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Fewer Tomatoes in Ketchup? East Europeans Pursue Parity at the Grocery - The New York Times | BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — When Simona Budinska, a public relations specialist, had trouble finding products at her local grocery, she and her husband began driving across the border to Austria, where the stores were teeming with choices. But it was not the variety of products on the shelves as much as what was in them that stunned the couple. “The washing powder was just much more effective, and the ketchup contained more tomatoes than the Slovak one,” Ms. Budinska said. The countries of Eastern and Central Europe have long bridled at being treated like the poor cousins of the European Union family. It does not help that even after more than a dozen years in the bloc, wages remain lower, corruption persists and public services, like schools and hospitals, are far scruffier. But now that sense of resentment — of being treated as citizens by more prosperous neighbors — is reaching even into the region’s refrigerators and cupboards. With rising passion, prominent politicians and local news media have taken up the issue of whether Eastern Europeans are being sold inferior products. The issue has steadily emerged with growing consumer awareness among a newly prosperous middle class. Yet it also crosses class and party lines, so it is for politicians looking to play on the region’s festering grievances as a wave of nationalism sweeps the Continent. Last month, the leaders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic went so far as to ask the European Commission to investigate the complaint, which has been backed up in recent years by several studies, though not exhaustive ones. “People who are bothered about this trend tend to be young, middle class and higher income,” said Daniel Prokop, head of social and political research at Median, a private polling and marketing agency in Prague. “Politicians need some enemies to mobilize support. And they like the food issue, because it can be blamed on foreigners. ” Food producers and industry analysts point out that it is common for ingredients to differ from country to country, sometimes to favor local producers, sometimes to appease local tastes and, yes, sometimes to increase profits by substituting cheaper ingredients. “Brand owners nearly always tailor a product for its target market, whether by age, ethnicity, income, geographic location or any other demographic,” said Lisa McTigue Pierce, executive editor of Packaging Digest, published in Oak Brook, Ill. Indeed, she said, the trend has been that consumers demand such customization and personalization, not homogeneity, at the supermarket. But bitter Eastern Europeans insist that their situation is different. They are part of the European Union, a common market, and they believe that means that food quality should remain constant throughout all 28 nations. “We cannot allow our citizens to be considered second class,” said Gabriela Matecna, Slovakia’s agriculture minister. “Slovak consumers, just like consumers from other countries of the European Union, have the right to get the same quality of food when it comes to the same brand from the same producer. ” With parliamentary elections set for the fall, the food issue has gotten an even bigger push next door in the Czech Republic. Marian Jurecka, minister of agriculture there, has been leading the charge on the issue since 2015. He denies that it has anything to do with politics. But the populist party leading in the polls was created by Andrej Babis, an oligarch currently serving as finance minister, whose holdings include some of the country’s leading food producers. In Slovakia, the populist prime minister, Robert Fico, faces rising competition from extreme groups and a series of corruption scandals. He has seized on the food issue, too. “We will ask the European Commission to adopt the suitable legislation as soon as possible,” Mr. Fico said this year, “to stop the practices that degrade the citizens of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. ” While rumors that inferior food is shipped to the East have swirled for years, only in 2011 did the Slovak Association of Consumers conduct a comparison of a basket of products purchased in Austria with the same products bought in Slovakia. In all but one case, the products in the East were inferior, the group concluded. This led Olga Sehnalova, a Czech member of the European Parliament, to take up the cause. She conducted a test with her own basket of products and found half were inferior. “Regrettably, I had to confirm that differences were really found, and not in terms of something being more or less tasty but in the quality of the basic ingredients,” Ms. Sehnalova said. A later test, released in February, found that eight of 23 tested products were of lesser quality, she said. And a subsequent survey of Slovak and Austrian foods had even worse results. The Czechs found that many products — Mövenpick bourbon vanilla ice cream, Carbonell extra virgin olive oil, Heinz ketchup — were identical whether purchased in Germany or in the Czech Republic. But when differences were found in other products, lesser quality in the East was almost always the result. Rama Classic margarine had lower fat content. Sprite and Nestea used fructose as a sweetener in the Czech Republic, but actual sugar in Germany. Canned luncheon meat sold under the Tulip brand was all pork in Germany, but it included “mechanically separated poultry meat” in the Czech Republic. Officials at Rama did not respond to requests for comment. But the differences are obvious to Jens Hansen, a spokesman for Danish Crown, which makes Tulip products. “It is two different products sold under two different names in two different countries,” he said, adding that a quick look at the list of ingredients makes that clear. Ms. Sehnalova, though, said the Czechs conducting the study had taken into account the entire “visual impact” of the products, including their packaging and label design, before deciding to compare them. “Less meat, more additives and other indicators to justify saying that the quality is lower,” Ms. Sehnalova said. “That’s what we found. ” Thus far, the only studies conducted have been between Germany and the Czech Republic, and Slovakia and Austria, and these have involved only a small sampling. But officials from the region now want all Europe Union countries to undergo testing, to determine how widespread the issue is. Food producers and industry experts insist there are often sound reasons for products to differ between countries: local tastes, a preference for local ingredients, divergent buying patterns. “The formula for is the same all around the world,” said Petr Jonak, external affairs director for in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. “Locally we add the water, CO2, and some from the proven and authorized sweeteners. ” The Czech Republic gets fructose syrup, he said, but so do Spain and the United States. Germany gets cane or beet sugar, but so do Austria and many other countries. The Czech Association for Branded Products said its products met all European Union regulations. If contents do change from country to country, the difference is reflected on the ingredients label. “Special attention is given to providing consumers with comprehensive information about the products, including detailed specifications of ingredients on the label, enabling them to make a qualified choice,” the association said in a statement. That has done little to allay a sense of resentment among many Eastern consumers. “It is absolutely proven that the product are inferior here,” said Helena Tomkova, 43, who runs a public relations agency in Bratislava, the Slovakian capital. “Foods are different, but also household products, like laundry detergent. The soaps sold here are not as concentrated. ” Ms. Tomkova, though, now has a financial interest in the question. In 2014, with Zuzana Hostakova, 28, she founded Drogerka, an online site where residents of Slovakia can buy products from Austria and have them delivered. Business is growing, with plans to expand into the Czech Republic. “Food quality is an issue that some care about, some don’t,” said Mr. Prokop, of the marketing and polling agency in Prague. “But for those who do, it is a potent issue. ” | 0fake |
Turkey's Erdogan takes legal action after lawmaker calls him 'fascist dictator' | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan filed a criminal complaint against a prominent opposition lawmaker on Tuesday, one of Erdogan s lawyers said, after the deputy called the Turkish leader a fascist dictator. In blistering criticism of Erdogan, the spokesman for the main opposition Republican People s Party, Bulent Tezcan, attacked what he said was a fearful atmosphere in Turkey. Erdogan s lawyer, Huseyin Aydin, said on Twitter: We have filed a legal petition concerning Bulent Tezcan with the Ankara chief prosecutor s office for the crime of insulting the president. Aydin also posted photos of the petition. The suspect s statements are part of a new campaign against our president and cannot be interpreted as an isolated incident, the petition said, saying such a campaign had also been launched ahead of last year s attempted coup. In a speech on Monday in the western city of Tekirdag, criticizing local judicial authorities, Tezcan had said: If you try to scare people and to create a fearful atmosphere by showing legal words as illegal ones we will not be deterred. His comments appeared to be in defense of the local mayor, a CHP member, who was questioned by authorities this month after he reportedly called Erdogan a dictator at a party congress. I don t know if our mayor said that or not. I, here in Tekirdag, say it now: Erdogan is a fascist dictator , Tezcan said. His comments prompted a swift backlash from Erdogan s office and lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, with Erdogan s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin saying his hate speech is an example of disgrace for the main opposition . Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison in Turkey. Lawyers for Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade, have filed more than 1,800 cases against people including cartoonists, a former Miss Turkey winner and school children on accusations of insulting him. Following the failed coup of July 15 last year, Erdogan said he would drop outstanding suits, in a one-off gesture. Nonetheless, rights groups and some Western governments have voiced concern that Turkey is sliding toward authoritarianism. Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs and more than 50,000 jailed pending trial on suspicion of links to the failed coup. Erdogan says such measures are necessary to ensure stability and defend Turkey from multiple security threats. | 0fake |
WATCH: Fox Host Calls For Revolt If Grand Jury Indicts Trump | If a grand jury indicts Donald Trump, one Fox News host wants conservatives to revolt in retaliation.When Robert Mueller impaneled a grand jury to hear evidence in Trump s Russia scandal, it was a huge deal.Should Trump get indicted, he would be the first president to get indicted.Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were nearly indicted but special prosecutors waited for impeachment proceedings instead. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and was subsequently pardoned by Geral Ford. Clinton s impeachment trial ended in his favor, so Ken Starr abandoned the indictment effort.Trump, however, is not being impeached at the moment because Republicans still refuse to do their constitutional duty. So the next best thing is a criminal indictment, which could be slapped against Trump or any member of his family if the grand jury sees fit to do so.That s going to depend on the evidence, of which there is plenty thanks to Donald Trump Jr., who released emails confirming that Trump s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 Election.Fox News host Jeanine Pirro all but directly threatened bloody violence if the grandy jury indicts Trump or any member of his family, even if the evidence proves one or all of them broke the law. I m sure this is on Donald s mind, he never stops thinking, Pirro began. But at the same time, this is an agenda. Pirro then warned that an uprising will occur upon indictment. Here is my concern. If they end up with an indictment against a family member, just to get at Donald Trump because they couldn t get at him, there is going to be a real uproar, a real uprising in this country. Pirro then accused Mueller of rigging the grand jury against Trump. I was a prosecutor for 32 years, you can indict a ham sandwich. The only person in that grand jury is the district attorney who is interacting with all of those grand jurors on what the law is and the body language is clear! Here s the video via Twitter..@JudgeJeanine: There will be an uproar in this country if they end up with an indictment against a Trump family member just to get at POTUS pic.twitter.com/tm10kRA2Ws FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 4, 2017If indicting somebody is that easy, one wonders why so many police officers have been let off the hook by grand juries in recent years. Indeed, grand juries have failed to indict in clear cases where police officers murdered unarmed black men. Just look at the Eric Garner case for example. Garner was strangled to death just for allegedly selling cigarettes. The grand jury in that case decided not to indict the officer who killed him even though Garner s death was ruled a homicide.The evidence was clear. Garner s death was even caught on film. It should have been enough to send the police officer to prison. Instead, the grand jury chose to indict the man who filmed Garner s murder.Clearly, Pirro is wrong about grand juries.Pirro is also wrong to incite an uprising just because the walls of justice are closing in on Trump and his crime family. This amounts to a threat against the grand jury, which could be seen as interference. Pirro is literally telling the grand jury to absolve Trump or face possible violent retribution. That s unacceptable and Robert Mueller should question Pirro for it.She may be a former judge and prosecutor, but tampering with a grand jury in this way is still a crime she could be punished for.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1real |
HAWKISH DOVE: The Enigma of Donald Trump in Volatile Race to the White House | Shawn Helton 21st Century WireGOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is a populist candidate among a bevy of warhawk rivals yet many still wonder how the real estate mogul has marched virtually unabated towards the 2016 Republican nomination.Undoubtedly, the stir Trump has caused this election season is already historic. Love him or hate him, the well-known businessman and reality TV star turned American political juggernaut is emerging as a surprising voice for US national interests in the face of an ever-increasing globalized world.Below we ll examine Trump s shocking rise in American politics, his strengths, his weaknesses and what he s up against HAWKISH DOVE Who s the real Donald Trump? (Photo illustration Shawn Helton of 21WIRE)The Curious Case of Donald Trump Back in 1993, brothers David and Tom Gardner founded The Motley Fool stockbroker consultancy, and at the time, it took the investment world by storm. Their mantra was simple: in business (as it is most everything else in life) timing is everything, and when a market or system becomes insular and stagnant, the conditions are ripe for a rule breaker , and eventually, the rule breakers becomes the rule makers. This spirit of guerilla business also underpinned the Silicon Valley revolution in the 1990s and 2000s.Likewise, Donald Trump read the tea leaves and saw an opportunity in 2016.If you believe the United States is ruled by an elite establishment or is a country taken hold by statism, endless foreign intervention and crony corporatism, chances are you might be considering Donald Trump as your candidate of choice in the 2016 presidential election and you wouldn t be alone. Similar sentiments are felt on the left-wing by supporters of Democratic Party outsider Bernie Sanders.Trump s outsider tag and anti-establishment veneer, is what seems to be resonating most among a broad base across America, as many believe that the country has been in a decline following two failed administrations in the White House under both Bush and Obama.This is the nature of populist campaigns and whether you like Trump or not, he s run one of the most effective presidential campaigns in American history, despite major backlash from the media and various political pressure groups attempting to stop his rise.The New PopulistsMuch like former Republican congressman Ron Paul in 2012, and to a lesser degree with Bernie Sanders, Trump has seemingly tapped into a cultural zeitgeist rarely seen in American politics as this year s preeminent populist choice.While Paul s staunch constitutional and libertarian beliefs propelled his popularity in 2012, it s Trump s cross-spectrum political thinking that s drawing supporters to his campaign marked by an ability to reach the average blue-collar worker, as well as successful entrepreneurs by bringing up issues concerning economic growth, immigration and global trade.To some critics however, Trump is not conservative enough, even though he s already unveiled one of the most comprehensive plans to uphold gun rights in modern history. The plan includes a proposal for nationwide concealed carry without placing a ban on certain types of guns or magazines something which has become a hot button particularly for those on the left after a string of strange mass shooting events during much of 2015.On the other side of the political fence, many have criticized Trump s antiquated views on expanding torture techniques in the military, as well as his tough talk on internet security, privacy concerns and heavy stance on illegal immigration.The term super-nationalistic is being batted around to describe Trump s perspective, causing some to fear the unknown.Ironically, what has led to Trump s success has also hindered him and has arguably become a major weak point for the shrewd businessman.Trump s fiery rhetoric concerning certain issues facing America today, in some cases has worked against him, and has painted a target on him, opening the door for the media to spin anything he says, or doesn t say, or what others say about him.This is perhaps best exemplified with his tough talk on illegal immigration, along with his media counter attack against professional agitators and protesters at his events following several clashes at some of his rallies over the past few weeks.Unfortunately, his detractors and political rivals have already used these social triggers to attack the GOP frontrunner, as his Chicago rally was cancelled after erupting into a chaotic scene, leading to at least 5 arrests. Similarly, his St. Louis rally was also stormed, leading to 32 arrests, with much of the media joining in condemnation of the embattled businessman.While no one should condone the violence that results from Trump supporters clashing with outside political agitators at Trump s campaign events, critics insist that Trump has somehow escalated these volatile protests through his own incendiary language and for not using his powers of persuasion to calm things down. Later on in this article, we ll take an even closer look at what s behind these seismic uprisings at Trump s campaign rallies.The Manhattan mogul s political story has only just begun and there are many things to consider concerning the embattled GOP frontrunner WAR LIES Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell and the Bush administration s findings revealed a highly coordinated disinformation campaign that led to over half a million deaths in the US-led invasion in Iraq in 2003. (Photo link foreignpolicyjournal)Alternative To War?Recently, Trump was pressed again on matters concerning the Middle East and his response has been surprisingly diplomatic with a non-interventionist platform. Trump s open condemnation of the Bush administration for the Iraq war and the Obama White House for the destruction of Libya, has resonated across the board for voters on both sides of the political spectrum. Trump has asserted that 2003 s invasion in Iraq and the blitzkrieg in Libya via NATO members in 2011, is further evidence of failed US foreign policy throughout the world.Doubling down, the GOP frontrunner Trump, has also refused to pick a side between Israel and Palestine and in true form to his business pedigree, stating that he would rather attempt to broker a peace deal in the ages old conflict, rather than tow the party line.Calling Out Bad Global Trade TRANS PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP US leaders vote in favor of cloaked trade deal involving Asia pacific countries and America in 2015. Trump has been the only presidential candidate talking about the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal and its vast implications on the global economy.The Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP trade deal, is something we ve covered extensively at 21WIRE over the past two years, as international trade law for new trade treaties appear to be a way for private corporations to exempt themselves from the laws of sovereign nations under the guise of a so-called free-trade agreement.As global policy makers continue to merge with the interests of multinational or transnational corporations to achieve their goals, we could view the TTP or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as having zero national loyalty to any existing nation-state or its set of laws.These multi-national and transnational free trade deals have been vigorously opposed by Trump during many GOP debates this election cycle. Other critics of these deals have suggested they are being used as a way to gain a foothold on property rights in the future, in addition to having lasting implications on intellectual property.21WIRE previously outlined the role that the United States Trade Representative has played in facilitating these deals between different industries: Understanding the power structure behind these draconian trade deals reveals the global chess play at work and the behind-the-scenes corporate merger s, under the watch of a biased government entity, the USTR. The USTR has been doing heavy lifting through its corporate connections with the likes of Haliburton (ESG and KBR) and Monsanto Corp, and political insider ties for a massive trade deal that will consolidate our future all done outside of the democratic process. This past week, Huffington Post published an article entitled At Secretive Meeting, Tech CEOs And Top Republicans Commiserate, Plot To Stop Trump, : Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute s annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The article goes on to say that the participants couldn t help discussing Trump but he was not the sole purpose of the meeting. Here s some of the list of attendees as reported by HuffPo: Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he cannot support Donald Trump. Recently, it was reported by Cleveland.com that Ohio lost 112,500 jobs in 2015 resulting from the United States trade deficit with countries that are part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Additionally, the EPI s findings state that an estimated 2 million jobs have already been lost due to the TPP and that half of those were in manufacturing industry.Above all else, Trump s non-interventionist outlook on the Middle East and his diplomatic approach to Israel and Palestine, as well as his strong position on free trade deals such as the TPP and TTIP, have all contributed to placing the outspoken candidate on the political chopping block.Such is the curious case of Donald J. Trump AMERICAN PSYCHO? Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney propelled Trump s campaign despite his desperate appeal to the public last week in a staged pre-debate speech. (Photo link cowgernation)Political Attack DogsThe anti-Trump coalition consists of the Republican Party establishment, the Leftwing and the mainstream media and each of these factions are presently at war with Trump and his campaign.From the onset, you could see the horror in TV broadcasters eyes when confronted by Trump a media mogul himself who knows how to conduct a symphony on the airwaves. In many respects, he s their worst nightmare a politician who can outplay them in their media manipulation game.For the American Leftwing, he induces revulsion, and for good reason his ability to tame the media has enabled him to discard the political correctness which governs US media discourse.The most sustained attack however, is coming from his own party. In the September of 2015, here at 21WIRE, we discussed how neoconservatives within the Republican Party were incensed when Trump first launched his presidential campaign bid over the summer. Flashing forward to now, it s even more apparent that the media and the dying GOP party elite have attempted to shanghai Trump and the public during his unexpected political rise.Since last summer, there s been a host of media pundits and Washington figureheads looking to take on Trump in a kinda of metaphorical Thunderdome, something which has routinely played out before millions of TV viewers and one by one, each has become politically castrated, spayed or otherwise cast aside by the outspoken tycoon.You don t have to take my word for it, just ask Meghan Kelley, Lindsay Graham, Jeb Bush, as well as former FOX News favorite and PNAC (Project for a New American Century) waving neocon, Marco Rubio a list, that may now include Mitt Romney, following his dirty, scripted propaganda speech meant to quell Trump s primary rise.It seems this year more than any other, the American public has peeled away at the politically fixed halls of FOX, CNN and others, as mainstream networks have deliberately attempted to derail Trump through a plethora of designer media attacks, timely gotcha questions, ambush-style interviews and scripted debate forums working in concert to keep the apparent GOP outsider off-balance throughout the entire presidential nomination process. Astute observers of the GOP nomination process, might conclude that many media personalities, political insiders and beltway lobbyists are comfortable with America s long ago chartered cruise towards global ambiguity and perpetual stagnation, rather than to take a chance on new blood.In fact, The Grand Old Party pet-parade nearly flatlined last week after enlisting Bain Capital businessman and former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney to unleash a scathing nationally televised assessment of Trump s presidential qualifications.Bain Capital, is an investment firm with a rich history of litigation concerning claims of disgruntled investors over profits, as well as a global company with big ties to military defense, aerospace and big agricultural giants like Monsanto.Romney s recent pre-GOP debate speech appeared to be a last-ditch effort directed by neoconservative strategists to silence Trump s campaign but it led to a huge backlash and in the process, revealed the former governor s role as political spoiler (and thus damaged goods), as evidenced by his support of Bush-approved candidate John Kasich.Romney s speech, piggy-backed anti-Trump hashtag campaigns (#nevertrump and #stoptrump) that emerged in the weeks following an article by well-known neoconservative strategist, Peter Wehner on why he wouldn t support a Trump presidency.Here s a You Tube clip of Fox News contributor Judge Jeanine Pirro condemning Romney for awakening a sleeping giant among the US electorate The Shape of ThingsMitt Romney and the billionaire boys club are out for blood.Trump is using big media to put out some dangerous ideas like the prospect for a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, and d tente with Russia, and also calling out the clear fraud of the Iraq War, as well as NATO s bombardment in Libya as Trump stated, Libya would be better off if we had left Gaddafi in power. If the politicians had gone to the beach instead, and did nothing, we d be better off in Libya and Iraq than we are today. Romney represents the financial and investment wing of the military industrial complex and an Israel first foreign policy. Along with John McCain, Romney is one of their inside men embedded inside the US political establishment.This is what Trump is really up against.It doesn t stop there, the dirty politricks continued this week as Rubio urged his supporters to vote for rival presidential candidate and Governor of Ohio John Kasich (a close Bush-family friend), with the Florida Senator stating, If you re a Republican primary voter in Ohio, and you don t want Donald Trump to be the nominee, John Kasich is your best bet. Incidentally, Jeb Bush met with three non-Trump candidates (Cruz, Rubio Kasich?) in Miami this week, a month after dropping out of the presidential race, due to his poor campaign results. The situation was described by the Wall Street Journal as the following: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who ended his 2016 candidacy last month after months of sparring with Mr. Trump, met with each of the three non-Trump candidates this week in Miami, though he hasn t offered direction on how to block Mr. Trump s path. On another interesting note, early in March, according to The Hill, CEO of FOX News, Roger Ailes, dropped his support for Rubio, if true, the move would signify this latest strategy to use Romney and Kasich as a way to undermine Trump s campaign. Here s the excerpt reported by The Hill: We re finished with Rubio, Roger Ailes told one of the network s hosts recently, according to three unnamed sources. We can t do the Rubio thing anymore. Flashing forward to this past week, Trump loyalist Roger Stone, wrote a revealing article entitled Ted Cruz, A Bush By Another Name, which detailed GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz s close relationship to the Bush family. Here s a passage from Stone s recent piece at The Daily Caller: Neil Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush, who defrauded U.S. taxpayers out of $1.5 billion dollars in the savings and loan scam, and later peddled influence for the Chinese government, (who plied him with Chinese prostitutes) has formally endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for president. You can t make this stuff up. The Bush-Cruz connection is clear. Ted was George W. s brain when he ran for president. A top policy adviser, Ted maneuvered for Solicitor General in Bush World but settled for a plum at the Federal Trade Commission. Ted s a Bush man with deep ties to the political and financial establishment. Ted and wife Heidi brag about being the first Bush marriage they met as Bush staffers. SEE ALSO: Ted Cruz comes up empty on Obamacare as government continues debt scamAs the political claws are fully out now, the recent words of Pulitzer prize nominated journo, Jon Rappoport, comes to mind: A true populist leader would accept the fact that working through usual channels, to bring about stunning changes, is a loser. The enemy is entrenched. The enemy controls the landscape. The enemy controls the machinery. Where is the populist s strength coming from? Only one place: the people who are supporting him. So he has to go back to that well, over and over again. And now he can. While pondering Trump s rivals and populism, there s a deeper agenda concerning 2016 and beyond, something which was recently pointed out here at 21WIRE.In October of 2014, The Boston Globe published a stirring article rarely seen in the mainstream entitled Vote all you want. The secret government won t change. The Globe piece covered Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon s detailed perspective on the political process in America. The article included an in-depth discussion about Glennon s book National Security and Double Government, a book that gives the public an inside look into the collusion between neoconservative and neoliberal political strategy on the global stage in particular, counterterrorism policies that are routinely followed by president after president.The idea of concealed policy between neoconservatives and neoliberals was further confirmed when Robert Kagan, a co-founder and co-author of The Project for the New American Century, recently endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.This was a big story, but it barely kept the media s attention span for longer than a week.Indeed, Kagan s endorsement should provide a window for people to see the so-called (neo) conservative players behind the scenes that might have helped Clinton escape the Benghazi scandal and might step in to rescue her from her ongoing national security related email case with the FBI.Clinton s exploits in Libya are well documented and her recent endorsement by neocon strategist Kagan, is just one more glaring example of political complicity, no matter who gets elected as the president of America, the foreign policy machinations are controlled by the same operators.Coincidentally or not, Kagan also appears to be linked to Romney s anti-trump plea to the public.In a catchy call to arms, a deeply biased political plea was published on the website called War On The Rocks. The piece featured an impassioned rant from those directly connected to the military industrial complex. In fact, many war party operatives, put their seal of approval on the message including Robert Kagan, as well as Former Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, (the Chertoff Group manufactured the TSA body scanners used in most major airports) as well as over hundred other political operatives.To those aware of these tactics, the War On The Rocks Trump hit-piece, read like a foreign policy business as usual dossier, with a heavy-handed characterization of mogul, while completely misrepresenting some of Washington s most notorious military interventions in recent memory. TRUMP CARD Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump posters adorn Trump s Nevada caucus rally. (Photo link ulinet)Socially Engineered Flash Mobs Go Viral The political game changers are fully after the Trump campaign now, as the George Soros funded advocacy group MoveOn, played a large role in the Chicago University student organized shutdown at the Trump rally this past Friday, as well as a host of other splinter groups associated with Black Lives Matter (BLM) and supporters for Bernie Sanders. BLACK BLOC Black bloc provocateurs, have violently escalated protest movements since the 1980 s, including 2011 s Occupy Wall Street Movement. (Photo link examiner)The echoes are still felt from the Soros funded protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and the Baltimore riots of 2015, something which immediately recalls the misguided machinations of The Occupy Movement (aka OWS) in 2011, an event that turned out to be a think-tank-spun divide and conquer stratagem designed to push naive participants into violent action. CHICAGO CHAOS Bernie Sanders supporters join Black Lives Matter linked groups to shutdown Trump rally. (Photo link twitter)Back in January, MoveOn publicly endorsed the Bernie Sanders campaign in what appeared to be a call to action for BLM associated groups seen backing Sanders. It s worth mentioning, that MoveOn, also supported the Obama campaign in 2008, according to the website, Sanders is the only other candidate to threshold for an endorsement. From here on out, professional political agitator flash mobs, will be mobilized at future Trump campaign events, making it very difficult to run a normal campaign taking away Trump s strength in numbers at his rallies. This was confirmed in Ohio recently, after a BLM activist and Sanders supporter, stormed the stage, shortly after Trump started speaking.In a Politico article entitled Major donors consider funding Black Lives Matter, we gain deeper insight into the political funding for BLM and the Soros linked Democratic Alliance: Major donors are usually not as radical or confrontational as activists most in touch with the pain of oppression, said Steve Phillips, a Democracy Alliance member and significant contributor to Democratic candidates and causes. He donated to a St. Louis nonprofit group called the Organization for Black Struggle that helped organize 2014 Black Lives Matter-related protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police killing of a black teenager named Michael Brown. And Phillips and his wife, Democracy Alliance board member Susan Sandler, are in discussions about funding other groups involved in the movement. It worth noting Soros, a long time contributor to Hillary Clinton, donated $2 million in PAC money in 2015 and January of 2016, Soros reportedly gave $8 million to boost Clinton s campaign. Soros also recently funded $15 million to Latino groups looking to stop Trump s rise towards a potential GOP nomination and beyond.Any bloodshed at the hands of vigilante mobs at Trump rallies, should be the responsibility of those who of have sought to politicize and fund this agenda from the very beginning.Look for these political engineers, to pit choreographed conservative and liberal groups against each other at Trump s rallies or events in the future as all of these hostile uprisings are by design.During the Days of Rage in 1969, the FBI was said to have been tracking specific members of the Students for a Democratic Society. The SDS was heavily connected to 60 s political agitators turned domestic terrorists, The Weather Underground. Many concluded that the group s leader, Bill Ayers, was an interloper looking for new recruits that were easily manipulated into hostile action.This begs the question: Are government agencies still infiltrating political advocacy groups to push social change?The disruptions at Trump rallies are a form of modern class warfare, one that disguises its true intentions, eroding national sovereignty through a series of upheavals, while presenting shock and awe imagery in order to manipulate the public s political perspective.Amazingly through it all, Trump s still been able to confound his opposition in the aftermath of a barrage of attacks, propelling his popularity even to even higher levels.The Ides of March primaries will be a good barometer to see what impact these chaotic clashes may have on Trump s campaign moving forward.It still remains to be seen if Trump s dynamic political vision for America will push the country further into authoritarianism or whether he can unite an embattled nation by restoring international relations throughout the world.But one thing is for sure there s no doubt now that a systematic design is in place to unseat the GOP frontrunner and the public should question why READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1real |
Testing the Limits of Trust, and Sushi, at Sugarfish - The New York Times | Like many habits, the pursuit of good sushi can get expensive. At the extreme end, the cost includes airfare to Tokyo and bribes to hotel concierges. Even for New Yorkers who stick close to home, the price of keeping up to date on sushi is high and climbing. sushi nuts have already had the $145 omakase and been served on both sides of the counter by the profoundly courtly employees of Kosaka tried Sushi Zo’s $200 omakase, the rice almost invisible under very long and very soft and unadorned ribbons of fish sat down to Ichimura’s $300 sonata of fish cured and seasoned in an emphatic style that descends from the days before refrigeration and handed over as much as $400 to Sushi Ginza Onodera for nigiri and other dishes that are as minutely detailed as the interior is soaringly grand. For sushi chasers whose bank accounts are not this all gets kind of depressing. Or consider the novice fan, who has begun to realize that there are realms of pleasure out there beyond tuna rolls from Duane Reade. What’s next? Sugarfish by Sushi Nozawa would like to be the answer. It’s not, but enough people believe it is, or want to believe, that getting inside this restaurant on East 20th Street can be a test of patience. Sugarfish arrived with an pedigree. Its branches around Los Angeles have an ardent following, and one of the chain’s founders, Kazunori Nozawa, was among the first sushi chefs to bring to that city a rigorously autocratic style. Specializing in omakase, he was known to yell at those foolish enough to stir wasabi into their soy sauce. Nobody yelled at me at Sugarfish, but the staff didn’t seem all that eager to feed me, either. I made my first assault on the host stand just after 6:30 one weeknight. (The place doesn’t do reservations.) I was alone and willing to wait even if it took until closing time — 11 that night. What an optimist I was in those days. “We’re not taking any more names tonight,” a host announced. Later, I learned to stage my raids between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, not hours when I typically crave raw fish. One lucky day, I was in within 30 minutes and out before sunset. One can order sushi by the piece, but the servers and the printed menu heavily push the three “Trust Me” meals. This is a variant on omakase, which roughly means “I trust the chef,” but a Trust Me is not an omakase meal. It is, essentially, a set menu served in waves. All three start with chilled edamame and slices of tuna in ponzu, move on to several small courses of nigiri and end with a hand roll or two. The simplest, Trust Me Lite, is $27 and includes four pieces of nigiri the most expensive is the Nozawa Trust Me, with 12 pieces of sushi and two hand rolls at a price of $51. Each course zooms out of a window in the kitchen where sushi is made with unusual speed. Efficiency lets Sugarfish keep prices low, the volume high and the rice warm — a hallmark of what the critic Jonathan Gold has termed the School of Nozawa. The rice is not only warm. It’s seasoned with so much vinegar that it’s almost pickled. This makes it appealingly energetic, a quality that sets it apart from the rest of the food. The fish is uniformly soft and pretty, but none of it tastes much like fish. Sweet shrimp and sea scallops were both exactly as they should be. But there was no heft to the tuna, no depth to the salmon, and anybody who happens to like species like mackerel or sardines is in the wrong restaurant. The menu and website make much of Mr. Nozawa’s connections among elite fishmongers, but the selection at Sugarfish rarely rises above entry level. The menu lists certain specials “when available. ” Sea urchin is one the last time I went, there wasn’t any. This has to be the only sushi restaurant in New York that can’t get its hands on sea urchin. Fresh wasabi may be too much to ask at Sugarfish’s prices, but there is no wasabi at all under the fish. This is weird. Where sushi is concerned, wasabi isn’t just a condiment. It’s the air in the tires. Sugarfish lets you apply your own from some concentric bloops of stuff that tastes like watery horseradish and looks like a green version of the poop emoji, without the smile. By the end of my third meal, I was desperate for some break in the monotony. If Mr. Nozawa had suddenly materialized to yell at me, I would have given him flowers. | 0fake |
Blame government, not markets for monopoly | Blame government, not markets for monopoly Corporate mergers and “hostile” takeovers can promote economic efficiency By Ron Paul - November 1, 2016
When Time-Warner announced it planned to merge with another major communications firm, many feared the new company would exercise near-total monopoly power. These concerns led some to call for government action to block the merger in order to protect both Time-Warner’s competitors and consumers.
