title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
EP #17: Patrick Henningsen LIVE – ‘Parallax Politics in DC’ with guest Daniel Faraci | Join Patrick every Wednesday at Independent Talk 1100 KFNX and globally at Alternate Current Radio for the very best in news, views and analysis on all top stories domestically and abroad THIS WEEK: Episode #17 This week we cover MSNBC and Rachel Maddow s epic Geraldo Moment, along with more palace intrigue in Washington, as the House prepares for its much anticipated Russian Hearings starting next week. What does this mean for America s new President? We ll find out Tonight, host Patrick Henningsen is joined by political and international affairs analyst, Daniel Faraci, Director of Grassroots Political Consulting based in Washington DC, to discuss the latest issues, obstacles and political power struggles embroiling the Trump White House, as well as some potentially major foreign policy rifts emerging as a result of additional US troops deployed inside of Syria this week, and also serious problems facing Saudi Arabia over their military operations in Yemen.Tonight we ll talk about what this means going forward in 2017. Listen Listen to EP 17: Patrick Henningsen LIVE With Daniel Faraci on Spreaker.This program broadcasts LIVE every Wednesday night from 9pm to 10pm MST, post-drive time and after the Savage Nation, on Independent Talk 1100 KFNX over the terrestrial AM band across the greater Phoenix and central Arizona region, and live over global satellite and online via www.1100kfnx.com.LISTEN TO MORE INTERVIEWS AT PATRICK HENNINGSEN LIVE SHOW ARCHIVESREAD MORE TRUMP NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Trump FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
House Speaker Ryan calls for less violence on presidential campaign trail | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday condemned efforts to disrupt political rallies, but said all presidential candidates must bear responsibility to help curb violence at campaign events and create a less hostile atmosphere. “All candidates have an obligation to do what they can do ...provide an atmosphere of harmony, to reduce violence, to not incite violence,” Ryan told reporters, speaking after a string of chaotic events that have been most notable at campaign rallies for front-runner Donald Trump. Separately, Ryan said he has spoken with Trump and the three other Republicans vying for the party’s nomination and received a good reception for the House’s planned agenda. He still plans to support the eventual Republican candidate in the November presidential election, he added. | 0fake |
India PM Modi's party seen sweeping state polls in popularity boost | NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi s ruling group will sweep an election in his home state of Gujarat, surveys showed on Thursday, shaking off the most serious challenge yet from a combined opposition. The election for a new state assembly in Gujarat is seen as a litmus test for Modi ahead of a national election in 2019. Voting closed on Thursday. A win would help him dismiss critics who said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party s support base was eroding after last year s shock move to ban high-value currency notes in the fight against graft, and poor implementation of a national sales tax this year hit businesses. The Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi and teaming up with regional politicians has run a tough campaign aiming to weaken Modi in his home base and rouse public discontent over lack of jobs and a softening economy. But three separate television exit polls at the close of the final round of voting on Thursday showed the BJP winning more than 100 seats in the 182-member state house, well clear of the half-way mark of 92 required to rule. Congress, the main opposition party, will win 70-74 seats, the polls showed, better than in the past but not enough to oust the BJP from power. Another exit poll, conducted by a Today s Chanakya group, gave the BJP a two-thirds victory. The actual votes will be counted on Monday and exit polls and other surveys have often gone wrong in India, where millions vote. The Congress party said it was too quick to call the election based on exit polls. The BJP has ruled Gujarat since 1998, with Modi as its chief minister for more than a decade before he became prime minister three years ago. Modi has won praise for transforming the coastal state into an economic powerhouse and deploying business-friendly policies to lure foreign investors. To ensure his party s prospects, Modi led from the front to campaign in the state and addressed dozens of public rallies, performed rituals and even waved from a sea plane on the last day of his campaign trail. On Thursday, Modi cast his ballot in Gujarat s Ahmedabad city and then hit the streets again, showing off his inked finger as he walked, surrounded by hundreds of supporters. In separate exit surveys released for state polls held in Himachal Pradesh state also showed Modi s party emerging as a winner. | 0fake |
UK not prepared to pay for EU single market access during transition: government source | FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - Britain is not prepared to pay for access to the European Union s single market during a post-Brexit transition period, a UK government source said on Friday. During a speech in Florence Prime Minister Theresa May called for Britain to stay in the single market under its current terms during a roughly two-year transition period. Following the speech, a government source said Britain was categorically not prepared to pay for single market access, and that a commitment to honor Britain s obligations referred only to specific programs during the transition period. | 0fake |
U.S. Virgin Islands seaports closed ahead of Irma - port authority | HOUSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Virgin Islands seaports were closed to commercial traffic by the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday morning until further notice ahead of Hurricane Irma, the port authority said on its twitter account. | 0fake |
Merkel says three-way coalition can work, Greens skeptical | BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed confidence on Friday that her conservatives can reach a coalition deal with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), but her would-be partners say the talks could still fail. After bleeding support to the far right in last month s election, and with her former coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), determined to go into opposition, Merkel must bring together three disparate blocs to secure a majority. Party leaders are slated to meet on Monday evening before the larger negotiating teams launch into more detailed talks. Difficult deliberations lie ahead of us in the coming days, Merkel told reporters on arrival for a fresh round of exploratory talks. But I still think we can tie the ends together if we try and work hard. Failure to forge a coalition would likely result in a new election that could see more gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which surged into parliament last month. SPD leader Martin Schulz ruled out any prospect of resuming the outgoing grand coalition if Merkel failed to reach agreement with the Greens and FDP. If Mrs. Merkel can t put a government together, there must be new elections, he said in an interview to be published Saturday by the RND newspaper chain. Marco Buschmann, head of the FDP parliamentary group and a member of the party s negotiating team, told Saturday editions of Die Welt newspaper that his party was ready to move into opposition if the coalition talks failed. A new election could strengthen the far-right Alternative for Germany that entered parliament with 13 percent of the vote, but voters might not turn to the AfD as a protest vote if the differences among the other parties were more clear, he added. The would-be allies agreed during Friday s talks on the need to relieve the financial burden on families, increase child care options and combat child poverty, negotiators said. They also agreed to support Germany s role in NATO and other multilateral organizations, to strengthen cooperation with France and to maintain good relations with Russia. But they remain at odds about immigration caps, whether to end coal production, how to combat climate change and increasing defense spending, among other issues. And the divisive issue of transport was not discussed at all on Friday. Negotiators agreed to be nicer to each other , FDP deputy leader Wolfgang Kubicki told reporters, adding: I m willing to try, but everyone has to play along. The parties will now spend the weekend distilling their priorities before Merkel meets the other party leaders on Monday. We have all the many ingredients on the table. Now we have to combine them all into a tasty dough, said Michael Kellner, a top Greens negotiator. Fellow Greens negotiator Juergen Trittin struck a less conciliatory tone, telling ARD television that, after 10 days of debate on 12 topics, the parties still haven t even managed to agree on what we disagree about . FDP leader Christian Lindner and Buschmann put the odds of a coalition being formed at 50-50. Greens foreign policy expert Omid Nouripour said the talks might fail altogether. Merkel has said she expects a stable government before Christmas, but senior conservatives close to her say it may take until next year for a new government to be formed. Horst Seehofer, embattled head of the CSU, sister party to Merkel s CDU, said he was encouraged by very constructive, trustworthy discussions among party leaders in recent days. He urged negotiators to stop airing their conflicts in public. We can hit the reset button and hope that things change in the next few days, he said. Seehofer came under fire from his party s youth wing for cancelling a speech to the group, which has called for a more youthful image ahead of Bavarian regional elections next year. Hans Reichhart, head of the CSU youth group, suggested the move could exacerbate debate about Seehofer s future after sharp losses in the Sept. 24 election. Seehofer had urged party members to put off debating the leadership until later this month, arguing that it could weaken his negotiating position in the coalition talks. | 0fake |
Obama Attacks FBI Chief for Investigating Hillary | Obama Attacks FBI Chief for Investigating Hillary November 2, 2016 Daniel Greenfield
Richard Nixon called. He wants his old job back. There hasn't been a president and a party who were this blatantly corrupt ever. There's no question that Obama has made history. It's just the wrong kind of history.
Initially the White House chose not to join Hillary's war on the FBI. Then Obama threw all caution to the winds and decided to echo the spin chamber's lines about "innuendo" and "incomplete information". Never mind that it was Obama's own DOJ which was blocking FBI efforts to secure the emails and resolve the issue.
It's a sad day in America when the White House actively seeks to obstruct and intimidate an FBI investigation and when the media cheers on this brand of corrupt thuggery. | 1real |
The Children Of Christian Fundamentalists Are Dying Because Their Parents Think Only God Can Cure Their Illnesses (VIDEO) | Christian Fundamentalism is putting American children in danger, as ever greater numbers of parents are refusing to seek medical treatment for their children, believing only in the power of prayer.The most high profile case in recent times was that of Herbert and Catherine Schaible. The Pennsylvanian were jailed in 2014 for allowing their 8-month-old son Brandon to die a slow and painful death from diarrhea, rather than seek medical attention. They argued their religious beliefs stipulate that illness is a sign of spiritual lack , and only prayer can cure it.The father, Herbert Schaible, defending their decision, said: We believe in divine healing, the Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil s power, What makes the case all the more shocking, is that the couple were already on probation for the involuntary manslaughter of another child. Their two-year-old child died of pneumonia in 2009 after they refused to seek medical help.The couple were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the 2009 death, and sentenced to 10 years probation. A condition of their probation was that they sought medical attention if any of their surviving children became sick. Yet, within that probationary period, the couple allowed another child to die from a treatable illness. This time, their eight-month-old son Brandon.Addressing the couple of court, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said: You ve killed two of your children not God, not your church, not religious devotion you. The couple has seven further surviving children.The Schaibles are part of a small Pentecostal community which, similar to the Quiverfull Christian Conservative approach to family planning leaves the treatment of illness in what they believe to be God s hands.In 2015, 18-month-old Hope Delozier died of a treatable ear infection because her parents were against antibiotics and other chemicals associated with modern medicine. A further 12 child deaths have been linked to the Pentecostal church, just in Idaho alone.Yet Idaho, and 31 other states, have built-in legal protections for parents who allow their children to die this way. These states have religious exemptions to felony or misdemeanor charges involving children.The Schaibles and their peers seek to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions by hiding behind this bogus freedom of religion argument. Which is why we need to strike down these exemptions to support a common principle:No one s freedom of religion should be honored to the extent that a helpless and vulnerable child is left to die of neglect. Let alone two.Yet Republicans lawmakers are failing to back the repeal of these exemptions, with arguments epitomized by Idaho State Rep. Christy Perry, who said: This is about religious beliefs, the belief God is in charge of whether they live, and God is in charge of whether they die, This is about where they go for eternity. This has nothing to do with freedom of religion. When people become parents, they accept the responsibility to ensure the health and safety of that child through to adulthood. The Schaibles and those who think like them, choose to put their personal interpretation of their faith above their duty of care as parents. In doing so, they are turning their own children into human sacrifices. That has no place this century, let alone this country. Featured Image via Flickr Creative Commons | 1real |
LEFTIST ACTRESS ALYSSA MILANO Gets BLASTED On Twitter For Calling President Trump’s “National Prayer Day” For TX Hurricane Victims: “National A**hole Day” | Last week, President Trump announced that by Presidential proclamation, Sunday, September 3, would be known as a National Day of Prayer for the Texas victims of Hurricane Harvey. He asked all Americans to pray for the victims who, in many cases, lost everything. It was a beautiful gesture that was met with positivity by many Americans of faith.Here is President Trump s tweet asking people to pray for the victims, reminding them: Remember, Sunday is National Prayer Day (by Presidential Proclamation)! Remember, Sunday is National Prayer Day (by Presidential Proclamation)! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017Of course, even asking Americans to pray for their fellow Americans who are suffering was more than at least one Hollywood liberal could bear. Has been actress turned leftist activist, Alyssa Milano, whose short stint at fame took place much earlier in her career when she had starring roles in Who s the Boss?, Melrose Place and Charmed took to Twitter to rename President Trump s National Day of Prayer by telling her followers: Remember, Sunday is National Asshole Day (by Presidential Proclamation)!Remember, Sunday is National Asshole Day (by Presidential Proclamation)! https://t.co/1DlYAJiEAa Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) September 4, 2017Milano was immediately rebuffed on Twitter by people who were disgusted by her tweet:What's wrong with prayer? No matter who suggested it! TabzKatz (@KatzTabz) September 4, 2017National Day of Prayer was about praying for ppl hurting from hurricane Harvey. Shame on you for making it about your hatred for Trump! WellBlessYourHeart (@kc2775) September 5, 2017This Twitter user told Milano that her tweet was the ugliest tweet ever posted on Twitter. She went on to tell Milano that, You have lost yourself & your moral compass due to your hateful heart. This is the ugliest tweet ever posted on Twitter. Just absolutely foul. You have lost yourself & moral compass due to your hateful heart. CovfefeNanceBased (@NancyLCouch1) September 5, 2017There is no more room in the world for hate or HYPOCRICY Love is love And prayers & religion isn't a bad thing Its people who manipulate it TeamZayn (@ZLNLH0009) September 5, 2017This Twitter user used an image to let Milano know what they think of opinions by celebrities. pic.twitter.com/jgdtGLQpRw Deplorable KVT (@sgtkvt) September 5, 2017This Twitter user reminded the broke actress that maybe she should stop worrying about President Trump and pay her taxes:Way to keep killing your career. You think you are broke now ..https://t.co/l68c3q30CX Long little doggie (@54Doggie) September 5, 2017 | 1real |
The Daily 202: Ted Cruz might be the last, best hope for conservatives to stop Donald Trump after Super Tuesday | The Texas senator has suffered through a string of rough news cycles, from losing evangelicals to Donald Trump in South Carolina to firing his communications director and finishing behind Marco Rubio in Nevada.
[Get more must-read campaign news and analysis delivered directly to your email inbox with The Daily 202]
But Cruz finally caught a few big breaks last night, and he could now emerge (once again) as the best bet to stop Trump. He won his home state of Texas by 17 points (the day’s biggest delegate prize), the neighboring state of Oklahoma (in a surprise) and the caucuses in Alaska (underscoring his appeal to libertarians and in spite of Sarah Palin’s support for Trump). He lost Arkansas to Trump by just 2 points.
-- Rubio, meanwhile, had a very disappointing night and continues to not live up to his potential. He won only the Minnesota caucuses and wound up losing Virginia, which was fertile territory and where he campaigned hard.
Besides the obvious reality check that the Florida senator has won just one of the first 15 states (that’s a 1-14 record in football terms), he finished third yesterday behind Cruz in several states where he ought to have finished second, including Tennessee (where he had the backing of Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Lamar Alexander) and Massachusetts. Top Rubio campaign officials told donors before results came in yesterday that they might win outright in Arkansas and Oklahoma. He finished third in both of those places too.
Despite campaigning hard in Alabama over the weekend, Rubio only pulled in 18.7 percent. And he got a point less than that in Texas, where he campaigned and his team expected to do better. This means he fell beneath the 20 percent threshold to collect any delegates from those states. And it bears noting that, in several states, Democrats voted for Rubio to try embarrassing Trump.
-- Cruz today has far more delegates than Rubio, and he doesn’t have Gang of Eight baggage. He has well-funded super PACs. He’s invested in building organizations for the upcoming caucus states and to collect delegates from places like Guam and the Virgin Islands.
-- To be clear: On the day with the most delegates at stake, Trump won seven of 11 states. He romped in the Deep South while proving again that he’s not a regional candidate. His strongest performance actually came in Massachusetts, where he took 49 percent of the vote.
The Post’s Dan Balz declares that the window for stopping Trump has now "closed almost completely." He explains that the demoralized anti-Trump forces are very unlikely to agree upon a strategy to stop the New York billionaire. “There’s this fallacy that some small group can get together and decide the outcome of this,” former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt told him. “That does not exist.”
That stipulated, Balz argues, “Cruz can now claim, with more credibility, the mantle of the true conservative in a conservative party against a front-runner with no clear ideology and views at odds with GOP orthodoxy.” Whether that’s enough to win in Northern states is an open question.
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza also declares Cruz a winner and Rubio a loser of the night: “Suddenly Cruz looks like the favorite to be the alternative to Trump. Plus, the votes between Tuesday and the March 15 primaries -- Louisiana, Kansas, etc. -- look like potential Cruz wins."
The establishment loathes Cruz, but they may reconsider if faced with a binary choice between Trump and Cruz. "Cruz is not my favorite by any means … but we may be in a position where we have to rally around Cruz as the only way to stop Trump. I’m not so sure that would work," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on CBS. Asked if he would recommend rallying behind Cruz to stop Trump, Graham said yes. "I can't believe I would say yes, but yes," he said.
-- By all accounts, the GOP field will stay scattered (which works to Trump’s advantage).
Kasich came within three points of winning Vermont. “We have absolutely exceeded expectations,” he said, promising to fight on in Michigan and Ohio.
Rubio, in Miami, claimed a late surge and predicted he’ll win Florida on March 15. His home state is winner take all. If he loses there, he’s done. Polls show him trailing, and it’s not a sure thing he can pull it out:
Ben Carson said he’s not ready to quit “quite yet,” which means he’ll continue to dilute the anti-Trump evangelical vote.
As Cruz himself correctly pointed out during his speech in Houston, “So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely.”
-- As of today, the Republican National Convention in Cleveland seems like the only place Trump can still be stopped:
-- Importantly, though, Cruz’s success is showing palpable signs of galvanizing not just his supporters, some of whom were thinking about jumping ship if he had a bad night, but other movement conservatives:
David Bossie, the president of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, told David Weigel that it is now time for Rubio to end his campaign and let Cruz take Trump on.
Erick Erickson (formerly of RedState, now at The Resurgent): “It is time for Rubio, behind by double digits in his home state … to accept he will not be the nominee. It is time for Cruz to accept we need a unity ticket and for Rubio to agree to be Cruz’s Vice Presidential pick, uniting the outsider and insider factions of the party and stopping Trump in the process. The non-Trump faction has the delegates to stop Trump. But now there must be unity.”
Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz: “Cruz is the only one who can win back enough of the conservative voters Trump is winning … Rubio lacks the ability to make inroads to those voters, and many of Cruz’s voters would go to Trump instead of Rubio were Cruz to drop out. [The Florida senator] dominated the media coverage and endorsements for the entire week, yet he failed…”
Bill Kristol, the executive editor of the Weekly Standard, was a little more sanguine. “Cruz and Rubio together have won more votes and more delegates than Trump so far," he said. "So they just have to combine. Simple. Cruz-Rubio 2016.”
For Democrats, the political revolution is not to be—
Hillary Clinton accelerated her march to the Democratic nomination. She swept the South, with the exception of Oklahoma (which has few delegates). After getting whooped in New Hampshire, she showed she can win in New England by carrying Massachusetts. It was the closest contest of the night on the Democratic side (she prevailed by a point), but a win is a win.
Bernie Sanders did not make the inroads he needed to among minority voters. None of the states with large African American and Latino populations were even close. HRC extinguished the Bern in Alabama (78-19), Arkansas (66-30), Georgia (71-28), Tennessee (66-32), Texas (65-33) and Virginia (64-35).
But, but, but: By winning four states, Sanders got a rationale to carry on. He prevailed in the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses, demonstrating that he can continue forcing Clinton to spend money and tack leftward. Speaking in his home state of Vermont, which he won handily, he pledged to stay in until all 50 states have voted. Delegates are awarded proportionally, so Sanders will still get some from the states where he got blown out. The Sanders campaign invited reporters to a “path forward” breakfast later this morning, where they’ll outline a theory of the case. By Saturday, the senator will campaign in Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Ohio. And he’ll have the money to stay in as long as he wants: he raised $42 million in February, including $6 million on Monday alone.
Still, all the pundits are calling the race for Clinton. “The Sanders challenge was doomed by a fatal flaw: Democrats aren’t as unhappy as he needed them to be,” Dana Milbank writes. While 89 percent of Republicans think we’re on the wrong track, only 34 percent of Democrats do.
Our exit poll in Virginia found that six in 10 Democratic voters wanted to continue Obama’s policies. Clinton won those voters by about 60 points, while Sanders held a 2-to-1 lead among those who wanted more liberal policies. “Experience” was the most desired quality. About a third of voters picked it as the most important attribute in choosing who to vote for, and Hillary won nine in 10 of them.
-- Every Republican incumbent with a primary challenge survived: Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby avoided a runoff by pulling 65 percent of the vote. So did GOP incumbent Reps. Martha Roby and Bradley Byrne, The Birmingham News reports. And, in Texas, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady and Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions each easily won. (Kelsey Snell)
-- Rubio’s suburban strategy did pay some dividends. He came within 3 points of winning Virginia because of his strength in the suburbs outside D.C. and Richmond. “But Trump overwhelmed his competitors in more rural areas, including the Shenandoah Valley to the west and the Tidewater region in the south, and drew enough votes in the suburbs to emerge victorious,” Paul Schwartzman explains. “Trump was able to hold off Rubio in part because Kasich also took votes in Northern Virginia, including 16 percent in Fairfax City and 12 percent in Falls Church.”
From our Virginia exit poll: 55 percent of Republican voters said they would be dissatisfied with Trump becoming the party’s nominee. Those who made up their minds in the past week broke for Rubio over Trump (39-19). Trump won men by 10 points but lost women to Rubio by five points. Trump won voters who have no more than a high school diploma by 29 points. Rubio won Republicans with college degrees.
-- Ken Cuccinelli has relatively little juice in his home state: The former Virginia Attorney General, who nearly won the governorship in 2013, went all in for Cruz. He even showed up at a Rubio event on Sunday to criticize him, wandering around the press pen unstaffed. In the end, Cruz got just 17 percent. He even finished third among evangelicals (Trump got 37 percent to Rubio’s 28 percent and Cruz’s 19 percent.)
-- More record turnout numbers for Republicans: Four times as many voted in Virginia as in 2012 and more than twice as many as voted in 2008.
-- Trump tried to act like the presumptive nominee during a half-hour press conference: He painted Clinton as a D.C. insider and called himself a common-sense conservative. “I am a unifier,” he said. “When we unify, there’s nobody, nobody that’s going to beat us.”
But, in Trump’s always unorthodox fashion, the first-time candidate declared victory on his own terms. “There was no watch party with supporters,” Jenna Johnson notes. “No packed suburban hotel ballroom lined with televisions blaring results and commentary. No open bar, passed appetizers or themed drinks. No lengthy victory speech with his wife at his side. No balloons.” He still does not have a pollster or a speechwriter.
-- Hillary also focused her victory speech on the general, with an eye on Trump: “America never stopped being great,” she said in Miami. “We have to make America whole; we have to fill in what’s been hollowed out.” She added, “It’s clear tonight that the stakes of this election have never been higher. And the rhetoric we’re hearing on the other side has never been lower.” (In a taste of what the general election could feel like, Trump said during his speech that he thinks “Make America great again” has a much better ring to it than “Make America whole again.”)
THE MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT OF LAST NIGHT
Chris Christie's pained expression as Trump spoke totally dominated the online conversation. "Christie spent the entire speech screaming wordlessly," Alexandra Petri writes. "I have never seen someone scream so loudly without using his mouth before. It would have been remarkable if it had not been so terrifying. ... It was not a thousand-yard stare. That would understate the vast and impenetrable distance it encompassed. He looked as if he had seen a ghost and the ghost had made him watch Mufasa die again. He had the eyes of a man who has looked into the heart of light, the silence. A man who had seen the moment of his greatness flicker, and seen the eternal footman hold his coat, and snicker. In short, he looked afraid."
Here's some reaction to a moment that will fuel the New Jersey governor's fall from grace with conservatives just as much as hugging Obama after Superstorm Sandy did:
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
Correction: this list has been updated to include a corrected version of item 14. The previous version said that Israeli troops were carrying out attacks in Palestianian areas using the Google-owned Waze app.
MORE ON THE REPUBLICAN RACE:
Trump was dealt a blow by the New York Supreme Court, which ruled that the $40 million fraud suit against Trump University could move forward, putting the case one step closer to a nasty public trial. (Emma Brown)
Former Jeb Bush communications director Tim Miller joined the anti-Trump super PAC Our Principles. (The Hill)
Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), a retiring moderate whose district was decisively won by Trump, posted an open letter on a Virginia conservative blog yesterday promising not to vote for Trump. “My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party,” Rigell wrote, “and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nation’s commander-in-chief.”
Quote du jour, from historian Jon Meacham to Joe Scarborough (who has just signed on as a WaPo contributor): “Trump has managed to hijack an entire political party, and the pilots are asking why no one is on their side. The passengers are cheering for the guy who took over the plane.”
Tom DeLay said Trump would “tear the Republican party apart” and he would not back him should he win the nomination. “I think he’s very dangerous for the country, for the party,” said the former House Majority leader. Maybe The Hammer is not the most credible messenger?
Paul Ryan denounced Trump over David Duke, saying the GOP nominee must reject “any group or cause built on bigotry.” He did not, however, walk back his earlier promise to support the front-runner should he become the nominee. (Paul Kane)
…Trump, meanwhile, had an ultimatum of his own for the Speaker: “I’m going to get along with Paul Ryan,” said Trump. “And if I don’t, he’s going to have to pay a big price.”
A group of African American students escorted from a Trump rally in Georgia said they were “outraged” and claim, backed up by several witnesses, they were kicked out for no reason. (Lindsey Bever)
A state judge ruled Cruz can remain on the Illinois primary ballot, throwing out a complaint saying the senator’s Canadian birth disqualifies him from being president. Similar legal challenges have since been filed in Alabama, Texas and New York. (USA Today)
Kasich told Fox Business news there is “zero chance” he’ll consider being someone’s vice president.
Rand Paul said he will skip CPAC this year, focusing instead on upcoming caucuses in Kentucky. (David Weigel)
Bernie is on the cover of DOPE magazine (here's the story):
Meet the Press made a mistake with this one:
Ben Carson called for the candidates to meet and discuss the tone of the race:
Scott Walker started a weird meme, especially in the wake of Rubio mocking Trump for having small hands.
DPCC chair Steve Israel slammed nine House Republicans for voting against naming a post office after Maya Angelou:
Here are statements from two of the Republicans:
President Obama is excited to attend a baseball game in Cuba:
Finally, a throwback photo of Kasich's first visit to the Oval Office -- when he was a freshman at The Ohio State University:
GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE -- How last night's results are playing in the Super Tuesday states:
Boston Globe: “Voters across Massachusetts had turned out in high numbers, fueled perhaps by the unpredictable natures of the races in both parties … Clinton staved off an insurgent bid by Sanders. Among Democrats, however, Sanders’s progress here, from a distant second to Clinton last fall to Tuesday’s finish, was eyed as a key metric of his campaign’s durability.”
Montpelier Times-Argus: “Sanders swarmed Clinton in Vermont as voters ignored national trends … demolishing Clinton in just about every voting category. Experience didn’t help Clinton as much as an advantage on honesty helped Sanders.”
The Baxter (Ark.) Bulletin: “Early voter turnout doubled that of the 2012 election [as] Clinton defeated Sanders in the state where she served 12 years as first lady … Democratic Party Chairman Vince Insalaco said Arkansas could be winnable for Democrats if Clinton faces Trump in the general election, though Arkansas hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since 1996.”
Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News: “Trump and Clinton steamrolled to wins in Alabama as GOP voters lashed out at Washington insiders and Clinton capitalized on her support among African-American voters. Eight in 10 Alabama voters who said they want a candidate who ‘tells it like it is’ picked Trump … and Clinton won the support of 9 in 10 African-American voters.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Trump’s march toward the Republican nomination did not slow as it came through Virginia as rural voters propelled the business mogul to a victory … Virginia’s status as a centrist bellwether led many to believe it offered the best chance for the Republican establishment to lift Rubio to his first win. … Trump won military-rich Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton, Chesapeake and Newport News … He was particularly dominant with Southwest and Southside Virginia.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Sanders and Rubio won Minnesota's caucuses, as voters handed both a badly needed boost as they try to hold off the surging campaigns of Clinton and Trump.”
Denver Post: “Sanders surged to victory in the Colorado caucus, giving him some breathing room to continue his battle with Clinton.”
The Tennesseean: “With nearly all precincts reporting, Clinton enjoyed a more than 2-to-1 advantage over Sanders in the Volunteer State, with the liberal Vermont senator winning as few as three of the state's 95 counties. And Trump finished with 39 percent of the vote … spoiling last minute efforts from the GOP establishment to try and stop his rise. But their help came after a record 254,659 Tennesseans had already voted early in the state’s Republican primary — historic turnout that, following Tuesday’s results, was shown to be driven foremost by Trump.”
Norman Transcript: “Cruz regained some momentum with a victory in Oklahoma, and Sanders earned a sizable advantage over favorite Clinton … This year marked a more than 100 percent voter increase [in Oklahoma]… occurring mostly on the Democratic side.”
Alaska Dispatch News: “Cruz won Alaska’s Republican ‘Super Tuesday’ contest, edging out Trump who came into the contest with the endorsement of former Gov. Sarah Palin … GOP spokeswoman Suzanne Downing said in an email that volunteers manning polling sites were somewhat overwhelmed by the ‘unbelievable’ turnout.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Clinton’s victory in Georgia was another sign she has consolidated support of minority voters, a key constituency in the Democratic base. Support from African-Americans helped power her rout … Trump got the bulk of delegates up for grabs in Georgia, the second-biggest trove of the sweep of states.”
On the campaign trail: Several of the candidates are in Michigan. Here's the rundown:
At the White House: President Obama participates in an ambassador credentialing ceremony. Later, Obama welcomes the Alabama Crimson Tide to the White House to honor their championship title win.
On Capitol Hill: The Senate meets at 9:30 a.m. to work on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. The House meets at noon for legislative business, with first votes on the Ensuring Access to Quality Medicaid Providers Act expected between 1:15 and 2:15 p.m.
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- Remember that nice little break we had from winter weather? Well, the cold is coming back with a vengeance. The Capital Weather Gang: “After the overnight clouds and showers, skies turn partly to mostly sunny today, but gusty winds from the northwest bring in a blustery chill. Temperatures are mainly steady in the upper 30s to mid-40s through the day.”
