicians is also wanted on multiple drug trafficking and conspiracy charges. Los Zetas have been behind the execution of 72 Central American immigrants who were murdered in San Fernando in an apparent show of force. The same criminal organization has been singled out as being behind the disappearance of hundreds of victims from San Fernando. In 2011, close to 200 victims were discovered in shallow graves in rural areas near San Fernando. At the time, authorities revealed that the victims may have been kidnapped off passenger buses or may have been motorists traveling one of the state’s main highways near the city. In 2012, cartel gunmen kidnapped the daughter of Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez Martinez. Despite the lack of cooperation from the Mexican federal government, the activist formed a support group that focused on pressuring the government and helping locate missing victims. Rodriguez Martinez was able to locate the mass grave where the gunmen buried her daughter’s body. Through her work, Martinez was able to contribute to the arrest of nine Los Zetas gunmen directly responsible for her daughter’s kidnapping. According to the Tamaulipas government, Rodriguez Martinez requested government protection after learning that Enrique Yoel Rubio, the main suspect behind her daughter’s murder, was named among the dozens of inmates who broke out of a state prison earlier this year. As Breitbart Texas reported in May, at least 29 members of Los Zetas used a tunnel to break out of the state prison in Ciudad Victoria. The breakout came after the cartel was undergoing an internal fight for territorial control. While federal authorities ignored Rodriguez’s cry for help, state authorities provided her with a series of police checkups at her home. Information provided to Breitbart Texas by Tamaulipas authorities revealed that Rubio had been arrested shortly after the breakout and has remained behind bars since. Despite state cops checking in on Rodriguez, unknown cartel gunmen were able to carry out the assassination earlier this week. State officials issued a strong condemnation and claimed they would not let the murder go unsolved. Ildefonso Ortiz is an journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
EXCLUSIVE: Inside Venezuela: Starved Families Scavenge for Food in Garbage-Covered Streets - Breitbart | CARACAS, Venezuela — Driving through the streets of Caracas, it is impossible not to notice the ubiquitous government propaganda on the sides of buildings and scores of armed police. [Even harder to avoid, however, is the garbage. On almost every street corner, stacks of waste can be seen piled up, some of it in black bags, but other items in limbo such as water bottles, diapers and occasionally food waste. Around almost every pile of garbage, a crowd had formed, rifling through it for scraps to eat. From schoolchildren to the elderly, even to those in work uniform, many Venezuelans are resorting to scavaging just to survive. A recent report found that over 15 percent of people scavenge as a means of survival. Those who eat what they find have developed the skill of finding edible bits of food where they can. In an interview with Colombia’s El Tiempo, for example, one woman noted that some neighborhoods are known for having the “good” garbage — the kind with food in it that can be recooked and consumed, as opposed to waste. A woman and her teenage daughter, who can be seen wearing a school backpack, search for food in garbage bags. Huge amounts of waste are routinely dumped on roadsides. A scolds me for taking the photo. Anything showing Venezuela’s extreme poverty is considered a crime against the state. men ruffle through bin bags. Drainage systems are also inundated with waste, increasing the risk of flooding. A roadside is covered in waste within a busy market. Stray dogs can be seen scavenging through garbage. Some Venezuelans have now resorted to eating dogs just to survive. protesters regularly place bin bags in the middle of the road to prevent vehicles from accessing marches. “I AM HUNGRY” The country’s problems with managing landfill are well documented. Venezuela’s waste management system has been largely for much of the Chavista era. In 2007, a Lonely Planet travel guide to Venezuela warned foreign visitors that waste management was “far and away the most obvious environmental problem in Venezuela,” with “no recycling policy and dumping of garbage in cities, along roads and natural areas is common practice. ” In some neighborhoods, garbage trucks simply fail to come around for over a week, resulting in large heaps of garbage on the streets. “The fundamental problem has been planning, which has stagnated the solid wage management systems [in Venezuela] for 20 years, because in the past two decades, the exact same thing has been done despite the evolution of technology as well as recycling measures that have evolved,” Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) professor Juan Carlos Sánchez explained at a 2016 presentation. There is little evidence that Maduro has implemented reforms to change the waste management system, despite his claims of environmentalism. Venezuela remains a signatory of the Paris Climate Agreement and under former president, Hugo Chávez’s leadership launched a number of environmental initiatives such as “Mission Tree” that promoted conservation and sustainable development. However, such initiatives appear to have been sidelined under the Maduro regime, and it is unclear how, if at all, Venezuela is working to meet the commitments in the Paris agreement. This did not stop Maduro from criticizing President Donald Trump’s withdrawal announcement from the Paris Agreement, accusing Trump of “turning his back on the world. ” Maduro has blamed corruption, private enterprise, and the United States generally for the country’s current state of emergency. In addition to the unsightly nature of the problem and environmental dangers, the waste is also likely to present a serious health hazard, particular given the South American nation’s status as one of the countries most affected by the Zika virus. Stagnant pools of water, easily created by standing waste after rainfall, breed mosquitos that spread the disease. The government has refused to disclose numbers of Zika victims or other key details to keeping the public safe, and the Colombian Health Minister last year accusing Venezuelan health officials of “an epidemiological silence” on the problem. Even if Venezuelan government officials sought to solve the problem now, they would have to improvise on what to use to solve it. Venezuela is lacking hygienic products to tackle the mess, with chronic shortages of products such as detergent, disinfectants, and general cleaning materials. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0fake |
Swiss right-wing's Blocher: Trump win a warning to world establishment | ZURICH (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory, on the heels of Britain’s vote to exit the European Union, was fuelled by voters who feel neglected and shunned by establishment leaders, prominent Swiss right-winger Christoph Blocher said on Wednesday. Blocher, a top official in the anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party who engineered its ascent to become the biggest faction in the Swiss parliament, said Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton was a warning to current world leaders not to go over citizens’ heads on issues including immigration. “People feel powerless against those who rule them, and for them, Trump is a release valve,” Blocher said in an interview. “The unexpected result ... should give pause to those who are in power around the world.” Next year, the Netherlands, France and Germany - and possibly Italy and Britain too - will hold elections in which debate is likely to be driven by populist parties over issues including immigration. [nL8N1D83Q4] That was also a central theme in Britain’s June 23 “Brexit” vote to end 43 years of EU membership. [nU8N1B401J] Non-EU Switzerland is seeking to balance demands by voters in 2014 for immigration quotas for EU workers without torpedoing trade agreements with the bloc. Blocher’s party has said alternatives now being considered ignore the will of voters. [nU8N1B401J][nL8N1BX4CB] “When politicians in Berne refuse to take the vote against mass immigration seriously, it will only lead to a shock like it did in America,” Blocher said. Blocher said Europe’s responses to immigration amid violent Islamist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany have helped populist political parties including France’s National Front, as well as the Alternative for Germany, gain traction. [nL4N1DA4PG] “They stand out because they are taking on problems the establishment refuses to tackle. One big question that you have to speak openly about is the immigration from Islamic countries. You can’t just tear down everybody who is critical of this.” | 0fake |
Obama, Italy's Mattarella discuss fight against Islamic State in Libya | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Italian President Sergio Mattarella met on Monday in the White House and discussed efforts to work together to combat the Islamic State in Libya. During a meeting in the Oval Office, Obama and Mattarella talked about the need to help Libya form a united government. “That will allow us to help them build up their security capacity and to push back against efforts by ISIL to gain a foothold in that country,” Obama told reporters after the meeting, using an acronym for Islamic State. Islamic State forces have attacked Libya’s oil infrastructure and taken control of the city of Sirte, exploiting a power vacuum in the North African country where two rival governments have been battling for supremacy. Obama and Mattarella also discussed the refugee crisis facing Europe and the situation in Iraq and Syria. | 0fake |
The all-American terror of Donald Trump: Inside the nightmare ideology that’s made him a hero to white fundamentalists | He has been roundly condemned for these statement by key GOP figureheads like Senator Lindsey Graham, who called him a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot.” But the GOP should understand Trump’s popularity as a case of their chickens coming home to roost. The modern Republican Party has secured its base by pandering to the worst impulses of white male, working class, and white Christian fundamentalist rage. Only Trump doesn’t use a dogwhistle. He barks. And every time he does the GOP base responds by replenishing his poll numbers.
Although this doesn’t seem like a viable longterm strategy, the short-term effects are important to watch. The responsiveness of the American public to his rhetoric of keeping white people safe reminds us again of the extent to which narratives about white safety drive U.S. social policy particularly on the right. For the cause of white safety much of the American public finds it reasonable to restrict the movement of Muslims both inside and outside of the U.S. But we don’t restrict conservative white men on the grounds that they disproportionately commit mass shootings at public places – churches, schools and colleges, movie theaters, and health care facilities.
Another major effect of Trump’s rhetoric is the increased threat of violence that Muslim Americans face, because a front-running candidate for the presidency is using reckless discourse to substantiate the legitimacy of Islamophobic views. Since the Paris attacks last month there has been a sharp uptick in vandalism and violent rhetoric against mosques in the U.S. and abroad. My Muslim colleagues and friends have described feelings of heightened anxiety and fear as they move through public space and send their children to school. In New York, a young school girl was attacked by classmates who called her “ISIS” and tried to rip off her hijab.
The GOP base is not merely racially ignorant; they are also prone to violence. By Trump’s logic, we should be placing tracking devices on all socially conservative white men who own guns. We should be interrogating the source of these white men’s radical views. We should understand the Church, particularly the conservative evangelical church as a breeding ground for white terrorism. White evangelicalism is the fundamentalist ideological arm of white social conservatism and of white American male terrorism.
The story of 21st century U.S. state violence is not only a story of anti-Blackness. It is also a story of state-sanctioned Islamophobia that uses the tragic terroristic acts of 9/11 as a framework to mistreat Muslim Americans, and other Americans who appear to be of Arab or Middle Eastern descent. (There is no acknowledgement that not all Arabs are Muslims.)
Using the extreme acts of a few to condemn the peaceful lives of the many is a hallmark of the American script of racism. White Americans do this to Black people when they suggest that Black intraracial violence justifies the overpolicing of all Black people. Americans do this to Muslims when we demand that key Islamic religious leaders step forward to quickly condemn the violence, so that we will not mistake lack of censure for allegiance.
Yet, we did not require or expect conservative white male politicians and religious leaders to issue statements after the Planned Parenthood shooting affirming that Christian social values are anti-violent and condemning the actions of the shooter as an egregious mischaracterization of Christian values and principles. We did not ask all white men to feel shame over the actions of the shooter. The myth of white individualism absolves white people of a collective reckoning with the ways that white fundamentalism breeds violence against people of all colors and social backgrounds. This is why we must begin to understand whiteness as a kind of violent fundamentalism, one at the heart of the American project. Fundamentalism is always a struggle over values and an attempt by those who feel marginalized to order the universe through a set of moral absolutes that not-so-coincidentally also concede power to their particular worldview. Donald Trump is not particularly religious, despite his meeting with Black pastors. But he deploys whiteness as ideology with the fundamentalist zeal of the worst kinds of religious zealots and proselytizers. His rhetoric about protecting the U.S.-Mexico border—rhetoric that has been unfortunately taken up by two misguided Black female Trump enthusiasts—is just one more example of the kind of power laden demands for purity that adhere to fundamentalist ideologies. Whiteness as a fundamentalist ideology frames all others as enemies of the project of white supremacy. It authorizes violence against all who divest from the project of whiteness. It uses a narrative of marginalization and the need to regain power (to take America back) to justify aggressive and violent acts towards non-white groups. And it values and seeks to perpetuate whiteness as a way of life. Until we dismantle white fundamentalism, no people of color will be safe. All fundamentalist belief systems view other belief systems in zero-sum terms. Evangelical Christianity believes that the truer it is, the less true every other belief system is. White/American fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism also engage each other in zero-sum geopolitical terms. They will be locked into an endlessly violent battle of wills. To make it more plain, on the homefront, white Americans respond so strongly to acts of Islamic terror and with such fear, because they recognize this same capacity for fundamentalist rage in themselves. In a zero-sum battle of fundamentalism, either we are invading their shores or they are invading ours. Game recognize game. But terror and violence are not a game. People of color frequently become casualities of war in these internecine battles of competing fundamentalisms. Reinscribing whiteness and pedaling white fundamentalism as an ideology befitting of the 21st century will cause innumerable harm to all people of color. As a case in point, Trump used the Japanese internment to justify his current ideas about Muslims. And this is perhaps one of the most fundamental lessons that this Black Lives Matter moment can teach us: a nation that is wholly adversarial to Black life is not a nation fit for any non-white lives to inhabit. In America, Islamic fundamentalism is not our biggest threat. White fundamentalism is. And it is long past time for us to do something about it. | 0fake |
Democrats Contaminate Cliven Bundy Jury Pool with 700,000 Mailers Falsely Connecting Him to Las Vegas Cop Killers | Tim Brown
Well, leave it to the Democrats in Nevada to do something like this. Not only are they engaged in illegal acts concerning voter registration , but now they have ruined the good name of Cliven Bundy by sending out 700,000 mailers to households throughout Nevada and contaminating the jury pool, which has led the defense to call on the court to “change the venue” so that Bundy might receive a fair trial.
The flyer reads, “This man’s armed standoff led to the deaths of two Las Vegas Police Officers and he’s supported by Congressman Hardy.” It also contains Cliven Bundy’s name and mug shot in front of a row of prison cells. This was also paid for by the Nevada State Democratic Party.
Attorney for journalist Pete Santilli , Chris Rasmussen, joined with Nevada’s public defenders in a motion to compel the court for a “change of venue.” Rasmussen received one of the flyers and entered it into evidence with the court claiming that Bundy would not receive a fair trial due to the obvious propaganda sent out by the State of Nevada.
This story about tying the Bundy’s or anyone at Bundy Ranch to Jared and Amanda Miller, the Las Vegas shooters , is bogus. By his own account, Miller was sent home from Bundy Ranch . Here’s Miller’s comment to a YouTube video claiming that very thing.
In fact, the media jumped all over the false narrative that Miller and his wife were tied to the Bundy’s, labeling them right wing extremist terrorists , and attempting to use the propaganda for advancing attacks on the Second Amendment . The media never mentioned the fact that the Millers were involved in the Occupy Movement and it never informed the public that they were Vegas police informants .
What’s worse is that this attempt to smear patriots for standing against the illegal and unconstitutional acts of the DC government and their willing accomplices in the Bureau of Land Management , FBI, and corrupt politicians, both in DC and local, is the fact that this was already dealt with once as Constitutional Sheriff Richard Mack was wrongly connected to the Millers.
Deb Jordan adds , “Las Vegas Metro Police and the Clark County Sheriff’s Department cannot produce any report of violence or destruction of property during the Bundy Civil Rights Protest, except in those instances where the Bureau of Land Management were the perpetrators.”
“Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, the then Sheriff of Clarke County said at the time, there was no direct link to the couple’s killing spree and Cliven Bundy – noting that the two had arrived in Las Vegas in January of 2014 and that they had their own agenda for starting a revolution,” she added. “Gillespie made clear he had seen NO evidence that the Miller’s had come to Nevada seeking out Cliven Bundy.”
Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore also took time to call out this injustice .
“This mailer is completely unacceptable she said, and somebody needs to be held accountable for putting this false narrative in Nevada mailboxes,” she said. “Clearly the Bundy’s Civil Rights were being violated by a United States Government – Terrorist Organization – known as the BLM, and we all saw it happening with our own eyes. I was not the only elected official at that protest and what I want to know is, where the hell are they now?”
Fiore also said :
The level of propaganda being allowed by the Democratic Party must come to an end. We have men whose lives are on the line here in Nevada, and poisoning the jury pool with a downright lie must be dealt with. Not only do we have a case here that is already out of balance because it is being overseen by Judge Gloria Navarro, a left winger who was recommended by Harry Reid and appointed by Barack Obama, and Steven Myhre a Liberal Prosecutor who could obviously care less about fairness and truth, now we add to that more unfairness by allowing a left-wing propaganda machine to send out the message, that Cliven Bundy is directly responsible for the death of two of our Metro Police officers.
This case should be awarded a change in venue in the fairness of law, and my peers should stop being cowards and get back to representing the truth about this case.
Cliven Bundy held a peaceful protest on his own property and even though the Federal Government was not invited, they came anyway.
They literally beat up on his family, set trained snipers on hillsides overlooking his ranch, came at them with stun guns and dogs, tried to restrict them to a first amendment area, killed and buried their cattle on public lands – in mass graves, threatened everyone who came to a lawful protest with lethal force, had armed helicopters and drones flying all over the place, and now they honestly want the American people to believe the Bundy’s were the bad guys — come on …
The Government has stacked the odds against these men, and I am telling you right now;
I will not stand by and watch them be railroaded by a bunch of left-wing extremist and sent to prison for crimes they did not commit.
This case should not only be moved out of the State of Nevada, it should be dismissed altogether.
I have no regrets for doing the right thing here when it comes to the Bundy’s — As hard as it is, I would rather lose every single race for office, before I would lose one nights sleep knowing I had betrayed them .”
Fiore is correct. The men in Nevada were more peaceful than the agents who surrounded them. So, what are you going to do America? Will you sit quietly by at your keyboard and rage at the machine, or will you take action?
You can contact the responsible party here: Address : 6233 Dean Martin Dr, Las Vegas, NV 89118 | 1real |
DR. WOLF CALLS OUT HILLARY For Lying About Pneumonia Diagnosis [VIDEO] | Dr. Milton Wolf seems to have take offense at the diagnosis of Hillary Clinton. He states in no uncertain terms that Non-Contagious Bacterial Pneumonia does not even exist. His argument can be supported by the fact that if that was indeed what she had then why the antibiotics that supposedly don t help with bacterial type infections.You may remember Dr. Wolf from stories of him being Obama s second cousin. He has been featured on a few Mainstream Media shows to discuss many different things form his familial ties to Obama to his campaign for Kansas State Senate in 2014.These screen captures are from his recent tweets concerning Hillary and her supposed diagnosis.Is it possible that Hillary, her doctor , and her staff are all lying once again to hide somethin more disturbing, like a neurological disorder? Clinton is very aware that the DNC has had meetings to discuss replacing her as the 2016 candidate, even going so far as discussing the possibility of Obama taking a 3rd term, so it is well within the possibility that she is panicking and trying hard to cover the truth.Not that we expect Hillary to ever tell the truth about anything, but it would be nice to know if someone who may be running this entire country is possibly suffering from a disease that may cause her to not be fully able to use her cognitive abilities to the fullest when making important decisions for the American people.In an ironic twist the YouTube link for this particular video clearly states that the two doctors featured have never even met Hillary. H/T [ Proud Cons ] | 1real |
WOW! MAJOR CREDIT CARD COMPANY Still Sponsoring Central Park Production Depicting Assassination Of President Trump After Other Sponsors Flee [VIDEO] | Delta Air Lines and Bank of America became the first companies to announce they are pulling their sponsorships of a Manhattan-based theater company s portrayal of Julius Caesar as a Donald Trump look-alike in a business suit who gets stabbed to death on stage.Delta and Bank of America both announced their intentions on Sunday. No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines values, the company s statement said. Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste. Bank of America added it was withdrawing funding for the production. The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in such a way that was intended to provoke and offend, the bank said in a tweet. Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. Fox News American Express also took to Twitter and announced their sponsorship doesn t support the play.A Statement from American Express: pic.twitter.com/Ig0Ju3B2dP American Express (@AmericanExpress) June 12, 2017 We would like to clarify that our sponsorship of the Public Theater does not fund the production of Shakespeare in the Park nor do we condone the interpretation of the Julius Caesar play, the financial corporation tweeted.Customers of American Express responded on Twitter:I'm am considering not accepting AE cards at my business and reminding customers why just to clarify. rex prescott (@rex1956) June 12, 2017Sadly, we expect the New York Times to support a production of President Trump being assassinated, but Amex customers like myself who currently use an American Express card can just as easily switch to VISA or MasterCard. The fees are generally less and both alternatives seem to be more widely accepted by businesses. Seems almost like a no-brainer | 1real |
Trump to receive multiple options on Iran nuclear deal: Tillerson | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will be presented with multiple options regarding the future of the Iran nuclear deal ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline to certify whether Tehran is complying with the pact, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday. Tillerson did not disclose details about the kinds of options he will present to Trump. He also declined to directly answer a question about whether he shared Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ assessment to Congress on Tuesday that Iran was “fundamentally” in compliance with the accord. “We’ll have a recommendation for the president. We’re going to give him a couple of options of how to move forward to advance the important policy toward Iran,” Tillerson told reporters at the State Department. A collapse of the 2015 deal, which Trump has called “an embarrassment,” but which is supported by the other major powers that negotiated it with Iran, could trigger a regional arms race and stoke Middle East tensions. A senior U.S. official said last month that Trump was leaning toward not certifying that Iran is complying with the pact. Trump himself has said he already had made up his mind whether to keep the pact, but has declined to disclose his decision. If Trump declines to certify Iran’s compliance, U.S. congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the accord. Unlike Mattis, who publicly suggested Trump should consider sticking with the agreement, Tillerson has been highly critical of the accord and said it must be changed. He has taken aim at the deal’s so-called sunset clauses, under which some of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire over time. Tillerson on Wednesday suggested that whatever path the United States chooses on the nuclear accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it would only represent one component of America’s broader policy toward Iran. “The JCPOA represents only a small part of the many issues that we need to deal with when it comes to the Iranian relationship,” he said. “So it is an important part of that, but is not the only part. And I’ve said many times, we cannot let the Iranian relationship be defined solely by that nuclear agreement.” | 0fake |
Hillary's 33,000 emails might not be 'missing' after all | THE DELETER OF THE FREE WORLD Hillary's 33,000 emails might not be 'missing' after all Files backed up on multiple platforms never subpoened by FBI Published: 7 mins ago
(New York Post) For months now, we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails were permanently erased and destroyed beyond recovery. But newly released FBI notes strongly suggest they still exist in several locations — and they could be recovered, if only someone would impanel a grand jury and seize them.
In a May interview with FBI agents, an executive with the Denver contractor that maintained Clinton’s private server revealed that an underling didn’t bleach-clean all her subpoenaed emails, just ones he stored in a data file he used to transfer the emails from the server to Clinton’s aides, who in turn sorted them for delivery to Congress.