No, I am not talking about Time-Warner’s recent announced plan to merge with AT&T, but the reaction to Time-Warner’s merger with (then) Internet giant AOL in 2000. Far from creating an untouchable leviathan crushing all competitors, the AOL-Time-Warner merger fell apart in under a decade.
The failure of AOL-Time-Warner demonstrates that even the biggest companies are vulnerable to competition if there is open entry into the marketplace. AOL-Time-Warner failed because consumers left them for competitors offering lower prices and/or better quality.
Corporate mergers and “hostile” takeovers can promote economic efficiency by removing inefficient management and boards of directors. These managers and board members often work together to promote their own interests instead of generating maximum returns for investors by providing consumers with affordable, quality products. Thus, laws making it difficult to launch a “hostile” takeover promote inefficient use of resources and harm investors, workers, and consumers.
Monopolies and cartels are creations of government, not markets. For example, the reason the media is dominated by a few large companies is that no one can operate a television or radio station unless they obtain federal approval and pay federal licensing fees. Similarly, anyone wishing to operate a cable company must not only comply with federal regulations, they must sign a “franchise” agreement with their local government. Fortunately, the Internet has given Americans greater access to news and ideas shut out by the government-licensed lapdogs of the “mainstream” media. This may be why so many politicians are anxious to regulate the web.
Government taxes and regulations are effective means of limiting competition in an industry. Large companies can afford the costs of complying with government regulations, costs which cripple their smaller competitors. Big business can also afford to hire lobbyists to ensure that new laws and regulations favor big business.
Examples of regulations that benefit large corporations include the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulations that raise costs of developing a new drug, as well as limit consumers ability to learn about natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals. Another example is the Dodd-Frank legislation, which has strengthened large financial intuitions while harming their weaker competitors.
Legislation forcing consumers to pay out-of-state sales tax on their online purchases is a classic case of business seeking to use government to harm less politically-powerful competitors. This legislation is being pushed by large brick-and-mortar stores and Internet retailers who are seeking a government-granted advantage over smaller competitors.
Many failed mergers and acquisitions result from the distorted signals sent to business and investors by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary monetary policy. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the AOL-Time-Warner fiasco, which was a direct result of the Fed-created dot.com bubble.
In a free market, mergers between businesses enable consumers to benefit from new products and reduced prices. Any businesses that charge high prices or offer substandard products will soon face competition from businesses offering consumers lower prices and/or higher quality. Monopolies only exist when government tilts the playing field in favor of well-connected crony capitalists. Therefore those concerned about excessive corporate power should join supporters of the free market in repudiating the regulations, taxes, and subsides that benefit politically-powerful businesses. The most important step is to end the boom-bust business cycle by ending the Federal Reserve. | 1real |
Bangladesh Arrests Over 3,000 to Halt Attacks - The New York Times | DHAKA, Bangladesh — More than 3, 000 people, some of them known Islamist militants, have been arrested in a series of police raids intended to quell a wave of deadly machete attacks against bloggers, minorities and others, the police said Saturday. The roundup began last week after militants killed the wife of a police superintendent who had been investigating the machete attacks. Over the course of the week, the police said, they killed five militants in shootouts. They were members of the Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, one of two groups that the authorities believe are behind most of the attacks, the police said. Many citizens criticized the government for not taking action sooner against the militants, who have created a climate of terror since they began murdering secularist bloggers and others more than three years ago. Since 2013, bloggers, freethinkers, religious minorities, foreigners, gay activists, followers of more liberal strains of Islam and others have been killed in attacks carried out mostly by groups of young men wielding machetes. The government had previously arrested dozens of people involved in at least 40 such attacks, but until this past week had not carried out a nationwide crackdown. People close to the government said leaders were hesitant to clamp down for fear of alienating radical fundamentalists, who form a large voting bloc. “I welcome this special drive. It should have been taken much earlier,” said Shahriar Kabir, the general secretary of the South Asian People’s Union Against Fundamentalism and Communalism. The police believe Mr. Kabir was one of the militants’ top targets, and he leaves his house here only with police protection. But the leading opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, accused the government of using the crackdown as an excuse to round up opponents. “In the name of an antimilitant drive, the government is arresting opposition activists, including B. N. P. and other antigovernment people,” said Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the party’s senior joint secretary general. A. K. M. Kamrul Ahsan, a Bangladeshi police spokesman, said that the crackdown began Friday at 6 a. m. and that within 24 hours more than 3, 000 suspects had been arrested nationwide. Five members of the Islamist group Jama’atul Mujahedeen Bangladesh were killed in shootouts with the police during the week, including one militant wanted in connection with the killing of a doctor last year and another who was suspected of shooting up a Shiite mosque during evening prayers last year, the police said. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, speaking at a meeting of her Awami League party committee on Saturday, vowed that the killers would be hunted down. Ms. Hasina also suggested that opposition parties had been involved in the killings of the bloggers and others. In addition to local groups, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for some of the killings on social media, and several attacks have been claimed by a faction of Al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent. | 0fake |
Unprecedented Bond Dumping Means U.S. Dollar Collapse Ahead | in: Collapse , Economy & Business , Multimedia In the following interview, Elijah Johnson and Silver Doctors bring you the latest interview with someone we haven’t heard from in a while, Dr. Jim Willie. To begin the financial portion of the interview, Elijah begins by asking Dr. Willie about the unprecedented bond dumping by China and Saudi Arabia, and of course what Elijah is referring to is how several weeks ago the markets witnessed never before seen numbers when $28 billion in U.S. Treasuries were dumped one week, followed by another $23 billion a week or so later.
Consider the massive sell-off’s just further evidence in a long line of existing examples regarding why the days of the U.S. Dollar as the World Reserve Currency are numbered. Our creditors are aware that the Fed has been engaged in non-stop printing of money out of thin air, and even though the short-term effect has been the propping up of U.S. Treasury prices, our creditors know history, something Americans seems to pay no attention to. Our creditors know that just like other countries who have engaged in the same kinds of reckless monetary policy in the past, eventually when the QE (printing money out of thin air), is removed, hyperinflation will set in, and there will be massive devaluation of the same Treasuries that were artificially propped up for so long. Most creditors expect the QE to be shut off the moment this U.S. election is over, because unlike uninformed American voters, our creditors know that In addition to his role in allowing the largest case of massive voter fraud in America history to take place on his watch, Captain Transparency in the White House has made sure his loyal servant at the Fed, Janet Yellen, has continued committing massive financial fraud at the Fed at the same time. All of these actions by the U.S. result in what Dr. Willie refers to as psychological damage not just to the full faith and credit of the United States Dollar, but to the United States itself. Creditors of U.S. debt are watching a never before seen transition in the U.S. to a system of pure corruption, undermining ANY faith they might have had in the Dollar, and giving them every reason in the world to want to distance them from the U.S. Dollar. Dr. Willie explains that any “perceived” moral authority the U.S. once might have had is long gone. Among other things, the world learned not long ago through a shocking revelation by Wikileaks that Obama and Hillary not only knew of funds being used to provide ISIS (our enemy), with weapons during a time of war, the world has now seen that Barack Obama and Hillary allowed it. With almost a week until the official election we have heard tremendous stories of voter fraud including stories revealing as many as 20/20 examples of machines switching votes from Trump to Hillary, we know the polls have been massively rigged, and thanks to a national media as corrupt and dishonest and those they are tasked with watching over, Dr. Willie briefly mentions millennials who were recently highlighted on the Steven Colbert show expressing their excitement that Obamacare premiums are doubling in some states. The level of stupidity that is coming out of liberal indoctrination centers known as public schools or universities, where graduates have no ability to exercise critical thinking skills, is exactly why 20% college graduates are now living with their parents or grandparents, and Michael Snyder explains below. Expect that number to keep climbing considerably, particularly with a Clinton Presidency. Michael Snyder writes: In America today, more than 60 million people live in multi-generational households. That number is so large that it may seem difficult to believe, but the truth is that vast numbers of young adults have had to move back in with their parents and grandparents in recent years due to the deteriorating economy . Millions of our young people cannot find decent jobs once they leave school, and millions of them are absolutely overwhelmed by debt. Of course some of them are just lazy, but whatever the reason it is undeniable that multi-generational households are on the rise. According to the Pew Research Center , 12 percent of the U.S. population was living in multi-generational households back in 1980. Today, that number is up to 19 percent. That means nearly one out of every five U.S. adults now live with their parents or their grandparents. One of the big culprits, of course, is student loan debt. | 1real |
PRESIDENT Promotes Made in America: Omaha Steaks Owner “Wanted to Kiss Me” for Reopening Trade with China [Video] | President Trump was sporting a Commemorative Stetson hat today when he introduced the Made in America week starting with Omaha Steaks. He has a great one-liner in the video below this one about opening the beef trade again with China: The gentleman who was in charge of Omaha Beef. They do beef. He hugged me and he wanted to kiss me so badly. OPENING REMARKS:President Trump says Omaha Steaks CEO wanted to kiss me so badly for opening beef trade in China https://t.co/LQEanwTWY8 NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) July 17, 2017President Trump admiring a Made in America baseball bat:President Trump admires a baseball bat during Made in America event: It s so beautiful I love to play baseball https://t.co/zvYjE7EG1e NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) July 17, 2017President Trump mentioned Senator John McCain: We hope John McCain gets better very soon. We miss him. He s a crusty voice in Washington, plus we need his vote. https://t.co/ZSpibzJlG2 NBC News (@NBCNews) July 17, 2017 | 1real |
PressTV-Hezbollah shares Aoun’s victory: Lebanon FM | Lebanon Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil gestures to his supporters during a rally to show support for FPM founder Michel Aoun, near the presidential palace in Baabda, near Beirut, Lebanon, October 16, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil says the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah shares the victory of Michel Aoun in securing the country’s presidency.
Aoun, a strong Hezbollah ally, was chosen by Lebanese lawmakers as the country’s president on Monday.
Addressing a large number of people who had converged at a square in Beirut to celebrate Aoun’s election, Bassil, who is also the head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Aoun’s son-in-law, said his movement never doubted Hezbollah’s “loyalty” and “honesty.” Aoun is the founder of the FPM.
He said Aoun’s victory was based on his own perseverance as well as the positions adopted by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who is Hezbollah’s secretary general.
In a phone call on the same day, Nasrallah congratulated Aoun on his election as the head of the Lebanese state. This image, taken in the southern suburbs of Beirut on October 31, 2016, shows people celebrating the election of Michel Aoun as the new president of Lebanon.
Nasrallah endorsed Aoun last week, advising Lebanese political factions to set aside their differences in order to fill the presidential void in the Arab country.
Lebanon had been without a president for over two years amid political bickering in the parliament.
After the election, Aoun vowed in a speech to the parliament that he would spare no effort in trying to bring about the liberation of Lebanese territories occupied by Israel.
He said his top priority would be to strengthen the army in order for it to become capable of defending the country against all threats to its independence and sovereignty.
Hezbollah has been defending Lebanon against Israeli aggression since the movement’s inception, including during a full-fledged Israeli war in 2006.
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THESE “POLLS” DON’T LIE! HILLARY PLANS HUGE Black Baptist Church Rally…Massive Number Of Empty Seats…Workers Forced To “Shrink” Room | The way Trump is packing in thousands of supporters at every rally in every state he visits, it s pretty clear his popularity way overshadows that of #CrookedHillary. She s barely getting enough people to fill a phone booth at her rallies! This event, at the Baptist National Convention in Kansas City turned out to be downright embarrassing for Hillary and her campaign. In a venue meant to hold 5,000 people, Hillary only drew about 1,000. Perhaps there just isn t a huge amount of interest with Baptist church members in Kansas City when it comes to spending time listening to a sociological liar Workers cutting the room down by a third with lower than expected turnout for #clintonkc speech. pic.twitter.com/L60YFfBpO1 Frank Morris (@FrankNewsman) September 8, 2016Check out the number of empty seats!Convention hall turned out lights in un-occupied part of hall for @HillaryClinton speech, now partitioning it off pic.twitter.com/O5Az8EfiRD Brian Abel (@BrianAbelTV) September 8, 2016Here are the requested "during speech" pics of KC convention hall pic.twitter.com/ZRGOm77xnO Brian Abel (@BrianAbelTV) September 8, 2016And finally, only 1,000 people filled a venue meant for 5,000. Who needs polls that are rigged by leftist media or polling firms with an agenda. From now on, we re going to continue to use the number of supporters who actually take time out of their busy day to see the candidates as a true indicator of who s leading in the race Front of press constituted 10 rows. 14 seats per section, 6 sections. Less than 1,000 of the >5k setup https://t.co/C6BcyCIl9F Brian Abel (@BrianAbelTV) September 8, 2016h/t Gateway Pundit | 1real |
FULL TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO From A Passionate AG Sessions: “Please hear me now…” [Video] | FULL OPENING STATEMENT OF ATTORNEY GENERAL SESSIONS STATEMENT: It was a very strong and passionate statement from a determined Sessions.FULL TRANSCRIPT:Thank you Chairman Burr and Ranking Member Warner for allowing me to publicly appear before the committee today.I appreciate the Committee s critically important efforts to investigate Russian interference with our democratic process. Such interference can never be tolerated and I encourage every effort to get to the bottom of any such allegations.As you know, the Deputy Attorney General has appointed a special counsel to investigate matters related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. I am here today to address several issues that have been specifically raised before this committee, and I appreciate the opportunity to respond to questions as fully as I am able to do so. But as I advised you, Mr. Chairman, and consistent with long-standing Department of Justice practice, I cannot and will not violate my duty to protect confidential communications with the President.Now, let me address some issues directly: I did not have any private meetings nor do I recall any conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel. I did not attend any meetings at that event. Prior to the speech, I attended a reception with my staff that included at least two dozen people and President Trump. Though I do recall several conversations I had during that pre-speech reception, I do not have any recollection of meeting or talking to the Russian Ambassador or any other Russian officials. If any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian Ambassador during that reception, I do not remember it. After the speech, I was interviewed by the news media, which had gathered as I remember in a different room, and then I left the hotel.But whether I ever attended a reception where the Russian Ambassador was also present is entirely beside the point of this investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 campaigns. Let me state this clearly: I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election. Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. I was your colleague in this body for 20 years, and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor for over 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie.Relatedly, there is the assertion that I did not answer Senator Franken s question honestly at my confirmation hearing. That is false. This is how it happened. He asked me a rambling question that included dramatic, new allegations that the United States intelligence community had advised President-elect Trump that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump s surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government. I was taken aback by these explosive allegations, which he said were being reported in breaking news that day. I wanted to refute immediately any suggestion that I was a part of such an activity. I replied, Senator Franken, I m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn t have did not have communications with the Russians, and I m unable to comment on it. That was the context in which I was asked the question, and in that context, my answer was a fair and correct response to the charge as I understood it. It simply did not occur to me to go further than the context of the question and list any conversations I may have had with Russians in routine situations, as I had with numerous other foreign officials.Please hear me now. It was only in March of this year that a reporter asked my spokesperson whether I had ever met with any Russian officials. This was the first time that question had been posed. On the same day, we provided that reporter with the information related to the meeting I and my staff had held in my Senate office with Ambassador Kislyak, as well as the brief encounter in July after a speech that I had given during the convention in Cleveland, Ohio. I also provided the reporter a list of all 25 foreign ambassador meetings I had held during 2016. In addition, I provided supplemental testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain this. I readily acknowledged these two meetings. Certainly nothing improper occurred.Let me also explain clearly the circumstances of my recusal from the investigation into the Russian interference with the 2016 election. I was sworn in as Attorney General on Thursday, February 9th. The very next day, I met with career Department officials, including a senior ethics official, to discuss some things publicly reported in the press and that might have some bearing on the issue of recusal. From that point, February 10th, until I announced my formal recusal on March 2nd, I was never briefed on any investigative details and did not access information about the investigation; I received only the limited information that the Department s career officials determined was necessary to inform my recusal decision. As such, I have no knowledge about this investigation beyond what has been publicly reported, and I have taken no action with regard to any such investigation. On the date of my formal recusal, my Chief of Staff sent an email to the heads of the relevant departments, including by name to Director Comey of the FBI, to instruct them to inform their staffs of this recusal and to advise them not to brief me or involve me in any such matters. And in fact, they have not. Importantly, I recused myself not because of any asserted wrongdoing on my part during the campaign, but because a Department of Justice regulation, 28 CFR 45.2, required it. That regulation states, in effect, that Department employees should not participate in investigations of a campaign if they have served as a campaign advisor.The scope of my recusal, however, does not and cannot interfere with my ability to oversee the Department of Justice, including the FBI, which has an $8 billion budget and 35,000 employees. I presented to the President my concerns, and those of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, about the ongoing leadership issues at the FBI as stated in my letter recommending the removal of Mr. Comey along with the Deputy Attorney General s memorandum, which have been released publicly by the White House. It is a clear statement of my views. It is absurd, frankly, to suggest that a recusal from a single specific investigation would render an Attorney General unable to manage the leadership of the various Department of Justice law enforcement components that conduct thousands of investigations.Finally, during his testimony, Mr. Comey discussed a conversation he and I had about a meeting Mr. Comey had with the President. I am happy to share with the committee my recollection of the conversation I had with Mr. Comey. Following a routine morning threat briefing, Mr. Comey spoke to me and my Chief of Staff. While he did not provide me with any of the substance of his conversation with the President, Mr. Comey expressed concern about the proper communications protocol with the White House and with the President. I responded to his comment by agreeing that the FBI and Department of Justice needed to be careful to follow Department policies regarding appropriate contacts with the White House. Mr. Comey had served in the Department of Justice for the better part of two decades, and I was confident that Mr. Comey understood and would abide by the Department s well-established rules governing any communications with the White House about ongoing investigations. My comments encouraged him to do just that and indeed, as I understand, he did. Our Department of Justice rules on proper communication between the Department and the White House have been in place for years. Mr. Comey well knew them, I thought, and assumed correctly that he complied with them.I will finish with this. I recused myself from any investigation into the campaigns for President, but I did not recuse myself from defending my honor against scurrilous and false allegations. At all times throughout the course of the campaign, the confirmation process, and since becoming Attorney General, I have dedicated myself to the highest standards.The people of this country expect an honest and transparent government and that is what we are giving them. This President wants to focus on the people of this country to ensure they are treated fairly and kept safe. The Trump agenda is to improve the lives of the American people. I know some have other agendas, but that is his agenda and it is one I share.Importantly, as Attorney General I have a responsibility to enforce the laws of this Nation, to protect this country from its enemies, and to ensure the fair administration of justice. I intend to work every day with our fine team and the superb professionals in the Department of Justice to advance the important work we have to do. These false attacks, the innuendo, and the leaks, you can be sure, will not intimidate me. In fact, these events have only strengthened my resolve to fulfill my duty to reduce crime, and to support our federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who work our streets every day. Just last week, it was reported that overdose deaths in this country are rising faster than ever recorded. The murder rate is up over 10 percent the largest increase since 1968. Together, we are telling the gangs, the cartels, the fraudsters, and the terrorists we are coming after you. Every one of our citizens, no matter who they are or where they live, has the right to be safe in their homes and communities. And I will not be deterred, and I will not allow this great Department to be deterred from its vital mission.How sad that this is happening to a very good man! | 1real |
Justin Rose Outduels Henrik Stenson for Golf Gold Medal - The New York Times | RIO DE JANEIRO — The lives of the world’s top golfers revolve around a village much smaller than the facilities in and around Olympic Park, where they received a warm reception in the sport’s return to the Olympic program after a absence. In a typical week on the PGA Tour, the players are handed the keys to luxury vehicles. In Rio de Janeiro, they rode in shuttle buses or were driven around in armored cars by members of a security detail. On Sunday, a week after Bubba Watson finished in a tie for 25th at the PGA Tour stop in Connecticut and collected a $47, 226. 66 check, he earned nothing for finishing tied for eighth at the Rio Games, which he described as “one of the greatest golf trips I’ve ever been on. ” The biosphere that the golfers normally inhabit was broadened immeasurably during the weeklong competition that culminated with the coronation of Britain’s Justin Rose, who closed with a 67 to win the first gold medal awarded in golf since 1904. Rose, the 2013 United States Open champion, finished at 16 under par, two strokes ahead of the reigning British Open champion, Henrik Stenson of Sweden. Rose and Stenson arrived at the 18th hole tied at 15 under. Rose hit his third shot about three feet from the hole and then watched as Stenson for bogey. Rose made his birdie putt to claim the gold. Matt Kuchar of the United States carded the day’s lowest round, a 63, to claim the bronze at 13 under. As he came off the 18th green, Kuchar pulled his wife, Sybi, into a lingering embrace. When they separated, he told her, “I’ve never been so happy with a finish in my life. ” Despite not winning a medal, Watson, a Masters champion, said: “This is the greatest sporting event I’ve ever been a part of. I get to go to the Masters for the rest of my life, but it’s just golf. ” The sport’s return to the Olympics got off to an inauspicious start, with many of the best players, including the top four in the rankings, opting out because of health concerns, security fears and scheduling issues. Those who came appeared prepared to leave with lasting memories and no apparent regrets. “Once we got down here, we realized what a great experience it was,” said Rose, who was inspired to win a medal for his wife, Kate, a former member of the British acrobatic gymnastics team. She was a European champion who rose to fourth in the world before retiring at age 17 without having had a chance to compete in the Olympics because her sport was not included in the Summer Games. “I was very excited about golf in the Olympics,” Kate Rose said. “At least one of us will get to the Olympics. So from the beginning, he really embraced it. ” While golf’s Big Four — Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy — stayed home, Rose and his wife ventured out to watch gymnastics. Watson turned up at diving, swimming, women’s field hockey and men’s basketball sessions. Stenson checked in at handball matches. When golfers talk about their team, they typically mean their caddies. At the Olympics, Rose’s support group included all the athletes competing for Britain and every fan on the course waving the Union Jack. A sellout crowd of 12, 000 flocked to the course Sunday. The spectators’ support for their countrymen dispelled the notion that golf is an individual sport. “With the flags and everything, it’s as emotional as I’ve ever felt about a win,” said Rose’s caddie, Mark Fulcher. “Honestly, bless athletics,” he added, referring to track and field. “It looked great, but it was a stadium. There was nothing about this place today. It was an amazing atmosphere. ” At the start of the week, Rose and Fulcher added an app to their phones to receive alerts whenever a British athlete wins a gold medal. “It’s going to be pretty amazing seeing the gold flip up with Rosie,” Fulcher said. During his down time, Kuchar attended a bronze medal tennis match featuring the American doubles team of Jack Sock and Steve Johnson. He watched the Americans finish off their Canadian opponents and run toward the players’ box, shouting giddily about getting to wear their “podium jackets. ” The scene stuck with Kuchar, who said he got to thinking about how nice it would be to wear the United States jacket that was reserved for the medals ceremony. On Sunday, his eyes welled up as he talked about his podium jacket moment. “It was just an overwhelming feeling of pride,” he said. Kuchar’s caddie, John Wood, stood by his man all day only to be separated from him for the medals ceremony. Wood did not care that the caddies do not get medals. He choked up and took several seconds to compose himself. “Being a part of this,” Wood said, “I don’t need anything else. ” | 0fake |
Magnate’s Twin Goals: Fighting Climate Change and Electing Donald Trump - The New York Times | MONTAUK, N. Y. — On a sunny morning late this summer, Andrew E. Sabin was aboard his yacht, “Above the Ground. ” He had begun the day in Amagansett, a enclave near East Hampton where he maintains a lush compound replete with a menagerie featuring peacocks and an enormous pig. Now, on the eastern tip of Long Island, Mr. Sabin pierced a clam with a hook and dropped his fishing line 120 feet to the ocean floor, hoping to land some cod. A wisecracking, boyish septuagenarian of seemingly unlimited energy, Mr. Sabin runs a privately held recycling business that has made him enormously wealthy. The Sabin Metal Corporation processes about $1 billion worth of platinum, palladium and other metals each year. Annual revenue is less than that, but it clearly leaves plenty for a personal fortune. With that money, Mr. Sabin has emerged as a leading supporter of climate change initiatives. He has endowed the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, funds climate change prizes and professors at Yale and the University of California, Los Angeles and is a major donor to Global Wildlife Conservation. He founded a local natural history museum where he leads nature walks, and, thanks to his generous support of environmental causes, he has four species named after him — two frogs, a chameleon and a lemur. But Mr. Sabin also sharply diverges from the environmentalist stereotype: He is a strident Republican donating big sums of money in an effort to elect Donald J. Trump president. His twin passions are at odds. Many of the Republican Party’s elected officials deny that humans are accelerating the warming of the planet, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence. Prominent environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, generally back Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. Yet Mr. Sabin has been a generous donor to the Republican Party for years, contributing more than $500, 000 to Republican candidates, committees and other political groups this election cycle. Even within his party, Mr. Sabin is an outlier: Many other Republicans who believe in climate change have declined to support Mr. Trump. But after backing Jeb Bush early in the primaries, Mr. Sabin threw his wallet behind Mr. Trump and never looked back. He recently donated $100, 000 to Trump Victory, the candidate’s joint venture with the Republican Party. To hear Mr. Sabin tell it, a Trump presidency would not be such a threat to environmental concerns. Yes, Mr. Trump has routinely suggested that global warming is not real, has vowed to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency if elected president and said he would walk away from the landmark Paris accord approved last year, in which nearly 200 countries agreed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Sabin, however, brushes that off as bluster. “I don’t think he believes half the things he says,” he said. In meetings with Mr. Trump, he has come away convinced that the candidate is actually a reasonable, man who is committed to clean air and clean water. As for Mr. Trump’s proclamations about the E. P. A. and the Paris agreement, Mr. Sabin is dismissive, arguing that such actions wouldn’t get through Congress. “There are good checks and balances,” Mr. Sabin said. “He won’t be able to do whatever he wants. ” The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. As much as he supports the Republican ticket, Mr. Sabin is equally motivated by his loathing for Mrs. Clinton, whom he derides as untrustworthy, unethical and unfit for office. In front of his mansion, in an organic garden that features kale, blueberries and Swiss chard, Mr. Sabin has erected several “Hillary for Prison” yard signs. Last year, after the signs disappeared in the middle of the night, Mr. Sabin placed them on stilts and surrounded them with a electrified fence. “You will have a fascinating journey down the rabbit hole in trying to understand the complexity of Andy Sabin,” said Susan Rockefeller, a prominent conservationist who has worked with Mr. Sabin and affectionately calls him “the of the Hamptons. ” This summer, Mr. Sabin made several trips to Washington. His mission was to persuade Republican members of Congress to acknowledge climate change in the party platform that would shape the Republican National Convention in late July. In a flurry of meetings, Mr. Sabin, who wears a uniform of Hawaiian shirts, baggy khaki pants and sneakers, visited the offices of Republican representatives including Chris Gibson of New York, Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, as well as Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. Mr. Sabin has no doubt that greenhouse gases from human activity are warming the planet, leading to rising oceans and more severe weather. “The science is clear,” he said, and inasmuch as he can, Mr. Sabin is working to minimize his own carbon dioxide emissions. At Sabin Metal Corporation’s processing plants in upstate New York, North Dakota and Ontario, he says he has invested in expensive equipment to reduce emissions and minimize pollution. “Not a drop of carbon comes out of my stacks,” he said. Yet on Capitol Hill, he measured his words. Instead of trying to persuade Republican lawmakers that climate science is real, he talked to them about the need to minimize pollution as a way to keep people healthy. He makes the case that worse air quality leads to premature deaths, an increase in illnesses, more stillbirths and higher hospital spending. “I don’t discuss climate change,” he says. “I discuss health. ” Mr. Sabin employs this rhetorical sleight of hand to reconcile what, to many, are inherently contradictory positions. “I came to the conclusion that I needed to come up with a way to get Republicans on board about cutting carbon,” he said. “Democrats aren’t going to convince Republicans that climate change is real, so I’m trying to get them to the same place. ” He has drafted a policy paper peppered with statistics from the RAND Corporation and Carnegie Mellon University that encourages lawmakers to invest in clean energy jobs and to pressure businesses to pollute less, simply for the good of public health. If embraced in earnest, Mr. Sabin says, this approach will result in reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — a goal of many Democrats. But he opposes many ideas from Democrats about how to reach that goal. He is vehemently opposed to new regulation and a carbon tax, and he says the E. P. A. is guilty of overreach. Instead, Mr. Sabin says that private investments in clean coal technology, new nuclear power and renewable energy will reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to check global warming. In the meantime, Mr. Sabin supports the use of cheap and abundant natural gas. It is a position that closely mirrors that of the broader Republican Party on energy production. And Mr. Sabin claims to have the Trump campaign’s ear on the issue. He says he is in regular contact with the campaign and took credit for shaping the response to a question in the second presidential debate, when Mr. Trump talked up clean coal, wind power and solar energy. “That came from me,” Mr. Sabin said. Many environmentalists, however, say the policies promoted by Mr. Sabin and Mr. Trump will not do nearly enough to curb emissions. “To put the fate of our climate on clean coal and nuclear is about the riskiest proposition in the world,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “We might as well bet on leprechauns and the Easter bunny. ” Mr. Sabin’s positions baffle even some professors he supports. Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said: “Andy and I agree about some things and agree to disagree on other things. The party has gone off the rails on that side. ” Many Republicans in Congress reject the idea that human activity is contributing to climate change. “I don’t think what we do as a race is going to be the deciding factor in what happens with our environment,” said Ms. Foxx, the North Carolina congresswoman. “Because I happen to believe that God is in charge. ” There are some prominent Republicans talking openly about climate change. George Pataki, the former New York governor, has been critical of climate change deniers in the party. Theodore Roosevelt IV, a Republican and the of the former president, is an investment banker at Barclays who focuses on clean energy and an outspoken conservationist. And Jay Faison, a North Carolina businessman, has set up a “super PAC” to finance candidates who support renewable power. Yet none of these men are supporting Mr. Trump, largely because of his volatile personality. Shortly after Mr. Sabin’s visits to Washington, he had a private meeting with Mr. Trump at the Manhattan home of Steven Mnuchin, the candidate’s national finance chairman. Mr. Trump wore his usual dark suit with a white shirt and a red tie. Mr. Sabin attended the meeting in a bright green Hawaiian shirt, wearing Buddhist prayer beads on his wrist. Mr. Sabin came away impressed. “Trump knows in his heart that cutting carbon is the right thing to do,” Mr. Sabin said. “He’s very different in person. He listens. ” Mr. Sabin, 70, grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and still speaks with a thick New York accent reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s. As a boy, he would wander over to undeveloped areas in nearby Bensonhurst and collect frogs and snakes with his bare hands. “I started catching them and never grew up,” he said. He joined the Army reserve in the late 1960s, he said, and then joined his father’s business, which collected and sold scrap metal. In the early 1970s, Mr. Sabin started a trading house for metals and other commodities. As Wall Street went digital, Mr. Sabin left trading behind and built out his father’s company into Sabin Metal Corporation. He attributes his passion for the environment to his boyhood enthusiasm. “Since I started catching frogs, I’ve always been interested in nature,” he said. “As the years went on I realized the importance of preserving what I was enjoying. ” He has been a Republican for as long as he can remember, too, and has internalized the party’s talking points about Mrs. Clinton. “I see corruption with the Clintons only rivaled by Nigeria, Malaysia or Indonesia,” he said. “It starts right at the top, and it disgusts me. ” Perhaps one way to makes sense of Mr. Sabin is to recognize that he is much like Mr. Trump himself. Impassioned and at times charismatic, he is also quick to ignore facts, brimming with conspiracy theories, and prone to objectifying women. His girlfriend is several decades his junior. “You’re only as young as the woman you’re touching,” he said. While watching Fox News, he complimented the appearance of the daytime host Jenna Lee. (“I think she’s so hot,” he said.) Aboard his yacht, he openly viewed pornography on an iPad. Over the course of several months, he sent a reporter numerous emails containing images. On Thursday, Mr. Sabin said he was repulsed by Mr. Trump’s recently unearthed comments about sexually assaulting women — though not enough to withdraw his support. And he is unashamed of his own libido. “I’m proud that at 70 years old I still have a healthy sex drive,” he said. He also talks of radical transformation to the economy, while rejecting regulation as a tool to facilitate change. And on his Facebook page, Mr. Sabin traffics in the conspiracy theories of the Alt Right. Stories such as “Michelle Obama Vows to Confiscate All Firearms Before Leaving the White House” and “United Nations to Investigate Hillary Clinton for Election Fraud” are posted alongside pictures of Mr. Sabin searching for salamanders. This complex personality is on constant display. Tooling around the Hamptons, he drives a Jeep Wrangler with his nickname, the Salamander Commander, emblazoned on the doors. On the back of the jeep are bumper stickers that say “Hillary for Prison” and “Trump 2016. ” At a separate property that he owns in the Hamptons, away from his mansion, Tibetan prayer flags form a canopy over the driveway. In front of the house is a small sanctuary for injured turtles. Buddha statues are placed around the grounds and throughout the house. Inside, a piano once owned by the abstract expressionist painter Lee Krasner sits in the living room. And all around the property are National Rifle Association signs, warning trespassers that they will be shot. In his personal gym at home, the wall is crowded with framed pictures of Mr. Sabin with Republican luminaries, reflecting years of support for the Republican Party. But while Mr. Sabin supports Mr. Trump today, he was not always so enthusiastic. “Donald’s a bird brain, all right?” he told the website Grist last fall, adding: “He’s, like, on a TV show! I have to laugh. ” These days, Mr. Sabin acknowledges his candidate’s shortcomings. And he said he disliked the hobbies of some of Mr. Trump’s children. (“I don’t like hunting,” he said. “That’s what I don’t like about Trump’s kids: these pictures of them holding leopards and elephant tails. ”) And yet, Mr. Sabin is still supporting Mr. Trump for lack of what he sees as a better option. “I’d like to keep a Republican House, and Republican Senate and a conservative Supreme Court,” he said. “Trump comes with the package to do that. ” It is a combustible, contradictory mix, reflecting the tensions roiling the Republican Party — and the nation — in this bizarre election season. In the to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the party’s official platform was unveiled. “Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue,” it read. “This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it. ” Mr. Sabin was unruffled by the snub. “It was a disappointment,” Mr. Sabin said. “But if you don’t try it can’t happen. ” Motoring back to the Long Island shore on his yacht, Mr. Sabin was satisfied with his haul. A dozen meaty fish were in the hold, including several cod and a handful of black sea bass. On the horizon, five towering wind turbines rose from the ocean. The first offshore wind farm in the United States, the turbines have stirred up predictable controversy in this area. But Mr. Sabin rejects the Nimbyism that has turned some wealthy locals against the project. “I’m a big proponent of wind energy,” he said. “Some people worry about the views, but it’s better than more carbon. ” In the cabin of the boat, Fox News played on a large TV. It was midday, and Mr. Trump was holding forth at a news conference at his new Washington hotel, where he finally admitted that President Obama was born in the United States, after years promoting the birther conspiracy. “Trump is doing really well,” Mr. Sabin said enthusiastically. “Hillary’s in trouble. ” | 0fake |
Loser Trump Rants About Hillary And The Election Again, Twitter Mocks His Petulant Insecurity | It is now 14 days until Donald Trump takes over the White House and he is STILL whining about Hillary Clinton.We know Trump still has a bruised ego from losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but continuing to attack Hillary and brag about how he won is getting old and displays a childishness that no other president-elect has ever displayed.Hillary and the Dems were never going to beat the PASSION of my voters. They saw what was happening in the last two weeks before the Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017and knew they were in big trouble which is why they cancelled their big fireworks at the last minute.THEY SAW A MOVEMENT LIKE NEVER BEFORE Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017Hopefully, all supporters, and those who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will go to D.C. on January 20th. It will be a GREAT SHOW! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017Trump is absolutely obsessed with Election Day and continues to pretend that the Trump movement is this massive thing we ve never seen before. But again, the facts remains that he lost the popular vote and his electoral win is one of the smallest in American history, like his hands.And Twitter users were quick to humiliate Trump.@realDonaldTrump She was more popular than you by close to 3,000,000 votes. Because math ?? Jeremy Pond (@JeremyPond) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump IGNORANCE of your voters actually. The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Focus! The campaign is over & now you have an actual job to do. Also realize that the new job will limit tanning bed time Kevin (@TheKevinDent) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Many of your supporters have passion for nativism and jingoism, and they feed into your dangerous leadership qualities. Jeffrey Guterman (@JeffreyGuterman) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump it s true, racists can be very passionate Andrew W Chamings (@AndrewChamings) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump seriously, how is this helping to heal division and unite America? It still sounds embarrassingly like you are campaigning. Matt Haig (@matthaig1) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Way to reunite the country. Hint: Petulant insecurity isn t leadership. https://t.co/s85SLOjJPh Tim Guinee (@TimGuinee) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump I m pretty sure she beat the PASSION of your voters by almost 2.9 million votes. But, semantics. Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump wow.. what a child you are. Abraham Joffe (@Abrahamjoffe) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Did you win? I forgot. Why don t you talk about it some more instead of going to your intelligence briefings. Joe Harris (@joeharris) January 6, 2017Donald Trump needs to stop bitching and bragging on Twitter and start focusing on the toughest job in the world. Anything less is unacceptable and a disservice to our country.Featured image via sreeenshot | 1real |
A Threat on Migration That May Prove to Be Empty - The New York Times | ISTANBUL — When Turkey and Europe reached an agreement a year ago this week to restrict migration to Greece, it was bad news for Abu Samir, a in Istanbul. By late 2015, Abu Samir, a former house painter from Aleppo, had become a key cog in one of the largest migrations in history, sending thousands of refugees, most of them Syrians, to Greece and earning up to $4, 000 on some days. But in the 12 months since Turkey’s pact with the European Union, his business has collapsed. The problem: Too few refugees and too many border patrols. As relations between Turkey and Europe plumbed new lows this week, fresh concerns were raised that smugglers like Abu Samir — a nom de guerre he uses for security reasons — would soon be back in business. In addition to accusing European governments of Nazism for refusing to allow referendum rallies in support of a new Turkish Constitution in their countries, the Turkish government has hinted that it might scrap the accord to restrict migration flows through Turkey in exchange for financial aid from the European Union. “We will review the migrant deal if necessary,” Numan Kurtulmus, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, warned on Monday night. In Europe, the announcement prompted fears of a repeat of the 2015 migration surges that saw 850, 000 people leave Turkey for Greece in a single year. In Turkey, it gave Abu Samir renewed hope of better business. “I expect waves of people,” he said in a video call on Tuesday night. “The business will come back to the way it was, and maybe better. ” But can President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey turn on the migration tap as easily as Abu Samir thinks? As analysts have acknowledged, the dynamics that led to the 2015 migration have changed. As a result, it may no longer be in Turkey’s power — or its interest — to influence migration flows in the way that it did a year ago. Since the European Union first promised Turkey several billion euros for its help in stemming migration to Europe in late 2015, the number of migrants leaving Turkish shores had fallen to under 1, 500 in January from nearly 70, 000 in January 2016. There are several reasons for this drastic decrease, but one partial explanation lies in a crackdown on the Turkish smuggling industry that began over the winter. As Abu Samir said on Tuesday, “Turkey wanted to show that they were stopping the smugglers. ” Migration through Turkey rose sharply in 2015, not just because of the impunity with which smugglers could operate here, but also because it was comparatively easy for Syrian refugees to reach Turkey from Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. At the time, the land border was easier to cross, and Syrians in Amman and Beirut could fly to Turkey without needing to apply for a visa. Nearly two years later, that is no longer the case. Syrians now need visas to enter Turkey, while the land border is much better protected. In theory, Mr. Erdogan could lift both restrictions. But analysts said this was unlikely as it would make Turkey even more vulnerable to infiltration by fighters from the Islamic State extremist group and risk angering nationalist Turks in the middle of a tightly fought ballot referendum that would give Mr. Erdogan broad new powers. It would also mark “an incredible divergence” from one aim of Turkey’s continuing military campaign inside Syria, “which is to create a safe space for refugees to move back” into Syria, said Aaron Stein, a Turkey specialist at the Atlantic Council, a policy research group. “This seems to me like an empty threat, and it’s about time Europe called Turkey on this,” Mr. Stein added. Turkey nevertheless still already hosts the largest refugee population in the world, including more than 2. 5 million Syrians. In theory, some of these could also take advantage of renewed impunity for smugglers and pay for a boat ride to Greece. But the circumstances awaiting them there are now markedly worse than what their predecessors experienced in 2015. A humanitarian corridor that once ferried people from Greece to Germany via bus and train closed in March 2016. This did not stop onward migration entirely. Over 25, 000 still made it through the Balkans of their own accord last year, according to United Nations data, highlighting how it is usually possible to curb migration, yet far harder to end it entirely. But it did trap thousands of asylum seekers in squalid conditions inside Greece, many of them confined to detention centers on islands in the Aegean Sea. “It is a situation of absolute precarity,” said Dimitris Christopoulos, the president of the International Federation for Human Rights, an umbrella body for 178 rights groups. “It sends a message to migrants: Do not come. ” Whatever Mr. Erdogan does, the prospect of traveling to Greece is less appealing to Syrian refugees than it once was, said Heaven Crawley, a migration expert at Coventry University and the of research on the motivations of migrants. “There is no shortage of people in Turkey who could move. It’s just that they don’t see there’s much point in moving,” Professor Crawley said. “They don’t see the point of being stuck in Greece. ” Abu Samir, however, still holds out hope. In 2015, the sheer number of migrants was what forced European countries like Macedonia to establish the Balkans corridor in the first place. Two years later, the smuggler still will not rule out a repeat of that bonanza. If a new wave of migration to Greece does materialize, Abu Samir said, and “if enough numbers arrived in Greece, then neither Greece and Macedonia will be able to hold them, so they’ll have to open their borders. ” | 0fake |
NO KIDDING! HERE’S WHY HILLARY SUPPORTERS Will Get Us ALL KILLED [VIDEO] | Wow! The Dems are so out of touch | 1real |
Mark Ruffalo Just Did Something Amazing For Protesters Fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline | 27444 SHARES
The Standing Rock Sioux’s camp, set up to physically stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, just got solar power thanks to Mark Ruffalo.
The actor and director delivered trailers full of solar panels alongside Wahleah Johns, founder of Native Renewables, to the Standing Rock camp. As cold weather begins to set in for the indigenous tribes facing off with oil companies in North Dakota, the solar panels will help generate electricity to provide the camp with life-sustaining heat and medical treatment.
EcoWatch reported that Ruffalo and Johns touted the necessity of switching to renewable energy in the wake of drastic climate change. Ruffalo also emphasized the right of Native Americans to protect their land from predatory fossil fuel companies.
“Around the world, more than 80 percent of the forests and lands with protected waterways and rich biodiversity are held by indigenous tribes. This is no coincidence,” Ruffalo said. “As so many of us suffer from polluted water, air and land in our rural and urban communities, the water defenders at Standing Rock are showing us another way.”
However, Ruffalo was quick to note that he was merely “trying to be of service” in using his platform to bring awareness to the Dakota Access Pipeline protest.
“It was really Wahleah Johns responsible for the delivery. I was there to draw the spotlight,” Ruffalo told US Uncut in an email.
Johns, whose company’s goal is to provide low-cost, renewable energy sources and green energy jobs for indigenous communities, praised the Standing Rock Sioux’s fight against Energy Transfer Partners’ pipeline, calling it necessary for the sake of the planet’s survival.
“Water is life,” said Johns , who is a leader in the Navajo nation. “By leading a transition to energy that is powered by the sun, the wind, and water, we ensure a better future for all of our people and for future generations.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline, if constructed, would carry highly toxic tar sands oil through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois , where it would then be transported by train to ports on the Gulf of Mexico. Sacred land belonging to indigenous communities in North Dakota was destroyed for the pipeline route, with Native American leaders saying they were never consulted about the pipeline before construction began. The Standing Rock Sioux, who call themselves “water protectors,” say the pipeline would endanger drinking water for millions of people along the pipeline route.
Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at [email protected] | 1real |
WATCH Newest Addition To Trump’s Nat Security Council Explain To Imus Why She DIDN’T Defend Her Snarky Liberal Brother-In-Law Against On-Air Attack By Bill O’Reilly [VIDEO] | Monica Crowley, conservative radio host, Fox News analyst, columnist & editor of The Washington Times, bestselling author and loyal supporter of Donald Trump has been chosen as Trump s senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council. We are huge fans of the brilliant, outspoken Monica Crowley. She is unafraid to defend conservatism and will take on just about anyone who challenges her views even her own brother-in-law. We have yet to see her lose a battle to a liberal. That s probably what attracted Trump to her in the first place. But did you know who her snarky liberal brother-in-law is? And did you know she was sitting next to him when Bill O Reilly had what was considered his most explosive show in the history of the O Reilly Factor?Earlier today, President-elect Trump announced his choice of retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as chief of staff and executive secretary of the National Security Council and Monica Crowley as, a transition source tells Washington Examiner.Trump s transition officially announced the appointments Thursday afternoon. The United States is an exceptional country and these are two exceptional individuals who have agreed to fulfill the president-elect s pledge of putting America first once again, Mike Flynn, Trump s national security advisor-designate, said in a statement. I am honored to have General Kellogg and Dr. Crowley on the National Security Council team. I am deeply honored, humbled and grateful to be asked by the president-elect to join the extraordinary national security team he is assembling, Crowley said. With vision, courage and moral clarity, he is committed fully to re-establishing America s singular place in the world. He is also committed to selecting the best people for the jobs of keeping the American people safe and the country secure. It will be a great privilege to serve with them. Washington ExaminerMany of Monica Crowley s fans are surprised when they find out that her conservative sister is married to Alan Colmes, the ultra-liberal radio talk-show host who first gained attention when he co-hosted a FOX News show with Sean Hannity called, Hannity and Colmes. Bill O Reilly brought on Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley in 2013 to talk about President Obama s seeming reticence to offer any meaningful spending cuts, but most of the segment involved O Reilly getting into a shouting match with Colmes over Colmes not being able, as O Reilly viewed it, to provide concrete examples of what Obama wants to cut. O Reilly repeatedly shouted at Colmes, called him a liar, and declared his claims to be bull-blank. Watch Monica Crowley, a hard-core advocate of conservatism sit back and let her leftist brother-in-law defend to his liberal views, of which she knew he couldn t back up with a legitimate argument.https://youtu.be/ycbmcEAoKkE?t=2min30sNot one to back down when she feels strongly about her position, Monica Crowley defended Bill O Reilly s attack of her whiny, liberal brother-in-law Alan Colmes, to Imus while she was a guest on his Imus In The Morning Show:In a world where liberals have been effectively silencing conservatives over their opposing views, it s great to see someone like Monica Crowley stand up for what she believes in, especially when the views are those of her outspoken liberal brother-in-law | 1real |
Republican Senator Murkowski won't back 'repeal-only' health bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A third Republican U.S. senator on Tuesday said she could not back any legislation to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan, effectively blocking Republican leaders’ efforts to bring up a narrower repeal-only bill after earlier legislation collapsed. “To repeal there has to be a replacement. There’s enough chaos already, and this would just contribute to it,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters, saying she would vote no on any effort to take up legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010 under former President Barack Obama. | 0fake |
Britain won't pay EU more, or sooner, than if it were EU member: Barnier | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain will honor all its financial obligations to the European Union as part of its divorce bill, but the payments will not be required any earlier than if Britain had remained an EU member, the EU s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said. The European Commission declared earlier on Friday that sufficient progress in the divorce talks with Britain was reached to move on to discussions of a transition period and a future trade deal. Barnier repeated the words of British Prime Minister Theresa May that no EU country, including Britain would have to pay more or receive less as a result of Brexit. The UK will honor all the commitments entered into during its EU membership, Barnier told a news conference. | 0fake |
Trump Reaches Out to Blacks; Blacks Riot in Philadelphia | Posted on October 28, 2016 Trump Reaches Out to Blacks; Blacks Riot in Philadelphia Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, October 28, 2016 And DOJ prepares a politically motivated “civil rights” case in the death of Eric Garner.
This episode is available for download here . Share This View all posts by Jared Taylor Jared Taylor is the editor of American Renaissance and the author of White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century . We welcome comments that add information or perspective, and we encourage polite debate. If you log in with a social media account, your comment should appear immediately. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you may comment as a guest, using a name and an e-mail address of convenience. Your comment will be moderated. Commentary | 1real |
China says it will stick to commitment to fight climate change | BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday it would stick to its commitment to fight climate change after President Donald Trump said he would withdraw the United States from the landmark 2015 Paris global agreement to curb climate change. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comment at a daily news briefing in Beijing. Trump’s move fulfilled a major campaign pledge but drew condemnation from U.S. allies and business leaders. | 0fake |
Exclusive: Trump could seek new law to purge government of Obama appointees | CLEVELAND (Reuters) - If he wins the presidency, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and could ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers, Trump ally, Chris Christie, said on Tuesday. Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump’s White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election. “As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” Christie told a closed-door meeting with dozens of donors at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and two participants in the meeting. Christie was referring to Trump’s starring role in the long-running television show “The Apprentice,” where his catch-phrase was “You’re fired!” The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Trump’s transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said. “It’s called burrowing,” Christie said. “You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up ... roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.” Christie was referring to pranks committed during the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush in 2001. During that period, some White House staffers removed the W key on computer keyboards and left derogatory signs and stickers in offices, according to a report by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress. “One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people,” Christie said. He said firing civil servants was “cumbersome” and “time-consuming.” Christie also said that changing the leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency, long a target of Republicans concerned about over regulation, would be a top priority for Trump should he win in November. Trump has previously vowed to eliminate the EPA and roll back some of America’s most ambitious environmental policies, actions that he says would revive the U.S. oil and coal industries and bolster national security. Christie added that the Trump team wants to let businesspeople serve in government part time without having to give up their jobs in the private sector. Trump frequently says he is better equipped to be president because of his business experience. Although Christie was repeatedly asked during the meeting, he declined to name any potential Cabinet picks. He said Trump was not ready to do that yet. Responding to Christie’s comments on targeting political appointees on Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that allowing appointees to apply for career civil service positions was “a longstanding precedent.” “If you want to stack up the ethical record of President Obama and his political appointees against the ethical record compiled by Governor Christie and his political appointees, that we’d welcome that kind of comparison,” he said. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union in the United States, said while it was concerned about the practice of “burrowing,” current law protected most federal employees from at will firing. “The federal government is a serious undertaking. It’s not a reality TV show, with ‘You’re fired!’” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director at AFGE. “Just as we don’t want to hire anybody for political reasons, we don’t want anybody to be fired for political reasons,” she said. As of March 2016, there were a total of 3,164 political appointees, 852 of whom were presidential appointees. In its most recent report on the topic, the Government Accountability Office said in 2010 that 143 former political appointees and congressional employees converted to career positions between May 1, 2005, and May 30, 2009. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating the practice of burrowing. It sent letters dated Wednesday to 23 federal departments and agencies, asking them to document all cases of burrowing that have occurred since Sept. 1, 2015. | 0fake |
WE NEED A REVOLUTION: Overcoming Fascism with a Movement of Love | WE NEED A REVOLUTION: Overcoming Fascism with a Movement of Love Sabine Lichtenfels negotiating with a general, “Grace Pilgrimage” in Colombia, 2008 By Martin Winiecki / terranovavoice.tamera.org
November 9th, the day after the U.S. election, will be a peculiar anniversary. On this day in 1938 more than 1000 synagogues and 7000 Jewish businesses were burning all over Germany, set ablaze by the Nazis. Going down in history as “Kristallnacht” or the “Night of Broken Glass,” this dreadful event marked the beginning of the Holocaust, resulting in six million Jews killed in less than seven years.
History reverberates in an eerie manner these days. In the United States, the anger and hatred that has long been boiling in millions of people has now found its political outlet.
No matter whether or not he will be elected president, Trump’s success has been unprecedented and overwhelming. His simple message resonates in large parts of the American society, in people who have long felt betrayed, abused and disenfranchised by an alienated “establishment.” Trump wins against all reasoning of decency because he recklessly breaks what his supporters most despise: “political correctness.” He understands how to play the emotional piano of the masses; he’s the ultimate caricature of a society teeming with universal corruption and sexual perversion.
The rise of fascism always seems to hit the world by surprise. Yet what we are now witnessing has not begun with Trump, just as German fascism had not begun with Hitler. Wherever people are prohibited to express their basic emotional and energetic drives, wherever they grow up and live in conditions of fear, mistrust and violence, the danger of fascism looms. Suppressed life energy dams up and turns into constant aggression. When the container of the bourgeois order crumbles, when people lose their jobs, voices and prospects – as it has gradually happened in this era of expanding corporate dominance – and the state no longer succeeds in controlling violence, the monstrous force of bottled-up emotions breaks free. Once they have a strong paternal authority telling them whom to blame, declaring them to be a collective that will now exact revenge, people get together in wild exaltation. Finally they have a channel and they develop a threatening force.i We must not despise or ridicule these people, but understand how they have gotten into the desperate state they are in. Thereby fascism is no longer a thing of “the others”; it’s something that concerns us all. The psychoanalyst Dieter Duhm writes, “Latent fascism is present everywhere; it is the cancer of humanity… It develops in the subconscious of our human relationships. In the emotional substrata of a misguided civilization lie the horrible powers that led to Nazi Germany and which currently lead to very similar atrocities in many countries on Earth.”ii
On the eve of the election, armed militias across the United States are preparing themselves to, as they say, “take back their country” in case their opponent will “rig” the elections. People call for boycotting companies who employ refugees from Muslim countries and threaten the people running them. Attacks on people of color, other religions and political ideologies have steeply increased in the time leading up to the election. People no longer see any prospect for the future. They no longer have anything in this world they can believe in. Unable of loving, retaliation is what gives them strength. Similar explosions of hatred are occurring all over the world. When we witness what political prisoners in Turkey (neglected by our Western leaders) or the civilians trapped inside the besieged cities of Aleppo and Mosul are now facing, we know that this global culture has come to a turning point.
Yet the aggression now explicitly exploding among white lower-class Americans is only a miniature version of the ruthless warfare systematically orchestrated by this country’s elites for many decades. War is an essential component of our entire economic system – one without which this system would instantaneously collapse. While “decent” Americans show themselves outraged about Trump, their candidate for President has her blueprints ready for expanding military interventionism around the world. Democratic President Obama has already bombed seven Islamic countries and ordered the drone assassination of thousands of innocent children and women abroad, but he is considered “moderate” in terms of warfare compared to Hillary Clinton. In the current escalation with Russia and China there no longer seems to be any limit. We mustn’t be surprised by what is now erupting inside America. Similar to how it was in the late Roman Empire, the American Empire is entering a phase of self-destruction as it is being eaten up by the very violence it has used to establish itself in the first place. And with it goes the entire capitalist world order this country has essentially shaped.
Trump is nothing other than a mirror for the world to look into, a call to awaken before it’s too late. It is silly to blame the mirror for what you see in it. Trump is not the enemy; he is merely the symptom of a culture worshipping power, violence and greed. If you are afraid of Trump, what you are actually afraid of is this culture. Stopping fascism isn’t achieved through ideological battles; it is rather a matter of building a new and humane culture. This is nothing short of a global revolution. A revolution from bottom up, on all levels of society.
We need a revolution that establishes new foundations for human life on Earth, new foundations for our coexistence with each other and nature. A revolution that allows us to remember the sacredness of life and of all living beings. We need a revolution for solidarity and trust; “a revolution,” as Dieter Duhm says, “whose victory will create no losers because it will achieve a state that benefits all.”iii
On November 9th 2005, Sabine Lichtenfels initiated the “Global Grace Day” at the separation wall in Israel-Palestine. At the time, the peace activist and co-founder of the Tamera peace research center in Portugal led a group of 50 Israelis, Palestinians and internationals on a “Grace Pilgrimage” through the Middle East – a form of political activism rooted in reclaiming the depth of our humaneness. The activists committed themselves to overcoming hatred and divide by addressing the human being trapped behind the masks of world views and traumatization.iv This allowed for “miracles” to happen – encounters between former enemies invoking the vision of a reunited land. No matter whether it is a dispossessed farmer, a soldier, a fanatic resistance fighter or ourselves, whether it is a fascist, a banker, a liberal or an anarchist – there is something identical in all of humanity running far deeper than our ideological denominations: a universal longing to be accepted and seen, a longing to love and be loved, to belong to a community and to express oneself in trust and freedom; and there is a similarly universal trauma stemming from the suppression of these essential human needs. What we need is a revolution that acknowledges and follows human longing and establishes societal conditions where they can finally be met.
This new revolution will not be achieved by shifting political power from one party to another, but by establishing forms of coexistence which allow the human being to liberate himself from all disguises and reconnect in trust. Every fascist will transform into a loving person, every terrorist into a caretaker for life, if he or she can find home in a community that allows closed hearts to open again. This is not a matter of therapy, but of the social, sexual, ethical we live in. Building a movement based on communities of trust would not only be a genuine alternative to the fascist threat emerging everywhere; it may also set the foundations for the new global culture we as humanity need in order to have a future worth living on this planet. November 9th is a day of both despair and hope. In 1989 it was the day the Berlin Wall was opened. This year it can be a day for opening the wall of despair—exercised by people who find their determination to collaborate for a world of solidarity and trust.