-- D.C. mayor Muriel E. Bowser said she can no longer support the Pepco-Exelon plan, effectively killing a $6.8 billion merger that would have created the nation’s largest electricity utility. (Aaron C. Davis)
-- Maryland’s House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on a bill that eliminates criminal penalties for seven common narcotics, including cocaine, heroin and LSD. (Josh Hicks)
-- Maryland's Senate gave preliminary approval to a bill that could send adults to jail for letting underage teens drink. (Ovetta Wiggins and Josh Hicks)
-- So terrible: Fairfax county police are looking for a woman who stole a purse containing $10,000 cash – money that was to be used for a daughter’s college tuition. Maria Esteves, a maid who works 6-day weeks to put her children through college, says she hopes the woman will be identified by video footage. (Victoria St. Martin)
Bernie Sanders sang This Land is Your Land:
Here are three things the new Osama bin Laden documents reveal: | 0fake |
President Xi’s Great Chinese Soccer Dream - The New York Times | QINGYUAN, China — The 48 soccer fields of the vast Evergrande Football School in south China seem barely enough for its 2, 800 students. Against a backdrop of school spires that seem modeled on Hogwarts, the young athletes swarm onto the fields nearly every day, kicking, dribbling and passing in the hope of soccer glory and riches. “Soccer will be my career after I grow up,” Wang Kai, a gangly who has studied at the boarding school for over three years, said after a morning session under the supervision of a Spanish coach. “I want to be the Chinese Cristiano Ronaldo,” he said, referring to the Portuguese superstar. Grooming the next Ronaldo or Messi has become a national project in China, where the country’s No. 1 fan, President Xi Jinping, is bent on transforming the country into a great soccer power. It is a moonshot for China, whose teams have ranked poor to middling in recent international competition. But the effort has already unleashed a surge of spending and support for the game that has stunned fans and players around the world. In the last two weeks, the main Chinese league has plucked foreign stars from Europe and South America with contracts reported to be worth as much as $40 million a year, the highest pay for any soccer player in the world. A Chinese club offered the real Ronaldo $105 million a year, but he declined, his agent said last week. These giddying sums are shaking the landscape of pro soccer. Antonio Conte, the manager of England’s fabled Chelsea team, denounced the Chinese spending spree last month as a “danger for all teams in the world. ” The drive to match China’s economic ascent with success on the soccer field has become emblematic of Mr. Xi’s ambition to transform China into a great and confident power. “My biggest hope for Chinese soccer is that its teams become among the world’s best,” he announced in 2015. In the last two years, the government has poured the kind of concentrated effort into soccer that it has previously devoted to winning Olympic medals in individual sports like diving and gymnastics. It has promised to clean up and reorganize professional soccer and build a new generation of players by creating tens of thousands of soccer fields and adding soccer programs in tens of thousands of schools. The aim is to establish a flow of top players eventually capable of winning the coveted men’s World Cup and returning the women’s team to its former glory. That effort has emboldened Chinese clubs to spend lavishly. As well as paying tens of millions for foreign players, Chinese team owners have spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying into European clubs, hoping to tap their coaching and marketing expertise. “Current spending has created massive expectations,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports enterprise at the University of Salford in Britain. “Spending big on players is also about acquiring heroes and icons. ” But if soccer distills Mr. Xi’s national ambitions, it also illustrates how his plans could falter, as they have in other arenas, in a muddle of rushed and distorted enforcement, especially at the local level. There has been resistance by parents, worried about their children taking precious time away from academics, as well as fear that splurging on foreign stars diverts money and attention from fostering homegrown talent. The pitfalls in fixing soccer, it turns out, are a bit like those in fixing the economy a desire for quick, flashy success is putting goals at risk. People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Communist Party, warned last month of a “bubble” of reckless spending in Chinese professional soccer that could burst and badly damage the sport. Too many investors had feverish expectations, while some clubs, officials and schools were only going through the motions of developing young players, the newspaper said. “One of the biggest problems is ” said Cameron Wilson, a Scottish resident of Shanghai who edits Wild East Football, a website that follows the sport in China. “There are these great plans and ideas. But when it gets down to the level in the provinces, it’s like people doing their own thing. ” China’s passionate soccer fans would be thrilled to have competitive national teams instead of the lackluster ones they have now. The national men’s team recently placed 83rd in FIFA rankings, just ahead of the Faroe Islands, a remote outcrop of Denmark with fewer than 50, 000 inhabitants, and it is unlikely to win a spot in the 2018 World Cup. The women’s team — the pride of Chinese soccer in past decades — has stumbled. It was for the Women’s World Cup in 1999 but slipped to 13th in the latest rankings. “The national team is a joke,” said Xu Yun, 16, who had come to Workers’ Stadium in Beijing to watch his favorite Beijing team clobber a listless opponent from Henan Province. “I think it will need decades to get it right. It’s not just a question of spending money, it’s attitude. ” For years, the domestic professional game was riddled with corruption, brazen even by China’s standards. Since revelations grew into a national scandal in 2009, the worst cheating has been cleaned up. “It still exists,” Mr. Wilson said. “Just not so blatantly. ” For Xi, soccer has been a passion since childhood. His trips abroad have included photographs with David Beckham and other soccer celebrities. In Ireland in 2012, he famously had an enthusiastic but seemingly rusty go at kicking a ball. In September, he revisited his old school in Beijing, where he learned to kick and became a fan of the game, according to memoirs of his former teacher. “Look how healthy I am,” Mr. Xi told young soccer players at the school. “I laid the basis for that through sports when I was young. ” Private investors have piled into professional soccer, encouraged by Xi’s backing for the game and apparently eager to curry favor with his government. In the main pro trading season last year, the 16 Chinese Super League teams spent about $300 million hiring away promising foreign players, outstripping player spending by the English Premier League by nearly $120 million, according to FIFA TMS, a player transfer data company. Prices in 2017 are likely to go even higher. But Mr. Xi’s focus is on the long game and the next generation of players. His plan calls for 50, 000 schools to have a strong emphasis on soccer by 2025, a leap from 5, 000 in 2015. The number of soccer fields across the country will grow to over 70, 000 by the end of 2020, from under 11, 000. By then, the plan says, 50 million Chinese, including 30 million students, will regularly play soccer. “Now principals at every school are paying quite a bit more attention to soccer,” said Dai Wei, the athletic director at r. Xi’s old school, the Bayi School. “That was unthinkable before. ” Yet there is deep cultural resistance, even at Bayi. Some parents discourage their children from committing time to sports, Mr. Dai said, because they have so much homework and face stiff competition on academic exams. While China has excelled at individual sports that demand intense discipline from an early age, the country has not done as well at fostering group sports, where skills like teamwork and improvisation count as much as personal virtuosity. The privately run Evergrande school, the world’s biggest soccer boarding school, says its formula of intense training combined with a solid education could show the way for developing young players. “As more soccer schools are built, there’ll be more and more kids playing, and the stars will multiply, too,” said Liu Jiangnan, the principal of the school, which opened in 2012. “I’d guess that in seven or eight years, half the members of the Chinese national squad will come from this school. ” Drawn by such hopes, parents pay up to about $8, 700 a year to send children here, where 24 Spanish coaches oversee training. Students spend 90 minutes a day on drills and also play on weekends. Promising players get scholarships, and children from poorer families get discounts, school officials said. But even here, the children come to the game later than their European and South American counterparts, and they often lack solid grounding in teamwork and tactics, said Sergio Zarco Diaz, a Spanish coach. “The kids are getting better, year by year,” he said hopefully. But the Evergrande approach is too expensive to be widely copied. Some schools, facing a shortage of coaches and space for fields, have devised their own drills, like soccer gymnastics, in which children stand in lines tossing a ball up, down and around. It may impress visiting officials, but it is scant preparation for the free flow of the game, said Zhang Lu, a widely respected soccer commentator. “Chinese soccer has failed before through rushing for instant success,” Mr. Zhang said in an interview in Beijing, recalling previous failed efforts to build up the game in the 1980s and 1990s. “The problem is that everyone’s thinking is still deeply set in traditional ideas. Everyone thinks soccer is just about getting results, competition, training, creating stars. ” Mr. Zhang has instead been encouraging schools to focus on fun and broad participation. That approach gives more children a break from the monotony of the classroom and will eventually bring out more future champions than an elitist, approach, he argues. Some schools are trying his way. On a recent afternoon, the smog that often covers Beijing lifted and the children of Caoqiao Elementary School rushed onto the fields, shouting and squealing with delight. “This morning soccer had been canceled because of the smog,” said the principal, Lin Yanling. “But at midday I notified the kids that it was back on, and they all went crazy with relief. ” | 0fake |
Obama Makes UNPRECEDENTED Move To Protect The World From Trump (DETAILS) | President Barack Obama knows that President-elect Donald Trump doesn t know what the hell he s doing, and is putting more time in on Twitter than actually trying to figure it out and learn the ropes.Obama has not only agreed to hold Trump s little orange hands and remain close to guide him through this transition period, but he s also just made an unprecedented move to save the world from Trump and his deadly administration. On Monday, our beloved Commander-in-chief released a memo that is basically a guidebook on how to use military force for dummies.The document lays out specific details on national security-related topics, such as how and when to use military force. This is a major move by Obama and the first time a President has EVER had to do this to prevent a completely unqualified person from destroying everything. The Washington Post reported: On the eve of a new administration that has promised more aggressive counterterrorism operations, the Obama White House has released a lengthy compendium of its own policies governing the use of force.The 61-page document outlines eight years of the administration s legal opinions, executive orders and military directives. In a strong defense of the administration s actions, it lists rules for lethal drones and terrorist detention, and describes the international and domestic law that undergirds them. In the introduction of the guidebook, Obama said he d created it to reduce the risk of an ill-considered decision an obvious observation of Trump s lack of emotional stability and impulsive, erratic behavior. And then he wrote something that Trump will REALLY hate when he said it was critical to give as much information as possible to the public so that an informed public can scrutinize our actions and hold us to account. Obama is truly amazing for this. It s clear that even though he won t be America s President in a few weeks, he still deeply cares about the future of our country and the world. Even on his way out, he s committed to serving the people and minimizing the damage our moronic President-elect might do. We re really going to miss him.Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images | 1real |
Speculation: Trump Promotes NSA Boss Rogers To DNI Because He Leaked The Clinton Emails | November 19, 2016 Speculation: Trump Promotes NSA Boss Rogers To DNI Because He Leaked The Clinton Emails
If some investigative journos start digging into the issue this story could develop into a really interesting scandal:
Pentagon and intelligence community chiefs have urged Obama to remove the head of the NSA The heads of the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence community have recommended to President Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, be removed.
The recommendation, delivered to the White House last month, was made by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter. ... The news comes as Rogers is being considered by President-Elect Donald Trump to be his nominee for DNI, replacing Clapper as the official who oversees all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Rogers, without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower.
Adm. Michael S. Rogers recently claimed in reference to the hack of the Democratic National Council emails that Wikileaks spreading them is "a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect." He obviously meant Russia.
Compare that with his boss James Clapper who very recently said (again) that the "intelligence agencies don't have good insight on when or how Wikileaks obtained the hacked emails."
Emails of the DNC and of Clinton's consigliere John Podesta were hacked and leaked. Additionally emails from Clinton's private email server were released. All these influenced the election in favor of Trump.
Wikileaks boss Assange says he does not know where the emails come from but he does not think they came from Russia.
Clapper and Carter wanted Rogers fired because he was generally disliked at the NSA, because two big breaches in the most secret Tailored Access Organization occurred on his watch even after the Snowden case and because he blocked, with the help of Senator McCain, plans to split the NSA into a spying and a cyber war unit.
Now let me spin this a bit.
Rogers obviously knew he was on the to-be-fired list and he had good relations with the Republicans.
Now follows speculation:
Some Rogers trusted dudes at the NSA (or in the Navy cyber arm which Rogers earlier led) hack into the DNC, Podesta emails and the Clinton private email server. An easy job with the tools the NSA provides for its spies. Whoever hacked the emails then pushes what they got to Wikileaks (and DCleaks , another "leak" outlet). Wikileaks publishes what it gets because that is what it usually does. Assange also has various reasons to hate Clinton. She was always very hostile to Wikileaks. She allegedly even mused of killing Assange by a drone strike.
Rogers then accuses Russia of the breach even while the rest of the spying community finds no evidence for such a claim. That is natural to do for a military man who grew up during the cold war and may wish that war (and its budgets) back. It is also a red herring that will never be proven wrong or right unless the original culprit is somehow found.
Next we know - Trump offers Rogers the Clapper job. He would replace the boss that wanted him fired.
Rogers support for the new cold war will also gain him favor with the various weapon industries which will eventually beef up his pension.
Some of the above is speculation. But it would make sense and explain the quite one-sided wave of leaks we saw during this election cycle.
Even if it isn't true it would at least be a good script for a Hollywood movie on the nastiness of the inside fighting in Washington DC.
Let me know how plausible you find the tale. 19, 2016 at 02:14 PM | Permalink | 1real |
Trump Threatens Lawsuit Against Slanted New York Times | Donald Trump threatened to sue the New York Times — and went on a Twitter tirade slamming columnist Maureen Dowd as "a neurotic dope" after she alleged Trump appeared to like enjoy inciting violence at his rallies.
"My lawyers want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent. I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting," Trump tweeted on Saturday.
He suggested the newspaper was slanting its coverage to boost rival Hillary Clinton, saying the Democratic nominee was "doing so badly" that the Times is "willing to say anything."
He also lacerated Dowd, deriding her as "crazy," "wacky," and "a neurotic dope," and tweeting that the columnist "hardly knows me," but "makes up things that I never said for her boring interviews and column."
The attack followed Dowd's interview earlier Saturday on CNN, where she was promoting her new book. "The Year of Voting Dangerously."
"I told him that it was wrong that there was violence being incited at his rallies and that reporters were getting roughed up," Dowd told CNN. "And he paused — you're right, he did listen — but then he disagreed and said he thought the violence added a frisson of excitement." | 0fake |
A Father-Son Bonding Mission in the French Alps - The New York Times | On a clear winter morning in the French Alps just over a year ago, Sascha, my son, and I stood at the top of our first run at the Serre Chevalier ski area. I stamped to knock the snow from my skis, then pushed off, carving easy turns in the groomed track that spilled through groves of larch trees, Sascha following behind. “Help, Daddy!” he cried. I jammed to a stop, looked back and saw a tangle of limbs, skis and poles. “I’m stuck!” Sascha had taken a fall and lost his poles, but his skis had stayed on his feet, which were pinned underneath him. “It hurts. Help!” he said, the panic rising in his voice. “I want to go home. ” Ugh. Our first trip wasn’t supposed to start like this. I sidestepped to him, released his skis and gently untwisted his legs. After a few comforting words and a suggestion that we take it easy, we set off side by side. “Sascha wants to spend more time with you,” my wife, Lori, had said to me late one night that fall. “He and I were talking on the way home, and he said, ‘I really want to do something with Daddy. ’” Ouch. Since we’d moved to Paris from New York three years earlier, I had been working Sundays and evenings. I knew abstractly that Sascha and his younger sister were feeling my absence. We had dropped them into the neighborhood school, and within months they were fluent in French and had made new friends. Everything was fine, or so I thought. Our interactions were limited to frantic mornings hustling them off to school and fleeting kisses when I returned from work. Before I knew it, three years had passed — and how well, really, did I know them? Something told me that an afternoon at the playground wasn’t going to cut it. Sascha was old enough to travel with me by himself, I decided. I had a few days of vacation, and winter was coming up: ski trip. But the thought of driving seven hours to the Alps, skiing for two days, then driving back seemed grim and expensive. I wondered: Could we go by train? It would add an element of adventure — and be considerably cheaper. A little research revealed that one of the few remaining routes would take us from Paris to the Southern Alps town of Briançon, the gateway to the sprawling ski station of Serre Chevalier, which bills itself as the largest resort in the southern French Alps. Rolling the dice, I booked tickets on the train, found a promising pension, the Hotel de l’Europe, in the nearby town of Le — and immediately started worrying about the lack of snow, anxiously watching as webcams revealed a brownish, parched landscape. The week before we were due to leave, it started to snow, dumping a glorious 20 inches in a few days. We packed carefully, one duffel for me and a small wheelie for Sascha. I noticed, happily, that along with comic books and adventure stories he had packed Joe, the bear he has kept close since he was a baby. Our train clattered into the Gare d’Austerlitz, looking dowdy compared with the sleek trains that are replacing the night routes across Europe. We wedged ourselves into our compartment, in the lowest of the three bunks on either side. Sascha was happy in his nest with a reading light, a thin sleeping sack and a water bottle, and plunked himself on his stomach so he could look out the window. Slowly, our train chugged out of the station, swaying as the lights of Paris gave way to the suburbs and finally the darkened fields and woods. “Tuck me in, Daddy,” he asked after a while, gripping Joe tightly. Awaking at the station in Briançon, we hopped on a shuttle bus that would take us to Le . Just past the first signs for Le Monêtier we got our first glimpse of the high mountains. We clambered off at the edge of town and walked a few hundred meters up the rustic Rue St. . At the Hotel de L’Europe, a cheerful woman with a British accent took one look at our bedraggled state and asked, “You’ll be wanting breakfast, then?” Yes, indeed. After a restorative meal of yogurt, granola, pastries and coffee (for me) and a hot cocoa (for Sascha) we checked out our room, which turned out to be a bright, newly renovated suite with one bedroom for each of us and two bathrooms. Before fatigue took hold we changed into our gear and walked to a nearby ski shop to get some intelligence about Serre Chevalier. “Keep to the middle of the mountain,” we were told — up high it would be windy and foggy later in the day, possibly stormy, and down below the snow cover was a little thin. Booted and suited, we caught a free shuttle bus to the new base lodge a few minutes away. It was surreal to be riding a chairlift in the bracing air a little more than 12 hours after leaving Paris. On the advice of the ski shop, we started with an intermediate run, Rochamout, where Sascha fell. By the bottom, helped by creamy, forgiving snow, we had our ski legs again. After lunch in the base lodge we headed back up as flurries began. Around 2 p. m. we decided to take the long chairlift from the middle of the mountain to a natural, treeless pass with the jolly name of Cucumelle. A few minutes after boarding, we were in a blizzard, pelted with stinging hail and buffeted by wind. I tucked Sascha’s neck warmer into the base of his goggles, took his poles and told him to keep his head in his lap. “We won’t be able to get down,” he said in a panicky voice. Clearly, this was test No. 2. I pushed him off the lift, pointed him downhill and told him to grab one of my poles. We inched into the teeth of this unexpected storm and after a few agonizing minutes, found ourselves back among the calm of the trees. Feeling that was enough adventure for one day, we went back to the hotel, and to a dinner of pasta carbonara speckled with rich lardons, prepared by the hotel’s proprietor and chef, Pascal Finat. (Sarah Finat, his wife, had greeted us in the morning.) Eleven hours of sleep later, we awoke to a blindingly sunny, crisp day, and cut first tracks on freshly groomed cruising runs through the larches and a few fir stands. Traditional chairlifts predominate in Serre Chevalier, so we had plenty of time to talk on the way up. I started out with softball questions: school (he didn’t much like math) friends (all boys, he said, but with a little prodding admitted to liking two girls) favorite sports (soccer, of course). He was 9, after all introspection could wait. I focused on observing his actions and moods, how school and sports like skiing came easily to him, how he stubbornly refused to ask for help until it was the only course of action left, how he was extremely sensitive to physical pain and discomfort. One of the joys of skiing in Europe is lunch, and I’d been told that the elusive restaurant L’Echaillon was the place to go. After a bit of up and down, we found a side trail that seemed to lead only to the restaurant. There, I washed down an escalope de veau milanaise with fresh tagliatelle with a hearty Savoyard red. Sascha went with a burger and a Coke, noting mischievously that he was eating the mother and I was eating the baby. Suffused with we skied as the French do after lunch, sticking to the sunniest runs and heading down early. Our destination was Le Monêtier’s other attraction: mineral baths dating to Roman times. The modern bath complex includes indoor and outdoor pools, as well as three plunge rooms — cold, tepid and scalding. By 5 p. m. we were soaking in a warm, bubbly pool, gazing up at the gathering dusk on the slopes. We treated ourselves to fondue at dinner, and fell into conversation about inventions throughout history. Sascha argued for the computer I explained the story of the printing press, and how innovation had accelerated in the past 100 years. I took the opening to segue into a quick primer on early American history, since Sascha had been learning only French history. Our luck held the next morning, another bluebird day. We headed straight up to explore more of Serre Chevalier, which has 102 marked trails, 61 lifts and nearly 10, 000 acres within its boundaries. I let Sascha take the lead. His call was to ski the terrain park, eliciting a silent groan from my arthritic left hip. I watched as he flew whooping over the jumps and grind rails, heedless of the aches, pains and worries of adulthood. On Saturday, our last day, we felt confident enough to take on some of the nearly empty expert slopes, which overnight had been draped in fresh powder. After another decadent soak in the thermal baths, we grabbed dinner at the excellent Pizza Nono, then took the shuttle back to the Briançon train station. There were no complaints from Sascha, no dawdling. He was becoming a travel partner, and I was already looking forward to our next trip. As we left the Paris station the next morning, our trip already seemed like a memory, a flash of sun and snow in a gray and drizzly Parisian winter. I sensed that Sascha was feeling some of the same melancholy. I stopped in the middle of the street and said “hug” — our code for comforting him when he was younger. He squeezed me with strength that felt more like an adult’s than a boy’s. | 0fake |
BOOM! FOX NEWS LEFTIST CHRIS WALLACE Attempts Trump Smear Over Inauguration Crowd Size…FOX News’ Brit Hume Backs Up Trump On Fake News Story [VIDEO] | The AP, CNN, People Magazine and other mainstream media, fake news outlets used pictures of the crowds at Obama s inauguration to compare to the crowd s at Trump s inauguration. The only problem is, the picture they used for Trump s inauguration crowd was taken before Trump s actual speech, where the crowds were much larger.Of course, there was never a comparison between Obama and George W. Bush s inauguration crowds, because instead of the full-blown media assassination attempt we see against President Trump, the post-inauguration media coverage was more like an all out effort to canonize Barack Obama by our sycophant media.The media completely ignored the fact that threats of violence were being made by Soros funded groups against Trump supporters since the day after the election. They ignored the open threats made against anyone who dared to attend Trump s inauguration.Anti-Trump rioters made good on their threats. They used human chains to lock visitors out of certain areas including check points where Trump supporters had to pass through in order to get to the inauguration and to the parade.Watch this husband and wife, as they are split up by human barricades. The husband manages to break through the barricade but the wife is trapped and unable to join him. (Does anyone remember seeing this on the news?):#Trump supporter gets past #DisruptJ20 barricade but couldn't get back to his wife #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/JFHOcgcT9c Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) January 20, 2017Fires were started everywhere on the streets. Rioters wearing black ski masks and carrying sledge hammers they used to bust out windows of banks and vehicles were roaming the streets as well.None of these threats existed prior to or during Obama s inauguration. It s pretty safe to say that angry Democrats and anarchists roaming the streets looking for trouble didn t make for the most family friendly environment. Many Trump supporters admitted they wouldn t attend the inauguration because they feared violence against them and their children. But the media just glossed over the fear factor created by the Left, and chalked it up to Trump s sudden (according to fake polls) unpopularity. Here are the propaganda photos used by the media to discredit Trump.Comparing the crowds at Donald Trump s and Barack Obama s inaugurations https://t.co/YysDewDB9N pic.twitter.com/myrXutzMpH NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) January 21, 2017For the record, here is an actual picture that was taken during Trump s inaugural speech. The mall appears to be jam packed with Trump supporters:Chris Wallace jumped on the mainstream media train this morning and attempted to discredit Trump and his Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Chris Wallace asked to have the picture comparing Trump and Obama s crowds up on the screen for the viewers to see before confronting Reince Priebus. Priebus responded, You re also not saying that that picture was taken before he even began speaking. Chris Wallace freaks, and asks to have the picture put back up again (which of course doesn t change what Priebus just said).Watch:Fox News Senior Political Analyst, who also attended the inauguration, tells a much different story than the one Wallace was trying to paint. Perhaps Wallace should have consulted with Hume, since they both work for the same network. Perhaps he should have asked about how the violent protesters affected the number of people who were actually able to make it to the inauguration. To be sure, Brit Hume was no cheerleader for Donald Trump leading up to the election, but at least he had the integrity to tell the truth about the deceitful media s attempt to prove Trump supporters have somehow magically deserted him.I was in the building at the bottom of picture on right yesterday. Shot was taken early, area was considerably fuller by time of speech. https://t.co/bzhWjm4alC Brit Hume (@brithume) January 22, 2017Brit Hume is also one of the only journalists to point out the seriousness of these violent rioters and says they need to be held responsible for the damage they did to other people s property:"Property damage is not violence" > Protesters who destroyed property on Inaug. Day part of well- organized group https://t.co/jdx0ta59Zt Brit Hume (@brithume) January 22, 2017 | 1real |
LIBERAL LOSER Screams “This is my America!” After Electors Vote TRUMP [Video] | 1real | |
WATCH: John Oliver Rips ‘Douchebag’ Trump For Attacking Obama And Calling Election ‘Rigged | John Oliver had a field day mocking Donald Trump on Sunday night for repeatedly shooting himself in the foot and it was an absolute laugh riot.The HBO host of Last Week Tonight began by talking about how Hillary Clinton released her tax returns and has had to answer questions about Clinton Foundation connections to the State Department, which could have helped the Republican nominee if he hadn t utterly screwed himself and his own campaign by running his mouth. She was eclipsed by the imploding star that is Donald Trump, the owner of what you might describe as a resting rich face, Oliver said.You see, Trump tried to briefly act sane by reading his speech material off of a teleprompter, which the right-wing hypocritically whines about President Obama doing, so he can t go off script and say stupid things. This was the 53rd consecutive week he was going to put his campaign back on track, Oliver quipped.But no sooner had Trump started doing that when he started calling for Second Amendment people to do something about Hillary, claimed the the election is rigged, and declared that President Obama literally founded ISIS. Wow, Oliver remarked. Now clearly what he just said is absolutely absurd, but even when people try to help him reframe it, he doubled down. Indeed, during an interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt he doubled down on his accusation despite being given an opportunity to walk his statements back, only to then claim that he was merely being sarcastic when he repeatedly called the sitting President of the United States the leader of a terrorist organization. He s so insistent! Oliver continued. He s like the guy drowning but waving off a lifeboat saying, Get out of here, I m very buoyant. I m the most buoyant. Everybody talks about my buoyancy. I m a tremendous floater. And yes, sarcasm is a bullshit excuse. It s the douchebag s apology. After incredulously noting that Trump walked back his bullshit excuse, Oliver then took on Trump s dangerous charge that Hillary will only win the election because it is rigged. What is really worth taking note of there, and is worth thinking about, is that he s suggesting the election may be stolen by his opponent, and that s actually dangerous. He is priming his supporters to question the result when he loses Pennsylvania, as polls indicate he will, and as all Republican presidential candidates have since 1988. In fact, Trump actually urged police officers who support him to patrol polling places to make sure voters don t vote multiple times. In short, Trump supporters are primed to intimidate minority voters on Election Day, because as we all know, conservatives believe minority voters cheat the system. But Oliver pointed out how Americans will know if Trump somehow wins the election. In a way, we are all Trump Election Day observers. Because if you look out of your window in November and see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse you ll know, oh shit, they just called Florida! Oliver then explained that his team signed up as an election observer on Trump s website to see what would happen and they got an email declaring that we are going to do everything we are legally allowed to do to stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election. And that prompted Oliver to question if Trump knows what is legal and what is not since his own lawyer once claimed that spousal rape isn t real. Plus, again, Trump suggested that gun nuts assassinate Hillary Clinton.Here s the video via VidMe.Donald Trump is a con man who is trying to become the most powerful person on the face of the planet. He is so good at lying to his supporters that he has even told them to their faces that he is lying to them and they were too dumb to notice.Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
WATCH: MALIA OBAMA ANGRILY SNAPS at Woman For Asking To Take Picture With Her Grandson at Harvard: “Are you gonna take it in my face like an animal in a cage?” | The Obamas recently moved their oldest daughter, Malia, into her dorm at Harvard. After her gap year, which seemed to be spent participating in activities such as attending various music festivals, shaking her booty for the crowd, and rolling around on the ground, she, all of the sudden, seems to be not so fond of her fame anymore.It s been less than a week since Malia Obama moved into her dorm and officially became Harvard University s most famous freshman.Barack and Michelle Obama s first-born reacted angrily Saturday to a gawker who waited outside a campus store in order to snap a picture of the famous former occupant of the White House, TMZ reported.The gossip site said that eyewitnesses reported a woman approached Malia at a salad shop in Cambridge s Harvard Square asking for a picture for her grandson.After Malia politely declined, the woman walked reportedly walked outside and waited for her to complete her purchase and exit the store.As Malia left the store, the woman snapped a photo, prompting the newly minted college student to say: Are you gonna take it in my face like an animal in a cage? Malia moved into her Harvard University dormitory on Monday afternoon, one day before her fellow students began arriving with their parents.The family was joined by members of the Secret Service as they pulled up to Malia s new residence in a two-SUV envoy. Daily Mail | 1real |
Fact-checking the vice-presidential debate between Kaine and Pence | The Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, and the Republican nominee, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, debated Oct. 4 at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. Here is a roundup of 25 suspicious or interesting claims that were made. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates.
Kaine surely meant to say nuclear weapons but it came out as chemical weapons. (Later in the debate, he said “[Clinton] went toe-to-toe with Russia as secretary of state to do the New START Agreement to reduce Russia’s nuclear stockpile.”)
Even so, Kaine overstates the impact of the 2011 New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty agreement, which Clinton helped negotiate as secretary of state.
New START placed tighter limits on deployed strategic weapons but Russia was actually already meeting the treaty’s limits, for the most part, when the treaty’s implementation began. Indeed, Russia has increased deployed nuclear weapons from 1,537 in February 2011 to 1,796 in September of this year. Also, the treaty does not restrict either country from stockpiling weapons, nor does it require them to destroy any existing weapons.
Russia’s total nuclear warhead arsenal has been on a steady decline from 40,000 since 1986. The total has hovered around 4,500 since 2012, during Obama’s presidency.
Kaine leans way over on his skis here. The Iranian nuclear agreement was actually negotiated by Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, though Clinton helped tee up the negotiations by increasing sanctions on the Islamic Republic. The deal, which has been sharply criticized by Republicans, did increase the amount of time that Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon by reducing its centrifuges for uranium enrichment and its stockpile of enriched uranium; international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities was also implemented. But key elements of the deal expire in 15 years (some go longer) and Iran’s nuclear infrastructure remains in place.
While Iran has insisted it has no interest in building nuclear weapons, the deal does not eliminate the risk that it will obtain nuclear bombs. The agreement limits Iran’s civilian nuclear program and it is also contains an indefinite prohibition on activities related to a weapons program, defined in Annex 1, Section T. Whether those elements eliminates the nuclear weapons program is a matter of opinion.
Indeed, Clinton’s economic plan would raise an estimated $1.46 trillion in tax revenues over the next decade, according to an analysis by economist Mark Zandi. But the tax hike “falls almost exclusively on the most highly paid,” the analysis says.
This figure does not take into account the impact of her other proposals on the economy. For example, his report also said that if Clinton were able to fully implement her economic plans, the economy would add an additional 3.2 million jobs during the first four years of her presidency. Combined with anticipated job creation under current law, that adds up to 10.4 million jobs. But the report also said that Clinton would face significant roadblocks to getting her economic plan through Congress, resulting in far fewer job gains.
Trump has, indeed, said all of those things.
During his campaign announcement, Trump said: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.“ We awarded Trump’s claim connecting illegal immigrants from Mexico and crime Four Pinocchios.
In 2007, Trump called Rosie O’Donnell “a slob,” “a pig” and a “degenerate” in a single speech. He has called Arianna Huffington “a dog” and said New York Times columnist Gail Collins had “the face of a dog.”
Trump did say that the Indiana-born U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel had an “inherent conflict of interest” because of his Mexican heritage and Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has said McCain was “not a war hero,” and that McCain is “a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Trump has, indeed, said: “We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell, because it’s so dangerous.” And Trump was one of the most high-profile “birthers” who questioned whether Obama was a U.S. citizen.
Earlier in the campaign, Trump said women who receive illegal abortions should be subject to “some sort of punishment.” But he reversed that statement several hours later, after widespread criticism from those on both sides of the abortion rights issue. He amended his statement to say that the doctors, not women, should be punished.
This is correct. A key difference here is that Nixon did not release his taxes while he was a presidential candidate; he did so in 1973, a year after he was reelected.
Presidential candidates have no legal obligation to release their returns, but there has long been a tradition to do so for the sake of transparency. Trump has cited a pending Internal Revenue Service audit, even though the first president to release his taxes, Nixon, did so in the middle of an audit. Moreover, Trump has not released his tax returns from before 2009, which are no longer under audit, according to his attorney.
Pence is correct on raw numbers regarding education spending, but is incorrect when the figures are adjusted for inflation.
In fiscal year 2017, state spending on higher education and K-12 education is the largest in Indiana’s history. But adjusted for inflation, the 2017 appropriations are not quite as high as they were in 2010 and 2011, said Lawrence DeBoer, Purdue University economist and an expert on Indiana’s state budget. By 2017, Indiana state spending on education will be almost back to 2011 levels, DeBoer said.
On infrastructure, Pence began improving the state’s roads only after an emergency repair of the Interstate 65 bridge led to a month-long traffic problem and caused a political liability, the Associated Press reported. Political ads attacked Pence for saving money in the state’s reserves at the expense of underfunding the state’s infrastructure.
Pence then proposed a plan to improve roads “that relied on borrowing, drawing down state reserves and accounting gimmicks to reach an advertised $1 billion sticker price,” the AP reported. “In the end, he got just a fraction of that after Indiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature balked. And much of the money set aside for local governments came from local taxes held in state reserves that were already supposed to be returned.”
Clinton has said she would expand Obama’s executive actions on immigration and has advocated for comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. But she also has supported enhanced border security. And her immigration proposal includes “humane, targeted and effective” enforcement and focusing immigration resources on detaining and deporting those “who pose a threat to public safety.”
[Update: Hacked emails released on Oct. 7 showed Clinton apparently said in a paid closed-door speech to a Brazilian bank: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” through green energy.
The Clinton campaign has refused to authenticate the hacked emails, but campaign manager Robby Mook said in an Oct. 9 CBS “Face the Nation” interview that Clinton was “talking about integrating green energy between North and South America. … If the question is, ‘Does Hillary Clinton support throwing open our borders?’ Absolutely not. And she is going to do everything she can to fight to protect the interests of workers in this country.”]
This is correct. Clinton has said she supports President Obama’s decision to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in fiscal year 2016 — and that she would support an increase up to 65,000. That is a 550 percent increase from 10,000. But Clinton has not yet disclosed her plan for the new fiscal year or beyond.
This map below shows where Syrian refugees have ended up in the United States.
Maybe the GOP ticket did not precisely use the word “great” or “better,” but Kaine pretty much hits the target here.
Pence told CNN just a few weeks ago: “I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been.” Pence made these remarks just after Trump asserted that Putin has “been a leader far more than our president has been a leader.”