The Platte River Networks executive, whose name was redacted from the interview report, said PRN tech Paul Combetta “created a ‘vehicle’ to transfer email files from the live mailboxes of [Clinton Executive Services Corp.] email accounts [and] then later used BleachBit software to shred the ‘vehicle,’ but the email content still existed in the live email accounts.” | 1real |
DANISH CITY OVERRUN WITH MUSLIM MIGRANTS Makes Pork Mandatory On All Municipal Menus | Assimilate or go hungry Human rights lawyers descend in 5 4 3 2 1 COPENHAGEN, Denmark A Danish city has ordered pork to be mandatory on municipal menus, including for schools and daycare centers, with politicians insisting the move is necessary for preserving the country s food traditions and is not an attack on Muslims.Frank Noergaard, a member of the council in Randers that narrowly approved the decision earlier this week, says it was made to ensure that pork remains a central part of Denmark s food culture. Denmark is a major pork producer and it is the most popular meat, but it is forbidden to Muslims and Jews. Most of the asylum-seekers who have arrived in the country in the past months are Muslim.Noergaard, a member of the anti-immigration, populist Danish People s Party that proposed the council motion, said Thursday that it wasn t meant as a harassment of Muslims, but added that he had received several complaints about too many concessions being made to Muslims in the small, predominantly Lutheran country. The signal we want to send here is that if you re a Muslim and you plan to come to Randers, don t expect you can impose eating habits on others. Pork here is on an equal footing with other food, Noergaard told The Associated Press. He said that halal meat, vegetarian dishes and diets for diabetics would still be available.In 2013, then-Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt lashed out at some nurseries after they started serving halal-butchered meat instead of pork because Muslim children had refused to eat it. Via: AP Newsh/t Weasel Zippers | 1real |
RNC scrambles to calm state GOP officials | The election in 232 photos, 43 numbers and 131 quotes, from the two candidates at the center of it all. | 0fake |
Infant and Fetus Remains Are Found at Ex-Home for Unwed Mothers in Ireland - The New York Times | DUBLIN — The local historian had been telling the authorities for years that dead infants might have been buried in an old sewage system on the grounds of a former home for unmarried mothers and their children in the west of Ireland. Little attention was paid to her claims at first, but the questions eventually led to the establishment of a investigation. And on Friday, the investigators said that the remains of babies, small children and fetuses had been found where she said they would. The discovery, in the County Galway town of Tuam, was announced on the website of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. “The commission is shocked by this discovery and is continuing its investigation into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way,” the agency said in a statement. From 1925 to 1961, the St. Mary’s home was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours, a Roman Catholic order, but was financed by the Irish government. Tests showed that most of the remains were “likely to date from the 1950s,” according to the statement, which added that further examinations were being conducted. “This is very sad and disturbing news,” Katherine Zappone, the minister for Children and Youth Affairs, said in a statement. “It was not unexpected as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years. Up to now we had rumors. ” The historian, Catherine Corless, said in an interview that she welcomed the commission’s report but thought the deaths should have been investigated “decades earlier. ” “Nobody was listening locally or in authority, from the church or the state. They said, ‘What’s the point?’ And that I shouldn’t view the past from today’s lenses. ” The remains are of some of the 796 children who died at the home over more than three decades. According to death certificates that Ms. Corless hunted down, the causes included malnutrition, measles, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. The commission that was established in 2015 to investigate allegations of abuse in the institutions, which are known in Ireland as mother and baby homes, said its inquiry in Tuam focused on two structures on the grounds of St. Mary’s. The first of these structures appeared to be “a large sewage containment system or septic tank that had been decommissioned and filled with rubble and debris and then covered with topsoil,” while the second was “a long structure which is divided into 20 chambers and appears to be related to the of sewage waste water. ” It was within this second structure that the commission reported that “significant quantities of human remains had been found in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers. ” According to the statement, the remains included those of fetuses to children up to 3 years old. Further tests are now being conducted and the commission has asked that the relevant state authorities take responsibility for the “appropriate treatment” of the remains. A coroner had also been informed, the statement added. Although there is no official state religion in Ireland, the Catholic Church has long had a profound influence over the country’s culture and government. Bearing a child outside of marriage was considered both sinful and shameful, and unmarried mothers and their children often suffered discrimination and abuse. Ms. Corless, who lives outside Tuam, went to school with children from the St. Mary’s home and remembered how they were kept to one side of the classroom and had to arrive and leave at different times so there would be no interaction with children of parents who were married. She said the “home babies,” as they were known, looked vulnerable and malnourished to her. When her own children were more grown up, she began to look into conditions at the home, and learned of the 796 deaths. None of the bodies were buried in any of the local cemeteries. She also concluded that the children lived in substandard conditions. After the home finally closed, the buildings were demolished, and now a housing development sits adjacent to the site. In 2012, Ms. Corless published an article in a local history journal. The article concluded that some of the children had been buried in an unofficial graveyard in the back of the home. But after studying a map of the grounds, she thought that other bodies might have been interred in the sewage treatment facilities. A sewage tank had been replaced by a public water system in 1937, but she said there was sufficient evidence to show that some babies and small children had been buried there while it was still in operation. Ms. Corless wanted to erect a plaque with the names of all of the children who had died, and she helped up set a committee in 2013 to finance it. The committee was unable to raise enough money. She also approached journalists with her work. In 2014, Alison O’Reilly, a reporter for the Irish edition of The Mail on Sunday, a London newspaper, wrote an article. But as it spread and was picked up by other news organizations, headlines shouted that “800 bodies” had been thrown into the septic tank. That led to criticism, and some said they found discrepancies in Ms. Corless’s work. She said on Friday that that had been difficult but that she had known she was right. “I never made a statement unless I could back it with facts. I only presented the truth. ” On Friday, the Bon Secours order issued a statement that promised its “continued cooperation with and support for the work of the commission in seeking the truth about the home. ” The order declined further comment. For years, there had been accounts of abuse at many mother and baby homes and the government agreed to begin an inquiry. The homes attracted international attention after the release of the film “Philomena,” which told the story of a woman’s search for the boy who was taken from her and was adopted by a couple in the United States. The commission has been examining allegations of abuse at 14 mother and baby homes, and four similar institutions between 1922 and 1998. But it has no power to award compensation or bring criminal charges. Ms. Corless added that it was important now that the investigation continued its work, and that “it needs to go further inside. ” The commission’s announcement marked another development in a series of scandals involving church and state in Irish life. The director of Amnesty International Ireland, Colm O’Gorman, who himself experienced clerical abuse, said it was time for the government to “join the dots. ” “There is a direct line between the industrial schools, the mother and baby homes and the abuse committed and covered up by priests,” he said. “The state never really accepted that it had accountability or responsibility when it came to their own citizens, so it outsourced all of that to the church. ” In the interview on Friday, Ms. Corless said that Ms. Zappone, the minister for children, had telephoned her earlier in the day and thanked her for her work and perseverance. | 0fake |
Illinois Senate passes grant program for needy college students | CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Illinois Senate on Thursday earmarked $227.2 million for low-income college students whose need-based financial aid has been imperiled by the state’s 11-month budget impasse. But Republican Governor Bruce Rauner offered no sign of supporting the measure for Monetary Award Program recipients after members of his party pilloried the funding package as a “farce” because it did not identify a specific revenue stream to pay for it. Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelley declined to say whether the governor intends to sign or veto the legislation, saying only “Governor Rauner remains committed to reaching a balanced budget alongside meaningful reforms in a bipartisan manner.” Illinois’ public universities and community colleges and the MAP program have only received a fraction of what they had expected from the state since July because Rauner and the Democratic-led legislature have yet to agree on a Fiscal 2016 spending plan. A stopgap $600 million higher-education funding package enacted by Rauner last month offered some relief, but an early-May effort to appropriate an additional $454 million on top of the April total stalled in the Illinois House of Representatives after passing the Senate. In fiscal 2015, the last year in which Illinois had a full operating budget, the state appropriated $357.1 million to the MAP program. That amount provided for income-based grants of up to $4,968 to 128,399 students, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission reported. State Senator Donne Trotter, a Chicago Democrat and the legislation’s chief sponsor, said the package would “ensure that our students can relieve themselves of some of the drama they’ve been going through this year because of the inaction by this body and the governor” in passing a budget. But Republicans ripped the plan, with Senator Chapin Rose, a Republican from Mahomet, Ill., about 200 miles south of Chicago, accusing the Senate majority of “writing a check that it darn well knows cannot be cashed.” The Senate passed the bill 39-15, with two members voting present - enough to override any potential Rauner veto. But the 68-45 margin during a Tuesday House vote fell three votes short of a veto-proof majority, meaning Rauner could kill the measure if he chose to. | 0fake |
Gary Cohn Relaunches War on Coal: Fuel from America’s Heartland ‘Doesn’t Make Much Sense Anymore’ - Breitbart | White House National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs banking executive, has reopened the U. S. government’s war on coal in direct contravention of directions from President Donald Trump. [“Coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock,” Cohn said in Europe on Air Force One, while speaking for the White House to the press, the New York Times’ Brad Plumer noted. “Natural gas, which we have become an abundant producer, which we’re going to become a major exporter is, is such a cleaner fuel,” Cohn continued. Trump adviser Gary Cohn a bit on Air Force One, per pool report: “Coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock” pic. twitter. — brad plumer (@bradplumer) May 26, 2017, Cohn’s comments against the coal industry come as he has attempted to steer President Trump in a direction against his campaign promise to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, a deal that Sen. Rand Paul ( ) has told Breitbart News would cost at least six million American jobs. Paul and 21 of his GOP U. S. Senate colleagues have written to President Trump urging him to follow through on his pledge to remove the U. S. from the deal and stand up for the coal industry in the United States. Trump repeatedly campaigned on defending coal workers — people previous presidents and his Democratic opponent former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton worked to undermine. Former President Barack Obama’s administration — was brutal to the coal industry — something Clinton campaigned on continuing. As the Trump administration has made great strides in rolling back regulations on the coal industry, moving the government out of the way, President Trump announced to the American people back at the end of March that “the war on coal is over. ” But it seems the war on coal is being relaunched by his economic adviser Cohn, who now calls coal obsolete and unclean. Cohn’s comments are sure to cause serious backlash among Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, since there is bipartisan support nationwide for protecting coal workers. | 0fake |
It’s Already Happening: DAPL Spews Oil From Multiple Leaks As Construction Continues | Oil leaks that pose catastrophic risks to the environment, people and water were the reason thousands of protesters risked their lives to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Millions of others around the world showed their support for the protesters and the rights of all people to have access to clean water and a healthy environment.Tragically, the fears of clean water activists around the world are already coming true. The Associated Press reports the Dakota Access Pipeline has already spilled oil onto American soil three separate times before it s even been fully constructed.According to the North Dakota Health Department, a leaky flange in a pipeline terminal spilled 84 gallons of oil on March 3, in Watford City. The spill was quickly contained and oil flow was stopped on site. According to the department, the contaminated soil and snow were removed and no waterways, people or wildlife were harmed.Two days later a leak of 20 gallons was reported in a rural area of Mercer County by the Federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Again, they stated that no waterways, people or wildlife were harmed.The incident report faults a manufacturing defect as the caused a valve failure and the subsequent leak, which was isolated by closing valves upstream and downstream. All other valves were later inspected and given the OK.Despite the ETP insisting that the pipeline is safe, several native Dakota tribes still fear the future environmental havoc of this 1,200-mile pipeline that will start commercial operation on June 1st.The Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Oglala Sioux and Yankton Tribes are still fighting to stop the pipeline from operating. They are currently working in court to convince a federal judge to shut it down.The pipeline leaked a third time on April 4th. Eighty-four gallons were spilled at a rural pump station in South Dakota. The SD Department of Environment and Natual Resources reported the spill to its online database but kept it quiet from the public. Apparently, the department s policy is to conduct a press release only if the spill threatens waterways or public health. In the fight to stop the DAPL, attorneys and local Tribal leaders are using these leaks as evidence that additional environmental reviews are necessary before it becomes fully operational. We have always said it is not a matter of if, but when, tribal attorney Jan Hasselman said after the South Dakota leak. Pipelines spill and leak. It s just a fact. | 1real |
CLASSIC! GREG GUTFELD Rips Comey Memo Disclosure As “Very Mean Girls”…You Will Love This! [Video] | GREG GUTFELD IS SO PASSIONATE and so on target with his commentary about the Comey memo disclosure. This is truly epic! Gutfeld said all of this comes down to the non-political way Trump communicates. When you say you hope for something, it s not a command. It s not saying you d better do this. Gutfeld then compared the use of hope to desiring a bicycle for Christmas, wanting people to show up for your birthday, and asking neighbors to be quiet while you re sleeping. In my mind it seems like it s not a big deal, which is maybe why Comey didn t think it was obstructionist, so he didn t have to comply to reporting it, because he knew what Trump was doing is what Trump does. Everything to him is like visiting a construction site. It s not what a politician says or does. He doesn t understand how internal stuff works. So he shows up and says I wish we could do this for cheaper wish we could have done a better job on lights on bathrooms. THE GUTFELD COMMENTS COME AT THE 9:30 POINT: | 1real |
Buchanan on Trump: After the Coup, What Then? | By Patrick J. BuchananThat the Trump presidency is bedeviled is undeniable.As President Donald Trump flew off for August at his Jersey club, there came word that Special Counsel Robert Mueller III had impaneled a grand jury and subpoenas were going out to Trump family and campaign associates.The jurors will be drawn from a pool of citizens in a city Hillary Clinton swept with 91 percent of the vote. Trump got 4 percent.Whatever indictments Mueller wants, Mueller gets.Thanks to a media that savages him ceaselessly, Trump is down to 33 percent approval in a Quinnipiac University poll and below 40 percent in most of the rest.Before Trump departed D.C., The Washington Post ran transcripts of his phone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.Even Obama administration veterans were stunned.So, it is time to ask: If this city brings Trump down, will the rest of America rejoice?What will be the reaction out there in fly-over country, that land where the deplorables dwell who produce the soldiers to fight our wars? Will they toast the free press that brought down the president they elected, and in whom they had placed so much hope?My guess: The reaction will be one of bitterness, cynicism, despair, a sense that the fix is in, that no matter what we do, they will not let us win. If Trump is brought down, American democracy will take a pasting. It will be seen as a fraud. And the backlash will poison our politics to where only an attack from abroad, like 9/11, will reunite us.Our media preen and posture as the defenders of democracy, devoted to truth, who provide us round-the-clock protection from tyranny. But half the nation already sees the media as a propaganda arm of a liberal establishment that the people have rejected time and again.Consider the Post s publication of the transcripts of Trump s calls with Mexico s president and Australia s prime minister.When reporter Greg Miller got these transcripts, his editors, knowing they would damage Trump, plastered them on Page 1.The Post was letting itself be used by a leaker engaged in disloyal and possibly criminal misconduct. Yet the Post agreed to provide confidentiality and to hide the Trump-hater s identity.This is what we do, says the Post. People have a right to know if President Trump says one thing at rallies about Mexico paying for the wall and another to the president of Mexico. This is a story.But there is a far larger story here, of which this Post piece is but an exhibit. It is the story of a concerted campaign, in which the anti-Trump media publish leaks, even criminal leaks, out of the FBI, CIA, NSA and NSC, to bring down a president whom the Beltway media and their deep-state collaborators both despise and wish to destroy.Did Trump collude with Putin to defeat Clinton, the Beltway media demand to know, even as they daily collude with deep-state criminals to bring down the president of the United States.And if there is an unfolding silent coup by the regime Americans repudiated in 2016 to use security leaks and the lethal weapon of a special counsel to overturn the election results is that not a story worth covering as much as what Trump said to Pena Nieto?Do the people not have a right know who are the snakes collaborating with the Never-Trump press to bring down their head of state? Is not discovering the identities of deep-state felons a story that investigative reporters should be all over?If Greg Miller is obligated to protect his source, fine. But why are other journalists not exposing his identity?The answer suggests itself. This is a collaborative enterprise, where everyone protects everyone else s sources, because all have the same goal: the dumping of Trump. If that requires collusion with criminals, so be it.The Justice Department is now running down the leaks, and the ACLU s Ben Wizner is apoplectic: Every American should be concerned about the Trump administration s threat to step up its efforts against whistleblowers and journalists. A crackdown on leaks is a crackdown on the free press and on democracy. That s one way to put it. Another is that some of these whistleblowers are political criminals who reject the verdict of the American electorate in 2016 and are out to overturn it. And the aforementioned journalists are their enablers and collaborators.And if, as Wizner s asserts, protecting secrets is tantamount to a crackdown on the free press and democracy, no wonder the free press and democracy are falling into disrepute all over the world.By colluding, the mainstream media, deep state, and the special prosecutor s button men, with a license to roam, may bring down yet another president. So doing, they will validate John Adams s insight: Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. This story was originally published at Lew Rockwell.comAuthor Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever See his website. READ MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
‘Brexit’ Opens Uncertain Chapter in Britain’s Storied History - The New York Times | LONDON — Asked to vote in or out, Britain has chosen decisively to cast off its membership in the European Union, leaving it to face a more complex question: What kind of nation will it be now? Will Britain be the entrepreneurial, confident country that makes its independent way in the world, as the leaders of the “Leave” campaign insisted it could be? Or will it retreat to become a Little England, nationalist and a touch xenophobic, responding to the voters that drove it to quit the European Union? Even more important: Will it even hold together? With Scotland deeply pressure will increase for another independence referendum that could bring an end to the United Kingdom. Britain, a nation whose storied history has encompassed the birth of constitutional government, global empire, royal pageantry and heroic defense against fascism, is entering unknown territory. The questions about its new path could remain unresolved for years. On Friday morning, at least, Britain remained a member of the European Union in full standing, just as it was 24 hours earlier. But the impact of this plebiscite is likely to be profound and well beyond the immediate tumult in the financial markets, and the questions about Britain’s future will be answered against the backdrop of potential political, legal and economic upheaval. A Conservative government with its first majority since 1992 has ripped itself apart on a global stage and is badly damaged. Prime Minister David Cameron promptly announced that he would step aside once his party settled on a successor, setting up a potentially leadership battle. An early general election is not out of the question. Once Britain begins the formal process of withdrawing from the European Union by exercising Article 50 of the treaty that governs membership in the bloc — a step Mr. Cameron said he would leave to the next prime minister — it will set off a clock on negotiations, a period in which Britain (including millions of European citizens living in Britain and British citizens living in the European Union) will be in limbo. And if the British Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies are to be believed, the British economy is in for a severe shock. The Treasury estimates that the British gross domestic product, representing the size of the economy, will fall by 3. 5 percent, clobbering tax receipts that half a million people will lose their jobs and that housing prices (and thus personal wealth of homeowners) will fall by 10 percent. Those estimates were criticized by the Leave campaign, including senior members of government, as unfounded fear mongering. Now Britain will find out how accurate they are. This vote was a severe shock to Britain’s political class from voters who are angry, confused and deeply distrustful of elites. The Labour Party joined Mr. Cameron in campaigning to stay in Europe, as did nearly all the other parties represented in Parliament, with the exception of the Democratic Unionists and the U. K. Independence Party, which was founded on a platform of leaving the European Union. Yet despite that solid wall of establishment voices — or perhaps because of them — Britain voted for a fundamental change in direction. “The British political class should pay attention,” said Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics. “There is a lot of disaffection with both main parties,” he said. In 1955, the Conservatives and Labour won 97. 5 percent of the vote, but in last two elections, the two won only about 66 percent of the vote, he said. “Into that vacuum something else has to move, but what?” Mr. Travers asked. “The political class has to wonder how to appeal to those who increasingly feel left out of the system, how to stop large numbers of voters feeling cut out of economic change and success. ” The Conservative Party is already split between traditional establishment figures like Mr. Cameron and others who embraced the posture of the Leave campaign, most prominently the former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and one of Mr. Cameron’s senior cabinet members, Michael Gove. Mr. Cameron also had more centrist views than many in his party’s grass roots, having pushed the Conservatives to back social issues like marriage and adopt unifying themes like “ Conservatism. ” He is likely to be replaced by someone more to the right and more like Theresa May, the home secretary, or Mr. Johnson, who also thinks of himself as a “ Tory,” but in the Churchillian mode, and has made no secret of his ambition. And the Labour Party must find a way to embrace those voters who are clearly unhappy about the effects of globalization and immigration on their lives and found themselves swayed by the Leave campaign. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was somewhat halfhearted in his support for the “Remain” camp, reflecting his ambivalence about whether staying in Europe would be the right focus when it comes to helping working people. This referendum has also displayed a major fissure between Britain’s metropolitan elite and the rest of the country, essentially pitting rich versus poor across the normal party divide. “Two nations, in short, are staring at each other across a political chasm,” wrote John Harris in the Guardian, which supported Remain, but James Bartholomew made the same point in the Spectator magazine, which supported Leave. Those with a university degree supported Remain in large numbers, according to polls those with little higher education supported Leave in equally large numbers. Major cities, multicultural and replete with immigrants, tended to support Remain, while the countryside and poorer areas along the eastern coast were strongly for Leave. People over 45, and especially retirees, strongly supported Leave, while younger Britons strongly supported Remain. Those with cosmopolitan lives and money were afraid to lose it those whose lives are bounded by England and are struggling with the pressures of globalization and immigration looked for a return to a calmer, more homogeneous past. So the divisions are just as much cultural as economic, and they raise serious questions about Britain’s political coherence and unity, and about how long it may take to heal the wounds made or reopened in this noisy, often vicious campaign. The referendum also sharply exacerbated tensions within the four countries of the United Kingdom and gave a jolt to English nationalism, already on the rise since the Scottish independence referendum failed in 2014. In addition to intensifying demands for another referendum on independence for Scotland, the outcome of the European Union vote may also increase demands in England, which makes up 85 percent of the British population, for its own devolved Parliament to vote on laws concerning only England, just as Parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do now for their regions. Amid the overwhelming confusion about the next few years, it will take more than a few reassuring words about a festival of democracy to begin to bring Britain back together. As Mr. Harris warned, “We are in a terrible mess, and it is probably going to take decades to even begin to put things right. ” | 0fake |
Exclusive: U.S. group Sierra Club seeks probe of EPA's Pruitt over CO2 comments | NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. environmental group the Sierra Club has asked the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general to investigate whether the agency’s head, Scott Pruitt, violated internal policies when he said he did not believe carbon dioxide was a major contributor to climate change, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Lawyers for the Sierra Club wrote to the EPA’s Office of Inspector General on Tuesday asking the independent watchdog to check whether Pruitt violated the EPA’s 2012 Scientific Integrity Policy when he told a CNBC interviewer on March 9, “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.” The request ramps up tension between the U.S. environmental movement and the administration of President Donald Trump, who has called global warming a hoax meant to weaken the U.S. economy and has packed his Cabinet with people who question the science of climate change. An overwhelming majority of scientists think that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to global climate change, triggering sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms. “It’s pretty unprecedented to have the head of the EPA contradicting basic scientific facts,” Sierra Club Senior Attorney Elena Saxonhouse told Reuters on Wednesday. In the letter, the Sierra Club’s lawyers said Pruitt’s comments contradicted a “comprehensive review” of scientific research on climate change and appeared to be politically motivated. The EPA website says its policy is meant to maintain “a culture of scientific integrity for all its employees,” and requires EPA officials and staff to ensure the agency’s work respects the findings of the broader scientific community. “Administrator Pruitt’s comments are perfectly in keeping with the scientific integrity policy,” EPA spokesman John Konkus said in an email. “There is an ongoing scientific debate on climate change, its causes and its effect. That debate should be encouraged as the Administrator has done, not discouraged as Sierra Club is attempting to do.” A spokeswoman for the EPA’s inspector general said in an email the IG’s office could neither confirm nor deny investigation requests. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times while accepting campaign donations from the energy industry. Emails released on Feb. 22 by an Oklahoma Court showed Pruitt also used language provided by an energy company in one of his challenges of the EPA over methane emissions regulations. Sierra Club’s Saxonhouse said the group believed that the EPA’s scientific integrity policy applied to political appointees as well as career EPA staff, but said it was unclear how the agency could enforce it. “It shouldn’t just be a piece of paper or some words on a website. It’s intended to protect the public from bad decision-making that’s not based on real facts,” she said. | 0fake |
Fate of lawsuit brought by Trump model to be decided this month | NEW YORK (Reuters) - A judge will decide by the end of this month whether to proceed with a proposed class action lawsuit filed by a Jamaican fashion model against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s modeling agency, the judge’s office said. Alexia Palmer accuses Trump Model Management LLC of lying to the federal government in its work-visa application that said she would be paid a $75,000-a-year salary while living in the United States, according to court documents.RECOMMENDED: Iran tests more missiles, says capable of reaching Israel Instead, according to court papers, Palmer received a total of $3,880.75 during the three years she was under contract with the agency. The complaint alleges “fraudulent misrepresentation” and violations of U.S. immigration and labor laws. It asks for $225,000 in back pay. The suit was originally filed in October 2014. A decision on a pending motion by Trump Model Management to dismiss is expected by the end of March, the clerk for Judge Analisa Torres, who is presiding over the case in the U.S District Court, Southern District, told Reuters. If Torres rules the case can proceed, it could revive attention on Trump’s foreign labor practices at a time when the celebrity billionaire’s rise in American politics has riveted the world’s attention. Trump’s lawyers have called the case “frivolous” and “without merit.” In court documents, they said Palmer wasn’t an employee and was more than adequately compensated for a “very brief stint as a fashion model,” which they say amounted to less than 10 days of work over three years. Reuters could not independently confirm that assertion. “At the end of the day, this model just didn’t have a successful career, and we fully expect to win,” said Lawrence Rosen, a lawyer for Trump Model Management. Although Trump owns the modeling agency, the suit does not name him. Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement that Trump Model Management’s treatment of Palmer was in line with “standard practice in the modeling industry.” Palmer’s lawyer, Naresh Gehi, says his client was cheated of earnings and seduced by a life of glamour that never materialized. “The visa application the company filed with the government requires that people are paid the full amount,” Gehi said. “It’s a requirement.” Palmer, who was 17 when she came to New York in 2011, was not available to comment. Sylvia Ayass, a lawyer who has worked with models on visas like Palmer’s, said agencies typically pay what they state on visa applications. Trump has won Republican frontrunner status in the 2016 election in large part by positioning himself as a champion of the American worker who will deport illegal immigrants, build a wall with Mexico and do away with the off shoring of U.S. jobs. This is not the first time Trump’s labor practices have drawn criticism. A Reuters story published in August revealed that Trump’s companies sought to import at least 1,100 workers on temporary visas since 2000. Of those, 250 were filed for foreign fashion models, according to the Reuters analysis of federal Department of Labor data. Using a federal visa program called H-1B that allows U.S. employers to hire “specialized” foreign labor, Trump’s modeling agency offered Palmer “at least $75,000 per year” for three years. It listed that salary on her H-1B visa application in 2011, according to the court documents reviewed by Reuters. It’s not the industry norm to use H-1B visas, which are usually reserved for highly skilled specialized labor like engineers, programmers and medical specialists. O-1 visas are more common, modeling agency lawyers and executives said. The O-1 is typically used by artists and athletes. Though H-1B use is rare, a Reuters analysis found that in the past three years, modeling agencies have submitted 181 applications for H-1B visas for foreign models. Of those, 173 stated that the model would be paid an hourly wage, ranging from as little as $8.40 an hour to as much as $500 an hour. The Trump Model yearly salary listed in the federal database of H-1B applications was the outlier. Rosen, the lawyer for Trump Model Management, said the $75,000 a year figure was simply a guess, not a guarantee. Under that contract, Palmer agreed “to promptly reimburse” Trump Model Management “for any and all costs and expenses” that the agency incurred relating to her modeling. According to the suit, the agreement stipulated that Trump Model Management would take a 20 percent cut of Palmer’s earnings but instead took 80 percent by deducting charges for everything from postage to walking lessons to mobile phone costs and limousine rides, as well as $4,000 in “administrative fees,” according to court documents. The suit said it was seeking class-action status to represent other models who believe they were misled and underpaid after coming to the United States with sponsorship from Trump’s modeling agency. | 0fake |
Tim Kaine: Trump ‘Unfit’ For Presidency Due To Blatant Disrespect Of Military (VIDEO) | Even though the election war is far from over, Tim Kaine won today s battle with Donald Trump when he blasted him for his blatant disrespect for the military and declared him unfit to serve as President of the United States as a result.Speaking near Fort Bragg, one of the country s largest Army bases, Kaine brought the crowd to their feet when he proclaimed the Republican nominee unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. Kaine said: Anybody who says the American military is a disaster is unfit to be commander in chief. I don t think, in the history of the United States, there has been a major party nominee who has talked with such disrespect about the military, The vice presidential candidate then shredded Trump for his callous remarks about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) having been a prisoner of war while fighting for the United States in Vietnam. Kaine ripped into the billionaire bully for saying he didn t consider people who had been captured to be heroes. How about making fun of John McCain for being a POW? he asked. Could you be more thick-headed, insensible and ignorant than that? Kaine also tore into Trump for attacking the Khan family, whose son was an Army captain that sacrificed his life in Iraq to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. Going after a Gold Star family? I ve gotta believe in North Carolina that s viewed the same way it s viewed in Virginia, Kaine said.Kaine then compared Trump s reaction to Khizr Khan s criticisms at the Democratic National Convention to that of Hillary Clinton in response to remarks made by family members grieving for those who were killed in Benghazi at the Republican National Convention. Unlike Trump, Kaine explained, his running mate would never consider attacking a grieving military family. That s not what a president does, said Kaine emphatically. That s not what a president does. And Donald Trump is not ready to be president. Watch Tim Kaine declare Trump unfit to serve as president because of his disrespect for the military, here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEmklpv4SsM]Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1real |
Barnyard Dust Offers a Clue to Stopping Asthma in Children - The New York Times | Scientists say they may have found a sort of magic ingredient to prevent asthma in children: microbes from farm animals, carried into the home in dust. The results of their research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, were so convincing that they raised the possibility of developing a spray to do the same thing for children who do not have regular contact with cows and horses. It is a pressing problem because as many as 10. 6 percent of children have asthma, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And there is no cure for this chronic and frightening disease. The discovery originated with an idea that has been around for years: that a growing number of children were developing asthma because their daily environments were simply too clean. If children are exposed to microbes that stimulate their immune systems in the first few years of life, they will be protected against asthma, the hypothesis says. As asthma rates climbed, researchers published study after study supporting what has become known as the hygiene hypothesis. The most consistent findings were from studies that compared children who grew up on farms — less asthma — with children who grew up in other environments. But in every case, there were many other differences between the children who had less asthma and those who had more. So it was not clear what exactly might have led to different asthma rates. What was missing was evidence that one essential factor in the environment was protecting children. And what was needed was a reason it had exerted its effect. The new study provides this, asthma researchers say, which is what makes its results so spectacular. It is still early. The study was small, and even though its results were striking, more work needs to be done. But, said Dr. Brian Christman, a pulmonologist at Vanderbilt University and a volunteer spokesman for the American Lung Association, “They really nailed it. ” The new work began when a group of investigators noticed that something peculiar was happening with children from two insular farming groups: the Amish of Indiana and the Hutterites of North Dakota. Asthma is rare among the Amish, affecting 2 to 4 percent of the population, but common among the Hutterites, with 15 to 20 percent affected. Yet the Amish and the Hutterites have similar genetic backgrounds. The Amish originated in Switzerland, the Hutterites in Austria. Members of both groups have large families and a very simple lifestyle. Their diets are similar, children in both groups have little exposure to tobacco smoke or polluted air, and both groups forbid indoor pets. Both groups also have meticulously clean homes. There was one difference, though: farming methods. The Amish live on dairy farms. They do not use electricity, and use horses to pull their plows and for transportation. Their barns are close to their homes, and their children play in them. The Hutterites have no objection to electricity and live on large, industrialized communal farms. Their cows are housed in huge barns, more like hangars, away from their homes. Children do not generally play in Hutterite barns. The researchers decided to start with a small study. They looked at 30 Amish children and 30 Hutterite children and asked what sort of immune cells were in their blood. “We never thought we would see a difference,” said Carole Ober, an author of the study and the chairwoman of the department of human genetics at the University of Chicago. To the researchers’ astonishment, she said,“we saw whopping differences with very, very different cell types and cell numbers. ” None of the Amish children had asthma. And they all had a large proportion of neutrophils — white blood cells that are the immune system’s paramedics and are part of what is known as the innate immune system. These children’s neutrophils were newly emerged from their bone marrow, evidence of a continual reaction to microbial invaders. “All 30 of the Amish kids had this,” said Anne I. Sperling, another author of the study and an associate professor of immunology and medicine at the University of Chicago. By contrast, six of the 30 Hutterite children had asthma, and all of them had far fewer neutrophils in their blood. The neutrophils that they did have were older ones, not cells that had just emerged. Instead, their blood was swarming with another type of immune cell, eosinophils, which provoke allergic reactions. It was as if they were primed for an asthma attack as soon as they breathed something to set it off. With the Amish children, Dr. Sperling said, it would clearly take a lot more provocation to set off an allergic response. The researchers decided that the differences between the Amish and the Hutterite children were so great that they should forge ahead with additional research to try to figure out what was stimulating the Amish innate immune system. They analyzed dust from the Amish and the Hutterite homes. The Amish dust was loaded with debris from bacteria the Hutterite dust was not. The researchers sent the dust to Dr. Donata Vercelli, an associate director of the asthma and airway research center at the University of Arizona, who would test the dust in mice. She put dust — Amish or Hutterite — into the airways of mice 14 times over a month and then exposed the animals to allergens. She measured how the airways responded: Did they constrict and twitch? Were they inflamed? “We found exactly what we found in the children,” Dr. Vercelli said. “If we give the Amish dust, we protect the mice. If we give the Hutterite dust, we do not protect them. ” Dr. Ober and her colleagues heard the results in a conference call with Dr. Sperling. “Our jaws were hanging open,” Dr. Ober said. “We could not believe it. ” Dr. Vercelli repeated the test and added another control. She gave the Amish dust to mice that were missing genes needed for the innate immune response. This time, the dust did not protect them. “It was incredibly exciting,” Dr. Sperling said. “Now we have a model that allows us to do these studies like never before. We can zoom in on microbial products. ” The work is scientifically sound, said Dr. William Busse, a professor of allergy, pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Wisconsin. “It is an extremely positive march forward,” he said. “This is an exciting paper. ” Now, said Dr. Talal Chatila, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School, “it is not to start thinking of how one could harness those bacteria for a therapeutic intervention. ” Dr. Chatila, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new paper, hastened to add that he was not suggesting that people start packaging Amish dust and selling it in pharmacies to protect children from asthma. But, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if inactive forms of the bacteria could be used. ” | 0fake |
Radio host Ingraham says she's being considered for White House post | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham said on Sunday she is being considered by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as White House press secretary. Ingraham said she has talked to Trump and she was privileged to be considered. “It’s an intriguing idea,” she said on “Fox News Sunday.” Ingraham defended the Trump transition team’s decision not to include a pool of reporters when he has traveled at times. She said the news media had been “stacking the deck against Trump” before the election. | 0fake |
Kentucky governor: Electing Hillary Clinton may eventually lead to violence | Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) told religious conservatives at the Values Voters Summit this weekend that blood might have to be shed if Hillary Clinton is elected president.
"I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” Bevin said Saturday. “But that may, in fact, be the case."
He added, citing Thomas Jefferson's "blood of patriots and tyrants" quote: "The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood. Of who? The tyrants, to be sure. But who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren."
Bevin, a tea party supporter who has been known to make a controversial comment or two, clarified his comments to the Lexington Herald-Leader, saying he was referring to military sacrifice.
"Today we have thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas, and they need our full backing,” Bevin said in a statement. “We cannot be complacent about the determination of radical Islamic extremists to destroy our freedoms."
Bevin's comments echo a tea party rallying cry that has cropped up from time to time. Activists and even some lawmakers have cited Jefferson's quote to reinforce the stakes for their political movement.
As for the 2016 campaign, Bevin's comments are the latest example of elected officials promising very bad things if the wrong candidate is elected. And it's not just Democrats warning about Donald Trump having his finger on the nuclear button — a prospect that has been the subject of a Hillary Clinton campaign ad.
Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) warned recently that a Clinton win might mean this could be the "last election" in which Americans would be able to elect a president with "godly moral principles."