Works cited | 1real |
Louisiana Governor Blasts Trump Over His Photo-Op Exploitation | While Republicans try to make Louisiana s deadly floods Obama s Katrina, there is only one person getting flack for being a raging opportunist you guessed it Donald Trump.Louisiana s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, blasted the Republican nominee for president after he showed up to Louisiana for a photo opportunity. While citizens are dying and being displaced by the thousands, Trump has decided he would exploit the carnage in an attempt to undermine President Obama.Remember when President Obama was chided by the GOP for not calling Gov. Rick Scott for two days after the Orlando massacre? Well, flooding has been going on in Louisiana for a week and still, Donald Trump has not reached out to the governor or any state leader tasked with handling the crisis. A spokesman for the governor pointed out:Donald Trump hasn t called the governor to inform him of his visit. We welcome him to LA but not for a photo-op. Instead we hope he ll consider volunteering or making a sizable donation to the LA Flood Relief Fund to help the victims of the storm.Trump, the self described billionaire and charitable man, should donate.While Republicans continue to bash President Obama, Edwards has gone on the record asking that President Obama not travel to Louisiana for at least a week until the state is more secure out of respect and timeliness of those working to aid the state.Trump s newest campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said the trip is a decidedly nonpolitical event, no press allowed, going to help people on the ground who are in need. And what did Trump do as soon as she said that? He took questions from the press and said President Obama would rather play golf than help those affected in Louisiana. Even though President Obama has secured the relief funds for the state and has expressed his support and thoughts for those affected, the Trump train has decided to use the opportunity to smear him and once again make Trump look like the unsung hero of the day.So much for no media and not being political.Once again, Trump is exploiting and using people s pain for personal gain. He s done that his entire life, so why stop now.Featured image via Joshua Lott/Getty Images | 1real |
CNN Host Calls Out Trump’s Uncle Tom Spokeswoman And It Is GLORIOUS (VIDEO) | Katrina Pierson is a black woman. She is also a top spokesperson for unabashed racist Donald Trump. She apparently buys into Trump s horrible ideas and rhetoric, though, as she defends him at every turn. Hell, she might be just as crazy as he is, as she even went so far as to appear on national television wearing a necklace made out of bullets in order to tout Trump s staunch support for the second amendment.However, it is about time someone took this black woman to task for her blind support of a clear racist, and, finally, CNN pundit and GOP strategist Tara Setmeyer did so. The pundit absolutely blasted Pierson, and said that she is simply one of the blacks he likes since he pays her to clean up his mess everyday on television. When Setmeyer pointed out how Trump is under fire for refusing to firmly toss aside an endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, Pierson dodged the question, saying: Mr. Trump said, look, I don t even know what you re talking about. So, I think this has really been blown out of proportion. And it really does highlight more media bias when no one has asked Barack Obama to disavow Sen. Robert Byrd, who was not just a klans [sic] member, but a leader in the Klan when he endorsed him in 2008. The thing is, though, Pierson, like so many ignorant Trump supporters, failed to notice the fact that Byrd had a BIG change of heart a hell of a long time ago, according to a book he wrote. So, completely different kettle of tripe entirely, as Duke is still very much an avowed racist.Setmeyer pushed Pierson, and plowed on: He brags about how he can manipulate folks. We sit and we watched this play out over the weekend, where Donald Trump took five different positions because he got pressured into having to actually admit to what was going on. David Duke absolutely came out and said it s against your heritage if you don t vote for Donald Trump, okay. That s an endorsement. Give me a break. And then to say, I couldn t hear what was going on, they gave me a [bad] earpiece. Anyone who watched the interview with Jake Tapper, Donald Trump clearly heard everything that Jake Tapper said. He responded to it. He didn t say, Oh, I can t hear you, this isn t a good earpiece. Clearly getting angry, Pierson yelled at the hosts: The Democrats have called the Tea Party racists! Should we have him disavow the Tea Party too? Absolutely not! But Setmeyer, in the end got the best of Pierson, and called her out for what she is: We aren t even talking about Donald Trump s questionable history with race back to when the DOJ sued the Trump organization for racial discrimination. Or when Donald Trump came out and said how much he loves quote the blacks or we can go down the list of very questionable things Donald Trump has said. But I don t know. Maybe Katrina Pierson is one of the blacks he likes since he pays her to clean up his mess everyday on television. And that s just it. Trump is fine with black folks, just since they bow, turn their backs on their own race, and go YASSA MASSA! when he comes running. They help assure the ignorant and blind people that he is somehow not racist no matter what he says.Of course, in the end, Pierson lamely went back to what Trump and all of his supporters say: He s winning. That s all that matters. He s winning. The sad thing is, though, is that Katrina Pierson, and so many other Trump supporters, seem to actually believe that.Watch the video below via Raw Story:Featured image via video screen capture | 1real |
Sean Spicer: When Trump Blamed ‘Obama’ Earlier ‘Obviously’ He Didn’t Mean ‘Obama’ (VIDEO) | Lyin Donald Trump tweeted this morning that former President Barack Obama was responsible for 122 vicious prisoners being released from Guantanamo Bay and returning to the battlefield. However, that never happened. Trump is blaming an unemployed black guy for his predecessor s actions. Trump s tweet read, 122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision! That s some real Alt-fact thinking right there. So White House press secretary Sean Spicer had to clean up after his boss s mess but he did a terrible job.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence states that 113 of the 122 former detainees who have taken up arms again were released before Obama s first term, meaning during the Bush administration s time in office. Obviously the president meant in totality, the number that had been released on the battlefield that have been released from Gitmo since individuals have been released, Spicer told reporters on Tuesday. That is correct. We know that hurts your brain, too.Sure, OBVIOUSLY, when Trump said Obama he really meant something else.The White House is backpedaling on Trump s accusation that Obama tapped the amateur president before the election. CNN s Jim Acosta asked Spicer, Where is the proof? Spicer said that it s not a question of new proof or less proof or whatever, but it s about bringing in Congress to get to the bottom of this.Then this happened:New York Times Glenn Thrush followed up by pressing Spicer again on the evidence for Trump s claims, and after that Reuters Ayesha Rascoe asked Spicer about whether Trump can just make declarative statements like that on Twitter and then get committees to look into it.Spicer went on to insist that going through the intelligence committees is the proper avenue for investigating. Rascoe asked whether we should, then, be taking Trump s tweets at face value. Watch Spicer squirm:That s what you call a swing and a miss, Sean.White House spokesman Sean Spicer says WH will not present any proof of President Trump's allegation that President Obama committed a crime. Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) March 7, 2017Spicer doesn t want the GOP plan to replace Obamacare called Trumpcare and we don t blame him because it s a fucking raw deal for everyone except the wealthy.Sean Spicer "It's not TrumpCare, it's PatientCare."Yes, be PATIENT because you'll need to win the lottery to afford it.#PressBriefing Tommy Campbell (@MrTommyCampbell) March 7, 2017Back to Gitmo. As it happens, more than 500 detainees were released by George W. Bush and we re not hatin .Here s the video:Featured image via screen capture. | 1real |
BUSTED! NANCY PELOSI Claims No Meeting With Russian Ambassador…Photo From 2010 Proves Otherwise! [Video] | Pelosi claims to have not had a meeting with the Russian ambassador:Pelosi with the ambassador in 2010: Pelosi had her spokesperson make a statement after twitter comments about the photo came out: Leader Pelosi s answer to the question today was clearly about private, one-on-one meetings, which she has never had with Ambassador Kislyak, Hammill said. The Ambassador was incidental to the 2010 meeting between then-Russian President Medvedev and then-Speaker Pelosi. Clearly, one needs to remind Politico that Attorney General Sessions lied under oath about a secret meeting amidst Russia s hacking of our election, which he also didn t disclose in a written questionnaire. | 1real |
Breaking News: The Elohim Confirm the Arrival of the Proton Stream From the Central Sun via the Coronal Hole of Our Sun and the Flame of Resurrection | www.stankovuniversallaw.com
Energetic Report from October 24th, 2016 Yesterday evening after I had recovered somewhat from the steady, heavy blast of energy, and my headache, dizziness and nausea had subsided, Georgi called me to come look out of the window and there we saw a beautiful rainbow in the north-east. It was a vertical pillar of rainbow stripes that rose up into the sky before melding into a sea of deep grey cloud cover – a storm had just rolled through. We were both happy to see this rainbow but at the same time we noticed there was something in the air that was very unusual. We felt a palpable change in the energy all around, and within the space of a couple of minutes it was as if everything was bathed in a blanket of soft, gentle golden light. Two more minutes and everything radiated a deep luminescent golden glow! It continued to deepen in intensity and suddenly the entire sky and every solid object was illuminated. White clouds had formed and were absorbing this luminosity from somewhere. This light did not come from our Sun; it was as though light was radiating out from the prana molecules themselves. Gold prana everywhere! The Sun was hidden behind a heavy bank of grey clouds to the west and it’s light was just not present. And the glow intensified even further! Everything was covered in a deep and luminous gold and emanated an energy that was soft, gentle, peaceful and yet powerful, warm and loving. It was as though everything reflected a reality made of pure divine presence. It was heaven-sent and we witnessed it all unfold in its magnificent and stunning beauty. We were both in awe of this vision before us and it wasn’t until we received this message from the Elohim that we realized that this light was the magnificent Resurrection Flame . We are certain others among you have seen or will see this light this week. We are with you all. Much love, Carla and Georgi Clarification The proton stream that is now flowing from the Central Sun via the massive coronal hole of our sun since October 24th, 2016 is different from the Resurrection Flame that is also coming from the Central Sun/Source. This is very important to observe. The latter consists of highest frequencies of light beyond the 5D, actually from the 12th dimension, while the protons are conscious God’s particles that are the building elements of space-time and of all forms in 3D, 4D and lower 5D. This includes the creation of matter, all elements and substances, in 3D as we know it from the current holographic model on the earth. In order to illustrate how important the protons are for life, I must make you aware of a well-known fact in bio-sciences that has not been fully understood by most scientists before I explained its paramount importance in my pivotal book Volume III on bio-science and medicine. The entire metabolism in the cell and in the human organism that keeps the biological bodies alive represents a complex redox-cascade of biochemical reactions and cycles which are the major topic of biochemistry. The final product of these chemical processes is the degradation of the three major food classes – carbohydrates, proteins and fatty acids – and the separation of protons from water and the food chain in the mitochondria. These protons are then expelled on the outer side of the mitochondrial membrane and build a powerful proton gradient of more than one million voltmeters across this membrane. In fact, such electromagnetic (EM) gradients are built around all cellular and intra-cellular membranes and these gradients are the driving force – the vis vitalis – of organic matter, organic life. As I have written a lot in the past, I am the first scientist who has grasped the importance of the electromagnetic gradients in the cell and the organism and how they operate as powerful spherical capacitors . The entire chemical energy stored in the food (minus the heat (thermodynamic energy) that is emitted to the environment) is utilized in the body via the cell metabolism and is then transformed into electromagnetic energy of transmembrane EM gradients . The latter drive the entire cell regulation and body metabolism by releasing their energy in form of action potentials which can be easily measured, for instance, as ECG and EEG. Organic life, including the human body, is thus an energetic system based on a constant energy exchange between the chemical energy stored in the food and the electromagnetic energy stored as membrane potentials (gradients) across all biological membranes. In other words, our body is a very complex and fine-tuned electromagnetic system and not a biochemical system as present-day science wrongly assumes and exclusively describes. This is the greatest theoretical breakthrough in the history of bio-sciences that transforms them into a true biophysics based on the Universal Law and explains how the biological body is actually regulated. This includes the acceptance of higher dimensional operational systems beyond the electromagnetic spectrum and builds the scientific foundation and explanation of the Light Body Process (LBP) and how the human carbon-based body is transformed into crystalline light body in the course of the ascension process. Hence this message from the Elohim has a profound theoretical background rooted in the new Science of the Universal Law. In fact, we have published a few messages from the Elohim in the past that have announced similar powerful proton streams on this planet but the latest one is unique insofar as it is combined with the all-pervading Flame of Resurrection that has now triggered the long-awaited Reset of this 3D holographic model and its transfiguration to a higher dimensional multi-reality. As the End Time has always been described as the Time of Revelations , also known as Apocalypse in Greek as first mentioned in the Bible, we are very happy to announce the final stage of the End Time that will very soon lead to the final ID shift and our ascension. George The Elohim Message We are the Elohim and we greet you with the loving warmth of great love. There is a proton flow greeting all of humanity, and all of Gaia, coming from the Great Central Sun and moving through the space-time portal that is your Sun. This and every proton stream has a profound impact on each aspect of creation and it is no exception here within your third dimensional reality. Streams upon streams of charged consciousness flood space-time and this energy reaches all elements at the quantum level. This is an expanded consciousness, the conscious awareness of Creation itself. It is the time of the Revelations and this proton stream is the fuel for this sacred moment in time that is rightly called a re-set and that is the projected expansion of awareness proclaimed through the millenia. Bring forth now new confidence in the living intelligence of the Light! There was great all-pervasive golden light today (October 24th) – flooding, penetrating and balancing energetic systems that are founded in light principle – this was magnificent was it not? The golden light is the light of the resurrection. It moves to re-empower your body-mind-spirit system through the power chakra, the solar plexus and it does so at the quantum level. This is why you and many others felt extreme nausea this day and this is why the proton stream is the fuel for the reactivation action of the Resurrection of Life . Your reality is changing, one proton at a time. The proton is the conscious God particle, the God-energy if you prefer, that is needed to re-instill the divine blueprint in each and every expression. Restoration of the divine blueprint precedes balancing, and healing, in all life forms. This cherished moment is a gift for you to experience in full consciousness; the healing power of God’s light, the light of Creation, the light which is founded in eternal love. Remember, you are created from these elements and therefore your highest expressions and grandest achievements are founded in love. We are the Elohim and we love you for ever. Share: | 1real |
The Google Trend That Reveals It’s ALL OVER For Hillary | Well it was a no brainer for Killery to want everybody to vote for her before all the info on her wild e-mail handling came out.
There are a lot of states that will not allow you to change your early vote!!
I don’t think it will matter because she will more than likely have the electoral vote in her favor.
And yes if google was checking this trend they more than likely would have molested it by now.
Let’s prey that enough people in the swing states that allow people to change their vote will do so. | 1real |
Puerto Rico oversight board orders furloughs, governor defiant | (Reuters) - Puerto Rico’s federally appointed financial oversight board said on Friday it will institute a two-day per month work furlough for government employees, but a defiant Governor Ricardo Rossello rejected the measure out of hand. The plan, which originally envisioned a four-day per month furlough, is set to begin on Sept. 1 and last throughout the 2018 fiscal year in an effort to achieve $218 million in savings. It excludes frontline law enforcement personnel. Rossello openly challenged the board’s authority to impose the belt-tightening measure on the bankrupt U.S. territory, however. The furloughs are part of the board’s efforts to implement fiscal changes and achieve $880 million in savings for “right-sizing” the government this fiscal year and ensuring the island’s long-term economic viability. Natalie Jaresko, executive director of the oversight board, said the government had offered a number of ideas for achieving savings. Speaking during a webcast of the board’s ninth public meeting, she said the government had fallen short of meeting required money-saving goals, however. Furloughs could be scaled back or eliminated early if sufficient savings are achieved per the government’s fiscal plan, the board said. Rossello, in a televised address late on Friday, said the furloughs were unjustified and unnecessary. He also highlighted, in a statement released by his office, public sector cutbacks and budgetary savings that resulted in higher than expected financial reserves. “I do not accept nor will I execute the furlough submitted today by the Financial Oversight and Management Board,” Rossello said. The board was created by the federal Puerto Rico rescue law known as PROMESA. Rossello said section 205 of the PROMESA law means the board can make “recommendations” but not impose changes. Furloughs would represent a $340 million hit to the economy in the current fiscal year, he said. Puerto Rico’s Treasury Secretary, Raul Maldonado, told Reuters on Wednesday that preliminary tax collections in July, the first month of fiscal 2018, were running $20 million to $30 million ahead of forecast. But board member Andrew Biggs spoke of the commonwealth’s current state of affairs in stark terms during the meeting. “The simple fact is that the government of Puerto Rico has run out of money,” he said. He added that “the difficult steps of raising taxes and cutting spending” were something that the board and government alike “have no choice but to do.” Puerto Rico is seeking to restructure roughly $72 billion in debt and another near $50 billion in unfunded pension liabilities while it struggles with the flight of residents to the U.S. mainland and a 45 percent poverty rate. Reforms of the pension system were among the measures discussed at Friday’s board meeting. They would include a 10 percent cut in benefits. For an adrift in debt interactive, click: here For a graphic on the Mutual funds' Puerto Rico bankruptcy tangle, click: here | 0fake |
Read Jilly Cooper’s ‘elasticated waist sex scene’ | Next Prev Swipe left/right Read Jilly Cooper’s ‘elasticated waist sex scene’
@Kateofhysteria over on Twitter notes, “Now, I love Jilly Cooper. But elasticated waists have no place in a sex scene.”
We were amused enough by this to track down the extract – it’s from Mount and the whole passage is mind-bending. “Oh buttercunt, oh buttercunt” can you imagine anyone saying that?
Maybe we should start running The Poke Bad Sex Writing awards? | 1real |
North Korea's Kim trades missiles for tractors during testing lull | SEOUL (Reuters) - After a summer filled with flaming rockets and an earth-shaking nuclear blast, North Korea s state media is portraying Kim Jong Un as a leader who has temporarily traded weapons for workshops. The new portrayal appears designed to build domestic support by delivering on promises to develop the economy alongside the nuclear program and to reassure citizens amid tightening international sanctions. State media photos released on Wednesday showed Kim examining equipment at a tractor factory, test driving one of the vehicles and laughing with workers, the latest in a stream of photos in the past two months depicting a smiling Kim visiting farms and factories that make shoes, cosmetics, trucks. Between June 21 and Sept. 20, Kim did not conduct a single public activity related to the economy, instead focusing almost exclusively on appearances at events including missile tests or tours of weapons factories, according to data collected by South Korea s Ministry of Unification. The resumption of public, economic-related activities has coincided with a lull in missile testing. North Korea has not fired a rocket or tested a nuclear weapon since it launched a ballistic missile over Japan on Sept. 15. The break in testing matches lulls at similar times in past years and North Korea is almost certainly continuing its push for more capable nuclear weapons, South Korean officials say. But the renewed focus on economic development could be a bid to unify North Koreans and strengthen support for the leadership, said Baik Tae-hyun, a spokesman for South Korea s Unification Ministry. While North Korea still shows the will to continue developing its nuclear and missile program, their focus on the economy is also helping the North Korean people come together, Baik said. North Korea may be starting to feel the pinch of sanctions, tightened after its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September, and its leadership could be under pressure to limit their impact, said Nam Sung-wook, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul. Kim Jong Un has been simply doing what he does best - encouraging his people to achieve rapid economic growth and boost production, Nam said. Taking care of the economy and his people are the top priorities. Since taking the reins of the reclusive regime after the death of his father at the end of 2011, Kim has embraced a goal of simultaneously pursing economic development and advanced nuclear weapons. New U.N. Security Council sanctions in August and September banned imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while restricting oil shipments to the North. North Korean officials have said in state media the sanctions were causing a colossal amount of damage to ordinary North Koreans, while leaders have shown defiance, arguing that self-reliance can overcome international pressure. The main key to foiling the extremely vicious sanctions and pressure of the U.S. imperialists and their vassal forces and turning misfortune into a blessing is just self-reliance and the sci-tech strength, Kim said in an Oct. 7 speech to leaders of his ruling Workers Party of Korea, according to state media. Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, a researcher with the Foreign Policy Research Institute who tracks North Korea s economy, said there was a push to expand manufacturing and decrease reliance on imports of a wide range of goods. North Korea was also looking to expand exports of products not covered by sanctions, such as tractors, Silberstein added. While analysts say there is anecdotal evidence the sanctions are beginning to the North s economy, it is not clear to what degree. Prices of petrol and diesel have spiked, but the cost of foods likes corn and rice have remained relatively stable, according to a Reuters analysis of market data collected by the defector-run Daily NK website. | 0fake |
Does The $100 Million Given To Clintons By Gulf Sheikhs Disqualify Hillary For Candidacy? | DOESN T THIS COMPROMISE HER ABILITY TO BE OBJECTIVE?Bill and Hillary Clinton received at least $100 million from autocratic Persian Gulf states and their leaders, potentially undermining Democratic presidential candidate Hillary s claim she can carry out independent Middle East policies.As a presidential candidate, the amount of foreign cash the Clintons have amassed from the Persian Gulf states is simply unprecedented, says national security analyst Patrick Poole. These regimes are buying access. You ve got the Saudis. You ve got the Kuwaitis, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. There are massive conflicts of interest. It s beyond comprehension, Poole told TheDCNF in an interview. Overall, the Clinton Foundation has received upwards of $85 million in donations from five Persian Gulf states and their monarchs, according to the foundation s website.Activist groups have charged the five states Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) committed numerous human rights abuses.For years, the accusations have centered on the Persian Gulf practice of importing hundreds of thousands of poor foreign laborers who work for low wages, including hundreds of thousands of female domestic workers who have no labor rights and often face exploitation and sexual abuse.The ongoing Clinton financial relationship with despotic Persian Gulf states could hurt Hillary as a supporter of labor rights and tarnish her image as a vigorous supporter of women.Yet as secretary of state, Clinton consciously and actively sought to legitimize the sheikdoms through many new Department of State programs.Read more: Daily Caller | 1real |
SEC halts some enforcement of conflict minerals rule amid review | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it is suspending enforcement of the costliest requirements of its “conflict minerals” rule, after a court remanded it back to the regulator because part of it violates the U.S. Constitution. Acting SEC Chairman Mike Piwowar, a Republican, said he has asked staff for a recommendation on how to proceed with the rule, which requires companies to disclose if their products contain certain minerals from a war-torn part of Africa. For now, he added, companies will not be required to conduct a due diligence review or an audit, which are both part of the process used to determine the origin of the minerals. “Until these issues are resolved, it is difficult to conceive of a circumstance that would counsel in favor of enforcing” the due diligence requirements, he said in a statement. The move sparked backlash from SEC Democratic Commissioner Kara Stein, who accused Piwowar of acting beyond his authority to gut the meat of a rule mandated by Congress, adopted by the SEC and reviewed by the courts. “It is unprecedented for one commissioner, acting alone and without official notice and comment, to engage in de facto rulemaking,” she said. “It represents a troubling attack not only on the Commission process, but also on the restraints of government power.” The conflict minerals rule was required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and is supported by human rights groups that want companies to tell investors if their products contain tantalum, tin, gold or tungsten mined from the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the hope that such disclosures will curb funding to armed groups. Business groups have contended that it forces companies to furnish politically charged information that is irrelevant to making investment decisions and that it costs too much for companies to trace the source of minerals through the supply chain. In 2014, a U.S. appeals court struck down part of the conflict minerals law after the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers sued the SEC over it. The court found part of it violated free speech rights of companies by forcing them to publicly state that their products were not conflict free. The rest of the rule was left intact. Since then, companies have furnished reports with SEC and conducted due diligence, though they were granted a reprieve from the audit requirement and the labeling of the minerals themselves. The litigation formally came to an end on Monday, when the lower court remanded the rule back to the SEC to address the First Amendment concerns. The appeals court did not say whether the Dodd-Frank law itself or the SEC’s implementation of the rule violated the Constitution, a matter that the SEC will now need to determine. Companies will still need to file required forms with the SEC and do origin inquiries, as they have been doing. | 0fake |
‘GENTLE GIANT’ MICHAEL BROWN MEMORIAL UNVEILED…Video Captures Arrest Made At Memorial Spot On Same Day | It would have been more appropriate for the plaque to mention that the Obama-Holder-Sharpton race war started here on Canfield Dr in Ferguson, MO. on Aug. 9, 2014 Mike Brown Sr. carried the plaque to Canfield Drive in the rain today.The makeshift Mike Brown memorial on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri caught fire and burned to the ground in September.The memorial was then ran over in December.The plaque to Mike Brown reads:In Memory of Michael O.D. Brown May 20, 1996 August 9, 2014I would like the memory of Michael Brown to be a happy one. He left an afterglow of smiles when life was done. He leaves an echo whispering softly down the ways, of happy and loving times times and bright and sunny days. He d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun of happy memories that he left behind when life was done.The last video of gentle Michael Brown was taken when he robbed a convenience store and roughed up the owner before his death.https://youtu.be/9Uf5mfE057EGentle Mike Brown was shot dead when he attacked a police officer after the robbery.There was at least one arrest today at the memorial ceremony.pic.twitter.com/mYWCgLGYGw Search4Swag (@search4swag) May 20, 2015Via: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
LOL! HILLARY ACCIDENTALLY Calls Trump Her “Husband” [VIDEO] | Below the belt h/t Weasel Zippers | 1real |
Mexican ruling party to pick presidential candidate on February 18 | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said on Thursday registration for PRI contenders in the July 2018 presidential election will begin on Dec. 3, and that a national convention would pick the candidate on Feb. 18. In a statement, the PRI said the national convention would be made up of around 19,100 delegates to be chosen during the second week of December. President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking a second six-year term. Ruling Mexico continuously from 1929, the PRI had become a byword for corruption by the time it was voted out in 2000. Pena Nieto returned the party to power in 2012, but a slew of corruption scandals, ongoing gang violence and anemic growth have sapped the PRI s credibility in the past five years. The party faces an uphill struggle to hang on to power, and veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, twice a runner-up for the presidency, has led most early polling for 2018. The run-up to the election takes place in the midst of fraught discussions between Mexico, the United States and Canada over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which underpins much of the region s commerce. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to walk away from the accord if he cannot rework it in favor of the United States. The three nations have pledged to keep talking through March. | 0fake |
DAUGHTER OF SUNNI MUSLIM, George Clooney Wife, Open Borders Activist And British Citizen Says Trump Doesn’t Represent “U.S. Values” | There s nothing like a Brit telling Americans who we should support for President, or a foreigner suggesting we should open our borders to anyone who cares to cross over them. It s not exactly like Britain is immune from the violent Muslim invasion taking place across Europe. Telling Americans which of our candidates do, or do not represent US values adds a special touch don t you think?Perhaps Queen Clooney should stick to advising Britain citizens about who they should or shouldn t vote for. Just because you and your ass-clown of a husband raised $15 MILLION for corrupt Hillary, doesn t give you the right to tell Americans who we should vote for. George Clooney is a Clinton supporter but he agrees with Sanders on at least one point. #Decision2016https://t.co/gQ8X7YR8yA Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 16, 2016Amal Clooney, the British-Lebanese human rights attorney who has been married to Hollywood actor George Clooney since 2014, says populist GOP frontrunner Trump doesn t represent U.S. values. In a BBC interview Monday evening, the 38-year-old criticized the leading candidate on the Republican side for proposing building walls and a temporary pause on Muslim immigration into the United States.She then paraphrased Trump and defended Muslims who she says are not extremist or violent. If you actually look at what [Trump] specifically says in that now infamous speech about Muslims, he kept saying, They only want jihad; they don t believe in our way of life; they don t respect our system, she said.She continued: And when he says they And, you know, you watch the media coverage afterwards and people should ve been saying, Do you mean the 1.5 billion people around the world who fit that description? Do you mean the people who are U.S. citizens, who are members of your military, the vast majority of whom are not extremist or violent in any way? Her mother is a Sunni Muslim.Amal Clooney added she is perplexed by the success of Trump s campaign. If, at the end of all of this, he gets beaten by the person who becomes the first female president of the United States, then I think that would send a very positive message from the electorate back to him as to what they really think of those points of view, Clooney said.She concluded: I don t think they are U.S. values. Amal Clooney and her husband George both support Hillary Clinton s White House bid. Mr. Clooney, who has pushed for open borders, recently described Trump as a xenophobic fascist who want ban Muslims from the country during an interview with The Guardian.As Breitbart News has extensively reported in the past, the Clooneys have taken extensive measures to ensure they have privacy and security at their homes, including their $10 million Lake Como estate in Laglio, Northern Italy.Roberto Pozzi, mayor of Laglio, issued an ordinance in 2015 to protect the solace of the couple and their property. The area surrounding the estate is now off limits to unwanted guests, and anyone who gets too close to the property faces a stiff fine.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
White House In Deep Denial Over Dumpster Fire Healthcare Plan (DETAILS) | The Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of the GOP s Obamacare replacement plan today, and their findings were bad. Really bad. According to the CBO s report, 14 million people are going to lose their healthcare by the end of the year and 24 million will be without coverage by 2026. But somehow, the White House is in complete denial about what a disastrous bill they are pushing.Health Secretary Tom Price said on Monday afternoon that the administration strenuously disagrees with the CBO s report. Despite the numbers presented to him, he still insists that more people will be covered and costs will be lowered under the Republican plan.White House says it disagrees strenuously with finding that 14M would lose health coverage under GOP plan. https://t.co/Q4fZoG4jFV The Associated Press (@AP) March 13, 2017The job of the CBO is to analyze proposed legislation and provide Congress with a nonpartisan assessment. Their findings in regards to the GOP plan? By 2026, 24 million Americans will be without healthcare. No wonder they tried to hide it from the public.According to Price, the White House disagrees strenuously with the report that was put out. Price said that the CBO isn t looking at the whole picture. He argues that the Republicans have a three-part plan, but the CBO only looked at the House Bill, which is just othe first step. It s just not believable is what we would suggest, Price said of the CBO s assessment.House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the bill against the report as well. On Monday, he praised the plan for lowering the deficit by a measly $336 billion over a decade, which is a mere drop in the bucket when looking at the overall budget.It is obvious that the Republican s make America sick again bill is horrible. People are going to die, plain and simple. The CBO report laid out the numbers. You know, facts and stuff. Yet, the White House and the rest of the GOP just can t believe it so they disagree. Here s the thing, that isn t how it works. You can say you disagree with a fact and you can say you don t believe a fact, but it s still a fact.Millions of people, many of whom just finally got insurance under the Affordable Care Act, are going to lose their coverage under the GOP plan. Saying you don t believe it doesn t change a damn thing.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | 1real |
McCain calls on Trump to back up wire-tapping claim | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain on Monday called for President Donald Trump to release any evidence supporting his claim the Obama administration wiretapped him while probing Russia’s influence in the 2016 election. “I think the president of the United States, if he has any information that would indicate that his predecessor wiretapped Trump Tower, then he should come forward with that information. The American people deserve it,” McCain, a Republican from Arizona, told Reuters. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican lawmaker who heads the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CBS in an interview on Monday that he had “not seen anything directly that would support what the president has said.” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who heads the Senate Judiciary subcommittee looking into allegations Russia meddled in the election, said the panel would be asking both Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey and the Justice Department whether he had told the law enforcement agency this weekend to reject Trump’s wire-tapping claim. The White House said on Monday that Trump still has confidence in Comey despite his assertiveness in challenging Trump’s claim that the administration of former President Barack Obama had wiretapped him. Asked whether Trump still had confidence in Comey, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer said, “There’s nothing that I have been told by him that would lead me to believe that anything is different than what it was prior.” He was “almost 100 percent certain” Trump had not spoken to Comey since the Republican president made the allegation on Twitter on Saturday. “I’m not aware that that occurred,” Spicer told reporters. But, when asked during an early-morning interview on Monday with ABC’s “Good Morning America” whether Trump accepted Comey’s assertion, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “I don’t think he does.” The FBI declined to comment on Comey’s communications. Trump has given no evidence for his claim that Trump Tower was wiretapped. The allegation is the latest twist in a controversy over ties between Trump associates and Russia that has dogged the early days of his presidency. The wiretapping allegation hit U.S. stocks on Monday. Some investors worried that the affair could distract Trump from his economic agenda of introducing tax cuts and simplifying regulations that has powered a record-setting rally on Wall Street since the election. The lack of detail on Trump’s proposals, his isolationist stance and setbacks in filling his Cabinet have made investors question whether the post-election rally has run its course. Democrats accused Trump of making the wiretapping claim to try to distract from controversy about possible links to Russia. His administration is facing FBI and congressional investigations into contacts between members of his campaign team and Russian officials. The White House has asked the Republican-controlled Congress to examine, as part of an ongoing congressional probe into Russia’s influence on the election, whether the Obama administration abused its investigative authority. | 0fake |
