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10 Highlights From Wednesday’s Confirmation Hearings - The New York Times | Democrats complained mightily about their questions being limited, but the Republicans, who hold the majority, get to set the rules. Four of Donald J. Trump’s cabinet choices faced aggressive questions, but avoided any major stumbles. Here are 10 highlights: ■ Representative Tom Price of Georgia, picked to be health secretary, said repealing the Affordable Care Act would not leave millions without health insurance. ■ Mr. Price offered lofty goals for replacing the law but gave few details about the administration’s plans. ■ He did not rule out cuts to Medicare or Medicaid. ■ Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and the pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, said he disagreed with Mr. Trump’s statement that climate change is a “hoax,” but hedged when asked how much of it is caused by human activity. ■ He defended what he called “common sense” environmental regulation, arguing that farmers, ranchers and business had been hurt by intrusive federal rules. ■ Mr. Pruitt said he would not deny the government’s finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a threat: “That is a law of the land. ” ■ Wilbur Ross, selected to be commerce secretary, had a message for Mexico and Canada: Be ready to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. ■ Some Republicans said they were taken aback by Mr. Trump’s threats to impose big tariffs, but Mr. Ross assured them that the was merely being a good negotiator. ■ Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, Mr. Trump’s choice for ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the international body’s treatment of Israel. ■ Ms. Haley said there would not be a Muslim registry in the United States. Mr. Price tried to offer reassurance that the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act would not leave millions of people suddenly without health insurance, but Democrats challenged him repeatedly on that point. “One of the important things that we need to convey to the American people is that nobody’s interested in pulling the rug out from under anybody,” Mr. Price said. But Mr. Price gave up few details about Mr. Trump’s plan. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who ran for president as a Democrat, pressed Mr. Price on whether he viewed health care as “a right. ” Mr. Price deflected. “We’re a compassionate society,” he said. “No, we’re not a compassionate society,” Mr. Sanders shot back, lamenting the United States’ treatment of some of its neediest citizens. Mr. Sanders also parsed Mr. Price’s remark that Americans deserved “access” to health care. “I have access to buying a $10 million home,” Mr. Sanders said. “I don’t have the money to do that. ” Mr. Price, who has faced intense scrutiny and criticism from Democrats over his stock trades while in Congress, found a defender in Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. “To question your motives, I think, is insulting,” Mr. Paul said. “To question whether you’re honest is insulting. ” Democrats have made clear their deep discontent with Mr. Price’s nomination. But one of them, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, found a silver lining with the nominee, who happens to be an orthopedic surgeon. “I have never shown a knee, my knee, to any nominee before Dr. Price came to my office,” Mr. Bennet disclosed when it was his turn at Wednesday’s hearing. “But he gave me some free medical advice and I’m grateful. ” “How you doing?” Mr. Price chimed in, showing a glimpse of his bedside manner. “It’s terrible, but I’ll talk to you after it’s over,” Mr. Bennet said. “It’s not because of you. ” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, pressed Mr. Price to address Mr. Trump’s pledge that he would not cut Medicare or Medicaid. “Do you believe he was telling the truth?” she asked. “I believe so, yes,” Mr. Price said. Ms. Warren went on to ask Mr. Price to guarantee that he would “safeguard” that pledge and not use his administrative power to “carry out a single dollar of cuts to Medicare or Medicaid eligibility or benefits. ” Mr. Price did not provide such an assurance. Mr. Pruitt, whose hearing attracted dozens of protesters to the Capitol, defended his position that excessive government regulation was hurting business and energy development. Mr. Pruitt said his “first and primary goal” as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency would be “to return the agency to that core mission of protecting the American people through common sense and lawful regulations. ” He said that “farmers, ranchers, landowners and owners have recently felt hopeless, subject to a torrent of new regulations that only a lawyer can understand. ” “They fear the E. P. A. and that just shouldn’t be the case,” he said. “If confirmed, I will work tirelessly to ensure that the E. P. A. acts lawfully, sensibly and with those Americans ever in mind. ” But several senators challenged him. Lead came up repeatedly in the hearing, and Mr. Pruitt has come under fire for his answers. In an one round of questioning, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, asked, “Do you believe there is any safe level of lead that can be taken into the human body, particularly a young person? Mr. Pruitt responded: “That’s something I have not reviewed nor know about. I would be very concerned about any level of lead going into the drinking water or obviously human consumption, but I’ve not looked at the scientific research on that. ” As the writer Susan Matthews at Slate noted, the E. P. A. says there is no safe level of lead in the bloodstream, though its regulations still allow extremely small amounts of lead in plumbing systems. Mr. Pruitt’s statement led to a strong reaction online: There was also a forceful response among the Democratic members of the Senate in the hearing room. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois asked incredulously, “You are seeking to be the E. P. A. administrator and you’ve not looked into the issue of lead in our drinking water supply?” She called that, in the aftermath of the water crisis in Flint, Mich. “a serious oversight on your part. ” Mr. Pruitt responded that the E. P. A. had power to address problems with lead in water and that the agency should have done more in Flint. “The E. P. A. has emergency order authority” to respond to incidents of contamination, he said, “and I think the E. P. A. should step into these situations in a very meaningful way. ” Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, had a feisty exchange with Mr. Pruitt over climate change and ethics. Mr. Markey started out by revealing a bit of daylight between the positions of Mr. Trump and Mr. Pruitt on climate change. Mr. Markey noted that Mr. Trump has called climate change a hoax created by “the Chinese. ”” Mr. Markey asked whether Mr. Pruitt agreed with the president elect on that point. “I do not believe that climate change is a hoax,” Mr. Pruitt replied. “O. K. that’s important for the president to hear,” Mr. Markey responded. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the nominee for United States ambassador to the United Nations, was the subject of rather mild questioning, but that did not mean the hearing was . “I am concerned with your lack of foreign policy experience,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland and the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. But he then praised Ms. Haley for leading the fight to take down a Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina statehouse property. For her part, Ms. Haley pivoted to an issue of central concern to Republicans, and many Democrats: the United Nations’ relationship with Israel. “Any honest assessment also finds an institution that is often at odds with U. S. interests,” Ms. Haley said, noting the body’s 20 resolutions against Israel, more than against Syria, Iran and North Korea. “This cannot continue,” she said, also criticizing the United States’ abstention from the latest such resolution against Israel. “I will never abstain when the United Nations takes any action that comes in direct conflict with the interests and values of the United States,” she said. She also was asked whether she agreed with sanctions on Russia. “I think that Russia has to have positive actions before we lift any sanctions on Russia. ” What about a Muslim registry? Nope, Ms. Haley said, not going to happen. Mr. Ross kicked off his confirmation hearing by taking a tough stance on China, describing the country as protectionist. “They talk much more about free trade than they actually practice,” he said. Mr. Ross’s stance echoed Mr. Trump’s own approach. The rankled many by accepting a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan, challenging the One China principle and heightening tensions with the country before he even takes office. In an unexpected revelation, Mr. Ross admitted he had unknowingly employed an undocumented household worker, a fact he said he discovered while preparing for his Senate confirmation process. Mr. Ross said the employee had presented a Social Security card and a valid driver’s license, both bearing that individual’s name, when hired in 2009. But during a check over the past month, the employee had been unable to provide similar documentation. He fired the employee immediately, he said. “We did the best that we thought we could do in order to verify the legality of the employment, and it turned out that was incorrect,” Mr. Ross said. During that roughly period, Mr. Ross said he paid all applicable taxes without incident on that employee, using the Social Security number he had been given. | 0fake |
Gallup: Assault Weapons Ban Support at Lowest Level Ever Recorded | Email
Poll results released on Wednesday by Gallup confirm the trend toward the acceptance of the freedom to own guns and support of the Second Amendment. Sixteen years ago 59 percent of those polled favored “a law which would make it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles,” while just 39 percent were opposed. Today those numbers have flipped: Just 36 percent support a ban, while 61 percent of those polled oppose it.
Even those polled who don’t have a gun in their home oppose such a ban. Most surprisingly, however, is that support for such a ban has dropped even among those most likely to support one: Democrats. In the year 2000, 63 percent of Democrats supported such a ban, while today just 50 percent do. Wrote Art Swift for Gallup: “It is striking — and unusual — that fewer Democrats than ever support an assault weapons ban, since the Democratic Party has been instrumental in pushing for stricter gun laws.”
Perhaps comforting to those watching how Independents might vote in the upcoming presidential election, Gallup reported that just 31 percent of them support such a ban (the same as Democrats), while in 2000, 63 percent did.
Swift called the results a “paradox”: Perhaps paradoxically, opposition toward a ban has increased against a backdrop of multiple mass shootings and terrorist attacks in which the perpetrators used assault rifles. These guns were used in high-profile incidents, including the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, and the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut.
Gallup could help its cause by defining more carefully the distinct difference between “assault rifles” and “assault weapons.” Assault rifles have been heavily regulated for decades, being defined as rifles used by the military that are “select” fire: able to fire multiple rounds with a single press of the finger on the trigger. “Assault weapons” were never defined until the Brady Bill was passed into law in 1994. Then they were defined as rifles that were “semi-automatic,” firing but a single round with a single press of the trigger. The bill also declared such a weapon as banned if it had any two of five cosmetic features that had nothing to do with its lethality: a collapsible stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher (which is useless without grenades).
Commentators jumped on the Gallup report with all manner of explanations as to the cause of the continuing drop in support for a ban or, conversely, citizens’ increasing support for gun ownership. Sean Davis, the co-founder of The Federalist , declared, “Americans understand that terrorists want to murder us, and that our laws are no obstacle to their blood lust. They will use planes, or bombs, or trucks, or knives, or box cutters, or guns.… Strict gun control laws in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C. have done nothing to prevent sky-high murder rates in those cities year after year.”
It’s possible that the message offered for years by Pastor Chuck Baldwin, a presidential candidate for the Constitution Party in 2008, is gaining purchase as well. In a recent newsletter Baldwin pulled no punches: To take away the citizen’s right to bear a semi-automatic rifle is to, in effect, completely disarm him…. The only reason that would-be tyrants in the US government have been kept at bay is because of an American citizenry fully armed with semi-automatic rifles.
That they are “fully armed” may be an understatement. The usual estimate of the number of firearms owned by American citizens has routinely been reported at 300 million, plus or minus. But that doesn’t square with the fact of increasing numbers of citizens purchasing firearms, setting records month-after-month for the last year and a half. WeaponsMan blog, written by a former Special Forces soldier and a stickler for details, investigated the publicly available data from government sources, including the ATF itself, and found the number to be vastly larger: upwards of 660 million. His analysis is available here .
He concludes “that the US inventory of firearms is almost certainly between 412 and 660 million, not the lower numbers recently trumpeted by the media.”
The irony remains that, thanks to the media’s propaganda blitz against the private ownership of firearms, awareness of what the true agenda is continues to grow. The harder gun-grabbers push, the harder it will be for them to accomplish their ultimate goal: complete confiscation of every firearm from every private citizen in the country. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson saw the threat, and gave perhaps the most reasonable explanation for today’s increasing support of the right of the people to buy, bear, keep and use firearms: The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Hillary's Anti-gun Stance Becomes Clearer Thanks to WikiLeaks | 1real |
U.S. senator launches probe into five top opioid drugmakers | (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill sought on Tuesday details from the nation’s top opioid drugmakers on their sales and marketing practices, as lawmakers step up efforts to tackle the country’s deadly opioid crisis. The Missouri senator’s investigation comes amid an epidemic of opioid addiction, with 91 Americans dying everyday as a result of overdose, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This epidemic is the direct result of a calculated sales and marketing strategy major opioid manufacturers have allegedly pursued over the past 20 years to expand their market share," McCaskill, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote in a letter to the drugmakers. (bit.ly/2o7pa4p) McCaskill asked Johnson & Johnson, Mylan NV, Purdue Pharma, Insys Therapeutics Inc and Depomed Inc for internal estimates of the risk of abuse, addiction and overdose of opioids. The companies are the top five U.S. prescription opioid drugmakers by 2015 sales, according to McCaskill’s letter. Depomed and Purdue Pharma said they were reviewing the letter and would respond accordingly. Purdue also said its OxyContin painkiller made up just 2 percent of the U.S. opioid analgesic prescription market. Johnson & Johnson said it had received the letter and would address the senator’s request. “We believe that we have acted appropriately, responsibly and in the best interests of patients regarding our opioid pain medications,” said Jessica Castles Smith, a spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson unit Janssen. Mylan said it is committed to helping find solutions to the issue of opioid abuse and misuse. “We welcome the senator’s interest in this important matter and we share her concerns regarding the misuse of prescription opioids,” a Mylan spokeswoman told Reuters in an email. | 0fake |
Someone Just Donated $2.5 Million to Bail Out Everyone Arrested at Standing Rock | By Nick Bernabe
Following the recent mass arrests of 141 people at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site located near Standing Rock, North Dakota, an anonymous donor just donated $2.5 million to bail out everyone who was arrested at the protests.
The news came after Tamara Francis-Fourkiller, a tribal leader from the Caddo Nation tribe in Caddo County, Oklahoma, was arrested at Standing Rock. Francis-Fourkiller was released after spending two days in jail, but her family says she was just an innocent observer in the clashes between militarized law enforcement and Native American activists, or “water protectors.”
[ UPDATE 11/1 4:35 pm EST: A statement from Red Owl Legal Collective/National Lawyers Guild that is advising Standing Rock has issued a statement saying the $2.5 million has not been received yet. We are waiting on confirmation from the Caddo Nation tribe.]
According to local news affiliate News On 6 :
Family members of Caddo Nation chairwoman Tamara Francis-Fourkiller said an anonymous donor paid $2.5 million late Saturday afternoon to release everyone arrested on Thursday at the Dakota Access Pipeline site. They said, however, that Francis-Fourkiller should not have been arrested in the first place.
Though the donor who sent the $2.5 million remains anonymous, it appears the person is connected to the Caddo Nation tribe in some way . | 1real |
EPA chief says ready to further relax fuel standards due to hurricanes | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is preparing for Hurricane Irma s landfall on the U.S. East Coast by securing vulnerable toxic waste sites and easing gasoline standards to ensure steady fuel supplies, its chief told Reuters on Thursday. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt declined to say whether he believed claims by scientists that the second powerful storm to affect the United States in two weeks may have a link to warmer air and water temperatures resulting from climate change. The most we can do is help people in these areas by monitoring drinking water and respond to real and tangible issues, he said in a brief telephone interview. Hurricane Irma is expected to make landfall in Florida as early as Friday after slamming Caribbean islands with 185 mph winds, only days after Hurricane Harvey triggered record flooding in Texas that killed scores of people. The EPA said has issued waivers on certain federal requirements for the sale, production and blending of gasoline to avoid supply shortfalls in the aftermath of Harvey and as Hurricane Irma approaches Florida. Pruitt said he spoke with Florida Governor Rick Scott about potentially issuing more waivers on gasoline requirements if the need arises after Irma. EPA will grant additional waivers if requested, he said. He said the agency is also evaluating 80 Superfund toxic waste sites from Florida to North Carolina to identify those at risk of flooding. The EPA has yet to finish assessing the impact of Harvey on Texas Superfund sites - heavily contaminated former industrial zones - amid widespread flooding. On Saturday, the agency said 13 sites were flooded or damaged, but the full impact on surrounding areas was not immediately clear. Pruitt said the agency is also continuing to seek additional information about explosions last week at French chemical company Arkema s flooded plant in Crosby, Texas, which sickened more than a dozen law enforcement personnel and prompted an evacuation of the surrounding area. | 0fake |
For Navajo Team, a Season of Change and Challenge - The New York Times | HOLBROOK, Ariz. — The teenage boys amble off the school bus like so many old souls, knees and backs stiff, eyes puffy and hollowed. The previous evening this Navajo basketball troop from Chinle High School had played a rollicking game against the Monument Valley Mustangs, on the northern edge of the Navajo Nation. The boys from Chinle went on a late run and won the game. Their trip back home took three hours, their school bus rolling through moonlit mountain passes and mesas, and plains. The boys fell into bed well past midnight. Then they woke up and boarded the bus again, this time riding two hours south for a Saturday afternoon game here in Holbrook, a high prairie crossroads. These Navajo teenagers are practitioners of “rez ball,” a style of hoops. They deeply desire a state championship. They also are perched on that precarious cliff wall between adolescence and manhood, and that brings other questions and yearnings. The seniors study college catalogs and wonder if they should leave their starkly beautiful land of family and clans, a reservation that is bigger than West Virginia. Hope and fear jostle. Nachae Nez, a shooting guard, a senior and a fine student, sits in the bleachers and talks of a future that feels as alive as a snake in his hands. He lives in a small town tucked against the red sandstone flanks of the Chuska Mountains. He dreams of attending a college. “They say it’s hard for natives to leave the rez,” he says. “Your favorite place if you’re a Navajo, it’s your grandmother’s hogan,” he adds, using the Navajo word for a house built in a traditional and sacred style. He pauses. “I know I need to leave if I want to be of service to my people. ” He peers at me. “These choices are painful, right?” Cooper Burbank is the youngest Chinle player, a preternaturally calm and talented freshman who deals with his own dislocation. He grew up in the red mesa northlands and attended a middle school of 108 students. His parents — his mom is a teacher and his father a custodian — wanted him to attend a bigger school, with more course offerings, to prepare for college. So they took a hard swallow and left grandmother and cousins and clans behind and moved to Chinle, where the high school has more than 1, 000 students and the family, Cooper and parents, are outsiders. Many weekends, the Burbanks travel back to their village. “I like to go home and clear my head,” Cooper says. He adds, softly: “My life needs challenges. I know that. ” Several months ago Raul Mendoza, 69, the widely admired coach of the Wildcats, invited me to watch him try to revive the Chinle team. Last season, before he took over, the Wildcats finished this year, the Wildcats will finish . My wife, Evelyn, and I lived in a trailer on the Navajo Nation years ago. She was a midwife and delivered babies. We wandered this land with our young sons, and Navajo sank its hook deep into us. The chance to return and explore the passions that drive this coach and his Navajo teenagers proved irresistible. After my trip in December, I wrote of Mendoza’s story. Half Mexican and half Tohono O’odham, a child who picked cotton in the fields of Arizona, he is a lifelong wanderer. I’ve returned to explore the lives of his teenage players. Chinle sits 5, 500 feet above sea level, west of Canyon de Chelly, where in the 1860s the Navajo held out against Kit Carson and federal troops who had come to destroy their crops and burn their homes. Basketball is a passion here. Chinle has 4, 500 residents, and its high school arena, the Wildcat Den, seats 7, 000. Fans drive and hitchhike 50, 60, 80 miles to games. Coaches are regularly tossed aside after a single losing season. Most of the teenage players observe traditional beliefs: They bow to the four sacred mountain peaks of Navajo they carry corn pollen in case their path crosses that of the coyote, a notorious trickster they swallow a bitter herb before games to guard against envy, jealousy and witchcraft. One senior wears his unshorn hair in a woven pony tail. He will cut it at age 18 and present the locks to his grandfather. As they wander canyons, they listen for the voices of ancestors. Before each game, a girl sings the national anthem in Navajo. Harsh winds blow through as well. Some parents are racked by hunger for booze and disappear others lose jobs and are evicted. The median annual income in Chinle is $27, 000. In surrounding villages, it is half that. Marcus Litson, a senior forward with a shaggy mane and easy smile, grew up in the same town as Nachae, who is the team captain. They roamed forests and climbed sandstone buttes. In his telling, his boyhood sounds like an idyll. He also lived four years on the distant New Mexico side of the reservation. Why? “My mom and dad split, and Mom won me in seventh grade,” he says. “When I got to 16, the court made me choose who to live with. ” Marcus missed his cousins and clans, and he chose to go back to Tsaile with his father. What did his mom say? “I haven’t heard from her in a year,” he says. He turns away and whispers, “I think she took it hard. ” Darrian Yeahquo, a junior, wanders by. His father disappeared when he was a toddler, and his mother moved the family to Albuquerque. He found city high schools tough and scary. Last spring, his grandfather, a Vietnam veteran crippled by broken knees and lingering war shock, could no longer care for his ranch and asked for help. Darrian hopped the bus to Navajo. All summer long he and a favorite cousin rode horses and tended sheep and cattle. His grandmother made sandwiches for her teenage herders and tied their lunch to a gnarled pine tree. Darrian himself in a dream. “If I have to leave the rez to go to college, to learn irrigation to help my family and people, I will,” he says. “This time I know I am coming back. ” Nachae and Cooper remain the team pillars. Nachae feels the urgency to win that comes with a senior’s sense of time fleeting Cooper is the team’s future. After practice, they remain in the darkened arena: Cooper shoots at one end of the court Nachae shoots at the other. Mendoza walks me out of the gym. “Natives, we’re not expected to be successful, and sometimes I worry that my kids feel that way,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with not achieving your goal, but you have to fight. ” He nods at Nachae and Cooper. “Those boys are intelligent and fight hard. ” The Wildcats remain a team half formed and maddeningly inconsistent. Sometimes forwards toss up errant and point guards tumble toward the hoop with no discernible plan. Mendoza enjoys a tortured relationship with rez ball. He appreciates that generations of natives grew up on this style of play. At its best, it is artful and breathtaking. He prefers when his players settle into defensive crouches, or when they pass and pass until they find an open man. “Are we going to play rez ball or are we going to play this game the right way?” he told his teenagers. “It bothers me when you can’t see the open man. ” Before I arrived, the Wildcats scored an upset of Ganado, which had been the only undefeated team on the reservation. Then they ran Monument Valley’s team off the court. They swell with confidence in Holbrook. This gym, however, is freighted with history. Mendoza once was Holbrook’s coach. He won a championship here, and Arizona coach of the year honors, and his departure still upsets some fans. Nachae played here as a freshman, and he has former teammates and friends here, and that brings pressure, too. The Wildcats begin strongly. Nachae hits a jumper and tosses down a and drives to the basket. Cooper wrestles rebounds and hits that soft dagger of a jumper. Just as suddenly, the tempo shifts: The Wildcats throw up jumpers. Nachae misses layups and grows frustrated. The Wildcat players stop swinging the ball to Cooper, who remains reluctant to impose his will. The game gallops away, and the Wildcats lose, . Mendoza does not hide his displeasure. You came in here laughing, he tells his team. Your play was embarrassing. Nachae pulls his jersey up over his face. Failure pierces deeply he wants to lead. He raises his hand and says, “We’re a really good team, but we have trouble connecting with each other. ” Cooper listens, his face opaque. On Sunday morning, a photographer and I drive north to Rock Point. We join Cooper and his family at a God’s Grace Fellowship church on a rutted dirt road two miles north of the general store. The congregation numbers a few dozen, the men wearing cowboy boots and hats, jeans and dress shirts, the women in dresses and Navajo turquoise jewelry. The Bible is written in Navajo. In a kind nod to their visitors, the female pastors translate the service into English. At the end, Cooper walks up to a pastor and holds his palms out. She grasps his hands, and they pray together for the strength to face down his challenges. Afterward, we drive with the Burbank family to a tiny restaurant, the only joint for many miles. Cooper’s mother, Joni, explains that she and her husband became fast friends in elementary school they began dating in high school. Both of their fathers died because of drunken driving. “I came from a home he was raised by his grandmother,” Joni says. “We were magnets attracting. ” Joni attended high school and college in Flagstaff. Her husband, Darrick, worked construction and rode rodeo bulls. One night they drove to San Francisco just to smell the salt air. They married, and when Cooper, the first of their four children, arrived they agreed: no drinking, an intact family. Darrick gave up good construction dollars in the boom towns of Las Vegas and Phoenix to work maintenance at the local school. “I had a hard time with that at first,” he says. “But I didn’t have a dad. My job is to give these kids a dad. ” Joni taught at the elementary school twice she had Cooper as her student. They joined a church and stayed close to cousins and elders. They are building a hogan atop a mesa with a Navajo name that they say is too long to translate into English. Change beckoned as Cooper reached eighth grade. Within the context of a reservation of 175, 000 Navajo, Chinle is a bustling town. The Burbanks now live in an apartment there. “Cooper needed the challenge I needed professional growth,” Joni says. “I prayed and did a lot of searching. Then I said to myself: ‘Joni, Cooper, it’s time to push yourselves. ’” They bade goodbye to Joni’s mother, Virginia Tsosie, whose trailer sits 25 yards from their own in Rock Point, near the smooth folds of cliffs. Tsosie misses them greatly. When Cooper arrives back each weekend he walks into Grandma’s trailer and flops on her couch, and she massages his legs and tells him stories. Talk of distant schools stirs trepidation in those of Tsosie’s generation. When she was very young, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent her to an boarding school. She went many months without seeing her parents. Tribal culture was treated as backward, a skin to be shed in pursuit of assimilation. When Tsosie spoke Navajo to a friend, a teacher washed out her mouth with soap. “I gagged,” she recalls. “Now I talk to my grandchildren in Navajo all the time. They know the survival words. ” The winter sun sinks toward the buttes. Cooper excuses himself, grabs a basketball and walks outside, followed by his younger brothers. He dribbles on the red dirt and shoots at a backboard with a hoop twisted like broken foot. Swish, and swish, and swish. We say goodbyes and drive south to the high country village of Tsaile, which in Navajo means water flowing into a canyon. Nachae, the team captain, meets us by the gas station. We clamber into his pickup truck and bounce up an icy and rutted track to his family’s trailer. He hops out and points to the trailers next door. That one is my grandma. And that one, too. And that one, that’s my auntie. His mom, Andrea Nez, comes to the door and smiles. “No secrets around here,” she says. Nachae attended three high schools in four years. After his freshman year in Holbrook, he spun to the hoop and tore up his knee. He had surgery and needed six months before he could walk unaided. That, he figured, was that for hoops. He enrolled in Navajo Prep, a private school in Farmington, N. M. where academics are king. “I figured books were my way out,” he says. A physical therapist helped him rebuild his knee. He played as a junior and led Prep in scoring. Then a flour plant laid off his mother, and the money dried up. He left Navajo Prep and returned to Tsaile, where he enrolled at Chinle for his senior year. Nachae’s Navajo name is Napi. He tells me it means Old Man in Navajo and in Blackfoot, which is his mother’s tribe. That means you are wise, I reply. He smiles, wistful, and points to the knee he ices after every game and his sore shoulder. “Maybe it just means I have an old body. ” Like so many Navajo, he occupies several worlds. As a child he danced powwow, shot bow and arrow and dreamed of following his father, Felix, who rode serious rodeo bulls. He sees a world alive with spirits. He also has fine grades, serves on the student council and has an auntie who graduated from Cornell as a guide star. He is aware of the world outside the reservation. He has eyes on New Mexico State and its agriculture program. Last summer, he traveled the Navajo Nation reservation helping with a wool buyback program, aimed at reinvigorating the sheep industry. “I want to get educated to help my people,” he says. He drops us by our car. Tsaile sits at 7, 100 feet, adrift in snow. The night sky is kaleidoscopic with stars. The next night the Wildcats drop a fierce game to Page. They are limping into the playoffs. As suddenly, the Wildcats kick into gear. Their playoff opener is against Holbrook, and their defense goes taut. Chinle wins by a basket. Next up is Blue Ridge High School, a powerhouse with a record of . The Wildcats should be an afterthought. Nachae, in his final high school game, has perhaps his finest performance. He scores 28 points, a whirlwind. Cooper scores 12 and plays fierce defense. The Wildcats lose only in the final minute, . Mendoza is taciturn compliments fall sparing as bread crumbs from his mouth. “I told the kids that we were just a few possessions from advancing,” he says. “They finally learned to compete and battle. I’m very proud of our efforts. ” Now Nachae pivots. He must spend his days deciphering college dreams. Cooper must prepare himself for a new leadership role next year. As for me, I drive out of Navajo, past buttes and cliffs under a frozen dawn sky scraped clean of clouds. The sensation is of doors opening. | 0fake |
Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 5) - Utah national monuments | The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Yesterday, I was thrilled to be with so many WONDERFUL friends, in Utah’s MAGNIFICENT Capitol. It was my honor to sign two Presidential Proclamations that will modify the national monuments designations of both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante... here [1246 EST] - Join me this Friday in Pensacola, Florida at the Pensacola Bay Center! Tickets: here [1813 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) | 0fake |
Chris Christie Becomes Powerful Figure in Donald Trump Campaign - The New York Times | Defeated by Donald J. Trump in the 2016 primaries and derided by fellow Republicans for his subsequent embrace of Mr. Trump, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has quietly emerged as one of the most influential advisers to his party’s presumptive presidential nominee and one of the leading contenders to be his running mate. Four months after endorsing Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie remains one of the few major figures in the Republican establishment to align himself entirely with Mr. Trump’s candidacy. In public, he has defended Mr. Trump’s freewheeling and sometimes offensive pronouncements, vouching for him even after Mr. Trump attacked a federal judge for his Mexican heritage. (Mr. Christie said he knew from personal experience that Mr. Trump was not a racist.) Mr. Christie is among those being vetted as Mr. Trump’s possible running mate, according to people briefed on the process, and Mr. Trump has said in interviews that Mr. Christie would have a prominent place in a Trump White House. Already, Mr. Christie has begun the task of designing a government on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Chosen to lead Mr. Trump’s transition efforts, Mr. Christie has taken a role that some of his allies liken to that of a White House chief of staff, soliciting views on what a potential administration should look like. Mr. Christie has taken the transition process firmly in hand, according to people familiar with his activities. He has enlisted his former top aide in Trenton, Richard H. Bagger, to help manage the transition team. On a conference call with several dozen of Mr. Christie’s political allies on Thursday afternoon, he and Mr. Bagger said they aimed to have a long list of possible appointees drawn up for Mr. Trump by the time of the election. And they outlined plans to fund their early preparations through a nonprofit group, people briefed on the plans said, and asked for help raising money until they receive government support after the July conventions for their transition efforts. Behind the scenes, Mr. Christie has prodded his fellow governors and Republican political donors to line up behind a candidate many view with distaste. He has made only modest headway in the last few months: Mr. Trump has struggled badly with and Mr. Christie has pleaded with donors in personal phone calls and at events to give him a second look. At a breakfast in Manhattan last week, Mr. Christie cajoled reluctant donors to back Mr. Trump, arguing that giving anything less than enthusiastic support would be a de facto vote for Hillary Clinton. And he has prodded Mr. Trump, too, to shift direction at key moments: Mr. Christie was among the senior Republicans who privately urged Mr. Trump to dismiss his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was widely distrusted by national party leaders and other members of the Trump inner circle. Mr. Christie’s new role is a stark transformation from a boastfully independent politician determined to win over female, Hispanic and Asian voters, to the man of the most culturally polarizing presidential candidate in a generation. Politically, it represents a drastic gamble for Mr. Christie, a wager that he will be better off as a loyal and footman for an unpopular nominee than as a sulking former opponent plotting his eventual comeback. Should Mr. Christie seek the presidency again, he would probably be identified — for better or worse — not as a leader of the mainstream Republican Party, but as a champion of Mr. Trump’s faction. Mr. Christie has also acknowledged to friends that Mr. Trump seized much of the political space Mr. Christie had hoped to occupy in his own presidential run — that of a blunt leader with an expansive media profile and a forceful message on terrorism. But some Republicans are disheartened by Mr. Christie’s integration into the Trump machinery, seeing it as a lost opportunity to build a more inclusive Republican Party this election year. Joel Maiola, a New Hampshire strategist who helped steer Mr. Christie’s campaign in the state, said he had been “confused and not overly happy” about Mr. Christie’s involvement in the Trump operation. “I think he’s been diminished by the way the Trump organization has used him, and I think that’s really unfortunate,” Mr. Maiola said. He described Mr. Christie’s efforts to unite the party behind Mr. Trump as largely futile because of Mr. Trump’s divisive approach to the presidential race. “He just seems to blow up the efforts that Governor Christie has been making to sort of form those alliances and form those bridges,” Mr. Maiola said. A spokesman for Mr. Christie declined to comment on his involvement with the Trump campaign or to make Mr. Christie available for an interview. Mr. Trump has been outwardly receptive to Mr. Christie’s coaching. The two men describe each other as friends with an acquaintance dating back 15 years, to early in Mr. Christie’s political career. Even during their clash in the Republican primaries, Mr. Christie spoke warmly of Mr. Trump as a friend as an endorser, Mr. Christie has shown loyalty that has been noted with appreciation by Mr. Trump and his children. And Mr. Trump has given credit to the governor for helping him win the Republican nomination. Addressing a in Manhattan last week, Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Christie for his political advice and his sophisticated grasp of government — and, perhaps most of all, for his part in demolishing Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. The New Jersey governor, Mr. Trump said, gutted Mr. Rubio so thoroughly in a February debate that he was content simply to sit back and enjoy the show. He kidded Mr. Christie, “Thank you, Chris, for being the bad guy,” according to some in attendance who paraphrased Mr. Trump’s remarks. But Mr. Christie’s proximity to the possible next president has come at a price. And as a Trump advocate, he has also run up against the limits of his own influence. Shortly after backing Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie visited one of his close friends in politics, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, in Annapolis. Over breakfast in the governor’s mansion, Mr. Christie and Mr. Hogan discussed the presidential race, and Mr. Hogan made it clear that he did not share Mr. Christie’s enthusiasm for Mr. Trump. Mr. Hogan is one of several Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Rick Snyder of Michigan, who have said they will not support Mr. Trump. “They’ve agreed to disagree on this particular issue, and there’s no kind of confrontation,” said Matthew A. Clark, a spokesman for Mr. Hogan. “Governor Christie did not make any attempt to change Governor Hogan’s mind. ” In New Jersey, Mr. Christie’s already low approval ratings slipped further after he endorsed Mr. Trump. And on a more personal level, Mr. Christie has been routinely taunted by Democrats and more than a few fellow Republicans for his perceived obsequiousness around Mr. Trump. A gregarious politician who routinely refers to other officeholders by their first names, Mr. Christie was pilloried in late February for referring to his friend as “Mr. Trump” in announcing his support. Soon after, Mr. Trump was caught on a microphone in Arkansas curtly telling Mr. Christie that he should go home after having finished his remarks. On the night of the March 1 primaries, Mr. Christie became the subject of internet memes featuring his seemingly vacant expression as he stood at Mr. Trump’s shoulder during his victory speech. In June, Mr. Christie’s staff flatly denied an account in The New Yorker that Mr. Christie had been captured on video fetching fast food for Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie has shrugged off any hard feelings about the mockery he draws on the campaign trail, but he has also recently stepped away from the stump and opted for a more discreet role. Thomas H. Kean, a former New Jersey governor, said Mr. Christie had described himself as deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s activities. “He was advising him on speeches he’s advising him on policies,” Mr. Kean said. Mr. Kean added: “He’s in a position to be a good adviser. Whether Trump will listen to him or not, I don’t know. ” | 0fake |
BREAKING: Irrefutable Proof Obama Lied to Protect Hillary Clinton’s Run for the White House Read | By Claire Bernish at theantimedia.org
Thanks to Wikileaks, we now have the smoking gun email irrefutably proving not only did President Barack Obama know about Hillary Clinton’s non-government-issued email account, he used it in correspondence with her.
Even more damning to the president’s credibility, it appears the lie was a purposeful attempt to protect Clinton’s upcoming bid for the presidency.
Shortly after the New York Times broke the story on March 2, 2015, of Clinton’s use of a personal server to supplant the government system — and, as has been revealed, to thwart transparency — Obama announced publicly his lack of prior knowledge.
“The same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” the president told CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante, as Zero Hedge reported . “The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency, which is why my emails, the BlackBerry I carry around, all those records are available and archived.
“I’m glad that Hillary’s instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine, however, Obama’s placid public appearance guarded secret internal panic — a panic echoed behind the scenes at the burgeoning Clinton campaign.
An email penned by Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin to Director of Communications, Jennifer Palmieri, and a few others, calling immediate attention to a tweet by journalist Katherine Miller paints an entirely different picture.
Miller tweeted a snippet of the aforementioned interview in which Plante asked Obama, “Mr. President, When did you first learn that Hillary Clinton used an email system outside the U.S. Government for official business while she was Secretary of State?”
“The same time everybody else learned it,” he responded, “through news reports.”