Kaine repeats a line that recently earned Hillary Clinton Three Pinocchios. But no credible analyst would cite the Bush tax cuts as playing a key role in spurring the economic crash.
Kaine puts it even more starkly than Clinton. The Clinton campaign tried to suggest income inequality, exacerbated by tax cuts, led to the stagnation of the middle class and spurred excess borrowing and leverage — key components of the crash along with lax regulation. But that’s a real stretch, given that a housing bubble was the key trigger. The causes of the Great Recession are complex and debatable, but there’s no debate that it is wrong to put the Bush tax cuts at the top of the list.
This isn’t a direct quote about deporting all undocumented immigrants, but Trump did say that all “criminal illegal immigrants” (likely referring to undocumented immigrants convicted of a crime) “are going to be gone. It will be over.”
Among other claims Trump made at the Aug. 31 Phoenix rally about removing those here illegally:
But Trump also laid out his deportation priorities during the speech. Among them: Targeting at least 5 million and as many as 6.5 million undocumented immigrants who would be subject to swift removal. That is about half of the 11 million undocumented people estimated to be living in the United States.
Pence misconstrued an Associated Press report here, similar to the way Donald Trump did earlier in the campaign.
The AP analyzed State Department records and looked specifically at Clinton’s meetings on the phone or in person with 154 people who were not federal employees or foreign government representatives. This narrowed down the denominator to a small subcategory of people Clinton met with as secretary of state, since the majority of her diplomatic work would involve representatives of foreign governments. In addition, the AP report is based on partial records released by the State Department so far and does not reflect the full scope of people with whom Clinton met as secretary of state.
The AP found that 85 of those 154 people, or “more than half,” had donated to the Clinton Foundation or “pledged commitments to its international programs.” The 85 donors collectively contributed as much as $156 million, the AP reported. There were representatives from at least 16 foreign governments, who donated as much as $170 million to the charity, but those representatives were not included in the 154 number, the AP reported.
This is wrong. Counting from January 2009, nearly 11 million private-sector jobs have been created in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you count all jobs, including government jobs, the figure is 10.5 million.
So how does Kaine come up with 15 million? He’s counting from the low point for jobs in Obama’s presidency, February 2010. When you start the clock from then, the tally is 15 million private-sector jobs and 14.8 million overall jobs.
The last time we checked, February 2010 was 6 1/2 years ago. So with this claim, Kaine is trying to wipe off a year of Obama’s presidency.
Moreover, as a general matter, regular readers know that we tend to discount job-creation records by a president, as so much of the record is due to economic forces beyond a president’s control.
Mark Zandi, a respected economist at Moody’s Analytics, did issue a report saying that if Trump’s economic plans were fully implemented, 3.5 million jobs would disappear, incomes would stagnate, debt would explode, and stock prices would plummet. (This compares to an anticipated increase of 6 million jobs under current Obama administration policies.) In another report, Zandi also said that if Clinton were able to fully implement her economic plans, the economy would create an additional 3.2 million jobs during the first four years of her presidency. Combined with anticipated job creation under current law, that adds up to 10.4 million jobs.
But both reports were highly skeptical that either candidate would be able to get their plans through Congress — even a Republican-controlled one during a Trump presidency — because so many of Trump’s positions are such a departure from GOP principles. Even so, the report said the U.S. economy would likely suffer under a Trump presidency. (The report was issued in June, and Moody’s has not issued an updated report that would reflect additional policies announced by Trump, including a revised tax plan. But the report said Trump’s trade policies would be especially damaging.)
Pence makes it sound like this is U.S. taxpayer money — and he uses a too-high estimate. Because of international sanctions over its nuclear program, Iran had billions of dollars in assets that were frozen in foreign banks around the globe. With sanctions lifted, in theory, those funds would be unlocked.
But the Treasury Department has estimated that once Iran fulfills other obligations, it would have about $55 billion left. (Much of the other money was obligated to illiquid projects in China.) For its part, the Central Bank of Iran said the number was actually $32 billion, not $55 billion.
Trump has called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization obsolete, but he has not said he wants to get rid of it. Asked specifically by The Washington Post in March if he wanted to pull out of NATO, he said, “I don’t want to pull it out. NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country anymore. … I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved.” Trump has argued that “distribution of costs” has to be changed but, as we have noted, Trump frequently overstates the burden on the United States.
Kaine is referring to Trump’s 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” where he made such a comparison about Social Security and said he wanted to privatize the program: “The workers of America have been forced to invest a sixth of our wages into a huge Ponzi scheme. The pyramids are made of paper-mache.”
Trump added in the book: “Privatization would be good for all of us. As it stands today, 13.6 percent of women on Social Security live in poverty.”
But that book was published 16 years ago. On the campaign trail, Trump has said he wants to “keep Social Security intact.… I’m not going to cut it.” His specific plans for the program, however, are vague. His campaign has said “the key to preserving Social Security and other programs that benefit AARP members is to have an economy that is robust and growing.”
For more on Social Security and allegations it is a Ponzi scheme, see The Fact Checker’s guide to critical questions about the program.
This is a zombie claim that just won’t go away. We have awarded it Three Pinocchios, and fact checkers repeatedly debunked this during the 2012 presidential election.
Indeed, the number of ships (272) as of Oct. 4 is the lowest count since 1916 (245 ships). But a lot has changed in 100 years, including the need and capacity of ships. After all, it’s now a matter of modern nuclear-powered fleet carriers versus the gunboats and small warships of 100 years ago. The push for ships under the Reagan era (to build the Navy up to 600-ship levels) no longer exists, and ships from that era are now retiring.
This talking point is a poor way to depict the country’s naval fleet needs. Gunboats of 1915 and aircraft carriers of 2015 are not the same. And military budgets, fleet needs and historical circumstances are much different in 2015 than they were in 1916.
Pence reprises a GOP talking point from the 2012 campaign, but it’s not correct. Obama substituted a different system, but it was on the recommendation of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican. Gates, in fact, had recommended the original plan to President George W. Bush and then decided the new system implemented by Obama was more effective, less costly and timelier than the Bush plan.
Gates, in his 2013 memoir, noted that while the Obama administration had stumbled in failing to lay the diplomatic groundwork for the shift, looking “like a bunch of bumbling fools,” the Bush plan was already running into trouble in both Prague and Warsaw and likely would have been rejected by parliaments in both countries. “The Polish and Czech governments were relieved,” he wrote.
“I sincerely believed the new program was better — more in accord with the political realities in Europe and more effective against the emerging Iranian threat,” Gates added. “While there certainly were some in the State Department and the White House who believed the third site in Europe was incompatible with the Russian ‘reset,’ we in Defense did not. Making the Russians happy wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.”
In fact, Gates says, the Russians quickly concluded that the Obama plan was even worse from their perspective, as it eventually might have capabilities that could be used against Russian intercontinental missiles.
“How ironic that U.S. critics of the new approach had portrayed it as a big concession to the Russians,” Gates added sardonically. “It would have been nice to hear a critic in Washington — just once in my career — say, Well I got that wrong.”
Trump has walked back the particular claim that Kaine cites, that “wages are too high.” Of course, Trump has flip-flopped on the minimum wage at least five times since August 2015 and has consistently contradicted his own statements, making it hard to track exactly where he stands on the issue at a given time. Trump’s stance on this matter, as of August 2016, was that he supports “raising it to $10 at the federal level, but believes states should set the minimum wage as appropriate for their state.”
During a November 2015 Republican primary debate, Trump was asked whether he was “sympathetic to the protesters’ cause since a $15 wage works out to about $31,000 a year.” His full answer, with the part Kaine is quoting in bold:
Days later, Trump clarified he was referring to whether he would increase the minimum wage. He would not raise it, because then it would be “too high,” he said.
Kaine correctly notes that Pence, as a congressman, voted in 2007 against raising the minimum wage above $5.15.
Pence made this claim in the context of abortion and choosing whether to be for or against abortion rights. But polling does not support this. In fact, it shows young adults’ views on abortion rights are about the same as their elders — unlike issues like marijuana and gay marriage, where young people are more liberal.
Among adults aged 18 to 29, 58 percent said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 39 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center poll. That was similar to those aged 30 to 49 (59 percent supported abortion, 38 percent opposed) and those aged 50 to 64 (56 percent supported, 37 percent opposed).
“Partial-birth abortion” is usually used to refer to later-term abortions using a specific fetus-extraction method.
Clinton has said she supports a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, as long as the health and the life of the mother are protected. As senator, Clinton opposed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, which did not include a health exception.
Earlier this year, Clinton again said she is “on record in favor of a late pregnancy regulation that would have exceptions for the life and health of the mother.”
Trump has, indeed, said that countries such as South Korea, Japan and Saudi Arabia should have nuclear weapons because nuclear proliferation is inevitable. Trump has said that countries like Japan and South Korea would be “better off” if they were armed with nuclear weapons, in order to defend themselves from North Korea. And Trumps said he considers nuclear weapons a last resort, though he would not “rule anything out” regarding their use.
For example, during a CNN town hall in March, Trump was asked: “So if you said, Japan, yes, it’s fine, you get nuclear weapons, South Korea, you as well, and Saudi Arabia says we want them, too?”
Trump answered: “Can I be honest with you? It’s going to happen, anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely. But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them.”
This is an odd, inaccurate comment. The Russia-Georgia war took place in 2008, when Clinton was still a U.S. senator. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, lodged the protests. Whatever diplomatic pressure the Bush team had put on Russia over Georgia was abandoned when President Obama was elected and the administration decided to pursue the ill-fated “reset.”
Kaine gets this right, as Pence repeated a false claim that is popular on the right. The Clinton Foundation does not dole out grants, like a typical foundation, but instead directs the donations it raises directly for specified charitable activities. So simply only looking at the grants does not tell the whole story about the foundation’s activities.
The American Institute of Philanthropy’s “Charity Watch” gives the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating for its efficiency (the top rating is A+). It says the foundation spends 88 percent of its expenses on programs and 12 percent on overhead. It also says the Clinton Foundation spends just $2 to raise $100.
Send us facts to check by filling out this form
Check out our guide to all Trump and Clinton fact checks
Sign up for The Fact Checker weekly newsletter | 0fake |
Mike Huckabee's daughter: Negative tone in GOP race helps Clinton | "I don't think it is good for anybody," Huckabee Sanders told CNN's Erin Burnett on "OutFront" when asked about Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's rhetoric on the campaign trail. "I think it's unfortunate the nature of politics seems to create this type of tension. I think the person it ultimately and sadly ends up at times being good for is Hillary Clinton."
Trump and Rubio engaged in a war of words Friday, with Trump calling his opponent a "choker," "lightweight" and "clown," and Rubio labeling the billionaire as a "con artist."
"I keep hearing all these pundits and people from the media and other politicians talking about how bad Donald Trump is for America and, in particular, how bad people are that support Donald Trump. My thing is that they're not bad for America, they are America."
She added that Trump supporters are "from the heartland and heart and soul of America. They are hard-working, God-fearing people who are sick and tired of the government stepping all over them and they want someone to help just clear the path and get government out of the way." Huckabee Sanders went on to criticize Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's attempts to attack Trump for having "New York values." She claimed that the bulk of Cruz's campaign is being funded by New York donors and that "you need to follow the money in this case, and certainly Ted Cruz doesn't have a lot of credibility to attack on that front." As for why she joined Trump's campaign , Huckabee Sanders said Washington is being controlled by donors and special interests and believes Trump is the only presidential candidate who can go there and fix it. | 0fake |
Almost 100 Missing After Boat Carrying Migrants Sinks Off Libyan Coast | Get short URL 0 18 0 0 As many as 97 people are missing after a boat carrying more than 100 migrants sank off the Libyan shore, a spokesman of the Libyan coast guard told Sputnik.
TRIPOLI (Sputnik) – According to spokesman Ayoub Qassem, the vessel carrying 126 people sank on Wednesday 26 miles away from the lighthouse of Tajura and was spotted by a tanker which alerted the coastguard. As many as 29 people were rescued by the tanker. © AFP 2016/ ITALIAN NAVY 2016 Shows Record Number of Refugee Deaths in Mediterranean "The coast guard … is looking for the remaining missing persons, the number of whom is estimated at 97," Qassem said.
Europe is currently struggling to cope with a massive refugee influx, with hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing conflict-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa. According to the UN refugee agency, the Mediterranean Sea claimed over 3,600 lives last year. ... | 1real |
Donald Trump: ’Anti-Semitism is Horrible’ | President Donald Trump condemned in response to a series of vandalism events targeting Jewish sites. [“ is horrible and it’s going to stop,” Trump told NBC News after visiting the museum in Washington D. C. on Tuesday. “And, it’s gonna stop and it has to stop. ” Trump’s response came as the media criticized him for not condemning the vandalism forcefully enough. “This tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms,” Trump said. “The threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are a painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil. ” During the museum visit, Trump was asked by reporters if he would visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington D. C. as well. “I will. I will be doing it soon,” he said. “Very important. Very important for me. ” Trump has battled media accusations that he is implicitly indifferent to despite his repeated support for Israel and his Jewish Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump and their three grandchildren. “I am the least person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life,” Trump said emphatically during a press conference last week, when he was questioned by reporter about “an uptick in . ” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Trump from critics during a press conference at the White House. “I’ve known the president and I’ve known his family and his team for a long time. There is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state than president Donald Trump,” Netanyahu said. “I think we should put that to rest. ” | 0fake |
U.S. urges EU hopeful Albania to get tough with 'big fish' of crime | TIRANA (Reuters) - The United States urged its NATO ally Albania on Monday to start jailing bosses of organized crime if it hopes to make headway in its bid to join the European Union. U.S. ambassador Donald Lu said fighting organized crime and corruption was the biggest and most difficult challenge ahead for the ex-communist Balkan country, which officially became an EU candidate in 2014 and hopes to begin accession talks soon. Until the big fish are arrested, prosecuted and go to jail, the cannabis will return, judges will be bribed, and government officials will be corrupted, Lu told a gathering of judges and aspiring magistrates. Citing U.S. reports, Lu described Albania as a center of organized crime activity, which includes trafficking in drugs, weapons and prostitution . He said four major clans in Albania controlled 20 families involved in a wide range of criminal activities. Albania has a substantial black market for smuggled goods, primarily tobacco, jewelry, stolen cars and mobile phones. The country remains at significant risk for money laundering because of rampant corruption and a weak legal system, Lu said. Despite efforts to clean up the judiciary under EU pressure, a hit-and-run incident involving an armored car belonging to a powerful businessman and a police chief in the central town of Elbasan in September demonstrated again how some groups continue to see themselves as above the law. After the incident, police stepped up their seizure of suspicious luxury cars, confiscating 17 armored cars. Lu said he was troubled to see no major drug traffickers arrested or prosecuted in 2015 or 2016 when there was a sharp increase in the cultivation of cannabis in Albania. | 0fake |
Obama Tells GOP To F*ck Off, Picks A Supreme Court Nominee Anyway (VIDEO) | President Obama thumbed his nose at Republicans on Wednesday morning and picked a replacement for Justice Scalia anyway. What s even better is that he picked someone who is such a centrist that the GOP is going to look really silly when they oppose him.Obama held a press conference in the Rose Garden on Wednesday and announced his support for the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Merrick Garland, 63, as the next justice of the Supreme Court. President Obama praised the judge in his speech, saying: I have selected a nominee who is widely recognized, not only as one of America s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness, and excellence. These qualities, and his long commitment to public service, have earned him the respect and admiration of leaders from both sides of the aisle. He will ultimately bring that same character to bear on the Supreme Court, an institution in which he is uniquely prepared to serve immediately. Today I am nominating Chief Judge Merrick Brian Garland to join the Supreme Court. When Justice Scalia passed away in February, the right immediately said that they would oppose anyone who the president chooses to replace him. They have even pledged to not even open their doors for the nominee. This led a lot of pundits to speculate that President Obama would pick a centrist who would make the Republican Party look ridiculous if they opposed his nomination and that is exactly what he did.Garland has spent nineteen years on the federal bench and is not known for deciding things based on his ideological views. Although he is a moderate justice, he has ruled in favor of Republican causes in the past.In 2003, for instance, Garland ruled that Gitmo detainees did not have the right to seek relief in civilian courts. This ruling was so controversial that when his name was floated as a replacement for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in 2010, liberals were quick to speak out against him. Meanwhile, the Republican Party praised him as a brilliant judge. Doug Kendall, president of the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center, said: He s won the admiration of everyone around him by taking the job of a judge seriously and engaging in conversation with his colleagues, rather than confrontation. Carrie Severino of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said at the time: of those the president could nominate, we could do a lot worse than Merrick Garland. He s the best scenario we could hope for to bring the tension and the politics in the city down a notch for the summer. This was an incredibly smart move for President Obama. Although liberals are not going to be entirely thrilled with the moderate justice, he is a fine jurist with a long list of accomplishments. However, Republicans are going to have a really hard time opposing a man whom even conservative Orin Hatch has called a fine man. Ultimately, they will oppose him because they are obstructionists who care little about the Constitution and everything about blocking Obama.Ultimately, they will oppose him because they are obstructionists who care little about the Constitution and everything about blocking Obama. But this will damage their credibility with the American public, maybe not their base, but definitely Independents. All of the intelligent citizens of this country recognize that there is absolutely no place for politics when it comes to the highest court in the land.Watch Obama s speech: Featured image via video screenshot | 1real |
Gun Control: 4 States Vote YES | Gun Control: 4 States Vote YES November 08, 2016 An audience member holds a hand lettered sign calling for further gun control at a campaign stop with U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Nashua, New Hampshire October 16, 2015
Gun Control advocates expected to advance agenda in four states this Election Day.
Ballot measures to control gun sale and ownership in Maine, Nevada, Washington D.C., and California are expected to pass on Tuesday.
In Maine and Nevada, residents will vote on whether to mandate universal background checks for firearm sales, including private handgun transactions.
Voters in Washington state, meanwhile, will consider allowing judges to bar people from possessing guns if they pose a danger to themselves or to others, such as accused domestic abusers. In California, a referendum would ban large-capacity ammunition magazines and require certain people to pass a background check to buy ammunition.
The U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, and gun rights advocates fiercely contest any attempt to restrict that freedom.
As reported by Charisma News in the Spring of 2016 investigative author and activist Mark Dice, during a "Man on the Street Monday" videos, asked passersby at a San Diego beach if gun control could've prevented the death of Jesus. The results gave a worrisome state of America today.
Reuters copy / TRUNEWS analysis. Article by , Correspondent for TRUNEWS | 1real |
Britain believes North Korea was behind 'WannaCry' NHS cyber attack | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Friday it believed North Korea was behind the WannaCry cyber attack in May that disrupted businesses and government services worldwide, including the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Security Minister Ben Wallace said Britain believed quite strongly that the ransomware attack came from a foreign state. "North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack on our systems," he told BBC radio. We can be as sure as possible - I can t obviously go into the detailed intelligence but it is widely believed in the community and across a number of countries that North Korea had taken this role. WannaCry infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries in a matter of days, demanding victims pay ransoms starting at $300 to regain access to their machines. Cyber security researchers quickly identified a possible link to North Korea. More than a third of England s 236 NHS trusts and an estimated 19,000 appointments were affected, Britain s National Audit Office said on Friday in a report on the attack. It said WannaCry was a relatively unsophisticated attack that could have been prevented by the NHS had it followed basic IT security best practice. No NHS organization paid the ransom but the government does not know how much the disruption to services cost the NHS, it said. Wallace said Britain needed to redouble its efforts to strengthen cyber security. It s a salient lesson for us all that all of us, from individuals to governments to large organizations, have a role to play in maintaining the security of our networks, he said. | 0fake |
U.S. diplomat Nuland says optimistic about Ukraine reforms | KIEV (Reuters) - U.S Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said on Wednesday she was encouraged by signs of commitment to reform from Ukraine’s new government and urged Kiev to start jailing corrupt officials. Months of political turmoil in the run-up to the cabinet reshuffle - the biggest since an uprising in 2014 brought in a pro-Western leadership - have derailed efforts to root out corruption, delaying billions of dollars in foreign loans. “Overall, I go home encouraged by the commitment of all the political forces to continuing and accelerating reform, economic reform, anti-corruption reform, in particular judicial reform,” she said at the end of her first official visit to Kiev since the political shakeup earlier in April. Former prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk resigned two weeks ago and was replaced by Volodymyr Groysman, a close ally of President Petro Poroshenko. “Obviously corruption is still a very deep problem. It’s time to start locking up people who have ripped off the Ukrainian population for too long,” she said. Nuland called for greater political unity, insisting Ukraine must “stay the course” with a $17.5 billion bailout program from the International Monetary Fund, whose third tranche of $1.7 billion has been delayed since last October. Pro-European reformists in Ukraine have previously expressed concern that the latest political reboot will not eliminate the influence of powerful business interests on policymaking. Nuland said further U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine - a third $1-billion loan guarantee is in the offing - would depend on the government sticking to the IMF program. | 0fake |
Trump to Deploy Melania for Major Speeches… Could Be Surprise Giuliani Promised | Giuliani, however, would not reveal exactly what the surprise would be. Rudy Giuliani: Trump campaign has a couple of surprises left pic.twitter.com/vVT8sElzox
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) October 25, 2016
On Thursday, Trump revealed that his wife, Melania , had agreed to give several speeches on his behalf — something she hasn’t done since the Republican National Convention in July.
“She’s actually going to make two or three speeches,” Trump told “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos. “She’s amazing when she speaks. She’s an amazing public speaker.” WATCH: "[Melania] is actually going to make two or three speeches."– Trump on Melania on the campaign trail https://t.co/2SykRNHMgh
— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 27, 2016
Melania has been quite popular, particularly among conservative women who have described her as “classy,” “beautiful” and “well-spoken.” She has also appealed to immigrants, as she herself came to the United States from Slovenia.
While we’re not completely sure this is the “surprise” Giuliani was talking about, it certainly seems like it fits his description of an unsuspected campaign move. | 1real |
43-Year-Old Can’t Get Over The Amount Of Kids In Local Night Club | We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] 43-Year-Old Can’t Get Over The Amount Of Kids In Local Night Club October 26, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , LIFESTYLE Share 0 Add Comment
A COUNTY Waterford man is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment today after he was unable to get over the amount of ‘kids’ in a local night club last night.
Michael Roache, 43, is said to be suffering from a rare form of temporary psychosis, which forces him to repeat himself continually for its duration.
“It started after he arrived home last night,” wife Deirdre Roache recalls, “I thought nothing of it until this morning, when I found him staring at the ceiling in bed, murmuring the same thing over and over again: ‘I can’t get over the amount of kids in here'”.
Worried, the mother of children immediately called her local care doctor, who in turn referred him to a psychiatric unit for further testing.
It is understood the self-employed man was overwhelmed when he entered the popular nightclub in the city centre, triggering something in his head and sending him into a loop.
“He kept saying over and over again that he couldn’t get over the amount of kids in the place,” friend Dermot Ryan told WWN, who is also way too old for night clubs, “We just went in for a late drink because we were working late. It’ll be the last time I go into that fucking place. I felt so old”.
Mr. Roache is currently being treated for verbal looping at the psychiatric unit, and doctors have suggested temporarily moving him to an old folks home in a bid to ‘snap him out of it’.
“This kind of thing is common in the over 35’s,” Dr. Kevin Maher explained, “Hopefully an hour or two in the old folks home will neutralize his psychosis. He should have known better going to a nightclub at his age, though”. | 1real |
Dogs Test Drug Aimed at Humans’ Biggest Killer: Age - The New York Times | SEATTLE — Ever since last summer, when Lynn Gemmell’s dog, Bela, was inducted into the trial of a drug that has been shown to significantly lengthen the lives of laboratory mice, she has been the object of intense scrutiny among dog park regulars. To those who insist that Bela, 8, has turned back into a puppy — “Look how fast she’s getting that ball!” — Ms. Gemmell has tried to turn a deaf ear. Bela, a Border shepherd mix, may have been given a placebo, for one thing. The drug, rapamycin, which improved heart health and appeared to delay the onset of some diseases in older mice, may not work the same magic in dogs, for another. There is also a chance it could do more harm than good. “This is just to look for side effects, in dogs,” Ms. Gemmell told Bela’s many . Technically that is true. But the trial also represents a new frontier in testing a proposition for improving human health: Rather than only seeking treatments for the individual maladies that come with age, we might do better to target the biology that underlies aging itself. While the diseases that now kill most people in developed nations — heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer — have different immediate causes, age is the major risk factor for all of them. That means that even treatment breakthroughs in these areas, no matter how vital to individuals, would yield on average four or five more years of life, epidemiologists say, and some of them likely shadowed by illness. A drug that slows aging, the logic goes, might instead serve to delay the onset of several major diseases at once. A handful of drugs tested by federally funded laboratories in recent years appear to extend the healthy lives of mice, with rapamycin and its derivatives, approved by the Food and Drug Administration for organ transplant patients and to treat some types of cancer, so far proving the most effective. In a 2014 study by the drug company Novartis, the drug appeared to bolster the immune system in older patients. And the early results in aging dogs suggest that rapamycin is helping them, too, said Matt Kaeberlein, a biology of aging researcher at the University of Washington who is running the study with a colleague, Daniel Promislow. But scientists who champion the study of aging’s basic biology — they call it “geroscience” — say their field has received short shrift from the biomedical establishment. And it was not lost on the University of Washington researchers that exposing dog lovers to the idea that aging could be delayed might generate popular support in addition to new data. “Many of us in the biology of aging field feel like it is underfunded relative to the potential impact on human health this could have,” said Dr. Kaeberlein, who helped pay for the study with funds he received from the university for turning down a competing job offer. “If the average pet owner sees there’s a way to significantly delay aging in their pet, maybe it will begin to impact policy decisions. ” The idea that resources might be better spent trying to delay aging rather than to cure diseases flies in the face of most philanthropy and the Obama administration’s proposal to spend $1 billion on a “cancer moonshot. ” And many scientists say it is still too unproven to merit more investment. The National Institutes of Health has long been organized around particular diseases, including the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. There is the National Institute on Aging, but about a third of its budget last year was directed exclusively to research on Alzheimer’s disease, and its Division of Aging Biology represents a tiny fraction of the N. I. H. ’s $30 billion annual budget. That is, in part, because the field is in its infancy, said the N. I. H. director, Dr. Francis Collins. “I would resist the idea that we should shift funds away from cancer and diabetes and Alzheimer’s, where there are clear drug targets, and say, ‘We’re going to work on this hypothesis,’ ” Dr. Collins said. “If you had a lot of money for geroscience right now, it’s not clear what you would do with it that would be scientifically credible. ” Researchers in the field, in turn, say they might have more to show for themselves if they could better explain to Congress and the public why basic research on aging could be useful. “People understand ‘my relative died of a heart attack, so I’m going to give money to that,’ ” said Dr. James L. Kirkland, a Mayo Clinic researcher. “It’s harder to grasp ‘my relative was older, that predisposes them to have a heart attack, so I should give money to research on aging.’ ” Some companies have embraced the quest for drugs that delay aging. Google created Calico (for California Life Company) in 2013 with the goal of defeating aging. A called Unity has said it will develop drugs based on new research on aging mice suggesting that purging certain cells can extend a healthy life span. And a group of academic researchers is trying to persuade the F. D. A. to recognize aging as a disease for which a drug can be marketed, which they hope will draw more interest from pharmaceutical firms. The agency recently greenlighted its proposed trial of a widely used diabetes drug, metformin, to see if it can delay the onset of other diseases in older adults who have received a diagnosis of at least one, as one study suggests it might. But the group has yet to secure funding. One reason, the researchers say, is that the notion that aging is immutable is so deeply entrenched. “When I go out and try to raise money for this, the first thing people will say to me is, ‘Eh, we’re all getting older,’ ” said Steven Austad, a researcher at the University of Alabama. Most of us harbor the intuition that we age because our bodies, like our cars, our furniture, our patience, just wear out. But the best argument that life span is not biologists say, has long been evident: Living things age at significantly different rates. “The squirrels in my neighborhood have a life span, but they look like rats that live two years,” said Gary Ruvkun, a pioneer in aging biology at Harvard Medical School. “If you look at what nature has selected for and allowed, it suggests that you might be able to get your hands on the various levers that change things. ” That aspiration gained traction in the 1990s and 2000s, when scientists, armed with new tools of molecular biology, homed in on the complex cellular pathways that regulate life span in many species. By removing genes that produced certain proteins, or adding genes that produced others, researchers found they could significantly extend the lives of simple laboratory organisms like budding yeast, roundworms and flies. “It’s not just wearing out, it’s a program,” Dr. Ruvkun said. “The genetics told us that. If you can modulate it with a few simple perturbations, that’s the definition of a program. ” Since genes cannot be so easily manipulated in humans, it was significant in 2006 when Dr. Kaeberlein and others demonstrated that rapamycin, the drug now being tested in dogs, suppressed one of the crucial proteins in yeast, resulting in a longer life span without removing a gene. The protein is known to be involved in cell growth. But just how its suppression works to extend life is still unclear, raising questions about potential unknown downsides. And it has not helped the field’s reputation that what emerged as a hope for fighting aging, amplifying proteins called sirtuins, has not yet panned out. Initially believed to be activated by resveratrol, a substance found in red wine, sirtuins provided a seemingly excellent excuse to imbibe. But the pharmaceutical giant GSK, which had purchased a company for $720 million with the intention of developing a drug, cut back its efforts in 2013 after the results of the original genetic experiments came under question. A year later, one of only two major foundations funding longevity research stopped making new grants in the field. Besides the standard scientific road bumps, biology of aging researchers say their field’s reputation suffers from its association with peddlers selling creams, hormones and fountains of youth, not to mention the likes of Dorian Gray, Voldemort and assorted Sith lords. Efforts to prolong life are often viewed as selfish or trivial. “It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer,” Bill Gates, whose philanthropy focuses on global poverty, said during a session on Reddit last year in response to a question about Calico, the Google spinoff. Coleen Murphy, a molecular biologist at Princeton who is studying reproductive age in women, said she had received hate mail accusing her of trying to overpopulate the earth. Critics of research on extending life span also worry that, rather than increasing health span, which researchers say is their goal, geroscience will consign humanity to living longer in a compromised state. That is happening, with or without longevity research, thanks to advances in public health that have allowed life spans to increase. of older Americans have multiple chronic conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and in just over a decade, a fifth of Europeans and Americans will be 65 or older. “If you go to a dinner party and you tell people you’re working on longevity, they say, ‘Oh that’s terrible,’ ” Dr. Murphy said. “I think if they just understood it’s a way to slow the whole process, instead of fighting it one disease at a time, they’d understand why we’re interested in this. ” Dogs age faster than humans, and bigger dogs age faster than smaller dogs. The 40 dogs that participated in the rapamycin trial, which just concluded its pilot run in Seattle, had to be at least 6 years old and weigh at least 40 pounds. Like Lynn Gemmell’s Bela, whose cholesterol was high, many of them were showing signs of aging: loose skin, graying muzzles, a stiffness in the joints. So were some of their owners. “How are you going to be sure people are going to be giving this to their dog rather than taking it themselves?” Ms. Gemmell, 58, joked with Dr. Kaeberlein on her first visit to the veterinary clinic, where Bela was given a checkup and an echocardiogram to measure heart function, a marker that could conceivably register an improvement over the 10 weeks that she would be given the drug. A research coordinator for human clinical trials at a hospital, Ms. Gemmell adopted Bela as a rescue without realizing how much outdoor time she would need with her. Now divorced with two grown daughters, Ms. Gemmell dons a headlamp when she returns home in the dark, and takes Bela out with a ball and a collar light. “I wish she could live forever,” she said. Over 1, 500 dog owners applied to participate in the trial of rapamycin, which has its roots in a series of studies in mice, the first of which was published in 2009. Made by a type of soil bacterium, rapamycin has extended the life spans of yeast, flies and worms by about 25 percent. But in what proved a fortuitous accident, the researchers who set out to test it in mice had trouble formulating it for easy consumption. As a result, the mice were 20 months old — the equivalent of about 60 human years — when the trial began. That the mice survived about 12 percent longer than the control groups was the first indication that the drug could be given later in life and still be effective. Dr. Kaeberlein said he had since achieved similar benefits by giving mice the drug for only three months. (The National Institute on Aging rejected his request for funding to further test that treatment.) Younger mice, given higher doses, have lived about 25 percent longer than those not given the drug, and mice of varying ages and genetic backgrounds have been slower to develop some cancers, kidney disease, obesity and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. In one study, their hearts functioned better for longer. “If you do the extrapolation for people, we’re probably talking a couple of decades, with the expectation that those years are going to be spent in relatively good health,” Dr. Kaeberlein said. Still, drugs that work in mice often fail in humans. It is also hard to ask rodents about their quality of life. The side effects, depending on the dose and duration, include mouth sores, cataracts, insulin resistance and, for males, problems with testicular function. No one knows if people, who already live a lot longer than mice, would see a proportional increase in life span. And some researchers say there would be serious concerns in testing rapamycin, or any drug, in healthy people just to slow aging. What if a drug lengthened life for some and shortened it for others? Could anyone ethically put a healthy person into a test that might actually shorten life span? “It’s not as simple as cancer, where patients are going to die anyway if they don’t get the drug,” said Andrew Dillin, a biology of aging researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who recently raised the questions in Nature, a scientific journal. Ethical concerns aside, such a trial would take decades. But what dog lovers have long considered the sad fact that their pets age about seven times as fast as they do, Dr. Kaeberlein knew, would be a boon for a study of rapamycin that would have implications for both species. An owner of two dogs himself, he was determined to scrounge up the money for the pilot phase of what he and Dr. Promislow called the Dog Aging Project. Last month, he reported at a scientific meeting that no significant side effects had been observed in the dogs, even at the highest of three doses. And compared with the hearts of dogs in the control group, the hearts of those taking the drug pumped blood more efficiently at the end. The researchers would like to enroll 450 dogs for a more comprehensive study, but do not yet have the money. Even if the study provided positive results on all fronts, a human trial would carry risks. Dr. Kaeberlein, for one, said they would be worth it. “I would argue we should be willing to tolerate some level of risk if the payoff is 20 to 30 percent increase in healthy longevity,” he said. “If we don’t do anything, we know what the outcome is going to be. You’re going to get sick, and you’re going to die. ” For her part, Ms. Gemmell is not counting on anything. The other night, when she got home from work, she was ready to read her mail and have a glass of wine. But Bela greeted her as usual, ball in her mouth, ready to play. For now, she said, this is how they both plan to stay young. | 0fake |
U.S. farm groups discuss policy with Clinton staff, pursue Trump | CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. agriculture groups are pushing for continuing talks with the presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential nominees in an effort to influence their farm policy positions as a slump in crop prices squeezes the sector’s profits. Representatives of about a dozen trade associations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union, met with staffers for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on Friday at her New York campaign headquarters. It was the farm coalition’s first meeting with Clinton’s staff and included discussions of issues ranging from agricultural trade and labor to mandatory labels for foods containing genetically modified ingredients, attendees said on Wednesday. The meeting was the start of a push by the sector for more details from Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump about their stances on issues affecting farmers and agribusiness. The groups are seeking a meeting with Trump’s campaign. “All of us agreed, on both sides of the table, that it is a successful meeting only if it’s the first of a number of exchanges,” said Jay Vroom, the chief executive of pesticide association CropLife America, who attended the session. The candidates’ agriculture policies are crucial, the groups say, because net U.S. farm income is forecast to drop to its lowest since 2002, largely due to a decline in grain prices. If that happens, incomes will be down 56 percent from a recent high of $123.3 billion in 2013. “With that kind of climate, we’re definitely concerned about what farm policy will look like building to the next (congressional) farm bill,” said Tom Bryant, the National Farmers Union’s membership director. If elected, Clinton will increase agricultural production and profitability for family farms, spokesman Tyrone Gayle said. A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Matt Paul, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman working with Clinton’s campaign, participated in the meeting. The gathering came a day after Britain’s surprise vote to exit the European Union, which drew support from some regions with low population densities. Chandler Goule, incoming CEO of the National Association of Wheat Growers, said farm groups drew parallels to Britain’s referendum because “it’s going to be rural America that’s going to turn out for this election, that’s actually going to determine the outcome of this (presidential) election.” Now that Clinton and Trump are the presumed nominees, “it’s time to start making more detailed and more in-the-weeds-type commitments,” he said. | 0fake |
Factbox: How Catalan autonomy stacks up against other regions | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Questions around nationhood, tax autonomy, international representation and policy powers are at the heart of Sunday s violence-marred independence referendum in Catalonia, Spain s wealthiest region. Below please find brief description of how Catalonia compares with other regions with separatist leanings. A historic principality that became part of a united Spanish kingdom in the 15th century, it is one of 17 autonomous regions under Spain s devolved political system created after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. It has its own government, presidency, and parliament. The statute of autonomy defining Catalonia s powers refers to Catalonia as a nationality . Catalan and Spanish share status as official languages in Catalonia. Catalonia has its own flag and anthem. Half of the income tax and value-added tax (VAT) levied in Catalonia is returned to the region of 7.5 million people, with the central government in Madrid deciding how the rest is spent. Company taxes also go to Madrid. Catalonia receives 58 percent of the proceeds of a number of other taxes, including on alcohol and fuel, raised there. Its tax-collecting agency also gathers some taxes on wealth, inheritance, gambling and transport and keeps all the proceeds. Catalonia, with about 16 percent of Spain s population of 47 million, complains about the redistribution of tax revenues. Each year, it pays about 10 billion euros ($12 billion) more in taxes to Madrid than it gets back, or around 5 percent of regional economic output, according to Spanish Treasury data. The Catalan government has a number of delegations abroad, including in Brussels, London and Washington. The Catalan government has broad powers in areas such as education, health, security, culture, urban development and the environment. It has its own police force, the Mossos d Esquadra. The central government has powers over foreign, defense, immigration and broad economic policy. A kingdom occupying the northern half of the island of Great Britain from the 9th century, Scotland s monarch took the crown of England through dynastic succession in 1603 and in 1707 the two countries formed the state of Great Britain. It is now part of the United Kingdom, with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. After rejecting independence in a 2014 referendum, Scotland was allowed to raise a portion of its own taxes with the option to set what is currently half the level of income tax. From this year, it has had the power to set rates and bands of income tax, and half of VAT receipts from Scotland are now assigned to the Scottish government to spend. The rest of Scotland s financing comes from the UK budget via a formula which takes into account population changes. In general, Scotland, with about 8 percent of the UK s 66 million population, is a net beneficiary from the central budget. Scotland has its own international soccer team and the Scottish government has offices in Brussels, Washington, Toronto and Beijing to promote its regional interests. Scottish Development International also has some 40 offices in about 20 countries aimed at promoting trade and investment. Decisions taken in Scotland s parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh, which was created in 1999, encompass agriculture, health, education, transport, local government, law, social work, housing, tourism and economic development, sport and arts. All other powers such as immigration, defense and foreign policy - are reserved to the UK parliament at Westminster. After gaining independence from the Netherlands in 1830, Belgium later faced demands for equality from Dutch-speakers in a state dominated by the then-richer French-speaking south. Since World War Two, demands for independence for the now more numerous and richer Flemings were met with six rounds of constitutional change that left Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia highly autonomous within a complex federal structure. Most tax rates are set at federal level, though the regions have some powers, such as over car and property taxes. In general, Flanders with about 6 million of Belgium s 11 million people, is a net contributor to the federal budget. Regional governments are in charge of foreign trade and conduct separate trade missions in addition to those of the federal government. Wallonia nearly derailed an EU-Canada trade deal last year. Flanders has permanent representatives in several locations Europe, as well as New York and Pretoria. Flanders, like Wallonia, is in charge of several policy areas, notably education, healthcare and agriculture. Mainly French-speaking since the days of British and French colonial rivalry in North America, Quebec, with a population of 8.2 million, is now one of 10 provinces of the federal state of Canada, whose population is 36 million. Independence referendums in 1980 and 1995 delivered majority votes in favor of remaining part of Canada. The Canadian parliament voted in 2006 to recognize Quebec as a nation . All Canadian provinces have the power to levy provincial taxes and receive transfer payments from the federal government. Quebec, has its own delegations in the Unites States, Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa. Quebec is also a member of its own right in some international organizations, including UNESCO, the U.N. education, science and culture arm. The province can make laws concerning provincial matters and is still bound by federal regulations. | 0fake |
U.S. military says 'opting out' of some exercises following Gulf rift | DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States is scaling back its involvement in some joint military exercises in the Gulf region, a spokesman said on Friday, following a rift between Qatar and its neighbors. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, along with Egypt, severed ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of supporting terrorism, in the most serious rift between the United States Gulf Arab allies. Doha denies it supports terrorism and says the sanctions are intended to force it to change its foreign policies. Asked whether the United States had scaled back military operations with some Gulf Cooperation Council countries due to the rift, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Colonel John Thomas said in an emailed statement: We are opting out of some military exercises out of respect for the concept of inclusiveness and shared regional interests. We will continue to encourage all partners to work together toward the sort of common solutions that enable security and stability in the region, he added, without elaborating. The U.S. Central Command is responsible for 20 countries in the Middle East and South and Central Asia, from Egypt to Kazakhstan. The United States has sought to encourage its Arab allies to discuss their differences, which appear to revolve around Qatar s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group designated by Saudi Arabia and its allies as a terrorist organization. Gulf Arab states also accuse Qatar of cozying up to non-Arab Iran, which they accuse of trying to expand its influence in Arab countries by supporting Shi ite Muslim minorities, something Tehran denies. The United States maintains close military ties with all Gulf Arab states and regularly holds joint exercises. It has military bases in several of the counties, including Qatar which hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. | 0fake |
Someone Made a Guide for What To Do If You See A Hate Crime | Tom Cahill | November 11, 2016
A brilliant guide showing bystanders what to do when seeing Islamophobia in public is spreading on social media.
