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Nigerian court drops most asset declaration charges against Senate president | (This version of the December 12th story corrects headline and paragraph one to remove references to corruption) By Camillus Eboh ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria s court of appeal on Tuesday dismissed 15 charges against the Senate president related to alleged false declarations of assets, but it upheld three other charges against him. Bukola Saraki s three-year tenure as president of the upper house has been marred by numerous accusations of misconduct and investigations, though none have led to convictions. The original charges are related to allegations that Saraki falsely declared his assets when he was a state governor from 2003 to 2011, to which he pleaded not guilty. A Code of Conduct Tribunal cleared the Senate president of the charges in June, saying the case against him lacked substance. The government mounted a legal challenge which led to Tuesday s ruling by the court of appeal that Saraki should be retried by the tribunal on three of the 18 charges against him. The three counts relate to Saraki s acquisition of two houses in Ikoyi, an upmarket district in the southern commercial metropolis of Lagos. The appeal is dismissed in part in respects of the other 15 counts , said the judge, Tinuade Akomolafe-Wilson, at the appeal court in the capital Abuja. The Senate president s camp has previously denied any wrongdoing and on Tuesday issued a statement in which it said Saraki had been victorious due to the 15 charges being dropped. The full details of the judgement on the final three charges against Saraki have not been released and will be addressed by his lawyers once they have been, the Senate president said in a statement. Saraki ran unopposed for the post of Senate president, mainly with the backing of the opposition. He was not the ruling party s preferred candidate, which led to strains in his relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari. The Senate president has been dogged by legal cases since taking office. In October 2016 Saraki was cleared of altering Senate rules to get himself elected, and in March this year lawmakers cleared him of any wrongdoing over allegations that he attempted to evade payment of customs duties on a car. | 0fake |
Trump to urge all nations to isolate North Korea's 'brutal regime' in South Korea speech | SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will urge all countries to join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea on Wednesday, saying the world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens it with nuclear devastation. Today, I hope I speak not only for our countries, but for ALL civilized nations, when I say to the North: Do not underestimate us. AND DO NOT TRY US., according to excerpts of a speech Trump is set to deliver to South Korea s parliament. We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated, according to the excerpts. All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea - to deny it any form of support, supply, or acceptance. | 0fake |
Republicans Just Made A Decision That Probably Means They’ve Given Up On The Election | Faced with the prospect of campaigning with Donald Trump at the top of the Republican presidential ticket, the Republican National Committee appears ready to do something unprecedented eight months before the first ballot is cast and give up on the election.The Republican National Committee is scaling back its financial commitments to some of the most hotly contested states because of flagging fund-raising, the most concrete evidence yet of how the party s divisive and protracted presidential race is threatening the party s entire ticket in November.Sean Spicer, the RNC s head strategist, admitted to the New York Times that the party was not yet ready to have field organizers in place in key swing states like Florida and Ohio because the money isn t there yet, thanks to the contentious presidential contest.Even stranger, the Republicans are setting up a fund so that the party s wealthiest supporters can direct funds towards Senate and House races, instead of the marquee presidential matchup.Just as revealing, the party is also taking steps to create a separate fund-raising entity dedicated to Senate races, an acknowledgment that many of the wealthiest contributors are increasingly focused on protecting Republican control of Congress rather than on a presidential campaign they fear is lost.It is becoming apparent that those candidates are in trouble, thanks to Trump s series of toxic comments about Latinos, Muslims, blacks, and women. Already high profile Republicans like Senator John McCain have announced that they would not be attending the convention, usually the political destination of record for both parties in election years. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush and the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, both also said they would be skipping the convention as well.Polling shows that Donald Trump is the most disliked person to ever head the ticket of a major party, and in head to head polling he loses by double digits to Hillary Clinton. Trump performs so poorly that traditionally hardcore Republican states like Mississippi and Utah are within striking distance for Clinton. And in states that are part of President Obama s winning coalitions in 2012 and 2008, Trump is way behind.The Republican Establishment has already announced it plans to challenge Trump s bid to be the nominee, but it may already be too late. The election may already be lost.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
YIELD…! Funeral Ahead…! | from Rogue Money :
The Wolf’s sense of smell has been in confusion of late trying to figure out which way the winds blow. Are free markets about to make a come back, or have they been with us all along, once you fully factor in the effects of “cognitive dissonance” over the past couple decades? Meaning “cognitive dissonance” is also a part of the free market equation, and the markets have just been factoring them in appropriately.
One thing is for sure, the biggest bubble in world history is starting to get “thin in the skin,” as in ready to pop. Which bubble, you ask? The western debt markets. Putting that aside for the moment, the good news of late is that nationalism is on the rise in the USA with a Trump victory, but it ain’t the only thing on the rise. “Yields” are as well folks. It would appear a debt funeral is “dead” ahead, along with an associated paper wake. In a rather timely fashion the professor Ken Schortgen Jr., just provided a top down analysis to a western paper funeral, with historical theories that are now becoming reality.
Before getting into the meat and potatoes of this installment, I have to throw out a theory from an installment written over two years ago. A theory that will fit nicely, and one that states that the markets are actually free. “Free,” just like the international man Doug Casey has said. I know what you may be thinking, that with a supposed honest market filled with “informed” investors that the prior couple of sentences are totally incorrect, especially with respect to the hard asset markets. Incorrect except for one major thing. If free markets are truly free, and additionally allow for the “stupid/cognitive-dissonant” people to freely participate, then I suppose you have to factor in the unpredictability of “stupidity/cognitive-dissonance.”
At least for a while, as it appears responsibility and intelligence may be taking hold in some corners. Witness the public’s uprising in the recent US election, but that same election has released a dose of “election victory cognitive dissonance.” The more things change, the more things stay the same!
The time frames for “stupidity/cognitive-dissonance” (SCD) being an overdeveloped defining factor in free markets are typically limited. Decades apparently mark the political free market’s limits regarding the afore mentioned ‘SCD’. Again, witness the recent election. And the winds seem to be telling one Wolf Gray that we are about to see how Economic Mother Nature presides over the current limits to the time frame that will define the “Fiat King Dollar’s” life span. A life span fueled of late by the last fumes in the gas tank, the typical fumes of cognitive dissonance, plus a dose of stupidity. An ‘SCD’ that I am afraid to say may have just got a boost by the recent election.
The Wolf’s and the Wolfpack’s sense of smell is somewhat confused and would seem to be alone on this bottom up view, so ‘I/we’ could use your guidance. To wit, those happy Trump voters that seem to think the US economic life boats are coming to their immediate aid are about to see a delay to their ‘pocket-book’ rescue, thanks to the ravages that will come with rising debt “Yields.” These rising “Yield” signs say the market is about to let each of us know, “it doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” WG
Yield! The funeral cometh ! And, sorry folks it can’t be Trumped. There are limits to man’s abilities to forestall “nature” economic and or otherwise.
News that…….Yields?
First please note the recent top down analysis of the overall business economic landscape by the professor, with reference to Dr. Jim Willie’s theories and analysis.
https://www.roguemoney.net/stories/2016/11/20/bond-markets-and-dollar-stength-screaming-for-a-savior-to-usher-in-a-currency-reset
The above link leads us nicely to some of the “ground up” business/economic evidence to be witnessed in real time. That being said, no news beat would be complete without a rehash of the undeniable trends that continue asserting themselves…. | 1real |
Last exit from Myanmar, Rohingya wait for weeks on beach | AH LEI THAN KYAW, Myanmar (Reuters) - Some 1,000 Rohingya Muslims desperate to leave Myanmar are camped on this exposed, sun-baked beach on the Bay of Bengal waiting for a boat to carry them to sanctuary in Bangladesh. Having kept northern parts of Rakhine State virtually off limits since it launched a counter-insurgency operation there in late August, Myanmar s military made a rare show of openness on Sunday by taking foreign journalists to see one of the beaches from which Rohingya are trying to escape. Well over 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to find shelter in the refugee camps, the living victims of what a top U.N. official has called ethnic cleansing . Myanmar, a mostly Buddhist country, has denied such accusations, insisting the military s clearance operation was necessitated by national security concerns after Rohingya militants attacked 30 security posts in northern Rakhine on Aug. 25. For the Rohingya at Ah Lei Than Kyaw, some 5 km south of the mouth of the Naf river, the beach is a kind of purgatory. Mohammad Eidnou, a 19-year-old laborer, sold his house and belongings but he and his family have spent everything surviving for the past two months and have no money to pay the $50 a head that boatmen are demanding to take them to Bangladesh. I don t want to go back to my village because there is nothing for us, Eidnou told Reuters. We cannot survive. Some have been stuck there for over a month, sweltering under the plastic sheeting used to make tents and existing on handouts proved by the Myanmar Red Cross Society. Others came just a few days ago, a sign that the flight of the Rohingya to Bangladesh is far from over. The International Rescue Committee reckons that two-thirds of some 300,000 left in Myanmar could leave in the next couple of months. On the beach at Ah Lei Than Kyaw, 30-year-old Sauli Mullahhe was thinking only of getting away. Like several other men, he described how things had got so bad that he could no longer go to work or his children to school. He could not get to a pharmacy when they fell sick, or go to a market to buy food and said the authorities had even stopped Rohingya leaving the village to fish. I could not have survived anymore, Mullahhe said. I will not go back to my village, I really hope to cross the Naf river to get to Bangladesh. Myint Kyaw, a police lieutenant-colonel, said his officers were leaving the Rohingya on the beach alone, and were not intervening when boats came to pick them up. We don t really take any action against them, because we don t want them in trouble, the policeman said. They cannot go on living in the camp for very long because they can have so many health problems. That s why we don t interfere with them. Rohingya among the hundreds who reached Bangladesh on rickety boats and rafts late last week told Reuters they had left thousands of others behind in miserable conditions on the Pa Nyaung Pin Gyi beach, at the mouth of the Naf. The military-arranged media trip did not extend that far up the coast. Many of the Rohingya living in the camps in Cox s Bazar, on the Bangladesh side of the Naf river, have recounted how their relatives were raped and murdered as they ran from villages set ablaze by Myanmar soldiers. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar s less than two-year-old civilian government, has said any allegations of atrocities need substantiating and should be investigated. Under Myanmar s transition to democracy, civilians still have to share power with the generals who ruled the country for nearly half a century, and Suu Kyi has no say over what the military does. She is currently on a mission explaining how Myanmar is working to stem the crisis to leaders of other Southeast Asian countries at a regional summit in Manila. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Myanmar for talks with the country s leadership, while senators back in Washington press for economic and travel sanctions against the military and its business interests. Suu Kyi has said preparations are being made for Rohingya to return, so long as they can prove they were resident. | 0fake |
U.S. offers states help to fight election hacking | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government is offering to help states protect the Nov. 8 U.S. election from hacking or other tampering, in the face of allegations by Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump that the system is open to fraud. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told state officials in a phone call on Monday that federal cyber security experts could scan for vulnerabilities in voting systems and provide other resources to help protect against infiltration, his office said in a statement. Trump has questioned the integrity of U.S. election systems in recent weeks, but his allegations have been vague and unsubstantiated. The attempts to sow doubts about the 2016 election results coincided with Trump’s slide in opinion polls against Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and missteps in his campaign. His complaints have focused on fears of voter fraud - that people will vote more than once - rather than election rigging. “I mean people are going to walk in, they’re going to vote 10 times maybe. Who knows? They’re going to vote 10 times. So I am very concerned and I hope the Republicans are going to be very watchful,” Trump said in an Aug. 3 interview. President Barack Obama dismissed the claims as “ridiculous.” “Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean?” Obama said at a news conference the next day. In his phone call, Johnson encouraged the state officials to comply with federal cyber recommendations, such as making sure electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet while voting is taking place, the department said. Concerns in both parties about manipulation of electronic electoral systems are not new. Hackers can wreak havoc in myriad ways, from hijacking a candidate’s website to hacking voting machines or deleting or changing election records. An Electronic Privacy Information Center report this week said 32 of the 50 states would allow voting by insecure email, fax and internet portals in this election cycle. | 0fake |
Islamophobia Must be Fought and Defeated | When I was a lieutenant colonel on active duty, I supervised an officer in the U.S. Air Force who was (and is) an Iraqi-American. He came to the US as a boy after President George H.W. Bush’s call to the Shia to revolt against Saddam in the aftermath of Desert Storm, which was ruthlessly suppressed by Saddam as Bush and company did nothing.
As an Iraqi-American in uniform, he served as an interpreter attached to the 101st Airborne in Iraq in 2004, if memory serves–dangerous times indeed for US troops in Iraq.
He wrote to me, rightly outraged, after Ben Carson made his anti-Muslim comments back in September of 2015 during the presidential primary season. It made him so sad, so angry, as a US Air Force veteran and as a Muslim-American to hear such ignorance, such bias, such Islamophobia. And it made me angry as well.
So many Muslim-Americans have served this country with distinction, troops like Navy veteran Nate Terani, who has written an eloquent article at TomDispatch.com on the prejudice he faced as an Iranian-American. Terani is doing his best to fight a new enemy, Islamophobia, the irrational fear of Islam fed by the unhinged rhetoric of candidates like Ben Carson and Donald Trump.
Here is how Terani puts it in his article :
In Iran, theocratic fundamentalists sowed division and hatred of outsiders–of Westerners, Christians, and other religious minorities. Here in America, the right wing seems to have stolen passages directly from their playbook as it spreads hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslim ones. This form of nationalistic bigotry–Islamophobia–threatens the heart of our nation. When I chose to serve in the military, I did so to protect what I viewed as our sacred foundational values of liberty, equality, and democracy. Now, 20 years later, I’ve joined forces with fellow veterans to again fight for those sacred values, this time right here at home.
As America builds walls and weapons and wages war all over the globe, as our leaders look outward for enemies, we’re forgetting the enemy within America, the enemy that is a much more serious threat to our national security. That enemy, which exists right here in America’s heartland, is ignorance, hatred, fear, aggression, compounded by a cowardly desire to “get even” and to “make America great again” by ostracizing other Americans who are considered “different” and “untrustworthy.”
But spreading fear and bigotry is not a way to national security; it’s a way to national insanity. Islamophobia, like all other irrational fears, must be fought and defeated.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views . He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu . Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
| 1real |
One of the World’s Greatest Art Collections Hides Behind This Fence - The New York Times | The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train tracks, roads and a fence, looks like the kind of place where beauty goes to die. But within its walls, crated or sealed cheek by jowl in cramped storage vaults, are more than a million of some of the most exquisite artworks ever made. Treasures from the glory days of ancient Rome. paintings by old masters. An estimated 1, 000 works by Picasso. As the price of art has skyrocketed, perhaps nothing illustrates the approach to contemporary collecting habits more than the proliferation of warehouses like this one, where masterpieces are increasingly being tucked away by owners more interested in seeing them appreciate than hanging on walls. With their controlled climates, confidential record keeping and enormous potential for tax savings, free ports have become the parking lot of choice for buyers looking to round out investment portfolios with art. “For some collectors, art is being treated as a capital asset in their portfolio,” said Evan Beard, who advises clients on art and finance at U. S. Trust. “They are becoming more financially savvy, and free ports have become a pillar of all of this. ” The trend is prompting concerns about the use of these storage spaces for illegal activities. It is also causing worries within the art world about the effect such wholesale storage has on art itself. “Treating art as a commodity and just hiding it in storage is something that to me is not really moral,” said Eli Broad, a major contemporary art collector who last year opened his own Los Angeles museum. Free ports originated in the 19th century for the temporary storage of goods like grain, tea and industrial goods. In the last few decades, however, a handful of them — including Geneva’s — have increasingly come to operate as storage lockers for the superrich. Located in countries and cities, free ports offer savings and security that collectors and dealers find almost irresistible. (Someone who buys a $50 million painting at auction in New York, for example, is staring at a $4. 4 million sales tax bill. Ship it to a free port, and the bill disappears, at least until you decide to bring it back to New York.) At least four major free ports in Switzerland specialize in storing art and other luxury goods like wine and jewelry, and there are four more — most newly minted — around the world: Singapore (2010) Monaco (2012) Luxembourg (2014) and Newark, Del. (2015). Concerned by the rapid growth of these private storage spaces and worried that they could become havens for contraband and money laundering, Swiss officials initiated an audit in 2012, the results of which were published two years ago. The results revealed a huge increase in the value of goods stored in some warehouses since 2007, led by an increase in goods like art. Though the audit did not specifically measure the increase in stored artworks, it estimated that there were more than 1. 2 million pieces of art in the Geneva Free Port alone, some of which had not left the buildings in decades. Many masterpieces have long lived outside of public view, buried in the basements of museums or tucked away in the private villas of the rich. But the free ports are drawing more criticism and concern, namely: Are they bad for art? Does the boxing up of millions of valuable works pervert the very essence of what art is supposed to do? Yes, say many in the art world. “Works of art are created to be viewed,” said the director of the Louvre, Martinez, who described free ports as the greatest museums no one can see. Some see even higher stakes for contemporary works, as they can be whisked off, their paint hardly dry, before ever entering the public’s consciousness. Storage puts the art “intellectually almost in a coma,” said Joanne Heyler, the director of the Broad Museum. Not everyone agrees, pointing out that there is plenty of art in the world for people to see and that much art was created as private property. “Paintings are not a public good,” said David Nash, a New York gallery owner. Even so, some collectors whose businesses have come to depend on free port storage are a bit sheepish. “It is a shame,” Helly Nahmad, a London dealer whose family is said to store 4, 500 works in the Geneva Free Port, told The Art Newspaper in 2011. “It is like a composer making a piece of music, and no one listens to it. ” So just what works are locked away? Because most art is tucked into storage spaces quietly, it is difficult to know what is where at any given moment. But assorted legal disputes, investigations and periodic exhibitions featuring stored works have provided glimpses of specific pieces lost from view. There are the rare Etruscan sarcophagi discovered in Geneva by the Italian police two years ago, found among 45 crates of looted antiquities, some still wrapped in Italian newspapers from the 1970s. And the $2 billion collection of the Russian billionaire Dmitry M. Rybolovlev, which includes a Rothko, a van Gogh, a Renoir, Klimt’s “Water Serpents II,” El Greco’s “Saint Sebastian,” Picasso’s “Les Noces de Pierrette” and Leonardo da Vinci’s “Christ as Salvator Mundi. ” (Mr. Rybolovlev is suing his former art adviser, a major free port operator in Geneva, and has since shifted his collection from Geneva to storage in Cyprus, according to court papers filed last year.) Some 19 works by Pierre Bonnard, a master of are owned by the Wildenstein family, one of the great families of the 20th century, according to the former lawyer for the widow of the patriarch, Daniel Wildenstein. And there is a portrait of Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline, by the artist, along with 78 of his other works, shipped by his stepdaughter, Catherine Hutin, to the Geneva Free Port in 2012, according to legal papers. “If Jacqueline was alive and knew that her paintings were in the free ports, she would just be devastated,” said Pepita Dupont, author of a book about Jacqueline Picasso. Despite enhanced Swiss efforts to track inventory and ownership, the free ports there remain an opaque preserve (though more transparent these days than counterparts in places like Singapore) filled with objects whose ownership can be confoundingly convoluted. Case in point: $28 million worth of works by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Joan Miró and others now stored in the Geneva Free Port. Equalia, a company registered by Mossack Fonseca (the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers controversy about how the wealthy conceal their riches) stored the works on behalf of a diamond broker, Erez Daleyot, in 2009. Once in storage, the art was used as collateral for debts Mr. Daleyot owed to a Belgian bank, according to court papers. Now a man named Leon Templesman, president of a New York diamond manufacturing company, Lazare Kaplan International, is trying to seize the art as part of a dispute with Mr. Daleyot and the bank. Mr. Templesman said the free port’s embrace of confidentiality made such seizures more complicated. The bank, KBC, said it had kept the art in the free port “out of precaution” and that it could not comment further on a matter involving one of its clients. David Hiler, president of the Geneva Free Port, said that as a result of the audit, the Swiss were working to address concerns about lack of transparency. Come September, he said, all storage contracts will require that clients allow additional inspections of any archaeological artifacts they want stored there. Collectors and dealers choose to store art in the free ports for more pedestrian reasons than tax avoidance. Some simply have no more room in their homes, said Georgina Hepburne Scott, who advises collectors. And in a free port, their property is protected in environments, often under video surveillance and behind walls. “When it is brought to light, the work is preserved it’s not been hanging above a smoky fireplace,” she said. Some warehouses also have viewing rooms where collectors can review their art and show it to potential buyers. This year, after voters in Geneva rejected a plan to expand the major art museum, a Swiss lawyer, Christophe Germann, wrote a newspaper column advocating wholesale sharing, arguing that free ports be forced to open their doors to let people see public displays of the private collections, a worthy for the tax benefits collectors receive. For many living artists, meanwhile, the fact that their work might be stored away in a bunker has become part of the reality of doing business. “Ideally, I would like my work to be on display rather than in storage,” said Julia Wachtel, a contemporary artist who knows that some of her collectors occasionally store art. At their worst, Ms. Wachtel said, free ports represent a financial system in which investors have no connection to the art they buy. But she also recognizes that storage warehouses allow responsible collectors to manage their works and their limited wall space. “People buying art is what keeps artists alive,” she said. And at the end of the day, dealers say that most artworks eventually surface. “Even if it stays there for the lifetime of the collector,” said a New York dealer, Ezra Chowaiki, “it’s not going to be there forever. It will come out. ” | 0fake |
SCARY! LEAKED EMAIL PROVES Radical Billionaire Donor GEORGE SOROS Was Pulling Sec Of State Hillary Clinton’s Strings On Foreign Policy | It was announced last week that George Soros was donating over $25 MILLION to Hillary s campaign. Today we find out that George Soros is making decisions for Hillary that could affect our national security and the security of other nations worldwide.More leaked e-mails from Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State now prove that she was taking foreign policy advice from radical leftist billionaire George Soros.WikiLeaks latest email leak shows how Soros had a direct line to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when it came to foreign policy decisions she was tasked to act upon.How can we ever trust Hillary to make important decisions that affect the national security of our nation and of foreign nations now that it has been proven she is relying on advice from major donors like the unhinged radical, George Soros?Here is the content of the email. (A screen shot of the actual email can be found below): Dear Hillary, A serious situation has arisen in Albania which needs urgent attention at senior levels of the US government. You may know that an opposition demonstration in Tirana on Friday resulted in the deaths of three people and the destruction of property. There are serious concerns about further unrest connected to a counter-demonstration to be organized by the governing party on Wednesday and a follow-up event by the opposition two days later to memorialize the victims. The prospect of tens of thousands of people entering the streets in an already inflamed political environment bodes ill for the return of public order and the country s fragile democratic process. | 1real |
A Fifth Clinton Presidency? Hill, No! | 1real | |
Reshaping Lives, Without Congress - The New York Times | The Obama White House has issued hundreds of major regulations in an effort to reshape aspects of American life. Here are some of the most important: CLEAN POWER PLAN Last year, the Obama administration completed rules requiring the nation’s existing power plants to cut, by 2030, emissions of greenhouse gases by 32 percent from 2005 levels. The rules were a central piece of the president’s global effort to confront climate change. But a fierce legal challenge has stalled the rules, which are headed to a test in the Supreme Court. FUEL EFFICIENCY STANDARDS In the summer of 2012, the administration finished rules to require cars and light trucks to get, on average, nearly 55 miles per gallon by 2025. Critics called the rules costly and unnecessary, but President Obama said they would reduce oil consumption by a total of 12 billion barrels by 2025. The regulations survived a legal challenge. HOSPITAL VISITATION After reading about a lesbian social worker who had been kept from the hospital bedside of her partner, Mr. Obama issued an order in 2010 directing the creation of regulations to allow such visits. By the next year, new rules required all hospitals that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs to allow patients to designate visitors. PASSENGER BILL OF RIGHTS After a series of highly publicized cases in which airplane passengers were stranded for hours on the tarmac, the Obama administration in 2009 finished rules requiring airlines to return their planes to the gates within three hours or face steep fines. Airline executives called it government meddling the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, called it a victory for consumers. REARVIEW CAMERAS In 2008, Congress passed a measure mandating that all cars have rearview cameras, reacting to tragic stories of children and older people being killed. For years, regulators and industry representatives balked at the cost, but in 2014, the Obama administration completed the regulations, which require backup cameras in cars and light trucks by 2018. FEDERAL WORKERS In a series of regulatory changes, Mr. Obama sought to improve the pay and benefits for federal workers and contractors. In 2014, he signed an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10. 10 per hour from $7. 25. The next year, he issued rules requiring up to seven days of paid sick leave for federal contractors. And this year, he increased the number of workers, including federal employees, eligible for overtime. NET NEUTRALITY In early 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, at Mr. Obama’s urging, issued rules that would regulate internet companies as utilities. The decision set off a battle among tech companies and digital content providers, and the issue is still in the courts. This year, a federal court upheld the administration’s rules, but the fight is likely to end up in the Supreme Court. RULE Among the many new regulations governing the financial industry, one completed this year requires financial advisers and brokers to act in the best interests of their clients. Wall Street firms and the insurance industry fervently oppose the new rules, and they are likely to continue fighting them in court. HOME HEALTH AIDES Seeking to respond to changes in the way health care is provided at home, the Obama administration imposed rules requiring overtime and minimum wage protections for home health care workers. Opponents of the changes filed suit, and won an initial legal victory. But last summer, a federal appeals court reinstated the rules, which administration officials had called a basic protection for workers. DRONES The Obama administration, trying to balance the potential benefits of drones with the dangers to airplanes and privacy, issued new regulations in June outlining where and when the devices can be flown. The rules allow the use of drones in a wide range of businesses, but they ban their operation close to airports and require pilots to have passed a written test. Business officials hailed the rules as clearing the way for broader use of drones by companies, but privacy advocates said the rules did not go far enough. | 0fake |
MATTEL Features Boy In Girly Barbie Commercial…Doing Their Part To Help Letists Blur The Gender Lines [VIDEO] | Newsflash for Mattel, and any other company who is pandering to the Left this Christmas season: God did not create Gender-Neutral beings God made man and woman to be different for a reason Don t mess with God A boy is featured in the latest Barbie commercial for the first time ever. The commercial is receiving widespread praise for upending gender barriers. The ad displays Mattel s new line of Barbie dolls created as part of a partnership with the Italian fashion house Moschino. The dolls sport outfits of black mesh and leather, with edgy golden accessories to match.However, it is not the dolls racy clothing that steals the show, but rather, the mohawked boy playing with the dolls. Moschino Barbie is so fierce, he exclaims to the camera with an exaggerated head roll. This single line is garnering the Barbie boy a huge fan base worldwide.The public now accepts homosexuality and same-sex marriage. But the fight is not over. The offensive to reshape society in even more radical ways pushes forward.An effort is gaining ground to create a world where not just sexual orientation, but sex itself, is a choice. Where boys can be girls and girls can be boys, or something in between. Where people are expected to ignore the biological reality of sex so that all people coexist androgynously, or according to whatever gender suits them at the moment. Where everyone pretends that gender confusion is normal, if not desirable, and anyone who doesn t play along can be punished and silenced.This demonstrates unprecedented contempt for reality and common sense, let alone morality.Think of the implications with respect to public bathrooms, sex-segregated activities, locker rooms, college student housing and countless other areas of human interaction.Does the idea of a boy who thinks he s a girl showering next to your daughter in P.E. class make you uncomfortable? Then you d better brace yourself. This cause is winning critical legal battles and it is starting with our youth.Earlier this month, the California Senate passed a bill saying that throughout K-12 education, a student is permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities [e.g. bathrooms, locker rooms] consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil s records. Gender identity is the terminology these ultrasensitive, morally sophisticated lawmakers use to refer to the sex a person happens to identify with.Last month, a governing body in Colorado ruled that a 6-year-old boy who thinks he s a girl has the right to use the girl s bathroom at his elementary school. The Colorado Division of Civil Rights said that denying him that right creates an environment rife with harassment and is akin to racial segregation.See where this is going? The public majority already agrees that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is exactly like prohibiting interracial marriage. Now, denying someone access to a public bathroom on the basis of biology is just like excluding blacks from white-only facilities.These lawmakers and officials are determined to ensure that these children grow up in a world where sex confusion is welcomed, even encouraged.What about the girl who feels awkward about having a boy walk in while she s using the bathroom? Sorry. She is the one who needs to adjust her thinking not the boy.But there is something far more sinister going on here. Mattel is not just using the ad to connect with little boys who play with Barbie dolls; it is using the ad to smash gender roles.It s no secret that society is moving away from gender-based toys for children. Target is in the process of removing gender-based signs from their toy section, and Hasbro switched to a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven a few years ago.The Moschino Barbie commercial is just another step in society s pursuit to radically change social expectations. But is including a boy in a Barbie ad really progress and common sense, as one news source put it? Via: The Trumpet | 1real |
BRILLIANT: [VIDEO] SHERIFF CLARKE EXPLAINS HOW #BlackLIESMatter IS BASTARD CHILD OF #HandsUpDontShoot LIE | Nothing like a good dose of Sheriff Clarke to expose the lies of the left After showing a clip of the confrontation between Hillary Clinton and some Black Lives Matter representatives in which things became tense and Clinton was clearly uncomfortable, Sheriff David Clarke is asked to weigh in on what is happening.He leads off by saying, Hillary meet Frankenstein, they created this monster and now they realize that if you cannot continue to feed it the beast the beast will turn on you and eat you and that s what s going on here. He said that he refers to the group as Black Lies Matter because they are perpetuating lies built upon a foundation of lies, the bastard child of the original lie of the Hands Up Don t Shoot narrative built upon the justified self-defense shooting of hood rat Michael Brown.Sheriff Clarke describes the group as a conglomeration of misfits, noting their ranks include retreads and operatives from the occupy movement, organized labor, criminals, black racialists, cop haters and anarchists. He fails to include their funding source, billionaire America-hater George Soros. Any Marxist associated or otherwise subversive movement in this nation invariably has the stain of Soros visible just below the surface.Sheriff Clarke says, No longer in the United States, and I think that I m living proof of that, no longer can blacks as a whole claim victim status except for one situation. They are victims to the Democrat Party in the United States of America and what modern liberalism has done to the black family. The speak to the absurdity of Democrat candidate for president Martin O Malley caving to Black Lives Matter pressure to walk back a statement that all lives matter.Clarke says It s an example of the monster that they ve created that they cannot feed anymore. They re not in control of this movement. This was created to mobilize the black vote for the 2016 election. The problem is we ve got a long way to go and there s only so long that you can keep that sort of negative movement going before you lose control of it. I though O Malley, his reaction after that was pathetic. They point to how well the cowering to the black thugs has demonstrated the lack of character on the part of both O Malley and Barry Surrender the mic Sanders and their unfitness for the world leadership stage.They also note the hypocrisy of the faux-movement in that only the black lives which they can use to foment unrest matter. The black on black violence is never mentioned and it doesn t matter because it carries with it no political capital. Via: Rick Wells | 1real |
HANDPICKED SUCCESSOR And Son Of DISGRACED Lawmaker John Conyers Reportedly Body-Slammed, Spit Upon and Slit His Girlfriend With Knife | The disgraced Representative John Conyers (D-MI) was not about to quit his job as an elected official before he hand-selected his son as his successor. Never mind that his son has absolutely no experience in politics. His last name is Conyers , and that s apparently enough for the 88-year old politician. But is that really all they need to know about the 27-year old son of the disgraced lawmaker and the former Detroit councilwoman, Monica Conyers, who was recently released from prison after serving 2 years of a 3-year term for bribery? And should anyone be surprised by anything that comes out of the mouth of the 88-year old lawmaker, who, in 2010, was caught on video, as he brazenly read a Playboy magazine on a domestic flight in plain view of other passengers, and who has recently been accused by multiple women of either sexually assaulting or attempting to sexually assault them. John Conyers III also has an interesting background.According to NBC News, on February Feb. 15, John Conyers was arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse but wasn t charged, after his girlfriend called the police. The unidentified woman said the younger Conyers accused her of cheating on him, then body slammed her on the bed and then on the floor where he pinned her down and spit on her, according to a district attorney s report quoted by NBC News. The woman claimed that Conyers III took her phone when she tried to call the police, he chased her into the kitchen and swung a knife at her, resulting in a cut on her arm.Conyers III asserted that the woman had been drinking and using marijuana and tried to throw him out of her home before they began pushing and shoving one another. He said she threatened him with a knife and cut herself as they struggled.NBC reported that the Los Angeles County District Attorney s Office chose not to move forward with the case, citing a lack of independent witnesses and investigators conclusions that it could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim s injury was not accidentally sustained. FOX NewsConyers III also likes to think of himself as a rapper . He recently made this video where interestingly, he refers to his father as a f*cking player : Conyers III also caused public headaches for his father in 2010.Chicago Tribune In 2010, MLive.com reported that John Conyers III was cited for speeding in his father s Cadillac Escalade or rather, the government-leased vehicle his father used as a member of Congress.There were also reports that year that the younger Conyers had driven the vehicle to a rap concert and that it was broken into, according to MLive.com. The then-20-year-old reported to police that two laptops had been stolen from the Cadillac, along with tens of thousands of dollars worth of concert tickets.After the incident, the elder Conyers apologized. | 1real |
Trump expected to pressure China's Xi to rein in North Korea: officials | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to pressure China s president when they meet next month in Beijing to do more to rein in North Korea out of a belief that Xi Jinping s consolidation of power should give him more authority to do so. Trump leaves Nov. 3 on a trip that will take him to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. It will be his first tour of Asia since taking power in January and one with a major priority: Preventing the standoff with North Korea from spiraling out of control. Xi is immersed in a Communist Party Congress expected to culminate in him consolidating his control and potentially retaining power beyond 2022, when the next congress takes place. Trump believes that Xi should have even more leverage to work on the North Korea problem. The president s view is you have even less of an excuse now, said one official. He s not going to step lightly. Trump wants to gain some serious cooperation from China to persuade Pyongyang to either change its mind or help deprive it of so much resources that it has no choice but to alter its behavior, the official said. Trump has heaped praise on Xi in recent weeks in hopes of gaining Chinese cooperation and has held back from major punitive trade measures. In an interview with Fox Business Network s Maria Bartiromo, Trump said he wants to keep things very, very low key with Xi until the Chinese leader emerges from the party congress. I believe he s got the power to do something very significant with respect to North Korea. We ll see what happens. Now with that being said, we re prepared for anything. We are so prepared, like you wouldn t believe, Trump said in the interview, to air on Sunday. Trump has traded bitter insults with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, using his speech at the United Nations General Assembly last month to dismiss Kim as a rocket man on a suicide mission for his repeated nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. He said if threatened, the United States would totally destroy North Korea. Kim in recent weeks said the United States would face an unimaginable strike from North Korea if provoked. CIA chief Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that North Korea could be only months away from gaining the ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons. | 0fake |
Trump Adviser Just Proved Hillary’s ‘Basket Of Deplorables’ Comment Correct With One Image | For some reason, the Trump campaign is utterly clueless about the alt-right movement and what it stands for. Trump himself regularly retweets stuff from those deplorable (oops, we said it) excuses for human beings and then brushes it off, if he even says anything at all. He even enthusiastically tweeted an image of himself as Pepe the Frog, a mascot for the Neo-Nazis, which is bad enough given that Trump keeps saying he ll work for all Americans.One of his top advisers, Roger Stone, now, is saying he s proud to walk alongside Trump as a symbol for the Neo-Nazi movement while he s protesting Hillary s basket of deplorables comment aimed at half of Trump s followers.The irony is strong in this one.Stone thinks he s going to turn the word deplorables around the way that President Obama turned Obamacare from something derogatory into something with his signature on it. He will make this backfire on Hillary, because of course. It s his own idea that s backfiring though all he s done is prove that an awful lot of Trump s supporters are really deplorable people.Image via TwitterPepe the Frog has been around for awhile, to be sure. It recently became unacceptable, however, as the Neo-Nazis began working towards claiming Pepe as a racist, white nationalist symbol.So now Pepe represents what he was always supposed to represent, and he s in a likeness of Donald Trump. Roger Stone has an image co-opted from The Expendables, showing Trump as a Neo-Nazi mascot, that he s put on social media.And he s probably amazingly proud of his ingenious idea.This isn t the first time Trump s been depicted as Pepe. In 2015, Trump retweeted a different image of himself as Pepe standing in front of an American flag, and behind a podium. The alt-right worked to associate their mascot with Trump because they believe that Trump represents them. And who wouldn t? The toxic waste fountain on the front of Trump s face spouts everything they want to hear. @codyave: @drudgereport @BreitbartNews @Writeintrump You Can t Stump the Trump https://t.co/0xITB7XeJV pic.twitter.com/iF6S05se2w Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015The sheer hypocrisy involved in promoting Trump as anything dealing with white nationalist groups while whining about Hillary insulting half of Trump s voters is just absurd. White nationalists, who make up an awful lot of the alt-right, are far more hateful and discriminating than Hillary ever could be.The truth is that these are people who think that immigration equals white genocide. Some on the alt-right hate women and everything to do with women. A lot of them think that some races are inherently more stupid than others, and deserve to be treated as such. These are people who are as anti-Semitic as Adolf Hitler.In short, they re deplorable people, and Stone is busy complaining that Hillary called them what they are while directly associating Trump with them. Any reasonable campaign and any reasonable adviser would find a different way to make that backfire on Hillary the Trump camp is too entrenched with the alt-right and too full of itself to realize what they ve actually done, though.Featured image via screen capture from Roger Stone s tweet | 1real |
UK raises 'grave concerns' about illegal settlements with Israel's Netanyahu: May's office | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May raised concerns about illegal settlements on Thursday at a meeting with her Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in London, May s office said. They discussed the need to overcome obstacles to peace, with the prime minister noting our grave concerns about illegal settlements, a spokesman from May s office said in a statement. The prime ministers also discussed the fact settlements are not the only obstacle and that the people of Israel deserve to live free from the scourge of terrorism and anti-Semitic incitement. | 0fake |
The Libertarian Party Just Gave Up On Winning, Endorsed Hillary Over Trump | Comments
The Libertarian vice-presidential nominee, Bill Weld, has accepted that his ticket’s longshot bid for the presidency is doomed, and has demanded that voters give their votes to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton instead. He will remain on the ticket but will solely work towards stopping Trump for the remainder of the election cycle.
The Libertarian ticket, usually popular with a small margin of voters with a particularly poor understanding of basic economics and the Constitution, were looking like they were going to put up a surprisingly strong performance as Republican nominee Donald Trump dragged the GOP brand into the mud, until a series of inexcusable gaffes by presidential nominee Gary Johnson destroyed what little credibility they had.
In a statement today, Weld roundly tore into Trump for his unfitness to command and his moral deficiencies .
“I would like to address myself to all those in the electorate who remain torn between two so-called major party candidates whom they cannot enthusiastically support. I’m speaking particularly to those Republicans who feel that our President should exhibit commonly accepted standards of decency and discipline.
Mr. Trump has some charisma and panache, and intellectual quickness. These qualities can be entertaining. Yet more than charisma, more even than intellectual ability, is required of a serious candidate for this country’s highest office. A serious candidate for the Presidency of the United States must be stable, and Donald Trump is not stable.
“Throughout this campaign, Mr. Trump has demonstrated an inability to handle criticism or blame well. His first instinct is to lash out at others. When challenged, he often responds as a child might. He makes a sour face, he calls people by insulting names, he waves his arms, he impatiently interrupts. Most families would not allow their children to remain at the dinner table if they behaved as Mr. Trump does. He has not exhibited the self-control, the discipline, or the emotional depth necessary to function credibly as a President of the United States.
“From the beginning of his campaign, Mr. Trump has conjured up enemies. First it was eleven million criminals in our midst, all bent on obtaining the benefits of citizenship, at our expense. Over time, the enemies became any trading partner of the United States. He says they are nothing but foreigners seeking to threaten our livelihoods. Now we have reached the point where his idea of America’s enemies includes almost anyone who talks or looks different from him. The goal of the Trump campaign, from the outset, has been to stir up envy, resentment, and group hatred.
This is the worst of American politics. I fear for our cohesion as a nation, and for our place in the world, if this man who is unwilling to say he will abide by the result of our national election becomes our President. This is not the time to cast a jocular or feel-good vote for a man whom you may have briefly found entertaining. Donald Trump should not, cannot, and must not be elected President of the United States.” He’s absolutely right. While the inclusion of more political parties into our stagnant two-party system can only be healthy for our democracy, unfortunately this is not the right moment. Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our nation as we know it, and stopping him must be our number one priority. This is not the time to throw away a vote on the Libertarian Party. | 1real |
Egypt-Gaza border opens under PA control for first time in a decade | GAZA (Reuters) - The Egypt-Gaza border opened under control of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority for the first time since 2007 on Saturday, raising residents hopes for easier passage in and out of the impoverished enclave. An Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal last month formally restored Palestinian President Abbas s administrative control of Gaza, including its border crossings with Israel and Egypt, after a 10-year schism with Islamist Hamas. Palestinians hope the pact will ease Gaza s economic woes and help them present a united front in their drive for statehood, although the details of implementation of the deal have yet to be worked out fully. Citing security concerns, Egypt and Israel maintain tight restrictions at their Gaza borders. Hamas, regarded by the West as a terrorist group, seized the enclave in 2007 after fighting forces loyal to Abbas. Hamas quit positions at three Gaza crossings and handed them over to Palestinian Authority employees on Nov. 1, in a step seen as vital to encouraging Israel and Egypt to ease their restrictions on the movement of goods and people. Witnesses said at least five buses loaded with passengers crossed over to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Saturday. Hamas-appointed policemen had checked travellers documents in a separate hall outside Rafah. Egypt has not yet signaled any change to its present policy under which it opens the border crossing three times a week. Palestinians are hoping the crossing will operate full-time, as it had been doing until 2007. About 30,000 Gazans have applied for entry to Egypt in the past few months, according to the Palestinian Interior Ministry. Egypt will host further talks with Hamas, Fatah and other factions next week on Nov. 21 to discuss major reconciliation issues, including security arrangements and a possible date for Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections. Responsibility for security remains an open issue in Gaza, where Hamas, which still polices the territory, has what analysts say are at least 25,000 well-equipped fighters. The group refuses to disarm, as demanded by Israel and the United States. | 0fake |
What Gives? Saudi King Spends A Fortune In 2014 On Gifts For The Obamas | Even though Obama has to pay for anything he wants to keep, it s still a bribe in my book.Throughout 2014, Saudi King Abdullah and top kingdom officials spent a fortune on gifts for Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters roughly $1.35 million on the list.The accounting was made public the day before Thanksgiving, with Americans poised to dive into the gift-buying season.The first thing to know is that these gifts aren t bribes (wink, wink). If Obama wants to keep anything he gets from another world leader, he has to pay fair market value for it and take it with him when he leaves office. Otherwise, U.S. law stipulates that the president must turn over everything to the National Archives or other institutions for storage or display.Obama is wealthy book sales and investments, on top of a $400,000 annual salary, have made the onetime college professor financially quite comfortable. But it s hard to imagine him putting up the cash to keep the gold and silver men s wristwatch with leather band, valued at $18,400, that he received from the Saudi king on Jan. 14, 2014. Or the $67,000 needed to own another timepiece, a white gold men s wristwatch with leather band, that the monarch gave him on April 15, 2014 (no word on whether it was inscribed happy tax day ). And then there was the 48-inch gold-plated brass replica of the Makkah Clock Tower on marble base, presented March 28, 2014, and coming in at a cool $57,000, roughly what a median American family earns in a year.Impressive? Not when compared to the gifts the Saudi king, who died in 2015, gave Michelle Obama.On Jan. 14, 2014, Barack Obama might have been admiring the watch he wasn t going to keep, but the first lady got a diamond and emerald jewelry set including necklace, earrings, ring and bracelet. Value? $560,000.On April 15, 2014, she received an identically described set, but this one was worth $570,000.Malia and Sasha weren t left off the Saudi king s list. On Jan. 14, 2014, they received diamond and emerald jewelry set including earrings, necklace, ring, brooch, and wristwatch. Diamond and ruby jewelry set including earrings, necklace, ring, brooch, and wristwatch. Price tag: $80,000.So did the Saudi King give the gifts to the First Family out of the kindness of his heart? Of course not They re bribes, nobody gives stuff like that unless they expect something in return.Read more: Blur Brain | 1real |
Trump Campaign Org Co-Chair Taken Into Custody By FBI For Conspiracy Against The United States | Donald Trump s Co-Chair of the Veterans For Trump Coalition in New Hampshire, Jerry Delemus, was just arrested by the FBI on nine charges, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States.Jerry Delemus, a significant component of Trump s campaign effort to attract veterans, is a Tea Party activist who made trips to take part in the Bundy Ranch stand-off. According to the indictment being brought against him, Delemus was a mid-level leader and organizer of the conspiracy who, among other things: recruited, organized, trained and provided logistical support to gunmen and other followers and organized and led armed patrols and security checkpoints. Delemus s connection to Trump is certainly a factor, but it s also damaging to the Republican party as a whole. Jerry s wife, Susan Delemus, is a GOP lawmaker in the state of New Hampshire s House of Representatives. News of the incident first broke when Susan called Jack Kimball, the former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP to let him know that the FBI was raiding their house. Here s what Kimball wrote on Facebook: She said that the FBI just rolled up with lots of vehicles and Agents who were in tactical gear. They forced their way into Jerry Delemus and Sue s condo with weapons drawn and arrested Jerry and took him away. Currently, the FBI is not taking questions on the matter and is asking that anyone needing more information to get in contact with the Department of Justice. As of right now, the U.S. DOJ has not gotten back in touch with local newspaper Portsmouth Patch, who reported on it first.Here is a list of the charges Delemus is currently being faced with:In addition to taking part in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve in Oregon, Delemus was a security team member on the Bundy Ranch in Nevada.Even though these charges are quite serious (and factual) it s likely the right is going to chalk this up as retaliation for being either 1) a Trump supporter or 2) because of their anti-government beliefs.Delemus s wife had already been an outspoken proponent of big government and lying politicians, even before the FBI ransacked her home. That is, everyone but Trump. You may remember her face from a recent CNN survey she did, in which she professed her ardent support for the man: We ve got people in positions of power who I know for a fact are liars. Liars! I watch the TV My president comes on the TV and he lies to me! I know he s lying. He lies all the time. Trump supporter: I believe Donald. I m telling you he says what I m thinking. https://t.co/K0KNfPh6Gp @CNNPolitics Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) December 10, 2015No, Delemus was not arrested because of his Trump beliefs. If that was the case the FBI would have hauled her crazy ass off with him and thrown her in a jail cell, too.Featured image via screen capture. | 1real |
McCain proposes $7.5 billion of new U.S. military funding for Asia-Pacific | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee, John McCain, has proposed $7.5 billion of new military funding for U.S. forces and their allies in the Asia-Pacific, where tensions have been rising over China’s territorial ambitions. The funds, $1.5 billion a year for five years to 2022, could be used to boost U.S. munitions stocks in the region, build new military infrastructure, such as runways, and to help allies and partner countries increase their capabilities, an aide to McCain and a U.S. military official said. The funding proposal was contained in a White Paper issued by McCain last week entitled “Restoring American Power.” His committee is expected to discuss it at a budget hearing on Tuesday. “Senator McCain believes the United States must sustain its enduring commitment to the security and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region,” a spokesman for McCain, Dustin Walker, said. “The Asia-Pacific Stability Initiative ... would ... make U.S. regional posture more forward-learning, flexible, resilient, and formidable,” he said. “These funds would boost operational military construction, increase munitions procurement, enhance capacity building with allies and partners, and expand military exercises and other training activities.” An official in the administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump, who took office on Friday, said he believed McCain’s proposal was “very much in general alignment with the administration’s goals in the region.” Trump has vowed to take a tougher line with China and to build up the U.S. military, although it is unclear whether he will succeed in lifting caps on defense spending that have been part of “sequestration” legislation. A U.S. military official, who did not want to be identified, said the funds could go to construct new military runways in countries such as Australia and the Philippines and to make up a shortfall of munitions that the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, complained of last year. “There’s a shortfall in the total number of munitions and also a quality gap,” the official said, adding that more sophisticated missiles were needed in the region to counter China’s “anti-access, area-denial” strategy. On Monday, the new U.S. administration raised the prospect of worsening tensions with China when it vowed to prevent Beijing from taking over territory in international waters in the South China Sea, something Chinese state media has warned would require Washington to “wage war.” | 0fake |
Walt Whitman’s America Through Edward Weston’s Eyes | Walt Whitman’s America Through Edward Weston’s Eyes Jordan Riefe This image, titled “Woodlawn Plantation House, Louisiana, 1941,” is one of several photographs by Edward Weston on display as part of the Huntington Art Collections’ exhibit “Real American Places: Edward Weston & Leaves of Grass.” (Edward Weston / The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens ©1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents
In the year 1940, publisher George Macy of the Limited Editions Club hit on a brilliant idea for his pricey book line aimed at collectors: a new edition of “ Leaves of Grass ,” poet Walt Whitman’s rhapsodic elegy to what Macy called “the real American faces and the real American places,” illustrated with photos by Edward Weston. Macy’s slogan makes a handy title for the new exhibit, “ Real American Places: Edward Weston & Leaves of Grass ” at The Huntington Art Collections in San Marino, Calif. On view through March 2017, it includes roughly half of the 49 photos chosen for the ill-fated edition.
“Weston never explicitly said he was going to illustrate Whitman,” James Glisson, co-curator of the show with Jenny Watts, told Truthdig. “He didn’t tell Macy until very far into the project.”
The 54-year-old Weston was coming off a crowning career achievement the same year, the publication of “ California and the West ,” financed through a Guggenheim Fellowship—the first awarded to a photographer. The book represented a departure for Weston, who until then was known primarily as a studio photographer. He had taken his first road trip, covering 23,000 miles with his lover of 10 years, Charis Wilson , 28 years his junior, who wrote the book’s highly praised text and became his second wife along the way.
By May 1941, they were ready to do it again, loading up an eight-cylinder Ford dubbed Walt and setting off from Wildcat Hill, their sanctuary in Carmel, Calif. This journey would cover 20,000 miles through 24 states over eight months, with Macy shelling out for expenses up to $1,000 over six months, including printing and supplies.
Their first significant stop was Boulder, Colo., where Weston photographed the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam. At a subsequent stop in Port Arthur, Texas, he captured more than a dozen frames of silvery spherical oil tanks. “California and the West” had featured natural landscapes, but man-made objects now took over his frame.
The first progress report to reach Macy gave him a real fright. What did otherworldly globes in Texas have to do with Walt Whitman? In his original proposal, Macy requested that Weston “illustrate every other line in Whitman’s poetry,” which, taken literally, would require thousands of photos to match even half the images in the text. “I hope this is a job which you can tackle quickly,” he added without irony.
“He’s very controlling,” said Watts, who pored through correspondence between the two. “He comes in with very strong ideas of what he wants. He’s not very good at communicating it to the artist. Then he gets very horrified when something comes back that’s not what he had envisioned.”
Although Macy had run into creative differences with artist Henri Matisse while working on another masterpiece dense with illusion, James Joyce’s “ Ulysses ,” it would be presumptuous to blame the publisher for the disagreement with Weston. Matisse hadn’t bothered to read the book, delivering drawings based on the Greek mythical character instead of Joyce’s text, for a price of $5,000. In Weston’s case, he “didn’t give a hoot about ‘Leaves of Grass’—he was having the time of his life,” according to Wilson’s 1998 memoir, “ Through Another Lens .”
Whitman is mentioned only five times in 230 pages of notes chronicling the journey. Weston explained himself this way: “My plan for work on this commission was direct: I photographed anything and everything I saw which excited me. I could do no more. Since Whitman’s poems cover all walks of life, and every high- and byway, I couldn’t easily neglect him.”
This gave him license to expand his parameters, photographing places and people he was seeing for the first time. Gone are the wide horizons of “California and the West,” replaced by works of man—a Louisiana church, a bottle farm in Ohio, the Brooklyn Bridge. Each is captured as an item on a list, ordered so as to tell a story, which is similar to how Whitman commonly structured his verse:
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than a journeywork of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’ouvre for the highest …”
“There’s this idea of movement and journey, one by foot, the other by car, that acts as a temporal element to what they’re doing,” Glisson said, completing the parallels between Weston and Whitman. | 1real |
Hurricane Irma threatens luxury Trump properties | (Reuters) - Hurricane Irma swept over U.S. President Donald Trump s 11-bedroom Caribbean mansion on Wednesday, the first of several luxury Trump properties threatened by the storm s path. It was not immediately known whether Irma damaged Trump s beachfront Chateau des Palmiers, or Castle of the Palms, on St. Martin. The gated estate, for sale for $16.9 million, is owned through a trust and had been rented out, U.S. media has reported. But French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said some buildings had been destroyed and social media showed flooded roads and overturned cars on the island that is roughly divided between France and the Netherlands. The situation was being closely monitored on St. Martin and at a number of Trump properties in Florida, Trump Organization spokesperson Amanda Miller told Reuters in a statement. Our teams at the Trump properties in Florida are taking all of the proper precautions and following local and Florida state advisories very closely to ensure that everyone is kept safe and secure, Miller said. While Irma s exact trajectory remained uncertain, Trump s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach - which has been called the winter White House and valued by Forbes at $175 million - could also take a hit. Trump bought the estate in 1985 and turned it into an exclusive club, which now boasts a membership fee of $200,000 and is a haven for the tony Palm Beach set who pull up to the gate in Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. A staffer who answered the phone said it was closed and declined to comment further. Palm Beach County declared a state of emergency on Wednesday. Near Miami, Trump owns luxury high-rise condos called the Trump Towers, Sunny Isles and the oceanfront Trump International Beach Resort. Some guests were leaving ahead of the storm but precautions were being taken and resort officials were prepared to oversee evacuations if they were ordered, marketing director Jim Monastra said. At the Trump National Doral, an 800-acre golf resort in Miami that local media reported had completed a $250 million renovation last year, officials tweeted Wednesday that resort operations were going on as normal until further notice. | 0fake |
Man’s Collapsed Driveway Reveals Hole & Ladder, Shocked When He Goes Down | Share This
A man was pulling out of his driveway when his wheel suddenly got stuck. Initially, he thought he had accidentally driven up on his flower bed, but once he took a closer look, he realized there was a hole in the ground. There was also a ladder in the hole, but nothing could have prepared him for what he’d find when he daringly went down.
Simon Marks was pulling out of his driveway in Luton, England, when he thought he had accidentally driven into one of his flowerbeds. When he got out to inspect the damage to the flowers, he quickly realized that he had been mistaken. He hadn’t driven onto his flower bed at all. Instead, there was a gaping hole in his driveway.
Even more unbelievable than the sudden hole that appeared, he also saw that there was a ladder in the hole, where the driveway collapsed. Wanting to know what the odd discovery was all about, he bravely took a look and was shocked to find a two-roomed shelter. Simon Marks next to the air raid shelter (Source: The Sun )
“This massive hole appeared. I thought it was a sinkhole or a badly constructed garden,” Simon explained, according to The Sun . “I was just terrified the whole house was going to vanish. I took some pictures and sent them to my dad. When I moved a few of the slabs out of the way, I found a ladder. I got my selfie stick and put it down the hole where I saw two rooms.”
When his dad Gerald saw the pictures, he instantly knew what it was – an air raid shelter. After looking on the internet for some more information, Simon and his father learned that there were quite a few of these bomb shelters in the area and that this particular one had probably been built after a German bomb landed nearby during World War II. Bottles and newspapers were found inside
“The previous owner must have known it was there, and when he built the house and put a garden in, he must have filled it in,” he explained. “He clearly wasn’t very worried about it and it just sat there until the hatch fell through. I think it’s great and I want to clear it out and preserve it if it’s structurally sound.”
The shelter is nearly 10 feet deep and was full of mud. As Simon and Gerald began excavating the shelter with buckets, they found various items along with glass bottles and old newspapers. “It’s incredible to think it has all been made by hand,” Simon admitted. “It’s part of our history so it should be kept.”
This just goes to prove that you never know when you’ll accidentally stumble on a piece of history hidden in your own backyard or your driveway. I can guarantee that Simon had no idea that his property held a treasure of the past – so you never know what you might stumble on someday and what it could reveal about the history in your area. | 1real |
Clinton Leads In Yet ANOTHER Poll – One HUGE Problem With That… | Poll after poll shows Hillary Clinton leading.
Clinton up by four points.
Hillary up by six points.
Clinton leads by 6 points , is the latest headline from The Washington Post .
But these polls – most of them – have huge problems: They’re oversampling Democrats.
This happened a couple of days ago in Arizona , a state that has more Republicans than Democrats, but whose poll had many, many more Democrats polled.
The story for the poll starts out pretending that everything is perfectly legitimate:
With 12 days to go, Hillary Clinton holds a six-point edge over Donald Trump among an electorate fixated on the campaign and nervous about their candidate losing, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll.
Then it shows a graphic showing just how far ahead Hillary is. See? Hillary’s line is in orange and Trump’s is in gray. She must be winning.
But there’s a problem with the poll – like with so many other polls that have come out recently … they’re conveniently asking many more Democrats than Republicans.
Here’s a link to their methodology (they have to publish this if they’re going to pretend they’re legitimate).
If you look at page 7, you’ll see exactly who they’re polling.
Of the 1,135 people they polled, 36 percent identify as Democrats and just 29 percent as Republicans.
This is bad enough, but they also have 29 percent self-declared “independents” answering the poll. How do independents vote? Gee? Who knows? The pollsters do…
Now, they have to justify the fact that there are so many more Democrats than Republicans at the polls (and of course, there are simply not 29 percent of “independents” going to the polls. They’re going to choose a Republican or a Democrat, except for the tiny percent who will choose a third-party candidate.
So here’s the paragraph justifying their methodology:
This survey uses statistical weighting procedures to account for deviations in the survey sample from known population characteristics, which helps correct for differential survey participation and random variation in samples. The overall adult sample is weighted to correct for differential probabilities of selection among individuals who are landline-only, cell phone-only or dual users. Results are also weighted match the demographic makeup of the population by sex, region, age, education and race/ethnicity according to the latest Current Population Survey March Social and Economic Supplement by age, race/ethnicity, sex and education. Party ID was weighted to the average of the most recent Post-ABC surveys.
Did you understand that? That’s okay, because they do. And they want you to trust them.
The only poll that counts is the one that you are going to participate in on Nov. 8, and they don’t get to “over sample” or “account for deviations.” They count the votes.
So make sure your vote is counted. | 1real |
Greece's Golden Dawn says Trump win a victory for ethnically 'clean' states | ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party hailed Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, calling it a victory against “illegal immigration” and in favor of ethnically “clean” nations. Golden Dawn, Greece’s third-largest party, took its first seats in parliament in 2012 on a backlash against austerity policies in Greece, which has received three international bailouts since 2010. “This was a victory for the forces which oppose globalization, are fighting illegal migration and are in favor of clean ethnic states, in favor of self-sufficiency in the national economy,” a spokesman of the party said in a post on YouTube. “A great global change is starting, which will continue with nationalists prevailing in Austria, Marie LePen in France and Golden Dawn in Greece.” | 0fake |
Philippine drugs board chief quits after contradicting Duterte | MANILA (Reuters) - The head of the Philippines narcotics control body has resigned after just five months in the job, the second successive official to vacate the post for making statements contracting President Rodrigo Duterte. Retired army general Dionisio Santiago on Tuesday said he quit as chairman of the Dangerous Drugs Board after receiving a call from Duterte s executive secretary, a few days after he publicly said the construction of a 10,000-bed mega drug rehab facility was a mistake. Countering illicit drugs is the centerpiece policy of Duterte s presidency and he has repeatedly threatened to kill dealers and users and said he was willing to be jailed for it. His crackdown has killed thousands of Filipinos, but the administration insists it is committed to arresting dealers and rehabilitating users, citing the new facility and the voluntary surrender of 1.3 million addicts and pushers as a sign of its positive intent. My rule is the boss is always right and if you think the boss is not right, refer to rule No. 1, Santiago told Radyo Inquirer, adding he had already submitted a two-sentence resignation letter. Santiago had said the government may have miscalculated with the rehab center and should have pursued a practical community-based rehabilitation program. Fewer than 500 people have been admitted to the facility, which was launched last year amid great fanfare and was funded by a wealthy Chinese businessman. Duterte gave Santiago the job in June after the former head was forced to quit after disputing the president s repeated statements that there were more than four million Filipino drug addicts. Duterte has never disclosed the source of that information and some experts say it is exaggerated. Separately, Duterte s new health minister, Francisco Duque, on Tuesday voiced his approval for using marijuana only for research purposes in medicine. He said he would prefer marijuana in pharmaceutical form if the country legalized its use. If it is in raw form, it is uncontrolled, subject to abuse, addiction, he said at his first news conference. That is where, I believe, the risks are more profound. There is a pending bill in Congress to legalize and regulate the medical use of cannabis. | 0fake |
Trump to meet with retired U.S. Admiral Stavridis on Thursday | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump will meet on Thursday with retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of NATO and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a spokeswoman for Stavridis said on Sunday. “There has been no discussion of a position in the Trump administration,” Stavridis’ spokeswoman, Juli Hanscom said, responding to reports that Trump was interested in Stavridis, once vetted to be the running mate of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as a potential secretary of state. (This story has been refiled to fix spelling of spokeswoman’s surname, paragraph two) | 0fake |
US Officials Try to Scare Voters With Terror Threat | US Intelligence Sees Attacks Likely Ahead of Tuesday Vote by Jason Ditz, November 04, 2016 Share This
US intelligence officials have reportedly warned law enforcement around the country of the potential for multiple al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on Monday, aimed to coincide with the day before the US election. The reports were described as “ possibly legitimate and concerning. ”
Details are still scant, but the intelligence has singled out New York, Virginia, and Texas as the mostly likely targets. Even then, they offered no details on potential locations, saying al-Qaeda and its affiliates are eager to regain their relevance.
A NYPD spokesman briefed on the matter said that the threats “ lack specificity ,” however local police around the country were said to have been warned that polling places are considered “attractive targets” for both organized and homegrown terror attacks.
Of course, saying that any upcoming event is a potential “attractive target” is not unusual these days, and hardly a significant holiday goes by in the US where warnings and briefings about potential attacks are not heavily publicized.
The Monday warning offers some unusual details, however, as generally one would think the day of the election itself would be the target, when more people are queuing up for the vote. An attack the day before the election would, however, cast a rather dramatic pall over the entire matter. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
Hillary’s Secret Weapon: Evan McMullin is CIA-Goldman Sachs candidate, backed by Mitt Romney’s Wall Street Machine | J.R. Smith 21st Century WireMuch has been made by Democrat Hillary Clinton and the White House s accusation that Russia is trying to influence US elections, although neither has presented any real evidence to back up this extraordinary claim. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence documenting the CIA interfering and altering numerous foreign elections throughout history. This raises an interesting question: would the CIA ever try to interfere in an US election? Evan McMullin is a 40-year-old self-described conservative Mormon and former CIA operative. I enjoyed being a grey man, said McMullin of his 11 years in the CIA.On the wall in his Salt Lake City campaign offices is a poster which reads 007 for President. That s a bit worrying, if indeed McMullin fancies himself as a James Bond character, but in a way it really sums up what his presidential run is all about working in the grey areas, in back room meetings with GOP establishment luminaries, colored by private and public deception. It s what the CIA has specialized in for decades; manipulating and perverting hundreds of overseas elections all in the interest of transnational corporate elites (like Mitt Romney), and now it seems they have an inside man nested in another key position Oddly, the media often introduces him as a conservative columnist seemingly in an effort to distract from his total insider pedigree. McMullin is no newcomer or fresh face he is a career operative, inserted into special niches, including his most recent stint as Congressional director of GOP policy. Now he s come out of the shadows to play a key role in the US election on behalf of some very powerful interests.According to Real Clear Politics, McMullin describes his work as a clandestine operative for the CIA in both Iraq and Afghanistan, in all the war zones post-9/11 until 2010 and most of the other hostile environments . He admits his job was to penetrate insurgent and terrorist groups as well as foreign governments , recruiting agents to pass information to take these people off the battlefield either capture or kill them. Interesting skill set, penetrating governments. We can safely assume that also entails subverting elections overseas, or maybe using Saudi Arabian cash to buy weapons for Jihadi terrorist rebels in Syria.Not surprisingly, McMullin trumpets a loud anti-Putin and anti-Assad rhetoric which is almost perfectly in synchronization with that of Hillary Clinton s. Like Clinton, McMullin relies on a campaign of fear set against Russia and Syria in an attempt to try to bracket Trump togther with other overseas leaders currently under a demonization order by the Washington DC establishment. Donald Trump is an authoritarian just like Vladimir Putin, just like Bashar Al-Assad, just like the Communist regime in China. I have worked against and around authoritarians overseas and I know them when I see them. Donald Trump is one of them. He would bring the same kind of economic stagnation, internal turmoil and discord to our country that other dictators bring to their own. I m sure the Kremlin considers Donald Trump by far its most successful intelligence operation ever. It s very clear that Vladimir Putin and his regime have some control over Donald Trump. Trump s support for Putin is the only thing he has been consistent on. The following is straight off of McMullin s campaign website, under the heading of, America s Role in the World : Evan will impose tougher sanctions on Russia and increase America s military presence in the Baltics in order to deter and reverse Putin s aggression, rather than pretending that he is a partner for peace in Syria. Evan will stand up for the rights of American and allied ships to sail freely in international waters, rather than letting China dominate the Western Pacific. This statement could ve just as well have written by the CIA s office of forward information planning, or from the office of Hillary 2016, take your pick.The next line in his r sum should also throw up a big red flag: he s also a former operative at Goldman Sachs investment bank. So, CIA and Goldman Sachs. Aside from bank-rolling Bill and Hillary Clinton s political machine for the better part of the last 15 years, Goldman also backed Mitt Romney s failed 2012 presidential run.The connections here between all of these establishment players is undeniable with McMullin sitting comfortably in his CIA grey area.Stealing Utah for Hillary If we can send a strong message here from Utah, it will change the discussion in Washington and across this country, said McMullin.This is the problem with the contrived McMullin campaign: it will not impact the national political discussion.Since he announced his candidacy three months ago on August 8, 2016, his campaign has only really existed inside Utah, but conveniently amplified by an US corporate mainstream media and the very same media outlets that have been demonstrably pro-Clinton, anti-Sanders and anti-Trump since the very beginning of the presidential race.Evan McMullin s primary directive seems to be to steal Utah s 6 electoral votes away from Republican candidate Donald Trump who is currently enjoying a comfortable lead over Hillary Clinton in Utah. Recent polls show Trump and McMullin running neck and neck in Utah, at 30% and 29% respectively. In an already tight national race between Trump and Clinton, those 6 electoral votes could easily decide the national election in favor of Hillary Clinton.Aside from Utah, McMullin is also hoping to steal away Republic votes in key states with substantial Mormon populations like Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming. McMullin is hoping to exploit Mormon voter blocks over the issue of Donald Trump s bolshy demeanor and alleged past sex scandals a negative which will resonate with conservative Mormon voters in places like Utah.Based on the incredible amount of national media access he s being given across all of the top establishment broadcast TV networks, it s pretty clear that the McMullin campaign is being engineered at the highest levels. For a candidate who appeared from nowhere in the last two months, he s enjoyed carte blanche airtime, including softball interviews on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, The Week with George Stephanopoulos, as well as primetime slots on pro-Clinton media outlets CNN, CBS, NBC, and of course, on Democratic Party channel MSNBC.Here s his debutant spot on Morning Joe, where McMullin waxes on about how, George Bush kept this country safe after 9/11 , and other familiar platitudes: When McMullin speaks, you can almost hear the voice of Mitt Romney and the old GOP establishment. If the Republican Party can t make the changes, as wasn t able to do after 2012, the conservative movement will need a new political vehicle, said McMullin to Stephanopoulos.From these sort of statements, we can see that the object of McMullin s campaign is the same as Romney s to keep the Republican candidate from winning on November 8th.Establishment scion Mitt Romney (photo, left) and his Wall Street partners are desperate, and deathly frightened that if Donald Trump wins, he will build a new GOP power base one which is not based on a tight elite Wall Street investment bank circle that uses men like Romney as their intermediary to control govemnent affairs and fix markets but rather, real people power based on grassroots, working class and middle class voters.The other subtle piece of the McMullin deception is how he constantly spins in the mainstream media about how a Clinton victory is already a fait accompli. In other words: Trump has already lost, so cast your vote for me as a protest vote against the winner, Hillary Clinton. By applying that subtle spin, McMullin hopes to avoid being fingered as Mitt Romney s #NeverTrump tool.Getting on enough ballots in enough states requires money, and a political machine. Enter the Team Romney McMullin s ability to get on the ballot in 11 states, and also write-in access in 32 others, was financed and run by a 501c3 Not for Profit organization which, like McMullin, suddenly popped up this year. It s called, Better For America, said to be founded by GOP operatives John Kingston and Joel Searby.When asked whether or not he s backed by Mitt Romney, McMullin always says no , but the facts say otherwise. Here we can see clearly that McMullin is a creation of Mitt Romney s so-called #NeverTrump Movement. McMullin s primary backer in this project appears to be Kingston, who just happens to be a former GOP delegate from Massachusetts and donor to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, as well as executive producer for the 2014 documentary, Mitt.In addition, McMullin s running mate is former Mitt Romney campaign staffer, Mindy Finn. Aside from working in the Bush Administration, Finn also worked for Twitter and Google, specifically building their tech networks with the Washington Beltway. Another total insider.McMullin has also been working with former Mitt Romney campaign strategist Stuart Stevens.Behind the patriotic rhetoric in Better For America s marketing spin is well-financed, laser focused operation to steal Utah from the Republican party. In public, the organization claims that: We deserve better than two candidates that are deeply unfavorable among a majority of the people they claim to represent. Together, we can give a voice to the millions of Americans who cannot in good conscience vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. If a third party candidate emerges, they need to know the support they have on the ground among the nearly two-thirds of Americans said they are willing to support an independent candidate. Better For America s claim is disingenuous at best, if not outright deceptive, not least because there were already third, and fourth party candidates Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) and Jill Stein (Green Party), both of whom have been organizing in all 50 states. This casual ignorance of the other alternative candidates indicates an attempt to totally manipulate the electoral conversation.Very underhanded yes, but this is something a CIA operative would be doing overseas thrawrting elections and destablizing fledgling democracies in target nations. Romney and Goldman Sachs End GameBeyond engineering a narrow victory for Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney and the #NeverTrump conclave s last option is to steal the election after Nov 8th. It goes like this .Their final play would be if neither Trump nor Clinton receive the 270 electoral college votes required for an outright victory which would then send the election to the House of Representatives. This hasn t happened since 1825. At this point a Republican House of Representatives (many of whom are #NeverTrump supporters) would choose any of the top three candidates who had won a state. If McMullin wins Utah, then he would theoretically be in with a chance. But not as good a chance as Hillary Clinton would.Regardless, either scenario (although the Clinton scenario is more real) is predicated on Evan McMullin s role as a spoiler. McMullin admits this openly: It depends on the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump being very, very close and it is not close now. For Clinton friends and campaign backers like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and fellow Wall Street elites, a Donald Trump victory could mean an interruption in profits slowing down the financial organized crime and fiat paper fraud which has enriched them and the Clintons (and soon the Obamas too) ever since Bill Clinton gave Goldman and Co. the ultimate blank check when the outgoing US President repealed the Glass Steagall Act in 1999. With that one stroke of the pen, the Clintons set the stage for the 2008 Financial Collapse and bailout recipient Blankfein and the Goldman syndicate (and Romney too) made vast fortunes off other people s misery. Notice that Goldman and Wall Street have been stuffing money into the Clinton s pockets ever since with speaking fees, jobs, investments, and also bank-rolling Chelsea Clinton s husband Mark Mezvinsky s hedge fund.Blankfein and his ilk brought the US economy to its knees, and were paid handsomely for their effort.It s an incestuous ring of financial skull-duggery and you will not hear the righteous, self-styled liberty advocate Evan McMullin so much as mention any of this, let alone bad mouth his former employer and criminal financial institution and yet, this is the real story that everyone should really be talking about this election the seedy relationship between the likes of Goldman Sachs and the establishment s favored political candidates.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Trump taps ex-pharma executive Azar as U.S. health secretary | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday said he is nominating former pharmaceutical executive and industry lobbyist Alex Azar to serve as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, saying Azar would push to lower the price of medicines. Republicans as well as the lead lobby groups for drugmakers and health insurers welcomed Azar as an experienced hand who could help overhaul the world’s most costly healthcare system. But several Democratic lawmakers questioned whether he would tackle changes that cut into pharmaceutical profits. If confirmed, Azar also would take the lead in implementing Trump’s campaign promise to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare overhaul that extended health insurance to 20 million Americans. Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said Trump’s pick of a former pharmaceutical executive was “like a fox guarding the hen house.” Trump, who is in the Philippines on a diplomatic trip, announced the nomination on Twitter by saying Azar would “be a star for better healthcare and lower drug prices.” Trump’s first health secretary, former U.S. Representative Tom Price, resigned in September amid a public furor over his use of expensive taxpayer-funded private charter jets for government travel. Azar worked at Eli Lilly (LLY.N) and Co for a decade, including five years as president of its Lilly USA unit, and left the company in January, according to his LinkedIn page. Cummings and Senator Bernie Sanders, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, last year called for a federal probe into whether Eli Lilly, Sanofi SA (SASY.PA), Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) and Novo Nordisk A/S (NOVOb.CO) colluded to set prices on insulin and other diabetes drugs. “This is a slap in the face to millions of Americans who are waiting on (the President) to take action to lower drug prices,” Cummings wrote on Twitter. He also pointed to Eli Lilly raising drug prices by double digits while Azar was an executive at the company. Azar, though a spokesman, declined to comment. Other Democrats were more cautious in their response to Trump’s announcement, with Senator Chuck Schumer calling for the health agency to turn over a new leaf with Azar. Democratic Senator Patty Murray, who has been working on bipartisan healthcare legislation, tweeted, “Given Alex Azar’s professional background, there are concerns on whether he can fairly execute any significant effort to lower drug prices for patients & families.” Republicans were supportive with Senate health committee head Lamar Alexander of Tennessee describing Azar as a qualified, experienced nominee. Azar also drew praise from PhRMA, the largest pharmaceutical industry trade group and America’s Health Insurance Plans, the key lobbyist for the insurer industry. Azar served several years on the board of directors of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a drug industry lobbying group, and earlier was general counsel and deputy secretary for Health and Human Services under former Republican President George W. Bush. Patient advocacy organization Public Citizen said Azar has made it clear he is opposed to measures “to restrain prescription companies’ profiteering and limit improper marketing” and that he favors weaker safety approval standards. As head of HHS, Azar would have oversight responsibility for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the drug industry including approving new treatments. Azar’s nomination must be approved by the U.S. Senate, which is controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans. | 0fake |
SHOCKING VERDICT: Kate Steinle Murdered By Illegal Alien Who Walks Free [Video] | A shocking verdict and race baiting was on the menu tonight in the liberal bastion of San Francisco tonight The prosecutor in the Kate Steinle case won and then came out to make a statement where he attacked President Trump and waisted no time politicizing the verdict as it relates to gun control. He claimed that the president was fomenting hate Huh? This is where we are in America right now: An illegal alien with 7 prior felony convictions murders a legal American citizen and goes free Americans last? Illegals first?LISTEN TO THIS JACKWAGON LAWYER POLITICIZING THIS CASE:Matt Gonzalez: The physical evidence has always supported the finding that this was an accidental occurrence, and I think the jury came to that conclusion. #TheStory pic.twitter.com/QDy4qNx4zZ Fox News (@FoxNews) December 1, 2017HARD TO HEAR BUT MATT GONZALEZ POLITICIZES THE CASE: There are a number of people who have commented on this case in the past few years: the Attorney General of the United States, the President and the Vice President of the United States, let me just remind them that they are themselves under investigation by a special prosecutor in Washington D.C., and they may themselves soon avail themselves of the presumption of innocence and beyond a reasonable doubt standard, Gonzalez says. I would ask them to reflect on that before they comment or disparage the result in this case. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez speaking to critics of the jury verdict, specifically @realDonaldTrump, who faces Mueller's investigation pic.twitter.com/gDoC2ccHOK ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) December 1, 2017HOW IS WHAT CANDIDATE TRUMP SAID IN 2015 ABOUT THE STEINLE CASE FOMENTING HATE ?: This senseless and totally preventable act of violence committed by an illegal immigrant is yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately, Trump said in July 2015. This is an absolutely disgraceful situation and I am the only one that can fix it. Nobody else has the guts to even talk about it. That won t happen if I become President. HEARTBREAKING TESTIMONY FROM KATE STEINLE S DAD:Kate Steinle s father testifies and says his daughters last words were help me, Dad . Long Live #KateSteinle pic.twitter.com/r7uyK2amuY Based Monitored (@BasedMonitored) December 1, 2017ABC News reports:In a surprising verdict, the jury of six men and six women deliberated and came back with a not guilty verdict for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. The defendant was facing second degree murder charges for killing 32-year-old Pleasanton resident Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015 at Pier 14 in San Francisco.While Garcia Zarate can technically walk out of the courtroom, it s expected that he will be taken into custody by Immigration officials and eventually deported back to his native Mexico.The case gained notoriety because Garcia Zarate is an undocumented immigrant who had been deported several times and had a number of felony convictions. Steinle s death became part of the immigration debate in this country. During his campaign, President Trump criticized San Francisco for its sanctuary city status. | 1real |
Muslims in the Military: The Few, the Proud, the Welcome - The New York Times | When Donald J. Trump said last fall that he would consider making Muslims in the United States carry special identification cards, Tayyib Rashid reached into his wallet and pulled out his military ID, then posted a picture of it online, adding: “Hey @realDonaldTrump, I’m an American Muslim and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours?” Now, Mr. Rashid, who served five years in the Marine Corps and worked in avionics, deploying three times, has been outraged again by Mr. Trump. This time it is because of the Republican presidential candidate’s disparaging comments about Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of an Army captain killed by a car bomb in Iraq in 2004, who criticized Mr. Trump’s proposed policies toward Muslims at the Democratic National Convention. The episode “brought tears to my eyes,” Mr. Rashid said. “These are people who sacrificed their own child, their own blood. ” But, he said, his anger is tempered by his own experience in the military, where people were overwhelmingly accepting and supportive. “I experienced nothing but love and camaraderie from all the Marines I served with,” said Mr. Rashid, who joined the Marines in 1997. “I was often the first Muslim many of them had ever met, but there was no racism, no bigotry. It doesn’t really matter your faith: We were all Marines first. ” Still, as Mr. Rashid acknowledges, Muslims in the military face numerous challenges. For one, 15 years of war in Muslim countries has made serving in the military a cultural minefield. Among some soldiers, Islam itself, not extremism, is often seen as the problem. In interviews, Muslim soldiers said they had all encountered at one time or another what one called “knucklehead” comments equating them with terrorists. Things got worse after 13 people were killed at Fort Hood in 2009 by a Muslim Army psychiatrist who said the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wars against all Muslims. Other problems come from the cultural barriers, like a ban on facial hair, and dealing with military food that is often rife with pork, forbidden by Islam. Few bases have Muslim prayer services, and only five of the Army’s roughly 2, 900 chaplains are imams. “It can be challenging,” said Mr. Rashid, whose family moved from Pakistan when he was 10. “The nature of military service is not very conducive to practicing your faith, but Islam is flexible. ” “I am here as an American,” he added. “I benefit from the liberty and opportunity of this country, and it is my obligation to serve this nation in some way. ” Thousands of Muslims have served in the military since at least the Civil War, but they make up a disproportionately small portion of the force. Just 3, 939 troops currently list their faith as Islam, according to Pentagon data. They make up just 0. 3 percent of the military Muslims are estimated to make up about 1 percent of the civilian population. Their numbers are so few that some go most of their career without meeting another Muslim in uniform. In Europe, some countries have made moves to encourage Muslims to enlist. The British Army, which has similarly low participation among Muslims, two years ago launched a recruiting initiative, the Armed Forces Muslim Forum. The armed forces allow fasting during Ramadan and make accommodations for daily prayers, setting up prayer rooms on bases and recently adding one to a warship. The Pentagon does not track how many Muslim troops have died in combat since 2001, but they have served in all branches — as officers, combat troops, interpreters and intelligence gatherers. Some say that life in the military became harder after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “After I really started noticing a change,” said Mansoor Shams, who was born in Pakistan and served in the Marine Corps from 2000 to 2004. “A few guys made negative comments, sometimes calling me the Taliban. I decided to nip it in the bud, and most of the guys understood. ” Some troops also find it difficult to fight in countries their families may be from. But when it comes to religious liberty, they say, the military has gone to considerable lengths to be accommodating. Troops have time to pray and can fast during Ramadan. The military even makes halal versions of M. R. E.s — meals ready to eat, its field rations — along with kosher and vegetarian versions. “The halal M. R. E.s are actually pretty good, maybe even better than regular M. R. E. s,” said Capt. Nadi Kassim, a company commander in the Army’s Second Cavalry Regiment. Captain Kassim, a child of Palestinian refugees who graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2010, has felt nothing but support from the military since he was a cadet, he said. “I was never singled out for being a guy named Nadi Kassim,” he said. “The Army minimizes differences and rewards achievement, and I really thrived in that. ” When a recent field exercise fell during Ramadan, Captain Kassim said, the support unit doing the cooking set aside meals so he and another Muslim could eat after sunset. “We did not ask them to,” he said. “They just did it on their own to show they supported us. ” Though easy to overlook, Muslim culture has a firm toehold in the military, said Cmdr. Abuhena Saifulislam, a chaplain who serves as an imam in the Navy and Marine Corps, a job he has held for 20 years. Every Friday, he said, an imam holds prayers in the Pentagon, and at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where he is stationed, he leads prayers daily. Commander Saifulislam has been invited to lead prayers at the White House by President George W. Bush and President Obama. On his latest visit, during the Muslim holiday Eid he walked into the White House with a Muslim who had fought in World War II. “Many times I have been to Afghanistan,” he said. “I let them know there how we as Muslims live in America. And I have made great relationships. ” Commander Saifulislam oversaw the building of a mosque at Camp Lejeune, complete with separate entrances for men and women. And in his long career in the military, he said, he has ministered to many more Christians than Muslims and has never faced a backlash. “When I was young, I came here from Bangladesh without a family,” he said. “And in many ways the military became my family. I wouldn’t have stayed 20 years unless I felt welcome. ” | 0fake |
Kellyanne Conway On Trump Administration’s Lies: But What About Benghazi! (VIDEO) | White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday was confronted by ABC s This Week host George Stephanopoulos on the conflicting stories coming from the White House regarding Donald Trump Jr s meeting with a Russian lawyer. The amateur president s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, added to that to say that Trump was not involved in writing a letter to defend his son. However, it was just after that when White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump weighed in as any father would. The White House and the president s lawyer said he wasn t involved at all, Stephanopoulos told Conway. They didn t tell the truth. You know, George, I know there s this whole thing about Conway replied. About telling the truth, the ABC host shot back. Let s talk about telling the truth, Conway said, as if she s even familiar with that concept. Let s talk about [President Barack Obama] looking Americans in the eye who are still suffering eight years later. If you like your plan you can keep it, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Benghazi happened because of a video. Kellyanne, you re simply changing the subject, Stephanopoulos said. You are changing the subject going back to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Don Jr. responded to an email that said he was going to get Russian government information on Hillary Clinton, he continued. That was not out during the campaign. That was revealed just in the last several weeks. But what came of that meeting, Conway replied. Nothing. Watch:Well, we hate to burst Kellyanne s bubble (we love bursting her bubble) but no one knows about the meeting since it was held in secret at Trump Tower except for the people who attended it, including Russians and we all know how truthful they are. What we do know is that Don Jr. released copies of his email chain about that meeting with the subject line reading, Russia Clinton private and confidential. Junior was thrilled to take that meeting in order to help his father win the election. I love it! he wrote.And that has nothing to do with the 2012 Benghazi attack, thankyouverymuch.Image via screen capture. | 1real |
UNIV Of GA PROFESSOR Allows Students To CHOOSE THEIR OWN GRADES To Help Alleviate Stress | A University of Georgia professor has adopted a stress reduction policy that will allow students to select their own grades if they feel unduly stressed by the ones they earned.According to online course syllabi for two of Dr. Richard Watson s fall business courses, he has introduced the policy because emotional reactions to stressful situations can have profound consequences for all involved. As such, if students feel unduly stressed by a grade for any assessable material or the overall course, they can email the instructor indicating what grade [they] think is appropriate, and it will be so changed with no explanation being required. If in a group meeting, you feel stressed by your group s dynamics, you should leave the meeting immediately and need offer no explanation to the group members, the policy adds, saying such students can discontinue all further group work with their remaining grade being based totally on non-group work. Similarly, when it comes to tests and exams for Watson s Data Management and Energy Informatics courses, all will be open book and open notes and designed to assess low level mastery of the course material (the Stress Reduction section has been removed from both syllabi, but an archived version of the Data Management syllabus has been provided here).Finally, for in-class presentations, Watson will allow only positive comments to be made, while comments designed to improve future presentations will be communicated by email. For entire story: Campus ReformPerhaps someone should give the good professor a ticket to Afghanistan so he can spend time with some of our young, brave, college-age troops who don t get to chose their next assignment because it might be too stressful for them.Parents of these students need to start speaking up. We are raising a generation of marshmallows who will have no idea how to handle stress in real life situations. We as a nation, will have no one to blame but ourselves for raising an entire generation of coddled snowflakes with absolutely no coping skills. | 1real |
U.N. rights chief decries 'bigotry' in U.S. presidential race | GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights launched a thinly veiled attack on U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and other presidential hopefuls on Friday, in a speech entitled “The road to violence.” “Bigotry is not proof of strong leadership. It is evidence of the lowest and most craven lack of faith in the principles that uphold a ‘land of the free’,” Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said in a speech at a university in Cleveland, Ohio. “Less than 150 miles away from where I speak, a front-running candidate to be President of this country declared, just a few months ago, his enthusiastic support for torture,... inflicting intolerable pain on people, in order to force them to deliver or invent information that they may not have. “We have heard hateful slander of foreigners, and multiple candidates declaring their support for extensive and intrusive surveillance of people based on their religious beliefs – vast and discriminatory systems to single out and discriminate against Muslims.” Zeid’s speech, the Klatsky Lecture at Case Western Reserve University, also recalled the Nazi holocaust and the genocide of Bosnian Muslims for which former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was jailed last month. He said the eyes of the world would be on Cleveland when it hosts the Republican National Convention in July, and it was his “deepest hope” that Americans would use it to demonstrate their profound understanding of human dignity and human rights. “And yet, in what may be a crucial election for leadership of this country later this year, we have seen a full-frontal attack – disguised as courageous taboo-busting – on some fundamental, hard-won tenets of decency and social cohesion that have come to be accepted by American society.” He said the price for the “dangerously divisive” rhetoric would be paid by innocent people falling victim to violent acts, not by politicians. “We have heard these calls to hatred – calls stigmatizing and demonizing minorities, beginning the validation of violence,” he said. “Real courage would mean standing up for the great and enduring values of this society.” | 0fake |
Turkish forces set up positions in Syria's Idlib | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Turkey s military has begun setting up observation posts in northwest Syria s Idlib province, its General Staff said on Friday, part of a deployment that appears partly aimed at containing a Kurdish militia. Turkey sent a convoy of about 30 military vehicles into rebel-held northwest Syria through the Bab al-Hawa crossing in Idlib, rebels and a witness said. Video distributed by the Turkish army showed what it said was the convoy starting to move on Thursday night, with military vehicles traveling along a road in darkness. Turkey says its operation, along with Syrian rebel groups it backs, is part of a deal it reached last month with Russia and Iran in Astana, Kazakhstan, to reduce fighting between insurgents and the Syrian government. The army said its forces in Syria were conducting operations in line with rules of engagement agreed with Russia and Iran. However, the deployment is also intended to rein in the Kurdish YPG militia, which holds the adjacent Afrin region, a senior rebel official involved in the operation said. (It is) in line with Astana 6 resolutions to ensure the area is protected from Russian and regime bombing and to foil any attempt by the separatist YPG militias to illegally seize any territory, said Mustafa Sejari, an official in a Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group. Broadcaster CNN Turk reported on its website that there was a clash in Idlib countryside near the Ogulpinar border post in Turkey s Reyhanli district. It said the sound of doshka (machine-gun) fire from across the border could be heard in Reyhanli district and it was not clear which forces were clashing. The convoy was heading toward Sheikh Barakat, a high area overlooking rebel-held territory and the Kurdish YPG-controlled canton of Afrin, the witnesses said. President Tayyip Erdogan announced the deployment on Saturday, saying Turkey was conducting a serious operation with rebel groups it supports. Turkey has supported rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the war. But since last year Ankara has focused on securing its border, both from jihadists and from Kurdish forces that control much of the frontier area inside Syria. Sejari, the rebel official, said it was important to contain the YPG to prevent any new military offensive to reach the Mediterranean, something that would require it to capture swathes of mountains held by rebels and Syria s army. Today we can say that the dream of the separatists to reach the sea and enter Idlib and then to Jisr al-Shaqour and the coastal mountains has become a dream, he said Turkey regards the YPG as an extension of the PKK, a Kurdish group inside Turkey that has been waging armed insurgency against Ankara for three decades. We said we may come unannounced one night, and tonight our armed forces started the operation in Idlib with the Free Syrian Army, Erdogan said in a speech to his AK Party on Friday. We are the ones with the 911 km border with Syria, the ones who are constantly under threat, he added, noting the YPG s presence in Afrin. As the strongest part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the YPG has received military aid from Turkey s NATO ally the United States to fight Islamic State. Last year, Turkey launched the Euphrates Shield operation, an incursion into northern Syria alongside Syrian rebel groups to take territory on the frontier from Islamic State. That operation was also aimed at stopping the YPG using its own advances against IS from linking Afrin with the much larger area it controls in northeastern Syria. In the area taken by the Euphrates Shield campaign, Turkey has made changes to local governance that indicate it may be laying a foundation for long term ties with that part of Syria. The Astana agreement with Assad s foreign allies Russia and Iran involves reducing fighting in several regions of Syria, including Idlib and adjacent swathes of the northwest, the most populous rebel-held area. | 0fake |
Police Use Tear Gas, Arrest 9 During Protests In St. Louis | Police Use Tear Gas, Arrest 9 During Protests In St. Louis
Police used tear gas and arrested nine people during protests in St. Louis on Wednesday.
Demonstrators gathered after police shot and killed an 18-year-old they say pointed a gun at them. Police said protesters threw bottles and bricks at them, so they deployed armored vehicles and teams of officers in riot gear.
"The Rev. Renita Lamkin of St. Charles, who regularly attended protests in Ferguson, went to Page Avenue with several other clergy members Wednesday evening. She accused the police of engaging in an overly aggressive response. " 'There has to be a better way, but the better way is not to terrorize an already terrorized community,' she said. 'How they deal with the situation is classist and dehumanizing. The people here don't matter as much to them.' "Kayla Reed of the Organization for Black Struggle also said she believed officers were too aggressive toward a crowd 'that never was all that big.' She claimed officers gave no warning firing canisters of smoke and tear gas."
Police defended their actions, saying they warned protesters that the gathering had been deemed an unlawful assembly.
As The Associated Press reports, officers were serving a warrant at a home in that neighborhood Wednesday afternoon. They encountered two suspects.
"The suspects were fleeing the home as [18-year-old Mansur] Ball-Bey, who was black, turned and pointed a handgun at the officers, who shot him," the AP says. Police say they found four guns and crack cocaine at the home.
"Police said a 33-year-old white officer with seven years on the force and a 29-year-old white officer with nearly seven years experience fired their weapons after Ball-Bey pointed his gun at them. "A black male in his mid to late teens escaped and remains at large. Police said they recovered a 9-mm gun with 'an extended magazine' from Ball-Bey that had been reported as stolen in Rolla, Mo. They also recovered three other guns at the scene."
Of course, these protests come at a time when tensions in the St. Louis area are running high. The last few weeks have been marked by events commemorating the shooting death of Michael Brown.
The protests and clashes with police extended through the night. One vacant house was set on fire and the Post-Dispatch says police have received reports of businesses being set on fire. | 0fake |
PERFECT! President Trump Is Laughing Hysterically In HILARIOUS New Video Featuring CNN Logo As Jim Carrey In “LIAR LIAR” Movie | Last week, after President Trump retweeted a hilarious WWE wrestling video featuring Donald Trump body-slamming WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, with a CNN logo dubbed over his head. Instead of letting it go, CNN chose instead, to threaten the person who allegedly created the meme. As it turns out, threatening to out a private citizen for exercising his right to free speech, simply because it offended CNN, probably wasn t a very good idea. #VeryFakeNews has been getting hammered on social media ever since, and their ratings are have plummeted as a result.A couple of days ago, we posted a hilarious meme depicting CNN s president Jeff Zucker, who seems to have made it his mission to destroy President Trump, as Hitler. Infowars has created a CNN meme contest, offering a $20K reward to the winner, as a way to encourage as many people as possible to create memes that expose the fake news network.The internet has provided some pretty funny CNN memes, but so far, the Liar Liar video is our favorite. The meme maker couldn t have chosen a more appropriate clip, considering the logo dubbed over liar Jim Carrey s face is that of the #VeryFakeNewsCNN.Enjoy:"Kellyanne Conway" pic.twitter.com/0kxl68THbT Anonymous America (@KORANISBURNING) July 10, 2017Here s the actual scene from the movie, Liar Liar with Jim Carrey: | 1real |
TRUMP SUPPORTER FIGHTS BACK: Man Wearing “Make America Great Again” Hat Sues “The Happiest Hour” Bar For Refusing To Serve Him | Enough is enough. Americans need to start making business owners and their employees pay up for discriminating against them simply because they dare to show their support for our President. Good for this Trump supporter for fighting back against the intolerant left. A lot of Americans would be happy to contribute to his legal defense Bartenders at a West Village hot spot served up discrimination with a liberal twist refusing to serve a customer because he was wearing a Make America Great Again hat, according to a lawsuit.Greg Piatek, 30, an accountant from Philadelphia, claims he was snubbed and eventually 86 d by workers at The Happiest Hour on West 10th Street over his conservative fashion statement, popularized by Donald Trump on the campaign trail, he told The Post. Anyone who supports Trump or believes what you believe is not welcome here! And you need to leave right now because we won t serve you! Piatek claims he was told as he was shown the door by a manager.The shake-up started when Piatek and two pals, after a visit to the 9/11 Memorial, ordered drinks at the posh tavern around 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 28.A female bartender served Piatek a $15 jalape o margarita and his pals beers. But when he tried to order a second round, a male bartender noticed his hat and skipped them, he said.One of Piatek s pals pointed out it was their turn to be served, but the bartender scoffed. Is that hat a joke? the Manhattan Supreme Court suit claims. Ignoring me because I m wearing the hat is ridiculous, Piatek said. It s really sad. The flustered bartender got them a second round but allegedly slammed the drinks down. A third bartender also asked Piatek if his lid was a joke and shouted, I can t believe you would support someone so terrible and you must be as terrible a person! Piatek claimed. I wasn t even trying to order a drink and she said, Don t even try to order from me. I won t get you a drink, Piatek alleged.A manager said he spoke to the bar owner, and was told, Anyone who supports Trump or believes what you believe is not welcome here. And you need to leave right now because we won t serve you! according to the suit. For entire story: New York Post New York Post reporter Dean Balsamini had a similar experience when he wore a Trump hat around NYC. He recounts his day of scorn and discrimination after donning a Make America Great Again hat as he visited a few hot spots in the city: I may as well have been wearing a Red Sox hat at Yankee Stadium.The mere sight of my cap nearly caused a riot at the historic Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street site of the 1969 riots that launched the gay rights movement. You come into a gay bar THIS gay bar with THAT hat! one woman lectured as a large crowd gathered.At Soho s sceney La Esquina, where celebs like Julia Roberts nosh on $26 enchiladas, servers nearly lost their lunch when I showed up. Oh my God, do you see that? Is he serious? Is he kidding me? one waiter gasped.My companion and I were quickly shunted to an out of sight table near a back wall. Don t talk to him! a man instructed a street vendor as I browsed along 125th street near the Apollo Theater.Hipsters and trustafarians along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg either did a double take, shot me a death stare or a snarky remark. Take off that stupid f ing hat! one skinny-jeans-wearer sneered.At high-end chapeau peddler Goorin Bros., I overheard a salesman tell his colleague, I m losing my sh ! as I walked in. When I asked him to hold my hat while I admired a fedora, he grimaced. I m surprised nobody s knocked that hat off your head! a mother of two scolded me as we crossed paths along Central Park West and 63rd Street. Make America Great Again right! | 1real |
Map to Wikileaks Podesta Emails - Alphabetical Index by Sender (Version 14 Updated 10/25/16) | Map to Wikileaks Podesta Emails - Alphabetical Index by Sender (Version 14 Updated 10/25/16)
SUPPLEMENT TO: Navigating Wikileaks: A Guide to the Podesta Emails (image by Charles Grapski) License DMCA
The following is a lengthy list of the entirety of the Podesta Emails database as released by Wikileaks (updated as of 10/24/14 through the 14th dump of records). It provides a quick graphic representation of the structure of the database (which is organized alphabetically by the sender [see the Introduction to the Guide: Navigating WikiLeaks: A Guide to the Podesta Emails ]). In particular this view, which contains a set of documents by the Alphabetical set (one for each letter and a PRE and POST category for the emails that fall prior to A and after Z), can show the gaps in the records thus far released. It is thus a useful tool to see whether a particular sender may be missing or what further emails from a particular sender have yet been released. This can be done using the colored bands - the DARK ORANGE band highlighting the as yet unreleased emails. Each of the other colored bands represents the data dumps from the 7th through the latest. The second to last column (dump) indicates which dump the email was released in. I will present an alphabetical list at the start which provides a direct link to a PDF version (links not active) and a SPREADSHEET version (active links if download Excel file [Viewable online but doesn't work if open in Google Sheets]). The links provide a link to the Wikileaks page (Link) and to directly download the .eml email file (Get). This will be followed by an image representation of the entire alphabetical list. Unfortunately due to the limitations on using table formatting I have chosen to use the image rather than the data itself on this page. Thus the user might find the PDF and/or SPREADSHEET useful. I will also provide the links to the PDF and SPREADSHEET above each alphabetical section.
Also useful is the General Map of the database showing the total number of released and unreleased emails by alphabetical set. See: MAP to Wikileaks Podesta Emails [Version 14 - Updated (10/24/16)] - Advertisement -
The Introduction to this Guide including a narrative and an explanation of the methodology can be found here: Navigating WikiLeaks: A Guide to the Podesta Emails.
[UPDATE NOTE: Updates will be loaded shortly bringing this info up to date through the 19th data dump by Wikileaks on 10/26/16. In order to do so I will publish the PDF and SPREADSHEET in advance of the full page so it is available for use as soon as possible. You can check the Series Page on OpEdNews to see what updates have been posted. Unfortunately the site does not allow updates to these pages themselves so new pages will be created for updates.] MAP of Indexed Sender Email Information Files (Quick Links) LETTER - PDF - SPREADSHEET | 1real |
Extra Incentives to Benefit Russia-Serbia Trade, Economic Ties | Get short URL 0 1 0 0 Relations between Moscow and Belgrade are developing favorably, nevertheless, additional stimuli would benefit their trade and economic cooperation, Serbia's First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic told Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev on Wednesday.
BELGRADE (Sputnik) — During his visit, apart from Dacic and Stefanovic, Patrushev is expected to meet with Serbian Defense Minister Zoran Djordjevic, and President Tomislav Nikolic. As part of the visit, Patrushev will take part in the ceremony of laying wreaths at the memorial to the liberators of Belgrade and at the monument to Soviet soldiers. © AP Photo/ Darko Vojinovic Serbian Minister Stands for Increased Cooperation With Russian Security Services "Minister Dacic stressed that relations between Serbia and Russia are traditionally good, and are developing in the interests, and to the satisfaction, of both countries, as well as that it is necessary to provide additional incentives for the development of trade and economic relations," the Serbian Foreign Ministry press service announced, citing the first deputy head of the Serbian government.
In the afternoon, before speaking with Patrushev, Interior Minister of Serbia Nebojsa Stefanovic said that Belgrade was successfully cooperating with the Russian Interior Ministry, Federal Security Service and the National Guard. Patrushev proposed to work on a memorandum of understanding to create the conditions for regular communication on security matters of mutual interest. ... | 1real |
Trump considering Dr. Scott Gottlieb to head FDA | (Reuters) - Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a partner at one of the world’s largest venture capital funds and a former deputy commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is being considered by President-elect Donald Trump to run the agency, according to sources close to the transition team. Gottlieb, 44, a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, is well known in health policy circles and is a frequent commentator on television and in print. Gottlieb is being considered alongside Jim O’Neill, a self-declared libertarian and colleague of Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Mithril Capital Management who was an early Trump supporter and is now advising his transition team. Bloomberg News first reported that Trump was looking at O’Neill. Trump, a Republican, takes office on Jan. 20. Michael Gaba, federal policy leader of law firm Holland & Knight’s national Healthcare & Life Sciences Team, said Gottlieb would be more palatable to more people than O’Neill, who believes drugs should be allowed on the market before their efficacy has been established, as long as they are safe. Even the drug industry would likely oppose that stance, Gaba said, since companies want to be able to make credible claims that their products are effective in treating the diseases they say do. “They want the FDA’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” Gaba said last week, adding, however, that drug makers would like to provide less data to get it. Gottlieb would be a more traditional choice than O’Neill and fits the profile of what Trump’s administration seems to be looking for, he said. “He leans right, he’s got experience in the agency, he’s got the M.D. credential, and he’s outspoken,” Gaba said. The FDA historically has named someone with medical credentials to head the agency. O’Neill has none, though he served as principal associate deputy secretary of health and human services under the George W. Bush administration. Gottlieb’s ties to the pharmaceutical industry run deep. He sits on the boards of multiple companies and advises others, including the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline Plc. He is also a managing director of investment banking at T.R. Winston & Co, a Los Angeles-based, privately held investment bank that focuses on healthcare, clean energy and consumer technology. According to its website, the firm provides services to a range of healthcare clients, “including companies engaged in the clinical development of new therapeutic compounds, drug discovery techniques, medical technologies, and devices.” Between 2003 and 2004 Gottlieb was a senior adviser to the FDA commissioner and then the agency’s director of medical policy development. In 2004 he also acted as senior adviser to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. From 2005-2007 he was the FDA’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs. Gottlieb has a medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wesleyan University. He advises the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a member of the Federal Health Information Technology Policy Committee. | 0fake |
Employees Say FACEBOOK IS SUPPRESSING CONSERVATIVE NEWS…Pushing Black Lives Matter…Artificially Ordering “Trending News” | We know firsthand what it feels like to be a victim of Facebook. Four years ago, we started making a lot of noise about the illegal immigrants crossing our borders. The number of people interacting with our page went from 32 MILLION to 3 million during within a year. The number of likes on our page had almost doubled, but the activity levels on our Facebook page had dropped over 90%. We hadn t changed a thing that we were doing during that one year span, we were just no longer showing up in the Facebook newsfeed. We still struggle with the same issue today. Even though we pay to advertise on Facebook, we only show up in the newsfeed between 2-6 times per week. Even after our readers have checked the box to see our stories first in their newsfeed on Facebook, they complain we are never there and that they have to physically visit our page in order to see what we re posting. Hmmm On Feb 8, 2013, Breitbart News did a story about Facebook unfairly suspending one of the two mom administrator s on our page:Anonymous sources at Facebook s news team have confirmed to Gizmodo that, in addition to suppressing conservative news sources, the company suppresses stories about itself while artificially promoting stories about the Black Lives Matter movement.This is the latest in the story of Facebook s politically biased trending section, which we initially reported on last week. The anonymous source told Gizmodo that stories from conservative news sources like Breitbart were regularly suppressed by the company.New details emerged today, with the anonymous employee revealing to Gizmodo that stories about Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, CPAC, and other conservative topics were prevented from reaching Facebook s trending category. Furthermore, stories about progressive movements like Black Lives Matter were artificially promoted by the company.According to Gizmodo, the source kept a list of stories that were deep sixed, or prevented from trending on Facebook. They include a laundry list of topics of interest to conservatives.Among the deep-sixed or suppressed topics on the list: former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.Gizmodo explains that, far from reflecting the interests of the social network s users, the site s trending list instead reflects the biases of its news team.In other words, Facebook s news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing but it is in stark contrast to the company s claims that the trending module simply lists topics that have recently become popular on Facebook. In other words, Facebook s role in the dissemination of news is beginning to resemble that of the Old Media gatekeepers the company initially claimed to be disrupting. Like MSNBC or CNN, Facebook is going to feed its users information from the top down, mediated by its employees own political prejudices just as I predicted it would last month.In addition to suppressing stories, Gizmodo s sources also confirmed that they were also directed to inject certain stories into the trending list even if they weren t popular enough to warrant inclusion. Unsurprisingly, these included stories about Black Lives Matter, a movement that Mark Zuckerberg has personally defended from internal critics at the company.Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter, the individual said. They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, Yeah, now I m seeing it as number one . This particular injection is especially noteworthy because the #BlackLivesMatter movement originated on Facebook, and the ensuing media coverage of the movement often noted its powerful social media presence.The company also instructs its curators to avoid promoting stories about Facebook itself a useful barrier against articles that could make the company look bad. When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it, said one former curator. It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool. Something tells me this article won t be appearing on Facebook s trending list anytime soon.Despite Facebook curators actively suppressing articles from Breitbart News, it is still the 15th largest publisher in the world for Facebook engagement, #12 in the world for Facebook shares of its stories, and #10 in the world for Facebook comments. It begs the question how much bigger Breitbart News reach would be if Facebook employees were not intentionally holding back Breitbart s exposure on the social media platform.Breitbart News issued an official statement in reaction to these latest revelations:Breitbart News has remained in the top 25 Facebook publishers for six months in a row, despite the new reports confirming what conservatives have long suspected: Facebook s trending news artificially mutes conservatives and amplifies progressives.Facebook claims its algorithm simply populates topics that have recently become popular on Facebook in its trending news section, but now we know that s not true.In a spirit of transparency and community, we invite Mark Zuckerberg to do a Facebook Live interview with Breitbart News Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos to explain to the tens of millions of conservatives on Facebook why they re being discriminated against.Breitbart Tech has long warned that despite their outward commitments to political neutrality, hyper-progressive Silicon Valley companies like Facebook would inevitably imprint their own biases on the flow of information. It seems those warnings were not amiss.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Ex-U.S. NSA employee pleads guilty to taking classified documents | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. National Security Agency employee pleaded guilty on Friday to illegally taking classified information outside the spy agency that an intelligence official said was later stolen from his home computer by Russian hackers. Nghia Hoang Pho, who worked in the NSA’s elite hacking unit, retained U.S. government documents containing top-secret national defense information between 2010 and March 2015, the Justice Department said. Pho, a 67-year-old U.S. citizen born in Vietnam, faces up to 10 years in prison. He is not being held by authorities as he awaits his sentencing, which is scheduled for April 6, 2018, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pho was the same NSA employee who had been identified in media reports for using Kaspersky Lab antivirus software on his home computer. Some U.S. officials have said software from the Moscow-based company allowed Russian intelligence agencies to pilfer sensitive secrets from the United States through Pho’s computer. The Department of Homeland Security in September ordered federal agencies to start removing Kaspersky software from their computers. U.S. officials have said the firm either has ties to Russian intelligence or is forced to share information held on its servers with Russian officials. Kaspersky has repeatedly denied the allegations but acknowledged its software in 2014 took NSA code for a hacking tool from a customer’s computer before its chief executive, Eugene Kaspersky, ordered the code destroyed. The court documents do not appear to make mention of Russian intelligence agencies or Kaspersky Lab. The connection was first reported by the New York Times. The intelligence official declined to comment on whether Pho knew the software he was using at home was vulnerable. Pho is at least the third NSA employee or contractor to be charged within the past two years on counts of improperly taking classified information from the agency, breaches that have prompted criticism of the secretive NSA. A federal grand jury indicted former NSA contractor Harold Martin in February on charges alleging he spent up to 20 years stealing up to 50 terabytes of highly sensitive government material from the U.S. intelligence community, which were hoarded at his home. In June another NSA contractor, Reality Winner, 25, was charged with leaking classified material about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to a news outlet. She pleaded not guilty. And in 2013, former contractor Edward Snowden pilfered secrets about NSA’s surveillance programs and shared them with journalists. He now lives in Moscow. Pho, of Ellicott City, Maryland, took both physical and digital documents that contained “highly classified information of the United States,” including information labeled as “top secret,” according to court records unsealed Friday. He was aware the documents contained sensitive information and kept them at his residence in Maryland, the records said. Asked for comment, Pho’s attorney, Robert Bonsib, said, “Any conversations regarding this case will be made in the courtroom during the sentencing.” He declined to comment further. Officials at the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The NSA, whose main mission is gathering and analyzing foreign communications for potential security threats, is based at Fort Meade, Maryland. | 0fake |
Israel’s Parliament Draws a Line on Short Hemlines - The New York Times | JERUSALEM — How short is a short skirt and who gets to decide? These were the questions vexing members of the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament, on Wednesday as dozens of female employees arrived in attire to protest what they said was the Knesset guards’ sudden eagerness to enforce a longstanding dress code. Many aides also wore thick tights or black leggings, though it was unclear if that was a nod to modesty or the bad weather. The code, which a Knesset spokesman said was recently “refreshed,” calls for dignified dress that becomes the place and bans items like shorts, ripped trousers, skimpy tops, with political slogans, short skirts and dresses, and . While many Knesset members and their aides said they supported the need for a dress code, they questioned the guards’ role as the arbiters of appropriate skirt length, comparing them to the modesty police in conservative religious societies. One employee cheekily said in a radio interview that she was considering looking into jobs in Iran’s Parliament. The dispute was amplified by the deeper cultural and religious wars roiling Israeli society, with women often on the front line. An girl set off a national debate about religious extremism in 2011 after men spit on her and cursed her because her modest dress did not conform to their rigorous rules. More recently, at the height of this summer’s debate in Europe over the swimwear known as the burkini, an Israeli singer ran into trouble for wearing a bikini top at a beachside concert. And some rabbis and retired generals have objected to the proposed integration of the army’s tank crews, with one critic worrying that after nine months in a coed tank, “a little tank soldier would be born. ” The skirmish burst into public conversation after the Haaretz reported on the plight of Shaked Hasson, who was pictured in a slightly crumpled, blue dress and was held up by Knesset guards for nearly an hour on Sunday until her boss, Merav Michaeli of the Zionist Union, intervened. “Yes, yes, no less than five guards stood and visually measured up Shaked’s legs and decided that her attire did not allow her to enter the Knesset to do her job,” Ms. Michaeli, a feminist lawmaker, wrote in a Facebook post. Describing Ms. Hasson’s experience as “humiliating,” Ms. Michaeli added, “Respectful attire yes, but no to modesty patrols. ” Other female workers subsequently reported having been sent home to change clothes, saying they had frequently been allowed into work in the same garments before. Manuel Trajtenberg, another legislator from the Zionist Union, registered his objection on Wednesday after his parliamentary assistant was asked to remove her jacket for inspection. Mr. Trajtenberg took off his own shirt, revealing an underwear vest, and shouted, “You should all come in burqas, covered up completely,” referring to the full Islamic veil and robe. The guards were prepared for Wednesday’s protest. Some women seeking entry in shortish skirts reported being examined scrupulously, with some female guards tugging at their hemlines. Tamar Ish Shalom, an anchorwoman on Israel’s Channel 10 news, posted pictures on Twitter of the British prime minister, Theresa May, in clothing that revealed her knees and some thigh. She wrote that she hoped Ms. May was not planning a visit to the Knesset, or “It could cause a diplomatic incident. ” The Knesset spokesman, Yotam Yakir, described Wednesday’s protest as a “provocation. ” “I am sure other parliaments in the world have a much stricter code,” Mr. Yakir said by telephone. “Here, jackets are not obligatory. We just don’t allow real minis, torn clothes, things like that. It is very elementary. It is not about gender. ” Israel is a casually dressed country, where shorts, and sandals are common at weddings and funerals. But in September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked a minister, Haim Katz, out of a cabinet meeting for showing up in a striped polo shirt. The Knesset banned jeans in 2007, but later reversed course. Ms. Hasson, the aide whose case led to the protest, told the news site Ynet that she had been told hemlines could be no more than 5 centimeters above the knee, something Mr. Yakir said was incorrect. “There are no numbers or centimeters specified in the code,” he said. “It just says no short skirts. ” | 0fake |
TWO ILLEGAL ALIENS TO BECOME FIRST APPOINTED CITY COMMISSIONERS: Hope To Create More Opportunities For Illegals | Is there really any point to go through the work and expense to become an American citizen anymore?Huntington Park may become the first city in California to appoint two undocumented immigrants as commissioners on city advisory boards, a lawmaker confirms.City Councilman Jhonny Pineda has picked Francisco Medina to join the health and education commission and Julian Zatarain for the parks and recreation commission.The 32-year-old lawmaker told CBSLA online producer Deborah Meron that he promised voters while running for office that he would create more opportunities for undocumented residents. Huntington Park is a city of opportunity and a city of hope for all individuals regardless of socioeconomic status, race, creed, or in this case, citizenship, the councilman said in a statement. Both these gentlemen have accomplished a great deal for the city. For that, on behalf of the city council, mayor, and our city, I want to say thank you to them both and I am confident they will do an excellent job on their commission posts. Pineda says he cleared the appointments with the city attorney, who confirmed there s nothing that requires a commissioner to be a registered voter, a documented citizen or even a resident, which technically means someone here without legal residency can serve.Appointees first pass a LifeScan background check.Medina and Zatarain would not be paid for the volunteer positions and would not have a direct hand in constructing policy but would help advise the council on legislation. Other commissioners receive a $75 monthly stipend on months when they hold meetings.Coming the same year that California allowed residents to apply for a driver s license, regardless of immigration status, this move is the latest in an effort to recognize an increasingly sizable demographic in the state.Pineda says at 13 years old he emigrated alone to the United States. He established legal residency and told Meron he feels blessed to have been able to come here and work. He s served as a district representative on the California State Senate and legislative assistant for the U.S. House of Representatives. He currently is president of the California Latino Leadership Institute, an organization designed for young professionals interested in leadership development and serving their community.A graduate from Cal State Dominguez Hills with a bachelor s degree in sociology and Chicano studies, Medina interned for then-Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, who now serves on the Los Angeles City Council, Pineda says. Medina also organizes immigration forums aimed a helping working-class communities.Pineda says the decision will be announced at the City Council meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday and will become official after being processed by the council.Via: CBS Los Angeles | 1real |
Who collects costs for Trump's Taiwan call? | BEIJING (Reuters) - There are many pressure points China can push to express its anger at Donald Trump’s call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen last week, including luring away more of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies and ramping up military deployments in the Taiwan Strait. China’s irritation with the call, the first by a U.S. president-elect or president since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, has mostly been directed at the self-ruled island China claims as its own. But it could also make life difficult for the United States and its allies in the region. Shi Yinhong, head of the Centre for American Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University, who has advised the government on diplomatic issues, said China was still in a wait-and-see period when it came to Trump, noting Beijing’s reaction to the call had been quite restrained. But that would change if Trump continued like this in office, Shi said. “Without a doubt, if the Chinese government judges a president Trump wants to challenge the ‘One China’ principle followed since President Carter, China will definitely make a very strong response.” That could include policy toward North Korea, where China has been working with Washington to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear program, or in the disputed South China Sea. “Everything is possible,” he said. Beijing could, for example, ease up on United Nations sanctions on North Korea, providing economic succor to a country developing missiles that could target the United States, or take a more aggressive stance to U.S. freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea, where it has so far limited itself to verbal warnings. Washington and Beijing have also cooperated on the multilateral agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program and on climate change, areas that Trump has said he wants to revisit to get a better deal for the U.S. The status of Taiwan is an unresolved issue from China’s civil war, when defeated Nationalist forces fled there in 1949, posing a pointed challenge to the Communist Party’s claim to rule all of China. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring what it calls a “renegade province” under its control, and Taiwan estimates that China has hundreds of missiles targeting the island over the narrow straits that separate them. The Global Times, an outspoken and influential tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said punishing Taiwan was the best way to convey a message to Trump. “The Chinese mainland can let Taiwan lose one or two diplomatic allies as a punishment as well as a warning. The mainland can also strengthen its military deployment,” it said in editorials in its Chinese and English editions. The number of countries maintaining formal ties with Taiwan, which until 1971 held China’s seat at the United Nations, has since been whittled away by China to just 22, mostly poor nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. An unofficial diplomatic truce between China and Taiwan ended earlier this year after Tsai was elected in January, when China established ties with former Taiwan ally Gambia. Last week a large Chinese business delegation visited Panama, another Taiwan friend. Tsai says she wants peace and stability with China, but China fears she wants to push the island’s formal independence, one of the core principles of her Democratic Progressive Party. China could also step up its divide-and-rule policy favoring pro-China politicians in Taiwan with trade and access deals, while excluding those from the ruling party. The People’s Daily overseas edition said the Trump-Tsai call set a “terrible precedent” for China-U.S. ties and put a big question mark over a smooth transition in the relationship. Jia Qingguo, dean of the School of International Relations at Peking University and a government advisor, said the incident would help Chinese leaders get past initial uncertainty about Trump and better understand what his administration could mean for China, but “in a negative way”. “Donald Trump is hurting the relationship, and that will also hurt U.S. interests. If he continues this when he is in office, I assume we will have more frictions - over trade, over Taiwan. This is bad for both countries.” Beijing also has to bear in mind the opinion of a Chinese public brought up to insist on sovereignty over Taiwan. “Taiwan is simply a province of our China,” said one user on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. “Anywhere, anytime we can bring things to a conclusion. Have no worries about that.” China and Taiwan have nearly gone to war three times since 1949, most recently ahead of the 1996 Taiwan presidential election. Then, China carried out missile tests in waters close to the island, hoping to dissuade people voting for Lee Teng-hui, whom it suspected of harbouring pro-independence views. Lee won by a landslide. In the intervening 20 years, Chinese wealth and power have grown. “China is much stronger now,” said Jia, the academic and advisor. “Presumably a U.S.-China confrontation over Taiwan would have a much more negative impact on the international order and relations between the two countries.” | 0fake |
Merrick Garland’s instinct for the middle could put him in the court’s most influential spot | Merrick Garland has the opportunity to become not only the newest member of the Supreme Court but also its most influential, taking a spot at the court’s center now reserved for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
If the 63-year-old Garland is confirmed by the Senate — and there is no bigger if in all of Washington politics — he would help fulfill President Obama’s goal of remaking the court and become a part of a five-member liberal majority chosen by Obama and President Bill Clinton.
Garland’s replacement of conservative icon Antonin Scalia would be the most significant shift on the Supreme Court since Clarence Thomas was confirmed in 1991 to replace the liberal civil rights giant Thurgood Marshall.
But more than that, Garland could occupy the pivotal role as the court considers the most controversial cases of the day: affirmative action, abortion, gun rights, campaign finance regulation, the death penalty.
For a decade, a version of that role has been played by Kennedy, the most powerful of the nine justices and the one who most often casts the deciding vote when the court’s conservatives and liberals deadlock.
Just as Kennedy is to the left of the rest of the court’s Republican-nominated conservatives — and thus the justice most often in play — most scholars of the court think that Garland would probably be just to the right of all of the court’s liberals.
No one knows for sure. But a review of his record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and interviews with those who have watched him for years as a prominently mentioned Supreme Court hopeful see someone whose instinct is for the middle.
“If confirmed, he’ll surely become the swing vote in most of the highly politicized cases, but more because he is a centrist than because he vacillates between more progressive and more conservative ideals,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law who watches closely the work of the D.C. Circuit, of which Garland is chief judge.
Like others, Vladeck is most struck by the lack of controversy in a judge who has been on the bench nearly 20 years.
“Chief Judge Garland’s jurisprudence is the epitome of centrist, case-by-case adjudication — not because he lacks deep methodological commitments, but because he’s never been prone to go out of his way to wax philosophical about those commitments,” he said. “He has a remarkable dearth of separate opinions, and even his majority opinions tend to be fairly efficient, technical resolutions of the legal questions before him.”
Moreover, Garland is well known to the Supreme Court. More than 40 of his clerks have gone on to clerk for the justices, about a quarter of them for conservative members of the court. Such cross-pollination is increasingly rare.
“Many fine Supreme Court justices took time to get their bearings,” said Justin Driver, a University of Chicago law professor who clerked for Garland and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer.
“That would not be him,” Driver said. “He would hit the ground running.”
Garland is known as a technical craftsman, with careful opinions that follow rather than push back at precedents either at his own court or the Supreme Court. He ranked in the top 10 percent of judges appointed in 1997 or after in a measure of both the quantity and quality of their work, according to an analysis by Ravel Law, a legal research and analytics start-up.
Despite nearly two decades on what is often called the second-most-important court in the country — its judges often are nominated to take the next step to the high court — he has relatively few controversial rulings.
The court often hears important government and regulatory cases but is rarely called upon to decide dramatic social issues such as affirmative action, abortion, same-sex marriage or the death penalty. Those have become staples at the Supreme Court.
Conservatives acknowledge they have come up with a limited list of complaints. Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank that is normally a scourge of liberal jurists, acknowledged in a conference call with reporters that “the only criticism I’d make of him is that he’s a liberal.”
Carrie Severino of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network criticized Garland as anti-Second Amendment. In 2007, he voted with the losing side on whether the entire D.C. Circuit should review a panel’s decision that struck down the District’s restrictive gun-ownership laws.
She and Brian Rogers, executive director of the Republican group America Rising Squared, said Garland may be the “most anti-gun nominee” in decades.
But a Republican judge joined Garland in saying that the landmark ruling about the Second Amendment’s protection of individual rights should be reviewed. The whole court did not take up the merits of the panel’s decision. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court in a dramatic 5-to-4 decision, with the majority opinion written by Scalia.
But it would probably be just as accurate to describe Garland as the most conservative Supreme Court nominee by a Democratic president in decades. His prosecutor background and some of his rulings on the D.C. Circuit indicate that he would not take uniformly liberal positions on criminal justice issues; on the circuit, he is more likely to side with the government than his liberal colleagues.
He is also deferential to government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and his rulings on labor issues are supported by unions. Liberal groups that might have wanted a more outspoken champion nonetheless say privately that they are confident that Garland would move the court in their direction.
That was Whelan’s point, too: When it comes to the Supreme Court, a “supposed moderate liberal” is as good as any other kind of liberal.
Garland has always been seen as the “safe” nomination that Obama kept in his back pocket. The president acknowledged that he considered Garland twice before and, with a Democratic-controlled Senate, opted instead for Sonia Sotomayor and then Elena Kagan.
Garland looks more like a left-leaning version of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: a Midwesterner with double degrees at Harvard who clerked for the same circuit judge, moved on to work for Supreme Court justices, served on the D.C. Circuit and made friends on both sides of the aisle.
No one seriously doubts that Garland would move the court to the left and that his presence holds the promise for a reversal of the court’s trends on issues such as voting rights, environmental issues and, perhaps, campaign finance regulation.
That is why the fight over his nomination is likely to be so fierce. | 0fake |
Ex-ally of Malaysian PM Najib held in graft probe: source | KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A senior Malaysian opposition leader was detained by anti-corruption authorities on Thursday, a source said, as part of a nationwide campaign against graft launched by Prime Minister Najib Razak. Hundreds of people including many high-profile figures have been arrested this year by the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC), at a time when a multi-billion dollar scandal involving state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) hangs over Najib. Shafie Apdal, a former close ally of Najib, was detained at the MACC office in the state of Sabah in connection with a RM1.5 billion ($355 million) embezzlement probe, according to a source in the anti-graft agency. The investigation covers alleged corruption involving projects doled out by the federal government through the Rural and Regional Development Ministry between 2009 and 2015, when it was run by Shafie. He will be brought before a magistrate for a remand hearing tomorrow, said the source, who was not authorized to issue statements on behalf of the MACC. Shafie could not be contacted. Darell Leiking, Deputy President of his Parti Warisan Sabah party, described the arrest as political persecution. We shall ensure that we shall fight for justice for all those who this (Najib) regime intends to suppress and intimidate, Darell told Reuters. Prior to Shafie s arrest, the anti-graft agency detained two of his brothers and several senior Warisan leaders. Shafie, a former vice-president of Najib s ruling United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), quit the party after he was suspended for questioning the prime minister over his handling of the 1MDB scandal. He later founded Warisan to run for office in his home state. Over the past two years, Najib has grappled with the 1MDB scandal which has been the subject of investigations in at least six countries for money-laundering and misappropriation of funds. Malaysia s attorney-general closed the 1MDB probe in January 2016, and cleared Najib of any wrongdoing. | 0fake |
Running on the Hillary Ticket? Then Let Me Ask… | Charles Goyette https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/running-hillary-ticket-let-ask/
Unless you think “What’s your favorite color?” is a hard question, you shouldn’t expect much from lapdog press interviews of Statist candidates.
In a Wall Street Journal column this morning, James Freeman, an editorial page editor, notes that getting candidates in races below Donald Trump on the Republican ticket to denounce him has become a regular sport in the media. But he wonders why reporters “don’t force down-ballot Democrats to take a position on each new Clinton email revelation.”
That would be fine. Although there is nothing we didn’t suspect, thanks to WikiLeaks, we have more details than ever about Clinton venality and political corruption.
But there is a line of questioning that is even more important.
Why shouldn’t other candidates on the Democrat ticket be asked to endorse or disavow Hillary’s regime change wars in Libya and Syria?
Shouldn’t they be made to own the jihadist-generating carnage she champions? Wouldn’t it be wise to tie political supporters to her war trajectory with Russia as well, so that if she has her way the survivors will know who was to blame? 1:20 pm on October 28, 2016 | 1real |
TEXAS PIG FARMER Has BRILLIANT Idea After Muslims DEMAND He Moves So They Can Build A Mosque [VIDEO] | Don t mess with Texas A Texas pig farmer found out that Muslims trying to build a mosque had purchased the land next to his farm.What s more the new Muslim landowner actually asked him to leave.That s because Craig Baker owns a pig farm, and the Muslim community hates pigs it s in the Koran. So in an effort to cleanse the land, the Muslim landowner asked Baker to move out.Baker instead decided to fight back.Baker started holding pig races every Friday at the same time Muslims are supposed to be saying their afternoon prayer.Now local Muslims (and their liberal stooges) are calling him a racist. (Since when is Islam a race ?)What do you think? Did he go too far? Should he have embraced diversity instead? Via: Top Right NewsWATCH HERE: | 1real |
Hillary’s ‘Environmental Justice’ Plan Is The Kind Of Kick Ass Policy We’ve Been Waiting For | On Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate and front runner Hillary Clinton released a clear and very detailed plan for dealing with the epidemic of lead and toxic waste poisoning that is affecting millions of Americans, many of them poor and/or minorities:Exposure to pesticides and chemicals has been linked to childhood cancer, and the likelihood of such exposure can depend on where children live. For example, in the Manchester neighborhood of Houston, which is 85 percent Latino and where 27 schools are within one mile of a high-risk chemical facility, children who attend public schools are 56 percent more likely to get leukemia than those who live 10 miles away.Simply put, this is environmental racism. And the impacts of climate change, from more severe storms to longer heat waves to rising sea levels, will disproportionately affect low-income and minority communities, which suffer the worst losses during extreme weather and have the fewest resources to prepare.Undoubtedly, this will be sneered at as pandering but since Clinton s strongest supporters are, in fact, minorities and the poor, the word constituents seems more appropriate.The title of the blueprint is Hillary Clinton s Plan to Fight for Environmental and Climate Justice, and contains several concrete steps that are guaranteed to leave corporate polluters foaming at the mouth:Here, Clinton cites the man-made disaster unfolding at Flint, Michigan in which (insanely) no one broke any existing laws, a judge giving polluters in West Virginia a slap on the wrist and Donald Blankenship receiving only 1 year of jail for killing 29 miners by ignoring safety regulations. Each example is a case of the system coddling corporate criminals and throwing the public s health and safety under the bus.Here s the solution:Clinton will work with Congress to update our environmental, public health, and safety laws by enhancing the criminal provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, adding criminal provisions to the Lead Disclosure Rule, improving the lead inspection standards of the Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, and increasing the penalties for violations of the Mine Safety and Health Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act so that they are felonies that carry the possibility of serious jail time.In other words, no more free passes to corporations that poison us to make a little more profit. Big government? Damn right it is! We formed a government to protect us from the depredations of the rich and powerful. It s about time it started to take that responsibility seriously.America has a serious infrastructure problem. Specifically, Republicans have stopped allowing us to keep our infrastructure from crumbling. Why? Because infrastructure spending, while vitally important, is also really REALLY good for local economies. You can t outsource replacing old pipes so all of that money spent goes right into the economy instead of the pockets of a few multinational corporations.Republicans also don t care because rich communities don t suffer from this problem:Aging and inadequate wastewater systems discharge more than 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage a year, posing health risks to humans and wildlife, disrupting ecosystems, and disproportionately impacting communities of color. Clinton has a $275 billion plan to invest in modernizing American infrastructure, including drinking and wastewater infrastructure, and will work with states, municipalities, and the private sector to bring our water systems into the 21st century and ensure that all Americans have access to clean, safe drinking water.That s $275 billion to make our drinking water clean again AND help the economy at the same time. Republicans will fight it but how much more political damage can they take? Is blocking clean water for children really a hill to die on?Flint is not the only place to suffer from lead poisoning and drinking water is not the only way to get it. Old schools and buildings still have lead paint, placing children at risk:The ongoing tragedy in Flint has put a spotlight on the urgency of this crisis, but Flint is not alone. More than 535,000 children are poisoned by lead in the United States, and children of color are more likely to be poisoned than white children.Clinton is pledging $5 billion just in federal spending to deal with this blight. And, again, as a bonus, all of that money spent goes right into the local economy. .There s (a lot) more and it s just as well thought out. I encourage you to read the entire thing, it s fantastic. From expanding public transportation to investing heavily in green energy, Clinton has developed a comprehensive strategy to dealing with several major issues confronting America. This is the kind of leadership we can expect from someone who s spent a lifetime serving the public and something we can all get behind.Featured image via Getty | 1real |
U.S. responds in court fight over illegal Indonesian immigrants | BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. immigration officials sought to block a federal judge’s order delaying efforts to deport 51 Indonesians living illegally in New Hampshire, saying they have not shown they would face harm if repatriated, court documents on Wednesday showed. The U.S. government’s motion in federal court in Boston was in response to a judge’s order last month that found members of the group should be given time to make a case that changed conditions in the southeast Asian nation would make it dangerous for them to return. “Even if they are removed, petitioners’ generalized evidence of Indonesia’s conditions do not prove that persecution or torture is immediate or likely for each petitioner,” the motion said. It said the court lacked jurisdiction over their claims, and the immigrants did not state any plausible claims. The group of ethnic Chinese Christians fled the world’s largest Muslim-majority country following violence that erupted 20 years ago and have been living openly for years in New England under an informal deal reached with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Beginning in August, members of the group who showed up for ICE check-ins were told to prepare to leave the country, in keeping with U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration. Members of the group have said in interviews with Reuters that they entered the country on tourist visas but overstayed them and failed to seek asylum on time. Several said they fear they would face persecution or violence for their Christian faith and Chinese ethnicity if they were returned to Indonesia. Federal law gives authority over immigration matters to the executive branch, not the courts, and ICE contends that it has always had authority to deport members of the group. Chief U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston last month found she had authority to ensure the Indonesians have a chance to argue that conditions in their home country had deteriorated significantly enough to reopen their cases for trying to stay in the United States. The Indonesians are part of an ethnic community of about 2,000 people clustered around the city of Dover, New Hampshire. Their cause has drawn the support of the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, including U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and Republican Governor Chris Sununu. | 0fake |
Netflix Casts a Wider Net for Original Documentaries - The New York Times | It was early in March 2015, the filmmaker Ava DuVernay recalled recently, when she was approached by Lisa Nishimura, the vice president for original documentary and comedy programming at Netflix, who asked “if I had any story I wanted to tell. ” As it happened, Ms. DuVernay had been thinking “about an overview of where the United States currently stands in terms of mass incarceration. ” By September 2016, the resulting movie, “13th,” opened the New York Film Festival. In January, after screening in some movie theaters, being made available free to some academic institutions and streaming on Netflix, the movie received an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature. “13th” was one of several pictures produced by streaming services to make it to the Oscars this year, but Ms. DuVernay (who was coming off an intensive Oscar campaign for her 2014 film, “Selma,” when she first spoke to Netflix) said that awards weren’t her concern when making the film. Nor could she pursue them after “13th” was out she had already begun her next film, the fictional “A Wrinkle in Time,” adapted from the Madeleine L’Engle book. She also didn’t make press junket rounds ahead of awards season. What secured the nomination were two things: the movie’s extraordinary quality and the perspicacious marketing department at Netflix’s documentary division. A couple of months back, I wrote about some of Netflix’s original films, lightweight comedies of varying quality. Several developments suggest a widening of the company’s ambitions in documentaries. The service began streaming the Sundance Film Festival’s Jury Prize winner, the dark drama “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore,” a month after the movie won that prize. And, in what movie business journalists are almost unanimously terming a major coup, Netflix announced its acquisition of the rights to “The Irishman,” a return to the gangster genre from Martin Scorsese, in late February. The documentary division, though, has been moving from hit to hit since the series “Making a Murderer,” which, along with HBO’s “The Jinx” and the podcast “Serial,” gripped the public imagination with innovative approaches to true crime. Ms. DuVernay’s “13th” made the lists of many film critics in 2016, and it wasn’t the only documentary to be nominated for an Oscar this year “White Helmets,” about the war in Syria, actually took home a statuette in the Documentary Short category. Netflix also presented “The Ivory Game,” a Leonardo exposé of elephant poaching. Flexibility of formatting is one component of this success story. On March 28, Netflix will premiere “Five Came Back,” about a group of prominent Hollywood directors and how they were changed by World War II, in three episodes. Mark Harris, the film’s screenwriter and the author of the book on which it is based (who is a longtime colleague and friend of mine) noted that had the project been picked up by a television network, “the directive would have been, ‘Please fill this slot.’ Whereas with Netflix, the first thing they asked was ‘What should this be? ’” Ms. DuVernay recalled that Netflix’s commitment to making “13th” what she thought it should be remained consistent for the entire process. “After I started it, I realized that it needed to be about more than the immediate situation, and I wanted to add historical perspective” she said. “That meant an expanded budget, and expanded time. ” She noted that she wanted a cut reduced to 100 minutes. “Lisa told me, ‘It can be two and a half hours.’ The length was something I wanted. ” Ms. DuVernay added, “The division is filled with people who are real filmmakers, who have made documentaries, been in the editing room. ” What it looks like to the creator is borne in mind throughout the process Netflix’s goal over all, according to the filmmakers working with them, is to create distinctive stories. “In this line of endeavor, you hear about things like network notes, and that’s always a kind of vicious punch line,” Mr. Harris said. “We kept waiting for that moment, but it never came. [Netflix] was always constructive and supportive. ” Ms. Nishimura, the executive making all this possible, said she was lucky “to have come from a professional background that supports creators first. ” Before joining Netflix almost a decade ago, she worked with Chris Blackwell, the music entrepreneur who founded Island Records, at the indie film company Palm Pictures. When she joined Netflix, it was a DVD rental entity, and she was buying up titles and “overseeing relationships with creators worldwide. ” In the process, she discovered that audiences had a hunger for documentaries not always reflected at the box office. “Television ratings exist because of ads, which we’re free of, and box office has become so reliant on Friday night returns that it’s warped perceptions of what audiences want,” Ms. Nishimura said. “Just because a person doesn’t go see a documentary on a Friday night, it’s not a reflection on the film it’s just a reflection that maybe a documentary isn’t a film that a couple is going to want to see on date night. What we’ve discovered is that we can elevate storytelling and bring it to a global platform and create a cultural moment. ” (According to a Netflix spokeswoman, 73 percent of all subscribers — more than 68 million — watched at least one documentary on the site in 2016.) “Making a Murderer” certainly created a cultural moment, and “13th” did so on a scale that even its creators did not necessarily expect. “When we created it, we wondered whether or not it was a uniquely American story,” Ms. Nishimura said. “Really it’s a story of ‘the other,’ and how we treat each other as humans, and what can happen when that goes awry. And so it did get a response from a global audience. And will continue to. The docs live on our service forever. We’re allowing stories to continue to find their ceiling over time. ” | 0fake |
Online Trail Illuminates Baton Rouge Gunman’s Path to Violence - The New York Times | BATON ROUGE, La. — He joined the Marines, served in Iraq and earned a Good Conduct Medal. He was an entrepreneur, a author, a nutrition and fitness counselor, a proponent of the American gospel of . He considered himself a lifestyle coach, even though he had failed in marriage, neglected to pay his taxes and was, at one point, living on $500 per month. He had also embarked on a spiritual quest to find his roots as a black man, traveling around Africa for two years. But Gavin Long’s life also became a web of paranoid ideas, a professed allegiance to an antigovernment “sovereign citizen” group and a belief that bloodshed was a better tool than peaceful protest in the fight against oppression. On Sunday, Mr. Long died in a parking lot just off a commercial street here in a shootout with the police. It was his 29th birthday. He killed three law enforcement officers and wounded three others. On Monday, law enforcement officials said Mr. Long had targeted officers, though his motives otherwise remained murky. Mr. Long had been a resident of Kansas City, Mo. and it is unclear what he was doing in Baton Rouge, though a video that appears to have been posted by him shows him in the Louisiana capital discussing the July 5 fatal police shooting of a fellow man, Alton B. Sterling, here. Though the police here have released little information about Mr. Long, a deeper portrait is beginning to emerge, based on a large trail left online. Many of these digital bread crumbs — web posts, YouTube videos and podcasts — are tied to Mr. Long’s given name, or some version of a new name, Cosmo Ausar Setepenra, which he filed court documents in Missouri to adopt in May 2015. (He never petitioned the court, so the name change was not legally binding, officials said.) Some of these posts and videos included biographical and personal information that aligned with the information released by the authorities. In an interview with a podcast host in March, Mr. Long identified himself as a member of the online community of targeted individuals, people who believe they are being harassed with weapons and by armies of stalkers. And in one YouTube video, he discusses the killings of men at the hands of police officers, including the death of Mr. Sterling, and advocates a bloody response instead of the protests that followed the deaths. “One hundred percent of revolutions, of victims fighting their oppressors,” Mr. Long said, “have been successful through fighting back, through bloodshed. Zero have been successful just over simply protesting. ” “You’ve got to stand on your rights, just like George Washington did, just like the other white rebels they celebrate and salute did,” he added. “That’s what Nat Turner did. That’s what Malcolm did. ” In Baton Rouge on Monday, the crime scene along Airline Highway was returning to normal. Bullet holes could be seen in a wall of the Hair Crown Beauty Supply store, where the shooting took place. The city had begun the process of mourning the police officers Mr. Long gunned down — including Montrell Jackson, 32, an and veteran of the Baton Rouge Police Department, who left behind a wife and son. On a podcast posted on iTunes and dated April, the speaker, who gives his name as Cosmo, gives a sketch of his life story. He says he grew up in Kansas City, and was a student until about middle school, when he became fat and started getting C’s. As a child, he was something of a hustler who made extra money by making loans and charging interest. “Say if I loaned out money to my family, even to my mother, I would make her pay me back, with interest,” he says. “If I loaned $20, I would make you pay me back $5 on Friday. ” He says he lost significant weight in high school, bought his first car at age 16 and joined the Marines. Mr. Long’s military records show he served from 2005 to 2010, including a deployment in Iraq. He was a sergeant and a data network specialist who earned several awards, including one for good conduct. He was also assigned to Okinawa, Japan, and several locations in Southern California. He attended Central Texas College at its Marine Corps Air Station Miramar site in San Diego and via distance education, earning an associate of arts degree. In 2011, court records show, he had an uncontested divorce from a woman named Aireyona Osha Hill. They listed that they had no children or assets and that Mr. Long earned $500 a month. Around this time, Mr. Long befriended a Kansas City schoolteacher who wished to remain anonymous because of the heinous nature of the shootings. The teacher said Mr. Long had taken interest in the Occupy Wall Street movement and culture, and sympathized with the views of the villain Bane, from the 2012 Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” — particularly Bane’s vigilantism against corruption. But the man the teacher knew never spoke about violent solutions to the real world’s problems. “I’m surprised he took it as far as he did,” the teacher said Monday. “It doesn’t surprise me so much as he had an agenda against the government. He’d always talk about how the government was corrupt. ” By 2012, Mr. Long had moved — briefly, apparently — to Tuscaloosa, Ala. where he spent one semester at the University of Alabama. He majored in business. He made the dean’s list. The University of Alabama police had no interactions with him during his time there. Mike Mansur, a spokesman for the Jackson County prosecutor’s office, which covers most of Kansas City, said his office also had no record of contact with Mr. Long. He also attended Clark Atlanta University during the school year, and was in good academic standing, a university spokeswoman said. Although he claimed to be on the dean’s list there, he said he had dropped out, sold his two cars, gave away his possessions and traveled to Africa. Mr. Long appeared to be obsessed with the idea of for himself and for others, and he embraced more esoteric means of achieving those goals. While traveling to Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, he said, he wrote three books, covering topics like “holistic detoxification for health, and success” the “ancient esoteric secrets of the Pineal Gland” and the “124 Universal Laws and their use in the Laws of the Cosmos. ” In 2015, Mr. Long filed the petition to change his name. In his statement of intent, he said he was a member of an “indigenous society” called the United Washitaw De Dugdahmoundyah Mu’ur nation. It was apparently a reference to the Empire Washitaw De Dugdahmoundyah. On its website, the group says it is “a multicultural, highly spiritual nation of aboriginal, indigenous Americans. ” The group is largely and subscribes to a “sovereign citizen” ideology holding that members are “no longer beholden to any form of government,” said Ryan Lenz, a senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups. On Monday morning, a man who answered a phone number on the website and said he was a leader of the group, Fredrix Joe Washington, said he had never heard of Mr. Long. “We are about peace — and especially not about going out and killing some police officers,” said Mr. Washington, 71. This year, court records show, a case was filed against Mr. Long for not paying his local earnings tax. Papers in that case were served on his address last month, and his mother accepted them, according to court records. Six days later, the tax case was dismissed. In many of his podcasts, Mr. Long expounds at length on dating and tips for men, arguing that they must display the characteristics of an “alpha” male. But a number of his other online offerings discuss the historical oppression of minorities, and America’s current racial problems. In a recent email he sent out to those interested in his ideas, he listed numerous instances of massacres of people. On July 8, Lance Scurvin, a podcast host in Orlando, Fla. posted a note from Mr. Long on his Facebook page that seemed to suggest that Mr. Long was feeling paranoid about his safety. Mr. Scurvin, who is known for lending a sympathetic ear to guests, had interviewed Mr. Long in the past. “I just want everyone to know that if anything may happen to me or with me, I am NOT affiliated with anybody, any group, nationality, association, religion, corporation, business, etc. ” the note said. Mr. Long traveled to Dallas after the killing of five police officers at a demonstration there on July 7. Chanattra Long, who is not related to Mr. Long, said he had come into her shop, the His and Hers Barber Shop, two days after that shooting and passed out copies of his book. “He pulled out a wad of money and said: ‘You think this is something? This is nothing,’” she recalled. She said he had spoken of being in Africa and of being able to speak five languages. She was startled at his boldness and assertiveness. She had never seen him before and had no idea why he entered her shop that day. “I could tell he wasn’t right, his demeanor, his aggressiveness,” she said. Still, Mr. Long made no mention of attacking police, she said. One of Mr. Long’s last videos, posted to YouTube but taken down as of Monday, shows him driving around Baton Rouge. He approaches a number of strangers apparently, and doles out stray nuggets of advice and wisdom, deploying the salty language of the street. He refers to himself as a life coach, a freedom strategist, a real estate entrepreneur, an author, a teacher and a motivational speaker. And he tells them about his book. “I want my people to succeed,” he says at one point. Later, he refers to “Arabs” and “Indians” who do not care about people, ostensibly except when the latter give them their money. At one point he uses the word “cracker,” apparently in reference to whites. He also makes a passing reference to the shooting of Mr. Sterling. “It’s two parts to freedom, bruh,” he says. “Knowing your rights and standing on your rights. They know we know our rights. ” But how many black people, he asked, stand on their rights? “And if you not standing on your rights then you have no rights. ” | 0fake |
Hurricane Matthew Avoids Direct Hit on Florida, Continues North - The New York Times | Hurricane Matthew churned north along the coast of Florida on Friday, staying far enough offshore to spare the state a direct hit, but still caused flooding, wind damage and power failures. By Friday evening, it was a Category 2 storm, with sustained winds of up to 110 miles per hour, and government officials and forecasters shifted their focus to the threat of more serious damage on Saturday as the storm approaches Savannah and Charleston. The storm was blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in Haiti, according to a Reuters report based on information from civil protection and local officials. For much of the day, officials warned that Jacksonville could suffer the worst damage. But while there was flooding in the area, the eye of the storm remained about 40 miles offshore as it passed Jacksonville. Dispatches from our reporters on the ground a live storm tracker map and answers to reader questions will be updated below. ■ At 10 p. m. the hurricane’s center was 50 miles of St. Simons Island, Ga. and 90 miles of Savannah, Ga. The storm was moving at about 12 m. p. h. with maximum sustained winds of 110 m. p. h. ■ It was predicted to continue to parallel the coast into Georgia and the Carolinas, putting Savannah Charleston, S. C. and Wilmington, N. C. at risk, before turning out to sea. ■ Florida officials blamed the storm for at least five deaths: three in St. Lucie County, one in Volusia County and one in Putnam County. Early on Friday, the St. Lucie County fire service received a call to aid a woman who had suffered a heart attack, but winds approaching hurricane force prevented emergency vehicles from responding. An older couple running a generator inside a garage died from carbon monoxide poisoning, the county said in a social media post. Around noon, another woman was killed in Volusia, Fla. when a tree fell on her after she went outside to feed animals, according to James T. Dinneen, the Volusia County manager. In Putnam County, between Gainesville and Daytona Beach, the sheriff’s office said a woman had been killed when a tree fell onto a camper. Another man was injured. ■ Florida officials said Friday afternoon that more than 1 million customers were without electricity. ■ Significant flooding hit cities south of Jacksonville, including St. Augustine and Ormond Beach, on Friday. ■ The National Weather Service extended its hurricane warning northward into North Carolina. The Weather Service downgraded the hurricane warning for Florida’s coast to a tropical storm warning, and lifted the tropical storm warning for the state’s southern coast. ■ President Obama warned against complacency. “I just want to emphasize to everybody that this is still a really dangerous hurricane, that the potential for storm surge, flooding, loss of life and severe property damage continues to exist,” he told reporters at the White House. “Pay attention to what your local officials are telling you. If they tell you to evacuate, you need to get out of there and move to higher ground. ” The president has declared a state of emergency in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, allowing federal agencies to coordinate relief efforts. ■ To cover the storm and its aftermath, The New York Times has journalists deployed along the path of Hurricane Matthew. Follow our correspondents on Twitter. Miami may have been spared the wrath of Hurricane Matthew, but for residents of the city’s Little Haiti neighborhood the anxiety over the storm was acute. Haiti, birth nation to most of the people in the Miami enclave, was devastated by the storm, which killed hundreds of people on the island and left fears of an even greater toll. “I have two cousins I have not heard from — I’m very worried,” Daniel Fils Aimé, who has lived in Little Haiti for a quarter of a century and was last in his native Les Cayes two years ago, said. “Somebody is supposed to let me know. Someone is investigating. ” Mr. Aimé, 72, managed to get in touch with several friends in the devastated southwestern region of Haiti. “I’ve heard from some friends — not others,” he said as he bought pastries and bread at the Piman Bouk Bakery. “They’re all scattered now. People lost their houses. They had chickens and cows in the yard — everything went straight into the ocean. ” As the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, which he founded in 2005, Mr. Aimé said he was trying raise money to buy enough food to fill a container, with the intention of sending it to Les Cayes. Sitting with a friend in a small park at the intersection of 62nd Street and North Miami Avenue, Maximin Raphael, 59, closed his eyes and pursed his lips as he thought about his sister, Gyslaine Joseph, in Les Cayes, and what she went through during the hurricane. Mr. Raphael, who has lived in the United States for 34 years, had finally managed to reach her by telephone on Friday morning, after days of trying. “Her house is gone,” Mr. Raphael said. “The roof flew away. Everybody that lives there has a big problem. ” At the Piman Bouk Bakery, murals, both inside and out, portray a verdant and abundant Haiti in the manner of much of the country’s art. But the crushing realities of life there, made even more so by frequent batterings it takes from natural calamities like storms and earthquakes, were all too plain to the customers — almost invariably Haitian immigrants — who lined up Friday afternoon to buy goods. “We are all Haitian, so we have to be concerned, regardless of whether they are family or not,” said Richardson, a registered nurse who was born in Cap Haitien, in the country’s north, and who moved to Miami in 1986 after completing high school in her native country. — NICK MADIGAN, in Miami Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, declined to extend the deadline after a call from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to accommodate people disrupted by the hurricane. Read more » Forecasters say there are hints that the storm could take a path back toward the coastline, at a reduced strength. Read more from John Schwartz » On Friday afternoon in Charleston, S. C. officials warned of potentially high tides, urged people to evacuate if they had not done so and set a curfew, from midnight until 6 a. m. Saturday, for those who remained. But as the wind whistled and rain began to spit on this peninsular city, those who remained here seemed remarkably relaxed. “There’s parties all over,” said Elle Norton, 58, as she boarded up the windows of her pale pink house in downtown Charleston, and brought her potted plants inside. “I have to go to the store now to get some appetizers. ” To Ms. Norton and many others here, the emptiness of Charleston’s streets, where antebellum architecture is dotted with hidden courtyards and lush window boxes, was a refreshing break, because the city is usually brimming with tourists. “It’s so pleasant just hearing the birds,” Ms. Norton said. A few streets over, Normandy Farm Bakery had filled the case it normally reserved for oysters — of which there were only three left — with hot dogs and beer, and strung up a random assortment of celebratory balloons outside to signal they were staying open. “You ride it out in your house, you’re gonna go bananas,” said the owner, Mike Ray, who seemed unmoved by the dire warnings from public officials. “I don’t think it’s gonna flood right here. ” Nearby, Jerome Monroe, a local handy man, closed the shutters on a fine arts gallery. He was planning to ride out the storm inside the Footlight Player’s Theater, where he would use a ShopVac to try to minimize flooding, though he knew he was powerless to prevent it entirely. “When the water comes,” Mr. Monroe said, “you’re not stopping it. ” — JESSICA BIDGOOD in Charleston, S. C. John Schwartz, a New York Times reporter who covers climate change and the environment, is answering reader questions about the storm. He rode out his first hurricane, Carla, in his hometown, Galveston, Tex. at age 4. He has covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as well as other storms for The Times. Ask your hurricane questions here. Why do weather agencies and the news media keep getting the forecasts so wrong and overstate the severity of hurricanes? Is this some kind of insurance liability issue, where they are afraid of getting sued if they don’t paint a ‘doomsday’ picture? — Jim The conservative approach isn’t about liability, Jim, it’s about saving lives. The storm track that Matthew has followed has been well within the range of possibilities that the National Hurricane Center has been talking about all along. This is still a dangerous storm, and just because some stretches of the Florida coast have not been hit as catastrophically as was possible, that does not mean the rest of Florida or Georgia or South Carolina are in the clear. Marshall Shepherd, the director of Atmospheric Sciences Program, University of Georgia, has been fiercely defending the warnings on Twitter, and I’ll let him do the talking here: Chris W. Landsea, science and operations officer for the National Hurricane Center, said that while the storm has weakened somewhat, it is now spread over a larger area, and “a larger hurricane can cause more storm surge,” and a larger wind field the wind damage, in other words, can be felt over a larger area. So a slightly weaker but larger storm is “kind of a wash, as far as impacts,” he said. I grew up in Houston and also rode out Carla as a child as well as Henrietta in Cabo as an adult. I certainly believe in climate change, but is the hurricane season really worse now? What about the 1900 Galveston hurricane? — Jackie Berry There have always been hurricanes, and many have been profoundly destructive. The Great Storm of 1900 killed at least 6, 000 people on Galveston Island, and remains the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. But climate change isn’t about these isolated incidents. It’s the trend, and the trend is not good. People remember the 1900 storm — and the haunting song about it, Wasn’t that a Mighty Storm? and Erik Larson’s book “Isaac’s Storm” — because it stands out in the damage that it did. What climate change is doing is dumping more heat into the oceans and more moisture into the air — conditions that are likely, over time, to make the strong storms that do develop become more powerful, and possibly more frequent, as well. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, noted that while global average temperatures are rising, “20 times more heat is going into the ocean” than into the atmosphere, and so that’s a lot of power in the sea for hurricanes to draw on. And, in fact, while the 1900 storm was terribly destructive, much of that tragedy could be blamed on the lack of warning in those times. It’s hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change, but it’s clear that climate change sets up conditions that can lead to more 1900 storms, more Katrinas, more Sandys. When I wrote about the science of attribution last year, Andrew E. Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A M, told me determining whether an extreme weather event like a flood is caused by climate change is like trying to figure out which of Barry Bonds’s home runs were caused by his steroid use. “You know statistically some of them were, but you don’t know which ones,” he said. “Almost certainly, it would have rained a lot even without climate change — but it’s possible climate change juiced it, added a little bit. ” | 0fake |
SNL Gets Real And Delivers The Most Important Message Of The Election Year (VIDEO) | Saturday Night Live has helped bring quite a bit of levity to this otherwise horrific election year but in the final episode before the election, before we as a nation go to the polls and decide if we want to be extraordinary or deplorable, the cast of Saturday Night Live could not help but drop the act and get real with America.It began as it normally does, with Alec Baldwin s masterful Donald Trump character and Kate McKinnon s excellent portrayal of Hillary Clinton (if she spent all day every day mainlining a dangerous mixture of sugar and caffeine). I never use emails, Trump says in the cold opener. I use a very private, very secure site where one can write whatever they want to and no one can read it It s called Twitter. After he is informed that everyone can see his tweets, Trump replies: Really? And I m still in this thing? America you must really hate this lady. After a scathing rebuke of the media s decision to ignore Trump s cozy relationship with Putin, the KKK, and the FBI and instead focus on something as meaningless as Hillary Clinton s emails, something magical happened: McKinnon and Baldwin dropped the facade and got serious. I m sorry, Kate. I just hate yelling all this stuff at you like this, Baldwin says. I just feel gross all the time about this. Don t you all feel gross? he added, addressing the audience.McKinnon agrees and the two embark on a friendship montage through the city before returning to the stage. Then they dropped perhaps the most important message you will hear this election year. None of this would have mattered if you don t vote, Baldwin says. We can t tell you who to vote for, but on Tuesday we all get a chance to choose what kind of country we want to live in, McKinnon finishes.They re right.Watch it below: Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Yet ANOTHER Dem Lawmaker To Snub Trump Inaugural Over Lewis Attacks | Georgia Congressman John Lewis is a living legend. At 76 years old, and as someone who was beaten nearly to death fighting for civil rights, he has the right to say anything he likes. Therefore, the idea of attacking him, as Donald Trump has been doing all through his Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend, is nothing short of repulsive.Those attacks have led to a massive boycott of Trump s inauguration, especially among Democratic lawmakers. The latest to announce that he will skip Trump s party is Rep. Keith Ellison, who is also in the running to become the head of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison says of the decision:I will not celebrate a man who preaches a politics of division and hate. I won't be attending Donald Trump's inauguration. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Rep. Ellison also made it clear that he is on the side of John Lewis, and is just as appalled as all decent people at Trump s attacks on the civil rights icon. Prior to tweeting his decision regarding Trump s inauguration, Ellison also tweeted:No question I am #StandingwithJohnLewis and the millions of people around the country who have been targeted by @realDonaldTrump. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017The time is always right to do what is right. And in the face of so much hate, the right thing to do is reject it. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Medical price-gouger Martin Shkreli is headed to DC for President-elect Trump s inauguration. Another reason to #StandWithJohnLewis Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Rep. Ellison is clearly ready to battle Donald Trump, along with other Democrats on Capitol Hill. Trump really crossed the line with his attacks on John Lewis, and he did the biggest favor ever for progressives by showing his true colors. Some people and events are untouchable, and attacking a living civil rights legend on Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend is at the top of that list.Godspeed, Rep. Ellison. Thank you for standing up for what is right.Featured image by Joe Raedle via Getty Images | 1real |
“Honor Our Immigrant Veterans” Replayed | ‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. “Honor Our Immigrant Veterans” Replayed By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 8, 2016 Veterans By elizawhig
“Honor Our Immigrant Veterans” from VoteVets is a video on Youtube I tripped over recently, and have watched several times. It is that good. Another Kossack may have already posted it, but I would like to get it some play. Not because I think it will change any voter’s mind, but because it deserves to be seen to remind us of who we are as Americans. We are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, and we and our relatives and grandparents have had to make tough choices that deserve to be remembered.
I had an uncle (by marriage) who was Italian. In 1940 he was still not a US citizen, although I gather he had begun the process, so he was sent to an internment camp in Wyoming (or Montana?). While he waited for his citizenship application to be completed, he and his fellow detainees played a lot of poker. His papers were finally processed, he was made a US Citizen, then was promptly drafted into the US Army as a Sargent (Supply). And of course he was sent to…Italy. His division survived Anzio, then my uncle came into his glory. His father was someone of importance further north, so he had connections. He was able to secure excellent billets (in a castle) and good food and drink for his comrades.
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Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on November 8, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
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Hungary dismisses Estonian compromise offer on asylum-seekers | BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary remains firmly opposed to illegal immigration and the European Union should focus efforts on protecting its external borders, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said about an Estonian compromise proposal on asylum-seekers. Hungary s view on migration is clear and rock steady: We think illegal immigration is dangerous. Because of illegal immigration, Europe has never had to face the kind of terror threat it faces now, Szijjarto told a news conference with ministers and officials from eastern and southern Europe, in response to a question. Under the Estonian plan, the executive European Commission would determine fair shares of asylum-seekers that countries would be expected to take in at their own borders - largely based on their population and wealth. But it would trigger an early warning if arrivals looked about to test such levels. Szijjarto said any encouragement for further migrant arrivals was against Europe s interests, adding that the only solution acceptable to Budapest was that illegal immigration should be stopped, preferably as far outside the EU s borders as possible. | 0fake |
D.C. BAR OWNER Where Seth Rich Was Last Seen Drops Bombshell: NO EMPLOYEES Of Bar Questioned By DC Police…Never Asked For Surveillance Tapes [VIDEO] | Last week, Private Investigator Rod Wheeler appeared on Fox5 news in DC with an update in the unsolved murder of DNC IT expert Seth Rich, claiming proof exists on Rich s laptop proving he was Julian Assange s source for leaked DNC emails during the 2016 election an account in direct conflict to the Russian hacking narrative based on a discredited IT firm s report.Wheeler walked back his statements the next day, however the fuse was already lit Weaponized autists on Reddit and 4chan began furiously digging back into the Seth Rich case for clues in the still unsolved murder and they went deep.Among the findings were Seth Rich s Reddit account, email addresses, and Twitter accounts one of which was in support of candidate Bernie Sanders. As an aside before joining the DNC, Rich moved to Washington DC to take a job with polling and research firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner whose founder Stanley Greenberg was a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton.Reddit s the_donald goes darkAs Seth Rich posts reached a crescendo Friday night dominating the front page of /r/The_Donald, the Conde Nast-linked website shut the subreddit down for around 12 hours following a moderator s unrelated declaration of war on the rest of Reddit over censorship completely killing the Seth Rich momentum. When The_Donald was reopened, officially to aid the Seth Rich effort the offending moderator had been banned and two other mods were removed from their positions. Seth Rich posts, however, are notably sparse. Oh, and Reddit edited Seth Rich s account during the lockout.Meanwhile in New ZealandKim Dotcom is pissed and has been plotting revenge against Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Hollywood after being targeted in the biggest copyright infringement case in history which included a massive illegal (and then legal) raid on his New Zealand mansion by 76 armed officers and two helicopters.Dotcom tweets that Democrats attacked his family and stole his assets in a copyright infringement case and appears to be suggesting that he was paying them back by sending Rich s DNC emails to Wikileaks:Democrats destroyed my business, attacked my family, stole my assets in a pay4play strike for the @MPAACounterstrike:Trump Presidency Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 19, 2017Sean Hannity has offered Dotcom a national platform (which Kim retweeted)I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved. https://t.co/MbGQteHhZM Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 20, 2017Dotcom accepts Hannity s offer to expose the DNC hacker on his Tuesday night show:Stay tuned. Public invitation Kim Dotcom to be a guest on radio and TV. #GameChanger Buckle up destroy Trump media. Sheep that u all are!!! https://t.co/3qLwXCGl6z Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 20, 2017Kim Dot.com hits the Democrats and their #FakeNews partners with this tweet where he s putting them on notice that they re about to be exposed:How will Democrats and their #FakeNews partners brush away the fact that I had insider knowledge about upcoming leaks? #SethRich https://t.co/SwFLGbeUbQ Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 21, 2017Meanwhile, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange just doubled down on his silence about #SethRich being the DNC leaker with this interesting tweet this morning that Kim Dot.com retweeted:WikiLeaks has never disclosed a source. Sources sometimes talk to other parties but identities never emerge from WikiLeaks. #SethRich Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) May 22, 2017Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich all discussed the mysterious murder of DNC staffer last week, who, according to Rich s parents was getting ready to work for Hillary s campaign when he was murdered on his way home from a local bar late at night. Here is a compilation of Hannity and Limbaugh s remarks on the Rich case:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXn6FzWBS4oWhy were no employees of Joe s City Bar where Rich was last seen questioned about his final hours leading up to his murder? Why was the surveillance tape in the bar not seen by investigators? WND A manager of the Washington, D.C., bar where Democratic National Committee worker Seth Rich was last spotted hours before he was shot and killed last summer told WND that D.C. police officers never interviewed the bar s staff or requested any evidence from the bar, including the bar s surveillance video from that night, as part of an investigation into Rich s murder.The revelation backs up a claim made by a private investigator who worked on the case who said D.C. police were told to stand down on the investigation.WND also can report that the investigator recently was ordered to cease and desist his work on the murder case. The police never asked for the surveillance video from that night, a manager of Lou s City Bar told WND.His name is being withheld for this story.He said the bar s surveillance video runs in a cycle of 30 days and that, by now, any footage that may have existed of Rich the last night he was seen alive has been taped over.Furthermore, the manager said police never asked for any other kind of evidence from the bar such as Rich s bar receipt from that night. The manager did note he wasn t sure if Rich paid using a credit card or cash. Seth Rich s girlfriend, best friend and parents all speak out about the brutal murder that DC detectives are calling a botched robbery that left Rich dead while leaving all of his valuables, including his wallet on his person. Seth Rich s parents admitted that after Seth was shot, police reported that he was quite talkative . If Seth was quite talkative, then why aren t there any leads on his killers? Seth s parents appear to be Hillary sycophants. They appear to be very proud of their son as they tell Crime Watch Daily that he was just getting ready to go to work for Hillary s campaign. They also adamantly stand behind the Democrat Party and claim they are angered by any claim that a hit was ordered on Rich by online citizen journalists.As more and more evidence is being revealed about Rich s possible role as the leaker of the DNC emails to Wikileaks, the attitude of Seth s parents towards citizen journalists has taken a surprising turn. In this video that was just released, Rich s parents appear to be praising the work of citizen journalists that are forcing the investigation into Seth Rich s death via social media.https://twitter.com/RedPillDropper/status/866071104112209921According to research conducted by a 4Chan citizen journalists, Joseph Capone, the owner of Lou s City Bar where Rich was last seen alive, visited the East Wing of the White House 4 days before the murder of Seth Rich.A visit by a Joseph P. Capone to the East Wing of the White House on July is verified on the government White House visitor log website. We cannot verify that this is the same Joe Capone who owns Lou s City bar where Seth was last seen. According the White House Museum website, the East Wing is reserved for the first lady and her staff, including the White House social secretary and correspondence staff.:Crime Watch Daily investigated the murder of Seth Rich and compiled an interesting video that includes interviews with Seth s girlfriend, best friend and parents.Although there are pockets of darkness, for the most part this neighborhood is pretty well-lit. Investigators tell Crime Watch Daily in the early morning hours of July 10, Seth was walking home. He was only about a block and a half away from home when he was gunned down, shot in the back. The officers who were there and they said Yeah, he was quite talkative, he did not realize he had been shot,' said Joel Rich, Seth s father.But an hour and a half later at a nearby hospital, Seth was pronounced dead.Heartbreaking news to Kelsey Mulka. She was just on the phone with him, and in a split-second he was gone. Now Mulka is breaking news in our exclusive interview, revealing details, telling Crime Watch Daily there was no sign of trouble in his voice that terrible morning. | 1real |
Anonymous Online Vigilante Group Helps Jail a Pedophile | An online vigilante group in the United Kingdom, the Internet Interceptors, has helped the law deal with a 33-year-old pedophile who was planning to lure a 14-year-old girl to have sex with him in north London. The pedophile, Richard Ganyata, is said to be a Rugby player at Saracens Amateur RFC. It’s thought that he had met the underage 14-year-old girl online, proposing to have sex with her at his residence.
In a video chat with the supposed underage girl, Ganyata claimed to be 23-years-old. He told the girl that he lived at the club house of his rugby team. He then proposed that the girl visit him for sex, instructing the girl that if she arrives at the club house, she should pretend she was just his little sister’s friend.
He also told the girl how he planned to lay with her on the sofa, describing in detail what he would do to her during sex. The positive response from the girl excited Ganyata, who was looking forward to having a good time with the underage girl.
But unbeknownst to the pedophile, he had spoken to members of the Internet Interceptors instead – the team who dedicate their time to hunting down pedophiles on the Internet.
When the day came for the pedophile to meet the girl as planned, he went to pick her up, but rather than meet with her, he was confronted by members of the Internet Interceptors, who immediately called the police. The vigilante group filmed their meeting with the pedophile on camera.
A member of the group asked the pedophile: “You’re here to meet a 14-year-girl aren’t you, Richard?”
He replied: “I wasn’t really sure about it.” | 1real |
HOLLYWOOD’S SLICK PRO-HILLARY AD Gets A TRUMP Redo You’ll Love [Video] | A bunch of celebrities set out to hijack our election but we Trump supporters hijacked their pompous ad. #MAGA retweet make this go viral! pic.twitter.com/rVDCvSc9G9 Elizabeth Imus (@imuszero) September 23, 2016 | 1real |
Small German parties fight for third place and possibly power in TV debate | BERLIN (Reuters) - The leading candidates of Germany s smaller parties locked horns over migration, security and foreign policy in a television debate on Monday. It came less than three weeks before the federal election in which the third-placed party could turn out to be the kingmaker. The clash followed a debate between centre-right Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democrat (SPD) challenger Martin Schulz on Sunday in which hardly any differences emerged. This stirred speculation that a re-run of the current grand coalition between the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the SPD is the most likely outcome of the Sept. 24 vote. Merkel and Schulz both have stressed they want to avoid such a scenario. But polls suggest that the next government would have a stable majority only with another grand coalition or with a tricky three-way coalition between the conservatives, the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP). In the debate of the smaller parties, Cem Ozdemir from the Greens attacked Die Linke (Left) candidate Sahra Wagenknecht and AfD politician Alice Weidel for their euroceptic rhetoric. This anti-European populism is simply wrong no matter if it comes from far-left or far-right, Ozdemir said, adding that Germany was benefiting immensely from the European Union and that it was easy to always blame Brussels for national problems in member states. Weidel from the rightist anti-immigrant AfD blamed the European Central Bank s ultra-loose monetary policy for soaring rents and property prices in German cities and accused the ECB of violating European treaties with its bond-buying program. FDP candidate Christian Lindner tried to corner Ozdemir by accusing him of applying double standards in foreign policy and having an inconsistent approach toward Russia. Lindner raised eyebrows last month when he suggested that Germany might have to accept Russia s 2014 annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine as a permanent provisional arrangement . Merkel has condemned Russia s annexation of Crimea and its support for anti-government separatists in eastern Ukraine, leading Europe in maintaining economic sanctions against Moscow. Linder himself said Germany should not mix refugee and asylum policies with the need for a modern and well-directed immigration law to attract more highly educated workers from abroad to avert a shortage of skilled labor in Germany. Turning to the threat of Islamist attacks, Lindner said there was no need for tougher security laws, adding that last year s Christmas market attack in Berlin by a failed asylum seeker could probably have been averted if authorities had only implemented existing laws more strictly. AfD s Weidel called for tougher border controls to improve security and suggested there should be an upper limit of 10,000 refugees per year. The Bavarian CSU conservatives want an official cap of 200,000 refugees per year a proposal opposed by Merkel and the co-governing Social Democrats. The SPD is trailing Merkel s conservative CDU/CSU bloc by double digits in polls. The latest survey by Emnid showed on Sunday that the SPD gained one percentage point to 24 percent and Merkel s conservatives remained unchanged at 38 percent. The leftist Die Linke came in at 9 percent, making it the third-strongest political force. The Greens, FDP and AfD stood at 8 percent each. This means that six parties are expected to enter the Bundestag lower house of parliament, up from the current four. The fractured political landscape could make it hard to form another viable alliance than the current grand coalition. | 0fake |
BREAKING: Who’s Laughing Now? House GOP Members Introduce Resolution To Impeach IRS Commissioner | Does this mean Republicans in the House are FINALLY going to start standing up for the Americans who elected them to be their representatives in Washington DC? Does this action represent the change we re all desperate to see now that Boehner is vacating his seat? House Republicans on Tuesday introduced a resolution to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, accusing him of making false statements under oath and failing to comply with a subpoena for evidence.In case you ve forgotten, here are two of the most powerful testimonies exposing the tyranny of our government we have ever posted on our website:Our friend Becky Gerritson (who is currently running for a seat in our US Congress):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE4_MT8MkIAAnd then there was the powerful testimony by Founder and Chairman of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db21AQu30XwHouse Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and 18 other committee members introduced the resolution to begin impeachment proceedings. In doing so, they followed through on a threat first made over the summer, when Republicans accused the IRS leader of making inaccurate statements to Congress regarding the Tea Party targeting scandal and its aftermath. Commissioner Koskinen violated the public trust, Chaffetz said in a statement Tuesday. He failed to comply with a congressionally issued subpoena, documents were destroyed on his watch, and the public was consistently misled. Impeachment is the appropriate tool to restore public confidence in the IRS and to protect the institutional interests of Congress. The IRS issued a statement later Thursday saying, The IRS vigorously disputes the allegations in the resolution. We have fully cooperated with all of the investigations. The announcement of the impeachment resolution comes on the same day Koskinen testified before the Senate Finance Committee, and after the Justice Department on Friday decided to close its investigation of the targeting scandal without pursuing criminal charges. Via: FOX News | 1real |
NOT GRASSROOTS: #Ferguson Protestors PAID Over $5K To Attack Police, Instigate Violence And Disrupt | The Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter protesters are spilling the beans on the so-called grassroots movement.Earlier this week black protesters staged a protest at at the office of MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) on Thursday to press their claim that groups led by whites have collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations off of the Black Lives Matter movement without paying the Black participants their fair share.Much more on that sit-in protest at MORE here.The black protesters threatened to f*ck up the white protest organizers.Now this It s widely known thatFerguson activists were flown to New York City, Wisconsin, and even the West Bank to spread racial hatred.Now we know why they re so committed to the cause.They are being paid quite a bit to disrupt and initiate violence across the country.The protesters are talking online about how much they were getting paid to protest against the police and stir up racial hate in Ferguson and other communities since August.** Protesters were making MORE THAN $5,000 a month to disrupt cities and attack police!Listening to @search4swag live now on @JoePrich they pointing out that @deray is getting paid by Soros Independent CaT (@RealOrangeCat) May 16, 2015The far left billionaire George Soros pumped at least $33 million into the violent Ferguson protest movement, according The Washington Times.Many of the grassroots leaders were paid handsomely.And the protesters are wising up to Deray who has been out every night tweeting and stirring up the race hate n numerous cities for several months. Black Lives Matter and Get Paid Another group Resource Generation, a racist Socialist group, paid a million to the protesters.Via: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
Project Veritas 4: Robert Creamer's Illegal $20,000 Foreign Wire Transfer Caught On Tape | Project Veritas 4: Robert Creamer's Illegal $20,000 Foreign Wire Transfer Caught On Tape Oct 26, 2016 3:10 PM 0 SHARES
Project Veritas has just released Part IV of it's multi-part series exposing numerous scandals surrounding the DNC and the Clinton campaign, including efforts to incite violence at Trump rallies and, at least what seems to be, illegal coordination between the DNC, Hillary For America and various Super PACs.
Part IV focuses on a $20,000 foreign donation made by an undercover Project Veritas journalist to Americans United for Change (AUFC). Ironically, shortly after the $20k donation wire was released, the contributor's "niece" was offered an internship with Creamer's firm, Democracy Partners.
In the effort to prove the credibility of the undercover donor featured in the videos and to keep the investigation going, Project Veritas Action made the decision to donate twenty thousand dollars to Robert Creamer’s effort. Project Veritas Action had determined that the benefit of this investigation outweighed the cost. And it did.
“First thing, like I said, thank you for the proposal. And I’d like to get the $20,000 across to you. The second call I’m going to make here is to my money guy and he’s going to get in touch with you and auto wire the funds to you,” said the PVA journalist.
Creamer told the PVA journalist to send the money to Americans United for Change. Shortly after the money was released, the “donors” “niece” - another Project Veritas Action journalist - was offered an internship with Creamer.
In an effort to see how far Creamer would go with the promise of more money, another Project Veritas journalist posing as the donor’s money liaison requested a meeting with Creamer. During that meeting, Creamer spoke about connections he had with Obama and Clinton.
AUFC President, Brad Woodhouse, subsequently returned the money, after Project Veritas started to release their undercover videos, citing "concerns that it might have been an illegal foreign donation." Oddly, Woodhouse was not terribly concerned about the "legality" of the donation when he chose to accept it a month prior.
In an unexpected twist, AUFC president Brad Woodhouse, the recipient of the $20,000, heard that Project Veritas Action was releasing undercover videos exposing AUFC’s activities. He told a journalist that AUFC was going to return the twenty thousand dollars. He said it was because they were concerned that it might have been an illegal foreign donation. Project Veritas Action was pleased but wondered why that hadn’t been a problem for the month that they had the money.
While the latest video focuses on the " $20,000 illegal foreign contribution" from an undercover Project Veritas journalist , the following comments from Robert Creamer were also rather intriguing in light of recent White House efforts to vehemently deny any connections between he and President Obama.
"Oh Barack Obama's was the best campaign in the history of American politics, I mean the second one, I mean the first was good too. I was a consultant to both, the second one, was everything hit on every level and every aspect.
He's a pro. I've known the President since he was a community organizer in Chicago .
I was just at and event with him in Chicago actually, on Friday last . He is just as good as ever. I do a lot of work with the White House on their issues. Helping to run issued campaigns that they have been involved in. I mean, for immigration reform for the...the health care bill...trying to make America more like Britain when it comes to gun violence issues."
* * *
As a reminder, video 3 directly linking Donna Brazile and Hillary Clinton to efforts to disrupt Trump events.
Video 2 provided the democrat playbook on how to commit "mass voter fraud": | 1real |
Lindsey Graham DEFENDS Obama, Drops BOMBSHELL On Trump That Will Destroy Him (VIDEO) | Donald Trump is getting more screwed over by the Republicans as the days go on. They had originally wanted to use him to advance the GOP s motives, but now that they see how batsh*t crazy he is, many conservatives want nothing to do with him.We saw a perfect example of this on Saturday morning, when GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham condemned Trump s latest Twitter meltdown, and it was absolutely brutal. Graham basically stood behind former President Barack Obama and trashed Trump for accusing the last respectable POTUS of wiretapping his phones in the Trump Tower before the election.Graham has previously spoken out against Trump, and has rarely minced his words when warning Americans about the loose cannon we now have in the White House. In the town hall, Graham blatantly stated that what Trump was alleging might end up being the biggest scandal we ve seen in decades. Graham said: The President of the United States is claiming that the former President of the United States ordered wiretapping of his campaign last year. I don t know if it s true or not, but if it is true, illegally, it would be the biggest political scandal since Watergate. This statement was met with shouts and screams, and Graham had to beg the rowdy crowd to settle down so he could continue. Offering another take on what Trump had done, he said: If the former President of the United States was able to obtain a warrant lawfully to monitor the Trump campaign for violating law, that would be the biggest scandal since Watergate. Graham went on, explaining that Trump had just done himself a MAJOR disservice, and his Twitter meltdown may have very serious consequences. I m very worried that our president is suggesting that the former president has done something illegal. I would be very worried if, in fact, the Obama Administration was able to obtain a warrant lawfully about Trump campaign activity with foreign governments. This would hardly be the first time Trump s pathetic attempt to make someone look bad backfired. You can watch Graham defend Obama below:.@LindseyGrahamSC responds to Donald Trump s claim that Obama wiretapped him https://t.co/phnWHeCO7J https://t.co/e8kvKJUC6Y CNN (@CNN) March 4, 2017Featured image via Scott Olson and Drew Angerer / Getty Images | 1real |
Noam Chomsky: US Commenced Plan To Dominate ‘Grand Area’ Of The Globe After WWII | Videos Noam Chomsky: US Commenced Plan To Dominate ‘Grand Area’ Of The Globe After WWII After World War II, Chomsky said the U.S. implemented a plan ‘in which the United States would have pretty much complete economic and political control’ over a massive percentage of the planet. | October 27, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! U.S.Army 4.7mm anti-aircraft gunsare lined up in the final assembly area of the Grand Rapids stamping division of Fisher Body in Detroit on June 1, 1944, prior to shipping.
MUNICH — World War II marked a crucial turning point for U.S. empire building and the growth of global capitalism, according to the historical analysis of noted political philosopher and scholar Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky examined U.S. domination of world affairs in “ Who Owns The World? ,” a speech he delivered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. In May, he published a book, “Who Rules The World?,” which examines similar themes. Watch ‘ Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the World? Resistance and Ways Forward ‘ :
He revisited the topic in a recent conversation with Zain Raza, a senior editor at the independent media outlet acTVism Munich. An excerpt from that conversation was published on Tuesday as part of acTVism Munich’s “Reexamining History” series .
Much of the U.S. government’s global strategy both during and after World War II was based on a plan proposed by the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations , which Chomsky describes as the “major, non-governmental institution concerned with foreign affairs” whose membership “draws from a wide range of elite elements, business, politics, academics, and so on.”
Between 1939 and 1945, the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations held regular strategy meetings to develop a post-war economic plan. These meetings led to proposal under which the United States would dominate a vast swath of the globe that came to be known as the “Grand Area,” Chomsky said. Explaining that the “Grand Area” would include “the Western Hemisphere,” Chomsky said: “It included the former British Empire, which the U.S. was intending to largely take over, maybe Britain would be a junior partner. And as much of Europe, the commercial and industrial center of Europe, as much of that as possible. Certainly Western Europe, its industrial, technological, commercial center.”
Within the “Grand Area,” Chomsky continued, “the United States would have pretty much complete economic and political control.”
With the collapse of the German economy after the war, and amid the beginnings of the Cold War with Russia and China, the United States was in a unique position to implement this plan. Chomsky said: “The war was very beneficial to the U.S. economy. Its industrial production virtually quadrupled, wartime spending ended the Depression, which had not been ended before — enormous stimulus to the economy. The technology that was developed just laid the basis for post-war growth. In that context ‘Grand Area’ planning of the kind I described was by no means unrealistic.”
Far from a Pentagon pipedream, the “Grand Area” became concrete U.S. foreign policy, and its effects linger to this day.
“If you look at the policies implemented and developed in the early post-war period, they follow these prescriptions pretty closely,” Chomsky said.
As Chomsky and other historians have observed, Washington’s plans to dominate the “Grand Area” led directly to the Vietnam War. They were also crucial in the development of the International Monetary Fund , which continues to disrupt global economies for the benefit of multinational corporations and the military-industrial complex. | 1real |
Australia Says It Foiled a Terrorist Plot - The New York Times | SYDNEY — A terrorist plot to attack the Australian city of Melbourne with explosives, knives and guns — possibly on Christmas Day — is believed to have been headed off with the arrest of five people, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday. Mr. Turnbull told reporters in Sydney the group was “ ” and inspired by the Islamic State. Five men, ages 21 to 26, were to be formally charged later Friday, the authorities said. Another man and a woman were also taken into custody, but were later released. According to the police, the plotters had scouted Federation Square, a popular shopping and entertainment district, as well as the Flinders Street train station, Melbourne’s busiest, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, an Anglican church. All three locations are close to one another in the center of the city. The country’s justice minister, Michael Keenan, said the planned attack was imminent and “would have been the most serious in terms of its intent” in Australia. Had it occurred, he added, it would have “caused very significant casualties. ” Andrew Colvin, the commissioner of Australia’s Federal Police, said the arrests had been carried out in overnight raids involving about 400 officers in Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs. “This is a significant disruption of what we would call an imminent terrorist event,” Mr. Colvin said at a news conference in Sydney, held with Mr. Keenan and Mr. Turnbull. “They had moved very quickly from an intention to a capability, a developed capability, including quite progressed plans, we will allege,” Mr. Colvin said. The premier of Victoria State, Daniel Andrews, said in Melbourne: “What was being planned were not acts of faith, they were, in their planning, acts of evil. ” Graham Ashton, the chief commissioner of the Victoria police, said: “The attack we will allege was being planned was going to involve the use of explosives and we have gathered evidence to support that, and the intention to use other weapons, that could include knives and or a firearm. ” Of the five to be charged, four were born in Australia, and one was born in Egypt. “We believe they were ” Mr. Turnbull said. “They’ve been inspired by Daesh or ISIL, that’s our intelligence at the present time,” he added, using alternate names for the Islamic State. The police have disrupted a number of terrorist plots in Australia, and Mr. Turnbull said that, since September 2014, 57 people have been charged as a result of 25 counterterrorism operations. But he added there had been four attacks in the country since then. In an episode that attracted international attention, two people were killed when a gunman took hostages at a cafe in Sydney in December 2014. The gunman was killed when the police stormed the building. Mr. Colvin said the state and federal police, as well as the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, had been monitoring the Melbourne suspects. “We believe that they were narrowing down exactly what their plan was, but that’s all in one very small part” of Melbourne’s central business district, he said. The police, he said, were confident there was no longer a threat to public safety. A series of tough counterterrorism measures were enacted by Parliament this year, including legislation that could keep convicted terrorists in prison after the completion of their sentences, and control orders to monitor children as young as 14 if they were thought to be involved in, or planning, a terrorist act. Mr. Turnbull on Friday urged Australians to defy terrorists by simply going about their lives. “We are the most successful multicultural society in the world,” Mr. Turnbull said. “That’s because we have a culture of mutual respect. ” | 0fake |
Scientists Say Canadian Bacteria Fossils May Be Earth’s Oldest - The New York Times | They are microscopic artwork: tiny tubes and long filaments, strange squiggles etched into some of the most ancient rocks known. On Wednesday, researchers reported that these may be the oldest fossils ever discovered, the remains of bacteria thriving on Earth not long, geologically speaking, after the very birth of the planet. If so, they offer evidence that life here got off to a very early start. But many experts in the field were skeptical of the new study — or downright unconvinced. Martin J. Van Kranendonk, a geologist at the University of New South Wales, called the patterns in the rocks “dubiofossils” — structures, perhaps, but without clear proof that they started out as something alive. Heated disputes are nothing new in the search for the earliest life on Earth. In 1993 J. William Schopf, a paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues found what that they, too, argued were the world’s oldest fossils: chainlike blobs in 3. 46 rocks made, they said, by bacteria. Other researchers later argued that the structures were just oddly shaped minerals. But additional specimens from other sites came to light over the past two decades, and many of them have withstood scrutiny. There is now solid evidence of life dating back about 3. 5 billion years. Earth was a billion years old by then, and scientists have long wondered if even older fossils might be found. In August, Dr. Van Kranendonk and his colleagues reported discovering fossils in Greenland dating back 3. 7 billion years. The scientists argued that the organisms were once mats of bacteria that grew in shallow coastal waters. In the new study, published in the journal Nature, Mattew S. Dodd, Dominic Papineau and their colleagues at University College London studied rocks that were either slightly older or much older than those containing the Greenland fossils. They came from a remote geological formation in Canada called Nuvvuagittuq, which stretches across four square miles on the coast of Hudson Bay. Geologists surveyed the formation for the first time in the 1990s. Researchers have variously estimated its age at 3. 77 billion years or 4. 22 billion years — just 340 million years after the formation of the planet. In 2008, Dr. Papineau collected rocks from the formation and found a number of clues indicating that they had formed around hydrothermal vents on the ancient sea floor that spewed iron and other minerals. He also found hints that there might have been life there — tiny blobs of rock, for instance, that contained a compound called apatite, which can form from phosphorus released by dying organisms. The tubes and other structures in the rock that Mr. Dodd found are also reminiscent of bacteria that live today around hydrothermal vents. They grow as filaments, feeding on iron compounds and creating cavities in the sediment. Similar filaments contain iron compounds in the Nuvvuagittuq rocks, Mr. Dodd and his colleagues found, and they are attached to round clumps that resemble the tiny anchors bacteria use to hold on to rock surfaces. The rocks also contain forms of organic carbon that could have been created by bacteria. The researchers argue that it would be unlikely for all of these features to have formed in the absence of life. “Then you’re left with one scenario — a biological origin,” Mr. Dodd said. Such a discovery could have big implications for the understanding of life’s early evolution. If these really are fossils 3. 77 billion years old, then they show that life was already diversifying by that time, thriving in both the shallow ocean in what is now Greenland and the deep ocean in today’s Canada. And if these are fossils 4. 2 billion years old, then scientists will have evidence that life began quickly on Earth, not long after the oceans formed. Yet Frances Westall, the director of research at the de Biophysique Moléculaire in Orléans, France, isn’t convinced these are fossils at all. “I am frankly dubious,” she said. For one thing, she has argued, the filaments in the Nuvvuagittuq rocks are too big. She and her colleagues have found filaments formed by bacteria in rock dating back 3. 3 billion years, and these are far smaller. On the early Earth, bacteria were forced to stay small, Dr. Westall said, because the atmosphere did not yet have enough oxygen to fuel their growth. Long after the Nuvvuagittuq rocks formed on the sea floor, they were heated to tremendous temperatures. Some experts doubted that microscopic fossils could have survived such a baking. “These authors built their research on pushing speculative ideas and appear totally unaware of the considerable evidence against their interpretation,” said Wouter Bleeker, of the Geological Survey of Canada. In response, Dr. Papineau observed that the type of rock studied, known as chert, is very hard and might have protected fossils from high temperatures. “I think the authors have done a good job,” said David Wacey, who researches the origins and evolution of life at the University of Western Australia. With the new evidence, he said, “One comes up with a pretty convincing biological scenario” for the origins of the mysterious rock features. Dr. Wacey was not surprised that the new work had drawn criticism. “It may be many years before a consensus is reached,” he said. “But this is how science progresses. ” | 0fake |
LIBERALS ARE AFRAID Of Kid Rock Running For U.S. Senate…Elizabeth Warren’s Panicked Email Proves It | Kid Rock has struck panic into the hearts of liberal politicians upon his announcement that he will be running for senate in Michigan.Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, is from Romeo, Michigan and will be a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election.U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is already sounding the alarm with her Democratic base, warning a Senate run by Detroit bad boy Kid Rock could be the second coming of Donald Trump.Watch Fox News host, Tom Shillue tell panelists, If Kid Rock runs for Senate, he ll win :The Wasting Time and All Summer Long rap rocker-turned-country singer tweeted on Wednesday that he s running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Although it s been largely dismissed so far as a publicity stunt, Warren isn t taking any chances with the longshot Republican. I know a lot of people are thinking: this is some sort of joke, right? Warren wrote in an email blast with the subject line Senator Kid Rock (R-MI). Well, she said, maybe this is all a joke but we all thought Donald Trump was joking when he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his campaign, too. And sure, maybe this is just a marketing gimmick for a new album or tour but we all thought Donald Trump was just promoting his reality TV show, too, she added.In her email, Warren included a link where people could donate to Michigan Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and her own reelection campaign.A Warren campaign spokeswoman did not return repeated inquiries about how much the fundraising appeal has hauled in or the strategy behind it.But if the effort succeeds, other Democrats are likely to also cash in on a Rock candidacy remote as it may be to fill their own campaign coffers, said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. Political elites and activists who actually give money to campaigns keep up with all this stuff, he said. Plus, the most effective direct mail is often tied to something that just happened something that can be spun into a threat. Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl, who will officially challenge Warren next month, blasted the email as proof that Warren is more concerned about crafting a bid for the White House. She uses any and every issue, whether it s a celebrity Republican or it s Hillary Clinton, to try to scare her support base into giving her more money so that she can reach that main goal I believe of running for president not of focusing on the concerns of her constituents in Massachusetts, said Diehl.Still, don t count him out, said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. He s well-liked, said Anuzis. He s a big proponent of Detroit and somebody who s put his money where his mouth is investing back home. Boston HeraldKid Rock is taking a page from the Donald Trump playbook. He s already responding to #FakeNews on his website. | 1real |
CodeSOD: The Rule of Ten | Remy Porter Remy escaped the enterprise world and now works as a consultant. Editor-in-Chief for TDWTF.
Florian ’s office has a “rule of ten”. Well, they don’t , but one of Florian’s co-workers seems to think so. This co-worker has lots of thoughts . For example, they wrote this block, which is supposed to replace certain characters with some other characters. sbyte sbCount = 0; // set value of new field content to old value sNewFieldContent = sFieldContent; while (rFieldIdentifierRegex.Match(sNewFieldContent).Success) { // for security reasons if (++sbCount > 10) break; // get identifier and name string sActFieldSymbol = rFieldIdentifierRegex.Match(sNewFieldContent).Groups[1].Value; string sActFieldName = rFieldIdentifierRegex.Match(sNewFieldContent).Groups[2].Value; string sActFieldIdentifier = sActFieldSymbol + sActFieldName; // default value for unknown fields is an empty string string sValue = ""; [... calculate actual replacement value ...] // replace value for placeholder in new field content sNewFieldContent = sNewFieldContent.Replace(sActFieldIdentifier, sValue); }
As Florian puts it:
Having more matches than 10 inside one line is obviously a security risk (it isn’t) and must be prohibited (it mustn’t) because that would cause erroneous behavior in the application (it doesn’t). [Advertisement] Infrastructure as Code built from the start with first-class Windows functionality and an intuitive, visual user interface. Download Otter today! | 1real |
Facing potential wheat crisis, Egypt plays down poppy seed risk | CAIRO (Reuters) - Poppy seeds found in two cargoes of imported wheat halted by Egyptian authorities are not very dangerous , Agriculture Minister Abdel Moneim Al-Banna told Reuters on Wednesday, in comments that could avert a trade row. Al-Banna said the cargoes from France and Romania would be sieved before a decision was taken on whether to allow them into the country. The world s biggest wheat buyer has panicked global suppliers in recent weeks by referring the two cargoes to its public prosecutor for containing what it said were drug-producing poppy seeds. The prosecutor has yet to issue a final decision on whether the wheat should be re-exported. Supplier Transgrain France and the French embassy in Cairo sent letters to state-buyer GASC arguing that the strand of poppy, papaver rhoeas, in the wheat was a harmless variety not used in opium production and commonly found in wheat fields. Banna s comments are the first by an Egyptian official to take a similar view. He said the seeds were not very dangerous , and that there is still a study that has not been completed to determine whether to re-export it to the country of origin or use it after the sieving. GASC later said it had determined that the seeds present in the Romanian cargo were not harmful as per an agriculture quarantine report and that it would be sieved. The poppy seeds found on the Romanian vessel according to a report that was signed by the head of the agriculture quarantine are not of the harmful opiate kind. The procedure therefore is sieving, GASC Vice Chairman Ahmed Youssef told Reuters. Traders are watching closely, and have said that any rejection could lead them to boycott the state s massive tenders, protesting what they describe as excessive inspection measures that have made doing business increasingly risky. All suppliers will wait and see what will happen, said one Cairo-based trader. In a similar trade row last year, Egypt temporarily banned any trace of ergot, a common grain fungus, in cargoes. That move halted the country s billion-dollar grain trade after suppliers said the zero-tolerance level was impossible to guarantee. GASC expects to buy about 7 million tonnes of wheat in the fiscal year that began last July in order to supply a bread subsidy program relied on by tens of millions of Egyptians. Inspectors from Egypt s agriculture quarantine service have slammed a food inspection system launched this year that was intended to streamline trade following the ergot dispute. They say the new system, which ends the process of sending Egyptian inspectors abroad to check on grain, has allowed harmful contaminants to enter the country. They successfully challenged the system in court, but a verdict to suspend it has not been implemented and is being appealed. We are being exposed to the biggest campaign to enter the largest quantities possible of poor quality wheat into Egypt and to make it the wastebasket of the world, a quarantine inspector said. | 0fake |
Republicans Say Everything’s Terrible Because Of Obama, Show Them THIS And Shut Them Up | Republicans insist that everything under President Obama is awful and terrible and getting worse. Their nominee for the presidency has based his entire candidacy on the idea that America is a complete trianwreck and only he alone can fix things.But when you ask actual Americans about what their lives are like after eight years of Barack Obama being president, a completely different message emerges. Gallup did just that, in a survey of over 100,000 people, and almost completely across the board people feel better off than they did before.In 2008, fewer than half of Americans said their life was good enough to be considered thriving, according to Gallup. But that s changed: The 55.4% who are thriving so far in 2016 is on pace to be the highest recorded in the nine years Gallup and Healthways have tracked it, according to the report.The report even has findings that obliterate Donald Trump s constant harping that black Americans are living lives of complete desperation inside crack-destroyed inner city ghettos. The percentages of U.S. whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians who are thriving have all increased during the Obama era, Gallup notes. The percentage of blacks thriving has risen by about 6 points, as has the percentage of whites and Hispanics. Asian thriving has risen by about 10 points since 2008.It isn t magic or left wing propaganda. People simply feel better off and more optimistic, and it isn t a coincidence that this change has occurred between the presidency of a conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat.As a result, President Obama s approval rating has gone over 50 percent and reports are now emerging that Trump is having trouble convincing voters in key states that they need to turn the page from Obama because people are feeling positive about the situation in America.Ignore the hype and noise of the right, check out the data and you ll learn how people really feel.Featured image via Flickr | 1real |
Suspect Charged for Carrying Pistol Without Permit After Gun Falls Out of His Buttocks | Officers were booking Jesse O’Neal Roberts into jail when a pistol fell out of his buttocks, initially giving them the impression that Roberts was defecating on himself. [The incident occurred at Alabama’s Limestone County Jail. According to AL. com, deputies received a call “about a prowler” and arrived at the address to find Roberts being held at gunpoint by the resident. Deputy Chad Harbin said Roberts “was showing signs of impairment,” so he arrested him on public intoxication. They drove Roberts to jail and, upon arriving, a corrections officer noted that Roberts was walking “strangely. ” While Roberts was being booked a pistol fell out of his buttocks. The corrections officer recalled, “I immediately considered that he defecated on himself before noticing a familiar shape in the form of a pistol in his boxers. ” The pistol was a Jimenez . 380 which had been reported as stolen. Roberts was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit, “ promoting prison contraband,” and “ receiving stolen property. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
Bernie Sanders: The Democratic primary gave me ‘leverage I intend to use’ to pressure Hillary Clinton | Print
Sen. Bernie Sanders laid out the ways he would leverage his popularity that emerged from the Democratic primary to continue to push Hillary Clinton to the left if she wins the presidency next month.
In an interview published Monday with The Washington Post, Sanders argued that the Democratic Party is “more progressive” than its presidential nominee.
He emphasized that he saw it as his role to “demand that the Democratic Party implement” the party platform his allies helped shape, and would be “vigorously in opposition” if Clinton attempted to abandon the platform’s progressive elements.
“The leverage that I think I take into the Senate is taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment, and, you know, taking on a very powerful political organization with the Clinton people,” Sanders said. He then referenced the number of states he won during the primary, 22.
“That gives me a lot of leverage, leverage that I intend to use,” he added.
The Vermont senator also emphasized that he would not be cowed by the knowledge that his proposals would not be well received by a likely Republican-controlled House of Representatives. | 1real |
Comey’s October Surprise | After some considerable anticipation, it seemed that the much awaited October Surprise had arrived with the revelation that John Podesta, HRC’s right hand man, had a bona fide email addiction after having been publicly identified by Wikileaks as the author of a massive quantity of damaging emails.
As scandal-weary voters are threatened with serious cerebral overload, the continuing array of titillating revelations spanned from naming the MSM names in collusion with the Democrats to an otherwise obscure reporter suggesting that Podesta link Russia to Trump to a multitude of documents identifying the Clinton Foundation as a vehicle for nefarious dealings – and a host of unethical examples of how to steal democracy, the rank-and-file continues to look the other way, clinging to the illusion that Democrats are the good guys, the white hats for social change.
Beginning with the DNC scandal in July which revealed a host of pre-meditated efforts to undermine the Bernie Sanders campaign and steal the nomination, the question remains whether a candidate nominated as a result of a flawed, if not legally flawed, Democratic primary process could be considered a politically legitimate candidate for the general election and the office of US President. The Clinton campaign apparently never felt the need to resolve that question.
Since the Wikileaks emails were not a total surprise, it would now appear that the real October Surprise is FBI Director James B. Comey’s dramatic turn-around announcement on October 28th that the Clinton email investigation was being re-opened due to new information as a result of its investigation into Carlos Danger.
Comey, who reportedly had been privately criticized by disgruntled agents in his department for the dismissal of felony charges against Clinton, informed pertinent Congressional Committee Chairs and ranking Democrats of the renewed investigation in an unusual letter on Friday. Acknowledging that the agency had previously “completed its investigation,” Comey said that “due to recent developments” the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” Comey continued that after having been briefed by the FBI’s investigative team, he “agreed that the FBI should take proper investigative steps” to “determine whether they (the emails) contain classified information .”
To put the current crisis in context, several days after the FBI’s original announcement in July, Rep. Curt Gowdy’s (R-SC) conducted a vigorous cross examination of Comey that was devastating to the FBI’s “no charge” determination and its no proof of intent determination that was, in turn, irreparably damaging to Secretary Clinton’s credibility. In other words, backed into a corner by Gowdy, Comey confirmed that Clinton had misrepresented the facts. Comey’s responses should have been front page headlines but received barely a ripple from the MSM which Wikileaks confirmed takes its marching orders from the DNC.
In response to the newest FBI investigation that surfaced on Friday, Secretary Clinton has demanded , contrary to standard procedure, that the FBI “release all of the information that it has” and “needs to share whatever facts they have with the American people” and “it is deeply troubling because voters deserve to get full and complete facts” without any recognition of the irony.
Secretary Clinton is, of course, a subject of interest of the renewed investigation and understands that the purpose of a reopened investigation is to ferret out the facts. Rather than shoot from the hip to conform with candidate Clinton’s demands, Comey has the responsibility to conduct a thorough investigation free from political intimidation as should have occurred in July. While the public can only speculate on the real backstory, if there is one, prompting the FBI to initiate this current investigation, surely Comey understands what is on the line here. For the FBI to come back at some future time with another ‘no charges’ determination, everyone go home folks, there’s nothing more to see, would irredeemably and irretrievably doom the FBI, which is already on thin ice, and further drive a once-Constitutional democracy into the ditch.
As the Democrats continue to circle the wagons, counting on some mindless Democrat to continue its nonsensical anti-Russian agenda, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Oh) stepped forward to link the FBI with Putin as the true source of the new stash of emails which were found on the home computer of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), estranged husband of HRC’s long-time confidante Huma Abedin. FBI officials first estimated ‘ tens of thousands of emails’ belonging to Ms. Abedin but have since revised its estimate to 650,000 emails which may include some of the missing 33,000 emails previously erased and may have been sent to and from Secretary Clinton’s private email server.
Following the thread, if we assume that a percentage of Ms. Abedin’s emails were ‘classified’ or ‘top secret’ (which is a reasonable assumption) and that her husband, who has repeatedly exhibited gross lapses of judgment, had free and open access to his own computer, the question that terrifies the Democrats is not knowing the content of Abedin emails contained in Weiner’s laptop.
As if to throw oil on a bonfire, it was reported over the weekend that Comey’s decision to reopen the Clinton investigation was done against Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s recommendation. You may recall in July, Lynch participated in a highly controversial tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton – just days prior to Comey’s announcement that there would be no criminal charges against Hilary Clinton.
Looking back on the July announcement may factor into Comey’s role in the current controversy. It is, of course, FBI Director’s job to conduct an investigation and it is the Attorney General’s decision whether or not to pursue prosecution. Given that the Lynch – Clinton tarmac meeting was widely publicized, a good guess is that the political players decided it more appropriate for Comey to do the ‘no charges’ announcement rather than Lynch – who was already being publicly castigated for favoring Clinton by meeting with Big Bill. Lynch took the easy way with Comey being sent to face the public ire and take the heat.
According to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker , Lynch was opposed to Comey’s letter to Congress and opposed to not following DOJ practice of no comment or involvement regarding any political campaign as it could be interpreted as attempting to ‘influence’ a campaign – which has become a frequent refrain this season as the Clinton campaign continues to flail with a frantic desperation, a willingness to discredit anyone whose presence threatens their path to the White House – Russian President Vladimir Putin, Republican candidate Donald Trump, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and now FBI Director James Comey.
Against that background, on Friday Comey was in the position of sitting on potentially explosive new information and taking the risk he would be publicly slammed for favoring Clinton and attempting to influence the election. According to Mayer’s sources, Comey felt ‘compelled’ to go forward with the letter and reopen the Clinton case against the DOJ recommendation.
The Democratic Coalition Against Trump (DCAT) has filed a formal Complaint with the Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility against Comey for ‘interfering in the Presidential election” citing the Hatch Act which prohibits federal employees from participating in politically partisan acts.
In an imprudent display of anguish from the Clinton campaign, Scott Dworkin, senior advisor to the DCAT, said “it is absolutely absurd that FBI Director Comey would support Trump like this with only eleven days to go before the election.” And as if anticipating special entitlement for his candidate, Dworkin continued that “Comey needs to focus on stopping terrorists and protecting America, not investigating our soon to be President Elect Hillary Clinton.”
Immediately after the July announcement when Clinton drew the Home Free card, Comey was the object of much Democratic adulation and praise for his exemplary record and trustworthiness. However, over the weekend, the Clinton campaign launched a ferocious attack giving its media benefactors and Democratic bigwigs the green light to dump on Comey with an arsenal of steamrollers. In keeping with the Democratic strategy of irrational verbal assaults, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nv) wrote asserting Comey’s violation of the Hatch Act which “bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election” while former DNC Chair Howard Dean declared that “Comey put himself on the same side as Putin.”
While US law bans foreign government interference in our elections, where is the outrage for Israel’s heavy hand manipulation of American electoral and policy decisions over the last twenty years?
Inexplicably there has been no hint by Democrats that Anthony Weiner may be responsible for providing the FBI with the latest batch of emails, late breaking news is that Weiner, who is looking at a possible fifteen years in the slammer, is ‘cooperating’ with the FBI and might have traded his wife’s emails for a deal.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31 | 1real |
British princes mark anniversary of Diana's death with garden visit | LONDON (Reuters) - Princes William and Harry paid a quiet tribute to their mother Princess Diana on Wednesday, a day before the 20th anniversary of her death that has reignited interest in one of the world s most famous women. Diana s two sons met representatives of the charities she supported in a public garden at Kensington Palace, their home and where their mother lived until she was killed in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997. Outside the palace gates supporters of the royal family gathered in the rain to mark the occasion, with many praising Diana s sons for keeping her in the public memory. Everyone remembers where they were the day she died, and when they heard about it, said 74-year-old Nancy Purinton, on holiday with her husband from the United States. It was pretty dramatic. Sheltering under umbrellas, William, Harry and Kate took a tour of the renamed White Garden, which has been transformed temporarily with white English roses and forget-me-nots planted earlier this year. The palace s head gardener and a gardener who knew Diana from her frequent visits to the spot, usually known as the Sunken Garden, explained the design and pointed out some of the princess s favorite plants. The gathering follows weeks of renewed interest in Diana, the first wife of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles. She has once again become front page news with new revelations about her life and a raft of TV documentaries to mark the anniversary. Previous anniversaries of her death have passed with little fuss, suggesting that the People s Princess , as she was dubbed by then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, had perhaps lost some of her allure and relevance. But with the popular William and Harry coming to the fore, the 20th anniversary has sparked a re-examination of the role Diana played in Britain and the royal family, from her lavish wedding in 1981 to her bitter divorce. The princes have also been increasingly willing to speak about the trauma of her death and its lasting impact. I m glad that they ve finally loosened up a little bit to talk about her and how really hard it was for them, Purinton said of the princes. I think they were stiff upper lip for so long and now they re able to talk about it, which I think helps other people if they re grieving. Diana s death in a Paris underpass sparked an outpouring of grief that stunned many Britons, with thousands of mourners descending on the palace to leave flowers and letters to pay tribute to a woman who had become a global fashion icon and charity campaigner. I was here the first time around, Alexia McDonald, 54 and a full-time carer, told Reuters. We were similar age ... (I remember) seeing the fairytale wedding. She was my generation and I just felt a connection. I felt I needed to pay my respects to Diana. Outside the palace on Wednesday, Britons again left flowers, photographs and messages attached to the front gates, although in far fewer numbers than immediately after her death. After touring the garden, the princes met representatives from causes Diana had supported, including Great Ormond Street Hospital, the National Aids Trust and The Leprosy Mission. On Thursday, they will reflect on their mother s life in private. | 0fake |
Schumer: Dems Can Block Gorsuch, Effort to Repeal Obamacare - Breitbart | Tuesday on ABC’s “The View,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ) said the Democrats in the Senate have enough power to block President Donald Trump nominee for Supreme Court Justice, Judge Neil Gorsuch and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Schumer said, “They need 60 votes. And I believe — if Gorsuch keeps it up he’ll have a rough road to hoe to get those 60 on votes. ” When asked about the Democrats power, he added, “We have enough to block to Gorsuch … People ask, do the Democrats have power? Are we in charge? No which means we can’t set the agenda, McConnell can do that but we can block a lot of things. Like for instance, the Affordable Care Act which originally everyone wanted to get rid of it. Now when they see what they are getting, 20 million people covered, conditions — a mom or dad has a kid with cancer the insurance companies said we’re not going to cover your kid has cancer. “And they watch their kid suffer — all these things people want. And so, now, people — because no Democrat has cooperated with the Republicans from the most liberal like Bernie Sanders to the most conservative like Joe Manchin,” he added. “They’re stuck. They’re not going to be able to repeal it in my opinion. So we have some power. We have to use it smartly and wisely. We do. And I tell people, I’m ready for the fight. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0fake |
MILLIONS OF FRAUDULENT AND INVALID VOTER REGISTRATIONS ALREADY FOUND: “Sara Sosa who died in 2009 cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.” | This week, liberals have been repeating their frequent claim that voter fraud doesn t exist. A recent Salon article argues that voter fraud just isn t a problem in Pennsylvania, despite evidence to the contrary. Another article argues that voter fraud is entirely in the imagination of those who use voter ID laws to deny minorities the right to vote.Yet as the election approaches, more and more cases of voter fraud are beginning to surface. In Colorado, multiple instances were found of dead people attempting to vote. Stunningly, a woman named Sara Sosa who died in 2009 cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. In Virginia, it was found that nearly 20 voter applications were turned in under the names of dead people.In Texas, authorities are investigating criminals who are using the technique of vote harvesting to illegally procure votes for their candidates. Harvesting is the practice of illegally obtaining the signatures of valid voters in order to vote in their name without their consent for the candidate(s) the criminal supports.These are just some instances of voter fraud we know about. It would be silly to assume cases that have been discovered are the only cases of fraud. Indeed according to a Pew Research report from February 2012, one in eight voter registrations are significantly inaccurate or no longer valid. Since there are 146 million Americans registered to vote, this translates to a stunning 18 million invalid voter registrations on the books. Further, More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters, and approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state. Numbers of this scale obviously provide ripe opportunity for fraud.Don t Let Data Contradict My Narrative Yet in spite of all this, a report by the Brennan Center at New York University claims voter fraud is a myth. It argues that North Carolina, which passed comprehensive measures to prevent voter fraud, failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina. However, this faulty reasoning does not point to the lack of in-person voter fraud, but rather to lack of enforcement mechanisms to identify and prosecute in-person voter fraud.The science of criminal justice tells us that many crimes go unreported, and the more victimless the crime, the more this happens. The fact is, a person attempting to commit voter fraud is very unlikely to be caught, which increases the incentive to commit the crime.The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a sophisticated, comprehensive effort to catalog the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement authorities. However, it tends to deal mostly in violent crimes. As complex as the NCVS is, gathering accurate data for unreported victimless crimes such as voter fraud is even harder, since 1) outside of the criminal, no one may know a crime has taken place, and 2) there is no direct victim to report the crime in the first place. Yet we are expected to believe that, unlike violent crime, voter fraud is limited only to the cases that are actually reported and prosecuted? This is a senseless position. Further, the Brennan Center report argues that because prosecutor Kris Kobach s review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states found only 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution (which amounts to a 0.00000017 percent fraud rate), voter fraud is so statistically small that it s a non-issue. Let s follow this logic. Does the fact that 109 people were cited for jaywalking in Seattle in 2009 mean that only 109 people jaywalked in Seattle that year? Does the fact that 103,733 people were cited for driving without a seatbelt in Tennessee in 2015 mean that only that many people were driving without seatbelt in Tennessee in 2015?Absolutely not. This can be proven easily because in 2014, the previous year, only 29,470 people were cited. The disparity is largely due to increased enforcement efforts in 2015. In other words, increasing enforcement of the crime revealed a much larger number of people committing the crime.The exact same is true for voter fraud. We have no reason to believe that the low number of prosecutions means only that exact amount of voter fraud is happening. Rather, it could mean a lack of enforcement is failing to reveal the bulk of the violations that are occurring. Thus, as with many types of crimes, especially victimless crimes, the real number of cases is likely significantly higher than the number reported.How to Effectively Target Voter Fraud So now that we know voter fraud is a serious issue, what are some solutions to this problem? States like Michigan have Poll Challenger programs, where observers from both parties may be present at voter check-in tables at precincts. They check each voter s ID against a database of registered voters for that precinct to ensure the person attempting to vote is actually legally qualified to vote in that precinct. If there s a discrepancy, the poll challenger may officially challenge the ballot. Other states should implement similar programs.Read more: FOX | 1real |
North Korea official says North may consider hydrogen bomb on Pacific Ocean: Yonhap | SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said on Friday he believes the North could consider a hydrogen bomb test on the Pacific Ocean of an unprecedented scale, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. Ri was speaking to reporters in New York when he was asked what North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had meant when he threatened in an earlier statement the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States. North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test, Ri said, although he did not know Kim’s exact thoughts, Yonhap reported. | 0fake |
Taking back control? Britain's May to make high-stakes Brexit speech | LONDON (Reuters) - After months of Brexit talks that have made little progress and deepened rifts in her party, British Prime Minister Theresa May will try this week to put the negotiations on track and reassert her authority. In a speech in the Italian city of Florence, May will set out on Friday her vision for future ties with the European Union and try to fill an apparent policy vacuum that has left her Brexit team adopting what Brussels regards as wrecking tactics in the talks on unraveling four decades of union. The 60-year-old leader has deliberately chosen an EU city to deliver the speech so that she can speak directly to the other 27 nations in the bloc, but has her work cut out in seizing back the initiative. May has been largely quiet on Brexit since her Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority in a June election that she need not have called, saying little beyond expressing her support for a deep and special partnership with the bloc once Britain leaves in March 2019. But days before the speech, foreign minister Boris Johnson laid out his own Brexit vision, challenging her more cautious approach and exposing the fault lines in her party and government. EU negotiators are also frustrated with what they see as Britain s policy drift. At talks in August, British officials spent almost three hours picking holes in the legal basis for the bill that the EU expects London to pay to leave. Sources familiar with the presentation so detailed it stretched for 11 pages and was illustrated with 23 slides called it a show of legal muscle. But, as Brexit minister David Davis said, the meeting was even tetchier than the one before . The reason lawyers gave a two-and-a-half hour presentation is because no government minister had made a decision on policy, said Andrew Hood, who was a legal adviser to former prime minister David Cameron and still has contact with lawyers in several government departments. The August talks were almost canceled by the EU side because of Britain s lack of position, Hood told Reuters. I always thought when I was in the foreign office that if you ever need to revert to lawyers you ve probably lost, he said. Hood now advises companies on their Brexit strategy for law firm Dechert but took part in meetings with the EU under Cameron, who resigned last year after Britons voted for Brexit. The financial settlement with Brussels is one of the most difficult parts of the Brexit negotiations, but the lack of movement so far on even the mechanics of how to calculate the sum shows the difficulties facing Britain. May is walking a tightrope between hardline Conservative Brexit supporters who want to make sure any payment is as small as possible, and some top ministers who believe Britain must pay to keep ties as close as possible. Until now, she has largely let her government do the talking by setting out a wishlist for future relations with the bloc that aims for the closest of ties without the costs. May has also stuck to a belief that by playing her cards close to her chest, Britain will force EU negotiators into concessions. But her silence has allowed other voices to emerge. The main opposition Labour Party says it would keep Britain in the single European market and customs union during a transitional period, the Liberal Democrats are demanding a second referendum and the Scottish National Party wants Scotland to remain part of the EU. Their opposition is to be expected, but criticism from May s own team is not, and has raised eyebrows. In a weekend newspaper article, Johnson wrote that he did not expect Britain to pay for access to the EU s market, putting him at odds with finance minister Philip Hammond and May, who has spoken of paying in. At the August talks, left without clear policy direction, Davis and his team s detailed dissection of the EU s arguments on the Brexit bill left the bloc s main negotiator Michel Barnier wondering whether we can build trust and start discussing a future relationship . Weeks earlier, a former aide to May had praised the emerging agreement in her cabinet over the need for a transition deal and a divorce settlement something that seemed remote after last year s Brexit referendum. But though there may be agreement on this in principle, the difference lies in the detail and has opened a deep rift. Hammond wants a transition as close as possible to the status quo while others, such as trade minister Liam Fox, do not want to stay in the single market or pay for access. Pro-Brexit lawmakers have also balked at suggestions Britain should pay 60 billion euros ($72 billion) for the divorce, and May s aides have poured cold water on reports that there could be a compromise to reduce the headline figure by paying 10 billion pounds a year to the EU during a transition. In a move that appeared intended to tighten her control over the Brexit talks, May appointed the top official at the Brexit ministry as her EU adviser on Monday. But resetting the talks is a tough order, and aides are silent on whether May will use the Florence speech to try to break the deadlock on the financial settlement. Officials in Brussels are not holding their breath. The EU has taken the black veil off and is getting on with its life, one EU official said after the August talks. The Brits are either completely overconfident or completely overwhelmed. | 0fake |
NAFTA talks must include discussion on fintech: Mexican negotiator | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) must include a discussion of new financial services, a Mexican negotiator said on Wednesday, singling out so-called fintech companies rapidly gaining ground in the region. Created 23 years ago, NAFTA includes Canada, Mexico and the United States and is being renegotiated at the behest of U.S. President Donald Trump who made a campaign promise to get a better deal for U.S. workers. Vanessa Rubio, an undersecretary at Mexico’s finance ministry who is taking part in the NAFTA negotiations that began in Washington on Wednesday, said discussions on financial services had found common ground between the three countries. “We are not yet sure what will end up in the text of the new agreement, but we are sure that we need to have a discussion about new services, above all about the fintech industry,” Rubio told Reuters in an interview. Rubio said her U.S. counterparts were focused on transparency in new regulations, while she pushed the need to standardize rules. To modernize the deal, the three sides are looking at how to include e-commerce and other technological developments that did not exist when NAFTA was first negotiated. | 0fake |
BOXING LEGEND GEORGE FOREMAN Reveals How Trump Saved Him When He Was “Broke…Bankrupt”…BLASTS Athletes Like Kaepernick and Durant For Disrespecting Our Nation | You can t be black and support President Trump. The intolerant left simply won t allow it Boxing legend George Foreman has had about enough of the disrespect of the United States he s seeing in some professional athletes, particularly Colin Kaepernick and Kevin Durant.In an interview on the Offended America Podcast on Monday, the 68-year-old former world heavyweight boxing champion blasted the national anthem protests and shunning of the White House by the likes of Kaepernick and Durant, suggesting they were born out of ignorance about just how privileged we are to live in this great country.As for Durant s announcement that he would not attend the White House if his Golden State Warriors are invited because he doesn t respect who s in office right now, Foreman said he and the others protesting Trump were just sore losers. In the interview, Foreman also praised Donald Trump, who played a pivotal role in his personal comeback at age 42, helping to fund and promote his match with another boxing great, Evander Holyfield. Before the fight, Foreman said he was broke bankrupt. But Trump, he said, helped save him financially. He s part of writing those checks so I could be back on the wealthy side again, said Foreman. -Daily WireFox and Friends Shortly after his inauguration, George Foreman offered some wise words of advice for his friend Donald J. Trump: The two-time world heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman sounded off on President Trump, saying he has to keep fighting in order to continue his winning streak.Foreman compared Trump s battles with the many opposition groups to the numerous boxing matches he participated in over the years. When you re in something like this, you just have to fight, he said.Watch:He advised Trump not to listen to his detractors and stay on message, saying that while in the ring he would not listen to the boos from the crowd until he was home watching the match on tape. | 1real |
VIDEO: Locals Express Outrage During Pledge of Allegiance and Opening Prayer at Sen. Bill Cassidy’s Town Hall | A group of 200 locals expressed their displeasure during the opening prayer and Pledge of Allegiance at Sen. Bill Cassidy’s ( ) town hall in Louisiana Wednesday night, Independent Journal Review (IJR.) reported.[ Some constituents began shouting, “Pray on your own time” and “let’s get on with it” at the chaplain while others chanted, “Separation of church and state”: As a local veteran took the stage to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the crowd continued shouting, “We want answers” and “Do your job,” National Review reported. Despite the heckling, the veteran managed to remain on stage until he was finished. By the time Sen. Cassidy arrived at the town hall 20 minutes late, he was met with a reception from the crowd. Sen. Cassidy received a tense reception from the crowd throughout the speech, especially when President Trump or Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was mentioned, the reported. “If all you want to do is vent, this will not be profitable,” Cassidy warned the audience. By the time Cassidy called an end to the meeting an hour later, the audience’s mood had not changed, and the constituents once again shouted, “Do your job. ” Townhall ends, @BillCassidy says, and crowd starts chanting ”do your job” pic. twitter. — Caitlin Owens (@caitlinnowens) February 22, 2017, After the event concluded, Cassidy sought out the pastor who gave the opening prayer, Michael Sprague. “Thanks for doing that,” Sen. Cassidy said. “Wow, they booed the name of Jesus. ” Despite the hostile reception from his constituents, the senator kept his cool and did not get discouraged. “I assume they’re Americans who care about our country, who feel differently about Trump than most folks in Louisiana do,” Sen. Cassidy said. “But they’re coming out with their constitutionally protected right to assemble and speak. And isn’t that a good thing?” | 0fake |
MEALS ON WHEELS Shuts the Lyin’ Lefties Up With Truth After MoveOn.org’s Fake News [Video] | Below is the comment in red that MoveOn.org put up before the video. Notice how they say NOTHING about the budget but just state that the program helps people. They re clearly fear mongering with vague information and NO FACTS. If you would like to go to the post on Facebook and hammer them with the statement below that s DIRECTLY from Meals on Wheels, here s the link: MoveOn.org Facebook Post On Meals on Wheels Trump wants to cut Meals on Wheels Meals on Wheels America is one program Donald J. Trump wants to cut in his federal budget plan. It s especially outrageous because according to one Meals on Wheels director, we re delivering a meal but we re delivering a lot more because sometimes we re the only people that this person may see Share the message. Notice how the people in the video just speak about how the program helps people BUT doesn t discuss budget? That s because they re only fear mongering and nothing else Shame on them!MEALS ON WHEELS CAME OUT WITH A STATEMENT TO CLEAR THINGS UP: The nationwide Meals on Wheels network, comprised of 5,000, local, community-based programs, receives 35% of its total funding for the provision of congregate and home-delivered meals from the federal government through the Older Americans Act, administered by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Community Living. Other federal funding sources that support Meals on Wheels program operations may include the Community Development Block Grant, Community Services Block Grant or the Social Services Block Grant. In addition, programs rely on contributions from state or local governments, private donations and other resources to cover the rest, demonstrating one of the best examples of a successful public-private partnership. Meals on Wheels America, the largest and oldest national organization representing senior nutrition programs across the country, receives only 3% of its funding from the government, specifically to run the National Research Center on Nutrition and Aging. | 1real |
Senate panel approves measure to broaden North Korea sanctions | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate committee approved legislation on Thursday that would broaden sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program, human rights record and cyber activities, the latest bid by U.S. lawmakers to crack down on Pyongyang after its fourth nuclear test. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the measure by unanimous voice vote and members said they expected it would be approved by the full Senate within weeks, and signed into law by President Barack Obama. U.S. lawmakers have been clamoring for a clampdown on North Korea since Pyongyang earlier this month tested a nuclear device which it said was a hydrogen bomb. The U.N. Security Council is also discussing more action against the country, although it is not clear what would be supported by China, North Korea’s lone major ally and main business partner. The Senate bill would sanction anyone who engages in, facilitates or contributes to North Korea’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, arms-related materials, luxury goods, human rights abuses, activities undermining cyber security and the provision of metals or coal for use in such activities. Penalties include the seizure of assets, visa bans and denial of government contracts. Committee members said they wanted to make Washington’s resolve clear not just to Pyongyang, but to other governments. They said they expected the House of Representatives would back the Senate legislation. “We must also send a strong message to China,” said Republican Senator Cory Gardner, chairman of the panel’s Asia subcommittee and co-author of the legislation. An Obama administration official said the administration does not oppose the legislation, saying it is deeply concerned about North Korea’s recent actions and sees the most recent test as a “serious setback.” U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday the United States had seen increased activity around a North Korean site suggesting preparations for a possible space launch in the near future, raising concerns that the country was seeking to develop an inter-continental ballistic missile. North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Jan. 6 that it said was the explosion of a hydrogen bomb, although the United States and other governments and experts voiced scepticism that it had made such a technological advance. The House passed its own, less extensive, bill to broaden sanctions on Jan. 12 by a near unanimous 418-2 vote. The Senate is due to begin considering the bill approved by the foreign relations committee during the week of Feb. 8. | 0fake |
Ted Cruz Gets Booed At CPAC With Many Walking Out, And It’s Pretty Damn Funny (VIDEO) | Try as he might to appeal to a broad base of conservatives across the country, Ted Cruz is just remarkably unappealing. He uses a booming preacher type approach to his speeches that are reminiscent of televangelists selling miracle water at 3am or a megapreacher asking for donations so they can purchase another jet. His overwhelming smarmy nature may appeal to some who find comfort in being swindled, but to most, he is reprehensible.Trying to win over the crowd at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Cruz takes to bashing Trump, because why not, right? However, even though Trump decided to ditch out on the conference himself, many of his supporters were still in attendance. And as we all know, as bad and awful as Trump is, many of his most fervent supporters are even worse. So, when Cruz started in on Trump, many booed, got up, and walked out as the Texas junior senator was still speaking.Hears video from CSPAN via Crooks and Liars: Fox News had a wider shot of the event. Here, you can actually seeing people getting up and walking out. https://youtu.be/qd10-h-BwecBoth Cruz and Trump are despicable. They re both terrible choices for Commander-in-Chief. One wants to turn the nation into a giant megachurch, the other wants to turn the nation into a modern-day Nazi Germany. The infighting within the Republican party is going to tear the GOP apart. They are leaving this election wide open for a Democratic win, so no matter who, vote blue, and in the mean time, if you re a liberal, this is likely you watching the GOP right now:Featured image via image screen capture | 1real |
WOW! GOP ELITISTS Get Hammered: “‘Weak-Kneed, Lily-Livered Republicans’ Put on ‘Despicable Display of Cowardice’ by Abandoning Trump” | The list of pathetic sore losers and RINO s in the GOP who have said they won t support Trump seemed to be growing longer and longer after the private, inappropriate comments Trump made 11 years ago became public. After last night s debate, I wonder how many of them wish they could take it back. Trump handled the discussion about what he called embarrassing behavior better than most of us expected. We all make mistakes. He was a private citizen who was having some boy talk on a bus. He used some bad words and regrets it. He never laid a hand on anyone, but the sore losers who Trump crushed in the primaries and other RINO s like Mitt Romney are using this opportunity to destroy Trump s chances at winning while elevating Hillary s. Unlike the Dems, who surround and shield members of their party to the end, these turncoats Republicans are not team players Sam Clovis, co-chairman of Donald Trump s presidential campaign, reviewed Sunday night s second presidential debate on Monday morning s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow. I thought we did really well, said Clovis. I thought the first 15 minutes or so were pretty much as predicted, a little rocky, to be honest, but I think from that moment on, I don t think there s any question who was in charge, and I think he really had Mrs. Clinton on the defensive for most of the rest of the debate. Clovis disputed the notion that Clinton came to the debate to talk about the issues. She s done everything she can to avoid the issues, he said, because her tax plan sucks. Her record in foreign policy sucks. She has no love for the military. She s a criminal, and she ought to be in prison. I mean, I m just being blunt: this is a woman who ought to be in prison right now. If you or I had done what she has done, we would be in handcuffs in an orange suit, and we would be in a maximum security federal prison right now. Clovis said it was absolute nonsense to construe Trump s call for a special prosecutor during the debate as a banana republic-style threat to jail his political opponent. Director Comey has already come out and said she essentially lied to the FBI, he noted. Martha Stewart lied to the FBI, and she went to prison. If Hillary Clinton lied to the FBI, she ought to be prosecuted. And right now, what we have is, we have a deal struck by the Clinton campaign with the Obama administration, and I think if push comes to shove, I think Obama will pardon her before this thing gets out of hand because if they think anything is going to reveal that she has committed more criminal acts than she already has, then I think he ll pardon her. I really do. I think this is in the works. And I don t think the American people are really fooled by this. What we re talking about is establishing the rule of law, and the rule of law applies to everyone. That includes the former secretary of state, Clovis declared.Marlow asked how the Trump campaign planned to strategize around the intense media focus on his hot mic lewd remarks, considering that even the Republican Party is now destroying Donald Trump over these comments. Well, I think again it goes to the substance of what we have is, we have a vulnerability in the campaign, Clovis replied, adding, This is a vulnerability. Let s make no mistake. Let s be honest about this. We have a situation here, comments that were made 11 years ago. They were recorded, and they ve come back to haunt the candidate. The candidate has apologized for those remarks. And I think what it goes to is the fact that they don t want to focus on policy. They don t want to focus on the substance of the issues because the establishments of the Republican Party and the Democrat Party writ large are deeply threatened by a populist movement in this country. I really think this is why you see these weak-kneed, lily-livered Republicans out here I have other words, but I can t use them on the radio that go to the heart of what I think is a despicable display of cowardice on the part of the Republican Party over this whole issue. We don t need to defend the comments. I think the comments were bad, and frankly, if my son had said something like that, I d have taken him back to the woodshed. I don t have any problems talking about that and saying that because that s what I think of the comments. The other side of it is, the comments aren t what we re after. What we re after is the substance of who s going to lead this country. And that s what we ought to be focused on because the alternative of having Hillary Clinton as President of the United States is just too terrible to contemplate. Breitbart News | 1real |
California legislature sends $122.5 billion budget to governor | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The California legislature agreed on Wednesday to a $122.5 billion spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 and sent it to Governor Jerry Brown, who is expected to sign it. The budget directs $2 billion to the state’s rainy day fund, a priority for Brown, a Democrat and fiscal moderate who has warned that an economic downturn could lie ahead for the nation’s most populous state. Lower-than-expected income tax revenues in April caught state officials by surprise, and Brown said the state could take in $1.9 billion less than anticipated in taxes over the coming fiscal year. Democratic leaders in the state Senate praised the budget for making investments in the social safety net and early childhood education. The budget included a repeal of the state’s maximum family grant rule, which prevents people on welfare from receiving additional public money if they have more children. Without the rule, households would receive an additional $122 a month for a newborn child. The change is expected to cost the state about $220 million a year. “Our expenditure plan funds anti-poverty programs, child care and education,” said Mark Leno, Democratic state senator and budget chair. “It also includes resources to combat homelessness, support low-income working families and improve college readiness and enrollment,” he said. Republicans and some Democrats complained the spending increase of $6.9 billion from the prior fiscal year set California on a path of billion-dollar deficits down the road. “Californians deserve a responsible and sustainable state spending plan,” said Senate Republican leader Jean Fuller. “Unfortunately, this record spending budget paves the way for future deficits and increases fees that make living in California even more expensive,” she said. Some of the spending increases were attributed to an increase in the minimum wage and increased benefits for the disabled. In a tweet, Brown said: “Good work from the state legislature: we’re building reserves and investing in CA. Thanks.” Brown has until the end of the month to sign the budget. | 0fake |
California Single-Payer Health Care Bill Shelved And People Aren’t Happy | To say people aren t happy is an understatement. People are extremely angry about state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelving the single-payer healthcare bill in California.Huffington Post reports that Rendon has received death threats since making this decision.It is a shame that the bill got shelved as we all wanted to see how California would fare, but nobody should be threatening another life over it. We, as people, are meant to be better than that. Especially those of us with progressive outlooks.Rendon opted to pull the bill last week despite his support for a single-payer system. He called the plan woefully incomplete. He urged the state Senate to fill the holes and send the Assembly a workable bill next year. Even senators who voted for SB 562 noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, he said in a statement on Friday. These include its failure to address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities of needed action by the Trump administration and voters to make the bill a genuine piece of legislation, he said.That sounds fair, does it not? If we re going to do something progressive, we need to do it as correctly as possible, not half-baked. Rendon does not sound like he s against the plan.Yet, the death threats poured in. Supporters organized protests at Rendon s district office in Los Angeles County, as well as outside the state capitol in Sacramento. Some single-payer supporters held signs depicting the California state flag s grizzly bear stabbed in the back with a knife that reads Rendon. Social media got ugly, as always.I get it. We re all frustrated over the current healthcare situation in America. We all wanted to see how California would do with a single-payer system. It could pave the way for other states and do amazing things for everyone. But I think we should all step back and be rational about things. Rome wasn t built in a day.You have a right to be angry, but people need to stop sending death threats when things don t work out.Featured image via ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images | 1real |
Trump's dilemma: slower job growth or rising rates and inflation? | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A drop in the U.S. unemployment rate last month to a 9-year low signals the risk of a collision between President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to goose the economy and the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tap the brakes with higher interest rates. Since Trump’s election, officials at the U.S. central bank have cautiously introduced the possibility that his spending and tax cut plans could prompt a faster pace of rate increases than the two hikes currently foreseen in 2017. An increase is already expected when the Fed meets in two weeks. Fresh economic projections, the first since the election, will also be issued and Fed Chair Janet Yellen will hold a news conference when the meeting concludes on Dec. 14. With November’s decline, the jobless rate is now already below the most optimistic projections from Fed policymakers for where it would stand at year end. If it keeps moving lower, Trump’s spending and tax cut plans may be adding fuel to a tank that’s already brimming. Possible new trade or immigration restrictions could make markets even tighter, and switch the Fed from worrying about the risk of deflation to fighting price rises before they get out of hand. “There is much more than the Trump election driving the ... rally that started the day after the election,” Bank of the West chief economist Scott Anderson wrote. “We are seeing signs of a synchronized rebound in the global economy.” When Fed policymakers issued their last projections in September, the lowest level predicted for the unemployment rate at the end of the year was 4.7 percent. In November, it fell three-tenths of a percentage point to 4.6 percent. The decline was partly due to a drop in the labor force participation rate, which officials have expected to begin falling again because of an aging population with more retirees. In general, the lower the unemployment rate, the slower the pace of job growth the economy can sustain without pushing up wages and prices too quickly. Policymakers insist they still have time to move rates higher to keep price increases under control. Several officials feel it may even help fix some of the damage from the 2007-2009 recession if inflation moved above the Fed’s 2 percent target for a while. That might, for example, allow steady wage increases to restore some of the ground lost by workers. However, in recent months even ostensibly dovish officials, like Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, have cautioned that steady rate hikes might be needed to avoid the need for even faster increases that could trigger a recession. “I view a small step up in interest rates as appropriate, not because I want to curtail the expansion, but because I believe it will help prolong the expansion,” Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester said on Wednesday.. Trump’s victory gives that debate more urgency. His plans for a big infrastructure spending package, tax cuts and tighter controls on immigration could test the limits of what the economy can absorb before overheating. For a year now, Fed officials have said they expect job growth to slow as the economy nears full employment. It hasn’t happened, meaning Trump will take office at what may be a tough point of inflection: either job creation slows or inflation jumps. Jed Kolko, chief economist at the Indeed job site, said the current pace of job growth and low unemployment rate “sets a baseline for the Trump administration.” “Recent wage gains and unemployment declines make this a tough economy to improve on,” he said. | 0fake |
HOW HILLARY DESTROYED This Man’s Life To Hide Her Incompetence In #Benghazi | Does anyone even care that this American man was picked out of thin air to be used as a scape goat to cover for Hillary s incompetence? One day he s an innocent man making third rate videos and posting them on Youtube, and the next day, he s being hauled off to jail for a video he produced that Hillary and her lying staff claimed inspired a terror attack in Benghazi! This could have been any American. Of all the evil things Hillary has done, this has to rank at the top, just below the four dead Americans who she left unprotected to die in Benghazi. Yet, the Benghazi Butcher rolls on without missing a beat, as the mainstream media cheers her on like she s the horse they re betting on at the Kentucky Derby In September 2012 Hillary blamed an awful internet video for the deaths of four American heroes in Benghazi.Hillary Clinton made the statements as the bodies of the four dead Americans were brought back to US soil.She made the public comments just three days after the assault on the compound that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.But thanks to leaked Wikileaks emails we now know that Hillary Clinton wrote Chelsea during the Benghazi attacks telling her Americans were killed by an al-Qaeda like group.Hillary later lied and blamed the attack on a YouTube video. And the director of the YouTube video was later arrested.Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (C) is escorted out of his home by Los Angeles County Sheriff s officers in Cerritos, California September 15, 2012 (Reuters / Bret Hartman)Four years after the deadly Benghazi terrorist attack Hillary Clinton is running for president and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is broke, destitute and living in a homeless shelter.And ISIS is in control of much of Libya.FOX News reported:Four Americans died in the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, and those who survived saw their stories of heroism told in a Hollywood movie, but the filmmaker whose work was wrongly blamed for touching off the event lives in obscurity, poverty and fear, FoxNews.com has learned.Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the Coptic Christian whose short video The Innocence of Muslims was initially faulted for sparking the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack at U.S. diplomatic compounds in Libya, is now living in a homeless shelter run by First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif. He has served time in prison, been shamed publicly by the White House and threatened with death. Hmmm I wonder if Hillary is willing to cough up (pun intended) a few of her secret service agents to help protect the life of this innocent man, who will forever live in the fear of being killed by Muslim extremists. | 1real |
Republicans gear up for Supreme Court battle after Scalia's death | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates hardened their positions on Sunday on blocking a move by President Barack Obama to fill the Supreme Court seat left by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, a lifetime appointment that would help decide some of the most divisive issues facing Americans. The next justice could tilt the balance of the nation’s highest court, which was left with four conservatives and four liberals. The vacancy quickly became an issue in the 2016 presidential race. “We ought to make the 2016 election a referendum on the Supreme Court,” U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The normally nine-justice court is set to decide this year its first major abortion case in nearly a decade, as well as cases on voting rights, affirmative action and immigration. Scalia, 79, died on Saturday at a West Texas resort. The cause of death will not be determined for several days, the top official in the county where he died, Presidio County Judge Cinderela Gueara, said on Sunday in an interview with local TV station WFAA-TV. Obama, a Democrat, will nominate someone to fill the empty seat but will wait until the U.S. Senate is back in session, the White House said on Sunday. The Senate returns from recess on Feb. 22. “At that point, we expect the Senate to consider that nominee, consistent with their responsibilities laid out in the United States Constitution,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. The White House declined to give a more specific timeline for Obama to announce his nominee. The nomination will set up a battle with the Republican-controlled chamber, which must approve any nominee. Shortly after news of Scalia’s death, Republicans vowed not to act on the vacancy until Obama’s successor takes office next January. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said failure to act would be a “shameful abdication” of the Senate’s constitutional duty. Both sides said history was on their side. Reid said it would be unprecedented to have a vacancy on the court for a year. In the modern era, the longest Supreme Court vacancy was 363 days after Abe Fortas resigned in May 1969. Republicans cited 80 years of tradition in which no Supreme Court nominees were approved in presidential election years. In fact, Justice Anthony Kennedy was approved in 1988, after a bruising battle in which the Senate rejected President Ronald Reagan’s first nominee, conservative Robert Bork. Supreme Court nominations are rare, so neither side has much data to rely on in determining precedents. History is also an unreliable guide as the nomination process has become significantly more politicized in recent years. For Obama’s previous two Supreme Court picks, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, he took about 30 days each to announce the elections after their predecessors, Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice David Souter, respectively, said they planned to step down. Ohio Governor John Kasich, a moderate among the Republicans vying for the White House, said the Senate should wait because a battle this year would only deepen divisions in the country. “You know how polarized everything is,” Kasich said on ABC’s “This Week.” “What I don’t want to see is more fighting and more recrimination.” Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy warned that a delay could have consequences in November’s election, when voters get to decide who fills one-third of the Senate’s seats. “If the Republican leadership refuses to even hold a hearing, I think that is going to guarantee they lose control of the Senate, because I don’t think the American people will stand for that,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said the Constitution was clear. “The president makes the appointment, Senate confirms, let’s get on with that business,” the senator from Vermont said on “Fox News Sunday.” One possible contender to replace Scalia is an Indian-American appeals court judge, Sri Srinivasan, who has pro-business credentials and a stellar resume. His nomination could make it more politically challenging for Republicans to block anyone put forward by Obama. Cruz, a Texas lawmaker, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that takes the lead on Supreme Court nominees, said the vacancy left by Scalia made the presidential election even more critical. He warned that a justice chosen by Sanders or his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, would mean the Second Amendment right to bear arms would be “written out” of the Constitution and abortion on demand would become the law of the land. Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another White House candidate, said he would want someone who echoed Scalia’s “originalist” ideology that looks at the U.S. Constitution through the lens of its framers’ 18th-century intentions. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, appearing on NBC, was more direct when asked what he would want: “Someone just like Justice Scalia.” That would mean someone who did not let ideological differences preclude civility or even friendship, former President Bill Clinton told CNN, citing Scalia’s bond with liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg, in a statement on Sunday, called her friend “a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit” with whom she disagreed “now and then.” She cited a duet sung by the two justices in the 2015 opera “Scalia/Ginsburg” titled: “We are different, we are one.” She and Scalia, Ginsburg wrote, were “different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve.” (Additional reporting by Joan Biskupic, Alana Wise, Timothy Gardner in Washington; Sara Vasquez in Marfa, Texas; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage. | 0fake |
Why’d You Do That? Printing Donald Trump’s Vulgarities - The New York Times | Coverage of the leaked 2005 audio tape of Donald Trump speaking in lewd language about women has produced an onslaught of reader mail, mostly because of the vile words contained in the coverage. The majority of those writing in are asking how the decision was made rather than complaining about the choice to include such words. I went to the Times political editor Carolyn Ryan to ask some of the readers’ most frequent questions. Spayd: The public editor inbox is full of readers asking why The New York Times decided to use some of the most vile language spoken by Donald Trump in the audio released Friday. The words were used both on the home page and on A1. Can you explain the thinking behind this decision? Ryan: Yes, it is not a decision we made lightly. We had a spirited discussion among top editors about it, led by (executive editor) Dean Baquet. The argument against using the words was driven by a concern that it would be jolting to readers, especially given that the story would be played so prominently on page one, and that there were other ways we could signal what Trump said without relying on the actual vulgar words. Ultimately we decided that the words themselves were newsworthy, and that omitting them or merely describing them or slyly hinting at them would not have been forthright with our readers. Spayd: Has The Times ever used such vulgar language in such a prominent position before, or in any manner? Ryan: It is very rare, but we have done it in the past. One recent example: In 2013, Andrea Elliott wrote a powerful narrative about an homeless girl growing up in New York City, which captured how rough and desolate her life was. We quoted her mother cursing at her, which was in keeping with the rawness and roughness of the narrative. But again, it is quite rare. Spayd: In this case, the words appear both in print and online. Was it part of the discussion to consider using the words only online or is the standard the same for both? Ryan: We proceeded with the idea that whatever we decided would be applied to the print and the online story. One reality we faced was that, regardless of what we said in the story, we were going to run the video without editing it. So it seemed to us it would be especially awkward to run the video, in full, and then omit the vulgarities in the story. Spayd: Finally, several readers asked why The Times didn’t characterize Trump’s words as bragging about sexually assaulting women rather than just groping them, at least in initial coverage. What was the thinking about that? Ryan: This is a really important point and one that we tried to highlight — I think the first version of the story described Trump as “pushing himself on women,” but also included a quote from Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, saying bluntly that this was sexual assault. Since the news of the tape broke, our stories have become more explicit in calling what Mr. Trump is boasting about “sexual assault. ” *** Here’s my view. It should be the extraordinary case when such words are used by The Times, but this is one of those cases. Trump is the Republican nominee for the president of the United States. He alleges to have sexually assaulted women, and the words used in this tape are propelling many members of his own party to abandon him, or at least to publicly condemn him. In all their vulgarity, these words could turn the election. | 0fake |
Trump says didn't tell Flynn to discuss sanctions with Russia, but would have | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not direct former national security adviser Michael Flynn to talk to the Russian ambassador about sanctions imposed on Moscow by the Obama administration, but he said he would have. Speaking at a White House news conference, Trump said Flynn was “doing his job and I agreed with him.” “I would have directed him if he wasn’t doing it,” Trump added. | 0fake |
Bruising debate brings a reluctant Trump around on Afghanistan war | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump came around to the decision to allow for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan only after a prolonged internal debate in which he frequently tangled with his top national security advisers. Trump had repeatedly argued on the campaign trail last year that the long-running wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a waste of lives and billions of dollars that could be better spent at home. An emotional visit in April to Walter Reed Hospital, where many grievously wounded soldiers are taken for treatment, only served to harden the president’s reluctance to send more troops. Trump said he did not want to send more young Americans to battle only to see them lose limbs. “What are we doing there?” he asked his national security aides, according to a senior administration official. In a series of interviews, senior administration officials said Trump was hard to persuade but finally - and begrudgingly - agreed to allow for a modest increase in troop numbers, from the current 8,400 to more than 12,000. He first had to be convinced that the approach he was approving was markedly different from the strategies employed by his two immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, since he considered them to have failed, the officials said. In his prime-time speech to the nation on Afghanistan policy on Monday night, Trump conceded that his original instinct on taking office had been to pull out but he was then persuaded of the dangers of a hasty withdrawal. Putting new emphasis on anti-terrorism goals, he said U.S. troops were needed to prevent the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan and again making it a breeding ground for Islamic militants. “This is not about nation-building again. We are killing terrorists,” he said. In the White House discussions, some of Trump’s advisers appealed to his pride in his negotiating skills by saying he could succeed with the Taliban where Obama had failed, in part because Obama made the mistake of announcing that a surge of additional troops to Afghanistan he approved in late 2009 was temporary. “The president knows that in order to get the Taliban to the table, he knows that he first has to prove that he’s willing to keep pressure on them for as long as it takes, which Obama failed to do,” said one of the officials. “That doesn’t mean he expects to sit down with them in Qatar tomorrow.” Trump challenged his advisers to provide clear measurements of how progress can be gauged, with the goal of turning the tide in a battle in which the Taliban appears to have gained the upper hand in recent months. “He wants to be shown that we’re winning,” said one official. “They had to develop the metrics for that in advance before he would agree to it. He doesn’t want to be told in two years that it’s just as bad as it was 2017, but not worse. If that happens then we’re really talking about a withdrawal. He made that clear.” While Trump was joined in his skepticism by his chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was fired on Friday after months of power struggles inside the White House, multiple officials said the debate was less about Bannon and more about Trump himself. The argument that White House chief of staff John Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster made was that previous efforts faltered because the Afghan and Pakistani governments did not step up and do what is required of them to help defeat the Taliban and deny terrorists a haven in Afghanistan. The three - who have all had distinguished military careers - also raised the specter of Iran’s involvement in Afghanistan, an argument that helped given Trump’s desire to block Tehran’s expansionism in the Middle East, officials said. “It was hard to put together for him all the pieces of a complicated puzzle that includes not just the three major regional players, but also India, China, Russia, and Iran,” said one official. “But the idea that he could succeed where his predecessors had failed had a certain appeal. So did the idea of emphasizing this is part of the war against Islamic terrorism, not an effort to rebuild Afghanistan, something he had consistently opposed,” the official added. The new Trump strategy puts greater emphasis on the responsibilities of the Pakistani and Afghan governments. Another important factor, the officials said, was convincing Trump that the withdrawal he had advocated for years would force him to shoulder some of the blame for the Taliban victory that surely would follow. | 0fake |
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