Similarly, other Republicans have warned that nominating Trump might lead to the end of the Republican Party as we know it. George W. Bush even suggested he might be the last Republican president.
Conservative talk show hosts have warned of even worse, up to and including civil war. But Bevin's comments appear to be the most full-throated warning about a Clinton presidency so far from a high-ranking GOP elected official. | 0fake |
Cruz takes on Caitlyn Jenner over transgender fight | Washington (CNN) Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is standing his ground in his belief that allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice "opens the door for predators," dismissing criticism from Caitlyn Jenner, who mocked him over the issue last week.
"This is not a matter of right or left, or Democrat or Republican. This is common sense. It doesn't make sense for grown adult men, strangers, to be alone in a restroom with a little girl," Cruz told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
"This is the height of political correctness," Cruz continued. "And frankly, the concern is not of the Caitlyn Jenners of the world, but if the law is such that any man, if he feels like it, can go in a woman's restroom and you can't ask him to leave, that opens the door for predators."
Jenner, a reality TV star and activist for transgender causes, posted a video to Facebook on Wednesday knocking Cruz for his support of a controversial North Carolina law that requires people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their "biological sex" stated on their birth certificate, rather than how they self-identify.
After using a women's bathroom in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City -- following a recent comment by Trump in which he said Jenner could use whichever bathroom she wanted at the tower -- Jenner, a Republican, quipped: "By the way, Ted, nobody got molested."
"I've spent a lot of years in law enforcement dealing with child predators that are sick individuals," Cruz told Tapper. "That doesn't mean that that is the people who are transgendered. But there are predators in the world, and just saying that you're a man, you can go in the girls' restroom if you feel like it, opens the door for criminals."
"This is the height of political correctness for Donald Trump to say yes, let grown men in the bathroom with little girls," he said.
Cruz told Tapper that Fiorina's words owed to her being a tough competitor.
"She was a competitor in this primary. She was a fierce competitor in a primary people take shots at each other. That's part of the process," Cruz said. "You know, we all remember when Ronald Reagan picked George Herbert Walker Bush as his vice president and they had to explain why Bush had called Reaganomics 'voodoo economics.' Listen, that happens when you come through a primary and you unite."
Cruz added: "I can tell you Carly and I have spent weeks and weeks and weeks together on the road barnstorming the state of Indiana, barnstorming the country, and I have gotten to know and respect Carly. She's an extraordinary leader."
Boehner 'let out his inner Trump'
Asked about the criticism, Cruz shrugged it off.
"I think Boehner kinda let out his inner Trump, and he had some colorful imagery there. But it's interesting, when Boehner was attacking me, he praised Hillary Clinton. He thinks she's terrific, and he praised Donald Trump. He said Donald is his friend, his golfing buddy, his texting buddy," Cruz said. "And there's a reason -- if you like, if you want to see the next president as a Boehner Republican, then Donald Trump is your man."
So why does Boehner dislike Cruz?
"If you look at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and John Boehner, they're all part of the same corrupt Washington system where the rich get richer (and) the powerful and the lobbyists use government power for personal benefit," Cruz said.
'Behind the Donald Trump mask is Hillary Clinton'
"You know who I feel the worst for? I feel the worst for Donald's supporters who believe his role," Cruz said. "But every day, if he gets closer to the nomination, he starts taking his mask off, and behind the Donald Trump mask is Hillary Clinton."
"That is quite an image," Tapper said. | 0fake |
Dem Rep Meeks: Trump Is Using Similar Tactics as Putin, Hugo Chavez Against the Press - Breitbart | Rep. Gregory Meeks ( ) claimed Saturday on MSNBC that President Donald Trump is using similar tactics as Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in attacks against the press. “When we look at the threats that number 45 continues to give to the press, seeming as though he wants to be Mr. Putin himself because those are the same tactics that Mr. Putin and a lot of my Republican colleagues have gone against,” Meeks explained. “When you think about Hugo Chavez or Viktor Orban of Hungary, those are individuals who shunned the press. And it seems as though Donald Trump wants to move in that same direction. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0fake |
Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Fundraising Benefited From Loophole In Federal Anti-Corruption Rule | A combat veteran with PTSD wasn’t allowed to fly with her service dog. So she sued. ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Fundraising Benefited From Loophole In Federal Anti-Corruption Rule By VNN on October 31, 2016 ‘Particularly Vulnerable To Pay To Play Practices’
by David Sirota AND Andrew Perez (MAPLIGHT) AND Avi Asher-Schapiro
Despite an anti-corruption rule that was designed to reduce the financial industry’s political power, top officials from the investment firm BlackRock hosted Hillary Clinton at campaign fundraisers earlier this year. The cash — which poured in through a loophole in the law — came in as BlackRock’s federal contracts to manage billions of dollars of retiree assets will be up for renewal during the next president’s term.
In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission looked to stop campaign donations to public officials from financial firms seeking to convince those officials to hire them to manage public employees’ retirement assets. The agency enacted a pay-to-play rule that applied such a restriction to state and local officials. The rule, however, was structured in a way that effectively exempted federal agencies from its restrictions — and it was created even though a major federal agency had just been plagued by an investment-related influence-peddling scandal.
In practice, the gap in the rule allows BlackRock executives to raise big money for presidential candidates who — if they win — will appoint the officials that run the federal Thrift Savings Plan, which awards contracts to manage retirement assets for nearly 5 million current and former federal employees.
The loophole also allows Wall Street executives to give cash to presidential candidates, even as those executives’ firms get deals to manage — and earn fees from — investments for the federal government’s separate pension insurance agency, which is run by presidential appointees.
In all, the loophole in the SEC rule effectively leaves nearly a half-trillion dollars of retirement assets unprotected by the nation’s major anti-corruption measure. Clinton’s presidential campaign has raised more than $1 million from financial firms that are contracted to manage those assets.
Two SEC spokespeople, Ryan White and Judith Burns, declined to answer questions from International Business Times and MapLight about the pay-to-play rule carveout for federal agencies.
‘Particularly Vulnerable To Pay To Play Practices’
This report is part of an IBT/MapLight series examining the extent to which corporate interests are able to circumvent federal and state anti-corruption rules designed to restrict the influence of money on public policy.
When the SEC passed its rule to restrict Wall Street campaign contributions, the agency said the measure was necessary because publicly administered retirement programs “are particularly vulnerable to pay to play practices” which can end up “leading to inferior management, diminished returns or greater losses” for retirees. A study released last month validated that concern: Researchers at Stanford, Rice and Erasmus universities found that retirement systems whose overseers “have received relatively more contributions from the financial industry have lower returns.”
Federal regulators ended up prohibiting investment firms from earning fees from “a government entity” — that is, a retirement system — if firm executives donate to a public official who has power to influence the retirement system’s investment decisions. The rule, though, narrowly defined “government entity”: It says the term means only an agency at the state or local level, not the federal government.
“There’s no clear carve-out for federal plans, but the definition itself also does not insinuate that they are covered,” Benjamin Keane, an attorney at the law firm Dentons, told IBT/MapLight.
Through legislation, congressional lawmakers could close the loophole by passing a pay-to-play law that defined “government entity” to encompass the federal government. Without that, the loophole will remain.
‘Wouldn’t Appear To Put Such Firms At Risk’
The result: Pay-to-play restrictions do not apply to the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) — a $458 billion behemoth that is the single largest retirement system in America.
BlackRock officials delivered over $100,000 to President Barack Obama’s campaigns, and Obama’s appointees to the TSP’s board have awarded BlackRock contracts to manage $251 billion on behalf of millions of federal workers. Those contracts were awarded by the Obama administration between 2012 and 2015.
Now, with those deals coming up for renewal, BlackRock employees are helping raise big money for Clinton, Obama’s potential successor.
BlackRock official Matt Mallow and his wife are listed on Clinton’s website as “Hillblazers” who have raised or donated at least $100,000 for the Democratic candidate’s 2016 campaign. Mallow hosted a fundraiser for Clinton this past February. Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton adviser, also hosted a fundraiser for her and serves on BlackRock’s board of directors. Clinton’s campaign has received roughly $100,000 directly from employees of BlackRock.
If Clinton wins the election, the agency her appointees run will decide the fate of BlackRock’s TSP contracts — and there is nothing in the SEC pay-to-play rule to stop those appointees from rewarding Clinton’s donors.
“Since the Thrift Savings Plan is solely a creature of the federal government,” Keane told IBT/MapLight, “contributions to the president or presidential candidates by covered executives of investment advisors to the TSP wouldn’t appear to put such firms at risk.”
A TSP spokesperson, Kim Weaver, confirmed to IBT/MapLight that “the SEC has no jurisdiction” over the board that governs the retirement system.
While TSP management contracts involve relatively low fees, the deals are coveted. The TSP does not publish an itemized list of the exact fees it pays to outside money managers, but documents reviewed by IBT show that the TSP pays about $106 million in annual expenses for the specific funds that BlackRock manages.
BlackRock likely earns additional revenues through securities lending, in which it can lend out portfolio assets to other firms for a fee. BlackRock can also use TSP’s holdings to exert influence with major corporations.
Weaver said the agency “uses a competitive RFP [request for proposal] process when selecting fund managers. The vendor is selected purely on the basis of best value and the selection is done on a fiduciary basis.” She said the agency’s presidentially appointed board members “do not serve as selecting officials on any [agency] procurement.”
Federal law says the board sets “policies for the investment and management” of the TSP, and agency press releases note that the board selected BlackRock for the four investment contracts the firm won.
‘Serious Questions About The Integrity Of The Process’
The TSP is not the only source of investment business at the federal level: There is also the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation , which insures the pensions of 44 million Americans and pays out benefits if private pension systems collapse. PBGC officials currently oversee roughly $88 billion of investments.
The PBGC ( Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation ) invests money with 23 financial firms, according to a PBGC spokesperson. Employees at twelve of those firms — including J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock — have collectively given Clinton’s presidential campaign more than $1.2 million. Goldman Sachs also paid Clinton $675,000 for speeches after she completed her tenure as Secretary of State. Those same firms donated over $870,000 to Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
The PBGC declined to disclose any information on how much in annual fees the agency pays the Wall Street firms, but there are clues about how much at least some of those firms might be making off the system. The agency’s most recent financial report says roughly 1.7 percent of its assets are in “private equity, private debt, and private real estate.” That translates to roughly $1.5 billion of such investments. Assuming industry standard fees of up to 2 percent, that one small slice of PBGC investments alone could generate up to $30 million of annual management fees for financial firms — on top of any additional fees levied on investment returns.
Asked if it is appropriate for the agency to award contracts to firms whose executives make contributions to presidential campaigns, agency spokesman Marc Hopkins told IBT/MapLight: “PBGC follows federal procurement laws and regulations.”
The SEC’s decision to shield the federal government from the pay-to-play rule is striking, given that the PBGC was engulfed in an influence-peddling scandal at the beginning of President Obama’s term.
In January 2009, Charles E.F. Millard resigned as head of the PBGC amid accusations he inappropriately communicated with firms who were courting lucrative PBGC contracts. A whistleblower told the agency’s inspector general that Millard had been communicating with Wall Street firms seeking business from the PBGC, and that Millard refused to cut ties even after he was warned of potential ethical violations.
The investigation found that BlackRock and Goldman Sachs assigned employees to win over Millard. BlackRock even tasked a former high school classmate of Millard’s to keep in touch.
Goldman provided Millard with advice about how to persuade his colleagues to invest more PBGC funds in alternative investments, and the PBGC soon picked BlackRock and Goldman to manage nearly $1.6 billion in PBGC assets.
The inspector general said at the time that the “improper actions raise serious questions about the integrity of the process by which the winners” of federal investment contracts were selected. The IG noted that after Millard resigned, a Goldman executive worked to help him find a Wall Street job. Millard — who was not criminally charged — worked as a managing director and head of pension relations at Citigroup until earlier this year.
A few months after the IG report was released, President Obama appointed a private equity executive to take over the agency — just as that executive’s New York firm was facing questions about whether it used political influence to secure public pension deals. A year later, the SEC passed its pay to play rule — including the language that made sure the rule did not apply to the PBGC and other federal agencies.
Also see: | 1real |
Senior Saudi prince says Trump's Jerusalem move threatens stability | RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital will stoke violence in the region, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said, dismissing reports of prior consultations made with Riyadh over the move. It is a very bad decision. The consequences will be more bloodshed, more conflict rather than peaceful resolution, Prince Turki, a senior royal family member and a former ambassador to Washington, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday in Riyadh. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and veered from international consensus this month by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Most countries say the city s status must be left to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia condemned the decision. Saudi King Salman told President Trump that any decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached will inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported. But Saudi Arabia stopped short of calling for any Arab action against the decision. Palestinian officials say Riyadh has been working for weeks behind the scenes to press them to support a nascent U.S. peace plan. The reaction here was total surprise, said Prince Turki, who now holds no government office but remains influential. ... If there has been prior consultation or anything like that, why would the King go through the process of telling him (Trump) this is a bad idea and make that known publicly? I don t think there ever was any discussion of this before the decision was taken, he added. As regards possible Saudi and Arab action in response to Trump s decision, Prince Turki said: I am sure lots of people would prefer to have something just for the sake of appearance but I don t think that s how the Saudi government operates. If it is going to take action, it is going to be a serious action. Four Palestinian officials, who spoke on condition they not be named, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have discussed in detail a grand bargain that Trump and Jared Kushner, the president s son-in-law and adviser, are expected to unveil in the first half of 2018. Arab officials say the plan is still in its early phases of development. Prince Turki said he was unaware of details of any such plan. Prince Turki is a son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. His brother, Saud al-Faisal, served as foreign minister for 40 years until 2015, and their branch of the family is seen as influential over Saudi foreign policy, even as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has solidified his authority. Prince Saud championed a 2002 Arab peace initiative which called for normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel in return for Israel s withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. In a letter to Trump published in a Saudi newspaper on Dec. 11, Prince Turki said that Trump s opportunistic Jerusalem move would threaten security in the region. The now much diminished terrorist international gets a rejuvenation boost from you and re-energizes its recruitment of volunteers to broaden their murderous attacks on innocent civilians, worldwide, he wrote in his letter. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said he would encourage a more moderate and tolerant version of Islam in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The ambitious young prince has already taken some steps to loosen Saudi Arabia s ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police, permitting public concerts and announcing plans to allow women to drive next year. Prince Turki said that Saudis share in the blame for the spread of extremist ideology through funding of mosques abroad that may have fallen into the wrong hands, but that such funding stopped since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The kingdom has been the victim of such people and such activity... Since Sept. 11 the kingdom has had a sustained and continuous program opposing extremist ideology, not just in the kingdom but abroad, he told Reuters. For a period of time, yes it is true there were some Saudis who promoted issues of extremism and so on. Now we are getting rid of all of those. I would say we have gotten rid of most of them, if not all of them. | 0fake |
Judge Orders Release of Some Documents Related to Clinton Email Inquiry - The New York Times | A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered the partial unsealing of a government search warrant and supporting documents stemming from a federal inquiry into emails belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton. The judge, P. Kevin Castel of United States District Court, ordered on Monday that the documents be posted on the court’s docket at noon on Tuesday unless his decision is appealed and stayed or modified by a federal appeals court. The emails were discovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during an unrelated investigation of Anthony D. Weiner, the former congressman and estranged husband of Ms. Abedin. Mr. Weiner has been under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan over allegations that he exchanged illicit text messages with a girl. The emails, which the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, revealed to Congress on Oct. 28, jolted Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign and led to broad criticism of his handling of the investigation. On Nov. 6, Mr. Comey told Congress that the bureau’s review of the emails had not changed its conclusion: Mrs. Clinton should face no charges over her handling of classified information. The requested unsealing of the warrant and related materials was made by E. Randol Schoenberg, a lawyer who has criticized Mr. Comey’s handling of the investigation and who has written that Mr. Comey’s actions cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency. Mr. Schoenberg argued in a court filing that access to the materials “that provided the basis for the investigation are of the utmost public importance. ” Last week, a Justice Department lawyer, Jennie L. Kneedler, said the government objected to the unsealing request, but Judge Castel made it clear that he was leaning toward releasing the materials, with some redactions. He asked the government to provide the documents and proposed redactions to him under seal. In his ruling, the judge noted that the government, in its filing, “effectively” withdrew its opposition to Mr. Schoenberg’s request and asked that the documents be unsealed with redactions. In ordering the unsealing, the judge said Mrs. Clinton had little “privacy interest in the release of documents identifying her as the subject of this investigation. ” “The strong presumption of access attached to the search warrant and related materials is not overcome by any remaining privacy interest of Secretary Clinton,” the judge said. Although Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner are not mentioned in the ruling, their names appear to be among the redacted information, along with portions related to the investigation of Mr. Weiner. Mrs. Clinton had taken no position on the request, Mr. Schoenberg’s lawyer, David B. Rankin, said in a court filing last week. Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, declined to comment on the ruling, as did Arlo a lawyer for Mr. Weiner, and lawyers for Ms. Abedin. The Justice Department also declined to comment. | 0fake |
Putin: Use of 'mythical' Russian military threat a ‘profitable business' | vladimir putin , Valdai , sochi , RBTH Daily Russian President Vladimir Putin. Source: Kremlin.ru
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the use of what he described as a "mythical" Russian military threat is "a profitable business."
The Russian leader made this statement on Oct. 27 at a session of the Valdai international discussion club in Sochi.
"Fabricated, mythical threats like the so-called Russian military threat are constantly repeated. This is, indeed, a profitable business to seek new budgets in countries and press allies to fit the interests of one superpower, expand NATO and bring the alliance’s infrastructure, combat units and military hardware to our borders," said Putin.
"The truth is, however, that Russia is not going to attack anyone, that’s ridiculous," he continued. | 1real |
DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS IS? CLINTON FAMILY CORRUPTION RUNS DEEP | Do you know who this is? He is Edward Ed Mezvinsky, born January 17, 1937. Then you ll probably say, Who is Ed Mezvinsky? Well, he is a former Democrat congressman who represented Iowa s 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives for two terms, from 1973 to 1977.He sat on the House Judiciary Committee that decided the fate of Richard Nixon.He was outspoken saying that Nixon was a crook and a disgrace to politics and the nation and should be impeached.He and the Clintons were friends and very politically intertwined for many years.Ed Mezvinsky had an affair with NBC News reporter Marjorie Sue Margolies and later married her after his wife divorced him.In 1993, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, then a freshman Democrat in Congress, cast the deciding vote that got President Bill Clinton s controversial tax package through the House of Representatives.In March 2001, Mezvinsky was indicted and later pleaded guilty to 31 of 69 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud.Ed Mezvinsky embezzled more than $10 million dollars from people via both a Ponzi scheme and the notorious Nigerian e-mail scams.He was found guilty and sentenced to 80 months in federal prison. After serving less than five years in federal prison, he was released in April 2008 and remains on federal probation.To this day, he still owes $9.4 million in restitution to his victims.About now you are saying, So what! Well, this is Marc and Chelsea Mezvinsky.That s right; Ed Mezvinsky is Chelsea Clinton s father-in law.Now Marc and Chelsea are in their early thirties and purchased a 10.5 million dollar NYC apartment (after being married in George Soros mansion).Has anyone heard mention of any of this in any of the media?If this guy was Jenna or Barbara Bush s, or better yet, Sarah Palin s daughter s father-in- law, the news would be an everyday headline and every detail would be reported over and over.And yet say there are no double standards in political reporting. And people are already talking about Hillary as our next President! And then there is possibly Chelsea for president in our future!The cycle never ends!Via: Before It s News | 1real |
U.S. commerce secretary eyes more trade moves: WSJ | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration may undertake trade actions to protect the U.S. semiconductor, shipbuilding and aluminum industries, citing national security concerns, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the Wall Street Journal in an interview on Tuesday. He said those industries could qualify for protection under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which lets the president impose restrictions on imports for reasons of national security and was used to launch a probe of steel imports, the Journal reported. Last week, President Donald Trump launched a trade probe against China and other exporters of cheap steel into the U.S. market, raising the possibility of new tariffs. Ross said the Trump administration might intercede to aid Toshiba Corp’s U.S. unit Westinghouse Electric Co, which filed for bankruptcy last month. The company filed for bankruptcy protection after it incurred billions of dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S. Southeast. The bankruptcy cast doubt on the future of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in three decades. Ross said renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement should be completed by the end of 2017, the Journal reported. Ross told the newspaper that if the talks with Mexico and Canada go much beyond December, it would be difficult to get the pact ratified by Mexico. Mexico is due to hold its presidential election in July 2018. Ross said the Trump administration was considering restarting talks on bilateral trade deals with the European Union and China that the Obama administration had begun but never finished, the Journal reported, adding that he said the United States might reopen a bilateral deal with South Korea. Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told business leaders in Seoul that the Trump administration would review and reform the five-year-old free trade agreement between the two countries. Pence said the U.S. trade deficit had more than doubled in the five years since the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement began and there were too many barriers for U.S. businesses in the country. | 0fake |
Exclusive — White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on First 100 Days: President Trump ‘Going Big League on Trade’ - Breitbart | WASHINGTON, D. C. — White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told Breitbart News exclusively that he believes that President Donald Trump has been “going big league” on trade policy in his first 100 days in office. [“I think the president is going big league on trade right now,” Priebus said in an exclusive interview on Thursday afternoon, just a couple days before the mark. He went on to say: He just signed an executive order on aluminum that ends us being taken advantage of on aluminum. Last week it was steel. He’s been talking about NAFTA, and making sure that we get a good deal — and otherwise, if we don’t get a good deal, he’s willing to pull the trigger and start the process of getting out of NAFTA. One of the first things he did was get out of TPP, another campaign promise. I think the president is cooking with gas right now when it comes to trade. In the past week plus, Trump has gone hard after NAFTA — first signaling he would be open to scrapping the trade deal between the United States, Mexico, and Canada entirely, before agreeing to renegotiate the deal after phone calls with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Meanwhile, the president has cracked down on Canadian dairy and lumber industries — which have had a negative effect on U. S. counterparts — and zoned in on cracking down on unfair practices on the world stage with regards to the aluminum and steel industries. All of that comes after, in just his first couple weeks as president, he followed through on a campaign promise to rip up the Trans Pacific Partnership — once and for all. Priebus’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News comes as the mark looms, and it focused on the administration’s successes, setbacks, and lessons learned. Despite legacy, establishment media outlets claiming repeatedly that Trump has not delivered much in his first few months in office, the president has actually had a number of successes across government and in all facets of his agenda with more to come, Priebus pointed out: Well, look, I think that the president accomplished something that’s quite historical whether you look at deregulation or TPP — 28 pieces of legislation, he followed through on the ethics pledge to make sure that all of his staff are barred from ever lobbying for a foreign government and five years within that same department as a domestic lobbyist. He’s touched on HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] opioids, Keystone, I could just go on and on — not to mention Gorsuch, who’s an incredible pick. Just look at the deregulation — obviously, you’ve written about it but it’s remarkable. For every new regulation, two regulations have to be dismissed which means he put our country on a permanent glide path toward deregulation on a permanent basis. There’s more — but one last thing: Look at how he’s realigned our position in the world. He’s got leverage with North Korea and China, realigning there, he’s forcing countries to pay up to NATO. We had the NATO meeting and I know some people were sort of perplexed that he was on stage with NATO but what was the first thing that came out of the Secretary General’s mouth? He said President Trump is 100 percent right that these countries have to start paying up. Look at Egypt: He was criticized for having a meeting with Egypt. What happened 10 days later? The prisoner was released, something that Barack Obama couldn’t get done. All I would tell you is I think if you look at everything President Trump could control, he’s done a remarkable job and I would say a historically good job. All of that is true: Trump has opened up the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline instituted the aforementioned ethics pledge held events focused on and signed executive orders related to HBCUs and the opioid epidemic achieved that success with NATO at a meeting and joint press conference with the Secretary General secured the release of an American prisoner held by the Egyptian government and appointed and overseen the confirmation in the U. S. Senate of Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court. Specifically on Gorsuch, Priebus told Breitbart News, the fact that Trump nominated him and the whole process that played out should be proof Trump is “a man of his word. ” Priebus told Breitbart News: For one thing, the entire process should be totally a complete validation that President Trump is a man of his word because he put out that list, he told the world that ‘I’m going to choose a judge from this list,’ some people questioned it, but he followed through in grand fashion. That’s number one. Number two, the process of interviewing, the process of vetting started back in November after the victory and the process was methodical and he spoke to all the right people and players and groups and had meetings in the White House if you remember with Republicans and Democrats. He talked to trade groups, he talked to citizens across the country, he talked to members of the Senate, he did everything that you would expect a professional, competent operation to do and he did it every day until ultimately he made the decision to choose Justice Gorsuch. Priebus added that the execution of the Gorsuch pick rollout, among many other things — including operations at the White House, where Trump has had an overpacked schedule nearly every day with multiple events, bill signings, executive order signings, meetings with foreign dignitaries, and more since his inauguration on Jan. 20 — is a sign that the White House runs smoothly. No small feat. Priebus said: Even the mystery of who it would be up until the very time Justice Gorsuch walked out into the East Room was executed to a T, which sort of brings us to another point which is there’s a lot — you look at the here in the White House. One EO [executive order] signing, a bill signing, a meeting with a trade group, a bilateral meeting with a foreign dignitary, and you look at the amount of activity that goes on in this White House with this president — it’s not like he’s doing one event a day, he’s doing one thing after the next and he’s doing it flawlessly. Just so you know, that doesn’t happen by accident. The team here, everything from the public liaison to the political operation to the intergovernmental agency process, I’m just telling you that though the Gorsuch thing is the big shiny object that was flawless, you look at all of these events that happen, you have to say there’s not a lot of things that go wrong on a regular basis on the operation in the White House. Another point that has appeared in virtually no media roundups of Trump’s first 100 days, Priebus said, is the president’s first address to a joint session of Congress. That speech earned him universal praise, and one of the most powerful moments in modern presidential history — his exchange with Carryn Owens, the widow of fallen U. S. Navy SEAL Ryan Owens — rocked the world that night. Priebus continued: I think what you saw that night was everything that President Trump believed in — whether it be from the 1980s, the 1990s, where we are today, the feeling that he has about this country, how much better we should be and how much stronger we should be and how much more respected we should be — was captured that night,” Priebus told Breitbart News about the president’s speech that evening. “It was captured through a lot of issues. It was captured through talking about education, it was captured through talked about our position on the world stage, it was captured talking about what we need to do to repeal and replace Obamacare, but beside that it was captured in a moment of pride looking at a widow up in the balcony that lost a hero soldier and honored by a president that understood the incredible value of life and the value and respect that he has for the heroes of this country and also the respect for the United States of America at that moment where the president, the House and the Senate are getting together and talking about how great America ought to be all coming together in a stew of pride that was captured by looking at that great family up in the balcony. That’s what I was thinking about when that happened and I think that’s what a lot of people were thinking about. Since Trump won the election, and especially since he has been in office, nearly every economic indicator has been on the upswing — from the stock market to employment numbers to business development and more — something Priebus attributes to an overall message of optimism emanating from the president. Priebus’s words: I think what’s important to know is that underlying all of the things that President Trump is doing is one real basic theme which is optimism,” Priebus said. “There’s an incredible optimism among manufacturers, business groups, people that are expecting a better future. All the polling aside — I know everyone loves to talk about the polling — but one of the things that gets lost, and you touched on it, is that people are optimistic for the future. People believe that President Trump is going to follow through on his promises and that those promises are going to result in a better future for everybody. When you look at the stock market, you look at business growth, the housing market, sales getting better, people being able to buy and sell their house, all those things matter — and that sort of optimism underneath everything is I think a great foundation for President Trump’s legacy moving forward. On immigration, illegal border crossings are down, while Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have increased efforts to enforce the law. President Trump recently, in a meeting with conservative media at the White House earlier this week, compared — the drug trafficking connected gang — to terrorist group Al Qaeda, and the administration has created an office, VOICE, designed to represent families with victims of illegal immigrant crime. Trump, meanwhile, maintains plans to build a wall along the U. S. border once and for all — despite setbacks for now in funding from the congressional side of things. Priebus, in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News, sang the president’s praises on immigration: People understand across the borders that we have a president that’s not really interested in playing games on illegal immigration. We’ve had enough illegal immigration. It’s time to get serious about putting Americans first, and legal Americans first. I think we’re in agreement that there’s not anything good about illegal immigration, and a lot of it’s that really bad like drugs, human trafficking, violence — there’s a lot of reasons for having and wanting to have a wall on the southern border. It’s not just a wall that’s a campaign promise. It’s a wall that’s there to protect Americans from something that shouldn’t be happening. So as far as this issue is concerned, the president has been very strong on illegal immigration and I think that people that have been attempting to come over the border on the mass trek across hundreds of miles maybe even through Central America and Mexico are thinking again about it saying ‘you know what? This may not be worth it because we’re going to get turned around and get returned back to where we came from.’ That may sound harsh, but it’s not. It’s about sovereignty and protecting the people of the United States. On rolling back regulations, which Trump has done via executive action, and empowering his cabinet officials to act and through the Congressional Review Act, Priebus said that Trump’s vision resembles his predecessor Ronald Reagan. Priebus said to Breitbart News, “Here’s what I think people should understand: One of the pillars of Reaganomics was deregulation. If you ask anyone about Reaganomics, you can’t have a conversation about how that economic transformation happened without talking about deregulation. If you look at the president’s earliest actions, it’s all about deregulation. It’s all about CRAs. It’s about deregulation. I think he’s at 12 CRAs now, and there’s only one that was done previous to President Trump. So when you take the executive order on deregulation two for one, you take the CRA activity, you look at what he’s doing on clean power — and obviously that’s part of it — but this unbelievable effort and focus on deregulation is part of what his vision is. The president will tell you — and you saw in his tax plan, he’s all for lowering taxes for every American and it’s going to be the biggest tax cut for all Americans that’s ever been done — but put that aside, he also understands a lot of these guys in small business who put people to work, they will tell you ‘listen the taxes are out of control, we shouldn’t be paying 35 percent, but I’ll tell you what, what’s worse is the regulations. I’m getting killed on regulations. I hate the taxes, but the regulations are worse.’ The president gets it. ” | 0fake |
U.S. judge deals blow to Texas 'sanctuary' city law | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A U.S. district judge in Austin has rejected an effort by Texas to have a law that would punish so-called sanctuary cities be declared constitutional ahead of the measure taking effect next month. The Republican-backed law is the first of its kind since Republican Donald Trump became president in January, promising a crackdown on illegal immigrants and localities that protect them. Texas is the U.S. state with the longest border with Mexico. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, appointed under Republican President George H.W. Bush, dismissed the case without prejudice late on Wednesday. The brief ruling did not give a reason. Senate Bill 4 calls for jailing police chiefs, sheriffs and possibly frontline officers who fail to cooperate with U.S. immigration officials. The measure also allows police to ask about immigration status during a lawful detention. After the law was approved in May, Texas sued major urban areas, including Austin, El Paso and Houston, as well as civil rights groups, saying they backed policies of non-cooperation with federal immigration officials. At a June hearing, Sparks asked why a court should declare the law constitutional before it took effect on Sept. 1. He also questioned why he should hear the case when most of the parties were part of a separate lawsuit over the same law being heard in a federal court in San Antonio. The defendants contended they had abided by federal law and the suit should be dismissed because Texas had no evidence showing it had been harmed by a law not yet in effect. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Wednesday he was disappointed with the ruling on what he called an “undoubtedly constitutional law.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil rights group that has argued in court against the law, on Thursday said the Texas suit was a farce aimed at distracting attention from the harm that would come with SB 4. “This is a significant blow to the State, and its legal posturing has only resulted in wasted taxpayer money,” Edgar Saldivar, senior staff attorney of the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. In the federal case in San Antonio, a small border town and some of the largest Texas cities told a judge in June that SB 4 could lead to an immigration police state and establish illegal racial profiling. They asked the court to halt it, saying it was unconstitutional. | 0fake |
TOMI LAHREN’S Rant Against Anti-Trump Rioters Goes VIRAL: “A Bunch Of Sore Losers Gathered Together Isn’t A Protest, It’s A Tantrum” [VIDEO] | Share this with every offended snowflake in America clamoring for a safe space | 1real |
Trump Just Got DESTROYED By J.K. Rowling For His Attack On The Free Press – Here’s How (TWEET) | Donald Trump topped off his disastrous press conference on Thursday by calling the press the enemy of the American people on Friday, and is thankfully getting all the criticism and backlash he deserves.One of Trump s harshest and most outspoken critics, author J.K. Rowling, slammed Trump s comments about the press without even using any of her own words. Brilliantly quoting former President Theodore Roosevelt, Rowling tweeted to educate Trump on just how the free press worked, in case dictator Trump and the GOP forgot. In the tweet, Rowling pointed out that Roosevelt had written: To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong is morally treasonable to the American public. Rowling even used the trending #NotTheEnemy hashtag to show her support for the press. Check out the full tweet below:Exactly. The free press is protected by the U.S. Constitution, a document that Trump desperately needs to read before he does or says something else that will make him look foolish. In his attacks on the media, it s clear that Trump wants unquestioned, unchecked and unlimited power and doesn t care if it interferes with the very values that this country was built on. Trump wants to operate as if his word is law and that his alternative facts are the only truth Americans should be digesting without a second thought.Trump seems to be oblivious to the real responsibilities of the job he signed up for, as well as the fact the he actually works for the American people not the other way around. What Rowling did perfectly put Trump in his place and reminded the undeserving POTUS just exactly how a democracy is supposed to work.Featured image via Ben A. Pruchnie and Mario Tama / Getty Images | 1real |
Pray for Shade: Heat Wave Sets a Record in India - The New York Times | NEW DELHI — People weren’t frying eggs on the sidewalks in Phalodi during India’s hottest day ever — in fact, it was so hot that many did not venture out at all. Heat is a familiar part of life in Phalodi, in the deserts of Rajasthan, so residents were following a familiar drill even before temperatures soared to 123. 8 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday: When the heat comes, stay indoors, chug buttermilk and, if you must go out, cover your head and pray for shade. It is a drill that may prove ever more necessary if temperatures continue to rise. Dr. Bhani Ram Paliwal, the principal medical officer at a government hospital in Phalodi, could not remember a day like Thursday in 15 years of working there. Roughly 500 patients, almost double the average number, visited his outpatient department, many complaining of diarrhea and fever. “It was like heat waves were coming out of a clay oven,” he said. Scientists say that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high pace, average global temperatures could rise by more than six degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. “Climate change is obviously going to be playing a role,” said Andrew Robertson, a senior research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. May is typically the hottest month in much of India, Dr. Robertson said, with lots of sun and stagnating air leading to broiling temperatures. The Indian Meteorological Department has forecast a severe heat wave for parts of western India through Saturday. Extreme heat was also forecast across central and northern India into next week, though officials say another record high is unlikely. The heat is amplified by an accompanying drought across much of the country. As farmers await the rains of this season’s monsoon, they continue to struggle with the effects of inadequate rainfall from the last monsoon: negligible crop yields, scarce drinking water and emaciated cattle. “My buffalo is giving only of the normal milk,” said Dinesh Bishnoi, a farmer in the village of Sajananiyo ki Dhani near Phalodi. His grandfather, who is 93, “has never seen this kind of heat in his life,” he said. This year, India is facing “a double whammy: more heat and less water,” said Dileep Mavalankar, the director of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, who helped develop the city of Ahmedabad’s plan to cope with heat waves after a deadly one in 2010. “The main protection against heat is water,” he said. “If you don’t have adequate water or water gets contaminated, you might die because of diarrhea and dehydration in the summer. ” Last year more than 2, 400 people died from illness in India, according to India’s National Disaster Management Authority. Many of those who died were laborers and farmhands who work outside, even in peak temperatures, officials said. India’s former record high was 60 years ago, when temperatures reached 123 degrees Fahrenheit in Alwar, also a city in Rajasthan. The heat makes going outside virtually unthinkable and, experts say, staying indoors is a critical safety measure. “If you go outside you can’t survive in this heat wave,” Dr. Paliwal said. | 0fake |
Trump administration starts countdown to NAFTA talks in mid-August | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Thursday set the clock ticking toward a mid-August start of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico to try to win better terms for U.S. workers and manufacturers. With a letter to U.S. lawmakers, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said he triggered a 90-day consultation period with Congress, industries and the American public that would allow talks over one of the world’s biggest trading blocs to begin by Aug. 16. Renegotiation of NAFTA was a key campaign promise of U.S. President Donald Trump, who frequently called the 23-year-old trade pact a “disaster” that has drained U.S. factories and well-paid manufacturing jobs to Mexico. Trump has pledged to use the NAFTA talks to shrink goods trade deficits that stood at $63 billion with Mexico and $11 billion with Canada last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Lighthizer told reporters NAFTA has been successful for U.S. agriculture, investment services and the energy sector, but not for manufacturing. He added that he hopes to complete negotiations by the end of 2017. “As a starting point for negotiations, we should build on what has worked in NAFTA and change and improve what has not,” Lighthizer said in a conference call with reporters. “If renegotiations result in a fairer deal for American workers there is value in making the transition to a modernized NAFTA as seamless as possible.” In his letter to congressional leaders, Lighthizer said NAFTA needs modernization for provisions on digital trade, intellectual property rights, labor and environmental standards, regulatory practices, rules for state-owned enterprises and food safety standards. The Obama administration attempted to address many of these deficiencies in the 2015 Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which included Canada and Mexico, but Trump pulled out of TPP in one of his first official acts as president. Canada and Mexico both welcomed the U.S. move to launch a NAFTA revamp. Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, speaking at a news conference with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington, said the trade pact needed updating after nearly 25 years. “The world has changed, we’ve learned a lot and we can make it better,” he said. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada was “steadfastly committed to free trade in the North American region,” noting that 9 million U.S. jobs depend on trade and investment with Canada. U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue urged U.S. officials to “do no harm” to businesses that depend on trade with Canada and Mexico and to move quickly on a new trilateral deal. As the administration took its first formal step toward NAFTA renegotiations, the U.S. Commerce Department launched an investigation on Thursday into Boeing Co’s (BA.N) anti-dumping claims against Canadian rival Bombardier’s (BBDb.TO) new CSeries jetliners, drawing a threat from Canada to review a deal to buy Boeing fighter jets. Lighthizer's letter (here%20Notification.pdf) is less detailed than a draft sent to lawmakers in March, which listed as objectives tax equality and the ability to reimpose tariffs if Mexican and Canadian imports pose a serious injury threat to U.S. industry. Trump late in April had considered a full withdrawal from NAFTA, but was persuaded by senior officials in his administration to pursue negotiations instead. Lighthizer said he did not think a new threat to withdraw from NAFTA would be necessary. “As the president has said, we are going to give renegotiation a good strong shot,” Lighthizer told reporters, adding that he believed Canada and Mexico would negotiate in good faith. He said he hoped to maintain the current trilateral format of NAFTA, but noted that many of NAFTA’s problems are bilateral issues that need to be worked out with either Mexico or Canada. “Our hope is that we can end up with the structure similar to what we have now. If that should prove to be impossible, then we’ll move in a different direction.” Asked if the NAFTA talks would seek to resolve trade disputes over imports of Canadian softwood lumber or Mexican sugar, Lighthizer said he hoped those issues would be settled before the NAFTA talks begin under separate negotiations being conducted by the U.S. Commerce Department. A Canadian source close to the lumber negotiations said it was unlikely an agreement could be reached by mid-August, however. Lighthizer said he will seek public comment on the NAFTA process and intends to publish negotiating objectives on or about July 16. | 0fake |
OUTRAGEOUS: ILLINOIS SCHOOL USES FINGERPRINT Scanner To “Track” Kids…America Yawns | We re living in a world where we have willingly surrendered our privacy for the sake of making identification of ourselves, and our children more convenient for our government and for private businesses and entertainment venues like Disney World. Students and faculty at Harrison Street Elementary School just love the new thumbprint scanner in the school s lunch line, but civil rights experts are warning parents about serious privacy concerns with the technology.The Geneva Unit District 304 replaced a different biometric scanner system for school lunch lines this year with devices from a local company, PushCoin Inc., that read students thumb prints to track their accounts, the Daily Herald reports. It s good, because you don t have to carry your own money or anything like that, fifth-grader Quinlan Bobeczko told the news site. It s just there. Your thumb is easy, because you just have to put your thumb on (the device). Officials in several area school districts are watching District 304 in hopes of installing similar devices in their schools.East Maine Elementary District 63 spokeswoman Janet Bishop said the district hired PushCoin Inc. this spring to begin offering the thumb scan option this month, and Lake Zurich Unit District 95 board president Doug Goldberg said schools there will implement the biometric scanners in the 2016-17 school year, the Daily Herald reports. I will tell you that many of the kids aren t very good about keeping track of their ID cards, Goldberg said. And so moving to biometrics was felt to be sort of the next generation of that individual, unique ID. We ll record their thumbprints, there will be thumbprint readers at all the cash registers, and they ll simply come by and bang hit their thumbprint. It makes it faster and, also, there s a lot less opportunity for any kind of misuse or fraud when they re using biometrics. PushCoin Inc. allows parents to closely monitor their children s lunch accounts through email updates, and the company s CEO, Anna Lisznianski contends the scanners can help school officials use lunch time more efficiently. | 1real |
C.D.C. Reports 234 Pregnant Women in U.S. With Zika - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The number of women infected with the Zika virus during their pregnancies in the continental United States has risen to 234, health officials said on Thursday. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to say how many of the women had given birth, citing confidentiality concerns for the women and their families. But they did cite six cases with abnormalities — three babies with birth defects and another three who died before birth with evidence of defects. The numbers raised more questions than answers. Without knowing the total number of births, officials cannot know if the babies with birth defects represent a tiny fraction of the total, or a large part. The agency said some of the defects were related to microcephaly, a condition linked to Zika that causes brain damage and abnormally small heads. Others, like eye problems, were but not caused by microcephaly. Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, one of the leaders of the pregnancy and birth defects team, which is part of the C. D. C. ’s Zika response effort, said the release of the numbers was the first in what will be weekly updates on birth outcomes in Zika pregnancies. As the number of births rises, she said, the agency will be able to release more detailed information. “We’re sort of in a hard place,” Dr. Jamieson said. “We can’t provide a lot of information about where these women are in their pregnancy. We don’t want to inadvertently disclose information about difficult decisions these women are making about their pregnancies. ” She said the numbers included the nine pregnant women the C. D. C. had reported on in February. Of the babies in those cases, at least one was born with microcephaly. The C. D. C. also reported on Thursday that the total number of pregnant women who had been infected with Zika in United States territories, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, was 189. But the agency did not report birth outcomes for that group. “Microcephalic babies are beginning to be born,” Dr. Jamieson said. “The disease seems to be very similar no matter where it is. ” Dr. Jamieson said some of the microcephalic births they were seeing were among women who had no symptoms of Zika, a troubling pattern. Roughly 80 percent of people who contract the virus never display symptoms. She estimated that the approximate risk of having a baby with birth defects — based on findings from Brazil, Colombia and other countries, including the United States — was between 1 percent and 15 percent. A study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found no cases of microcephaly among infants born to women in Colombia who were infected in the third trimester of pregnancy. “The pattern we are seeing in other places is the same as in U. S. travelers — that Zika is causing birth defects is real,” she said. “It’s not confined to one location or one time period. ” | 0fake |
VIRAL VIDEO: Bernie Sanders Socialist Gets Shut Down By Judge Judy | Yes, I m going to take your money and NOT give it back! | 1real |
"It would be huge": U.S. border town confronts possible import tax | NOGALES, Arizona (Reuters) - For up to 16 hours a day, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and mangoes grown in Mexico flow north through a border checkpoint into Nogales, Arizona, helping to ensure a year-round supply of fresh produce across the United States. This is a city built on cross-border trade. Each year, some 330,000 trucks and 75,000 train cars carrying $17 billion worth of goods move through Nogales, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Economists estimate trade supports nearly one in three jobs here, ranging from workers who inspect the goods to forklift operators who unload them in distribution centers. In many ways, Nogales represents the flip side of free trade deals that have battered industrial cities in the Midwest, where jobs have been outsourced and manufacturing plants shut down. The cities where Donald Trump’s promise to throttle what he calls unfair competition resonated most profoundly during the presidential campaign. It also represents potential risks that new trade barriers could pose for businesses and residents along the border. Only a tall, rusted fence separates Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales, Mexico; the cities are so intertwined that locals call them by a single name, “Ambos Nogales” or “Both Nogales.” Now in office, Trump is considering a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico, one of several ideas under review in Washington, and is promising to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. More than a dozen city officials, employers and workers interviewed here said a border tax, if enacted, could choke the flow of imports from Mexico. They described a chain of events that would harm the economy, threaten local jobs and lead to higher prices for U.S. consumers. “President Trump should take a good look at the effects of whatever he does, because he’s going to end up with a real problem,” said Nogales Mayor John Doyle, who joined other lawmakers from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas in denouncing the import tax plan in letters to U.S. lawmakers. Food, autos and electronics go both ways across the border checkpoint, sometimes more than once. Mexican mangoes and melons come north while California almonds and apples from Washington state go south. U.S. car parts sent to Mexican factories are imported back as finished vehicles. “There are hundreds of products that come back and forth through the port of entry in Nogales,” Doyle said. The Trump administration told Reuters that any tax deal would protect U.S. interests. “The American people can rest assured that any policy President Trump pursues will be designed to increase wages for American workers, reduce the U.S. trade deficit, and strengthen the economy so that it works for all,” a White House official said in an email. Since the 1994 implementation of NAFTA, trade between Mexico and the United States has risen more than six fold. Each country exported about $40 billion to the other in 1993. Last year the United States imported $294 billion in goods from Mexico and exported $231 billion back, U.S. Census data show. Nationwide, nearly 5 million jobs are now tied to trade with Mexico, from importers to jobs dependent on low-cost goods, according to a study by the non-partisan Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. In Santa Cruz County, surrounding Nogales, the produce import industry and supporting businesses account for more than 22 percent of jobs, according to a 2013 report by economists at the University of Arizona. Trade and support for factories across the border account for another 10 percent of the workforce. The report’s lead author, Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi, said a 20 percent border tax would create the strictest barriers to trade in five decades. In addition to Trump’s proposal of a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico, Republican lawmakers have put forth a plan that would cut corporate income tax to 20 percent from 35 percent, exclude export revenue from taxable income and impose a 20 percent tax on imports. The proposals have split Corporate America. A group of major exporters including Boeing Co, General Electric Co and Pfizer Inc have formed a coalition to support the import tax. At the same time, large retailers, including Target Corp and Best Buy Co Inc, have countered that such a tax would raise consumer prices and hurt their businesses. Seated in his second-floor office in a warehouse nestled in the rolling hills on the outskirts of town, produce trader Jaime Chamberlain said business with Mexico is the lifeblood of Nogales, which brings in more pounds of Mexican produce than any other U.S. border town. It’s “one of the largest industries here with the most employment and the most to lose,” said Chamberlain, a board member of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. He voted for Trump and his pro-business, socially conservative agendas, but is lobbying state leaders to oppose the tax. Chamberlain’s parents began the family business with a $1,000 loan in 1971. He and his sister now own J-C Distributing Inc, which employs about 25 people who handle 120,000 pounds of Mexican tomatoes each week for Taco Bell in addition to orders for major companies such as Kroger Co and Sysco Corp. The company warehouse is among more than six dozen such facilities on Interstate 19, just a few miles north of Nogales’ town square. In all, they bring in fruits and vegetables worth $3.3 billion a year, according to the Fresh Produce Association. Local officials, residents and economists warn that a tax could reverberate across the local economy. For example, a 20 percent border tax could put some of the $17 million in produce trade-related fees on custom brokerage, freight forwarding and truck permits at risk. “There are a lot of unintended consequences with this,” said Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors Chairman Manuel Ruiz. “There are domino effects all over. ” Many local business people expect Mexico to fight back. “A 20 percent tax could start a trade war with Mexico. I don’t see how we can impose that unilaterally,” said Ricardo Crisantes, vice president of marketing and sales at Wholesum Harvest, which is part of a Mexico-based company that has offices in Nogales and organic farms on both sides of the border. Company representatives said a border tax could drive the company to shift more farming to the United States, but it also could send import demand to other parts of Latin America that would bypass Nogales. Restaurant and store owners say the tax would make already tough times even worse. “It would be huge,” said Karla Galindo, 35, who owns Rancho Grande restaurant in Nogales with her husband. She and other local business owners said sales have already been hurt by the war of words between officials in Mexico and the United States. “People are afraid to spend their money,” Galindo said. | 0fake |
CHRISTIAN GROUPS FEARFUL AFTER TARGETED in Fake Hate Groups List Released by CNN | CNN published a hate group map and list from the Southern Poverty Law Center that targeted many Christian Organizations. The organizations are fearful for their safety after the bogus hate map with the headline, Here are all the active hate groups where you live. The Southern Poverty Law Center will have blood on their hands if they cause the injury of anyone in these Christian groups. It s bad enough that they labeled these groups as hate groups but now the people in the groups are fearful.Todd Starnes of Townhall reported:The list included among others American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel and Pacific Justice Institute.American Family Association blasted the CNN story calling it a sham news article that could easily incite violence and place AFA employees and supporters in harm s way. Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver demanded an immediate retraction calling CNN s report false, defamatory and dangerous. Liberty Counsel is not a hate group, he said. The false hate label is very damaging to our reputation and is a safety risk to our staff. Liberty Counsel is a Christian ministry, and hates no one. Conservatives and Christians have good reason to be worried.In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins opened fire inside Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C. A security guard was shot and wounded.The domestic terrorist told police he wanted to kill as many employees as possible to intimidate opponents of same-sex marriage. Corkins brought along Chick-fil-A sandwiches, which he intended to smear on the faces of dead staffers.Corkins told authorities that he picked his target using the Southern Poverty Law Center s so-called hate map. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins appeared on my nationally syndicated radio show Thursday to condemn CNN for using material from an organization that is an attack dog of the Left. They are not a neutral arbiter that is calling balls and strikes. They are on the field playing. They are pushing an agenda and anyone who opposes them they slap a label on them, Perkins told me. They are inciting violence and it needs to stop, he added.READ MORE: TOWNHALL | 1real |
WATCH: Whoopi Goldberg SMACKS DOWN Conservative Co-Host For Attacking Planned Parenthood | Things got heated on The View on Friday between Whoopi Goldberg and Jedediah Bila on the subject of Planned Parenthood, and Bila got SCHOOLED.The ladies began talking about how House Republicans plan to include defunding Planned Parenthood in their Obamacare repeal bill, which really upset Goldberg.Goldberg went on the offensive by reminding the audience that not one dollar of federal funding pays for abortion services. But by defunding the organization, Republicans would be stripping millions of low income women of vital healthcare services such as breast cancer exams, PAP smears, and contraceptives that would prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Do people still not have their facts straight about who s going to actually be affected by Planned Parenthood s removal? Goldberg began. There is no line item in the federal budget that goes to Planned Parenthood. No tax dollars. Can we just say that again? Because the myth of federal tax dollars for abortions has been discredited, we ve said it a million times, all those videos you keep seeing have been discredited. The videos Goldberg is talking about, which she later correctly labeled as bullshit, are the deceptively edited videos illegally recorded by anti-abortion fanatics to try and portray Planned Parenthood as a profiteer off abortions. In reality, Planned Parenthood does not profit off of fetal tissue. The organization merely gets reimbursed the cost of shipping from medical and scientific organizations and facilities who need the tissue for research. The only people who are going to eat it when Planned Parenthood goes away are women who need the services, Goldberg continued.Bila jumped to defend conservatives by whining about how religious people don t want their tax dollars going to an organization they don t agree with. And then she had the gall to claim that conservatives don t have a problem with women choosing to have an abortion, which we all know is bullshit considering all the anti-abortion laws conservatives have been pushing for over the years.Apparently it s not, because If it was my right, you wouldn t give a crap whether I was having an abortion, Goldberg fired back. Whether you subscribe to people having abortions or not should have nothing to do with what I do or what I need. If I m a low-income person and I ve been raped you don t have the right to tell me if I should have an abortion. And then Goldberg dropped the hammer on Bila by telling her that if conservatives don t want their tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood, then she doesn t want her tax dollars going to paying for Trump s wall. Look, I don t want to pay for this new wall that suddenly we are now paying for. My religious background says that I m supposed to make sure that people are serviced, that s what my religion says. I m not there to judge. God judges. I m paying for stuff I don t want to pay for, she added. I don t want to pay for a wall My thing about America is that people have to pay their fair share for things they don t like and things they do like. You may not like abortion don t have one. Here s the video via YouTube.And Goldberg is absolutely right. After all, taxpayers were forced by Republicans to pay for abstinence-only sex education programs that don t work, not to mention costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and let s go ahead and include the salaries of every Republicans who sat on their ass and did nothing but obstruct over the last eight years instead of helping President Obama rebuild America. I m sure many taxpayers object to their money being used for that as well.The fact is, however, that Planned Parenthood provides healthcare services to millions of low-income women across the country and only 3 percent of those services has to do with abortion. And if Republicans really care about women, they ll stop trying to take their healthcare provider away from them.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Trump ‘travel ban bands’ take to stage in Texas capital | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Bands with diaspora from the seven Muslim-majority countries on U.S. President Donald Trump’s original travel ban took to the stage in Austin to build resistance against executive orders critics see as perpetuating bigotry. For many musicians in the “ContraBanned” showcase that went from Friday night to early Saturday at the South by Southwest music festival, the show put a human face on the countries that have become a focal point of current U.S. politics. “I understand the travel ban was done with the impression for securing a place of safety for Americans. I feel it is short-sighted and perpetuates the xenophobia that exists in this country,” said Bassel Almadani, frontman and vocalist for the soul and funk band of Bassel & The Supernaturals. Almadani, raised in the U.S. Midwest from parents born in Syria, has relatives who have given up hope on leaving the country ripped apart by a civil war due to Trump’s proposed bans. He has been trying to use his act to raise awareness about the six-year civil war that has set new standards of savagery in its impact on civilians, leaving an estimated half a million people dead. The Trump administration has said its executive orders are common sense approaches that will protect the American people. Attention from the bans has opened the door for Almadani to play in places like churches in Kansas where congregants want to learn more. “For a good five years there, I thought I was pulling teeth to get that conversation moving,” Almadani said in an interview. “It wasn’t until the immigration ban went into place that people became more intent on the issue and more supportive of the cause.” Before the so-called “travel ban bands” took the stage in Texas, the U.S. government said it would appeal against a federal judge’s decision that struck down parts of the Trump travel ban on the day it was set to go into effect. The acts included people Kayem, a Libyan-American from Chicago and the sister group Faarrow, born in Mogadishu, Somalia and relocated to Canada from a refugee camp. London-based, Iranian born artist Ash Koosha would not attend after trouble securing a visa. South Sudanese-Canadian artist Emmanuel Jal said the showcase dubbed “music of the banned nations” could change hearts and minds. “The people who voted for Trump voted out of fear. Let us fight with love because love will win,” he said. | 0fake |
Elizabeth Warren Calls Out ‘EVERY SINGLE’ House Republican For ‘SHAMEFUL’ Vote (VIDEO) | If you need reassurance that someone is truly fighting for your best interests in Congress, look no further than Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). She has been fighting for justice for the American people against a corrupt financial system since before she even took office. She is a champion for the unheard American voice that all too often gets drowned out by corporate cash and lobbying efforts from big banks.Republicans, of course, fall in line behind these lobbyists and take what they can get. They then turn around and vote in favor of those who crashed our economy rather than those who elected them into office the people.No greater example of this is than what just happened on the floor of the House of Representatives. A vote was taken (HR766) to let fraudulent bankers off the hook and make it harder for them to be investigated and held accountable. Take a guess how Republicans responded Warren did NOT hold back in her disgust of what was happening before our very eyes:It s not equal justice when a kid gets thrown in jail for stealing a car, while a CEO gets a huge raise when his company steals billions. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016The American people remember who broke our economy & who made out like bandits and they didn t send us here to help the bandits. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016If anyone in Congress thinks they can make it harder to crack down on corporate criminals, I promise you: The American people are watching. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016Systematic fraud on Wall St helped spark the 2008 financial crisis but not a single Wall St executive went to jail. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016You d think big banks would be happy with enforcement so tepid that they could just bake fines into the cost of doing business, right? Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016Nope right now on the House floor, Wall St buddies are pushing a bill to make it tougher to prosecute bank fraud. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016You read that right: The House is just minutes away from voting on a bill to make it tougher to investigate & prosecute bank fraud. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016So she urged everyone to tell Congress to hold Wall Street accountable and vote NO :Tell Congress: They work for the American people not Wall Street banks that break the law. Vote NO on HR 766. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016And this is how House Republicans responded:Every single House Republican who came to work today just voted to make it harder to hold big banks accountable for fraud. Shameful. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016It is remarkably shameful, corrupt and disgusting. Thank goodness for voices like Senator Warren and Senator Sanders for being in the Senate to call these corrupt politicians out and shine a huge spotlight on where Republican loyalties truly are. To know we live in a nation where people of color are locked up for minor offenses or even killed where they stand, but these corrupt bankers are allowed to destroy our economy as well as people s lives and not be held accountable is beyond shameful, it s reprehensible. Thank you for fighting for us, Senator Warren. Thank you.Video/Featured image: YouTube | 1real |
Women Should Vote With Their Husbands | Taki's Magazine October 28, 2016
This election is going to have unprecedented political infidelity. A good 20 percent of husbands for Trump predict their wife won’t vote with them. This is wrong for a number of reasons but the biggie is, a family is supposed to be a cohesive unit. He can’t have his better half canceling out his vote. Even if a husband wants to vote badly—say, for Hillary—his wife should stand by her man and make the same mistake. Nobody’s saying there can’t be discussions and women shouldn’t have their own political beliefs, but the final decision comes down to the guy paying the bills and she should abide by that. This is counterintuitive because we live in a feminist fantasyland, but it’s really the same as deciding where your family is going to live. A married couple agree where they’re going to go based on what’s best for the kids. If he gets an amazing job offer in Cleveland but she’s a city gal from Manhattan, she needs to accept that Ohio is best for the future of their family. Voting is the same. You’re deciding where the country is going to go based on what’s best for future generations.
Unfortunately, this is not happening. A map of America “if just men voted” is almost completely red, whereas a map of America “if just women voted” is almost completely blue. The maps don’t differentiate between married and single, but judging by this massive split in what gender likes what candidate, we can assume the married map would be similar. Single people are a lost cause anyway. The women vote almost exclusively out of spite. They are voting for Hillary because she has a pussy, they hate Trump because he grabbed one, and they elected Obama because he makes theirs wet (they elected Trudeau because he is one). As for single men, I’m not convinced they even vote . There are also stay-at-home dads and situations where the woman is the breadwinner. This is awkward, but if you’ve made her the patriarch then her husband (a.k.a. wife) needs to vote with her. For the most part, however, we’re talking about a home where the father makes the lion’s share of the money and the woman’s contribution is using her magic powers to make babies. They have a symbiotic relationship where they’re both utilizing their greatest strengths. Patriarchs are best at driving, so he’s the helmsman. He doesn’t want to fight about it because he doesn’t want to rock the boat, but for her to turn starboard while he’s going port is to split everything in half and now the whole family is drowning. Voting against your husband is a tiny divorce. The Best of Gavin McInnes Tags: Described as "The Godfather of Hipsterdom," Canadian expat Gavin McInnes is a writer who cofounded Vice Magazine in 1994. After selling his shares in early 2008, he cofounded the website Street Carnage as well as the advertising agency Rooster New York where he serves as creative director. He is a regular on the Fox News show Red Eye and recently published a book of memoirs with Simon & Schuster entitled How to Piss in Public. Follow @Gavin_McInnes on Twitter. | 1real |
Clinton leading Trump by 2 points in McClatchy-Marist poll | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 2 percentage points in the White House race, according to a McClatchy-Marist poll released on Friday. The poll of 940 likely voters conducted Nov. 1-3 showed Clinton with 46 percent and Trump at 44 percent. It has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points. A September McClatchy-Marist poll showed Clinton with 48 percent and Trump at 41 percent. | 0fake |
THIS IS NOT A JOKE! Soros-Linked Group Has Plan To Destroy Trump…Will Register 8 MILLION “Global Voters” For Hillary [VIDEO] | The Left has been organizing for decades, and George Soros has been funding them. From the chaos of Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, wherever there is chaos and anarchy in America, George Soros and the Democrat Party are usually behind it. There have been reports for several years of voter fraud efforts, in which it has been suggested that George Soros is involved. This is just another example of his involvement in a scheme to effect the results of our elections in America by using his vast global network A new campaign, touted as the October surprise that will end Trump , is seeking to mobilise a secret swing state of more than 8 million mostly unregistered global citizens and progressive Americans living abroad to vote in the U.S. election.The 8 million Americans abroad almost never vote. This dead easy tool can fix that but only if we make it famous: https://t.co/z4l7lekdub Avaaz (@Avaaz) September 13, 2016The initiative was launched in London in the United Kingdom on Wednesday by Avaaz , a registered U.S. charity and one the world s largest and most powerful activist groups linked to globalist billionaire George Soros. Campaigners toured from the University College London down to Parliament blasting Bruce Springsteen s Born in the USA while chanting Don t Vote Trump from an open top bus.While illegal for registered U.S. charities to work with or for presidential candidates, a spokeswoman for Avaaz denied any connection to the Hillary campaign when quizzed. Campaigners with Avaaz however, were recorded shouting, Vote for Hillary! during the demonstration.A huge 88 per cent of Americans living abroad did not register to vote in the last presidential election, and Avaaz points out that this massive untapped voting block is much more likely to be progressive because 56 per cent of us [in the UK] have masters degrees and overwhelmingly donated to Democratic candidates in the last three presidential primaries.Does anybody really believe this get out the vote effort is to register LEGAL American citizens? This effort has fraud written all over it. And with only a little over a month to go before our general election, where is the manpower to pour through all of these new incoming registrations going to come from? If I didn t know better, I d think George Soros and Hillary planned to to overwhelm our system with last minute foreign votes that can t be properly vetted before the election kinda like their Muslim refugees The view for the top of the @Avaaz Stop Trump battle bus in London. American music, balloons, flags & chanting @LBC pic.twitter.com/slsTFdQti3 Rachael Venables (@rachaelvenables) September 21, 2016 Avaaz has created the world s first, global, citizen s get-out-the-vote drive , Ms. Alexander added. The more people that share it on Facebook, the more Americans abroad will see it, and the more we will be able to stop the global threat of Trump .The group chose London for the launch as the UK has the largest concentration of US expats outside of North America , and at the event several Americans registered to vote before the media to prove how easy it is with Avaaz s new tool. For months, the world has sat on the sidelines, horrified by Trump s hate. Now, global citizens have a way to fight back , Emma Ruby-Sachs, Deputy Director of Avaaz added.The charity s website encourages people to email potential U.S. voters in other countries, giving them a template that reads: 8 million Americans abroad could defeat Trump if they vote! I wanted to make sure you saw this new overseas registration tool that makes voting dead-easy. It literally takes a few minutes :) .Their efforts don t stop in the UK, they are also putting out a call to Mexicans to register to vote. Who will be checking the validity of millions of votes coming in at the last minute? From their register to vote for Hillary campaign in Mexico:1 million Americans in Mexico can stop #Trump's wall! #GringosAVotar campaign kicks off Sun 9/25 in Mexico City: https://t.co/Q68FjjJk7d pic.twitter.com/6tv7CES8Cy Avaaz (@Avaaz) September 21, 2016ENGLISH:Over 1 million US citizens live in Mexico, and their participation in this election is key to stopping Trump and his beautiful wall. This Sunday we re meeting at the Angel de la Independencia on Paseo de la Roma, in the heart of Mexico City, to spread the word and register US voters on site.There will be music, great people, and media. Come take a picture of yourself in front of a massive artistic model of Trump s wall to say: #GringosAVotar united against Trump! RSVP and share widely with friends.If you are a US passport holder and want to register to vote there on site, make sure to bring a scanned copy of your passport with you. US voters in Mexico can also register directly here: www.avaaz.org/GringosAVotarSomething tells me if Johnny Cash were alive today, he would not approve of these clowns using his music to promote the destruction of America in a foreign land:Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
UK's May urges EU to respond in kind to new tone on Brexit talks | TAPA, Estonia (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May urged the European Union on Friday to respond in kind to proposals she set out in Italy last week that sought to unlock Brexit talks, saying forming a new partnership was in the bloc s interest as well. Speaking to Reuters in Estonia after meeting British troops, May said she believed the speech in Florence a week ago had given new momentum to the troubled divorce negotiations and had seen signs to suggest it had broken the deadlock. But she did not say whether she thought it was enough to move the talks on to a discussion of the future relationship by an October summit after EU negotiators said again this week that not enough progress had been made. A week ago I gave a speech in Florence which set out how we have made good progress so far, I thought we could make further progress and moving on to looking at the future deep and special relationship and partnership that we want to build with the European Union when the UK has left the EU, she said. I made that speech to give momentum to the talks and I think we have seen that being shown in the talks that have taken place this week and further progress has been made. Following the latest round of talks this week, the EU s top negotiator said May s speech had created a new dynamic , but more progress was needed to move to the next phase of discussions. May, weakened by a June election when she lost her Conservative Party s majority, hopes to use the informal summit in Estonia to talk to EU leaders about Brexit, and to underline Britain s role in European security to try to win goodwill. Standing beside French President Emmanuel Macron and Estonia s Juri Ratas, she chatted to some of the 800 troops Britain has deployed at a military base in Tapa, northern Estonia, as part of NATO s moves to defend against a newly assertive Russia on the EU s border. By focusing on defense in Tallinn, May will want to show that Britain has something to offer its European neighbors and will say she is ready to share British expertise - including through the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) - to help EU nations build up their own cyber-security capability. That, she hopes, could bolster her argument for pushing the Brexit talks forward. I set out what I thought was the future deep and special partnership we can build with the EU and I look for the speech that I set out for that being reciprocated in proposals that the EU will come forward with, she said. | 0fake |
Clinton to press Trump to spell out policy plans in presidential debate | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton will press Republican Donald Trump to provide more specifics on his policies in their presidential debate on Monday, two top Clinton campaign aides said ahead of a face-off that could set U.S. television audience records. On the eve of the debate at Hofstra University in suburban New York, aides to Clinton have sought to cast Trump, a New York businessman and former reality TV host, as lacking the temperament and experience to serve as president. Trump’s aides for their part have sought to reinforce voter doubts about Clinton’s trustworthiness. The debate, the first of three face-to-face matchups between the two candidates, will begin at 9 p.m. on Monday (0100 GMT on Tuesday). It comes as opinion polls show a tight race between Clinton, a former secretary of state, and Trump, six weeks before the Nov. 8 election. “We’re going to have a lot of people really tuning into this election for the first time. They’re going to see these two candidates onstage,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on Sunday in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” “I think they’re going to see that Donald Trump is unfit, unprepared, and over his head. I doubt he will have a command of the issues.” Mook said Clinton would challenge Trump at the debate “to reveal what his plans are. You know, for example, he has not revealed any plan whatsoever to defeat ISIS (Islamic State) militants.” Trump has said he would work closely with NATO allies to defeat Islamic State and vowed to wage a “military, cyber and financial” war against the militant group. “Donald Trump’s been all about himself. But she’s got to tell people what she wants to do for them,” John Podesta, chairman of Clinton’s campaign, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, in a separate “This Week” interview on Sunday, attacked Clinton’s trustworthiness. “You know, if you’re running against a Clinton, veracity is certainly always on the table,” she said. “Hillary Clinton’s casual relationship with the truth is well known to Americans. I’m sure we’ll see it on full display tomorrow night.” The Trump campaign put to rest on Sunday the prospect that he might invite Gennifer Flowers, who had an affair with Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, to attend the debate. After Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, a Clinton supporter and vociferous critic of Trump, tweeted that he had a “front-row” seat to watch the Hofstra debate, Trump raised the possibility in a tweet of inviting Flowers to the debate. But Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, told “Fox News Sunday” that Flowers would not attend the debate. “Donald Trump was using the tweet yesterday really to mock an effort by Hillary Clinton and her campaign to really distract attention from what the American people are going to be focused on tomorrow night, which is on the issues, on the choice that we face,” Pence said. Supporters of both candidates sought to manage expectations before the debate. Mook said the moderator of Monday’s debate, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, should fact-check candidates’ statements, although Trump’s campaign said it should be up to American voters to gauge who they thought was telling the truth. To prepare for the debate, Clinton has been holding mock debate sessions where longtime aide Philippe Reines plays the role of Trump. Trump aides said their candidate, who like Clinton participated in numerous TV debates during their respective parties’ nominating races, was preparing for Monday’s event but not doing mock debates where someone plays the role of Clinton. Trump’s advisers said the Republican presidential nominee was going up against a highly seasoned politician. “He’s the outsider, he’s a person who has never run before, let alone be in a presidential debate, but he’s going to be ready,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. “And I think one of the things Donald Trump has going for him is he’s got very good instincts.” | 0fake |
IS JADE HELM 15 REALLY ABOUT MARTIAL LAW? Texas Ranger Relays What He Saw Inside Military Trains | Chuck Norris wrote about Jade Helm 15 in a commentary for the conservative website WND last weekend, pointing to the decision of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to have the Texas State Guard monitor the Pentagon s Jade Helm 15 military ops as evidence that the operations as a potential threat to the state s sovereignty. Governor Abbott wrote: During the training operation, it is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed. And Abbott is demanding regular updates on the progress and safety of the Operation. Norris fanned the conspiracy flames by writing: Concerned Texans and Americans are in no way calling into question our brave and courageous men and women in uniform. They are merely following orders. What s under question are those who are pulling the strings at the top of Jade Helm 15 back in Washington. The US government says, It s just a training exercise. But I m not sure the term just has any reference to reality when the government uses it. A covert training operation by U.S. military special operations personnel, Jade Helm 15, is taking place in a several states this summer, spreading panic and conspiracy theories as to the true purpose of the mission.The two-month simulation spans much of the Southwest, requiring special forces from four branches of the military to carry out covert operations amid hostile territory in Texas, Utah and part of California.In at least one of those states, hostility toward the operation has begun a few months early. Online and at in-person meetings, many Texans have expressed suspicion and outright opposition to the project. Some are understandably worried about how it ll affect their daily lives, while conspiracy theorists claim it s an attempt to institute martial law.The military says that they are merely preforming training exercises to help hone soldiers skills in the event they face a foreign threat, but some citizens are worried that planners have something more domestic in mind.Events for the exercise are outlined in a map among unclassified documents posted online last month. Army sources have verified to The Washington Post that the map is legitimate.Many have speculated that the American government isn t far from declaring martial law, an idea only bolstered by these training exercises.In an anonymous email sent to Dave Hodges at The Common Sense Show, a self-described Texas Ranger said that train cars outfitted with prison-type shackles have been moving about Texas. While he added that the Department of Homeland Security claimed the train cars were for transporting captured terrorists, he was apparently reluctant to believe them. He wrote: We have been told by Homeland that these trains are slated for transporting captured terrorists, non-domestic. We are not sure we can trust this explanation because Homeland is keeping a lot from us and we are growing increasingly uncomfortable with their presence in Texas. The paranoia about Jade Helm, which started on websites like Alex Jones s InfoWars, had started with familiar fulmination about a mass seizure of firearms or a cover-up for American death squads. This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott asked the Texas state guard to monitor the exercise for any violations of freedom. It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed, said the governor.Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Saturday that he d been hearing concerns about Jade Helm 15, and reached out to the Pentagon for answers. My office has reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise. We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don t trust what it is saying. The Texas Senator, speaking at the South Carolina Republican Convention went on to say: I understand a lot of the concerns raised by a lot of citizens about Jade Helm. And I think part of the reason is we have seen, for six years, a federal government disrespecting the liberty of the citizens. That produces fear, when you see a government that is attacking our free speech rights, or Second Amendment rights, or religious liberty rights. That produces distrust. Just because you re paranoid, said Cruz, doesn t mean they re not out to get you. Via: TPNN | 1real |
Reported two-month gap in Clinton emails coincides with escalating Libya violence | A reported two-month gap in emails from Hillary Clinton's private account during 2012 coincides with a period of escalating violence in Libya and the obtaining of a special exemption by her top aide, Huma Abedin, to work for both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
The Daily Beast reported late Tuesday that no emails between Clinton and her State Department staff for the months of May and June 2012 are among the estimated 2,000 messages that have been released from the Democratic presidential frontrunner's account.
A State Department spokesman told The Daily Beast that only emails related to the security of U.S. diplomats in Libya or the consulate in Benghazi were turned over to the House select committee investigating the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack. If true, that means neither Clinton nor her staff communicated via e-mail during a period that saw three attacks on international outposts in Benghazi, including one on the consulate itself.
That attack, on June 6, 2012, involved the detonation of an improvised explosive device outside of the consulate, prompting the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to warn Americans about the "fluid security situation in Libya." Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed along with three others in the Sept. 11 attack, warned his superiors that "Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya."
Two weeks earlier, on May 22, the International Red Cross office was hit by rocket-propelled grenades. Five days after the consulate bombing, a convoy carrying Britain's ambassador to Libya was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, injuring two bodyguards.
The State Department plans to release Clinton's emails on a regular, monthly basis through January 2016 to comply with an order by a federal judge. The next release is tentatively scheduled for Friday. Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill released a statement saying "More emails are slated to be released by the State Department next week, and we hope that release is as inclusive as possible
The Daily Beast reports that the Benghazi committee has only received one e-mail dating from the two-month period. The message in question was sent in June 2012 by longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal and dealt mainly with his business interests in Libya. Security threats to the U.S. diplomatic presence were not mentioned.
Another issue raised by the e-mail gap is the status of Abedin, a longtime aide to Clinton and the wife of former New York congressman and mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner. The Daily Beast reports that on June 3, Abedin was granted "special government employee" status, allowing her to remain employed by the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, a consulting firm founded by a Clinton ally, and by Hillary herself. The "special government employee" designation prevented Abedin from being subject to some ethics rules.
On Tuesday, the Daily Beast reported that State Department lawyers identified 68 pages of "potentially responsive" documents in response to a 2013 Freedom of Information Act request by the Associated Press for details about how Abedin obtained her special employee status. That was the first time the department acknowledged having any documentation about Abedin's arrangement.
Meanwhile Tuesday, Republicans on the House Benghazi committee insisted there was no agreement with Clinton over her possible appearance before the panel, despite an announcement by her campaign that she would testify Oct. 22. Federal investigators said last week they have alerted the Justice Department to a potential compromise of classified information arising from Clinton's private email server.
A memo signed by the inspector general of the intelligence community said the IG's office had identified "potentially hundreds of classified emails" among the 30,000 that Clinton had provided to the State Department and that are now being processed for public release. None of the emails was marked as classified at the time they were sent or received, but some should have been handled as such and sent on a secure computer network, according to a letter to congressional oversight committees from I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for a collection of executive branch agencies that work on intelligence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from The Daily Beast. | 0fake |
Lieberman withdraws from consideration to be FBI director | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman has withdrawn from consideration to be the next director of the FBI, citing the potential for an appearance of a conflict of interest given President Donald Trump’s decision to retain an attorney who works at the same firm. Lieberman works at a New York firm headed by Marc Kasowitz, who has been hired by Trump to represent him amid probes by the Justice Department and Congress into possible ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. “With your selection of Marc Kasowitz to represent you in the various investigations that have begun, I do believe it would be best to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest,” Lieberman wrote to Trump in a letter dated Wednesday. A copy of the letter, which was first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, was provided to Reuters on Thursday. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Lieberman’s withdrawal. Trump told reporters a week ago that he was “very close” to selecting a nominee to replace James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he said Lieberman was a leading candidate. Trump fired Comey on May 9, a decision that set off a political firestorm given Comey’s central role in the FBI’s probe of Russian meddling in the election and potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials seeking to swing the vote in Trump’s favor. The Department of Justice appointed a special counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller, to lead an independent investigation into the Russia matter. Given Kasowitz’s role, Lieberman might not have been able to participate in the Russia investigation for a period of two years without White House and Justice Department waivers, Kathleen Clark, a professor of legal ethics at Washington University School of Law told Reuters on Wednesday. A federal regulation restricts newly hired government lawyers from investigating their prior law firm’s clients for one year, a period that was extended to two years under an executive order signed by Trump in January. CNN, citing a unnamed senior administration official, reported on Wednesday that Trump wanted to renew the search for an FBI director after having interviewed a number of candidates, including Lieberman. On Thursday, citing unnamed sources, CNN said John Pistole, a former deputy director at the FBI and a former head of the Transportation Security Administration, was under consideration. | 0fake |
Dick Cheney Just Did The Most Disgusting Thing Since Lying About WMDs In Iraq | What could Dick Cheney, engineer of the wars that will go down in history as criminal at best, possibly do that is worse than lying to the American people about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in a fraudulent ploy to gain public support for a war we had no exit strategy for? Cheney told CNN Friday that he would be backing Donald Trump just like he would back anyone else who was on the Republican ticket.That s a stark difference of opinion from Cheney s old Oval Office Puppet, George W. Bush or his brother and daddy, all of whom have vowed not to support Trump in the general election and to skip his nomination at the convention this summer in Cleveland. Mittens Romney has also openly stated that he wouldn t support Donald Trump along with House Speaker Paul Ryan and a slew of other high-ranking establishment Republicans.So why is Cheney sticking around while the party goes about the business of trying to hand our nuclear codes to an idiot? Because he s done it already. In 2001, a complete moron walked into the White House, unqualified to order a sandwich, and somehow Dick Cheney gave him a legacy. Sure it s a legacy of poverty and despair; war and death. Financial collapse isn t such a bad way to end an administration, is it?Cheney knows full-well that Donald Trump, if elected, will be looking back at everyone who abandoned him and you can bet your bottom dollar that Dick Cheney will be listed as adviser in some capacity. That s the kind of West Wing we ll be looking at. Whoever will take the job will be the number one contender for almost every position of power. If you re looking for a career in politics that will come to an abrupt end in four years or less, take a spot in the Trump Administration. Not that it will really matter. The cabinet will fill up with people we ve never heard of to whom Donald Trump owes a special favor.One thing is certain: Cheney has definitely hit the low spot in his life if he s reduced to supporting The Donald.Featured image by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images | 1real |
10 Effective Ways To Use Vinegar As A Household Cleaner (VIDEO) – Collective Evolution | advertisement - learn more From window sprays and bleach to toilet bowl cleaners and everything in between, they all seem to be filled with chemicals I’d prefer to avoid handling and inhaling. While more natural and eco-friendly alternatives continue to pop up on store shelves worldwide, they often cost significantly more than their chemically-laden counterparts. So while I do encourage people to purchase these products — both as an investment in our health and in the well-intentioned companies making them — I also love to discover life hacks that empower us all to step away from the conventional, regardless of our financial state. Here is a quick list (in video and written form) outlining 10 simple vinegar-based life hacks for cleaning around the house: advertisement - learn more 1. Cleaning Out Your Iron If your clothing iron doesn’t seem to steam and press as powerfully as it once did, clogged outlets are likely to blame. To remedy this, fill the iron to the 1/4 mark with vinegar and use it face down on a slotted baking sheet, while consistently pressing the steam function until the liquid runs out. Rinse the water compartment out and your appliance should be functioning like new. 2. Shoe Cleaner While I personally do not support the purchase of leather-based products, vinegar is a proven restoration tool for those of us who do. Simply mix 1 cup of water with 1/3 cup of vinegar and use a microfibre cloth to gently clean and restore your leather shoes. Thankfully, I’ve also tried this cleaning method on my fake leather dress shoes and found it just as effective (but always do your research before taking a chance and damaging your cherished footwear). Your Inbox Will Never Be The Same Inspiration and all our best content, straight to your inbox. 3. Glass Cleaner Most traditional glass cleaners are laced with unwanted ammonia, but thankfully there is a safe and easy alternative. Fill a spray bottle with 50% water and 50% vinegar and watch as this simple mixture gives you that same streak-free shine. As the video outlines, you can also add in a few drops of lemon to boost it with a fresh scent, or some blue food colouring to help differentiate it from your other homemade cleaners. 4. Weed Remover Find yourself regularly battling weeds amongst your pavement or stones? Avoid traditional weed killers by using vinegar instead. Simply pour vinegar into the cracks of the affected concrete areas. Let it sit for 24 hours and return to find the vegetation killed and ready to be removed. 5. Computer Keyboard Cleaner As I type this, I realize how badly my laptop keyboard could use this cleaning right now. Rather than investing in those expensive foams or play-doh-like keyboard dirt removers, simply use vinegar straight from the bottle. First be sure to turn off your computer and then lightly dampen a cloth in vinegar. From there, use the cloth to not only clean the keys, but to also get into all of the crevices of the device. You can also dampen a q-tip to get into the finer places with adequate pressure. 6. Cleaning Out Your Dishwasher Just like every other appliance, your dishwasher could also use a cleaning from time to time to maintain top performance and hopefully lengthen its working life. To do this, simply fill your washer’s soap dispenser with vinegar, pull out the inner basket, and run the unit on ‘Pots and Pans’ mode. 7. Sterilize Your Toothbrush While simply replacing your toothbrush is always a good option, vinegar is also a good solution for those of us not quite ready to part with our current brush. Fill a mug with vinegar to the point that the entire head of your toothbrush will be submerged in liquid. Put the brush into the mug for 30 minutes to help clean and sterilize it. To get rid of the vinegar odour, just massage some toothpaste into the brush under hot water. 8. Remove Bathroom Ceiling Mould The dampness of bathrooms makes them highly susceptible to mould growth. If you ever find a mould stain on your ceiling, vinegar may just be the answer to cleaning it. Put 2 parts vinegar and 1 part borax into a cup followed by warm water to fill the remainder of the container. Mix the concoction until the borax has dissolved, then dip a paper towel into the mixture. Dab the mould spot, then start rubbing to see it disappear (in most cases). Not a fan of borax? Simply research a healthier alternative. 9. Restore The Power Of Your Bathroom Faucet If you find your bathroom faucet doesn’t have the same power it once did, or that it misfires some of its stream, chances are it is partially clogged. To fix this, soak a cotton ball into vinegar for a few seconds. Apply the soaked cotton ball directly onto the faucet and hold it in place with a rubber band for 15 minutes. When removing it, wiggle the cotton ball around to remove any final deposits trapped in the head and run your water on hot to get it firing like new once again. 10. Couch & Furniture Cleaner Help eliminate smells in your furniture by pouring 1/4 cup of vinegar into a spray bottle followed by two tablespoons of fabric softener. Top off the bottle with water, shake it up well, and spray a light coat over the furniture. Once done, get a dry towel and rub into the fabric in a smooth, circular motion until dry. All 10 of these vinegar-based life hacks were put together by HouseholdHacker . Be sure to share your experience with any of them via the comment section below.
The Sacred Science follows eight people from around the world, with varying physical and psychological illnesses, as they embark on a one-month healing journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle.
You can watch this documentary film FREE for 10 days by clicking here.
"If “Survivor” was actually real and had stakes worth caring about, it would be what happens here, and “The Sacred Science” hopefully is merely one in a long line of exciting endeavors from this group." - Billy Okeefe, McClatchy Tribune | 1real |
ON THE MOVE: [Video] Iranians, Russians And Syrians Set Up Coordination Cell In Iraq | How many more days remain in our Community Organizer In Chief s term in office? He can t make golfing his full time job fast enough This week, former CIA director Gen. David Petraeus testified on Capitol Hill, warning that inaction in Syria carries risks for the United States. Russia s recent military escalation in Syria is a further reminder that when the U.S. does not take the initiative, others will fill the vacuum often in ways that are harmful to our interests, Petraeus said.FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE Russian, Syrian and Iranian military commanders have set up a coordination cell in Baghdad in recent days to try to begin working with Iranian-backed Shia militias fighting the Islamic State, Fox News has learned.Western intelligence sources say the coordination cell includes low-level Russian generals. U.S. officials say it is not clear whether the Iraqi government is involved at the moment.Describing the arrival of Russian military personnel in Baghdad, one senior U.S. official said, They are popping up everywhere. CNN Report Sept. 8, 2015:The Russians already have been building up their military presence in Syria, a subject expected to factor prominently in a planned meeting between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in New York Monday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.While the U.S. also is fighting the Islamic State, the Obama administration has voiced concern that Russia s involvement, at least in Syria, could have a destabilizing effect.Moscow, though, has fostered ties with the governments in both Syria and Iraq. In May, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi flew to Moscow for an official visit to discuss potential Russian arms transfers and shared intelligence capability, as well as the enhancement of security and military capabilities, according to a statement by the Iraqi prime minister s office at the time.Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani also was spotted in Baghdad on Sept 22. He met with Shia militias backed by Iran; intelligence officials believe he met with Russians as well.Meanwhile, a U.S. official described to Fox News how, over the weekend, the Russians were able to move 24 attack jets into Syria undetected.The Russian military flew 12 Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot and a dozen Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer attack aircraft in tight formations under the steady stream of the large Russian An-124 cargo planes that have been ferrying supplies from bases in Russia through Iran before traveling on to Syria, the official said.The large cargo planes appeared as a big blip on radar, but flying beneath them were tight formations of the smaller Russian fighter jets that used jamming pods and switched off their IFF, which would identify the aircraft to radar.The large Russian cargo planes have the capability to fly directly from Russia to Syria, but the smaller attack aircraft do not. The Russian jets did not have the legs to make it directly from Russia to Syria, and needed a base to refuel, said the official, who spoke to Fox News under the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose sensitive information.According to the Aviationist, the Russian cargo planes and fighter jets landed at an airbase in Hamadan, Iran, roughly halfway between Baghdad and Tehran on Sept 18-19.Fox News also has learned from U.S. military sources that the Russians have begun flying some of the Sukhoi fighter and attack jets from Bassel al-Assad airport, in Latakia, now a Russian forward operating base along the Mediterranean.The planes are not dropping bombs or conducting attack missions, but just flying around near the base, according to one official. The official also confirmed that Russian destroyers are in position off the Mediterranean coast.On Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby denied a U.S. intelligence failure led to U.S. officials being caught unaware of the two dozen Russian warplanes arriving in Syria. I can tell you that we ve been watching this very, very closely and we have not been ignorant of what the Russians have been doing, said Kirby.Asked Thursday about Russia s military involvement in Syria, Defense Secretary Ash Carter cautioned that without Russian support for a political transition in Damascus, it could pour gasoline on the ISIL phenomenon rather than to lead to the defeat of ISIL. But just two days ago, Secretary of State John Kerry said the Russian build-up was consistent with defensive measures. For the moment, it is the judgment of our military and most experts that the level and type represents basically force protection, a level of protection for their deployment to an airbase given the fact that it is in an area of conflict, Kerry said at the State Department Tuesday. | 1real |
German spy agencies want right to destroy stolen data and 'hack back' | BERLIN (Reuters) - Top German intelligence officials on Thursday urged lawmakers to give them greater legal authority to hack back in the event of cyber attacks from foreign powers. Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV domestic intelligence agency, told the parliamentary oversight committee it should be possible to destroy data stolen from German servers and moved to foreign servers to prevent it from being misused. He said it would also make sense to infect foreign servers with software that would enable greater surveillance of any operations directed against German cyber targets, or to extract data, much as human agents are recruited for counter-espionage. In the real world, it would be like turning a foreign intelligence agent and getting them to work for us ... Something like this should be possible in the cyber world too, Maassen told the committee in its first public hearing. These are hack back instruments, but they are below the threshold of destroying or incapacitating a foreign server, Maassen said. German officials have blamed APT28, a Russian hacker group said linked to Moscow, for the May 2015 hack of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, and other cyber attacks aimed at political groups, individuals or institutions. They issued repeated warnings about the possibility that Moscow could seek to influence or disrupt the Sept. 24 German election, although officials have since said they did not see any major push by Russia to do so. Maassen said it was possible Russia decided the political cost was too great after the backlash that ensued in the United States after a similar effort there. Russia denies seeking to influence any foreign elections. Germany s BND foreign intelligence agency already has the expertise, but not the legal authority, to destroy foreign servers, its chief Bruno Kahl told the committee. Once the source of attack had been carefully investigated and identified, it could make sense to shut down the source of such an attack and not have to retreat and give the job of going back in and taking care of business, Kahl said. In the end, however, such decisions had to be made by politicians, Kahl said. Christof Gramm, head of Germany s MAD military counter-espionage agency, said there were questions of domestic and international law to address before empowering the agencies to take such actions. This all has to be worked out. There are international boundaries. We re not just talking about national law, Gramm told the committee near the end of a three-hour session. He said if such powers were granted, it would be up to the military s cyber command to carry out such actions, not the MAD. Maassen said authorities needed access to streaming data from foreign servers - for instance of videos showing beheadings - to track radicalization of possible Islamist attackers. He also called for broader powers to track communications between Germany and Raqqa, the Syrian city still under Islamic State control, noting that current law only allowed the tracking of individual communications, not broader flows. | 0fake |
Opposed from the start, the rocky history of NAFTA | (Reuters) - Negotiators from Canada, Mexico and the United States kick off an ambitious first round of trade talks on Wednesday as the countries try to fast-track a deal to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement by early next year. Following are significant moments in the history of the deal: * June 10, 1990: U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari issue a statement endorsing a new, comprehensive free trade pact between the two neighbors, ordering talks to begin. Canada would join the talks in 1991, paving the way for three-way negotiations. The United States and Canada inked a bilateral free trade deal in 1988. * Nov. 3, 1992: Running as an independent for president in the United States, Ross Perot claims the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), would lead to a “giant sucking sound” of jobs rushing to Mexico. Bill Clinton wins the election, defeating incumbent Bush. Perot wins 19 percent of vote to place a strong third. * Dec. 17, 1992: NAFTA is signed by outgoing Bush, Mexico’s Salinas de Gortari and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, creating the world’s largest free trade area. The timing was, in part, aimed at making it harder for President-elect Clinton to pursue major changes; Clinton had endorsed the deal but insisted on environmental and labor side agreements. * Jan. 1, 1994: NAFTA comes into effect, and a Mayan Indian guerrilla army in southern Mexico launches an armed rebellion against “neo-liberalism” and explicitly against the free trade deal. The declaration of war against the Mexican government leads to days of fighting and dozens of deaths before the rebels retreat into the jungle. * Nov. 30, 1999: Tens of thousands of anti-globalization protesters converge on the U.S. city of Seattle, leading to widespread rioting coinciding with a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, which was seeking to launch new international trade talks. The protests underscore growing, if scattered, opposition to free trade deals like NAFTA. * July 16, 2004: Senior trade officials from Canada, the United States and Mexico issue a joint statement touting a decade’s worth of expanded trade in North America. Three-way-trade more than doubled to reach $623 billion while cumulative foreign direct investment increases by over $1.7 trillion compared to pre-NAFTA levels. * Dec. 11, 2001: China formally joins the World Trade Organization, integrating the Asian giant more deeply into the global economy. Easing trade with China intensifies a trend that had been seen since NAFTA came into effect as the U.S. trade deficit soared to more than $800 billion by 2006. * Jan. 1, 2008: NAFTA is fully implemented as the last of its polices come into effect. In many sectors, NAFTA stipulates that trade barriers would only gradually be phased out, which was designed to smooth economic shocks in vulnerable industries. By this time, trade within the three North American nations has more than tripled since NAFTA began. * July 19, 2016: Billionaire businessman and political outsider Donald Trump formally clinches the Republican presidential nomination, winning the traditionally pro-free-trade party’s nod in part by denouncing NAFTA, calling it “the worst trade deal ever.” * Aug. 16, 2017: High-stakes talks aimed at “modernizing” NAFTA kick off in Washington, with both U.S. and Mexican officials aiming to conclude a new pact in early 2018 before elections later in the year in both nations might derail negotiations. A second round of talks is due to take place in Mexico in September. | 0fake |
WATCH: PATRIOTS Fans BOO Players Who Disrespect Our National Anthem…Shout “Stand Up!” At Players Taking A Knee | Pittsburgh Steelers players were absent from the sideline and remained in the locker room during the Star Spangled Banner.Alejandro Villanueva, who served three tours in Afghanistan, was the only Steelers player to stand outside the tunnel for the anthem.The protests from each team came in the wake of Trump s critical remarks toward players who don t stand for the anthem.Last week across the entire NFL, only four players knelt or sat, and two stood with their fists raised. Daily MailEarlier today, President Trump sent out this tweet in response to the action of the NFL players:Courageous Patriots have fought and died for our great American Flag we MUST honor and respect it! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017The Patriots players made their statement, and many fans did so in response.Before Sunday s Texans-Patriots matchup in Foxborough, Mass., about 20 Patriots players, according to ESPN, took a knee during the national anthem, the first time anyone on the team had joined the growing protest.In return, a loud chorus of boos was heard sandwiching the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner. According to the Boston Herald, there were shouts of, Stand up, as they knelt.Tom Brady, the face of the team and the league, did not take a knee but stood with his arms locked with other players and his hand over his chest.The Patriots have been intertwined with Trump, with Brady, coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft pals with the president. After Trump s attack on the protests, though saying owners should cut ties with the son of a bitch who kneels during the anthem Kraft said he was deeply disappointed in Trump.It s been a Sunday in which not just players, but owners, executives, and fans have been forced to take a side. There were similar reports of booing in Indianapolis, too. NYPPresident Trump retweeted this awesome message from Donna Warren earlier today, reminding the NFL that if they choose to boycott our flag, we can boycott the NFL as well:You can boycott our anthem WE CAN BOYCOTT YOU! #NFL #MAGA pic.twitter.com/ryYzZnXjXE DONNA WARREN (@DonnaWR8) September 24, 2017 | 1real |
Ohio's 'dirty little secret': blue-collar Democrats for Trump | CANTON, Ohio (Reuters) - If Donald Trump wins the Republican Party nomination, his path to the White House will run through this working-class city with a knack for picking presidents. No Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio. And nowhere better reflects the challenges and opportunities Trump faces in his 2016 presidential quest than Canton, a once-booming industrial city that, like Ohio and the rest of America’s rust belt, is going through profound economic and demographic change. Canton, a gritty northeastern Ohio city where the once-dominant steel industry has been in decline for 20 years, is the heart of Stark County, a political bellwether that, save twice, has picked every winning presidential candidate since 1964. The real-estate mogul’s primary wins in Michigan and in Mississippi on Tuesday, in the face of blistering attacks from the party’s establishment, expanded his lead in the White House nominating race and demonstrated his broad appeal across many demographic groups in the Republican Party. But here, in predominately white Canton, the birthplace of professional American football, he will need to show cross-over appeal in the general election and win over not just Republicans but working-class Democrats and some independents, to beat a Democrat, illustrating the challenge he will face in Ohio and potentially other Midwestern “rust belt” states. A more immediate test looms next week in the state’s Republican primary, where polls show Trump narrowly leads Ohio Governor John Kasich, who casts himself as a pragmatic, statesman-like alternative to Trump. If Trump wins Ohio and Florida — states rich in the delegates who select their party’s nominee at July’s Republican National Convention - he would almost certainly lock up his party’s nomination. Sitting in a steel workers’ meeting at their Canton union hall, Curtis Green, the chapter’s vice president, described Trump’s support among a growing number of members as their “dirty little secret.” “I view him as a radical and a racist and I don’t want to be affiliated with that,” Green said. “But if you say what you mean, a lot of guys see that in Trump and they respect that. He doesn’t dance around the issues, he takes them head on. There are a fair amount of our members who do support Donald Trump.” If Trump just wins the states that Republican nominee Mitt Romney won in 2012, he would have only 206 electoral college votes, short of the 270 needed to win the White House. The fight over electoral college votes has turned recent elections into pitched battles over a dozen or so states. Ohio is often at the center. The state, which has not voted for the loser in a presidential election since 1960, is seen as a microcosm of American swing voters — from culturally conservative “Reagan Democrats” who defected from their party to support Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to suburban soccer moms and upwardly mobile Hispanics. To offset the growing proportion of blacks and Hispanics in the voting age population, Trump must turn white voters out in greater numbers than Romney in cities such as Canton. His performance in primary states where Democrats and independent can vote, as well as Republicans, suggests Trump could attract large numbers of these voters in a general election. Reuters interviews here with more than two dozen voters show why. In this city of 72,500 people, Trump’s denunciation of free trade, political correctness and illegal immigrants is resonating among some traditionally Democratic blue-collar steel workers. “The labor unions, who usually support the Democrats, a lot of our members, and a lot of their families, are supporting Trump,” said Keith Strobelt, a political director for the United Steelworkers local union in Canton. Strobelt does not support Trump. Canton’s local United Steelworkers union has 1,800 members - down from 6,700 at its peak 30 years ago. Its leadership has not officially endorsed a candidate, thought it has praised Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders. Some rank-and-file members, however, say they better identify with Trump’s broadsides against illegal immigration and tirades against trade with China and Mexico. “It could be that several hundred of our members will back Trump,” Strobelt said. “A lot find him refreshing. He says a lot of things they say around their dinner tables.” But in a general election, Trump faces formidable odds in Canton, as he does across Ohio and the Midwest. Canton and the region is changing in ways that favor Democrats, reflecting the Republican Party’s broader problems with a U.S. electorate that is becoming less white and less culturally conservative. In 2000, Canton was nearly 75 percent white, with an African American population of 20 percent, and an Hispanic population of just over 1 percent. Its biggest employer was the Timken Company, a giant ball bearing and high custom steel manufacturer that was the dominant economic force in Canton for much of the 20th century. By 2010, according to Census data, Canton was 69 percent white. Its black population had increased by 3 percent, its Hispanic residents to nearly 3 percent. Tuesday’s primary in neighboring Michigan showed how volatile this election has become, with Trump’s potent appeal among disaffected whites stretching beyond the South. In the Democratic race, Sanders won most of the state’s white working-class countryside and small towns in an upset over front-runner Hillary Clinton. In Canton, like elsewhere in the “rust belt” heartlands stretching from the Midwest to the Great Lakes region and parts of the Northeast, manufacturing has been hollowed out since the 1970s, due in part to foreign competition. In 1990, Ohio had over 1 million manufacturing jobs; today, just 680,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ohio has shed nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs since the 2007-2009 Great Recession. A different type of worker, more white collar and upscale, has moved into the Canton area. The top two employers are now the Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center, highly competitive health care providers. “While Trump might pick up blue collar Democrats, and older folks who are disillusioned with the political process, the flip side is he could lose more upper-status voters in Ohio,” said John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron, close to Canton. “Republican Party leaders in Ohio are wringing their hands. There is a perception that Trump helps among blue collar voters - but could alienate white collar voters.” Jane Timken, the vice-chair of the Stark County Republican Party and the wife of TimkenSteel’s chief executive, said the local party was encountering people who had never voted Republican before but were supporting Trump. But, she said, there was concern Trump might turn off other voters, especially independents who account for one fifth of Ohio’s voters. There is no polling to predict which way Canton and Stark County will vote in November’s general election. But after a long era of mixed local government, the city council, after elections last year, is now made up of entirely Democratic Party members, although the current mayor, a former Democrat, won office as an independent. In Canton, there are nearly 6,000 voters registered as Democrats, compared to just over 1,100 Republicans according to the Stark County Board of Elections. In 2006, there were 12,000 registered Democrats and 4,400 Republicans. Democratic strategists say that despite the demographic changes, Trump could still prevail. Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist, cites Trump’s dominant performance in the Republican primary in Massachusetts on March 1. Although not a rust belt state, Trump won big in heavily blue collar, union cities. “Trump put together a coalition in Massachusetts that elects Democratic governors. He won among Catholics, a week after picking a fight with the Pope. I absolutely think he can put the rust belt into play,” she said. | 0fake |
SUNDAY SCREENING: ‘In Debt We Trust’ (2007) | 21st Century Wire says..With Christmas season right around the corner, millions retail consumers in North America and Western Europe will be taking on thousands of dollars in new credit card debt. Few have paused to ponder how it all started, and where the real breaking point lies for both personal and social stability. If you think that your credit has taken over your life then you need to watch this film.This week s documentary film curated by our editorial team at 21WIRE Debt is like a disease that can enable us from living a happy and normal life by taking control over our lives. Most of us don t even know how we end up in the situation we are in. Buying every thing we own with credit has become our culture. But don t let debt control your life any more. You can take over your life again. Imagine life with out debt Watch: SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENING HERESUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Aardvark dies in blaze at London Zoo, meerkats missing | LONDON (Reuters) - An aardvark was killed and four meerkats are missing believed dead after a blaze tore through part of London Zoo early on Saturday, destroying a cafe and gift shop. The fire broke out shortly after 0600 GMT at the zoo s Animal Adventure section before spreading to the shop and cafe, near to an area where visitors can handle and feed animals, the zoo and London Fire Brigade said. More than 70 firefighters took three hours to bring the fire under control while desperate keepers who live on the site in Regent s Park in central London moved animals to safety. Some of the staff needed treatment for smoke inhalation and shock. Ten-year-old Misha the aardvark, one of the zoo s best-loved animals, perished in the fire and four of the meerkats were unaccounted for and are also presumed to have died. Taking their name from the Afrikaans word for earth-pig , aardvarks are large burrowing mammals found across much of Africa. We re absolutely devastated that Misha the aardvark has been killed and we re still trying to find out what happened to the meerkats, but at the moment the site where this fire took place is closed down, Dominic Jermey, the zoo s Director General, told BBC TV. At the moment we re not certain what has happened to the meerkats but I m not optimistic at this stage, unfortunately. Other animals nearby are being monitored by vets, but the zoo said indications were that they were unaffected. It said it hoped to reopen on Sunday. It is the world s oldest scientific zoo, dating from 1826, and houses 20,166 animals, according to its inventory for 2017. The fire brigade said it had sent 10 fire engines and 72 firefighters to the scene and added that the cause of the blaze was under investigation. The fire mainly involved the cafe and shop but part of a nearby animal petting area was also affected, said Station Manager David George. When they arrived our crews were faced with a very well developed fire. They worked incredibly hard in arduous conditions to bring it under control as quickly as possible and to stop it from spreading to neighboring animal enclosures. | 0fake |
Nepal holds final round of municipal polls, ethnic grievances remain | KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepalis began voting in the final round of municipal elections on Monday, an important step before a general election in November that will complete a near decade-long democratic transition after the abolition of Nepal s monarchy. The final round of voting covers parts of the restive southern plains that border India and are dominated by the ethnic Madhesi people. More than 2.6 million people are eligible to choose more than 6,000 representatives in 136 municipal, officials said. Voting in the area had been delayed since June after the Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN), which dominates the area, called for a boycott of the poll, a call that was only partially successful. Scores of people were killed in 2015 and 2016, mainly in clashes with police, in protests by the Madhesis against a new constitution that they said left them marginalised and favoured those living in the hills. The Madhesis are demanding a unified homeland and greater participation in state organs, including parliament, the judiciary, bureaucracy, and the national army. However, lawmakers rejected a government proposal last month to amend the constitution and meet some of the Madhesis demands. Pressure had mounted on the RJPN to take part in the municipal polls after some of its members quit the party and took part in the second round of polls in June. The first round was held in May. We ll now take our demands to the people through this election and get them passed in future with their support, Sarbendra Nath Shukla, a senior RJPN leader, told Reuters. The municipal elections, the first since 1997, are an attempt by the national government to restore democracy at the local level after a decade-long civil war that ended in 2006 and years of instability after the monarchy was abolished in 2008. They will serve as a barometer of public opinion ahead of the Nov. 26 general election. | 0fake |
FERGUSON FLAMETHROWER COMES OUT OF HIDING: Slams FBI Director For Blaming “Ferguson Effect” On Rise In Crime | Holder should be making his baseless remarks from behind bars but that s another story Retired Attorney General Eric Holder pushed back on statements made last week by FBI Director James Comey in which Comey suggested the so-called Ferguson effect might be responsible for a recent rise in crime in cities around the country.In a gathering with reporters Wednesday, Holder told the Huffington Post, I don t agree with the comments that he s made about, or the connection he s drawn, between the so-called Ferguson effect and this rise in crime. The Ferguson effect is a name given to a recent spike in crime in some, but not all, American cities this year. The idea is that police have taken note of the public mood and decided to hold back on more aggressive policing.Eric Holder told the Huffington Post the factors involved in the crime surge would be difficult to tease out, It s hard for us to understand why crime dropped to historic lows over the last 40 years. I think it s probably equally difficult or even more difficult to explain why crime has gone up in some places, violent crime has gone up in some places, over the past 12 months. But Holder then immediately discounted one possible explanation, saying, But I don t think it s connected to the so-called Ferguson effect. The comments by Eric Holder are part of an ongoing war of words within the Obama administration, which escalated last Friday when FBI Director James Comey seemed to endorse the Ferguson effect as an explanation during an address at the University of Chicago Law School.After ticking off a list of possible explanations for the recent crime surge, Director Comey said, I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior. Nobody says this on the record. Nobody says this in public, Comey told his audience last Friday, adding that it was, the one explanation that, to my mind, explains the calendar and the map. He was referring to both the widespread increase in crime in cities across the country and the timing of that increase this year.Former AG Eric Holder rejected the idea that police were holding back because of the public mood Wednesday, telling the Huffington Post, I frankly don t think police officers are laying down on the job. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
DR. MANNY: Water crisis in Flint is just the tip of the iceberg | The water crisis in Flint, Mich., is just the tip of the iceberg – and if you think that it can’t happen in your community, you’re sadly mistaken. The aging water infrastructure in this country is deeply flawed. Many of the 150,000 public water systems that serve more than 300 million people are based on rusting, leaky pipes and decades-old plans that— if not corrected and replaced— will have devastating and long-lasting effects on our communities.
The disaster in Flint, which began in 2014 when the city switched its water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in a cost-saving measure, is likely brewing in many other communities. It is inconceivable to me that in the most developed nation on the planet, we have exposed families and young children to the poisonous effects of lead. And it is almost criminal to me that water supply officials were unaware that the water pumping through a large American city was endangering the community. That level of negligence is beyond comprehension.
The dangerous, detrimental effects that lead can have on a developing brain and body are well-documented. In 1978, a largely successful campaign to remove lead from home paint products resulted in a new law, after it was found that small children could mistakenly eat paint chips and be exposed to lead poisoning. When it comes to levels of lead in water, no true amount is safe. However, in 1991 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established an action level for lead in public drinking water at 15 micrograms per liter, and required water supplies to routinely test household tap water to check lead levels.
These laws and others were established to protect our citizens from both indirect and direct exposure to the harmful compound. A person can be directly exposed to lead by drinking contaminated water with unsafe levels, while indirect exposure can occur when a person inhales contaminated water particles through steam or vapors.
Once lead enters the human body, the heavy metal attaches itself to cells that can begin to build up in bones or major organs like the liver or kidneys. It disrupts the normal cellular biology of the organ and can lead to chronic diseases. However, the most dangerous damage lead poisoning can inflict is on the brain, especially in young or unborn children. If lead is deposited in a developing fetal brain, it can disrupt the normal function and cause irreversible damage. The same can happen in young children whose brains are still maturing.
The consequences can result in low IQ, severe delays in cognitive function, significant disruption in the memory center of the brain, learning disabilities and other neurological deficits. The devastating part of this diagnosis is that it is, for the most part, irreversible. Patients exposed to acute lead poisoning can be treated through chelation, which is a method used to filter out the lead. However, for children chronically exposed over a period of time, the damage cannot be undone.
This makes the preventable crisis in Flint all the more devastating.
I read that the Obama administration is planning to pick Dr. Nicole Lurie to act as a “czar” and fix the crisis in Flint, but I urge her to look further than just Michigan. Lurie and others must start to seriously evaluate other areas of America where the people are most susceptible to a disaster such as this. The government failed the city of Flint, it must act now to protect the rest of us.
Dr. Manny Alvarez serves as Fox News Channel's senior managing health editor. He also serves as chairman of the department of obstetrics/gynecology and reproductive science at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. Click here for more information on Dr. Manny's work with Hackensack University Medical Center. Visit AskDrManny.com for more.
| 0fake |
Watch: Muslim ‘Palestinians’ Declare “We follow our Prophet Muhammad, we will kill all Christians and Jews” | jewsnews © 2015 | JEWSNEWS | It's not news...unless it's JEWS NEWS !!! Proudly powered by WordPress — Theme: JustWrite by Acosmin Join the over 1.4 million fans of Jews News on FB…It’s NOT news unless it’s Jews News! | 1real |
Cory Booker on how America's criminal justice system destroys the American dream | German Lopez:You've called the war on drugs a failure. What did you mean by that?
But we've compromised those values severely during this so-called drug war — so severely that we're actually inhibiting public safety. We're consuming gross amounts of taxpayer dollars. We are undermining human potential. And we're doing it all in a way that has a significant, if not savage, disparate impact on poor people and minorities.
That, to me, is a failure. When we can get the same aims but also save taxpayer dollars, create greater safety than we're experiencing right now, elevate human life and human potential, and not further cement racial disparities in this country but alleviate them, then we should be going in a dramatically different direction with drug policy reform. Pilot programs for prison reentry, and entire states like Georgia — which is dramatically lowering its African-American prison population, saving taxpayer dollars, and driving down crime — are showing us that we could go a different way.
Cory Booker:Overall, drug policy has gone seriously awry and is offending our value system. And marijuana is one of those drugs that's been almost pulled out of a category of other serious drugs, many of which are prescribed by doctors to deal with serious injuries — somehow this drug was pulled out, made a schedule 1 crime, and so vilified that it's created classes of criminals amid otherwise law-abiding citizens. For example, a mother who has a sick child with seizures — which we can show, medically, that marijuana, without even its intoxicating element, could severely reduce, and benefit that child — right now that person's behavior, if she's getting that life-affirming drug, is going to be called criminal. If she goes into another state that may have legalized it or legalized it medically and comes back into a state that doesn't, she's trafficking drugs across state lines — a federal offense. I'm one of those people who think our marijuana laws are way off the rails. We need to pull back and focus on things like legalizing medical marijuana; supporting states like Alaska or Colorado or Washington that want to be incubators of reform; and allowing scientists and medical researchers to test marijuana's impact on people.
What I'm comfortable doing now is just saying, "Hey, federal government, play catch-up here. Get into the zone we already know most Americans are comfortable in." And we're going to stop criminalizing large segments of the country, we're going to allow scientists to study it, and we're not going to take law-abiding citizens who sell marijuana through dispensaries in the states that have legalized it and make criminals out of them.
You have drug laws that are so severely, disparately enforced against some groups. Let's take African Americans, for example: there's no difference between black and white marijuana usage or sales, in fact. You go to college campuses and you'll get white drug dealers. I know this from my own experience of growing up and going to college myself. Fraternity houses are not being raided by police at the level you see with communities in inner cities.
So equal usage of this drug, equal sale of this drug, but blacks are about 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for it. African Americans are more likely to get mandatory minimums, more likely to get about 13 percent longer sentences. It's created these jagged disparities in incarceration. In my state, blacks are about 13 to 14 percent of the population, but they make up over 60 percent of the prison population.
Remember: the majority of people we arrest in America are nonviolent offenders. Now you've got this disparity in arrests, but that creates disparities that painfully fall all along this system.
For example, when you get arrested for possession with intent to sell, you can do it in some neighborhoods where there are no public schools and it's not as densely packed as an inner city. You do it in an inner city and now you're within a school zone, so you're facing even higher mandatory minimums. So when you face that and you get out from your longer term, now you're 19 years old with a felony conviction, possession with intent to sell in a school zone.
But forget even all of that — if you just have a felony conviction for possession, what do you face now? Thousands of collateral consequences that will dog you for all of your life. You can't get a Pell Grant. You can't get a business license. You can't get a job. You're hungry? You can't get food stamps. You need some place to live? You can't even get public housing.
What that does within our country, especially in these concentrated areas where we have massive numbers of men being incarcerated, is create a caste system in which people feel like there's no way out. And we're not doing anything as a society like we know we could do. There are tons of pilot programs that show if you help people coming back from a nonviolent offense lock into a job or opportunity, their recidivism rates go down dramatically. If you don't help them, what happens is that, left with limited options, many people make the decision to go back to that world of narcotic sales.
What's more dangerous to society: someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of their own home, or someone going 30 miles over the speed limit, racing down a road in a community? And yet that teenager who makes a mistake — doing something the last three presidents admitted to doing — now he has a felony conviction, because it's more likely he's going to get caught. And for the rest of his life, when he's 29, 39, 49, 59, he's still paying for a mistake he made as a teenager.
That's not the kind of society I believe in, nor is it fiscally responsible. It's undermining productivity. It's undermining people's ability to take care of their families. It's locking in generational problems in poverty, or even limiting opportunities.
This is so wrong that those conversations I'm having with conservatives as well as with Democrats are resonating. When you have people like Sen. Rand Paul talking about racial disparities in incarceration, when you have people like Grover Norquist standing up and talking about disparate racial impact of this problem, this convergence in understanding of fiscal conservatives, of Christian conservatives, of libertarians shows me that this is a time of great hope for our country.
So I'm not going to question people's motives. This is one of those issues, like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, where it should pull all Americans together to say enough is enough.
I went through 15 years of my life where every single day I would encounter good Americans who were being overly punished in a disproportionate way for a nonviolent drug offense, whose lives were being destroyed, who had desperation, desire, hunger just to have a shot at the American dream — yet a nonviolent drug offense was undermining their potential to contribute, to raise their kids, to have a decent life.
That's just wrong. So every day that I'm here, that echoes in my conscience and drives me forward.
Let me even go a step further, because I alluded to this point but didn't make it clear enough: the violence in my community that's driven by men who believe — and I think they're wrong, but this is what they believe — that they have no fair shot in this country; they made a mistake and they've gone into a system that often turns them out worse than they went in, in terms of their proclivity for crime.
When you take juveniles, like we do in this country, and put them in solitary confinement — other nations consider that torture — you hurt them and you scar them through your practices. You expose them for nonviolent crimes to often violent people. You expose them to gang activity.
Then you throw them back on our streets. And you tell them, "We're not going to help you get a job. You want a roof over your head? Forget it. In fact, if we catch you trespassing on public housing authority property, we're going to take action against you. You're going to get a Pell Grant, try to better yourself through education? Sorry, you're banned from getting a Pell Grant."
What do people do when they feel trapped and cornered by society? What I saw in my city was people getting more and more caught up in criminal activity. You can trace it way back to an early youthful offense that resulted not in us helping them, not in us intervening to empower them — but in taking children and abandoning them and saying, "You made this mistake, and we're going to punish you, and, by the way, that punishment is going to continue every day of your life."
Think of the statistic when I was mayor. We found out that the murder victims in our city had an 85 percent chance of having been previously arrested an average of 10 times. Some people might take a statistic like that and say, "Well, it shows these people are whatever." No.
If you want to judge a society, don't judge it by the kid like me who grew up in an affluent neighborhood and was given great schooling. Judge it by how we treat all of our children.
What does it say about a society when a kid makes a mistake, and we don't surround him with opportunities that we know now work? But no, we have this slippery slope of punishing teenagers for nonviolent offenses — things kids in the neighborhood where I grew up, in an affluent town, did a lot. But when these kids get caught, they begin a slippery slope into a system that often closes off their options and points them more toward crime than toward redemption. That's unacceptable to me.
So I've got a lot of missions here — to expand opportunity, empower people with education, make college more affordable — but dear god, I am driven every single day to end this nightmare that has made my nation singular in humanity for having more people behind bars for nonviolent offenses. And in terms of race and class, we now have a country that has more African Americans under criminal supervision than all the slaves in 1850.
This is haunting to me, especially because there's another way. I don't have to invent it; I'm not just asserting it. I know factually there's another way because I know many red states with Republican governors are showing there's a way to dramatically reduce the prison population. The governor of Georgia is bragging about a 20 percent reduction of African Americans in the criminal justice system. There are common-sense things we could be doing that we're not doing because of a lack of urgency — and that's unacceptable to me. I was taught as a kid, as Langston Hughes said so eloquently, "There's a dream in this land with its back against the wall. To save the dream for one, we must save the dream for all."
But I'm the X Generation. We grew up after the Civil Rights Movement. And I know I'm here because of the outrageously righteous impatience of a whole lot of Americans from wildly different backgrounds — from religious folks to nonreligious folks, black folks to white folks, Christian folks to Muslim and Jewish folks, Latino folks, you name it. There was a wild sense of urgency to raise the consciousness of this country until this place couldn't stop the change. I mean, Sen. Strom Thurmond did a 24-hour filibuster trying to stop civil rights legislation. And the pressure in this country to end an outrageous injustice, a savage injustice, led to change.
To me, this issue is no less urgent. In fact, in terms of affecting poor people and minorities and devastating communities, this is an urgent issue of that magnitude — to bring a legal system that is truly a justice system.
We're all hurting for it. I don't care what your background is. You're hurting for it. You're hurting because the truth of our country — liberty and justice for all — is not being told. You're hurting for it because you're spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars from your annual taxpayer expenses to support an unjust system. We're hurting for it because there's a better way to go; and not doing anything is making streets less safe, and destroying and undermining our children that we desperately need in a competitive economic environment to be contributing and not costing.
So I don't know what it's going to take, but I know one thing it's going to take is us and more people getting involved and seeing this as a cause for our country, not a cause for some people over there. This really does touch us all, and there's got to be a lot more pushing. You know the old saying — I've heard it a million times down here: "Change doesn't come from Washington; it comes to Washington."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. | 0fake |
JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO: Criminal Clintons Stop Eric Trump’s Incredible Charity For Children With Cancer [Video] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMHGkzrwzKg | 1real |
Leftist leader backs Guillier in Chile's run-off presidential election | SANTIAGO (Reuters) - The leader of an influential leftist bloc in Chile endorsed center-left presidential hopeful Alejandro Guillier on Monday over conservative Sebastian Pinera in next week s run-off election. Beatriz Sanchez, the flagbearer for the hard-left Frente Amplio coalition, said Pinera s suggestion that ballots had been tampered with in the first-round election had changed her mind about staying quiet on whom she would vote for in the run-off. That crosses the line and that s why today I ve decided...to vote against Sebastian Pinera, Sanchez told journalists. My vote will be for Alejandro Guillier. Winning over Sanchez voters has been seen as essential for a Guillier triumph over Pinera in the second-round vote. As Frente Amplio s presidential candidate, Sanchez secured twice as many votes as expected by opinion polls and came two points short of moving onto the run-off election with Pinera. But it was unclear if Sanchez somewhat reluctant endorsement of Guillier would be enough to get her supporters excited about heading to polls Dec. 17. Last week, Frente Amplio refrained from endorsing Guillier and demanded he clarify his proposals. Pinera, a former president who governed Chile between 2010 and 2014, had been expected to easily win this year s election before his disappointing performance in the Nov. 19 first-round vote. On Monday, Pinera said on a local radio program that some voters had reported that ballots were pre-marked in favor of his rivals in the first-round election and that he would have more supporters supervising voting stations in the run-off vote. Chile s electoral authority said it had received no complaints of irregularities and Pinera s remarks were widely criticized. Let s be responsible and not discredit our democratic institutions, outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet said on Twitter. Pinera said in an impromptu news conference later on Monday that he did not mean to cast doubt over election results but reiterated that he believed ballots had been tampered with. | 0fake |
MOTHER OF 12 GOES ON RANT IN TARGET STORE: “Mothers…Get your children out of this store!” [Viral VIDEO] | Perhaps a few random flash mobs protesting Target s decision to put the feelings of .01% of our population before the safety of our women and children are in order?Video showing a woman protesting the bathroom policy at Target has gone viral. A video posted on YouTube shows the woman, who says she s a mother of 12, carrying a Bible through the store and yelling, America, when are you going to wake up? It s time to take a stand and have a voice. She calls the store s bathroom policy a wicked practice and says she wouldn t spend a penny there.You can see other people with her in the video, which lasts less than two minutes, and then shows them walking out.https://youtu.be/TCIYsXhR1D0Target has said that in its stores, transgender people are free to use whichever restroom they feel comfortable with. Via: Fox 8 | 1real |
Three Quarters Of Americans Oppose Gun Control | Three Quarters Of Americans Oppose Gun Control Record numbers say no to proposed handgun ban Steve Watson | Infowars.com - October 27, 2016 Comments
A new poll released by Gallup has found that a record amount of Americans are opposed to gun control measures .
The survey found that 76 percent of respondents, over three quarters, believe that a ban on civilian ownership of handguns should not be made law.
The findings represent a four-point increase on the same survey from last year, in addition to an all-time high for the past three decades.
The poll also found that almost two thirds, 61 percent, are “against” a ban on semi-automatic rifles, or “assault weapons”as the corporate media refers to them.
That figure represents a full ten-point increase on previous findings, and is an all time record high since polling began on the issue 20 years ago.
Just 27 percent, less than a third, say they support a ban on handgun ownership, while only 36 percent, support a semi-automatic ban. an eight-point decline on previous findings.
In addition, gun sales have been hitting record highs for months on end.
In a summary of the new poll, Gallup seemed surprised, by the findings, describing waning support for a gun ban as a “paradox”:
Perhaps paradoxically, opposition toward a ban has increased against a backdrop of multiple mass shootings and terrorist attacks in which the perpetrators used assault rifles. These guns were used in high-profile incidents, including the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, and the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut.
The findings reveal just how out of step Hillary Clinton’s position on gun control is with the majority of Americans.
Hillary is a staunch gun control proponent. Wikileaks releases have revealed that Hillary plans to implement strict gun control measures by executive order.
Clinton purportedly plans to open gun manufacturers to lawsuits by crime victims, a move that critics say would do nothing to reduce crime, but would bankrupt–and eventually end–gun manufacturing in the United States. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 1real |
LAURA INGRAHAM’S Brilliant Idea On How To Shake Up Liberal College Campuses [Video] | Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity are hysterical! During an interview about free speech, they discuss a tour of liberal college campuses BRILLIANT!TUCKER CARLSON JUST HAD A PROFESSOR ON HIS SHOW WHO BELIEVES IN SHUTTING DOWN FREE SPEECH: Last night on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show, Tucker debated a loony leftist English professor at Colby college wrote a piece in the New Republic where he essentially argued that it s okay for colleges to shut down free speech on their campuses based on value judgments the colleges make about the speakers. From Hanlon s piece in the New Republic:Rejecting campus speakers is not an assault on free speech. Rather, like so many other decisions made every day by college students, teachers, and administrators, it s a value judgment.Aaron Hanlon of Colby College in Maine said on Tucker Carlson Tonight that Ann Coulter does not meet the standards for speakers that should be invited to campus.Hanlon said he was personally very speech-permissive but that colleges should be able to make judgments based on a speaker s value but not their ideology before allowing them to speak.Carlson asked Hanlon to name one speaker who was disallowed on campus due to a liberal viewpoint under that rule. FOXDuring the exchange between Tucker Carlson and leftist professor, Tucker attempts to wrap his mind around what he s actually hearing Hanlon is saying. At one point, Carlson is so stunned by the professor s attempts to justify the shutting down of free speech on college campuses simply because you don t agree with them, that he actually breaks out into laughter. Tucker is visibly stunned by the responses to his questions about the removal of free speech from campuses, as this Colby English professor unashamedly argues that fascism should be acceptable on college campuses. Carlson asks Hanlon, Can you hear yourself? You re a college professor and you re against intellectual debate that s deliberately provocative. Watch the insane exchange here: | 1real |
Macron urges the French to value success, rejects 'president of rich' tag | PARIS (Reuters) - Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said he was a president of all French, dismissing opponents criticisms that his policies favor the rich while urging his countrymen to adopt a more positive attitude toward success. In his first months in power, Macron has defied street protests to loosen France s labor laws, moved to scrap the wealth tax and cut housing aid. His sometimes forthright style has forced him to fend off accusations that he holds the working class in contempt, but Macron said he was a leader who would keep saying things as they are. The 39-year-old, whose election win sidelined France s mainstream political parties and tore apart the country s traditional left-right divide, sought to reassure left-wing voters in his first live TV interview since taking office in May. We re taking care of the France where things aren t going well, Macron said. I m doing what I said I would do during the election campaign. Macron angered unions last week with comments he made during a visit to a car parts factory, saying workers protesting over job losses should look for work at a nearby plant rather than kicking up a bloody mess . He said that reforms to overhaul France s unemployment insurance and professional training systems, which will be discussed in the next few weeks, would help the most in need while encouraging social mobility and merit. Macron, whose popularity has slumped since his election, said the aim of scrapping the wealth tax was to help to retain talent in France and encourage the wealthy to invest. For our society to get better, we need people who succeed. We shouldn t be jealous of them, we should say: fantastic , he said. But the move has prompted opponents to label the former investment banker president of the rich . He s not president of the rich, he is president of the super rich, those who funded his campaign, right-winger Nicolas Dupont-Aignan said. Left-wing daily Liberation said on its Monday front page Macron was brandishing individual success like a mantra under the headline: Succeed, bloody hell! , in a reference to his comments at the car parts factory. In the more than hour-long interview at the Elysee palace that focused on his domestic agenda, Macron also said his economic reforms would start bearing fruit within two years. Unemployment is currently falling. You ll see the full effect of the reforms currently carried out by the government in 1-1/2 to two years, he said During the campaign, Macron promised to lower France s stubbornly high unemployment rate to 7 percent by the end of his mandate from near double digits. On the international front, he said that despite disagreements with U.S. President Donald Trump over Iran and climate change, he would continue to work with the billionaire. I constantly talk to the American president, because it s my duty, he said. It s the right way to do it because he is the head of the top power so it s necessary to anchor him to this partnership and multilateralism. On Iran, he said he would go to Tehran in due time , but added: We must be more stringent with Iran on its ballistic activity, the missiles it shoots and which are not nuclear and Iran s action in the region. | 0fake |
C-Span Online Broadcast Interrupted by Russian Network - The New York Times | At 2:30 p. m. on Thursday, Representative Maxine Waters was on the floor of the House of Representatives, arguing for the importance of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “At this time,” Ms. Waters, Democrat of California, said, “with a bill that would basically take our cop on the block, the S. E. C. and literally obliterate — — ” Alas, politics junkies, news editors and anyone else who was watching the broadcast online did not learn how that sentence ended. Ms. Waters was cut off. Instead, they heard the jangling music of a feed from RT, a Russian television network that has been accused of helping its government interfere in the American election. Some on social media immediately assumed that the interruption, which lasted about 10 minutes, had nefarious implications. in a statement, had a simpler explanation: It was probably a technical error. ’s television broadcast continued uninterrupted. Noting that RT is among the news feeds it regularly monitors, it said: “We don’t believe we were hacked. Instead, our initial investigation suggests that this was caused by an internal routing error. We take our network security very seriously and will continue with a deeper investigation, which may take some time. ” RT America, which is broadcast by cable companies within the United States, did not respond to an email requesting comment on Thursday afternoon. A recent declassified intelligence report accused Russia of interfering in the election and said that RT “aimed at undermining viewers’ trust of U. S. democratic procedures. ” — a private company that, according to its website, is available in 100 million American homes — receives no government money but broadcasts all live congressional proceedings, providing a direct feed of the daily stuff of politics to Americans who find themselves interested in what their representatives are doing. Howard Mortman, a network spokesman, said he could not provide numbers for ’s online viewership at the time of the interruption. ’s newsroom monitors many other channels for breaking news, including domestic networks like CBS and CNN as well as various international networks. Its statement suggested that a routing error had caused the RT feed it regularly monitors to be broadcast accidentally. Mr. Mortman said the network’s early explanation for the interruption came from an internal analysis. He said that he was not aware of any previous such interruption. Timothy Burke, the video director at Deadspin, who regularly monitors 20 to 30 online news feeds from his home in Tampa, Fla. was among the first to comment on Twitter about the sudden interruption. He said he had assumed “somebody just flipped a wrong switch somewhere. ” Had Mr. Burke and others who were watching online at the time not been interrupted, they would have heard Ms. Waters mention Russia and Donald J. Trump several times before she ended her turn on the floor. In a phone interview Thursday, she was perplexed. She said no one had satisfactorily explained “how this happened or why it happened, or if it’s happened before. ” “I just think it’s strange,” Ms. Waters said. “At a time when our intelligence agencies are very confident and basically have confirmed that Russia hacked the D. N. C. and other political interests, and then we have, while I’m on the floor of the House, talking about Trump and Russia, I get interfered with and interrupted by Russia Today. ” “It’s strange. It’s odd,” she said. | 0fake |
Georgia senators will consider Clinton high court nominees: report | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Georgia’s two Republican senators broke with members of their party, saying they would consider Supreme Court nominees put forward by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton if she wins the presidency, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Sunday. The comments from U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, who is up for re-election on Tuesday, and U.S. Senator David Perdue came after Republican Senators John McCain and Ted Cruz suggested they might block any of Clinton’s potential nominees. “You don’t shirk your responsibility when you’re an elected official. You sanctify your responsibility, and that’s what I’ll do. I’ll consider who she nominates at the time she does and make a decision that’s right for the people of Georgia,” Isakson told the Atlanta newspaper. A spokeswoman for Perdue, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the AJC: “He wants to ensure we have a Supreme Court justice who will uphold the Constitution, and he will examine each nominee independently based on their merits.” The death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February has left the nine-member high court short one justice and evenly split between liberals and conservatives. In March, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a federal appeals court judge, to replace Scalia, but the Republican-led Senate has refused to consider the nomination, saying the next president should make the pick. The Senate’s inaction on Garland, a centrist, has made the Supreme Court a potent issue in the election. After many years of leaning conservative, the court could tilt to the left for the first time in decades if Clinton wins the election. Isakson said he expects the Senate will confirm Garland before January in the event of a Clinton victory. Some Republicans fear Clinton would nominate a more liberal justice, swinging the ideological balance of the court even further to the left. | 0fake |
TOP PRIORITY: Obama Springs Crack Dealers Out Of Prison In Record Numbers | The controversy surrounding Obama s prison reforms continues with the release of more non-violent drug dealers. Andy McCarthy had this to say about the lawlessness of Obama s release of prisoners: In making a mockery of his core constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully, the broad law-enforcement discretion the Constitution vests in the executive branch has been President Obama s preferred sleight of hand. In reality, prosecutorial discretion is merely a resource-allocation doctrine peculiar to criminal law: a recognition of the obvious fact that enforcement resources are finite; that it is neither possible nor desirable that every penal infraction be prosecuted; and therefore that priorities must be established about which cases should be pursued, which left to state law-enforcement to handle, and which overlooked. The doctrine has never been what the president has turned it into: a license not merely to ignore but to rewrite laws not just penal laws; any laws with which he disagrees on policy grounds. He s set a record with the number of releases:President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentences of 95 people, mainly for non-violent, drug-related offenses, and pardoned two others, the White House said in a statement on Friday.Obama has made reforms to the US criminal justice system to reduce the number of people serving long sentences for non-violent drug crimes one of the top priorities for his remaining year in office.With the move on Friday, President Obama, who signed the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010, has now granted 184 commutations during his time in office more than the last five presidents combined.The number of sentences Obama commuted Friday is more than double the number he granted this summer and it s the third time this year he s given clemency, the Washington Post reported. I commuted the sentences of 95 men and women who had served their debt to society, another step forward in upholding our ideals of justice and fairness, Obama said.The Fair Sentencing Act reduced the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses and many of the pardoned offenders would have faced shorter penalties under today s laws.Each of the 95 people who received a commutation Friday got a personal letter from the president.He wrote: I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong, and change your life for the better.Ex-Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter reduced sentences for 90 inmates total.Republicans George W Bush, his father and Ronald Reagan commuted sentences for 27 people. | 1real |
EVIL HILLARY SUPPORTERS Yell "F*ck Trump"…Burn Truck Of Daddy Fishing With 2 Yr Son Over Of Trump Bumper-Stickers [VIDEO] » 100percentfedUp.com | Email
These people are sick and evil. They will stop at NOTHING to get their way. Laws mean nothing to them, because they mean nothing to their President and his regime…
A California man says a stranger hurled expletives and set his truck on fire Thursday after seeing a pro-Donald Trump sticker on the bumper.
Hao Lee had taken his 2-year-old son fishing on a pleasant November afternoon in Sacramento. He parked his white Dodge Ram truck with a pair of Trump stickers on the bumper along Garden Highway.
“About a couple hours into fishing I heard someone yelling out ‘F’ Trump,” Lee told KTXL.
Lee and his son were only about 50 yards from where his truck was parked, near the edge of the river. TRENDING ON 100% Fed Up | 1real |
Obama budget would fund public works program with tax on overseas profits | President Obama unveiled a $4 trillion budget Monday, featuring an ambitious public works program, a one-time tax on foreign profits kept overseas by corporations, tax credits for middle-class Americans, and a 1.3 percent pay raise for federal employees and troops.
The massive document is a blueprint for what Obama has been calling “middle-class economics,” but congressional Republicans are likely to view it merely as the president’s opening bid in a contentious process designed to forge a tax and spending plan for the new fiscal year.
The document will become, if not law, another defining moment for the president as he tries to carve out priorities for his remaining two years in office. Administration officials have tried to map out potential political trade-offs by offering elements such as a corporate tax revision that could appeal to Republicans, while asking for more spending on infrastructure.
But the president is also seeking to fund his proposals by raising taxes on the richest Americans, an approach that has immediately drawn Republican opposition.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), appearing on television Sunday, rejected many of Obama’s ideas for raising taxes on the wealthy as “envy economics.”
The president’s budget features a six-year, $478 billion public works program for upgrading the nation’s infrastructure, including roads, railroads and ports.
The package is bigger and stretched over more years than Obama’s earlier unsuccessful requests for infrastructure money.
The administration is proposing to pay for the ambitious program in part with revenue from a one-time mandatory 14 percent tax on about $2 trillion in profits that corporations have been keeping overseas in order to avoid corporate income taxes here. The tax would be a sizable hit on multinationals and a way of discouraging them from parking money in foreign countries.
The administration also is seeking to lower the corporate federal income-tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent by closing loopholes.
And the president wants to raise pay for federal workers and troops by 1.3 percent, which would be more than the 1 percent pay bump given to them the past two fiscal years.
The administration is also seeking a 6 percent increase in research and development spending, a “substantial investment” in early education, boosts in efforts on cyber-security, and resources to fight the Islamic State and other foreign threats.
The Office of Management and Budget said the president’s plan would produce a $474 billion deficit, or 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product, which is little changed from the current fiscal year but in line with deficits as a share of the economy over the past half-century.
The budget requests exceed the spending caps established in 2010 by $74 billion spread evenly between military and non-military discretionary spending, and while the administration is proposing offsets, it also argued strongly for the elimination of the limits that trigger wide cuts known as sequestration. “We’ve seen bipartisan agreement that the sequestration is mindless and is not the right approach for our country,” said a senior administration official.
The OMB also forecasts that over the next decade, nearly $6 trillion will be added to the national debt, but that would represent a small decline as a share of the economy at 73.3 percent in 2025, said a congressional aide familiar with the plan who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. That forecast includes $1.8 trillion in deficit-reduction measures, said another person familiar with the plan.
The administration said it “achieves these goals by replacing mindless austerity with smart reforms, paying for all new investments” and seeking new savings.
That isn’t likely to appease Republicans, however, who are expected to quickly dismiss Obama’s budget request and start drafting their own blueprint that would seek to eliminate deficits entirely over the next 10 years and tackle the biggest drivers of government spending: Social Security and federal health programs.
Although the president has previewed his tax and spending priorities over the past two weeks, the budget provides important — and controversial — details.
“This is a budget that fleshes out the president’s State of the Union address and puts meat on the bones of his middle-class economics agenda,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “It makes important strategic investmens to sharpen our competitive edge, including investments in infrastructure, science research and education — things that have helped power the American economy in the past — and we risk falling behind if we don’t make those investments going forward.”
Van Hollen added that the administration is proposing tax changes — including an increase in the capital gains tax and expanded tax credits for families with children — “designed to address what is currently a tilt in the tax code in favor of those who make money off of money and against those who make money off of hard work.”
According to a Tax Policy Center paper, if all of the major individual income tax provisions were fully phased in, the president’s package would raise taxes by an average of $164 per household in 2016. But winners would outnumber losers by more than 7 to 1, with the tax increases concentrated among the richest 1 percent of households.
The vast majority of households in the bottom four quintiles would pay lower taxes — or receive larger refunds — as a result of the policy proposals. Those in the lowest quintile would by far save the most.
“My job is to present the right ideas,” Obama told NBC News in a pre-Super Bowl interview broadcast from the White House. “If the Republicans think they’ve got a better idea, they should present them. But my job is not to trim my sails and not tell the American people what we should be doing, pretending somehow that we don’t need better roads or more affordable college.”
The president will also propose approximately $1.8 trillion in deficit-reducing measures over a 10-year period. Those measures, which resemble past proposals, would include about $160 billion in higher income and Social Security taxes resulting from immigration reform, $400 billion in health care savings. and $640 billion from taxes raised mostly by eliminating deductions without raising rates. Additional savings would come from lower interest costs on the federal debt.
One item that will still be in the printed version of the budget: a tax on withdrawals from 529 accounts designed to promote parents’ savings for college tuition. After that proposal was recently greeted with a backlash, the administration retreated from the idea, but it was too late to change the printed budget.
Obama administration officials have been trying to link various tax and spending changes to build support among members of Congress who might favor only one part of those pairings.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently said that the windfall resulting from taxing foreign profits accumulated by corporations should go to funding the infrastructure program. The administration also paired increases in capital gains taxes and a new fee on the liabilities of big banks and insurance companies with proposals to expand middle-class tax credits and free community-college education. And the administration has also said that it wants to break through spending caps for discretionary spending by equal amounts for military and non-military programs.
But making those trade-offs will prove more difficult in Congress than on paper.
For example, the tax on foreign profits, regardless of whether they are brought back to the United States, is likely to face strong headwinds in Congress. Obama’s plan would impose an immediate tax of up to $280 billion on U.S.-based multinationals at a time when many lawmakers are worried about pushing companies to move their headquarters overseas.
The 14 percent tax would “transition” to a long-term 19 percent rate, senior administration officials said.
As previously announced, the budget will include an increase in the top capital gains tax rate to 28 percent, which would fall primarily on the richest 1 percent of Americans.
“What I think the president is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics. This top-down redistribution doesn’t work,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It may make for good politics; it doesn’t make for good economic growth.”
For example, Ryan called Obama’s plan to expand the amount of inherited wealth subject to the capital gains tax “a bad idea” that would make it “really hard for a family to pass on a family business to the next generation.”
Still, Ryan embraced some of Obama’s proposals for cutting taxes, especially for the struggling middle class. Ryan has long endorsed expanding the earned-income tax credit to childless adults, for example, saying it “pulls people into the workforce.”
“We really believe that we should reform the entire tax code for all people — individuals, families, businesses, simpler, the whole thing. But it is pretty clear to us that the president doesn’t agree with that on individuals,” Ryan said. “So the question is — which I don’t know the answer to — is there common ground on aspects of tax reform that we think can help grow the economy? . . . We’ll find out.”
Lori Montgomery and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. | 0fake |
PRESIDENT TRUMP Turns C-PAC Into T-PAC: “Era of empty talk is over…I’m Not Representing the Globe; I’m Representing Your Country” [VIDEO] | President Donald Trump returned to CPAC on Friday, receiving a rock star welcome from the packed ballroom.He kicked off the speech defending his statement on Twitter that the media was the enemy of the people, vowing to fight their fake news stories. A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are. They are the enemy of the people, he said, criticizing their dishonest coverage of his administration.Trump admitted that the media was very upset by his repeated criticisms, but that he would continue to do so, citing the First Amendment. They get upset, they say we can t criticize their dishonest coverage because of the first amendment. They always bring up the First Amendment, he said. I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it better than me. Here are a few of our favorite zingers from his speech: Never underestimate the people never! If our presidents would ve gone to the beach for 15 years, we would be in much better shape than we are right now. Jobs are already starting to pour back into our country. It s time for all Americans to get off welfare and get back to work You re gonna love it! You re gonna love it! Obamacare covers very few people and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them. It was taken away from them. Here are a few highlights from his speech:Trump traveled to the conference center in Maryland aboard Marine One, returning to the CPAC conference where he made his first big politically themed speeches. Supporters lined up hours early to get in the conference hall, but had to go through tight security to enter the building.During his speech, the president vowed to keep his campaign promises, specifically a repeal and replace of Obamacare, building the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, building a wall on the southern border, restoring military funding. We have to, to turn things around. The era of empty talk is over, he said. It s over. Now is the time for action. Breitbart News | 1real |
Bayer Deal for Monsanto Follows Agribusiness Trend, Raising Worries for Farmers - The New York Times | Don Halcomb, a farmer in Adairville, Ky. is expecting his profit to vanish this year, largely because of the confluence of falling crop prices and rising costs for seeds and other materials. The price of an bag of seed corn rose to $300 from $80 in the last decade, as the companies that produced them consolidated, he said. And with the recent decline in commodity prices, Mr. Halcomb said he expects to lose $100 an acre this year. “We’re producing our crops at a loss now, just like the oil guys are pumping oil at a loss,” Mr. Halcomb, who grows corn, soybeans, wheat and barley on his family farm, said by telephone on Wednesday. “You can’t cut your costs fast enough. ” It is a common plight of farmers across the United States, with the global agriculture industry in a wrenching downturn. Because farmers have produced too much corn, wheat and soybeans, they have been forced to slash prices to sell their crops. They have also reduced spending on seeds, pesticides and fertilizer, which has eaten into sales at agribusiness giants, including Monsanto and DuPont. In response, these companies have sought deals to cut costs and weather the industry’s storm. Four major agribusiness mergers have been announced in the last year. The latest is Bayer AG’s $56 billion takeover of Monsanto — the largest acquisition of 2016 — announced on Wednesday. Every merger creates the possibility of higher costs for farmers. Mr. Halcomb buys seeds with traits licensed to Monsanto of St. Louis and seeds from DuPont, which has a deal pending to merge with Dow Chemical. His fertilizers are made of potassium compounds and phosphate produced by Agrium of Calgary, Alberta, which on Monday agreed to combine with the fertilizer producer Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. He uses pesticides made by Syngenta of Switzerland, which agreed in February to a takeover by the China National Chemical Corporation. “It’s just like any other industry that consolidates,” Mr. Halcomb said. “They tell the regulators they’re and then they tell their customers they have to increase pricing after the deal’s done. ” The companies say they are merging to diversify and increase growth and research capabilities, but these deals, given their size and scope, have already caught the attention of lawmakers and regulators in Washington. There is no guarantee that they will all receive regulatory approval, and some companies may have to sell assets to allay antitrust concerns. Dow’s merger with DuPont is under Justice Department review. The market seemed to anticipate hurdles for the Monsanto deal on Wednesday. Shares of the company closed about 20 percent lower than the $128 per share cash offer from Bayer, which is based in Leverkusen, Germany. Shares of each company gained less than 1 percent after the deal was announced. Adding the assumption of about $10 billion of Monsanto debt, Bayer’s total $66 billion pact is the largest deal, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, ahead of InBev’s $60. 4 billion offer for another St. company, in June 2008. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, scheduled a hearing next week to discuss the possible effect of these mergers on farming. Iowa produced more corn last year than any other state, according to the National Corn Growers Association. “It seems to be catching fire and happening so fast with so many,” Senator Grassley said in a phone interview. “When you have less competition, prices go up. ” European competition regulators also said publicly, before a deal was even signed, that they would look at how it could affect prices and the availability of seed products, as well as research. Liam Condon, who leads Bayer’s division, said in an interview that the company did an “extensive analysis” with regard to antitrust before approaching Monsanto in May. Mr. Condon said that he does not believe there is much overlap between their portfolios, because Bayer’s focus is largely on crop protection, while Monsanto’s is on seeds and traits. He said the companies assume they may need to sell off some assets to appease regulators. Monsanto, which is famous for its production of genetically modified seeds, rejected several offers from Bayer as too low. Wednesday’s deal represented a 44 percent premium to Monsanto’s stock price on May 9, the day before Bayer’s interest in a deal surfaced. To assuage Monsanto’s concerns, Bayer threw in a $2 billion breakup fee if the deal fell apart on antitrust grounds. The strategic goal of the deal, according to Bill Selesky, an analyst at Argus Research, is to create a experience for farmers, making Bayer the world’s largest supplier of seeds and farm chemicals. By improving the product for farmers, the combined company could ultimately raise prices, Mr. Selesky said in an interview. Senator Grassley said that he had spoken with a few farmers who believed the deals were necessary so large agribusinesses could continue to absorb the costs of researching and developing products and getting government approval for them. Bayer and Monsanto said they planned to cut about $1. 2 billion worth of costs as part of the deal, helping to improve efficiency. But Jim Benham of Versailles, Ind. the president of the Indiana Farmers Union, was not so optimistic. He blamed the rising costs of inputs — seeds, fertilizer and the like — for eating away at farmers’ profit margins, and warned that consolidation will make it worse. Costs have already risen by double digits over the last four to five years, and the proposed merger could accelerate that. “The merger is going to hurt the farmer,” said Mr. Benham, who grows corn, soybeans and sometimes wheat on his farm. “The more consolidation we have on our inputs, the worse it gets. ” Mr. Condon of Bayer said that the company would not raise prices without providing more value to farmers. “This is a highly competitive industry, and just increasing prices without having any additional advantage or benefit for growers won’t go anywhere,” he said. “It’s up to us to show what we’re offering will help farmers improve their return on investment. ” Some farmers said the consolidation could even enable prices to fall. Christine Hamilton manages a farm of more than 12, 000 acres in Kimball, S. D. growing crops like corn and operating a ranch. She said that if the deal can pass the antitrust screening, then maybe it could actually help farmers. “I understand how companies need to get bigger in order to be competitive,” she said. “As we are in a low part of the cycle, anything that might have a chance of reducing our input prices would be great. ” | 0fake |
TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER and Dartmouth Grad Says He’d Be “OK if #BetsyDeVos was sexually assaulted” After DeVos Announced Law Would Be Restored In College Sex Assault Cases | Texas Civil Rights lawyer Rob Ranco is a partner at The Carlson Law Firm at the Round Rock, TX location. He is the supervising attorney for the firm s three Austin offices.When Rob isn t busy chasing ambulances or using a bullying incident his daughter allegedly faced at school to gain celebrity, he s publicly telling the world he d be okay if Betsy DeVos, a mother, grandmother and US Secretary of Education was sexually assaulted. It looks the real bully has been exposed Here s Rob Ranco s vile tweet, that he quickly deleted after it started to get traction on Twitter:This is what Rob s Twitter account looks like now:Here is a link to the archived tweet and to the responses Ranco got to his disgusting comment: https://archive.fo/xNdigRob Ranco, a partner in the Texas Carlson Law Firm was apparently referring to a decision made by Betsy DeVos, that she announced earlier in the week regarding changes that would be made to Title IX as it relates to the unfair and unlawful way sexual assault cases are currently being tried on college campuses.Betsy DeVos spoke on Thursday, September 7, at George Mason University s Virginia campus. DeVos ignited a firestorm when she announced the end of yet another case of an unlawful overreach by Barack Obama, that affected every college student by stripping them of their right to due process in sexual assault cases.DeVos explained her reasoning for reversing an unfair and impractical solution to sexual assault on campuses: Survivors, victims of a lack of due process, and campus administrators, have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved. A student says he or she was sexually assaulted by another student on campus. If he or she isn t urged to keep quiet, or discouraged from reporting it to local law enforcement, the case goes to a school administrator, who will act as the judge and jury. The accused may or may not be told of the allegations before a decision is rendered. If there is a hearing, both the survivor and the accused, may or may not be allowed legal representation. Whatever evidence is presented may or may not be shown to all parties. The notion that a school must diminish due process rights to better serve the victim only creates more victims. A better way also means we shouldn t demand anyone become something they are not.Click HERE for video of Betsy DeVos making her announcement that has the Ivy League educated attorney so angry.Ranco brags about his huge settlement against the Austin Police Department in 2016, for excessive use of force against an innocent citizen. Rob offered to give up his salary before the case was even settled in an effort to get the Austin Police Department to admit guilt before the settlement. The Youtube videos showing him asking for an apology for his client have all been mysteriously scrubbed, but we have managed to locate the grandstanding video and can be seen below:Rob mentions his wife Tonia, who has her own website and Youtube channel that caters to women in his profile on Twitter.Tonia has also shut down her Twitter account, as her husband s disgusting remarks are sure to harm her business whose primary market appears to be women.Leave it to a liberal to be so filled with hate for anyone who doesn t agree with him, that he s willing to destroy his own career, and in the process, destroy his wife s career as well.Here s a video of Rob promoting himself and his excellent skills as a lawyer: | 1real |
Still Not Over: They Are Trying to “Flip the Electoral College” To Block Trump’s Win |
OK, theoretically, everything will go according to plan, and Donald Trump will be the next president.