The guide instructs friendly bystanders to do four things in succession: Converse with the victim while ignoring the attacker, focus on a random subject of conversation that doesn’t involve anything the attacker is talking about, maintain eye contact with the victim while refusing to engage with the attacker, and continue friendly conversation until the attacker leaves, while offering to escort the victim to a safe space.
The illustrated guide, made by artist Maeril , is a 4-step guide that simultaneously shows how a bystander can make an Islamophobic attacker irrelevant while at the same time providing the victim with a safe space. Maeril, who lives in France, originally designed it for bystanders wanting to make Muslim citizens feel welcome after the terror attacks in Paris and Nice, said on her Tumblr that the guide can actually be used to help those being targeted by various forms of hatred and racism. Maeril asked those planning on following the guide to make sure to do two things:
1) Do not, in any way, interact with the attacker. You must absolutely ignore them and focus entirely on the person being attacked!
2) Please make sure to always respect the wishes of the person you’re helping: whether they want you to leave quickly afterwards, or not! If you’re in a hurry escort them to a place where someone else can take over — call one of their friends, or one of yours, of if they want to, the police. It all depends on how they feel!
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Maeril said the guide is based on a psychological technique called “Non-complementary behavior,” in which a person adopts the polar opposite behavior of someone else. In this instance, non-complementary behavior means acting in a warm and friendly way toward someone who is experiencing hostile behavior from someone else.
This guide will likely become essential over the next four years as hate crimes are already being reported across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Follow Maeril on Tumblr here .
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 |
Plouffe to Clinton: Stop micromanaging | A couple of days before Hillary Clinton won the South Carolina primary by nearly 50 points, David Plouffe eased back in his chair at an anonymous Capitol Hill hotel and declared that the woman he helped defeat in 2008 had, oh, a 98 percent chance of beating Bernie Sanders.
He felt pretty, pretty confident about her odds against Donald Trump, too (predicting she could win by “an unheard of margin, nationally, of 6 to 10 points”). But Barack Obama’s puckish, intensely competitive former campaign manager, arguably the most successful Democratic strategist of his generation, offered a who-the-hell-really-knows shrug when asked to offer a similarly precise estimate of Clinton’s odds of beating Trump.
“I don’t think we know yet, and I think all of us should have learned by now not to get out over ourselves with Trump,” Plouffe told me during an episode of POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast, in which he offered far-ranging opinions on Clinton’s self-defeating tendency to doubt her own staff, Trump’s role as an Uber-like disrupter and Bill Clinton’s not-quite-Obama-level status in the presidential pantheon.
“My sense, though is this: that he could completely implode,” Plouffe said of his favorite topic — Trump — tacking on a massive caveat: “So you say, well, how could someone, you know, really ferociously and viciously attack the last former Republican president and get into a worldwide verbal tango with the pope and come out OK? Well, he did. … The Trump thing is a living, breathing, growing organism. There are no rules for how you deal with it.”
Plouffe, the archetypal no-drama Obama adviser credited with implementing Obama’s delegate-hoarding strategy eight years ago, has been informally advising Clinton and her staff as needed. Last year, POLITICO reported that he had quietly met with the soon-to-be-candidate at her Washington mansion, tracing her steps, state-by-state, and offering counsel on how to avoid the rending internal dissension that helped scuttle her race against Obama.
Plouffe, several people in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters told me, speaks regularly with campaign manager Robby Mook, despite a demanding executive post at Uber that demands he travel almost constantly. Mook was checking in with Plouffe daily — sometimes multiple times a day — during Clinton’s narrow and bitterly won victory in the Iowa caucuses, they told me. Part of the problem he has identified is the sheer number of people the Clintons talk to on any given day, and the unerring certainty that each had in the quality of their own advice compared with what Mook and his team offered.
And here is where the 48-year-old Delaware political marketing whiz — who was trying to be as tactful as possible in his public dispensing of criticism — described what he believes to be the biggest danger to Clinton as she grinds through the primary headlong into a bellowing, full-steam Trump.
“I think you build your team, and you stick by your team, and you run,” said Plouffe. “It's got to be very hard for the Clintons. They’ve been on the scene for decades. So any time things go wrong, they have dozens of people, you know, in their email box, and probably calling, saying, ‘Told you so. You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do this.’ ... You’re going to have your valleys, and that’s always a test. And if the thing you do is sow internal tension and allow voices from the outside to really, I think, affect the campaign in a negative way, you may not win.”
Early on, it seemed as though the Clintons were headed to the same dark place they inhabited for much of 2008. Both were in a sour, question-everything mood in the days after her microscopic victory in Iowa, when it was clear Sanders was about to deliver a humbling and decisive win in New Hampshire. There was talk of accelerating a re-evaluation of staff that had been expected after Super Tuesday, or after she secured the nomination. (Some in Clinton’s orbit even floated the nonstarter idea that Plouffe abandon his lucrative Uber gig and jump aboard the campaign.)
Despite the finger-pointing, Clinton decided to stay the course and was rewarded with game-changing victories in Nevada and South Carolina — and Plouffe hopes she doesn’t get itchy-scratchy when things go south, as they inevitably will, in a general election fight. “I think what you do need to figure out whether it’s one voice,” Plouffe said of the campaign’s overall strategy — and please do away with Clinton’s propensity to summon the clans for 10-to-20-person conference calls anytime things go wrong, he urged.
“There has to be — you know, there’s the big call, and the big meeting, and then there’s the real meeting and the real call,” he added. “You can’t make decisions with 10 people. It’s impossible. So you’ve got to figure out, and, you know, the question is, who is she talking to? And listen, they’ve got enormous [talent]: Joel Benenson [pollster and strategist], Mandy [Grunwald, Clinton ad-maker and all-around adviser], [adman] Jim Margolis, Jen Palmieri [communications director]. ... These are super-smart people. So I don’t think it’s necessarily, you know, is there a missing person from the outside … you’ve got to commit to something.”
The test, he says, will come during the general election, when some old Clinton hand panics and demands that either Hillary or Bill scuttle Mook’s strategy to address some crisis, real or imagined. “There will be moments when there’s some bad, bull---- public poll that comes out that shows them tied in Pennsylvania, and, with all due respect, Ed Rendell will call, and say, ‘You've got to [abandon] Virginia and come here for three days.’”
At this point, Plouffe is almost certain Trump will be Clinton’s opponent: He says it’s already “too late” for Republicans to consolidate behind Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, even assuming one or the other would drop out in a fit of suicidal altruism. From here on out, Trump basically needs to not implode. “Remarkably, this is completely in his control. If he can land the plane, he wins,” Plouffe says.
While he professes to be alarmed by the developer-turned-reality-star in his capacity as an “American citizen,” he gets a little giddy (not a natural Plouffian state of being) at the process of reverse-engineering The Donald’s Teflon candidacy. “If you end up with a Trump-Clinton matchup, that will be one for the ages” — and one he’s pretty sure, though not entirely convinced, she’d win in a walk.
“I think that’s a likely possibility: that Hillary Clinton could beat Donald Trump by an unheard of margin, nationally, of 6 to 10 points,” he says. “But if that’s not the case and he’s competitive, where he’ll be competitive is in the Upper Midwest, in the Ohios, the Wisconsins, maybe Pennsylvanias of the world — maybe Iowa and Minnesota even, potentially.”
Plouffe is quick to say, “From an Electoral College standpoint, I don’t see a Trump path,” but he’s equally quick to say the greatest threat posed by Trump is his unpredictability. Plouffe is a guy who likes to make a plan and stick with it, and Trump makes that a near impossibility. “Trump is a wild card, and you just don’t know,” he adds.
The greatest danger is that the public continues to give Trump license to change his positions any time he likes, with minimal recrimination, and that will allow him to take popular stances outside the narrow confines of GOP orthodoxy. Plouffe thinks he’ll show openness to taxing the rich, nod toward the reality of climate change, even recognize some federal government role in providing health care to the poor.
The idea of deconstructing Trump appeals to Plouffe, but the aspect of his old job he misses most is playing around with the numbers. He thinks Clinton’s greatest advantage is a sophisticated data-gathering operation capable of targeting voters, one by one, in swing states, undermining Trump’s scattershot populist messaging.
Plouffe comes by his numeracy naturally. His father, a Massachusetts native, was a physics major who joined the Army and rose to the rank of captain, where he worked in intelligence, and Plouffe earnestly says that he can’t talk about what his dad did before retiring and taking a job with DuPont.
The son inherited the father’s love for math — he fondly recalls solving calculus “puzzles” as a kid — and like many political pros he grew up a baseball box-score fanatic and, later, a devotee of Sabermetrics. But he was also a passionate fan and, like many kids in Delaware, followed the Phillies as a young boy and idolized their Hall of Fame third-baseman, Mike Schmidt. As any one who has ever worked with (or against) him knows, Plouffe is also very, very competitive. As a pre-teen, he merged all of his passions into an obsession with a 1970s-era board game, “All-Star Baseball,” that combined probability, cards with the names of his favorite players and the thrill of pure chance — in short, all the elements of modern politics.
Yet for Plouffe, politics is ultimately about loyalty, in his case an abiding loyalty to Obama that’s apparent even as he dives enthusiastically into a role as public Clinton booster and private unpaid adviser.
His old competitive instincts toward Clinton have been mostly, but not entirely suppressed. He speaks glowingly of her toughness and smarts. But when I ask Plouffe if he regrets playing hardball with Bill and Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, he grins. “Not one bit,” he says. “Not one bit.”
When Plouffe compiles his list of “consequential presidents” over the past century (the purpose is to place Obama near the top) he ticks them off, one by one. “Well, clearly Franklin Roosevelt. ... Maybe you throw in the combined Kennedy-Johnson years … and then Barack Obama, I think, on that level — and Reagan, of course.”
“Bill Clinton was a very good president,” he replies, “very good.” | 0fake |
Megyn Kelly is an evil genius: How the Fox News host won America’s trust (by being slightly less horrible) | The famously liberal Behar was back on “The View” for the day. The topic was Kelly’s much-hyped interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar about the molestation scandal that has engulfed them and their son Josh. (The interview airs Wednesday night.) Behar found herself agreeing with Republican panelist Nicolle Wallace, who said that Kelly has “proven herself to put journalism ahead of any sort of politics.”
It’s the kind of plaudit Kelly has probably become accustomed to. She has had a meteoric rise at Fox News in recent years, vaulting from reporter to daytime anchor to primetime star in less than a decade and attracting so much ratings and media attention that other network notables are openly envious of her.
But Kelly is more than just the newest popular kid on the block. She’s also perhaps the greatest example of the sneaky, complicated brilliance of the Fox News machine.
It’s easy to think of Fox News as a crude propaganda machine, and most of the time it lives down to that reputation. But the network also remembers to offer up just enough little twists and nuances to temper that caricature. Like it or not, it’s filled with formidable, highly watchable broadcasters. Whether it’s Shep Smith railing against drones and praising gay marriage, Chris Wallace making Marco Rubio uncomfortable over Iraq, or any of Kelly’s famous throw-downs, Fox News always adds some spice to the mix to keep things interesting.
Say what you will about the man, but Roger Ailes definitely knows that you can’t only employ braindead hacks if you want people to stay tuned in. And Kelly is emphatically not a braindead hack. She is a ruthlessly compelling presence onscreen, and she uses that to her advantage. In the process, she has managed to get something very few of her colleagues can claim: love from the Joy Behars of the world.
“I’m becoming very uncomfortable with the feelings I’m developing towards Megyn Kelly and I’m praying that someday soon she’ll jump ship and go somewhere where she’s allowed to to use actual facts,” Jezebel’s Kara Brown wrote back in January, after Kelly deftly skewered a blustering Bill O’Reilly. It’s a common feeling among the left-leaning crowd — the idea that Kelly is somehow better than the place that made her name.
Kelly has earned that admiration through a series of extremely fun episodes in which she made mincemeat out of (usually male) right-wing pundits. There was her torching of the odious blobs known as Erick Erickson and Lou Dobbs over some particularly odious comments they’d made about women. There was her efficient filleting of radio host Mike Gallagher after he’d criticized her for going on maternity leave. And, most memorably, there was her tour-de-force humbling of Karl Rove at the 2012 election, when she marched through the Fox News hallways in an effort to silence his baseless assertion that Mitt Romney might have won Ohio, and then asked him, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?”
The liberal set cheered after each of these moments, and they helped Kelly reach the dominant position she has now found herself in. Crucially, they have also helped obscure the fact that, far from being some objective oasis in a conservative desert, her show is usually just as right-wing and authoritarian as anything else on Fox News. Take just the past week, for instance. Kelly did an hour-long special on policing. The title? “America’s Finest Under Fire.” Here’s how she described the protest movements that have emerged following the killings of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Eric Garner and so many more: “Many times they rush to judgment, ignore the results of investigations or dismiss the verdict in order to feed what has become a narrative about out-of-control cops with racist intentions.” Not exactly a dispassionate introduction. Kelly then brought on Mark Fuhrman — most famous for lying about his use of the n-word — to back her up. Of course, these things float by because they’re neither crude enough nor unexpected enough to excite the blogosphere. Kelly knows how to keep tight control of her material. She’s only let herself get in real trouble once, and that was about Santa Claus. It’s hard to imagine that Kelly won’t handle the Duggar interview just as skillfully. In a preview of the sitdown on Monday, she played every side of the story beautifully. She told guest Howard Kurtz—who has really come into his own as a right-wing blatherer—that anyone looking for a “cross-examination” of the Duggars would be disappointed, and excoriated both the media’s handling of the story and the police for leaking details of Josh Duggar’s juvenile records. But she also stressed that nothing would be “off limits,” and that she wasn’t excusing anything the Duggars had done. Anyone looking for exactly what she would do was left with one overriding message: tune in and find out. Another job well done, Megyn! | 0fake |
COLLEGE CAMPUS BANS Chalk, Fears Students Might Write “Trump” Word On Campus Sidewalks | Remember when college campuses were considered a safe space for political and social debate?DePaul University will no longer allow students to chalk political messages on the sidewalks of its campus because of the offensive, hurtful, and divisive nature of pro-Trump chalking found on campus last week. While these chalk messages are part of national agendas in a heated political battle, they appeared on campus at a time of significant racial tension in our country and on college campuses. DePaul is no exception, Depaul s vice president for student affairs Eugene Zdziarski wrote in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform. The university has been addressing campus climate issues in an effort to provide an inclusive and supportive educational environment. In this context, many students, faculty and staff found the chalk messages offensive, hurtful and divisive. Consequently, Zdziarski explained that DePaul s status as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit organization prohibits students from participating in any political activity that could be interpreted as a reflection of the university s views or opinions. Political chalking on Depaul s grounds, Zdziarski argued, fits this description.Last week, Depaul s College Republicans organized a chalking campaign on campus, during which phrases such as Make DePaul great again, Blue Lives Matter, and Trump Train 2016 were scrawled on the sidewalks.The campus grounds crew removed the chalkings the following morning but cited routine maintenance as one of the reasons for their removal. After some investigation, it turns out this happened for two reasons, the university wrote in a statement. First, the crew regularly cleans up chalk messages on our sidewalks. This is a part of their duties. Secondly, some among the crew considered the messages inflammatory. The crew has agreed to consult about such matters in the future. Although the grounds crew regularly cleans up chalk messages, meaning DePaul students regularly chalk their campus sidewalks, this appears to be the first time university officials have expressly addressed their chalking policies. Zdziarski noted, after the Trump chalkings appeared, that students are not even allowed to chalk on sidewalks at all. Students or student organizations may not post partisan political flyers, posters, signs or images on University bulletin board, buildings, electronic message boards, forums or sidewalks. This includes chalking on campus property, he said.Via: Campus Reform | 1real |
Iran rejects U.S. demand for U.N. visit to military sites | ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran has dismissed a U.S. demand for United Nations nuclear inspectors to visit its military bases as merely a dream . It also said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was unlikely to agree anyway. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, last week pressed the IAEA to seek access to Iranian military bases to ensure that they were not concealing activities banned by the 2015 nuclear deal reached between Iran and six major powers. U.S. President Donald Trump has called the nuclear pact negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama the worst deal ever . In April, he ordered a review of whether a suspension of nuclear sanctions on Iran was in the U.S. interest. Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht responded at a weekly news conference broadcast on state television on Tuesday. Iran s military sites are off limits, he said. All information about these sites are classified. Iran will never allow such visits. Don t pay attention to such remarks that are only a dream. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani followed up later by saying the U.S. call was unlikely to be accepted by the U.N. nuclear watchdog. The International Atomic Energy Agency is very unlikely to accept America s demand to inspect our military sites, Rouhani said in a televised interview. Rouhani gave no indication why he believed the IAEA would decline the request. Under the deal, the IAEA can request access to Iranian sites including military ones if it has concerns about activities there that violate the agreement, but it must show Iran the basis for those concerns. That means new and credible information pointing to such a violation is required first, officials from the agency and major powers say. There is no indication that Washington has presented such information to back up its call for inspections of Iranian military sites. Under U.S. law, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days of Iran s compliance with the nuclear deal. The next deadline is October, and Trump has said he thinks by then the United States will declare Iran to be non-compliant. So far, IAEA inspectors have certified that Iran is fully complying with the deal, under which it significantly reduced its enriched uranium stockpile and took steps to ensure no possible use of it for a nuclear weapon. This was in return for an end to international sanctions that had helped cripple its oil-based economy. During its decade-long stand-off with world powers over its nuclear program, Iran repeatedly rejected visits by U.N. inspectors to its military sites, saying they had nothing to do with nuclear activity and so were beyond the IAEA s purview. Shortly after the deal was reached, Iran allowed inspectors to check its Parchin military complex, where Western security services believe Tehran carried out tests relevant to nuclear bomb detonations more than a decade ago. Iran has denied this. Under the 2015 accord, Iran could not get sanctions relief until the IAEA was satisfied Tehran had answered outstanding questions about the so-called possible military dimensions of its past nuclear research. Iran has placed its military bases off limits also because of what it calls the risk that IAEA findings could find their way to the intelligence services of its U.S. or Israeli foes. The Americans will take their dream of visiting our military and sensitive sites to their graves ... It will never happen, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran s highest authority, told reporters. | 0fake |
Pro-Iran Iraqi militia says Jerusalem decision could make U.S. troops a target | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A prominent Iraqi militia backed by Iran, Harakat Hezbollah al- Nujaba, said on Thursday U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital could become a legitimate reason to attack U.S. forces in Iraq. Trump s stupid decision ... will be the big spark for removing this entity (Israel) from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces, the group s leader Akram al-Kaabi said in a statement. | 0fake |
Israel preparing for one-sided UN Security Council resolutions | November 11, 2016 Israel preparing for one-sided UN Security Council resolutions
Some members of the United Nations Security Council are planning anti-Israel resolutions during the last days of the Obama administration, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told Arutz Sheva. This comes as no surprise.
The Ambassador reported that he had been alerted to a specific effort to pass one-sided, binding resolutions in the Security Council that could have serious ramifications for the Jewish state.
“We’ve been hearing for some time from various sources about attempts to take advantage of the lame-duck period after the election, and to pass resolutions against the State of Israel in the Security Council,” Danon said.
“We’re working on a number of fronts,” the Ambassador added, “including with the present [American] government and the incoming administration, as well as with other countries, in order to prevent [one-sided UNSC resolutions].”