I have some questions here pic.twitter.com/ufkeoZCx2m | 1real |
College Republicans, Once ‘the Best Party on Campus,’ Endure Taunts Over Trump - The New York Times | To grab the attention of freshmen at the student club fair this month, the College Republicans of George Washington University unfurled a red banner and set out beer cozies and lime green cups sent by the College Republican National Committee, which bills itself as “the best party on campus. ” Then came the issue of decorating. “We should put the Trump posters out,” said Demri Scott, the group’s membership director. Christian Miller, the club’s political affairs director, disagreed. “That’s the best way to, A, get us heckled a lot and, B, get no one to sign up,” he said. The Trump posters stayed in the box. For decades, College Republicans have drawn ridicule from — and defined themselves against — the more liberal masses on college campuses. But this year has been especially nightmarish for C. R. s, as they call themselves. The nomination of Donald J. Trump, who has attacked their conservative heroes and esteemed alumni, has prompted widespread mockery from their liberal classmates, dissension from within and something of an identity crisis. While some College Republican leaders profess an appreciation for the voters that Mr. Trump has awakened, many in the preppy Vineyard Vines set are wondering if Mr. Trump is transforming the party they hope to inherit into one in which they are unwelcome. “They tend to be traditional Republican conservatives, and so you know there is a little bit of a mismatch there,” said Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. Mr. Rove’s career in politics started as a national chairman of the College Republicans who won the position in 1973 over opponents supported by Roger J. Stone Jr. and Paul Manafort, both of whom went on to become advisers to Mr. Trump. “There’s a tension there,” he said. That tension, tangible on campuses across the country, threatens to change the nature of both the organization that has long trained the party’s leaders and the party they are being trained to lead. Since 1923, when Calvin Coolidge became the first former College Republican to become president, the list of the group’s alumni reads like a who’s who of the Republican establishment. Besides Mr. Rove, there is Lee Atwater, the former Republican National Committee chairman, and Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, was a College Republican, and so was the Jack Abramoff. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, whose visage the George Washington chapter displayed on its table, was a member. So was Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and numerous elected Republican officials across the country. Mr. Trump was never interested. “I didn’t do that,” Mr. Trump said with a shrug when asked in an interview if he had ever considered joining the club. “I was very much into the world of real estate. ” At Mr. Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, Grayson Sessa, the vice president of the school’s College Republicans, said he was dismayed by the nominee’s and hoped the party’s values could withstand him. “It’s not a great feeling,” he said. At Yale, the chapter’s endorsement of Mr. Trump led to a mutiny, with departing members forming the Yale New Republicans and Yale Undergraduate Conservatives Against Trump. And at Harvard, alma mater of countless Republican leaders, the club’s president, Declan Garvey, 21, said that between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, “I would have to vote for Hillary. ” But Karis Lockhart, the chairwoman of the University of Central Florida chapter, whose parents met as College Republicans, said that those who could not bring themselves to vote for Mr. Trump were being overly sensitive. She argued that Mr. Trump would bring in new voters who would help in other races on the ballot. “He’s dumbing it down for people who don’t want the numbers and statistics,” she said approvingly. Mr. Trump’s nomination prompted the Central Florida’s chapter to post a letter on Facebook urging students “to not get discouraged” by Mr. Trump. Some did, and left the club. “My job is to bring everybody back on board to the Republican Party, whether or not they love Trump,” said Cade Marsh, the College Republicans’ state chairman in Florida, who wears “Hillary for Prison” shirts and wants to run for president in 2032. (His email handle is Cade2032POTUS, using the acronym for president of the United States.) Today, the College Republican National Committee claims to have around 250, 000 students in nearly 1, 800 chapters. It is a nonprofit political action committee with power and shares its research on millennial voters with the Trump campaign, specifically the findings of its survey “Growing Up G. O. P. ,” the cover of which features hands cradling a plant sprout. “If you become a College Republican in college, then you are Republican for the rest of your life,” said Mr. Norquist, the former member. “Nobody learns anything about politics after they are 21. ” The task of reconciling Mr. Trump’s ascent with the bewilderment of conservative students falls to Alex Smith, the current national chairwoman of the College Republicans. She works in an office on K Street in Washington that is decorated with framed “Rove” and “Youth for Nixon” pins, a blues album featuring Mr. Atwater and letters from Mr. Rove. Ms. Smith, 27, is telegenic and ready, the very picture of message discipline. In an interview, she repeatedly tried to veer the conversation to Mrs. Clinton, whom she calls the first college Republican to win the Democratic nomination. (Mrs. Clinton was a Goldwater Girl, a supporter of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.) Ms. Smith said that Mr. Trump’s preference for Twitter and Instagram suited her members. “In a lot of ways, he speaks like a person of my generation,” she said, adding, “He brings more people in. ” But was it not strange to work for the election of a candidate who had ripped her heroes to shreds, who disagreed on core Republican values? Ms. Smith looked at the tape recorder on her desk. “You could turn it off?” she asked. The George Washington chapter had its own struggles in absorbing the rise of Mr. Trump. When it released a statement in June congratulating him on winning the nomination, it drew backlash from its members and from the College Democrats with whom they share an office on campus. “It was a really bad summer,” said Ms. Scott, the membership director. Allison Coukos, the chapter’s communications director, who, like Ms. Scott, is undecided on whether to vote for Mr. Trump, said, “They were like, ‘How can you support someone who is a racist, who hates women, who is a bigot?’ ” In an attempt at damage control, the group published a letter on Facebook clarifying that it had not endorsed Mr. Trump. Ms. Scott said the Trump fans in the club responded by calling them “pathetic” and mocked them for creating a “safe space. ” At the club fair this month at George Washington, many of the dozens of freshman who stopped by the College Republicans table expressed relief when Ms. Scott explained that the group had, in fact, not supported Mr. Trump. But Tom Crean, a freshman who joined the club, wished they had. “It is their job to promote whoever is at the top of the ticket,” Mr. Crean, 18, said. “It’s undercutting the party. I would change it by being a person in the organization. By being an apologist. ” | 0fake |
Trump adviser Cohn wrote resignation letter, decided to stay: NYT | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, drafted a letter of resignation over the administration’s weak response to recent clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-racism protesters, but decided to stay on the job, the New York Times reported on Friday. Cohn spoke publicly about the controversy for the first time in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper, saying the administration needed to clearly reject hate groups. He said there was no equivalence between white supremacists or neo-Nazis and those who protest inequality. “I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” the former Goldman Sachs president told the newspaper. “Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK,” he added. Cohn’s criticism came nearly two weeks after white supremacist and neo-Nazi activists clashed with anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, over a plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general in the U.S. Civil War. A man thought to have neo-Nazi sympathies drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring more than a dozen others. Following the clashes, Trump said there had been violence on “both sides,” remarks that spurred condemnation by both Republican and Democratic politicians. Cohn stood nearby during an impromptu Trump Tower news conference as the president insisted there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. Cohn considered resigning over Trump’s response, both newspapers reported, citing sources. Cohn went so far as to draft a resignation letter, the New York Times reported, citing two people familiar with the document. Cohn said he felt “compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks” and came under intense pressure to quit over Trump’s reaction to the incident but decided against it. “As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job,” he said, referring to chants by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. “I feel deep empathy for all who have been targeted by these hate groups. We must all unite together against them.” | 0fake |
Right-Wing Radio Host Gets Owned By Neil deGrasse Tyson For Lying About Him | Note to conservatives who want to pretend to be journalists: be sure that where you get your information is not a satirical site, or you ll be humiliated like this idiot.This is especially true if you decide to attack a professional scientist, because if you haven t done your research properly you can rest assured they will discover that fact when they research your claims.In this case, that s exactly what popular scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson did to right-wing radio host Neal Larson this week after the conservative mouthpiece repeated the charge that Tyson mocked a little girl for wanting to live on Jupiter, a planet where no human could survive.The alleged mocking supposedly took place in front of a crowd and on Twitter, Larson crowed in the vicious hit job on Tyson and his character in an op-ed criticizing Tyson for simply inserting math into the Olympic medal count. The scientist pointed out that while America earned more medals than Hungary, Hungary is actually beating us when we adjust to account for total population. Then the victory for medals to population ratio goes to Hungary.Larson believes this is Tyson attacking America when in reality he was only stating a mathematical fact that also happenes to be interesting.Larson went on to whine about Tyson because he constantly calls out conservatives for getting science wrong. He also attempted to assassinate Tyson s character by using the following tale as an example. I ve listened to Neil deGrasse Tyson before. And what I observe is a smart guy who consistently enjoys asserting his intellectual supremacy over others more than he actually likes educating. In one of his worse moments, Tyson mocked a 12-year-old girl who suggested she d like to live on Jupiter. He ridiculed her in the midst of a crowd, then later, several times, on Twitter. That told me everything I needed to know about Neil deGrasse Tyson.For that moment he was just a horse s astrophysicist. The only problem is that the story never actually happened, and Tyson schooled Larson for it. The incident with a 9yr old girl never happened, Tyson responded.And he s right. As it turns out, the story relayed by Larson is complete satire. It looks to be a hoax, Tyson continued. No such tweets ever existed on November 29th, 2015, or on any other day. So you abrogated your journalistic integrity by not verifying what you read in somebody else s article, before using it as a foundational pillar in yours. In short, Larson just got lit up by Tyson and those pesky things called facts that conservatives are allergic to for some reason.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
Trump HUMILIATED Over Name-Drop That’s Worse Than Frederick Douglass Gaffe (TWEETS) | Is The Donald really this oblivious to the entire world? And history? And, well, everything? Two and a half months after embarrassing himself by implying that Frederick Douglass was still alive, he embarrasses himself by dropping the name of yet another famous person who has passed away Luciano Pavarotti. He didn t just imply that Pavarotti is still living today (he died of pancreatic cancer ten years ago). While he and Italy s prime minister held a joint press conference, he must have decided to praise Italy for the gift of Pavarotti (or rather, he decided to use Pavarotti to puff himself up and appear more superior) by saying: Pavarotti, friend of mine, great friend of mine. First off, as stated before, Pavarotti is no longer gracing the world with his amazing tenor voice. Twitter made a point of reminding Trump of that:@kylegriffin1 @colattesipper @MSNBC Which is when I wish that Trump had died, instead of Pavarotti. Since at least Pavarotti could sing, and Trump can t do anything ..sad! Conversation Bug (@Conversationbug) April 20, 2017I can t get enough of this.#Trump #pavarotti such good friends.#FakePresident#FakeFriends#DeadFriends https://t.co/stId5Lkx0N Betsy (@studio_gal) April 20, 2017So Trump let everyone know that Pavarotti is a friend of his. Maybe he ll invite Pavarotti and Frederick Douglass to attend a WH dinner. Gail Stein (@gailstein) April 20, 2017@kylegriffin1 @jefferyrhenry @MSNBC Is Trump inviting Frederick Douglass and Pavarotti for unbelievable chocolate cake? Leticia (@ColinLeti) April 20, 2017@ALT_uscis We re still at zero for the number of days he hasn t been an embarrassment to this country. Kim Thompson (@KimYarnwrangler) April 20, 2017@ALT_uscis Chef Boyardee. The best chef. Great friend of mine. He cooks for me all the time. Love his food. Anybody s Guess (@boxcarbrenda) April 20, 2017@kylegriffin1 @MSNBC Since Trump and Pavarotti are such great friends I m sure he ll be saddened to hear of his passing #LobCitySoldier (@RealAnthony14) April 20, 2017Trump & Pavarotti were great friends. They d get together & wear each other s sports bras. Good DAY, Sir! (@xISaidGoodDAY) April 20, 2017Little known fact: Trump still gets together every weekend with Joe Paterno and Luciano Pavarotti for Trump s Little Italy club. https://t.co/h5z6faw64l Joe Bob #721 (@JHowieJr) April 20, 2017Trump should have asked Pavarotti to sing at his inauguration. William Peace ?? (@WilliamPeace81) April 20, 2017@sddphoto @ntned I know who Pavarotti is, but I don t know why Trump thinks he is still alive. sara caudell (@CaudellSara) April 20, 2017Don t worry, guys. Pavarotti told Marcello Mastroianni we should keep acting as if Trump s normal, and Marcello told me. Suzanne Munshower (@expatina) April 20, 2017@IMPL0RABLE @teka21bat Trump s presser with Italian PM is so cringe worthy, his good friend Pavarotti can t even stand to watch it. (((Shelley Rivlin))) (@srivlin) April 20, 2017But it s also not likely that Pavarotti was any friend of Trump s at all. Trump repeatedly used a recording of him singing Puccini s Nessun Dorma during his campaign, and his family asked Trump to stop. Nessun Dorma means None Shall Sleep, and Pavarotti s rendition has a climax where he sings Vincero three times, which means I will win. We all know how Trump likes to win. The family issued a statement that said: As members of his immediate family, we would like to recall that the values of brotherhood and solidarity which Luciano Pavarotti expressed throughout the course of his artistic career are entirely incompatible with the world view offered by the candidate Donald Trump. Trump may well have met Pavarotti at some point, but one would think that, if they had been great friends, he would have at least been able to act like he knew Pavarotti was gone. The family may also have taken that into account regarding the use of Pavarotti s aria at rallies if it were true.So not only did he again demonstrate that he doesn t know a damn thing about anything that goes on, and he likely lied about being great friends with that man. Pavarotti was a great man. Trump is an insecure, pathetic fraction of a man.Watch below:Featured image by Mark Wilson via Getty Images | 1real |
Fix the roads, California Governor Brown tells lawmakers | SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown urged continued fiscal restraint amid the state’s economic expansion but hinted broadly that new fees would be needed to pay for repairs of deteriorating roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Improvements in the state’s financial health and a weather pattern that is helping to ease four years of catastrophic drought put California on a stronger footing as Brown addressed the legislature for his 14th State of the State address on Thursday. “We have to bite the bullet,” said Brown, who last summer pushed unsuccessfully for new fees to help pay long-neglected repairs to the state’s transportation infrastructure. Roads and bridges make up the bulk of an estimated $77 billion in delayed repairs to public property, he said, and, “One way or another the roads must be fixed.” Brown, who served two terms as governor from 1975 to 1983 before returning to California’s top job in 2011, also called on Republicans to agree to proposed changes in a tax on some health insurers, with proceeds to help pay for healthcare for the poorest Californians. Brown cited his administration’s support for California’s new $10 minimum wage, saying the January hike, combined with a tax credit for the working poor, will ease income inequality. Brown has been tight-fisted since returning to office in 2011, reining in the state’s liberal Democratic majority lawmakers to build a rainy day fund and hold down expenses after facing down a $27 billion budget deficit. He is widely credited with stabilizing the state’s finances, in large part by urging voters in 2012 to approve a temporary tax increase that allowed the state to cover its budget gap and restore some social services. Earlier this month, Brown proposed a budget plan for fiscal year 2016-2017 that included a $2 billion payment to the state’s rainy day fund and called for increases in spending on education, transportation infrastructure, as well as a modest increase in aid for the disabled. But the fiscal moderate has held the line on committing more funds to such programs in the absence of new revenue streams for the state. He is hesitant to call for new taxes on income or sales after supporting a temporary tax three years ago, but has supported other fees, such as a road usage tax or an increase in the tax on gasoline. Senate Republican leader Jean Fuller of Bakersfield said her caucus would work with Brown on infrastructure repairs, but opposes enacting new fees. | 0fake |
Outrage: NYC Health Department Closes Chick-Fil-A Due to Permitting Issue | The New York City Health Department shut down a in Midtown Wednesday due to a permitting issue, and New Yorkers were outraged at the decision. [It is unclear exactly when the Health Department shut down but management said the restaurant would Thursday, the New York Post reported. “Sorry, we are closed due to permitting issues,” ’s notice stated. “Thank you for understanding. ” “Screenshot this shit,” one person outside the fast food joint said, pointing to the notices. “What the fuck? !” a passerby who attempted to enter the location at 46th Street and Sixth Avenue yelled, only to be stopped by signs saying it was closed. “I’m dying!” screamed Philip M. 31, of Chelsea. ‘”What am I going to do?! I am really upset … I love the chicken sandwich. ” “It’s disheartening … I was going to try it for the first time here today … They are going to have to do something important to gain my confidence back to eat their chicken,” said Rick M. 45, of Manhattan. City officials told the Post that the 46th street establishment had been operating with a denied permit after they submitted an incomplete application. They said restaurant management took care of the problem Wednesday. A spokesman for said the “paperwork issue” was being resolved “ASAP. ” | 0fake |
null | Would have been more ironic if that had been a US TOW missile supplied by the Pentagon to ISIS recently.
Recently read that the Abraham M1A2's armour (Chobham type) is near impenetrable with most tank and RPG rounds so it's weird that this one sliced through it and cooked the lid off the thing. | 1real |
Gala glitz masks Asia's tensions as Trump winds up tour | MANILA (Reuters) - Leaders from across Asia joined U.S. President Donald Trump at an extravagant gala dinner in the Philippines capital on Sunday, a show of amity in a region fraught with tensions that have lurked behind his marathon tour of the continent. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte set the tone of cordiality ahead of the two days of summit meetings he will host, suggesting that despite their differences over claims to the South China Sea, the leaders should not discuss the issue. We have to be friends, the other hotheads would like us to confront China and the rest of the world on so many issues, Duterte said at a business conference, as planes carrying heads of state and government attending the summit landed in quick succession in Manila. The South China Sea is better left untouched, nobody can afford to go to war. It can ill-afford a violent confrontation. Hours earlier, during a bilateral visit to Vietnam, Trump offered to mediate in the dispute over the South China Sea, where four Southeast Asian countries and Taiwan contest China s sweeping claims to the busy waterway. All the claimants will be at the summit, except for Taiwan. Trump will join leaders of Southeast and East Asian nations in Manila over the next two days, the last leg of a tour that has taken him to Japan, South Korea and China as well as Vietnam. The sheer length of the trip - the longest to Asia by a U.S. president in more than a quarter century - may reassure some that, despite Trump s America First policy, Washington remains committed to a region China sees as its strategic domain. Leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Russia, Japan, Canada, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand arrived one by one for a glitzy gala dinner where they were entertained by singers and dancers. Each of the men sported a cream-colored barong, a traditional Philippines shirt made of fiber from the pineapple plant, embroidered and worn untucked. They were served a four-course Filipino-Asian fusion meal curate and prepared by Chef Jessie Sincioco, who also designed the menu for Pope Francis when he visited the Philippines in 2015. Police used water canon to prevent hundreds of protesters reaching the U.S. embassy in Manila ahead of Trump s arrival. Carrying placards declaring Dump Trump and Down with U.S. Imperialism , the left-wing protesters were blocked by police in riot gear with shields and batons, and then showered with jets of water from a fire engine. The United States and its former colony, the Philippines, have been strategic allies since World War Two. Trump is expected to try during the summit to shore up relations, which have been strained by the mercurial Duterte s notorious anti-U.S. sentiment and his enthusiasm for better ties with Russia and China. Duterte - sometimes described as the Trump of the East because of his brash style - said last week he would tell the U.S. president to lay off if he raised the issue of human rights when they met. More than 3,900 Filipinos have been killed in what the police call self-defense in a war on drugs declared by Duterte. Critics say executions are taking place with no accountability, allegations the police reject. But Trump, who has been criticized at home for neglecting rights issues in dealings abroad, praised Duterte in May for doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem . INDO-PACIFIC Trump s tour comes against a background of tensions on the Korean peninsula following exchanges of war-like threats and insults between North Korea s leader Kim Jong Un and Trump over Pyongyang s nuclear and missile development program. China has been urged by both South Korea and the United States to take a more active role in curbing North Korea s nuclear and missile ambitions. During his tour, Trump and his team have repeatedly used the term Indo-Pacific instead of Asia-Pacific for the region, which some see as an effort to depict it as more than China-dominated. Pacific Rim nation leaders agreed in Vietnam on Saturday to address unfair trade practices and market distorting subsidies , a statement that bore the imprint of Trump s efforts to reshape the global trade landscape. The summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries in Vietnam put on show the contrasting vision of the America First policy with the traditional consensus favoring multinational deals that China now seeks to champion. Manila hosted the APEC summit two years ago, and at that meeting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a Twitter poll with the hashtag #APEChottie that asked people to vote for the most attractive leader there. Journalists swarmed the youthful leader and screamed in excitement. On his latest visit, Trudeau visited an outlet of Jollibee, a chain that has become a byword for Filipino fast food, chatting and posing for selfies, charming the people of Manila again. (This story has been refiled to correct word untucked in 10th paragraph.) | 0fake |
Clinton, FBIGate and the true depth of the ObamaGeddon | Clinton, FBIGate and the true depth of the ObamaGeddon 31.10.2016 Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a problem. Just over one week before the Mother of All Elections, we have information which shocks us to the core, freezes our hearts and sends chills shuddering through our spines. Ladies and Gentlemen, the problem is not FBIGate, it is the mechanisms behind the scenes which have not been reported. Read on. First off, how many times has President Obama blocked investigation into Hillary Clinton's affairs? You will never know. You will never, ever know because the system is rigged, there is no paper trail. There are telephone calls, there are meetings behind closed doors, there are threats. This time however, Obama was caught by surprise. The Nobel Peace Prizewinner, the one who insulted the Nobel Institution, the international community and all those who believed in his shitfaced lie "Change", the one who blasted Libya from the African country with the highest human development index back to the stone age, riddled with terrorists, including Islamic State, the one who stood back as Islamic State appeared under his nose... this one this time was unable to stop an FBI investigation because it happened behind his back. Trying to get at the truth Print version Font Size Ladies and Gentlemen, this truth will not come out in the next few days. For those with their political knives a-glistening and a-gleaming behind Hillary's back, waiting for some knock-out soundbites from those documents, it is not going to happen. Not because the FBI investigation failed to unveil juicy stuff, but because that juicy stuff will never reach the public domain. ObamaGeddon to the rescue, FBIGate quashed. And while FBIGate is quashed, watch what happens behind the scenes with the electoral system. George Soros is firmly in the Clinton camp, so they say. Does anyone know how many States use electronic voting systems run by George Soros? Does anyone know how easy it is to hack or rig these voting machines? These machines churn out votes. There is no accountability, there is no paper trail, the vote will not be verified. There will be numbers, statistics the day after, rigged. This is American democracy? The collective answer is no, the collective response is we all know this is true, we all know this is happening. Nobody likes Hillary, nobody trusts Hillary. So why vote for her? Investigating FBIGate Now let's see what my friend Nancy O'Brien Simpson turned up. She lives in the United States of America, she is a political commentator and she is a political activist: Secretary Clinton fell for the oldest hack in the book. This hack entails something called the "Buffer Overflow Exploit" that involves "stacking" a malicious computer virus in an area on your hard drive where virus protection software can't find them. Then it steals the files from the hard drive. A friend of mine who has been on the wrong side of these kinds of situations explained what he has read about how it all went down- Huma and Anthony are sharing a laptop at their home. Huma receives classified information from her boss, Hillary Clinton, in various e-mails and texts. She testified to the F.B.I. that she often emailed classified files over her unsecured Yahoo account in order to print them out at home on the laptop she shared with her husband Antony. When Huma goes to bed, Carlos Danger sneaks out in his pajammies and prowls 4chan all night looking for young teen girls to send them naked photos. One of these photos contains a computer virus that infects the laptop. This virus hides in photographs stored on a computer's hard drive by exploiting a photo's bandwidth. When the recipient receives photos in return, the photos contain information from the computer it has infested. The ironic part is every time Carlos Danger send photos of his "wiener" his nasty photos contained ALL the emails his wife received from Hillary as well as the classified documents she printed out.. This means some hackers out there on the net has EVERYTHING Huma brought home.. If the hackers are "White Hat" they probably told the F.B.I. to examine every one of Carlos Danger's nasty photos he sent over that laptop. If the hackers are "Black Hats" you can bet some foreign government has a lot of classified documents. The Clinton Crime Family will blame the Russians, which is laughable and serious at the same time.. You know they reopened the investigation BEHIND Obama's back because he has blocked the investigation of her at every turn. I heard the rank and file FBI were about to mutiny because they know she is guilty as sin and Comey would not prosecute because she is protected by Obama AND Clinton gave his wife half a million for her political campaign. This might be big, but Obama will stop it to protect her and his globalist masters. I rest my case. Nancy O'Brien Simpson Ms. Simpson was a radio personality in New York. She was a staff writer for The Liberty Report. A PBS documentary was done on her activism for human rights. She is a psychotherapist and political commentator. | 1real |
Hillary is Sick & Tired of Suffering from Weiner Backup | 1real | |
Trump Responds to North Korean Missile Launch With Uncharacteristic Restraint - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — After North Korea threatened on New Year’s Day to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, Donald J. Trump, then reacted with characteristic swagger. He vowed to stop the North from developing a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States. “It won’t happen!” he wrote on Twitter. But six weeks later, after North Korea defiantly launched a missile into the sea, Mr. Trump, now president, reacted with surprising restraint. Appearing before cameras late at night on Saturday in Florida with his golfing guest, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, Mr. Trump read a statement of just 23 words that pledged American support for Tokyo without even mentioning North Korea. The muted comment stood in sharp contrast to his response after Iran tested a ballistic missile, when he directed his national security adviser to publicly warn Tehran that he was “officially putting Iran on notice” and followed up with sanctions. If North Korea was testing the new president, as many analysts believe, then Mr. Trump seemed intent on showing that he would not be baited into a confrontation every time an American adversary tried to provoke him. At least not right away. In his short time in office, Mr. Trump has shown that he can respond to events in measured ways one moment and with hotheaded bluster the next. But even after waking up on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump chose to publicly feud with Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, rather than the maverick leader of North Korea. “I assume they don’t have a strategy yet, so Trump with Abe by his side was properly taciturn, surprisingly so,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, an Asia scholar at the Brookings Institution who served as President Barack Obama’s Asia adviser. “But that can’t hold. At some point you need to articulate a strategy. ” The tempered response may also have reflected the fact that the missile launched on Sunday by North Korea was either a or an missile, according to the American military, and not an intercontinental missile, or ICBM, capable of reaching the United States. The missile flew 310 miles before dropping harmlessly into the Sea of Japan, according to the South Korean military, which identified it as an Musudan. North Korea regularly tests missiles in violation of United Nations resolutions, including roughly two dozen last year, but has boasted that it could test an ICBM “anytime and anywhere. ” The kind tested on Sunday poses a potential threat to American allies in Japan and South Korea and American forces in the Pacific, but could not strike the United States. “It’s yet unclear what missile was tested,” said Thomas Karako, a missile expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “What is certain is that North Korea has now begun 2017 by continuing the aggressive pace of missile testing they’ve shown in recent years. ” North Korea challenged Mr. Obama early in his tenure, too, with an underground nuclear blast four months after he took office. The effect was to harden Mr. Obama’s attitude toward North Korea for the rest of his presidency, according to former aides. Rather than try to negotiate, as both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did, Mr. Obama focused on tightening international sanctions and bolstering alliances with Japan and South Korea. Three weeks in office, the Trump administration is still trying to find its footing on foreign policy, especially in areas like North Korea that have not been Mr. Trump’s main focus. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson was sworn in on Feb. 1 and does not even have a deputy, much less a full team of trusted advisers, in place. That North Korea’s latest test came while Mr. Trump was hosting Mr. Abe for a multiday set of meetings, meals and golfing, first at the White House and then at Mr. Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. was seen as no accident. And it may be that Mr. Abe counseled Mr. Trump on his response. In his own comments while he stood beside Mr. Trump, Mr. Abe called the launch “absolutely intolerable. ” Asia experts and members of Congress praised Mr. Trump for reaffirming American support for Japan but lamented that he did not mention South Korea at the same time. “I was glad he issued the statement with the prime minister of Japan, but he ought to do it quickly with South Korea,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “South Korea is probably more susceptible to North Korea’s virulence than any other country. ” White House officials on Sunday remained quiet about the test and their emerging strategy. Stephen Miller, the president’s senior adviser for policy, said Mr. Trump had sent a strong signal with his joint appearance with Mr. Abe. “But we’re going to be sending another signal very soon, and that signal is when we begin a great rebuilding of the armed forces of the United States,” he said, also on “Face the Nation. ” “President Trump is going to go to Congress and ask them to invest in our military so once again we will have unquestioned military strength beyond anything anybody can imagine. ” Short of military action, the menu of options available for Mr. Trump is not significantly better than it was for his predecessors. The United States and the United Nations have already imposed an array of wrenching sanctions and have largely isolated North Korea from much of the world. On his first overseas trip since taking office, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Japan and South Korea to reassure them of America’s support despite statements by Mr. Trump during the campaign that called it into question. South Korean officials agreed to press ahead with development of a new missile defense system called Terminal Area Defense, or Thaad. Most policy makers consider China crucial to any meaningful response to North Korea, given the nations’ extensive economic and political connections, but it remains uncertain that Mr. Trump would have any better chance of persuading Beijing to take tougher action. Mr. Trump had a telephone call with President Xi Jinping of China last week and promised to stick by America’s longstanding “One China” policy, reportedly at Mr. Tillerson’s urging. But the president has been an unrelenting critic of China on trade and currency matters, and some of his top advisers, including Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, view China as a adversary. “We will learn an enormous amount about his policy and his administration by how he deals with North Korea,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a managing director at the Eurasia Group and a former Obama adviser. “It’s the land of really bad options, and the threat is only becoming more serious and the window is closing. It will probably become the defining security challenge for the next president in Asia, if not globally. ” | 0fake |
Clinton Promises To Scrap ‘Pointless’ FBI If Elected | 0 Add Comment
ON the verge of being elected, the first female president of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton admitted her first official act in office would probably be replacing FBI director James Comey or failing that, just scraping the FBI altogether.
Accused of politicizing his role as the FBI’s director and wilfully manufacturing a scandal that has implicated Clinton in some wrongdoing while failing to specify just what, who or why he is investigating anything, Comey remained defiant.
“Well, it’s not a bad way to spend your last few days in a job before being fired, ya gotta go out with a bang,” Comey explained.
Comey remains under fire for reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s much publicised personal email server, while refusing to give any details, just days before the November 8th polling day.
Clinton’s campaign has asked for the public to be given all relevant information on the investigation so there can be no cynical insinuation of illegality without a shred of proof, however, the candidate herself admitted if elected ‘shit will go down’.
“More like Federal Bullshit Investigators, am I right?” Clinton shared with a rally of her supporters this morning, “I am not a petty person, but Comey’s desk better be cleared out come November 9th or he’ll suffer a fate more graphic than illicit images sent to minors by idiot politicians who have nothing to fucking do with my campaign,” Clinton added in a calm fashion.
In a rare moment of candour, Clinton’s rival for president, Donald Trump, gave his support to the Democratic candidate.
“Shit, maybe my whole crazy bullshit about a shadowy network of people trying to fix elections for one side is actually a real thing,” Trump explained before correcting himself and calling for Clinton’s execution instead. | 1real |
The Neo-Liberal Globalist Wish List | The Neo-Liberal Globalist Wish List
Hunter Wallace Occidental Dissent October 29, 2016
I read all the #TruCon pundits. I even read the people like Damon Linker who write about the groupthink of #TruCon pundits :
âSome important segments of the party are quite happy with the way things were before Trump burst on the scene â with the GOPâs post-Reagan optimism, idealism, and conservative moralism; with the presumption that the country benefits when using military force to impose order around the globe; with the often unstated assumption that all Americans of every economic and cultural echelon automatically thrive when the nationâs entrepreneurial class is given everything on its wish list (massive tax cuts along with open borders and markets). Plenty of people are perfectly content with this governing vision, including most conservative pundits, much of the partyâs donor class, many senior officials and officeholders, most Mormons (including McMullin and his most passionate Utah supporters), many conservative Catholics, and some evangelical Protestants.â
I liked that image. I hope he doesnât mind me borrowing it.
Anyway, Damon Linker makes a good point here that gets to the heart of the issue: the âgoverning wingâ of the Republican Party is used to getting its way, and #NeverTrumpism is their revenge on their âbaseâ (i.e., your votes belong to them) for defying its wishes and rejecting Bush, Rubio and Kasich in the primaries.
Mario Loyola has a plan for reconciliation between #NeverTrump and Trump supporters:
âStill, the best outcome of this election, from the point of view of a traditional conservative Republican, is for Trump and the GOP to have a landslide victory and then for Trump to resign immediately in favor of Vice President Mike Pence, who is both eminently qualified to be president and a real conservative. âŚ
Pledge to impeach. Should God elect to ignore my prayer, and should President Trump prove to be as bad a president as his detractors fear, then it is my duty and the duty of my fellow Republican members of Congress to impeach him. And I will apply that same rule to any president of my own party who fails to uphold the honor of the presidency. GOP members face a painful dilemma in Trump, but thereâs another side to that coin. GOP members of Congress have a unique power that nobody else in the land possesses â namely, the ability to pull the curtain down on a Trump presidency by impeaching him.â
The plan is to elect Trump. He will be given the chance to sign off on our neo-liberal globalist agenda ⌠or else, Paul Ryan and the #TruCons in the House will impeach him for âhigh crimesâ against the establishment. Isnât it strange that Trump supporters donât seem to care much about the #NeverTrump downballot?
He continues:
âTo do that, conservatives will need Trump supporters. Indeed, they will need to prevail not just among Trump supporters, but among Democrats as well. The international consensus for low regulation, low taxation, and free trade, enshrined in the Bonn Declaration of 1985, later elaborated as the âWashington Consensus,â must be restored to its former state of acceptance among both parties.
The neo-liberal globalist consensus (Team America World Police, globalization, open borders, low-taxes, Wall Street deregulation) among both parties (read: the uniparty) has to be restored to âits former state of acceptance.â
Kevin Williamson, who you might recall is famous for his declaration that White working class communities suffering from an opioid epidemic ought to die, is mounting a defense of the #TruCons in the GOP Congress :
âThe Republican party â stupid and corrupt as it often is â has in fact provided a number of dramatic victories for conservatives in recent years: the spread of right-to-work laws and school-choice programs, lower tax rates, trade liberalization, affirmations of the First and Second Amendments, restrictions on abortion, including a national ban on partial-birth abortion, etc. (See Charles C. W. Cooke, âWhat Has Conservatism Ever Done for Us?â) Consider the state-level work that has been done in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. These are not trivial victories â these are the small things that in the end add up to big things. âŚ
The Republican majority in Congress is like a hard and unpleasant job with long hours, but one that pays reasonably well: If you donât like it, try doing without it for a while and see how that works out for you.â
You will be sorry when we are gone!
Weâve conserved a low top marginal income tax rate and globalization. Weâve busted the unions, cut onerous regulations for hedge fund managers, kept the borders open to Third World immigration for half a century, and spread right-to-work laws. Weâve given strong rhetorical support to ending abortion and let the assault weapons ban expire when George W. Bush was president. Why arenât you rednecks satisfied?