Riot police, hooded youths clash in Paris at labor reform protest | PARIS (Reuters) - Riot police clashed with hooded youths on the fringe of a protest in central Paris against French President Emmanuel Macron s reforms to loosen labor regulations. Police fired water canons and could be seen dragging several demonstrators behind their lines, Reuters TV images showed. | 0fake |
The Internet Obliterates Trump After He Whines About A Photo Of Him CNN Used (TWEETS) | The president-elect on Monday took issue with a photo of himself used by CNN for the cover of its book about the 2016 election. Donald Trump took to Twitter to write, @CNN just released a book called Unprecedented which explores the 2016 race & victory. Hope it does well but used worst cover photo of me! @CNN just released a book called Unprecedented which explores the 2016 race & victory. Hope it does well but used worst cover photo of me! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017This is the book cover:Get the 2017 inaugural edition of CNN s book Unprecedented in stores or online https://t.co/3ix857A9E5 pic.twitter.com/m23kFq7Y49 CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 2, 2017This isn t the first time Trump put his massive ego on display. He never learns. In late November, he yelled at reporters for using a picture of him which showed his multiple chins. Ever since, people have been tweeting out the image he dislikes so much. Well, it s happening again.The Internet responded to the tragically insecure president-elect s tweet with impunity. Twitter users are looking for the picture in question. (Psst: It s in the above linked tweet).This is apparently the photo the Mirror-Gazer in Chief hates. Make sure not to retweet it! @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/qR8NtQSSDM Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump @CNN did they use this one? pic.twitter.com/1ezRJuxPqv Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) January 2, 2017Social media users started tweeting Trump terrible photos that have been taken of him.@realDonaldTrump @CNN how about this one? pic.twitter.com/HzWBHN6YlV Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump @CNN this one is pretty nice too! pic.twitter.com/2pEAdg6jFv Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump @CNN You re so vain. Jeffrey Guterman (@JeffreyGuterman) January 2, 2017@JeffreyGuterman @realDonaldTrump @CNN he probably thought that book was about him. Subverting Trump (@rationalsquad) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump @CNN Now the president elect is whining about a photo they used. Jesus. What a clown. Mike Elgan (@MikeElgan) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump Have your charitable foundation commission a better one. pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 2, 2017@pourmecoffee @realDonaldTrump We here at MDT kinda like this one. pic.twitter.com/4bzmx1gDRn Not Maureen Dowd (@MaureenDowdTwit) January 2, 2017@realDonaldTrump @CNN Your cabinet looks great though pic.twitter.com/4w72z2AWmn Eric Lampaert (@EricLampaert) January 2, 2017@jrjaxster @realDonaldTrump @CNN only when he is googling nazi memes pic.twitter.com/uuLp2mFIbT Boycott tRump (@vicsepulveda) January 2, 2017.@realDonaldTrump @CNN I hope it s this one!! pic.twitter.com/KpOUkPcNIQ Matthew D Ambrosio (@drmattdambrosio) January 2, 2017The reason for his meltdown, as Brian Stelter explains, was likely because he was on CNN talking about the Unprecedented book and Trump s doubts he would win. Then he tweets about both. Coincidences? 12:55pm: I was on @CNN talking about the Unprecedented book and Trump s doubts he would win. Then he tweets about both. Coincidences? pic.twitter.com/hvhokeTuuZ Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 2, 2017This man will be sworn in in just 18 days and he s worried about an unflattering photo. Wait until he has to endure what President Obama was put through for 8 years. It s called karma and he s going to get a massive dose of it.Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty. | 1real |
House opens inquiry into deaths of drug-dependent newborns | WASHINGTON - The chairman of a U.S. House committee that oversees child abuse issues opened an inquiry Friday into whether the federal government is failing to enforce a law meant to protect thousands of babies born dependent on drugs each year. The inquiry, launched by Representative John Kline of Minnesota, comes in response to a Reuters investigation last month that identified 110 examples of children who were exposed to opioids while in the womb and later died preventable deaths after leaving the hospital. No more than nine states comply with a 2003 law that calls on hospitals to alert social workers whenever a baby is born dependent on drugs, the news agency found. Since the law was enacted, the number of newborns diagnosed with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome has skyrocketed – from 4,991 cases in 2003 to 27,315 in 2013, federal data show. A Reuters analysis found that thousands of drug-dependant newborns are sent home each year without a referral to social service agencies, contrary to the intent of the federal law. Those referrals are intended to help social workers develop a “plan of safe care” for the newborns and mothers. Although most states fail to comply with the provisions, Reuters found none has lost federal funding. In a letter Friday, Kline told Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell that he was “deeply concerned” that the agency may not be enforcing the law. “A Reuters investigation released in December cast serious doubts over whether these basic requirements in federal law are being followed,” wrote Kline, a Republican who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The letter was co-signed by Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican, who chairs a subcommittee on early childhood education. “The Reuters investigation reveals the shocking and deadly consequences when these vital federal and state child welfare policies are not properly implemented and enforced,” the lawmakers wrote. “Even more troubling, according to the Reuters report, there are some states that have failed to put these policies in place altogether, yet not a single state is being denied … funds.” Kline and Rokita asked Health and Human Services officials to explain the review process for determining whether each state has created a safe-care plan for babies born drug-dependent, and to make clear the consequences for states that do not comply. Agency officials did not immediately respond to the lawmakers’ letter. The primary backer of a key provision in the 2003 law, former Representative James Greenwood, said he was “delighted” that Kline and Rokita took “this step to light a fire under” the Department of Health and Human Services. “Precious little lives are at stake,” Greenwood said. Last month, top U.S. senators also called for action. Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, asked for an “emergency surge” of funds to help protect the newborns, and Sen. Robert Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, sought oversight hearings. The senior Republican in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the series “brings to the forefront a problem” that he has urged the Obama Administration to address faster. The Reuters investigation, “Helpless & Hooked,” can be found here. (reut.rs/1NSc7uC) Kline and Rokita’s letter to the Health and Human Services secretary can be found here. (1.usa.gov/235146g) | 0fake |
Half of Germans want new elections after coalition talks fail | BERLIN (Reuters) - Half of Germans are in favor of calling a new election after Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to reach a deal to form a new coalition with two other parties, while a fifth back forming a minority government, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday. The poll, conducted by INSA for the Bild daily, showed 49.9 percent favoring another election. It also showed 48.5 percent think the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are right to rule out joining a new grand coalition with Merkel s conservatives, which only 18 percent would favor. The SPD lost ground in the September election after sharing power with Merkel for the last four years. The collapse of talks between Merkel s conservative bloc, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens has thrown Germany into political uncertainty and raised the prospect of new elections. The poll showed that 28 percent blame FDP leader Christian Lindner for the failure of the talks, followed by 27 percent, who blame Merkel, while only 13 percent blame Greens leader Cem Ozdemir. Four out of 10 people polled say Merkel should run again as chancellor if new elections are called, while 24 percent would prefer another candidate for her Christian Democrats (CDU), although there is little consensus on who that should be. The poll showed that most voters would prefer a coalition between the CDU and FDP after new elections, followed by a coalition between SPD, Greens and the left-wing Linke. However, the poll showed that a new election would bring little change to the results of the September vote, with the CDU down slightly on 30 percent, the SPD steady on 21 percent, the Greens on 10 percent and the FDP on 11 percent. That would still mean that the only possible coalitions with a majority would be between the CDU and the SPD or between the CDU, FDP and Greens. | 0fake |
Official candidate seen ahead in Buenos Aires Senate race: poll | BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s ruling party candidate for Senate in the key province of Buenos Aires is 4.8 percentage points ahead of the opposition candidate, according to a poll by consultancy Management & Fit sent exclusively to Reuters on Friday. The country s mid-term congressional election will be held this Sunday, and is seen as an early indicator of the electoral power that President Mauricio Macri will have going into his 2019 re-election campaign. Esteban Bullrich, of Macri s Cambiemos or Let s Change party, is forecast to win 35.3 percent of votes in his bid for the Senate, according to the poll. Buenos Aires province is home to a third of Argentina s population. His opponent, former President Cristina Fernandez, has 30.5 percent of voter intentions, according to the Management & Fit survey of 2,000 voters. The poll had a margin of error of 3.3 to 3.5 percentage points. Fernandez is loved by many low-income Argentines for her generous social spending. Macri, a proponent of free-markets, and Cambiemos have been criticized for reducing popular home heating and transportation subsidies but lauded by investors who say the President s policies can return Argentina to sustained growth. | 0fake |
Tillerson says North Korea's aggression endangers 'entire world' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that North Korea s continuing missile tests threaten the entire world and stressed the United States was working closely with regional allies Japan and South Korea on the problem. In East Asia, an increasingly aggressive and isolated regime in North Korea threatens democracies in South Korea, Japan, and more importantly, and more recently, has expanded those threats to the United States, endangering the entire world, Tillerson said to a gathering of the Community of Democracies. We first look to our regional allies South Korea and Japan. By working with them and other democratic partners, we continue to build consensus at the United Nations Security Council to create a united international front that upholds our values and strives to make us safer. | 0fake |
Saudi has completed main wave of arrests in anti-graft purge, minister says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has completed the main wave of arrests in its sweeping crackdown on corruption and is preparing to channel billions of dollars of seized funds into economic development projects, a Saudi minister said on Monday. As far as I know, this is the case, Minister of Commerce and Investment Majid bin Abdullah al-Qasabi told Reuters when asked whether authorities had finished taking large numbers of top officials and businessmen into custody. Now the government will not keep its mouth shut when it sees a corrupt case. So definitely it will act. But this is in terms of its magnitude, in terms of scale, in terms of how, in terms of why, in terms of now, that s it, he said. Dozens of princes, officials and businessmen were detained last month, about 200 people questioned, and over 2,000 bank accounts frozen in the purge, which has strengthened the authority of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Some suspects will go to court but authorities are seeking to reach financial settlements with most and said last week that the first deals had been done. Senior prince Miteb bin Abdullah, once seen as a leading contender for the throne, was freed after agreeing to pay over $1 billion, officials said. A special Ministry of Finance account has been opened to receive such funds, which the public prosecutor s office has estimated should eventually total between $50 billion and $100 billion, Qasabi said during a visit to Washington to meet U.S. businessmen. This money definitely will be used for housing, for the general public needs, because it is the money for the people. It will not be used for any other issue but for development projects. The public prosecutor is expected in a few days to issue a statement on the status of the investigation, including how many people are detained and how many face legal charges, Qasabi added. Riyadh is seeking huge amounts of U.S. and foreign investment to reduce its dependence on oil exports. Qasabi conceded that U.S. businessmen were somewhat concerned by the potential impact of the crackdown on corruption. They re worried about if this is ... will be, the end of it or where it will stop, he said. But they all think this will be good for the country, because the country s leadership stood visibly to fight corruption, and ultimately this will be a level playing field for everybody. The economic reforms include a privatization program that is to raise some $300 billion. In the past 18 months, there has been little concrete progress as deals have been slowed by red tape, legal uncertainties and high asking prices for assets, foreign businessmen say. Qasabi said the program was on track and the government, having identified sectors to be privatised, was working on the complex mechanics of asset transfers that would take place by mid-2019. Sea ports will be a major area of activity, he said. Privatization of grain mills under the Saudi Grains Organisation is in its final phase and could be completed by mid-2018, Qasabi added. The economy has been hit hard in the past couple of years by low oil prices and government austerity measures. Authorities have promised stimulus steps and Qasabi noted they had this year increased the capital of the Saudi Industrial Development Fund, which makes soft loans to businesses. More stimulus measures are likely to be announced with the 2018 state budget, expected to be released in late December, or before then, he added. Financial incentives offered by the government could total 70 billion riyals ($18.7 billion). Qasabi chairs a program that encourages strategic Saudi companies to expand globally in sectors such as food, logistics, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. The government will allocate money to help them grow by acquiring other firms locally, he said. | 0fake |
Fifteen Quotes Proving False Flag Terrorism & the Existence of a ‘Shadow Government’ | ARJUN WALIA OCTOBER 18, 2016 Tensions between the United States, their allies, and Russia continue to rise. It seems, as always, that we are on the brink of global war. The Western military industrial complex continues to take over the Middle East and arm ISIS and other terrorist groups, as well as establish and solidify their military presence throughout the world. The sheer number of United States military bases around the globe is astonishing.
For more, unbiased information on the current state of affairs between the United States and Russia, I recommend visiting theantimedia.org.
Mainstream media outlets continue to spread propaganda , and have been doing so for years, claiming that there are terrorists, that they threaten national security, and that we must go after them. At the same time, an inflated sense of patriotism is encouraged in American citizens, so they believe their soldiers are fighting for freedom, despite doing the precise opposite.
A great quote by Edward Bernays, who was known as the father of public relations, comes to mind here:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society . Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. ( source )
A number of politicians and academics from around the world have been trying to create awareness on this issue for decades, and although we’ve come a long way, our relatively slow progress demonstrates the stranglehold mainstream media has on the minds of the masses.
“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
– Mark Twain ( source )
Below, you’ll find 15 quotes on false flag terrorism and the secret government. False flag terrorism refers to the idea that terrorist attacks are created, perpetuated, and/or funded by Western governments and their allies in order to justify the infiltration of other countries for ulterior motives. Quotes on False Flag Terrorism and the Secret Government
1. The Dalia Lama
“Of course, war and the large military establishments are the greatest sources of violence in the world. Whether their purpose is defensive or offensive, these vast powerful organizations exist solely to kill human beings. We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous – an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.”
“Modern warfare waged primarily with different forms of fire, but we are so conditioned to see it as thrilling that we talk about this or that marvelous weapon as a remarkable piece of technology without remembering that, if it is actually used, it will burn living people. War also strongly resembles a fire in the way it spreads. If one area gets weak, the commanding officer sends in reinforcements. This is throwing live people onto a fire. But because we have been brainwashed to think this way, we do not consider the suffering of individual soldiers. No soldiers want to be wounded or die. None of his loved ones wants any harm to come to him. If one soldier is killed, or maimed for life, at least another five or ten people – his relatives and friends – suffer as well. We should all be horrified by the extent of this tragedy, but we are too confused.”
“But no matter how malevolent or evil are the many murderous dictators who can currently oppress their nations and cause international problems, it is obvious that they cannot harm others or destroy countless human lives if they don’t have a military organisation accepted and condoned by society.” ( source )
2. Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, Canadian economist, the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics
“We are dealing with a criminal undertaking at a global level . . . and there is an ongoing war, it is led by the United States, it may be carried out by a number of proxy countries, which are obeying orders from Washington . . . The global war on terrorism is a US undertaking, which is fake, it’s based on fake premises. It tells us that somehow America and the Western world are going after a fictitious enemy, the Islamic state, when in fact the Islamic state is fully supported and financed by the Western military alliance and America’s allies in the Persian Gulf. . . . They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. They’re not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor. . . . The global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity.”
“Al Qaeda and the Al Qaeda affiliated organizations, including the Islamic State, are not independent organizations, they are sponsored, and they are sponsored by the United States and its allies. It is documented that prior to 2011, there was a process of recruitment of mujahideen to fight in Syria, and this was coordinated by NATO and the Turkish high command. This report is confirmed by Israeli news sources and unequivocally, we are dealing with a state-sponsorship of terrorism, the recruitment of mercenaries, the training and the financing of terrorism.” ( source )( source )
3. Paul Hellyer
“It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark.” ( source )
4. John C. Calhoun, The 7th Vice President of the United States
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” ( source )
5. Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary
“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al-Qaeda, and any informed intelligence officer knows this. But, there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an intensified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive TV watchers to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the United States.” ( source )
6. John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925
“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation . . . The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties . . . [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.” ( source )( source )
7. Senator Daniel K. Inouye, highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history
“There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.” ( source )
8. David Steele, the second-highest ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence and a former CIA clandestine services officer
“Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.” ( source )
9. Theodore Roosevelt. former President of the United States
“Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.
From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” ( source )
10. Benjamin Disraeli, First British MP
“The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” ( Coningsby, Book 4, Chap. 15 , Page 131)
11. Senator William Jenner
“Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means … We have a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state … It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government … This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century… This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.” ( source )
12. Woodrow Wilson, former President of the United States
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” ( source )
13. Eric H. May, a former U.S. Army military intelligence and public affairs officer
“The easiest way to carry out a false flag attack is by setting up a military exercise that simulates the very attack you want to carry out. As I’ll detail below, this is exactly how government perpetrators in the US and UK handled the 9/11 and 7/7 “terror” attacks, which were in reality government attacks blamed on ‘terrorists.’ ” ( source )
14. Professor Lance deHaven-Smith, Professor Emeritus of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University
“SCADs [which refers to State Crimes Against Democracy] involve high-level government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power.” ( source )( source )
15. President John F. Kennedy
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. . . .
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.” ( source ) Share: | 1real |
Trump questions NATO, Asia nuclear weapons ahead of Washington summit | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his criticism of NATO, a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades, and called for the alliance’s overhaul days before world leaders convene in Washington. President Barack Obama will host the Nuclear Security Summit on Thursday and Friday with 56 delegations in attendance. While preventing nuclear terrorism will headline the discussions, Trump’s views could be a topic as well, particularly behind the scenes. In another sharp departure from historic U.S. policy, Trump said in an interview published on Sunday by The New York Times that he would consider letting Japan and South Korea build their own nuclear weapons, rather than rely on America for protection against North Korea and China. The billionaire businessman, vying to win his party’s nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, also said he might halt U.S. purchases of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies unless they commit ground troops to fight Islamic State or pay the United States to do so. “NATO is obsolete,” Trump said on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. The 28-country North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up in a different era, Trump said, when the main threat to the West was the Soviet Union. It was ill-suited to fighting terrorism and cost the United States too much, he added. “We should readjust NATO ... it can be trimmed up and it can be, uh, it can be reconfigured and you can call it NATO, but it’s going to be changed,” he said. On March 21, Trump said the United States should slash its financial support for NATO, which was formed in 1949 after World War Two and became a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Russia will not attend the upcoming nuclear summit, but Chinese President Xi Jinping will. Obama said the United States would review international efforts to combat Islamic State in the wake of the Brussels attacks. Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, called the real estate mogul’s views on NATO “catastrophically foolish.” Speaking on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Cruz said Trump was “out of his depth.” “Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from the most successful military alliance of modern times, it makes no sense at all,” Cruz said. “It would hand a massive victory to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, a massive victory to ISIS,” the militant group also known as Islamic State. Cruz said if he were elected president, his approach to Islamic State would be to “carpet bomb them into oblivion.” In the interview, Trump also said he would be willing to withdraw U.S. troops from Japan and South Korea unless the two countries paid more to house and feed them. Japan hosts about 50,000 U.S. troops, while 28,500 are in South Korea. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference in Tokyo on Monday that there had been “no change” to Japan’s policy of not building, possessing or introducing nuclear weapons, and reiterated that no matter who became U.S. president, the U.S.-Japan alliance would remain the core of Japan’s diplomacy and vital for regional and world stability. South Korea said it had continued to play a positive role in the U.S. military’s presence in the country and for the allies’ ability to defend against the North and there was no change to its commitment to the mutual defense treaty establishing their military partnership. Asked about the comments on considering allowing Japan and South Korea to build their own nuclear weapons, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said he had noted it was only a “hypothetical situation”. | 0fake |
Lockheed Martin wins $1.6 billion U.S. defense contract: Pentagon | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp was awarded a $1.6 billion order-dependent contract for the Counter Fire Target Acquisition Radar System, the Pentagon said on Thursday. | 0fake |
Grab Your Popcorn: Ryan Bundy Pretty Much Just Volunteered For Prison | Just when we think that the Bundy Militia morons couldn t possibly surpass the amount of stupid they have already demonstrated, one of them surprises us. On Friday, Ryan Bundy, leader of Y all Qaeda, decided that he didn t need no stinkin lawyer and is going to represent himself.Bundy is facing charges for possession of firearms in a federal facility, conspiring to impede federal officers from doing their jobs at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, theft of government property as well as possessing and using a firearm while committing a violent act. He could face up to life in prison if convicted.U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown warned Bundy that it wasn t a particularly bright idea to represent himself, saying, The stakes here are extremely high. But Bundy was not dissuaded, he said that he was upset that his younger brother, Ammon Bundy, was told to let his lawyers speak for him during his hearing: I need to be able to speak when the time is right .I feel it very important that I need not be silenced when I need to be able to speak. The judge asked Bundy if he has any courtroom experience and he said he d represented himself before. However, the previous outcomes in those cases were not exactly favorable. As Oregon Live reported in January:2007: Arrested on suspicion of interfering with a legal arrest. He waived his right to an attorney and demanded a jury trial, only to change his plea to no contest on the day of the scheduled trial. He was sentenced to six months of probation in November 2008, ordered to take a life skills class and fined $500, court records show.2011: Found guilty of several vehicle-related citations, including an equipment violation and driving on a restricted license.2012: Arrested on an allegation of misdemeanor theft. A judge ordered the charges to be dropped if Bundy fulfilled 18 months of probation.2014: Charged with interfering with an animal officer. He pleaded no contest in April 2015, but not before he was arrested on a failure-to-appear warrant. He ended up paying a $150 fine.If this case turns out like those, he s definitely going to prison for a long time. Of course, that s where he and his fellow occupiers belong anyway maybe the court will allow him te represent the rest of them too. Featured image via Multnomah County Sheriff s Office | 1real |
Secret Israeli Operation Brings Tons Of Winter Supplies To Syrian Refugees | TEL AVIV — A clandestine Israeli initiative has gathered over a hundred tons of winter supplies bound for Syrian refugees who have no idea that the donations come from the enemy state next door. [Identifying tags and Hebrew logos have been removed from 3, 000 boxes of blankets, coats, sleeping bags, gloves and boots in order “to protect the effort and the recipients,” a statement from the organizers of “Operation Human Warmth” said. Jointly organized by Zionist youth movement HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed, Dror Israel and the Combat Genocide Association, the supplies will be handed over to another aid organization that will distribute the items to the refugees. The sensitive nature of the mission means the exact date and method of delivery have not been revealed. Gilad Perry, Dror Israel’s international collaborations director, said he was moved by the amount of Israelis — Jewish, Arab and Druze — who came together for the operation. “I thought people would be reluctant to support an effort they would not get credit for,” Perry said. “I was amazed to see how wrong I was. The generosity of people just caring for those who suffer from the cold winter on the other side of the border, in an ‘enemy country,’ overwhelmed me. ” “The most moving part of the operation for me is to see thousands of Israelis from different religions join forces in a humanistic effort, emphasizing the similarities in the core values of all of us who simply try to make good on this planet, no matter what our backgrounds may be,” Perry added. Last month, Breitbart Jerusalem reported that Israel is set to absorb more than 100 Syrian child refugees who have been orphaned as a result of the civil war. Over 2, 500 Syrians have been treated in Israeli hospitals since 2013, even though Syria and Israel have officially been in a state of war since 1948. | 0fake |
AIRPORT PASSENGER “PAT DOWNS” Get More Intrusive With New Full-Body Groping Procedures | One woman s awful experience at the airport could soon be what we all go through to travel by air. This is the day of terrorism where Islamists will do pretty much anything to hide explosives or a weapon so we now have to endure a very intimate examination in order to keep us all safe when flying. The new procedure was put in place a month ago-Please see the specifics below.Do you have a story to tell? We d like to hear it. Here s Jenna s story below:Jenna MacFarlane was on the way to visit a friend in Baltimore in April when her carry-on bag triggered an alarm at Charlotte s airport.A Transportation Security Administration screener told MacFarlane she would have to undergo a full-body pat-down by a female officer. Late for her flight and with no option other than to be searched in private, MacFarlane agreed.The pat-down, done over her clothes, explored her breasts, crotch and buttocks. I did not imagine that she would ask me a few times to spread my legs wider and in fact touch my vagina four times with the side of her hand, MacFarlane later wrote in a complaint to the TSA.Just a month before her search, TSA had launched a new, more involved pat-down procedure:Pat-down procedures are used to determine whether prohibited items or other threats to transportation security are concealed on the person. You may be required to undergo a pat-down procedure if the screening technology alarms, as part of random or unpredictable security measures, for enhanced screening, or as an alternative to other types of screening, such as advanced imaging technology screening. Even passengers who normally receive expedited screening, such as TSA Pre passengers, may at times receive a pat-down.A pat-down may include inspection of the head, neck, arms, torso, legs, and feet. This includes head coverings and sensitive areas such as breasts, groin, and the buttocks. You may be required to adjust clothing during the pat-down. The officer will advise you of the procedure to help you anticipate any actions before you feel them. Pat-downs require sufficient pressure to ensure detection, and areas may undergo a pat-down more than once for the TSA officer to confirm no threat items are detected.TSA officers use the back of the hands for pat-downs over sensitive areas of the body. In limited cases, additional screening involving a sensitive area pat-down with the front of the hand may be needed to determine that a threat does not exist.You will receive a pat-down by an officer of the same gender. TSA officers will explain the procedures to you as they conduct the pat-down. Please inform an officer if you have difficulty raising your arms or remaining in the position required; an external medical device; or areas of the body that are painful when touched. You may request a chair to sit if needed.At any time during the process, you may request private screening accompanied by a companion of your choice. A second officer of the same gender will always be present during private screening.Read more here: Charlotte Observer | 1real |
This Ted Cruz ‘Bad Lip Reading’ Is Everything You Never Knew You Wanted And More (VIDEO) | With the Republican side of this presidential race turning out to be the most horrifically embarrassing thing that has ever happened in the history of the republic, it s good to enjoy some comic relief from time to time to take your mind off of how awful things really are. With Donald Trump in the lead for GOP nominee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) not far behind, one has to wonder if the Republican party has gone and lost their ever-loving mind.To provide some much-needed comic relief is none other than the folks over at Bad Lip Reading. They ve been putting hilarious words into the mouths of athletes, celebrities and politicians for some time now, and now in what may be their best bad lip reading yet, they ve gone after Captain Smarmy himself, Ted Cruz.Usually, when watching a BLR it will be mostly gibberish and you will laugh at how closely the words match up to who they are parodying. However, this time around, there s a full story-line and it is absolutely spot on. From putting the words into Cruz s mouth, to his wife s, to his children s to those he s met along the campaign trail. Although, in true BLR form, they did give Cruz a new campaign slogan: I Need a Bogel for the Glotch. Knowing Cruz, though, it might be something he d actually say to pander to Bogel and Glotch makers. (kidding)Without further ado, here s Bad Lip Reading s Ted Cruz :Featured image: YouTube/photoshop | 1real |
The Only Way to Save the World is to Save Yourself | Waking Times
“We are not here to save the world. We are here to save ourselves, but in doing so, we save the world.” ~ Joseph Campbell
As I write this, some shit is probably going down at Standing Rock . For anybody awake to the tyranny at hand, the events of the last few months have weighed heavily on our hearts. But the thing people need to remember is this: We’re all Native Americans. If you were born in the USA, and you love the land you were born on (which includes the entire fucking planet, by the way!), you are a Native American. You are a Native Earthling, for shit’s sake. It’s all connected. Their fight is our fight. Skin color is irrelevant. Where you were born or where you migrated to is irrelevant. The only thing relevant is this: are you for freedom, life, cooperation, and love; or are you for statism, profit, divisiveness, and violence? As Derrick Jensen said, “We are the governors as well as the governed. This means that all of us who care about life need to force accountability onto those who do not.”
The media (even the alternative media, mind you) is trying to spin this as a land issue, or a Native American issue. But it’s not. This is a freedom versus tyranny issue. This is an anarchy versus statism issue. This is a life versus entropy issue. All land is free. We just need to quit focusing on imaginary lines and think cooperation first, competition second. All human beings are free. We just need to quit being obsequious to state-driven authority and start asking (and answering) the tough questions.
The only way to save the world is to save yourself. The only way to save the land from being poisoned is to save yourself from being poisoned (and from poisoning the land, yourself). The only way to save the environment from pollution is to save yourself from pollution (and from polluting the environment, yourself). In other words: The only way to save the Crashing Plane that is the Human Race is to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attempting to put it on anybody else, and especially before attempting to right the plane. The oxygen mask, if you haven’t gathered already, is a metaphor for health, awareness, and truth. Save Yourself
“Only the individual can rise to the heights of consciousness and awareness. The more you belong to the crowd, the deeper you fall into darkness.” ~ Osho
Saving yourself is putting on the oxygen mask of health, awareness, and truth. But what does that mean? It means questioning yourself to the nth degree , to the point of self-interrogation, and then questioning some more. It means psychosocial upheaval. It means getting uncomfortable. It means admitting you are wrong. In short: It means pain, existential pain of monumental proportions.
Why is it so painful? Because much cognitive dissonance must be navigated. Everything that you’ve taken for granted as a fundamental truth must be turned inside out and given proper scrutiny. After such scrutiny, you will likely find that you were wrong about a great many things. But the only tool you need to weigh yourself against your deep questioning is the following anonymous quote: “When an honest man realizes that he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or cease being honest.”
The question is: Do you have the courage to be honest with yourself? Because if you honestly choose the moral side of freedom, life, cooperation, and love, then you’re going to have to admit that statism provides none of these. It only sells the illusion of these.
Statism is about profit, ownership, divisiveness, and violence. It steals people’s freedom by enforcing, and profiting on, outdated and unjust laws (but only if the person believes in the law). It stifles life and human flourishing through calculative debt slavery and by convincing people into believing in an illusory debt. It creates physical divisiveness by drawing imaginary lines in the sand and declaring them “borders.” It creates psychological divisiveness through xenophobic nationalism and conditioned flag worship, setting up an us-versus-them mentality. When, really, the only us-versus-them mentality that holds any moral weight and intellectual validity is the freedom versus tyranny position.
Statism is tyrannical. There’s simply no way to wiggle out of this fact. It teaches authoritarianism and oppression. It teaches the individual to oppress and to tyrannize him/herself and others. It teaches people to blindly follow and obsequiously respect authority. It teaches extortion and violence. For if the authority of the state is not obeyed, or its many outdated and immoral laws are not followed, the individual is forced, violently if need be, to acquiesce. Comply or die, is what it comes down to. Either that or your freedom is taken away from you.
So, when it comes down to it, saving yourself is, first and foremost, waking yourself up from the spell that statism has over you . And then it’s breaking that spell. Break that particular spell, and freedom is at hand. Break that particular spell, and ( your ) life begins. Break that particular spell, and you free yourself to learn how cooperation and love actually work, because you will finally begin taking responsibility for your own shit. No Masters. No rulers. That means taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions as a social creature on an interdependent planet. No more leaning on the crutch of authority. No more codependence on the state. Saving yourself is choosing freedom. Save the World
“The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. ‘Live,’ Nietzsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’ It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so, every one of us shares the supreme ordeal––carries the cross of the redeemer––not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.” ~Joseph Campbell
So, you’ve saved (freed) yourself from the grip of the state. What comes next? Freeing others, of course. But not so fast. Just because you’re free from the state, doesn’t mean the state isn’t still there, rearing its ugly head. It is still there, oppressing and extorting. It is still there, tyrannizing and destroying the planet under the guise of progress. It’s still there, trying to suck you back in. It is still Goliath and you are still David. And just because you recognize statism as tyranny and oppression, doesn’t mean that others do. Remember: most people are devoted statists who don’t even realize they are statists. Yes, the ignorance is that thick. But, I digress…
You’ve secured your “oxygen mask” on the crashing plane that is the human race. Now it’s time to start helping others to secure their own masks. The problem here is: you can’t control other people. And, really, you don’t want to. You want people to be free, after all. That means you’re going to have to convince them . You’re going to have to be creative. You’re going to have to use your imagination and come up with novel ways to persuade them into being healthy. Yes, sadly it has come to that. The only way to bring health to those who are all-too-well-adjusted to a sick society, is to sell it.
The real kick in the pants is: most people don’t want to hear what you have to say. People are wrestling with their own cognitive dissonance. People are caught up in their own state driven conditioning and brainwashing. Those cops “serving and protecting” the enforcement of the unhealthy, unsustainable, climate changing (game ender) North Dakota pipeline , are all wrestling with their own cognitive dissonance, conditioning, and brainwashing. They’re simply losing their own inner battle and coming up with the only thing they know: the cowardice and violence of a statist.
So, it comes down to this: What do we (those who are already free and have their oxygen mask securely fastened) do against the cowardice and violence of the inured statist? We teach. We use our imagination to persuade them away from the unhealthiness of the state and toward the healthiness of freedom. We lead by example, influencing them with our courageous words and our actions. We coax them into freely putting their own oxygen mask on. For we know that volition is paramount if freedom is to be had. Force is the way of the state. Violence is the way of the state. A free human being helping others to be free must never use force or violence, lest they wish to be a tyrant. An authentically free human being wishes other human beings to be just as authentically free.
But, and here’s the rub, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Your right to waive your fist ends one inch from my nose.”
This means that when our health and freedom are under attack, we are morally justified to defend ourselves. And so, the most important thing we can do as free people, as individuals who have our oxygen masks securely fastened, is to stand our ground. To protect ourselves. Which, by extension, means protecting that which immediately sustains us: water, and the land that grows our food. The worst thing we can do is back down and play the pacifist. Like Derrick Jensen said, “ Love does not imply pacifism.” The Goliath that is the state will trample all over pacifism. Indeed, the road to an unhealthy, unsustainable, immoral, and violent world is paved with pacifism. It’s paved with people turning a blind eye. It’s paved with the inaction of people who recognized evil and did fuckall with it.
At the end of the day, Goliath (the state) is going to be Goliath. But Goliath is only Goliath because people believe in it. We dismantle goliath by convincing people not to give into Goliath’s unhealthy and unsustainable song and dance. First, we extract ourselves from being Goliath by transforming ourselves into courageous Davids. Then, we attempt to extract others from being Goliath. And if we cannot, we stand our ground and point out their cowardice and violence as unacceptable. We draw a line in the sand. We stand our ground. We protect our water. We declare, right in the face of the Goliath state, these courageous words by Thoreau : “I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” Read more articles by Gary ‘Z’ McGee . About the Author
Gary ‘Z’ McGee , a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man . His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide awake view of the modern world. This article ( The Only Way to Save the World is to Save Yourself Waking Times and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary ‘Z’ McGee and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
| 1real |
Bernie Sanders Just Used Trump’s Own Tweets To Publicly Shame Him On The Senate Floor | Donald Trump s tweets just became the club progressives like Bernie Sanders are going to use to hammer him with over the next four years.It s no secret that Trump is obsessed with spewing all kinds of bullshit on Twitter, but they are a liability that will make Republicans regret making Trump their leader.Because messages on Twitter can live forever. Even if Trump deletes them, there are likely always going to be copies that were captured via screenshot.But Bernie Sanders didn t need to worry about that because Trump rarely deletes his past tweets, which made things awkward for Trump and the Senate Republicans as Sanders took to the floor to passionately defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all three of which Republicans want to gut after Trump takes office on January 20th.Throughout the primaries and the presidential campaign, Trump told his supporters that he would not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Most prominently, he repeated that message on Twitter in May 2015 to claim that Mike Huckabee copied him by saying the same thing. I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid, Trump wrote. Huckabee copied me. Well, during his time on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Sanders used that very tweet against Trump, even going so far as to blow it up for all to see, to demonstrate that if Trump signs any legislation Republicans send him to target these sacred programs, he would be breaking a core promise to the people who voted for him.Sanders began by calling out Republicans for cruelly seeking to repeal Obamacare, which would leave millions of Americans without health insurance and increase the deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars.He then slammed Republicans for taking at a Medicare in their budget bill, a move that would eliminate Medicare as it currently exists, a government-run program that actually works to provide senior citizens the healthcare they need at a far lower cost than a private insurance plan would provide.Sanders also repeated a statement Trump made on April 8, 2015. Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, Trump said. They want to do it on Medicare and they want to do it on Medicaid and we can t do it. It s not fair to the people who have been paying in for years. In March, Trump attacked Paul Ryan for planning to gut Medicare, but Trump made it clear that he doesn t support Ryan s plan because it will cost Republicans the election. Millions of people voted for him on the belief that he would keep his word, Sanders declared.Here s the video via YouTube:Donald Trump is already backing away from his promises, which means his supporters were duped in the worst way. They were stabbed in the back and now have to face a future where Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and Obamacare do not exist. And they only have themselves to blame for believing Trump in the first place.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
Fake News: The Collapse of the MSM’s ‘Facebook Russian Bot’ Story | As 21WIRE said last year, the Russian hacking, or Russiagate story was a political hoax from the start. What this story can now demonstrate, is that for the last 18 months, the entire mainstream media has been promulgating a highly politicised, and relentless campaign of fake news designed to implicate Russia in an imaginary scandal. Leading the pack are former papers of record The New York Times and The Washington Post, flanked by America s premier broadcast TV propaganda outlet CNN.Last week, we revealed how powerful politicians in Washington had pressured Facebook executives to come up with any evidence to support the Democratic Party s theory of Russian meddling, demonstrating clear collusion between the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley corporation Facebook, with the goal of fabricating a scandal in order to scapegoat Vladimir Putin and the Russians for the electoral collapse of Hillary Clinton last November.As a result, US-Russian relations have been sacrificed at the altar of petty partisan politics and a failing deep state agenda.It certainly begs the question: with so much at stake, why would Washington and MSM lie and risk pushing global tensions closer to a world war level confrontation? If they are prepared to lie about this, what else are they prepared to lie about?Consortium News Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media is determined to prove Russia-gate despite the scandal s cracking foundation and its inexplicable anomalies, such as why Russia would set up a Facebook puppies page.By Robert ParryWhat is perhaps most unprofessional, unethical and even immoral about the U.S. mainstream media s coverage of Russia-gate is how all the stories start with the conclusion Russia bad and then make whatever shards of information exist fit the preordained narrative.For instance, we re told that Facebook executives, who were sent back three times by Democratic lawmakers to find something to pin on Russia, finally detected $100,000 worth of ads spread out over three years from accounts suspected of links to Russia or similar hazy wording.These Facebook ads and 201 related Twitter accounts, we re told, represent the long-missing proof about Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election after earlier claims faltered or fell apart under even minimal scrutiny.In the old days, journalists might have expressed some concern that Facebook found the ads only under extraordinary pressure from powerful politicians, such as Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator on the tech industry. But today s mainstream reporters took Warner s side and made it look like Facebook had been dragging its heels and that there must be much more out there.However, it doesn t really seem to matter how little evidence there is. Anything will do.Even the paltry $100,000 is not put in any perspective (Facebook has annual revenue of $27 billion), nor the 201 Twitter accounts (compared to Twitter s 328 million monthly users). Nor are the hazy allegations of suspected links to Russia subjected to serious inspection. Although Russia is a nation of 144 million people and many divergent interests, it s assumed that everything must be personally ordered by President Vladimir Putin.Yet, if you look at some of the details about these $100,000 in ads, you learn the case is even flimsier than you might have thought. The sum was spread out over 2015, 2016 and 2017 and thus represented a very tiny pebble in a very large lake of Facebook activity.But more recently we learned that only 44 percent of the ads appeared before Americans went to the polls last November, according to Facebook; that would mean that 56 percent appeared afterwards.Facebook added that roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent. So, as miniscule as the $100,000 in ad buys over three years may have seemed, the tiny pebble turns out really to be only a fraction of a tiny pebble if the Russians indeed did toss it into the 2016 campaign.What About the Puppies?We further have learned that most ads weren t for or against a specific candidate, but rather addressed supposedly controversial issues that the mainstream media insists were meant to divide the United States and thus somehow undermine American democracy.Except, it turns out that one of the issues was puppies.As Mike Isaac and Scott Shane of The New York Times reported in Tuesday s editions, The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads. Now, there are a lot of controversial issues in America, but I don t think any of us would put puppies near the top of the list. Isaac and Shane reported that there were also supposedly Russia-linked groups advocating gay rights, gun rights and black civil rights, although precisely how these divergent groups were linked to Russia or the Kremlin was never fully explained. (Facebook declined to offer details.)At this point, a professional journalist might begin to pose some very hard questions to the sources, who presumably include many partisan Democrats and their political allies hyping the evil-Russia narrative. It would be time for some lectures to the sources about the consequences for taking reporters on a wild ride in conspiracy land.Yet, instead of starting to question the overall premise of this scandal, journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. keep making excuses for the nuttiness. The explanation for the puppy ads was that the nefarious Russians might be probing to discover Americans who might later be susceptible to propaganda. The goal of the dog lovers page was more obscure, Isaac and Shane acknowledged. But some analysts suggested a possible motive: to build a large following before gradually introducing political content. Without viewing the entire feed from the page, now closed by Facebook, it is impossible to say whether the Russian operators tried such tactics. [Seriously, this is what the New York Times is passing off as journalism now]The Joe McCarthy of Russia-gateThe Times then turned to Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent and a top promoter of the New McCarthyism that has swept Official Washington. Watts has testified before Congress that almost anything that appears on social media these days criticizing a politician may well be traceable to the Russians Continue this story at Consortium NewsREAD MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russiagate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
ALL HELL IS BREAKING LOOSE IN GERMANY: Citizens Want “Refugees” Gunned Down At Borders [VIDEO] | Enough is enough! German citizens are witnessing the fast-track decline of their nation. Does America need to look any further than Germany to see that bringing in hundreds of thousands (in Germany s case millions) of Muslim men from countries who have no interest in assimilating in the Western world, is a serious threat to its citizens? Liberal open-border policies that have been put forth by Angel Merkel and other progressives in power have clearly put their citizens in grave danger. OVER one-in-four Germans say they back a policy to open fire on unwanted illegal refugees at their borders.Watch massive brawl break out in refugee camp over torn Quran:The Alternative for Germany (AFD) party leader Frauke Petry caused a storm a week ago when she advocated the right of border police to gun down migrants. But her comments have struck a nerve in a country being pushed to the brink by the crisis with 29 percent of respondents in a weekend poll backing her extremist plan. Via: Express UKWe recently reported about a vigilante group in Finland that is gaining large numbers of international members. The Soldiers of Odin are taking matters into their own hands. They are no longer going to sit back and allow the women and children in their communities be raped by these migrants, who have no regard for the laws of the countries that have generously agreed to accept and support them. I think it s going to be a war between local people and immigrants. Soldiers of Odin member Foreigners can t go out alone after dark anymore. It used to be safe to go out in Finland at night, even by yourself, but now we just don t have the courage to do it. MigrantCLICK HERE for entire story. | 1real |
LEFTIST REPORTERS Tie Hillary To Firing Of #MattLauer | Once again, the left eats its own Liberal reporters used the unexpected firing of NBC News anchor Matt Lauer for unspecified sexual misconduct as an opportunity to mention how hard he was on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. It was a liberal pile-on with brutal attacks on twitter from journalists who actually called Lauer a right winger and Trump apologist .Now that s funny!Annie Karni, White House reporter for Politico, tweeted about how Hillary Clinton condemned Matt Lauer s performance during the 2016 Commander-in-Chief forum.Hillary Clinton on Matt Lauer's performance during the Commander-in-Chief forum in 2016: "Trump should have reported his performance as an in-kind contribution . I can't say I didn't fantasize about shaking some sense into Lauer while I was out there." Annie Karni (@anniekarni) November 29, 2017BuzzFeed World correspondent Borzou Daragahi used the firing to remind followers to not forget about Lauer covering Clinton s email controversy.Let's not forget Matt Lauer's shining moment of journalistic glory last year when he bulldozed over Clinton about her emails while letting Trump get away with lies https://t.co/RVl0ZkC3jr Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) November 29, 2017The left attacks its own AGAIN! Many on twitter are blaming Hillary for the ouster of Lauer. This means that he s being fired NOT because of sexual misconduct but for not following the party line and supporting Hillary? They might have a point. Lauer s escapades with women are legend so why fire him now? Is it the trend in sexual harassment cases or because he s out of favor with the liberal elites since the election last year? With these people you have to march in lockstep or you re out! How confusing!Numerous people have commented on our report about Lauer s firing to say they blame Hillary Who knew?OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON LAUER S FIRING: NBC was in cover your ass mode with their longtime anchor Matt Lauer s latest misstep coming to light via numerous news outlets. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack pulled the trigger to fire Lauer late last night after it was revealed that Lauer was going to be outed for sexual misconduct.Page Six reports:Longtime NBC anchor Matt Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted a female NBC staffer during the Rio Olympics. The staffer, who has not been named and wishes to remain anonymous, complained to NBC News bosses yesterday, prompting them to move fast and fire him. An NBC staffer come forward with a claim that Matt sexually assaulted her at the Olympics. There have been rumors about Matt having affairs with subordinates at NBC for years, but those were believed to be consensual. This incident in Rio was not. 2006 CRUEL AND INHUMANE His wife, Annette, famously filed for divorce in 2006, accusing him of cruel and inhumane behavior, but withdrew the filing a month later after they reached a private agreement. They ostensibly live separate lives, she living full time in the Hamptons with their children, while Matt resides in the city during the week.Lauer has been rumored to be a serial adulterer but this case was not consensual. A whole different ball of wax for the notorious cad.Rumors of an affair with Natalie Morales and other co-workers have been out there in the past. Lauer s current co-workers spoke out this morning claiming shock at what just happened:Matt Lauer has been terminated from NBC News. On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we ve decided to terminate his employment. pic.twitter.com/1A3UAZpvPb TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2017The victim wishes to remain anonymous we re wondering how long it will take for her name to be leaked out. | 1real |
U.S. aims to trim its U.N. peacekeeping bill after Trump's calls to slash | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States wants to cut $1 billion from the total United Nations peacekeeping budget for the year from July 1 to shave over 10 percent off Washington’s share of the bill following calls by President Donald Trump for U.S. funding to be slashed. The proposal by the largest U.N. contributor is an opening bid in negotiations by the 193-member General Assembly budget committee, which has to agree funding for 13 peacekeeping missions and a logistics support office by the end of June. Reuters reviewed a document compiling the peacekeeping budget proposals by states and regional groups. The U.S. proposal of an annual budget of $6.99 billion was the lowest made - nearly $1 billion less than U.N. chief Antonio Guterres’ proposal and almost $570 million less than the recommendation by the world body’s budget advisory experts. Under the U.S. proposal, Washington would have to pay $1.99 billion compared with $2.25 billion for the current year. While Trump has described U.S. funding for the United Nations as “peanuts” compared to its “important work,” he complains its share of the peacekeeping bill, currently 28.5 percent, is “unfair.” In his 2018 budget proposal he requested Congress approve only $1.2 billion for U.N. peacekeeping. This is $1 billion less than the U.S. peacekeeping bill for the 12 months to June 30, 2017, when the total peacekeeping budget was $7.9 billion. Washington currently owes $417 million for peacekeeping, U.N. officials said. Ultimately the U.S. Congress sets the federal government budget and will decide how much money is made available for U.N. peacekeeping. Republicans, who control both houses, and Democrats have said they do not support drastic cuts proposed by Trump. Under the U.S. proposal to the U.N. budget committee, the largest cuts would be made to some of the most expensive operations in Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Sudan’s Darfur, according to the document seen by Reuters. The 193 U.N. member states are working to negotiate a compromise by the end of the month between the U.S. proposal, at the low end of the scale, and the highest suggestion of $7.72 billion by the African Group, according to the document. Trump also wants to enforce a 25 percent cap on the U.S. contribution to U.N. peacekeeping. The U.N. General Assembly is due to negotiate next year new levels of contributions by countries for 2019, 2020 and 2021. The United States also pays 22 percent of the $5.4 billion U.N. core budget. Guterres has pledged to make U.N. peacekeeping more efficient but has noted that the current budget to fund it is less than one half of 1 percent of global military spending. | 0fake |
Sen. Liz Warren Refuses to Disavow Madonna’s Wish to ’Blow Up the White House’ - Breitbart | Two days after Madonna shared her wish to blow up the White House, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D. .) has not come out with a statement condemning the outrageous desire that the pop singer expressed in her address to Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington’s National Mall. [“Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House,” Madonna said to the cheers of tens of thousands of feminists and other opponents of President Donald J. Trump. Breitbart News sought comment from Warren with an office visit, in addition to emails and a phone message. After being given a window before posting, the senator’s office did not respond. A survey of Warren’s social media accounts and her official senate office website turned up no condemnation of Madonna’s threat of terrorism against the Executive Mansion. According to Gateway Pundit, the response of the Secret Service was different: A spokesman for the Secret Service told The Gateway Pundit the agency is aware of the comment by aging pop star Madonna made at a large liberal women’s protest against President Donald Trump held in Washington, D. C. Saturday, that she has “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. ” The spokesman said an investigation would be opened but that the decision to prosecute rests with the U. S. Attorney’s office. Sunday, the “Material Girl” songstress walked back her wish to blow up the White House in an exhaustive Instagram post: Yesterday’s Rally. was an amazing and beautiful experience. I came and performed Express Yourself and thats exactly what i did. However I want to clarify some very important things. I am not a violent person, I do not promote violence and it’s important people hear and understand my speech in it’s entirety rather than one phrase taken wildly out of context. My speech began with ” I want to start a revolution of love. ” ♥️ I then go on to take this opportunity to encourage women and all marginalized people to not fall into despair but rather to come together and use it as a starting point for unity and to create positive change in the world. Madonna said her plan to blow up the White House was a metaphor and she does not want to speak or act out of anger: “It was truly an honor to be part of an audience chanting “we choose love”. ♥️♥️♥️♥️ #revoltutionoflove♥️#revolutionoflove♥️***” | 0fake |
Clinton leads Trump by eight points: Reuters/Ipsos poll | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads Republican rival Donald Trump by 8 percentage points among likely voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday. The Aug. 14-18 survey showed 42 percent of Americans supported Clinton ahead of the Nov. 8 general election. That compares with 34 percent support for Trump. Another 23 percent of likely voters would not pick either candidate. Clinton has led Trump in the poll throughout most of the 2016 campaign, and has maintained her advantage following last month’s Republican and Democratic conventions. Since late July, support for the former secretary of state has ranged between 41 percent and 44 percent of likely voters, while Trump’s support has varied between 33 percent and 39 percent. The race was tighter at this point in the 2012 election, with Democratic President Barack Obama ahead of Republican nominee Mitt Romney by less than 2 percentage points. Clinton also led a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll that asked people to choose between Clinton, Trump, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party. Some 41 percent supported Clinton and 34 percent supported Trump. Among alternative-party candidates, Johnson came in third with 7 percent and about 2 percent supported Stein. Clinton and Trump have both struggled to inspire American voters this year. According to the poll, neither candidate is regarded favorably by most Americans, and two-thirds of U.S. adults believe the country is on the wrong track. Clinton continues to face questions about her handling of classified emails while serving as Obama’s secretary of state, while Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks about immigrants, women and Muslims have rankled members of his own party. Republican leaders, including former members of Congress, have called for the Republican National Committee to stop helping Trump and refocus its resources on helping candidates win down-ballot races for the House of Representatives and the Senate. Earlier this week, Trump reshuffled his campaign leadership while his campaign chief, Paul Manafort, faced increased scrutiny over his work with pro-Russian political groups in the Ukraine. Manafort resigned on Friday. The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It surveyed samples of 1,119 and 1,118 likely voters, respectively, and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points. | 0fake |
U.S. State Department email restored after global outage | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department’s email service has been restored after an approximately half-day outage, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Friday. State Department officials worldwide stopped receiving emails on the agency’s unclassified system around 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) on Friday, officials said. Service was temporarily restored by the early afternoon, Nauert said. “It has been quite a headache today, our email system has been down,” Nauert said at a news briefing. “It was brought up just a short while ago ... there are some glitches that they’re still working out.” The outage was caused by internal human error and not a cyber attack, an official said. | 0fake |
TJ MAXX AND MARSHALLS Tell Employees To Trash Signs For Ivanka Trump Line, Mix Line With General Merchandise | According to the New York Times, outlet stores T.J. Maxx and Marshalls have instructed their employees to throw away signs for Ivanka Trump s clothing line, and hang her clothes so that they mix in with other lines.The instruction was to eliminate special displays for the merchandise, not to remove it from the sales floor, said Doreen Thompson, a spokeswoman for the TJX Companies, the retailers parent corporation. We offer a rapidly changing selection of merchandise for our customers, and brands are featured based on a number of factors, she said.The company did not respond to the New York Times query as to whether or not this kind of handling of product was normal, but one employee came forward and told the paper that after several years of being employed with the stores, she had not been instructed to do this before. -The BlazeTJ Maxx and Marshalls corporate headquarters are located in the very liberal city of Farmington, MA.In the 2016 general election, 75 percent of the 39,722 registered voters in Farmington participated in the presidential election.Of those voters, 20,277 voted for Clinton, with 7,031 for Trump. So it should come as no surprise that the people making the decisions on behalf of the stores would send such an outrageous message to their employees that appears to be intended to harm Ivanka Trump s clothing line. For many shoppers like myself, these new developments as they relate to the trashing of Ivanka Trump s clothing and accessory brand really puts a crimp in my shopping patterns at some of my favorite stores, which include Norstrom and TJ Maxx and the TJ Maxx owned Home Goods store. Gone are the days when these kinds of corporate decisions are made and kept under the radar. Trump has an army of exceptionally loyal supporters who are willing to defend him and his lovely family, even if it means we have to do our shopping elsewhere.In a USA Today article, TJ Maxx CEO Ernie Herrman noted, We are extremely pleased that our comp store sales growth was almost entirely driven by customer traffic. Your companies recent decision to trash Ivanka Trump s brand in your store may change that Mr. Herrman Here s a letter to TJMaxx CEO from a leftist in VT that was published in the local Mountain Times newspaper. Editors note: the following is an open letter to Ernie Herrman, CEO and president of TJMaxxDear Mr. Herrman,I am writing to tell you that I have stopped shopping in TJMaxx stores since the election in November of 2016. That is when I became aware that you carry Ivanka accessories. I m sure that you have not missed my 100 or so dollars a month that I would usually spend at your store. But I have missed shopping with you. This is probably hurting me more than it is you. But the real hurt is what is being delivered to our nation by Trump.Let me be very clear: The objective of boycotting is not to destroy your business or to cause job losses. The objective is to send a direct message to you, the CEO, to your Board of Directors, and your stockholders that your merchandising choice regarding Ivanka brand goods needs to change.I know that public pressure and consumer spending has a big effect on markets and policy. Just this week, the CEO of Uber resigned from Trump s Economic Advisory Council. Uber profited from continuing service at JFK airport last weekend when all the NYC cabs boycotted the airport in a show of support for the protesters. Consequently, 200,000 customers deleted their Uber accounts. The CEO decided it wasn t economically advantageous to be aligned with the Trump administration.Recently, the retailers: Shoes.com, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom s all cancelled their Ivanka fashion and jewellery line because of public outcry and customer boycotts of their stores.In a consumer based economy, our money has power. So I am asking you to cancel your merchandising of Ivanka accessories. Please let me know as soon as possible when you have done this, so that I can resume shopping at my favorite TJMaxx store.In the meantime, I am going to donate the $100.00 I would have spent at your establishment this month to the ACLU, so that green card holders, immigrants and refugees seeking to enter the US can have some legal representation.Sincerely and respectfully, Your Once Loyal Customer,Candy Jones, Rutland | 1real |
White House considers lower deduction for U.S. homeowners: Politico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is considering reducing the annual $1 million mortgage deduction cap for U.S. homeowners as a part of its broader tax reform, despite earlier promises to protect the tax advantage, Politico reported on Friday. Politico said the popular deduction came up this week at a White House roundtable with real estate industry representatives led by National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn. The publication quoted an attendee as saying Cohn was willing to “ruffle some feathers” by putting everything on the table. The Internal Revenue Service says homeowners can deduct all interest on mortgages of up to $1 million. Lowering the mortgage deduction cap could help pay for major tax cuts for businesses and individuals that Republicans view as crucial for driving U.S. economic growth. But the White House pushed back on the notion that its position has changed. “As we’ve said since we introduced our principles in April, we intend to protect the homeownership deductions,” White House spokeswoman Natalie Strom said. Cohn told Bloomberg TV on Friday that the 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate should be more in line with the 24 percent average rate among other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “We cannot be substantially higher than the OECD average tax rate out there,” he said. “We’ve got to get in line with the rest of the world, we’ve got to entice capital to be invested in the United States.” President Donald Trump wants to cut the corporate rate far lower to 15 percent, a level that Republicans in Congress view as unlikely. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told Reuters this week it would be a challenge to get the rate to 25 percent. In a separate Friday interview on Fox Business Network, Cohn said the administration and Congress are committed to get as low a rate as possible for businesses. Two congressional tax committees are drafting tax legislation that is expected to be unveiled in September. Republicans hope to pass the bill before the end of 2017. Congress faces a packed legislative agenda when lawmakers return to Washington in September after their August break, including the task of raising the debt ceiling before October, when the Treasury Department is expected to fully exhaust its remaining borrowing capacity. Cohn told Fox the administration is well aware of the calendar and that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is working to ensure the debt ceiling gets raised. | 0fake |
Report: Sears, Kmart Remove Trump Line of Home Furnishings from Websites - Breitbart | Sears and Kmart have stopped selling products from the Trump Home line on their websites, Business Insider reports. [Items from Trump Home, which is part of the Trump Organization, were reportedly not available on both websites and did not appear in a search of either website as of Friday. “As part of the company’s initiative to optimize its online product assortment, we constantly refine that assortment to focus on our most profitable items,” a Sears Holdings spokesperson told Business Insider. “Amid that streamlining effort, 31 Trump Home items were among the items removed online this week. Products from the line are still offered online via Marketplace vendors. ” Sears sold 19 Trump Home items on their website and Kmart sold 13 Trump Home items on their website as of Tuesday, according to brand strategist Shannon Coulter, who started the #GrabYourWallet Trump boycott. Coulter has been tracking which retailers do business with the Trump family on the Grab Your Wallet website since October. Coulter wrote on Twitter that the items were missing as of Friday. Brand new. On Sears still had 19 Trump products. Note: it may still carry in brick and mortar locations. Will see if stmt. forthcoming. pic. twitter. — Shannon Coulter (@shannoncoulter) February 10, 2017, Neither Kmart nor Sears carried Trump Home in their locations. The report comes after Nordstrom dropped Ivanka Trump’s merchandise and TJ Maxx pulled advertising for her products. | 0fake |
Mel Gibson-Vince Vaughn Cop Thriller ’Dragged Across Concrete’ Acquired by Lionsgate | Lionsgate has acquired the U. S. distribution rights to Dragged Across Concrete, a police detective thriller starring Vince Vaughn and Mel Gibson. [According to the Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate will release the film under its Summit Entertainment banner after negotiating a deal at the Cannes Film Festival in France this week. The film reportedly stars Gibson and Vaughn as police detectives (Gibson an “ ” and Vaughn as his “volatile” partner) who are suspended from the force when video of their rough tactics is leaked to the media. “Low on cash and with no other options, these two embittered soldiers descend into the criminal underworld to gain their just due, but instead find far more than they wanted awaiting them in the shadows,” the film’s IMDb synopsis reads. The film was written and will be directed by S. Craig Zahler and is expected to begin production in Canada on July 17. Gibson and Vaughn are coming off a successful pairing on last year’s war drama Hacksaw Ridge, which won editing and sound Oscars, a Best Director nod for Gibson and a nomination for Best Picture. Lionsgate also distributed Hacksaw under its Summit Entertainment label last year. “We are delighted to be working again with Mel Gibson who helmed our double Oscar winner Hacksaw Ridge along with Vince Vaughn and the great production team behind this film,” Lionsgate president of acquisitions and Jason Constantine said in a statement. “It’s a double treat to have screenwriter S. Craig Zahler also direct what will be an intense film for audiences. ” The project is reportedly looking for international buyers in Cannes this week. Gibson’s acting slate is filling up quickly. The will star next in The Professor and the Madman alongside Sean Penn, and is currently filming a role for the comedy sequel Daddy’s Home 2. Vaughn previously worked with Zahler on the upcoming Brawl in Cell Block 99 and will also star in the upcoming wrestling comedy Fighting with My Family from director Stephen Merchant. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0fake |
WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP Calls Out Feds On Overregulation: “It took only four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge” [Video] | PRESIDENT TRUMP ON OVERREGULATION: They spent $29 million for an environmental report weighing 70 lbs. and costing $24,000 per page. I said, do me a favor, I m going to make a speech in a little while, do you mind if I take that and show it? So I m going to show it. The president then walked away from the podium and flipped through the pages of the binder, then let each one hit the ground with a thud.With Trump s speech, the White House s so-called infrastructure week came to an end Friday. The effort was meant to highlight the need to speed up the permitting process before roads, bridges, ports and tracks across the country can be built. It took only four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge and five years to build the Hoover Dam and less than one year to build the Empire State building but today it can take 10 years just to get the approvals and permits needed to build a major infrastructure project, Trump said.On Monday, the White House kicked off a weeklong focus on infrastructure, announcing a series of events and speeches where the president would draw attention to the issue his advisers say they hope can be tackled this year. We have structurally deficient bridges, clogged roads, crumbling dams and rocks, our rivers are in trouble, our railways are aging and chronic traffic that slows commerce and diminishes our citizens quality of life, Trump said Friday. Other than that, we are doing very well. Read more: WE | 1real |
OBAMA’S ARMY: BLACK LIVES MATTER TERRORIST SHOUTS, “Burn Everything Down” IN LARGE ACTIVIST MEETING, AS CO-FOUNDER CHEERS [VIDEO] | And why is this person not up on domestic terrorism charges? Can you imagine a white person being caught on camera making such claims in a crowded room of white racists? Lorretta Lynch s DOJ would have already descended on them if the color of their skin was anything but black. We are witnessing something very ugly taking place in America, orchestrated by a man the majority of Americans voted for as their two-term president, because they actually believed he would make our country even better In rarely seen angle on the Black Lives Matter mob takeover of a NetRoots Nation Presidential Town Hall last weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, activists from the group scream explicit calls for violence and chaos, using an Occupy Wall Street style call-and-response technique to advocate burn everything down, shut this shit down, and rise the f*ck up. By the way, it s worth mentioning that spineless, pandering Democrat presidential candidate Martin O Malley was on the stage witnessing this whole scene unfold. Does anyone remember O Malley apologizing to the crowd following this event for having the audacity to say: All lives matter ?The shouted manifesto lays bare the theory behind the burning, looting, and rioting that have transpired in recent months in Baltimore and Ferguson, and it also lays out the group s agenda on current news events like immigration reform, transgender activism, and the fables about the death of convicted criminal Sandra Bland that the group is spreading through the media.The nascent Black Lives Matter movement cannot claim that these statements were made by a few fringe members: the entire rant was orchestrated by Black Lives Matter Founder Patrisee Cullors, who can be seen in the video enthusiastically pumping her fist and shouting along with every incendiary statement.Nor is Black Lives Matter a fringe group; they have been embraced and given fealty by the highest levels of the Democratic power structure. Cullors told a British interviewer, We re going into halls of power now. Many of us are meeting with mayors or meeting with local government. Some of us have met with President Obama himself to talk about the demands. Ms. Cullors name appears on White House visitor records.Last week, Breitbart News exposed that convicted cop killer Assata Shakur is one of the heroes of the Black Lives Matter founders. Black Lives Matter pays homage to Cuban exile Shakur and quotes the Communist Manifesto at every single Black Lives Matter event.In one of the only cases of any coverage of the Black Lives Matter shrieks of angry poety at Netroots, CNN glossed over some of the crowd s chants in their reporting, but just as they did with Occupy movement, most of mainstream media has completely ignored the radical and revolutionary agenda revealed in Black Liver Matter s scripted call-and-response at NetRoots Nation. Even though the horde of screamers is surrounded by cameras, there has been no public criticism of Cullors and her folloers shouting burn everything down, nor any calls for her to apologize for her group s offensive statements.That media fail is unfortunate, because every American should hear who Black Lives Matter is, what they stand for and what they want, in the group s own words.Guided Transcript of What Black Lives Matter Said The group starts by pointing out that both leftist journalists like CNN s openly gay Don Lemon and mainstream racer baiting Democrats like the Reverend Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson are actually too moderate for them:If I die in police custody do not let my parents talk to Don Lemon, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or any of the motherfuckers that would destroy my name. Let them know that my sisters got this.Then another activist links the group with the LGBTQ political left. Black Lives Matter was founded by Cullors and two other women who self-identify as queer.The speaker makes reference to being called by the name I choose, not the name I was given ; a familiar demand for anyone who has followed the recent Bruce Caitlyn Jenner controversy.If I die in police custody say my name, say my name the name that I chose, not the one I was given. If I die in police custody make sure that I m remembered. Make sure my sisters are remembered. Say their names. Say their names. Marsha P. Johnson. [Unintelligible] Say their names! Say that Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!https://youtu.be/raK8kI7oKW0Marsha P. Johnson is name used by Malcolm Michaels, Jr., a New York drag queen who died in 1992 in a death ruled a suicide. Johnson / Michaels was not in police custody.The group then turns to its pro-illegal immigration position. Two of Black Lives Matter s founders head up pro-Illegal alien groups.If I die in ICE custody say I am not a criminal. Stop funding prisons and detention centers! Shut ICE down and (unintelligible) jails and our prisons! Not one more deportation!The line about ending all deportations got huge applause and cheers from the Netroots.The group then begins to turn their screeched narrative into an emotional and paranoid attack on white people. In strident language, they shout their fear that white supremacy wants to kill black Americans en masse.If I die in police custody, know your silence helped kill me. White sumprecacy helped kill me. And my child is parentless now.If I die in police custody know that I want to live! We want to live! We fight to live! Black lives matter! All black lives matter!Then the mob makes a thinly veiled reference to Sandra Bland, a woman whose death the group has been exploiting and spreading false information and conspiracy theories about for several weeks.Bland s death in jail after she was arrested for assaulting a police officer was ruled a suicide, and an autopsy confirmed that suicide finding with physical evidence. The autopsy also revealed that Bland had a large amount of marijuana in her system.Additionally, Bland had made a previous suicide attempt, had spoken about depression in a video she d posted on social and during intake at the jail had written herself that she was very depressed that day. Further, Bland had had at least ten prior run-ins with law enforcement that had resulted in numerous conviction and over $7,500 in outstanding fines.Despite the mountain of evidence about Sandra Bland s sad history, the Black Lives Matter movement has continued to push the idea that Bland was an activist who was the victim of murder by the police. They push this narrative at Netroots with a series of calls to violent action:If I die in police custody don t believe the hype, I was murdered! Protect my family! Indict the system! Shut that shit down!If I die in police custody. Avenge my death! By any means necessary!If I die in police custody burn everything down! Because no building is worth more than my life! And that s the only way motherfuckers like you listen!If I die in police custody make sure I m the last person to die in police custody by any means necessary!If I die in police custody do not hold a moment of silence for me! Rise the fuck up! Because your silence is killing us!At this point, the group is interrupted by Netroots Nation official.As National Journal reported in a story that mentions none of these calls to violent action Netroots Nation itself announced plans to work with Black Lives Matter.For its part, Netroots declined to criticize the protest. Although we wish the candidates had more time to respond to the issues, what happened today is reflective of an urgent moment that America is facing today, the group said in a statement. In 2016, we re heading to St. Louis. We plan to work with activists there just as we did in Phoenix with local leaders, including the #BlackLivesMatter movement, to amplify issues like racial profiling and police brutality in a major way. As the old song goes, see you in St. Louis. Bring a fire extinguisher.Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
U.N. Security Council to vote Friday on new North Korea sanctions | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Friday on a U.S.-drafted resolution that seeks to toughen sanctions on North Korea in response to its latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch, diplomats said. The draft, seen by Reuters on Thursday, seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum product exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and demand the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 12 months. It would also cap crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year. The United States has been calling on China to limit its oil supply to its neighbor and ally. The text was circulated to the 15-member council on Thursday. While it was not immediately clear how China would vote, traditionally a draft on North Korea is not given to all members until it is agreed by Beijing and Washington. The United States has been negotiating with China on the draft resolution for the past week, diplomats said. If adopted, it would be the 10th resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea over its missile and nuclear programs since 2006. To pass, a resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. The United States late last month warned North Korea s leadership it would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out after Pyongyang test-fired its most advanced missile, putting the U.S. mainland within range. During a speech on Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stressed that nobody can deny the entity of the DPRK which rapidly emerged as a strategic state capable of posing a substantial nuclear threat to the U.S., according to North Korea s official KCNA news agency. DPRK is the acronym for the country s official name, Democratic People s Republic of Korea. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman visited Pyongyang earlier this month - the first senior U.N. official to do so since 2011 - and said North Korean officials did not commit to talks, but he believes he left the door ajar. The U.S.-drafted resolution repeats previous language by reaffirming the council s support for the Six Party Talks, calls for their resumption. So-called six-party talks on North Korea s nuclear program stalled in 2008. In a bid to further choke North Korea s external sources of funding, the draft resolution also seeks to ban North Korean exports of food products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone, including magnesite and magnesia; wood; and vessels. It would ban exports to North Korea of industrial equipment, machinery, transportation vehicles, and industrial metals. The draft resolution would subject 19 new North Koreans and the Ministry of the People s Armed Forces to a global asset freeze and travel ban. It also seeks to allow countries to seize, inspect and freeze any vessel in their ports or territorial waters that they believe was carrying banned cargo or involved in prohibited activities. Separately, China and Russia on Thursday asked for more time to consider a U.S. proposal to blacklist 10 ships for transporting banned items from North Korea, diplomats said. It was unclear how much more time would be given. The vessels are accused of conducting illegal ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels or illegally transporting North Korean coal to other countries for exports, the United States said in its proposal. Countries are required to ban blacklisted ships from entering their ports. The council s North Korea sanctions committee in October designated four ships as banned for carrying coal from North Korea. | 0fake |
British police say lifting road closures near Buckingham Palace | LONDON (Reuters) - British police started to reopen roads around Buckingham Palace in London late on Thursday after investigating a suspicious vehicle. All road closures are now in the process of being removed, London s transport authority said. There s significant congestion in the area but this should now improve. A police spokesman said road closures were being lifted. Queen Elizabeth is not at Buckingham Palace as she travelled to her Sandringham estate in eastern England earlier on Thursday for the Christmas holiday. | 0fake |
MARK STEYN Hammers Democrats On Climate Change Scam: ‘You’re effectively enforcing a state ideology’ | 1real | |
Zakharova slams FBI harassment of Russian diplomats over US elections | November 8, 2016 - Fort Russ News - PolitRussia - translated byJ. Arnoldski -
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has directly pressured Russian diplomats and forbid them from being near voting places during the presidential elections in the United States on November 8th. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman of the Russian foreign ministry, wrote about this on her Facebook page on Monday.
“It’s come to openly intimidating the staff of diplomatic agencies. The State Department recommended Russian representatives in a memo ‘not to come to polling stations on their own’, and some states’ authorities have gone even further and threatened criminal prosecution. This means that they can’t even watch the voting procedure,” Zakharova wrote.
According to Zakharova, in recent days, direct pressure has been put on Russian representatives in the United States by the FBI, “whose agents, with undisguised threats, have let us know that we should not be interested in the American elections.”
“In Houston, in order to offer such a ‘warning,’ a Hollywood-style special operation was arranged that blocked the car of our Consulate General’s employees on the street. They stopped the car and started to ‘convince’ them that they should not watch the voting, and not even think about it,” Zakharova added.
In connection with the incident with the Russian embassy in Washington, a relevant submission has already been made to the State Department.
“But the question arises: what can a foreign diplomat see at American polling stations that is so important that they’ve brought in ‘Mr. Smith’, and why are election monitoring procedures controlled by the FBI?!”, the Russian foreign ministry’s representative concluded.
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Global Survey HUMILIATES Trump After He Claims World Leaders Loved Everything He Said At United Nations | Let s just put it this way, if world leaders really agree with Donald Trump they have a lot of explaining to do in their home countries.Because a massive global survey found that only TWO nations think Trump is doing a good job.During his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Trump voiced his disdain for the United Nations, accusing the organization of being a mismanaged bureaucracy and threatened to pull American financial and military support.Trump also threatened war with North Korea and criticized the Iran nuclear deal while one of his top advisers told climate ministers that Trump is still withdrawing America from the historic Paris climate agreement.Afterwards, Trump took to Twitter to boast about his speech, and claimed that those in attendance agreed with most or all of what he said.A great and important day at the United Nations.Met with leaders of many nations who agree with much (or all) of what I stated in my speech! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017In fact, Trump received tepid clapping from the General Assembly, not even close to the kind of thunderous applause President Obama received when he spoke before the international peace-keeping body.And a new study of global surveys reveals that most nations in the world have very little confidence in Trump, which means all the world diplomats who supposedly agree with much or all of what Trump said can expect to be replaced. In fact, the only nations who have a favorable view of Trump are Russia and Israel.According to FiveThirtyEight.com, Since Trump took office, confidence in the president has gone down further, on average, than favorability toward the U.S.: Confidence dropped 47 points; U.S. favorability just 13 points Some of the biggest declines have been in countries with whom the U.S. has a collective defense agreement, such as NATO members and Japan, especially when it comes to confidence in the president Mexico, unsurprisingly, also saw a big public opinion drop on both questions. On the other hand, public favorability toward the U.S. has gone up in Russia, and public confidence in the president has gone up in both Israel and Russia since Trump took office. While President Obama enjoyed a public confidence rating of 63 to 73 percent, Trump only has a rating of 27 percent.One of the largest drops came from South Korea, in which only 17 percent have confidence in Trump. 88 percent had confidence in President Obama just two years ago. Clearly, South Koreans are alarmed by the pissing match Trump is having with Kim Jong-Un to discover who is the craziest dictator of them all. Overall, though, Trump has brought a return to George W. Bush-era levels of favorability for the U.S. and the presidency, FiveThirtyEight concluded.And it turns out that the world disagrees with Trump on most of the issues.Only one nation agreed with Trump s climate change policy. Trump s Mexican border wall was almost universally disliked. His vows to withdraw from trade agreements were just as unpopular. Only Turkey approved of withdrawing from the Iran deal. And only three nations approve of Trump s Muslim ban. Basically, most of Trump s supporters come from nations that have committed human rights violations or have oppressive governments.In short, the world representatives who make up the United Nations General Assembly are more likely repulsed by Trump. Tepid clapping is not the definition of overwhelming agreement. Trump thinks that everyone likes him and agrees with him because he is a delusional narcissist.The reality is that Trump has turned America into an international joke and has harmed our reputation around the globe. He is an embarrassment to our country who should be removed from office immediately before he inflicts more damage.He is now the most hated president in history, and that must make George W. Bush very happy. Featured Image: Ron Sachs Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
These Syrian Refugees Just Nailed The Mannequin Challenge! | 0 Add Comment
A GROUP of over a thousand civilians fleeing from the civil war in Syria have taken the time to pull off one of the best mannequin challenges we’ve ever seen, in a 4-minute video lighting the internet on fire right now!
The mannequin challenge, the latest craze sweeping through social media platforms at the minute, involves groups of people posing stock-still as a camera roves around them, with everyone from the Portuguese football team to Michelle Obama to a group of lads at a house party in Stillorgan taking part.
All those videos pale in comparison, however, to the epic one-take shot filmed in the war-torn region of Aleppo in which 976 men, women, children and babies are shown staying perfectly still, with poses ranging from “half-buried underneath a collapsed hospital” to “clutching throat as the lungs fill with chlorine gas”.
“With the mannequin challenge, you’ll always see one person blink or sway, but not in this one,” posted Mark Lennings, a 26-year-old internet user who shared the video on his Facebook page.
“You’d nearly swear they were actually mannequins. But that can’t be the case, because if this kind of thing was really happening to these people, we’d be talking about it more than we’re talking about a viral game that serves only to fill our timelines with nonsense so we don’t have to cope with the realities of this world. In fact, it’s the best viral video to come out of the country since the ice-bucket challenge they filmed in the Mediterranean last year”.
It is really up there with the best we’ve seen, to view the epic video, click HERE. | 1real |
The Complex Math Behind Spiraling Prescription Drug Prices - The New York Times | This is an update of an article that was published earlier this year. The soaring cost of prescription drugs has generated outrage among politicians and patients. Some cancer drugs carry price tags of more than $100, 000 a year, and health plans are increasingly asking people to shoulder a greater share of the cost. The latest outrage involves the price of EpiPen, a lifesaving injection device for people with severe allergies, which has risen to more than $600 for the list price of a set, from less than $100 when Mylan acquired the product in 2007. A bipartisan group of senators has demanded that Mylan explain why the cost of EpiPen has skyrocketed, and others have called for congressional hearings, like those that examined price increases by Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. In surveys, Americans routinely say drug prices are a top health care concern, and it has been an issue on the presidential campaign trail. But there are no simple answers. Much of the attention has focused on a handful of pharmaceutical companies that have snapped up old drugs and then aggressively raised prices, sometimes by more than 1, 000 percent. Last fall, Martin Shkreli, the founder and former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, ignited a fierce response on social media after it was reported that his company had raised the price of a drug to treat toxoplasmosis to $750 a tablet from $13. 50. And Valeant Pharmaceuticals International has received similar attention for raising the price of many of its drugs, including two heart medications, Nitropress and Isuprel. Critics say these companies and others like them have unfairly favored profit over patients’ needs. Congress has held several hearings on these tactics, and Valeant and Turing are under investigation by federal authorities. Presidential candidates have singled out these companies on the campaign trail. But even as the drug industry has sought to distance itself from companies it describes as bad actors, insurers, hospitals and other major health care players have raised alarms about the rising cost of new drugs, including those that treat cancer, hepatitis C and rare diseases. Some of those drugs can cost $300, 000 a year. Higher drug prices threaten to raise insurance premiums and patients’ expenses and can cost taxpayers more because of Medicaid and other government programs. But drug companies say the prices reflect the enormous investment of time and resources that go into bringing a drug to market and argue that many times, their drugs can prevent more expensive medical interventions like surgery and hospitalization. The answer to this is more complicated than one might expect. Manufacturers set list prices for their drugs those are the figures that have sent Congress and presidential candidates into fits of outrage. But almost no one actually pays those prices. Insurers and managers, who manage drug plans for insurers, negotiate discounts and rebates, which lowers the effective cost of a drug. And they have been getting better at doing this. That is why, although list prices for drugs rose about 12 percent in 2015, net prices — what insurers and employers actually paid — grew only about 2. 8 percent, the lowest rate in years, according to IMS Health, a research firm. Insurers and others say that lower figure obscures the larger price increases in specific areas like cancer treatment, where less competition exists and it is more difficult to pit manufacturers against one another. In the case of EpiPen, Mylan has a virtual monopoly after a similar product was withdrawn from the market about a year ago. What’s more, drug makers do profit from raising their list prices because rebates and discounts are often based on a percentage of those prices. “That’s where the real angst in the marketplace is,” said Steve Miller, chief medical officer of Express Scripts. A drug’s path from the manufacturer to the patient is circuitous, and many middlemen are paid along the way. The pharmaceutical company sends the drug to a distributor, which takes a fee and then sells the drug to a pharmacy, which pockets its own fee before dispensing the medication to a patient. If a patient is insured, a manager is paid for processing the transaction between the pharmacy and the insurer or employer. The manager also handles the rebates that flow from the drug maker to the insurer or the employer. Part of what makes the issue so frustrating is that visiting a pharmacy to pick up a prescription seems simple. “If you go into a retail pharmacy, it looks like a retail transaction,” said Adam J. Fein, president of Pembroke Consulting, a management advisory and business research company. But it is not like buying a bottle of orange juice most patients do not choose which drug they are picking up, nor are they paying for most of it, he said. “It’s part of this crazy system. ” The good news first: The vast majority of drugs dispensed in the United States — more than 80 percent — are generics, which are alternatives to drugs. If your doctor writes you a prescription, there is a very good chance it will cost you $10 or less. But if you have a more serious illness or require a newer, drug, insurers have been requiring that you pay an increasingly large share of the drug’s cost. Many people are covered by health plans with large deductibles that require them to pay the full price of their drugs until they hit their limit, which can be thousands of dollars a year. And more plans are requiring patients who need expensive specialty drugs to contribute a percentage of the list price. Drug companies often help cover patients’ costs through assistance programs, but not always. So patients who are the sickest and require the most expensive drugs are the most vulnerable to soaring drug prices. “It’s sort of embedded in the health care system that the price is never the price, unless you’re a customer,” Mr. Fein said. “And in that case, we soak the poor. ” | 0fake |
The Gun Industry Is Hating Trump And The GOP, And The Reason Why Is Hilarious | One would think that the gun industry would thrive under an entirely Republican government, because more people would feel good about the government s stance on gun legislation. The NRA loves Republicans because they always push to loosen gun laws, even in the face of horrific tragedy (especially in the face of horrific tragedy). Oddly enough, such is not the case. The gun industry is suffering under Donald Trump, and the reason why is quite amusing, to say the least.The gun industry, which the NRA represents whether they want to admit it or not, thrives on fear specifically, fear of losing gun rights. Conservatives abject fear that the government will make buying guns more difficult, and will probably also come and take the guns they already have, really only happens under Democrats. So they go out and buy up more guns so that a) They already have their guns, and b) So they re better able to defend themselves when the big, bad, tyrannical blue people come to steal what they think is their only method of holding onto their freedoms.Under President Obama, various gun manufacturers share prices soared because of the increased sales. The market responded badly to Trump s election, however, and these same manufacturers shares plummeted and have not recovered. The post-election market boom that other industries enjoyed didn t touch the gun industry. You can see the huge dip two major manufacturers took in November, just after the election, and how much they ve struggled to recover below:Image via Yahoo! FinanceOf course, gun manufacturers are trying to spin the Republicans victories as a positive on their earnings calls. In February, Michael Fifer, the CEO of Sturm, Ruger, said: You ve got more concealed carry in more states You ve got more new shooters coming along [ ] All that stuff drives demand. And in some municipalities, you have the cops backing off. They re being seen by the media too often as the enemy. And so, they re backing off, and crime rates in those cities are soaring to the roof. Those people could care less who s President. They want to defend themselves. But as of today, share prices continued their slumps. For an industry that thrives on fear of Democrats, a Republican government is a dreadful thing.Featured image via Spencer Platt/Getty Images | 1real |
TRUMP REPORTEDLY Thinking About Replacing Jeff Sessions With Candidate Who Won’t Cower To Pressure From The Swamp | Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch better start lawyering up President Donald Trump is reportedly thinking about bringing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on as his Attorney General, White House sources told Axios on Monday.Axios Mike Allen wrote that Trump has recently pondered the idea of nominating Giuliani for the job currently held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.The news came soon after Trump s latest broadside at the beleaguered head of his Justice Department. So why aren t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillary s crimes & Russia relations? Trump tweeted on Monday morning.Trump s views on his attorney general have soured in the months since Sessions decided it was best to recuse himself from any investigations involving the Trump campaign, which he was closely associated with. That includes all of the Russia-related investigations, which special counsel Robert Mueller is overseeing.In an interview last week with The New York Times, Trump said he wouldn t have hired Sessions if he knew he d recuse himself from the Russia investigation. So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, Trump said. I then have which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself from the job, I would have said, Thanks, Jeff, but I can t, you know, I m not going to take you. It s extremely unfair, and that s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself. I then end up with a second man, who s a deputy. When Trump was first selecting his top cabinet officials after winning the November election, Giuliani insisted on being named the secretary of state. He reportedly was not interested in other top posts, including the attorney general. | 1real |
Nancy Hatch Dupree 'Grandmother of Afghanistan' dies in Kabul | KABUL (Reuters) - Nancy Hatch Dupree, a historian from the United States who helped set up the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University, has died in the country whose culture she worked for more than five decades to preserve, the university said on Sunday. She was 89. Dupree arrived in Kabul in 1962 as a diplomat s wife but soon divorced and married Louis Dupree, an archaeologist celebrated for his adventurous exploits and groundbreaking discoveries of Paleolithic Afghan tools and artifacts. For the next 15 years, they traveled across Afghanistan by Land Rover as Louis Dupree excavated prehistoric sites and Nancy wrote a series of witty and insightful guidebooks to a country since torn apart by decades of warfare. She called herself an old monument and a lot of Afghans called her the Grandmother of Afghanistan, said Wahid Wafa, Executive Director of the Afghanistan Centre. She understood and knew Afghanistan much better than anybody else. A fixture in the social scene of Kabul during the 1970s, a now-vanished world of smart cocktail parties and mini-dresses, they were forced to leave in 1978 after the Soviet-backed government accused Louis Dupree of being a spy. Her husband died in 1989 and much of the time before her return to Afghanistan in 2005 was spent in Pakistan, where as well as briefly meeting Osama Bin Laden and working with the growing number of war refugees, she assiduously gathered as much documentation on Afghanistan as she could. In 2005, after the fall of the Taliban and the installation of a new Western-backed government in Kabul, she returned with some 35,000 documents wrapped up in fertilizer bags, which became the basis for the Afghanistan Centre archive. A prolific writer, she was director of the Centre between 2006 and 2011 and continued to go into her office after she stepped down, remaining an institution in the cultural life of Kabul and receiving a stream of visitors. It was Nancy s aim to preserve Afghanistan s heritage, said Wafa. She was a very funny, interesting person who loved to talk to anyone coming to visit. She was kind, she was very giving with the information she had and she was always lobbying for the Afghanistan she first knew. While she could be waspishly critical of both blundering Westerners and Afghans she felt were promoting a bigoted version of their culture, she retained her faith in her adopted country to the end, Wafa said. Despite the 40 years of war in Afghanistan she was always hopeful of the future and hopeful for the future of the new generation in Afghanistan. | 0fake |
Catalonia finds no friends among EU leaders | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders sought to minimize Spain s crisis with Catalonia on Thursday and avoid encouraging separatists across the bloc, describing Barcelona s secession bid as a domestic issue and declining a mediation role. Leaders did not hold a discussion of Catalonia s bid to break away from Spain and judged they had nothing to gain by angering Madrid, diplomats said. It is not on our agenda, European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters during the EU summit. All of us have our own emotions, opinions, assessments but formally speaking there is no space for an EU intervention. The approach contrasted with EU strategies on almost every other major issue over the past decade, including Greece s financial crash and mass migration flows from Syria. On countless occasions, EU leaders have used late-night summits to press for a common decision or joint policy statement. It s an internal Spanish matter, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters, a position echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who held a private meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on the sidelines of the summit. He (Macron) has complete confidence in Rajoy to resolve the situation, a French diplomat told Reuters. Spain s government is set to suspend Catalonia s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region s leader threatened to go ahead with a formal declaration of independence if Madrid refused to hold talks. Rajoy kept a low profile at the summit while his fellow leaders held news conferences on Thursday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hoped there were solutions on the grounds of the Spanish constitution. Despite some disquiet over the way Rajoy handled a Catalan independence referendum on Oct. 1, which Madrid said was illegal and sent in police to disrupt voting, countries fear making any remarks that could embolden separatists at home. From Scotland to Flanders and Lombardy, the 2007-09 financial crisis, unemployment and migration have allowed separatists, anti-EU and populist parties to feed off discontent with political elites and reopen regional divisions. As Britain negotiates its exit from the EU, few leaders want to wade into another highly complex negotiation bringing new economic uncertainty and legal disruption. Smaller EU countries such as Slovenia that emerged as sovereign states after the end of the Cold War are equally uncomfortable about inspiring secessionists across the bloc. They rely on Spain, a large euro zone economy, for investment. Even in Western Balkan countries aspiring to join the European Union, there is a reluctance to fuel calls for regional autonomy at home. Spain is one of five EU countries that has yet to recognize Kosovo s independence. There is not much to gain from backing Barcelona and a lot to lose from angering Madrid, said a senior EU diplomat at the EU summit. | 0fake |
What Does ‘Dress Like a Woman’ Mean? Designers Tackle the Question - The New York Times | What does it really mean to “dress like a woman”? Social media recently took it upon itself to answer that question, after a brief flurry of rumors about a possible White House dress code. At the Grammys, so did Beyoncé, who apparently decided it meant looking like the golden goddess of fecundity. Now designers are having their turn. It is, after all, a question that lies at the heart of fashion, and that they, at least theoretically, are supposed to be asking themselves every season. Of course, that doesn’t mean they always come up with viable answers. Indeed, during New York Fashion Week shows on Sunday, they sometimes seemed to get so entangled in the many possible responses that they tripped over their own hemlines. Or, in the case of Sander Lak at Sies Marjan, the many fluttery bits that dangled, flapped, ruffled and wobbled in his painterly procession of aubergine, peach, mint green and fluorescent pink. Even with some sporty snaps to ground them, his dresses (and sleeves and trousers) looked as if they’d taken a wrong turn on the way to a Martha Graham dance performance and ended up in the ballroom of the Sixth Avenue Hilton by mistake. Prabal Gurung, however, seemed to know exactly where he was going: toward “multiple ways to celebrate the exuberance of being a woman and to interpret her femininity as she sees fit,” according to the show notes. That’s kind of broad territory. Witness giant nubby, braided and tufted Nepalese knits in wool and cashmere with fox trim. Sleek camo intarsia mink furs in lemon, olive green and white, made for a Park Avenue warrior. Silver devoré shirting and flared trousers fit for a glam rock star. And sheer evening gowns with bra tops for — well, it wasn’t entirely clear for whom. Someone who does a lot of Soul Cycle, maybe. And a finale of personalized for each model (including those of welcomely nontraditional runway size) and bearing such messages as “The Future is Female,” “My boyfriend is a feminist,” “I am an immigrant,” and so on. By the time Mr. Gurung appeared for his bow, wearing one of his own tees — “This is what a feminist looks like” — his celebrity front row (the most diverse yet for any designer, with Misty Copeland, Sarah Jessica Parker, Huma Abedin, Priyanka Chopra and Diane Kruger, among others) were on their feet in ecstasy. Yet with the myriad possibilities, it was also a bit of a muddle. It’s not enough to be inspired by all women, lovely as that sentiment is: Designers also have to know what they stands for — the specific thing they offer women — and to make aesthetic choices. While some of Mr. Gurung’s were great (those knits!) some were cloying (a dress dripping with plissé at the sleeves and a host of covered buttons down the skirt) and some were just plain silly. Dressing like a woman does not mean putting the breasts front and center via an entirely sheer Lurex turtleneck, the movement aside. Whether it instead means dressing in the gray flannel cape of a renaissance prince, on the other hand, as Joseph Altuzarra seemed to think it does, is far from certain. In an from last season’s flirtatious romp through the Côte d’Azur, for fall, Mr. Altuzarra took a decidedly more and historicist turn in black velvet and ruby jacquard. Wool coats were finished in elaborate frogging and big pearl buttons, leather combat boots studded with pearls were laced up to and they were echoed by corset lacing at the waists of jersey dresses. Big fur pockets were belted atop little velvet dresses with white poplin collars. Aside from some leather motorcycle pants worn with a houndstooth blazer, it tipped a bit too far into Shakespearean territory — at least until a evening skirt with a simple silk blouse, molded red velvet trouser suit and series of embroidered gowns tore free of the heavy hand, and fabrics, of their more antecedents. Perhaps the question itself is too weighty these days — which is why, at Diane von Furstenberg, Jonathan Saunders took a somewhat alternative approach and chose to reframe the issue in the mantra of the brand’s founder, “Feel like a woman, wear a dress!” “Optimism and color,” Mr. Saunders said of what he wanted to communicate with his collection of shades, fur jackets (faux and real, in candy colors) scarf silks and skinny knits. Pattern clashed with print and paillettes — polka dot with florals and stripes with leopard spots — but the easy shapes kept it in line. There was nothing hard about these clothes, from fabric to form. Forget the existential issues for a moment, they said, and have a little fun. And for that moment, milling about the art gallery where the presentation took place, everyone did. | 0fake |
CASTRO IGNORES DISASTROUS COMMUNIST POLICIES That Destroyed Cubans: Blames World Leaders At UN Assembly For Allowing Millions To Go Hungry | If Obama had a communist friend he d be this poor victim Raul Castro the champion of human rights and justice What a dog and pony show.Cuban leader Raul Castro used his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly to lash out at the international body, saying Monday that member states have failed to produce much beyond an illusion of the human rights, justice and development promised in the charter.Castro made scant mention of last summer s landmark restoration of ties with the United States after a five-decade break, instead delivering a searing indictment of world superpowers for allowing millions to remain hungry, illiterate and at risk of death by curable illnesses while annual military expenses worldwide amount to more than $1.7 trillion. Barely a fraction of that figure could resolve the most pressing problems afflicting humanity, Castro said.Castro received warm applause and scattered cheers when he made his U.N. debut, and several Latin American and African leaders gave him a standing ovation at the end of his remarks, in apparent approval of his narrative that Western colonialism and imperialism are at the roots of today s conflicts. He didn t name names, but his allusions to the United States and its allies were clear as he criticized invasions and overthrows, the selective and discriminatory approach to human rights, and the threat of climate change stemming from an irrational and unsustainable consumerism. There have constantly been wars of aggression and interference in the internal affairs of the states, the ousting of sovereign governments by force, the so-called soft coups and the recolonization of territories, Castro said.Via: McClatchyDC | 1real |
Watch Bill O’Reilly Lose It After A Fox News Poll Delivers Terrible News For The GOP (VIDEO) | Bill O Reilly refused to believe the findings of a poll conducted by his own news organization on Thursday night, because it was simply too bad for him to contemplate. According to the poll, Democraict candidate Bernie Sanders would beat ALL current GOP contenders for President.While endorsing all other sections of the poll, which supported his views, O Reilly flat out loses it with the section which doesn t. The section shows that that Sanders beats Trump by 14 points, Ted Cruz by 12 points, and narrowly defeats John Kasich by 4 points. It s also not the first poll to show this sort of result.Nevertheless, O Reilly wasn t willing to tolerate such information, which flies in the face of his own views on the electability of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. He appeals to his fellow Fox News veterans Geraldo Rivera and Dana Perino to join him in denouncing the results. Rivera immediately obliges, calling the findings: pie in the sky, while Perino makes sympathetic noises.But it s not enough to quell the perplexed O Reilly, who turns to camera saying: I don t believe it, And I have to say, with all due respect the Fox News poll has been good I don t believe this. I just don t. The incident is a perfect example of the phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance. As Chris Mooney explains in Mother Jones:the concept of cognitive dissonance has been well established in psychology and even, to some extent, embedded in public consciousness. Basically, when the mind is faced with an idea that is threatening to one s identity or sense of self an idea that induces unpleasant dissonance one tends to try to either avoid the thought or, perhaps, reinterpret it into something unthreatening or positive.This urge is also known to affect conservatives to a far greater degree than liberals.This doesn t mean every conservative is less likely to open their minds to information which challenges their world view than every liberal, it simply follows the overall trend.It is a major obstacle in the way of liberals seeking to change the minds of conservatives, as whichever way they appeal it is rejected. If liberals appeal in terms of reason and evidence their case is rejected the moment it creates cognitive dissonance. However, if liberals move into more emotive arguments, these are often rejected on the basis of confirming to naive idealism stereotypes by conservatives. So liberals are painted as either policy wonks with no humanity, or airy fairy liberals with no common sense.Meanwhile, the most ridiculous arguments put forward within the normalised conservative worldview go unchallenged, requiring minimal or no evidence, such as Mexico paying for Trump s border wall for example. Mexico has stated on the record this will not happen, and yet it remains fact among Trump supporters. There is little doubt that if the Fox poll had shown Donald Trump or Ted Cruz beating Sanders and Clinton in a head-to-head O Reilly would have considered it water tight.This is something for us to all watch in our own behavior. Do we demand the same level of evidence for arguments that conform to our world view, as those which do not? If the answer is no, then we are no better. If we want a cleaner, better politics it starts with us. Featured image via Screengrab | 1real |
Man who had his Twitter access revoked given access to nuclear codes | Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Spacey Donald Trump could regain access to Twitter account on completion of successful trial with nuclear codes
Donald Trump, who had his Twitter access revoked by his campaign managers, has successfully secured access to America’s nuclear codes.
Trump was denied control of his Twitter account in the build-up to the presidential election due to a series of monumentally stupid tweets.
According to a senior aide, the new president will only regain full control of his Twitter account once he’s proved that he can act responsibly.
“We’ll give him the nuclear codes, and if he can get through a week without triggering armageddon then we’ll review his Twitter access,” confirmed the senior aide.
“It’s one thing to bring on the apocalypse, but we can’t risk him reacting to criticism with an ill-judged tweet.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 1real |
Obama Meets Boy After Deplorable Trump Fans Attack His Wheelchair When He’s Removed From Rally | Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr
On Sunday, President Obama met with a 12-year-old boy who was attacked by Trump supporters while being removed from a rally. Yesterday, this young man was kicked out of a Trump rally. As he was leaving, people kicked at his wheelchair. Today, he met his President. pic.twitter.com/VI4g2tKANG
— Steve Schale (@steveschale) November 6, 2016
J.J. Holmes has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. He and his mother, Alison Holmes, attended a Trump rally on Saturday to protest the GOP nominee’s mockery of people with disabilities. As they were being removed from the rally by security, Trump’s supporters began pushing and kicking the child’s wheelchair.
“The crowd started chanting ‘U-S-A’ and pushing his wheelchair,” Alison said. “We were put out by security. Mr. Trump kept saying, ‘Get them out.’”
“I hate Donald Trump. I hate Donald Trump,” J.J. said through his vocalization device.
The next day, J.J. and his mom got to meet the President of the United States after a rally for Hillary Clinton in Kissimmee, Florida. The experience was the polar opposite of what they had experienced the day before.
If kicking a child’s wheelchair isn’t deplorable, I don’t know what the hell is. You can watch a video of the appalling incident below. Protestor pushing a child in a wheelchair appears to be kicked by Trump supporter. Happens :03 seconds in. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/LDr6E5NHvT
— Tom Llamas (@TomLlamasABC) November 5, 2016
Featured image via Twitter | 1real |
WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY? NANCY PELOSI Spits Out Word Salad During Press Conference On Obamacare [Video] | 1real | |
Two White House officials helped give Nunes intelligence reports: NYT | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two White House officials played a role in providing House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes with documents showing President Donald Trump and his associates were swept up in surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Times identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s office. White House spokesman Sean Spicer declined to comment on the details of the report during a briefing on Thursday. The New York Times reported that Cohen-Watnick began reviewing “highly classified reports” about intercepted communications of foreign officials after Trump said on Twitter earlier this month that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor, President Barack Obama. The reports reviewed by Cohen-Watnick consisted of mostly of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how to develop contacts with the Trump family and his inner circle ahead of inauguration, the paper reported. FBI Director James Comey told Congress he had seen no evidence to support the wiretapping claim. Obama has denied the accusation through a spokesman. Nunes, who was a member of Trump’s transition team, has faced criticism from Democrats and some prominent Republicans, for the way he handled the allegations about U.S. spy agency surveillance of Trump’s team. Many Democrats, including Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, have called for Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation after he met last week with an unidentified source at the White House complex, accusing him of colluding with the White House. The House Intelligence Committee, headed by Nunes, is also investigating possible Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. Russia has denied the allegations. | 0fake |
BUDWEISER Unveils SUPER BOWL Ad That Distorts Truth About Trump’s Temporary Refugee Ban [VIDEO] | So much for the cute little puppies and clydesdales Budweiser has created a Superbowl Ad that is creating a lot of controversy. The 1-minute ad tries to explain to origins of the company s co-founder, Adolphus Busch, by focusing on the fact that he was an immigrant.The ad starts out with an actor who is playing Busch being told, You re not wanted here! Go back home! The vice-president and ranking executive for Budweiser brand in the U.S., Ricardo Marques, claims that this is not related to what is currently going on in the country in regards to illegal immigration.Yeah right..Budweiser took a big hit in stock prices yesterday after Americans discovered the news about their Super Bowl ad: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
Lockheed nears $27 billion helicopter deal with Pentagon | (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp is expected to receive Pentagon approval on Thursday to begin production for 200 new heavy cargo helicopters for the U.S. Marines, a Defense Department official said on Tuesday. The long-expected award for the CH-53K King Stallion will cost $87 million on average each and $105 million including spare parts and certain service contracts, said Colonel Hank Vanderborght, who heads the program for the Pentagon. The $27 billion program also includes more than $6 billion in research and development costs. The new helicopter, in development by Lockheed’s Sikorsky helicopter business, can lift 36,000 pounds and would replace the CH-53E Super Stallion, which has operated as the backbone of field logistics for the U.S. Marines since the mid-1980s. The Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board will meet on Thursday and it is expected to approve the beginning of production of the new helicopter, Vanderborght told Reuters. A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment. The expected approval by the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board would be a major milestone for the largest U.S. defense contractor. Final terms of the production deal still are being finalized, a Defense Department official said. Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson told reporters at the company’s annual media day last week that the 2015 purchase of helicopter maker Sikorsky from United Technologies Corp for $9 billion helped reshape the company. | 0fake |
Iran re-imposes death sentence on spiritual figure that supreme court quashed | DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iranian court has re-imposed the death penalty on the founder of a spiritual movement after the first sentence was struck down by the supreme court, the judiciary said on Sunday. Mohammad Ali Taheri, founder of Erfan Halgheh which calls itself Interuniversalism in English, was arrested in 2011 and given five years in prison for insulting Islamic sanctities . He was sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court in 2015 for corruption on earth but the Supreme Court later quashed the sentence. (Taheri s) case was sent back to court and tried with the presence of a lawyer and various advisors and the judge has again reached, Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the news agency ISNA. The sentence can be appealed, he added. Amnesty International says Taheri is a prisoner of conscience and has condemned Iran s use of capital punishment for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalized at all . Tehran dismisses such criticism as part of an effort from the West to heap political pressure on the Islamic Republic. | 0fake |
How Last Night's Gary Johnson/William Weld CNN Town Hall Was a Disappointment in Libertarian Terms | The Libertarian Party presidential ticket of former Republican governors Gary Johnson (N.M.) and William Weld (Mass.) succeeded in seeming human, humane, decent, calm, and at least compared to their major party competitors, thoughtful this evening at their second CNN Town Hall.
But I'm not sure they succeeded in seeming very Libertarian, or selling the Party's position as a distinct outlook on politics and government that someone could grasp and understand.
They often seemed to go out of their way to just seem like a centrist, independent mixture of what someone might see as good aspects of both other parties.
In fact, when host Anderson Cooper would occasionally remind the candidates what the traditional libertarian stance was, often relying on the Party platform, he might have done more to sell libertarianism's unique stances than the candidates.
Herewith, a (not necessarily comprehensive) list of places where a Libertarian might have been frustrated with the candidates tonight, with a few (again, not comprehensive) nods to when they got it closer to right. The emphasis, though, will be on the disappointments, which dominated in my eyes.
The two governors mostly seemed thoughtful, humble, decent, not aggravating control freaks or rampaging ids. They did not seem like bold representatives of a distinct philosophy and practice of government, one with a well-developed philosophy about what government is for, and why. | 0fake |
Funding shortfall for Social Security disability program: Is it real? | Republicans say Social Security’s support for people with disabilities will be 'broke' next year; the Obama budget suggests the system needs only a patch. But both sides agree: Something must be done by 2016.
Why are Americans more open to torture than other nations?
Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont (l.) talks as committee chairman Sen. Michael Enzi (R) of Wyoming listens during a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington earlier this month
In the wake of Republican victories in the election last fall, pundits warned that Congress would be at loggerheads with President Obama on a number of budget issues in 2015, including over highway funding and the Department of Homeland Security.
Not high on the list of hot topics: Social Security.
Yet the vaunted social insurance system is suddenly a hot part of the fiscal debate in Washington – and it's not waiting for 2016 elections. The new Obama budget proposes a patch to the program’s support for people with disabilities, but Republicans say the system needs an overhaul, not a Band-Aid.
How urgent an issue is this? Specifically, how real is the financial trouble for the disability program?
The two sides are far apart on their characterizations, but they agree that something needs to be done, and a good case can be made that the reality is between the extremes.
Many Democrats and liberals say, in effect, that Social Security’s Disability Insurance program is in trouble only if Republicans refuse to rubber stamp Mr. Obama’s fix.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont, the top member of the Democratic caucus on the Senate Budget Committee, accused Republicans of trying “to manufacture a crisis where none exists.”
On the Republican side, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who chairs that panel, says that “by December of next year, the program will be broke.”
What's new is that after years of talk about Social Security's solvency and the need to reform it (or not), Congress has come to its first definitive fork in the road on the issue. Perhaps the problem isn’t as dire as Republicans say it is, but Obama also might not have a slam-dunk case for his patch.
A good many economists agree with the Republican view that reforms are needed to keep the system solvent – and the sooner they’re enacted, the better it will be for the nation’s fiscal health.
Here are key facts behind the rhetoric:
These facts suggest that Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah had a valid point when he argued this week on the Senate floor that “having a joint trust fund exhaustion as a target doesn’t solve any fundamental financial problem facing ... Social Security.”
At the same time, Democrats have a point when they note that rebalancing the tax revenues between the two trust funds has been done by Congress many times in the past.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes that Congress has reallocated tax receipts between these two funds in the past, but generally accompanied by reforms to Social Security.
House Republicans are seeking to block any such reallocation, unless it’s accompanied by reforms to shore up Social Security so promised benefits can be paid beyond 2033.
The Social Security trustees said in their 2014 annual report that although Congress may consider another rebalancing, such a move "might serve to delay DI reforms and much needed financial corrections for OASDI as a whole."
Regardless of whether the tax flows are rebalanced, the two programs may call for differing reforms to bolster their solvency.
In the old-age program, possible fixes include asking high-earning Americans to shoulder bigger tax burdens, modestly raising the retirement age, and adjusting the inflation index used for benefits (so that annual cost-of-living increases aren’t so big).
On the disability side, changes might include expanding incentives for people to work rather than rely on DI benefits. “Increasing employment among individuals with disabilities could improve their economic well-being and increase their autonomy while also reducing the fiscal strains on Social Security,” Stanford University economist Mark Duggan argued at a Senate hearing this week.
The disability program has grown markedly in recent years. By 2012 it was accounting for 18 percent of all Social Security benefits, up from 10 percent in 1970, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Much of the expansion stemmed from demographics, as an aging population included more people developing disabilities in their later work years, a 2013 CBO analysis concluded. But it also found the growth in the program to be related to 1984 legislation that loosened the definition of conditions qualifying as disabilities, and in fluctuations in the economy – such as the long jobs drought following the 2008 financial crisis.
“The DI rolls have barely grown for the last two years,” notes Kathy Ruffing of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
That slowdown coincides with an easing of demographic pressures on the program, as the baby boomers retire, as well as the improving economy. | 0fake |
BOOM! KELLYANNE CONWAY Schools CNN’s Anderson Cooper On The Comey Firing [Video] | Kellyanne Conway went at it with Anderson Cooper and came out on top when she basically schooled Cooper on the chain of command in government. The facts make no sense to him because he s in denial. Conway said Trump s decision to fire James Comey had nothing to do with the FBI s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election. She goes on to explain to Cooper that the letter recommending that Comey be fired was sent to President Trump. Was Trump supposed to then deny the Assistant Attorney General s decision? It s good to note that the Assistant AG was just confirmed by over 90% of the Senate. He s a bipartisan choice and a well respected man who came into his position under AG Jeff Sessions just two weeks ago. The letter sent to Trump summarized the numerous things that prove the case for the recommendation of firing Comey. TRUMP DID NOT DO THIS ALONE But you have the fake news media beating the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA drums over and over.Watch how Kellyanne Conway runs circles around Anderson Cooper while Cooper just keeps coming back to the Russia scenario: It s not a cover up. The president makes it very clear in his letter. Comey assured him he s not under investigation. I think you re looking at wrong set of facts here. You re going back to the campaign. This man is president of the United States. He acted decisively today. You want this to be about Russia when this is about restoring public confidence in the FBI The FBI director reports to deputy attorney general, the deputy attorney general reports to the attorney general and the attorney general reports to the president of the United States. This has nothing to do with Russia. It has everything to do with whether the current FBI director has the president s confidence and can faithfully and capably execute his duties. | 1real |
Strangers on an 18-Hour Train - The New York Times | Many years ago, before my family immigrated to the United States from Pakistan, we used to travel frequently by train. During a more recent trip home, instead of flying back to Karachi from Lahore, I decided to go by train again. I was interested to see what it was like traveling in economy class. I got a seat in Car No. 3, and amid thunder and rain, the train hissed out of the station. Its pace was slow. The compartment was packed. Those who had reserved seats occupied them, while others were perched on the floor, next to the seats or even by the toilets, with the result that it became difficult to move around or to use the toilet yourself. Families with little children spread quilts and pillows on the seats and on the floor. A conductor entered the car and started checking tickets. The passenger in Seat 54, a tall, man with sharp gray eyes, had only an unreserved ticket, so he was asked to vacate the seat. But he took the conductor aside and returned in a few minutes to the same place. The conductor, overlooking the mess everywhere in the car, smiled and went about his duty. If it were not for the rains in Punjab, the heat and dust would have been unbearable. I noticed that the man sitting in Seat 54 kept watching a young woman in a window seat with a little child on her lap. The woman’s eye fell on the man’s face, and she immediately looked down and adjusted her dupatta, her scarf. The night wore on, and people began to close their eyes, but the seats were so uncomfortable that only a very heavy sleeper could manage to get any rest. The train continued its slow pace, stopping every so often at another station. Because of the heat and suffocating air in the compartment, many windows were kept open. The woman with the child on her lap looked over at the man in Seat 54. He was still staring at her. I was beginning to get angry with him. Even under such filthy and uncomfortable circumstances, he couldn’t resist indulging his desire to gaze at an attractive woman. She began to look back at him with fire in her eyes. Turning her face away, she played with the child again for a while. The train was approaching a station. I could see the familiar lights of Khanewal, and as we stopped, a memory flashed through my mind. Two decades earlier, whenever we traveled this route and stopped at this station, my little daughter would urge me to take her out and buy some ceramic toys from one of the stalls. We would buy the toys, and I would enjoy a cup of tea in a clay cup at a tea stall. It was now 2 a. m. and I got down from the train to recapture this pleasant memory. I was drinking my tea when two burly men came near me and stood on either side. I could feel something probing at my right. “Take out your wallet and give it to me,” ordered one of them. I took it out and handed it to him. The other man relieved me of my wristwatch. “Have a safe journey,” one said before they both disappeared. I was shaken, and not just because I lost my wallet and watch. The watch was cheap, bought for four dollars from Kmart in Chicago, and there were only a hundred rupees in my wallet the rest of my money, my credit cards and my IDs were safely tucked inside my shoes. But it struck me that you should never try to recapture the memorable scenes of the past, because you are likely to lose those memories forever. I finished the cup of tea and returned to my seat on the train. The train started again. The child was still awake on his mother’s lap, but the woman found it difficult to keep her eyes open. She was soon lost in a short wink of sleep. Her head fell forward. A moment later, the child began to climb the open window — one leg went over it. The man in Seat 54 leapt up and grabbed the child before he fell out. The commotion woke up the woman. She seemed to be in a panic, and then reality dawned. “Here you are,” the man said as he gave the child back to her. “Your child has been looking for an opportunity to crawl out of the window,” he said. “That’s why I have been watching the whole time. ” He stretched his back and moved away. The woman was dumbfounded, and so was I. The woman had a few sips of water, then got up to thank the man, but he was nowhere to be seen. The train moved on. Early in the morning, at Drigh Road Station, the woman got up to get off the train. She searched for the man again but couldn’t find him. “Bhai,” she addressed me, calling me brother. “If you see that man, will you kindly thank him on my behalf?” I nodded. Before I got down at Karachi Cantt, I searched the whole compartment for him — but he was gone. | 0fake |
Trump: First Saudi Meetings Will Bring Americans ’Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’ - Breitbart | President Donald Trump described the first day of his overseas trip in Saudi Arabia as “a tremendous day” — referring to billions in investments — in his first remarks at the top of one of several bilateral meetings. [Trump’s first remarks to reporters on Saturday included: That was a tremendous day. I just want to thank everybody. But tremendous investments in to the United States, and our military community is very happy, and we want to thank you and Saudi Arabia. But hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs. During a signing ceremony, the U. S. President signed a joint vision statement, private sector agreements, and defense cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia. The defense agreements are worth $110 billion effective immediately and worth an additional $350 billion over ten years, according to a White House official. At one point during the day, the President’s Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn answered reporters’ questions as to what was being signed. He said that the signing was “to invest a lot of money in the U. S. and have a lot of U. S. companies invest and build things over here. ” He continued, “They’re going to hire U. S. companies … a bunch of infrastructure related things … A lot of money. Big dollars. Big dollars. ” Cohn told reporters that things were going “really well. ” During brief remarks to reporters at the top of a meeting between President Trump and the Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, Trump said, “It was a great day. ” Jared Kushner, Cohn, Stephen K. Bannon, and Dina Powell were also in the room. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 0fake |
China downplays tensions with U.S. as Xi prepares to meet Trump | BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Beijing sought to play down tensions with the United States and put on a positive face on Friday as the U.S. administration slammed China on a range of business issues ahead of President Xi Jinping’s first meeting with President Donald Trump. Trump set the tone for what could be a tense meeting at his Mar-a-Lago retreat next week by tweeting on Thursday that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses. Trump said the highly anticipated meeting, which is also expected to cover differences over North Korea and China’s strategic ambitions in the South China Sea, “will be a very difficult one.” Ahead of the meeting, Trump signed executive orders on Friday aimed at identifying abuses that are causing massive U.S. trade deficits and clamping down on non-payment of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports, his top trade officials said. Separately, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, which is controlled by the White House, said Beijing’s industrial policies and financial support for industries such as steel and aluminum have resulted in over-production and a flood of exports that have distorted global markets and undermined competitive companies. Seeking to downplay the rift, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated a desire for cooperation on trade. “With regard to the problems existing between China and the United States in trade relations, both sides should in a mutual respectful and mutual beneficial way find appropriate resolutions, and ensure the stable development of Sino-U.S. trade relations,” he told a daily news briefing. The leaders of the world’s two largest economies are scheduled to meet next Thursday and Friday for the first time since Trump assumed office on Jan. 20. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the United States has “serious concerns” on the U.S. trade relationship with China. “This isn’t a sit around and play patty-cake kind of conversation,” he told reporters. “They’re big issues.” Trump “wants to have a very good and respectful and healthy relationship, but he also wants to make sure that he tackles the challenges and the problems that are facing American workers,” Spicer said. Speaking earlier at a briefing on the Xi-Trump meeting, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang acknowledged the trade imbalance, but said it was mostly due to differences in their two economic structures and noted that China had a trade deficit in services. “China does not deliberately seek a trade surplus. We also have no intention of carrying out competitive currency devaluation to stimulate exports. This is not our policy,” Zheng said. State news agency Xinhua also struck a conciliatory tone. “Of course, it would be naive to believe that the two sides can bridge their differences in a single diplomatic meeting,” it said in an English language commentary on Friday. “Yet as long as the two nations can maintain their good faith, which they have shown recently, to talk and to make concessions based on mutual respect, then no difference would be too difficult to iron out.” Trump has frequently accused China of keeping its yuan currency artificially low against the dollar to make Chinese exports cheaper, and “stealing” American manufacturing jobs. The yuan fell 6.5 percent last year in its biggest annual loss against the dollar since 1994, knocked by pressure from sluggish economic growth and a broadly strong U.S. currency. Trump has resisted acting on a campaign promise to declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office, but tensions have persisted over how his administration’s China policy would evolve. While apprehensive about a trade war, the American business community in China has grown more vocal. Fear of retaliation had once made business lobbies eschew more forceful U.S. trade policies toward China, but such groups have increasingly urged the Trump administration to take targeted action to address market access imbalances. Zheng said domestic consumption in China will increase as it pursues economic reforms, helping to raise demand for foreign goods and services, including those from the United States. “This also helps ameliorate the trade imbalance between China and the United States,” he said. The trade imbalance could be resolved by improved cooperation, Zheng said, urging Washington to lift restrictions on civilian technology exports to China and create better conditions for Chinese investment in the United States. The USTR report, however, accused China of using a range of measures to engineer the transfer of foreign technology to local firms. It said these include denying financial or regulatory approvals to companies using foreign-owned intellectual property or that do not conduct research or make products in China. The report also brought up longstanding complaints about online piracy of movies, books, music, video games and software in China as well as a ban on U.S. beef that has been in place since 2003. | 0fake |
Kerry: World leaders take step to end Syria war and spreading terror concerns, but disagreements persist | Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday that world leaders have made progress toward ending the civil war in Syria, where the chaos has allowed the Islamic State, the terror group responsible for the Paris terror attacks, to flourish.
Kerry and the other world leaders in Vienna agreed on a timeline for a political transition in Syria that is aimed at ending the country's civil war. However, key details, including the status of Syrian President Bashar Assad and a determination of which opposition groups are terrorists, remain unresolved.
“We do not agree on all of the issues,” Kerry said. “But we do agree on this: It’s time for the bleeding to stop. … It’s time not to allow terrorists a single kilometer.”
The United States has tried for years to end the Assad regime, which has been accused of using chemical weapons on civilians and other crimes against humanity, while Russia has support Assad. Moscow in recent weeks has openly launched air strikes against government-opposition forces in Syria.
Kerry announced agreement on a Jan. 1 date for the start of talks between Assad's government and the opposition. The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is to begin immediate work on determining who should sit at the table.
Within six months, the negotiations between the Syrian sides are to establish "credible, inclusive and nonsectarian" transitional government that would set a schedule for drafting a new constitution, according to a joint statement released by the United Nations on behalf of the 19 parties to the talks.
A free and fair U.N.-supervised election would then be held within 18 months, according to the statement.
The diplomats agreed on a means to enforce a cease-fire but failed to agree on which groups other than the Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates would not be eligible for the truce. Under those terms, the sponsors of each group covered by the cease-fire would be responsible for making sure that group upholds it.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Jordan would oversee a process that would identify which groups should be considered for identification as terrorists. That process is to be completed by the time the political process between the government and opposition begins in January.
Kerry acknowledged that participants also failed to agree on Assad's role in the transition or his potential future role in the country's government. The United States and its allies have said the war cannot end while Assad is in power but Russia and Iran have insisted that Syrians must decide their own leadership.
The participants also agreed to meet before the end of the year in Paris to go over progress made toward the cease-fire and the selection of delegations for the political talks.
Saturday's meeting was overshadowed by the terrorist shootings and bombings in Paris that killed more than 120 people, and Syria as a breeding ground for terrorism moved to the foreground of the talks as participants linked the shooting and bombing attacks in Paris to Mideast turmoil and the opportunities it gives for terror.
Kerry and Lavrov both condemned the attacks as they began meetings with senior representatives from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries with strongly conflicting views on how to end the more than four-year war.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged ministers "to move beyond their differences on Syria" and work on a negotiated end to the war.
More than 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian war. Eleven million have been uprooted from their homes. The conflict has allowed Islamic State militants to carve out significant parts of Syria and Iraq for their would-be caliphate. Europe and Syria's neighbors, meanwhile, are struggling to cope with the worst migrant crisis since World War II.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0fake |
The Future of Privacy - The New York Times | This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. Turning Point: Apple resists the F. B. I. in unlocking an iPhone in the San Bernardino terrorism case. I’ve never been able to fit the concepts of privacy, history and encryption together in a satisfying way, though it continues to seem that I should. Each concept has to do with information each can be considered to concern the public and the private and each involves aspects of society, and perhaps particularly digital society. But experience has taught me that all I can hope to do with these three concepts is demonstrate the problems that considering them together causes. Privacy confuses me, beyond my simplest understanding, which is that individuals prefer, to different degrees, that information about them not be freely available to others. I desire privacy myself, and I understand why other individuals want it. But when the entity desiring privacy is a state, a corporation or some other human institution, my understanding of privacy becomes confused. While it’s true that states and corporations often desire privacy, they just as often desire that I myself have less privacy. What does it mean, in an ostensible democracy, for the state to keep secrets from its citizens? The idea of the secret state seems antithetical to democracy, since its citizens, the voters, can’t know what their government is doing. Thereby hang the countless conspiracy theories of our day, many of them supposing that we possess far less privacy than we actually do. Advocates of the secret state, wishing to comfort us, sometimes praise a rough and ready transparency: If you have nothing to hide and you trust your government, what can you possibly have to fear? Except that one can just as readily ask: If you have nothing to hide, what do you really have, aside from the panoptic attention of a state, which itself keeps secrets? Even this simple consideration of privacy confuses me. Is individual privacy and state privacy the same thing? Are they conceptually antithetical? Is it to a state’s advantage to permit its citizens to keep secrets? States desirous of citizens’ secrets have been known to torture their own people in the course of encouraging them to reveal what they know. We know this historically, and we know it still to be true, though whether we’ve personally been affected by it largely depends on where we happen to live. I have ideas about history, more than I have about privacy, and it is here that my confusion deepens exponentially. I believe that our ability to create history, to transcend generations via our extraordinary prosthetic equivalents of memory, is the most remarkable thing about us. Unless we’ve forgotten something, lost it to history, we’ve yet to encounter another species capable of the same thing. Should the F. B. I. or other agencies be able to unlock the iPhones of terrorists? To be able to do so makes them able to unlock yours or mine. Should I be able to encrypt documents in such a way that the F. B. I. can’t decrypt them? If I can, terrorists can as well. (Not that I necessarily accept terrorism as the ultimate fulcrum in such arguments, but it’s become the one most often employed.) In the short term, the span of a lifetime, many of us would argue for privacy, and therefore against transparency. But history, the long term, is transparency it is the absence of secrets. So we are quite merciless, as historians, when it comes to the secrets of the past, the secrets of the dead. We come to know them with an intimacy impossible in their day. It would be unthinkable for us to turn away from their secrets, to allow the Iceman his privacy or to not scan beneath the bitumen to recover an Egyptian priestess’s tattoos. And here, to complete my tangle of confusion, is encryption, no doubt aggravated by my inability to understand the concept mathematically. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that the future is all too liable to have its way with today’s most sophisticated encryption technology. I imagine that the world’s secrets — those of both private citizens and state institutions — will one day sit in plain sight on whatever it is that our descendants display data on. Privy to that information while looking back at us, our ancestors will know us differently than we currently know ourselves, just as we now know the Victorians quite differently from how they knew themselves. The past, our own past, which our descendants will see us as having emerged from, will not be the past from which we now see ourselves emerging, but a reinterpretation of it, based on subsequently available information, greater transparency and fewer secrets. If our continually lengthening, ever more transparent history is the sum total of who we are as a species, then our species is the poorer for every secret faithfully kept. Any permanently unbreakable encryption seems counter to that. And yet I would prefer to keep certain secrets of my own, as I assume most of us would. So perhaps that desire is as much a part of us, as a species, as our need to build these memory palaces. | 0fake |
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