Danon then outlined some of the warnings he had received regarding planned efforts towards a Security Council resolution. | 1real |
Silicon Valley Elites Continue to Push for Universal Basic Income - Breitbart | Silicon Valley elites continue to push for a universal basic income in America that would give all citizens a guaranteed annual income from the government. [Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman are just two of the tech elites pushing for universal basic income in America. “We should make it so no one is worried about how they’re going to pay for a place to live, no one has to worry about how they’re going to have enough to eat,” said Altman in a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. “Just give people enough money to have a reasonable quality of life. ” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, also floated the idea in a Harvard commencement speech. “Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,” said Zuckerberg during his speech. “We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas. ” Now Congressman Ro Khanna ( ) is getting onboard with the idea, pushing to introduce a $1 trillion expansion to the earned income tax credit that is currently available to families. “There’s a dignity to work,” Khanna told SiliconValley. com. “People, they don’t want a handout. They want to contribute to the economy. ” Y Combinator has given 100 randomly selected families in Oakland an income of approximately $1, 500 a month. The organization GiveDirectly is currently attempting to raise money to launch a basic income study in Kenya. The group currently plans to provide a basic income to more than 26, 000 people, with some continuing to receive payments for up to 12 years. In January the country of Finland began giving 2, 000 Finnish citizens a monthly income of $600. This study is set to last up to two years. | 0fake |
Trump dismisses Facebook ads controversy as part of 'Russia hoax' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday questioned Facebook Inc s (FB.O) decision to overhaul how it handles paid political advertisements amid investigations into alleged Russian interference in U.S. elections. The Russia hoax continues, now it s ads on Facebook, Trump wrote on Twitter. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary, referring to Hillary Clinton, his rival in the 2016 presidential campaign. Earlier this month, Facebook said an internal review had shown that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on 3,000 Facebook ads promoting divisive messages in the months before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The company initially declined to turn over details on the ads to Congress but said on Thursday it would do so, making a concession to U.S. lawmakers who have threatened to regulate the world s largest social network over ads that run during election campaigns. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook, for the first time, would now make it possible for anyone to see any political ads that run on Facebook, no matter whom they target. Facebook also will demand that political advertisers disclose who is paying for the advertisements, a requirement that under U.S. law applies to political ads on television but not on social media. Zuckerberg said on Thursday the changes would help address concerns that governments including Russia are using Facebook ads to meddle in other countries elections. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia engaged in cyber attacks to sway the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton in favor of Trump. U.S. congressional investigators and a special counsel are investigating the matter. Moscow has denied any interference. While Trump dismissed the advertisement controversy, his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, expressed concern. Well, I think all of these social media providers are faced with many challenges, Tillerson said on ABC s Good Morning America, pointing to their use by militant groups around the world as well as in election campaigns. But they also have responsibilities, he said. And I think they re going to have to think carefully about their responsibilities in this regard. U.S. election law bars foreign nationals and foreign entities from spending money to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. | 0fake |
Scott Pruitt, Trump’s E.P.A. Pick, Backed Industry Donors Over Regulators - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — A legal fight to clean up tons of chicken manure fouling the waters of Oklahoma’s bucolic northeastern corner — much of it from neighboring Arkansas — was in full swing six years ago when the conservative lawyer Scott Pruitt took office as Oklahoma’s attorney general. His response: Put on the brakes. Rather than push for a federal judge to punish the companies by extracting perhaps tens of millions of dollars in damages, Oklahoma’s new chief law enforcement officer quietly negotiated a deal to simply study the problem further. The move came after he had taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from executives and lawyers for the poultry industry. It was one of a series of instances in which Mr. Pruitt put cooperation with industry before confrontation as he sought to blunt the impact of federal environmental policies in his state — against oil, gas, agriculture and other interests. His antipathy to federal regulation — he sued the Environmental Protection Agency 14 times — in many ways defined his tenure as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Now, Mr. Pruitt, tapped to head Donald J. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, will have the opportunity to engineer a radical shift in Washington. If confirmed by the Senate, he is expected to shelve the Obama administration’s aggressive environmental enforcement and embrace a more collaborative approach with the industries that the agency is charged with policing, many of which have helped him advance his political career. The impact would stretch from the nation’s waterways to the planet’s climate, since the E. P. A. carries out and enforces rules to combat global warming. “He has advocated and stood up for the profits of business, be it the poultry companies or the energy industry and other polluters, at the expense of people who have to drink the water or breathe the air,” said Mark Derichsweiler, who led the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality division responsible for overseeing the cleanup. Mr. Derichsweiler retired in 2015 after 40 years with the state, frustrated with Mr. Pruitt’s approach. Mr. Pruitt declined a request to comment. But his supporters contend that his record demonstrates a deeply held philosophy that states understand their needs best and should be allowed to regulate their own environment. On Thursday, a coalition of 23 powerful conservative advocacy groups endorsed Mr. Pruitt’s nomination, in advance of his confirmation hearing, set for Wednesday. “Some claim Mr. Pruitt opposes clean air and water. This could not be further from the truth,” wrote the groups, which include the political action committee Club for Growth the American Energy Alliance, which has advised Mr. Trump on energy policy and Americans for Tax Reform, the group founded by the lobbyist Grover Norquist. Mr. Pruitt, the endorsement said, “understands that many of the nation’s challenges regarding clean air and water are best met at the state and local level. ” Mr. Pruitt, if confirmed, will take over the agency in an odd position: He has spent the last seven years suing it to block regulations that he would be expected to put into effect and enforce. Some legal scholars say he should recuse himself from major pending environmental matters, while groups like the Environmental Defense Fund are urging Congress to reject his confirmation. “The president’s choices deserve a lot of deference from Congress and even environmental groups,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “But at some point when the nominee has spent his entire career attempting to dismantle environmental protections, it becomes unacceptable. That’s why Mr. Pruitt is the first E. P. A. nominee from either party that the Environmental Defense Fund has opposed in our history. ” Some experts say that while returning more authority to states can be desirable in some cases, environmental protection is probably not one of them. Smog and toxic chemicals that foul the air and waterways of one state may originate from one or several others, necessitating federal oversight of pollution. “Pollution doesn’t respect state boundaries,” said Patrick A. Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School. “States have limited ability to regulate pollution from outside the state, and almost every state is downstream or downwind from other pollution. ” Case in point: the “Green Country” chicken battle that Mr. Pruitt inherited in eastern Oklahoma. The phosphorus and nitrates in chicken manure were causing algae blooms in the ponds, streams and lakes of the 1. acre Illinois River watershed, which reaches from Arkansas into Oklahoma. In 2005, Attorney General Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt’s predecessor, sued Tyson Food, Cargill Turkey and a dozen other major poultry producers for damages caused by the pollution and to force them to change the way they disposed of 300, 000 tons a year of animal waste. As Mr. Pruitt ran for election, at least $40, 000 in contributions poured into his campaign from nearly 30 executives at poultry companies named in the lawsuit or attorneys at law firms representing them, including Mark Simmons, the founder of Simmons Foods Donald J. Smith, then the chief executive of Tysons Foods and Gary Weeks, a lawyer listed on the court papers as representing George’s, another company targeted in the lawsuit, according to data assembled by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group and confirmed by The New York Times. That money represents about 4 percent of the total $1 million he raised in the 2010 campaign, records show. After Mr. Pruitt took over, instead of pushing the federal judge for a ruling that, seven years later, still hasn’t been issued, he negotiated an agreement with Arkansas and the poultry companies to conduct a study of the appropriate level of phosphorus in the Illinois River. “Regulation through litigation is wrong in my view,” Mr. Pruitt told The Oklahoman newspaper in 2015. “That was not a decision my office made. It was a case we inherited. ” J. D. Strong, director of Oklahoma’s Wildlife Department and the state’s former Secretary of Environment, praised Mr. Pruitt for negotiating the settlement. “You can’t force a judge to rule,” Mr. Strong said. “Pruitt didn’t sit back and wait or badger the judge for a ruling. He worked to get the states of Oklahoma and Arkansas around the table. ” A spokesman from Tyson Food noted that the contributions to Mr. Pruitt’s campaign were made by the company’s executives and employees — including two former chief executives and members of the Tyson family — rather than by the company itself. “We’ll point out that our employees are encouraged to participate in the election process of public officials at all levels, and are at liberty to make personal contributions to any campaign as they see fit,” Worth Sparkman, the spokesman for Tyson, said. But Mr. Pruitt quietly allowed the expiration of a 2003 agreement that Mr. Edmondson helped negotiate with Arkansas to reduce poultry waste pollution — and to monitor the progress — without seeking another formal extension of the deal. And Mr. Pruitt shut down the specialized unit of four attorneys and a criminal investigator that had helped initiate the lawsuit against the 14 poultry companies. That environmental unit had broad jurisdiction, forcing farmers to spend millions of dollars on their own cleanups and collecting tens of millions of dollars to clean up toxic sites in the state, including poisonous waste left at an abandoned lead and zinc mine known as Tar Creek. Mr. Pruitt, in response to questions, provided a list of environmental enforcement actions taken during his tenure, but the list includes cases that were largely initiated under Mr. Pruitt’s predecessor, Mr. Edmondson. A spokesman for Mr. Pruitt said that while the environmental unit had been closed, environmental cases continued to be handled by the state solicitor general’s unit. “Under the leadership of Attorney General Pruitt, this team has held bad actors accountable and protected stewardship of Oklahoma’s natural resources. ” But Mr. Edmondson said that prosecution of such environmental crimes fell as a result of the shuttering of the unit. “Under his tenure as attorney general, I don’t think environmental crimes have disappeared,” Mr. Edmondson said of Mr. Pruitt, in an interview. “It is just the filing of cases alleging environmental crimes that has largely disappeared. ” Residents who live in eastern Oklahoma, where local ponds and streams are still often clogged with algae, said they, too, were frustrated. Phosphorus levels have declined considerably — a total of about 70 percent between 1998 and 2015 — but the largest reductions took place before Mr. Pruitt became attorney general, as wastewater treatment plants have been upgraded and more poultry farmers have shipped chicken waste for proper disposal. Still, the levels remain far above the state standard and the decline in pollution has been slower than some hoped. “I want an attorney general — and a head of our E. P. A. — who is not averse to protecting Oklahoma’s most outstanding waterways,” said Ed Brocksmith, who is a of a group called Save the Illinois River. At the same time that he was retreating from his predecessor’s more aggressive approach, Mr. Pruitt sent a series of letters to federal regulators that in some cases were drafted by industry lobbyists and then put on his state government stationery, open records obtained by The New York Times in 2014 showed. The letters pressed the federal government to back down on proposals to tighten controls over energy production, such as oil and gas wells that can release methane. Mr. Pruitt separately filed a series of lawsuits against the federal government, challenging regulations intended to reduce the discharge of poisonous mercury from power plants, carbon dioxide blamed for climate change and other emissions that federal authorities argued were causing unsightly haze in Oklahoma’s air. In total, Mr. Pruitt filed 14 lawsuits challenging federal environmental regulations. In 13 of those cases, the included companies that had contributed money to Mr. Pruitt or to political campaign committees. Mr. Pruitt separately has served as a leader of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which since 2013 has collected $4. 2 million from related companies, including Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Murray Energy and Southern Company, which in many cases have also supported the lawsuits he has filed. Given the scale of his regulatory challenges, Mr. Pruitt turned to major corporate law firms, which typically defend energy companies fighting these laws, for help. In some cases, that assistance was offered free. BakerHostetler, the law firm whose clients have included dozens of energy industry players, assigned five of its lawyers to help Oklahoma overturn President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, intended to combat climate change. The law firm did not charge Oklahoma anything for the work, Mr. Pruitt’s office confirmed. David B. Rivkin Jr. the lead attorney from BakerHostetler who handled the matter, said that the work was considered charitable, similar to when major law firms give free legal advice to inmates at the Guantánamo Bay military prison. Environmentalists scoffed. “The industries and companies, through their corporate lawyers, are renting the state’s seal in order to make it look like their arguments are being made by Scott Pruitt on behalf of a state,” said David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. “It is a disgrace. ” Even federal judges are skeptical. Mr. Pruitt joined with Missouri and several other mostly rural states in one federal suit to beat back California’s regulations requiring egg farms, including those in Oklahoma, that wanted to sell in the state to seek more humane treatment of hens. In rejecting the suit, the federal judge admonished the plaintiffs. “The court concludes plaintiffs have not brought this action on behalf of their interest in the physical or economic of their residents in general,” Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of the United States District Court wrote in her 2014 opinion, “but rather on behalf of a discrete group of egg farmers whose businesses will allegedly be impacted. ” | 0fake |
WATCH: Bernie Sanders Makes MAJOR Announcement At Rally and Thousands Go Crazy | The mood at Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders rallies is always electrifying. Whether he s in big cities like Chicago or in small town America, Sanders has taken the nation by storm. This was all on display on Saturday in Wisconsin when Bernie Sanders made a major announcement and the crowd erupted.Sanders was talking about his victory in Alaska to a crowd of thousands when he received a private message. Sanders then said: Alright, are you ready for a news alert? We just won the state of Washington! That is what momentum is about. That s when the crowd went nuts. Sanders not only won Washington, but he won resoundingly in a record turnout where he picked up 73% of the vote. He also won big in Hawaii and received a whopping 83% of the vote in Alaska.Sanders is clearly poised to beat Republican candidate and frontrunner Donald Trump in a general election as polls show him not only winning but landsliding the bombastic billionaire should the two face off in a general election. In fact, Sanders easily defeats all of the remaining Republican candidates head to head.The electrifying support and enthusiasm Bernie Sanders has received all over the country just increased after his resounding and convincing victories in three states, making the race closer and his pursuit of the Democratic nomination more likely.Watch video here:Featured image via video screenshot. | 1real |
Liberal Democrat Leader Branded ’Bigot’ for Refusing to Endorse Gay Sex | Tim Farron, leader of the left wing Liberal Democrats, has been branded a “bigot” by celebrities and angry social media users after refusing to say gay sex is not a sin. [In an interview with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman on Tuesday night, the presenter asked: “A while back I asked you if you thought that homosexuality was a sin and you struggled to answer. “Now you’ve had a while to consider that question, what is the answer?” Mr. Farron, who is an observant member of the Church of England, responded: “I don’t think I struggled to answer it at all, Cathy. I think I’m not in the position to make theological announcements over the next six weeks. “I’m not going to spend my time talking theology or making pronouncements. ” The presenter then reminded him that in a 2015 interview she asked him three times if he thought homosexuality was a sin and he responded: “We’re all sinners. ” She asked him if this was still the answer. “As a Liberal, I’m passionate about equality, about equal marriage and about equal rights for LGBT people, for fighting for LGBT rights, not just in this country but overseas,” he responded. “Just because I’m Christian, it would be a bit boring for everybody to spend the next weeks asking me to make theological announcements that I’m not going to make. ” His response was not good enough for some, however. TV presenter Sue Perkins tweeted: “Tim Farron on C4 news failing to clarify his views on the gay community. ‘We’re all sinners’. It’s 2017. ” Tim Farron on C4 news failing to clarify his views on the gay community. ’We’re all sinners’. It’s 2017. — Sue Perkins (@sueperkins) April 18, 2017, Meanwhile, comedian David Baddiel even branded Mr. Farron a “fundamentalist Christian homophobe” with fellow comedian David Walliams adding: “Mr @timfarron you are definitely a sinner for your continued intolerance prejudice. Please try and join the rest of us in the year 2017. ” Problem with people saying it’s Tim Farron who’s talking the most sense is: he’s a fundamentalist Christian homophobe. #notsurehowwegothere, — David Baddiel (@Baddiel) April 18, 2017, Mr @timfarron you are definitely a sinner for your continued intolerance prejudice. Please try and join the rest of us in the year 2017. — David Walliams (@davidwalliams) April 18, 2017, Tim Farron joined nine other Liberal Democrat MPs in abstaining in the vote on gay marriage in 2013. However, he said his abstention did not mean he opposed it. | 0fake |
Assange claims ‘crazed’ Clinton campaign tried to hack WikiLeaks | Assange claims ‘crazed’ Clinton campaign tried to hack WikiLeaks The whistleblowing website has been releasing emails from Clinton’s campaign chair RT - October 27, 2016 Comments
Julian Assange has claimed the Hillary Clinton campaign has attacked the servers being used by WikiLeaks.
Despite the Ecuadorian embassy shutting down his internet until the US election is over, the website will continue publishing, according to Assange.
“Everyday that you publish is a day that you have the initiative in the conflict,” Assange said via telephone at a conference in Argentina on Wednesday.
The whistleblowing website has been releasing emails from Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, on a daily basis since early October.
Assange claimed the release “whipped up a crazed hornet’s nest atmosphere in the Hillary Clinton campaign” leading them to attack WikiLeaks.
“ They attacked our servers and attempted hacking attacks and there is an amazing ongoing campaign where state documents were put in the UN and British courts to accuse me of being both a Russian spy and a pedophile,” he added.
Ecuador’s decision to shut down his internet was described by Assange as a “strategic position” so that its “policy of non-intervention can’t be misinterpreted by actors in the US and even domestically in Ecuador.”
He said he was sympathetic with Ecuador, insisting they face the dilemma of having the US interfere with their elections next year if they appear to interfere with the US elections next month.
Assange, who claimed the embassy will be without internet until the election is over to avoid accusations of interference, said he did not agree with Ecuador’s decision but did understand it. WikiLeaks will not be affected by the decision as they do not publish from Ecuador, he said.
He did, however, reject the idea that WikiLeaks is interfering with the US election, claiming, “this is not the interference of electoral process, this is the definition of electoral process – for media organizations and, in fact, everyone to publish the truth and their opinion about what is occurring. It cannot be a free and informed election unless people are free to inform.”
He also attacked US TV networks, many of whom he accused of being “controlled by Clinton supporters.”
The Podesta emails will make no difference to the election result, according to Assange. “I don’t think there’s any chance of Donald Trump winning the election, even with the amazing material we are publishing, because most of the media organizations are strongly aligned with Hillary Clinton,” he said.
Assange said journalists and people who work in the media are predominantly middle class and view Trump as representing “what in their mind is white trash.” NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 1real |
WATTERS’ WORLD VIDEO Asks Bernie Sanders Supporters: What Is “Democratic Socialism?” | The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. -Winston Churchill | 1real |
Iranian foreign minister "unmoved by threats" from U.S | ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Friday that the Islamic Republic was unmoved by U.S. threats following its missile test launch and that Tehran would never initiate war. “Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense,” Zarif wrote. U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted early on Friday that “Iran is playing with fire” and “they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!” Trump said on Thursday that “nothing is off the table” in dealing with Iran following its launch of a ballistic missile. Fellow Republicans in Congress said they would back him up with new sanctions. Zarif said Iran had no intention to use its military might against any country, except in self-defense. “We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement,” he tweeted. Iran said on Thursday it would not yield to “useless” U.S. threats from “an inexperienced person” over its missile program. | 0fake |
Trump says prepared to take on North Korea without China if needed | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States is prepared to tackle the crisis surrounding North Korea without China if necessary. The president made the comments at a joint news conference with visiting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping last week and spoke to him by phone on Wednesday night. “President Xi wants to do the right thing. We had a very good bonding, I think we had a very good chemistry together, I think he wants to help us with North Korea,” Trump said. “We talked trade, we talked a lot of things, and I said the way you’re going to make a good trade deal is to help us with North Korea, otherwise we’re just going to go it alone, that’ll be all right too, but going it alone means going with lots of other nations.” | 0fake |
Video Proves Texas Cop Lied About Man Pulling A Gun On Him Twice (VIDEO) | Newly released surveillance video shows that a Texas police officer lied when he arrested a young father in front of his two children, claiming the man pointed a gun at him twice.The video, just released by KHOU, shows Julian Carmona s vehicle pulling into a parking space at a Houston, Texas convenience store. His two children were in the back seat of the vehicle.The off-duty officer who claims the man pointed a gun at him, identified as William Wright of the Houston Police Department, was driving his own personal vehicle at the time of the encounter.In the first few moments of the video, Carmona can be seen pulling in behind the officer s pickup truck, before parking his own vehicle.Carmona says he was in a hurry to get inside the store because he had to use the restroom. He admits that there was a gun in the pocket of the driver s side door.Carmona says that as he was getting out of the car, the gun somehow fell out of the car. I don t know if I hit it when I opened the door, or hit it with my foot everything just happened so fast, he told KHOU.The video shows Carmona opening the door to his vehicle, then bending over as if to pick something up off of the ground. He immediately turns back toward his own vehicle, apparently to return the fallen object to the car.It s at this point that officer Wright can be seen getting out of his pickup truck with his gun drawn on Carmona. I put my hands up like, Sir, I apologized right away, Carmona said. Sir, I apologize, because the first thing that come to my mind, I dropped a gun in front of an officer, without even knowing it. Wright ordered Carmona to the ground, placing the man in handcuffs as his children watch from the car.At one point his young son can be seen getting out of the car as his father lay face down on the ground. He comes behind me, he starts handcuffing me and my son comes out of the truck. That was the last thing I wanted, he told KHOU.In his official report, Wright wrote that Carmona pointed a gun at him twice, causing him to fear for his life.He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony offense under Texas law.But the video clearly shows that the Texas father never pointed a gun at officer Wright.It should not go without saying that carrying a gun in a vehicle with two children riding inside is a terrible, terrible idea.From the video and Carmona s own statements, it appears that he intended to leave the gun in the car with his children while he used the convenience store bathroom. That is something no parent should ever do.Be that as it may, it s not a crime in the state of Texas.Carmona has a legal permit to carry a concealed weapon.In an apparent effort to discredit him, police brought up a 2007 charge which was dismissed through deferred adjudication.What s more, video from inside the store shows that Officer Wright has stopped there to purchase beer, something officers in uniform are barred from doing under department policy.Regardless of how you feel about concealed carry laws, there s no justification for this kind of dishonesty and abuse of power on the part of police.Here s more on this story, including footage from the surveillance video, via KHOU.Featured image via video screen capture via KHOU | 1real |
Krikorian: ’Bringing Sanctuary Cities to Heel Much More Difficult’ Than Building Border Wall | Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, spoke about President Trump’s executive actions on the border and immigration with Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow Thursday. [While calling Trump’s early actions on immigration “outstanding,” Krikorian said, “The border wall is going to be less problematic” compared to efforts to push back against “sanctuary cities. ” Trump “has all the authority he needs” to build the wall, said Krikorian. “Bringing sanctuary cities to heel is going to be much more difficult because cutting off some of their Justice Department grants is not going to do it for at least a lot of the big ones: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. They’ve already said they don’t care they’ll take the hit. Their first goal is protecting illegal aliens. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 0fake |
China says U.S. violated its sovereignty in South China Sea | BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday that the United States had violated its sovereignty and security, after a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near islands that Beijing claims in the South China Sea. China firmly opposes the U.S. move, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on its microblog. | 0fake |
Asian-American judges among Obama's options as he seeks to replace Scalia | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has a number of likely options as he looks for a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday. Within a few hours, Obama said he intends to make a nomination, despite Republicans stressing they opposed any appointment being made until after November’s presidential election. The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate would have to approve the nomination. If Obama’s nominee is not confirmed by the Senate, the White House could use the process to energize Democratic voters ahead of the presidential and congressional elections in November. If a Democratic nominee were to replace Scalia it would lead to a sizable shift in the ideological balance of the high court, which has had a conservative majority for decades. Here are some of the possibilities, including two prominent Asian-American judges: Sri Srinivasan Among those the administration could turn to is Sri Srinivasan, 48, who has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since May 2013. He would be the first Indian-American on the court and has impeccable bipartisan credentials. The Senate confirmed him on a 97-0 vote three years ago. He was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, now retired, a 1981 appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan. At Srinivasan’s confirmation hearing, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, now a presidential candidate, described himself as a long-standing friend dating back to their time together as law clerks in the U.S. appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia. Cruz said Srinivasan had done a “very fine job” in answering the committee’s questions. During his nomination to the appeals court, prominent Republicans such as former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson supported Srinivasan. At his 2013 investiture, leading lights of the legal establishment from both parties praised him. Federal appeals court judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee for whom Srinivasan was also a law clerk, called him “lightning smart.” So far on the appeals court, his rulings have not sparked controversy. Jacqueline Nguyen Other names the administration could consider include Jacqueline Nguyen, 50, a Vietnamese-American who has been a judge on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since May 2012. The first Asian-American woman to sit on a federal appeals court, she was confirmed by the Senate in 2012 by a 91-3 vote. When she was a child, Nguyen fled South Vietnam with her family toward the close of the Vietnam War in 1975, and then lived in a refugee camp in California. Nguyen was a federal prosecutor and district court judge in Los Angeles before she was elevated to the appeals court. Paul Watford An African-American who is also a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Paul Watford is another possibility. He was an appellate litigator at the Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm before Obama nominated him to the appeals court in 2011. Watford, 48, clerked for 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, a libertarian-leaning Republican, and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of Scalia’s colleagues on the Supreme Court. He was confirmed by a 61-34 vote, as some Republicans raised concerns about Watford’s work as a lawyer on immigration and death penalty cases. Jane Kelly Jane Kelly, a white woman and former public defender who has served on the St. Louis, Missouri-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since April 2013. She was supported by Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the key committee that would review the nominee. Kelly, 51, clerked for now-retired Judge David Hansen, a friend of Grassley’s who served on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She was confirmed by the Senate on a 96-0 vote. | 0fake |
Abe says agreed with Putin to implement U.N. sanctions on North Korea | DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday that he had agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin to implement United Nations sanctions on North Korea strictly. On North Korea, we have agreed to implement U.N. sanctions strictly and to continue cooperating closely, Abe told reporters after meeting Putin on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Danang, Vietnam. | 0fake |
Quarter of Republicans would keep Obamacare: Reuters/Ipsos poll | NEW YORK (Reuters) - About a quarter of U.S. Republicans do not want to see Obamacare repealed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. Trump and his fellow Republicans, who control Congress, have promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, but a majority of Americans, including 25 percent of Republicans polled, do not want it to be repealed. The law has been credited with helping about 20 million people get insurance coverage. Only one in five Americans would repeal the law immediately, the poll found. Republicans were sharply divided, with 25 percent of those polled wanting to keep it intact or fix problem parts. Some 32 percent would repeal it immediately, while 44 percent would wait to repeal it once an alternative plan is ready to go. “There is some recognition, even from Republican supporters, that the underlying goals of the law are worthwhile,” said Jack Hoadley, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. “They still want something done, they don’t want it to disappear.” About 10 percent of Democrats polled would keep the 2010 law as it is and another 70 percent want it to remain intact with some fixes. Some 19 percent of them want the law repealed, including 13 percent who want a replacement passed first. Respondents interviewed by Reuters said they want the U.S. Congress to address problems such as the rising cost of healthcare but even many Republicans who have insurance don’t want it scrapped without a replacement. “I’m afraid if you just repeal, people will lose it,” said Kathy Dugas, a Republican who works as a dietician near Jackson, Mississippi, which has one of the country’s highest obesity rates. “Healthcare should be about people, not about politics,” she said. “There has to be something to take care of people.” Some congressional Republicans have expressed concern about starting a repeal absent clarity about how to replace provisions of the complicated and far-reaching law, but Congress is under pressure from Trump to act quickly. On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a fiscal 2017 budget by a vote of 227-198, nearly along party lines, that establishes a reconciliation procedure to shield an Obamacare repeal from Senate filibusters. The Reuters poll mirrors findings from a poll released in early January by the Kaiser Family Foundation that also found the public divided: Almost half the people in that poll wanted the law repealed but 28 percent of that group want to know the details of the replacement before Obamacare is scrapped. The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. The question on Obamacare included responses from 2,232 American adults, including 951 Democrats and 879 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the entire group, and 4 percentage points for the Democrats and Republicans. | 0fake |
U.S. Interior Department finalizes rule to protect waterways from coal mining | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Monday finalized a contentious rule to protect streams and forests from the impact of coal mining, one of the Obama administration’s last major environmental regulations that the incoming Trump administration is likely to target. The Stream Protection Rule, which the coal industry strongly opposes, updates 33-year-old regulations with stronger requirements for responsible surface coal mining. The Interior Department says the rule will protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests over the next two decades. “This updated, scientifically modern rule will make life better for a countless number of Americans who live near places where coal is being mined,” said Joseph Pizarchik, director of the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which crafted the rule. Pizarchik said his office received over 150,000 public comments on the proposal. The Stream Protection rule requires companies to avoid mining practices that could pollute streams and drinking water sources, restore streams, and promise to return mined areas to their original form. It also requires mining companies to replant these areas with native trees and vegetation in certain cases. The rule also requires testing and monitoring of streams near coal mines before, during and after drilling to ensure that miners can detect increased levels of pollution. Industry groups like the National Mining Association have been vocal opponents of the proposal, saying it places too much of a burden on mining companies. The rule is likely to be reversed by President-elect Donald Trump, who said that in his early days in office he would reverse a number of regulations targeting the coal industry, which he has promised to revive. The Republican-majority Congress could use the Congressional Review Act to block the rule with a simple majority vote. Trump would likely not veto it. Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who represents coal-mining state West Virginia, called the Stream Protection Rule a “last-ditch effort” by the Obama administration to burden her state’s struggling coal industry. “The decision by voters last month makes today’s announcement by the Office of Surface Mining an exercise in futility,” Capito said in a statement. “Working with President-elect Trump and our Republican congressional majority, I am confident that we will be able to use the Congressional Review Act to stop this rule from taking effect.” | 0fake |
VIDEO : Bernie Supporter Hijacks Hillary Crowd and Tells them NOT to Vote For Her – TruthFeed | VIDEO : Bernie Supporter Hijacks Hillary Crowd and Tells them NOT to Vote For Her VIDEO : Bernie Supporter Hijacks Hillary Crowd and Tells them NOT to Vote For Her Videos By Amy Moreno November 5, 2016 Hillary got trolled at her own rally by a scheduled speaker!
During a small, lackluster Clinton rally a scheduled speaker took the stage and urged everyone NOT to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Ha ha ha!
The young man is a college sophomore and Bernie supporter.
He told the small crowd of people NOT to vote for Hillary because of her strong ties to crooked Wall Street before he was escorted off stage.
Awesome!