There was so much more for you we could have done with Rubio as president. We could have had Dow 38,000! We could have had World War III over the Donbass! | 1real |
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY: Who Really Killed JonBenét Ramsey? | Do roses know their thorns can hurt? a quote attributed to JonBen t Ramsey from Lawrence Schiller s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Shawn Helton 21st Century WireIt s been nearly 20 years since the cold-blooded murder of JonBen t Ramsey shocked America. On December 26, 1996, the lifeless body of a 6-year-old girl, JonBen t Ramsey, was found brutally murdered in the basement of her family home. The grisly discovery stunned a quiet and affluent community in Boulder, Colorado and quickly became one of the most disturbing unsolved crimes in the United States over the past two decades. Photo Illustration Shawn Helton of 21WIREThe killing of JonBen t was an American tragedy and still to this day, it remains a haunting case and enigma.Below we ll examine some of the key elements surrounding the Ramsey investigation, along with some of the prevailing theories concerning JonBen t s homicide Throughout the course of this crime analysis, there will be references to a compilation of media reports, independent investigative reports, as well as the court case, Wolf v. Ramsey in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia which convened in 2003.The 2003 case stated that a Boulder journalist named Robert Christian Wolf filed a $50 million defamation suit against John Ramsey and wife Patsy Ramsey after being referred to by the family as a possible suspect in the death of JonBen t in the couple s controversial book, Death of Innocence.During the Wolf v. Ramsey court case, some shocking details surrounding JonBen t s murder were reviewed once again. Subsequently, John and Patsy Ramsey were sued in two separate defamation lawsuits (including Linda Hoffman-Pugh) after the publication of their controversial book about the murder of their daughter. DARK HOLIDAY The crime taped scene at the Ramsey residence in University Hill on December 26, 1996. (Image Source: eonline)Christmas in Boulder 1996JonBen t Ramsey was discovered dead in what has been referred to as the wine cellar of her parent s Boulder mansion just one day after Christmas.According to investigators, the official cause of the young child s death was asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma. The savage scene indicated a possible sexual assault based on DNA evidence collected.Court transcripts confirmed that around the time of JonBen t s death, an unknown object (possibly a flashlight) was used to cause blunt force trauma to her head. However, the strangulation came 45 minutes to two hours after the blow to the head (with the killer behind the victim).The initial inspection of JonBen t s body revealed that the child beauty pageant contestant was bound to a broken paintbrush, an improvised garrote with a slip knot that included some of her own hair. A closer forensic investigation would later uncover that the duck tape placed over JonBen t s mouth, allegedly contained hair from a beaver. Similarly, it was discovered that unidentified dark animal hairs were found on her hands. Nothing in the home matched the animal hair samples found on the duct tape.According to the The Colorado Bureau of Investigations, there were fibers found on the duct tape that were also similar to a jacket worn by JonBen t s mother on Christmas day.Those close to the case would later remark how many elements of the crime scene appeared to be staged as the cord, body positioning, additional bodily trauma, as well as the white blanket covering JonBen t and the Barbie nightgown found near her, indicated manipulation after the crime occurred.In a report by the now retired forensic pathologist and medical examiner, Dr. Michael Doberson, The right side of [JonBen t s] face as well as on the lower left back are patterned injuries most consistent with the application of a stun gun. According to additional court documents, Male DNA was found under JonBenet s right hand fingernail that does not match that of any Ramsey. The same court documents also stated, Defendants also assert that male DNA was found under Jon-Benet s left hand fingernail, which also does not match that of any Ramsey, and that male DNA was found on the deceased s underwear but did not match any other Ramsey family member.The Ramseys assert that JonBen t was last seen alive around 10pm on Christmas day after attending a Christmas party at the White family residence. Along with her brother Burke, the young girl was put to bed shortly after coming home from that party.JonBen t s time of death has remained undetermined, though autopsy results suggest that sometime between 10pm on Christmas night and the early hours of December 26th. Reports confirm that rigor mortis had set in on the body and an odor of decomposition had also been present. It would later be revealed that JonBen t had undigested pieces of pineapple still in her stomach and small intestine.According to other investigative reports, it s inconclusive whether the 6 year-old had the pineapple an hour or two prior to her death or earlier in the day.However, JonBen t was able digest cracked crab she ate at the Christmas party hosted by the White family, suggesting the pineapple was served later that night at home. Interestingly, JonBen t s mother Patsy, claimed to not remember giving her daughter fruit that day or night, even though the bowl containing the pineapple had her and her son s fingerprints on it. Burke Ramsey s fingerprints were also found on a nearby glass. RANSOM PLOT? Above is the apparent ransom note found by Patsy Ramsey. Oddly, John Ramsey had recently received a holiday bonus nearly the exact amount demanded in the note. (Image Source: pintrest)The Ransom Note & 911Early on December 26th, Patsy Ramsey (possibly in the same clothes), awoke at 5:33am and was said to have made her way down a staircase known to those familiar with the large house. Sitting on the stairs, the former Miss West Virginia found an apparent ransom note which stated that her abducted daughter was safe and unharmed but demanded $118,000 for her return.Strangely, this was the exact amount that Patsy s husband John received for a Christmas bonus in 1996, while working as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Access Graphics, a computer services company and a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. After discovering that JonBen t was missing from her room, Patsy made a distressing 911 call to police at 5:52am, where Burke was said to have been heard talking in the background. However, John and Patsy maintained that their son was not yet awake at this time.Patsy then called her neighbor and close friends, Priscilla White, as well as John and Barbara Fernie, between 5:55am and 6am. Boulder police arrived at the scene some seven minutes later to find a frantic Patsy and an oddly clam John. There were no signs of forcible entry at the residence, which complicated the purported kidnapping plot.Below is an enhanced version of the Ramsey 911 call seen in a recent CBS series examining the case. The Ramsey 911 call on December 26th, has caused a tremendous amount of speculation about a possible family cover-up in the murder of JonBen t An in-depth investigative site revealed that Boulder Police Detective Melissa Hickman reviewed the 911 call and transcribed it after having it enhanced at the Aerospace Corporation. Similarly, Lawrence Schiller s book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury s Search for the Final Truth, suggested that the voice of Burke Ramsey is supposedly heard in the back ground of the 911 call stating, Please, what do I do?, in addition to CBS s findings above.The December 26th phone call to police would be the second 911 call from the Ramsey home over a three-day period. The first was on December 23rd, during a party at the Ramseys house, which included guests said to be from the upper echelon of Boulder society. However, a complete list of attendees was not made public and the reason for the first 911 call was never fully explained as the unknown caller hung up without saying a word.Schiller s book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, stated that Linda Hoffman-Pugh, the Ramseys longtime housekeeper named some of the families who attended the December 23rd Christmas party: At 5:30 P.M. Santa showed up. By then the Barnhills, the Fernies, the Stines, Pinky Barber, and the Whites, who came with Priscilla s parents, had all arrived. Maybe eight couples and their children. Most of the men gathered by the spiral staircase. John made drinks for everybody from the butler s kitchen. The kids played in the living room by the big Christmas tree. That s where Santa read his little verses about everyone. This year, Mrs. Claus was there too, Santa looked kind of sick. Flashing back to the alleged ransom note, FOX 13 reported that former Boulder police chief Mark Beckner, stated the following during a Ask Me Anything segment on Reddit. Here s a revealing passage from that discussion: The FBI told us they d never seen a 2.5 page ransom note, [and that] No note has ever been written at the scene, and then left at the scene with the dead victim at the scene, other than this case. In addition to Beckner s Reddit commentary, the online magazine The Federalist stated that, The FBI s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit had noted that JonBen t s murderer almost certainly hadn t committed a murder before. They also concluded separately that the ransom note was written by someone intelligent but criminally unsophisticated. Continuing, the same article summarized another important aspect in the Ramsey case, lab tests also showed it was Patsy s Sharpie pen used to write the note. The pen used to write the note an FBI profiler estimates it took 21 minutes for the author to practice on the pad and then compose it was found in a cup with other Sharpies right next to the phone in the kitchen where Patsy kept them. It was very conscientious of the murderer to put everything back where he found it. Though Patsy was never conclusively proven to have had a hand in writing the purported ransom note, of those asked to give written samples, she was the only person police could not completely eliminate.According to a longtime FBI agent, the note contained deliberate mistakes and strange manipulative elements in an attempt to confuse authorities.The FBI was said to have arrived at the Ramsey house some fifteen minutes after the body was discovered. Schiller s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, also noted the protocol of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the following manner: FBI s standard procedure is to investigate the parents and the immediate family first and then move outward in circles. Then would come people who had frequent access to the child babysitters and domestic help. The next circle would contain friends and business associates. The outermost circle would be strangers. The technique was to avoid leaping over these concentric circles too quickly. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics from 1980 2008, 78.1 percent of the time, offenders were not strangers to the victim, and in more than 56 percent of cases, the victim was at least acquainted with an offender. HOUSE OF HORROR The police taped scene outside the Ramsey residence following the discovery of their murdered daughter. (Image Source: ajc)Spoiling the Scene Upon arriving at the Ramsey residence on December 26th, Boulder policeman Rick French, conducted a quick search of the house, looking for possible intruder exit points. French failed to search the wine cellar room where JonBen t would later be discovered, because he noticed that the wooden latch on the door was on the opposite side for a door exiting the house. Around this time, French was also given the apparent ransom note by the Ramseys. The two and a half page note, was later described as one of the longest ransom notes in the history of kidnapping cases in America.At least two searches were conducted by JonBen t s father John and family friend Fleet White, Priscilla s husband, in the Ramseys basement sometime between 6:06 8:00am. Shortly after arriving at the Ramsey residence, Fleet searched the basement alone including the wine cellar where JonBen t s body was located within fifteen minutes of arriving. Documents would confirm the search effort in the following description, Mr. White also opened the door to the wine cellar room, but he could not see anything inside because it was dark and he could not find the light switch. Fleet then testified that a window in the basement playroom had been broken and that underneath that window, there was a suitcase and piece of broken glass.Early on investigators were concerned about the lack of debris and other forensic evidence in and around the window thought to have been used in the alleged abduction/murder plot.December 26th, at 6:45am, John calls and leaves a message for Michael Archuleta his pilot. At 7:00am, his 9 year-old son Burke was dressed and taken to the White residence. Also at this time, Rev. Rolland Hoverstock from St. John s Episcopalian Church arrived at the Ramsey residence.The UK s Guardian described other compelling forensic details noted at the house that day: Eventually, other details emerged which competed with the original picture. Though there was no sign of forced entry, there was that small broken window into the basement that had been left open. Though there were no footprints in the snow, there was no snow on the part of the lawn that would need to be crossed to get in through the window. There was a footprint near the body left by a Hi-Tec boot. There was a latent handprint on the doorframe that didn t match any of the Ramseys . MAP OF MURDER Here s a bird s eye graphic detailing the Ramsey s basement area and the hidden wine cellar room where JonBen t s body was found. (Image Source: denverpost.com)In the striking book Programmed to Kill by writer and researcher David McGowan, we see an examination of the Ramsey case in a chapter entitled Boulder. In the following passage, McGowan underscored that the crime scene had been mishandled from the beginning: For reasons that have never been adequately explained, the investigation was compromised from the very beginning. Officers inexplicably failed to secure the crime scene, allowing the family s pastor to come and go from the home. No effort was made to prevent contamination of any potential evidence. Detectives did not arrive on the scene until 8:10am, over two hours after the first patrol officers arrived. It took another twelve hours for the coroner to arrive (and once there, he reportedly spent just ten minutes examining the body and the crime scene). Detectives Linda Arndt and Fred Patterson arrived at the Ramsey s residence at 8:10am and are given a rundown of the scene by Officer French from the Boulder police department.Detective Arndt then prepped the Ramseys for the potential ransom phone call, tapping the house phone. Around this time, the police s team of victims advocates who are skilled in dealing with trauma, arrive with breakfast food. Unfortunately, as was the case with many elements of the Ramsey crime scene, crucial evidence was potentially erased, as the team of advocates inadvertently wiped down parts of the kitchen.Arndt would later remark that there was no acknowledgement from anyone inside the house that the ransom phone call deadline came and went. John would later be seen examining the contents of his mail during the developing tragedy at his home.Detectives Arndt and Patterson sealed off JonBen t s bedroom some time around 10:30am but did not block off the entire house as a potential crime scene. In fact, friends and family moved freely throughout the house most of the day.At 10:30, Arndt calls for backup at least twice while left in the house alone with the Ramsey family and friends (seven in total), she is told that all officers are in a Boulder Police Department meeting and they received her message. Later a qualifier for the lapse was given by the BPD stating that they were short-staffed.At 1pm, Arndt decided that John should do a top to bottom search of the house with specific instructions not to touch anything. John, Fleet and supposedly another family friend, John Fernie, trekked downstairs into the basement, during the tense wait for the alleged kidnappers to call a call that never happened.John located JonBen t almost immediately at 1:05pm in the wine cellar hidden in the basement of the Ramsey house. Upon discovering JonBen t, John reportedly ripped the duct tape from her mouth and untied her hands bringing her lifeless body upstairs. Arndt then grabbed the young girl placing her near the family Christmas tree after a strange nonverbal exchange with John. Patsy was also said to have grieved over the body at this time.While it was a undeniably an emotional situation, Arndt made a mental note of the disturbance to the crime scene as this was not officially a homicide.Twenty minutes later, after additional officers secure the house and the forensic team returns, John places a phone call to his personal pilot but is instructed by police to stay in Boulder.Sometime later, testimony revealed a time discrepancy over the timeline of John s basement search, as it appeared to contradict other time frames of the initial crime scene investigation. Some researchers contend that John perhaps searched the basement before 6am based on statements given to authorities.Detective Arndt attempted to question Patsy further but the family s lawyer Mike Bynum stepped in blocking the inquiry into his client. The Ramseys did not give formal police interviews until four months after JonBen t s murder.According to The Daily Mail s report, They also assembled a team of private investigators, a public relations guru, an ex-FBI criminal profiler and two handwriting experts to look at the ransom note, arguing that the local police had botched the initial investigation. In a 1999, during a Good Morning America interview with Detective Arndt, described John s discovery of JonBen t, I decided that everything made sense in that instance. And, um, I knew what happened. I mean that s, I knew what happened to her. Below is Arndt s interview on ABC News, discussing the behavioral anomalies she witnessed at the Ramsey residence on December 26th During the course of that interview Arndt remarked how long it seemed before officers returned to the house following her radio to police, prompting the detective to become fearful of her own life waiting for backup, after witnessing the severe bodily trauma to JonBen t.In May of 1997, Detective Arndt and Detective Melissa Hickman were dropped from the case. MEDIA SPOTLIGHT The body language displayed John and Patsy Ramsey appeared to belie the murder of their child. Furthermore, they were never seen consoling one another by police the day their daughter was discovered murdered. (Image Source: crime.about)Casting SuspicionOn December 27th, it was reported that Patsy s friend Pam Griffin, the seamstress that designed JonBenet s pageant costumes went to comfort Patsy, who was grieving at the Fernie residence. Here s a passage describing that encounter in a Newsweek report three years after the murder of JonBen t: At the Boulder home of John and Barbara Fernie, friends of the Ramseys , Pam, a former registered nurse, touched Patsy s skin and realized she was dehydrated. She brought Patsy some water and made her drink it. You need to brush your hair, Pam told her. You need to lie down a little bit. But Patsy stood up to greet each new person who arrived to offer condolences, and as she did, tears streamed down her face. Hours later, Patsy finally took Pam s advice and lay down in the bedroom. Patsy reached up and touched Pam s face. Couldn t you fix this for me? she asked. Pam thought she was delirious. It was as if Patsy were asking her to fix a ripped seam. Patsy said something like, We didn t mean for that to happen , Pam would say later. Pam couldn t say why, but she remembered feeling as if Patsy knew who killed JonBenet but was afraid to say. Back in the spring of 1996, Griffin put local dance instructor, Kit Andre in touch with Patsy to help teach JonBen t a routine for the pageant circuit. Andre would later be quoted by media, stating the following: She was a fabulous child, I told Patsy at JonBenet s memorial service in Boulder. She was a star. I never saw JonBenet in a pageant. Never saw her do the routine I taught her until I saw that pageant video on TV. I ve looked at that video several times. They made JonBenet look like a clown. Someone else taught her those pseudo-adult movements, the provocative walk, the poses, all of it. The Daily Mail described the family preoccupation with the child beauty pageant circuit. Adding to that, family visitors noted that JonBenet s room was filled with pageant trophies rather than toys: Patsy later insisted that while JonBenet loved taking part in pageants, it was just a little hobby. Experts immediately pointed to the coaching, dancing, singing, music and beauty sessions along with the outrageous cost of outfits that made it an almost full-time occupation. FAMILY TIES The Ramsey s and White family on a ski trip. (Image Source: westword)The case most certainly took a different turn once the police had indicated that the Ramseys themselves would also be investigated as possible suspects. Right away, the Ramseys lawyered-up and hired an formidable legal defense team. Some twenty months after the brutal murder of JonBenet, John Ramsey s friend Fleet White, wrote an open letter to the people of Colorado that questioned the investigation by Boulder police and Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter: After JonBen t Ramsey was killed in Boulder nearly twenty months ago, her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, immediately hired prominent Democrat criminal defense attorneys with the law firm of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman. This firm and its partners have close professional, political and personal ties to prosecutors, the Denver and Boulder legal and judicial communities, state legislators, and high-ranking members of Colorado government, including Gov. Roy Romer. The investigation of her death has since been characterized by confusion and delays. Continuing, White outlined a larger conspiracy concerning the Ramsey case: During the course of the investigation, the district attorney has used inexplicable methods including the recruitment of magazine writers and tabloids to leak information concerning the case and to needle witnesses, suspects , and police detectives. White also mentioned the resignation of Boulder police detective Steve Thomas on August 6, 1998, after publicly accusing the District Attorney of obstructing the investigation into the Ramsey murder case. Torn Between Two Theories Something that continued to plague the Ramsey investigation, was that authorities were not able to reconcile the two different types of crime theories, one of the brutal killer and one of the ransom seeking kidnapper, based on the evidence presented.In 2000, Boulder s Daily Camera news, reported that the White family would be drawn even further into the Ramsey case, due to a California woman s descriptive allegations of an expansive child abuse ring. Her claims initially garnered attention because she allegedly knew John and Patsy Ramsey through Fleet: The White family did come in for more public scrutiny than some Ramsey associates during the star-crossed investigation.In his statement, Becker noted that, in 2000, The police department did investigate allegations made by a California woman to District Attorney Alex Hunter, as reported in the press, that were intended to cast suspicion on the White family. The department found no evidence to support the unfounded allegations. There has never been any evidence to link the White family to the JonBenet Ramsey homicide. The Camera in February 2000 reported that a 38-year-old woman had told Hunter that, when she was young, she had been ritually and sexually abused in a manner similar to the way JonBenet Ramsey died. Prior to the article mentioned above Barrie Hartman, editor for the Daily Camera for 18 years, added the following details concerning the woman interviewed by Boulder law enforcement which describe a deeper level abuse: The woman has described to police years of sexual and physical abuse in California homes at the hands of adults who stayed at holiday and other parties after other guests had left for the evening. Then, she said, another party, one of sexual abuse for the gratification of a select group of adults, would begin. Though Fleet White was cleared as a suspect in 1997 and officially exonerated in 2008 along with John Ramsey, publicly scrutiny has remained to this day.In 2014, even though Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett declined to write yet another letter of exoneration for the Whites, which would have been the fourth such public decree regarding the family.According to reports, in 2002, former Detective Lou Smit who believed in John and Patsy s innocence, named a convicted Oregon sex offender Gary Oliva as his prime suspect after discovering the drifter had been in Boulder in December 1996. But Oliva s DNA did not match samples taken from the body. Throughout the last 20 years, at least 140 different men have been considered by investigative authorities, including convicted sex offender John Mark Karr, who gave a false confession that was later cleared through a DNA analysis.Additional investigative details state that, DNA samples from 1.6 million offenders 86,000 in Colorado alone have been checked over the past five years and forensics experts update those files once a week. It was recently revealed in April of 2016, that Ollie Gray, a private investigator hired by John and Patsy Ramsey claimed to have named the killer as one Michael Helgoth. The story implicated Helgoth, a 26-year-old whose family owned a junkyard on the edge of the city. According to an interview with The Daily Mail, Gray stated the following, Based on what we know now, I believe Helgoth and his accomplices committed the crime. There s no doubt about it. The Helgoth story gained traction because John Kenady, a former employee of Helgoth s, said his employer allegedly taped a video of JonBen t s death. Kenady supposedly tried to reach police some twenty times according to the Ramseys private investigator.The Daily Mail continued: Then, on February 13, 1997, Alex Hunter, who was then the district attorney, held a press conference where he spoke to JonBenet s unknown killer, saying; The list of suspect narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you. Helgoth died of an apparent suicide two days later at his home. Kenady believes he was murdered by an accomplice or accomplices who were with him when he killed JonBenet. The gun was found on Helgoth s right side, but the bullet hole goes from left to right. It doesn t make sense why someone would commit suicide in that manner, said Kenady. Below is a documentary featuring former Boulder Detective Steve Thomas regarding a bed-wetting rage theory revolving around JonBen t s murder (Thomas testimony is at 24:20) Ramsey Case Oddities In 1998, the NY Times reported that a private detective named Brett Sawyer had been convicted of paying a photo lab tech for 20 autopsy photographs and reselling to The Globe newspaper for $5,500. Naturally, this caused quite a public outcry, stirring questions about morality, societal behavior and the media s role in sensationalizing violence in America.On an intriguing note, in 2001, the Daily Camera reported that the Ramsey house s address would be changed: [The] Tudor where JonBen t Ramsey was found dead nearly five years ago have discarded the 755 15th St. address plate. Small adhesive-backed, black numbers 749 now adorn the mail slot to the right of the front door, and that Before the address change was granted, city officials contacted 18 different agencies including emergency responders, utility companies and the post office, to determine if such a change would be practical. In 2007, it was reported that a year after Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer, husband John was for a short time reported by some publications to be romantic with Beth Holloway, the mother of Natalee Holloway who disappeared in 2005 after allegedly being abducted. Other case oddities have included the apparent meaning of the acronym signature at the bottom of the alleged ransom note that read S.B.T.C, something of which that caused quite a stir. Here s a 2011 FOX News report that has only added to the confusion, Some journalists erroneously believed that phrase was a war reference to John Ramsey s training in the Philippines at Subic Bay Naval Base (they believed it could mean Subic Bay Training Center). However, according to the Chicago Tribune in January of 1997, John Ramsey, 53, spent March 1968 through November 1969 assigned to the Navy Public Works Center at Subic Bay Training Center, according to the Bureau of Navy Personnel in Washington. In another bizarre and uncanny twist to the Ramsey murder case, Bill McReynolds the man who dressed up as Santa Claus on the night of December 23rd at the Ramsey house, had is own daughter abducted exactly twenty-two years (December 26th, 1974) to the date of JonBen t s murder. Strangely, he and his wife purportedly wrote a screenplay called Hey Rube (possibly named after the circus cry for help) that dealt with the brutal murder of a child in a similar manner to JonBen t.In the early days of the Ramsey case there was also concern about Randy Simmons, a child photographer well-known on the pageant circuit.In 1999, well-known Denver-based journalist Stephen Singular wrote a book about the murder of JonBen t, which investigated the exploitation of children and the dark and seedy elements potentially connected to the brutal crime in Boulder.In terms of historical context concerning Singular s theories, the book by former Nebraska state Senator John De Camp entitled, The Franklin Cover-up, comes to mind. The Cover-up was a scathing expose that implicated politicians, judges, those in the military, police, as well as members of the intelligence community for the subsequent abduction of numerous children over the course of many years, including connections to the wider Boys Town scandal. Former CIA director William Colby wrote the preface to De Camp s courageous book, lending even more credibility to its claims. Decamp had previously been an aide for Colby, who became disillusioned by his time in the CIA.You have to wonder, was JonBen t also a victim of a larger criminal conspiracy? LAST PICTURE The last photo of JonBen t alive. Here she is with her mother Patsy on Christmas morning 1996. (Image Source: dailymail.co.uk)Only Theories, No ConclusionTheories about JonBen t s killer or killers, have ranged from an unknown intruder, members of her family, family friends, a larger network of abuse, a wandering criminal who may have acted alone, or someone who played a role in a potential murder-for-hire scenario. But after all these years, every one of these so-called theories has one thing in common: the investigation seems to lead straight back to questions regarding John and Patsy s official story despite the couple s exoneration.Adding fuel to the fire, for the first time in public,JonBen t s brother, Burke Ramsey, recently discussed the murder of his sister during an exclusive three-part interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, something which has caused more speculation about the tragic and troubling case.Interestingly, since airing a six-hour docu-series called The Case of: JonBen t Ramsey , CBS is now being sued by Burke Ramsey, for the shows suggested conclusion that he may have been responsible for his sister s homicide.In 2013, the Daily Camera revealed that an unprosecuted grand jury indictment revealed the grand jury prepared charges of child abuse resulting in death and accessory to a crime for both John and Patsy Ramsey in the death of their daughter, and that Alex Hunter, the Boulder County district attorney at the time, never signed the true bill, apparently believing he could not successfully prosecute due to a lack of evidence. The tragic story of JonBen t continues, a portrait of innocence shattered a truly unbelievable crime still unsolved 20 years later.READ MORE TRUE CRIME NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire True Crime FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE and its work by Subscribing and becoming a Member @ 21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Republicans in tailspin, group forms to draft Ryan for U.S. president | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With U.S. Republicans sharply split over a front-runner they cannot unite behind, a new group is trying to push the country’s top elected Republican, Paul Ryan, into the White House race. The Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan filed papers as a Super PAC with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, adding to the groups of mainstream Republican leaders and donors with a shared goal: stopping Trump. Ryan, the House of Representatives speaker who spoke out against Trump for not quickly rejecting white supremacist support, did not appear ready to take on the role. “He is flattered, but not interested,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email on Friday. Politico first reported the formation of the draft-Ryan PAC. Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ losing presidential candidate in 2012, also said he was not interested. “There are no circumstances I can foresee where that would possibly happen,” Romney said on NBC’s “Today” show on Friday, a day after he excoriated Trump as a fraud ill-equipped for the White House. The Republican Party may need more than a hero as it grapples with its deepest divisions in decades. Those splits were on display again on Thursday night as Trump took on his two closest challengers, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz of Texas, in a debate marked by the yelling, name-calling and vulgarity that has tainted the 2016 Republican race. Trump’s rivals said they would support the ultimate nominee but it was clear on Friday that would be easier said than done. “That is the quandary I’m trying to avoid the Republican Party having to face,” Rubio said on CNN on Friday. While the anti-Trump movements proliferated, some Republicans have urged party leaders to respect the will of the voters. Trump spokesman Sam Clovis seized on that message on Friday, warning on CNN that it was dangerous for Republican leaders to “call American voters stupid” because they support Trump. “You have record turnout in every state so far. Record turnout. That doesn’t happen by accident, said Clovis, national campaign co-chairman. Trump is “tapping into what is going on in this country like no one else has in a long, long time. I haven’t seen anything like this since Ronald Reagan.” Columnist Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, had a different lament in the Wall Street Journal on Friday. “I think we are seeing a great political party shatter before our eyes,” she said. “But we are witnessing history. Something important is ending. It is hard to believe what replaces it will be better. No one knows where this goes. The top of the party and the bottom have split.” (Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Megan Cassella; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bill Trott) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0fake |
Hillary Clinton’s Message: Yes, the Economy Is Messed Up. But I Can Fix It. - The New York Times | It has been a year dominated by populist rage, embodied in Bernie Sanders’s calls for a political revolution and Donald J. Trump’s angry assertions that the United States, and its workers, are losing badly in the global economy. In an economic policy speech on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton gave this message: I alone am the candidate who knows how to turn those underlying frustrations into actual policies that might make things better. She offered herself as someone who would not merely vent voters’ anger, but respond to that anger by pulling the levers of the federal bureaucracy and creating legislation that can be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and just maybe pass a Senate committee. “It’s not easy to change Washington, or how corporations behave,” Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said before exuberant supporters in Raleigh, N. C. a day after a speech blasting Mr. Trump’s business record, ethics and policy positions. “It takes more than stern words or a flashy slogan. It takes a plan, and it takes experience and the ability to work with both parties to get results. ” Unlike her primary opponent, Mr. Sanders, she did not promise to provide free college tuition or to break up major banks she instead said she would make sure students could graduate without a debt hangover, and clamp down on banks in ways that would probably lead them to shrink. Unlike her Republican opponent, Mr. Trump, she did not propose ripping up trade deals and risking trade wars with the likes of China and Mexico. But she did say her administration would use the tax code to punish companies that outsource jobs. Notably, she also did not proclaim the greatness of the economy and pledge continuity. That was a contrast with two other candidates who ran to succeed a president from their party amid a strong economy, Al Gore in 2000 and George H. W. Bush in 1988. This carefully speech suggests she seeks to run not by boasting of what has gone right in the economy under President Obama, but as a fixer who can more successfully deal with the things that are still broken. The Obama administration has stressed that job growth has been strong for the last several years and that the unemployment rate is now down to 4. 7 percent. But in her speech, Mrs. Clinton emphasized the divergence between worker productivity and wages, the tendency of companies to view employee compensation as a cost to be minimized. And she spoke of the struggles of the unemployed, people who can find only work, and those who are out of the labor force entirely. In effect, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged the underlying economic discontent that has fueled the rise of Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump, while presenting herself as the person best qualified to address it. “The bottom line is that too many leaders in business and government have lost sight of our shared responsibility to each other and to our nation,” she said. “They let Wall Street take big risks with unregulated financial activities, they skew our tax code toward the wealthy, they failed to enforce our trade rules, they undermined workers’ rights. ” Mrs. Clinton thus emphasized policies that have potential for deal making even in a polarized Congress, or that could be executed through administrative action. In the first category, she mentioned investment in public infrastructure, funding investments in the nation’s future with a mix of public and private resources. Business interests and many elected Republicans support ideas in this vein, at least in theory. She also mentioned immigration reform as a tool for economic improvement, another idea that businesspeople and many Republicans support. (Recall that an immigration bill created in part by Marco Rubio, who in a slightly different universe might be Mrs. Clinton’s opponent, was one vote in the House of Representatives away from becoming law not long ago.) In the category of administrative action, Mrs. Clinton was vague but clear about her intention to use the machinery of government to nudge things in workers’ favor. She said she would “continue to crack down on wage theft” and abuse of overtime rules, suggesting that she would, if anything, seek to expand Obama administration rules to make more workers eligible for pay and use government authority to fight employers that try to shortchange employees. The policy steps she described had mostly been put forward by her campaign already, so it is hard to describe the speech as a step toward the left, in hopes of corralling Sanders voters, or to the center, in hopes of broadening her appeal to the general electorate. Rather, the speech framed her place in the race as being the candidate who understands the populist discontent but will react to it with practicality. That carries risks, too. After all, President Obama has spent his entire second term following the same basic strategy of looking for lanes for bipartisan cooperation on things like infrastructure spending and immigration overhaul, while using the federal bureaucracy to try to tilt the playing field toward workers within the confines of current law. As the election advances, Mrs. Clinton will be vulnerable to the charge that she is promising to do the same things as Mr. Obama has, but with the hope of getting better results for American workers. Politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Mrs. Clinton’s message on Wednesday was that she will campaign and govern with a plan, drawn up by experts, incorporating the full range of potential legislative and administrative tools available to the next president. | 0fake |
The Only Pittsburgh Steeler To Stand For National Anthem Speaks Out, And Trump Fans Will HATE It | Conservatives cheered when Pittsburgh Steeler Alejandro Villanueva, who s also a combat veteran, came out and stood for the national anthem while the rest of the team stayed in the locker room. They won t be happy with what Villanueva has said about it since, though. They think he s just like them, a jingoist among a sport full of traitors to America, and this is really going to ruin that.First off, it doesn t look like Villanueva intended to be defiant this way:Villenueva asked Ben after Sat night meeting if he could be out in front with captains. Agreed to. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Villenueva turned around when the Bears fan flag came in, he looked back to his teammates,then the anthem started. He couldn t walk out then Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017So it looks like there might have been some miscommunication about what they were doing, or maybe that Villanueva wasn t totally sure what the team had agreed to do.He also said he knew, every time he saw the flag on a fellow soldier s shoulder during a mission, that they were fighting for each other. He also did say, People die for the flag; there s no way else to put it There s nothing else that would justify dying for that mission. (It s likely the mission he meant was whatever mission he and his fellow soldiers were on, rather than the mission of fighting for the flag that Trump fans are glomming onto).But it s what he says about how he feels about what happened that will have Trump fans seething. Seriously:Alejandro Villanueva: This national anthem ordeal has sort of been out of control, and there s a lot of blame on myself Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Villenueva: I made coach Tomlin look bad, and that is my fault and my fault only. I made my teammates look bad, and that is my fault only Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Alejandro Villanueva: Unfortunately, I threw (my teammates) under the bus, unintentionally. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Alejandro Villaneuva: Every single time I see that picture of me standing by myself, I feel embarrassed. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Al Villanueva: For anybody who thinks that Coach Tomlin is not as patriotic as you can get in America I m offended by that. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Villanueva: We as a team tried to figure it out, obviously we butchered it . I m not gonna pretend I have some kind of righteous voice. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Alejandro Villaneuva: I will support all my teammates, and all my teammates and all my coaches have always supported me. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017And then there s this:Villenueva says he absolutely would be OK if teammates kneeled or sat during the anthem. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Al Villanueva says some players who have been kneeling during anthems have approached him after/before games and thanked him for his service Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Al Villenueva: Every single one of my teammates is extremely supportive and extremely patriotic. I can honestly said that. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Al Villaneuva: The team meeting that we had on Saturday night brought the whole team together. Absolutely, We had great conversations. Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) September 25, 2017Trump fans really don t understand why people are so angry at them for whining about professional athletes not standing for the national anthem. The jingoism is dangerously strong among them, along with the cluelessness and blind followership. In fact, many of them are on the above thread and totally, utterly and completely misunderstanding it. They aren t the patriots they believe themselves to be. Not even close.Featured image via Joe Robbins/Getty Images | 1real |
A Ranger, a Field of Wildflowers and the Retelling of Flight 93 - The New York Times | SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — Just another Thursday, and the morning mix includes bikers from New Jersey, Amish visitors from Pennsylvania and a few children adjusting to a park not intended for play. They settle onto benches for the 11 o’clock retelling. A ranger in the green and gray of the United States National Park Service tucks his lunch on a shelf and walks out to face his audience. A field of wildflowers undulates behind him the clouds seem nearly within reach. He begins: “Remember how bad the weather was that morning?” Hesitant nods turn quickly to head shakes. No. On that particular September morning, you could see forever. This is just the ranger’s way of buckling you in. Helping some to remember what we already know. Helping others, especially those who were not yet born, to envision a beautiful, calamitous day now nearly 15 years in the past. His name is Robert Franz, he is 61, and his title is “interpretive park ranger,” which means that his job is to tell the story of what happened in that field behind him, again and again and again. This is the Flight 93 National Memorial, by far the most removed of the three crash sites. A visit requires a journey through the arresting Allegheny Mountains, up and down and up and down, past a Confederate flag here, a Trump sign there, to a field set aside for reflection. “Mayday! Mayday! Get out of here!” the ranger says, echoing the alarm that was heard by air traffic controllers. The words chill the air, as children fidget and bees buzz about. He continues the story of United Airlines Flight 93, bound for San Francisco from Newark. How four hijackers redirect the jet southeast, most likely to crash into the nation’s capital. How many of the 40 crew members and passengers fought back. How this hurtling jetliner nearly flipped before crashing at 563 miles an hour into the soft, earth, killing all. “The crew and passengers put democracy in action,” Mr. Franz says. “They take a vote” — to storm the cockpit and regain control of the plane. We connect to that day in our own way, and the storyteller in the ranger’s hat is no different. He was born into the military, his father an Army lifer who served in World War II’s European theater, his mother a daughter of the French underground. They were married at the Cathedral of in Paris, and went on a short honeymoon in an Army jeep. Their son Rob spent the better part of two decades flying Army Hueys and Black Hawks and training other soldiers how to fly helicopters. He left the service in early 2001, and was at home on Cape Cod, Mass. that Tuesday, watching the news. He thought of those he had trained, and felt guilt for not being among them for the deployments sure to come. Mr. Franz focused on a real estate career, volunteered with the local veterans’ committee and worked briefly as a police officer. Then, in late 2011, he spotted a listing on a government website for a seasonal job as an interpretive park ranger at the Flight 93 Memorial. He quickly applied, he recalls, sensing a chance to “complete the circle. ” Soon he was driving about 600 miles west to Shanksville every April, and staying until October. He proved to be such a powerful storyteller, his presentation informed by his knowledge of aeronautics, that he was recently offered permanent employment, which he accepted. “He told this story unlike anyone I had heard,” says Stephen Clark, the superintendent for the national parks in western Pennsylvania. “And, of course, being a veteran makes it all the more special. ” Sometimes Mr. Franz stands at the memorial plaza, answering questions about the time of the crash and the location of the bathrooms. He commiserates as people recount their own connections to the day, and keeps his counsel as conspiracy theorists question whether such a crash even occurred. “If somebody’s made up their mind, there’s nothing I can do,” he says. Sometimes he distributes Flight 93 Junior Ranger handbooks, explaining to young visitors what activities they need to complete before receiving a Junior Ranger badge. The booklet is a thoughtful study in trying to find the right words: Early in the flight, their plane was hijacked by four men. To hijack a plane means to take control over it. These hijackers were angry at the United States of America … But there are words, and then there are words. When children ask about the recovery of bodies, Mr. Franz redirects, ever so slightly. Since there were only remains, no bodies, he explains that a spot out there, beyond the wildflowers, is now “a final resting place. ” And sometimes, Mr. Franz is standing before another 11 o’clock crowd, as he is now, telling an American epic in less than a all the while reminding himself not to get emotional again when he comes to a certain point. The more familiar narrative of Flight 93 focuses on those Mr. Franz calls the “big guys” — Todd Beamer, for example, the young software salesman who helped to organize the passenger revolt and whose last recorded words of “Let’s roll!” became a national rallying cry. But the park ranger makes the gentle point that the revolt was “a group effort. ” “Let me tell you about Sandy Bradshaw,” he says, recalling the flight attendant who, in a furtive call to her husband, explained how she was boiling water to hurl at the hijackers. “Let me tell you about Honor Elizabeth Wainio,” he says, recalling the business executive known as Lizz who, in a moment of supreme compassion, called to comfort her stepmother about what was to happen, and who was part of the revolt. She was 27. “No, it’s not looking good,” Mr. Franz says. “But they weren’t going to give up. ” The park ranger, the father of two adult daughters, looks down and takes a long, unscripted pause. As he struggles to regain his composure, the wildflower setting becomes the bikers and the Amish now silent congregants in outdoor pews. Soon these people will wander off, some over to the memorial wall, some up to the new visitors center, where Flight 93 shirts and mugs are sold, and an interactive display includes recordings from the fatal flight. Soon, a Korean War veteran will tell Mr. Franz that he thinks the federal government “overdid it” with this park, and a boy in a tank top and a Penn State ball cap will ask for a Junior Ranger handbook so that he can learn about this place and earn his plastic badge. But right now, Mr. Franz is taking a brief private moment in public that seems to him like an hour. Sandy Bradshaw. Lizz Wainio. Democracy in action … His emotions in check, Mr. Franz acknowledges his awkward pause and returns seamlessly to his story. How the airplane flew right over Route 30, “the road you came in on. ” How this elevated ground is a place to reflect on the tragic loss of life, yes, but how it is also a place to honor the courage of the passengers and crew of Flight 93. And that, he says, “is a good story. ” It’s 11:30. “Thank you,” the ranger says. “Have a great day. ” | 0fake |
NY Daily News Nails Republican Party Perfectly With This Perfect Cover (IMAGE) | The New York Daily News, once again, has knocked it out of the park with their Wednesday cover. The cover features images of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan next to each other. Ryan is pointing his index towards Trump, with the words I m with racist written over the two Republicans.The cover photo was shared on Twitter Tuesday night, where it quickly went viral. Here s the cover photo:Tomorrow's front page: I'M WITH RACIST! Ryan still supports Trump, "definition of racist" https://t.co/0C1JIaQxwN pic.twitter.com/AxlnLYWcv2 New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) June 7, 2016The cover relates to Ryan s recent public condemnation of Trump s racist rhetoric. I disavow these comments. Claiming a person can t do the job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It s absolutely unacceptable. Trump s flagrantly racist comments aren t enough for Ryan to rescind his endorsement of Trump. Ryan offered this explanation as to why he is still supporting Trump: Do I believe that Hillary Clinton is the answer? No, I do not, he said. I believe that we have more common ground on the policy issues of the day and we have more likelihood of getting our policies enacted with him than we do with her. The actual article that The NY Daily News published describes the situation with a bit of apt snark, by saying, Donald Trump is a racist, but he s our racist, the Republican speaker of the House said. The cover is emblematic of the current situation happening in Republican politics. The GOP is a party divided. Top Republican party members have consistently refused to take a firm stance on Trump s most controversial proposals. Those proposals include building a wall a border wall that isn t needed between the United States and Mexico and the laughable assertion that Mexico will pay for this mega construction project. Then there is Trump s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. A policy that is blatantly xenophobic, impossible to enforce, and will do absolutely nothing to prevent terrorism.Though, Trump s economic policies (whatever they are this week) tend to follow the trickle down economic agenda of the party of big business, which is apparently good enough for Ryan.Featured image from screenshot via Twitter | 1real |
About 30 killed when train derails, catches fire in Congo | KINSHASA (Reuters) - About 30 people were killed and more than two dozen injured when a train derailed then caught fire in Democratic Republic of Congo, a provincial governor said on Monday. The freight train was traveling from the southern copper and cobalt mining hub of Lubumbashi to Luena, in Lualaba province, on Sunday when it left the tracks and tumbled into a ravine near the town of Buyofwe. There s major damage because the tanker cars caught fire, Lualaba s governor Richard Muyej told Reuters. Around 30 dead and 26 wounded were transferred to the hospital in Lubudi, 25 km (16 miles) from the scene of the accident. The train had taken on a number of passengers before the accident, and Muyej said the death toll could rise further. Eleven of the train s 13 cars caught fire following the derailment. Officials from Congo s national railway company, the SNCC, were investigating the cause of the crash, which was not immediately known. Rail accidents are relatively common in Congo due to aging, poorly maintained infrastructure and lax enforcement of safety standards. (This version of the story corrects spelling of governor s name in paragraphs 3 and 4) | 0fake |
NYPD Cop Who Killed Eric Garner to be Indicted on Civil Rights Violations | NYPD Cop Who Killed Eric Garner to be Indicted on Civil Rights Violations Anon HQ
In a surprising move by the Justice Department, it seems as though an indictment of the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner may be on the horizon. Officer Daniel Pantaleo was caught on cell phone footage, filmed choking the life out of Garner on a Staten Island street corner. After two years of public outrage – in the failure to prosecute Pantaleo and an internal conflict at the DOJ, reports have surfaced, indicating that Pantaleo will stand trial for civil rights violations.
One would think that the video evidence of Garner’s murder would be enough to convict Pantaleo on a minimum voluntary manslaughter. A Staten Island grand jury failed to indict him on a charge of murder, which was presented to them last year. Again, the grand jury system is a fraud when it comes to police killings, as the prosecutor has sole discretion to prosecute. The grand jury system is used to placate the public, and this case was no different. Aside from the local authorities failing to prosecute, the FBI and the Justice Department lawyers handling the case out of Brooklyn didn’t believe there was sufficient evidence to bring a federal civil rights violation charge. In order to do so, they would have to prove that Pantaleo intended to violate Garner’s civil rights.
“It’s going to happen sooner than later,” said an unnamed source within the investigation. “Washington wants to indict him.” This information came out after the entire team of federal prosecutors was replaced.
It is difficult to avoid the appearance of a cover-up when all of the initial investigators found nothing wrong with the actions taken by Pantaleo, which resulted in Garner’s death. The fact that he used an illegal chokehold – which had been outlawed – seemed to make little impact on their decision. All the while, Pantaleo has been riding a desk and collecting his substantial six figure salary from the NYPD.
Up until now, the only person to have been penalized for Garner’s death is Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, who was the supervisor on scene. The only charge was internal, not criminal, for failure to properly supervise. Adonis said in regards to the incident “the perpetrator’s condition did not seem serious and… he did not appear to get worse.” The outright lies told by police, when covering up their crimes, is enough to make your blood boil. Nothing about Adonis’ statement had any truth to it, as Garner pleaded for help and ultimately died on scene. Hard to believe anyone wouldn’t define death as “getting worse.”
Although a federal charge seems imminent, an indictment is only the beginning of a very long battle. The fact that Pantaleo was brought before a grand jury only to have them not indict, doesn’t look good for prosecutors. Even if the presentation was one-sided and an obvious fix, the defense can use it to demonstrate internal conflict and therefore, argue that the case is in fact, politically driven. It doesn’t help matters when the jury finds out that the original prosecutors did not feel a charge was warranted and had been removed from the case. Presenting the internal conflict will not sit well with a jury.
The New York Daily News spoke with an anonymous former federal prosecutor who stated “If I’m Pantaleo’s defense lawyer, I want all the internal communications that the prosecutors were fighting about.” Obtaining specific details of the internal conflicts would indeed sway a jury. On the flip-side, he stated, “The government will argue, though, that it is internal deliberations and that you can’t cross-examine witnesses about what the prosecutors think about their case.” Others contend that the former prosecutors would be barred from being involved in the indictment and not allowed to give any testimony for the defense or prosecution. With the burden of proof falling on the shoulders of the DOJ, despite the clear-cut murder that took place, they’ll fight an uphill battle in court.
The Police Benevolent Association has denied that Pantaleo ever used a chokehold, and believes the entire issue is a moot point. Despite their cherry picking their own beliefs, they can’t cherry pick their own facts in this case, as the video speaks for itself. While Pantaleo needs to stand trial for the death of Eric Garner, attempting to prove his intent is going to be difficult. It is unfortunate that the need to define Pantaleo’s intent is overshadowing the true tragedy of this case: the very death of justice. | 1real |
Mozambique president replaces energy and foreign ministers | MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has sacked four ministers, including those with the foreign affairs and energy portfolios, his office said late on Tuesday, without giving a reason. Energy is a key portfolio in Mozambique, which has vast untapped offshore gas reserves that are being developed by oil majors such as Italy s Eni. Nyusi s office said Ernesto Max Elias Tonela had replaced Leticia da Silva Klemens as minister of energy and mineral resources and Jose Condugua Antonio Pacheco was the new foreign minister, replacing Oldemiro Baloi. The president also replaced the ministers of industry and trade and of agriculture and food security. Tonela, the new energy minister, previously served as commerce minister. An economist by training, Tonela has also worked previously on the board of the Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB) company responsible for Mozambique s 2,000 megawatt hydroelectric dam. | 0fake |
WATCH: MITT ROMNEY DOESN’T Think Roy Moore Deserves Fair Treatment In Questionable 40-Year-Old Sex Assault Allegations…Has Romney Already Forgotten What Harry Reid’s LIE Did To His Campaign? | Yesterday, former GOP Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, came out with one of his most incredible statements to date. After months of silence, Mitt tweeted about the 36-40-year-old sexual misconduct allegations against Alabama s Republican candidate for Senator, Judge Roy Moore.In his tweet, Mitt told Americans that Judge Roy Moore was not entitled to a fair investigation and that Moore should step aside . Romney tweeted: Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside. Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside. Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) November 10, 2017Mitt has remained mostly dormant since he went off on his anti-Trump rant just before the Presidential election. The last time we saw Mitt, was when he was in Trump Towers, pandering to President-elect Trump for a job in his administration. It appears that, much like John McCain, the anti-conservative, bitter, former GOP presidential candidate just can t keep his disdain for Republicans, who are unafraid to openly fight for their convictions, to himself. Perhaps Mitt s nasty remarks were intended to help ingratiate himself with liberal voters in Utah, as he allegedly is preparing to run for the retiring Republican Senator Orin Hatch s seat. It s also quite possible that after the United States watched Mitt give up the race after he pummeled Barack Obama in their first presidential debate, that Mitt just doesn t have the stomach for Republicans who actually fight back when they re being attacked by the left.Is it possible that Mitt has already forgotten the lie that Harry Reid pushed out to the voters only months before the election about Mitt not paying taxes for the past 1w years?On July 12, 2012, Senator Harry Reid stood before his comrades on the Senate floor and told a bald-faced lie about then-candidate Mitt Romney not paying his taxes for the past 12 years. Reid knowingly lied to Congress telling them Mitt Romney s father set the precedent for presidential candidates allowing the American public to view their taxes, but Mitt Romney can t do that because he s paid no taxes for 12 years. His father, George Romney, set the precedent that people running for president would file their tax returns, let everybody look at them. But Mitt Romney can t do that because he s basically paid no taxes in the prior 12 years. Watch:Two years later, Harry Reid was later questioned by CNN s Dana Bash about the lie he told to his fellow Senators. His response could not have been more arrogant or disrespectful to the American voters who based their votes for Barack Obama, based on a lie that Senator Harry Reid told only 4 months before the election.So, tell us again Mitt, how it doesn t matter if a political candidate is guilty of charges levied against him by the left, that their only response must be to step down if they re accused of wrongdoing.Yesterday, it was revealed that at least one of Judge Roy Moore s accusers was deeply involved in Democrat politics, is virulently anti-Trump, and has been openly pushing for Judge Roy Moore s Democrat opponent Doug Ross on her personal Facebook page.It was also revealed that Stephanie McCrummen, one of the co-writers of the Washington Post article that smeared Moore with 4 unproven allegations has a history of faking things to benefit herself (read more HERE). More and more details continue to emerge about Roy Moore s alleged victims .Stay tuned, for those of us who are sick and tired of watching Republicans get kicked around and watching their careers being ruined, this isn t over yet | 1real |
Russia puzzled by Norways decision to host US Marines | Russia 'puzzled' by Norway's decision to host US Marines page: 1 link Norway is to break a decades-old commitment not to host foreign troops on its soil by accommodating 330 US Marines next year. Russia, the apparent target of the buildup, said it was puzzled by the move. The Marines will be stationed at the Vaernes military base in central Norway from January, the Norwegian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday. The agreement for the deployment will be reviewed in the course of the year, it added. SOURCE I was one of the few posters on this forum who expressed that Norway's decision to have Marines deployed on its home soil was significant. Part of the reason I believe it is significant is Russia's reaction to the move. Our opinions mean nothing in this matter. If Russia considers the move to be significant then it's significant. I wonder if posters will be able to put aside their egos for this thread and not focus on their view of this issue but focus on Russia's view. Quoting from the article linked above: "The deployment appears to be in line with NATO's strategy to boost its military presence close to Russia’s borders. The alliance decided to send four 1,000-strong battalions each to Poland and the Baltic states, claiming it was needed to deter Russia." Please put it all in context from Russia's point of view. edit on 26-10-2016 by Profusion because: (no reason given) | 1real |
John Oliver’s Smear Tactics Exposed As Establishment Propaganda | John Oliver’s Smear Tactics Exposed As Establishment Propaganda | 1real |
Oliver Stone: Pokémon Go is ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ for a Robotic Society | Press Association The GuardianFilm director Oliver Stone has branded the popular gaming app Pok mon Go a new level of invasion of privacy that could lead to totalitarianism .The American reportedly voiced concerns over the game as he promoted his new movie about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden at Comic-Con International.After he was asked about security concerns associated with Pok mon Go, Stone said companies were carrying out surveillance capitalism by monitoring people s behaviour.According to Time magazine, he told the Comic-Con audience in San Diego: It s not funny. What s happening is a new level of invasion. The profits are enormous here for places like Google. They ve invested a huge amount of money in data mining what you are buying, what you like, your behaviour. It s what some people call surveillance capitalism. He added: You ll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society. It s what they call totalitarianism. Pok mon Go, which is free to download, has faced criticism over claims it could access a player s entire Google account, including email and passwords.The app s makers, Niantic, insisted the move was unintentional and reassured users it was not collecting any exceptional data Continue this story at The GuardianREAD MORE POKEMON GO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Pokemon Go Files | 1real |
An Alternative Form of Mental Health Care Gains a Foothold - The New York Times | HOLYOKE, Mass. — Some of the voices inside Caroline White’s head have been a lifelong comfort, as protective as a favorite aunt. It was the others — “you’re nothing, they’re out to get you, to kill you” — that led her down a rabbit hole of failed treatments and over a decade of hospitalizations, therapy and medications, all aimed at silencing those internal threats. At a support group here for however, she tried something radically different. She allowed other members of the group to address the voice, directly: What is it you want? “After I thought about it, I realized that the voice valued my safety, wanted me to be respected and better supported by others,” said Ms. White, 34, who, since that session in late 2014, has become a leader in a growing alliance of such groups, called the Hearing Voices Network, or HVN. At a time when Congress is debating measures to extend the reach of mainstream psychiatry — particularly to the severely psychotic, who often end up in prison or homeless — an alternative kind of mental health care is taking root that is very much . It is largely nonmedical, focused on holistic recovery rather than symptom treatment, and increasingly accessible through an assortment of services, residential centers and groups like the voices network Ms. White turned to, in which members help one another understand each voice, as a metaphor, rather than try to extinguish it. For the first time in this country, experts say, psychiatry’s critics are mounting a sustained, broadly based effort to provide people with practical options, rather than solely alleging abuses like overmedication and involuntary restraint. “The reason these programs are proliferating now is society’s shameful neglect of the severely ill, which creates a vacuum of great need,” said Dr. Allen Frances, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University. Dr. Chris Gordon, who directs a program with an approach to treating psychosis called Open Dialogue at Advocates in Framingham, Mass. calls the alternative approaches a “collaborative pathway to recovery and a paradigm shift in care. ” The Open Dialogue approach involves a team of mental health specialists who visit homes and discuss the crisis with the affected person — without resorting to diagnostic labels or medication, at least in the beginning. Some psychiatrists are wary, they say, given that medication can be for many people with mental problems, and rigorous research on these alternatives is scarce. “I would advise anyone to be carefully evaluated by a psychiatrist with expertise in treating psychotic disorders before embarking on any such alternative programs,” said Dr. Ronald Pies, a professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate University, in Syracuse. “Many, though not all, patients with acute psychotic symptoms are too seriously ill to do without immediate medication, and lack the family support” that those programs generally rely on. Alternative care appears to be here to stay, however. Private donations for such programs have topped $5 million, according to Virgil Stucker, the executive director of CooperRiis, a residential treatment community in North Carolina. A recently formed nonprofit, the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, has made several grants, including $160, 000 to start an Open Dialogue program at Emory University and $250, 000 to study the effect of HVN groups on attendees, according to Gina Nikkel, the president and CEO of the foundation. Both programs have a long track record in Europe. About three quarters of people put on a medication for psychosis stop taking it within 18 months because of side effects or other issues, studies suggest. Some do well on other drugs others do not. “I was told by one psychiatrist at age 13 or 14 that if I didn’t take the meds, my brain would become more and more damaged,” said Ms. White, who began hearing voices in grade school. “Of course I believed it. And I became hopeless, because the drugs just made me feel worse. ” On a recent Tuesday, Ms. White and seven others who hear voices gathered at the Holyoke Center of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, which hosts weekly hearing voices groups, to talk about what happens in those sessions. The group meetings themselves, guided by a person who hears voices, sometimes accompanied by a facilitator, are open to family members but closed to the news media. The culture is explicitly nonpsychiatric: No one uses the word “patient” or refers to the sessions as “treatment. ” “We need to be very careful that these groups do not become medicalized in any way,” said Gail Hornstein, a professor of psychology at Mount Holyoke College and a founding figure for the American hearing voices groups, which have tripled in number over the past several years, to more than 80 groups in 21 states. Most of the people in the room had extensive experience being treated in the mainstream system. “I was told I was a ticking time bomb, that I’d never finish college, never have a job, never have kids, and always be on psychiatric medication,” said Sarah, a student at Mount Holyoke who for years has heard a voice — a child, crying — and in college started having suicidal thoughts. She was given diagnoses of borderline personality disorder and put on medications that had severe side effects. She asked that her last name not be used, to preserve her privacy. In the group, other members prompted her to listen to the child’s cries, to ask whose they were, and why the crying? Those questions led, over a period of weeks, to a recollection of a frightening experience in her childhood, and an effort to soothe the child. This altered her relationship with the voice, she said, and sometimes the child now laughs, whispers, even sings. “That is the way it works here,” said Sarah, who is set to graduate from college with honors. “In the group, everyone’s experience is real, and they make suggestions based on what has worked for them. ” Like many of the other alternative models of care, Hearing Voices Network is not explicitly . Many people who regularly attend have prescriptions, but many have reduced dosages. “I walked in the door on Thorazine and thought I couldn’t get better,” Marty Hadge said. “About all I could do is lie on the couch, and the doctors would say, ‘Hey, you’re doing great — you’re not getting in trouble! ’” Mr. Hadge is now a group leader who trains others for that role. He no longer takes Thorazine or any other medication. Not everyone benefits from airing their voices, therapists say. The pain and confusion those internal messages cause can overwhelm any effort to understand or engage. “People will come to our program because they’re determined not to be on medication,” said Dr. Gordon, the medical director of Advocates. “But that’s not always possible. The idea is to give people as many options as we can, to allow them to come up with their own program. ” To do that, proponents of alternative care have much work to do. The programs are spread thin, and to scale up, they will probably have to set aside their native distrust of mainstream psychiatry to form alliances with clinics. In parts of Europe, including Britain and Denmark, such integration has occurred, with hearing voices groups and Open programs widely available. In this country, there is very little collaboration. Ms. White runs a hearing voices group in the forensic psychiatry unit of a hospital in Springfield, Mass. and there is a scattering of other medical clinics that work with voices groups. But the culture gap between alternative and mainstream approaches to psychosis and other mental problem remains deep, and most psychiatrists and insurers will need to see some evidence before forming partnerships. Last month, the influential journal Psychiatric Services published the first study of the Open Dialogue program in the United States, led by Dr. Gordon and Dr. Douglas Ziedonis of the University of Massachusetts. The results are encouraging: Nine of 14 young men and women enrolled in the program for a year after a psychotic episode were still in school or working. Four are doing well without medication the others started or continued on drugs. Insurance covered about a quarter of the overall costs. “It’s tiny, just a pilot study,” Dr. Gordon said. “But it’s a start. ” | 0fake |
Eastern Congo rebels aim to march on Kinshasa: spokesman | GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - A rebel spokesman in eastern Congo said on Friday that his movement intended to march across the country to the capital Kinshasa to depose President Joseph Kabila, who refused to quit power at the end of his mandate last year. Led by self-proclaimed general William Yakutumba, the rebel force, calling itself the National People s Coalition for the Sovereignty of Congo (CNPSC), has emerged as one of the strongest groups in Democratic Republic of Congo s lawless eastern borderlands since its formation in June. Analysts doubt that the CNPSC has the capacity to make a move on the capital. However it briefly captured some strategic towns in June and advanced this week to within a few kilometers of the city of Uvira along Lake Tanganyika, forcing U.N. helicopters to intervene to help Congolese troops drive them back. Congo has been beset by a wave of prison breaks, rebellions and lawlessness since Kabila s refusal to step down in December. We are even going to reach Kinshasa, Dalton Waubwela Mwila, secretary-general of the CNPSC, told Reuters in a telephone interview. Our ultimate objective is to be in Kinshasa. Kabila s father, Laurent, came to power in 1997 on the back of a rebellion that started in eastern Congo, marching the more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) to the capital, but he crucially received backing from the armies of neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda. Waubwela said that the CNPSC includes a number of armed groups in eastern Congo, including in its home province of South Kivu and the neighbouring provinces of North Kivu, Tanganyika and Maniema, where heavy fighting was also reported this week. Yakutumba formed a militia bearing his name in 2007 and established himself as a warlord, gold smuggler and arms trafficker in South Kivu s Fizi territory, but looks to be trying to raise an insurrection with nationwide support. Regional wars in eastern Congo, which holds vast reserves of gold, tin, coltan and other minerals, between 1996-2003 killed millions and spawned dozens of armed groups that continue to exploit natural resources and prey on local populations. Waubwela claimed that the coalition includes more than 10,000 men, but analysts estimate the size of the militia at closer to 300-450, and say it would require significant foreign backing or fresh alliances to be able to occupy much territory, let alone threaten Kabila in Kinshasa. Waubwela said the rebels have armed themselves with weapons captured from Congolese forces. Speaking to reporters in the eastern city of Goma on Thursday, the army s top general, Didier Etumba, dismissed the CNPSC as a flash in the pan that the army would put out . But the rebellion is yet another security headache for Kabila, who is also trying to tame a brutal insurgency in central Congo s Kasai region, which has killed up to 5,000 people and displaced 1.4 million more in the past year. | 0fake |
Police Departments Refuse Participation In Dakota Access Pipeline Crackdown | Videos Police Departments Refuse Participation In Dakota Access Pipeline Crackdown In addition to the general retreat of departments, two officers have already turned in their badges in support of the protesters. Members of the Stutsman County SWAT watch protesters demonstrating against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Stand Rock Sioux Reservation, as they stand next to a police barricade on Highway 1806 in Cannon Ball, N.D., Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016.
Standing Rock, North Dakota — Widespread outrage over both the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and violent police crackdowns rages on. That outrage is spreading even to police agencies now returning from deployment to the reservation. Two departments have already refused to return, citing personal and public objections. As if that wasn’t enough, an army of sympathizers is re-purposing social media to combat police efforts in Standing Rock.
Minnesota’s Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department is among that group. Lawmakers, according to MPR News , found police activities in Standing Rock “inappropriate”. It’s to the point where they’re considering rewriting legislation to avoid future deployments to incidents like the pipeline resistance.
Police officials, of course, declined to comment on their return from North Dakota or their feelings on what’s happening there. It’s also made the task of rebuilding trust with the community an even loftier uphill battle. “I do not support Sheriff Stanek’s decision to send his deputies to North Dakota”, says LT. Governor Tina Smith, “nor did we approve his decision to begin with. I do not have any control over the Sheriff’s actions, which I think were wrong, and I believe he should bring his deputies home if he hasn’t already.”
Smith’s comments split the state’s government, however, and she was targeted. Minnesota State Rep. Tony Cornish condemned Smith for prioritizing “the rights of protesters over the needs of law enforcement”, saying she should apologize to the cops.
Sheriffs from Wisconsin’s Dane County were more empathetic, pulling out and refusing to return. According to the Bismarck Tribune , Sheriff Dave Mahoney made the decision after a “wide cross-section of the community” decried the deployment. “All share the opinion that our deputies should not be involved in this situation”, says Mahoney. Dane County’s deputies were deployed to Standing Rock for around a week. Sources report Dane County wasn’t involved in recent arrests, a string of which scooped up an alderwoman from Madison Wisconsin.
Ald. Rebecca Kemble traveled to North Dakota as a “legal observer”, filming and participating in prayer ceremonies. When Morton County officers–if they cans till be called that–grabbed and arrested her for engaging in a riot. According to Kemble, no riot was happening. Other Wisconsin departments have been recalled, with at least one staying behind for a more couple weeks.
Many other citizens have been charged for trespassing and participating in non-existent riots, including journalists. One of the most renowned reporters who’s faced DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline)- related charges was Amy Goodman of Democracy Now . Goodman’s team filmed dog attacks by DAPL contractors who lacked proper K9 licenses. The contractors have also been accused of unethical surveillance, intimidation, and sabotaging the movement by attempting to make authorities believe the protesters have finally turned violent.
Other journalists, including documentarian Deia Schlosberg, face decades in prison for filming climate activists at a separate oil project. Journalists from the independent outlet Unicorn Riot, who recently reported use of a sound cannon on water protectors, have also been arrested.
Thousands of opponents to the pipeline have flooded Standing Rock to repel construction and police brutality. More still have taken to the internet, spreading information in the form of writing, video, photography, and art. Among the renegade tactics is using Facebook to “check-in” at Standing Rock. According the Guardian , over a million people–even people I know–have joined the action.
It began with a Facebook post, disclosing that Morton County sheriffs are allegedly using Facebook check-ins to track protesters. “Checking in”–whether you’re at a friend’s, restaurant, or escalating resistance–pinpoints your location to a tee. Once you check in, a notification is sent out to, yes, your friends, but theoretically anyone who’s capable of watching. It’s yet another tool in the bag of tricks authorities have deployed against civilians, and are likely utilizing in Standing Rock.
Some detractors have dismissed the social media action as a waste of time. An editor at The Fifth Column challenged these in a Facebook post, narrating a debate on the subject he’d had. Editor Justin King pointed out that even if the check-in’s wasted two minutes of time, multiplied by hundreds of thousands, that equates to two months of wasted police work. Now imagine how ineffective the surveillance may be with millions continuously checking.
Morton County Sheriff’s, Guardian reports, called claims of police surveillance misguided “rumors”. Morton County, by their own account, isn’t “monitoring Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location for that matter.” Before you trust them, consider that Facebook access for water protectors was reported as “blocked’ during a military-style raid on a camp.
Data Collection Nationwide
Other police departments are similarly sketchy when pressured to speak on their surveillance technologies. Wisconsin’s Milwaukee PD hid the use of cell site simulators , or Stingrays, from courts for months. Stingrays mimic cellphone towers, thus tricking phones into providing all manner of user information and data
Nearby, the Wauwatosa Police Department , despite having admitting to “collecting and analyzing cell phone data” in its public reports, denied ever even coming close to a Stingray. It took the department 5 weeks to respond to that open records request, which is considered unusually long. It remains unknown how Wauwatosa PD, which has been blasted for lack of transparency before , collects cell phone data.
The Hand’s Fingers In Open Rebellion
In addition to the general retreat of departments, two officers have already turned in their badges in support of the protesters. North Dakota water protector Redhawk, MintPress reports , disclosed the revelation. The individual also pointed out “you can see it in some of them, that they do not support the police actions.” “Some are waking up”, they continued, “we must keep reminding them that they are welcome to put down their weapons and badge and take a stand against the pipeline as well.” Hints of shame could be seen in the faces of officers who confronted protesters as they blocked them from prayer grounds. As the protesters condemned officers , some of whom looked down or off to the horizon in shame.
The modern era of internet and technology gifts us with a plethora of ways to express ourselves, and help one another. Standing Rock is quickly becoming a stand out of that fact. Citizens, journalists, and activists are all using the internet to achieve their own goals. Whether that be spreading information being blocked, tracking police movements, sending food and rations or just voicing opinions. Standing Rock’s resistance is spreading globally, with protests occurring in Europe and elsewhere. As long as construction doesn’t stop, the movement won’t rest. | 1real |
Tillerson says U.S. will keep up 'peaceful pressure' on North Korea | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday the firing of three ballistic missiles by North Korea this week was a provocative act but that the United States will continue to seek a peaceful resolution. “We do view it as a provocative act against the United States and our allies,” Tillerson said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “We’re going to continue our peaceful pressure campaign as I have described it, working with allies, working with China as well to see if we can bring the regime in Pyongyang to the negotiating table.” | 0fake |
Extreme Left #DISRUPTJ20 Plot to ‘Acid Bomb’ Inauguration Deploraball | 21st Century Wire says The investigation team at Project Veritas just released the first part in another hidden camera interview series which apparently documents their undercover journalist speaking with Washington DC Anti-Fascist extreme leftist group who were conspiring to disrupt the Trump inaugural ball known as the Deploraball by using the HVAC systems in the building to conduct a butric acid release. Obviously, the implications of this story should be of concern to everyone, no matter which party of ideology you are siding with Project VeritasWatch part one of the video series below and let us know what you think Continue this story at Project Veritas READ MORE ELECTIONS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
'I feel like I'm going crazy:' migrant health crumbles in Greece | ATHENS (Reuters) - A mental health emergency is unfolding in migrant camps on Greece s islands, fueled by poor living conditions, neglect and violence, charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday. Medical staff have seen a sharp increase in people trying to get help after attempting suicide, harming themselves or suffering psychotic episodes, it said in a report. More than 13,000 migrants and refugees, mostly Syrians and Iraqis fleeing years of war, are living in five camps on Greek islands close to Turkey, government figures show. Four of those camps are holding two to three times as many people as they were designed for. Every day our teams treat patients who tell us that they would prefer to have died in their country than be trapped here, said Jayne Grimes, manager of MSF s mental health activities on the island of Samos. The charity said six or seven new patients had visited its clinic on the nearby island of Lesbos each week over the summer following suicide attempts, self-harm or psychotic episodes, 50 percent more than the previous three months. Violence which many experienced on the journey or in Greece was one factor aggravating mental distress, MSF said. I know I need to find hope, but when the night falls and I see where I am, I feel like I m going crazy, it quoted a Syrian man as saying. The 25-year-old said he was haunted by the images of people dying of hunger in front of him in the long-besieged town of Madaya. I still remember the taste of the leaves and the smell of death, he said. On Samos, more than 3,000 people are crammed into facilities designed to hold 700, and about 400 live in the woods. In one Lesbos camp, about 1,500 people are in makeshift shelters or tents without flooring or heating, the U.N. refugee agency says. In August, MSF found nearly three-quarters of new mental health patients on Lesbos needed to be referred to a psychiatrist, up from just over a third in the nine months from October 2016 to June 2017. The report quoted a 41-year-old man, who said he had been tortured in a Syrian prison. When he visited a Lesbos hospital, he said he was told he would have to wait eight months to see a psychiatrist. When I heard that, I felt like dying, he said. A 29-year-old Syrian woman, on Lesbos with her family, told the MSF researchers the uncertainty over the future was crushing us. It is killing us inside. While the number of arrivals to Greece has slowed significantly since a European Union deal with Turkey to block the route in March last year, a recent sharp rise in arrivals has put pressure on government-run facilities. | 0fake |
WATCH: Brand-New Pro-Trump Ad Features So Much A** Kissing It Will Make You Sick | Just when you might have thought we d get a break from watching people kiss Donald Trump s ass and stroke his ego ad nauseam, a pro-Trump group creates an ad that s nothing but people doing even more of those exact things. America First Policies is set to release this ad, called Thank You, President Trump, on Christmas Day and, well, we threw up a little in our mouths trying to watch this.Basically, the spot is nothing but people fawning all over Trump for all the stuff he hasn t actually done. The ad includes a scene with a little girl thanking Trump for bringing back Merry Christmas, which never went away (there are even videos of President Obama saying Merry Christmas himself). A man thanks him for cutting his taxes. And America First says that everyday Americans everywhere are thanking Trump for being such a great and awesome president.The best president.Nobody s ever done what he s done. He s breaking all kinds of records every day.Believe us.Anyway, the word propaganda comes to mind when watching this. That s what it is literal propaganda promoting someone who shouldn t need this kind of promotion anymore. Watch this ad bullshit below:The way the MAGAs are kowtowing to Orange Hitler is both disgusting and frightening. The man has done nothing, and his policies will harm the very same Americans who are thanking him. Unfortunately, it will take an obscene amount of pain before they ll open their eyes and see they ve been duped by a con man with a bad hairdo.And his ongoing need for this kind of adoration is, at best, unbecoming of his office. This ad is vile.Featured image via Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
Britain's Prince William and wife Kate expecting third child | LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Prince William and his wife Kate are expecting their third child, their office said on Monday after the Duchess was forced to cancel an engagement due to severe morning sickness. Britain s monarchy has ridden a wave of public support in recent years due to the popularity of William, Kate, and William s brother Harry, and the news was soon making headlines around the world. Queen Elizabeth, who is 91, said she was delighted. The baby will be fifth in line to the British throne, after grandfather Prince Charles, father William and elder siblings George, 4, and Charlotte, 2. The popular Harry becomes sixth in line to the throne. Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting their third child, Kensington Palace said. The Queen and members of both families are delighted with the news. The couple did not say when the baby was due. Kate and William married in a lavish ceremony in 2011 watched by about two billion people around the world. Two years later the international camera crews and photographers camped outside a London hospital to record the birth of George, and returned two years later for his sister Charlotte. George and Charlotte have since appeared on the front covers of magazines around the world and traveled on official royal tours of Poland and Germany with their parents. George will attend his first day of primary school later this week. This is fantastic news, British Prime Minister Theresa May said. Many congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. William and Harry have been in the headlines in recent weeks as they led the efforts to remember their mother Princess Diana who died in a car crash in Paris 20 years ago last Thursday. In a sign of how the young royals have helped to modernize the House of Windsor, the princes have spoken about the trauma of her death and its lasting emotional impact. Harry was in Manchester visiting a center supporting people affected by a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in May when he gave his reaction. Fantastic, great, very very happy for them, he said. Kate last appeared with the princes on Wednesday when they visited a public garden at Kensington Palace dedicated to Diana but the palace said she would not attend an engagement at a children s center on Monday due to ill health. As with her previous two pregnancies, The Duchess is suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum...., the palace said. The Duchess is being cared for at Kensington Palace. Hyperemesis gravidarum can cause severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients. The condition forced Kate to be admitted to hospital in the early months of her first pregnancy with George. The couple have returned to live in Kensington Palace after an earlier spell in Norfolk, eastern England, enabling them to dedicate more time to their royal duties on behalf of William s grandmother, the queen. William has also given up his job as an air ambulance helicopter pilot. One of three herself, Kate had prompted speculation earlier this year that she wanted a third child when she was presented with a cuddly toy designed for newborns during a trip, telling William: We will just have to have more babies. | 0fake |
TREY GOWDY ON CROOKED DNC: ‘There May Be Something The DNC Didn’t Want Law Enforcement to See In Hacked Server [Video] | Rep. Trey Gowdy was full of sarcasm (rightfully so) during comments about why the DNC didn t turn over its hacked computer server to authorities. The puzzling thing that raised red flags is that the organization said it never received federal assistance causing people to question whether the DNC had something it didn t want law enforcement to see. Congressman Gowdy spoke with FOX News Martha MacCallum about why the DNC did not turn over its server to the DHS or FBI officials who could have helped to prevent future hackings:The DNC was hacked during the 2016 election and emails were published by WikiLeaks. JKeh Johnson, former DHS Secretary, testified yesterday that the DNC didn t need help after the hacks.Then this shocker after Johnson s testimony, Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that while she was chair of the DNC, she was never contacted by any federal agency, including DHS and the FBI, about the hack.Gowdy goes on to refer to his career as a prosecutor by implying that it appeared as though the DNC had something to hide: Let me hazard a wild guess: that there may be something else on that server they didn t want law enforcement to see? Trey Gowdy | 1real |
EU seeks to end Brexit transition no later than end: 2020 | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union wants a transition period after Brexit to end no later than Dec. 31, 2020, according to the European Commission s negotiating directives agreed on Wednesday. The transitional arrangements should apply as from the date of entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement and should not last beyond 31 December 2020, the published text showed. Coinciding with the end of the EU s current seven-year budget period, the end of 2020, 21 months after Brexit at the end of March 2019, had long been expected as the target end date of the transition but this was the first official confirmation that this is the official goal of the Union negotiators. British Prime Minister Theresa May had formally asked for a transition to last around two years. The four pages of new directives for EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier were in line with guidelines issued by EU leaders at a summit on Friday and will form the basis of talks on the transition which Barnier hopes to start next month. They spell out that Britain will be effectively still a member of EU institutions, bound by all their rules including new ones, while not having a say in their making. The EU will also offer Britain a non-voting place at some meetings where decisions may affect specific issues and will set up special arrangements for a UK role in setting annual EU fishing quotas. The directives also spell out more clearly that EU treaties with other countries and international organizations will no longer apply to Britain during the transition period. However, the document adds: Where it is in the interest of the Union, the Union may consider whether and how arrangements can be agreed that would maintain the effects of the agreements as regards the United Kingdom during the transition period. This has been important to Britain since it could mean that it no longer benefits automatically from free trade agreements which the EU has with, say, Canada or South Korea, while, as the directives underline, it would still have to apply EU trade policy for example collecting EU customs duty at UK ports. Among elements spelled out more in the transition directives than in the leaders guidelines last week was a repetition of a previously agreed EU position that everything applying to Brexit for Britain would also apply to other British territories. Brussels has previously said the Spanish government must agree any future arrangements with Britain that affect the British territory of Gibraltar on Spain s southern coast. | 0fake |
BRILLIANT! LIBERAL SENATOR TRIES TO EMBARRASS Priest…Gets Schooled By Him On Climate Change [Video] | Father Robert A. Sirico, President and Co-Founder of the Acton Institute, and philosopher and author of A Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Alex Epstein embarrass Senator Barbara Boxer with facts when she tries to discredit them.WATCH HERE:Watch brilliant philosopher prove how the Democrats are falsely using income inequality as an argument for climate change. He also brilliantly points out that the poor people who are being hurt the most when the government intentionally targets domestic fossil fuel production.See Epstein s entire testimony here: | 1real |
Re: Camden, New Jersey: One Of Hundreds Of U.S. Cities That Are Turning Into Rotting, Decaying Hellholes | Camden, New Jersey: One Of Hundreds Of U.S. Cities That Are Turning Into Rotting, Decaying Hellholes December 15th, 2013
All over America, formerly prosperous communities are being transformed into crime-infested wastelands of poverty and despair. Of course the most famous example of this is Detroit . At one time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city that the world had ever seen and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But now it has become a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the planet laughs at. And of course Detroit is far from alone. There are hundreds of other U.S. cities that are suffering a similar fate. In this article, the focus is going to be on Camden, New Jersey, but the truth is that there are lots of other “Detroits” and “Camdens” all over the nation. Jobs and businesses are leaving our cities at a staggering rate, and what is being left behind is poverty, crime and extreme desperation.
Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published an article that took a hard look at the nightmare conditions that exist in Camden. A city that once made Campbell’s soup and some of this nation’s most famous warships is now a national disgrace. The following are six of the best quotes out of that article…
-“In September, its last supermarket closed, and the city has been declared a “food desert” by the USDA. The place is literally dying, its population having plummeted from above 120,000 in the Fifties to less than 80,000 today.”
-“Their home is a city with thousands of abandoned houses but no money to demolish them, leaving whole blocks full of Ninth Ward-style wreckage to gather waste and rats.”
-“With legal business mostly gone, illegal business took hold. Those hundreds of industries have been replaced by about 175 open-air drug markets, through which some quarter of a billion dollars in dope moves every year.”
-“On January 18th, 2011, the city laid off 168 of its 368 police officers, kicking off a dramatic, years-long, cops-versus-locals, house-to-house battle over a few square miles of North American territory that should have been national news, but has not been, likely because it took place in an isolated black and Hispanic ghost town.”
-“After the 2011 layoffs, police went into almost total retreat. Drug dealers cheerfully gave interviews to local reporters while slinging in broad daylight.”
-“The carnage left Camden’s crime rate on par with places like Haiti after its 2010 earthquake, and with other infamous Third World hot spots, as police officials later noticed to their dismay when they studied U.N. statistics.”
You can read the rest of the article right here . But as bad as things have become in Camden, this should not be a surprise to most of you. The reality is that this kind of rot and decay is happening in communities all over the United States.
Over in Detroit, crime has gotten so bad that even the police are telling people to “ enter Detroit at your own risk “. When you call the police in Detroit it takes them an average of 58 minutes to respond, and more than 90 percent of the crimes committed in the city end up as unsolved mysteries.
At this point, 60 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty, and there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.
For much more on all this, check out the statistics in this article , and you can find some great photos of the “ruins of Detroit” right here .
So why is all of this happening?
Well, there are lots of factors involved of course, but the biggest one is the lack of good jobs in these cities.
At one time, Detroit had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the entire nation. But now those days are long gone.
And what is happening to Detroit is precisely what is happening to America as a whole. Our good jobs are disappearing and the middle class is being systematically destroyed .
In order to have a middle class, you have got to have middle class jobs.
There is no way around that.
And right now, hordes of young people are graduating from college and discovering that the middle class jobs that they were promised simply are not there.
CNN recently profiled a 37-year-old college graduate named Bobby Bingham. Because he cannot find a good job, he is forced to work four low paying jobs…
Bobby Bingham works four jobs in Kansas City, Missouri, yet he has very little to show for it.
Bingham is 37 years old and has a college degree, but like many Americans, is stuck working many hours in low wage, part-time jobs.
Each week, he works a total of about 60 hours in his jobs as a massage therapist, a waiter at a Mexican restaurant, a delivery man for sandwich chain Jimmy John’s and a receptionist at his massage school.
Bingham makes approximately $400 a week, which works out to about $20,000 a year. He has come to the conclusion that he may never be able to make enough to support a family…
“I’ve come to the point in my life where I wonder if I can ever support a family,” he said. “I have no idea how that’s ever going to logically happen.”
That deeply saddened my heart when I read that. Here is a young man that wants to get married, have a family and do all the right things, but the economy is so bad that he fears that this may never be possible for him.
As I have written about previously, the economic downturn that we are experiencing right now has hit men particularly hard . The number of men in their prime working years that do not make enough money to support a family is rising with each passing year, and this is causing massive problems in this country.
And when our politicians proclaim that all we need is “more education”, I feel like vomiting. The U.S. population as a whole has more “education” today than it ever has had before.
If you think that “more education” is the answer, then check out the following excerpt from a recent interview with a law school graduate that is making about $40,000 a year and that has about $200,000 in law school debt…
Yes, it’s extremely hard to get by. I can’t afford rent or a car and can barely afford food. Anything extra like enjoying myself with friends, going to a movie, traveling, etc. — that’s all out the window for the foreseeable future and possibly for the rest of my life thanks to law school. I live with my parents. I don’t have a car. I don’t go out to socialize. I don’t date. I don’t buy new clothes. I don’t buy electronics. I don’t buy much of anything. I spend my free time working other jobs to put more money toward my debt. I do contract work for other lawyers, but the pay is very low and payment is sporadic.
Why did this happen to him? Well, the truth is that there are way, way too many law school graduates. There are not nearly enough good jobs for all of them. In fact, this particular law school graduate deeply regrets ever going to law school and considers it “an extraordinary waste of money”…
I consider law school a waste of my life and an extraordinary waste of money. I feel like I was duped and tricked. At the end of the day, it’s my own fault for being a sucker and I learned an extremely hard lesson. Because I went to law school, I don’t see myself having a family, earning a comfortable wage, or having an enjoyable lifestyle.
But at least he has a job. There are millions of college graduates that do not. And there are hundreds of thousands of other college graduates that are currently working as waiters and waitresses. Large numbers are also working temp jobs or standing behind registers in retail stores.
Over the past decade, tens of thousands of businesses and millions of good jobs have left this country. The quality of the jobs that remain continues to decline at a frightening pace , and most of the new jobs that are being “created” these days are part-time jobs.
But you won’t hear the mainstream media or our most prominent politicians talk about these things much. You won’t hear them talk about the fact that median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row or about the fact that the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row .
The middle class is dying .
Wake up America.
And even as millions of our jobs have been shipped to the other side of the planet, some of the most prominent “American companies” have been bought up by foreigners. The following list comes from a recent Economy In Crisis article … —–
Here are some of America’s most famous brands currently held in foreign hands: Budweiser, now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V., which is based in Leuven, Belgium Alka-Seltzer, now owned by German company Bayer Schering Pharma AG Ben & Jerrys, now owned by British-Dutch Unilever AMC theaters, now owned by the Chinese 7-Eleven, now owned by the Japanese company, Seven & I Holdings Woman’s Day Magazine, now owned by the French company, Hachette Filipacchi Médias, S.A Purina, now owned by the Swiss company, Nestle Gerber, now owned by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Novartis Firestone, now owned by the Japanese Bridgestone Corporation Citgo, now owned by the government of Venezuela French’s Mustard, now owned by Reckitt Benckiser, a British conglomerate Frigidaire, now owned by Sweden’s AB Electrolux The Plaza Hotel in New York City, now owned by Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva’s El-Ad Group Trader Joes, now owned by German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht Dial soap, now owned by Henkel KGaA, based in Dusseldorf, Germany Sunglass Hut, now owned by Italian eyewear seller Luxottica Group —–
Are you starting to get the picture?
Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted and more than 46 million Americans are now living in poverty.
And if you are waiting for the jokers in Washington D.C. to fix things, you are going to be waiting for a very, very long time.
Over the past several years, both the Democrats and the Republicans have proven again and again that they are basically completely and totally useless. In fact, just about everything that they try to do actually makes our problems even worse.
In just a few days, Barack Obama leaves for a 17 day holiday vacation in Hawaii. Many have criticized him and the members of Congress for taking so much time off, but perhaps that is the best thing that they can do at this point. As long as they are away from Washington D.C., at least they won’t be making things even worse for all the rest of us. Dent, Faber, Celente, Maloney, Rogers – What Do They Say Is Coming In 2014? » MegaLiberty74
It’s the deindustrialization of America by big government through taxations, fines, fees, extreme regulations, etc. Eventually, the business owner who can’t pay in D.C. to get exempted from such criminal government as like we are seeing with Obamacare, they throw their hands up and say DONE.
Who’s John Galt? This was all predicted and it’s basic economics. JoeD
John Galt was a creepy celibate perv who settled on being dirty thirds with Dagny Taggart.
America as an industrial power could never compete with the rest of the world once the rug was pulled out from under its feet. You blame taxes and regulation but that’s what comes with maintaining a first world country. No way to compete with the China’s of the world that are willing to poison their people with toxic pollution and have billions of people willing to work for slave wages. Of course instead of choosing to protect ourselves we decided it would be a better idea to save a few bucks at Walmart. jox
To reduce the taxes you should cut military expenses, not healthcare nor education. Sonar
So tell that to communist China and Russia which are both increasing military expenditures while spending very little on social services for their people? some-buh-day
Another masterpiece, Michael. That last paragraph is golden lol. Don’t forget that people are leaving the country in record numbers also 1stworlder
Those are productive people trying to go Galt to somewhere with lower taxes Chris
Ross Perot warned us this would eventually happen, but we failed to listen. In all honesty, we deserve everything we’re getting now. We voted for all of this. Politicians realized a long time ago that most people were uniformed about what was happening around them, thus allowing them to pass these ludicrous trade agreements that only benefited a handful of individuals. I’m afraid it’s too late to save the ship now. Rodster
It was the “giant sucking sound”, so true. Mondobeyondo
The “giant sucking sound” is coming from DC. 2Gary2
the giant sucking sound is conservative policies sucking the wealth of the middle class up to their 1% who they exclusively represent. Sonar
the giant sucking sound is progressive/liberal/leftist/socialist/communist policies sucking the wealth of the middle class up to their 1% cronies like George Soros along with bankers and hedge funds managers who put their stooge into the White House dbomb12
Don’t forget the “CONSERVATIVE” heritage foundation supported NAFTA. The left / right paradigm is the real divider. All polititcians are part of the same culb and we are not in it FUKyiah
WHAT conservative policies? What planet are you from? I’ll bet your parents were related BEFORE they got married. nestazhe265
Aunty Elena got a real nice Porsche Boxster by working off of a computer… Read Full Report Big29.ℂom FounderChurch
We need more of THE RIGHT KIND, and fewer of the wrong kind. By that I mean dumb America haters and I think you would qualify on both counts. Why do you pretend to be so dense and dumb? You know what I meant to start with, and if you are too slow to get it, well then, I just told you. Pablo Solano
Laughable. Spouting meaningless rubbish. It saddens me to think of the trees that produced oxygen that has been wasted on you. GSOB
I didn’t vote for any of this. In fact, I voted for Ross Perot. Geoff Gariepy
Ross Perot was looking out for Ross Perot. Mondobeyondo
So did I. He would have made a difference if he had been elected. But this is a democracy, er, constitutional republic, and the people wanted Clinton. Kannin
The people didn’t want Clinton! He won with less than 50% of the vote. Ross Perot only served to divide the conservative vote. djc
I voted for him twice. Its all really hopeless at this stage of the game. JulietteofOhio
WE don’t deserve this and WE didn’t fail to listen.There just weren’t enough of US to make a difference, but WE are suffering along with everyone else. I do agree it’s too late to save the ship. J Hall
And the opportunity is likely to come sooner than most expects. Mondobeyondo
How did these politicians get to such high levels of power? Someone voted for them. We don’t have coup d’etats in America (or do we?)
Detroit is my favorite example of mismanagement. And NO, it has NOTHING to do with black politicians in charge for the past 60 years there. It’s government mismanagement, Kannin
It was mismanagement and the unions. At the same time the government was growing too large too fast… and giving in to the public unions, the private unions were killing manufacturing jobs. What followed was fewer jobs and higher taxes to help support the bloated city. Then the wealthiest and the middle class fled to the burbs, and left the city to the poorest… who cannot afford to support the massive amounts of infrastructure and retirees. You can draw a very clear line between Detroit, Michigan and 20 other cities and states… St. Louis, Chicago, California and Illinois to name a few… mismanaged by liberal governments and unions… both, private and public. Annette Smith
I am so surprised that California has not declared bankruptcy. I don’t know how it gets along. Used to live there, and glad we don’t anymore. El Pollo de Oro
Chris: to this day, I hate Rush “Pillhead” Limbaugh with a passion for trashing Ross Perot. Pillhead was a big supporter of NAFTA and called Perot a racist for opposing it. But Perot was absolutely right about that “giant sucking sound.” Americans ignored Perot at their own peril, and I think you’re right about it being too late to save the ship now. Welcome to the Third World. Chris
EI Pollo de Oro: NAFTA and the rest of the free trade agreements were never meant to help us “little people.” Its sole purpose was to turn First World countries into Third World dumps. If they pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership, then it’s lights out for good. El Pollo de Oro
Chris: That’s exactly what NAFTA (No American Factories Taking Applications) was designed to do: turn major developed economies into Third World toilets. And CAFTA made things even worse because it sent out a message that if globalists though minimum-wage workers in México were overpaid, they could always move to countries that are even poorer (Honduras, Guatemalan, El Salvador). Globalism is truly a race to the bottom just as Perot predicted. Sequoia
NAFTA also screwed the Mexican people,because it wiped out all of the small family farms.Now the campesinos in Michoacan and other agriculture areas have to compete with the big Agribusiness corpotations in the USSA, and of course they can’t compete with them. The campesinos went broke and could’t compete and some of them had no choice than abandon their farms and try to cross the border ilegally into the USSA,to find work and survive. If there was no NAFTA,most of these people would have stayed in their home states,in Mexico Farming and surviving. NAFTA has screwed the Amaeicans, Mexicans and Canadians El Pollo de Oro
Sequoia: Excellent point about how badly NAFTA hurt campesinos in México. Although globalists won’t admit it, there’s a major connection between NAFTA and all the narcoviolencia south of the border. When campesinos lost their livelihood, los carteles took full advantage of that and put them to work. Sonar
NAFTA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993 and entered force January 1, 1994. Although it was signed by President Bush, it was a priority of President Clinton’s, and its passage is considered one of his first successes by the Democrat Party. El Pollo de Oro
Sonar: NAFTA is one of the many reasons I’m neither a Republi-con nor a Democrap. Clinton and Gore supported NAFTA along with Rush “Pillhead” Limbaugh and the Heritage Foundation. It was bipartisan rape of the American economy. So, bienvenidos, americanos, al tercer mundo. Annette Smith
Always, follow the money. Danger_Close
Limbaugh had always been for the Establishment GOP and for Multi National Corporations. He has never cared about what’s best for The Republic or it’s citizens.
He threatened to leave for Singapore if Obama was reelected, yet for some reason, he’s still in West Palm Beach.
Americans ignored Perot, as the ignored Paul. Trouble is, both were right. El Pollo de Oro
Danger Close: Pillhead Limbaugh also threatened to move to Costa Rica because of the Unaffordable Care Act, which gave me a good laugh because in many parts of Latin America, he would be a prime candidate for the dreaded Desperate People Doing Desperate Things Tax. Pillhead might be OK in Costa Rica, which is one of the safer countries in Latin America. But in Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras or Colombia, he would be a prime candidate for a kidnapping. The kidnappers/DPDDTT collectors are no joke in those countries. GSOB
I like Rush more than I know you. Annette Smith
Rush was okay when he started. He has become filthy and vulgar. He has been outright disgustingly trashy. I no longer listen to him for years. No one in my family does, anymore. Once you have to resort to vulgarity, you’re nothing. Sally Q
No, not all of us voted for this crap…many of us either refused to vote (don’t bother with the arguments…), or voted for somebody such as Ron Paul…the problems are not voting; the problems are the banking / corporate conglomerates and various multinational organizations such as the CFR that own the governments of most countries and are deliberately orchestrating these events. If you don’t believe it, do some investigating into the Federal Reserve, the Rothschilds, the Bilderbergs, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations and other related people and organizations. Put it together and understand. Chris
” the problems are the banking / corporate conglomerates and various multinational organizations such as the CFR that own the governments of most countries and are deliberately orchestrating these events” You just made my point. Like I said in my original post, voting is the problem because the majority keep on voting for politicians who are in cahoots with corporate conglomerates, etc. theblues77
Exactly. You can’t write an accurate article or frame the debate accurately without STARTING with NAFTA. bertinanth764
my Aunty Caroline got Buick Verano Sedan by working part time at home online. my latest blog post Big29.ℂom GSOB
troll John O’Neill
Amen to all of that. It is not just Obama/Biden who caused much of this but it is the millions of Americans who voted for them and who still champion their affirmative action virtuous government. Americans brought this on themselves and as Mencken once said “democracy is people getting what they deserve and getting it good and hard”. Rufus T Firefly
Does the Rolling Drone article point out that, like Detroit, Camden is a Democratic city that voted overhelmingly for Obama? They are getting the hellhole they deserve. WarriorClass III
Camden was 89 percent white in 1940 (104,842 out of 117,536 residents), and it was thriving. It attracted a steady flow of black migrants in search of jobs (that they didn’t create, nor could they sustain). By 1980, the city was 53 percent black (45,009 out of 84,910 residents). Only 26,003 white people remained.
This is how the city of Camden died — no more white residents paying the taxes or maintaining some form of civilization to support the city. Eventually, the same non-white population that overwhelmed Camden started to overwhelm the white suburbs surrounding the city.
Demography is destiny.
You meant race is destiny. Mondobeyondo
Race.. is the 100 meter dash. 1stworlder
its inverse. The race that usually wins 100 meter dashes loses out at the math test at payday loan offices. luchia
You are so correct warrior. I live in Camden on Erie St., in 1953. I was a great neighborhood. No crime, but petty stuff. We then moved to N. 24th St. No crime, except the petty. When I would go out and play, Mom would say, be home before dark, and at ages 8,9,10,11, etc., I was gone ALL day long. Couldn’t call Mom either, no phone, oh also no cell phone (lol). Nice clean neighborhoods both of them. Then they build Abbott Village for the low income people and slowly the place deteriorated, it seem like wild fire, slowly thugs and people from Puerto Rico, blacks took over, and it went to crap. Once the whites moved out, it started to become what it is today. Drove thru there about 2 yrs. ago, it was disgusting. Sequoia
Los Angeles CA has also turned into a hellhole which is expanding to one day turn all of Southern California into one. Sonar
Inland California is filled with bankrupt hellholes like Stockton and San Bernardino. Annette Smith
So true, so true! Those of us who grew up there know this to be the absolute truth. Did you know that Los Angeles is filled with illiterate people? There was a news report on the amount of illegals there. So many, now that the whites have moved out, that they are the main population group in Los Angeles city…and they are illiterate. Google it for the story. de malfosse
luchia; I also lived on Erie St until ’69. There is no public acceptance of that which we witnessed. Hellfire1968
Baltimore is the way and it is getting worse. k
They shouldnt have been brought from africa then. Blame politicians, not people. JulietteofOhio
There’s not a lot we can do about that, now. Politicians didn’t bring them, it was a business, and a very bad one, which has ongoing ramifications for all of us. We’re still stuck trying to take care of them, and they’re still busily biting the hand that feeds them. k
Its not the ones who are being fed, its the ones who arent. k
And businesses and politicians have been hand in hand since millenia. They are two sides of the same coin. Hammerstrike
Who elected the politicians? That´s right!
Some are more guilty than others but if you are looking for the guilty, you only need to look into a mirror! k
People elect politicians believing they will do something good. Now if politicians do something bad instead, its their fault not the peoples. The only other alternative is not to vote…and a lot of people do that already. k
I dont know how i missed your comment. Kim
This is racist. The failure of Camden and other us cities is connected to de-industrialization which can be connected to an even bigger cause, namely, peak oil in the United States in 1970. I’m not talking about fracking potentials, but cheap, easily-recoverable oil with large investment to energy recovered ratios. After we drained our wells circa 1970, industrialization declined and the jobs (money) went away and the poor were left inhabiting places like Camden and Detroit. This has nothing to do with the color of anyone’s skin. The only connection I see between race and poverty is lack of opportunity, and the governments refusal to be honest and manage the wind down of industry in a rational way. Eventually, we will all be living in similar Camdens, or worse.
The weapons of mass instruction have done their damage. There are far more poor whites without opportunity than non-whites in America, yet it’s the non-whites that are responsible for more than 80% of the crime.
The ten most dangerous cities in America all have non-white majority populations, new FBI data has revealed.
This not-so-surprising news is just the latest piece of evidence that emphasizes a clear correlation between increased non-white immigration and soaring crime figures.
Refer to The New Century Foundation’s The Color of Crime (2005), an American report on the differences in crime rates by race. It found that:
• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
• Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate.
• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.
• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.
• Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.
• Only 10 percent of youth gang members are white.
• Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs. Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.
• Blacks are seven times more likely to be in prison than whites. Hispanics are three times more likely.
You can keep making excuses for these people, but the facts don’t change. The problems you mention affect us all, but it’s the non-whites committing the crimes. Kim
Depends on where u live. I don’t believe criminal behavior is oriented in one’s racial DNA, just as I don’t believe one is homosexuality in the womb and from birth.
Environment, social status, economic status, inequality, and culture play primary roles in adult behavior.
Then u have the added problem of substance abuse.
Let’s take a comprehensive look at these statistical outcomes before we make conclusion that if you’re born black or mexican you are destined to have an 80% more probability to commit a violent crime than your white counterparts. Until there is actually something isolated in the human genome pertaining to race and criminal behaviors, I any reason to take a racist attitude toward crime. WarriorClass III
To some extent it does seem to depend upon where you live. Minorities in Texas are less violent than in other parts of the country. Nevertheless they are still more violent than whites and there are far more whites that are subjected to adverse pressures with regard to the things you mention, like environment, social status, economic status, inequality, drug use and cultural issues. Overall, non-whites are more impulsive and violent and the strongest correlation is race rather than any other factor. This is just observation of the facts, not racism. Whites are not angels, but you don’t see these problems in majority white cities and neighborhoods. Kim
It could be cultural, intellectual and emotional as well. It is well known that Italians are hot tempered. Does that mean they are hot tempered BECAUSE they are Italian? Not necessarily, I am of English heritage mostly and my family is very even tempered. But we have our issues. GSOB
Good point Spain is the only Hispanic nation with more bookstores than woman/male donkey shows. Hammerstrike
“Minorities in Texas are less violent than in other parts of the country.”
Everyone is, because there are a lot of guns there! GSOB
P = Perseverance of the Saints 1stworlder
IQ has been proven to be at least 85% genetic. This plays out in choices like “should I take a 500+%APR payday loan” or “should I rob a liquor store for $200, which could put me in prison, and prevent me from getting a job at a liquor store” China towns have been some of the poorest neighborhoods in US history but had even less crime than white hoods. Asians are able to succeed because they evolved under similar circumstances as Europeans. Kim
Ok, no way. Not genetic, it’s environmental, in other words, related to the way you are raised, taught, what sort of examples you have had, I will reach and give u the benefit of nutritional influences. Genetics? Please. No way — this line of thought is akin to predestination, and I don’t believe in predestination, however, if we are talking about some sort of genetic defect, I am open to that. Are u talking about some sort of mental defect that has been diagnosed by a medical doctor? 1stworlder
Nutrition can only affect it negatively and no one in the US on foodstamps is going to be that deficient. Studies have been done on identical twins separated at birth. The genes for IQ would give no advantage to people in an R style evolution set up where they have to outbreed diseases, High IQ only helps those evolving in K style evolution. If it was environmental 4th generation Hispanics would be able to compete with whites. Reality is what still exists when you stop believing in it. The avg IQ for east Asians is 106, whites 100, Mexicans 90, US/DR blacks 85 and African/Haiti blacks 70. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a land mass but the avg IQs between the 2 is as great as US vs African blacks due to the histories of each side of the island. Haitis side killed all whites & mixed after slaves where freed while the DR only killed white males. Annette Smith
Culture. And, the fact that the way your mom and dad brought you up, generally creates your destiny. Oh, that’s culture. Hammerstrike
Look further than peak oil or even wages, it is still more expensive for China to get oil than for the US and A.
The Federal Reserve and central banks in europe, through inflation, are redistributing profits from manufacture and other businesses to themselves and their cronies, they backed bloated governements that are sucking national economies even drier.
As for race… Sonar
Peak oil have been proven to be a failed theory put out by alarmists in the environmental movement who refuse to acknowledge the fact that oil production is INCREASING! In 2003, the Bakken formation in North Dakota was producing a mere 10,000 barrels a day. Today, it is over 400,000 barrels, and North Dakota has become the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country. Such “tight” oil could add as much as two million barrels a day to U.S. oil production after 2020—something that would not have been in any forecast five years ago.
Overall U.S. oil production has increased more than 10% since 2008. Net oil imports reached a high point of 60% in 2005, but today, thanks to increased production and greater energy efficiency (plus the use of ethanol), imports are down to 47%. Kim
The Bakken oil play is a joke. As are all fracking operations. Hammerstrike
Not when biological warfare, economic collapse and pandemies are involved! Gay Veteran
“…So why is all of this happening? Well, there are lots of factors involved of course, but the biggest one is the lack of good jobs in these cities….”
I expected this article to bring out the people who wants to blame minorities instead of the multi-national corporations.
attributed to Jay Gould: “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” Mondobeyondo
You know, whenever you discuss Detroit’s politics you run the risk of being racist.
*sigh*
Ummm.. you know? I’m tired of hearing the old tired arguments that “anywhere black people run the government, trouble is sure to follow”.
Just gonna touch on a couple brief points as my time is limited.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present…..
Exhibit #1 The late Nelson Mandela. Black guy, held in prison for 27 years, ran for president, and won. South Africa is a worse, um BETTER country because of Nelson Mandela.
If there was an African American Republican in charge of Detroit, would it have been any different? Really? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. English Kev
South Africa is better,yeah? That’s what you’re saying,right? Jeesh.
Nope,, didn’t say that at all. Peter
There was only one person who walked on water, and it wasn’t Mandela. There was a reason Mandela went to jail. Did you know his wife put tires around peoples necks and set them on fire. While he was busy organizing car bombing in the city. Does the Liberal media or schools teach this. Or are they too busy renaming the school after him. Anonymous
Have you asked some of the South African farmers if they think S.Africa is a better country after Mandela? jox
Obviously the people that benefited from segregation and racism feel that life was better with the former social structure. Do we have to worry about them? 1stworlder
During apartheid there was always heavy immigration as it was better than any black nation. Kim
It absolutely would not have made one bit of difference whether a democrat or a republican black or white was running Detroit. Detroit was built on cheap oil. It was a city that thrived on industrialization and collapsed under its own weight when de-industrialization began, and the poor were left holding the bag. Race is so completely irrelevant in the collapse of Detroit and Camden, I find it bizarre that we are even discussing it. Just give it time, we will all be living in Camdens of our own soon enough. De-industrialization itself isn’t an evil thing. But refusal to honestly acknowledge it and manage it in a proper way has led to the Camdens of this country. Pablo Solano
Here, here 1stworlder
When you replace a population with an avg IQ of 100 with one of 85 you get the 3rdworld. 1stworlder
Mandella’s family was given a free gold mine and the new black guards they hired sold all the equipment for scrap. Not an ounce of gold has left it since it was given, you would think if you were going to steal from a gold mine you would steal gold not scrap metal. Mondobeyondo
Three reasons why I’m still awake at 1AM on the Internet. – in no particular order:
1) Lady Gaga videos 2) People who think all our nation’s problems are because of the Democrats 3) That “Sound of Music” production that Carrie Underwood (who I suspect is a Democrat) starred in on NBC, on December 5th. Malcolm Reynolds
“People who think all our nation’s problems are because of the Democrats” What do you ascribe them to? Gay Veteran
BOTH parties. get a clue Malcolm Reynolds
Oh, I’ve got a clue. It’s a simple question to see what he thinks the issue is. I’m just curious what he thinks.
Now lets see if you have that much touted clue. Which philosophy? laura m.
Other hellholes are Reading, Pa. Sections in Baltimore, Gary, Ind., Atlanta; some of these row houses are at least 100 yrs old and not kept up in decades, like Detroit falling into ruins. K & Kim: agree, this is not a time to breed kids either. They will have a zero future. 1stworlder
Reading PA is a sanctuary city. Boo-urns
Voting Republican would have made no different. Do you really think the GOP isn’t comprised of the same type of idiots and morons and greedy bastards as the Democrats? Drud
I agree with the sentiment and I love the handle. Almost makes me want to change my to Hans Moleman. K
Michael once we had a pretty great Country here. Now we are turning into the world norm, 75% poor, 20% middle class, and 5% rich or near rich. Most of the smaller countries have always had these kind of percentages. Now the larger ones are heading down the same road. It is all part of a long term plan, and that plan is approaching the final chapter. Once this sort of plan would have never worked here, the people would have never stood for it. So perhaps this Country may be more educated than ever before. But it sure isn’t as smart as it once was. kfilly
Yeah, most that are educated are educated idiots. Most of them don’t have a lick of common sense. Anonymous
Very true. Some of the most intelligent people are found in the rural areas with little formal education. The song “A Country Boy Can Survive” is likely talking about the Southeast USA. Those people know how to survive and take care of themselves, even when there are no jobs to be found. Annette Smith
I am living among some of those folks. It’s good to be here. They take care of one another, too! J Hall
kfilly, they were never really educated. They were trained and indoctrinated. There is a significant difference. Mondobeyondo
It’s still a great country. Ask anyone from Cambodia what they think of the U.S.
We are losing the American Dream though. That more than anything, is what made America great. Azrael
No, what made America great was the wholesale killing of indians to get their land for free. If you would have had to pay for it you would have been in the same position as Mexico. K
What happened to the Native Americans was wrong, but not unique. Except for the most remote, or undesired land. Every place on earth is soaked with human blood. ,All lands, have at some point been violently taken by someone else. Mans civilized nature is a very thin veneer. In times of crisis, it is quite easily ripped away.Those that doubt that are in for quite a shock, albeit a very short shock. k
All great countries, at some point have gone down too. K
Very true. But none of those Countries possessed nuclear weapons. If we fail, what happens next. Do the local warlords take over the nukes? Or do the Russians or the Chinese nuke us, to keep that from happening. Or do they invade en masse to secure the nuclear stockpile. No, if we fail, it will be greatly different than anything witnessed before. k
Russia, china, india, pak, have the same threat…and more likely than not, they have a greater danger from warlords and economic/societal collapse than america has right now. K
Russia and China have a strong enough military, to secure their nukes. As Russia already proved when the communists fell. India is actually in better shape than most, and the core of their military is highly professional. Pak. there are already plans in place to invade, to secure their nukes. k
Not as strong as americas. America has the strongest military in the world. And if you think their military is strong enough to protect their nukes, then my friend you have nothing to worry about with regards to americas capability to protect its nukes. GSOB
That is for the time being.
America is the atomic weapons franchise dealer of the world. GSOB
ACTS 17:26
And He hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation,
27 that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. Annette Smith
Everything has a shelf life. Kim
I agree with you. The native Americans were just waiting to be displaced. Someone was going to do it eventually, but, what I find tragic is the WAY they were displaced. I also agree that many are in for quite a shock. I vacillate from being hopeful, to being afraid. Sometimes I feel ambivalent, which I strongly dislike. K
Until the collapse actually happens, there is nothing wrong with a bit of hope. Fear however can paralyze, I find no use for it. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst seems a good guideline. Many nowadays get caution confused with fear. Caution comes from wisdom, fear does not. So prepare to the point that you can, but do not forget to live your life.. GSOB
Matthew 24:6
“You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. 7“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.… Annette Smith
My family is gone, except for my son. I am glad that he has chosen to not marry and have kids. So, I only have him to worry about. I would hate to have grand-children in this world. I would worry so much about them. I grew up in the 50’s in a neighborhood that was like Ozzie and Harriet. I miss that place. Anyway, I’m glad that I won’t have immediate family to worry about. Patrick Mallahan
Only the strong survive, it’s nature. J Hall
Azrael, the initial settlers did well with the indigenous peoples. Both benefited from the other. What happened is when the ruling class realized that the wilderness they were banishing the undesirables to was, in fact, a very wealthy land – they sent their own to pillage it as they had done everywhere else they could reach. Mondobeyondo
Not really. Nations all over the world have this tendency of killing off their native citizens for their (the conquerors’) own benefit. Australia for one.
There are exceptions (Japan, Sweden, etc)… but not many. FUKyiah
Native Americans were angels who never killed each other and they never fought over land. Is this the crap they teach the kiddies in public school nowadays? Azrael
No, but they do teach us that it was their land, not yours, and you slaughtered them for it. Which makes you far more evil than they ever were. GSOB
Prove how that made America great… K
You can always find someplace worse. But my friend consider this. Forty years ago, people from Germany wanted to come here, not so much anymore. We were the great experiment. Could a nation prosper without the greedy psychotic few ruling it? Well it seems the experiment is over, and they getting ready to eliminate the lab rats. Anonymous
Ask almost anyone in the military if people from other countries are still hanging around the military bars to get a spouse to get to the USA. The answer is still “yes.” Dave Jenkins
Because most of them living in those other countries who want to marry a spouse to get to the USA still believe that the streets in the USA are paved with gold and money grows on every American tree. Until they arrive.. then they wake up and smell the coffee. I am sure most of them wanted to immigrate to the USA even in 1935 in the depths of the Great Depression. My point : they don`t know any better. FUKyiah
They used to want to come to the U.S. for freedom and opportunity…..now they want free government cheese! Parasites! Patrick Mallahan
‘The American Dream’ relied heavily on only a small portion of the world prospering. Now that everyone wants ‘The American Dream’ there aren’t enough of the scraps left from the fat cats to allow it. Malcolm Reynolds
If the American Dream relied on so little, how come when the concept is expanded there’s just not enough? Patrick Mallahan
Because based on my comment you replied to, ‘The American Dream’ only works when a small portion of the world population is experiencing it. Every time a new person takes part in ‘The American Dream’ it takes away from those already enjoying ‘The American Dream’ GSOB
DEFINE:‘The American Dream’
If you can only do that, you’d be speaking for yourself as to what that is.
You don’t understand the half of what you pretend to know. k
Thats a very good point!
If i am not mistaken i think it was bill clinton who said, america with 5% of the world population consumes 20 % of the worlds resources, and he likes to keep it that way.
Not trying to criticise america or anything, given the chance every country will try to do that. GSOB
It is glaringly obvious that ‘The American Dream’ is but materialism to you.
‘The American Dream’ did not rely on a small portion of the world for it to propser,… as you say.
You have missed the boat. Go play with your XBOX 1stworlder
The American dream require only that my grandfather didn’t have to pay for Latrina’s 14 illegitimate kids provisioning. Low IQ 3rdworlders bring everything around them down just like in Detroit. Patrick Mallahan
What it basically comes down to is, do you think it’s the responsibility of the intelligent to take care of the unintelligent? My answer is no. Annette Smith
Unfortunately, that is true. I went back to California for a visit. I drove through parts of the better areas of Los Angeles. Santa Monica and West L.A. were where we visited. I could not believe the screaming yellow paint of the hispanic businesses and how garish they had turned to place into. They can only bring with them what they know. How sad. beckjeremy .
The fact you use Cambodia, a country not too long ago bombed into the stone age, as a reference point with which to compare the US says it all. Mondobeyondo
Didn’t have to be Cambodia though. Matter of fact, we have a habit of building up countries that we’ve bombed. Japan, Germany, Iraq… El Pollo de Oro
Guatemala is a great country compared to Somalia. To the average Somali, Guatamala City would be a big step up. But to globalists, the problem with Guatemala is that it isn’t Third World enough and needs to be more like Somalia. Rogoraeck
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! Annette Smith
Any strong country has to be reduced to nothing, for their to be a One World Gov. Right?
And while Bingham makes $20K a year, Congress is considering – only considering, mind you – capping spending on official portraits (oil paintings) at $20K each. Currently, a portrait can cost much more than $20K. Rodster
Eventually this will all lead to a total social breakdown. It’s happening ALL around the world. Places like China are having to dumping cheap money into their system to keep their citizens (all 1.2 billion) from going ballistic.
So in the end as we get closer to a total global economic collapse we are going to read more of these stories.
At some point Amerikans will say enough and that’s when the Tanks, Paramilitary and Militarized Police depts are called in against an UNARMED nations. Douglas M. Green
djgrooveline posted a video on youtube last week showing a mile or more of railcars with light armored vehicles being transported. You have to assume that DHS preparing with assault weapons, ammo, gear and armored vehicles is no coincidence to our economic decay and decline in these years of $ trillion deficits and “recovery.” greanfinisher .
This is why the politicians want to disarm the people. JSB
All the while stock indices soar to new heights. Azrael
That’s not soaring for wealth, it’s inflation. 1stworlder
you can melt down a pre 1965 quarter and get over $5 of silver, that’s how bad inflation is James
Michael,
Might I suggest taking a look at Thom Hartmann. he recent wrote a book called the crash of 2016. He is liberal in nature but criticizes Obama and the democrats all the time. I have just started the book but based off interviews he is saying that Obama is doing what Bush and his advisors tried to do before 2008. That is delay the crash until he leaves office. Hartmann even suggests that the crash will be before 2016 and that it is long term decline not one epic crash as you have often stated. 1stworlder
While he has a point about cycles he ignores that leftist George Soros caused in UK to the pound, what he claims the right is trying to do here, instead of leftist Soros slopupy
Here is a young man that wants to get married, have a family and do all the right things, but the economy is so bad that he fears that this may never be possible for him. Uhhh…and the problem is?? XSANDIEGOCA
Let’s all go to Hawaii! Bushisugly
What has America become? Is it fair to draw comparisons to an Orwellian state? Well maybe it is not that far from the truth, so let’s make some comparisons.
The first and most obvious similarity is the surveillance of everyone. As the NSA completely unchallenged expands it’s storage capabilities toward infinity, and cameras are popping up everywhere, there will ulitimatly be no place to hide. Not even your thoughts are safe. In an Orwelian society one do have “food rations”, in an American society one have “food stamps”. They are basicly the same, and the percentage that rely upon them in our American system are well into the double digits and rising fast, soon to effect the vast majority of us in true Orwellian style.
As in the totalitarian Oceania, the totalitarian America is run by a shadowy despot who’s identity doesn’t remain clear to the public. In our case most probably a group of ultra-rich and a selected few military commanders, their exact identity and the level of cooperation between them, remains pretty much in the dark. In America, though, the totalitarian system is dressed up like a to-party-democracy, arguably making it even harder for the common man to hold the rigth people accountable for what is happening. Not even Owrell thought of that.
And of course, the history are being alternated in front of our eyes. Are you one of the numerous Americans that believe the cold blooded murder of a quarter million innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (perhaps the single biggest crime during WWII) was an act of heroism? If so you believe in a giant lie, which for years have been presented to us as a indisputable fact. Sadly not the only example of a lie turned into fact, especially not if you consider withholding the truth as a lie.
So what about those who have rebellious thoughts, what happen to them? Well first of all there are no such things as revolutionaries in America, only terrorists. And such elements of society can of course be put in prison for as long as our masters seems fit, with or without any formal charges against them. Though, such measures are usually not necessary because everybody knows that people who speak against the American moddel are nutters, that is after all what the media constantly keeps telling us, and when the media is directly run by a selected few from the elite, can legally lie, and make sure to drown any kind of alternative opinions by constantly spamming the internett and our TV-screens with the same junk-news and zombifying entertainment day after day after day, it becomes pretty obvious why people end up rather compliant. Sounds like a familiar story?
No wonder then why Americans apparently love their “Big Brother”, I mean, why else would we collectively pay trillions of dollars to bail our “pupet masters” following the financial crisis in 2008, without staging as much as a proper protest?
Not so much difference after all perhaps? It might still be some years to og before we are there, but things are deteriorating fast and the future looks rather bleake. Unless, of course, you lern to master the art of “dubblethink”. GSOB
Our country has been sold out long ago. Our current leadership on the hill will continue this to achieve the liberal version of it.. Guest
And some will say the solution is to vote them all out in the next election. Right. We’ve been hearing that for years, and yet the same politicians are voted back into office. Nothing will change. We’re told that approval ratings for the Congress and the President are at new lows, but it doesn’t matter. The President will go on lying to the American people. And the Congress will continue to do nothing about this nation’s growing indebtedness except make it worse. There won’t be a turnaround. The slow death will continue until there are no vital signs whatsoever. Rodster
It’s very sad but true. ConcernedAmerican
Politicians are selected, but not by the voters. GSOB
“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” – Josef V. Stalin
hey gary, you must be s proud Rodster
This is Gary’s Progressive/Keynesian world so he needs to embrace it with lots of love. Guest
The Rolling Stone article referred to above states a quarter of a billion dollars flows through the open-air drug markets in Camden. Tax the drug dealers HARD, and spread the wealth! Rodster
This story hot close to home. I remember working on a vehicle for a young couple and the wife to me here and her husband were in debt (dental college) for $374k. She said it was hard paying the bills and here and her husband were getting by even though they were renting a nice house in a gated community. Bill
I wonder if Camden will get station #2 for dispensing o-gas? Bill
Although the original article for this story is traced to a satirical website it is still good cabal fodder as it could lead to street violence which could lead in turn to martial law. This “is” what the cabal wants. GSOB
Propaganda is truly phenomenal! Roddy Pfeiffer
Being on top of the heap is only temporary, as America is finding out. When other countries learn to manufacture what we make, they will do it cheaper and we will no longer have jobs. Did we think we could keep all this a secret forever? Tractor
Send him and his family to sunny Detroit for a couple of years. They can stay in my cardboard box on S. Michigan Ave. bloggo
The problem is while the rest of the worlds cities and infrastructure where lying in ruins in the fifties after the war there was no competition to US. Its easy to be superpower when NO competition. Go the olympics while all other competitors have a ball and chain. As they recovered the truth comes home.They are a bunch of people who have stole N America from the inhabitants by brutal violence. They will get the due wrath. Alasha
“Bobby Bingham works four jobs in Kansas City, Missouri, yet he has very little to show for it.”
i worked “three jobs mon and trust me it is is n fun. totally hated every breathing moment…. wondering why did God let me wake up again today. Just a smidget of improvement since i have my $60k job yr past 4 years in this high cost of living area where 2 bedroom apartments can easily go for $4k a month…. now my every other breathing moment is hated and i wake every other day wondering why did He let me live another day……….. sort of. Alasha
Ben & Jerrys, now owned by British-Dutch Unilever
AMC theaters, now owned by the Chinese
7-Eleven, now owned by the Japanese company, Seven & I Holdings
Gerber, now owned by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Novartis
Firestone, now owned by the Japanese Bridgestone Corporation
Trader Joes, now owned by German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht
Dial soap, now owned by Henkel KGaA, based in Dusseldorf, Germany
Really – wow I dont want to buy or use ANY of these products,,,, I thought i was supporting our community… Especially with Trader Joes which i Love……. BUMMMER Klenzade
Nestles bought Gerber from Novartis two years ago. xander cross
More proof that it’s white men that are sending the jobs to Europe and China. JoeD
We all want the first world standard of living but no one is willing to pay more than the third world price. All of this is fine so long as it doesn’t come to my neighborhood! Colin
I feel our country has two types of cities; the cities that are gentrifying, like San Francisco and Washington, DC, and the cities that are dying, like Camden and Detroit. Anonymous
I didn’t know San Fran was doing well. Last I heard, their homeless population was really growing. Also, who can afford to live in California? Seriously, what kind of work are people doing that they can afford to live in California, New York, and New Jersey? Whenever I look at their home prices and what one gets for the money, I have to make sure I am sitting down to endure the shock. Sonar
Both San Francisco and Washington DC have huge homeless populations and both cities are controlled by the wealthy Democrat elite. 1stworlder
He meant Oakland. San Fran people found out they can up armor houses and pay 24/7 security guards for less than living in San Fran. Annette Smith
Well said, Anonymous! As I’ve mentioned before, I am from San Diego. The cost of housing is ridiculous! El Pollo de Oro
Colin: I’ve said many times that cities run by Democraps tend to fall into two extreme categories. You have the ultra-expensive, hyper-gentrified yuppie ghettoes like Boston, New York, Seattle, and Denver (the places where there is a Starbucks on every corner). And you have the crime-infested, rotting horror movies like Detroit, Camden, Gary, Newark, etc. Philly, where I live, is a combination of the two: it’s Starbucks and Whole Paycheck in some places and toothless crack whores in others. Orange Jean
El P., I wouldn’t exactly place Boston in a “hyper-gentrified yuppie” category. The reason being, while there are plenty of neighborhoods and nearby cities (Cambridge for example) have large areas that are more often frequented by tourists that qualify – there are also large, horribly poverty stricken neighborhoods that are right up there with Detroit.
I used to work in the heart of Roxbury, at the Boston Public Health Commission. Roxbury is a very high crime neighborhood of Boston, that looks like something out of a bombed out WWII movie. It was very dangerous to be there at night, I’m sure it still is…
And even though a place like Cambridge is known for Harvard Square and plenty of hoity-toity neighobrhoods… it also has neighborhoods (some parts of North and East Cambridge for example) that are very high crime similar to Detroit. When I lived in North Cambridge back in the mid-70s and my son was in grammar school… he told me he was afraid of the gangs they had, little kids in 1st and 2nd grade… holding up little old ladies at knife point. El Pollo de Oro
Matter of fact, a good friend of mine grew up in Roxbury (the North Philly of Boston). I know that some parts of Dorchester are also really hard. But I think that overall, Boston has a much higher “Starbucks factor” (as I call it) than Baltimore, for example. Baltimore has a handful of gentrified neighborhoods, but most of it is a war zone. 1stworlder
By gentrifying you mean white people with no kids moving in. Imaplaneiac
Fellow bloggers, a few days ago, I found that the RNC has restored e-mail capability to their web site: http://www.gop.gov . It was removed from their site after the Nov 2012 so-called Presidential ” Election “. I had then wrote the RNC TWICE supplying them with links to reports of WIDESPREAD voter fraud. The RNC FAILED to reply to BOTH of my reports!? But they DID delete e-mail capability; preventing comments from alarmed Americans such as myself! So, the other day, I BLASTED the RNC. YOU may want to do likewise; especially following CAVER Boehner’s recent tirade about the Tea Party! His remarks leave NO DOUBT that he is complicit with the objectives of the DEMONcrats! By his actions … he REGULARLY kisses their rings and CAVES to them! Mondobeyondo
Your town or city is next. Trust me. You’re in the crosshairs.
Camden today, Des Moines tomorrow, Hellfire1968
and Baltimore the next day. hero
I used to live in Philly & consider it my 2nd home. Whenever I rode PATCO & passed through Camden, I broke my heart looking at deserted homes & empty city blocks. Absolutely no economic activity & all I hear on Action News was about people going there to buy drugs.
It is true…When Blacks & Hispanics moved in, whole neighborhoods got destroyed & Camden never recovered from it. North Philly & West Philly are beginning to look like Camden but time will tell. Mondobeyondo
I’ve never lived east of the Mississippi River. I do not know what life is like in New York City, or New Orleans, or Philly, Detroit, etc.Can’t speak for those places. I’ve HEARD of Cabrini Green, the Detroit projects, etc. Personal experience? Zero.
Is it really that bad in Philly? Because it’s bad here in Phoenix, Arizona. If you are looking for the promised land, don’t come here. You won’t find it here.
Phoenix is suburbia gone berzerk; Las Vegas is suburbia gone berzerk with casinos. I live in one, been to the other often. Anonymous
New Orleans does not look like it ever recovered from Hurricane Katrina. IMO it looks like a third world country now. NOLA used to be a beautiful city that could rival the beauty of Savannah. Now you don’t want to go outside the tourist areas in NOLA or Savannah IMO. grumpyhillbilly
The positives for Philadelphia is it has very good med schools and universities. Pharmaceutical companies do research with the med schools, but prefer to work outside the city There are a few posh neighborhood, but they are increasingly getting invaded by criminal. Other than that its a decaying dump. Get past the historical areas and center city, I don’t think they’ve picked up the trash for years. By they – I mean the unioned city trash collectors. Kill a cop – you’ll get swift justice, but don’t bother that union for results in any other circumstances. Many buildings are crumbling. If you look at them side way you can still see there onetime grandeur. If it weren’t for the state, Philadelphia would have likely been the first city to have declared bankruptcy. The schools are teetering on whatever collapse you can think of. But the city Democrat machine is doing quite well. As is the union leadership, despite their dwindling membership. Corruption is thriving. El Pollo de Oro
Mondobeyondo: Philly is a tale of two cities. You have the crime-infested, dilapidated Philly (Kensington, North Philly, Germantown, Strawberry Mansion, Frankford), and you have the expensive gentrified areas that are full of yuppies with a Starbucks everywhere you turn. I know people here who are doing really well and others who are barely scraping by. Cities run by Democraps range from ultra-expensive places like Boston, San Francisco and Seattle to hellholes like Camden and Detroit, and Philly has both extremes. And such extremes are to be expected in a Third World country like the BRA. Sonar
Middle class families have been largely priced out of San Francisco and Seattle. Both those cities have a small wealthy Democrat elite who run everything and a lot of poor and homeless people who are totally dependent on government handouts like welfare, food stamps and rent subsidies. Anonymous
Detroit wasn’t destroyed. It committed suicide. MeMadMax
We paid for NAFTA and all the other so called “free trade” agreements with out country… Rene Girrard
Thanks Michale for posting another great article. I’m afraid you are so right that the middle class is dying. Why is there no talk of this on the MSM or even internet news sites? A couple in their 50’s just moved out right below me. They wanted to move to some place cheaper so they set u their 35-foot camper at an RV park just north of Ft. Worth. They are paying $300/month for the space, electric & water. It is far cheaper than what they were paying here at the extended stay hotel. There is also an article on Drudge now about people living in their RVs in NYC. I think this may be a trend in the future. smallergovnow
I’m considering doing just that. sell my house, buy a fifth wheel trailer and piece of land in the country… Anonymous
When enough people do it, this too will become unaffordable. xander cross
Funny how all of the companies that was sold to other countries are were sold by white men. So once again, who exactly is sending the jobs to other countries? The answer is WHITE MEN. Guest
Welcome back sander floss! We missed you…NOT!! xander cross
I see you yet again and of course, you cannot refute my statement. Sonar
We see that you cannot substantiate your racist and bigoted comments. xander cross
Pot, meet kettle. luchia
Maybe, they “unionized” themselves out of a job. The owner of a company, didn’t want to pay union wages, got his goods made for cheaper outside the USA. Anonymous
Yeah, who wants to pay those working class people a wage they can actually live on? How dare the workers form a union. How dare those workers demand humane working conditions and hours. Instead of forming unions, workers should have just jumped in front of their employer’s gunfire at Blair Mountain. Instead of forming unions, workers should have just been quiet and and happy about the company heads that do little real work becoming billionaires off of other people’s work and back. Meanwhile, employers have found a way to get free labor through internships and volunteering.
Americans work more than any other industrialized country. Americans deserve to be paid for their time, hard work, and their backs. No single person at any company should be making 7+ figure salaries. Every employer screams “We are a team” until it is time to cut the paychecks. Then, they pretend that some people on the team are less valuable than other people on the team. Malcolm Reynolds
In case you didn’t notice with all that leftist pap and whining, wages seem to be directly proportional to skills.
If you’re a moron whose job can be filled by basically calling out “NEXT!”, you can expect to make peanuts. If your job is very hard and there are very few of you, you can expect to make boat loads of money.
This is called life honey boo boo. Now go flip a burger, make a buck. Snore! Anonymous
So, are you suggesting a CEO should “be paid peanuts?” What specific “skills” do those at the top of the food chain possess to justify their salary? Have you ever watched them come down from their temperature controlled offices to attempt to do the real work on the show “Undercover Bosses?” Malcolm Reynolds
LMAO! You make minimum wage doncha? DiscouragedOne
Do you have any actual experience and facts to base your conclusions on, or you ACTUALLY believe what is on reality shows is real. Man, this country is messed up! Anonymous
I guess it is better for employers to be allowed to treat workers any way they want to. Perhaps working conditions in the USA should be as they are in China; where some factories have had to place suicide nets to catch the workers that are so miserable they are flinging themselves out of the windows. Is that a better solution than workers forming unions? Malcolm Reynolds
BTW, you’re clearly advocating a govt corporate blending, which is Fascism and is what currently exists in this country.. Gay Veteran
profits are easy when you have slave labor in China MrsBulldoggy .
You think all the evil in the world is perpetrated by white men? You are a racist, bigoted fool! There are many examples of narcissistic, evil murderers in this world that were not white: *Blacks in Rwanda committing mass genocide in 1994 (nothing to do with white men) *Pol Pot in the 1970’s exterminating anyone who would not turn to communism in Cambodia (nothing to do with white men) *Kim Jong Un and Il starving and murdering their own people (nothing to do with white men) *Chairman Mao murdering 50 Million+ of his own Chinese people during the 20th century (nothing to do with white men) *Arabic Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and other middle eastern and north African countries slaughtering non-muslims because they are infidels (has NOTHING to do with white men) The list goes on and on and on. Crimes against humanity have happened in history against all people of every color and creed by all people of every color and creed. Evil is not the sole domain of white men, evil comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, religions, non-religions, creeds. To put forth otherwise makes one look like an illiterate fool that is spouting racist, bigoted rhetoric. BTW, you don’t know if all these people are white or not, Xander. The wealthiest man on Earth right now is a MEXICAN (NOT WHITE MAN) named Carlos Slim. He has his hands in everything just like all the other wealthy men and women who are billionaires. Pull your head out of your southern orifice and get a clue… xander cross
I see you failed at reading. I never said all evil are perpetrated by white men. I said that white men sent the jobs to china for over 30 years and still do so to this very day. So, white men are the problem. MrsBulldoggy .
No, Xander you fail at logic and critical reasoning. You have problems, seriously, Xander. Mental health issues that I do not wish to deal with nor am I qualified to handle. I just feel sorry for you and your insane, inane and seriously deranged rantings and ravings. Nothing else to say except God Bless and get some help as soon as you can. xander cross
I feel that you’re going to need help when white men finish sending the jobs and resources to china and then send them water resources as well. Lets see how funny this is going to be. Sonar
xander cross appears to have forgotten to take medications today to control delusional thinking? xander cross
Why are you continuing to promote medications in China? The fact that you know that your medicine companies are sold to china now, suggest to me that you need mental help. xander cross
Every company that Michael has listed was sold by white men. So once again, white men are the ones that sending the jobs to China for greed. So, this proves to me that white men turned china into an economic superpower. luchia
Maybe, they got sick and tired of dealing with all the union b.s. Malcolm Reynolds
racist. xander cross
So who exactly sold all of the jobs to china then? The answer would be white men. Malcolm Reynolds
Think deeper. I know it’s hard for someone whose posts litter this page like so much garbage and cant get past the color of someone’s skin, but give it a shot anyway.
Apply whatever electrons you manage to get firing towards govt and redistribution of wealth and then get back to me. Sonar
xander cross is delusional again ConcernedAmerican
Excellent article. Thank you for making the points about education and it’s cost. I recently read that Rockefeller took a 10 WEEK course to become a bookkeeper. How did we go from needing 10 weeks to begin a career to spending half our lives in school before we can begin a career, or a family? Mondobeyondo
Michael is right. The middle clTass is dying. It doesn’t have to be that way, but we kind of chose our fate. Too busy listening to Lady Gaga, and following her example to the T.
That stands for Trouble, and that rhymes with
Okay, that’s enough
As I was saying, Lady Gaga. She lives for the applause, and she’s in love with Judas. If she is your example of Miss America, well…
; DiscouragedOne
I don’t listen to Gaga and am not familiar (nor will I ever be) but I do remember “t and that rhymes with p and that stands for pool”, she sounds like a copycat. Mondobeyondo
Camden 2013? Looks more like Warsaw 1943. El Pollo de Oro
What’s the difference between Berlin in 1945 and Camden in 2013? Berlin in 1945 looked a lot better. FounderChurch
We have. Cursed God and now it’s time for America to die and go to hell. We’ve killed our children with demonic Birth Control and refuse to repent. It’s all over. Pablo Solano
Really. We need more people? Why didn’t I think of that. FounderChurch
The answer to your question is: We need more of THE RIGHT KIND, and fewer of the wrong kind.
By that I mean dumb America haters and I think you would qualify on both counts.
Why do you pretend to be so dense and dumb? You know what I meant to start with, and if you are too slow to get it, well then, I just told you. Pablo Solano
How very Christian of you. And who decides who are the RIGHT kind of people, YOU? What in my comment leads you to believe I hate America? Dumb and Dense? coming from an individual who believes in a supernatural spirit that hears prayers. Yer right. FounderChurch
Being an admitted Atheist you have no standing to correct any Religious Believer. Stick to your own kind, and be kind to everyone else.
As to evaluating who are the right kind of people, just about anyone’s opinion would be better than no opinion or standards at all.
We have standards people have to meet for thousands of things, rights and privaledges, why not standards for being a parent? Got anything against that? Afraid you could not muster up? I doubt you have any children or would ever want any. Just guessing. Your object is to prevent anyone else from having any children. GSOB | 1real |
OCTOBER DIARY: Borjas No Bore; NOSTAR—”No Such Thing As Race”, Etc | => Professor George Borjas at Harvard. Credit: VDare.com.
Borjas no bore . October 20th I went to an event organized by the Center for Immigration Studies to hear Professor George Borjas present his new book, We Wanted Workers . Borjas explains the title in his Introduction:
Reflecting on the European experience with the millions of guest workers [from the 1950s onwards], the Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch made perhaps the single most insightful observation about immigration when he quipped: “We wanted workers, but we got people instead.”
(In a footnote, Borjas gives us the German original: “ Wir riefen Arbeitskräfte, es kamen Menschen .”)
Borjas is a lively and engaging speaker. I bought a copy of his book, and stood on line to have him sign it. When I got to him, he immediately recognized me from a chance encounter eight years ago, which I had completely forgotten.
That was of course embarrassing, with a line of secondary emotions coming along behind the embarrassment: gratification (How nice that a bigfoot researcher, a Harvard professor, remembers me after so many years!); annoyance (If he can remember an obscure opinionator, why can’t I remember a serious and important scholar, working in a field that I often write about?); to anxiety (Am I losing my marbles? He’s only five years younger than me …)
I recommend the book in any case; and I further recommend Borjas in person, if you get a chance to see him speak. I only regret that he is, to borrow Dr Johnson’s self-description , “a retired and uncourtly scholar,” with no taste at all — with, in fact, I think, a strong dis -taste — for political contention.
Borjas lays out a solid, factual, quantitative basis for the kinds of arguments we make here, with gentlemanly good humor and scholarly rigor. I’d love to see him make his case in argument with the open borders shills, on TV talking-head shows or the campaign trail … but that’s not his choice.
All strength to Prof Borjas anyway, and all success to his new book.
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Two essays on race . This month produced two notable essays dealing with race. One was notable for dishonesty and incoherence; the other for its clarity and straightforward good sense.
The dishonesty and incoherence was of course in defense of the No Such Thing As Race dogma, hereinunder NOSTAR.
NOSTAR is a key axiom in our state ideology. It is, however, so contrary to everyday experience, common sense, and elementary biology that media outlets feel obliged to publish stern affirmations of it from time to time, rather as state newspapers in communist countries used to publish long editorials, for use in study sessions by the Party faithful, affirming the infallibility of Marxist-Leninism.
(The outstanding exhibit here, according to sinologist Simon Leys , was an editorial in the Peking People’s Daily at the time of the Lin Biao affair in 1971 , instructing readers that extreme leftism was a right-wing deviation.)
So here was science journalist Faye Flam [ ] laying down the Party line at Bloomberg News, October 3rd.
Race is perhaps the worst idea ever to come out of science. [ Science’s Biggest Blunder by Faye Flam; Bloomberg News , October 3rd 2016.]
Really? Worse than phlogiston ? Worse than spontaneous generation ? Worse than the luminiferous ether ?
“We never use the term ‘race,’” said Harvard geneticist Swapan Mallick, an author on one of the papers revealing the latest DNA-based human story.
So what term do Dr Mallick and his colleagues use when discussing l ocal common-ancestry variations within a species? If “race” was good enough for Darwin , why isn’t it good enough for him?
“We’re all part of the tapestry of humanity, and it’s interesting to see how we got where we are.”
Indeed we are, and indeed it is. It is equally true, though, that we are all part of the tapestry of the genus Homo , of the family Hominidae , of the order Primates , of the class Mammalia , of the the phylum Chordata , of the Animal Kingdom . All of that is pretty interesting, too. What’s your point? ORDER IT NOW
One of the world’s most prominent American scientists of the mid-1800s, Samuel Morton, collected skulls from all over the world and attempted to demonstrate that those of European ancestry had the world’s biggest heads and were, so he claimed, intellectually superior.
Except that “there is no evidence that Morton believed this or was trying to prove it.” [ Scientists Measure the Accuracy of a Racism Claim by Nicholas Wade; New York Times , June 13, 2011]
Scientists subsequently realized that Morton was wrong — about whose heads were biggest and the connection between head size and intelligence.
Leaving aside the fact that Morton was not much interested in such a connection, brain size (which correlates with head size) does correlate with intelligence. [ Neuroanatomical Correlates of Intelligence by E. Luders, K.K. Narr, P.M. Thompson, and A.W. Toga; National Institutes of Health, 2009.]
[Geneticist Joseph] Graves sometimes quizzes his students by showing them an image of a man and asking them to guess where he comes from. It appears to show someone most Americans would identify as a black man, and Graves says people assume he’s from Africa or an African American community in the U.S. But he’s from the Solomon Islands, which are in the South Pacific.
Are there really people who don’t know this sort of thing? Fifty years ago, in then-wellnigh-monoracial England, I attended classes at University College, London with a young man whose skin was black. He was from Burma. (I recall his name as Man Man Tin, although the internet records no trace of such a person. In those easy-going days, with no offense intended or taken — he was a cheerful and sociable fellow — we gave him the nickname Rin Tin Tin . That would have gotten us permanently rusticated nowadays.)
And so on. It gets wearisome refuting this mendacious gibberish.
How refreshing, then, a few days later, to see that Jared Taylor had posted the talk he gave to September’s press conference on the Alt Right .
Given the loose nature of the movement [i.e. the Alt Right], there are people who consider themselves “Alt Right” but who disagree on one or more of these points — except one. The entire Alt Right is united in contempt for the idea that race is only a “social construct.” This is an idea that is so wrong and stupid that only very intelligent people can convince themselves it is true.
Race is a biological fact. Does anyone think that the differences between Danes and Pygmies are a sociological illusion? …
There are countless race differences in such things as skull structure, twinning rates, and susceptibility to disease. It is even possible to tell a person’s race from the varieties of bacteria that live in his mouth!
Human races have been evolving separately for perhaps as long as 100,000 years, and evolution has marked their temperaments and mental abilities just as it has their physical characteristics. [ What is the Alt Right? by Jared Taylor; American Renaissance , October 11 2016.]
Ah, the sweet clear wine of truth!
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Slow day at the Pentagon . The other zone of our social life in which state ideologues demand that we pretend to believe preposterous things is of course sex — or, as we are now supposed to say, “gender.”
Most of the preposterous things they want us to pretend to believe are in aid of an assault on traditional concepts of manliness. It is therefore not surprising that a key target of the No Such Thing As Sex (NOSTAS) preposterentsia is the military.
A friend with military connections passed on to me a document recently published by the Department of Defense. Title: Transgender Service in the U.S. Military: An Implementation Handbook .
The wretched thing has seventy-two pages . Sample, from pages 60-61:
Scenario 11: Use of Shower Facilities
A transgender Service member has expressed privacy concerns regarding the open bay shower configuration. Similarly, several other non-transgender Service members have expressed discomfort when showering in these facilities with individuals who have different genitalia.
Key takeaway(s)
This scenario illustrates the importance of open lines of communication between the Service member and the commander. It also depicts steps a commander may take to permit privacy, based on Service policy.
Service member responsibilities If you have any concerns about privacy in an open bay shower setting, you should discuss this with your chain of command. Consider altering your shower hours.
Commander responsibilities
You may employ reasonable accommodations when/if you have a Service member who voices concerns about privacy. This should be done with the intent of avoiding any stigmatizing impact to any Service member. If permitted by Service policies, some of these steps may include: Facility modifications, such as installing shower curtains and placing towel and clothing hooks inside individual shower stalls. In cases where accommodations are not practicable, you may authorize alternative measures to respect personal privacy, such as adjustments to timing of the use of shower or changing facilities Take proactive steps through the chain of command to ensure that expressions of discomfort don’t escalate into harassment or hazing. Consult the SCCC for guidance on how to institute such measures.
I repeat, there are 72 pages of this. That’s more than half as many pages as the Seaman’s Pocket Book from which I learned all the essentials of service as a rating in the Royal Navy .
Oh, and if you’re wondering what an SCCC is, it’s a Service Central Coordination Cell: basically an email address to which you can send queries about policy in your service.
The SCCC e-address for the Army is . If you want to send frivolous or spoof questions to the Army, use that address. Don’t worry that you may be wasting their time; to judge by that 72-page handbook they’ve just put out on servicepersons confused about their sex, time is a thing they have plenty of in today’s military.
Antarius, The Planet With 12 Sexes . On a related theme (I guess), Greg Cochran mused on how things might be if there were more than two human sexes. ORDER IT NOW
Many species have several different kinds of males (a few have different kinds of females as well). For example, a lizard species in California has three different kinds of males — aggressive orange-throated guys that successfully dominate blue males, sneaky yellow guys that get past orange males guarding a big territory, and blue mate-guarding males (that are also cooperative — possibly a green-beard gene) that successful guard females from sneaky yellows. The population frequencies oscillate: scissors, paper, rock. [ The Third Sex by Greg Cochran; West Hunter blog, October 26th 2016.]
I’m sorry to say that what this brought to my mind was one of Ed Subitzky’s cartoons from the glory days of National Lampoon forty years ago. Title: “ Saturday night on Antarius (The planet with 12 different sexes ) .”
I think I’ll send that link to the SCCCs for all the different services. You never know; we may find ourselves at war with Antarius one of these days.
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Does he bill his patients via the web? Just one more on the (approximately) medical beat.
My better half works in Medical Billing, arguing over the phone all day long with doctors, hospitals, patients, and insurance companies.
The other day she reported having dealt with a radiologist named Kwak — Dr Kwak. My lady is unfailingly truthful, so I did not doubt her story, but I was curious to see that Dr Kwak looks like, so I Googled him.
Sure enough, there he is: No Bong Kwak, MD — Specialty : Diagnostic Radiology. No picture, though. Googling further, I find that Kwak is a not-uncommon Korean family name.
I am sure that the Kwaks are a proud and noble lineage, and that Dr Kwak discharges his radiological duties at the highest standards of professionalism. And yes, I know it’s childish to make fun of people’s names, which after all they can’t help. For all I know to the contrary, “Derbyshire” sounds screamingly funny to Korean ears. If so, I do not begrudge them their mirth. Still … Dr Kwak?
And while we are at the intersection of October with names Korean, let’s pause in respectful silence for a moment to remember the South Korean Secretary of State murdered by the Norks in the Rangoon bombing of October 1983 : Lee Bum Suk.
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Galaxies like grains of sand . For the longest time I carried around in my head the easy thumbnail tally of the cosmos: there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.
That second hundred billion crept up to two hundred billion when I wasn’t looking; and now suddenly it’s increased tenfold.
The scale of the universe, already unfathomable, just became even more so: There are about 10 times as many galaxies as previously thought.
The new number, two trillion galaxies, is the result of work led by Christopher J. Conselice, an astrophysicist at the University of Nottingham in England, published last week in The Astrophysical Journal . [ Two Trillion Galaxies, at the Very Least by Henry Fountain; New York Times , October 17th 2016.]
That’s just the observable universe, mind: the one little bubble of objects whose emitted light has reached us since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. The whole shebang is much bigger. It may in fact be infinite: There is an argument for this in Chapter Five of Max Tegmark’s Our Mathematical Universe .
There’s a downside and an upside to knowing stuff like this.
The downside is of course that it further dethrones us. It is only within living memory that we have known there are any other galaxies besides our own, let alone two trillion of the suckers. Not very long before that — a mere handful of generations — our little ball of rock was assumed to be the principal place in the cosmos, and its affairs the primary interest of the Creator.
The upside is that our consciousness, our civilization, our accomplishments seem all the more astonishing as it becomes more and more probable that there are no others like them anywhere, or at least anywhere within several billion trillion miles.
The arguments for this cosmic exceptionalism go back at least as far as Michael Hart’s 1975 paper An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth . Tegmark recycles them briefly in the last chapter of his book. (He is out at the most skeptical end of the spectrum for belief in extraterrestrial intelligence: “I’ve just argued that we’re probably the most intelligent life-form in our entire universe.”) British science journalist John Gribbin wrote an entire book arguing the skeptical case.
So we are utterly insignificant, but at the same time fantastically unique. There’s something to meditate on, a hundred years on from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity , which opened the way to serious, informed speculation about these tremendous matters.
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Warm happy glow of the month . Home maintenance chore this month has been spackling. I hate spackling.
This is to do with my property’s standalone garage. The garage has a loft. For our first 24 years in this house, we paid no attention to the garage loft. It was a dark, filthy place, clogged with junk from previous homeowners going back to the 1940s.
It didn’t even have a floor , only some random planks thrown across the joists. Nor was there any ceiling. If you went up there — there was a crude, rotting wooden access ladder from below — you risked having your scalp ripped open by roofers’ nails. It seems to be a cardinal rule of roofing to use nails two inches longer than necessary when fixing the roof tiles in place. ORDER IT NOW
As the main house silted up with accumulated stuff , though, I began looking for extra storage space. And there it was: a nice unused space, twenty feet square, crammed with the junk of strangers long since passed on to their celestial rewards.
I cleaned it out. I installed a proper pull-down access ladder . I laid a proper floor. I hauled up tremendous 8’×4′ panels of drywall and screwed them to the roof beams. I put in windows at each end.
Then, to seal up the seams between panels and hide the screw holes, you have to spackle that drywall .
It’s a tiresome business. You can learn the essentials from YouTube; but the instructors all disagree with each other. This one says to use fiber tape on the joints; that one says no, fiber tape is for pros, stick with paper tape. This one wets the paper tape, this one doesn’t. This one says to spread the joint compound like this ; that one says to spread it like that ; a third one says to spread it like that but with a turn of the wrist thus . This one uses a special trowel for inside corners; that one says no, just do one wall, let it dry, then do the other. I was getting flashbacks to my time in Ed School amid those endless tiresome arguments about the best way to teach math.
I made all the mistakes amateurs make: used too much mud and ended up sanding three quarters of it off, etc., etc. Still, when I’d finished it didn’t look bad.
I called in my neighbor Charlie to do site inspection. Charlie worked for years in construction. He is a scrupulously truthful man (and a Trump supporter!) After looking over my spackling he declared it “Not bad.”
Not bad! That was my warm happy glow of the month right there. Bob Dylan is welcome to his Nobel Prize : I’ll take “Not bad” from Charlie.
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Quote of the month .
Freedom of speech and thought, such as we still more or less have, are very delicate and easily smashed.
Watching our current elite’s treatment of liberty is like watching a baboon carrying a priceless Ming vase across a stone-paved floor. [ Trust judges? I’d rather ask a baboon to carry a Ming vase by Peter Hitchens; MailOnline , October 29th 2016.]
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The Americans . The Mrs and I have been binge-watching the TV series The Americans , recommended by a friend.
The premise of the show is that in the late Cold War years of the 1980s, the U.S.S.R. had agents deep embedded in American life, living as ordinary suburban American couples with kids, but on call to carry out espionage missions. Its psychological appeal is to the fantasy we all nurse, from early childhood onward, of living a secret life of excitement and danger while keeping up an outward mask of humdrum social normality.
The plotting and characterization is very good, with a narrative “pull” that keeps you wanting to rent the next clutch of episodes. The storylines teeter on the edge of absurdity without ever quite falling over into the void.
Unfortunately I find that I am now in love with Annet Mahendru . When I confessed this to Mrs Derbyshire, she counter-confessed that she is in love with Noah Emmerich . The balance of domestic affections thus remains undisturbed, and we continue to watch The Americans with guiltless pleasure.
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Math Corner . The number three doesn’t get the respect it deserves, in my opinion.
Two is all over. We inhabit a universe of pairs: positive and negative, up and down, male and female, liberal and conservative, … there’s no end to the twos.
Three has less of a public profile. Threeness doesn’t have the deep, fundamental quality of twoness.
Not that three is altogether neglected. The Christian god is tripartite; heroes in fairy-tales are granted three wishes; and no-one thinks ill of underwear manufacturers marketing their products as small, medium, and large.
Patriots of many nations celebrate the fact of their flag having three colors. The French actually name their flag for this feature, which keys to the three ideals of the Revolution: liberty, fraternity, equity. English children used to be taught to sing : “Red, white, and blue / What does it mean to you / …,” although I suppose this would be considered a racist outrage nowadays. I see an opportunity for arbitrage here #TeachEcon pic.twitter.com/lyuzQKFHZz
— Jadrian Wooten (@Wootenomics) October 28, 2016
In math, one of the most striking objects in elementary Measure Theory (dealing with the lengths, areas, volumes, etc. of mathematical figures) is Cantor ‘s set, which has uncountably many points in it (i.e. too many to match off one-one with the counting numbers 1, 2, 3, …) yet has measure zero. Cantor’s set is arrived at by repeated division of a line segment into three parts; it is best grasped via ternary (base 3) notation . ORDER IT NOW
There is a dark, negative side to threeness, though. Three is often used to slight and marginalize: third-rate, three’s a crowd, third arm inspection (ask one of the older generation of military veterans), etc. The word “triage” has positively sinister connotations. The Hound of Hell had three heads.
This dark aspect was explored at length in Chapter Four of Paul Fussell’s fine book The Great War and Modern Memory . Fussell fills seven pages exploring the role played by threeness in the WW1 combat experience as filtered by the human imagination.
For the poet Charles Sorley the transformation of man into corpse is a three-part action. First, man; then, when hit, animal, writhing and thrashing in articulate agony or making horrible snoring noises; then a “thing.”
The under-appreciation of three is best seen in the realm of fractions. It is possible to find a ruler marked off in thirds of an inch — I own one — but halves and quarters are far more popular. We say “a quarter of an hour” all the time; when did you last hear someone say “a third of an hour”?
Is there a VDARE.com-relevant angle to any of this? Of course there is!
Looking at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock the other day, I found myself wondering when the population of our republic will reach a third of a billion. It’s almost there. That day, October 6th, around noon, the clock showed 324,647,530. The rate of increase — births minus deaths plus net immigration — was shown as one person every twelve seconds.
With 8,685,803 to go until we reach the magic number of 333,333,333, and assuming linear extrapolation, we get to a third of a billion sometime in the late evening of January 25th, 2020 (assuming I have done my arithmetic correctly, which should by no means be relied on).
Will there be national celebration? A public holiday? Street parties? I doubt it. Thirdness gets even less respect than threeness.
John Derbyshire [ ] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books . He’s had t w o books published by VDARE.com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT ( also available in Kindle ) and From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013 . His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com . (Reprinted from VDare.com by permission of author or representative) | 1real |
Republican lawmakers approve $1.1 billion in new Zika funds | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday agreed to $1.1 billion to fight the Zika virus, short-changing President Barack Obama’s $1.9 billion funding request and angering Democrats by making other cuts to pay for it. The House approved a funding deal that had been agreed to on Wednesday by Republicans from both the House and Senate. But the bill’s future was uncertain in the Senate, where the Democratic minority has more power to stop legislation, and Democratic leader Harry Reid has declared his opposition. “It is a responsible plan that assures the administration will continue to have the needed resources to protect the public,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said. Republicans said the deal included funding for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. But the White House said the allocation fell short. “This plan from congressional Republicans is four months late and nearly a billion dollars short of what our public health experts have said is necessary to do everything possible to fight the Zika virus, and steals funding from other health priorities,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement before the House voted. Earnest said the Republican plan would limit needed birth control services for women seeking to prevent Zika, which can be spread through unprotected sex — “a clear indication they don’t take seriously the threat from the Zika virus.” Democrats have been urging Republicans for months to agree to more Zika funding, and the Obama administration has already reprogrammed nearly $600 million that had been set aside to fight Ebola. House Democrats said they could not go along with the deal because of $750 million in budget cuts elsewhere that the Republicans want to use to pay for the Zika spending. Senate Democrats also voiced displeasure, clouding the outlook for it passing. “A narrowly partisan proposal that cuts off women’s access to birth control, shortchanges veterans and rescinds Obamacare funds to cover the cost is not a serious response to the threat from the Zika virus,” Reid said. Still, Ryan urged the Senate to move on the bill. According to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, $543 million of the $1.1 billion would come from unspent funds set aside for implementing Obamacare in U.S. territories, while $107 million would come from unused funds to fight another virus, Ebola. Another $100 million would come from unused administrative funds at the Department of Health and Human Services, he said. | 0fake |
Kathy Griffin after Trump ’Beheading’ Photo: ’I Do Not Condone Any Violence’ | Kathy Griffin said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that she does not condone violence of any kind following the massive backlash generated by the release of a photograph in which she posed with the fake bloody, severed head of President Donald Trump. [The shocking photo, first posted Tuesday by TMZ, was part of a photo shoot the comedian conducted with L. A. artist Tyler Shields, who is known for his provocative artwork. “I caption this “there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his … wherever” Also @tylershields great maker,” the My Life on the star wrote in a message on her Twitter account Tuesday. “OBVIOUSLY, I do not condone ANY violence by my fans or others to anyone, ever!” she added. “I’m merely mocking the Mocker in Chief. ” I caption this ”there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his … wherever” Also @tylershields great maker. pic. twitter. — Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 30, 2017, OBVIOUSLY, I do not condone ANY violence by my fans or others to anyone, ever! I’m merely mocking the Mocker in Chief. — Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 30, 2017, The photograph generated a significant uproar on social media and on Griffin’s own accounts when it was posted Tuesday morning, with users flooding the comedian’s Facebook page with calls to boycott her upcoming concert tour. Representatives for CNN, where Griffin New Year’s Eve festivities with Anderson Cooper, did not immediately respond to Breitbart News’ request for comment, nor did representatives for Griffin. The Secret Service has not yet responded to Breitbart News’s request for comment, but the agency’s Twitter account sent out this message Tuesday afternoon: Threats made against @SecretService protectees receive the highest priority of all of our investigations. #ProtectionNeverRests, — U. S. Secret Service (@SecretService) May 30, 2017, Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0fake |
Trump again vows to bring back U.S. jobs, but offers few details | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump told chief executives of major U.S. companies on Thursday he plans to bring millions of jobs back to the United States, but offered no specific plan on how to reverse a decades-long decline in factory jobs. In his first month in office, Trump has pressured a number of U.S. companies to hire in the United States but he has yet to publicly propose legislation tackling the big economic issues he campaigned on in 2016, including a job-boosting tax or infrastructure program. He will address a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28. In a meeting with some two dozen CEOs at the White House, Trump said the United States had lost about one-third of manufacturing jobs since it joined the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and asserted about 70,000 factories have closed since China joined the World Trade Organization 16 years ago. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the number of private sector manufacturing facilities in the United States has fallen less than that, from nearly 400,000 in 2001 to 344,000 last year. Lower wages, automation, foreign competition and other factors account for the steep decline in manufacturing jobs, experts say. Trump has promised to roll out proposals that he says could have favorable ramifications for companies, including a plan to overhaul the tax code and an infrastructure package that was part of his presidential campaign promises to create millions of jobs. He has declined to specify what he had in mind. “We’re going to find out how we bring more jobs back,” he told the CEOs. General Electric Co (GE.N) chief executive Jeff Immelt said after the meeting in a Twitter post that “tax reform a high priority for job creation. Business community will come together to help find a workable solution.” Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck & Co (MRK.N), told reporters “it is very clear the president is interested in lessening the tax burden.” Several of the CEOs who met Trump are part of a coalition that supports a so-called border adjustment tax, which would impose a 20 percent tax on goods that are imported into the country while providing write-offs for goods that are exported. In an interview with Reuters, Trump spoke favorably about the border adjustment tax proposal being pushed by Republicans in the U.S. Congress, but did not specifically endorse it. Trump is scheduled to dine at a Washington hotel on Thursday evening with members of The Business Council, a group of major U.S. company CEOs, including Immelt, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon. | 0fake |
German prosecutor demands life for neo-Nazi suspect Zschaepe | MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - A German prosecutor urged judges on Tuesday to give a sentence of life imprisonment to Beate Zschaepe, the main surviving member of a neo-Nazi gang accused of murdering 10 people, most of them immigrants, over seven years from the year 2000. Prosecutors say Zschaepe was part of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) group which killed eight Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman. Zschaepe, 42, has denied taking part in the murders with two friends who killed themselves in 2011 when police discovered the gang by chance. But she has, through her lawyer, said she felt morally guilty for not stopping them. Judges have yet to give a verdict. The accused is criminally fully responsible for her behavior, said federal prosecutor Herbert Diemer, calling for Zschaepe to be given a life sentence for 10 murders. He described Zschaepe as an ice-cold, calculating person , adding that there were no mitigating circumstances. Zschaepe, 42, listened impassively, resting her chin on her hands. Prosecutors said in July that four years of hearing evidence had shown that Zschaepe was a co-founder, member and accomplice of a terrorist organization. The group had carried out the most violent and infamous terror attacks including two bombings and 15 bank robberies since the end of the Red Army Faction s two-decade spree in 1991, in which 34 people are estimated to have been killed. Although the NSU murders were carried out by Zschaepe s two friends, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, both now dead in what is believed to have been a murder-suicide, she played a major role behind the scenes, according to prosecutors. | 0fake |
POLITICAL HACK DIANNE FEINSTEIN Makes a Fool of Herself in Questioning Supreme Court Nominee Who Shoots Back: “I have participated in more than 2,700 opinions over the last 10 years.” [Video] | 1real | |
Health Grades for New York Restaurants: Why No F’s? - The New York Times | Q. I’ve been in a lot of restaurants in New York, and I’ve never seen an F in any of those inspection grading cards given out by the health department. Does this mean that all of the restaurants in New York are above average? A. Actually, many of the city’s roughly 24, 000 restaurants do get the worst grades, but the trick is that C, not F, is the lowest one. By now, most New Yorkers are familiar with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s system, which was introduced in 2010, and assigns ratings based on a system that is calculated by the amount of major and minor infractions found by inspectors. The dirtier the restaurant, the more points accumulated, the worse the grade. According to a city database, there are more than 200 restaurants that currently have C ratings. There are more than 800 “grade pending” restaurants, because operators of restaurants are given the choice of displaying a “grade pending” sign or a letter grade while they contest any violations. If this makes you a little queasy, keep in mind that New York is generally a culinarily clean city: The A rating is by far the most common, with more than 21, 500 restaurants claiming that blue card. There are more than 1, 500 B ratings. So if you’re contemplating entering a C restaurant, rest assured that moving a few feet down the street might land you in A territory. The health department does not force any restaurant to close over ratings. Restaurants are closed by the department as a temporary emergency measure when there is an immediate public health hazard, such as a severe pest infestation. A restaurant can also be closed as a result of repeated violations or an extensive number of violations. “Once these issues have been corrected, a restaurant may request a reopening inspection,” Carolina Rodriguez, an assistant press secretary with the health department, said in an email. | 0fake |
Rep. DeSantis: Five Key Facts About the Obamacare Replacement Bill | Rep. Ron DeSantis ( ) joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow to highlight five key facts about the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily. [The new plan is closer to full repeal than the old GOP bill was. “The original Ryan bill left the architecture of Obamacare in place, which is responsible for driving up premiums and deductibles for millions and millions of Americans,” DeSantis recalled. “Conservatives looked at that and said that’s the main reason people hate Obamacare, we’ve got to deal with that. The problem, though, that we had is that we have a critical mass of members who, even though they campaigned on repealing Obamacare, did not want to roll back the architecture of Obamacare, so we were kind of at a standstill,” he explained. “And then, with the work of people like Mark Meadows and Tom McArthur from New Jersey, what we were able to do is say, ‘Let’s at least give the states the ability to opt out of the Obamacare regulatory structure and set up functioning markets, which will obviously allow people to have cheaper policies and will lower premiums for people. ’” “That’s not ideal,” DeSantis conceded. “We should just repeal it all. That would be the easiest thing. ” It shows Republicans can work together to craft a replacement bill. “I think the big upshot from this debate, what its revealed, is that people had always said ‘oh, these Republicans, they had seven years to come up with a replacement and they can’t do it.’ That’s not really the issue. I mean, there’s issues with the replacement that I would change if I could, but it is what it is. I think most members are fine with it,” said DeSantis. He pointed out the political reality that Republicans “don’t have the 216 votes to repeal” Obamacare outright. “Even though we voted to do it time after time, now we’re here, the iron’s hot, and we have some members that don’t want to do that. That’s why we ended up in this compromise situation. But I believe, and other conservatives believe, that this is as good as we can do right now, given where our votes are,” he said. It will lower insurance premiums. DeSantis said the new bill “provides a path to lower premiums in a way that the original bill I think did not. ” “Actually there was a good argument that that original bill, by retaining the Obamacare regulations and insurance mandates, but defunding the individual mandate for healthy people to purchase insurance, actually may have created more adverse selection in the insurance markets, which would have of course raised premiums,” he noted. “I think this bill corrects for that and gives governors the ability to really put some market forces back into their insurance markets. That’s what we’re looking to do. ” It takes care of people with conditions. “I think it’s important to point out, people act like before Obamacare there was no coverage for conditions. The fact is, if you either got your insurance through employer, Medicare. V. A. — pretty much everything but the individual market — conditions were covered. It wasn’t an issue,” DeSantis contended. “Now in the individual insurance market there were roughly, between 2010 — 2014, Obamacare had a insurance program before the exchanges stood up,” he recalled. “There were about 130, 000 people that signed up for that who were either denied coverage, or denied coverage that was even remotely affordable for them. ” “That’s a legitimate issue, but it’s a very discrete issue,” he said. “It’s frustrating when the media will act like without Obamacare, you wouldn’t have any protection for conditions for 300 Americans. That’s just not true. Second of all, if you really said was the reason you needed Obamacare, you didn’t need to do a bill. You could have done a bill. You could have appropriated money for those folks. This way, you would have saved all the crippling premium increases and deductible increases, and the plan cancellations, and all the stuff that’s happened with Obamacare. It cleans up the expensive morass of Obamacare regulations. “Our plan has always been as Republicans — whether it’s Tom Price’s plan, whether it’s Paul Ryan’s Better Way, anything that had been proposed — was you have to fully repeal Obamacare,” DeSantis said. “The regulatory structure is dysfunctional. It leads to insolvent markets,” he explained. “And then when you replace it, you do provide continuous coverage protection so that the insurance companies can’t kick you off if you get sick, or jack up your rates, as long as you’re paying your premiums. ” “If people are not paying premiums and are effectively uninsurable, you still provide a backstop for them, but it’s a general public fund, rather than imposing those costs on the premium holders and jacking up their rates,” he added. “So it’s a way to deal with folks who are not insurable under the traditional definition of insurance that also spares policyholders and the individual market. ” “I mean right now, eHealth. com just came out with how much it costs right now, and then they sell individual market plans unsubsidized, for a family of four the average and premium costs right now: $14, 300,” DeSantis noted. “That’s more than some people’s mortgage payments, depending on what part of the country you live in, so that’s not a sustainable system. That is being driven because of the dysfunctional Obamacare regulatory structure. ” “This bill, it not only deals with conditions, it deals with it three different ways. There’s a massive $100 billion fund. Then there was a $15 billion fund that is modeled after the main invisible program. And then there is another $8 billion just with this Fred Upton stuff,” he said, the latter a reference to Rep. Fred Upton’s ( ) decision to support the bill after an $8 billion amendment to protect people with conditions was added. “So you’re talking about probably 100, 000 to 130, 000 people, but maybe even less because anyone that has a policy now, it doesn’t matter if you have conditions, you can renew it and they’re not going to jack up your rates. So it’s taken care of in multiple ways, but basically the media sets a narrative, and I think some Republicans unfortunately accept this, that Obamacare is the only way to deal with conditions. We’ve never accepted that previous to this debate. We shouldn’t accept it,” DeSantis urged. “Actually, Obamacare is not good for conditions because if you’re in Iowa and you have a condition, and the insurers are totally fleeing the market now, guess what? Nobody gets issued a policy at all,” he added. “So yes, under the law you can’t be discriminated against because of that, but if no one’s issuing a policy to anybody, a lot of good that does you. The first thing you have to have if you want to protect both healthy and sick people is a functioning, solvent market, and Obamacare clearly doesn’t deliver that. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 0fake |
Comment on Seattle council member proposes a MASSIVE fee hike for pot shops by Steven Broiles | Posted on November 4, 2016 by DCG | 1 Comment
Seattle proggies love to push businesses out of their city.
From MyNorthwest.com : Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess proposed a 241 percent business license fee hike for pot shops, citing inspection and enforcement costs associated with regulating the two-year-old retail marijuana industry.
The proposed increase, introduced at Wednesday’s budget meeting, would raise the annual licensing cost within Seattle to $3,450 from the existing $1,000 . Cannabis retailers — and one council member — immediately questioned the proposal, saying that the math doesn’t make much sense.
“So what justified the increase other than the fact that we can do it?” asked District 2 Councilmember Bruce Harrell, citing Mayor Ed Murray’s more modest proposal for a $500 increase. “We’ve done a cost analysis that actually reflects (the increase)? It seems like we’ve exceeded it quite significantly.”
The city’s Finance and Administrative Services department defended the cost, saying that even with the mayor’s proposed increase, the licensing fee falls $430,000 short of the city’s cost to regulate pot. The finance department projected that pot retailers will cost the city more than $700,000 next year.
Pot growers and retailers wondered why this industry, from a license fee standpoint, must pay for its regulation in a way that other businesses, such as pawn shops and strip clubs, do not. Moreover, the city finance estimate misses a key point, said KC Franks, owner of Stash pot shops. “What about the $2 million in new sales taxes to the city?” Franks asked. “Why doesn’t their math reflect that?” Seattle Council Tax-Raising-Advocate Tim Burgess
Burgess, who said he has no independent confirmation of the sales tax figures, conceded that the pot retailers have, “raised some legitimate objections, so I’m sure we are going to look at all of that.”
But, he added, the pot issue speaks to a larger policy discussion about how cities pay for the cost of regulating local businesses. Typically, he said, a city uses a blend of licensing fees and taxes to get the money for necessary inspections and enforcement. Pot, he said, costs Seattle about $1 million a year to regulate, an amount which he characterized as a big burden. “This proposal was made to try to offset some of those costs,” he said
Burgess said the licensing fee likely will go up, but he is not sure if the full council will support his proposed increase. The measure, as it is or modified, could come to a vote next week.
Franks and other marijuana retailers characterized the proposal as a simple cash grab directed at an industry without much political clout – or as much money as people seem to think. Philip Dawdy, of the Have a Heart pot shop, wondered why an industry that is a net contributor to city coffers doesn’t have more council support?
When the city raised business license fees to help pay for more police, he said, they consulted retail business organizations first. The pot fee, he said, was a complete blindside. “We are actually helping to balance the city’s budget thanks to sales taxes,” he said. “Why are we not someone’s priority?”
DCG | 1real |
Will Barack Obama Delay Or Suspend The Election If Hillary Is Forced Out By The New FBI Email Investigation? | The Economic Collapse – by Michael Snyder
Just when it looked like Hillary Clinton was poised to win the 2016 election , the FBI has thrown a gamechanger into the mix. On Friday, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency has discovered new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information that they had not previously seen. According to the Associated Press , the newly discovered emails “did not come from her private server”, but instead were found when the FBI started going through electronic devices that belonged to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI has been looking into messages of a sexual nature that Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, and that is why they originally seized those electronic devices. According to the Washington Post , the “emails were found on a computer used jointly by both Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry”, and according to some reports there may be “potentially thousands” of emails on the computer that the FBI did not have access to previously. Even though there are less than two weeks to go until election day, this scandal has the potential to possibly force Clinton out of the race, and if that happens could Barack Obama delay or suspend the election until a replacement candidate can be found?
Let’s take this one step at a time. On Friday, financial markets tanked when reports of these new Clinton emails hit the wires. The following comes from CNN …
After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
At this point, we do not know what is contained in these emails. But without a doubt Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton’s closest confidant, and I have always felt that she was Clinton’s Achilles heel. Journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) is fully convinced that the FBI would have never made this move unless something significant had already been discovered …
We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are…
Is it a certainty that we won’t learn before the election? I’m not sure it’s a certainty we won’t learn before the election.
One thing is, it’s possible that Hillary Clinton might want to on her own initiative talk to the FBI and find out what she can, and if she chooses to let the American people know what she thinks or knows is going on. People need to hear from her…
If the FBI has indeed found something explosive, would they actually charge her with a crime right before the election?
It is possible, but we also have to remember that government agencies (including the FBI) tend to move very, very slowly. If there are thousands of emails, it is going to take quite a while to sift through them all. And of course Barack Obama has lots of ways that he could influence, delay or even shut down the investigation.
So those that are counting on this to be the miracle that Donald Trump needs should not count their chickens before they hatch.
But if Hillary Clinton were to be forced out of the race by this FBI investigation, the Democrats would have to decide on a new candidate, and that would take time. The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that examined what would happen if one of the candidates was forced out of the race for some reason…
If Clinton were to fall off the ticket, Democratic National Committee members would gather to vote on a replacement. DNC members acted as superdelegates during this year’s primary and overwhelmingly backed Clinton over boat-rocking socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach says there currently are 445 committee members – a number that changes over time and is guided by the group’s bylaws, which give membership to specific officeholders and party leaders and hold 200 spots for selection by states, along with an optional 75 slots DNC members can choose to fill.
But the party rules for replacing a presidential nominee merely specify that a majority of members must be present at a special meeting called by the committee chairman. The meeting would follow procedures set by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and proxy voting would not be allowed.
It would be extremely challenging to get a majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee together on such short notice. If Clinton were to drop out next week, it would be almost impossible for this to happen before election day.
In such a scenario, Barack Obama may attempt to invoke his emergency powers . Since the election would not be “fair” until the Democrats have a new candidate, he could try to delay or suspend the election. There would be a lot of controversy as to whether this is legal or not, but Barack Obama has not let the U.S. Constitution stop him in the past.
Meanwhile, new poll numbers show that the Trump campaign was already gaining momentum even before this story about the new emails broke. According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post survey, Donald Trump is now only trailing Hillary Clinton by 4 points after trailing her by as much as 12 points last weekend.
And CNBC is reporting on a highly advanced artificial intelligence system that accurately predicted the outcomes of the presidential primaries and which is now indicating that Trump will be the winner in November…
An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House.
MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions.
The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democratic and Republican Primaries.
Without Hillary at the top of the ticket, the odds of a Trump victory would go way, way up.
So if Hillary is forced out of the race by this investigation, Barack Obama and the Democrats will want to delay or suspend the election for as long as possible if they can.
At this point there is probably not a high probability that such a scenario will play out, but in this crazy election year we have already seen that just about anything can happen. | 1real |
Joe Scarborough BERATES Mika Brzezinski Over “Cheap Shot” At Ivanka Trump: “You don’t have to be so snotty!” [VIDEO] | 1real | |
Malia Obama to Attend Harvard, but Not Until 2017 - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — Malia Obama, the older daughter of President Obama, plans to attend Harvard University beginning in the fall of 2017, the White House announced on Sunday, waiting until her father leaves office to begin her college career. Malia’s decision, announced in a news release after months of official silence from the White House about her college search process, will make her the latest in a long line of presidential children to attend the elite university in Cambridge, Mass. Both of her parents attended law school there. “The President and Mrs. Obama announced today that their daughter Malia will attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017 as a member of the Class of 2021. Malia will take a gap year before beginning school,” the White House said in a statement. In deferring her start date until 2017, Malia, 17, is availing herself of the opportunity to take a “gap year,” a popular option for high school seniors who are seeking experiences outside the classroom — some in parts of the world — before they begin pursuing a degree. Harvard actively encourages admitted students to do so. It may also yield a less scrutinized experience for Malia, whose parents have worked vigilantly to keep her out of the public eye during her years in the White House and hope to shield her from such attention as a college student. “When you’re a presidential the rest of your life you’re famous, you’re a target, you’re in a security bubble, but it’s not the same,” said Gil Troy, a presidential historian at McGill University and the author of “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s. ” “The kids can get to at least some level of irrelevance that they absolutely cannot get when they’re still in the White House. ” Malia visited Harvard and a handful of other Ivy League and liberal arts schools last March on the East Coast, setting off speculation about where she might go. But the White House has steadfastly refused to comment on her college deliberations, even last month when she accompanied Mr. Obama on a trip to California, prompting whispers that she was giving Stanford University a final look before committing herself there. Harvard accepted 5. 2 percent of applicants this year, making this admissions cycle the most selective in its nearly history. When she arrives at Harvard, Malia will join a long list of presidential children who have attended, including John Quincy Adams and his son, John Adams II Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert the sons of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, who went to business school there. The university has also long been a popular destination for the children of foreign leaders. Malia, who turns 18 in July, is a senior at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School here. The school sends a handful of students to Harvard most years. | 0fake |
White House says opposes House bill on restaurant calories | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday it opposes a bill from the U.S. House of Representatives that it said would undercut regulations aimed at requiring fast food and chain restaurants to disclose the calories in food they sell. But the White House stopped short of issuing a formal veto threat for the bill, which it said “would undercut the objective of providing clear, consistent calorie information to consumers.” Tackling the American obesity epidemic has been a signature issue for the White House and first lady Michelle Obama. The menu regulations, finalized by the Food and Drug Administration in 2014, require calories to be listed on menus and menu boards of certain chain restaurants with 20 or more locations, and on certain vending machines. | 0fake |
House passes extreme ban on abortion coverage | House Republicans managed to pass an extraordinarily restrictive law to drop federal funding for abortion on Thursday, after deciding to pull the plug on a vote to ban abortions after 20 weeks scheduled for the same day. The vote ever-so-dramatically coincides with the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, as well as antiabortion activists’ annual March for Life in Washington.
The House approved the broadened abortion curbs by a near party-line 242-179 vote. The White House warned that President Barack Obama would veto the measure, all but ensuring that it would never become law. […]
The approved bill would permanently bar federal funds for any abortion coverage and block tax credits for many people and businesses buying health insurance that covers abortions. That would exceed current abortion restrictions. | 0fake |
Gay and lesbian troops will be protected by new Pentagon policy | WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Tuesday that gay and lesbian troops for the first time will be protected from discrimination by the same equal opportunity policy that protects other servicemembers.
Carter announced the change at the Pentagon's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Pride event.
The change ensures that gay and lesbian troops' complaints about discrimination based on sexual orientation will be investigated by the Military Equal Opportunity program, the same office that handles complaints based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
"Discrimination of any kind has no place in America's armed forces," Carter said. The military needs "to be a meritocracy."
The Pentagon rescinded its "don't ask, don't tell" policy in 2011. Under it, gay and lesbian troops could be kicked out of service if their sexual orientation became known.
"With this policy revision, we are now ensuring that servicemembers are afforded protection against discrimination in the department's military equal opportunity program, provided to all military members," said Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman.
Previously, gay and lesbian troops were required to register discrimination complaints with inspector general offices.
Carter called diversity critical to developing the troops the Pentagon will need for future battles. Excluding qualified troops, he said, is "bad defense policy."
Carter spoke before a standing-room-only crowd of troops from each service, from enlisted personnel to general officers and top civilian officials.
Amanda Simpson, the highest-ranking transgender official at the Pentagon, told the audience she has her Army post not because of her gender but "because I happen to be the best person to do the job."
The military still can kick out transgender troops for what it terms health reasons. However, the Army and the Air Force have made that process more difficult by requiring senior civilian officials to approve the discharges. The Williams Institute, a think-tank at the UCLA Law School that concentrates on issues regarding sexual orientation, estimates there are 15,000 transgender troops serving in the military.
A review of military health policies, including the transgender ban, is underway, Christensen said.
"The current periodic review is expected to take between 12-18 months; it is not a specific review of the department's transgender policy," Christensen said.
Before dumping the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, the Pentagon conducted a nine-month study on the effect of rescinding it. That effort, led by Army Gen. Carter Ham in 2010, determined that the risks of repeal were low and manageable.
Army Brig. Gen. Randy Taylor, who emceed Tuesday's ceremony, said he had to conceal his sexual orientation for most of his career, which included deployments to Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq. Taylor singled out his husband for his sacrifice, and Carter shook his hand to loud applause. | 0fake |
NSA ARCHITECT: NSA SNOOPING EXPIRES BUT FEDS WILL CONTINUE SURVEILLANCE OF AMERICANS’ PHONE RECORDS | This NSA whistleblower has some very interesting things to say about what will happen now that the right to snoop has expired:The AP had this to say about what s happening now with the NSA:Eight days after blocking it, Senate Republicans have agreed to begin debate on a House bill that would overhaul the National Security Agency s handling of American calling records while preserving other domestic surveillance provisions.But that remarkable turnabout didn t happen soon enough to prevent the laws governing the programs from expiring at midnight Sunday as Republican Sen. Rand Paul, a presidential contender, stood in the way of extending the program, angering his GOP colleagues and frustrating intelligence and law enforcement officials.Now, the question is whether the Senate will pass a bill the House can live with. If so, the surveillance programs will resume, with some significant changes in how the phone records are handled. If not, they will remain dormant.The Senate vote on the measure known as the USA Freedom Act can come no earlier than 1 a.m., Tuesday. Senate Republican aides said they expected some amendments, but no major revisions to the bill. Having gone past the brink, the Senate must now embrace the necessity of acting responsibly, said Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, in a statement after Sunday s Senate vote.The high-stakes drama played out as Congress debated the most significant changes prompted by the disclosures of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who revealed the phone records collection and other main surveillance programs. With no deal reached in time, the NSA stopped collecting American phone records at 3:59 p.m. EST Sunday, officials said.Other authorities that expired allowed the FBI to collect business records in terrorism and espionage investigations, and to more easily eavesdrop on a suspect who is discarding cell phones to avoid surveillance. | 1real |
China urges Thailand to find Muslim Uighurs quickly after dramatic cell break | BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday it has urged Thailand to quickly bring to justice 20 ethnic Uighur Muslims from China who broke out of a Thai detention center through a hole in the wall, using blankets to climb to the ground. Twenty-five Uighurs dug through their cell wall with broken tiles to make their dramatic escape from the center in Thailand s southern Songkhla province, near the border with Malaysia, early on Monday. As of Tuesday, 10 had been caught, leaving 15 whose whereabouts were still unknown, according to Thai police, who said checkpoints had been set up along the border. The escapees were part of the last remaining group of more than 200 Uighurs detained in Thailand in 2014. Members of the group identified themselves as Turkish citizens and asked to be sent to Turkey but more than 100 were forcibly returned to China in July 2015, a move that sparked international condemnation, including from rights groups who feared they could face torture in China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China would continue to strengthen cooperation with Thailand on the detainees escape and closely follow the situation. China has already urged the relevant Thai department to quickly bring the relevant people to justice, he said at a regular news briefing. Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Turkic-language speaking Uighurs have escaped unrest in China s western region of Xinjiang by traveling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. The Chinese government has blamed violence in Xinjiang between majority Han Chinese and Uighurs on separatist Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say that anger over strict Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Uighurs is to blame. Exiled ethnic Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer called on Thailand and any country that may find the Uighurs to treat them according to international law and not hand them over to China. The Uyghurs took the risk of capture and perhaps harsh repercussions to try to save themselves from indefinite detention in Thailand and from deportation to China, Kadeer said in an email released by the World Uyghur Congress, which she heads. [Whether they] are indeed Turkish nationals as they claim or Chinese nationals as China claims, the fact that they are ethnic Uyghur is enough for them to face persecution and harsh punishment, she said. Kadeer is a former political prisoner in China accused of leaking state secrets in 1999. She was later allowed to leave on medical grounds and lives in the United States. Amnesty International has said that Chinese authorities in recent months have detained up to 30 of Kadeer s relatives. China routinely denies accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang, though it has admitted a problem with torture of detainees and has pledged to stop mistreatment of prisoners. On the borders of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the region is one of China s most sensitive domestic issues, and the government has dramatically ramped up police operations there and set up what critics characterize as re-education camps and oppressive surveillance. | 0fake |
“Anti-Muslim”, “Anti-Female” Trump Makes Critics Look Foolish When he Does THIS for Group of Afghan Schoolgirls | A group of six, teen, Afghan girls was denied US visas to compete in an international robotics competition in Washington DC. When President Trump found out, he overrode the decision and allowed them to come to the US on a system called parole which allows them to stay in the for 10 days without a visa. President Trump took a lot of heat for his supposedly anti-Muslim travel ban and criticized for now supporting women or the sciences but his actions have proven speak louder than the voices of his critics. The State Department worked incredibly well with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that this case was reviewed and handled appropriately, Dina Powell, Trump s deputy national security adviser for strategy, said in a statement. We could not be prouder of this delegation of young women who are also scientists they represent the best of the Afghan people and embody the promise that their aspirations can be fulfilled. They are future leaders of Afghanistan and strong ambassadors for their country. The girls, who are from western Afghanistan s Herat area, reportedly leaped over multiple obstacles to build a ball-sorting robot for the FIRST Global Challenge, which is set for July 16-18 in Washington, D.C.Equipment sent to them got stuck in customs, so they improvised and used household items instead. To apply for their visas at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, they traveled hundreds of miles twice to Kabul, the Afghan capital, despite facing potential dangers on the road.Although the girls were first barred from the United States, their robot was not. If they hadn t been allowed to come to America, the girls planned to watch their creation compete via Skype. Politico | 1real |
Sean Hannity Is Still Upset Ted Koppel Said He Was ‘Bad for America’ - The New York Times | The Fox News host Sean Hannity has been very upset. Mr. Hannity is often very upset, at things like the past friendships of President Barack Obama the suspected political leanings of his former colleague Megyn Kelly the resignation of Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser and the tweets of media reporters from rival news organizations. But the primary target of his anger in recent days has been Ted Koppel, a veteran news anchor and contributor to “CBS Sunday Morning,” which last weekend broadcast a clip from an interview with Mr. Hannity that the Fox star did not like at all. The interview was conducted by Mr. Koppel roughly three weeks ago, Mr. Hannity said on his show Monday night, and had been presented to him as an opportunity to discuss the political polarization in American life. But only a minute or so of the full interview was used. And it looks as though it may have been the part that Mr. Hannity found the most insulting. The night before the segment aired, CBS News posted online a part of the interview in which Mr. Hannity described his upbringing, which he said shaped his views. But in the televised footage, he was shown complaining about socialism, liberalism and “angry snowflakes,” slang for liberals that conservatives see as easily upset. Then he led with his chin: Mr. Hannity asked if Mr. Koppel, an elder statesman of broadcast news who hosted the ABC show “Nightline” for 25 years, thought he and his show were “bad for America. ” Mr. Koppel responded, “Yeah. ” “Really?” Mr. Hannity responded, his voice rising an octave or two. “That’s sad, Ted. That’s sad. ” Why did Mr. Koppel think Mr. Hannity’s show was bad for America? “You have attracted people who have determined that ideology is more important than facts,” Mr. Koppel said. He also told Mr. Hannity, an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump, “You are very good at what you do. ” What Mr. Hannity has done for the last two nights is use his show to put his anger on full display. He has directly addressed Mr. Koppel (“Ted, you show in this clip, you are not a journalist,” he said on Monday’s show.) He has denounced the segment as “edited fake news. ” He has compared Mr. Koppel to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — perhaps the worst insult a Fox News host can throw at you. He has also demanded that CBS release the full tape of his interview, which he called ”a very good, substantive . ” Bill O’Reilly, another Fox host, and Brit Hume, a political analyst at the network, repeated that call on Monday night. So did the conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who called the Mr. Koppel “ancient” and a “walking dead decrepit media elitist. ” On Tuesday’s broadcast, the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham told Mr. Hannity that he was Mr. Koppel’s “victim” and said CBS treated him unfairly as a way to protect “the worldview of the left. ” “They want to delegitimize you,” she said. Mr. Koppel has not responded to Mr. Hannity. A spokesman for CBS News said the network would not respond, either, and also would not release the unedited footage of the interview, which was part of a segment that was not a profile devoted to Mr. Hannity. Mr. Hannity has turned the slight into a dispute over the intelligence of “the American people,” which he accused Mr. Koppel of underestimating. He said people were smart enough to know the difference between what he does and a news broadcast. So what does he do? On Monday, Mr. Hannity described himself as “a host” and “an advocacy journalist” who covers stories — like President Obama’s ties to “black liberation theology,” he said in one example — that CBS would not touch. But he also used the word “news” to describe the service he provides his viewers, asking Mr. Koppel, “How can I be bad for America when I am offering the American people news and information nightly that your own network will not touch because they have an agenda?” Mr. Hannity has never hidden his own conservative beliefs. Immediately before Mr. Koppel’s rebuke, he was describing a political vision so expansive that he went out of his way to be clear that he did not mean to foment revolution. “Honestly, I think liberalism has to be defeated. Socialism must be defeated — in a political sense,” he said. “This is not a — we don’t want a revolution in this country. ” One of the prime engines of disloyalty was the media, he said, which he accused of being “out to destroy the president. ” He now says Mr. Koppel is doing the same thing to him. “That’s the difference, Ted, between me and you,” he said on Monday night. “I’m honest with my audience. I don’t pretend that I’m fair and balanced and objective. You do. ” | 0fake |
null | makes me think of "pentagon wars" | 1real |
One habit Trump says he will keep as president: tweeting | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to select the media representatives who are given access to the presidential press briefing room, but will not move the room out of the White House, he said in interview with Fox News broadcast on Wednesday. Trump, whose election campaign was punctuated by a stream of Twitter messages, also said he plans to keep tweeting when he takes office on Friday. “Look, I don’t like tweeting. I have other things I could be doing. But I get very dishonest media, very dishonest press. And it’s my only way that I can counteract,” said the Republican president-elect. MORE FROM REUTERS * As caliphate crumbles, Islamic State lashes out in Iraq * Potentially nasty fight looms over Supreme Court pick * Business euphoria over Trump gives way to caution, confusion A New York businessman and former reality TV star, Trump often used Twitter during the campaign to communicate his views, including his sometimes scathing opinions of rivals. Since winning the November election he has delivered a steady stream of tweets - often focused on countering critics. He has had a contentious relationship with some prominent U.S. news organization that he refers to derisively as the “mainstream media,” banning some news outlets during the presidential campaign and publicly criticizing individual reporters. Trump’s team had discussed moving news conferences out of the small West Wing briefing room to the Old Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday on ABC. “The press went crazy, so I said, ‘Let’s not move it.’ But some people in the press will not be able to get in,” Trump told Fox in the interview broadcast on Wednesday. “We have so many people that want to go in so we’ll have to just have to pick the people to go into the room - I’m sure other people will be thrilled about that,” he said. “But we offered a much larger room because we need a much larger room and we offered to do that, but they went crazy.” “And they’ll be begging for a much larger room very soon, you watch.” The current press room has about 49 seats, which are assigned by the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA). The current president of the WHCA is Jeff Mason, a Reuters correspondent. Moving the briefing room could reduce access to White House officials, as the room is only steps from the Oval Office. | 0fake |
Trump Has CRAZY Meltdown On ‘Face The Nation’, Ends Interview In The Most COWARDLY Way (VIDEO) | Donald Trump and his team are not only some of the most corrupt people we ve ever had infiltrate our government, but they re also some of the most cowardly and Trump has just set an example to his team that will likely give way to even more spineless behavior.In an interview with CBS s Face The Nation, Trump actually cut the interview short, ending it abruptly by literally fleeing from reporter John Dickerson when Dickerson dared to question Trump about his unfounded claims that former POTUS Barack Obama wiretapped him (Trump has STILL not been able to prove this).Dickerson was speaking to Trump inside the Oval Office when the discussion turned to Trump s relationship with Obama, and Trump made some extremely disrespectful, inflammatory remarks. Trump said he d had some difficulties with Obama over what happened with surveillance. When Dickerson cornered Trump on why he d called his predecessor sick and bad in his wiretapping accusations in March, Trump practically had a breakdown from being put on the spot while the cameras rolled. Trump gave this incoherent response: I don t stand by anything. I just, you can take it the way you want. I think our side s been proven very strongly. And everybody s talking about it. And frankly it should be discussed. I think that is a very big surveillance of our citizens. I think it s a very big topic. And it s a topic that should be number one. And we should find out what the hell is going on. Trump only seemed to get more frustrated and edgy as Dickerson tried to get to the bottom of Trump s babbling. Trump said: You don t have to ask me.Because I have my own opinions. You can have your own opinions. Dickerson had tried to hold Trump accountable, and it was just too much for the man baby. Trump suddenly ended the interview by straight up walking AWAY from Dickerson, saying Okay, that s enough, thank you, thank you very much. You can watch this awkward, highly unpresidential exchange below:Featured image is a screenshot | 1real |
JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO: Mitt Romney Awoke A Sleeping Giant [Video] | Once again, Judge Jeanine nails it! No matter which candidate you support, this is great! | 1real |
Presidential candidate Clinton promises to prosecute police killers | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton promised on Monday to bring the “full weight of the law” against people who kill police officers if she becomes the next U.S. president after two recent episodes of gunmen slaying police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic candidate ahead of a Nov. 8 election, made the promise in a speech in Cincinnati at the annual convention of the civil rights group the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Anyone who kills a police officer and anyone who helps must be held accountable,” Clinton said. “As president, I will bring the full weight of the law to bear to make sure those who kill police officers are brought to justice.” The penalties for killing a police officer are rightly more severe than those for killing a civilian because police are symbols of the rule of law, she said. Clinton’s remarks come among heighten tensions between police forces and many black and Latino Americans, who have been rallying in protests across the country against a spate of police killings of black men, often unarmed, during encounters. A black former soldier killed five police officers during one such protest in Dallas, Texas, on July 7. On Sunday, another black former U.S. Marine sergeant killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. | 0fake |
Trump no quiere que EEUU toma parte de Acuerdo de París | US VIEWER | Trump no quiere que EEUU toma parte de Acuerdo de París 2016/11/13 13:22 Twitter El mandatario electo de los Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, ya está buscando formas rápidas para que Washington salga del acuerdo mundial de París contra el cambio climático.
USviewer, EEUU_ Así informó Reuters, citando a una fuente de su equipo de transición, quien reprochó al saliente presidente Barack Obama que firmara la adhesión del país mediante una orden ejecutiva, sin contar con el apoyo del Senado.
"Fue insensato que el Acuerdo de París entrara en vigencia antes de la elección" del martes, dijo la fuente, que habló bajo condición de anonimato. El Acuerdo de París obtuvo el 4 de noviembre el apoyo necesario para ser puesto en marcha.
Pues, según la fuente, la alternativa es enviar una carta de retiro de la Convención de 1992 que está asociada al Acuerdo de París, lo que restaría la participación de Estados Unidos en ambos en un año, o emitir una orden presidencial que borre la firma de Washington del acuerdo sellado en la capital francesa.
Muchos países se han mostrado optimistas para que EE.UU. se mantenga adherido al pacto, aunque Marruecos, sede de las actuales conversaciones, dijo que el acuerdo que busca reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero en la segunda mitad del siglo es lo suficientemente fuerte como para sobrevivir al éxodo estadounidense.
El triunfo del candidato republicano a la Casa Blanca, Donald Trump, en los comicios del pasado martes, ha generado diversas reacciones tanto dentro del territorio estadounidense como en otras partes del mundo, una victoria que ha sido acogida con la satisfacción de algunos, el temor o la prudencia de otros.
En diciembre de 2015, tras 13 días de intensa negociación en un suburbio de París (capital de Francia), representantes de 195 países consiguieron el acuerdo histórico para reducir drásticamente las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero en un intento por detener el calentamiento global.
Hasta este sábado había sido ratificado por 109 países que suponen el 76 por ciento de los emisores de gases con efecto invernadero. Estados Unidos supone el 18 por ciento de las emisiones. No hay comentarios para esta noticia Nombre : | 1real |
WATCH ANGRY TEACHER Play Out Mock Assassination Of Trump: “Die!” [Video] | Mentally ill teacher shoots Trump with a squirt gun in front of her students. This woman should be fired. pic.twitter.com/Gr0g7RKohD Deplorable Vet (@KGBVeteran) January 25, 2017 | 1real |
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Trump calls global currency devaluations 'dangerous' for U.S | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday blasted currency devaluations around the world for hurting the U.S. economy and costing American jobs, and defended his calls for a tougher U.S. stance on trade. Asked about the European Central Bank’s decision on Thursday to cut interest rates, Trump told CNBC that such devaluations were driving manufacturing and other jobs outside of the United States. “We just sit back and do nothing,” Trump said. “That’s getting to be very dangerous as far as I’m concerned.” A more effective economic move than devaluations would be charging a tax on products made abroad and sold in the United States, particularly those from China, Trump said. “China is the grand master of all,” Trump said. “I have great relationships and business relationships with China, and even those people say they can’t believe what they’re getting away with.” Additionally, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election said that while he supports free trade if it is “fair,” the United States has been taken advantage of in negotiations. Trump also said if elected president he would move quickly to stop corporate inversions - when a U.S. company acquires an overseas firm and reduces its tax bill by moving its headquarters to the purchased firm’s location. Trump said he thinks corporate inversions cost the United States twice as much as estimated. He said drugmaker Pfizer Inc and other companies that have recently left the country show “there are things that are very structurally wrong with what we’re doing.” “I think it’s $5 trillion, but I don’t think our country has any idea what it is, but I think it’s much more than $2.5 trillion,” he said, referring to U.S. tax revenue lost when companies pull off corporate inversions. Trump said Republicans and Democrats agree they want to halt such inversions, but “they can’t make a deal because they don’t have leadership.” “I could make a deal in 15 minutes by getting people in a room,” Trump said. “Everybody wants that money to come into the United States. ... It would be so easy.” (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Will Dunham) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 0fake |
Stephen King Just Got Real With Trump Supporters |
World famous author Stephen King has a message for the supporters of Donald Trump – a reasonable one that will be immediately ignored, but one that should be heard nonetheless. Trump voters, please think again. Sure, you’re mad. I get that. But you don’t burn down the house because you don’t like the decor.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 27, 2016
Trump voters are lashing out after being used and abused by a Republican legislature that has disrespected them and their woes for eight years, funneling the money of the working class up to the richest Americans and passing no meaningful legislation. They have every right to be mad – but voting for Donald Trump is not the answer. Trump’s “plans” for our nation will wreck the economy, undo all the progress of the Obama Recovery, and further divide our country along ethnic and racial lines.
But it seems like most Trump voters don’t want answers – they just want to be mad. | 1real |
May to pitch on Brexit at EU summit dinner | LUXEMBOURG/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Theresa May will make a pitch to fellow EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday as she tries to break a deadlock in Brexit talks that has left Britain s future trading position up in the air. But EU officials expect no movement in negotiating positions from either side before the other 27 leaders deliver a verdict on progress on Friday that will say Britain must up its offer on divorce terms before they will even talk about trade. We do not expect at this stage any new initiatives between now and the European Council, said an EU official, who said May had asked to address the summit. The others will not negotiate with her but will discuss Brexit after May leaves on Friday. They plan to reject her call for an immediate start to talks on a future trade relationship but make a gesture recognizing the concessions May offered in a speech at Florence last month by telling EU staff to prepare for talks on a transition period. Stepping personally into the breach after Brexit Secretary David Davis s four months of discussions struck deadlock last week, May had dinner in Brussels on Monday with EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and his negotiator Michel Barnier. But she came away with just a joint pledge to accelerate the process. There is a catch: the EU will not discuss relations in the future until London agrees to pay tens of billions of euros (dollars) in a divorce settlement for obligations incurred in the past. May, beset by demands from hardline Brexit supporters to simply walk away without any deal, says the bill can be worked out only when the future relationship is clearer. It takes two to accelerate, Barnier told reporters as he arrived to brief EU ministers in Luxembourg. One step after another... We are not finished with the first step. May s spokesman said she was pleased with a dinner that ended with an embrace at the door from Juncker. But he added: We can only resolve the financial implications of the UK s withdrawal ... as part of the settlement of all the issues. MERKEL-MACRON FRONT May came away similarly empty-handed from telephone calls to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, leaders of the Union s leading powers whose diplomats have taken a hard line this month in limiting the scope of the gesture on transition preparations which Barnier had proposed. People familiar with those calls on Sunday and Monday said May echoed emotional complaints from British negotiators last week that her Florence speech, offering to honor commitments made by Britain, deserved a more generous response from the EU. Macron and Merkel, who are coordinating closely, were clear that they will negotiate at the stage only through Barnier, a former French foreign minister, officials said. And they insisted Britain settled outstanding issues first, despite increasingly vocal calls from business on both sides of the English Channel for clarity by early next year at the latest in order to plan investments for after Brexit in March 2019. BusinessEurope, which represents employers federations across the continent including Britain s CBI, was the latest, saying it was extremely concerned with the slow pace of negotiations and telling EU summit chair Donald Tusk in a letter that business wants to avoid a cliff edge . EU leaders plan to issue a statement after May leaves on Friday saying that they hope a deal can be struck at their next summit in December and that things can move swiftly then. But after losing her majority in June, May has little room for maneuver at home: It s all about the money and if she ups the bid now, that is a really hard sell politically, a senior source in her Conservative Party told Reuters. British efforts to remind continental neighbors of how much they also have to lose if trade is disrupted are showing little return, even among close trading partners with most at stake. Sometimes it s very difficult to see and understand what Britain really wants from these negotiations, Finnish minister Samuli Virtanen said. Brexit minister Davis, who long campaigned to take Britain out of the EU, said London had no plan to walk away from talks but should maintain the option in negotiations. Yet interior minister Amber Rudd, who opposed Brexit in the referendum, said shortly afterward that it was unthinkable that the two sides would fail to strike a deal as it was in their own interests. | 0fake |
Heading Into The Convention, Clinton Maintains Comfortable Lead | With the Republican National Convention tomorrow, and the Democratic Convention next week, Hillary Clinton is maintaining a comfortable, average lead over Donald Trump (and that s with Trump s VP pick announced).Leading 46 to 41, Clinton maintains her advantage even after a month of serious setbacks and criticisms stemming from the FBI and Justice Department s decision not to indict her over the use of a private email server.NBC News poll also shows that Clinton is thrashing Trump among black, Hispanic, female, and young voters, while Trump leads in (not surprising) whites and men. Surprisingly, Trump only leads men by seven points, while Clinton leads with women by 15 percent.As NBC has shown, these numbers have been virtually unchanged in a month. It seems Americans are settling for their candidates, and that s even before Clinton announces her running mate.And it s worth noting that Trump is hated far more than Clinton. While the media likes to remind the people about her likeability issues, they have been (not surprisingly) mum about Trump s. The NBC poll shows Trump, heading into the convention, with a 27 percent positive/60 percent negative rating, a net negative of 33 percent. Clinton, on the other hand, will walk into the Democratic convention with a 34 percent positive/56 percent negative, a net negative of 22 percent.Currently, only 38 percent of Republicans are satisfied with Trump as their nominee, while 54 percent of Democrats are satisfied with Clinton.A sizable chunk of the population hates Donald Trump more than Clinton. But only one candidate is constantly questioned on why people hate them.It s important to remember that at around convention time in 2012, in early September, President Obama was ahead of Romney by 5 points, according to Ipsos/Reuters Tracking (Obama won by 4 percent). Clinton is following the same trajectory as President Obama, and, again, that s without a running mate announced.But in the coming months after the conventions, out of the 127 national polls ran, Romney beat President Obama in 22 and tied in 15.Clinton is in a good position. But Democrats know all too well what happens when they get cocky. The only way to ensure Clinton beats Trump is to not underestimate his abilities and supporters, and to show up to the polls to vote.Featured image via Darren McCollester/Getty Images | 1real |
Twitter Just UNLEASHED On Trump After He Called Americans ‘Stupid People’ And ‘Fools’ (TWEETS) | Donald Trump just unleashed an attack on any and all Americans who have a problem with his cozy relationship with Putin. Sure, Russia in an effort directly spearheaded by the Russian dictator hacked our election with the intent of effectively installing Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Sure, this has been confirmed by more than a baker s dozen intelligence agencies. Sure, Trump, who very publicly asked Russia to hack his opponents, has been informed of this himself. But according to him, all that matters is that we kiss Vladdy Poot s (we imagine this to be his cute little nickname for his Russian sugar daddy) ring and you re stupid if you feel otherwise. Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only stupid people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We .. Trump tweeted, still failing to grasp the intracacies of the use of ellipses (It s three dots, not four or twelve, Donald!), have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and . He added in a third tweet, both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD! Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only "stupid" people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We .. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017Of course, one of the world s problems is that Russia directly interfered with a sovereign nation s election at an unprecedented level, according to the report Trump received. Naturally, Americans who have a problem with a foreign power interfering especially at this level in our election don t exactly enjoy the President-elect calling them stupid for caring about the integrity of the electoral process:@realDonaldTrump Russia just made a mockery of the US election. Only a "fool" would think that's the sign of a good relationship. Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump So now you are calling Americans stupid. Fannnntastic! Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Only someone without real friends (you!!!) would solicit the friendship of a dictator like Putin. Ben Berkon (@BenBerkon) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Donald, they hacked the US. The only reason you re cheerleading for Putin is because he gave you the win. Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump a good relationship is one thing. Being in the pocket of, is quite another. What do they have on you? Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump We've come to the conclusion that you'd be better off w a pacifier, blankie and straitjacket. Certifiably batsh*t CRazY?? ErinHazel??#RESIST (@ErinRHazel) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Yeah, yeah. We get it. You're besties with Putin. pic.twitter.com/yHraRUHYkQ Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Do two countries have "a good relationship" when one country tries to influence the free and fair elections in the other? Simon Hedlin (@simonhedlin) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Most of my good relationships don't involve the other person HACKING INTO MY PRIVATE DATA AND SABOTAGING MY FUCKING LIFE. pic.twitter.com/dVfI8RbhHA Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Lets see, who else might applaud the idea that Americans who stand up for their sovereignty are "stupid" people or fools? pic.twitter.com/FeDrxi8KEB Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) January 7, 2017Look, we get it. Your love for Russia and disdain for our intelligence agencies is clear. But why constantly reminded us? @realDonaldTrump Big Lee ?? (@RejectTrump) January 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump they interfered in our election. Why would we want 2 have a good relationship w/them? Kelly Herself ? (@Kelly_Herself) January 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump also, calling Americans who disagree with you "stupid" is not awesome. Kelly Herself ? (@Kelly_Herself) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump We want a good relationship with Russia, you idiot. Part of that is them not interfering in our elections! Tom Coates (@tomcoates) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump The Russians interfering with our election defines a terrible relationship. Only a fool fails to see this. Keith Fitzgerald (@Oldfitz) January 7, 2017Mr. Trump, I want you to stop insulting me and my family. And my fellow patriots. #MAGA @realDonaldTrump Greg Laden (@gregladen) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump You want to get in bed w/ Putin a murderous thug? Is that so he won't spill the beans about your Russian business dealings? Not Maureen Dowd (@MaureenDowdTwit) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump There's a difference between diplomacy and sleeping with the enemy! You're still in Putin's bed. Auntie B (@b_auntie) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump You sure are working hard clutching your ankles for Putin. Shameful traitor. Kay (@karleenflem) January 7, 2017Yes, ideally, we should want a good relationship with every country, but Trump somehow doesn t consider it a problem that Putin directly ordered an interference in our election that likely helped him win. To Trump, his personal benefit is more important than the good of our nation. And we re stupid, right?Featured image via Getty Images (Drew Angerer)/screengrab | 1real |
For Incarcerated, Contraband Cell Phones Are Lifeline To Outside | Jails and prisons across the country struggle to tamp down the sale and use of contraband cell phones. But for many prisoners, especially those involved in the national prison strike against slave labor, access to such technology is considered a lifeline.
Prisoners in Alabama, South Carolina, New York, and other states use contraband phones to communicate with family, supporters, and members of the media about their work, and to document the violence, deteriorating and filthy facilities, and the testimonies of other incarcerated people. If prisoners did not have access to these cell phones, it’s possible the public would know even less about the prison strike than they do today.
“A lot of people have phones in prison. But a lot of them are scared to use them the way we use them. It’s complicated,” said a prisoner, who was granted anonymity to prevent retaliation from prison officials. “Being able to stay in contact with our families is helpful as far as rehabilitation goes.”
“Cell phones are part of the day to day life that we live in today. To say that you’re preparing someone to re-enter society and to rehabilitate them [and then] say that they can’t have access to a cell phone is contradictory,” the prisoner argued. “This serves as a supplement to rehabilitation but also it allows us to be connected to society, to the actual world that we’re going to be entering back into when we go back out there.”
“They don’t let the media inside of any prisons in any state. If they do allow the media to come in, it’s a dog and pony show. They walk them where they wanna walk them. They don’t let them talk to nobody they don’t really want them to talk to. So there’s no realistic perspective of what prisons are really all about.”
“With these cell phones, it allows us to put the reality out there, and they’re afraid of that. And they should be, because of what’s going on in the prisons.”
Another incarcerated person, who operates the @prisonslavery1 Twitter account, told Shadowproof, “The prison system slave drivers want to muffle our voice, dehumanize us through silence.”
“With them allowed to control the narrative and the prisoners silenced under brutal repression tactics, it’s a win-win for the enslavers. These phones level the playing fields. These (weapons) will go down in history as an essential tool used by 21st century slaves,” they said. “These weapons will cause their collapse. As we continue to expose them and push for human rights”
Going back to the prisoner, who spoke about cell phones as a connection to society, the phones may be especially useful to incarcerated parents eager to play a role in their children’s lives.
“Children live in households that they’re not in control of. They can’t just call collect to reach someone else’s house. They may be able to get a phone and let’s say their child acts out and they’re going through something. Well, that child can call their parent, their daddy or their momma on the cell phone and say, ‘Dad I’m in a bad situation. What do I do?'”
“But the wall phone, [the child] can’t call the wall phone. That’s a problem that [the parent] can’t offer advice, that he can’t help.”
The prisoner pointed out that many of these phones are smuggled in by the officers and sold at a high price to the incarcerated. But he argued the primary motivation for prison officials to clampdown on contraband phones is that it deprives them of a revenue stream.
“They’ll say, ‘Well, if you got the money to pay for the cell phone, you should be able to pay for the [wall] phone bill. But the cell phone allows us unlimited calls. The wall phone you have to pay every time you use the phone.”
“So if I pay $60 a month and I get unlimited calls, well that may be five or ten phone calls on a wall phone. And after that it’s over with. It’s not an unlimited amount of time on the phone call.”
“You get 15 minutes—that’s a $6 phone call,” they added. “You got to hang up and call back. Fifteen more minutes, six more dollars, so you can run through your 10 phone calls in just a few hours and that’s it. You can’t talk to anyone else for the rest of the month ’cause they don’t have money.”
“So [cell phones] just make it easier, it makes everyone more accessible. They can check on their cases, if they cant find information they can call a lawyer or they can seek legal help. You can’t do that on a wall phone, you really can’t help yourself on a wall phone.”
“If they allowed us to have cell phones and they told us they were gonna monitor our calls, no one would care,” the prisoner argued. “The issue is not that they’re monitoring our phone calls, we’re not on the phone trying to get in touch with ISIS or no shit like that. We’re trying to call our brothers and see how their day was at school.”
The prisoner mocked the argument by prison officials that the phone are how they get drugs in the prison. He noted drugs have been in prisons since their inception.
“They had drugs and shit, since the first time the prison doors open. So the cell phones do not facilitate anything. If the individual wants to commit crime, they’re gonna do it regardless. So the cell phone is not a part of that.”
The post For Incarcerated, Contraband Cell Phones Are Lifeline To Outside appeared first on Shadowproof .
| 1real |
Gun-Advocating Mom Shoots Daughters During Family Argument (VIDEO) | In March, 42-year-old Christy Sheats wrote on her Facebook page: It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away but that s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semi-automatic handguns. Instead of protecting her family, Sheats used a gun to kill her two young daughters, ages 22 and 17, on Friday. Police then shot and killed Sheats.Sheats oldest daughter, Taylor Sheats, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her younger daughter, Madison Sheats, was rushed to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead a short time later.Fulshear Police did not disclose details about what led up to the shooting, saying only that they believe it was triggered by a family argument.Sheats husband was at home at the time of the shooting. New York Daily News reports that he was not physically injured, but was taken to an area hospital to be treated for mental and emotional trauma.According to KHOU, the family s neighbors were also in shock over the shooting, which took place in a quiet neighborhood in Fort Bend County, Texas.They described the family as a nice, good, very good family, saying there had never been any issues at the home prior to the shooting.Contrary to Sheats statements in her March Facebook post, losing your right to own a gun is not horribly tragic. A horrible tragedy is when a mother loses her temper and uses a gun to shoot and kill her own children before getting shot and killed by police herself.As the L.A. Times reports here, the chances of someone using a gun in self-defense are slim to none. In 2012 there were just 259 justifiable gun-related homicides.The article goes on to point out that the number of justifiable homicides pales in comparison to the 8,432 criminal homicides that took place in the same year. Nor does it compare to the 20,666 intentional suicides. The number of deaths caused by unintentional shootings, 548, was more than double the number of self-defense shootings.Just a few months ago Christy Sheats and her family believed that owning a gun was a good idea. Now she and her daughters are dead. We can listen to the words of the NRA and second amendment enthusiasts, or we can move forward to enact sane gun-control policies and save lives.Here s more on this story from KHOU.Image credit: video screen capture KHOU | 1real |
Contrasting realities in Libya for French minister's visit | TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A hundred meters from the office of Libyan Prime Minister Fayaz al-Seraj in Tripoli, guards at a detention center for migrants had a message for a visiting French delegation: no minister, no journalists, nobody is allowed in. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian went to Libya on Thursday to revive U.N. talks between rival groups controlling the west and east, with a view to stabilizing a nation in turmoil since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. But the Tripoli leg of the visit showed how difficult it will be to find anyone capable of imposing authority, with a weak U.N.-backed government depending on an array of armed factions, each with its own agenda. After meeting Seraj in his impressive office, Le Drian was meant to visit the nearby detention facility to see conditions for African migrants caught as they try to reach Europe. But after CNN aired a video appearing to show migrants being auctioned off as slaves, Libyan officials are on edge, with guards refusing to let the French visitors through the detention camp s thick steel door. What do you want to call it? said a visibly tetchy man who described himself as the supervisor. It is a detention center. Nobody is allowed. Not the minister and not journalists. Not allowed. French officials played down the incident, saying there had been no time for a visit anyway. But it was symptomatic of how Seraj s government is struggling to make an impact, failing to fix anything from electric power cuts to a collapsing currency. Seraj promised to tackle migrant trafficking, but French officials say that will depend on which armed groups are prepared to help him. While armed factions are vying for control in Tripoli, power in Benghazi is in the hands of one man, General Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have driven out Islamist fighters. It s a lot more ordered here. There s no doubt here that there is just one chief, said a European security contractor in Benghazi. Haftar s self-styled Libyan National Army is made up of different groups, which he struggles at times to control. But the general, who hopes to run for the Libyan presidency next year, sought to impress his French visitor with as much fanfare as possible. Soldiers stood at strategic points, uniforms spotless and boots polished, in contrast to other parts of Libya, where armed groups are more informally dressed in a mixture of uniforms and civilian clothes. Opponents accuse Haftar of Gaddafi-style high-handedness and of trying to revive a police state, something his supporters vehemently deny. He did not leave his office during the French visit, leaving Le Drian to review air, sea and land forces as a military band struggled to play La Marseillaise. Haftar s aides did not allow journalists to film his meeting with le Drian with their phones. I appreciate the frankness of our exchanges, Le Drian said after an hour-long discussion. That s quite natural, Haftar responded loftily. Haftar is attempting to position himself as a presidential candidate, but there is still sporadic fighting in Benghazi despite his having declared victory in July. One diplomat recalled how Haftar was envious of Seraj after he met U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington last month, perhaps sensing a shift in the Libyan balance of power. I don t know how comfortable he (Haftar) is feeling, because I sense that this time the security was much more stringent than when we were last here (in August), said a French official. He may be feeling some pressure. | 0fake |
Clinton Foundation CEO Goes Missing After Trump’s Top Money Guru Found Dead |
Another astonishing Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that the Main Directorate for Migration Affairs (GUVM) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) reported this morning that former Clinton Foundation CEO Eric Braverman, who last week applied for “urgent and immediate” political asylum at the Russian Embassy in New York City, failed to keep his scheduled interview yesterday—with speculation being made by Federation intelligence analysts that his having gone missing is “directly related” to the mysterious and sudden death of Donald Trump’s top money guru E. Lee Hennessee. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
According to this report, Mr. Braverman was scheduled to return to the Russian Embassy in New York City yesterday for an in-depth interview related to the request he made last week for “urgent and immediate” political asylum in Russia—and as we had previously reported, sent shockwaves through the Kremlin as some Federation intelligence analysts believed his request was for the purpose of “protection by publicity” due to his fears that the Clinton Crime Family wanted him killed.
Fears that he was being targeted for death by the Clinton Crime Family, specifically Hillary Clinton, this report continues, was due to Mr. Braverman’s past association with the Clinton Foundation criminal money laundering organization that he headed as CEO after being installed there by Chelsea Clinton who discovered for herself the massive corruption of this supposed to be charity.
With the American press widely reporting (though skeptically) Mr. Braverman’s asylum request (“a simple “here I am” could quiet the waters – but there has been none”), however, this report notes, Federation intelligence analysts contributing to this report note that not only did he fail to keep yesterday’s interview date at the Russian Embassy in New York City, he has yet to publically deny his actions, and since 12 October has failed to even update his Twitter page account.
To why Mr. Braverman has gone silent and missing, this report continues, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is attributing to yet another Clinton Crime Family related mysterious death—this one being Donald Trump’s longtime billionaire money guru E. Lee Hennessee, age 64, found dead this past week in her Trump Plaza home, located in West Palm Beach, Florida—with one media account suggesting it was related to a domestic harm case involving her husband and longtime business partner, and another saying she died of a stroke—but with no autopsy having yet been performed.
Donald Trump’s money guru E. Lee Hennessee, this report explains, was one of the most powerful women financiers on Wall Street whose company, Hennessee Group LLC, achieved a staggering 2,132% increase of profits between 1987-2015 and was co-run by her husband Charles Gradante.
As to why Hillary Clinton feared and hated E. Lee Hennessee, this report says, is due to her having created for Donald Trump an “extraordinary/unique” investment portfolio that, in essence, has allowed him to run his revolutionary presidential campaign entirely debt free costing him virtually nothing as for every dollar he spent, he was able to gain back two more—thus making it the first US presidential election run in history to turn a profit.
With what is infamously called the Clinton Body Count rapidly increasing through this US presidential election cycle, this report concludes, there now appears to be a breaking of support of Hillary Clinton among America’s elites, with even the Chicago Tribune this past week saying Democrats should ask Clinton to step aside as the American political system is breaking down and their warning that it’s been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they’re properly frightened—and is most assuredly going to get worse with the shocking revelation that the FBI has now discovered a staggering 650,000 Hillary Clinton secret emails on the computer of her top aide Huma Abedin’s disgraced pedophile husband Anthony Weiner.
Source
| 1real |
Furious Trump Supporter Threatens To Kill Trump After He Changes Immigration Policy (VIDEO) | Republican nominee Donald Trump recently surprised everyone when he flip-flopped on the harsh immigration policy he d been promising his racist, hateful supporters since the beginning of his campaign. It turns out, not everyone is taking this news very well especially the Trump lovers who wanted nothing more than to see millions of illegal immigrants heartlessly removed from the country they built their lives in.On Wednesday s segment of The Glenn Beck Program, a furious Trump supporter shared his reaction to Trump s recent softening on immigration and it wasn t good. In speaking to host Glenn Beck, Nate from Virginia actually delivered a threat to Trump. The guest warned: As long as he does the basic things, the foundational things, which is build a wall, he s not going to have people like me coming after him. Beck wasn t alarmed at first, but was visibly stunned as angry Nate continued his rant. Seemingly speaking for all Trump supporters, Nate said: Oh, he s in so much trouble. You don t even understand the backlash of us, the ones who are so frustrated and angry and tired of all the political stuff. We re going to come after him, personally, you know what I mean? We re going to get him. Beck clarified, I don t know what you mean. Hang on, what does that mean? Nate s response was far from comforting: You know, the most peaceful way you can get rid of a president When Beck hopefully suggested that Nate might have meant he wants to impeach Trump, Nate corrected him and said he definitely meant violence: Well, I mean, hey, you yourself said he s condoned violence in the past, hasn t he? He s appealing to people who are very frustrated and angry. Their frustration and anger can only be subsided if he makes his promises true. And he has a lot on his shoulders, maybe he himself doesn t even know how much. But if he doesn t come through for us, he s going to have bigger problems, bigger problems than what you know. Beck was so disturbed by one of the spookiest phone calls I ve ever received that he hung up on Nate.You can watch the call unfold below:A few weeks ago, Donald Trump had suggested that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should be assassinated by the Second Amendment people. He might just be getting a taste of his own medicine now by the very hate movement he created.Featured image via Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images | 1real |
CHRISTIAN HIGH SCHOOL Told By State They Are No Longer Allowed To Pray Before Games | The drip drip drip of communism Leftists are stealing our rights and freedom while Americans can t be bothered with politics because they re too busy watching the Kardashians The Florida High School Athletics Association recently denied a request by two Christian schools to broadcast a prayer before a championship game at Orlando s Citrus Bowl Stadium.Cambridge Christian School in Tampa and the University Christian School out of Jacksonville are playing in the District 2-A high school football championships today and coaches from both teams submitted a request to ensure a 30-second prayer over the loudspeaker before kickoff, Bay News 9 reports.But Roger Dearing, director of the Florida High School Athletics Association, denied the request for two main reasons. The facility is a public facility, predominantly paid for with public tax dollars, makes the facility off limits under federal guidelines and precedent court cases, Dearing wrote in an emailed response to the teams. In Florida Statutes, the FHSAA (host and coordinator of the event) is legally a State Actor, we cannot legally permit or grant permission for such an activity. Cambridge head of school Tim Euler doesn t agree with Dearing s ruling. We ve played 13 football games this year, he told Bay News 9 We ve prayed before every one of them. Here s the problem, Euler told WTSP. The Florida Legislature is opened up with prayer in a building that is paid by tax dollars. What is the difference? If they can pray there, we can pray here, and I want them to be able to pray there and I want us to be able to pray here, he added. So I think (Dearing s) reasoning is flawed at the core of it. Euler said Friday morning, hours before the game s 1 p.m. start time, that it s unlikely the teams would be able to reverse the decision, but believes it s important to highlight the problem, nonetheless. What we really want to do is raise awareness, he told Bay News 9. All we re asking for is an opportunity for two Christian schools to pray. WTSP attempted to contact the Florida High School Athletic Association about the ruling, but the agency ignored its request.WTSP reporter Mike Deeson posted about the controversy on Facebook. I was disappointed the Florida High School Athletic Association didn t return our calls, he wrote. I wanted to know how the legislature opens with a prayer in a taxpayer owned building with state employees, yet FHSAA maintains a prayer couldn t be said in a taxpayer funding facility the Citrus Bow that was sanctioned by state employees, members of FHSAA. Something doesn t make sense when you compare the two but they NEVER returned our calls, Deeson posted. In my opinion that was a BAD PR MOVE! Readers, of course, were enraged by the FHSAA s decision. I think it s absolutely ridiculous that they will not let two Christian schools pray before their game, Mary Salvatore posted to Facebook. And you wonder why we have so many mass shootings across the country! So PC and so tolerant that you become intolerant, Robert Rosengarten added. Let them pray, who gives a f. If they want to pray to Jesus, Allah, the flying spaghetti monster, let them, who cares. Who s to stop them? Daniel Suarez questioned. What if both teams come together before the game and pray? What if all in the stands begin to pray? Who would it hurt? Via: EAG News | 1real |
Iran says fight to retake eastern Syria, Idlib will start soon: Mehr news | LONDON (Reuters) - A top Iranian official said on Wednesday that forces loyal to Syria s President Bashar al-Assad will start operations soon to retake the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib and eastern areas. Soon we will see eastern Syria cleared, and then the Idlib area in west, Ali Akbar Velayati, the top adviser to Iran s Supreme Leader, was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency. | 0fake |
‘To Hell and Back’ as a Cancer Survivor, Storm Victim and Caregiver - The New York Times | They treaded water for seven hours before a neighbor heard their screams. On Oct. 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded Staten Island. As the storm surge peaked at 14 feet in the borough — among the highest levels across New York City — the water crashed through the walls of their house, and DeBraan Varvaro and her younger sister, Carolyn Varvaro, clung to the gutter of their roof and did not let go. They waved frantically as helicopters circled overhead, but no one saw or heard them over the roaring water. “We could swim before we could walk,” the elder Ms. Varvaro said of her childhood on Staten Island’s beaches and teenage years as a lifeguard. “We’re ocean people. That’s why we survived. ” Her sister grew tired in the water, and Ms. Varvaro held her up as she treaded water. In the second hour, a garden statue of the Virgin Mary floated past. The younger Ms. Varvaro saw it as a sign they would survive. She kicked with renewed hope. Finally, at 6 p. m. a neighbor, crouched in his attic, heard the women’s screams. He helped them get the attention of more neighbors, and a young man swam through the water, filled with sewage, dead fish and gasoline, to pull them out. They were safe. But everything changed after the storm. They no longer felt safe. Over four years later, the night of the hurricane, and all the nights after, still haunt them. The elder Ms. Varvaro, now 61, a pack of her favorite Seneca cigarettes within reach, recalled in a recent interview the continuing terror, while propping her legs on a stool to ease back pain from a 1993 car accident. She cried, stopping at times midthought to find the words to describe her ordeal. Ms. Varvaro had feared displacing her sister, who is schizophrenic, so they decided to stay. The night before Hurricane Sandy hit, however, they called 911 for help, but the line was busy and they could not get through. They were among 236, 000 residents in impacted zones who did not evacuate their home before the storm, according to city estimates. Now, the sound of sirens still puts Ms. Varvaro in a panic, jolting her back to the hours spent treading water and praying for help. When she tries to sleep, she said, she hears “the of the helicopters circling overhead. ” She did not return to the beach until last summer. “I couldn’t even get to the boardwalk,” she said. “I’d have to stop. I could still smell the storm. ” In 2012, Ms. Varvaro was told that she had stress disorder. Even before the storm, her life had its difficulties. Pregnant at 23, she almost lost the pregnancy twice because of medical complications, but gave birth to a healthy daughter. The next year, in 1979, she learned she had cervical cancer, underwent surgery and fought it off. But it returned aggressively 10 years later, and she fought it again. Everything seemed fine until 2000, when the cancer returned a third time. She has been free of cancer since surgery in May 2000, and hopes to keep the disease in the past. “I’ve met the devil and survived,” she said with a shrug. “I came out the winner. ” Before her last bout with cancer, she met Kevin Killea, a sales representative, and they were together for 16 years. He died of pneumonia in 2010, and she has been alone since, except for her sister. Ms. Varvaro has been protecting and caring for her sister, who is four years her junior, since they were young. As a child, her sister often had high fevers and seizures that led to a loss of hearing Ms. Varvaro learned sign language so they could communicate. Surgery restored her hearing several years later. Ms. Varvaro has also helped her sister cope with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, diagnoses she received after their mother died in 1999. “They’re only labels,” Ms. Varvaro said. “I tell my sister, ‘Other people need them. You don’t. ’” She added: “I’m a shy person until it comes to my sister, and then the bulldog comes out. I fight for the people I love. I will go for the jugular and ask God for forgiveness later. ” When her sister, who had been living in a supportive apartment program, had a nervous breakdown in 2003, after verbal abuse and neglect, she moved her to another such program. Ms. Varvaro said she had lodged a complaint with local officials against the previous program. It was later shut down. But in August 2009, her sister had another breakdown at the second residence. Ms. Varvaro then brought her home to live with her in her apartment on Staten Island. When they moved in together, Ms. Varvaro promised to keep her sister safe. After the storm, she felt she had failed her. She asked for her sister’s forgiveness. “I think all the struggles I’ve survived in life were in preparation for taking care of my sister,” Ms. Varvaro said. By attending to her sister’s needs, however, Ms. Varvaro suppressed her own anxiety. In 2014, a friend referred her to an art class and other services provided by the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island, a beneficiary agency of of New York, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Working in watercolors and pastels, she painted a small sailboat flitting in the choppy water of a dark storm. “I’m no Picasso,” she said. “But it got me out of this house. It got me out of myself. ” The art classes have been a welcome break from financial troubles that were compounded after the hurricane. The family received $10, 000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover losses — well under what the sisters needed. They were unable to return to their first apartment together and the garden they tended daily with colorful annuals and window boxes by the kitchen. Since 2009, Ms. Varvaro’s back injury and other health problems have kept her from working as an emergency medical technician, a job she had held for 13 years. Her sister has never been able to work because of her mental illness. Together they receive $1, 736 in Social Security income and disability benefits. They also receive $375 a month in food stamps and a $575 rent subsidy from the city. They now share a apartment that is accessible only by a long, narrow staircase, which is difficult for the elder Ms. Varvaro to climb because of her arthritis and fibromyalgia. The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, another beneficiary, provided them with $850 in Neediest funds to cover one month’s rent in 2014. In September, they also received $1, 170 from the fund to replace the younger Ms. Varvaro’s broken bed and to buy a therapeutic mattress for her sister, which has greatly improved her sleep. The elder Ms. Varvaro hopes they can eventually move into a apartment. “I’ve been to hell and back,” she said. “Now I just want to help my sister have peace of mind. I’m ready to live again. ” | 0fake |
Адская Клинтон | Политика
Предвыборная президентская гонка в США всё больше напоминает некогда весьма популярный тележурнал «Каламбур», особенно его рубрику «Деревня дураков». Последние известия из-за океана напоминают именно этакую большую деревню, размером с добрую часть западного континента, жители которой задались целью развеселить весь мир.
Из самых свежих веселушек: католическая церковь в Сан-Диего предупредила своих прихожан о том, что проголосовать за демократов равносильно наитягчайшему смертному греху. Ведь эти «нечестивцы» рассматривают возможность разрешения абортов, эвтаназии и легализации лёгких наркотиков. Памятка, разосланная жителям, напоминала, что наказанием всем, поддерживающим подобную программу — прямая дорога в ад. Как думаете, кто же спустя несколько дней был объявлен «засланцем» самого Сатаны? Разумеется, Хиллари Клинтон, стабильно опережающая своего соперника (не иначе, как агнца божьего) на три процентных пунктика, так вожделенных Трампом.
Вроде бы смешно было рассчитывать, что после подобного выпада положение «дьявольской» дамочки сильно пошатнётся, если бы не одно «но»! До этого (феноменального по уровню мракобесия!) политического хода была целая череда инсинуаций, направленных на уничтожение репутации Хиллари Клинтон. Если припомните, то она:
— настолько легкомысленна, что пользуется личной почтой (совершенно не защищённой) для пересылки важнейшей информации;— так склеротична, что забывает секретнейшие документы в отеле вражеской страны, где, традиционно, разведывательные органы бдят неусыпно;— больна в такой степени, что теряет сознание на публичных мероприятиях;— кровожадна настолько, что ей инкриминируют ливийскую войну и тесную связь с террористическими организациями.
Даже её сторонники как будто задались целью подтвердить «греховность» Клинтон. Чего стоит только выходка Мадонны, объявившей во всеуслышание, что всякому (всякой?), кто проголосует за Хиллари, гарантирован сеанс орального секса от певицы. А в соцсети расшалившаяся последовательница демократии выложила фото своего обнажённого тела (изрядно постаревшего, но по-прежнему «звездатого»), призвав отдать голос той, «кто действительно нужен» Америке.
В каждой шутке присутствует небольшая доля шутки, не так ли? Мир оценил, мир развлекается за счёт происходящего в Штатах. Но требуемого результата «юмористы», похоже, всё-таки, добились: перед самым часом «X» Трамп явно обходит «дьяволицу»! Газета Los Angeles Times утверждает, что последний опрос показал следующие результаты по состоянию на 04.11.2016: за Дональда Трампа считают нужным отдать голоса 47,5% из опрошенных 2094 граждан, а за Хиллари Клинтон — 42,5%. Такой вот «экзорцизм» из американской политики происходит, пока американцы пытаются сделать окончательный выбор. А вам не страшно? С кем придётся нашему президенту налаживать «дружеские», или, как сейчас предпочитают выражаться, «партнёрские» отношения? | 1real |
Paul Ryan Admits Obamacare Will Be Law ‘For The Foreseeable Future’ After GOP Bill FAILS (VIDEO) | Well, folks, your health care is safe for the foreseeable future according to Speaker Paul Ryan. After the GOP abruptly pulled their healthcare bill from consideration Friday, spirits among the worst among us were pretty dim. We just pulled it, Donald Trump told the Washington Post after the decision to nix the embarrassing disaster of a bill, noting that he doesn t blame Ryan for this huge loss. Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains. We re feeling those growing pains today, Ryan told reporters, noting that this is a disappointing day for those whose biggest dream is stripping healthcare from millions and that doing big things is hard. All of us, all of us myself included will need to time to reflect on how we got to this moment, he added.How we got to this moment is that the Affordable Care Act is immensely popular. While it could use some improvements like a move toward universal healthcare the GOP s effort to repeal and replace is not as popular with voters as it may have seemed on the campaign trail.But they won t actually reflect on that, will blame Obama, and will present Americans with something equally horrible somewhere down the line.Ryan was forced to utter one of the most beautiful 22 words we have heard since Donald Trump was kinda-sorta elected by less than half of the population: ObamaCare will remain the law of the land until it s replaced. We re going to be living with ObamaCare for the foreseeable future. The president gave his all in this effort. He did everything he possibly could to help people see the opportunity we have with this bill. He really has been fantastic, Ryan said. Still, we have to do better and we will. This battle is won. The Affordable Care Act is safe for now. But the war is far from over, and all of us must fight each day to oppose the GOP s hateful agenda.The only thing standing between them and the destruction of all we hold dear is us.Watch Ryan s shamed admission below:"Obamacare is the law of the land and it will remain the law of the land until it's replaced," Speaker Ryan says: https://t.co/Okz2bwUl4f pic.twitter.com/9F3MnW7oMR CBS News (@CBSNews) March 24, 2017Featured image via screengrab | 1real |
HUD OFFICIAL Spends $366,000 in Fed Funds on Booze, Makeup, Clothes and Homes…You Won’t Believe Her Punishment! | WHY IS THIS CRIMINAL ALLOWED TO JUST SKATE BY WITH SUCH A SHORT AMOUNT OF JAIL TIME?We know that this woman is working on a plea bargain but FIVE YEARS??? The two things that are so outrageous about this entire case are that there was NO OVERSIGHT and that this WENT ON FOR 8 YEARS!!!USING THE FEDS AS YOUR OWN PERSONAL PIGGY BANK:Lorena Loren s job was to help poor people find housing Instead, prosecutors say, she was stealing from the poor to buy booze, makeup, clothes and homes for her relatives.But after years of scheming, authorities say, the government caught on. IT TOOK 8 YEARS!In a public corruption case that surfaced in federal court today, Loren, the former executive director of the St. Clair Housing Commission, was charged with embezzling more than $300,000 in low-income housing funds and spending the money on herself and family.According to a charging document filed in U.S. District Court, Loren s scheme ran between 2008-2016 and benefited many family members, including her husband, son and son-in-law.Prosecutors say Loren s criminal activity started in 2008 five years after she was appointed executive director of the St. Clair Housing Commission, which administers federally funded low-income housing programs in St. Clair County.According to court records, Loren used her job in many nefarious ways, including: She fraudulently used the housing commission s two credit cards to buy personal items for herself and relatives, including nearly $135,000 in online purchases from Amazon.com; $14,364 in purchases from Sam s Club in Port Huron, and $16,460 in purchases from various Walmart stores. The purchases included, among other things, adult and infant clothing, furniture, food, beauty supplies, medications and alcoholic beverages. Her unauthorized Amazon.com purchases included $60,000 worth of bedroom furniture, mattresses, appliances and other household items for family members. The items were shipped to Loren s relatives in Georgia and Florida. She embezzled $24,600 in commission funds to pay for her son s rental unit. She lied on four government housing contracts by claiming that her son-in-law was the landlord of a rental property for low-income residents in Michigan, when it was really her home in Port Austin. She falsified lease agreements and stole public housing money that was supposed to help poor people to rent a home for her son. She directed members of her family to establish bank accounts so that federal rental subsidy payments could be deposited into those accounts. The relatives then used the money for their own personal use, including rent for their Florida residences.Loren is charged in what is known as an information, which typically means she is working on a deal with the government. She is charged with conspiracy to commit federal program fraud. If convicted, she faces up to five years in prison.Loren home Lorena Loren bought this $325,000 home in Georgia after federal prosecutors say she embezzled more than $336,000 from the St. Clair Housing Commission.JUDICIAL WATCH: HUD s inspector general has testified before Congress about the severe mismanagement at offshoots functioning independently yet federally funded in states across the country that have fleeced taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. He testified that his office discovered more than $200 million in questionable spending at local public housing agencies (PHAs) since 2012. PHAs are created by states, operate at the city or county level and administer the federal program known as Section 8 to provide low-income people with affordable housing. Many of these local public housing agencies are run by people with troubled backgrounds that somehow manage to remain in high-ranking positions at the agencies, the watchdog told lawmakers back in 2014.DR BEN CARSON NEEDS TO CLEAN THIS UP STAT!READ MORE: DFP | 1real |
STUDENTS BRAVELY DEFY Catholic College VP’s Warning To Reconsider “Offensive…Divisive…Harmful” AMERICA-THEMED Party | Student government leaders at Loyola University Maryland faced a barrage of pressure from the university administration to change the theme of a senior class party described as very alienating, divisive and harmful and against the university s core values, according to emails provided to The Daily Caller. The theme? America.The theme for Loyola s annual Senior 200s party one of four celebrations exclusive to seniors held throughout the year was based upon a survey of Loyola seniors taken last summer. The party was held on Nov. 18 and went off without a hitch, according to students who attended, despite warnings that the administration might have to get involved if students were offended.Emails sent to student government representatives were provided to TheDC on condition of anonymity. Multiple student government representatives confirmed the emails authenticity on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the administration.Right before the presidential election, some student government members wondered if they should nix the America theme if Donald Trump won, according to internal SGA group chats shared with TheDC on condition of anonymity for the same reason.One representative claimed that if Trump wins it will be bad, while another argued it would be wrong to change the party theme simply because of disagreement with the president-elect s policies. The party was still on.The day after Trump s victory, a handful of students messaged SGA representatives to argue that because of Trump s victory an America-themed party was now inappropriate. One female student claimed she was a victim of horrible hate words and worried that similar mean things might be said at the party if the theme wasn t changed.When the possibility of unpleasant feelings wasn t enough to cancel a class-wide event, the administration got involved.The university s executive vice president, Susan Donovan sent an email to two SGA members claiming she talked with a number of students and heard from faculty members about the party. None of it is positive and it sounds very alienating, divisive and harmful. Sheilah Horton, the university s dean of students also tried to pressure students to change the party theme, in a lengthy email that portrayed the students as insensitive for not canceling the America theme.Horton worried that the theme provides an opportunity for students to dress or behave in a way that offends or oppresses others. Horton also said the administration would have to deal with any fallout from the party, which she worried would make students feel unsafe. She also worried that the America-themed party might keep potential students from attending Loyola and implied the event could be the defining incident of the senior class. Even one negative event, especially with social media can cause the campus community to feel unsafe; it can be shared with potential students which can have an effect on admissions and indeed can be the defining incident for the class of 2017, she said. So, you have made a decision that in effect, has the potential to cause negative consequences for the university and even to the students whose behavior crosses the line, she continued. Horton did not respond to TheDC s request for comment by press time. I was amazed and shocked at not only the reaction and lack of confidence of the administration in our class and SGA itself, but how they handled everything including some of the rude things said about our organization. It is quite disgusting how people feel and see the word America as something that is discriminatory, said one student government representative, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the administration. We should see the theme America as a way to forget political divide and come together as a country and class and celebrate all that we have accomplished. That is what ended up happening, yet we didn t have the support of people in our class and the administration itself. Daily Caller | 1real |
Carter Reveals Upgrades To US Long Range Rocket | Carter Reveals Upgrades To US Long Range Rocket 11/02/2016
SPUTNIK NEWS
On Tuesday US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the Army’s tactical missile system (ATACMS) will be upgraded to strike both land and sea targets. Such technology will go a long way to defending allies against the Chinese menace and battling Moscow’s “aggression” in the Baltics.
The missile system is sponsored by an office created by Carter in 2012, the Strategic Capabilities Office, which is currently being lead by Will Roper, a protege’ of the Secretary’s. During a panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Friday Roper told an audience, “How you offset the adversaries trying to offset your offset? It’s very simple to do that, you just don’t talk about your best capabilities…We are keeping our best ideas behind the door and probably always will,” according to Breaking Defense.
After the panel, he continued, “We thought it was important to come out (in public) with ATACMS for the Army because there’s been a lot of writing, a lot of speeches, on the need for the Army to go cross-domain.” High ranking officials in the US military have been calling for the ATACMS to extend its capabilities seaward for some time, and Roper responded to these concerns saying, “it’s time for us to show it isn’t just a theoretical idea, it’s something we can potentially get to quickly with something that we already have.”
During a morning session at CSIS Carter spoke of the new innovative features of the ATACMS, and how the SCO tries to maximize the potential of existing systems.
“A prominent theme of SCO’s work is spearheading creative and unexpected new ways to use our existing missiles and advanced munitions, and across varied domains”, he said, adding, “… By integrating an existing seeker onto the front of the missile, they’re enabling it to hit moving targets, both at sea as well as on land. With this capability, what was previously an Army surface-to-surface missile system can project power from coastal locations up to 300 kilometers into the maritime domain.”
Carter detailed the SCO’s plans to utilize seeker technology that the Defense Department has already developed so the missile system can hit targets both on sea and land.
Lockheed Martin was awarded the $174 million contract for the long range artillery rocket system in May 2015. Ken Musculus, vice president of tactical missiles at the defense contractor said at the time that ATACMS is “reliable and proven in combat, which is why it continues to be our customers’ choice for long-range strike requirements.” | 1real |
Campaign finance laws may be making political polarization worse by encouraging ‘purist’ donors. | Many Americans have become increasingly concerned over the role of money in politics, and back more populist approaches to reducing political donations. Raymond J. La Raja and Brian F. Schaffner, authors of Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail, argue that populist approaches such as imposing low contribution limits on parties, distort the campaign finance system in ways that benefit a small group of partisan purists at the expense of the broader electorate. This in turn pushes candidates towards ideological extremes. They write that reformers should consider a more party-centered campaign finance system which would channel money to candidates through highly transparent and broadly accountable party organizations, which would then lead to less polarization.
Since the 2010 Citizens United decision, there has been increasing concern over the role of money in politics. However, our new research indicates that populist approaches to curtailing money in US politics might actually be contributing to contemporary problems in the political system, including the bitter partisan stand-offs and apparent insensitivity of elected officials to the concerns of ordinary Americans. Populist approaches to campaign finance reform tend to focus on eliminating the potential for corruption by setting relatively low contributions limits to candidates and parties. But such limits rarely stop the flow of money into politics. Instead they affect the channels through which that money travels into politicians’ accounts. And increasingly, that flow pours in from highly ideological donors who tend to pull party candidates toward the extremes.
Our main argument in our new book, Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail, is that constraints on party organizations have forced candidates to rely heavily on ideological sources of funds. While party organizations tend to be highly pragmatic, preferring to support moderate candidates who reflect the views of the broader electorate, other kinds of donors – both large and small – favor highly ideological candidates. The demise of party funding relative to other sources (due to restrictive campaign finance laws and judicial decisions) has contributed to the decrease in moderate officeholders in statehouses.
Our view of party organizations runs counter to recent party “network” theorists who discount the importance of the formal party organizations. They claim instead that the party is really made up of the partisan network of allied interest groups, donors and activists who coordinate to help party candidates. While we embrace this view of the party coalition, we think organizational forms matter a great deal. The professionals who work in party organizations seek chiefly to win elections. As a by-product of this motive, they support moderate candidates who have the broadest possible appeal to voters, particularly in competitive districts. The wider partisan network, in contrast, is dominated by “purist” donors who want to elect people who agree with them on narrowly-based issue areas. Laws that restrict party organizations ineluctably shift power to the purists who seek ideological policy goals, sometimes at the expense of winning elections. Hence the subtitle of our new book: “When Purists Prevail.”
A main thrust of our argument is that party-friendly campaign finance laws should help decrease the ideological gap between the major political parties in the states and in the US Congress. Our findings bear this out.
Ideological Donors and their Impact on Legislatures
One key finding shows that different types of donors allocate their funds differently across incumbents from different ideological backgrounds. In each of the plots in Figure 1 below, the line indicates the proportion of funds from that source being contributed to incumbents at each point across the ideological spectrum. Note how party organizations concentrate their funds on moderates rather than those at the extremes. This type of distribution is unique among the actors we looked at. Issue groups give more to ideologues, particularly on the right side of the spectrum, while labor unions give overwhelmingly to liberal candidates. Individual donors and business groups tend to give across the spectrum but with a decided tilt toward conservatives (and they certainly do not favor moderates).
Figure 1 – Donations to incumbents across the ideological spectrum
What are the consequences of these patterns? We ultimately show how campaign finance laws, which affect the flow of money, shape the ideological make-up of state legislatures. Figure 2 below shows the ideological distribution of legislators for states with contribution or fundraising limits on parties (top) and for states without either of those limits. Legislatures in unlimited states show considerably less polarization. The disparity between the two sets of states is like going from one competitive legislature that experienced considerable bipartisanship such as Indiana (which is less polarized than Congress) to another that is as polarized as Oregon (which is even more polarized than Congress). Our book illustrates other ways of assessing polarization with similar results. We conclude that states that grant parties freer access to financing tend to have less polarized legislatures. The potential implication is that such states provide more opportunities for bipartisan compromise and effective governing.
Figure 2 – Ideological distribution of legislators in states with and without campaign finance laws
Based on our results, we ultimately provide some insights for how we might approach campaign finance reform in a different way. Specifically, we argue that reformers should consider a “party-centered” campaign finance system that boosts the influence of the pragmatist wing of the party. To accomplish this strategy, reformers would have to give up on long-held assumptions about the value of imposing relatively low contribution limits on parties as a way to thwart corruption. Low contribution limits on parties distort the campaign finance system in ways that tend to benefit partisan purists at the expense of the broader electorate. These purists have the means and motive to finance candidate campaigns by mobilizing passionate factions of like-mined donors throughout the nation, and through “Super PACs”, which are financed by mega-donors giving millions.
For this reason we encourage reforms that build canals to channel the flow of money through highly transparent and broadly accountable party organizations. The strategy of erecting dams through contribution limits to hold back money does not work, and favors a relatively small group of purists. To be sure, our position may not be popular because party organizations have a tainted legacy of machine politics in the minds of many. But a vast body of research on democratic politics indicates that parties play several vital roles, including aggregating interests, guiding voter choices, and holding politicians accountable with meaningful partisan labels. It may be time for reformers to help facilitate this role for parties, rather than have the party organizations be increasingly overshadowed by other actors in the political system.
This article is based on the new book, Campaign Finance and Political Polarization by Raymond J. La Raja and Brian F. Schaffner.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.
About the author
Ray La Raja – University of Massachusetts Amherst
Ray La Raja is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and associate director of the UMass Poll. He is author of Small Change: Money, Political Parties and Campaign Finance Reform (U. Michigan Press 2008) and editor of New Directions in American Politics (Routledge, 2013). He is founding editor of The Forum, an electronic journal of applied research in American politics.
Brian Schaffner – University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Brian Schaffner is a Professor in the political science department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a faculty associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. His research focuses on public opinion, campaigns and elections, political parties, and legislative politics. He is co-editor of the book Winning with Words: The Origins & Impact of Political Framing, co-author of Understanding Political Science Research Methods: The Challenge of Inference, author of Politics, Parties and Elections in America (7th edition). His research has appeared in over two-dozen refereed journal articles, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Communication, Political Research Quarterly, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Social Science Quarterly. | 0fake |
DEMOCRAT HEADS SET TO EXPLODE: Feds Waive Environmental Regulations To Begin Construction On 15-Mile Border Wall At Site Of 31,000 Illegal Alien Apprehensions | The Department of Homeland Security announced its plans to build a 15-mile prototype of the border wall in San Diego.The department issued a waiver from numerous environmental laws and regulations to build the wall with robust physical characteristics to prevent illegal immigration crossings in an area of high illegal entry. The Department is implementing President Trump s Executive Order 13767, Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, and continues to take steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border, the department said in a statement Tuesday announcing plans to issue the waiver.In one of his last moves as DHS secretary, Gen. John Kelly signed the notice on July 26, before he was tapped to serve as White House chief of staff.The waiver was published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.The notice outlines the plans for projects along a 15-mile stretch along the Southwestern border in the San Diego sector. The department said the area is in need of further border protection immediately, as it is the site of over 31,000 illegal alien apprehensions, the seizure of 9,167 pounds of marijuana, and approximately 1,317 pounds of cocaine last year alone. The construction of border wall prototypes in the Project Area and the robust physical characteristics that are to be incorporated into the border wall prototypes are intended to deter illegal crossings, the notice states.The department will waive several environmental regulations to build the prototype wall, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and a host of others.DHS said it is still committed to safeguarding the environment but is eliminating onerous rules that would delay construction.For entire story: Washington Free Beacon | 1real |
Deep Fried Offshore | TJ Mott I've been a developer for the past seven years. Currently I'm in the aerospace industry and work with a variety of programming languages and operating systems.
Stephen worked for an Initech that sold specialized hardware: high-performance, high-throughput systems for complex data processing tasks in the enterprise world, sold at exorbitant enterprise prices. Once deployed, these systems were configured via a management app that exposed an HTTP interface, just like any consumer-grade router or Wi-Fi access point that is configurable through a website (e.g. 192.168.0.1).
Stephen worked with a diverse team of American engineers who were finishing up the management application for a new model. The product was basically done but needed a little bit of testing and polish before the official release. They expected several months of post-release work and then the project would go into maintenance mode.
Then disaster struck. A pointy-haired boss somewhere up in a fuzzy area of the organization chart simply labeled “Here be VPs” discovered the large salary difference between American engineers and off-shore workers, and decided American engineers were far too expensive for software “maintenance”. The company decided to lay off 300 software engineers and hire 300 fresh-out-of-college replacements in a foreign country with much lower labor rates. The announcement was overshadowed by the fanfare of the product’s release and proudly billed as a major “win” for the company.
Stephen was lucky enough to stay on and shift to other projects, the first of which was to assist with the transition by documenting everything he could for the new team. Which he did, in hundreds of pages of explicit detail, explaining how to use the source control repository for the project, execute and log unit tests, and who to contact when they had questions regarding the hardware itself. After that, he devoted himself to other projects. Months turned into years and Stephen assumed by the silence that the handover was successful and he’d never see the management app again.
Of course that isn’t what happened.
There’s an old joke on the Internet called “How to shoot yourself in the foot” (http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers/humor/shoot-self-in-foot.html) that lampoons the complicated process of shooting yourself in the foot in various programming languages. Here is one such entry:
370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS and include a 300-page document explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot returns deep-fried.
Three years after the management app was passed off to the new offshore engineer team, a new panic was boiling through Initech. The management application was as slow as molasses, buggier than flies in soup, with a user interface that was battered and deep-fried in a nonsense language that vaguely resembled English. It also crashed a lot, each time requiring a power reset to bring the system back up.
Initech had simmered along by only shipping the original version, but now they had this expensive, powerful product with three years worth of hardware and firmware updates that the management app could not configure and thus were not available to customers. Several important customers canceled their support contracts rather than pay for half-baked updates that rarely worked, and many prospective customers passed them right by when basic features printed in the product brochure were “unavailable for demo”. They were falling behind in the industry.
It was bad enough that management finally decided to do something.
That something was to toss the offshore team and see how many of their old laid-off engineers they could scoop up, which was, not surprisingly, few. As one of the few original engineers who still worked there, Stephen was whisked away from his current projects to assist.
With a bite-sized portion of the old team re-assembled, they set to work to unscramble the situation. Stephen noticed that the last source control check-in was from three years ago. Upon further inspection, he realized that not one of the offshore engineers had ever committed.
He called up the offshore office to see if they had their own repository. The last few remaining offshore workers didn’t know, and when told to search every system they had, they replied they couldn’t because their local manager had sold all of their computer equipment on an auction site upon learning of their impending layoffs.
He then contacted the hardware team in hopes that maybe somebody had a clone of the offshore team’s repository, but the hardware guys claimed the software team was laid off three years ago and they were not aware of an offshore replacement team.
With no current source code, and an old repository that hadn’t been committed to in three years, Stephen and the team were left with no choice but to pick up exactly where they left off three years ago… [Advertisement] Manage IT infrastructure as code across all environments with Puppet . Puppet Enterprise now offers more control and insight, with role-based access control, activity logging and all-new Puppet Apps. Start your free trial today! | 1real |
Integration Expert Warns: ’Globalist’ Le Pen Rival Is ’Dangerous’ | “Multicultural” establishment candidate Emmanuel Macron endangers France, and “sorcerers of globalism” have put the West in a state of decay warns engineer, writer, and integration expert Malika . [Noting that Germany received more than a million migrants in 2015 alone, the Algerian engineer and writer highlighted how former investment banker Macron “travelled to Berlin to pay tribute to Angela Merkel’s welcome policy” and warns Macron’s approach to migration is “dangerous”. Drawing attention to the globalist president’s declaration that “there is no French culture” in her interview with Le Figaro said he also has a “blind spot” with regards to integration policies. The engineer, who was a member of France’s High Council of Integration, went on to contend there is “hardly any” common ground between Macron and his rival, Francois Fillon. “For one, French culture does not exist, when the other is part of a desire to continue France from a cultural point of view,” the author of Decaying France told the broadsheet newspaper. “[Macron has] repeatedly made clear the fact his line on these issues is globalist and multicultural, and so his positioning on migratory flows and French culture is coherent. “[He sees France] as a country with open doors and windows, under the reign of a ‘buffet culture’ under which everyone places his and her dishes on the table and people only take what suits them. ” also drew attention to remarks in which Macron described France’s colonisation of Algeria as a “crime against humanity” writing that the president’s objective was to “seduce” voters of North African descent. But, noting the accusation “is likely to pit different groups against each other” she warns: “[The comments were] extremely serious at a time when France is at war, targeted by terrorists who justify their acts with what [the nation] is and what it has been. ” said Macron represents a continuation of the ‘Terra Nova’ strategy on the left, referencing the “progressive” think tank whose name has become synonymous with a strategy in which minorities are encouraged to band together to fight against “an electorate that defends against change”. Last year, Wikileaks revealed Macron, a former Rothschild banker, was working on an alliance with Hillary Clinton before her shock defeat in the U. S. presidential election. The globalist candidate had requested the Democratic presidential candidate’s presence at a private roundtable dinner in October with several European politicians, according to an email published by Wikileaks. Breitbart London reported Macron announced the world has entered an age of mass migration which will be inescapable for Europe. “We have entered a world of great migrations and we will have more and more of it [migration]” he declared during a debate on climate change. And earlier this month, maintaining that the mass migration of people from the third world to Europe will only accelerate, the establishment favourite to win the election said immigrants are good for France and bring “fresh bursts of creativity and innovation” to society. | 0fake |
Saudis Bankroll Taliban, Even as King Officially Supports Afghan Government - The New York Times | KABUL, Afghanistan — Fifteen years, half a trillion dollars and 150, 000 lives since going to war, the United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money. With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the United States. It is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sides. A longtime ally of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia has backed Islamabad’s promotion of the Taliban. Over the years, wealthy Saudi sheikhs and rich philanthropists have also stoked the war by privately financing the insurgents. All the while, Saudi Arabia has officially, if coolly, supported the American mission and the Afghan government and even secretly sued for peace in clandestine negotiations on their behalf. The contradictions are hardly accidental. Rather, they balance conflicting needs within the kingdom, pursued through both official policy and private initiative. The dual tracks allow Saudi officials plausibly to deny official support for the Taliban, even as they have turned a blind eye to private funding of the Taliban and other Sunni groups. The result is that the Saudis — through private or covert channels — have tacitly supported the Taliban in ways that make the kingdom an indispensable power broker. In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he traveled to Saudi Arabia for years raising cash while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also been allowed to raise millions more by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser. Yet even as private Saudi money backed the Taliban, Saudi intelligence once covertly mediated a peace effort that Taliban officials and others involved described in full to The Times for the first time. Playing multiple sides of the same geopolitical equation is one way the Saudis further their own strategic interests, analysts and officials say. But it also threatens to undermine the fragile democratic advances made by the United States in the past 15 years, and perhaps undo efforts to liberalize the country. The United States now finds itself trying to persuade its putative ally to play a constructive rather than destructive role. Meanwhile, the Afghans have come to view Saudi Arabia as both friend and foe. The question now, as Afghan officials look for help, is which Saudi Arabia will they get? Prince Turki who led the Saudi intelligence agency for over 24 years and later served as ambassador to the United States until his retirement in 2007, rejected any suggestion that Saudi Arabia had ever supported the Taliban. “When I was in government, not a single penny went to the Taliban,” he wrote in emailed comments. He added that the “stringent measures taken by the kingdom to prevent any transfer of money to terrorist groups” had been recognized by Daniel L. Glaser, the United States assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury, in testimony to Congress in June. Others say the verdict is still out. “We know there has been this financing that has gone on for years,” Hanif Atmar, director of the Afghan National Security Council, said in an interview. “This sustains the terrorist war machine in Afghanistan and in the region, and it will have to be stopped. ” That may be easier said than done. Saudi Arabia remains one of the main sources of what Secretary of State John Kerry recently called “surrogate money” to support Islamist fighters and causes. Much of that largess is spread about in pursuit of what Mr. Nasr describes as a Saudi strategy of building a wall of Sunni radicalism across South and Central Asia to contain Iran, its Shia rival. That competition is being rekindled. With the Americans leaving, there is the sense that Afghanistan’s fate is up for grabs. In recent months, the Taliban has mounted a coordinated offensive with about 40, 000 fighters across eight provinces — a push financed by foreign sources at a cost of $1 billion, Afghan officials say. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is offering the Afghan government substantial defense and development agreements, while Afghans say sheikhs from Saudi Arabia and other Arab Persian Gulf states are quietly funneling billions in private money to Sunni organizations, madrasas and universities to shape the next generation of Afghans. “The Saudis are ” said Mr. Nasr, now dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in a telephone interview. “Afghanistan is important to them, which is why they invested so much in the 1980s, and they are looking to make themselves much more relevant. ” The Taliban theocracy in Afghanistan was coming to a fiery end. It was 2001, and the Taliban government was collapsing under United States bombing unleashed in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks. Disguising himself as a doctor, Agha Jan Motasim, the Taliban finance minister, escaped over a remote border crossing into Pakistan aboard a Red Crescent ambulance, he said in a recent interview. In the Pakistani border town of Quetta, he and other Taliban leaders regrouped and began organizing the insurgency that continues today. Mr. Motasim was appointed head of the finance committee. One of his first stops was Saudi Arabia. As home to both enormous oil wealth and Islam’s holiest sites, it was the perfect place to make appeals not only to rich Saudi sheikhs and foundations but also to important donors who traveled to the kingdom on pilgrimage from all over the Muslim world. Between 2002 and 2007, Mr. Motasim traveled to Saudi Arabia two or three times a year. Ostensibly he went on pilgrimage, but his primary purpose was to raise cash for the Taliban. “There were people coming from other countries for umrah and hajj,” he said referring to the different Muslim pilgrimages. “Also the Saudi sheikhs would come as well. I would ask them for their help for the war. ” “It was not only the Saudis who would help us but people who would come from different countries,” he recalled. “Saudi Arabia was the only country where I could meet them. ” Once secured, the money could be moved in myriad ways to Taliban coffers, officials said, including through regional banks near Pakistan’s tribal areas and the hawala system of informal . Last year, Afghan security forces even discovered families of Al Qaeda members entering eastern Afghanistan with a stash of gold bars, Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said. The Saudi authorities often say they cannot control or always identify the millions of Muslims who travel to the kingdom every year on the hajj, said Barnett Rubin, who worked as special adviser to the United States envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban always traveled on fake Pakistani passports under assumed names and were unknown to Saudi authorities, said a security official in the region, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity, citing the extreme sensitivity to upsetting Saudi Arabia. American requests to cut the funding yielded little result. In 2009, American officials complained that the Taliban and other extremist groups were raising millions of dollars during annual pilgrimages, according to American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. A December 2009 cable from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that donors in Saudi Arabia constituted the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. ” The cables date from a period when Richard C. