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Federal Lawsuit Filed Against Trump Over Financial Disclosure (DETAILS) | It looks like Donald Trump can add another case to the list of lawsuits he is facing. An attorney, based in Washington, D.C., has filed suit in federal court alleging that the financial disclosure Trump filed in May 2016 was not even close to accurate.Jeffrey Lovitky filed the lawsuit on March 14. According to Politico, Trump mixed his personal liabilities in with his business liabilities, making it impossible for voters to get a true picture of his potential conflicts of interest. The purpose of these disclosure requirements is to allow members of the public to make informed judgments as to whether candidates for federal office have financial conflicts of interests that may impair their ability to faithfully execute their duties as public servants, Lovitky explained in the complaint.Lovitky s suit does not accuse Trump of any improprieties, but it does allege that the public has not been given truthful information regarding Trump s many debts due to the lack of clarity in the financial disclosure. If you just look at the statement on its face, all those liabilities are assumed to be personal liabilities, but I just do not think that s the case. I have information that says otherwise, Lovitky said during an interview with Politico.When Lovitky was asked why he decided to pursue this issue in court, he said that when it comes to Trump, there are very serious concerns about conflicts of interest. It s mostly the fact that with this president there are very serious concerns about conflicts of interest in this particular administration, and I think it s important that those concerns be addressed thoroughly, the attorney explained.Lovitky is not seeking damages in the suit and is only asking the court to declare Trump s financial disclosure illegal and order him to file a new one that accurately represents his personal debts. Currently, his next financial closure is not scheduled to be released until May 2018. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, has been assigned the case.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1real |
Young Rural Women in India Chase Big-City Dreams - The New York Times | BANGALORE, India — The factory floor is going full throttle when the new girls walk in. Everywhere is the thrumming of sewing machines, the hum of fans, the faint burning smell of steam irons. On narrow tables that run between the machines, Marks Spencer miniskirts are thrust forward by fistfuls. The tailors, absorbed in the task of finishing 100 pieces per hour, for once turn their heads to look. The new girls smell of the village. They have sprinklings of pimples. They woke well before dawn to prepare themselves for their first day of work, leaning over one another’s faces in silence to shape the edges of each eyebrow with a razor blade. Their braids bounce to their hips, tight and glossy, as if woven by a surgeon. On their ankles are silver chains hung with bells, so when they walk in a group, they jingle. But it is impossible to hear this sound over the racket on the factory floor. The tailors glance up for only a moment, long enough to take in an experiment. The new workers — teenagers, most of them — have been recruited from remote villages to help factories like this one meet the global demand for cheap garments. But there is also social engineering going on. A government program has drawn the trainees from the vast population of rural Indian women who spend their lives doing chores. In 2012, the last time the government surveyed its citizens about their occupation, an astonishing 205 million women between the ages of 15 and 60 responded “attending to domestic duties. ” Economists, with increasing urgency, say India will not fulfill its potential if it cannot put them to work in the economy. They say that if female employment were brought on par with male employment in India, the nation’s gross domestic product would expand by as much as 27 percent. Experiments like the one in Bangalore run against deep currents in India, whose guiding voice, Mohandas K. Gandhi, envisioned a socialist future built on the economy of the village. They also collide spectacularly with an old way of life, in which girls are kept in seclusion until they can be transferred to another family through arranged marriage. Bangalore is the first city the 37 trainee tailors have seen. They are dazzled by the different kinds of light. Picking their way through the alleys around the factory, a column of virgins from the countryside, they stare up at an apartment building that towers over the neighborhood and wish their mothers could see it. Among them are two sisters, Prabhati and Shashi Das. They have come from a village at the end of a road, a place so conservative that the single time they went to a movie theater, their male cousins and uncles created a human chain around them, their big hands linked, to protect them from any contact with outside men. They are, as far as they know, the first unmarried women who have ever migrated from the village to work. Neighbors in the village are waiting to see what happens. The nasty ones say, with obvious relish, it will end badly. They whisper about migrant workers whose eyes were removed by organ traders while they slept. They say Prabhati and Shashi will be “used this way and that. ” Still, they go. Prabhati, at 21, is stubborn and able, and Shashi, two years her junior, pretty and fizzing with suppressed laughter. The two sisters hook pinkies when they walk down the lane that leads to the factory. “All the flirts and ruffians in the whole world must have been born on this lane,” Shashi grumbles, but she is laughing. Attention is like water to her. The sisters are waiting, too, to see what will happen to them. They are both at the age when they could be summoned at any moment to be displayed to a family of strangers as a potential . And each of them wants something else, something impossible. It is late May, the first day of their factory summer — of love letters folded into squares and dropped onto work stations of fevers sweated out on the floor of a bare hostel room of supervisors shouting in a language they do not understand, a couple of words — “work” and “faster” — gradually becoming clear of capitalism, of men and of a bit of freedom. It all started in March, in the drippy jungle of rural Odisha, when two distant relatives happened to meet on the roadside. One of the men had found employment as a “mobilizer” for Gram Tarang, a agency contracted by India’s government to recruit and train workers. He mentioned that Gram Tarang was offering a cash incentive — roughly 450 rupees, or about $6. 75, a head — to mobilizers who identified young women willing to enroll in a training program for garment factory jobs. The second man, Hemant Das, perked up, sensing the approach of a change of career. Hemant had an underfed look and teeth rimmed with tobacco stains. Among the first college graduates from his family, he had tried his hand at laying bricks, tutoring schoolchildren, programming computers, setting up wedding tents and waiting tables before finally falling back on the only job widely available to men here, working as a field hand for 200 rupees a day. Hemant was from a village called Ishwarpur, and as it happened, idle young women were something Ishwarpur had in great quantity. That they could be monetized came as good news. On its economic merits alone, Hemant figured, the government scheme would prove tempting: After two months of training, their daughters would be placed in a factory in the industrial center of Bangalore, where they would earn the legal minimum wage, 7, 187 rupees per month, or about $108, which is more than most of their fathers make. Six months after arriving in Bangalore, they would be free to return home if they wished. Hemant set out the next day with a fistful of pamphlets and an uncharacteristically sunny disposition. But as he made his rounds of local families — 30 of them, at least — they shook their heads. No. “Letting go of female children is dishonorable, in itself,” explained Pramanand Das, who presides over an informal family council. Minati Das, the mother of a got to the point quicker. “Not everyone wants a who is a working woman,” she said. “They think she has lost her chastity. ” The village had its own plan for these young women. Upon reaching adulthood, they would be transferred to the guardianship of another family, along with a huge dowry that serves as an incentive to treat them well. The transfer is final. Once married, the new bride cannot return to visit her parents without permission, which is given sparingly, so that the bonds to her old home will weaken. She must show her submission to the new family: She is not allowed to speak the names of her because it is seen as too familiar, and in some places she is not allowed to use words that begin with the same letters as her ’ names, requiring the invention of a large parallel vocabulary. Each morning, before she is allowed to eat, the must wash the feet of her husband’s parents and then drink the water she has used to wash them. Hemant would have been completely out of luck if he had not thought to try Karuna Das, who had two daughters of marriageable age. Karuna was a sinewy day laborer, and he had roamed far from the village in his younger days to work in iron foundries in Chennai and Hyderabad. The gossip was that Karuna agreed to enroll his eldest daughters because he was unable to scrape together 100, 000 rupees for dowries. That was undoubtedly the case. It was also true that Karuna did not care much what other people said. He had never behaved like a poor man. When word spread that he had agreed to send Prabhati and Shashi, the village elders convened emergency meetings to determine whether this violated “purdah,” or separation between the sexes, and whether this would damage the marriage prospects of their own daughters. Women stopped by to tease the girl’s mother, Radha Rani, who wept inconsolably. It turned out that Karuna had not been asking for permission. He instructed his daughters to pack four or five changes of clothes. Go see what the world is like, he told them. “They were reluctant to go anywhere because they were a bit scared,” he said. “I told them being scared is O. K. O. K. you’re scared. Now you have to move on. ” Prabhati has never seen a train, much less ridden in one, and on the journey to Bangalore the earth seems to heave under her. As miles of paddy fields slide by, she vomits. Thatch roofs are replaced by peaked roofs, and she vomits. When they reach south India, rain begins to hit the window in fat spatters. It had come as news to Prabhati that the training program involved traveling 900 miles. But some intention had hardened within her. She wanted to prove the neighbors wrong. She did not care about her marriage prospects because, after examining the marriages that surrounded her in Ishwarpur, she decided she did not want to marry at all. “I will go to Bangalore,” she told her parents. “If I come back, then you can get me married. If I don’t come back, you can’t get me married. ” Shashi sits beside her retching sister and strokes her back. She had not wanted to come. Happy enough with a future as a housewife, she had focused her energy on making mischief. Among friends, she introduced herself as “45 kilograms of hotness. ” Out of the corner of her mouth came a stream of dirty jokes, and she made the other girls dissolve in helpless laughter by comparing breast sizes to vegetables (including, mournfully, a kernel of corn). Working on an assembly line was not Shashi’s idea of fun. But Prabhati plunged forward, and, as usual, Shashi cruised along in her wake. The sisters, lugging a bag of clothes, sit with 35 other girls from Odisha who are making the same journey. They have all dressed in baggy uniforms, with ID cards swinging from their necks. Their parents had made attempts to keep them from leaving, which had to be repelled with sustained tantrums. A girl called Baby, who is 18 and bespectacled, said that she had secured her mother’s permission only by refusing to eat for two days. “They wanted me to come home,” she says. “I’m not going home. ” The Gram Tarang instructors had taught them an anthem about and they sing it on their journey to Bangalore, again and again, for comfort. We will stay a month and train ourselvesThis job is the story of our livesThe job is as important as prayerWe won’t fear, and we will go ahead. The sun has not yet risen when they arrive at the hostel that will be their new home for the next six months: 137 women in 15 unfurnished rooms, every inch covered with girlish flotsam, underwear and bras drying on the window grates, sentimental verses penciled on the walls. Prabhati and Shashi’s room is being painted, so on the first night 25 of them crowd into two rooms, so tight that one of their roommates stretches out on the kitchen counter. “I thought there would be beds,” murmurs one, and the chaperone from Gram Tarang looks exasperated. “They complain, ‘You could have given us this, you could have given us that,’” he says. “We sweetly explain that it is not possible. They don’t have the bed system in Bangalore. ” But the girls are too keyed up to sleep. Climbing onto the roof, they can see the sun rising over a landscape of other roofs, where, in all directions, migrants seek a breath of quiet. There they can gaze up at the 22nd story of an apartment building, where residents come out to hang their laundry on balconies. It is the most amazing thing they have ever seen: big people looking tiny. “I want to see what I haven’t seen,” murmurs one of the girls, sleepily. “I want to see what I don’t even know exists. ” Baby says something about her eventual return to India, and when someone corrects her, she looks up sharply. “Bangalore is in India?” she asks. For the first few weeks, everything is new. Stepping out of the hostel, the trainees are surrounded by men: Men on balconies, men on scooters, men lounging in doorways, staring. The road is plastered with signs saying “tailors wanted,” and one girl gives a yelp of alarm, mistaking them for wanted posters. On the day of a Hindu festival, Prabhati peers down from the roof at a troupe of transgender dancers, smiling and twitching suggestively as men press in around them. When one bends down so that an onlooker can stick a folded bill in her cleavage, Prabhati is so shocked that she has an impulse to reach for a stone and throw it. “If this happened in the village,” she says, “you would all be dead. ” In rural Odisha they like to say that “a girl’s shyness is her jewelry. ” But here, there is no space for the newcomers unless they make space for themselves. To cross the street — a throbbing road coursing with auto rickshaws, clattering cargo trucks, scooters carrying whole families — requires stepping in front of the vehicles, if necessary stopping them with their bodies. The girls waver, and then they plunge. Much of what they learned in the village must be unlearned here. One evening when Baby begins preparing dinner, several of her roommates protest. She is menstruating, and caste tradition dictates that menstruating women must live in isolation, sleeping alone and taking care not to step into the kitchen, lest they contaminate the food and water. So two of the younger roommates cook, emerging an hour later with a glutinous, inedible glop. At this point, Baby is irritated. Menstruating women are allowed to work in the factory, aren’t they? She walks into the kitchen, and the scent of spices and onions fills the room. After a brief discussion, they agree that the menstruation rules will be void for as long as they are living in Bangalore. Then they stuff themselves with food and fall into a deep sleep. When they are introduced to a factory supervisor and dive to touch her feet, a traditional gesture of respect toward elders, the supervisor jumps back as if she has been stuck with a hot poker. She then assumes a slight crouch, as if preparing to defend herself from further reverence. Back in their bedrooms, the girls laugh hysterically at this. From childhood, they have been told that it is disrespectful for a girl to laugh out loud in the presence of elders. In the event of irrepressible laughter, girls must cover their mouths with anything at hand: the corner of a dupatta, a hand, a washcloth. This lesson, too, flies out the window. In the hostel they laugh like tractors. They laugh so loud they spit their water out. “I’m giving you 25 seconds to thread this needle,” the supervisor says in Hindi. The recruits, whose native language is Oriya, barely understand. tailors bend their heads, trying to guide frayed threads through a maze of eight loops. At the K. Mohan Company Exports Private Limited, the girls have entered a world of machines: massive industrial extractors, laser cutters, a protocol that kicks in when a needle tip breaks off. And yet, incredibly, garments worn in the West are still made by humans — nearly all of them women, working exhausting hours, with few legal protections and little chance of advancement, for some of the lowest wages in the global supply chain. As the trainees practice sewing straight lines on pieces of scrap fabric, supervisors pace the aisle, hoping to spot one with machinelike dexterity and speed. One of them slows, and then stops, beside a girl called Cuddles, the daughter of a truck driver. The supervisor blinks, looks again. This is — there is no other word for it — talent. She has covered the fabric with seams as straight as the lines on ruled notebook paper. Cuddles is among the first in the group to be integrated into an assembly line, bent over, eyes straining. Her task is to stitch together three small tags for the Marks Spencer stretch corduroy skirt: one that identifies the brand, one that gives washing instructions and one the size, a scrap so tiny that it is nearly impossible to hold straight between finger and thumb. If she allows a tag to slip to the floor, or fly away in the gusts from the ceiling fan, her salary will be docked. She will be under pressure to complete this task 100 times per hour for eight hours, with one break for lunch, for a base daily wage of around $2. A man with a loft of dyed black hair steps out of his office to greet the group. This is N. Manjunath, the assistant general manager for human resources at the factory. He is recruiting rural workers through the government program because he is desperate: are no longer interested in factory jobs like these, with their low pay and punishing conditions, and attrition rates are high. Migrant women are more docile. This is what Manjunath is hoping. Prabhati, Shashi and the other recruits take seats in a canteen, and sit with their hands folded in their laps. They are to work every day but Sunday. They can collect their pension in 40 years. Should they die on the job, state health insurance will cover funeral costs. They are drowsy. The numbers fly by them in flocks. When a response is expected, they chorus “Yes, miss,” or “Yes, sir,” as they would to a schoolmaster. Any questions? “Can we work on Sundays?” Manjunath thinks of himself as a kind man. But the complications of employing village girls have strained his last nerve: the weepy petitions for leave to return to the village for essential functions, like a father having a hemorrhoid removed the domestic squabbles, which on one occasion ended in the consumption of toilet cleaner and the “love cases,” in which a tailor, upon forming a romantic attachment in the factory, is summarily ordered home. Lately, when the girls come to him with complaints, he listens skeptically, with a sardonic smile. He assesses this latest batch of recruits, the second from Odisha, as “lackadaisical. ” He believes they have come here for an adventure, and will gravitate back to the village as soon as their parents tell them to come home. He is right to worry. After six months on the job, when the government incentives are paid out, around half the trainees brought in by Gram Tarang return to their villages. Only 40 percent stay longer than a year. It comes down to this: If the village has a plan for the girls, so does the factory. Leading them through the rows of machines, Manjunath wags his finger. “Don’t get married too soon,” he warns them. Within two weeks of their arrival, one of the sisters’ roommates has eloped straight from the factory gates, not even stopping by the hostel to pick up her clothes. Those who remain spill their secrets to one another. Tanushree Behera sleeps entangled with a girl she calls her wife. Jayasmita Behera is divorced, having left her husband less than two weeks after the wedding. “If I had stayed,” she says, “my life would have been destroyed. ” The rest spend their evenings in quiet conversation with boyfriends, whose existence is unknown to their parents. They examine each other’s palms for creases that indicate they will be among the small number of Indians — as low as 5 percent, according to one survey — who marry for love. At the factory, they stitch their boyfriends’ names on scrap fabric. Male tailors stroll by as they work, dropping love letters folded into fat wads, and the girls read them aloud, to comic effect, at the hostel. “My dear, my lever,” someone writes to Shashi in broken English. “I have tied you up in my heart. ” Sitting on the floor, they compare notes on evasive maneuvers they use to avoid being shown to prospective like Roadrunner slipping away from Wile E. Coyote. Shradhanjali Mallick, the beauty among them, says she used to have success with bouts of hysterical crying, but that moving to Bangalore has been more effective. “How can they marry me off if I am not physically present?” she asks innocently, and Prabhati laughs. “Let them hold a wedding of and ” she says. “Because that’s the only kind of wedding they will be able to pull off. ” This is not something Prabhati can laugh about at home. Her views on marriage were set in stone several years back, when a young wife in her village was set on fire in a domestic dispute. Prabhati has been arguing for years that she should be allowed to remain single, that her parents should proceed to fixing a marriage for Shashi, who is pretty and will get better offers. “I will become a nun,” she says. But her parents flick away her comment, casually, as if it were a fly. So she thinks of escape. This is a subject she cannot discuss with her sister. Three years ago, Prabhati came across a mobile phone that a secret boyfriend gave Shashi as a way of keeping in touch, rigged, as if for espionage, with no audible sound or light, to be switched on at times when they have agreed to speak. Prabhati snatched the phone away and informed her father. Shashi screamed at her father that day — don’t break that phone! — but she never saw it again. For months, she could not look him in the eye. The sisters were never as close again. When it comes to the future, Prabhati and Shashi keep their own counsel. By the first week of June, the new girls are praying for Sunday to arrive. Their joints hurt. Their backs hurt. They come home from the factory with fingers punctured by needles or sliced by industrial clippers. Sitting still for eight hours is strange and new, and at times, the boredom is maddening. They sing to their machines. They pull hairs out of their chins. Baby amuses herself by giving herself little scratches on the wrist. They are locked into the hostel except for “out passes” on alternate Sundays, which are granted by the factory human resources staff. A Gram Tarang “life skills” instructor makes the rounds inside the hostel, selling them jars of an Herbalife energy drink, which she tells them will help them keep up with the pace of work in the factory. It does give them energy — it includes caffeine and maltodextrin — but it also gives them diarrhea and eats up their remaining cash. This is no small problem, because they are running out of money for food. They count the days until June 10, when they will be paid for their first two weeks of work. Prabhati and Shashi, who had left home with 5, 000 rupees, or about $75, find themselves with 100 rupees between them. “If there’s no salary today, it’s going to be a problem,” Prabhati says. On June 10, they are not paid. Three more days pass, and they still are not paid. Outside the factory window the sky has turned black and the air is churning a curtain of monsoon rain is about to sweep in. About 15 girls walk into Manjunath’s office, hearts pounding, to demand their pay. He looks up from his desk, annoyed. The usual genial expression has vanished from his face. He explains that he cannot solve their problem: The company has opened bank accounts for them, but the bank has not delivered their A. T. M. cards. Anyway, he dismisses the suggestion that the girls are running out of money. And who, he wonders, has given them the idea that they can make demands? He surveys the group in search of its leader. “My clear understanding is that if you have a basket of fruits and only one is not good, it will spoil the other fruit,” he explains. “You have to take one out. ” When Jayasmita steps forward to say they have not eaten since yesterday, he swivels his head in her direction. He does not speak Oriya. “What did she say?” he asks a caseworker. The girls are promised an advance for rice and are ordered to leave his office. They shuffle out. They had been planning to stop working unless they were paid immediately, but their strike has lasted less than five minutes. Jayasmita slumps against a wall, and vows never to try anything like that again. “When you come to a new city,” she says, “you have to learn to care for yourself, and not bother with others. ” The money for the first two weeks’ work comes through three or four days later — after withholdings for pension, health insurance, lodging, food and kitchen furnishings, a grand total of 1, 874 rupees, or roughly $28. This sum must last them for the next month. In the hostel room where Prabhati and Shashi stay, the amount of the paycheck is not relevant. They have never earned money before, only asked their fathers for it. A wave of happiness washes over all of them. They do not feel like girls, they say: They feel like boys. They transfer credit — 30 rupees, 50 rupees — to the cellphones of their mothers, brothers, and boyfriends, as if they were distributing sweets to celebrate some windfall. Unable to wait, they call their families from cubbyhole A. T. M.s to share the news. This is not always welcome. Cuddles transfers a balance of 50 rupees to her father’s phone, but he considers it shameful to accept money from a daughter. He calls her, angrily, to say, “Never do that again. ” Cuddles doesn’t care she has never been so happy. Prabhati and Shashi are among the last to receive their A. T. M. cards. They find a bank machine in between Krishna Jewelers Pawnbrokers and Blooming Buds India Playschool. Leaving the A. T. M. Prabhati feels joy, but she is not the type of person who shows it. She scans the street, looking for some way to celebrate, and finally asks a man if she can borrow his bicycle for a moment. She climbs on top of it and pedals as hard as she can, her braid flying behind her. Then, taking note of his look of worry, she swings the bicycle around and returns it to its owner. Shashi dances down the stairs and most of the way home. The money sends a wild thrill through her, so that she wishes she could through the next month, and the month after that, and after that. So that life is a long string of paydays. The two sisters make a pact: They will stay in Bangalore at least a year. They spend much of their paychecks on nose rings for each other, tiny specks of gold. They place them on each other in front of their roommates, beaming, their faces so close together that they could be kissing. Then Prabhati lies down on her stomach, full length, cheek to the cool linoleum. She is not feeling well. It is strange that one of the first girls to falter is Prabhati, who was the most resolute about staying in Bangalore. She has contracted a fever that comes and goes for two weeks. She stops eating and then stops talking her eyes are so hollow that you could place a handful of rice in them. Shashi stays home, combing her sister’s hair and forcing her to bathe. But then she must return to work, and Prabhati is left shivering on the floor. “In city life,” Prabhati says, “even if you are dead, people will just get dressed and go to the factory without being bothered. ” Minati Mahji, who has lived in the hostel for six years, observes them wearily. Of 130 women who arrived at the same time, only she and her four roommates have stuck it out. She tried switching to another factory, but it was no better, and she wound up back in the hostel. Her pay has crept up to 9, 800 rupees, or $146 per month. She has seen wave after wave of young women arrive from the countryside, freshly hatched, and she knows how it usually ends — with the girl’s disappearance into that old world as a . “Whatever they are planning, it doesn’t happen like that,” she says. Even through her fever, Prabhati knows she wants to stay. She tries to keep her illness from her family, handing her crisp new bills to a doctor who seems to give all his injections in the buttocks. It is Shashi who tells their father that her sister is sick. Her father calls the Gram Tarang training center, demanding that Prabhati be sent home, and the training center calls the factory. On the day she is to board a train to return to Ishwarpur, Prabhati stands at the edge of the roof, tears streaming down her face, and watches her younger sister walk down the lane toward the factory. The mood in the hostel sags. “The day she left, she told me: ‘I told you I would stay a year. And I couldn’t even stay for two months,’ ” Jayasmita recounts. Minati doubts Prabhati will return. The family, having violated custom once by letting the daughters go, is not likely to do it twice. “People mean to come back,” Minati says. “But they don’t come back. ” On the assembly line, someone covers Prabhati’s sewing machine with plastic sheeting. Three weeks later, two burly men come to push it to an area marked “idle machines. ” Just like that, Prabhati is back in her mother’s thatch hut, feeding kindling into a clay oven. Coming home is like falling into cotton. Rice is sprouting up through great reflective planes of water, so vivid it hurts your eyes to look at it. The neighbors stop by, seeking an outcome to the family’s experiment. “So, are your daughters back from their jobs?” asks one, in a voice thick with . Prabhati’s mother, Radha Rani, takes her to a country witch, who traces shapes around her head with a broom and declares that someone has cast an evil eye on her. He blows on her, a holy wind. Outside there is the smell of things growing. Prabhati sleeps as if she is under a spell. When she calls her sister, hoping to arrange for her return to Bangalore, Shashi sounds far away. It turns out factory life agrees with Shashi. She has been absorbed into an assembly line expected to produce 100 pairs of khaki chinos an hour. In the morning she takes her seat among hillocks of pants, and spends the next eight and a half hours in a punctuated by the shouting of supervisors and a break for lunch. A whiteboard lists the target. They are always behind. Behind her in the assembly line, a potbellied man in his late 30s peppers her with the gustatory queries that pass for small talk in south India. Have you eaten today? Are you hungry? Do you want to eat more? She swivels in her chair to ask him, “Would you like me to shove these pants down your throat?” Shashi finds it interesting that she, the in the family, is the one becoming a city person. She examines her face in the mirror for signs that she is becoming paler. She tells the family that Prabhati should not return, and that she cannot send money home this month. Instead, Shashi arranges for a meeting with Sunil, a boy from a neighboring village whom she wants to marry. Six years ago, when Sunil first asked Shashi to meet him in person, she was escorted by a female cousin and was too shy to look at Sunil’s face. When he sat on the chair, she would go to the bed. When he went to the bed, she would go to the chair. Finally he told her to stop and listen. She sat still. Whatever it was he said to her, it made her feel that he was her own. “I love him, you know?” she says. “I do not know whether he is good or bad. ” Since that day three years ago when Prabhati discovered the cellphone Sunil had given her, Shashi has been proceeding cautiously with a plan to persuade her parents to agree to her choice for a husband. She and Sunil have chosen names, Situ and Sukhi, for a girl and boy. “If I work for a long time,” she says, “and I really insist on it, there is a chance. ” Now that her sister is gone, it is no longer necessary for Shashi to keep this a secret. It is a blessed relief, like taking off a shoe that is cutting into a tender part of your foot. On the August day when her third paycheck comes in, Shashi doesn’t tell anyone what she has planned. Leaving the hostel means breaking curfew, but she persuades her friends to go with her. The small group threads its way along the darkening street, past rotting cauliflower and coconut shells. The girls are headed to a bright shop where smartphones are displayed in glass cases. The shopkeeper is about 25, his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a glint of gold chain. He has seen many girls like these, provincials, fishing out coins at the vegetable market. He does not hide his disdain. But when Shashi announces that she wants to buy a Lava A59 smartphone, he is suddenly wide awake, respectful. Shashi’s face is a mask of concentration as she repeatedly counts the bills and arranges them into a fan to show the shopkeeper. The girls around her are hushed. The amount is more than half her month’s pay. It is the weightiest decision she has ever made. When they step back onto the street, something flickers across Shashi’s face — triumph — and she pumps her fist. Back at the hostel, she drops her new purchase into the hands of her roommates, who immediately go through it, looking for WhatsApp, which they discovered the week before. Sunil will be calling soon. He has been badgering Shashi to make this purchase so she can send pictures over the internet. She disappears into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. She is gone a long time. She lies for a moment on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Then she dials a number in the village. “Elder sister,” she says. “I got my phone!” September has arrived, and every day there is a new reason Prabhati cannot return to Bangalore. Her mother has stomach cramps. Her younger siblings’ tuition bills are due. No adult male is available to accompany her on the train journey. Prabhati mentally reviews the cost of the ticket: 1, 350 rupees for the train, 300 more for the auto rickshaw from Majestic Station. She jokes, a little nervously, that she should steal the money. A voice in her head tells her that if she doesn’t go now, she never will. And yet that voice is becoming fainter. She can feel the village’s drowsy peace overtaking her. Her mother says, in an offhand way, that it is time to start finding a groom. This is not how it was supposed to go. Shashi ensconced in the city, and Prabhati stuck in Ishwarpur. “Before, I was at home, and I didn’t know anything, and it was O. K.,” she says, dully. “Now I know something, and it’s not O. K. ” Back in Bangalore, the factory girls’ fathers have begun to call. They expect them to come home on leave in December, after the factory stint is up. Jayasmita’s father says a marriage proposal has come from a man in Cattuck. “I tell them I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “The moment I heard talk about marriage, I hung up. ” Shradhanjali says she will return, and plans to wriggle out of yet another proposal. “If possible, I’ll fight it off,” she says, but sounds uncertain. “You know where you’ll find her in a year?” Jayasmita says, teasingly. “At her . ” The factory girls seem less afraid every month. Shashi sees her boyfriend, Sunil, as planned. He takes the overnight train in from Kerala, where he has migrated for work. They meet at a nearby gas station and walk in a park for most of the day, holding hands. At 4 p. m. he returns to the train station and boards another overnight train back to Kerala. She uses Facebook and WhatsApp to communicate with him, as if the internet were two tin cans attached by a piece of twine. Every time they get into a fight, she uninstalls the apps. Her smartphone has become an appendage. She presses it to her ear while she is walking down the lane, striding over rats flattened into the pavement. Waking in the night, she rolls over and checks it for new messages. A group of her friends are toying with the idea of leaving the hostel, seeking work at another factory. She is amazed at how far she has come. On an outing last Sunday, she arranged to meet a male cousin, another migrant worker, and a group of them strolled together at the edge of a highway overpass, breathing in the exhaust from 12 lanes of traffic. They don’t have money to step into a restaurant, so they sit on a pipe on the ground outside a Toyota dealership, in the bright sunshine, comparing phones. That’s another thing: Shashi and her friends are not the new girls anymore. The new girls are arriving from Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. Their braids are tight and glossy. Dropping their bags in their rooms, they climb up to the roof to gaze at the building, which is the most amazing thing they have ever seen. Their eyes widen at the girls from Odisha, in their jeans and . The girls from Odisha regard them with friendly condescension. They invite them into their rooms, as if they’ve been here forever. | 0fake |
Scientists Say Melanesians Carry DNA Of Unknown Species | Posted on October 29, 2016 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in Sci/Environment // 0 Comments
People from Melanesia contain traces of DNA belonging to an unknown species, according to an exciting new computer analysis.
Scientists say that Melanesians, people from a region in the South Pacific, contain DNA of an unknown human species in their genetic makeup.
Ryan Bohlender told the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics that the DNA was very unlikely to be Neanderthal or Denisovan – but is likely a third, unknown “human” relative.
Sciencealert.com reports:
“ We’re missing a population, or we’re misunderstanding something about the relationships ,” Ryan Bohlender, a statistical geneticist from the University of Texas, told Tina Hesman Saey at Science News . Alien DNA? People from the Pacific Islands carry DNA from a third, unknown “human” relative
Bohlender and his team have been investigating the percentages of extincthominid DNA that modern humans still carry today, and say they’ve found discrepancies in previous analyses that suggest our mingling with Neanderthals and Denisovans isn’t the whole story.
It’s thought that between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, our early ancestors migrated out of Africa, and first made contact with other hominid species living on the Eurasian landmass.
This contact left a mark on our species that can still be found today, with Europeans and Asians carrying distinct genetic variants of Neanderthal DNA in their own genomes.
And that’s not all they’ve given us.
Earlier this year, researchers investigated certain genetic variants that people of European descent inherited from Neanderthals, and found that they’re associated with several health problems, including a slightly increased risk of depression, heart attack, and a number of skin disorders.
And a separate study published earlier this month found evidence that modern genital warts – otherwise known as the human papillomavirus (HPV) – were sexually transmitted to Homo sapiens after our ancestors slept with Neanderthals and Denisovans once they left Africa.
While our relationship with Neanderthals has been widely researched, how we interacted with the Denisovans – the distant cousins of Neanderthals – is less clear.
The problem is that Neanderthals are well represented in the fossil record, with many remains having been uncovered across Europe and Asia, but all we have of the Denisovans is a lone finger bone and a couple of teeth that were found in a Siberian cave in 2008.
Using a new computer model to figure out the amount of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA carried by modern humans, Bohlender and his colleague found that Europeans and Chinese people carry a similar amount of Neanderthal DNA: about 2.8 percent.
That result is pretty similar to previous studies have estimated that Europeans and Asians carry, on average, between 1.5 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA.
But when they got to Denisovan DNA, things were a bit more complicated, particularly when it came to modern populations living in Melanesia – a region of the South Pacific that includes Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, West Papua, and the Maluku Islands.
As Hesman Saey explains for Science News : “Europeans have no hint of Denisovan ancestry, and people in China have a tiny amount – 0.1 percent, according to Bohlender’s calculations. But 2.74 percent of the DNA in people in Papua New Guinea comes from Neanderthals. And Bohlender estimates the amount of Denisovan DNA in Melanesians is about 1.11 percent, not the 3 to 6 percent estimated by other researchers. While investigating the Denisovan discrepancy, Bohlender and colleagues came to the conclusion that a third group of hominids may have bred with the ancestors of Melanesians.”
“Human history is a lot more complicated than we thought it was,” he told her . | 1real |
Trump, Putin to talk over phone on Tuesday after Assad's visit to Russia: Ifx | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a telephone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the Interfax news agency cited the Kremlin as saying. Putin was paid a rare visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday. Greeting Assad at his Black Sea residence of Sochi, Putin said he would follow up the meeting with telephone calls to Trump and to Middle Eastern leaders including the Emir of Qatar. [nL8N1NR0K3] | 0fake |
Mexico expels North Korean ambassador over nuclear tests | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican government on Thursday said it had declared the North Korean ambassador to Mexico persona non grata in protest at the country s nuclear tests, an unusually firm step that moved it closely into line with Washington. In a statement, the government said it had given Kim Hyong Gil 72 hours to leave Mexico in order to express its absolute rejection of North Korea s recent nuclear activity, describing it as a grave threat to the region and the world. Mexico has traditionally sought to steer clear of diplomatic ructions, but in the past few months it has adopted robust language to condemn the governments of Venezuela and North Korea as they descended into increasing international isolation. Facing a rocky relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump due to his threats to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico has backed him diplomatically on issues that imply no great political cost for the government. North Korea s nuclear activity is a serious risk for international peace and security and represents a growing threat to nations in the region, including fundamental allies of Mexico like Japan and South Korea, the Mexican government said. Mexico s step follows a tide of international condemnation of North Korea for repeated missile launches in recent weeks that intensified again following a nuclear test on Sunday. An official at the Mexican foreign ministry noted, however, that President Enrique Pena Nieto s government was not breaking diplomatic ties with North Korea. | 0fake |
G.O.P., Once Unified Against Obama, Struggles for Consensus Under Trump - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Whenever a major conservative plan in Washington has collapsed, blame has usually been fairly easy to pin on the Republican who insist on purity over practicality. But as Republicans sifted through the detritus of their failed effort to replace the Affordable Care Act, they were finding fault almost everywhere they looked. President Trump, posting on Twitter on Sunday, saw multiple culprits, including the renegade group of conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and outside groups like the Club for Growth. Those groups, which do not always work placidly together, had aligned against the president and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the ultimate symbol of their dismay with the entrenched ways of the capital. At the same time, some saw the president as pointing a finger at Mr. Ryan when Mr. Trump urged his Twitter followers on Saturday to tune in to a Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, who went on to call for Mr. Ryan’s resignation. For eight years, those divisions were often masked by Republicans’ shared antipathy toward President Barack Obama. Now, as the party struggles to adjust to the political order, it is facing a nagging question: How do you hold together when the man who unified you in opposition is no longer around? Mr. Obama provided conservatives with not just a health law to loathe and a veto pen to blame, but also a visage that allowed their opposition to be more palpable. “With Obama no longer being there, the emotional element of the opposition is drained away,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review. Republicans also have to contend with an outsider president who never had much of an affinity or loyalty for their party, and who, as a novice politician, has not built the relationships in Washington that are usually needed to get big deals done. “There’s this disjunction,” Mr. Lowry added. “He doesn’t have a congressional party. He doesn’t even really have a wing of a congressional party. ” In the health care fight, it was not just the far right, egged on by outside groups, that split from the Republican leadership. There were dissenters among the more conservative lawmakers, those representing suburban communities outside Philadelphia and Washington and rural states like Louisiana. Even party leaders like Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, opposed the bill. Interest groups on the right were also divided, with natural allies like Americans for Tax Reform, the outfit, and Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by the Koch brothers, on opposing sides. While Republicans often said they would deliver freedom and good fortune if given their turn at the wheel, they are now jolted by the realization that their struggles to reach a consensus have thrown into doubt whether they can reach deals on other priorities like a tax overhaul, infrastructure, trade and immigration. “It is a challenge for the modern Republican Party and the Trump administration to figure out how to get to 218 on a regular basis,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, who supported the Republican health care bill that failed last week. Generally, 218 is the number of votes needed to pass legislation in the House. Mr. Norquist said the desire for sweeping change had distorted some conservatives’ perceptions about what could be achieved and how quickly. “They want to change the rules,” he added. “But until you actually change the rules, they’re there, and you have to live by them. ” In a sign of just how deeply this episode has shaken the conservative faction of the party, one of the Freedom Caucus’s members resigned in protest on Sunday, saying he no longer believed the group was effective. “Saying no is easy, leading is hard, but that is what we were elected to do,” said the lawmaker, Representative Ted Poe of Texas. What makes progress on any issue so complicated is the fundamental clash between the belief systems of Mr. Trump, whose instincts are more populist than conservative, and Republican leaders in Congress, who are more oriented toward a policy vision. “Trump, whatever else he is, was able to see that what was being offered to Republicans was not really what they wanted,” said David Frum, the conservative writer and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. “They wanted more health care for themselves, less immigration and no more Bushes. And what they were offered was no more health care, more immigration and a third Bush. ” The Trump administration wants to focus next on a tax overhaul. And on that Mr. Trump will probably find agreement with the Republicans in Congress. But crafting a plan that pleases most conservatives will not be simple. They remain split on some crucial details, like taxing imports. Some in the party, like Mr. Ryan, have favored such a plan, while others, like the political advocacy groups, argue that it could set off trade wars and drive up manufacturing costs. Speaking to the dismay among many on the right after the health care fight, Ann Coulter, the writer and pundit, attacked Mr. Ryan for pursuing “standard G. O. P. corporatist stuff. ” “What made Donald Trump stand apart from the crowd, and apart from the crowd from every presidential candidate for 20 years,” she said on Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “was immigration, trade, infrastructure, building a wall. Obviously, that was very, very popular. ” As for Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Saturday, a White House official said that it and Ms. Pirro’s attack on Mr. Ryan were a coincidence, but the president has been pressed by some advisers to consider Mr. Ryan’s role in the health care defeat. How Republicans resolve issues of debt and deficit spending also loom as tripwires to the kind of legislative progress Mr. Trump craves — especially after a rocky start to his presidency. These issues, which Mr. Ryan and many other Republicans have been waiting eagerly to tackle since they took power, are not especially important to Mr. Trump, who is more focused on the kinds of projects that are natural to him as a developer, like infrastructure. And esoteric debates over deficit spending will not matter nearly as much to voters as how their personal finances look. “When he goes back to Rochester in a campaign, he can’t talk about what’s changed in the deficit — no one will care,” said Frank Cannon, a longtime conservative activist. “But if he can talk about labor rate participation, jobs, jobs that are paying more, that’s what he’ll be judged on. And that’s what Republicans are going to live and die by in the next election cycles as long as he’s president of the United States. ” | 0fake |
DC IMAM: “Zionists Brought Trump, Like Hitler, To Power; We Have To Rescue The Dumb Americans” [VIDEO] | A DC Imam was caught on camera spewing hatred for Jews and saying the Muslims have to rescue the dumb Americans . This Imam is probably saying things just like this every week in his Mosque. It s no wonder we have terror and hate coming from the Muslims who want to kill us .do you think we need Mosque surveillance for hate speech just like this?Washington D.C. Imam Abdul Alim Musa: Zionists Brought Trump, Like Hitler, to Power; We Have to Rescue the Poor Dumb Americans pic.twitter.com/oZHXkjrjkJ MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) November 23, 2016It s when Imam s get caught saying things like this that you see the real agenda We went to this Imam s Facebook page and found this post: Mahmoud Abdul Rauf and Collin Kaepernick continuing the legacy! Notice that Kaepernick is wearing a Malcolm X t-shirt The Imam s Facebook page has several photos of his visits to speak in Iran He has several pictures with the president. He has this photo with the caption Greatness above it: So he s pro Iran and pro Cuba What does that tell you??? | 1real |
President Obama BURNS Canadian Ted Cruz With Epic Joke (VIDEO) | It was a slow burn, but President Obama made the audience explode in laughter with the punchline.During a state dinner in honor of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Obama delivered lighthearted remarks that included humorous shots at the Republican Party Primary race and the participants.Obama began by talking about how America and Canada are lands of opportunity and then he turned the birtherism of the GOP around and threw it right back at them in a burn Ted Cruz will feel on the campaign trail. This visit has been a celebration of the values that we share, Obama began. We as a people are committed to the principles of equality and opportunity. The idea that if you work hard and play by the rules you can make it if you try no matter what the circumstances of your birth in both of our countries. Obama started out serious and thoughtful, setting up those in attendance for what would be a hilarious joke at Ted Cruz s expense, thus once again demonstrating his mastery of comedy. We see this in our current presidential campaign. Where else could a boy born in Calgary run for president of the United States? Here s the video via YouTube.For years, Republicans have claimed that President Obama is illegitimate because they say he wasn t born in the United States even though records clearly prove that President Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother in 1961.But during this GOP Primary, Ted Cruz has been running for president even though he really was born in a different country, and only Donald Trump has repeatedly pointed that out throughout the race while other Republicans hypocritically remain silent.But President Obama also alluded to Trump in a separate joke, mentioning how Canada is welcoming Americans into their nation if Trump somehow wins the presidency and how our neighbors to the North refuse to build a wall to keep us out in our time of need. Where else would we see a community like Cape Breton, Nova Scotia welcoming Americans if the election does not go their way? And to the great credit of their people, Canadians from British Columbia to New Brunswick have, so far, rejected the idea of building a wall to keep out your southern neighbors. We appreciate that. We can be unruly, I know. President Obama s humor and quick wit will be sorely missed when he leaves office in 2017.Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
EXPOSED! OBAMA REGIME Gave MILLIONS US Tax Dollars To RADICAL SOROS GROUPS Used To Take Down Conservative European Nation’s Government | The cash flows through the State Department and the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), which is charged with providing global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. USAID has allocated about $5 million to leftwing Soros groups in Macedonia since 2012, documents show, and at least $9.5 million has been earmarked by the agency to intervene in the Balkan nation s governmental affairs for 2016-2011.Here s how the clandestine operation functions, according to high-level sources in Macedonia and the U.S. that have provided Judicial Watch with records as part of an ongoing investigation. The Open Society Foundation has established and funded dozens of leftwing, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Macedonia to overthrow the conservative government. One Macedonian government official interviewed by Judicial Watch in Washington D.C. recently, calls it the Soros infantry. The groups organize youth movements, create influential media outlets and organize violent protests to undermine the institutions and policies implemented by the government. One of the Soros groups funded the translation and publication of Saul Alinsky s Rules for Radicals into Macedonian. The book is a tactical manual of subversion, provides direct advice for radical street protests and proclaims Lucifer to be the first radical.Thanks to Obama s ambassador, who has not been replaced by President Trump, Uncle Sam keeps the money flowing so the groups can continue operating and recruiting, sources in Macedonia and the U.S. confirm.With a population of about 2 million, Macedonia has one of the more conservative governments in Europe. This includes the lowest flat tax in Europe, close ties with Israel and pro-life policies. The country recently built a border fence to crackdown on an illegal immigration crisis that overwhelmed law enforcement agencies. Between 10,000 and 12,000 illegal aliens were crossing the Greek-Macedonian border daily at the peak of the European migration crisis, a Macedonian official told Judicial Watch, and the impact was devastating. This is likely of big interest to Soros, a renowned open borders advocate who pushes international governance, diminished U.S. global power and an increase in Muslim immigration.This appears to be the case in Macedonia with the help of American financing.There have been a number of violent protests in recent months that have been coordinated by Soros Open Society Foundation through its U.S.-funded NGOs, sources tell Judicial Watch.Some U.S. members of Congress have expressed interest in the issue and have demanded answers from Ambassador Baily, USAID and the State Department. In typical fashion, the State Department has stonewalled the inquiries and USAID hasn t been much more forthcoming. Judicial Watch | 1real |
Alec Baldwin Makes Bombshell Announcement That’s Going To ENRAGE Trump | If things keep going as they are, we may see a surprising candidate on the 2020 presidential ballot. Our favorite Donald Trump impersonator could be running against Trump.59-year-old Alec Baldwin might throw his hat in the ring, because according to him, there s no one who can beat Trump. I would love to run for office because I think people need something different. I think that all the people that are on deck in 2020, none of them are going to win, the 59-year-old actor who plays Trump on Saturday Night Live told Extra in an interview released Tuesday.Without naming names, Baldwin reiterated, None of those people are going to beat him. Source: The HillBaldwin s wife doesn t seem to be on board. During the interview, she shook her head and said, we re not going to do that. Baldwin, though warned that if Trump were to be reelected, things would be a lot worse. You think things are bad now? the performer added. I ll tell you when things are going to be worse if he wins again. Baldwin has been playing Trump for a while now, to popular acclaim. He performed both that role and the role of Bill O Reilly on Saturday Night Live on Saturday.Here s the video:That s not the same as actually being president, though, but the fact that Trump is in office could ironically be reason Baldwin might stand a chance.Baldwin is a popular liberal who has long been very vocal about politics, but he s no stranger to controversy. In 2013, he left a message for his daughter calling her a rude thoughtless pig. Last year, he called a reporter by a gay slur.In normal political times, Baldwin s lack of political experience, along with his caught-on-tape controversies, would be an immediate deal breaker, but these are not normal times. Baldwin s flaws are far less glaring than Trump s. Then again, Democrats are always held to a higher standard than Republicans.Featured image via D. Dipasupil/Getty Images. | 1real |
The New American Century: An Era of Fraud | Paul Craig RobertsIn the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way. On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President of Russia had not prevented it. Washington is also behind the current destruction of Yemen, and Washington has enabled and financed the Israeli destruction of Palestine. Additionally, Washington operated militarily within Pakistan without declaring war, murdering many women, children, and village elders under the guise of combating terrorism. Washington s war crimes rival those of any country in history.I have documented these crimes in my columns and books (Clarity Press). Anyone who still believes in the purity of Washington s foreign policy is a lost soul Russia and China now have a strategic alliance that is too strong for Washington. Russia and China will prevent Washington from further encroachments on their security and national interests. Those countries important to Russia and China will be protected by the alliance. As the world wakes up and sees the evil that the West represents, more countries will seek the protection of Russia and China.America is also failing on the economic front. My columns and my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, which has been published in English, Chinese, Korean, Czech, and German, have shown how Washington has stood aside, indeed cheering it on, while the short-term profit interests of management, shareholders, and Wall Street eviscerated the American economy, sending manufacturing jobs, business know-how, and technology, along with professional tradeable skill jobs, to China, India, and other countries, leaving America with such a hollowed out economy that the median family income has been falling for years. Today 50% of 25 year-old Americans are living with their parents or grandparents because they cannot find employment sufficient to sustain an independent existance.This brutal fact is covered up by the presstitute US media, a source of fantasy stories of America s economic recovery.The facts of our existence are so different from what is reported that I am astonished. As a former professor of economics, Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, I am astonished at the corruption that rules in the financial sector, the Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and the Federal Reserve. In my day, there would have been indictments and prison sentences of bankers and high government officials.In America today there are no free financial markets. All the markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The regulatory agencies, controlled by those the agencies are supposed to regulate, turn a blind eye, and even if they did not, they are helpless to enforce any law, because private interests are more powerful than the law.Even the government s statistical agencies have been corrupted. Inflation measures have been concocted in order to understate inflation. This lie not only saves Washington from paying Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and frees the money for more wars, but also by understating inflation, the government can create real GDP growth by counting inflation as real growth, just as the government creates 5% unemployment by not counting any discouraged workers who have looked for jobs until they can no longer afford the cost of looking and give up. The official unemployment rate is 5%, but no one can find a job. How can the unemployment rate be 5% when half of 25-year olds are living with relatives because they cannot afford an independent existence? As John Williams (shadowfacts) reports, the unemployment rate that includes those Americans who have given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found is 23%.The Federal Reserve, a tool of a small handful of banks, has succeeded in creating the illusion of an economic recovery since June, 2009, by printing trillions of dollars that found their way not into the economy but into the prices of financial assets. Artificially booming stock and bond markets are the presstitute financial media s proof of a booming economy.The handful of learned people that America has left, and it is only a small handful, understand that there has been no recovery from the previous recession and that a new downturn is upon us. John Williams has pointed out that US industrial production, when properly adjusted for inflation, has never recovered its 2008 level, much less its 2000 peak, and has again turned down.The American consumer is exhausted, overwhelmed by debt and lack of income growth. The entire economic policy of America is focused on saving a handful of NY banks, not on saving the American economy.Economists and other Wall Street shills will dismiss the decline in industrial production as America is now a service economy. Economists pretend that these are high-tech services of the New Economy, but in fact waitresses, bartenders, part time retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services have replaced manufacturing and engineering jobs at a fraction of the pay, thus collapsing effective aggregate demand in the US. On occasions when neoliberal economists recognize problems, they blame them on China.It is unclear that the US economy can be revived. To revive the US economy would require the re-regulation of the financial system and the recall of the jobs and US GDP that offshoring gave to foreign countries. It would require, as Michael Hudson demonstrates in his new book, Killing the Host, a revolution in tax policy that would prevent the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing it in debt obligations paying interest to the financial sector.The US government, controlled as it is by corrupt economic interests, would never permit policies that impinged on executive bonuses and Wall Street profits. Today US capitalism makes its money by selling out the American economy and the people dependent upon it.In freedom and democracy America, the government and the economy serve interests totally removed from the interests of the American people. The sellout of the American people is protected by a huge canopy of propaganda provided by free market economists and financial presstitutes paid to lie for their living.When America fails, so will Washington s vassal states in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Unless Washington destroys the world in nuclear war, the world will be remade, and the corrupt and dissolute West will be an insignificant part of the new world.Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order. READ MORE NWO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NWO Files | 1real |
Judge seals all video depositions in Clinton email case: The Hill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered that all videotaped depositions in a lawsuit over Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s private email server remain sealed, The Hill newspaper reported. In a brief order on Thursday evening, Judge Emmet Sullivan granted the request of lawyers for Clinton’s ex-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, who had worried that video clips of her interview could be used for political purposes, according to The Hill. And Sullivan went further, ordering all videotaped depositions to remain sealed until he ordered otherwise, the newspaper said. | 0fake |
Gawker’s General Counsel Takes On a Leadership Role - The New York Times | Heather Dietrick, Gawker Media’s president and general counsel, has always been close to her grandfather, a prisoner of war during World War II who, she said, “has taught me a lot about fielding a lot of situations. ” She still wears his vocational high school class ring from 1943 as a reminder that people can get through anything if they are resilient. It’s the kind of inspiration that has helped Ms. Dietrick make it through the last 11 months at Gawker. These have been tumultuous times, perhaps never more so than last Friday at noon at the company’s Manhattan offices. After taking a few moments to collect her thoughts, Ms. Dietrick joined Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder and chief executive, at a companywide meeting. There they told some 200 employees that Gawker, facing a $140 million judgment from a lawsuit by the retired wrestler Hulk Hogan, had filed for bankruptcy and was putting itself up for sale. As she stood beside Mr. Denton and delivered the news, Ms. Dietrick said in an interview over the weekend, she looked at her audience. “I could tell there was initial shock, seeing everyone and looking them in the eyes. ” Ms. Dietrick and Mr. Denton spent much of the meeting answering questions and assuring the employees that the company planned to continue its operations during its bankruptcy. As has recently become customary, Ms. Dietrick did most of the talking. Since joining Gawker three years ago, Ms. Dietrick, 35, has become the main source of support during a chaotic time for the company. Most general counsels work in obscurity, but Ms. Dietrick, with the added responsibilities of president, has taken on more of a leadership role at Gawker as Mr. Denton has pulled back from the operations. Throughout the Hulk Hogan case, she has been the bridge between the newsroom and Gawker’s legal proceedings. She manages much of the company’s editorial operations and has a formal role in editorial . And though Mr. Denton is still arguably the public face of Gawker, she has been called on repeatedly to represent the company during periods of turmoil. “The place would not run without Heather,” Mr. Denton said in a recent interview. “She’s the person that holds everything together. ” In the last year, Ms. Dietrick, who has both a law degree and an M. B. A. from the University of Michigan, has had to try to steer the company through one crisis after another. Last month, the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that he was financially supporting the Hogan lawsuit and other legal cases against the company. That put Gawker at the center of a First Amendment battle that has captivated the media world while highlighting a deepening chasm between an ascendant technology industry and a journalism business buffeted by financial challenges. In the interview on Saturday, Ms. Dietrick said that Gawker began seriously considering filing for bankruptcy once Mr. Thiel’s involvement in the Hogan case became known. The pivotal moment came on Friday at around 11 a. m. after a hearing in which a Florida judge affirmed the $140 million judgment in the Hogan case and granted Gawker’s request for a stay, but under conditions that the company found too onerous, Ms. Dietrick said. The conditions included allowing Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea, to get liens on the company’s assets. Gawker had considered the option of filing for bankruptcy within a few days, Ms. Dietrick said. But as its lawyers in Florida provided updates on the hearing by phone, she and Mr. Denton decided the company could not wait any longer because they feared it would be unable to continue to operate otherwise. “The timeline was pushed forward a little more quickly than we expected,” Ms. Dietrick said on Saturday. “As of yesterday, it was inevitable that we were going to go through with the sale. ” The company still plans to appeal the judgment. Gawker has had its fair share of detractors, and on Twitter and in comments in news articles, some cheered the company’s fate. Ms. Dietrick said any suggestion that Gawker got what it deserved was “absurd. ” She said that the company had certainly “overstepped the line a couple of times” but that it was proud of nearly all of the stories it had done over the years. Ms. Dietrick said she was committed to staying at Gawker but acknowledged that its future was uncertain. The company said on Friday that it would conduct a sale through an auction and expected to close a deal by the end of the summer. Ziff Davis, a digital media company, has submitted an opening bid in the range of $90 million to $100 million. It was not clear whether a buyer would want all of Gawker’s sites, and it is possible that Mr. Denton might consider buying back Gawker. com at some point. Nearly everyone who works with Ms. Dietrick, who was in Hearst’s legal department before coming to Gawker in May 2013, describes her as nice. But that belies her steeliness in difficult situations. They also say she has brought a sense of professionalism and diplomacy that helps balance Gawker’s notoriously freewheeling spirit. She has built up a team of four lawyers including herself who handle vetting, contracts, licensing deals and most of the company’s other legal matters. And she has gained the trust of editorial staff members, who view her more as a partner than an adversary. Women at Gawker say they see her as an advocate at a company that has been criticized in the past for how it treats female employees. She often works on her laptop on a couch in the lounge area near the editorial team and goes out for drinks with employees. On Friday evening, she invited staff members to a rooftop gathering at her apartment building in the West Village, where she lives with her husband. People ordered pizzas and drank beer. Ms. Dietrick firmly believes in Gawker’s approach to news, current and former employees say. She is a staunch defender of the First Amendment and would rather figure out a way to tell a story than prevent it from running. “She believes in what we do as much, if not more, than I do,” said John Cook, Gawker Media’s executive editor. Last July, Gawker published an article claiming that a married male media executive had sought to hire a gay escort. The article drew a firestorm of criticism and there was considerable debate at the company about whether to remove the post. Mr. Denton ultimately decided to take it down after a vote that he said showed that the company’s management, including Ms. Dietrick, was largely in favor of doing so. But Ms. Dietrick maintained that she wanted to keep it online and that her stance was misconstrued. “I knew the world was going to have a discussion about it,” she said. “I think it’s hard to talk about things once they’ve been disappeared. ” Some colleagues suggest that her numerous roles may have stretched her too thin. “She actually has more jobs than one human should probably have,” said Hamilton Nolan, a writer who has worked at Gawker for eight years. Some in the media legal community question whether it makes sense for Ms. Dietrick to hold general counsel and president roles. Acting as both executive and lawyer, they say, can complicate privilege. Ms. Dietrick said she did not think her dual role was “that odd,” but acknowledged that the last year had been tough. “I feel like my job has been removing roadblocks,” she said. For all of the challenges, however, it is largely because of her roles at Gawker that Ms. Dietrick is now enjoying much more prominence than most general counsels ever do. “If I were her, I wouldn’t be unhappy being in her position,” said Sandra S. Baron, a First Amendment media lawyer and a former executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. “There’s nothing humdrum about what she’s doing now. ” | 0fake |
Senate Confirmation Hearings to Begin Without All Background Checks - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — As Senate Republicans embark on a flurry of confirmation hearings this week, several of Donald J. Trump’s appointees have yet to complete the background checks and ethics clearances customarily required before the Senate begins to consider nominees. Republicans, who are expected to hold up to five hearings on Wednesday alone, say they simply want to ensure that the new president has a team in place as soon as possible. “I believe all the ’s cabinet appointments will be confirmed,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said. But Democrats are calling for the process to be slowed and for the hearings to be spread out. That, they say, would allow more time to vet the nominees. “Our first overarching focus is getting tax returns and ethics forms,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota. In a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the leader of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr. said on Friday that “the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me. ” He said the packed schedule had put “undue pressure” on the office to rush its reviews of the nominees and he knew of no other occasion in the office’s four decades when the Senate had held a confirmation hearing before the review was completed. Mr. Schumer responded on Saturday by saying that the letter had made clear that the Trump transition team colluded with Senate Republicans to “jam through” the nominees. Several of the nominees are millionaires or billionaires and have vast webs of financial interests that must be untangled. The Trump transition team issued a statement on Saturday evening defending its handling of the nomination process. Richard W. Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, said he thought none of the nominees could receive a full vote on the Senate floor before the vetting was complete. Norman Eisen, Mr. Obama’s ethics counsel in his first term, said the paperwork delays were “totally . ” The status of the background checks and ethical clearances can change by the day. Republicans say they expect the missing documents to be submitted for all the nominees eventually. The hearings are scheduled to begin on Tuesday, with testimony from Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the nominee for attorney general, and Gen. John F. Kelly, the pick for homeland security secretary. On Wednesday, the parade of nominees is expected to include Rex W. Tillerson, the choice for secretary of state Betsy DeVos, the pick for education secretary and Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas, the nominee to lead the C. I. A. Later in the week, the billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr. chosen as commerce secretary, and Andrew F. Puzder, the labor secretary pick, are scheduled to come before congressional panels. While some of Mr. Trump’s nominees, notably Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the choice for health secretary and an ardent opponent of the Affordable Care Act, are certain to receive hostile receptions, large numbers of Democrats will probably vote for many others. Still, Democrats are preparing a furious assault against the nominees by going after the himself and trying to drive a wedge between them over his most incendiary promises, like banning Muslim immigrants and bringing back torture. “Where will they come down?” Mr. Schumer, the new Democratic leader, asked in an interview. “Will they try to persuade the president that’s the wrong way to take America?” Democrats plan to keep the focus on the to a degree with few historical parallels. New presidents usually serve as a backdrop this year, by contrast, Mr. Trump’s words will loom over the hearings as Democrats press the nominees to take a position on them. Democrats have little chance of blocking any of the nominees, having given up the use of the filibuster in such cases when they were in the majority, but they say Mr. Trump has handed them ample political ammunition. Mr. Sessions is certain to be asked whether he, as attorney general, would make good on Mr. Trump’s pledges to get a special counsel to “jail” Hillary Clinton over her email server. General Kelly can expect questions about whether he favors Mr. Trump’s call to build a wall on the Mexican border and create a database on Muslims. Mr. Pompeo is likely to be asked about his views on Mr. Trump’s support for waterboarding and his skepticism about the intelligence agencies’ findings on Russian election meddling. Mr. Tillerson will probably face a grilling over Mr. Trump’s vow to “cancel” the Paris climate accord. Mr. Tillerson has spent hours trying to quietly assure lawmakers that he would take a more distant stance than Mr. Trump on the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, with whom Mr. Tillerson had close relations as the head of Exxon Mobil. The Trump transition team, which did not comment on the background checks, is bracing its nominees for questions about the ’s more controversial positions, according to people with knowledge of the preparations. But officials would not say what tack the nominees would take in responding. “I have no doubt that the and a number of his comments will come up,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Mr. Sessions’s confirmation team. “But Senator Sessions has a long record of service himself. ” Mr. Sessions will testify before the Judiciary Committee, which is generally friendly territory for sitting senators. But he is likely to face blistering questions from Democrats who are concerned about his civil rights record. In the 1980s, racially charged accusations derailed his nomination to a federal judgeship. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said she would press Mr. Sessions to say where he stood on Mr. Trump’s pledges to have a special counsel further investigate Mrs. Clinton’s emails. “Hillary’s situation is done, and other than some kind of gross retribution, there’s no reason for that to even be something to look at,” Ms. Feinstein said in an interview. By posing tough questions, said Sarah A. Binder, a political scholar at George Washington University, Democrats will try to lure the nominees into inflicting political damage on themselves by adopting some of Mr. Trump’s more divisive language. She said the terrain was so risky that the nominees might be better served by adopting a stance usually seen only from judicial nominees: “Don’t take a position. ” Democrats intend to use all the procedural moves available to slow the process on the Senate floor, possibly spending up to 30 hours per nominee, denying Mr. Trump a full cabinet when he takes office. Republicans are indignant. “Holding up confirmations just for delay’s sake is irresponsible and it is dangerous,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. He added, “This is a dangerous world we are living in, and why in the world would we want to make it even more dangerous just to let our colleagues delay for delay’s sake Trump getting to fill his cabinet, particularly these important national security offices?” | 0fake |
Turkish Referendum Has Country Trading Barbs With Germany Over Free Speech - The New York Times | BERLIN — Germany and Turkey have been locked in an intensifying war of words over the past week, as campaigning heats up before an April referendum in Turkey on a new Constitution that would expand the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan, whose critics cast him as ever more authoritarian, badly wants a victory in the vote. With the referendum on a he and members of his Justice and Development Party, known as A. K. P. are desperate to campaign in Germany among the 1. 5 million Turks who are eligible to vote. “There is a need for the A. K. P. to secure as many votes as possible from the Turks living in Germany — that’s the basic ingredient,” said Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at Carnegie Europe, a think tank. “The yes vote is now in jeopardy, therefore votes in Germany are of course very important,” he added. But the campaign has put Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in a deeply awkward position. Mr. Erdogan’s opponents in Germany, both Turkish and German, say the president wants to use the freedoms of Western democracy to further consolidate his powers at home, and they accuse him and his men of using their right to free speech in Germany while denying it in Turkey. Of particular concern to Germany is a journalist, Deniz Yucel, who turned himself in last month, was held for 13 days and last week was ordered held indefinitely, with the Turkish authorities — including Mr. Erdogan himself — labeling him a terrorist. Mr. Erdogan and his supporters have jailed tens of thousands of people they claim supported a failed military coup against him last July. Turkey jailed more journalists than any other country in 2016, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. But both sides are now accusing each other of stifling free speech, with Turkish officials charging that they are being blocked from campaigning in Germany. Two Turkish ministers campaigning in Germany on Mr. Erdogan’s behalf scrapped rallies last week after local German authorities said they could not guarantee security. Germany’s federal government has denied intervening in any way. On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan accused Berlin of using Nazi tactics and threatened to stir a revolt if he decided to go to Germany himself and was somehow prevented from entering. (He previously campaigned in Germany in 2008, 2011 and 2014.) “Some friends talked about fascism,” Mr. Erdogan said at a dinner event in Istanbul. “I was thinking that fascism is over in Germany, but it is still ongoing. It is ongoing, obviously. ” Then he added: “My brothers, now they think Erdogan is supposed to come to Germany. I would come if I want to. I could come and set the world on fire if you don’t let me come in, or you don’t allow me to talk. ” On Monday, Ms. Merkel told reporters, “One can’t even really seriously comment on such misplaced statements. ” Ms. Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, said Mr. Erdogan’s language was “absolutely unacceptable” and that the government would relay that message to Turkey. “Concerning the rule of law, tolerance and liberalism, Germany is not to be bested,” Mr. Altmaier said. Analysts and commentators urged calm and noted that the sparring would benefit no one. Germany and Turkey are bound by the NATO alliance, aid from the European Union and an additional European Union agreement, negotiated by Ms. Merkel and worth up to six billion euros, or $6. 3 billion, if Turkey keeps refugees from fleeing across the Aegean Sea to Greece and into Central Europe. “The most important thing is that we have no interest in a rising spiral of insults — an insult arms race, or however you want to put it,” said Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute for Security and International Affairs, a think tank in Berlin. “That will not help us. ” He predicted relations could get back on track after April 16. In the meantime, Mr. Erdogan — labeled the “dictator on the Bosporus” by Andreas Scheuer, a leading politician in Bavaria — has come under fierce attack, and not only in Germany. In Austria, which has a sizable Turkish minority and a strong opposition, Chancellor Christian Kern said Turkish politicians should not campaign abroad. In the Netherlands, the nationalist Geert Wilders, who leads polls for elections this month but is unlikely to become prime minister, said he would declare all of Turkey’s ministers persona non grata. In Turkey, opposition politicians criticized the decision to block Mr. Erdogan’s allies from speaking to German Turks. The leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accused Germany of hypocrisy. “You teach democracy to the world, but you forbid two ministers from speaking with this or that excuse,” Mr. Kilicdaroglu said on Friday, in comments reported by Hurriyet Daily News. But some of Mr. Erdogan’s opponents noted the irony of the president defending his right to free speech in Europe, while eroding that of citizens at home. Aysun Gezen, one of an estimated 4, 000 academics purged from Turkish universities since the failed coup last year, said her case highlighted the Turkish government’s intolerance of dissident voices within its own borders. “It is impossible to say that there is freedom of speech in Turkey,” argued Ms. Gezen, who was a political scientist at Ankara University before being fired last year for signing a petition that criticized the government’s actions toward Kurds. She and her fellow petitioners were accused of creating terrorist propaganda. In addition to academics like Ms. Gezen, more than 120, 000 government employees are estimated to have been fired or suspended in recent months for perceived opposition to the government. On the day that Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, defended his opponents’ right to campaign in Germany, he also lamented his side’s inability to campaign freely in Turkey. In an interview last week with The New York Times, he said that the whole Turkish state apparatus was being mobilized behind the yes campaign, while voices in the private news media are stifled. State officials had made it hard for his colleagues to rent spaces for campaign events, Mr. Kilicdaroglu argued, while the police in Istanbul had failed to properly investigate claims that a group of had been shot at. “We repeat the same thing 100 times, but with the problem in the media, we can’t deliver our message to the masses,” Mr. Kilicdaroglu said. | 0fake |
Press release on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s meeting with Namibian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah - Russia News Now | This post was originally published on this site
On October 26, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Namibian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who has come to Moscow on a working visit to attend the sixth session of the Russian-Namibian Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation.