Watch the video: Bernie Sanders supporter and college student speaker calls out Hillary Clinton at her own rally, security pulls him off stage 11/5/2016 pic.twitter.com/EKMV15ZScd This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 1real |
GOP Sen Fischer: ’Obamacare Failed Because It Took Choices Away’ - Breitbart | During Saturday’s GOP Weekly Address, Senator Deb Fischer ( ) stated, “Obamacare failed because it took choices away from patients and families. It took choices away from all of us. Well, it’s time to get our choices, our control, back so we can promote our health and wellness. ”[Transcript (via ABC News Radio) as Follows: “Hi, I’m Deb Fischer, United States Senator from the great state of Nebraska. When I hear from patients and their families about Obamacare, they tell me the law is a broken promise. They couldn’t keep the plan they liked. Or the doctor they trusted. Their costs shot up, not down. Jim, a grandfather from Grand Island, Nebraska, says this: ‘Our kids’ new insurance premiums went up 36 percent, which is over 50 percent of their income … This leaves my grandkids with no insurance.’ Tim from Kearney, Nebraska saw his health insurance premium jump 60 percent. Obamacare’s financial cost is . But it has another, hidden cost. One you can’t count with dollars and cents. It’s an emotional toll. The worry that comes from a lack of control. How many of you have seen your health care costs increase? How many of those you know have lost their health care? In November, the American people said, ‘Enough.’ They asked us to stop the hurt. This week, the Senate answered: we voted to put the tools in place to repeal Obamacare. Now, we will begin the process of putting the American people in charge of their health care. Congress will work with the ’s administration to put patients and families first — not Washington. We will work for a stable transition period to protect families. We will fight for patients with conditions, children, parents, and people who need to be protected. Our goal is a sustainable solution that gives patients flexibility and choices in their coverage. Obamacare failed because it took choices away from patients and families. It took choices away from all of us. Well, it’s time to get our choices, our control, back so we can promote our health and wellness. We Americans believe in freedom. Of speech. Of religion. Why not in health care too? Freedom is powerful. It made thirteen tiny colonies the greatest nation on earth. It took a man to the moon. It cured polio. We’re on the path now to giving families freedom in health care. To restoring choice and control. To delivering compassionate, personalized care that treats people like people, not numbers. Sadly, Democrats in Washington have stated their plan is to frighten Americans about this process. That kind of attitude, peddling dread and pushing anxiety, will not help the American people. It’s time to move forward. Let’s put this failed law behind us and focus on making life easier for families. The American people deserve health care reform done the right way and for the right reasons. I am committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to deliver the results the American people need and deserve. It’s the right thing to do. Thanks for listening. Thank you, and God bless. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Big role for U.S. at climate talks despite withdrawal from Paris deal | OSLO/LONDON (Reuters) - The United States will play a big role at global talks next month on shaping the Paris agreement on climate change, to the dismay of some nations that want Washington sidelined because of President Donald Trump s plan to withdraw from the deal. U.S. officials have said they will be constructive at the annual 195-nation climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, from Nov. 6-17 to work on a rule book for the 2015 Paris plan to shift the world economy from fossil fuels this century. But other nations are torn between welcoming or berating Washington s envoys after Trump s decided in June to pull out and instead promote the U.S. fossil fuel industry. Washington retains its place in the talks because the Paris pact stipulates that no country can formally pull out before November 2020. The Trump regime really needs to walk away and not hold the rest of the world hostage to the President s ineptitude, said Ian Fry, who represents Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation at risk of rising sea levels and storm surges. He told Reuters that Trump s pro-coal policies, and doubts that climate change is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions, could undermine urgency at the meeting of senior officials and environment ministers. The White House did not respond to requests for comment and the State Department has not set up a briefing ahead of the meeting, as it traditionally has. This year is on track to be the second warmest since records began in the 19th century, behind 2016. Scientists say rising temperatures will stoke ever more powerful hurricanes, floods and wildfires. But U.S. delegates at preparatory meetings said they will play a positive role in Bonn, said Nazhat Shameem Khan, chief negotiator of Fiji which will preside at the meeting. The U.S. approach send positive signals ... that this will not be a destructive COP, she said, using the shorthand for Conference of the Parties. It is not yet clear if any U.S. political leaders will attend. Many U.S. allies, including France, Canada and Britain, hope to coax Trump to end up staying in the pact which is backed by all nations except Syria. Nicaragua, which had judged the deal too weak, ratified it this month. In a sign that most nations are willing to permit a strong U.S. role, an internal U.N. document obtained by Reuters shows that a U.S. official, Andrew Rakestraw, will co-lead a section of the talks with a Chinese counterpart on ensuring transparent rules for the Paris agreement. And the U.S. delegation will be led by Thomas Shannon, a career diplomat who gave a speech in 2015 calling climate change one of the world s greatest challenges . The meeting will work on a rule book, due to be completed in 2018, for implementing the Paris agreement on issues such as the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and how national emissions will be checked. Washington and many other developed nations have long sought tough rules to bind emerging nations such as China and India, which have been wary of outside oversight. And many delegates expect the U.S. officials, many of whom were architects of the Paris accord under former President Barack Obama, will contribute to clear, enforceable rules that will be in U.S. interests whether it is in or out of the deal. Having the United States at the table with good negotiators who can take this forward is a win-win, said Paula Caballero, a director of the World Resources Institute think-tank and formerly a climate negotiator for Colombia. The treatment of the United States is likely to hinge on whether Washington limits itself to technical details of the rule book or promotes Trump s pro-coal political agenda. It is quite likely that the U.S. will be sidelined ... unless they play a constructive role, said Elisa de Wit, head of climate change at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright. Outside the conference center, a U.S. network called We Are Still In will highlight actions by states, cities and other non-federal groups to implement the Paris agreement and shift to wind, solar and other clean energies. It says Trump s pro-coal policies will be only a blip in a long-term economic shift this century. We need to make sure the world maintains confidence in our ability to move forward, said Washington State Governor Jay Inslee. | 0fake |
Hillary is Sick & Tired of Suffering from Weiner Backup | 1real | |
North Korea: Will World War III Kick Off This Week? | by Neil Clark for RTOf course, in State Department-friendly Western media, it s North Korea and its leadership who are routinely portrayed as the nut jobs. But you don t have to carry a torch for the North Korean government or be a card-carrying member of the Kim Jong-un Appreciation Society to acknowledge that the country s leadership has actually been behaving very rationally. Because recent history tells us that the best way to deter an attack from the US and its allies is not to disarm, dress up as John Lennon and make statements about how much you desire peace, but to do the exact opposite.The crisis on the Korean Peninsula is due to the actions of a rogue state ruled by madmen with nukes. This rogue state is of course the USA. https://t.co/A0JynTPlSy John Wight (@JohnWight1) August 11, 2017Consider what happened to Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Like the DPRK, all three were US target states . And all three were destroyed and their leaders killed. Do we honestly think these countries would have been attacked had they possessed nukes or missiles that could reach US targets? Of course not. Detailed analysis of these conflicts shows us that the Empire gets its way through a mixture of bluff followed by the use of military force, but only when it believes the risks are minimal, or non-existent. If it believes the risks are too high, it backs off and starts talking about the need for dialogue and diplomacy .To understand how the global hegemon acts in the international arena we don t need to study huge academic textbooks, only remember what happens in the school playground.In 1999, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic not only lacked ICBMs, but strong international allies who were prepared to stand by his country in its hour of need. Even though the Russian military were champing at the bit to help their historical Slavic allies in Belgrade, Yeltsin and the ruling elite in Russia were purportedly given financial inducements to stay out. Whether or not that is true, a new IMF loan was conveniently agreed just a week after NATO began its illegal aerial bombing campaign.The US only expected military action to last a few days before Slobo would cave in and accept the Western military alliance s right to occupy mineral-rich Kosovo and have free unhindered access over the whole of Yugoslavia. I don t see this as a long-term operation. I think this is something that is achievable within a relatively short space of time, boasted Secretary of State Madeline Albright.But Slobo and the stoical Serbs did not cave in. As the bombing campaign continued, splits began to emerge in NATO between the hawks, comprised of the US and Britain, and the countries from continental Europe who favored dialogue with Belgrade.On April 15, 1999, the Guardian reported that American officials rejected a six-point German peace plan which included a 24-hour bombing pause, a United Nations peacekeeping force and civilian monitors. It went on to note how British Prime Minister Tony Blair also gave the plan a polite cold shoulder. NATO atrocities, such as the killing of 16 civilians in the bombing of Serbian State Television a clear war crime and the bombing of a passenger train and a convoy of Kosovan Albanians, were beginning to turn public opinion against the humanitarian operation. With the war not going to plan, it was time once again for the US to make threats. To increase the pressure on Milosevic- the Yugoslav President was indicted as a war criminal, a process I described here.In addition, hints were made that NATO was planning a ground invasion. President Clinton declared on 18th May 1999 that he would not take any option off the table. Victor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin s envoy, flew to Belgrade to persuade Milosevic to accept NATO s terms or face an escalation of the war.But would there really have been boots on the ground or was it one big bluff? Evidence suggests the latter. NATO s supreme commander Wesley Clark revealed in his memoirs that the Alliance s top political leaders had reached no consensus over sending in ground troops. And would NATO have gotten away with intensifying its air campaign? Clark also admitted that by mid-May, NATO had gone about as far as possible with the air strikes. I m sure that seven years later, as he lay in his prison cell a sick man, denied the proper medical treatment which his heart condition required, Milosevic regretted not saying nyet to Chernomyrdin in 1999 and calling Washington s bluff.Four years later it was the turn of oil-rich Iraq to be attacked.Saddam Hussein and his Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz repeatedly told the world s media that their country possessed no WMDs.They were accused of lying by western neocons, but the endless war lobby knew the Iraqi leadership was telling the truth. Saddam s country was attacked not because it possessed weapons of mass destruction, but because it didn t. With its air defenses severely weakened after years of Allied bombing, and its own air force decimated in the first Gulf War, Iraq was a sitting duck. Bush and Blair lied about the country being a threat and 1m Iraqis eventually died.Over in oil-rich Libya, Muammar Gaddafi drew absolutely the wrong conclusions about what had happened to Iraq. Eagerly seeking the end of US sanctions on his country, he foolishly agreed in December 2003 to eliminate his WMDs program. He should have reacted to Shock and Awe by building up his arsenal, but instead, falling for the silver-tongued promises of Western leaders who were going to end his country s isolation, he did the opposite.George W. Bush hailed his decision as a wise and sensible choice. Tony Blair, for his part, said: This courageous decision by Colonel Gaddafi is an historic one. I applaud it. It will make the region and the world more secure. But of course, it didn t. It only paved the way for the destruction of Gaddafi s country by the same countries whose leaders had hailed him as wise and sensible a few years earlier.Again, I m sure that eight years later, as Gaddafi lay in his underground hideout, trying to escape capture from US-backed rebels (who eventually killed him in the most brutal way imaginable), he bitterly regretted his decision to disarm.Which brings us back to North Korea.It s clear that Kim Jong-un has seen what happened to Milosevic, Saddam and Gaddafi and the devastation wreaked on their countries and acted accordingly. North Korea s strategy is clearly based on the belief, borne out by events described above, that the US is a bully which only attacks the weak. Thus, saber-rattling and generally playing a high line is the best way to avoid attack. We must remember too that North Korea lost around 1m people in the Korean War 1950-53, many from an intensive US bombing campaign.#bbcpm discussing Trump's constitutional authority to attack N. Korea. International law, of course, is not even mentioned. David Traynier (@DTraynier) August 11, 2017 We need nukes to defend ourselves from attack, but it is deemed totally outrageous if countries in the global south, which we threaten on a routine basis, seek to acquire such weapons for the same reason.To deter a US attack, North Korea, or indeed any other country in the line of fire, has to convince the serial warmongers in Washington that the cost of launching such an assault would be too high. Being nice and singing Give Peace a Chance won t cut the mustard. Remember that John Lennon, who wrote and sang that song, lost his life from a gunshot.While Saddam implored the West, Believe me, I have no WMDs, Kim Jong-un has done the exact opposite and talked up his country s capabilities. However, Kim knows that words alone are not enough; he also needs to demonstrate that North Korean projectiles can be a threat to the US. Hence the announcement on Wednesday that it was carefully considering a plan to fire four missiles into the sea off the island of Guam, home to two US bases.https://twitter.com/PaddyBriggs/status/895547451381346305Of course, Pyongyang s strategy is high risk, especially with such a volatile individual as Donald Trump who seems desperate to earn neocon approval to avoid a possible impeachment in The White House.Recent history though suggests that North Korea, by keeping its fists clenched and continuing to indulge in missile willy-waving is doing absolutely the right thing. The big lesson of the last thirty years is surely that deterrence works. If you re a target state and can t deter the warmongers in Washington, you re in grave danger. Just ask the ghosts of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.***Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66READ MORE NORTH KOREA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire North Korea FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
ON THE INSIDE: Ex-Goldman Sachs Partner Tapped for US Treasury – Joined by Rothschild Linked Commerce Secretary Pick | Shawn Helton 21st Century WirePresident-elect Donald Trump continues to fill key positions in the White House and in the process, there have already been some controversial cabinet selections. This week the Trump transition team named former Goldman Sachs partner and ex-Soros Fund Management employee (turned Hollywood financier), Steve Mnuchin, as the US Treasury Secretary.The Mnuchin pick, arrives simultaneously as long time billionaire pal of Trump, Wilbur Ross, former head of Rothschild Inc s bankruptcy advisory business, becomes Commerce Secretary.While Trump s cabinet nominees for the White House have not yet been set in stone, the two selections mentioned above represent the type of financial syndicate we ve seen in the Washington swamp for many years. TOO BIG TO FAIL (Photo Illustration Shawn Helton of 21WIRE)The Financial Crisis & Goldman Sachs In April of 2016, Mnuchin was tasked with being the finance chairman of Trump s 2016 presidential campaign, paving the way for another Wall Street insider to head to the White House.In early November, sources close to CNBC floated the idea that formerly scandal plagued JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, was also up for consideration for US Treasury Secretary before Mnuchin, a long time acquaintance of Trump was officially named.The Mnuchin selection appears at odds with Trump s anti-Wall Street campaign rhetoric, as well as his drain the swamp mantra echoed towards the tail end of his presidential run.In fact, the optics of Mnuchin s appointment, seems to strike at the heart of the sub-prime mortgage-backed security lending which led to the 2007-2008 banking crisis.During the economic crash, extremely high risk subprime mortgage-backed securities were crafted from bundled loans. A large amount of these types of mortgages were adjustable rate mortgages, where interests rates would be fixed for a certain number of years, eventually sky rocketing to astronomical increases, subsequently putting the burrower under water as the banks continued to sell these loans to investors. This was a critical aspect that led directly to the foreclosure crisis that swept across the nation in the aftermath of 2008.According to an article featured in the money section of the website of How Stuff Works, we are reminded of the devastating effects of the 2007-2008 crash: In just the month of August 2008, one out of every 416 households in the United States had a new foreclosure filed against it [source: RealtyTrac]. When borrowers stopped making payments on their mortgages, MBSs [mortgage-backed security] began to perform poorly. The average collateralized debt obligation (CDO) lost about half of its value between 2006 and 2008 [source: This American Life]. And since the riskiest (and highest returning) CDOs were comprised of subprime mortgages, they became worthless after the nationwide increase in loan defaults began. Continuing, the article outlines how the hedge-fund Wall Street casino made a fortune by packaging mortgages into bonds to sell to investors: After MBSs hit the financial markets, they were reshaped into a wide variety of financial instruments with different amounts of risk. Interest-only derivatives divided the interest payments made on a mortgage among investors. If interest rates rise, the return is good. If rates fall and homeowners refinance, then the security loses value. In a bold and controversial move, the president-elect s administration by way of Mnuchin, is looking to derail the Dodd-Frank Act, which was put in place in 2010 as a moderate buffer (if at all?) to restrict the type of bank lending that led to the most recent financial crash in 2008. However, naysayers of the protective act say it s much to soft on Wall Street, which is in need of tougher restrictions, as any new deregulation could be seen as an attempt to increase the coffers of larger investment banks.In the passage below, The New American expands on this idea through revelations released by the NY Times: According to the text of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the law is supposed to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end too big to fail, [and] to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts. However, as is usually the case with federal laws, Dodd-Frank does precisely the opposite. In fact, reports the New York Times Gretchen Morgenson:Dodd-Frank actually widened the federal safety net for big institutions. Under that law, eight more giants were granted the right to tap the Federal Reserve for funding when the next crisis hits. At the same time, those eight may avoid Dodd-Frank measures that govern how we re supposed to wind down institutions that get into trouble. MONEY MAN Ex-partner of Goldman Sachs Steve Mnuchin nominated to head the US Treasury. (Image Source: mgtvwten.files.wordpress.com)Although Mnuchin has cited that there s a need to restructure the Dodd-Frank Act because it would bring economic growth to regional banks and potentially open lending up to smaller businesses there is still a fear that this may be a revolving door for the central banks to profit from as well.Zerohedge provides additional background details regarding Munchin s career in banking: Some more on Mnuchin s background: starting his career in the early 1980s as a trainee at Salomon Brothers before moving to Goldman Sachs in 1985, Mnuchin was front and center for the advent of instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. He has called securitization an extremely positive development in terms of being able to finance different parts of the economy and different businesses efficiently. The pitfalls of the financing method came later, he s said.Mnuchin s father, Robert Mnuchin, was a partner at Goldman Sachs in the 1960s. The second-youngest of five siblings, Steven attended the prestigious Riverdale Country School and then Yale University, where his roommate was Edward Lampert, who would go on to become a hedge-fund manager and owner of Sears. In addition to Goldman, Mnuchin also worked at Soros Fund Management, whose founder, George Soros, has funded many left-leaning causes. Where it gets even more bizarre is that Mnuchin has donated frequently to Democrats, including to Clinton and Barack Obama. As a hedge fund manager, Mnuchin is part of a group of business people Trump has excoriated. In August, Trump said hedge fund managers were getting away with murder as he touted his proposal to end the so-called carried interest loophole, which gives private equity and hedge fund managers preferential tax treatment. The hedge fund guys didn t build this country, Trump said at the time on CBS Face the Nation. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky, he said. They are energetic. They are very smart. But a lot of them they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It s ridiculous. Trump s disdain for Wall Street during his campaign run won t soon be forgotten by his supporters as the president-elect s antithetical banking rhetoric will only be magnified by bringing Mnuchin (along with his banking and hedge fund past) into the fold.Mnuchin s confirmation could be a contentious affair (if only for show) due to money made after his purchase of California s IndyMac following the financial crisis. Bloomberg recently stated the following concerning Mnuchin s role in the aftermath of the banking and housing meltdown: In 2009, during the depths of the financial crisis, Mnuchin joined with a group of former Goldman Sachs colleagues and billionaires to buy the remnants of IndyMac, which had collapsed after bingeing on reckless home loans during the frenzy of California s subprime-mortgage boom. They changed the name to OneWest, turned it around and sold the bank for a big gain last year. Continuing, Bloomberg outlines how Mnuchin may have seized on a financial opportunity but stops short of condemning the US Treasury nominee: It s unclear whether OneWest s practices were worse than those of other banks during the financial crisis or how much blame Mnuchin deserves for problems at a financial institution that was troubled before he bought it.Mnuchin declined to comment through a spokesman. But former OneWest Vice Chairman David Fawer said in a statement that the bank inherited loans from IndyMac with extraordinarily high delinquency rates and worked tirelessly to modify thousands of loans to help homeowners through the financial crisis. The bank has pointed to positive reviews of its foreclosure and loan-modification practices by the Obama Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Interestingly, The Nation reported that Mnuchin purchased the failing IndyMac with an agreement to be reimbursed for costs associated to foreclosures that were financed by the company: The Mnuchin group paid FDIC $1.5 billion for the bank, far less than the value of IndyMac s assets. The FDIC was so desperate to unload IndyMac that Mnuchin and his colleagues were able to obtain, as part of the purchase deal, a so-called shared loss agreement from the FDIC which reimbursed these billionaires for much of their costs for foreclosing on people unlucky enough to have mortgages from IndyMac.Within a year, the group that the Los Angeles Times called a billionaires club of private financiers had paid themselves dividends of $1.57 billion. In other words, the FDIC took much of the risk by subsidizing the bank s troubled assets, while Mnuchin and his colleagues pocketed the profits. Prior to considering Mnuchin, Trump was said to have considered former CEO of BB&T John Allison, an apparently harsh critic of the Federal Reserve banking system. The following was reported by Business Insider on November 28th: Trump will meet with John Allison, the former CEO of the bank BB&T and of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. There have been reports that Allison is being considered for Treasury secretary. Trump s has on the campaign trail questioned the future of the Federal Reserve s political independence, but Allison takes that rhetoric a step further. While running the the Cato Institute, Allison wrote a paper in support of abolishing the Fed. CABINET PICK President-elect Donald Trump with fellow billionaire investor Wilbur Ross and vice-president-elect Mike Pence. (Image Source: (mediad.publicbroadcasting) Insiders & The White HouseJust as Mnuchin s financial behaviour will be under watch, the same will hold true for the newly tapped Commerce Secretary position to be filled by billionaire investor Wilbur Ross.A brief rundown of some of the more controversial aspects of Ross s past were recently published at Forbes: After an getting an MBA from Harvard, he spent two decades heading Rothschild Inc s bankruptcy advisory business, where he represented investors in Trump s failing Taj Mahal casino in the early 1990s. Ross and Carl Icahn convinced bondholders to strike a deal with Trump, who some investors wanted to push out, which allowed Trump to retain control of the property. Continuing, the article described how Ross invested in distressed coal companies in addition to banking opportunities: During the recession Ross targeted another struggling industry: banking. He invested in troubled banks in England, Greece and Cyprus. He was also part of a group of investors that acquired a 35% stake in the Bank of Ireland during the height of Europe s 2011 debt crisis. He sold the last of his stake in 2014, nearly tripling his initial investment. Ross has also reportedly bet hundreds of millions of dollars on downtrodden oil and gas firms since the price of oil began to slide more than two years ago. Incidentally, Ross has maintained a tough public position on so-called free trade deals like NAFTA and the soon-to-be defunct Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) but real questions still remain about his financial acquisitions during distressed times is he a risk taking business visionary or a financial vulture?Ross has denied being a business liquidator for profit and states that he has worked to rebuild failing businesses.Whatever the case may be, Mnuchin and Ross have touted big corporate tax relief and large tax cuts to the middle class in the US. However, the public should be wary of their dealings with those on Wall Street and any new reform legislation aimed at deregulation.Banking deregulation and reform directed by Wall Street or one of their ilk, should be treated with great suspicion if history is any lesson Below is another look at a passage from a report I complied prior to the election entitled PARTNERS IN CRIME: Goldman Sachs, The Clintons & Wall Street : In one of the most significant financial rulings in the modern era, the Clinton presidency gave big banks like Goldman Sachs the skeleton key to the kingdom by deregulating the investment banking system almost entirely.The Clinton/Goldman Sachs/Wall Street partnership was fully forged after the removal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which banking luminaries cynically named the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 officially titled the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The original Glass-Steagall was a depression-age four-part provision under the Bank Act of 1933 that strictly prohibited securities activities that could be harmful to investors the same sort of rogue speculating and paper fiat fraud which triggered the Great Depression (1929-1941). In fact, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed Glass-Steagall, opened the door for the shadow banking realm outside of regulatory oversight which led to a much higher trading risk, as banks became more interlinked.Simply put: Clinton s repeal of Glass-Steagell removed the firewall between speculative investment banking and regular high street retail and consumer banking which exposed everyone to toxic, subprime ponzi schemes and fake paper products being pushed around the globe by the banking elite which ultimately caused the global economy to crash in 2008. All that can be laid at the feet of one William Jefferson Clinton. And Hillary still claims that, My husband did so well with the economy. Really?In a cross-posted article featured at Huffington Post, Nomi Prins underscored the complicit nature of Wall Street and Washington after the removal of tighter bank regulations under the Clinton administration during the 1990 s: To grasp the dangers that the Big Six banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) presently pose to the financial stability of our nation and the world, you need to understand their history in Washington, starting with the Clinton years of the 1990s. Alliances established then (not exclusively with Democrats, since bankers are bipartisan by nature) enabled these firms to become as politically powerful as they are today and to exert that power over an unprecedented amount of capital. Rest assured of one thing: their past and present CEOs will prove as critical in backing a Hillary Clinton presidency as they were in enabling her husband s years in office. Prins herself was a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, senior managing director at Bear Stearns, as well as having worked as a senior strategist at the now defunct investment banking firm Lehman Brothers. Following the financial crash in 2007-2008, Prins blew the whistle on the banking world in a book entitled It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Prins has become an advocate for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act since departing from the investment banking world.The media outlet Common Dreams described the merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group (becoming Citigroup), which was dubbed the Citi-Travelers Act on Capitol Hill. It was a conglomeration that went hand in hand with the Clinton administration s influence on banking deregulation marked by the repeal of Glass-Steagall: Then, in 1998, in an act of corporate civil disobedience, Citicorp and Travelers Group announced they were merging. Such a combination of banking and insurance companies was illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act, but was excused due to a loophole that provided a two-year review period of proposed mergers. The merger was premised on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Citigroup s co-chairs Sandy Weill and John Reed led a swarm of industry executives and lobbyists who trammeled the halls of Congress to make sure a deal was cut. At the time, it was the largest financial merger even though it was technically illegal, as stated by the former Bankers of America CEO Kenneth Guenther. In 1999, after 12 attempts in 25 years, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act, which led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Both of Trump s finance picks arrive with the all to familiar baggage witnessed within the beltway swamp and if Mnuchin s and Ross s questionable pasts are to be accepted wholesale, it s difficult to imagine insiders of their pedigree turning over a new leaf for the everyday man. The following is a screen shot of a statement released by former Goldman CEO and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson regarding the Mnuchin pick. As a reminder, Paulson presided over the financial crisis and was US Treasury Secretary from 2006-2009. In 2008, amid a flurry of backlash, he authorized a $700 million dollar Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) banking bailout, masking the derivatives scam pulled by Wall Street s top brass:In 2010, CBS News cataloged the long relationship of Goldman Sachs and government, revealing at least four dozen former employees, lobbyists or advisers at the highest reaches of power both in Washington and around the world. It s also worth noting that White House adviser Steve Bannon and adviser Anthony Scaramucci have also worked for banking behemoth Goldman Sachs.Will Washington see more Wall Street friendly policies under Trump? READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
State Dept. OKs possible sale of $1 billion in military vehicles to Britain | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved the possible sale to Britain of Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and accessories with an estimated worth of $1.035 billion, the Pentagon said on Monday. Britain has requested a possible sale of up to 2,747 of the vehicles, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement. The principal contractor of this sale will be Oshkosh Corp unit Oshkosh Defense LLC, it said. | 0fake |
UK government averts Brexit rebellion, giving ground on EU rights plan | LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May s government averted a rebellion in parliament on Tuesday over plans to ditch the European Union s Charter of Fundamental Rights, promising to review its approach and make changes if needed. Parliament is debating legislation which will enact Britain s exit from the EU in March 2019 and copy EU law into British law - described by officials as one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK . The bill is testing May s ability to govern effectively after she lost her parliamentary majority in June, leaving her leading a fragile minority government and in charge of a Conservative Party divided on how best to manage the split from the EU. On Tuesday, the focus of an eight-day debate which has already forced May s ministers into some concessions, fell on the government s plan not to include the Charter of Fundamental Rights in its mass cut and paste of EU law. The government, which says there is no need to copy across the EU charter because all it does is codify rights that exist through other legal instruments, headed off a potential rebellion by promising a review and possible technical changes later in the lawmaking process. We do recognise the strength of views... and we are prepared to look again at this issue to make sure that we are taking an approach which can command the support of this house, said the government s Solicitor General Robert Buckland. That was enough to dissuade dissatisfied members of May s party from joining forces with opposition lawmakers to force an outright U-turn on scrapping the charter. The government still intends to scrap the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, but says citizens will not lose any of the existing rights the document sets out. During the debate, critics - including members of May s own party - argued that abandoning the charter was an unnecessary risk and in its current form diluted some citizens rights and created uncertainty over the protection of others. The rights charter came into force in 2009 through the EU s Lisbon Treaty and brings together the fundamental EU-protected right in a single document. It is one of only a handful of exceptions contained within the government s Brexit blueprint which sets out to preserve EU law after Britain leaves the bloc to give businesses certainty that they won t face overnight rules changes. The bill is currently at an early stage in the lawmaking process. The government has so far avoided any defeats, but has had to make last-minute concessions on several points. Tuesday s concession concerned a technical issue around how certain types of EU law should be treated after Brexit. The toughest test of May s authority, set to centre on the issue of fixing the date and time of Britain s EU exit in law, is yet to come. No date has been set yet for the remaining five days of debates that make up the current stage of the bill s passage. | 0fake |
Study: Running linked to extended lifespan and brain repair | Study: Running linked to extended lifespan and brain repair
Saturday, October 29, 2016 by: Amy Goodrich Tags: running , brain repair , longevity (NaturalNews) We don't have to be scientists to know that exercise is good for us. However, researchers at the Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa in Canada have added another item to the long list of potential health benefits of regular exercise. They found that running triggers a particular molecule called VGF, a nerve growth factor that can help repair brain and nerve damage in mice with an unusually small cerebellum and a shorter lifespan. The cerebellum is the part of the brain important for balance and coordination.Although more research will be needed to determine how the healing process would work in a human brain, the Canadian researchers are hopeful that their groundbreaking discovery may open new doors in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Put on those running shoes and extend your life In the study, published in the scientific journal Cell Reports , the researchers reported that VGF production induced by running in a wheel extended the life of mice with smaller cerebellums and difficulties in walking. Typically these mice only lived for 25 to 40 days, but when they were allowed to run, they lived for over a year , which is the normal lifespan for a mouse.Furthermore, they discovered that the running mice had a better sense of balance, and showed increased levels of myelin production. Myelin plays a key role in a healthy brain . It is the insulating material of our nerves, and is best compared to the plastic material around electrical cables. Lose that protective layer and nerves will have difficulty carrying their messages as quickly or efficiently, resulting in a host of neurological issues.While running improved the quality and quantity of life for the mice, they had to maintain their healthy running habit. Once the opportunity to exercise was taken away, they began to degenerate again and their lifespans shortened once more. The positive effects of regular exercise Dr. Picketts, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa, said that these findings shine a new light on the effect exercise might have on people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, like multiple sclerosis (MS), that involve a loss of myelin or insulation of the nerve fibers."With multiple sclerosis, you get a lot of degeneration of the (neuron) insulation, and patients with MS go through these relapses and remissions," Picketts said. "We're really hoping that maybe if we could use VGF to limit the number of degenerations, (it would) really allow remissions to be more prevalent and longer," he added.Last month, another study published in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair , showed that exercise helped gerbils who had a stroke to recover their memory, partly though myelin repair around the neurons.However, when Dr. Picketts and his colleagues analyzed myelin levels in healthy mice, running didn't seem to produce any significant change. These findings suggest that VGF-triggered myelin repair probably only kicks in when our brain or nerves are under attack."Generally, healthy people [already] have normal levels of myelin," noted Dr. Matias Alvarez-Saavedra, lead author of the study.Of course, that doesn't mean healthy people should not exercise. Many studies have linked regular exercise to healthy brain changes such as improved memory, increased blood flow and decreased inflammation in the brain. Sources for this article include: | 1real |
Tony Blair suggests a second referendum to reverse Brexit | Tony Blair suggests a second referendum to reverse Brexit Tony Blair suggests a second referendum to reverse Brexit By 0 149
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says Britain should keep its “options open” on whether or not to leave the European Union until after Brexit talks with the bloc are completed.
During an interview on Friday with BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program, Blair described the EU referendum as “a catastrophe” and said UK voters should be given the option of a second EU referendum.
Britain should not withdraw from the EU until it becomes clearer how Brexit would impact UK’s economic, social and cultural future, Blair said.
“The bizarre thing about this referendum is that we took a decision but we still don’t know the precise terms,” he said. “There’s got to be some way, either through parliament, or through an election, possibly through another referendum, that people express their view.”
The former premier, who was in office from 1997 until 2007, said it should be possible for the public to switch their verdict if it becomes clear the… | 1real |
Lights, Camera, Propaganda! Washington's Anti-Russia Campaign Invades Hollywood - Danielle Ryan | Lights, Camera, Propaganda! Washington's Anti-Russia Campaign Invades Hollywood
Keep those Russian baddies coming! Originally appeared at RT
For years the influence of the CIA in Hollywood was hidden and unacknowledged. Now it’s more of an open secret; not publicized, but pretty easy to read up on if you care. Just ask the spy agency’s Entertainment Industry Liaison.
Yes, such a thing really exists .
You see, the CIA’s man in Hollywood wants to help actors, authors, directors, producers and screenwriters “gain a better understanding” of the intelligence agency in order to ensure “accurate portrayals” of its activities. It even wants to help fire up the neurons and actually give you some good ideas if you’re coming up short in that department. Indeed, the CIA provides “inspiration for future storylines” and lists them on its website. Of course, it’s all in the interest of creating authentic and balanced portrayals of US intelligence agencies and the US military. And they’re quite busy, too. Between 2006 and 2011, the CIA public relations office had input into at least 22 film and movie projects.
In a column for the Washington Post in 2011, David Sirota noted that the Pentagon too enlists the help of Hollywood for PR purposes when things are going awry and Americans are becoming weary of war. Movies like Top Gun in the 1980s and Zero Dark Thirty more recently were made in consultation with the Pentagon and White House. The result of this“creative input for Pentagon assistance” bargain created an entertainment culture “rigged to produce relatively few anti-war movies and dozens of blockbusters that glorify the military” and which amounts to “government subsidized propaganda,”
The CIA has had a hand in creating TV shows like 24, Homeland andAlias. The Americans — an FX show about two Russian spies living undercover in the US — was created by a former CIA agent, and the agency reportedly approves the scripts for each episode.
A piece in the Guardian in 2008 called the CIA’s involvement in Hollywood a “tale of deception and subversion that would seem improbable if it were put on screen”. Of course, it’s unlikely to be put on screen, given that the agency which provides guidance on CIA-related movies (...) is the CIA.
Enlisting Hollywood help with “anti-Russia messaging”
Remember the “inspiration for future storylines” list mentioned earlier? Well, guess what? The liaison’s “current pick” for a possible future movie project is about one Ryszard Kukliński — a Polish colonel and spy for NATO who spent years passing secret Soviet documents to the CIA. I wonder why they’d be interested in that sort of thing right now. It couldn’t be anything to do with deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, could it?
It may sound like conspiracy theory, but the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment revealed that the the US State Department has actively sought out the biggest players in Hollywood and tried to enlist their help with what they called“anti-Russia messaging” for the public’s consumption through innocent entertainment. In other words, the government asked Hollywood for help producing propaganda — although I’m sure the State Department would call it something nicer.
Richard Stengel, the US under secretary for public diplomacy, wrote to Sony CEO Mark Lynton explaining that the government needed help countering both ISIS and “Russian narratives” and said this wasn’t something the State Department could do “on its own”. He suggested convening a meeting of media executives to discuss ideas, content, production and “commercial possibilities”. Lynton responded with a list of media executives at other entertainment companies including Disney and Fox. It’s unclear from the emails whether that meeting Stengel requested ever happened, but judging by much of the recent entertainment industry output, one might be forgiven for assuming it did.
Negative depictions of Russia in American and British news and entertainment media are hardly new — but at least as far as I can tell, there’s certainly been an uptick over the past 12-18 months, and it coincides nicely with a major US government-led anti-Russia messaging campaign which has also spilled over into much of Western print and broadcast media. Gratuitous mentions of Russia and Vladimir Putin where they are not necessary are becoming tiresome. For me, the last straw was sitting down to watch Bridget Jones’s Baby last month and being subjected to an entirely unnecessary and irrelevant subplot about the anti-Putin punk band Pussy Riot and their struggle for free speech. It was the last straw because it was just one more in a long line of useless allusions to big bad Russia that seemed to come from nowhere.
For me, the last straw was sitting down to watch Bridget Jones’s Baby last month and being subjected to an entirely unnecessary and irrelevant subplot about the anti-Putin punk band Pussy Riot and their struggle for free speech.
In the Netflix political drama House of Cards, Pussy Riot — the real ones this time — got their own cameo alongside evil Putin (not the real one). But even when there isn’t a major storyline attached to Russia, somehow the country frequently gets thrown in anyway. Russia is still the go-to country when there needs to be a joke about scary or immoral foreigners. There are endless examples.
In NBC’s Scandal, one character suggests Putin might randomly invade Belarus. In CBS’s Madam Secretary, one character spews the line: “I can’t go back to Russia, it’s a pigsty.” In the recently released movie Bad Moms, one of the bad moms, protesting something or other which I can’t recall, shouts “What is this, Russia?” The short-running show Allegiancewas entirely about a Russian sleeper cell in the US which was suddenly reactivated and whose members — now fully adapted to blissful life in America — no longer wanted anything to do with Russia. How original.
NBC’s Blacklist has given us multiple Russian baddies and the sitcom 2 Broke Girls has made its fair share of Putin jokes. The third installment of The Purge introduced us to a gang of menacing Russian “murder tourists” who take advantage of the annual 12-hour period during which any crime, including murder, becomes legal. I could go on, but you get the idea: Russians are bad.
Is it all CIA influence? Is it all the result of the State Department’s“anti-Russia messaging” campaign? Not necessarily. While the CIA does have huge influence in Hollywood on specific projects, many of the random negative references to Russia are probably the result of a media information war which naturally spills over into the creative output of writers and directors. Many of them probably shouldn’t be blamed too harshly. They’re fed a diet of anti-Russia messaging through the news media, so it’s no wonder these kinds of lines end up in their movies and TV shows.
Interestingly, in June, the Senate Intelligence Committee included an amendment to Congress’ annual intelligence spending bill which would require the Director of National Intelligence to submit reports detailing the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood. But the Senate committee is no doubt less worried about the propaganda effects and more worried about the CIA divulging sensitive and classified information to movie directors, as was the case, controversially, with Zero Dark Thirty.
Anyway, tip for aspiring filmmakers and TV producers: Leave the Russia jokes out. It’s getting boring. Did you enjoy this article? - Consider helping us! Russia Insider depends on your donations: the more you give, the more we can do. $1 $10 Other amount
If you wish you make a tax-deductible contribution of $1,000 or more, please visit our Support page for instructions Click here for our commenting guidelines On fire | 1real |
Democrats Demand Jared Kushner Be Stripped Of Security Clearance | Donald Trump s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, conveniently forgot to mention a slew of foreign contacts, including several meetings with high-profile Russian operatives, when he applied for his security clearance. Now, Democrats are demanding that Kushner s security clearance be revoked in light of his failure to disclose the meetings.Five House Democrats penned a letter to FBI Director James Comey and National Background Investigations Director Charles Phalen on Thursday, calling for Kushner to lose his security clearance. Mr. Kushner s lack of candor about meetings with Russian officials appears to be part of a larger pattern of dissembling and deception on Russian contacts from the Trump team, and we believe the public deserves the truth about what connection, if any, exists between these incidents, they wrote.The letter was signed by Don Beyer of Virginia, Ted Lieu of California, Jerrold Nadler of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Peter Welch of Vermont. The Democrats said they were particularly concerned about an article in the New York Times that reported Kushner had omitted dozens of contacts with foreign leaders. They noted that this story did not receive the scrutiny it deserved. The lawmakers added a reminder that falsifying or concealing information on a SF-86 questionnaire is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Given the severity of the allegations and still unanswered questions about this administration s recently uncovered covert dealings with Russian government and intelligence officials, we are requesting that Mr. Kushner s interim top-secret security clearance be suspended pending a review of Mr. Kushner s compliance with the laws and regulation governing security clearance. The Democrats are also calling on Kushner to make public all of the meetings he had during the time of Trump s transition.According to Kushner s aides, he has been under an interim security clearance so far while the FBI has been gathering information on him. Kushner is also set to face an interview with Senate Intelligence Committee regarding his contacts with Russia.Via screen shotFeatured image via Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
IS car bomb kills 20 in eastern Syria: state media | BEIRUT (Reuters) - An Islamic State car bomb killed 20 people and injured 30 others at a site where displaced families are located in eastern Syria near the city of Deir al-Zor, Syria s SANA state news agency reported on Friday. It said the bombing took place near the al-Jafra area, which is located south of the city and is controlled by the Syrian government. | 0fake |
Italy, U.S. Presidential Race, Syria: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. A powerful earthquake in a mountainous stretch of central Italy devastated historic towns in three regions. The stunned mayor of one, Amatrice, reported that “half the town no longer exists. ” More than 100 people were killed in the quake and its aftershocks, many more were injured, and more than 1, 000 people are spending the night in emergency camps. Watch video from the scene. ______ 2. Turkey sent tanks, warplanes and special forces across the Syrian border to attack Islamic State positions, escalating the Syrian conflict days after a suicide bomber killed more than 50 people at a Turkish wedding party. Turkey also insisted that Syrian Kurdish militias, which it distrusts, retreat from the territorial gains they made with U. S. backing. ______ 3. Bernie Sanders is establishing a new group, Our Revolution, to fight economic inequality and special interests. But some of his core staff members have stepped down. One objection is that tax rules would allow Our Revolution to accept large donations from anonymous sources. Another is the leadership role of Mr. Sanders’s former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, above left in March, whom some do not trust. ______ 4. Donald Trump’s efforts to reach out to are alienating some black voters, who reject his portrayal of black America as defined by misery, poverty and urban perils. “Black America also has a large community of striving, successful, people: in the work force,” said a black leader. ______ 5. Hillary Clinton remained on the West Coast for a second day of including one hosted by Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive. Our election model currently gives the Democrats a 60 percent chance of retaking the Senate. But the trajectory may not be so smooth, because of candidates in key states like Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Iowa and Ohio. Above, the end of a lunch in Washington in January. ______ 6. The last major guerrilla struggle in Latin America is over. Colombia’s government and FARC rebels announced a final deal, ending a conflict that, over 52 years, claimed some 220, 000 lives and displaced more than 5 million people. President Juan Manuel Santos, who has staked his legacy on peace, must now sell the agreement to his people, who will be asked to vote in an referendum on the deal. ______ 7. Astronomers reported a tantalizing discovery: Circling our nearest neighboring star is a Goldilocks planet, one at just the right distance from its sun to be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid surface water. A scientist on the team said it was like a neon sign, flashing, “I’m the nearest star, and I have a potentially habitable planet!” ______ 8. Unease over the banning of “burkinis” has begun building in France, as images and reports of sometimes humiliating beachfront confrontations between the authorities and Muslim women circulate. The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, cautioned that enforcement efforts should not “stigmatize” people or “set one against another. ” ______ 9. Trolls and hackers renewed their assaults on the “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones. Her personal website was breached, plastered over with a picture of the gorilla Harambe — which became a racist meme after being killed in a Cincinnati zoo — images of her driver’s license and passport, and what appeared to be nude photos of her. The musician Questlove posted on the gravity of the attack: “It’s racist sexist. It’s disgusting. This is hate crimes. This ain’t ‘kids joshing round.’ ” ______ 10. Good economic news: The U. S. housing sector is finally back on its feet. A new report shows that more new homes were sold last month than in nearly a decade. Analysts say builders have begun serving the end of the market, including young adults who are entering their prime years. ______ 11. Finally, more good news: European scientists have figured out how to identify women with breast cancer who can recover well without chemotherapy. If most of the genes that control the growth and spread of cancer are inactive, then surgery, hormonal treatment and radiation appear to be enough to discourage recurrence. The finding could spare tens of thousands of women annually from the harshest cancer treatments. Above, survivors at an N. F. L. game last fall. ______ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
(VIDEO) HUCKSTER AL SHARPTON: CLIMATE CHANGE IS A ‘CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE’…BLACKS SUFFER MOST | The global warming hucksterism in the Obama administration has been going on since the beginning. The former EPA director was big on the environmental justice for minorities. It s a made up term just like environmental racism. I can t tell you just how important it is for Americans to pay attention and follow the money on this. Here s a video from the last EPA director that s full of pretty alarming lingo and propaganda: It [climate change] is an issue of justice, and it is an issue of human rights. African-Americans are at a higher risk of being close, or predisposed to areas of carbon, as well as other poisonous pollution in the air. And we have a disproportionate interest because we suffer disproportionately, Sharpton continued. You cannot, not deal with climate change as a health issue, as a moral issue, and as a civil rights issue. Aka: federally subsidize black communities because they are victim of geo-racism. | 1real |
Republicans Stand Against Cuba Change Despite Public Opinion Shift | The Cuban flag is flying over the Cuban Embassy in the United States for the first time in 54 years after the two countries restored diplomatic relations in December, but not everyone is celebrating the renewed flow of mojitos from the embassy's Hemingway Bar.
Presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, who both call the heavily Cuban-American Miami area home, denounced last Monday's new step in U.S.-Cuba relations.
"History will remember July 20, 2015, as Obama's Capitulation Monday, the day two sworn enemies of the United States were able to out-maneuver President Obama to secure historic concessions," Rubio, who is of Cuban heritage, stated, also referencing the U.N. Security Council's endorsement of the Iran deal, which happened last week.
"Monday's events at the U.N., Washington and Havana leave no doubt that we have entered the most dangerous phase of the Obama presidency in which the president is flat out abandoning America's vital national security interests to cozy up to the world's most reprehensible regimes," Rubio said.
"Better judgment is called for in relations far and near. Ninety miles to the south, there's talk of a state visit by our outgoing president," Bush said when he announced his candidacy. "But we don't need a glorified tourist to go to Havana in support of a failed Cuba. We need an American president to go to Havana in solidarity with a free Cuban people, and I'm ready to be that president."
Bush currently leads Rubio among Cuban-American Republicans by double digits. In a poll published July 18 of registered voters in Miami-Dade County, Bush led Rubio in Cuban-American GOP votes by 12 percentage points, 43 to 31 percent. Ted Cruz, whose father emigrated from Cuba, received 7 percent of support in the polls.
Florida, a swing state, is an important part of any presidential candidate's electoral vote calculus, and Cuban-Americans have long been a powerful group within Florida, especially in Miami-Dade County. The Miami area is home to the largest population of Cuban heritage outside Cuba.
Bush's relative success among Cuban-Americans in the polls with his slightly softer stance reflects a larger trend: Cuban-Americans are not as opposed to normalization as they were in the past.
Once a community known for standing in solidarity in support of the trade embargo, steering U.S. policy toward Cuba, the Cuban-Americans of Miami-Dade are showing rifts in their political views.
In a poll conducted in March, 51 percent of Cuban-Americans approved of Obama's plan to normalize relations with Cuba; 40 percent disapproved. Another poll, conducted in the spring of 2014 by Florida International University pollsters, found that 52 percent of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade favored ending the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
That's quite different from the past.
In the 1993 version of the same Florida International University poll, 87 percent of Cuban-American respondents in Miami-Dade favored increasing international economic pressure on Cuba, and 80 percent favored having no diplomatic relations with Cuba.
The changing Cuban-American demographic may serve as a window into the group's changing opinions. The number of Cuban-Americans born in Cuba dropped from 68 percent in 2000 to 57 percent in 2013, according to the Pew Research Center.
The decrease in share of the Cuban-born Cuban-American population matters because of the two groups' differing political views: In 2014, 45 percent of those born in Cuba supported normalization, compared with 66 percent of those born in the U.S.
The emerging differences in views among the Cuban-American community may also play a role in Democrats' increasing ability to court its members. While 70 percent of Cuban-Americans polled in Miami-Dade County were registered as Republicans in 1991, that number had fallen to 53 percent by May 2014. Another 25 percent in 2014 were registered as Democrats.
In the months since the Obama administration announced its policy change toward Cuba in December, nearly every GOP presidential candidate has come out with a statement denouncing normalization. Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee have joined Bush and Rubio in denouncing the restoration of full diplomatic ties.
Rand Paul has been the only outlier, a position that caused a scuffle with Rubio earlier this year.
"After 50 years of conflict, why not try a new approach?" Paul wrote in a Dec. 19 Facebook statement. "The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. Why not Cuba?"
Paul continued his statement to make a dig at Rubio's strong stance against the president's policy.
"Seems to me, Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism," Paul wrote. "Finally, let's be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans. A recent poll demonstrates that a large majority of Cuban-Americans actually support normalizing relations between our countries."
Rubio replied, "He has no idea what he's talking about," on Fox News' The Kelly File.
Democratic presidential hopefuls have openly praised the president's steps toward normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations.
"As I have said, the best way to bring change to Cuba is to expose its people to the values, information, and material comforts of the outside world," Clinton said when Obama announced his plan on Dec. 17. "The goal of increased U.S. engagement in the days and years ahead should be to encourage real and lasting reforms for the Cuban people. And the other nations of the Americas should join us in this effort."
"I applaud the president for beginning discussions to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba, just like most of the rest of the world. This is a major step forward in ending the 55-year Cold War with Cuba," Sanders said in a statement.
With Cuban-Americans' shifting opinions on normalizing relations, the Democrats' stance might just gain them a few more votes. And the popular Republican opinion may not stand for many more election cycles. | 0fake |
’Distress’ But No Apology For Epiphany Service Quran Reading | The head of the Scottish Episcopal Church has said he is “deeply distressed at the widespread offence” caused by the reading of a passage from the Quran denying the divinity of Christ during an Epiphany service, but no apology has been issued. [In a statement posted to his blog site, David Chillingworth, the Primus of the Church appeared to strongly rebuke Kelvin Holdsworth, the Provost of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Glasgow, where the reading took place, arguing that interfaith work, “like all works of reconciliation, must be founded on truth. ” He continued: “We approach others with open hearts but we stand in the truth of the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. ” However, no apology for the reading has been forthcoming Chillingworth reasoning that the “The decisions which have led to the situation in St Mary’s Cathedral are a matter for the Provost and the Cathedral community. ” He added that the church will “bring together all those who are involved in the development of interfaith relations” to explore how the work can be carried out “in ways which will command respect. ” Holdsworth himself is unrepentent, writing in a blog post that “local Muslim friends” were invited “as we were reflecting on the arrival of the mysterious Magi at Bethlehem”. The significance is unclear, as the Magi, predating Islam by some six centuries, were Zoroastrian. He continued: “Having a recitation from the Qur’an in a Christian cathedral in worship is not a new thing. “So it has indeed come as something of a surprise to find accounts of last week’s service appearing online and stirring up the most most incredible pot of hatred I’ve ever encountered. “This same Qur’anic reading has been given before in services and no outcry has happened. Is it because this is in a cathedral run by a gay man? Is it because the recitation was given by a young woman? “Clearly those things are factors as they feature in some of the abuse. ” Confirming that some of the messages received by the church had been reported to Police Scotland, Holdsworth added: “They assure me that intolerance and prejudice will not be tolerated in Scotland. To put it simply, I thank God for them and their work. ” The matter came to light after St Mary’s posted a video of verses of the Quran being sung in Arabic during a service to Facebook, along with a message calling it a “wonderful event. ” Both the Facebook post and a YouTube version of the reading have since been removed by the Cathedral, after it provoked widespread anger and criticism from Christians, who pointed out that the verses chosen denied the divinity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The reading can still be viewed elsewhere on Facebook via Madinah Javed, who sang the passages during the service. There was further anger as it emerged that a translation of the verses printed in the Order of Service and handed out to congregants omitted the last two, in which the denial came, leading to confusion. Commenting on matter on the Archbishop Cranmer blogsite, the Rev’d Dr Gavin Ashenden, Chaplain to the Queen, said: “It’s hard to know what was in the mind of the Provost of Glasgow Cathedral when he arranged for this assault on Jesus and the apostles. “The accusation of lying or deception [contained within the verses] was not just directed towards Jesus and the Apostles but is also [ … ] to those, too, who have been martyred at the hands of Islam, because they refused to renounce this deception when confronted with it. ” Refuting Holdworth’s claims that the reading was part of an interfaith dialogue between Islam and Christianity, Ashenden continued: “There was no dialogue in the Epiphany Eucharist only a refutation of what Christians hold most dear and upon which salvation depends. “In over 30 years of interfaith conversations, I have never yet come across a Muslim community which allowed those passages in the Gospels acclaiming the divinity of Christ to be read in Friday prayers. ” | 0fake |
Trump's New Ad Portraying 'Every Mother's Worse Nightmare' is Nothing Short of Chilling | Share on Twitter The Wildfire is an opinion platform and any opinions or information put forth by contributors are exclusive to them and do not represent the views of IJR.
In a campaign ad for Donald Trump, Laura Wilkerson talks about her horrific experience of her son being doused with gasoline and set on fire by an illegal alien. In the ad called “Laura,” she explains why Hillary Clinton's policies are harmful for America. | 1real |
HERE’S WHY AMERICA IS THE GREATEST No matter What The Loony Lefties Say [Video] | Paul Joseph Watson is the bomb! He makes the greatest videos and cuts through the bull to get to the truth. Here s a great example of why America is the best: | 1real |
KLEIN - Iran Is the Wild Card Following U.S. Air Strikes In Syria | TEL AVIV — Following the U. S. launch of Tomahawk missiles targeting a strategic Syrian airfield on Thursday night, Iran must be monitored carefully for the possibility that it may use its proxies for retaliation, especially against Israel’s northern border. [Following eight years of inaction on Syria under the Obama administration, President Donald Trump demonstrated last night that he is willing to hold Syrian President Bashar to account, this time by striking the Shayrat Airfield near the Syrian city of Homs that was believed to have been utilized to carry out a chemical weapons attack that killed scores of civilians. The U. S. airstrikes signaled to Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers that Trump will act in Syria and the administration strongly supports the removal of the Syrian president — an important strategic ally of Moscow and Tehran. The U. S. military move demonstrates to Israel and the Sunni Arab bloc cast aside by Obama’s nuclear deal with the mullahs that American leadership has officially returned to the region. Assad himself is unlikely to retaliate since the last thing he wants amidst a insurgency attempting to topple his regime is to go to war with Trump or expand the battlefield to U. S. ally Israel. Trump’s bold authority in Syria directly threatens Russian interests since it was Moscow that largely filled the security vacuum in that country when Obama repeatedly failed to take any meaningful action against Assad. However, Russia’s direct response will most likely be confined to vocal protestation, such as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the U. S. strikes “aggression against a sovereign nation” carried out on a “ pretext. ” President Vladimir Putin cannot risk a military confrontation with Trump and Russia is already signaling willingness to abandon Assad to come to a larger regional accommodation. Still, there is the possibility that Russia may quietly support action by others, especially agents of a very nervous Iranian regime that has been preparing proxies for years who can heat up Israel’s northern border and beyond. Both Moscow and Tehran have reason for wanting Trump to pay a price for acting in their Syrian playground. The question is whether they will dare to respond, even tacitly. And that brings us to Iran. Trump’s embrace of America’s traditional Sunni Arab partners at the expense of Tehran and his strong positions against the disastrous international nuclear agreement have been deeply concerning to the expansionist, Twelvers in Tehran. And while the removal of Assad from power would be a blow to Russia, depending on the ultimate outcome such a move could be disastrous for Iran’s position in Syria. Iranian Revolutionary Guard units have been fighting the insurgents alongside the Syrian military and the Hezbollah militia. Syria represents a key pawn in Iran’s geopolitical chessboard that stretches across the vital region. In recent weeks, there have been strong indications that Iran has been seeking to arm its Hezbollah proxy with even more advanced weapons that can target the Jewish state. Last month, Israel took the unusual step of striking a Hezbollah weapons convoy near the city of Palmyra that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was transporting advanced weapons to the militia. Israeli leaders and Hezbollah terrorists have in recent weeks ratcheted up war rhetoric, with Israeli officials warning that Hezbollah, which can only act at the direction of Iran, has been preparing for conflict. Last Sunday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot warned the IDF would not hold back from striking Lebanese state institutions in a future conflict with Hezbollah. “The recent declarations from Beirut make it clear that in a future war, the targets will be clear: Lebanon and the organizations operating under its authority and its approval,” Eisenkot stated. Hezbollah is not Iran’s only option. Breitbart Jerusalem has been reporting on the formation of a “Golan Liberation Brigade,” which was announced last month by the of the Iraqi Harakat al Nujaba Shiite militia and is reportedly being trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The militia is another Iranian front that could be used to target Israel’s Golan Heights at the behest of Tehran. The next few days and weeks will be critical in determining Iran and Russia’s resolve in the face of an awakened America that has returned from its slumber. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. | 0fake |
Biden Hints at U.S. Response to Russia for Cyberattacks - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Since the Obama administration formally accused Russia about a week ago of trying to interfere in the election, there has been intense speculation about whether President Obama has ordered the National Security Agency to conduct a retaliatory cyberstrike. The strongest hint so far has come from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. who either revealed American plans for a strike or engaged in one of the better bits of psychological warfare in recent times. Taping an interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Biden was asked whether the United States was preparing to send a message to the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. Days before, the American intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security declared that the Russian leadership was responsible for attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the leaking of stolen emails. “We’re sending a message,” Mr. Biden told Chuck Todd, the show’s host. “We have the capacity to do it. ” “He’ll know it,” Mr. Biden added. “And it will be at the time of our choosing. And under the circumstances that have the greatest impact. ” Later, after Mr. Biden said he was not concerned that Russia could “fundamentally alter the election,” Mr. Todd asked whether the American public would know if the message to Mr. Putin had been sent. “Hope not,” Mr. Biden responded. His warning seems to suggest that Mr. Obama is prepared to order — or has already ordered — some kind of covert action after the stolen emails were published online. That would require what is known in the intelligence agencies as a finding — a presidential determination authorizing covert action. Such a finding would allow the United States to make use of its newly developed arsenal of cyberweapons, which are under the control of the military’s Cyber Command, the N. S. A. and, in some circumstances, the C. I. A. Mr. Biden’s statement does not exclude the possibility of a response outside the realm of cyberspace. But most of the other options under discussion in the White House involve actions that would be public, such as economic sanctions under a 2015 presidential order on responding to cyberattacks. Such sanctions have never been invoked, but are well suited to cases like the presumed effort to influence the election. Some experts, however, say they may be insufficient. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, wrote in Foreign Policy last week that the first step could be making America’s evidence against Russia public. “Revealing the names of the officials who authorized the cyberattacks against the United States would put Moscow in an extremely uncomfortable position,” wrote Mr. Stavridis, a former admiral who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “Ideally, the United States could reveal emails or conversations between Russian officials that demonstrated their intent to undermine the U. S. electoral process. ” But that would run counter to Mr. Biden’s “hope not” statement. Mr. Stavridis and others have advocated other steps, including knocking holes in the Kremlin’s wall of censorship so that opponents of Putin could begin to conspire with one another. “As a response to the Russian attacks on the U. S. democratic system, this would be both proportional and distinctive,” Mr. Stavridis wrote. It might also be deniable — a key to any covert action approved by the president. Many others have advocated using cybertechniques to expose Mr. Putin’s links to Russia’s oligarchs and reveal his financial holdings overseas, which are believed to be vast. But such steps would risk escalation, and advisers have warned Mr. Obama that the United States is more vulnerable than most nations. Mr. Putin initially denied any Russian involvement in the attacks. But in an interview several days ago, he said the important thing was not how emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign had been hacked, but what they said. Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, went further. “We did not deny this,” he said of the hacking. But he added that the United States had offered no proof. A crucial question being debated in the White House is whether warnings like Mr. Biden’s will be enough to make Russia, or others, pull back in their hacking. The calculus behind the decision to formally accuse Russia was that the mere publication of the conclusion could temper the activity. If so, it may not have worked. WikiLeaks in the past few days has published thousands of emails stolen from the Gmail account of John D. Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign. While Mr. Podesta has blamed Russia for the attack, intelligence agencies say they have not formally reached that conclusion. There are only two known cases in which Mr. Obama has authorized an offensive cyberaction. One was the operation against Iran’s nuclear program, Olympic Games. That operation was not detected by the Iranians for years, until an accidental release of the computer code made it obvious that its centrifuges were exploding because of a cyberattack. The other case has been action against the Islamic State, mostly to interfere with its communications or alter data in its systems. Those attacks were publicly announced by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and others, though no details were offered. The announcement seemed intended in part to cause Islamic State insurgents to question whether their internal communications were genuine. | 0fake |
November supermoon biggest in nearly 70 years | November supermoon biggest in nearly 70 years 11/03/2016
USA TODAY
Supersized! November supermoon will be biggest in nearly 70 years. The supermoon occurs when the moon is slightly closer to Earth than it typically is, and the effect is most noticeable when it occurs around the same time as a full moon.
It can appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter than usual, according to NASA.
The word supermoon was coined in 1979 by astrologer Richard Nolle, AccuWeather’s Mark Paquette says. Nolle used the term to describe a new or full moon that occurs when the moon is at or near its closest approach to Earth.
Instead of a supermoon, astronomy site Slooh.com is calling it a “mega beaver moon,” which includes the moon’s folklore name for November.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac , the November moon was named the beaver moon partly because, “for both the colonists and the Algonquin tribes, this was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps froze, to ensure a supply of warm winter furs.”
Contributing: Mary Bowerman, USA TODAY
Follow @MaryBowerman on Twitter. Follow Doyle Rice at @USATODAYWeather . Share On: | 1real |
Republican Senators McCain, Sasse oppose Trump's U.S. trade representative pick | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senators John McCain and Ben Sasse said on Wednesday they would vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, because of his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Unfortunately, your confirmation process has failed to reassure us that you understand the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) positive economic benefits to our respective States and the nation as a whole,” McCain and Sasse said in a letter to Lighthizer. | 0fake |
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Gets Uncharacteristically Political; Says Trump Is A ‘Threat To Democracy’ (VIDEO) | Neil DeGrasse Tyson has always put science before politics, sometimes frustratingly so. Right after Trump was elected, Tyson appeared on Stephen Colbert s show, and rather than opine, he chose to try to comfort the host by saying that when you look at earth from outer space, our problems dissolve. He also said: The politician is representing an electorate. So, really, if you re against a politician, you re against their voter base, fellow citizens of this country, he said. So I as an educator, when I want to educate people, I don t say, Don t vote for this person or Vote for that person. I just simply educate you, so that when the time comes, you can make as informed a decision as you can. Now, though, Tyson is changing his tone. The Trump administration is clearly anti-science and it s anti-education. For Dr. Tyson, it s time to speak out right before protesters across the nation are prepared to march for science. He posted this video to Facebook on Friday: Science is a fundamental part of the country that we are, Tyson said. When you have people who don t know much about science standing in denial of it and rising to power, that is a recipe for the complete dismantling of our informed democracy. While Tyson was clearly talking about Donald Trump, anti-GMO anti-vaxxer (often) liberals were taken to task as well.Tyson didn t deny that science has a place in politics. Once we agree, for example, that humans are causing climate change, we can debate how to fix the problem, but until we agree that there is a problem, we re screwed.Donald Trump s name wasn t mentioned at all during the four-minute video, and it didn t need to be. It was clear that Tyson was frustrated (dare I say angry?) that his career has been so politicized while he tries to stay on the sidelines. Tyson is a true hero.Featured image via Joe Scarnici/Getty Images. | 1real |
Florida GOP’s Anti-Abortion Law Struck Down In Another Huge Planned Parenthood Win | Anti-abortion advocates were dealt another heavy blow on Friday after a federal judge blocked parts of a bill that would have put new restrictions on clinics that provide abortion-related health services. The bill, HB1411, was signed into law by Florida s Republican governor Rick Scott. The bill aimed to cut funding for health clinics that provide abortion services such as Planned Parenthood. If this bill had been allowed to remain law, it would have cost Planned Parenthood $500,000 dollars a year in funding.It s important to keep in mind that Florida law already prevents government funding of abortion services. That means that the relevant funding portions of the bill were not going to actually stop funding of abortion services but every other service that Planned Parenthood provides.U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle put in place a last minute injunction after Planned Parenthood affiliates challenged some of some of the provisions in the bill on conditional grounds. The state s only beef is that the plaintiffs provide abortions, Hinkle wrote.According to Reuters, Hinkle based his injunction on the reasoning that clinics were unacceptably targeted by state efforts to eliminate funding for other health care services they also provide, such as birth control and screening for cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. This comes just days after the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of women s reproductive rights. The decision in Woman s Health v. Hellerstedt has had a domino effect when it comes to women s reproductive rights. Since Monday s ruling, six states have had similar abortion laws struck down either permanently or temporarily. That s a major setback to the Republican Party s war against Planned Parenthood and women s rights.It s almost laughable at this point that Republicans are trying to spin their attacks on our health care system as being an attempt to protect women, as this bill was described by its proponents.Featured image from Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
DC CHIEF OF POLICE DENIES CONCEALED WEAPONS PERMITS…NO JAIL…Christian Clerk Refuses To Issue Same Sex Marriage Licenses…Guess Where She Ends Up | This is a perfect example of how the left is able to decide which laws they follow and which laws the rest of America follows Kim Davis, the Democrat Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of religious objections, was ordered to jail for contempt of court last Thursday. She suggested a compromise of removing her name from the licenses, but Federal District Court Judge David Bunning wouldn t even grant that reasonable compromise.Contrast this with Cathy Lanier, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, refusing to issue concealed weapons permits to people unless they can arbitrarily show a good reason, nothing required by law. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in May stopping her from denying the permits, although notably he did not send Lanier to jail for contempt.Similarly, county sheriffs in California had been denying concealed weapons permits to applicants who failed to show a need beyond self-defense. Last November, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the sheriffs were violating the law. None of those sheriffs were sent to jail, despite the fact that people around the country have died unable to obtain a permit to carry concealed.Or contrast it with the irony of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordering clerks to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, contrary to state law. The California Attorney General sued him and the California Supreme Court ultimately put an end to the practice, but Newsom was never sent to jail.Newsom also violated federal law by making San Francisco a sanctuary city in 2007, contrary to existing federal law, but nothing happened to him. The city s sanctuary status resulted in the death of Kate Steinle in July, who was shot by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times and had seven felony convictions. This is a far more drastic result than a clerk who merely does not want her name on marriage licenses, yet nothing is being done to the current mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee. In 2012, Tonya Parker, a lesbian judge in Texas said she would not issue marriage licenses to heterosexual couples until same-sex marriage was legalized. She wasn t put in jail for violating the law, nor does it appear she was even disciplined at all.Not everyone would have taken the position Davis did, some Christians might have resigned rather than deal with a huge battle. Others might not have had such strong objections, viewing matters of sexuality best left alone and without government interference. When I was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona, I represented agencies like the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Philosophically, I disagreed with its very existence. But I was able to separate my personal views from government laws to perform my job.The one thing all reasonable people can agree upon is that Davis was singled out and punished disproportionately compared to other public officials who didn t comply with controversial laws.This isn t about same-sex marriage, nor is it even about gay issues. It is merely one tactic in a larger goal to remove Christianity from the public sphere. There are reasonable compromises that could have been made between those Christians with conscientious objections and the LGBT community plenty of gays consider themselves Christians but the left is deliberately pushing for maximum conflict between the two groups in order to push one out of society.An Oregon judge announced on Friday that he will not perform same-sex marriages. Unlike the lesbian judge who said she would not perform heterosexual marriages, Judge Vance Day was immediately put under an ethics investigation by the Oregon Commission of Judicial Fitness and Disability, which plans to hold a hearing in November.This won t end with public employment. As the public sphere goes, so goes the private sphere. If companies balk, anti-discrimination laws can be used to force them to comply. The left intends to stamp religion out of society, until Christians are left secretly worshiping in their homes, hiding their status outside of the home. This is because the left fundamentally disagrees with Judeo-Christian ethics, which contradict its foundation of anything goes.Until conservatives wake up and start realizing the judicial branch, controlled by the left, has become the most lethal branch, the biggest threat of the three branches to our country and freedom, it will continue abusing the legal system to stamp out conservatism and religion from society. Via: Townhill | 1real |
null | Education has nothing to do with ethics and honest dealing. Obamacare was a scam from day 1. Obama was against a mandate during his '08 campaign. But we ended up with both a mandate and NO public option. An honest president would have shelved the thing immediately and begun from scratch. | 1real |
Putin On The Migration Crisis: 'Europeans Have No Future' | Putin On The Migration Crisis: 'Europeans Have No Future' # thinkbig 0
In a truly shocking twist, the Supreme Court of Austria has decided to acquit the Iraqi man, "that may not have realised the 10-year-old Austrian boy did not want to be sexually abused by him." Amir, 20, was visiting the Theresienbad pool in the Austrian capital of Vienna in December 2015, as part of a trip to encourage integration, when the incident occurred. Tags | 1real |
Trump Just Told His Most INSANE Inauguration Lie Yet And Is Getting Torn APART For It (TWEETS) | President-elect Donald Trump is currently trying to drown out all his insecurities after Meryl Streep absolutely gutted him in her Golden Globes speech on Sunday night. So far, he s spent Monday trying to trash Steep on Twitter, take credit for jobs he didn t create, and now he s trying to hype up his own inauguration. Of course, he s failing miserably at all of these but he just got called out in a major way.Apparently oblivious to the fact that the whole country knows his inauguration is an embarrassment because no respectable celebrity wants to perform for him, Trump told an insane lie about how popular his inauguration was going to be despite the fact that his parade has been significantly shortened due to its unpopularity. Trump actually said that so many people would be attending his inauguration that all the dress shops in Washington were sold out! He said in an interview with The New York Times: We are going to have an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout for the inauguration, and there will be plenty of movie and entertainment stars. All the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration. Everyone is shocked by this statement especially the shopkeepers in Washington, who actually have tons of evening gowns available! In an amazing fact-check by The Washington Post, VP and manager of Friendship Heights Neiman Marcus store Martha Slagle was quoted debunking Trump s lies: Definitely not. You have more than a thousand evening gowns to choose from. Slagle also said her store was stuffed with beautiful gowns and that other smaller stores always have dresses because stores stock up ahead of the inauguration in case there is a high demand (however, there doesn t seem to be). As if this weren t humiliating enough for Trump, he s been getting destroyed on Twitter for this, and it s absolutely hilarious:TwitterTwitterTwitterTwitterTrump is a pathological liar and psychopath. A lie like this shows that he is truly not fit to be President. Featured image via Scott Olson / Getty Images | 1real |