But technically, the (s)election hasn’t really taken place yet.
Presidential electors of the mystified electoral college must still actually vote for the president, and there isn’t anything to keep them from ‘voting their conscience’ and choosing someone other than Donald Trump.
Moreover, it appears that there is an active effort to flip the electoral college to deny Trump the presidency, and toss the White House to either Hillary or a GOP loyalist.
The #NeverTrump crowd and plenty of bitter Hillary supporters are still hoping for a coup, though even they admit it is a long shot – completely unprecedented and anything but likely.
According to the Blaze :
Donald Trump may have won the electoral votes necessary to win the White House, but he he’s likely going to lose the popular vote to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. And now two electors have launched a last-minute effort to convince their colleagues to abandon the president-elect.
“This is a long shot. It’s a hail Mary,” Bret Chiafolo, a Washington state elector who previously pledged not to vote for Clinton, told Politico Monday. “However, I do see situations where — when we’ve already had two or three [Republican] electors state publicly they didn’t want to vote for Trump. How many of them have real issues with Donald Trump in private?”
Chiafolo along with Colorado elector Micheal Baca have launched what they call a “moral electors” movement in hopes of convincing 37 of their Republican colleagues to deny Trump their votes. Should they succeed in their radical effort, the presidential decision would be thrown to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
[…]
The Electoral College consists of 538 members who are expected to convene in their respective state capitals on Dec. 19 to formally vote for the next president… Baca said he hopes the move launches a serious national discussion about abolishing the Electoral College , which would require either a constitutional amendment or legislation in several states.
The speculation is that if this maneuver were to be successful, the GOP-led Congress could be persuaded not to choose Hillary, but to write-in a selection for a party loyalist – like Mitt Romney or John Kasich… maybe even a Bush.
Of course, there have also been reports that Team Hillary has been hard at work attempting to persuade electors to switch their votes in the hope, however desperate, that they can still flip the election and take the White House:
On December 19, the Electors of the Electoral College will cast their ballots. If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win. However, they can vote for Hillary Clinton if they choose. Even in states where that is not allowed, their vote would still be counted, they would simply pay a small fine – which we can be sure Clinton supporters will be glad to pay!
We are calling on the Electors to ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton. Why? Mr. Trump is unfit to serve.
The larger issue here is that the system is badly broken, the people are harshly divided along demographic and political lines, and the future is gambling on extreme versions of itself – larger than life candidates, and bizarre back-door maneuvers in attempt to hack the system and bend it in one direction or another.
Trump has taken his place on the stage in a thunderous revolt of the people, but his legacy will be tested out the gates by the heavy pressures of Washington lobbyists, intrigue on the part of political insiders and the cults of opposition that are springing up in response to his controversial journey to the White House.
The entire political establishment have been knocked off their perch, though their hold on power has not necessarily been loosened.
A whole new era is born, and it remains to be seen how it will play out.
Read more:
It’s Not Over Yet: “They Are Probably Still Trying To Steal The Election” | Calls For Electoral College To Ignore Will Of People
Clinton Insider Confesses: Trump Protests Are Just More Pre-Paid “Soros Riots” to Stir Unrest
“Beware of the Shadow Government”: Ron Paul Advises President-Elect
Trump Surrounded By Bankers, Wall St. Insiders Banging on the Door to Get In: “Draining the Swamp?”
“Violent Revolution If Trump Lets Them Down”: People Remain Poised for Angry Revolt – Roberts | 1real |
“GODFATHER OF FAKE NEWS” Brian Williams Calls Syrian Airstrikes “Beautiful”…Instantly Gets DESTROYED On Twitter | Watch:good thing we don't have govt-controlled media in this country pic.twitter.com/fLkt9lQZa6 Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 7, 2017Brian Williams is getting hammered on Twitter after making what many consider to be an insensitive and even repulsive choice of words to describe an airstrike on human beings in Syria:Brian Williams must love the smell of Napalm in the morning . pixzen (@pixzen) April 7, 2017Twitter user Brett Eversole suggests that Brian Williams and John McCain apparently share the same lust for war with this tweet:Somewhere John McCain and Brian Williams are engaging in a threesome w/ a cruise missile right now Brett (@NeverKnovvsBest) April 7, 2017Peter Gratton took issue with Williams referencing the beauty of the missiles as though it was a fireworks display:How morally obtuse to react to missile launches that will kill scores of people like they're July 4th fireworks? https://t.co/km9VtvWx02 Peter Gratton (@PeterMGratton) April 7, 2017Another "BEAUTIFUL" Brian Williams bombshell. When will the drama queens at FAKE NEWS learn to just REPORT the news? @MSNBC @greta @CNN Liberty Wins (@ScottLynch149) April 7, 2017And finally, this Twitter user asks Williams, What is wrong with you? https://twitter.com/earthmann/status/850453062804262913 | 1real |
Trump administration taps coal consultant for mining oversight role | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Thursday named a coal industry consultant and strong supporter of the controversial practice of mountaintop mining to head up a U.S. Interior Department agency that oversees mining operations and environmental cleanups. Steven Gardner of Kentucky, an engineer and mining specialist who runs consultancy ECSI Llc, was nominated to be director of the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), the latest Trump administration appointee with ties to the industry he or she would regulate. Congress must approve the nomination. During the Obama administration, Gardner fought OSMRE’s moves to update a federal stream protection rule that regulated mining close to streams. Congress revoked that rule in February. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke welcomed Gardner’s nomination, and said the Lexington, Kentucky, native will help the agency carry out its “energy dominance” agenda. “Steve is highly regarded in the mining industry for his extensive experience and insight,” said Zinke. In the same news release, Hal Quinn, chief executive of the National Mining Association lobbying group, said: “America’s mining industry welcomes Steve Gardner’s nomination to become the next director of OSMRE.” Gardner has been an outspoken critic of what he termed the “war on coal,” which he said in a 2014 opinion article in the Lexigton Herald was waged by “activist groups, agencies and many in the press.” “I have seen the combatants and the casualties,” he wrote. Gardner also supports the practice of mountaintop removal, a form of surface mining at the top of a mountain or ridgeline that environmentalists say harms the landscape and water supply. The Interior Department in August ordered researchers to stop work on an independent evaluation of potential health effects from mountaintop removal coal mining. Environmental and grassroots groups criticized Gardner’s nomination, and said he is likely to side with industry at a time that the agency is supposed to focus on enforcing mine reclamation and cleanup work. “How can someone with his focus on defending the industry at all costs be the right choice for the federal agency in charge of overseeing that industry?” said Davie Ransdell, member of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and former supervisor at Kentucky Division of Mine Permits. | 0fake |
’Beauty and the Beast’ Director: Gay Controversy Is ’Overblown’ | Reports of an “exclusively gay moment” in Disney’s remake of Beauty and the Beast fueled intense speculation and sparked controversy when the details were reported last week — but now the film’s director says the controversy isn’t really a controversy at all. [“Oh, God. Can I just tell you? It’s all been overblown,” director Bill Condon said Friday in an interview with ScreenCrush. Last week, Condon told Attitude magazine that the character LeFou (Josh Gad) “wants to kiss Gaston (Luke Evans),” in what “is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie. ” Now, the film director says his comments have been wildly exaggerated. “Because it’s just this — it’s part of just what we had fun with,” Condon said. “I love the way it plays pure when people don’t know and it comes as a nice surprise. ” Last Tuesday, Disney released a promotional clip online showing a flamboyant Gad singing his ode to Gaston: “For there’s no man in town half as manly. Perfect, a pure paragon. ” Condon says he can only hope that audiences don’t “make a big deal of it. ” “Why is it a big deal?” Condon also commended Gad for being able to make “something really subtle and delicious out of” the role. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast opens in theatres March 17. The film is directed by Condon and stars Dan Stevens, Emma Watson, Luke Evans, Ewan McGregor, and Josh Gad. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 0fake |
Activist investor files Chevron proxy resolution on Myanmar rights concerns | HOUSTON (Reuters) - An activist investor in Chevron Corp said on Monday it filed a shareholder resolution that would require the oil producer to report on the feasibility of ending operations in Myanmar, where a crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims has been decried by the United States as ethnic cleansing. The resolution, filed last week by Islamic finance firm Azzad Asset Management, pushes Chevron s board of directors to consider how it could avoid risks posed by doing business with governments complicit in genocide or crimes against humanity. Azzad filed a similar resolution at the last Chevron shareholder meeting, garnering support from 6 percent of votes cast. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to southern Bangladesh since the end of August following a campaign by Myanmar security forces in response to attacks by militants in Rakhine State. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations officials have decried the crackdown as a form of genocide. Myanmar denies committing atrocities against the Rohingya. Chevron, the second-largest U.S.-based oil producer, does business in Myanmar through a subsidiary, Unocal Myanmar Offshore Co Ltd. It has projects that include a minority interest in natural gas production and a pipeline, according to the company s website. In a statement to Reuters on Monday, Chevron spokeswoman Melissa Ritchie said the company values the ongoing dialogue with the stockholders on this critical issue of violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar. We will continue to work with other U.S. companies and the government to promote the value of U.S. investment in Myanmar and the need to foster a business environment that respects human rights. Chevron has the option of accepting the proposal or asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to block it. If Chevron moves to block, Azzad would have the chance to appeal to the SEC. Chevron s annual meeting is slated for next spring. The filing comes as two Reuters journalists were arrested by Myanmar officials last week. Government officials accuse the pair of violating the country s colonial-era Officials Secrets Act. The arrests have been criticized by several governments as well as journalists and human rights groups. Chevron declined to directly comment on the arrests. | 0fake |
WOW! “We Mexicans Need To Kill Donald Trump Before He Becomes President…Cross The Border And Go And Kill Trump And His Supporters” [VIDEO] | And now a message of peace and unity from one of our neighbors to the South: We, Mexicans, have to kill Donald J. Trump before he becomes President. He is a threat to every single one of us. There are many Mexican Americans living in the U.S. right now and I m asking them to kill Donald Trump before he becomes President. The one in Mexico who have the means, I m asking you to cross the border and go and kill Donald Trump, and as many of his supporters as possible. Anywhere he goes just try to bomb the place, shoot up the place, do something. B..b but he looked like such a nice boy. Don t call him illegal he just wanted a better life he s just a victim This punk isn t the only one threatening the life of Trump. Watch this video that exposes the truth about how the media ignores these threats: | 1real |
RUBIO Sides With Democrats On Giving A Whopping $2 Billion For Zika Virus Prevention | Democrats want to spend a whopping $2 billion on zika virus prevention. Republicans are demanding more controls so Rubio is calling them stingy with federal dollars. Is this guy really a Republican? Just two months after running as one of the conservative candidates in the GOP presidential race, Sen. Marco Rubio is now embracing Democrats calls to open the federal checkbook and dole out billions of dollars in money to combat the Zika virus and tacking it onto the debt.Mr. Rubio, whose home state of Florida is at risk of a serious outbreak, is co-sponsoring legislation to fully fund President Obama s nearly $2 billion emergency spending request, and blasted his fellow Republicans for being too stingy by demanding more proof and more controls.And Mr. Rubio, who is finishing out his first term then ditching the Senate at the end of this year, said if the new spending can be offset, that s fine. But he s also fine with tacking it onto the debt and leaving it for others to pay for. In times of public health emergencies, just like natural disasters, we shouldn t delay acting while we figure out and try to agree on what we re going to cut from other parts of the budget, he said in a floor speech last week.Mr. Rubio gives Democrats political cover as Congress prepares to fight this week over the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which health experts say hasn t had a breakout in the U.S. yet, but fear one is looming as the summer heats up.The House GOP released its own plan Monday that would allocate $622 million toward Zika, taking the money from existing Ebola money and elsewhere.Read more: WT | 1real |
MEDIA LIE EXPOSED: DAD OF 3 YEAR OLD DROWNED SYRIAN BOY Was Really Going To Europe To Get Teeth Fixed [VIDEO] | Here s how the mainstream media spun this story:Here s the truth:Details about the Syrian family of the three-year old boy, who drowned as they made their way to Europe from Turkey on a small dingy, began to emerge recently and some things do not add up.According to The Wall Street Journal, Abdullah Kurdi, the little boy s father, was living in a relatively safe area in a Turkish town for three years while working on construction sites for 50 Turkish lira (roughly $17) a day.However, Kurdi told a Syrian radio station it was not enough to support himself and his family and he relied on his sister Tima Kurdi, who is a 20-year resident of Canada, to assist in paying the rent.It should be noted that Tima told reporters Thursday that the family just came to Turkey last year, even though WSJ points out he came to Turkey three years ago, and his Facebook shows pictures of the family in Istanbul crossing the Bosporus and feeding pigeons next to the famous Yeni Cami, or new mosque. Tima told WSJ that their father was still in Syria and advised his son to leave Turkey and go to Europe and have his teeth fixed. Once in Europe, he was instructed to find a way to bring his entire family over from Turkey. Tima wired 1,000 ($1,100) to her brother for the trip one month ago.According to The Ottawa Citizen, Turkey does not register thousands of Syrian Kurdish refugees in the country exit visas, as the UN does not register them as refugees. I was trying to sponsor them, and I have my friends and my neighbours who helped me with the bank deposits, but we couldn t get them out, and that is why they went in the boat. I was even paying rent for them in Turkey, but it is horrible the way they treat Syrians there, Tima told The Ottawa Citizen.Other reports say the family was fleeing Kobane in Syria, an area that ISIS attacked previously, but the WSJ report as well as others say the family wanted to leave Turkey for reasons that were not ISIS or war related. If we go, we go all of us, Ms. Kurdi recounted him telling her. She said she spoke to his wife last week, who told her she was scared of the water and couldn t swim. I said to her, I cannot push you to go. If you don t want to go, don t go, she said. But I guess they all decided they wanted to do it all together. The family boarded a 15-foot boat intended to take them from the Turkish resort town of Bodrum to the Greek Island of Kos.According to earlier reports, the family s application for asylum in Canada was rejected by Canada, but Canadian immigration authorities told the BBC they had no record of receiving an application for refugee status from Abdullah. Tima later admitted the asylum application for the family was never submitted.Tragically, the boat capsized Wednesday. Twelve passengers died as a result including Abdullah s young sons and wife. He was the only member of his family to survive, but the photo of his 3-year old drowned child on a Turkish beach made headlines across the globe.One Australian politician blamed the father for the death of the boy when the Australian Parliament debated the refugee issue. Senator Cory Bernardi told Australia s Parliament he was not swayed by these emotive arguments, and in particular to characterise this as some sort of humanitarian mission .While acknowledging that the boy s death was a tragedy, he said: That boy and his family had lived in Turkey for three years. The money for that boy s father to pay the people smugglers was sent from Canada. He added, The father sent them on that boat so the father could get dental treatment. They were in no fear, they were in no persecution and they were in no danger in Turkey. Via: Daily Caller | 1real |
Racists DISGUSTINGLY Attack And Blame President Obama For Torture Of White Disabled Man | Not long after news broke that four black teens tortured a white disabled man in Chicago, racist conservatives immediately blamed President Obama.Police have identified and arrested the attackers and are investigating the incident as a hate crime, but that s not enough for racists.Led by Laura Ingraham, who delivered a Nazi salute during the Republican National Convention in July, the racists demanded an apology from President Obama and directly blamed him for the violence.Will @POTUS denounce the beating of a white disabled man by black youth while they screamed f Trump & f white ppl ? Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) January 5, 2017Her tweet and the responses that followed are deplorable.@IngrahamAngle @POTUS No, this is what he wanted. He followed the saul alinsky playbook of how to divided a nation & cause chaos. Dolphins 10-6 (@PhinsDiehard) January 5, 2017Saul Alinsky was a peaceful community organizer who led protests. And when he died in 1972 he had been planning to organize the white middle class to fight for social change because he fear a right-wing demagogue like Donald Trump would make them ripe for the plucking by some guy on horseback promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday. @IngrahamAngle @POTUS Considering Obama started the #BlackLivesMatter movement I m thinking no. We never had this problem beforehand. #MAGA Karen! (@KarenMKunkle) January 5, 2017President Obama did not start the Black Lives Matter movement. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi founded the social movement via Twitter and calls to actions in response to white officers killing unarmed black men.@KarenMKunkle @IngrahamAngle @POTUS Disgusting! Why can t Trump sworn in right NOW? He would put this nonsense to an end!!! Bradin B. Winterward (@BradinW) January 5, 2017Not even Trump can magically put an end to violence, especially since many of his supporters have been committing hate crimes across the country. But you don t hear conservatives condemning them.@IngrahamAngle @POTUS Obama never denounced the killing of police officers certainly he s not going to start now and denounce hate crime Trumpocrats (@Trumpocrats) January 5, 2017Yes, President Obama did, in fact, condemn the killing of police officers. He did it when police officers were killed in Baton Rouge and he did it when police officers were killed in Dallas.But racist conservatives don t care about facts. They only care about spreading their hate and bigotry. And their hate only got more extreme.@IngrahamAngle @POTUS pic.twitter.com/39ukeAQ7AL KALMAN (@snutailgater) January 5, 2017@donderover @IngrahamAngle @POTUS when the gitmo people attack again l hope someone he knows and loves is in their path. maria dina (@mariedinao) January 5, 2017And even after President Obama condemns this act of violence, it STILL won t satisfy these racists. They ll just find another way to attack him and blame him.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
WATCH: Republican Senator Lashes Out At Trump Over This Bizarre Conspiracy Theory | Republicans are starting to rally around their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, albeit grudingly. Top Republicans such as Paul Ryan have begun to settle into a middle ground where they will endorse Trump, yet speak out against his more racist and xenophobic remarks. That being said, there is still a large number of Republicans out there taking the #NeverTrump pledge.GOP Senator Mike Lee from Utah still has not endorsed Trump. In fact, he is speaking out against him. So much so that he recently launched an attack ad against the presumptive nominee. He has also spoken out against Trump during media interviews. In one recent interview with Newsmax, Lee laid out a small list of grievances against Trump.During the interview, Lee brought up the time that Trump accused Ted Cruz s father (Lee and Cruz are BFF s) conspiring to kill John F. Kennedy, exasperatingly telling Newsmax, He said that. He actually said that. The exchange came after the host kept insisting that Lee should endorse Trump: Well, we can get into that if you want. I mean we can get into the fact that he accused my best friend s father of conspiring to kill JFK, Lee said. We can go through the fact that he has made some statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerance. We can get into the fact that he is so unpopular because my sate consists of members who were a religious minority church a people who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1839 and statements like that make them nervous. Now look, these things are not something that I couldn t get over if I heard the right things out of him. But if you want to go to why I have concerns, I can go on if you like. I hope I can get over these concerns. I hope Mr. Trump can help me identify them. But don t sit here and tell me Steve that I have no reason to be concerned about Donald Trump. Trump has made a lot of enemies in the Republican Party during his primary campaign run. Trump will not only have to fight off presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the general election, but also the left of lite-fascist members of the Republican Party. Sit back and get some popcorn, Trump s going to have to fend off punches from both the left and the right from now until November.You can start by watching the interview with Lee below. Featured image from Leigh Vogel/Getty Images | 1real |
iMAHDi – the arrivals 28 Why Satanism is Practiced by Our Leaders القادمون | Support Us iMAHDi – the arrivals 28 Why Satanism is Practiced by Our Leaders القادمون | 1real |
WHY THIS Democrat Stronghold County Voted For Trump…And Why They’ll Vote For Him Again: “He’s a fighter…nobody’s gonna push him into a corner” [VIDEO] | AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office; mining companies have added 1,200 jobs across the country since his inauguration, more than 180 of them in Kentucky. But industry analysts say that was tied largely to market forces and dismiss Trump s repeated pledges to resuscitate the coal industry as pie in the sky. Coal has been on the decline for many decades for many reasons outside of regulation: far cheaper natural gas, mechanization, thinning Appalachian seams. With the opposition he s had, I think he s pulling the plow pretty good, offers Wes Lewis from the card table. A few months ago, he says, he saw four brand-new coal rigs going through town. For the longest time, under Obama, all we saw were trucks being pulled on wreckers, because people turned belly up, they went broke. Lewis says he s heard about friends of friends being called back to work. He s noticed new trucks in people s driveways, too, which he takes as evidence that his neighbors are feeling confident about their futures. These tiny signs stack up to him as proof. Lewis fishes the tag out of the bib of his overalls: Made in Mexico, it reads. Trump s bringing them back, he says.Lewis, a registered Democrat, trusts Trump because he trusts his values. And because of that, he trusts Trump s other promises so strongly he can t think of anything that would shake that faith in him. If the factories and mines don t come back, he ll blame the opposition. If there isn t a wall on the Mexico border, he says, it won t be because Trump didn t try. If investigators find his campaign colluded with Russians, it s because so many people are so determined to bring him down.Go HERE to read entire story. | 1real |
Republican Party, Trump campaign to meet in Florida | ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign team is to meet officials from the Republican National Committee on Friday in what both groups described as a routine session to discuss joint operations in Florida. Trump, who is lagging Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in opinion polls, was not expected to attend the Orlando gathering after staging a rally near there on Thursday. He is to hold separate events on Friday in Erie and Altoona, Pennsylvania. The New York businessman is struggling to get past a rough several days, when he suggested gun rights activists could take action against Clinton, a statement he later said was aimed at rallying votes against her. In recent weeks, a steady stream of moderate Republicans, such as U.S. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, have vowed not to support Trump, while 50 Republican national security experts signed a letter opposing him. Many Republicans not only worry about failing to win the White House, but also are alarmed that their majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives could be at risk. Trump has blamed the U.S. news media for taking many of his comments out of context, and on Thursday night, some of his supporters heckled and cursed reporters who covered the rally in a large arena in Kissimmee. On Friday, Trump passed off as sarcasm the assertion he made repeatedly this week that President Barack Obama and Clinton were “co-founders” of Islamic State and its Most Valuable Players. “Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) ‘the founder’ of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?” Trump said in a tweet. It was the second time in recent weeks that Trump has explained a controversial statement as sarcastic. In late July, he invited Russia to dig up tens of thousands of “missing” emails from Clinton’s time as U.S. secretary of state, which raised concerns among intelligence experts that he was urging a foreign government to spy on Americans. He said later he was being sarcastic. | 0fake |
UNAIRED Documentary Illuminati Child Abduction Rings Exposed PT 4 | Support Us UNAIRED Documentary Illuminati Child Abduction Rings Exposed PT 4 | 1real |
Could Brexit vote be a preview of U.S. presidential race? | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Britain’s stunning vote to leave the European Union, buoyed by a frenzy of nationalism and populist anger, was a crushing rejection of the political elite. Republican Donald Trump hopes it is also a preview of November’s U.S. presidential election. The referendum result reverberated immediately in a U.S. presidential campaign dominated by Trump’s rapid rise to capture the nomination, fueled by a similar brew of anti-establishment and anti-globalization sentiment. The vote in Britain reinforced the notion that the insurgent campaign launched by the wealthy real estate developer had tapped into a global political movement that might be hard to stop. “This is a protest vote against globalization and there is one presidential candidate who won the nomination who has put globalization in his crosshairs - and that’s Donald Trump,” Republican strategist John Feehery said. Trump, who has spent much of his campaign warning of the dangers posed by immigrants who illegally enter from Mexico and proposing a temporary ban on U.S. entry for Muslims, has matched the global mood with his rhetoric. “There are swaths of the population around the world who are struggling economically in the current economy, and groping for targets of blame,” said Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Trump and the Brexit vote offer up tangible targets, and it is not surprising that people grab onto them. The vote yesterday is a reminder that Trump could very well win the presidential election,” she said. A Brexit supporter, Trump was happy to note the parallels to his own campaign when he reopened his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, on Friday. Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton bemoaned the result. The referendum, which most British opinion polls had predicted was headed to defeat, was a wake-up call for Democrats who have been heartened by Clinton’s lead over Trump in opinion polls of late. “I woke up this morning a little dismayed,” said Democratic strategist Dane Strother. “The question is whether Trump is similarly underperforming in the polls here. If that under-polled anger was present in Britain, as a Democrat you have to hope it isn’t mirrored here.” Global stock markets wobbled immediately after the vote, which experts warned could trigger a global recession and weaken the U.S. economy. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said after the vote he could step down by October, presents a cautionary lesson for Clinton as she prepares to face Trump. British voters ignored repeated warnings from Cameron about the dire consequences of a departure from the European Union. Clinton can take advantage of the unsettled global mood without indulging in predictions of doom or the over-the-top rhetoric that sometimes has set back Trump, Republican strategist Rich Galen said. “She can reflect some of the same sentiment that Trump and the Brexit forces tapped into but use it to her advantage,” Galen said. “She is not going to, and doesn’t want to, out-Trump Trump, but the idea is to say, ‘I understand these concerns.’” Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters after the vote that she has “a real confidence that Americans are generous, tolerant, big-hearted people” who believe that the country is stronger together. “They’re going to watch what impact (the Brexit vote) ends up having on the U.K. and on the British economy and come November, they are going to make their own decision about the kind of leadership that they’re looking for,” he said. Differences between the electorates in the United Kingdom and the United States are one reason the Brexit sentiment may not translate fully into success for Trump. About 30 million votes were cast in the last British general election in 2015, with about 10 percent of those cast by minority voters. Polling in the UK ahead of the Brexit vote suggested broad support for staying in the EU among those voters. By contrast, according to the Pew Research Center, nonwhite voters constituted 26 percent of all voters in the 2012 U.S. general election — and by a huge margin they backed Democratic President Barack Obama. Pew projects that by November, nearly one in three voters will be a minority, and opinion polls show Trump struggling with those blocs. Just being more mature, experienced and sympathetic than Trump may not be enough for Clinton. “The argument is you need a responsible grownup, but a large part of the world doesn’t want a responsible grownup,” said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist. “I don’t think it’s enough to say I know all the stuff he doesn’t or he’s rash, because right now people aren’t filtering that through.” | 0fake |
null | troll…ignore the ignorant and blatantly dumb “Alfi”. | 1real |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.