The parties spotlighted the traditional high level of the two countries’ mutual political understanding. They discussed partnership prospects in many spheres, particularly energy, fishing, railway transport, mining, and supplies of food and equipment. They exchanged opinions on topical international and African issues, including the UN reform, and confirmed their shared determination to work for enhancing the United Nations’ role in global affairs.
Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah highly evaluated Russia’s policy to promote peace and security, build up a broad international anti-terrorist front, and move towards a settlement in Syria.
The parties expressed concern over the remaining hotbeds of tension in Africa – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Western Sahara, Sahara-Sahel region and elsewhere, and spoke in favour of conflict settlement by political means through dialogue and compromise. Related | 1real |
Michigan Governor Gets Slammed With Racketeering Lawsuit For Running Flint Like Corrupt Business | If Michigan s embattled Republican governor thought he could simply keep his head down and he would be off the hook for what his administration did to (and didn t do for) the city of Flint, then he just got a very rude awakening. Rick Snyder and several of his staffers were just served notice that they were being sued for a pattern of racketeering activity. The lawsuit stems from a group of 15 Flint residents who saw the lack of action being taken at the criminal level and decided to seek damages at the civil one. Snyder now faces a RICO suit, the same typically used to take down corporations committing fraud and organized crime done by mobsters. Ironically, it s Snyder s conservative philosophy of treating his governance like running a business that may be his undoing. He wants to run the state like a business, attorney Marc J. Bern said of Snyder. Well. The citizens of Flint, as shareholders in the corporation of the state of Michigan, I don t think they were treated in an appropriate way. The lawsuit alleges that officials misrepresented the suitability of the Flint River water as the city s drinking water source for roughly two years and billed Flint residents at rates that were the highest in the nation for water that was unusable, resulting in the city s budget deficit being reversed.At first blush, using the RICO act, to go after a sitting governor seems like a stretch, but Snyder has always stressed how he hated government and considered himself more of a facilitator of private industry. To prove it, one of his first acts after being elected in 2010 was to give enormous tax breaks to his rich friends. In that light, proving greed-motivated gross negligence, and potentially willful deception, at the hands of Snyder s administration shouldn t be very difficult. Through emails, it s clear that both Snyder and the people who worked for him were very aware of problems with Flint s water. At the same time, the group made very little attempt to hide the fact that they hoped skimping on Flint s water safety would save them a few bucks in the long run. It was all part of that business-first mindset that Snyder trumpeted during election years.As The Washington Post put it:Snyder, a former accountant and venture capitalist whose Twitter handle is @onetoughnerd, took office in 2011 promising to fix the state s many financial problems by applying the expertise of outsiders who could reinvent the way government works. In Flint, where poverty had deepened after the departure of much of the auto industry, he appointed a series of emergency managers whose authority superseded even that of the elected city council.With his unelected cronies in place, Snyder focused on profit margins rather than the welfare of his state s residents. And to absolutely nobody s shock, the plan came back to backfire hurting Michigan s most vulnerable. Now he s being accused of the same crimes that took down the mafia. Should Snyder ever wind up behind bars, it s likely he would fit right in.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 1real |
Trump speaks with Palestinian leader Abbas - source | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday amid reports the United States is planning to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a source familiar with the call told Reuters. A senior administration official said last week that Trump would likely make the announcement on Wednesday, a decision that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said the president had not yet made a final decision. | 0fake |
PRESIDENT TRUMP SLAM DUNKS Golden State NBA Punk Stephen Curry Who Bragged About Not Going To White House To Celebrate Championship | In June of 2017, it was reported that the newly-crowned NBA champions the Golden State Warriors were preparing a political statement by refusing an invitation to the White House to visit President Donald Trump.The Oakland-based basketball team, led by head coach Steve Kerr, decided immediately after Trump s election on November 9 that it would shun the new president if it won the NBA championship, according to Comcast SportsNet.Golden State Warrior player Kevin Durant bragged about not visiting President Donald Trump at the White House if the NBA champion Golden State Warriors are invited. Nah, I won t do that, said Durant, the 2017 NBA Finals MVP. I don t respect who s in office right now. Yesterday, Stephen Curry bragged about not visiting the White House. Stephen Curry doesn't hold back on whether he'll vote to visit White House. pic.twitter.com/n2PBAtYQdA Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) September 22, 2017Today, President Trump who is clearly sick and tired of all of these overpaid athletes spewing a completely bogus narrative about him being a racist or supporting racism, shot back and rescinded Stephen Curry s invitation to the White House. In his tweet, President Trump reminding Curry that it s a privilege to be invited to celebrate their victory with the President. Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team. Stephen Curry is hesitating, therefore invitation is withdrawn! Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team.Stephen Curry is hesitating,therefore invitation is withdrawn! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017President Trump should have also reminded the petulant Stephen Curry that there s a high likelihood most of his fans couldn t care less about his political opinions, and that whining to the media about not wanting to go visit the President (who was elected by the majority of Americans) at the White House will probably not help his brand for future marketing gigs.If Americans are fed up with professional sports turning into political arenas, they can start by turning off so-called Sports networks like Disney owned ESPN, whose hosts are nothing more than political hacks promoting the hate and giving these overpaid athletes political views more attention than they deserve. Americans need to start turning off programs with controversial, race-obsessed hosts like Chris Hayes (who tweeted Curry s statement) and Trump-hating Jemele Hill who are more concerned about starting a race war in America than discussing sports. | 1real |
Conservatives Are Practically Ecstatic Over The Idea That Hillary Clinton Is Sick (VIDEO/SCREENSHOTS) | With nothing of substance to go on, conservatives have recently decided that the best way to prove Hillary Clinton is unfit to be President is to concern-troll her health. On Monday, right-wing garbage pit Zero Hedge published an article that postulates that Hillary Clinton is not healthy enough to be President because of a photograph that began making the rounds on right-wing websites over the weekend.NORTH CHARLESTON, SC FEBRUARY 24: Democratic Presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slips as she walks up the stairs into the non-profit SC Strong, a 2 year residential facility that helps former felons, substance abusers, and homeless move into self-sufficiency February 24, 2016 in North Charleston. The South Carolina Democratic Presidential Primary is held on February 27. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)This recent rash of attacks on Clinton for the photograph, which shows her being helped up the stairs after she slipped in February, is being presented as something recent and certainly not as a simple stumble on the stairs. This desperate attempt to malign Clinton has, in the short time since the photo s publication, become so downright insane that Glenn Beck s The Blaze was forced to step in and be the voice of reason:However, despite the photo s date, conservative outlets and blogs ran with the shock photo to showcase the questionable health condition of the former secretary of state in stories dated Sunday, Aug. 7.The Drudge Report even bannered the images on its site Sunday night with links of years when Clinton has supposedly fallen. Mediaite reported that the other links on the Drudge Report homepage included a YouTube video of Clinton stumbling as she boarded Air Force One in 2011 and a New York Times story about her treatment for a blood clot in 2013.Despite that idiotic speculations about Clinton s health have officially become too insane for The Blaze, the right wing has adopted them whole-hog. Another rumor the Stupid Part of America is using to support this insane theory spawned from a photograph of Clinton slipping on a stair accuses her of having seizures on camera. ZeroHedge posted random photos of Clinton coughing over the years, claiming that Hillary has at multiple times had convulsions that appear to be seizures on camera, including a series of seemingly inexplicable coughing fits. And then there was her on-camera seizure that wasn t a seizure: A frequently referenced video, shown below, alleging that Hillary may have seizure-like conditions emerged several weeks ago and has so far failed to lead to a conclusive explanation whether Hillary may have ongoing health problems and potential residual aftereffects from a blood clot in her brain sustained three years ago. ZeroHedge published a choppy GIF with no sound and multiple rewinds in an effort to deceive their really, really stupid readers into believing it was actually a seizure. The actual video shows Clinton was using exaggerated facial expressions to feign surprise when she was asked if she had spoken to Elizabeth Warren about the Vice Presidency.After her exaggerated reaction, which drew laughter from those surrounding her, Clinton suggested that people try the chai, holding up her cup. Snopes noted last month that: Notably, rumors that Clinton was captured on camera undergoing a seizure didn t start circulating until well over a month later, when they were presented without any evidence beyond uninformed speculation. But, hey, why not completely misrepresent it to cause conservatives to speculate about her health? Their other baseless attacks aren t working anyway. They re even speculating about Clinton s handler, who appeared on stage with Secret Service when a recent rally was interrupted by protesters. The man told her to keep talking and assured her that the protesters would be handled.Secret Service agents walk on stage during Hillary Clinton rally https://t.co/Btp1na4Pxt ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 4, 2016ZeroHedge informs us that the man might be a doctor (completely without evidence) who may or may not carry something that resembles a Diazepam pen for Hillary Clinton s alleged seizures.Since these accusations are baseless at best, they are quite popular with ZeroHedge s readers: Sorry, conservatives, but you have shown no evidence that there is need to question Hillary s health. Back to the drawing board, I guess.Featured image via Mark Makela/Getty Images (modified) | 1real |
Safety Pins Show Support for the Vulnerable - The New York Times | The recent presidential election inspired a notable amount of accessorizing, with hats and as impassioned voters wore their positions on their sleeves (or head or chest). The postelection atmosphere suggests this trend is not slowing down any time soon. The latest political fashion statement? The safety pin, an object that’s been adopted in the past by celebrities (remember Elizabeth Hurley’s Versace dress?) and the punk movement. After the election of Donald J. Trump, fears are growing that segments of his base may physically or emotionally abuse minorities, immigrants, women and members of the L. G. B. T. community. As a show of support, groups of people across America are attaching safety pins to their lapels, shirts and dresses to signify that they are linked, willing to stand up for the vulnerable. “It’s a matter of showing people who get it that I will always be a resource and an ally to anyone and everyone who wants to reach out,” said Kaye Kagaoan, 24, a graphic designer from the Philippines who lives in Brooklyn. “When I saw it on Facebook, it was so simple. It resonated with me. ” On Friday, the actor Patrick Stewart posted a photo of himself to Twitter wearing a pin on his jacket, and the photographer Cass Bird shared an Instagram post about why she’s wearing one that started with “If you wear a hijab, I’ll sit with you on the train” and ended with: “If you need me, I’ll be with you. All I ask is that you be with me, too. ” Between the two statements, sentences began with “If you’re a person of color … ” and “If you’re a refugee … ” and offered various forms of support. The actress Jaime King posted the same words to her Instagram account. In wearing the safety pin, participants are taking a page from protesters of the Brexit referendum results. After British citizens voted to leave the European Union in June, the nation experienced a 57 percent rise in reported xenophobic incidents. An American woman living in Britain tweeted a suggestion that people wear safety pins to show support to those experiencing abuse. Two days later, #safetypin was trending on Twitter. The woman, who used a Twitter account, @cheeahs, that has been deleted, had been inspired by the #illridewithyou movement in Australia, in which people offered to take public transportation with Muslims fearing a backlash after a Muslim gunman held people hostage in a cafe in 2014. Those who’ve donned the pin over the last week are quick to point out that their message isn’t necessarily in opposition to the . “More than anything, it’s ” said Sabrina Krebs, 22, a Barnard student from Guatemala City. “I wouldn’t say it’s resistance towards Trump. It’s a form of resistance to hate and to negativity. ” It is also, Ms. Krebs noted, a readily accessible item. “Everyone has safety pins in their house,” she said. “It’s something everyone can join. ” (But in case someone wants a more haute kind of protest, fashion has already jumped on the movement, with Fashionista suggesting “13 Safety Pin Brooches to Wear Now and for the Next Four Years,” with items ranging from a pin to one with crystal embellishments.) And it’s easy to put on. “It doesn’t take much to wear a safety pin,” said Robert Clarke, 52, a truck driver from Harrington Park, N. J. “I have them on several jackets, so I don’t have to think about it. ” Some Twitter users voiced criticisms of the trend, calling it “slacktivism,” a word that blends “slacker” and “activism. ” They expressed concern that wearing something doesn’t equate to action. Christopher Keelty, an author and nonprofit denounced the safety pins as something white people are wearing to assuage their guilt. “They’ll do little or nothing to reassure the marginalized populations they are allegedly there to reassure marginalized people know full well the long history of white people calling themselves allies while doing nothing to help, or even inflicting harm on, Americans,” he wrote. Wearers responded by acknowledging the critique. “I recognize that wearing a #safetypin is not sufficient action and does not supplement provide active, constructive work,” @OliviaHungers wrote. “Donate time. Donate money. Support people in your community with action. If you still wear the pin be sure to be ready to back it up. ” For his part, Mr. Clarke said that the pin isn’t just a signal of allegiance to those he encounters, but a constant reminder to himself. “A big part of wearing it is the mental preparation on my part,” he said. “If I do see something, I’ve thought it through, and I’ll stand up and say something and not be a silent witness. ” | 0fake |
What we've forgotten about childhood disease risks | Cynthia Leifer is an associate professor of immunology at Cornell University and a 2015 Public Voices Fellow at the Op-Ed Project. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.
(CNN) More than 100 people in 14 states were reported to have measles last month, with most cases linked to exposure to the disease at Disneyland from December 15 to December 20. President Obama urged parents to make sure their children are vaccinated. And yet three potential Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election have suggested in recent days that parents should have a choice in whether children should be vaccinated.
When we are not exposed to the suffering that childhood infectious diseases can cause or didn't experience them ourselves, we as a society tend to forget just how dangerous they can be.
In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes Foundation. Children and adults everywhere collected dimes to raise money for the development of a polio vaccine. There was such fear about the disease that children were kept from going to community swimming pools and parks. Their way of life was changed by the disease.
Today, in contrast, we don't seem to be alarmed at all. Federal research funds , the major source of funding to support research by immunologists, virologists, and other scientists who create the vaccines that protect us, were 22% less in 2014 than they were in 2003 when adjusted for inflation. Why was everyone so gung-ho to raise money for research then but not now? Because we forgot.
We forgot that the "black death" plague of the 14th century wiped out 60% of Europeans. We forgot that smallpox killed 30% of people who got sick before a vaccine was available.
We also forgot that the smallpox vaccination campaign was so successful that the last case of smallpox in the United States was in 1949, and, with the exception of two vials in storage, it was eliminated from the planet in 1977. By forgetting the sheer horror these diseases inflicted on humanity and the decisive way in which vaccines eliminated them, it's easy to forget how fragile we are.
Those parents saw children crippled by the polio virus; they saw images of iron lungs that breathed for a child because the child's own lungs were effectively paralyzed. Those parents willingly enrolled their children in the trial despite not knowing if their child would be in the group that received the vaccine or the control group that did not. They were terrified enough that the benefit outweighed the risk.
More recently however, for some parents, the risk has outweighed the benefit. They have become complacent. Maybe they bought into disproven science about a link between autism and vaccines. Maybe they think because they have not seen anyone with polio, that their child is safe. Our collective historical amnesia has led to increased numbers of unvaccinated children, and we are all worse off for it.
The recent outbreak at Disneyland will hopefully boost our collective memory as to how contagious a virus can be. The 102 cases reported in January is a staggering number when we consider that for the past decade, the average total number of cases in a year was under 150.
Many, but not all, of these cases were in individuals who did not receive the full course of childhood vaccinations, making us realize that any one of us could be at risk. Given that there are only a limited number of doctors still around that have ever seen a patient with measles, or remember diagnosing a case of measles decades ago, only compounds the problem and aids the spread of disease.
The unfortunate reality is that it may take the occasional serious outbreak to provide that reminder to all of us how quickly we can be overcome by something as tiny as a virus. Today's tourist destinations are just like the pools and parks when polio was rampant, places for the virus to find new victims.
Viruses don't care about borders and easily hitch rides around the world in a matter of hours. We can't protect against every infectious disease, but why should we risk getting sick from diseases, especially measles, for which we have safe and effective vaccines?
We can all hope that parents will see this as a wake-up call and vaccinate their children, and that all of us will make sure we are up to date on our boosters. Hopefully, the memory of these events will not fade so we won't need a reminder like the measles outbreak of 2015 again any time soon. | 0fake |
Will Michelle Obama Be The Replacement Nominee If The FBI Email Investigation Ends Hillary Clinton’s Campaign? | in: Politics , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests “And I certainly hope that Michelle Obama does not become the nominee if Hillary Clinton has to step aside, because Donald Trump would have an exceedingly difficult time defeating her.” I realize that this headline must sound extremely bizarre, but in this article I will explain why this could actually happen. We have just learned that the FBI has obtained a search warrant that will enable the agency to examine approximately 650,000 emails that are sitting on electronic devices owned by Huma Abedin and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. Now that the FBI is going through these emails, it is unlikely but still possible that a decision about whether or not to charge Hillary Clinton with a crime could be made by November 8th. Of course the most likely scenario is that Hillary Clinton will not be indicted before election day and that Americans will be voting with this scandal hanging ominously over the Clinton campaign. But if the FBI does quickly take action, it is possible that Hillary Clinton could be forced from the race before election day, and that would require the Democrats to come up with a new candidate. In fact, there are already calls in the mainstream media for Clinton to willingly remove herself from the race. For example, the following comes from a Chicago Tribune article entitled “ Democrats should ask Clinton to step aside “… So what should the Democrats do now? If ruling Democrats hold themselves to the high moral standards they impose on the people they govern, they would follow a simple process: They would demand that Mrs. Clinton step down, immediately, and let her vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, stand in her place. Democrats should say, honestly, that with a new criminal investigation going on into events around her home-brew email server from the time she was secretary of state, having Clinton anywhere near the White House is just not a good idea. But what the author of that article does not understand is that Tim Kaine would not automatically take her place if Clinton steps down before the election. In a previous article , I included a quote from a U.S. News & World Report article that explained what would happen if Hillary Clinton was removed from the Democratic ticket for some reason prior to November 8th… If Clinton were to fall off the ticket, Democratic National Committee members would gather to vote on a replacement. DNC members acted as superdelegates during this year’s primary and overwhelmingly backed Clinton over boat-rocking socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach says there currently are 445 committee members – a number that changes over time and is guided by the group’s bylaws, which give membership to specific officeholders and party leaders and hold 200 spots for selection by states, along with an optional 75 slots DNC members can choose to fill. But the party rules for replacing a presidential nominee merely specify that a majority of members must be present at a special meeting called by the committee chairman. The meeting would follow procedures set by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and proxy voting would not be allowed. So if this email scandal forced Hillary Clinton to exit the race at the last minute, a majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee would gather to select a new nominee. Who would they choose? Let’s take a look at the top five options… #1 Tim Kaine He would seem to be an obvious choice since he is Hillary Clinton’s running mate. But to win a national campaign you need to have name recognition, and most Americans outside of the state of Virginia have very little familiarity with him. And at this point he has proven to have very little popularity on the campaign trail. In fact, attendance at many of his rallies in key swing states can be measured in the dozens. So to me it seems unlikely that the DNC would select Kaine as the replacement nominee. #2 Joe Biden Vice-President Joe Biden has far more name recognition than Tim Kaine does, and in recent days he has been touting how he believes that he would have actually won the nomination if he would have decided to run … Vice President Joe Biden said in a recent interview that he believed he could have beat former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination had he pursued it. Biden was asked in an interview with CNN Saturday if news that the FBI was re-opening their criminal probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state made him second-guess his decision last year not to run. But according to the vice president, the short answer is “no.” The only thing that kept him from running, Biden said, was the recent death of his son, Beau. Unfortunately for Biden, he suffers from many of the same things that Kaine does. Biden is boring, he is not very good on the campaign trail, and he doesn’t have the sort of charisma that would motivate people to go to the polls in large numbers. Biden would probably represent the “safest” choice for the Democrats, but he might not be a winning choice. #3 Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders would seem to be a logical choice since he was the runner-up to Hillary Clinton, but the truth is that there are a lot of things working against Bernie Sanders. First of all, he does not have any real loyalty to the Democrats. He has previously operated as an independent, and he expressed a desire to return to independent status once the campaign was over. Secondly, the Democratic establishment very much dislikes him, and that plays a huge role in decisions such as this. Thirdly, Democratic insiders fear that he would be “another McGovern” and would get absolutely wiped out in a general election. So even though he is very popular with the radical left, it appears that Sanders would be the least likely choice on this list. #4 Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren would be very popular with the “Bernie Sanders” wing of the party, and she would enable the party to replace Hillary Clinton with another woman. So she is definitely a possibility. But she does lack name recognition, and just like Sanders there would be concern that the Republicans would frame her candidacy as “another McGovern” because of her far left policies. #5 Michelle Obama One recent survey found that 67 percent of all Democrats would rather have a third term for Obama than a first term for Hillary Clinton. And these days Barack Obama’s approval rating is running anywhere from +9 to +11. So the thought of another Obama in the White House is not as far-fetched as you might think. Michelle Obama has better name recognition than anyone else on this list, and she is generally very well-liked by the American people. And she has received a tremendous amount of praise for her work on the campaign trail recently. For instance, her recent speech in New Hampshire was lauded as “the most influential speech of the 2016 campaign” in a recent MSN article entitled “ In this campaign, Michelle Obama became more than just another political voice “… The speech, amplified by timing and met with an enthusiastic response, cemented Obama’s place as a star of the presidential race and put a defining stroke not just on how women view Trump, but also on herself as a voice of moral authority. Three months before leaving the White House, she already is among the ranks of public figures who transcend politics and title. “When you rise to a level like that, you see how much weight your words carry,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush and executive in residence at the School of Public Affairs at American University. “We know she didn’t like politics. But she was impassioned by the language that was used, and she feels compelled to speak out. People listen to her.” If I were the Democrats, Michelle Obama is the one that I would select if a replacement nominee was needed, because she would give them the very best chance of winning against Donald Trump. Of course the Obamas are just as radical as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but the American people have become quite comfortable with them at this point. And I certainly hope that Michelle Obama does not become the nominee if Hillary Clinton has to step aside, because Donald Trump would have an exceedingly difficult time defeating her. In the final analysis, none of this is probably going to matter anyway because it is unlikely that the FBI will move quickly enough to force Hillary Clinton out before election day, but there is still a small chance that it could actually happen. And if it does happen, it is going to turn politics in America completely upside down. Submit your review | 1real |
Why Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, 'won' town hall | Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28. The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state was the first woman to lead the presidential ticket of a major political party.
Clinton waves to the media in January 1996 as she arrives for an appearance before a grand jury in Washington. The first lady was subpoenaed to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas. The Clintons' business investment was investigated, but ultimately they were cleared of any wrongdoing.
Clinton looks on as her husband discusses the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 26, 1998. Clinton declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." In August of that year, Clinton testified before a grand jury and admitted to having "inappropriate intimate contact" with Lewinsky, but he said it did not constitute sexual relations because they had not had intercourse. He was impeached in December on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Obama and Clinton talk on the plane on their way to a rally in Unity, New Hampshire, in June 2008. She had recently ended her presidential campaign and endorsed Obama.
In this photo provided by the White House, Obama, Clinton, Biden and other members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
Clinton checks her Blackberry inside a military plane after leaving Malta in October 2011. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a personal email account during her time as secretary of state. The account, fed through its own server, raises security and preservation concerns. Clinton later said she used a private domain out of "convenience," but admits in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails.
Clinton testifies about the Benghazi attack during a House committee meeting in October 2015. "I would imagine I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she said during the 11-hour hearing. "I have lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done." Months earlier, Clinton had acknowledged a "systemic breakdown" as cited by an Accountability Review Board, and she said that her department was taking additional steps to increase security at U.S. diplomatic facilities.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders shares a lighthearted moment with Clinton during a Democratic presidential debate in October 2015. It came after Sanders gave his take on the Clinton email scandal. "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails," Sanders said. "Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing the United States of America."
After Clinton became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, this photo was posted to her official Twitter account. "To every little girl who dreams big: Yes, you can be anything you want -- even president," Clinton said. "Tonight is for you."
Obama hugs Clinton after he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The president said Clinton was ready to be commander in chief. "For four years, I had a front-row seat to her intelligence, her judgment and her discipline," he said, referring to her stint as his secretary of state. | 0fake |
Donald Trump Makes Another Truly Pathetic Attempt At Making Hispanics Like Him (VIDEO) | Donald Trump just can t accept that he has completely demolished any and all chances of winning over the Hispanic vote.Refusing to be discouraged by the fact that he s offended the Hispanic community since day one of his disgraceful presidential campaign and continuously pummeled the minority group throughout the election cycle, the presumptive Republican nominee is trying to reach out to the very community that he said was made up of rapists and drug dealers. Trump gave his first direct message to Hispanic conservatives over the phone, while sitting alone on a private plane. It s truly bizarre and uncomfortable to watch, but then again so is everything else The Donald does. During his 2-minute message, which was aired at the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference in California, Trump promised to do away with minority unemployment and stop illegal drug cartels. While Trump rattled off a few more talking points, the business mogul s main message to Hispanics could be summed up in these few sentences: National. Hispanic. Christian. Three great words. We re going to take care of you. We re going to work with you. You re going to be very happy. You re gonna like President Trump. You can watch Trump s awkward message below:The idea of Trump sincerely trying to portray himself as a great candidate for Hispanic voter is, quite frankly, hilarious. As much as Trump loves his polls, he must be absolutely oblivious or in severe denial it s been widely reported that Trump is still struggling big time to get support from the Hispanic community, and that s probably not going to change anytime soon.Many Hispanic voters have pledged their support to Trump s rival, Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, with only 23% of them stating that they would vote for Trump in November. In fact, many Hispanics registered for the first time this year for the sole purpose of voting AGAINST Trump. No matter how hard Trump tries to undo the damage he did in the beginning of his campaign, his attempts will likely fall short. The Hispanic community will not forget his offensive, hateful rhetoric, and neither should the rest of us.Featured image via Scott Olson / Getty Images | 1real |
Mattis visits Seoul for defense talks as tensions climb | SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis flew into Seoul on Friday for annual defense talks as tensions with North Korea climb ahead of a visit to the region next month by President Donald Trump. Mattis has emphasized diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis during his week-long trip to Asia, even as North Korea’s weapons tests and bellicose verbal exchanges between Pyongyang and Washington stoke fears of an armed confrontation. “I carried the message that the more we do together today the greater the chance for enduring peace in the future,” Mattis said earlier this week, looking back at three days of meetings with Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines. “That’s really what it was all about – to keep the (North Korea) effort firmly in the diplomatic lane for resolution.” Even before landing in Seoul, Mattis held a meeting in the Philippines on Monday with his South Korea and Japanese counterparts, where they agreed to keep bolstering intelligence sharing about North Korea and enhance exercises. “Now we got to do the ‘roll up our sleeves’ (work) and do the pragmatic planning and coordination,” he told reporters. Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera warned the threat from North Korea has grown to a “critical and imminent level”. CIA chief Mike Pompeo said last week North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent. U.S. intelligence experts say Pyongyang believes it needs the weapons to ensure its survival and have been skeptical about diplomatic efforts, focusing on sanctions, to get Pyongyang to denuclearize. The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on seven North Korean individuals and three entities for “flagrant” human rights abuses, including killings, torture, forced labor and the hunting down of asylum seekers abroad. Mattis is expected to meet South Korean leaders on Friday before he joins the top U.S. military officer, Marine General Joseph Dunford, at the annual “Security Consultative Meeting” with South Korea’s military on Saturday. The visit comes just before Trump’s departs on Nov. 3 to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, a trip which is expected to be dominated by the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea. Trump, in a speech last month at the United Nations, threatened to destroy North Korea if necessary to defend itself and allies. Kim has blasted Trump as “mentally deranged.” Despite the rhetoric, White House officials say Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution of the standoff. But all options, including military ones, are on the table. Mattis, for his part, dismissed the idea that U.S. allies were confused about the U.S. approach, noting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent trip to Beijing to get China to do more to pressure Pyongyang. China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner. “Do we have military options in defense for attack, if our allies are attacked? Of course we do. But everyone is out for a peaceful resolution,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him earlier this week. “No one’s rushing for war.” | 0fake |
FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: Why Obama is Guilty of REAL Hillary Obstruction [Video] | Former AG Mukasey went there during two morning show appearances today. He told Bill Hemmer he sees no crime in the Russia probe then told Maria Bartiromo of FOX Business (video below) that Obama may be guilty of obstruction in the investigation into Hillary s email: President Obama s statement that he thought she shouldn t be charged because she didn t intend to violate the law is the real Clinton obstruction because that is a statement by him that this is the way I want that investigation to come out A take on the matter, for what it s worth. Mukasey: I don t see evidence of any crime in Russia probe https://t.co/b4KNztDyLk Mister Eerie (@Psychogrotesque) June 13, 2017 Mukasey: He was introducing an element that was not in the statute to know you re violating the law and he was saying that, that was the way he wanted the investigation to end. Obviously the Justice Department picked up on that. In his testimony last week, former FBI Director James Comey said Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to call the Hillary Clinton probe a matter, not an investigation, but Mukasey said that s not breaking the law. That s, I think, not obstruction because she s simply playing the same card the Clinton campaign is playing, Mukasey said.On Tuesday, President Trump said on Twitter that Lynch committed a crime and gave Hillary Clinton a free pass and protection. A.G. Lynch made law enforcement decisions for political purposes gave Hillary Clinton a free pass and protection. Totally illegal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2017Meanwhile Democratic lawmaker Diane Feinstein said she wanted to open an investigation into Loretta Lynch s statement, but Mukasey said calling it a matter is just the tip of the iceberg. Then you re talking about how come the Justice Department didn t use the Grand Jury. How come they interviewed her at the end and two days later Jim Comey came out with a statement, Mukasey said, noting that the Lynch interview was not recorded. This was an un-serious investigation. FORMER AG MUKASEY DIGS INTO COMEY: DEVIOUS Former AG Michael Mukasey considers #Comey s calculated move regarding his memo extraordinarily devious ! #DrainTheDeepState @POTUS #1A pic.twitter.com/ploVQsdFzf eternal vigilance (@uspatrol) June 11, 2017WOW! To call the FBI Director devious is huge!Read more: FOX News | 1real |
Newt Gingrich Brutally Reminds Fox & Friends That They Created Trump (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s candidacy would not have happened if Fox & Friends hadn t encouraged it all these years. And Newt Gingrich reminded the hosts of the show of that fact on Monday.During the appearance, Fox hosts Steve Doocey and Brian Kilmeade mentioned to the former House Speaker that Donald Trump is the GOP Establishment s worst nightmare because he s a billionaire who is spending the least amount of money and running away with this thing. In response, Gingrich pointed out that it was Fox News that created the Trump candidacy in the first place. That s because of you guys. Donald Trump gets up in the morning, tweets to the entire planet at no cost, picks up the phone, calls you, has a great conversation for about eight minutes which would have cost him a ton in commercial money. And meanwhile, his opponents are all out there trying to raise the money to run an ad. Indeed, former Republican candidate Jeb Bush raised and spent millions of dollars but never could take down Trump, eventually dropping out after the South Carolina primary because of that failure.Trump, on the other hand, has been all over the media getting free coverage. Look, you can say that Trump is the candidate Fox & Friends invented, Gingrich continued. He was on your show more than any other show. Here s the video via YouTube:But the monster Fox News created has also come back to haunt them. Ever since that first GOP debate, Trump has taken repeated shots at the conservative network for being unfair. He has even said that Fox is so biased it is disgusting. In short, while some at Fox are bragging that they helped shake up the GOP by helping Trump rise as a GOP contender, some are probably regretting that because Trump is destroying Fox News is the process.Featured Image: Flickr | 1real |
U.S. Intelligence: ‘Expect al-Qaeda attacks Monday in New York, Virginia and Texas’ | U.S. Intelligence: ‘Expect al-Qaeda attacks Monday in New York, Virginia and Texas’ Will terror attacks sweep 3 major cities and help the Establishment suspend the elections? By Shepard Ambellas - November 4, 2016 ( INTELLIHUB ) — The U.S. Intelligence community has warned that al-Qaeda may attack three U.S. cities Monday, one day before the U.S. Presidential Election comes to a head.
Sources believe that New York, Virginia and Texas may be threatened but are mentioning no specific locations.
“The counterterrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States. The FBI, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety,” the FBI told ABC News.
If such a terror attack were to happen, keep in mind that President Barack Obama would likely use executive authority to remain in office after declaring a State of Emergency and suspending the elections.
#FalseFlag
Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, filmmaker , radio talk show host and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics. Established in 2013, Intellihub.com is ranked in the upper 1% traffic tier on the World Wide Web. Read more from Shep’s World . Get the Podcast . Follow Shep on Facebook and Twitter . Image: faungg’s photos/Flickr | 1real |
Trump says he is considering quotas, tariffs on Chinese steel dumping | (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he is considering quotas and tariffs to deal with the “big problem” of steel dumping from China and others. “They’re dumping steel and destroying our steel industry, they’ve been doing it for decades, and I’m stopping it. It’ll stop,” he told reporters on Air Force One during a flight from the United States to France. “There are two ways: quotas and tariffs. Maybe I’ll do both,” he said. Steel stocks rallied on the news, recovering some of the year-to-date declines in the sector. The S&P 1500 steel sector index added as much as 3 percent shortly after Trump’s remarks. The index rallied nearly 40 percent in the weeks following the Nov. 8 election, but so far this year it was down 6.6 percent at Wednesday On Thursday, the VanEck Vectors steel exchange-traded fund rose 0.6 percent after being down 1 percent before Trump’s remarks. AK Steel shares gained 7.9 percent, Nucor gained 2.6 percent and US Steel added 4.0 percent. Trump’s action on steel is a part of a campaign pledge he made to help revive U.S. manufacturing. The administration’s decision on steel could be unveiled in the coming weeks. Trump also said he would invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the White House. “I don’t think this is the right time, but the answer is yes, I would,” Trump said when asked if he would extend such an invitation to the Russian leader. | 0fake |
Democratic Senator Schumer to Trump: Stop blaming Puerto Ricans | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, reacting to President Donald Trump s comment that Puerto Rico had thrown the U.S. budget out of whack, said on Tuesday Trump should stop blaming Puerto Ricans for the hurricane that devastated the island. Mr. President, stop the blame game. Start making the situation better. That s your job, Schumer told reporters. | 0fake |
I Received A Jarring Death Threat From A Clinton Supporter Because I'm Working For The GOP | Share on Twitter IJR Opinion is an opinion platform and any opinions or information put forth by contributors are exclusive to them and do not represent the views of IJR.
I had my life threatened, and I didn’t ask for it.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that a deranged moron woke up on the wrong side of the bed on a Monday morning, or maybe it’s because I’m in a leadership position for my local Republican Party in a bellwether county. Maybe both. Either way, it was chilling.
I got the email when I woke up at 7 a.m. on a Monday morning, right as I was getting ready for a busy week. As someone who works in public relations and media, I’m bound at the hip to my email inbox.
Needless to say, the email with the subject line “BOMB” instantly caught my eye. I opened it. “This has to be a joke,” I thought. Another political fundraising email? After all, desperate times do call for desperate measures.
“You Nazi f***ing Republicans are going to blow up to pieces,” it began:
“You won't live to see the election day, and when your friends talk about how great you and your family WERE, other motherf***ing Republican a**holes would know how dangerous it is to insult the U.S. soon-to-be president Hillary Clinton.”
Swell. The election hasn’t even happened yet, and I’m already about to get droned by President Hillary Clinton. Alex Jones was right. Well, at least I’ll go down in a blaze of glory.
It continued:
“You have no idea what a liar your gun-loving daughter-molesting pig of a candidate is, but don't worry, I'm gonna show you who he is and how much he really cares about you f***ers who are about to die for him. Sit tight, it'll be over soon.”
And that was it. My immediate reaction was to send a quick reply, a snarky “Nice to meet you too” or “Do you even know me?” But I didn’t.
For the record, I’ve meticulously tiptoed around expressing public sentiments for or against Donald Trump. Anyone involved in a GOP leadership role is obligated to support whomever the GOP nominates. And if you refuse to back the candidate, you shouldn’t publicly oppose or speak out against said candidate. Plus, there are curtains on the voting booth for a reason.
But as far as the Republican Party is concerned, I have never been a fan of Donald Trump. Heck, I spent months of my life campaigning against Donald Trump in the GOP primaries. And while I am most definitely disgusted by Donald Trump’s comments about women and social issues - and I think I can speak for many lifelong conservatives in my shoes - we should all be completely repulsed by this kind of attempt to threaten or undermine our democratic system through threat of physical harm.
Anyone who threatens someone else’s life because of alleged support for Donald Trump (or any other candidate) is threatening a pillar of freedom that makes our republic great. The threat I received this past week is hardly an isolated case, either. It is merely one example of many acts of violence taking place against people of differing viewpoints. David French of National Review wrote a particularly jarring account.
You can bet that no matter the outcome on November 8th, there will be textbooks of postmortems about what happened this year. But it goes without saying that in the most contentious presidential election in recent memory, we seem to have forgotten who we are.
We’ve all “unfollowed” Facebook friends of opposing viewpoints, sent regrettably nasty in-the-moment texts to people with whom we disagreed, and engaged in shameless schadenfreude at the demise of both political parties.
But despite our differences, I think Americans can all agree on one thing: we have a right to vote for whoever we think will be the best leader for our country. As Thomas Paine once said:
“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another.”
Anyone who threatens the life of a fellow citizen because of his or her support for a candidate is attempting to attach a price tag of fear and risk to a vote.
Despite intimidation, violence, despair, and bomb threats - go vote. Volunteer. In the meantime, you’ll be silently laughing in the face of those who want to destroy our democracy. | 1real |
Comment on “This godless shrieking malcontent… This walking cadaver.” by Leeann Springer | “This godless shrieking malcontent… This walking cadaver.” – Huma Abedin describing Hillary
September 03, 2016 at 8:57 pm. Huma Abedin @ yahoo.Com wrote:
Sorry for my late reply, Hassan. Yes, let me tell you about her. The woman is so odd, so starved for validation, so tormented and vain it is a constant surprise to me that anyone takes her seriously.
Everyone on the team knows how unwell she is, but they’re more determined than ever to see her win. This woman that has a dozen seizures a day. This godless shrieking malcontent passed out in her medical van. This walking cadaver. She’s nonfunctional.
Hassan, nobody cares. We sober her up for speeches and indulge the press corps with cheap sentiment. The first female president. The last glass ceiling, etc. They trip over themselves lining up behind her.
Surely they know it is not her they’re getting. It’s the one in the corner, the quiet helper, your sister Huma.
You asked me once how I did it. How did I take the castle? Hassan, I didn’t take it, they gave it to me. Yes, there was a cost. I will admit, subjecting myself to AW (Anthony Weiner) and WJC (William Jefferson Clinton) is mortal torture. But I do it gladly, brother, everything they ask of me, however sick and depraved. I do it, and I smile, rejoicing at the thought of whose glory I serve.”
“…whose glory I serve.” Folks, she’s not talking about serving the living God. She’s serving Alah, AKA the devil. Huma is revealing her motives, her long game, in her service to Hillary Clinton. She is crawling into power to hand us over to islam.
A friend who is deeply connected and has followed Huma closely for a number of years told me this morning that Huma is slated for a very powerful position in our government if Hillary wins. This makes sense when considering the Appointments Obama made during his presidency.
♞ | 1real |
Voters in Arkansas, North Dakota Legalize Medical Marijuana Despite Federal Prohibition | By Mike Maharrey Voters in North Dakota and Arkansas have approved ballot measures legalizing medical marijuana, taking a first step toward nullifying the unconstitutional federal prohibition of... | 1real |
WINNING! GEORGE SOROS Group Gets Black Eye When Hannity Advertiser Comes Back After Allegedly Pulling Ads Over Seth Rich Story | The USAA financial services firm is reinstating its advertising on Sean Hannity s Fox News Channel program after receiving heavy criticism for its initial decision from many of the military members and veterans that it serves.The San Antonio, Texas-based company said Tuesday it will also start advertising again on other programs where it had suspended ads, including Hardball and The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and Jake Tapper s The Lead on CNN.Following Hannity s reporting on (what the AP calls a discredited conspiracy theory) involving the death of a Democratic National Committee staff member, the liberal advocacy group Media Matters last week posted a list of his show s advertisers and USAA was one of 10 to say it was pulling its commercials. At the time, the USAA said the company s policy was to avoid politically opinionated shows.But many of USAA s customers reacted angrily, and it didn t help when the company s advertising on other opinion shows was pointed out.USAA said it wasn t trying to favor one set of political views over another. We heard concerns from many members who watch and listen to these programs, USAA said in a statement on Tuesday. Our goal in advertising has always been to reach members of the military community who would benefit from USAA s well-known commitment to service. Today, the lines between news and editorial are increasingly blurred. The advertising is returning while the company reviews its policy about avoiding the opinion shows.Hannity was due to return to Fox Tuesday following a brief vacation. He had said he would no longer talk about the shooting death of Seth Rich last year following pleas from the man s family, although his network had retracted an online story about Rich because it hadn t met its reporting standards.Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, said he wasn t surprised by USAA s decision, given the avalanche of protests. His group was behind mobilizing that backlash, and said its members generated more than 1,600 phone calls to USAA within 48 hours. AP | 1real |
A Latina Disney Movie Princess? The Wait Isn’t Over - The New York Times | I’m not part of Disney’s target audience for its latest princess movie, “Moana,” but I don’t care. I’ve been excited about this film since Dwayne Johnson previewed it last year at the D23 Expo for all things Disney. As much as the new Miranda music sounds promising, what’s really exciting is the chance to see a Disney princess who doesn’t look like those we have already. I was already aging out of the children’s movie demographic when my mom took us to see Robert Rodriguez’s “Spy Kids” in 2001. Yes, it was a silly story: Children turn into spies to save their agent parents. But my sister and I became obsessed. The suave father was played by Antonio Banderas with a pronounced Spanish accent. The children were named Carmen and Juni (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara) and the implication was that they were or Americans. As a daughter of Cuban immigrants who once struggled with her accent, I had never seen characters who looked or sounded like us as the heroes of their own story. “Spy Kids” is still one of the few positive examples I hold onto, 15 years later. I’m not alone. There are many nonwhite women and girls who don’t see movie characters who look the way they do, and the omission can affect their . That’s why the issue of diversity in movies for young people is just as important as pushing for inclusion across Hollywood, both behind, and in front of, the camera. So much of nonwhite representation in cinema is trivial at best, stereotypical at worst — the wisecracking sidekick or the background player stuck there as a token. I remembered feeling that something was amiss about Tito the Chihuahua in Disney’s “Oliver Company” (1988). Why did the only dog with a Mexican accent (voiced by Cheech Marin, who has a less embarrassing part in “Spy Kids”) have to cars? I wanted to see more of the mechanic tomboy Audrey Ramirez (Jacqueline Obradors) in “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” (2001) and wished I could forget that “Cars” (2006) has a barely visible lowrider named Ramone (Mr. Marin, again) that happens to be the only vehicle in Radiator Springs with hydraulics. I forgot that “The Emperor’s New Groove” (2000) was set in the Inca Empire, because none of the main voice actors (David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton) sounded as if they spoke our language. Yet one of the videos in our home was “The Three Caballeros,” a Disney animated guide to South America from 1944. Donald Duck is the American protagonist, joined by the Mexican rooster Panchito (Joaquin Garay) and the Brazilian parrot José (José Oliveira) on a tour of Latin America. More than just a Technicolor spectacle (akin to “Fantasia,” in terms of trippy animated musical sequences) “The Three Caballeros” was a cultural explainer that didn’t entirely reduce our stories to cheap tropes. As an indirect product of the Good Neighbor Policy, by which the United States invested in South American ties, the movie had incentive to avoid negative portrayals. When it came to Disney princess movies, my sister and I had very different experiences. It was always easier to find a princess who looked the way I do, because I was born with much paler skin than anyone in our family. My younger sister, Cristina, didn’t decide to be Jasmine from “Aladdin” during playtime friends assigned her the character. Back then, that was the animated figure that looked closest to her, and she didn’t have many others to choose from. Luckily, the Disney renaissance of the 1990s gave us many more diverse heroines to treasure. Cristina adored Pocahontas’s free spirit and modeled herself on the strong Mulan. But they often weren’t the main princesses featured in Disney advertising or merchandise. And once their movies faded from store shelves, so would the dolls and the rest of their products. In those days, the newer princesses weren’t stocked like those of the classic era: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora from “Sleeping Beauty. ” In this sense, “Moana” is another step in the right direction. Native Hawaiians are entering a rarefied pop culture circle, inclusion in a movie that will reach viewers around the world. Considering how women, and especially women of color, are rarely shown as leaders onscreen, this is no small victory. The evolving arc of Disney princesses — from the damsel in distress Snow White in 1937 to the entrepreneurial dreamer Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog” in 2009 — gives hope that we’ll see more animated stories starring young female characters who look as if they could be from anywhere around the world. Then again, no tickets have been sold to a Disney movie starring a Latina princess. She doesn’t exist yet. The company started a TV show, “Elena of Avalor,” about such a character, but that series lacks the production values and marketing heft of a movie. It seems like a halfhearted concession to Latinas — half a Disney princess — but it’s more than other girls still waiting to see themselves on the big screen have received. There are many still waiting for a “Moana” to call their own, a movie to pass on to their children that speaks to them about their culture. My sister ended up working for a few months this year as a performer at one of Disney’s theme parks. After several frustrating auditions, she was told she was too dark to play any character not covered in fur. She tried out to greet guests as Elena of Avalor, and she received the same answer: too dark. (She ended up playing characters while fully covered in costumes.) Not even as an adult does she fit in Disney’s kingdom. But I’m hoping that those days are numbered, and that she and other women and girls like her will never have to feel as if they didn’t belong in the Happiest Place on Earth. | 0fake |
A Tax Overhaul Would Be Great in Theory. Here’s Why It’s So Hard in Practice. - The New York Times | House Republicans have an ambitious plan for overhauling the way American businesses are taxed. A short list of the plan’s potential benefits looks awesome: It would give companies more incentive to keep jobs in the United States, less to overextend themselves on borrowed money and provide vast savings by reducing what companies spend on tax lawyers, who help them game the current system. Yet these changes could also set off a cascade of more harmful effects. The plan could shift trillions of dollars of wealth from Americans to foreigners set off an emerging markets financial crisis wreak havoc in global oil markets and cause sustained harm to the American higher education and tourism industries (including, as it happens, luxury hotels with President Trump’s name on them). Welcome to the real world. The tax code has been flawed and inefficient for a very long time, precisely because fixing it could be so terribly disruptive. In a nutshell, the corporate tax issue provides an excellent case study of the problem of “path dependency” in public policy. The United States might well have a better, more efficient tax code today if, starting a century ago, lawmakers had designed it so that businesses were taxed on where their sales and expenses take place, as the Republicans’ plan calls for. But that is not what happened. Instead, lawmakers took what seemed to be a logical approach: They focused on taxing businesses on their profits. Today, that choice shapes arrangements in every corner of the economy. It affects the values of currencies and financial assets. Every business has devised its structure and organization to maximize its advantage within the existing system. Given all that, any fundamental change in the corporate tax code will create powerful ripples — some quite predictable, others less so — across the business and financial landscape. Essentially, for a politician trying to decide whether to support the new legislation, the question boils down to whether you think the potential gains are big enough to justify the probable and disruptions. A closer look at the disruptions that moving toward a “ cash flow tax” would create makes clear why it would be no small event. The tax has a feature called “border adjustment,” under which exports are not taxed but imports are. That, at first glance, may seem to penalize companies that import goods, like retailers, and subsidize those that export, like makers of jumbo jets. But economists believe the change in the tax code would lead to shifts in the currency markets that offset those moves, namely to a sharp rise in the value of the dollar compared with other currencies. The most vigorous opponents of the plan include retailers and consumer goods companies, which worry that currency adjustments won’t fully offset the damage they will suffer (they have a newly formed group fighting it, Americans for Affordable Products). But beyond the obvious problems, the proposed change in the tax code would cascade through the economy in many other ways. A 25 percent rise in the value of the dollar, the most widely used currency on the planet, would have enormous consequences. Supporters think the dollar will rise that much if the plan is enacted — indeed, it must happen, to avoid sticking Americans with much higher prices for imported consumer goods. But according to calculations by Michael J. Graetz, a Columbia law professor, a currency shift of that scale implies that Americans who hold foreign assets would lose $6. 1 trillion, and foreign holders of assets in the United States would gain as much as $8. 1 trillion. Meanwhile, because the dollar is the world’s benchmark currency, many businesses and governments outside the United States borrow in it, especially in countries where confidence in the domestic currency is low. That means that a steep in the value of the dollar generally makes those debts more onerous, and causes big trouble for countries including China, South Korea and Turkey. Consider that the Asian financial crisis in 1998, the Latin American crisis in 2001 and an emerging markets slump in 2015 all had their roots in debt problems and a spike in the dollar. What’s more, global markets in oil and other commodities are priced in dollars, so a dollar spike could unleash reactions from commodity producers. Oil would become much more expensive, and oil price shocks have helped set off recessions in the past. Perhaps the most consequence of such a tax overhaul — which would, presumably, be signed by President Trump — would be the damage to the tourism and education sectors in the United States. These businesses would have a serious problem, unlike conventional exporters — companies that ship things overseas, say. For the exporters, the disadvantages caused by a in the dollar would just cancel out the advantage received from changes in the tax system. But businesses that are not exporting anything across the border would suffer from the damage of a more expensive dollar without receiving advantages from border adjustment. As Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, that applies to any organization that serves a large number of foreign customers within the United States’ borders. Think of, say, a Trump international hotel, or amusement parks like Disney World, or any American university that bolsters its finances with foreign enrollment at tuition. All of these sectors would see their prices rise because of the dollar without any countervailing tax benefit. Lest any of these ripple effects seem like academic abstractions, keep in mind that tax changes can have powerful spillover effects. Some obscure provisions around depreciation rules in the 1986 tax reform act set off a downturn in the commercial real estate industry that, in turn, was a major factor in the 1990 recession. The problem of policy path dependency isn’t limited to the tax system, of course. The Obama administration faced it when it began to overhaul the health care system eight years ago. Many liberals argued that the United States should move toward a system in which the government pays for all health care, called a system. The Obama team saw that approach as appealing in theory, but too disruptive in practice so many Americans had become accustomed to receiving health insurance through their employer that it didn’t seem feasible to make a wholesale shift to a new and, perhaps, more efficient system. In other words, decisions that lawmakers made decades or even a century ago have essentially locked us into ways of doing things, as the cost of changing looms more heavily than the potential benefits of trying something different. And people who have much to fear from a change tend to be louder than those who have something to gain, a central dynamic that tilts policy in the United States toward conservatism. All of this is frustrating for anyone who believes that the existing system, whether for corporate taxes or health care, is broken and needs radical reform. But the bigger the change, the bigger the side effects. | 0fake |
LIBERAL HOLLYWOOD IMPLODES! Ratings Are In For The Trump-Bashing Emmys…Insignificant Celebrities Are Dealt MAJOR BLOW! | This summer s box office numbers were the worst they ve been in over 25 years, and now this KNOCK, KNOCK! Who s there? Karma Adjustments might take a little of the sting out of the news that Sunday night s Emmy telecast was a ratings catastrophe, but any adjustment will only make the nightmare a little less nightmarish. Instead of being the lowest-watched Emmys in its 69-year history, Sunday night s telecast might be able to squeak into the second-lowest.As of now, though, it looks as though all that promised Trump-hating resulted in a record low, which is especially shocking (at least to bubbled Hollywood) because last year everyone was certain the bottom had been hit.Regardless, the die is cast. Last night was yet-another ratings flop for Hollywood s Beautiful People. As of now, it looks as though fewer than 11.3 million viewers tuned in to watch host Stephen Colbert s hate-fest. That would mean the 69th Emmy telecast had fewer viewers than last year s 68th, which currently holds the all-time low ratings record.What we do know for sure is that the 8.2 overnight rating is lower than 2016 s 8.4. Even in the coveted 18-49 age group, TVs Greatest Night flopped with a pathetic 2.8, which proves that even young people are tired of watching rich elites publicly work through their inability to come to terms with losing the 2016 presidential election.This news, of course, comes just days after the ratings for the MTV Awards hit their own record low.What has to be especially galling to Colbert and his fellow social justice glitter-warriors, is that in a country of 330 million, fewer than five percent tuned in, cared to watch even a minute of the show, was not in the least interested in their Big Thinks on issues n stuff, including President Trump who, despite the unrelenting hate campaigns from the media and Hollywood, still holds (if you believe the polls) a 40% approval rating. We all know it is higher, especially in the only states that matter.As Hollywood has gotten more political, more divisive, more bigoted towards Normal People, and more hateful, take a look at the nuclear fallout. America is more red, more Republican-led than at any time since Reconstruction. On every level, Democrats have been wiped out of electoral office. Breitbart NewsAnd the best part is President Donald J. Trump continues to live rent-free in these small-minded celebrities heads. | 1real |
University of Georgia Socialist Group Under Police Investigation After Calling for Beheading Republicans - Breitbart | A student group at the University of Georgia is facing a police investigation after saying on Twitter that Republicans should be “guillotined. ”[Responding to a story about a professor at the Art Institute of Washington who allegedly claimed that House Republicans should be “lined up and shot,” the Young Democratic Socialists at the University of Georgia reportedly tweeted that the Republican members of the House should instead be “guillotined. ” David Littmann, the founder of the Young Democratic Socialists chapter at the University of Georgia who graduated in 2016, claimed that the tweet was made in jest. “I wouldn’t have made that joke myself, but it is clearly and obviously facetious,” Littmann said. “As a strict pacifist, I believe that all violence is immoral, period. But it’s absurd to take the joke literally. ” The University of Georgia announced on their official Twitter account that the campus police department is investigating the matter. According to the statement, the students involved in the group may also be facing an investigation by the Office of Student Conduct, which oversees student organizations. UGA response to Young Democratic Socialists student group tweet: pic. twitter. — UGA (@universityofga) June 14, 2017, In response to a storm of criticism and a statement from administrators claiming that the campus police department is investigating their call for violence, the Young Democratic Socialists chapter announced that they would disassociate from the University. The student group deleted not only the offending tweet but their Twitter account in its entirety. “Recent events have made clear that the only way forward is through the democratic will and revolutionary spirit of our members and community. The Young Democratic Socialists student group at the University of Georgia has voted unanimously to distance itself from UGA and restructure its platform to meet the needs of its members and the larger Athens community,” according to a post the group made on Facebook. The group has changed their name from the Young Democratic Socialists at the University of Georgia to the Athens Democratic Socialists of America. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 0fake |
[FLASHBACK VIDEO] MICHELLE OBAMA TO HILLARY: “If You Can’t Run Your Own House, You Certainly Can’t Run The White House!” | Last night the press swooned over Bitter Mooch s speech at the DNC She s such an asset to Hillary s campaign. The Democrat party should feel good about the fact that it took several innocent cops lives to be lost, riots, race wars and cities being burned to the ground before Mooch was finally proud of her country.https://youtu.be/uLm4w-z91B4Here s Mooch explaining how the next victim in line for Presidency deserves to be the leader of the free world simply because she was born with a vagina. Watch her as she stirs up the racial strife and division last night at the DNC.Here s the truth about how Mooch feels about Hillary, and how she wanted Biden to give her a whooping' in the primaries: | 1real |
NYC Democratic Election Commissioner: “They Bus People Around to Vote” |
In a video released by Project Veritas, James O’Keefe exposes what everyone except Democrats have known to be true. There is a lot of voter fraud.
In the video, NYC Democratic Commissioner of the Board of Elections Alan Schulkin is caught on hidden camera at a United Federation of Teachers holiday party admitting that there is widespread voter fraud in New York City.
“Yeah, they should ask for your ID. I think there is a lot of voter fraud,†said Schulkin, who elaborated on the types of voter fraud that are taking place in New York.
Voter fraud has been labeled as a right-wing myth by the left, but Schulkin, a Democrat, confirmed everyone’s worst fears, going against the grain of his own party.
“You know, I don’t think it’s too much to ask somebody to show some kind of an ID‌Like I say, people don’t realize, certain neighborhoods in particular they bus people around to vote,†said Schulkin.
When asked about which type of neighborhoods the busing of voters takes place in, Schulkin confirmed that it was minority neighborhoods, adding, “they get busses and they move people around.â€
Schulkin expressed concern over voter fraud and suggested that Mayor Bill de Blasio was to blame for a lot of the voter fraud taking place in New York City.
“He gave out ID cards. De Blasio. That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything. But, they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card. It’s absurd. There’s a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud.â€
Despite having disapproval with de Blasio’s faulty ID program and widespread voter fraud, Schulkin also expressed concerns over safety in the polling locations as well as the potential for voter fraud, specifically with regards to Muslims wearing burkas.
“They detonate bombs in the public schools, which we are using. That could disrupt the whole election‌Your vote doesn’t even count, because they can go in there with a burka and you don’t know if they are a voter.â€
It is clear after listening to a New York City Democratic Election Commissioner that the Democrats are in denial of the fraud that surrounds them. Schulkin confirms that voter ID laws are something that New York City desperately needs as a way to curb voter fraud.
Source
| 1real |
Trump talks tough on Pakistan's 'terrorist' havens, but options scarce | ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Outlining a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. President Donald Trump chastised Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants - an approach analysts say will probably not change Pakistan’s strategic calculations and might push it in directions Washington does not want it to go. Trump’s call for India to play a greater role in Afghanistan, in particular, will ring alarm bells for Pakistan’s generals, analysts said. “Trump’s policy of engaging India and threatening action may actually constrain Pakistan and lead to the opposite of what he wants,” said Zahid Hussain, a Pakistani security analyst. Trump criticised Pakistan for providing “safe havens to terrorist organisations” and warned Islamabad it had much to lose by supporting insurgents battling the U.S.-backed Kabul government. “It is kind of putting Pakistan on notice,” said Rustam Shah Mohman, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Kabul, predicting a bumpy road ahead for relations. Trump did resist some advisers’ calls to threaten to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism unless Islamabad pursued senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network. “Pakistan should not be reassured by this speech, but it could have gone a lot worse for them,” said Joshua White, a National Security Council director under former President Barack Obama. “There were voices within the administration who wanted to move more quickly and aggressively to declare Pakistan not just a problem, but effectively an enemy.” In Washington, a senior administration official said on Tuesday that significant measures were under consideration, including possibly sanctioning Pakistani officials with ties to extremist organizations. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. Pakistan’s powerful military has not commented on Trump’s speech, but the day before it denied any militants had havens in the country. The Pakistani government said Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif met with the U.S. ambassador on Tuesday and would speak in coming days with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “on the state of play in the bilateral relationship as well as the new U.S. policy on South Asia”. Successive U.S. administrations have struggled with how to deal with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Washington fumes about inaction against the Taliban, but Pakistan has been helpful on other counterterrorism efforts, including against al Qaeda and Islamic State militants. The United States also has no choice but to use Pakistani roads to resupply its troops in landlocked Afghanistan. U.S. officials worry that if Pakistan becomes an active foe, it could further destabilise Afghanistan and endanger U.S. soldiers. Daniel Feldman, a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under Obama, said the Obama administration found it more effective to pressure Islamabad over safe havens “in private than in public, and to keep the long-standing Indo-Pak rivalry from playing out in Afghanistan”. Hussain, the security analyst, said Trump on Monday “crossed a red line” as far as Pakistan was concerned when he implored India to deepen its involvement in Afghanistan. Relations between Pakistan and the United States have endured strain during the 16-year war in Afghanistan, especially after al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces inside Pakistan in 2011. The Obama administration had already begun trimming military aid to Pakistan. Last year, the Pentagon decided not to pay $300 million in pledged military funding, and Congress effectively blocked a subsidised sale of F-16 jets to Pakistan. Analysts say Trump is likely to further curtail military aid to pressure Pakistan. But any effort to isolate Pakistan would face problems from China, which has deepened political and military ties to Islamabad as it invested nearly $60 billion in infrastructure in Pakistan. China on Tuesday defended Pakistan after Trump’s remarks, saying its neighbour was on the front line in the struggle against terrorism and had made “great sacrifices” and “important contributions” in the fight. Mohman, the former ambassador, said if the United States kept putting pressure on Pakistan, then Islamabad would drift farther from the American sphere of influence. “We have options,” he said. “We can go to China and Russia, and I think the U.S. can’t afford that.” | 0fake |
[VIDEO] CARLY TAKES ON THE VIEW Hacks Only Days After Saying She Has A “Demented Face” And A “Halloween Mask” | So, if the hosts on this show are just comedians, does that mean the low information voters who follow them will stop taking these hacks so seriously? Friday on ABC s The View, Republican presidential candidate and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina fought toe to toe with the co-hosts over their comments disparaging her face as demented and a Halloween Mask. After small talk, Whoopi Goldberg brought up the subject saying, How about humor? I m going the bring it up because there are going to be lots of comics saying lots of things. I wondered, because we saw some of the that you were a little upset with us about a comic comment that was made. And so, how will you steel your skin? How will you get a thicker skin to accept some of the humorous things that will be said about you? Fiorina said, Well, hey, if you meant your comment about my face being demented and a Halloween mask as humorous, so be it. I guess you misinterpreted Donald Trump s questions. I have a real thick skin. Joy Behar said, I defended you against Donald Trump s comment. He s running for president of the United States and he was making a nasty comment about your looks. I took him on. On this show, but, we are comedians here. I make fun of Hillary s pantsuits. Hillary s husband s sex life. Rep. John Boehner s tan. Who else? I don t understand why any politician is exempt from my jokes. Here s the clip from Carly s awesome interview:Fiorina answered, You know what, Joy. You know what, Joy? You can say whatever you want. You always have. You always will. I m not going to stop that. And don t worry, I have skin plenty thick enough to the take whatever people throw at me. I m making a different point. The different point is this. I think that there are real issues in this nation that we ought to be able to discuss in a fact-based, civil fashion. Michelle Collins said, I want to add that the demented comment was a poor choice of words. It was responding to something you said during the debates. That people were telling you the smile more. To me, it felt like it was not your natural state of mind. It was not on your looks, it was on your expression. It felt like you were being told to smile more. I m wondering, is that difficult for you? Do you have people coaching you to act or be a different way? Will that help you win the election? Fiorina shot back, First of all, I don t have people coaching me to act a different way or be a different way. There s a time to smile and a time to be serious. When you re talking about burying a child, it s not time to smile. There are serous issues facing the nation. Goldberg said, We had you here. I thought we were pretty respectful. I have to tell you, having watched some of the press that you have garnered based on this fake feud with The View, I m a little taken aback. Because you kind of said that that somehow liberal women are that we re made uncomfortable by conservative women. We were not uncomfortable with you. Did you think we were uncomfortable with you when you were on? Fiorina said, First of all, Whoopi. I enjoyed being on the show. The first time. and I m enjoying being on the show the second time. And I think The View garnered a lot of publicity over the feud as well. I think that s why we re on. Goldberg said, We haven t put out any ads or anything. Fiorina said, I haven t put out any ads either, Whoopi. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Obama Just Did Something For The LGBT Community That Will Make Conservatives’ Heads Explode (VIDEO) | The majority of Republicans have fought tooth and nail to make sure that the LGBT community could not have the same rights and protections as others. President Barack Obama s presidency has been a major threat to those intolerant values, as marriage equality was finally legalized in all 50 states during his second term. Obama is still this nation s voice of equality, and today marks yet another tremendous win for the LGBT community.On Friday, Obama announced that the Stonewall Inn will become the first LGBT-dedicated National Monument. The Stonewall Inn is a historic landmark, and was the site of the 1969 riots that kicked off the gay rights movement. In releasing the news that the Stonewall Inn will be named a National Historic Monument, the White House released a powerful video, which announces that the Stonewall Inn will be the first official National Park Service unit dedicated to telling the story of LGBT Americans, just days before the one year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing marriage equality in all 50 states. In the video, Obama delivers a message that is going to have Republicans fuming once again: I believe our national parks should reflect the full story of our country, the richness and diversity and uniquely American spirit that has always defined us: that we are stronger together, that out of many, we are one. The Stonewall National Monument covers almost 8 acres in New York s Greenwich Village, including the Stonewall Inn the site where LGBT patrons fought police persecution. Obama spoke on the police raids in the video, and noted how the gay bar deserved a place in American history: Raids like these were nothing new, but this time the patrons had had enough. So they stood up and spoke out. The riots became protests. The protests became a movement. The movement ultimately became an integral part of America. Also in the video are the words of LGBT activist Eunic Ortiz, who said: The Stonewall riots in 1969, I think, obviously was a very pivotal point in our history. It was when we all stood up, and a trans woman of color said, Enough is enough, and it started a movement. And it started a movement that said, We re not less than you. We are your equals. You can watch the powerful video below:In a press release, the White House said: Although the LGBT civil rights movement has made significant progress in the pursuit of equal rights and protections under the law, there is still more work to do. As seen two weeks ago in Orlando, FL, LGBT Americans continue to face acts of violence, discrimination, and hate. LGBT people of color are especially at risk. The Administration is committed to continuing the fight for dignity, acceptance and equal rights for all Americans no matter who they are or who they love. Even decades after the riots, the bar has continued to be an attraction for gay rights activists last year, after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, LGBT activists gathered there in celebration. Recently, following the tragic mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida earlier this month, mourners gathered at the site.Judging from conservatives reactions to the news, the GOP isn t taking this very well:YahooYahooYahooYahooMediaiteMediaiteBy now we know that if conservatives are getting this angry over something, that must mean that some real progress in America is being made. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y), who helped lead the effort, said: Stonewall is finally taking its rightful place in American history. We are faced with painful reminders daily of how much further we must go to achieve true equality and tolerance for the LGBT community, but honoring and preserving the stories of all of the diverse participants in Stonewall in our National Park System is a clear symbol of how far we have come. Featured image via Pool / Getty Images | 1real |
DB Feedbacker Claims He Was on B29s That Fire-Bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki | DB Feedbacker Claims He Was on B29s That Fire-Bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki By Daily Bell Staff - November 18, 2016
Well now!! i was a pilot of a B 29, on the raids of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. i am 96 years old. Yes we firebombed these cities as well as Tokyo. But there were A bombs dropped on the two cities in question. –ALPHAMEG feedback to DB article
We’ve written numerous articles referring to the Pentagon’s lies about its nuclear program – both today and over the past 65 years or so. Now someone (see excerpt above) steps forward in a feedback to claim that indeed the Pentagon, along with millions of pages of military history, has not been telling the truth about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The feedback comes in response to our article, “If Trump Wants to Fix the ‘Disaster’ of the Pentagon, He Should Clean Up Its Nuclear Lies,” here.
ALPHAMEG seems to be a longtime poster but we have no idea if he is 96 years old, or if he participated in a firebombing raid on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We have no idea if his feedback is a hoax, a joke or even a “mis-remembering.”
However, in response to his lengthy feedback, we wrote the following:
Do you realize the magnitude of the cover-up you are suggesting? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fire-bombed? This negates 65 years of recorded history and changes the entire post-war narrative. Incredible! We have doubts about the severity of the radiation by the way.
Regardless of any nuclear detonations, the idea Hiroshima and Nagasaki were firebombed radically changes the military narrative of the war’s end. But we and others have regularly offered this alternative retelling.
Even a cursory investigation of America’s pre- and post-war nuclear program reveals a good many inconsistencies and outright lies. The Pentagon has manipulated its nuclear narrative from the very beginning, and so presumably have other countries who joined in later. You can see some of the articles we’ve written on elements of the Pentagon’s apparent nuclear fiction here, here and here .
We would invite ALPHAMEG to send us a feedback elaborating on his fire-bombing raids over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Additionally, we would invite anyone else who has knowledge of these raids, or apparently participated in them or was involved with the Pentagon’s nuclear program in the early days, to write to us as well.
The early days of the Pentagon’s nuclear program, especially, have surely not been properly related. Instead, we have been subject to reams of propaganda and obfuscation. This is especially sad when we consider how many millions of school-children in the 20th century spent time practicing ducking beneath their desks so they would know how to take shelter in case of a nearby atomic explosion.
Of course the ramifications are far larger. The threat of nuclear warfare has profoundly shaped the psychology of billions of people and reshaped world history. If things are not as they seem, if the Pentagon and US government have substituted – at least in some cases – PR hype for truth-telling, we should do our best to find out more. It’s a most important effort.
Conclusion: Only once we know, can we can make informed decisions about our place in the world – and understand more clearly how our society generally operates, and what can be done to change it for the better. | 1real |
Michelle and George: The Embrace Seen Around the World - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Maybe it was the unexpected warmth of the gesture, the sheer enveloping display of affection. Maybe it was his response, the beatific expression on his face, eyes almost closed, head tilted toward her shoulder. Maybe it was the moment: tenderness at a time when presidential politics has become a festival of cruelty. But when Michelle Obama hugged former President George W. Bush on Saturday, at a ceremony to open the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the image quickly took flight online. However one chose to interpret it — and overinterpretation is a hazard in such exercises — it became an instant metaphor. Some saw the lost virtue of civility in politics others, the unlikely friendships that blossom at the rarefied heights of public life. To critics on the left, it was a shameful case of political amnesia by the wife of a president who spent years cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor. Mrs. Obama and Mr. Bush have had a few such memorable moments. In July in Dallas at a memorial service for five police officers killed by an Army veteran, the two held hands while singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic. ” When Mr. Bush began swaying to the music, Mrs. Obama gamely let him swing her arm back and forth. At one point, as the choir sang “glory, glory hallelujah,” he turned to her in a burst of enthusiasm, causing the first lady to crack up, despite the solemnity of the occasion. In June 2012, when Mr. Bush returned to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait, he aimed a few wisecracks at President Obama. But he saved his best material for Mrs. Obama, reminding her that when British soldiers set fire to the White House in 1814, another first lady, Dolley Madison, rescued the portrait of the first George W. — as in Washington. “Now, Michelle,” he said, gesturing to his own painting, “if anything happens, there’s your man. ” Some of these encounters are explained by proximity. When the Obamas and the Bushes appear in public together, protocol dictates that Mrs. Obama stand next to Mr. Bush. Some of it is a function of the former president’s playful manner, which by all accounts has become more playful in his retirement. But some of it also has to do with the relationship between the couples, which current and former officials say has deepened over the past seven and a half years, both because of the shared bond of living in the White House and because of Mr. Bush’s decorum as an . “President Bush was very gracious to us during the transition, and he has been unfailingly gracious and respectful since,” said David Axelrod, a former adviser to Mr. Obama. He recalled the president telling him that the Bushes “had taught him lessons in how to be a former president. ” Mr. Bush has studiously avoided criticizing Mr. Obama or his policies. And Mr. Bush has lent his presence to occasions that meant a lot to the president, like the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march in Selma, Ala. when Mr. Obama delivered what some believe was the finest speech of his presidency, on race relations in the United States. Mrs. Obama sat next to Mr. Bush on that day, too, frequently leaning over to talk or share a laugh with him. Mrs. Obama’s rapport with Laura Bush is less playful, but Mrs. Obama’s aides say it is no less genuine. In early 2009, Mrs. Bush invited Mrs. Obama to visit the White House with her daughters, Malia and Sasha, for a private tour before her husband’s inauguration. Mrs. Bush’s daughters, Barbara and Jenna, showed the girls their new home, including good hiding places and banisters made for sliding. The two first ladies have appeared together regularly since, including this month at a conference at the National Archives to promote support for families of service members. In 2013, in Tanzania, Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Bush bonded during a conference on education for women and girls. “I like this woman,” the first lady said of Mrs. Bush. Mrs. Obama added that “it’s hard to find people who know what you’re going through, who understand the burdens and the fears and the challenges. ” “It’s sort of a club,” Mrs. Bush replied. “A sorority, I guess. ” The fraternity of presidents is well documented, though some members are closer than others. Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush became famously chummy, with Mr. Bush inviting the man who defeated him to the family compound in Kennebunkport, Me. to “play golf, spend the night” and “hurdle the waves at breakneck speed,” according to the book “The President’s Club,” by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. Mr. Clinton’s relationship with Mr. Obama took longer to thaw, largely as a consequence of the bitter 2008 primary race between Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton. There were a few golf games, an lunch at an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, and, above all, Mr. Clinton’s memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 defending the president’s economic record, after which Mr. Obama took to calling Mr. Clinton his “secretary of explaining stuff. ” Now, Mr. Obama is campaigning vigorously for Mrs. Clinton to succeed him, cementing the political alliance between them. Paradoxically, Mr. Obama’s relationship with the younger Mr. Bush has always seemed less complicated. Though Mr. Obama ran on his opposition to the war in Iraq — and has never stopped deploring that war — he appears to have an easy rapport with his predecessor. After the ceremony at the museum on Saturday, Mr. Bush was trying to take a photograph of himself with a family, only to find he could not fit everyone in the frame. The solution? He tapped Mr. Obama on the back, handed him the phone, and asked him to take the picture. As Mr. Obama was wrapping up his speech, he could not resist a gentle poke at his predecessor, who is known for his restlessness, laying odds on the length of his own remarks. “Enough talk,” Mr. Obama said. “President Bush was timing me. He had the at 25” minutes. | 0fake |
Trump Just Made Sarah Palin Sound Like A Genius With This Answer About Russia (VIDEO) | During an interview on ABC s This Week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was questioned by the show s host, George Stephanopoulos, about Russia s involvement with Crimea. Trump s answer is so completely ignorant that it definitively proves that Trump has a childlike understanding of current foreign affairs.While being questioned about Vladamir Putin and the GOP s stance regarding Ukraine, Trump insisted that Putin is not moving into Crimea despite the fact that Putin had already moved into Crimea in 2014. He s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want, Trump said. Well, he s already there, isn t he? Stephanopoulos responded.Trump said: OK well, he s there in a certain way. But I m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime, he s going away. He takes Crimea. Trump then seemed to imply that Russia had a greater claim to the Crimean than the Ukraine. I m going to take a look at it, Trump said. But you know, the people of Crimea, from what I ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also just so you understand, that was done under Obama s administration. Trump went on to say: And as far as the Ukraine is concerned, it s a mess. And that s under the Obama s administration with his strong ties to NATO. So with all of these strong ties to NATO, Ukraine is a mess. Crimea has been taken. Don t blame Donald Trump for that. Trump, at no point during the line of questioning Stephanopoulos gave him regarding the Ukraine, seemed to know what he was talking about. He appears to have no knowledge of one of the biggest events to happen so far in the 21st century.You can watch the relevant part of the interview below..@realDonaldTrump to @ThisWeekABC: Putin's "not gonna go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down." #ThisWeek https://t.co/C2PQQYg1c9 ABC News (@ABC) July 31, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Trevor Noah Dropkicks Donald Trump With A Truly Brutal One-Liner (VIDEO) | Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is leading the pack by appealing to the very worst aspects of human nature, and the battle is on the find the sentence that truly expresses the horror and contempt this news generates in the rest of us. We think Trevor Noah might just have found it.Speaking on the Daily Show, Noah said: I hope there are two Donald Trumps that way he can go f*ck himself Yep that just about does it.But Noah s whole rant delivered a brutal drop kick to the Trump campaign and its cynical use of every dirty tactic in the book to gain power with near total disregard for the consequences. We laugh, but it s still more likely there s only one Donald Trump, who is just a cynical, manipulating man, manipulating his followers and his enemies and the media without any concern for what he s doing to the country, That s possible. That s probably the truth. But I do hope I do hope that there are two Donald Trumps. Because that way he could go f*ck himself. Turning to the ever-escalating racist violence spilling out of Trump rallies across the country, Noah didn t mince his words either. Here s the truth: Donald Trump didn t just create an atmosphere for violence at his rallies, he engineered it as carefully and deliberately as Matt Damon did when he was growing potatoes on Mars. Finally the host appealed to fans of Trump s opponents to avoid confronting Trump fans, or attempting to shut down their rallies, saying: If you come in, and you actually try to silence them, it s like trying to put a fire out by putting wood onto it, You ve given Trump the villain that, up until now, he was making up. The issue of course, with failing to confront Trump and his merry band of agitators, is that fascism is the genie you can t put back in the bottle.Donald Trump, and his fellow Republican candidates, have pulled the most noxious, toxic, racist, sexist behavior back into the mainstream.The Republican establishment knows they have opened pandora s box, a box that they cannot now close. They hoped to leverage its toxic contents by turning it into votes for their establishment candidate. Instead, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have been given the chance to take over; two men who would have been unelectable in almost any ballot in modern times. Whatever hell these candidates and their followers reap upon the country, it will taint the Republican party forever.Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
Racist Whacko Threatens Construction Crew With Gun: ‘Get These N*****s Off The Road’ (VIDEO) | A racist Georgia man went completely off the deep end when faced with road work on his way home, threatening the construction crew with a gun while shouting racial slurs.Construction worker Nelson King said that on Thursday morning they were working on a section of road in Coweta County. Harold Bishop was on his way home when he came upon the portion of the road that had been closed for construction. The 72-year-old man then proceeded to completely freak the f*ck out and began waving around a gun while shouting racial epithets at the crew. He pulled up on us and he was like, Get these N-word off the road, I live here, I ll kill you N-word, King recalled.When Bishop pulled out his gun for the second time, King decided to start recording the incident while another man working at the scene called 911. According to the Coweta County Sheriff s Office, Bishop then left the scene but returned before police showed up. King said he decided to record the man s threats so that he would have proof of what was happening. If I can show proof that he pulled the gun out, said King, police will get him. It was a good thing King had decided to make the video of Bishop threatening them with his gun because when police showed up they saw him throw a beer out of the window and smelled alcohol on him, but they could not find the weapon. That s when King whipped out the proof. I showed police the video and they seen the gun when he pointed it at us, they were like oh he s got to go, said King.Bishop has been charged with charged with five counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, weapon pointing a gun at another, terroristic threats, DUI, and probation violation. He is currently being held without bond and is due in court on September 22.Watch more, here:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Top House Intelligence Democrat intends to make sample of Russia-bought Facebook ads public | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said on Monday he intended to make a “representative sampling” of Facebook Inc political ads believed to have been purchased by Russia available to the public later this month and that he hoped to make them all public eventually. Representative Adam Schiff confirmed that his committee, which is investigating Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, had received from Facebook more than 3,000 politically divisive ads the social media company found on its network that it said appeared in the months before and after the November 2016 U.S. election. | 0fake |
Re: Can’t make this up: Michael Moore is pissed that his anti-Trump movie might help elect Donald Trump | Can’t make this up: Michael Moore is pissed that his anti-Trump movie might help elect Donald Trump Posted at 7:38 am on October 27, 2016 by Greg P. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
This is really one of the funnier things we’ve seen this election.
Michael Moore has a new anti-Trump movie out called “TrumpLand,” but it’s a 4-minute clip of the movie where Moore makes the case for why Donald Trump will win that’s being shared right now by pro-Trump forces and that has the portly filmmaker all out of sorts.
For example, Donald Jr. told all of his followers to watch it on Wednesday: Hey everyone – Trump, Jr. & right wing thinks my movie called "TrumpLand" is pro-Trump! Haha. Pls don't tell them otherwise! #satire #irony pic.twitter.com/difR93uzTg
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 26, 2016
Trump comms guy Jason Miller thinks it’s a “must-see”, too: Michael Moore must-see (not a typo) – disagree on many issues, but he speaks with conviction and clarity here: " https://t.co/Z1mU96doRZ "
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 26, 2016
Whoops! | 1real |
Donald Trump Begs Hillary Clinton Early Voters to Change Their Votes | As a new poll shows 28% of early Republican Florida voters casting their vote for Clinton, Donald Trump is getting desperate.
The Republican nominee begged Clinton voters to change their vote in 6 states where it’s not too late to do so. Trump wrote Wednesday morning, “So now that you can see Hillary was a big mistake, change your vote to MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN!” You can change your vote in six states. So, now that you see that Hillary was a big mistake, change your vote to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2016
Tuesday evening Trump made the case that due to the FBI’s announcement about Clinton’s emails voters might have buyers’ remorse , “A lot of things have happened over the last few days. This is a message for any Democratic voters who have already cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton and are having a bad case of buyers’ remorse — in other words you want to change your vote — Wisconsin is one of several states where you can change your early ballot if you think you’ve made a mistake.”
While it’s true that people in some states can change their votes, it’s not true that this rule was changed because of Hillary Clinton’s “emails” and yes, that’s a new Right wing “thing” apparently. Trump doesn’t suggest the law was changed because of Clinton, but he seems to think people will be rushing to change their mind about Clinton because of the non-surprise October “surprise!” the Republican FBI Director delivered , which was perceived to have benefited the Trump ticket.
Days ago, Snopes debunked the notion that changing early votes is being allowed because of the FBI’s bizarre announcement that they may or may not have more emails pertaining to Clinton.
Claim: After FBI Director Jim Comey announced that he was reviewing e-mails potentially linked to Hillary Clinton, several states announced that they were allowing people to change their early votes. mixture
WHAT’S TRUE: Some states allow early voters to change their votes before election day.
WHAT’S FALSE: No states changed their election laws in order to allow people who voted early for Hillary Clinton to change their votes.
And to make this even better, that false information was based on a Fox News report that wasn’t selling the false story about Clinton, but still got some of the information wrong. This is why the Right can’t have nice things. The Left should be vigilant against allowing itself to become too insular, because epistemic closure leads to losing.
Trump conveniently ignores his own history of email dumping, exhaustive list of lawsuits, bragging about sexual assault, dissing minorities and a Gold Star family, and national security experts investigating his ties and his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Only a desperate candidate runs on trying to get people to change their votes to him because someone found a Clinton aide’s emails when they don’t even know what they say or if they are duplicates yet.
While this race is far from over, if all Americans get off their butts and go vote, Donald Trump faces an uphill battle to the White House. | 1real |
Police arrest two more men over London train bomb attack | LONDON (Reuters) - British police said they had arrested two more men on Wednesday in connection with the bombing of a commuter train in London last week which injured 30 people, bringing the total in custody to five. The men, aged 48 and 30, were held under terrorism laws in Newport in south Wales. Another man was arrested in Newport on Tuesday night while two others, an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old, were held by counter-terrorism officers on Saturday. | 0fake |
Trump’s Scandals Versus Hillary’s Scandals BRILLIANTLY Exposed | Robert Gehl asks if you remember back in 2001, when the Clinton’s backed a U-Haul truck to the rear-end of the White House and took off with a bunch of publicly owned furniture and other treasures?
Yeah… that was pretty embarrassing. Probably something you wouldn’t want to repeat.
But then again, you’re not Hillary Clinton.
According to another recently unclassified FBI interview, Clinton and her staff were seen removing furniture and lamps from the State Department offices early in 2009 as soon as she took office as secretary. Hillary was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.
The agent – who is now an investigator with the Department of Homeland Security – said he had no idea whether or not the items were ever returned to the taxpayers.
Back in 2001, after The Washington Post broke the story, the Clintons said they would reimburse the taxpayers $86,000 for the items they stole that were actually government property, LifeZette reports .
They also returned another $28,000 worth of furniture a few days later.
In addition to stealing all that furniture back in 2001, you’ll recall they even removed the “W”s from all the keyboards in a juvenile and childish stunt to upset the incoming administration of George “W.” Bush.
Theft of taxpayer items from the State Department were not the only revelations in the FBI interview, The Washington Examiner is reporting .
In its notes, the FBI writes: “Prior to Clinton’s tenure, being an agent on the Secretary of State’s protective detail was seen as an honor and a privilege reserved for senior agents. However, by the end of Clinton’s tenure it was staffed largely with new agents because it was difficult to find senior agents willing to work for her.” | 1real |
GOP Rep Blames Media For Trump’s Attacks On Sessions | On Thursday, GOP Rep. Dave Brat took to CNN to blame, of all people, the media for Donald Trump s relentless attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Brat represents Virginia s 7th District, which may explain his love of both Sessions and Trump, and his desire to blame someone else for their falling out. The 7th District was created in 1993 by decree of the Department of Justice, who forced the state to create at least one majority minority district in order to comply with Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act. Much of the urban areas of Richmond were carved out into a new 3rd District, and what was left the mainly white voters were left in the 7th.Being as Trump and Sessions are now the two most powerful racists in America, it stands to reason that a guy representing an area that hasn t voted for a single Democrat in more than 45 years and never elected a person of color would want them to get along.In a statement released by Brat s office on Wednesday, he decried the full-throated obsession over Russia by the media, which he said could not have been foreseen at the time of Sessions recusal from the investigation. That recusal has been the source of the recent enmity between the AG and the president. From the statement:The media s attacks have only escalated since Trump s inauguration. Fake news dominates. Anchors now make the news by opinion, instead of reporting objective reality. The President is frustrated with those who have called for his impeachment since day one.But CNN s Kate Bolduan took Brat to task for seemingly blaming the press for Trump s social media outburts. In a testy exchange, she maintained a difficult smile as she said the media s not forcing the president to tweet his attacks. Brat s response? I think you did. Bolduan was incredulous:Are you kidding me? The media did not force the president to attack Jeff Sessions.Watch the exchange in this tweet from CNN s Katerina Erbiti: I will concede the President did touch his key pad @RepDaveBrat saying the media forced POTUS to attack Sessions https://t.co/mWkvpjZKjb Katerina Erbiti (@KaterinaErbiti) July 27, 2017Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
DON’T BELIEVE MEDIA LIES…Wildly Unpopular Hillary Gives Speech In NH…Here Are Uncensored Facebook Users Responses From Live Feed…LOL! | This Facebook user s comment about Donald Duck is in reference to new video that was just released today by Project Veritas, showing direct collision with Hillary Clinton and underground Dem group who admits to committing massive voter fraud: While you re at it Hillary, you may want to look into an assisted living arrangement. We re pretty sure neither one of you are in any shape to be without constant medical supervision | 1real |
BUSTED: Growing Evidence Supports Claim Cruz Intentionally Lied About Carson Dropping Out (AUDIO) | Ted Cruz has a lot of explaining to do regarding the actions of his campaign staff. Cruz s campaign took a report that Ben Carson was diverting to Florida after the Iowa Caucus, without heading to New Hampshire, and very selectively cherry picked it to mean that Ben Carson was suspending his campaign and/or dropping out of the presidential race. This was immediately followed by a plea to Cruz workers to tell all Carson caucus-goers this falsehood while encouraging them to caucus for Ted Cruz instead.Carson s own campaign clarified at 6:53 pm he was not dropping out of the race. Cruz s deputy Iowa campaign manager sent an email at 6:56 pm, 3 minutes after Carson clarified things, saying Carson was taking time off from the campaign trail after Iowa and making a big announcement next week. The email also said to inform any Carson caucus goers of this and convince them to support Cruz instead. The first phone call by the campaign to a Cruz precinct captain in Iowa came in at 7:07 pm, with the same instructions to tell Carson supporters to caucus for Cruz instead. Another phone call came in at 7:29 pm. Both calls came after CNN also clarified that Carson was not suspending his campaign.The Cruz campaign has so far insisted that they were acting on an accurate report that Carson was suspending campaigning after the Iowa caucus. The thing is, there doesn t seem to be any accurate report that exists. Cruz had blamed CNN for reporting that Carson suspended his campaign, but CNN did no such thing. Iowa Republican Steve King linked to CNN s report then inferred on his own that Carson was quitting the campaign. King clearly was clueless, because CNN said no such thing. However, the fact Cruz took King s word for it without reading the actual article he linked is hard to believe. Cruz might claim they just made a mistake but it seriously strains credulity to think they are that inept.Nancy Bliesman, a precinct captain for Cruz received the voicemails because she didn t take the calls as they were coming in. This prevented her from unknowingly lying to Carson voters. It isn t immediately known how many other precinct captains or other campaign workers may have gotten the misinformation and acted on it. One thing is for sure, this puts a stain on Cruz s win and could prove problematic for him in future caucuses once voters get wind of his shenanigans.Listen to the voicemails that were sent by the Cruz campaign below:Featured image from Flickr | 1real |
WHY DID 14 Massive Teen Mall Brawls, Including Gunfire Break Out Across America On The Day After Christmas? [VIDEO] | MASSIVE PLANNED MALL FIGHTS Broke out across the US on Monday forcing many of the malls to evacuate shoppers and close their doors.December 26 is one of the busiest shopping days of the years with after Christmas specials.Beachwood Place Mall outside of Cleveland, Ohio Officers used pepper spray to disperse a large crowd after a fight that prompted a lockdown of Beachwood Place on Monday evening, police said.At least one juvenile is in custody in connection with the fight that broke out just after 6:30 p.m. near the mall s food court, police said. The juvenile is accused of assaulting a police officer who arrived to break up the disturbance.Officers were initially called to the scene for a report of shots fired, but have since confirmed there were no gunshots, police at the scene said. Cleveland.comThey shooting in Beachwood Mall tho pic.twitter.com/MNBEes9GIp DOE BEEZY/FREEBANDZ (@DoeBoyOfficial) December 27, 2016Gunshot-like noise during fight leads to chaos at Jersey Gardens mall https://t.co/cZlblGdH7x Steven P. Miller (@sparkermiller) December 27, 2016A total of seven arrests were made during a huge fight that broke out at the Shoppes at Buckland Hills in Manchester, causing the mall to shut down early Monday night.Manchester Police said hundred of teens were involved, and that several fights broke out. The mall was shut down shortly before 6 p.m. and cleared out in response. It was supposed to remain open until 9 p.m.According to Manchester Police Capt. Chris Davis, it s typical to see more teens in the mall during the holidays. Kids are out of school. A lot of them aren t hanging out in the streets so they come here, typically, and hang out at the mall. The mall released the following statement Tuesday morning:Buckland Hills has closed for the evening. The well-being of our shoppers and retailers is our number one priority, and we take matters very seriously that disrupt the peaceful, safe environment we strive to create for our community. We are working closely with law enforcement and direct all inquiries to the Manchester Police Department. The shopping center will be open Tuesday.According to police, about 8-10 teens started fighting at around 5:30 p.m., and officers who were already at the mall broke up the fight. Then, several hundred teens at various other locations throughout the mall started fighting at the same time.Davis said some veteran Manchester officers who were at Buckland Hills on Monday night noticed more teens than usual. They just kind of sensed that something was amiss, previous to the fights actually starting. So it was just kind of a sixth-sense by some of our officers. Fox61 Fox Valley Mall wildin pic.twitter.com/UU7p0Qq7Gs Velma (@BFitman) December 27, 201614 malls nationwide shut down due to large fights, reports of shots fired, etc. Ashley Michels (@ReporterAshley) December 27, 2016Social media update on Aurora TC Mall fight. Waiting for more info from police now pic.twitter.com/gWF8mXcyFg Ashley Michels (@ReporterAshley) December 27, 2016 Gateway Pundit | 1real |
‘James Bond of Philanthropy’ Gives Away the Last of His Fortune - The New York Times | As it happens, Donald J. Trump is not the only person to announce plans to shut down a personal philanthropy, just the best known. This is the story of a man who made and kept that same promise. Nearly five years ago, Charles F. Feeney sat in a cushy armchair in an apartment on the east side of Manhattan, grandchildren’s artwork taped to the walls, and said that by the end of 2016, he was going to hand out the last of a great fortune that he had made. It was a race: Mr. Feeney was then 81, and Atlantic Philanthropies, a collection of private foundations he had started and funded, still had about $1. 5 billion left. Flinging money out the window or writing checks was not Mr. Feeney’s way. Last month, Mr. Feeney and Atlantic completed the sprint and made a final grant, $7 million to Cornell University, to support students doing community service work. He had officially emptied his pockets, meeting his aspiration of “giving while living. ” Altogether, he had contributed $8 billion to his philanthropies, which have supported higher education, public health, human rights and scientific research. “You’re always nervous handling so much money, but we seem to have worked it pretty well,” Mr. Feeney, now 85, said last week in a phone interview. His remaining personal net worth is slightly more than $2 million. That’s not quite broke, by any standard, but it is a modest amount for a man who controlled thousands of times as much wealth. He and his wife, Helga, now live in a rented apartment in San Francisco. “You can only wear one pair of pants at a time,” Mr. Feeney has said. Until he was 75, he traveled only in coach, and carried reading materials in a plastic bag. For many years, when in New York, he had lunch not at the city’s luxury restaurants, but in the homey confines of Tommy Makem’s Irish Pavilion on East 57th Street, where he ate the burgers. None of the major American philanthropists have given away a greater proportion of their wealth, and starting in 1982, Mr. Feeney did most of this in complete secrecy, leading Forbes magazine to call him the “James Bond of philanthropy. ” His name does not appear in gilded letters, chiseled marble or other forms of writing anywhere on the 1, 000 buildings across five continents that $2. 7 billion of his money paid for. For years, Atlantic’s support came with a requirement that the beneficiaries not publicize its involvement. Beyond Mr. Feeney’s reticence about blowing his own horn, “it was also a way to leverage more donations — some other individual might contribute to get the naming rights,” said Christopher G. Oechsli, the president and chief executive officer of Atlantic. During the early 1990s, Mr. Feeney met secretly with paramilitary forces in Belfast, Northern Ireland, urging them to drop armed guerrilla conflict and promising financial support if they embraced electoral politics. Atlantic grants paid to create a public health system in Vietnam, and to provide access to antiretroviral treatment for AIDS in southern Africa. The last rounds of grants, about $600 million, included support for Atlantic Fellows, described as young emerging leaders working in their countries for healthier, more equitable societies. Raised in Elizabeth, N. J. Mr. Feeney served as a radio operator in the Air Force and attended Cornell University on the G. I. Bill. In 1960, he and a partner set up a company that sold items like brandy and cigars to travelers in shops at airports. It became a booming success. Mr. Feeney has also been a shrewd investor in technology . In 1984, he secretly transferred all of his assets, including his 38. 75 percent ownership of the business, to Atlantic Philanthropies. He grew the Atlantic pot with early investments in companies like Facebook, Priceline, Alibaba and Legent. A business dispute in 1997 forced disclosure of Mr. Feeney’s funding for Atlantic. As for Mr. Trump, if he really does shut down his foundation — stung by inquiries about the use of foundation money to pay Mr. Trump’s personal liabilities, or purchase football helmet memorabilia, or oil paintings of himself — he is not likely to follow the Feeney model. The two men are mirror images. For years, Mr. Trump lobbied hard to get onto lists of the wealthy, like the Forbes 400 Mr. Feeney has tried to stay off them. The Atlantic endowment came entirely from Mr. Feeney’s money much of the money that went into the Trump foundation in recent years was from others. One of Atlantic’s projects was to propose reforms to the American health care system, which helped lay groundwork for the Affordable Care Act another was advocacy for the end of the death penalty for juveniles. Mr. Trump has been on the other side of both of those issues, vowing to “dismantle Obamacare on Day 1,” and calling, in 1989, for the restoration of the death penalty after five teenagers were arrested in the rape of a jogger in Central Park. (They were convicted but later cleared of the charges.) Just as Mr. Trump was opening Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in the early 1980s, Mr. Feeney was a few blocks away in Makem’s pub, thinking about the first big checks he would write for charity, on the condition that his identity not be disclosed. “I don’t recall ever meeting Trump,” Mr. Feeney said last week. No wonder. The thought crossed my mind 20 years ago that Chuck Feeney is what Donald Trump would be, if he lived his entire existence backward. | 0fake |
Paper Tiger ISIS Digs Into Mosul | Written by Eric Margolis As a former soldier and war correspondent who has covered 14 conflicts, I look at all the media hoopla over tightening siege of Mosul, Iraq and shake my head. This western-organized “liberation” of Mosul is one of the bigger pieces of political-military theater that I’ve seen. Islamic State (IS), the defender of Mosul, is a paper tiger, blown out of all proportion by western media. IS is, as this writer has been saying for years, an armed mob made up of 20-something malcontents, religious fanatics, and modern-day anarchists. At its top is a cadre of former Iraqi Army officers with military experience. These former officers of Saddam Hussain are bent on revenge for the US destruction of their nation and the lynching of its late leader. But IS rank and file has no military training, little discipline, degraded communications, and ragged logistics. In fact, today’s Islamic State is what the Ottoman Empire used to term, ‘bashi-bazouks,” a collection of irregular cut-throats and scum of the gutter sent to punish and terrorize enemies by means of torture, rapine, looting, and arson. What has amazed me about the faux western war against ISIS is its leisurely nature, lack of élan , and hesitancy. In my view, ISIS was mostly created by the US and its allies as a weapon to be used against Syria’s government – just as the Afghan mujahadin were used by the US and the Saudis to overthrow the Soviet-backed Afghan government. Israel tried the same tactics by helping create Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both were cultivated to split the PLO. ISIS is an ad hoc movement that wants to punish the West and the Saudis for the gross carnage they have inflicted on the Arab world. Western and Kurdish auxiliary forces have been sitting 1.5 hours drive from Mosul and the IS town of Raqqa for over a year. Instead, western – mainly US – warplanes have been gingerly bombing around these targets in what may be an effort to convince breakaway ISIS to rejoin US-led forces fight the Damascus regime. Note that ISIS does not appear to have ever attacked Israel though it is playing an important role in the destruction of Syria. Some reports say Israel is providing logistic and medical support for IS. The siege of Mosul is being played up by western media as a heroic second Stalingrad. Don’t be fooled. IS has only 3-5,000 lightly armed fighters in Mosul and Raqqa, maybe even less. The leaders of IS are likely long gone. IS has few heavy weapons, no air cover at all, and poor communications. Its rag-tag fighters will run out of ammunitions and explosives very quickly. Encircling Mosul are at least 50,000 western-led soldiers, backed by heavy artillery, rocket batteries, tanks, armored vehicles and awesome air power The western imperial forces are composed of tough Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Iraqi army and special forces, some Syrian Kurds, Iranian ‘volunteers’ irregular forces and at least 5,000 US combat troops called “advisors”, plus small numbers of French, Canadian and British special forces. Hovering in the background are some thousands of Turkish troops, supported by armor and artillery ready to "liberate" Iraq – which was once part of the Ottoman Empire. For the US, current military operations in Syria and Iraq are the realization of an imperialist’s fondest dream: native troops led by white officers, the model of the old British Indian Raj. Washington arms, trained, equips and financed all its native auxiliaries. The IS is caught in a dangerous dilemma. To be a political movement, it was delighted to control Iraq’s second largest city. But as a guerilla force, it should not have holed up in an urban area where it was highly vulnerable to concentrated air attack and being surrounded. This is what’s happening right now. In the mostly flat Fertile Crescent with too few trees, ground forces are totally vulnerable to air power, as the recent 1967, 1973 Israel-Arab wars and 2003 Iraq wars have shown. Dispersion and guerilla tactics are the only hope for those that lack air cover. IS forces would best advise to disperse across the region and continue their hit-and-run attacks. Otherwise, they risk being destroyed. But being mostly bloody-minded young fanatics, IS may not heed military logic and precedent in favor of making a last stand in the ruins of Mosul and Raqqa. When this happens, western leaders will compete to claim authorship of the faux crusade against the paper tiger of ISIS. LewRockwell.com . Related | 1real |
Joe Biden Proves He’s A MUCH Better Negotiator Than Trump; He Helped Save Obamacare | Donald Trump made became a household name in the 80s after pretending to write a book called The Art of the Deal. After that, his reputation was sealed as a great negotiator or so his followers thought.That illusion was shattered on Friday, though, after the Senate failed to pass its latest attempt at repealing Obamacare. Despite Trump s last minute appeal to John McCain, McCain became one of three Republicans who are credited with killing the bill.It turns out that the real deal-maker in this scenario was our former Vice President. Joe Biden called his friend and former colleague before the vote. Former Senator Joe Lieberman did the same.While we don t know what Trump said to McCain that apparently had no effect, one of the reasons it fell on deaf ears is Trump s blatant insincerity. On the campaign trial, Trump disparaged McCain, saying he preferred people who weren t captured referring to the fact that McCain was captured by North Vietnamese and held and tortured in a POW camp for 5 1/5 years.Before the vote, and after McCain had voted to let the vote go forward, Trump tweeted that McCain was a hero.Biden s call may or may not have been the deciding factor in McCain s vote, but you can be sure it was more meaningful than Trump s. Biden, unlike Trump, can be kind and diplomatic, even when there are political disagreements. Biden is capable of emotional appeals, simply because he experiences empathy, something Trump completely lacks. Biden also has first-hand experience with the kind of brain cancer for which McCain is currently undergoing treatment. He lost his son to it. You can be sure that Biden, in his heartfelt way, helped convince McCain that no one should be denied treatment for such a cruel disease.The Post reported that Biden had a more emotional discussion with McCain, reflecting on his son Beau Biden s death to the same brain cancer McCain was diagnosed with earlier this month. Biden s son died in 2015, two years after his initial diagnosis.Source: The HillWhatever or whoever convinced McCain to do the right thing, it s clear that Trump s deal-making abilities don t translate to D.C. That s one small consolation for having a narcissistic madman at the helm of our country.Featured image via Mark Makela/Getty Images | 1real |
WATCH: ANTI-GUN RAPPER, Obama-Fanboy Snoop Dogg Uses Gun To Assassinate President Trump In New VIDEO | Watch:Here is Snoop Dogg s latest music video glorifying the assassination of President Trump. If Snoop Dogg is correct and the youth listens to their message, are they listening to this message? | 1real |
“The Radical Left Seems Ready To Go To War” As Count Claims Hillary Won the Popular Vote | Read by 2,559 people
This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published his End of the American Dream site.
Editor’s Comment: It is almost as if this unprecedented election was designed to bring about chaos. Half the country seem to vehemently hate one of the two candidates, and the election of either one may have been enough to start opposition riots, clashes in the street or worse – widespread, ongoing violence in all corners of the country. The perception that Hillary won the popular vote and pending official totals, which are even now subject to change, are likely to further fuel anger and division among leftist supporters who’ve long feared a Trump presidency.
While many people in the patriot movement are breathing a sigh of relief at the defeat of the establishment’s candidate, it seems that millions on the left are now emotionally tied to a huge collectivist government, and are willing to fight for their own enslavement. Is America peaking out of the darkness, or about to enter into its darkest phase yet?
Did America Really Pass The Test? – Hillary Clinton Is Going To Win The Popular Vote By A Wide Margin
by Michael Snyder
The 2016 election was a test, and it would be easy to assume that since Donald Trump won the election that America passed the test. Unfortunately, it may not be that simple. A closer look at the numbers reveals a very sobering reality. Yes, Donald Trump won far more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton did, and that means that he is on track to become our next president . But Hillary Clinton is going to win the popular vote, and it is likely to be by a very wide margin once all the votes are counted.
As I write this article, Hillary Clinton has a lead of 218,000 in the popular vote, but most of the votes that have not been counted are on the west coast.
In California, Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump by a 5,482,166 to 2,966,654 margin, and only 68 percent of the vote has been counted so far. So assuming that the ratio stays about the same the rest of the way, Clinton is going to add at least a million more votes to her lead just from the state of California.
Up in Washington state, Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump by more than 370,000 votes, and only 60 percent of the vote has been counted there so far. So she could easily pick up another 200,000 votes in that state.
When everything is all said and done, it seems very likely that Hillary Clinton will have received well over a million more votes than Donald Trump did in this election.
So the truth is that the American people chose Hillary Clinton, but because of some electoral college magic Donald Trump is the winner of the election.
And I am certainly very, very happy that Hillary Clinton is not going to be our next president. Four years under her “leadership” would have likely been the final nail in the coffin for our nation. My hope is that she will now disappear from national politics for good.
But just because she is not going to be our next president does not mean that we passed the test.
In this election, the American people were faced with a very stark choice. Hillary Clinton is the most wicked politician that our country has ever seen, and over the past three decades the American people have gotten to know exactly who she is and what she stands for.
And despite knowing exactly what they would be getting, more Americans voted for her than voted for Donald Trump.
If every vote counted equally, she would be our next president.
I certainly don’t mean to rain on the Trump parade. Christians, conservatives and patriots are right to celebrate this victory by Donald Trump. But the truth is that I don’t believe that we did actually pass the test that we were faced with.
As a nation, we willingly chose Hillary Clinton by a pretty substantial margin.
And don’t think that the radical left is going to forget that Trump lost the popular vote. Already, violence and protests have erupted all over the nation.
Shortly after Trump declared victory, riots broke out in Berkeley, San Jose and Oakland …
“Not my president! Not my president!” chanted anti-Trump rioters in Berkley, California as they light flares and storm the streets.
Riots erupted in Berkley, San Jose and Oakland shortly after the announcement of Donald Trump as president-elect. Rioters are breaking into stores, vandalizing cars and shooting flares.
One woman in Oakland was hit by a car on Highway 24 just after midnight and has suffered serious injuries after. When she pulled over to the right shoulder, she was surrounded by anti-Trump rioters, who vandalized her car and broke the back window, according to CHP officers.
There were reports of protesters burning American flags in some areas of the country, and there were even brawls outside of the White House .
And once the sun set on Wednesday night, the protests started again. According to USA Today , “thousands of demonstrators” have hit the streets in New York City…
In New York, thousands of demonstrators blocked off streets around Trump Tower near the busy intersection of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, chanting “hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go” and “p—y grabs back,” a reference to tape of a Trump conversation from years back in which he One woman protester was topless while another climbed on top of a tree to see the activity. Taxis, city buses and passenger vehicles stood at a standstill.
In Boston, radical leftists were organizing a giant protest against Trump …
Far-left organizers are planning a mass protest in Boston against President-elect Donald Trump, citing the need to “immediately start fighting against him.”
Approximately 2,300 people have indicated they will gather outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston tonight for a “Boston Against Trump Rally.” According to the Facebook event page, another 5,000 people say they may be interested in attending.
“Donald Trump is the next President of the United States. We need to immediately start fighting against him. We need to build a movement to fight racism, sexism, and Islamophobia,” the event description says.
Sadly, this could be the beginning of a new era of protests, rioting and civil unrest.
Instead of coming together behind the new president, the radical left seems ready to go to war.
So even though Trump won the election, the truth is that our troubles may only just be starting. More than half the country didn’t want Trump, our nation was already more divided than it has been in decades before he won, and it won’t take much for many of our big cities to descend into utter chaos.
Without a doubt, we should be very excited that Donald Trump won the election, but an election victory is not going to magically make our problems go away.
When faced with the most monumental election in any of our lifetimes, Hillary Clinton received the most votes from the American people, and the consequences for that decision may be far more severe than most people are now anticipating.
Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.
Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream .
If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming .
About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and End Of The American Dream. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. Click here to subscribe : Join over one million monthly readers and receive breaking news, strategies, ideas and commentary. Please Spread The Word And Share This Post
Author: Michael Snyder Views: Read by 2,559 people Date: November 11th, 2016 Website: http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/did-america-really-pass-the-test-hillary-clinton-is-going-to-win-the-popular-vote-by-a-wide-margin
Copyright Information: This content has been contributed to SHTFplan by a third-party or has been republished with permission from the author. Please contact the author directly for republishing information. | 1real |
Puerto Rico bill expected soon, House Democratic leader says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she expects legislation to help tackle Puerto Rico’s ongoing financial crisis to come soon and that lawmakers will hopefully act on it quickly. “We should have a bill pretty soon. And I think the Republicans are acting in good faith on this,” Pelosi, the chamber’s minority leader, told reporters. The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to leave for a recess on Wednesday. “It would be my hope that we would see something before we leave here, that would be marked up as soon as we come back and then taken to the floor and ... sent to the Senate,” she added. | 0fake |
ROSEANNE BARR PAID HIGH PRICE For Crossing Hillary: My Show Was Cancelled By “Rapist Bill Clinton” For Interviewing Paula Jones [VIDEO] | Add one more person whose career or life has been destroyed by the Clinton s as they scratch and claw their way into the White House Actress and comedienne Roseanne Barr revealed that she paid a high price for crossing Hillary Clinton.Barr believes her talk show was cancelled after she gave Paula Jones, who accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, a platform to speak in 1998.The 63 year-old actress is sure the fate of her show was sealed when she interviewed Jones and did not support the Clinton narrative that the former president was innocent of the allegations. Liberal Hollywood took note and Barr s show ended, despite its former success, she believes. There really is a deeper issue underneath the Clintonite spin of this right-wing conspiracy because apparently conservatives are not letting the President keep his pants zipped up, or something. Here is her 1998 interview with Paula Jones who accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse: Barr has made no secret of her dislike for the Clintons and has filled her social media with criticism of the Democratic presidential nominee and her husband. She even caught the attention of Donald Trump who tweeted his thanks for one of her comments.Via: DownTrend | 1real |
Trump Supporters Show They’re Not As Crazy As You Thought — They’re WORSE (VIDEO) | The majority of America has been wondering who actually is supporting Donald Trump. He s been rejected in Chicago and protests have been a theme at his rallies throughout the country. Yet, he does have support as evidenced by his trouncing of other GOP hopefuls who are just as crazy as he is but are prone to show it less. So, who are Trump s supporters exactly? This video shows us who these people are and how they think:Watch video here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiFMts60ZIQ]One man believed that the government is after Trump, turning the volatile and nasty Republican candidate into a victim or even a martyr of sorts. I m for Trump cause he s being bullied by the government and they need to be together, the man said. And when asked about the frequent counter-protests against Trump, he defended the Republican candidate. I m not racist and I don t think he s racist, though he admitted Trump should have denounced the KKK.Another man believes in Trump s honesty and thinks Bernie will control his every move: I think Trump is honest. We don t need a Barack in office no more, because he s a liar. He can t be direct. Hillary Clinton is a criminal. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. He believes in taking away all our freedoms. He ll control the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we live. These remarks border on paranoia and misinformation. If these people just looked a little closer and deeper at who they re voting for, they would see a racist, a demagogue, and someone who s already done damage to this country. One can only imagine the damage he would do should he become president. Featured image via video screenshot. | 1real |
Potential New Hampshire spoiler Kasich could pose threat to Rubio | MANCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is polling in the low single digits nationally but may be poised to play the role of spoiler in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary by cutting into the support of higher-profile rivals such as Marco Rubio. The Ohio governor, who is vowing to erase the U.S. budget deficit without shredding the safety net for poor Americans, has built a base of support among moderate Republicans and independent voters, who wield special clout in New Hampshire because they can vote in either party’s primary. Kasich, 63, has the support of about 12 to 14 percent of New Hampshire’s voters in recent polls. The former congressman has staked the viability of his White House aspirations on New Hampshire, whose pivotal primary is part of the state-by-state contests to pick the party nominees for the Nov. 8 election to replace Democratic President Barack Obama. While well behind billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, Kasich’s poll numbers are close to those of Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida who is seeking to build on his momentum after a third-place finish in last Monday’s Iowa caucuses behind Trump and winner Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas. “I found great clarity here in New Hampshire,” Kasich said on Sunday in Concord. “These town halls, you know, they’re getting bigger and I don’t know how I feel about them getting bigger.” The event marked his 102nd town hall in the state. For the 100th, in Bedford on Friday, the campaign celebrated with confetti and a cake that was served to voters attending the event. Kasich told stories of personal connections he said he had made with voters at town halls, including with a woman whose daughter has struggled with addiction. “She said: ‘My daughter has been sober for 11 months,’” Kasich said, asking the crowd: “Do you have any idea what this lady’s life is like?’” He added he had promised to call the daughter and tell her: “Your mom is counting on you.” The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll put Kasich’s support nationally at 3.4 percent. Kasich himself jokes about his lack of name recognition, saying voters often mispronounce his last name. But among New Hampshire voters, a Monmouth University poll released on Sunday found Kasich at 14 percent, compared with 30 percent for Trump and 13 percent for Rubio and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Rubio was criticized last year by Republican strategists who said he had not done enough to woo voters in New Hampshire in intimate settings such as coffee shops and town halls. This year, however, he has campaigned intensively in the state and often holds town halls. But Rubio came under heavy attack in the Republican presidential debate on Saturday from rivals who accused him of being too inexperienced for the White House. Kasich delivered a positive message during the debate that could appeal to New Hampshire Republican voters, who famously make up their minds late and never seem in the mood to follow the lead of the Iowa caucuses. Some of Kasich’s supporters are passionate about him. “It’s authenticity, brother. You have my vote,” one man told him at the Bedford town hall. Others were weighing their options. Tim Vanblommesteyn, 62, who attended the Kasich town hall in Concord, said he was “disgusted” with both political parties but liked some of what the Ohio governor had to say. The small-business owner and self-described independent praised Kasich for taking what he said was a “principled stand” on immigration reform, an issue that has aroused fiery campaign rhetoric, including from Trump, who has called for deporting illegal immigrants. Kasich has said the United States should secure its borders but that illegal immigrants who have not committed a crime should be able to pay back taxes and get on a path to legalization. Anne Brena, 53, a Democrat from neighboring Vermont, said she came to the Concord event to learn more about the governor. Brena said she thought Democrat Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from her home state, was too liberal to win the general election and she has concerns that his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has too much “baggage” to win the White House. “John Kasich is the only Republican that sounds reasonable,” she said. (This version of the story was refiled to fix typographical error in Clinton’s former title, paragraph 22) (Reporting by Emily Stephenson and Amanda Becker; Editing by Caren Bohan 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 |
Pyongyang shown no interest in talks: State Department | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has shown no interest in pursuing talks on its nuclear and missile programs, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged the United States was communicating directly with Pyongyang. North Korean officials have shown no indication that they are interested in or are ready for talks regarding denuclearization, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. | 0fake |
Is Western Civilization Worth Saving? | Home This Month Popular Is Western Civilization Worth Saving? Is Western Civilization Worth Saving? Beau Albrecht
My father was a high-ranking student radical poobah and still thinks Castro is the bees' knees. Although this makes me technically a red diaper baby, I rejected all that baloney early on. These days, I write stories - mostly comedy science fiction - as well as maintain a blog mainly about dating advice, political commentary, and my writing projects. November 4, 2016 Politics
By 2050, it’s predicted the USA will no longer have a white majority, which in 1960 was 90%. For this, we can thank Ted Kennedy’s Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which the politicians swore up and down wouldn’t change the American ethnic composition. In Europe, due to declining native birth rates and mass immigration , this will eventually come to pass for several other nations later this century, all according to the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan . The leftists, with their really big hearts , think all this will be wonderful.
Globalism and cultural Marxism are the driving forces behind population replacement policies, but unawareness and apathy are almost as much of a problem . Some think that if Western civilization will go down the toilet, they should just “go with the flow” and enjoy the ride all the way down the tubes. Thanks to media propaganda and educational indoctrination, they have no idea that their own civilization is worth anything, and don’t have the slightest concern for their own posterity. Still, they’re pretty naive to believe that things can’t turn far worse within their own lifetimes. Why this is bad (for those who need reminding) In the future, is this going to get better, or worse?
If trends continue unabated, the founding peoples will lose control over their destiny. History shows that when this happens, the results are not good. Pillaging and plundering is a more genteel affair in modern times (though not always ) but you’re still not going to like it. Will your new rulers say, “Since things have changed so much, how about we abolish Affirmative Action and set-asides to show we’ve transcended race?” Don’t count on it. More likely, they’ll double down on these preferential treatment programs, and come up with new ones, and you will have no chance to block the spoils systems.
That’s just the beginning, too. The “ diversification ” of cities for the last several decades has been bad—Detroit, need I say more?—and riots really are getting out of hand. Now imagine what it will be like when you have no hope of influencing things like Section 8 housing moving into your neighborhood, or if you’ll get any real police protection.
This is what we’re facing if the Aztlán crowd takes over the Southwest, the community agitators get in charge of the big cities, and together their constituency has an electoral majority controlling the Federal government. (Also remember that they’ve been told since the 1960s that you’re evil oppressors responsible for all their problems.) Parts of “flyover country” might be able to hold out for a while, but nothing short of forming their own country will stop the advance of “progress”. If it were ever to come to secession, they’ll be surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. Let’s keep things from getting to that point. Is there any hope? “Refugees” have taken on the characteristics of invaders
I’ve painted a grim picture, but I have to be realistic. As for what will happen later, things only look worse; Jean Raspail’s Camp Of The Saints describes a bleak future like that. This isn’t just the USA on the line, but Western Europe too, and perhaps Eastern Europe and Australia in time. If we want to keep from disappearing into the endless night, the time to act is now.
Sometimes, with luck, sovereignty can be regained: for example, the Spanish Reconquista, or the nations of the Balkans rising after a few centuries under the Turkish yoke. However, the results aren’t guaranteed; some nations may never recover. In these examples, the “dhimmis” were subjugated under military occupation, but they were not outnumbered in their own lands. The founding populations must not allow themselves to be dispossessed in their own countries in the first place.
Granted, the dark forces of globalism are very powerful—and they’d like us to think they’re invincible—but they must be stopped. They also want you to think they’re smarter than you and know what’s good for you . (If they’d simply focus on getting richer, and cease their social engineering, they’d have far less to answer for.) Not only has our political establishment failed us, they’re working against the public . It won’t be easy, but we must reassert control over our destiny. Do we deserve to be dispossessed? Brainwashed SJWs welcoming their own destruction
Some will even say—often with haughty condescension—that if we lose our countries, then we deserve this fate. Ignoring for a moment the sheer snottiness, as well as the “might makes right” argument incongruent with the usual rhetoric of fairness by the “prepare to be assimilated, resistance is futile” crowd, let’s consider the following facts: In the 1920s, a Communist propaganda campaign was launched in the Western world. In the 1930s, this mutated into cultural Marxism and kicked into high gear during the 1960s. Most people have no idea of the scope of it all, or where things like political correctness came from. Only senior citizens remember what it was like living in a fairly normal country. Even fewer never grew up exposed to this propaganda in one form or another. The rest of us have been indoctrinated from an early age by the mass media and educational establishment. The Western political tradition lately is about openness and democracy. For this reason, we don’t conduct political change by torches and pitchforks these days. We play fair, even if our enemies often don’t . Further, political correctness encourages the “disadvantaged” to have solidarity, but vilifies the same in the majority. This is one reason why we’re on the defensive, and (for now) usually losing. Most people only have a vague idea about the extent of managed democracy and sheer corruption. Those against population replacement policies mostly put their faith in the mainstream opposition parties, not realizing that they’ve sold out to deep-pockets globalists too. “Mainstream” conservatism is a controlled opposition , providing token resistance at best.
So with that extent of treachery, disinformation, limited options for resistance, and managed democracy, it’s grotesquely dishonest for the defeatists to tell us that we’re losing a fair fight! As for their opinion that we should just give up, I have one word: No.
Whenever you hear the defeatists crowing that this is inevitable or that we “deserve” it, remember that they want to demoralize you and anyone else listening. (The same goes for when they tell you that loving your people and wanting your posterity to survive is “hatred”.) Suppose someone is losing his home by a devious swindle, orchestrated by crooks widely lauded for their fairness, caring, and honesty. It would be the height of arrogance to tell the defrauded that he deserved it and should shut up about it and let it happen. The depopulation and population replacement agenda “First, the EU has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future… The EU should provide 15,000 euros ($16,800) per asylum-seeker for each of the first two years to help cover housing, health-care and education costs—and to make accepting refugees more appealing to member states.”
Don’t be fooled: this isn’t happening because some vague, invisible force called “progress” is pushing things inevitably in this direction. No, it’s being actively promoted by globalist interests that have adopted cultural Marxism as a means of control.
Why are native fertility rates declining below replacement level? The major factors are: Women are encouraged to spend their 20s partying and their 30s trying to get rich in a cube farm. Encouraging them to to make starting a family last priority often leaves them very unhappy over the long term, and many will miss the chance to begin. Good economy tends to be positively correlated with higher fertility rates. During recessions, births go down. The implications are obvious. If less tax money was taken from working citizens for costly social services programs and spit-in-your-eye wars, then they’d be able to afford more children. Sending the guilty to prison (instead of bailing them out) when they crash the economy might be a good indirect measure too. About a third of American babies conceived end up aborted . (Thanks, feminism!) The same leftists who think this is wonderful will scream bloody murder whenever a savage killer on Death Row is executed, but all that’s another matter.
Because of declining fertility rates, the globalists tell us that we must open the floodgates of Third World immigration to prop up the population and support the aging citizens. So they’ve fed us poison, and to soothe the symptoms, they want to feed us another kind of poison. To hell with that!
Granted, keeping Social Security going in the USA will be a challenge. Still, it’s pretty uncertain that newly-arriving immigrants—if they become the majority—will be able or willing to support millions of elderly “gringos”. As for future European retirees, will they be well cared for by “refugees” from Africa and the Middle East? The way things are now, many of them prefer rioting , looting, and collecting welfare over working. So these are going to be the people propping up the European retirement programs?
Dispossession is inevitable only if we let it happen. For now, we must educate the rest of the public about what’s going on, and convince them that their future is worth saving and their posterity is worth preserving. Once we’ve achieved critical mass, we can confront the political establishment and get the government to start working for us rather than against us What’s in it for us? Whenever someone writes that Western civilization is nothing but injustice and oppression, they’re using technology we invented to complain about us.
It’s fashionable—especially in academia—to bash Western civilization. We’re not perfect, but nobody else is either. The truth is that we’re a creative, dynamic, and industrious people. Some of us are under the impression that we don’t have any culture (only other people do) but that’s mistaken. I could spend all day listing our major artists, composers, poets, philosophers, writers, theologians, and the like, but I only would scratch the surface.
Other cultures have made notable contributions—particularly East Asia and the Middle East—but the fact is that the majority of science and technology that makes life comfortable today originated in the Western world. Electricity, motorized transportation, refrigeration, telecommunications, computers (need I go on)? Yep, that was us. We shared our medical advances with the rest of the world, increasing longevity and quality of life around the globe. Whether the world’s future looks more like Star Trek or more like Blade Runner may have a lot to do with whether or not our people survive.
Finally, most of us are going to live out our lives in our native countries. Do we want them to stay the same nations we grew up in? Some time in the future, today’s youth will be running the show while we’re elderly. What kind of a place do we want it to be by then? Western civilization is great; let’s keep it going. | 1real |
Priebus on Immigration Ban: ’Perhaps We Need to Take it Further’ - Breitbart | Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” while discussing the details of President Donald Trump executive order halting access to the United States for immigrants from seven countries, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said, “Perhaps we need to take it further. ” Priebus said, “Hang on a second, the order also says persecuted Muslims have priority as well. That is a piece that is just getting totally — however you want to call it, misreported or not fully reported. It doesn’t just say Christians it also says persecuted Muslims get priority as well. This is not a Muslim ban. All this is identifying seven countries. The reason we chose the seven countries, those were the seven countries that the Congress and Obama administration identified as the seven countries being the most identifiable with dangerous terrorism taking place in their country. You can point to other countries with similar problems like Pakistan and others. Perhaps we need to take it further. But for now, immediate steps, pulling the off is to do further vetting for people traveling in and out of the countries. This is an 80 percent issue. ” | 0fake |
Senator Rand Paul says would consider partial repeal of Obamacare | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Rand Paul said on Sunday that he remains open to supporting the Senate healthcare bill but only under certain circumstances. “If we get to impasse, if we go to a bill that is more repeal and less big government programs, yes I’ll consider partial repeal,” Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” However, he added that the current bill as proposed “is not anywhere close to repeal.” | 0fake |
Obama's Departure is One Reason to Feel Optimism for Trump's Arrival | 2016 elections by Danny Haiphong
Fears of Trump should not obscure the fact that Barack Obama’s reign was a disaster. “Black America is in a worse condition than before, working class people as a whole have lost ground to a low-wage economy, and the world is closer to a World War III scenario than at any point prior.” The struggle continues, but “it is important to ensure that the protests against Trump are not allowed to be channeled back into the Democratic Party graveyard.” Obama's Departure is One Reason to Feel Optimism for Trump's Arrival by Danny Haiphong
“Only gridlock saved Social Security and Medicare from being privatized during his Presidency.”
Thousands have taken to the streets across the country to protest Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 elections. The protests have mainly centered on Trump's racism, sexism, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric spewed during his campaign. Protesters have yet to wrestle with Trump's positions on foreign policy and trade that made him a pariah to the majority of the ruling class. The struggle against capitalism and imperialism in the US remains immature even in the midst of positive growth in the movement against police brutality and racism in recent years. While Trump's overt bigotry gives cause for protest, there is one benefit of the Trump moment that should not be understated. That benefit is the much needed conclusion of the Obama era.
Democrats across the US are in a state of mourning over the departure of Obama. Democrats heralded Obama as the quintessential professional and consummate politician. His celebrity was peppered by the appearance of intelligence and rationality in the face of so-called Republican "obstructionism." Obama's rule was advertised as a victory for the Black Freedom movement. His Administration possessed a vast marketing apparatus that defended him as the lesser-evil alternative to the racist vitriol of the White Man's Republican Party.
“Obama's rule was advertised as a victory for the Black Freedom movement.”
Black Agenda Report was one of the few on the left that warned of the dangers of Obama in 2008. Once elected, Obama became virtually untouchable. Criticisms of his policies were condemned as racist and insensitive to the needs of Black America. The needs of Black America and the entire left for that matter suddenly became aligned with whatever Obama did. Obama moved forward to protect the banks, escalate war, and erect the largest national security state ever assembled. He instantly became the austerity President, waging a war of privatization on public education with the expressed plans to do the same to Social Security. Only gridlock saved Social Security and Medicare from being privatized during his Presidency.
The full scope of Obama's legacy has been discussed in earlier issues and will not be analyzed here. What is important is that the left will no longer have Obama to defend its alignment with US imperialism. No longer will the left be able to fall back on the first Black President to sanitize his record. Obama's immigration policies deported nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants with little protest. His Administration painted itself as a friend of women and LGBTQ identified people despite the fact that his policy of proxy and drone warfare murdered tens of thousands of women and children in Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Honduras.
“The left will no longer have Obama to defend its alignment with US imperialism.”
Obama was able to conduct a greater assault on oppressed people than the prior Bush Administration, making him the most effective evil Wall Street could buy. Obama took over as President in a period where the US was mired in two unpopular occupations abroad and an economic crisis at home. These conditions prompted the ruling class to choose Obama as the required form of counterinsurgency necessary to crush resistance before it started. After making a number of promises to end "dumb wars" and institute a single payer healthcare system, Obama entered office ready to the bidding of the ruling class. Eight years later, Black America is in a worse condition than before, working class people as a whole have lost ground to a low-wage economy , and the world is closer to a World War III scenario than at any point prior.
The massive protests to Trump's victory are in part a release of popular energy brought on by the departure of Obama. Unrest began with the formation of the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements. However, neither of these movements articulated Obama's role in creating the conditions for social insurgency and movement. The 2016 elections changed the landscape dramatically. The Sanders and Trump campaigns set millions into motion in protest of the two-party establishment. Obama's departure will be another breath of fresh air into the internal rot of the imperialist system. It is thus important to ensure that the protests against Trump are not allowed to be channeled back into the Democratic Party graveyard.
“After making a number of promises to end "dumb wars" and institute a single payer healthcare system, Obama entered office ready to the bidding of the ruling class.”
Obama will leave Trump a set of conditions that he cannot possibly maintain without popular unrest. Obama departs office only inches from World War III with Russia and China. Poverty and wealth inequality worsened under his administration . Not even clever distortions of statistics could hide the large number of workers currently unemployed or underemployed in the low-wage economy. School closures, food stamp cuts, and bank bailouts have unleashed the neo-liberal wasteland that Trump spoke about in his campaign.
It appears early on that the left has rejected the viability of Trump's calls to regulate the banks and renegotiate trade deals in favor of working people. Many have ignored Trump’s “populist” rhetoric and have focused all the energy of resistance on his white supremacist proposals to ban Muslims and deport millions of undocumented people. However, this moment is just as much about Obama's departure as it is Trump's arrival. The US imperialist system is facing multiple crises that relate directly back to the economic stagnation of global capitalism. It would be a mistake not to demand Trump stay true to his “populism” just as it was a mistake when the left failed to demand Obama stay true to his promises. Whatever the case, the departure of Obama is a welcome site, and the left should use the room afforded by it to wage an intensified effort to build the organizational basis for social revolution in our time. Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at [email protected] | 1real |
Aya Cash: The First Time I Ate a Vegetable (I Was 22) - The New York Times | I grew up in San Francisco, land of organic vegetables and vegan delights, before such things were so popular. From an early age, my parents sent me to school with sandwiches, eggs, and fresh fruit from the fields of the Central Valley. Although I had every opportunity to eat delicious and nutritious food, I never met a vegetable I liked. Every time I tried something green, I spit it out or threw it up. I was a theatrical kid: taking off all my clothes when I didn’t want to leave a friend’s house, throwing myself against walls screaming “Aya not tired! Aya happy! Aya bouncing off the walls!” when I didn’t want to go to bed. I was just as melodramatic with food, gagging loudly when I accidentally ran into a zucchini in a quiche, picking mushrooms out of pasta dishes and piling them on the side of my plate like dams, throwing out a perfectly good tuna melt if there were slivers of celery inside. What I could keep down was junk food. Lots and lots of junk food. My parents tried their best, but the only times I was truly happy were the two days a week I ate fast food for dinner, one day with my mom at McDonald’s and the other with my dad at Wendy’s. My parents were divorced I spent exactly half the week with each of them, alternating every Saturday. Neither parent knew about the other’s weekly convenience meal. Like most children of divorce, the only power I had was to keep their secrets and then exploit them when it suited my needs. I kept these visits confidential, allowing both parents to think they were treating me to something special. I would sit in the car, beatifically chewing, fondling a Hamburglar toy or cheap movie that had come with the food. By the time I got to middle school, I was a sugar addict, using every dime of my weekly “lunch money” to buy candy at the Cala Foods in the Castro. I hid Skor bars and Skittles around my room like Claudia in “The Club. ” I once woke up covered in melted chocolate from a forgotten stash in my pillowcase. In high school, I realized I needed more than just sugar to live, so every day I would buy and consume an entire bag of Goldfish (that elusive pizza flavor really is the best). Who needed multiple food groups? Artificial flavors? Count me in. Butylated hydroxyanisole? Yum! It wasn’t until I was 22 and newly graduated from college that I voluntarily chose to put a piece of lettuce in my mouth, then actually chewed and swallowed it. I was doing “The Winter’s Tale” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Great River Shakespeare Festival, playing Perdita and Hermia — two characters whose names, in retrospect, sound like leafy greens. I was a working actor making $250 a week, more money than I had ever seen, and I felt like a real adult. But adults cooked and had wine with dinner. When I was invited for meals at other company members’ small apartments, I didn’t want to embarrass them by refusing their food, or embarrass myself by smuggling in a box of Mike and Ikes and a bag of . One night, someone made a salad. Just a salad. I stared at the plate — lettuce, onions, tomatoes — you know, salad. To me, that pile of fresh food was like a challenge out of “Fear Factor. ” For years, I had been telling everyone that I didn’t eat vegetables. I believed I hated them. I even took pride in the fact that I could fill my body with junk and not gain weight. I secretly, ridiculously, bizarrely thought my stance made me intriguing. Unique. Idiosyncratic. But sometimes we tell stories about ourselves that aren’t true. Sometimes stories we think are fixed are actually flexible. I picked up a piece of lettuce and ate it. I didn’t gag. To my surprise, I didn’t even dislike it. Tentatively, I began to try other vegetables, not just that night, but every time they were put in front of me. That Christmas, out for dinner with my mother, I lifted a fork of spinach to my mouth. She was so excited that she took a picture of it and made it her screen saver. Surprisingly, I found that I loved lots of vegetables and consequently, all kinds of foods. Broccolini was somehow less intimidating than the larger version: the gateway, broccoli. Zucchini wasn’t so bad after all. I realized that I had determined a defining characteristic based on who I was at 6. I had not tried again for 16 years. What else had I decided about myself that might not be true anymore? What had I decided about other people? That piece of lettuce was my first recognition that my identity was not set, but malleable. I used to think belly button piercings were cool. I used to date men who didn’t like me. I used to smoke. I had never wanted to get married I thought it wasn’t “who I was. ” But a few years ago, I found myself feeling otherwise. This didn’t mean I was a different person. But the narrative I had about myself had changed. Would I have learned this in other ways? Probably. But that bite opened me up to the possibility that change can happen even when you’re not trying you just have to stay curious. I’m still a picky eater. I don’t like pork chops, chicken, mushrooms and celery. But now, I will at least try pretty much anything. I still love the occasional Taco Bell (two bean burritos, no red sauce, no onions) and, of course, an burger. Yet my world is so much bigger because of that tiny piece of lettuce. | 0fake |
The Failure of Democracy, How The Oligarchs Plan To Steal The Election | The Failure of Democracy
How The Oligarchs Plan To Steal The Election
Paul Craig Roberts
I am now convinced that the Oligarchy that rules America intends to steal the presidential election. In the past, the oligarchs have not cared which candidate won as the oligarchs owned both. But they do not own Trump.
Most likely you are unaware of what Trump is telling people as the media does not report it. A person who speaks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYozWHBIf8g&app=desktop is not endeared to the oligarchs.
Who are the oligarchs?
—Wall Street and the mega-banks too big to fail and their agent the Federal Reserve, a federal agency that put 5 banks ahead of millions of troubled American homeowners who the federal reserve allowed to be flushed down the toilet. In order to save the mega-banks’ balance sheets from their irresponsible behavior, the Fed has denied retirees any interest income on their savings for eight years, forcing the elderly to draw down their savings, leaving their heirs, who have been displaced from employment by corporate jobs offshoring, penniless.
—The military/security complex which has spent trillions of our taxpayer dollars on 15 years of gratuitous wars based entirely on lies in order to enrich themselves and their power.
—The neoconservartives whose crazed ideology of US world hegemony thrusts the American people into military conflict with Russia and China.
—The US global corporations that sent American jobs to China and India and elsewhere in order to enrich the One Percent with higher profits from lower labor costs.
—Agribusiness (Monsanto et.al.), corporations that poison the soil, the water, the oceans, and our food with their GMOs, hebicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, while killing the bees that pollinate the crops.
—The extractive industries—energy, mining, fracking, and timber—that maximize their profits by destroying the environment and the water supply.
—The Israel Lobby that controls US Middle East policy and is committing genocide against the Palestinians just as the US committed genocide against native Americans. Israel is using the US to eliminate sovereign countries that stand in Israell’s way.
What convinces me that the Oligarchy intends to steal the election is the vast difference between the presstitutes’ reporting and the facts on the ground.
According to the presstitutes, Hillary is so far ahead that there is no point in Trump supporters bothering to vote. Hillary has won the election before the vote. Hillary has been declared a 93% sure winner.
I am yet to see one Hillary yard sign, but Trump signs are everywhere. Reports I receive are that Hillary’s public appearances are unattended but Trumps are so heavily attended that people have to be turned away. This is a report from a woman in Florida:
“Trump has pulled huge numbers all over FL while campaigning here this week. I only see Trump signs and sickers in my wide travels. I dined at a Mexican restaurant last night. Two women my age sitting behind me were talking about how they had tried to see Trump when he came to Tallahassee. They left work early, arriving at the venue at 4:00 for a 6:00 rally. The place was already over capacity so they were turned away. It turned out that there were so many people there by 2:00 that the doors had to be opened to them. The women said that the crowds present were a mix of races and ages.”
I know the person who gave me this report and have no doubt whatsoever as to its veracity.
I also receive from readers similiar reports from around the country.
This is how the theft of the election is supposed to work: The media concentrated in a few corporate hands has gone all out to convince not only Americans but also the world, that Donald Trump is such an unacceptable candidate that he has lost the election before the vote.
By controllng the explanation, when the election is stolen those who challenge the stolen election are without a foundartion in the media. All media reports will say that it was a run away victory for Hillary over the misogynist immigrant-hating Trump.
And liberal, progressive opinion will be relieved and off guard as Hillary takes us into nuclear war.
That the Oligarchy intends to steal the election from the American people is verified by the officially reported behavior of the voting machines in early voting in Texas. The NRP presstitutes have declared that Hillary is such a favorite that even Repulbican Texas is up for grabs in the election.
If this is the case, why was it necessary for the voting machines to be programmed to change Trump votes to Hillary votes? Those voters who noted that they voted Trump but were recorded Hillary complained. The election officials, claiming a glitch (which only went one way), changed to paper ballots. But who will count them? No “glitches” caused Hillary votes to go to Trump, only Trump votes to go to Hillary.
The most brilliant movie of our time was The Matrix. This movie captured the life of Americans manipulated by a false reality, only in the real America there is insufficient awareness and no Neo, except possibly Donald Trump, to challenge the system. All of my life I have been trying to get Americans of all stripes—academics, scholars, journalists, Republicans, Democrats, right-wing, left-wing, US Representatives, US Senators, Presidents, corporate moguls and brainwashed Americans and foreigners—out of the false reality in which they exist.
In the United States today a critical presidential election is in process in which not a single important issue is addressed by Hillary and the presstitutes. This is total failure. Democracy, once the hope of the world, has totally failed in the United States of America. Trump is correct. The American people must restore the accountability of government to the people.
The post The Failure of Democracy, How The Oligarchs Plan To Steal The Election appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 1real |
Downturn in Russo-British relations a danger for global security | russia-uk relations , uk , patriarch kirill , london Drawing by Alexei Iorsh Source: Iorsh
After the Brexit referendum and the subsequent change of government in the UK, a number of experts and observers expected an improvement in Russo-British relations. Perhaps unwittingly, former British Prime Minister David Cameron inspired these unfounded expectations. Cameron’s constantly repeated allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin supported a vote for Brexit made people expect a somewhat softer line on Russia from the new governing team in London who were, after all, supporters of Brexit and opponents of Cameron.
When Boris Johnson became the new foreign secretary, several MPs were even concerned about him not being “tough enough” with Russia and making “conciliatory” calls to his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Johnson quickly proved these concerns wrong, issuing a call for protests near the Russian Embassy in London as a way to punish Moscow for its actions in Syria. “This is something unprecedented in the world of diplomacy,” Alexey Pushkov, former head of the Duma’s committee on international affairs, said in an interview to Vesti FM radio station. “A diplomat calling for non-diplomatic solutions, with popular anger mobilized – this is something new.” Pushkov also noted Johnson’s tough statement accusing Russia of deliberately killing Syrian civilians with “repeated bombings.”“They drop one bomb and then they wait for the aid workers to come out pulling the injured from the rubble, and then five minutes later they drop another bomb,” Boris Johnson said in an interview with the tabloid The Sun.
“Boris Johnson is showing a flamboyant attitude where it is needed least of all,” Pushkov replied.
For their part, the Russian authorities, disappointed by Johnson, are also changing their tone, trying to drive home to both foreign and domestic audiences the message that they are angry.
“Decent people first provide the evidence, and only later they come out with accusations,” said Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in response to Johnson’s interview with The Sun. Seeing the bigger picture
Both Johnson and Zakharova have provided plenty of fodder for the media, but all commentary and posturing aside, the decline in Russo-British relations is detrimental not just for the two countries at hand, but also for global security at large.
“We should not forget that the world was once brought to the brink of a nuclear disaster not because of European problems, but because of a conflict over a distant land – Cuba. When I hear British voices suggesting that NATO forces should impose a no-fly zone over northern Syria by striking at the airfields of the Syrian or Russian air forces in Syria – I get really worried,” Alexei Pushkov said. “In this situation, tough statements with a strong populist message – such as the talk about “warning strikes” in Syria – such statements are not just tasteless, they are plain dangerous.” Patriarch’s visit to London hailed as step toward reconciliation with West Media tensions were somewhat eased by the visit to the UK by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. During his visit, which took place on Oct. 15-18, the Patriarch deliberately avoided controversial issues, playing down the conflict between the Russian and British governments. “Political differences won’t be able to disrupt the relations between Russia and Britain on the basic level, on the level of people-to-people ties,” Patriarch Kirill said, speaking to journalists before his flight back to Moscow. “I am often asked about our church’s position on Ukraine. My answer is that there can be only one position: to reconcile the people, to lessen the tension, to end the bloody clashes.”
Trying to minimize the damage from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church still recognizes Crimea as a canonical territory of its Ukrainian “Orthodox sister church.” For two years, Patriarch Kirill avoided any political comments on the recent “regime change” in Ukraine. When the Ukrainian government barred him from visiting Kiev, the cradle of Orthodox Christianity in ancient Rus, Kirill did not protest. In this way, the Russian Orthodox Church is offering a good example of forgiveness and compromise. Several British MPs protested against what they called a “red carpet reception” for Patriarch Kirill in London because of Kirill’s loyalty to Putin, but the Patriarch did not pronounce a single word of anger or even sadness, meeting instead with Queen Elizabeth, the titular head of the Church of England, and blessing by his presence the opening of a renovated Orthodox cathedral in London.
“Since the early stages of deterioration of relations between Russia and the West, the church leaders have often been doing the diplomats’ jobs in Russia’s relations with the West,” wrote Moscow-based Nezavisimaya Gazeta, deviating from its usual line, which is very critical of Kirill.
This is perhaps not the worst of developments: at a time when diplomats are often sacrificing security and professionalism in order to boost their standing in the mass media, the church is trying to remember and celebrate the positive legacy of Russo-British relations. This is done not so much for the sake of history, as for the sake of a secure future. Sooner or later, this cursory attitude towards diplomacy will have to give way to wisdom and responsibility.
Dmitry Babich is a political analyst at Sputnik International.
The opinion of the writer may not necessarily reflect the position of RBTH or its staff. Subscribe to get the hand picked best stories every week Subscribe to our mailing list | 1real |
Steven Tyler Lands in Israel Ahead of Aerosmith Tel Aviv Concert | The Jerusalem Post reports: Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith, landed in Israel on Saturday together with his partner Aimee Ann Preston, ahead of his concert on Wednesday. Tyler will be staying in Israel until May 17, when the band will kick off their farewell tour “ Baby!” in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park. [Tyler, who arrived separately from his bandmates, who will land on Monday, will be staying in the Dan Hotel’s royal suite, where Justin Bieber stayed just two weeks before. Among Tyler’s requests to the hotel were 12 big pillows for his room, peanut butter and organic food, as well as to empty the room of alcoholic beverages. Read more here. | 0fake |
Baltimore Man Sentenced to 4 Years, Owes $3.7 Million for Food Stamp Fraud - Breitbart | A Baltimore man was sentenced to four years behind bars for illegally trafficking food stamps. [U. S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Mohammad Shafiq, 51, to four years in prison and three years of supervised release after his sentence ends, in addition to making him pay $3. 7 million in restitution, the Baltimore Sun reported. Shafiq was the latest defendant to be sentenced in a series of prosecutions of 14 retailers in the Baltimore area. A federal grand jury indicted the retailers in August 2016 for food stamp and wire fraud. The 14 retailers stole a total of $16 million from the U. S. Department of Agriculture by illegally exchanging food stamps for cash, according to the indictment. Twelve out the 14 defendants pleaded guilty, and two were sentenced this week, according to the Sun. Multiple stores across the country have been cited for millions of dollars in food stamp fraud. Investigators found more than $20 million worth of food stamp fraud at retailers in Florida, and 140 stores in Chicago were cited for food stamp fraud. | 0fake |
US military commander: Russian military ‘far more capable’ than Soviet Union’s | A top U.S. military commander warned that Russia’s modern military is now “far more capable” than that of the Soviet Union, saying Moscow is “messaging” the United States that “they’re a global power.”
The warning over Russia’s military might from Adm. William Gortney, head of U.S. Northern Command, is the second in as many months.
Gortney disclosed to Congress in March that Russian heavy bombers flew more "out-of-area patrols" last year than in any year "since the Cold War." On Tuesday, he affirmed that Russia’s “long-range” flights are rising – and occurring in places they haven’t before, like near Canada, Alaska and the English Channel.
He also confirmed there are two Russian Navy ships off the shores of the United States, reportedly near Cuba and Venezuela.
The comments are the latest sign of military and other tensions rising between the U.S. and Russia, which is accused of stoking the fighting in eastern Ukraine despite international sanctions and condemnation.
Gortney described Russia’s intervention in Ukraine as part of a “new doctrine,” which they’re employing.
“The Russians have developed a far more capable military than the quantitative, very large military that the Soviet Union had,” he said.
In sheer numbers, the Soviet Union’s military was still much bigger than Russia’s today. According to statistics published in The Washington Post, the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s had more than 5 million in its armed forces, and even more in its reserves. Today, its armed forces number fewer than 1 million, with its reserves at 2 million – roughly comparable to the total forces of the U.S., but smaller than the total NATO force.
“We watch very carefully what they're doing,” Gortney said, while noting that Russian aircraft are “adhering to international standards that are required by all airplanes that are out there.”
CNN also reported Tuesday that Russian hackers were able to breach a White House computer system after a successful cyber-attack on the State Department. The White House has not publicly confirmed this.
Meanwhile, Gortney revealed Tuesday that China has three ballistic missile submarines capable of hitting the U.S.
On the bright side, he said: “China does have a no-first-use policy, which gives me a little bit of a good news picture there.” | 0fake |
Hard-right German party tells Trump to tweet less | BERLIN (Reuters) - The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which initially embraced Donald Trump and the populism that swept him into office last year, had a message for the U.S. president on Monday - he should tweet less, and govern more. Alice Weidel, one of the AfD s top two candidates in the Sept. 24 election in Germany, said Trump s response to a recent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, had been completely unnecessary and she had only a limited understanding for it. Donald Trump should focus more on policies and less on tweeting and Twitter, Weidel told journalists in Berlin. If I had a wish list, then I would wish that Donald Trump would focus ... more on cleaning up his own house, and being a little more devoted to his governing responsibilities. Trump was widely criticized for at first failing to condemn white supremacist groups after a man thought to have neo-Nazi sympathies drove a car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, killing a woman and injuring over a dozen other people. Trump had said both sides were to blame for the violence and there were very fine people at the rally. Weidel s comments came amid controversy over remarks made by a senior member of her own party, Alexander Gauland - the AfD s other top candidate - who said Integration Minister Aydan Ozoguz, a Social Democrat (SPD) politician born in Germany to Turkish parents, should be dumped in Turkey. Members of the SPD, and Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, rejected Gauland s remarks as racist. Gauland conceded on Monday that his choice of words was a little too tough but Weidel said she agreed with his general concern about what he said was Ozoguz s lack of respect for German culture. Weidel said that although her party opposed Merkel s 2015 decision which has allowed more than a million migrants into Germany over the past two years, it condemned extremism in any form, whether it came from left-wing, right-wing or Islamic groups. Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, the AfD shifted its focus after the euro zone debt crisis peaked to campaigning against immigration after Merkel s move to open the borders. It is expected to enter the German parliament for the first time after the September election, although its support has dropped to 7 to 10 percent from a height of around 15 percent in 2016, according to polls. Weidel, who is openly gay, chafed at a question about whether she was racist, noting that her partner of nearly 10 years, a Swiss filmmaker, also has a Sinhalese background. | 0fake |
Trump Derangement Syndrome: Larry Summers Worries We Might Export Natural Gas To China - Breitbart | Larry Summers is now worried that the United States might start exporting natural gas to China. [The former Treasury Secretary has attacked a trade deal reached earlier this month between the United States and China as something “a serious administration committed to helping American workers would likely not have accepted and surely would not have hyped. ” That’s a powerful accusation to level against an administration elected on an America First platform. Fortunately, there’s little evidence to back up the allegation. The most substantive objection Summers raises has to do with the part of the deal which will allow U. S. to export liquified natural gas to China. “To at least a small extent that would mean higher heating costs for American consumers and higher energy costs for U. S. producers,” Summers warns. This objection might make a bit of sense if energy costs were presenting a serious problem for American consumers and producers. But energy costs are at historic lows. Natural gas prices have come off their recent lows but are still far below their average for this century. Higher heating costs are not a big concern right now. Summers objection is likely wrong even about the effect on prices. It assumes that the U. S. is currently producing the maximum amount of natural gas possible so that any additional demand for China would push prices up. But this assumption is factually wrong. In fact, natural gas production is far from its peak in the U. S. Which means that added demand from China is not likely to drive up prices so much as drive up production. It is also notable that this is an objection that could apply to any export by U. S. producers. When foreign consumers buy products made in America, they drive up the price of those goods for Americans — all other things being equal. Of course, all other things are not equal since demand for exports results in increased production of goods. Summers is apparently suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, the psychological compulsion to find fault with Trump policies that would otherwise be unobjectionable. And now its grip on the former Treasury Secretary is so strong he is arguing against exports to China. | 0fake |
WATCH: Hypocrite Bill O’Reilly Accuses Liberals Of ‘Sedition’ For Calling Trump Illegitimate | Clearly, Fox host Bill O Reilly wasn t paying attention over the last eight years.Because if he had been paying attention, he would know that conservatives sought to delegitimize President Obama repeatedly.The principle claim, of course, was that President Obama was not born in the United States, a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump adopted for his own gain and continued to repeat during the campaign. Republicans in Congress also repeatedly attempted to sabotage the country in order to make Obama a one-term president and even after winning a second term Republicans continued to refuse to work with him.In fact, Republicans went so far as to pledge allegiance to foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu rather than acknowledge Obama as their president.Republican racism and hatred toward President Obama divided America for eight years, yet conservatives like O Reilly have the gall to blame him for it. And now he is accusing those who oppose Donald Trump of sedition.During an interview with a very unfunny Dennis Miller, who claims to be a comedian, O Reilly asked if he believes the effort in opposition to Trump is anti-American. Do you believe that this whole movement to delegitimize Donald Trump is anti-American? O Reilly asked. Would you say it s that bad? Miller cracked another pathetic joke that not even O Reilly could laugh at and O Reilly continued by going a step further. These people want to delegitimize the whole election, the whole presidency, and I think it borders on sedition, he said.Miller then blamed President Obama for how divided the country has become even though Republicans were the ones who divided it in the first place and Trump continued to divide it on the campaign trail.Here s the video via YouTube.Bill O Reilly, like most conservatives, are hypocrites. Over the last eight years, they desperately tried to convince the American people that President Obama was illegitimate in order to sabotage his presidency and I don t remember O Reilly throwing out words like sedition to describe that un-American effort.The fact is that Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, and his electoral win is one of the smallest on record. Furthermore, the Russians helped Trump by launching cyber attacks against our country and spreading propaganda. And Trump has done nothing but suck up to Putin, proving that he ll be a Russian puppet instead of the American president. But you ll only hear O Reilly whine about how people aren t lining up to kiss Trump s ass. Well, he better buckle up because turnabout is fair play because if anyone is a true illegitimate president it s Donald Trump. And unlike the birther conspiracy, there is plenty of proof backed up by the intelligence community.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
UK's Boris Johnson reignites leadership speculation with Brexit plans | LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson set out his plans for a glorious Brexit on Saturday that angered colleagues and reignited speculation he would challenge Prime Minister Theresa May for the leadership of the Conservative party. With May due to set out her vision for Brexit in a speech in the Italian city of Florence on Friday, Johnson published a 4,300-word newspaper article that roamed well beyond his ministerial brief and, in some cases, went beyond the approach set out by the government. Britain, he said, would not pay to access European markets in the future. Once out of the European Union, the country should borrow to invest in infrastructure, reform the tax code and set immigration levels as it sees fit. A prominent Brexit campaigner in last year s referendum, Johnson also repeated the controversial claim that the government would be 350 million pounds ($476 million) better off per week once outside the EU. My friends, I must report that there are at least some people who are woefully underestimating this country, Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph. They think Brexit isn t going to happen. I am here to tell you that this country will succeed in our new national enterprise, and will succeed mightily. We have a glorious future. With some colleagues angered by the timing - Johnson s article was published a day after a bomb injured 30 people on a train - he later added on Twitter: Looking forward to PM s Florence Speech. All behind Theresa for a glorious Brexit . A favorite with grassroots members of the Conservative Party, Johnson had been expected to challenge for the leadership after May gambled away her parliamentary majority in a June election she did not need to call. Instead, he publicly pledged his loyalty. But the Times newspaper reported earlier this week that Johnson believed he had since been sidelined as May prepares to compromise over a divorce bill with the EU to ease the negotiations. We would not expect to pay for access to their markets any more than they would expect to pay for access to ours, he wrote. The article made no reference to a transition period the government is expected to negotiate. And yes once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly 350 million pounds per week, he said. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS (health service). During the campaign, Johnson traveled around Britain on a bus emblazoned with a slogan suggesting that Britain was sending 350 million pounds a week to the EU - a figure rejected as inaccurate by experts - and that the money would be better spent on the NHS. Saturday s article also included Johnson s belief that Britain needed to leave the EU because so many young people with the 12 stars lipsticked on their face were beginning to have split allegiances between Europe and their own country. Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Saturday s comments also laid bare the conflicts within May s government and cut the ground from beneath the prime minister s authority. But a source within Downing Street said Johnson s views were well known. As you ll see in the PM s speech next week the government is united in our determination to make the most of the opportunities for a successful future outside the EU. Colleagues criticized the timing of the article, which came around two hours after May put Britain on the highest threat level of critical, meaning an attack may be imminent. On the day of a terror attack where Britons were maimed, just hours after the threat level is raised, our only thoughts should be on service, said Ruth Davidson, the popular leader of the Conservatives in Scotland. Will Tanner, a former adviser to May, said the timing was astonishing, self-serving and disloyal. The real PM *just* raised threat level. Meanwhile guy who wants to replace her issues a prelude to resignation, to save face over 350 million pounds. Hmm. | 0fake |
SEE GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS’ Reaction When Hillary Says She’s Ignorant About 9/11 Legislation | I don t really know about that Nice try Hillary! | 1real |
Hamas says ready to hand Gaza to a Palestinian unity government | CAIRO/RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Hamas has agreed to dissolve the administration that runs Gaza, it said on Sunday, a major step towards handing control of the enclave to a Palestinian unity government after a decade of bitter rivalry with President Mahmoud Abbas. The Islamist group, which has ruled Gaza since a brief Palestinian civil war in 2007, said it had taken a courageous, serious and patriotic decision to dissolve the administrative committee that runs the territory of 2 million people, and hand power to some form of unity government. Reunification a decade after Hamas and Abbas s secular Fatah movement battled for control of Gaza may hinge on whether complex issues related to power-sharing - which stymied reconciliation bids in the past - can be resolved. Abbas welcomed Hamas move - a result of talks mediated by Egypt - and said he would convene the Palestinian leadership for discussions upon his return from New York where he was attending the U.N. General Assembly. The development would enable the formation of a national reconciliation government to work in the Gaza Strip and hold ... elections, he said in a statement on official news agency WAFA. Earlier, a Palestinian government spokesman said Cairo s mediation had presented a historic opportunity that could help Palestinians toward full statehood. But Fatah said it still needed clarification from Hamas on the handing over of government ministries in Gaza and control of the enclave s border crossings with Israel and Egypt. Hamas and Fatah agreed in 2014 to form a national reconciliation administration but could not agree on the details. A unity government formed after Hamas won the last Palestinian general election, in 2006, was short-lived. Aiming to pressure Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza, Abbas cut payments to Israel for the electricity it supplies to the enclave, leading to power provided for less than four hours on some days, and never more than six hours a day. Azzam Al-Ahmad, who headed Fatah s delegation to the talks in Cairo, told WAFA: This step will enhance the unity of the Palestinians and end ugly division. The two parties did not meet at the talks which took the form of shuttle-diplomacy with Egyptian officials mediating. Ahmad said the two sides planned to meet face-to-face but gave no date. Other Palestinian factions would join the talks later to discuss practical steps to implement the agreement, he added. Mending fences with Western-backed Abbas would be another step in Hamas diplomatic push to improve relations with its neighbor Egypt, which has kept its frontier with Gaza largely closed and accused the group in the past of aiding Islamist militants in Egypt s Sinai desert, something Hamas denies. The United Nations envoy welcomed Sunday s news. All parties must seize this opportunity to restore unity and open a new page for the Palestinian people, U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov said in a statement, adding that the U.N. was ready to assist the talks in order to alleviate hardship in Gaza. Mladenov thanked Egypt for its tireless efforts in creating this positive momentum. Some opinion polls have showed that if parliamentary elections were held now, Hamas would win both in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the seat of Abbas s Palestinian Authority. Abbas, 82, is 12 years into what was meant to be a four-year term as president and opinion polls show him to be unpopular. He has no clear successor and no new presidential election appears imminent. | 0fake |
Elizabeth Warren Just Blasted The FBI Director For Going After Hillary Instead Of Wall Street Crooks | Comments
In the wake of a string of completely extraordinary revelations starting this summer by FBI Director James Comey, Senator Warren is now demanding that the FBI release investigatory details about the 14 corporations and 11 individuals which the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) referred for criminal prosecution in 2010;
“Your recent actions with regard to the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provide a clear precedent for releasing additional information about the investigation of the parties responsible for the financial crisis.
These new standards present a compelling case for public transparency around the fate of the FCIC referrals. If Secretary Clinton’s email server was of sufficient interest to establish a new FBI standard of transparency, then surely the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis should be subject to the same level of transparency.
As a consequence of the 2008 crash, trillions of dollars in American housing wealth was destroyed. Millions of Americans were touched personally as they lost their homes, their jobs, or both. Hundreds of pension funds were eviscerated, and millions of retirees saw their financial futures wiped out. Congress created the FCIC to examine what went wrong and to determine Whether any individuals or entities deserved law enforcement scrutiny as a result of their actions in this crisis. The FCIC followed the law and sent such referrals to the DOJ, yet not a single senior Wall Street executive has ever been criminally prosecuted.
For the uncounted millions of Americans whose lives were changed forever and for those who are still dealing with the consequences of the crash, I can think of no matter of intense public interest about which the American people deserve the details than the issue of what precisely happened to the criminal referrals that followed the 2008 crash.”
Until now, the FBI has never, ever released the investigatory file of anyone or any institution it has targeted. However, if the Democratic nominee herself was a bank, then she would have nothing to fear from the FBI.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is laser focused on protecting the American people from shady banks and financial scams, but the newly transparent FBI apparently doesn’t share her concern since those investigations don’t involve Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. To date, no executive has been criminally prosecuted for financial crimes by banks, Wall Street firms and lending institutions which caused the Great Bush Recession’s mass unemployment and foreclosure epidemic.
Of 25 entities named by the FCIC to be criminally investigated , only one actual person has paid a civil penalty, and another person – none other than Daniel Mudd, former CEO of mortgage giant Fannie Mae, was fined — but had his $100,000 penalty paid by the government sponsored enterprise that employed him.
FBI Director James Comey has deployed a massive double standard to protect the criminal financial institutions, handing them a free pass and complete secrecy for collapsing our national economy and wiping out $3 Trillion dollars in home equity, stock equity and savings, while dragging Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton through the mud for Comey’s partisan predilections for transparency when she’s demonstrably done absolutely nothing wrong.
The FBI Director himself admitted in July that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against the Democratic nominee, yet he himself cannot resist rehashing and releasing the investigatory details in public over and over. Releasing anything about an investigation, or even delivering an actual indictment, actually violates Department of Justice policy to remain silent in the 60 days before an election. It’s been described by former top Justice Department officials as the “difference between being independent and flying solo.”
Elizabeth is right. How long will the FBI wait to deliver transparency to the American people eight years after their jobs, homes and savings were attacked by irresponsible bankers?
Once the FBI completes disclosing those investigatory files, then how long will it take for them to deliver indictments and justice to the men and women who caused the Great Recession?
Neither can happen soon enough. For now, he needs to stop his partisan witch-hunt against Hillary and start going after the real crook.s | 1real |
OPEN BORDERS BERNIE Threatens Sheriff Arpaio For Arresting Illegal Aliens: “Watch out Joe” | Just what America needs another President who makes up laws to fit his radical agenda, with no regard for the actual laws the rest of America must abide by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders ripped into Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio at a rally in northern Arizona on Thursday, after facing criticism from the Clinton campaign for an encounter Sanders wife had with the immigration-hardliner sheriff.The U.S. senator from Vermont said Arpaio s arrests of undocumented immigrants, often separating families, were outrageous and unconscionable. It s easy for bullies like Sheriff Arpaio to pick on people who have no power, Sanders said. If I am elected president the president of the United States does have power. So watch out, Joe. Via: USA Today | 1real |
Senate Confirms Scott Pruitt as E.P.A. Head - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt on Friday to run the Environmental Protection Agency, putting a seasoned legal opponent of the agency at the helm of President Trump’s efforts to dismantle major regulations on climate change and clean water — and to cut the size and authority of the government’s environmental enforcer. Senators voted 52 to 46 to confirm Mr. Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who has built a career out of suing to block the E. P. A. ’s major environmental rules and has called for the dissolution of much of the agency’s authority. One Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, crossed party lines to vote against Mr. Pruitt, while two Democrats, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, both from states where voters generally oppose environmental rules, voted for him. Democrats railed all night on the Senate floor against Mr. Pruitt and urged Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, to delay the confirmation vote until after next Tuesday, when the Oklahoma attorney general’s office is under order to release about 3, 000 of Mr. Pruitt’s emails related to his communications with the fossil fuel industry. But the effort did little but deprive Democrats of sleep. Democrats, environmental groups and even current E. P. A. employees have harshly criticized Mr. Pruitt’s record of fighting the mission of the agency he will now lead, as well as his close ties with the fossil fuel industry he will now regulate. Both opponents and supporters of Mr. Pruitt’s say he is well positioned to carry out Mr. Trump’s campaign trail promises to dismantle the agency and slash its ranks of employees. Mr. Trump vowed to “get rid” of the agency “in almost every form. ” A 2014 investigation by The Times found that energy lobbyists drafted letters for Mr. Pruitt to send, on state stationery, to the E. P. A. outlining the economic hardship of the environmental rules. Many of the coal, oil and gas companies represented by those lobbyists were also some his largest campaign contributors. Mr. Pruitt also worked jointly with those companies in filing multiple lawsuits against major E. P. A. regulations. Democrats say the emails to be released on Tuesday could reveal more, and possibly disqualifying, information about those relationships. “I reminded my colleagues that the release of these documents could be imminent and that we would be wise wait to vote on Mr. Pruitt’s nomination until we had the opportunity to review them — and shame on us if we didn’t,” said Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “Mr. Pruitt has been nominated by a man who, as a nominee, as a and now as president, has made clear his goals to degrade and destroy the E. P. A. ,” Mr. Carper said. “Like many things President Trump says, we ask ourselves, ‘Did he mean it?’ With the nomination of Mr. Pruitt, it’s clear he did. ” For many Republicans, that appears to be part of Mr. Pruitt’s appeal. During the Obama administration, Mr. McConnell became a leading opponent of the president’s climate change agenda, particularly its centerpiece, a set of E. P. A. regulations intended to shut down heavily polluting power plants and replace them with wind and solar power. Those rules, if enacted, could disproportionately hurt the economy of Mr. McConnell’s state. Mr. Pruitt, who has expressed skepticism about global warming, has been a key architect of the legal battle to overturn the rules. “Pruitt is just the candidate we need at the helm of the E. P. A. ,” Mr. McConnell said. “He’s exceptionally qualified. He’s dedicated to environmental protection. And, as someone with state government experience, he understands the consequences of E. P. A. actions and knows that balance is the key to making policies that are sustainable over the . ” Mr. McConnell added: “We should confirm him. Doing so will represent another positive change in Washington that can give hope to families in Kentucky and across the nation who are still recovering from the last eight years. ” Within days of Mr. Pruitt’s Mr. Trump is expected to sign one or more executive orders aimed at undoing Mr. Obama’s climate change policies, people familiar with the White House’s plans said. While it will be impossible to undo the rules immediately, the presidential signatures would give Mr. Pruitt his marching orders to commence the to legal process of withdrawing the climate rules and replacing them with looser, more rules. It is also possible that under Mr. Pruitt, the Trump administration could pursue the bold legal strategy of challenging the underlying legal requirement that the federal government regulate greenhouse gases in the first place. Already, Mr. Pruitt has begun work to reshape the environmental agency. Among the candidates he has interviewed for top positions are several former senior staff members in the office of his fellow Oklahoma Republican, Senator James M. Inhofe, who has become known as Congress’s most prominent denier of the science of global warming. | 0fake |
President Obama Is Putting An End To Inhumane Punishment In The Federal Prison System | President Obama announced via an op-ed in the Washington Post that he will be enacting some major reforms in the federal prison system. He will be putting an end to solitary confinement for juveniles, and prohibiting the practice as a punishment for low-level infractions. The reforms were taken from a report by the Justice Department that listed recommendations for improving the system. It s estimated that approximately 10,000 individuals would be affected.Unfortunately, this only applies to the federal prison system and not to the majority of prison inmates that are incarcerated for state-level crimes. Even with that in mind, this is still a bold and very necessary step in reforming American prisons which can serve as a model for states to follow.President Obama made his case as follows:How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people? It doesn t make us safer. It s an affront to our common humanity.The Justice Department has completed its review, and I am adopting its recommendations to reform the federal prison system. These include banning solitary confinement for juveniles and as a response to low-level infractions, expanding treatment for the mentally ill and increasing the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells. These steps will affect some 10,000 federal prisoners held in solitary confinement and hopefully serve as a model for state and local corrections systems. And I will direct all relevant federal agencies to review these principles and report back to me with a plan to address their use of solitary confinement.Source: WaPoWhile acknowledging that sometimes solitary confinement can be required for certain individuals, President Obama made it clear that it s a punishment which is overused and ends up causing more harm than good in many cases.There are as many as 100,000 people held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons including juveniles and people with mental illnesses. As many as 25,000 inmates are serving months, even years of their sentences alone in a tiny cell, with almost no human contact.Research suggests that solitary confinement has the potential to lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences. It has been linked to depression, alienation, withdrawal, a reduced ability to interact with others and the potential for violent behavior. Some studies indicate that it can worsen existing mental illnesses and even trigger new ones. Prisoners in solitary are more likely to commit suicide, especially juveniles and people with mental illnesses.Source: WaPoHopefully, this will be a first step in what turns out to be a long path of reforms to bring our prison system out of the realm of cruel and unusual punishment, as it was intended to be all along.featured image via The Georgia Straight | 1real |
Google Exec: H-1B Restriction Is ’Stupidest Policy’ | The top executive to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, says any restrictions on the foreign guest worker visa is the “stupidest policy” in the U. S.[In a discussion at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Alphabet’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said he opposed all restrictions on the visa, where currently 1. 8 million foreign workers are in a multitude of U. S. jobs. “The stupidest policy in the entire American political system was the limit on visas,” Schmidt said, according to CNBC. “We want the best people in the world, regardless of any form of sex, race, country, . We want them to work for us and not our competitors. ” “We should organize our country to be the most attractive place for those people,” Schmidt continued. “Stupid government policies that restrict us from [having] a fair chance of getting those people are antithetical to our mission [and] the things we serve. ” Every year, more than 100, 000 foreign workers are brought to the U. S. on the visa. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and are exempt from the cap. With more entering the U. S. through the visa, Americans are often replaced. President of Protect U. S. Workers Sara Blackwell, who is a staunch critic of the visa, lambasted Schmidt in an interview with Breitbart Texas, saying that while American workers are being laid off and forced to train their replacements, the Alphabet executive is reaping the benefits. “The only stupid thing would be if Americans believed these lies and propaganda,” Blackwell told Breitbart Texas. “The person who benefits from this awful use of is Eric Schmidt. ” “He wants to continue the termination of American workers and forcing them to train their foreign replacements,” Blackwell continued. “But in the end, guess who wins? Eric Schmidt, who make $108 million every year. ” If Schmidt’s suggestion that the visa be limitless, there would be no requirements on how much U. S. companies have to pay foreign guest workers and no restrictions on how many foreign workers can enter the U. S. every year. Blackwell said Schmidt presents a “false dichotomy” of the where lawmakers must choose between the current system, which has led to of American workers, or a system where the smartest from around the world cannot enter the U. S. “If you’re worth 10. 1 billion, you can’t talk for American workers who are being hurt by the system,” Blackwell said. As Breitbart Texas reported, Alphabet has ramped up its lobbying for more immigration and more foreign guest workers during the first months of President Donald Trump’s administration. Alphabet remains one of the largest opponents in the tech industry to Trump’s “America First” agenda, which is why analysis by Quartz showed it had the largest uptick in lobbying in the first quarter of 2017. In the current quarter alone, Alphabet lobbied more for immigration than ever before since 2008. In the past, U. S. companies have created affiliates with American universities in order to get around the cap on visas for private companies, which is set at 85, 000 foreign workers a year. Between 2011 and 2014, companies like Dow Chemical, Samsung, and Monsanto successfully used the visa loophole to hire more foreign workers by partnering with universities. The visa has not only been criticized by Trump, but also Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has blasted the visa for years in the U. S. Senate as a way for giant corporations to profit off the displacement and firing of Americans. In a recent executive order, Trump called for a “full legal review” of the visa and its negative impacts on the wages, job opportunities and unemployment of American workers, Breitbart Texas reported. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
Jake Tapper’s Dream Interview Is a Drugged Vladimir Putin | CNN host Jake Tapper tells the Hollywood Reporter that his “dream” interview subject is Russian President Vladimir Putin — after a dose of sodium thiopental, a drug often depicted as a “truth serum” in fiction. [In a roundtable with four other “top TV broadcasters” — ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, CBS’s Gayle King, and Fox News’s Bret Baier — Tapper jokingly hoped that he could uncover real Truth from Putin with the help of barbiturates. Final question: Who would you most like to interview? … TAPPER Are these or are they sodium pentothal [a trademarked name for the compound] interviews? (Laughter.) I mean, as long as we’re doing a dream [interview] a Putin interview with sodium pentothal would be fantastic. Tapper’s network CNN has doggedly pursued a conspiracy theory that President Trump and his associates are pawns in an international plot led by Putin. CNN was the first outlet to report on a dossier that claimed Russia had gathered blackmail material on Donald Trump before he ran for office, stating that intelligence officers briefed the on these specific claims. Following CNN’s lead, the advertorial justice blog BuzzFeed published this unverified dossier in full — quite obviously to air claims that Trump has a urine fetish. NBC later quashed CNN’s reporting, writing that the dossier was appended to Trump’s daily intel briefing as an example of “unvetted disinformation. ” Tapper himself appears to be a true believer that Russia “influenced” the 2016 election and displays a very healthy interest in the topic, calling several detractors “Russian trolls. ” Not quite. They indeed testified there was no hacking of voting machines no votes changed. But influencing the process — rather different https: . — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 20, 2017, Except:1) Comey acknowledged for 1st time that FBI is investigating whether there was any 2016 coordination btwn Trump team Russian govt https: . — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 20, 2017, Five months, eight prominent Russians dead — CNN https: . — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 25, 2017, next time tune in to when we’re discussing how your boss Vladimir Putin is responsible for human rights abuses and cyberattacks of US https: . — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2017, And how about the deaths of Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Berezovsky, Boris Nemtsov? Putin or God? https: . — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 15, 2016, @DCnyrMAGA @CalebHowe @PressSec @CNN cold in Moscow tonight, Comrade? — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 10, 2017, If all these Russian trolls got off Twitter and got to work maybe they’d finally have an economy bigger than Italy’s. Just a thought. pic. twitter. — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 15, 2017, The Hollywood Reporter roundtable provided little else of interest, aside from Tapper and his peers’ newfound outrage, at the start of a Republican administration, that political flacks try to push spin. Tapper proudly recounts how he tried to make Mike Pence answer for Mike Flynn Jr’s tweets — then says that he would cover “more policy” if given a chance to do 2016 any differently. | 0fake |
LIKE A BOSS! President Trump’s Arrival at the EU Headquarters: “You can expect the president to be very tough on them” [Video] | President Trump arrived like a boss to check out what s going on at the NATO headquarters. They just spent big bucks on a new headquarters Trump s probably wondering why they didn t use that money more wisely:NATO leaders have arranged an itinerary to appeal to the former real estate magnate: a ribbon-cutting of the alliance s glassy new headquarters, followed by a dinner where leaders will be held to a lightning-round speaking schedule to save time.Trump plans to press NATO leaders on defense spending, continuing a line of attack he started as a candidate last year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday. You can expect the president to be very tough on them, Tillerson said, saying that he expected Trump to tell them: The American people are doing a lot for your security, for our joint security. You need to make sure you re doing your share for your own security as well. | 1real |
Khodorkovsky: Putin is not going to cozy up to Washington | Print version Font Size The number of predictions about the state of affairs in the US-Russian relations after the presidential election in the United States continues to grow. Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky did not stay aside and predicted that there would be nothing good in the US-Russian relations after the election, regardless of who wins the vote. If Hillary Clinton takes office as president, the relations between Russia and the United States will deteriorate further. According to the ex-oligarch, Putin was originally prepared for Clinton's victory in the election, therefore, he has been allegedly trying to damage the relations between the two countries during the recent months. The logic is as follows: "He'd better to go down to the bottom so that she could make only one step - up." "If Mrs. Clinton wins, then the bottom that Putin sees will not be the real bottom. She knows how to hit Putin to make him fall even lower. She has an extensive experience, and she will not forgive - I'm talking about the American establishment here - she will not forgive interference in the internal electoral process in the United States," Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Open Russia told Politico . When Khodorkovsky speaks about Clinton's "extensive experience" does he have Libya in mind? And of course, it is only Hillary Clinton, who knows all about the real bottom. If the Russian president was originally prepared for the victory of the former Secretary of State, then it is not clear why he would need to interfere in the "internal electoral process." Did he want to cause even greater damage to the US-Russian relations to give Clinton a chance to start it all over again? Or Putin? Or both? Why would he need to interfere, if she would not "forgive?" Noteworthy, on the eve of election day in the USA, former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul gave an interview to Russian media. McFaul stated in the interview that he did not think of Hillary Clinton as a supporter of a hard line course against Russia."I think the claim that the fear-mongering that Trump himself and Trump supports say to scare American voters that Secretary Clinton is going to start a war with Russia is completely absurd, completely has nothing to do with the reality. Only a total crazy person would start a war with Russia," McFaul told Interfax . Clinton understands that there will be no war between the U.S. and Russia, "she is not crazy," he added. "I think she takes a very pragmatic approach to defend America's national interests and security and economic interests of our allies," McFaul said. "She's not going to become president to say "it is my goal to improve relations with Russia". What is she's going to do instead is she is going to say that "it is my goal with Russia to accomplish policy items A, B and C." And then she is going to decide which strategy, which instrument of policy [will achieve that]. Sometimes it will be engagement and sometimes [it will] be containment," Michael McFaul said, Interfax reports. Unlike the former ambassador, Mikhail Khodorkovsky does not leave Hillary Clinton any room for maneuver. What if Donald Trump leaves? There will not be anything good for Russia anyway, Khodorkovsky believes. A conflict between the two countries will be highly likely as well, because Putin is not going to cozy up to Washington. "We all know people like Trump, and it is unlikely that Putin will play up to Trump's ambition, like, for example, Kadyrov (Chechen President - ed.) plays up to Putin's ambition," Khodorkovsky said.What does Kadyrov got to do with it? Is it just because his name rings the bell in the West? According to Khodorkovsky, it is difficult to predict what will happen after Putin refuses to subordinate Russia to Trump's will. "Putin will not be able to do this, so it means that a conflict with Trump is inevitable."Why is the ex-oligarch confident that the Republican candidate will wish to subjugate Russia? What does he know about Trump's thoughts on Russia? Does Khodorkovsky know something that everyone else does not know? The former oligarch does not expect anything positive in relations between Russia and the United States, and it seems that this is the most desirable option for him. Anton Kulikov | 1real |
ANTI-TRUMP FRENCH PRESIDENT MACRON Caught on Video Pushing Way Through World Leaders to Be Pictured Next to Trump in G-20 Group Photo | French President Emmanuel Macron has prided himself as the world s anti-Trump. He has arrogantly taken counter stances to President Donald Trump s on issues such as global warming and globalization. Ironically, he seems to have abruptly decided that his political career may benefit from associating himself with Trump, as he was caught on video jostling his way through world leaders so stand beside Trump in a G-20 group photo.Macron left his position during the family picture to place himself next to US President Donald Trump as German Chancellor Angela Merkel watched on.Starting off near the back of the G20 group Mr. Macron appeared to lose his way before an aide tried to direct him to his spot.Noticing the commotion, Angela Merkel tapped Mr. Macron on the shoulder to get his attention but the French PM was already making his way through the world leaders.Mr. Macron jostled and kissed his way to the front in an awkward reshuffle.He finally joined Trump on the far left fringe at the G20 summit leaders group photo. This is suspiciously different behavior from the time President Macron tried to avoid President Trump and then crush his hand during a handshake. The Telegraph | 1real |
South Sudan commander on trial for rape, murder of aid workers found dead | JUBA (Reuters) - A South Sudanese army commander on trial for his role in an attack on aid workers has been found dead in military custody, an army spokesman said on Friday. The attack by soldiers at the Terrain Hotel in the capital Juba was one of the worst on aid workers since South Sudan plunged into civil war in 2013. The rape of five foreigners and murder of their local colleague occurred on July 11, 2016 as President Salva Kiir s troops won a three-day battle in Juba over opposition forces loyal to ex-Vice President Riek Machar. Lt. Col. Luka Akechak was found dead last weekend, army spokesman Santo Domic Chol told Reuters on Friday. Chol said Akechak had fallen sick some weeks ago and received medical treatment in Juba but did not recover. The military custody told us that the man was found dead in the morning. Akechak was the unit commander at the hotel on the day of the attack and is one of more than a dozen South Sudanese soldiers standing trial in a military court. The army spokesman said that in the last hearing, one of the rape survivors who testified said she witnessed Akechak directing the soldiers to raid property at the hotel. The next hearing in the trial is scheduled for Wednesday. Lawyer Philip Manyang, who is representing survivors of the attack in court, told Reuters that survivors would be testifying by video conference in a closed session. | 0fake |
BLACK STUDENT With Hot Glue Gun Causes Elite LIBERAL COLLEGE To Lock-Down Campus | After a sighting of black student with a hot glue gun caused the tolerant, liberal campus of Colgate quickly jumped into action and locked down the school. The university president took swift action, blamed the Campus Safety Director and quickly placed him on administrative leave until an investigation is completed. There have been no shots fired Colgate University locked down its campus today, after a student spotted an armed individual who was actually holding a hot glue gun.The upstate New York university s official Twitter account tweeted out a warning late Monday urging students to seek shelter. The tweets warned there was an armed person on campus, although there were no reports of shots fired. But shortly before midnight, the lockdown was lifted. In a statement to students, Colgate announced that after thorough investigation, and with the assistance of the person in question, law enforcement identified the individual as a student who was using a glue gun for an art project. Students on social media quickly reported that the glue-toting student was African-American, and grumbled that race may have played a factor. In an additional statement Tuesday morning, Colgate President Brian W. Casey confirmed the student s race and apologized. WFBColgate Alert: Because of a dangerous situation in the Coop, everyone is advised to leave the building. Colgate University (@colgateuniv) May 2, 2017Colgate Alert: There is an armed person at the Coop. Find a safe space and remain indoors. If you are off-campus,stay away. Colgate University (@colgateuniv) May 2, 2017Law enforcement is on campus for reports of an alleged armed person in the Coop. They are searching the building. Colgate University (@colgateuniv) May 2, 2017Campus safety officials report there have been no shots fired. Situation is still under investigation. Updates as available. Colgate University (@colgateuniv) May 2, 2017Colgate University President made the following statement: This morning I received an update from Campus Safety regarding the events of last night, details of which I want to share with the campus. Please know that I have called for a thorough, deeper review of all matters related to last night from the original reporting of the events to the University s response. I will have this report within ten days and I will share its findings with the campus.At a few minutes before 8 PM last night a Colgate student called Colgate Campus Safety reporting that they had seen a black male entering the Coop, carrying what appeared to be a gun. A few minutes later, Campus Safety sent out the first of two campus announcements, the first identifying an Emergency Situation and the second indicating, in a profound error, that there was an active shooter on the campus. (The remaining campus notices last night were sent out by our Communications Office and an emergency response team.)After the initial report, Campus Safety contacted local law enforcement units, which proceeded to engage in steps associated with reports of a person with a gun in a public setting. Only after it was determined that the person in the Coop was a Colgate student who had a glue gun needed for an art project was Campus Safety able to end the campus lockdown.To more fully understand the events of last night, we are in contact with the student who had the glue gun and will be with the student who made the initial report. Importantly, I am also in contact with those who were making the essential administrative decisions last night.It is important that we understand the role that implicit racial bias had in the initial reporting of and responses to the events of last night. I want to make sure we speak with those who made and received the initial report to understand the role this played.More egregiously, perhaps, was the effect profiling had on the response of safety officers and other University offices to these events. In addition, communication and enforcement steps were taken that, I believe, confused and harmed this campus and our students. As a first step, I have asked Campus Safety Director Bill Ferguson, who was leading university security efforts last night, to take an administrative leave from his position effective immediately while we conduct a review of the events of last night.This has been a difficult, painful several hours on this campus. My obligation is, first, to demand a full accounting of what happened. My next obligation is to take steps to ensure the safety of all Colgate students, faculty and staff. My final obligation my desire is to improve Colgate. If there is anything that can and should come from these events it must be that concrete steps are taken to make Colgate a better place, and a university worthy of both regard and respect. | 1real |
Virtual tie raises doubts: Can Hillary Clinton close the deal? | DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s struggle in Iowa to fend off underdog Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, reignited questions about her ability to close the deal with Democratic voters and turned up the pressure on her high-profile White House campaign. The Democratic presidential front-runner, whose campaign ran off the rails in Iowa in 2008 against Barack Obama, was dealt another setback on Monday in the Midwestern state that begins the 2016 race for the presidency. The former secretary of state, Clinton, 68, was pushed to a virtual tie with Sanders, a 74-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont. Next up is New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Feb. 9. Sanders has been leading in opinion polls there and has an advantage because it neighbors his home state. A Clinton loss would start to set off alarm bells with her supporters. “She has had every possible structural and organizational advantage and Sanders fought her to a draw,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “This is almost a moment by moment rerun of 2008,” Schnur said. “The difference is her competition is not as tough this time.” Clinton insisted at her post-caucus rally that she was the candidate who could unify her party and prevail against a Republican challenger in the Nov. 8 election but the sense of disappointment was palpable. Her subdued, six-minute speech contrasted with the ebullient tone of Sanders’ 16-minute speech. With no clear victory to announce, Clinton’s campaign scrapped a plan to have her daughter Chelsea and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, introduce her. They stood alongside her instead, with Bill Clinton wearing his campaign logo badge upside-down. Aides removed the TelePrompter at the last minute, supporters at the Drake University rally told Reuters, in a further indication of last-minute changes in plans. While the race in Iowa had tightened in recent weeks, her aides had appeared to draw some confidence from a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg politics poll over the weekend that showed Clinton with a three-percentage-point lead over Sanders among likely caucus-goers. Into the early hours of Tuesday morning, Clinton and Sanders remained separated by less than a single percentage point. The race was so tight that several precincts were forced to decide whether Clinton or Sanders got the winning votes - and one more delegate - by a coin toss, following the state Democratic Party’s advice. The MSNBC television network finally called the race for Clinton at nearly 3 a.m. CST (0900 GMT), and Clinton’s Iowa state director Matt Paul issued a statement declaring victory with “no uncertainty.” Opinion polls show Clinton still faces an enthusiasm gap with Sanders and her Republican rivals, whose race attracted a record turnout in Iowa. Voters have persistent doubts about her honesty and trustworthiness after months of controversy over her use of a private email server for government work while secretary of state. Sanders, who launched his campaign nine months ago with a small, sparsely attended news conference on Capitol Hill, has excited liberal activists with an anti-establishment message that calls for eradicating income inequality, breaking up the big banks and providing free college tuition. Iowa was a good state to test that message, given the heavy liberal bent of the Democratic activists who dominate the caucus process. Entrance polls of Iowa caucus-goers showed 68 percent described themselves as very or somewhat liberal. Fundraising figures reported on Sunday by Sanders underscored the extent to which his campaign has grown into a popular movement. Clinton has raised more than Sanders - her campaign brought in $109 million last year compared to his $73.5 million. But 75 percent of his haul came from donations of $200 or less, in contrast to only 18 percent of Clinton’s, and far more of Clinton’s donors have hit the $2,700 donation limit. Still, Sanders faces significant challenges when the Democratic nominating contest moves to the more diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina before expanding to 11 states on March 1, “Super Tuesday,” including seven in the South where Clinton’s advantage with African-American voters could begin to pay off. “Iowa was built for Bernie Sanders,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who nevertheless said the strong showing by Sanders means “this race goes on longer than Clinton wanted it to.” (Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in Washington; Editing by Caren Bohan and Howard Goller) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. | 0fake |
Watch Hillary Clinton Squirm When Voter Asks About E-Mails, Benghazi, Whitewater [Video] | This is great because Hillary Clinton is never asked questions like this one: Um, you said earlier that you wanted to end corruption, but how can you do that after the Whitewater scandals, Benghazi and the deleted emails? Hillary s response: Well, I wish you d go back and read the history of 1990s, because clearly uh, there, there were unfortunately a lot of partisans who uh, thought that the best way to work uh, with my husband s administration was through attacks of all kinds all of which washed out. Soooo it was the vast right-wing conspiracy ? That s a pretty pitiful answer | 1real |
Satire to resume writing itself | November 9, 2016
Satire, an archetype invented by classical Roman poets, has reversed a decision it took in early July and will continue taking charge of the global situation. Satirists, who had hoped to resume control of a vehicle that has now nullified itself by creating real world conditions so ridiculous that it is impossible to send them up, called the decision ‘disappointing but understandable’.
‘Just to recap,’ said Satire, ‘I actually began all this in the States a year ago so it’s come full circle. The joke seemed to have gone stale after a while, so I switched to Britain. I whipped up an unnecessary referendum, chucked in some grotesque stock characters and got an overgrown blonde child to pretend to be for one side when he had been for the other just months before.’
‘I encouraged him to do just enough to get an honourable defeat, only to have him win so that his school chum who had been ruling the country had to resign. Then, I arranged for his weird sidekick to stab him in the back, only to get chucked out in turn, then let two demonic female figures fight it out and had one win who thought much the same as the original man about the original problem, which wasn’t really a problem at all and ensured she is bound to win an election on the decision, even though most people regret it.’
At that point, Satire took a back seat, agreeing that the possibility of a fictional orange-skinned character might become the world’s most powerful man after a campaign based on telling obvious lies, losing every debate and winning the evangelical vote by gripping vaginas was just too ridiculous to write about. Now, however, he has decided to make another go of it.
‘OK, so I’m in my comfort zone now,’ Satire concluded. ‘The world’s leading nation devoting its entire energy to building a wall to stop brown-skinned people coming to do the jobs they won’t do themselves, people protesting against the 1% by voting for the epitome of the 1%, a thin-skinned, twice-bankrupt narcissist making decisions that will affect the whole world for a generation – it’s going to be epic. I mean, seriously, what’s the worst that could happen? … Nuclear war, you say? Hey, that could lead to another satire boom too. Boom – geddit? Did you see what I did there? Oh please yourselves…’ Share this story...
Posted: Nov 9th, 2016 by Oxbridge Click for more article by Oxbridge .. More Stories about: Left Alert 0 | 1real |
Vladimir Putin: Who will protect young boys from pedophiles and rapists in Europe? | By Jonas E. Alexis on November 3, 2016 Putin: “Is this the result of erosion of the traditional national values? I don’t even know how to explain it. Maybe they have a guilty conscience because of the refugee crises. " “Why can’t those people get a simple concept through their heads?” …by Jonas E. Alexis
No, the Khazarian Mafia and their lackeys will never report that Vladimir Putin, the man who has been called all sorts of disgusting names, is actually fighting in order to save the moral fabric of Europe. In 2014, he argued that “ a faith in God and a belief in Satan ” are incompatible.
Putin moved on to argue that any policy that puts “multi-child family and a same-sex partnership” on the same level is on “the path to degradation.”
More recently, there have been numerous rape allegations in Europe. In fact, many so-called refugees have been literally caught with their pants down. The British newspaper the Independent has recently reported:
“ A man who raped a 10-year-old boy at a swimming pool in Austria has had his conviction overturned after judges found he may have believed the child consented.
“Police said the 20-year-old Iraqi refugee, who has not been named, assaulted his victim in a toilet cubicle at the Theresienbad swimming pool in Vienna on 2 December last year.
“The child reported the rape to a lifeguard and his attacker was arrested at the scene, reportedly telling officers in initial interviews that he was experiencing a ‘sexual emergency’ after not having sex in four months.”
Obviously there is a problem here. Putin responded by saying: “ So, what’ going on now? A refugee raped a child in one of the European countries. The court let him free on two grounds: he doesn’t speak the language of the residence country, and he didn’t understand that [the] boy was against the rape. It’s just hard to imagine what Europeans are going… “Is this the result of erosion of the traditional national values? I don’t even know how to explain it. Maybe they have a guilty conscience because of the refugee crises. A society that cannot defend its children today, has no tomorrow. It has no future.”
Indeed. We should add that the Neoconservative Mafia and their marionettes are largely responsible for the rape crisis in Europe. Never forget what flaming Neocon Daniel Pipes said.
After postulating that “Western governments should respond by helping the rebels to prevent Assad from crushing them,” Pipes added back in 2013: “the West should prevent either side in the civil war from emerging victorious by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their conflict.’” [1]
Did you catch the diabolical proposition here? Pipes himself admitted that this ideology is really weird: “This policy recommendation of ‘helping whichever side is losing’ sounds odd, I admit, but it is strategic.” [2]
Well, it is only “strategic” for Pipes and his minions, who have been waging a frontal war against the moral and political order from time immemorial. Their subversive movements across Europe have been responsible for Bolshevik Revolution, for Abu Ghraib, and indeed for the debacle in Syria. So, whenever people like Pipes beat the perpetual war drum, rest assured that rape will largely be the end result.
Furthermore, if the so-called refugees are raping boys by the numbers, then European officials should fire a moral and political shot at people like Daniel Pipes and other people who don’t give a flip about saving both the Middle East and indeed Europe from slow destruction. If the late rabbi Ovadia Yosef was right, that Goyim are donkeys and that they “were born to serve” Jews, [3] then it doesn’t really matter who gets raped in the process at all.
Yosef himself said that the Goyim “need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.” [4]
Well, the young Goyim are dying in Europe, and no serious politician gives a flip about them because those politicians, as we shall see in the next installment, are in cahoots with the Khazarian Mafia in Israel and other places. Putin again is trying to help Europe by indirectly appealing to an implicit moral law, which he says is imbedded in traditional values.
[1] Daniel Pipes, “Support the Syrian Rebels?,” National Review , May 12, 2013.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Tradition Today: Jews and gentiles,” Jerusalem Post , November 12, 2010.
[4] Lazar Berman, “5 of Ovadia Yosef’s most controversial quotations,” Times of Israel , October 9, 2013. Related Posts: | 1real |
Starr steps down as Baylor chancellor after sex assault scandal | AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Former Baylor University President Kenneth Starr resigned as chancellor of the world’s largest Baptist university on Wednesday after being implicated in a report for not doing enough to probe sexual assaults by athletes. Starr, who rose to prominence for his exhaustive investigation of sex scandals surrounding then-President Bill Clinton, stepped down as chancellor but will keep his post as a professor in Baylor’s law school. “With sorrow, earlier this morning, I announced my resignation effective immediately as chancellor of Baylor University as a matter of conscience,” Starr said in an exclusive interview on ESPN television’s “Outside the Lines.” Starr added he was unaware of what was happening but still accepted responsibility. “We need to put this horrible situation behind us,” he said. One of the victims of sexual assault at Baylor, identified only as “Sarah,” told the show she sent a letter to Starr about being raped. She finds it hard to believe that he did not know about other sexual assaults. Baylor’s board of regents accepted the resignation, the school said. Last week, the central Texas university in Waco removed Starr as president and fired head football coach Art Briles after an independent report found administrators mishandled sexual abuse cases involving football players. The investigation found actions by Baylor administrators directly discouraged students from reporting sexual assaults. In one case, the actions included retaliating against a complainant for reporting a sexual assault. “We were horrified by what we learned from the investigation and again express our public acknowledgment and deepest apologies,” the board said in a statement on Wednesday. In March, a former student at Baylor brought a negligence lawsuit in federal court against the school, claiming it acted callously and indifferently after she was raped by a Baylor football player. In a separate scandal, Baylor football player Sam Ukwuachu was sentenced last year to six months in jail for sexually assaulting a fellow student in 2013. Starr became Baylor’s president in 2010, promising to promote the school’s “great tradition in the Christian world.” A former appeals court judge, Starr was appointed as a special counsel to investigate Clinton over a real estate investment and other matters. His probe widened to include Clinton’s sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives. Republicans could not muster the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to remove Clinton from office. | 0fake |
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