President Trump Said ’Terror’ 31 Times, Obama in Cairo Said it ZERO Times | Critics will argue upon first inspection that President Trump’s speech to Arab leaders in Riyadh today was scarcely a shift from President Obama’s infamous, fawned over lecture in Cairo in 2009. Those critics are incorrect. [They’re incorrect because they’ll tend to be journalists, activists, politicians, or pundits. In other words: no business people. The speech President Trump gave in Riyadh was different because of his business acumen. No businessman concludes a meeting without the cliched “action points”. Otherwise, the whole thing is a waste of time. We can easily find similarities in both their speeches: the usual diplomatic gratitude towards their hosts, the pledges not to lecture, the aggrandizement of the region’s history, and the aversion to describing Western vs. Middle Eastern philosophies as a “clash of civilizations”. Fine. But where Obama stopped short, Trump continued full speed into making demands of the people in the room. THE INTROS, Obama opened with “Assalamualaikum” going on to apologise for colonialism, proxy wars, hostility to Islam, and quoting the “Holy” Quran. He spoke of civilization’s “debt to Islam” his responsibility to defend the Muslim faith, the hijab, and declare “Islam is a part of America”. After this submissive introduction — having spent the first seven pages of his speech his audience — he noted that “violent extremists” needed to be confronted, closing with: “Islam is not part of the problem … ” Instead, President Trump dived right in, spending less than a page on the flattery — and there was scarcely any in that section anyway — getting to the first action point by page two of his speech: “This landmark agreement includes the announcement of a $110 billion defense purchase … ” If America is going to deal with the Arab world under a Trump presidency, it is at least going to get something out of it for the American people. Cash, jobs, and importantly, leverage. Wait, you thought that was all? The very next sentence announced the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology. Let’s be clear, this center will do nothing, and likely achieve nothing. But by this point in Obama’s speech, he was quoting Quranic Surah 9, Verse 119, which he claimed said: “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth”. In reality, the passage demands the reader to be fearful of Allah, and just a few verses later explains why: “O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness. And know that Allah is with the righteous”. While President Obama lectured from the Quran, President Trump was declaring today: “We are not here to lecture, we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership based on shared interests and values, to pursue a better future for us all”. DEFENDING MUSLIMS FROM RADICAL ISLAM, Both presidents Obama and Trump made mention of how Muslims are the primary target of “violent extremism” but Obama’s defense of Muslims came more in the way of the following, than anything else: … freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state in our union, and over 1, 200 mosques within our borders. That’s why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it. Later on, he mentions how extremists have “killed people of different faiths, more than any other, they have killed Muslims”. But President Trump was far more robust, and far more — undoubtedly to the chagrin of liberal commentators — spirited in his defence of young Muslims who are having their minds poisoned and futures ruined. This is the most effective argument against Islamic extremism, and President Trump put it simply, and effectively, as follows: Young Muslim boys and girls should be able to grow up free from fear, safe from violence, and innocent of hatred. And young Muslim men and women should have the chance to build a new era of prosperity for themselves and their peoples. Notice the difference. No apologia for hijabs, no caveats or compromises. He goes on: “ … in sheer numbers, the deadliest toll has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence. Some estimates hold that more than 95 percent of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim”. Obama’s conclusion in this section was again to quote the Quran. This time, the contentious Surah Al Maidah, often deployed by Islamist organizations themselves when seeking to defend against allegations of radicalism or terror links: The Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as — it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Quran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. Except it doesn’t. The verse, without paraphrasing, actually reads: “ … We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land — it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one — it is as if he had saved mankind entirely”. “Corruption” in the land, in context, is opposition to to the spread of Islam, which includes critique, mockery, or even disbelief. The very next paragraph of the Quran reads: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment”. IRAN, Perhaps the most striking difference between President Obama’s speech and that of President Trump’s is the section on Iran. Obama — with naiveté — began with another acknowledgement of American guilt: “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of and violence against U. S. troops and civilians. This history is well known”. He moved on to state: “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that’s why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. And any nation — including Iran — should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Treaty”. As we now know, this approach has endangered the wider world, with Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, and emboldened regimes and their allies the world over to do the same. Without this approach, without this line in this speech, even Kim Jong Un would be singing a different tune today. President Trump appears to want to right that historical wrong, stating today his wish to isolate the nation from the civilized world. Again, an action point: From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region. For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror. It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room. Among Iran’s most tragic and destabilizing interventions have been in Syria. Bolstered by Iran, Assad has committed unspeakable crimes, and the United States has taken firm action in response to the use of banned chemical weapons by the Assad Regime — launching 59 tomahawk missiles at the Syrian air base from where that murderous attack originated. Responsible nations must work together to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria, eradicate ISIS, and restore stability to the region. The Iranian regime’s victims are its own people. Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leaders’ reckless pursuit of conflict and terror. Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve. TOLERANCE, OR LACK THEREOF, Where Obama declared “Islam has a proud history of tolerance” as the Mullahs prepared their latest homosexual to be thrown from a building, and the most recent woman to be stoned in the street, President Trump demanded: “Your soul will be condemned” for barbaric acts, a sentiment that found its crescendo when he declared: “This is a battle between Good and Evil” insisting that Arab and Muslim leaders “drive out” the forces of terror and extremism within their ranks. A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out. DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, andDRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH. Contrast this with President Obama’s section on tolerance, specifically, with regards women’s rights and economic opportunity. Curiously for a liberal, President Obama told the Cairo audience: “I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home”. Such socially conservative statements would perhaps be more readily expected from Vice President Mike Pence. But the media — neither at the time, nor now — seemed to pick up on it. Obama’s own tolerance for conservative values applied only in the Muslim world, it seems, not at home. TACKLING TERRORISM, President Trump used the word “terror” in some way — terror, terrorism, terrorists — a whopping 31 times in his speech in Riyadh. In Cairo, President Obama used the word an even more whopping ZERO times. Obama described as an “enormous trauma” rather than a terrorist atrocity, opting to deploy the word “extremism” 11 times in his speech, which President Trump also used nine times. As a result, Obama lacked action points, policy goals, or anything of substance when it came to tacking terrorism. President Trump on the other hand announced the formulation of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, insisting: “Muslim nations must be willing to take on the burden, if we are going to defeat terrorism and send its wicked ideology into oblivion”. Oh yeah, and President Trump said: “Islamic terrorism” just FYI. CONCLUSIONS, The way the two presidents concluded their speeches is proof enough of how differently the two men approach the issues of Islam, Islamism, terrorism, and the U. S. relationship with the Middle East. While Ivanka and Melanie strut around Riyadh in designer clothes, and the current president refuses to bow before the Saudis, Obama took every opportunity to remain prostrate before the Muslim world, in action, as well as in his words. In Cairo, he concluded with quotes from the Quran first, then the Talmud, then the Bible. His Quranic verse: “O mankind! We have created you male and a female … ” may not find much support from the LGBTQI++** brigade of the liberal left today. He closed: “Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you. Thank you very much”. President Trump’s conclusion, in addition to being more traditional, was also more hopeful, and effectively called for a Islamic reformation: The birthplace of civilization is waiting to begin a new renaissance. Just imagine what tomorrow could bring. Glorious wonders of science, art, medicine and commerce to inspire humankind. Great cities built on the ruins of shattered towns. New jobs and industries that will lift up millions of people. Parents who no longer worry for their children, families who no longer mourn for their loved ones, and the faithful who finally worship without fear. These are the blessings of prosperity and peace. These are the desires that burn with a righteous flame in every human heart. And these are the just demands of our beloved peoples. I ask you to join me, to join together, to work together, and to fight together — because united, we will not fail. Thank you. God Bless You. God Bless Your Countries. And God Bless the United States of America. Raheem Kassam is the Editor in Chief of Breitbart London and tweets at @RaheemKassam | 0fake |
U.S. Treasury would run out of cash by early April if debt ceiling not lifted: CBO | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury would exhaust all of its borrowing options and run dry of cash to pay its bills by late March or early April if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling before then, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday. “If the debt limit remains unchanged, the ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will be exhausted and the Treasury will most likely run out of cash by late March or early April 2018,” it said. “If that occurred, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully, and it would delay making payments for its activities, default on its debt obligations, or both,” the CBO added. | 0fake |
Millennial Entrepreneurs Give Sleepy Montevideo a Fresh Jolt - The New York Times | On a recent afternoon in Montevideo, a young couple approached the counter at Futuro Refuerzos, a snug sandwich shop that features artisanal breads, spreads and locally sourced meats. The woman was wearing a felt halt and carried a vintage leather handbag the man sported tousled curls, forearm tattoos and skinny jeans. There was nothing remarkable about this scene — stylish ordering gourmet sandwiches in a rustic space — except that it unfolded in a destination that has seemed immune to hipsterdom. Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is almost invariably described as and . But in the past few years, an energetic cadre of entrepreneurs with social media proficiency and a keen awareness of global trends has begun to breathe fresh life into this traditionally sleepy South American city. Most are design and millennials who are opening up restaurants and boutiques, organizing street festivals and supper clubs, and daring to stand out in a society that has typically rewarded modesty. “Thanks in part to social media, young Uruguayans have a global and are very motivated,” said Mónica Zanocchi, the founder of a popular fashion and lifestyle blog called Couture. “There are a lot of creative professionals entering the work force, and since established companies can’t absorb all of this new talent, they end up becoming entrepreneurs. ” Futuro Refuerzos is led by Fermín Solana, a food writer and rock musician who grew frustrated with the lack of options in Montevideo. “There was nowhere to eat a decent sandwich beyond the old places that make chivitos,” he said, referring to the traditional steak sandwiches that are offered in neighborhood joints or local chains. “I looked at Santiago and Lima, where the sandwiches are incredible, and decided to take a risk. ” Soon after opening in late 2015, Futuro Refuerzos had garnered a following thanks to creations like “gol,” handmade pita filled with spiced meatballs, sweet blood sausage and red cabbage. Mr. Solana is part of a group of young restaurateurs and chefs fueling the city’s small but growing foodie circuit, which right now includes over a dozen restaurants, cafes and specialty stores (until recently, Montevidean epicures spoke of living in a culinary wasteland, so this is a noticeable improvement). There is Estrecho, a tiny restaurant in the historic district with simple décor belying a sophisticated lunchtime menu prepared by Cali Diemarch, a chef trained in the United States who invents his daily dishes on the fly, such as a deconstructed chivito made with filet mignon, poached egg, caramelized pancetta and fried onions. La Pasionaria, a concept store and restaurant on a quiet nearby street, recently welcomed a new young chef, Luciana Fia, who makes pasta, ice cream and other food by hand, using fresh, local ingredients. At Sucré Salé Bistro, a casual spot near downtown, on the back patio of the Alliance Française de Montevideo, Florencia Ibarra often sneaks refined dishes like rabbit in mustard sauce with boulangère potatoes into her unfussy menu. Leading the pack is the and Jacinto, headed by Lucía Soria, an alumna of the famed Argentine chef Francis Mallmann. Ms. Soria frequently appears on television, participates in food festivals like Degusto and headlines as the top guest chef in supper clubs like Mesabrava. “Finally, we have good places to eat, good live music and a generation of people who are breaking away from the old molds,” Mr. Solana said. “I think the city’s lighting up. ” Montevideo’s new vibe is closely linked to fashion and interior design, as seen in a surge of shops selling locally made clothes, accessories and home accents. Last year, one of the most dynamic new labels, Rotunda, unveiled a sleek multistory boutique in the Punta Carretas neighborhood, complete with its own photography studio, where the owners, Kevin Jakter and Sofía Dominguez, showcase their expanding line of minimalist women’s clothing, eyewear, shoes, and jewelry. Ten blocks away in the residential and commercial district of Pocitos, a trendy multibrand store, Tienda, sells labels like Pastiche, which specializes in denim, and Mutma, a maker of leather shoes and handbags. Casa Baném, a home décor store set in a villa in upscale Carraco, also stocks a variety of homegrown brands like Don Baez, known for its throws and pillows made with Uruguayan merino wool, and Home Touch, which makes lighting. This design boom can be gauged at MoWeek, the local fashion week held in April and October, which began in 2010 with six showrooms and now includes more than 60. “They’re all independent brands started by a new generation, which is impressive,” Ms. Zanocchi of Couture said. “Montevideo is still quiet, but there are some very interesting alternative scenes that are seeping into the mainstream. ” | 0fake |
What are your plans for defeating the demiurge | Re: what are your plans for defeating the demiurge Follow the words of Jesus and Buddah. Not the whole bible though. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31310212 Alot of whats in the bible has been written by the demiurge so you have to be careful. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31310212 If it's in this existence, I don't trust it. And that certainly goes for ALL religions and the new age bullshit too. I don't think it's gonna be a case of saying some little bullshit quote and being able to go free. As for the question, that's what I'm still struggling with. I'd love to take a baseball bat to it and whatever else has trapped us here but I somehow don't think that's gonna work. All I know is I'm not gonna fall for this shit ever again and I'm not coming back to this shithole of a world either. Page 1 | 1real |
The Trump – Epstein Rape Lawsuit | Posted on November 3, 2016 by Michael Collins
Donald Trump’s post election experience may be as bad or worse than the nightmare he hopes to visit on Hillary Clinton, perhaps worse.
Jane Doe ( proceeding under a pseudonym ) filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and convicted sex offender, Jeremy Epstein, for multiple acts of sexual and physical abuse, which occurred when the defendant was 13 years old. Specifically, the the plaintiff charged the defendants with:
“Rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional, and reckless inflection of emotional distress, duress, false imprisonment, and defamation.” Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein .
Judge Ronnie Abrams scheduled a December 16, 2016 pretrial conference to set a timeline for the case in the U.S District Court, Southern District in Manhattan.
The complaint argues for the use of Jane Doe rather than the plaintiff’s actual name: “This litigation involves matters that are highly sensitive and of a personal nature, and identification of Plaintiff would pose a risk of retaliatory physical harm to her and to others.”
The heart of Jane Doe’s complaint is summarized below:
“Plaintiff was enticed by promises of money and a modeling career to attend a series of parties, with other similarly situated minor females, held at a New York City residence that was being used by Defendant Jeffrey Epstein. …
“Defendant Trump initiated sexual contact with Plaintiff at four different parties. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant Trump, Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted. Exhs. A and B.” Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein .
The complaint against Epstein describes behavior similar to that of Trump.
Epstein – a convicted sex offender
Palm Beach, Florida investigators produced a probable cause affidavit in 2006 that documented Jeffrey Epstein’s “unlawful sexual activity with” 4 minors and “lewd and lascivious molestation.” The crimes took place at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion where he entertained lavishly.
Epstein hired Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershhowitz and former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr as his defense team. Even though FBI and other investigations accumulated a victim list of 40 underage girls in Florida , the case was settled in 2008 when Epstein pleaded guilty to one count of soliciting prostitution from underage girls. He was sentenced to 18 months, served 13, and had to register as a risk level 3-sex offender in New York (the highest level).
Trump – brags about close friendship with Epstein
Before Epstein’s legal problems, Trump did a 2002 interview in New York Magazine in which he described a long-term relationship with Epstein.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” New York Magazine
Trump had Epstein at a guest at his Florida mansion and Epstein had Trump as a guest as his estates in Florida and New York.
Will the case go forward if Trump wins the election?
If the case is not dismissed, the scheduling conference on the December 16 will outline various tasks and dates over the first few months of 2017, including the dates for the inauguration of the 45 th President of the United States. If that happens to be Donald Trump, there is nothing to prevent the trial from going forward. The Supreme Court decision in the Bill Clinton – Paula Jones case established the right of citizens to sue presidents in civil court for acts committed prior to taking office.
If the case moves forward, the evidence in the exhibits and subsequent information, the quality of representation at trial, and the judge and jury are the central factors that will determine if a sitting president or losing presidential candidate will do some serious time for the heinous crimes alleged. Unlike the original Epstein case, the visibility for this matter is so high, backroom deals for the rich and famous will be virtually impossible. | 1real |
LOL! OPEN BORDERS SEAN PENN Responds After New PRO-REFUGEE Movie Gets DESTROYED By Critics At Cannes | Is it possible the French have lost their appetite for our pro-open borders Hollywood liberals misrepresenting the truth about the inundation of Muslim men into their towns and communities? CANNES Another day, another dud. In its early days, the 69th Cannes Film Festival was one of pleasant surprises, including a three-hour German-language art-house comedy, Toni Erdmann, that had critics applauding during as well as after the film. Then there was Paterson, a Jim Jarmusch creation starring Adam Driver as a bus driver who writes poetry. The well-received film plays out like something of a poem itself. And even if it doesn t win any official prizes, it has already captured the Palme Dog for best canine performance, by a bulldog named Nellie.But many of cinema s big names have proven less reliable. Woody Allen s Caf Society and Stephen Spielberg s The BFG, both opening out of competition, were solid but hardly the directors best work. A Thursday night screening of The Neon Demon, written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Elle Fanning, drew jeers for its lurid, over-the-top stew of vampirism, cannibalism and a touch of necrophilia.That was followed the next morning by The Last Face, Sean Penn s fifth film as a director and his first since 2007 s Into the Wild. It s a story of refugee crises and humanitarian aid (subjects with which the activist Penn is intimately familiar) but also, as an opening text explains with a thud: about the love (pause) between a man (pause) and a woman. You could hear the groans from the crowd.Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem lead an international cast that includes Britain s Jared Harris and French star Jean Reno. They are aid workers whose tumultuous love affair plays out over a decade and many explosions and, lest we doubt their passion, through a variety of slow-motion scenes, soft-focus lenses and choral music.Penn had little to say about the negative reaction to The Last Face. I ve finished the film so it s not a discussion that I feel I can be of any value to, he said. I stand behind the film as it is, and everybody is going to be well entitled to their response. Via: National Post | 1real |
WHOA! 3 WELL-KNOWN Democrats Go NUCLEAR On Hillary Clinton And Her Supporters [VIDEO] | Wow! Thrill up his leg for Obama, Chris Matthews does a stunning 180 on his support for Hillary and boldly calls out any person who is still planning to support her. He accuses her supporters of being too dainty to stand up for America. Watch him tell his liberal viewers that the only chance we have to turn this nation around is to vote for Trump. If you like the way things are the way they are headed in this country. If you d like to continue the destruction of our manufacturing base, and the jobs that went with it. If you like the uncontrollable immigration, if you like the string of stupid wars from Iraq to Libya to Syria. If you want to say yes to all of that, if you want to keep this all the way it is, fine then vote for Hillary Clinton. If you don t like the way things are headed, you ve got a chance to really shake the system at its roots. If you wake up on Election Day and it s the same as it is today, if it s the same 4 or 5 or 8 years from now, remember you had a chance really change it up but you were too dainty to do it. https://twitter.com/WDFx2EU7/status/793323182262358017Liberal champion of union members Michael Moore stunned liberals and union bosses everywhere when he came out with this passionate support for Donald Trump:***Language warning***Former Democratic pollster for Hillary makes a stunning admission to Fox News host Harris Faulkner that he won t support Hillary: I still share her worldview and am much closer to her approach to policies than I am to Donald Trump. That said, with America facing a potential constitutional crisis after her election, I am not able, under the circumstances we are now facing, to vote for Secretary Clinton. | 1real |
Sinn Fein says Northern Ireland talks have failed | BELFAST (Reuters) - Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein said on Wednesday that its talks with the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party aimed at re-establishing a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland had failed. Sinn Fein is disappointed that after the last few weeks of negotiations that it has ended in failure, Sinn Fein s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O Neill, told journalists. We did our best to be flexible. She called on the British and Irish government s to act urgently to deliver equality in Northern Ireland following the failure of the assembly to deliver it, citing the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace deal. | 0fake |
Republican's plan to revamp Dodd-Frank highlights U.S. political divide | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chair of the House Financial Services Committee has proposed getting rid of much of the regulation put in place after the financial crisis, unveiling a plan on Tuesday that ignited fierce debate in the presidential election but is expected to flame out in Washington. In a sweeping speech at the Economic Club of New York, Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling, from Texas, laid out his ideas on weakening the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law just as polls opened in six states holding presidential primaries. Hensarling also met on Tuesday with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee who has called for dismantling the massive reform law. Trump’s campaign declined to comment on Hensarling’s plan. The lawmaker told Fox Business Network on Tuesday he would not describe the “blow-by-blow” of his meeting with Trump but said they had common ground on Dodd-Frank. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ likely nominee, Hillary Clinton, sought to tie the real-estate tycoon to Hensarling’s proposal. Clinton “strongly opposes Chairman Hensarling and Donald Trump’s efforts to gut critical reforms put in place to protect the public after the financial crisis,” said her adviser Gary Gensler, who headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when Dodd-Frank was passed. “While Republicans attempt to roll back measures that protect consumers and curb excessive risk-taking on Wall Street, Hillary Clinton will fight to defend Dodd-Frank and go beyond it, with tough new rules, stronger enforcement and more accountability.” Hensarling’s plan would allow banks to choose between complying with Dodd-Frank or meeting much tougher capital requirements. It would also throw out the Volcker Rule that restricts banks from making speculative investments and eliminate the authority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council consisting of regulatory agencies’ heads to designate firms as “systemically important,” also known as “too big to fail.” That label triggers requirements to hold more capital and abide by stricter regulations. In essence, Hensarling said his plan involved “far more loss-absorbing capital and far less federal control.” It would also maintain the law’s section on derivatives and keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Dodd-Frank, albeit with a changed structure. “I’m only replacing 89.7 percent of Dodd-Frank,” Hensarling joked. Few expect the plan, previewed in a video last week, to become law soon. While it could pass the Republican-controlled Congress, it would then have to be signed by President Barack Obama, who also signed Dodd-Frank into law. On Tuesday White House spokesman Josh Earnest said reforms enacted after the crisis “essentially guarantee that taxpayers will not be on the hook for bailing out big banks if their risky bets go south.” But Obama leaves office in January and those vying to replace him, including Senator Bernie Sanders running as a Democrat, have distinct views on regulation and Wall Street. “Those on the left who gave us Dodd-Frank believe in the principle that human nature is self-destructive and that people - except themselves, of course - are fundamentally ignorant,” Hensarling said, demonstrating the political charge of his ideas. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick, shot back that Republicans seek “to make life easier for mega bankers and tougher for ordinary Americans.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who is a firebrand for stronger regulation, said “while most Republicans in Congress are debating not whether to run away from Trump - but how far and how fast - Congressman Hensarling is sprinting toward Trump Tower.” Trump has given few clues to how he would take apart Dodd-Frank and what he might put in its place. “Here’s something we both agree with, and that is Dodd-Frank is impeding economic growth,” Hensarling told Fox Business. “I think he well received the message. I think he was interested in the policy.” Clinton has proposed breaking up large banks that take excessive risk, charging institutions a “risk fee,” taxing high-frequency trading, and creating more oversight of “shadow banking.” The most liberal candidate, Sanders has gone further and suggested reinstating the Glass-Steagall law that once separated commercial and investment banking. James Ballentine, head of congressional relations at American Bankers Association, the industry’s lead trade group, said both parties “agree that parts of Dodd-Frank just aren’t working.” “Any law that generates more than 24,000 pages of proposed and final rules will inevitably include problems that should be fixed,” he said in a statement. | 0fake |
U.N. rights chief decries hunger in Syrian siege, demands aid access | GENEVA (Reuters) - The humanitarian situation in the besieged eastern suburbs of Damascus is an outrage and parties to the conflict must allow food and medicine to reach at least 350,000 trapped Syrians, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said on Friday. The shocking images of what appear to be severely malnourished children that have emerged in recent days are a frightening indication of the plight of people in Eastern Ghouta, who are now facing a humanitarian emergency, Zeid said in a statement. The tightening siege has pushed people to the verge of famine in the rebel enclave, residents and aid workers have told Reuters. I remind all parties that the deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law, and may amount to a crime against humanity and/or a war crime, Zeid said. Zeid s office had a list of several hundred people who needed medical evacuation, but the government had reportedly imposed severe restrictions on such evacuations, leading to the deaths of several civilians, the U.N. statement said. A U.N. convoy last reached the besieged area on Sept 23, with aid for 25,000 people. Food prices have rocketed since forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad took control of several neighborhoods in May and destroyed tunnels that had been used to smuggle goods into the siege. This month they closed Eastern Ghouta s main access checkpoint and imposed a big rise in taxes imposed on traders. Last week two food warehouses were looted in a possible sign of growing desperation , the U.N. statement said. | 0fake |
Student Charged With Hazing in Peanut Butter Allergy Case - The New York Times | A college student in Michigan has been charged with hazing, accused of smearing peanut butter on the face of a friend who had a serious peanut allergy, the student’s lawyer said on Wednesday. The student, Dale Merza, turned himself in to the authorities after a warrant was issued last week. He pleaded not guilty in Isabella County District Court on Friday, his lawyer, Bruce Leach, said in a telephone interview. The charge, a misdemeanor that can carry a jail sentence, was reported in the Detroit Free Press and other news outlets this week. Mr. Merza, who was released on a personal recognizance bond, is a student at Central Michigan University, Mr. Leach said. He was charged in connection with the incident that took place in October at an party. There a fellow student, Andrew Seely, who was 19 at the time, passed out, he said. He woke up with peanut butter on his face and a severe reaction that his mother said could have been deadly. Mr. Leach said no one at the party knew that Mr. Seely had a peanut allergy. He gave no further explanation of what happened that night. “This is a total misunderstanding,” he said. “It was only learned the day after the incident that he had an allergy. I don’t think this had anything to do with hazing. ” “It was a big misunderstanding that has been blown out of proportion,” he added. The episode came to light in March, when the police in Mount Pleasant, a city of about 26, 000 people two and half hours northwest of Detroit, said they were investigating the encounter involving members of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity. Mr. Seely’s mother, Teresa Seely, contacted the police after her son told his family what happened, and she posted a photograph of his distorted face on Facebook. “He could have been killed,” she wrote, adding that he carried medicine to counteract accidental exposure to peanuts. Ms. Seely wrote in the post that her son had passed out at the party. When he came to, he discovered that his eyes, nose and lips had ballooned because peanut butter had been rubbed on his face, she wrote. He was treated at a campus clinic. Mr. Seely’s father, Paul Seely, told CBS News last month that it could have been fatal had the peanut butter gotten into his mouth. The national headquarters of Alpha Chi Rho said in a statement last month that it had revoked the chapter’s charter in 2011 because of hazing, adding that those involved in Mr. Seely’s case “were not members” of the fraternity and “acted independently. ” Citing privacy rules, Heather L. Smith, a spokeswoman for the university, said on Wednesday she could not comment on a possible university investigation into violations of the student code of conduct. Peanut allergy is one of the most common causes of severe allergic attacks, according to the Mayo Clinic. The allergy can cause a potentially condition in which the blood pressure drops and airways narrow, blocking breathing. | 0fake |
Lockheed Martin wins $743 million U.S. defense contract: Pentagon | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp unit Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co is being awarded a $743.17 million modification to a previously awarded initial production contract for F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters, the Pentagon said on Monday. The modification also establishes maximum prices for one F-35A aircraft and one F-35B aircraft for a non-U.S. Department of Defense participant in the F-35 program, the Pentagon said in a statement. | 0fake |
BOOM! It’s Payback Time For Gun-Grabbing Gov: GOP Works To Strip Him Of Armed Protection Detail | Do you think our Gun Grabber In Chief should be next?Virginia state senator Bill Carrico (R-Dist. 40) is responding to Governor Terry McAuliffe s (D) relentless gun control push by introducing a budget amendment to remove funding for McAuliffe s protection detail.Carrico said, If he s so afraid of guns, then I m not going to surround him with armed state policemen. McAuliffe has pushed numerous gun controls as governor and, in August, infamously pushed for expanding background checks after Virginia reporter Alison Parker had been shot on air. McAuliffe made the push for expanded background checks before the gunman who killed Parker had been caught and, therefore, before he had any knowledge of how the gunman acquired his gun. As it turned out, gunman Vester Lee Flanagan acquired his gun via a background check.Moreover, on October 15, McAuliffe issued an executive order banning the open carry of firearms in state buildings used by the Virginia executive branch and calling for enforcement to ensure that the only people in the business of selling guns in Virginia are those with a Federal Firearm License (FFL).Senator Carrico is responding to these things and more by trying to be sure McAuliffe does not have to be around guns at all if they bother him so much. According to the Bristol Herald Courier, Carrico said he will address this matter when the General Assembly convenes in January, saying:A lot of the governor s power is deferred to the General Assembly at that point and I ll be getting with my colleagues to circumvent everything this governor has done on this point. I have a budget amendment that I m looking at to take away his executive protection unit. If he s so afraid of guns, then I m not going to surround him with armed state policemen. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
In Major Defeat for Trump, Push to Repeal Health Law Fails - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders, facing a revolt among conservatives and moderates in their ranks, pulled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act from consideration on the House floor Friday in a major defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, conceded. The failure of the Republicans’ blitz to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement exposed deep divisions in the Republican Party that the election of a Republican president could not mask. It cast a long shadow over the ambitious agenda that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders had promised to enact once their party assumed power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. And it was the biggest defeat of Mr. Trump’s young presidency, which has suffered many. His travel ban has been blocked by the courts. Allegations of questionable ties to the Russian government forced out his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Tensions with key allies such as Germany, Britain and Australia are high, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings are at historic lows. Republican leaders were willing to tolerate Mr. Trump’s foibles with the promise that he would sign into law their conservative agenda. The collective defeat of the health care effort could strain that tolerance. Mr. Trump, in a telephone interview moments after the bill was pulled, tried to put the most flattering light on it. “The best thing that could happen is exactly what happened — watch,” he said. “Obamacare unfortunately will explode,” Mr. Trump said later. “It’s going to have a very bad year. ” At some point, he said, after another round of big premium increases, “Democrats will come to us and say, ‘Look, let’s get together and get a great health care bill or plan that’s really great for the people of our country. ’” Mr. Trump expressed weariness with the effort, though its failure took a fraction of the time that Democrats devoted to enacting the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010. “It’s enough already,” the president said. A major reason for the bill’s demise was the opposition of members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which wanted more aggressive steps to lower insurance costs and to dismantle federal regulation of insurance products. In a day of high drama, Mr. Ryan rushed to the White House shortly after noon on Friday to tell Mr. Trump he did not have the votes for a repeal bill that had been promised for seven years — since Mr. Obama signed the landmark health care law. During a 3 p. m. phone call, the two men decided to withdraw the bill rather than watch its defeat on the House floor. Mr. Trump later told journalists in the Oval Office that Republicans were 10 to 15 votes short of what they needed to pass the repeal bill. The effort to win passage had been relentless, and hardly hidden. Vice President Mike Pence and Tom Price, the health secretary, visited Capitol Hill on Friday for a late appeal to House conservatives, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. “You can’t pretend and say this is a win for us,” said Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, who conceded it was a “good moment” for Democrats. “Probably that champagne that wasn’t popped back in November may be utilized this evening,” Mr. Walker said. At 3:30 p. m. on Friday, Mr. Ryan called Republicans into a meeting to deliver the news that the bill would be withdrawn, with no plans to try again. The meeting lasted five minutes. One of the architects of the House bill, Representative Greg Walden, Republican of Oregon and the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, put it bluntly: “This bill’s done. ” “We are going to focus on other issues at this point,” he said. The Republican bill would have repealed tax penalties for people without health insurance, rolled back federal insurance standards, reduced subsidies for the purchase of private insurance and set new limits on spending for Medicaid, the program that covers more than 70 million people. The bill would have repealed hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act and would also have cut off federal funds to Planned Parenthood for one year. Mr. Ryan had said the bill included “huge conservative wins. ” But it never won over conservatives who wanted a more thorough eradication of the Affordable Care Act. Nor did it have the backing of more moderate Republicans who were anxiously aware of the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment that the bill would leave 24 million more Americans without insurance in 2024, compared with the number who would be uninsured under the current law. The budget office also warned that in the short run, the Republicans’ legislation would drive insurance premiums higher. For older Americans approaching retirement, the cost of insurance could have risen sharply. With the House’s most conservatives holding fast against the bill, support for the legislation collapsed Friday after more and more Republicans came out in opposition. They included Representatives Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Barbara Comstock of Virginia, whose suburban Washington district went for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, in November. “Seven years after enactment of Obamacare, I wanted to support legislation that made positive changes to rescue health care in America,” Mr. Frelinghuysen said. “Unfortunately, the legislation before the House today is currently unacceptable as it would place significant new costs and barriers to care on my constituents in New Jersey. ” The bill died after Republican leaders, in a bid for conservative support, agreed to eliminate federal standards for the minimum benefits that must be provided by certain health insurance policies. “It’s so cartoonishly malicious that I can picture someone twirling their mustache as they drafted it in their secret Capitol lair last night,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “Republicans are killing the requirements that insurance plans cover essential health benefits” such as emergency services, maternity care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment and prescription drugs. Mr. Trump blamed Democrats for the bill’s defeat, and they proudly accepted responsibility. “Let’s just, for a moment, breathe a sigh of relief for the American people that the Affordable Care Act was not repealed,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. Defeat of the bill could be a catalyst if it forces Republicans and Democrats to work together to improve the Affordable Care Act, which members of both parties say needs repair. Democrats have been saying for weeks that they want to work with Republicans on such changes, but first, they said, Republicans must abandon their drive to repeal the law. “Obamacare is the law of the land,” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced. ” Whatever success Mr. Trump had in making business deals, he utterly failed in his first effort at cutting a deal at the pinnacle of power in Washington, Democrats said. “This is not the art of the deal,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, alluding to Mr. Trump’s book. “It is the art of the steal, of taking away insurance coverage from families that really need it to provide tax breaks for those at the very top. ” Rejection of the repeal bill may prompt Republicans to reconsider the political strategy they were planning to use for the next few years. “We have to do some internally to determine whether or not we are even capable of functioning as a governing body,” said Representative Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “If ‘no’ is your goal, it’s the easiest goal in the world to reach. ” Representative Robert Pittenger, Republican of North Carolina, offered this advice to conservatives who helped sink the bill: “Follow the example of Ronald Reagan. He was a master he built consensus. He would say, ‘I’ll take 80 percent and come back for the other 20 percent later. ’” Failure of the House effort leaves the Affordable Care Act in place, with all the features Republicans detest. “We tried our hardest,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess of Texas, chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. “There were people who were not interested in solving the problem. They win today. ” “The Freedom Caucus wins,” he added. “They get Obamacare forever. ” | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.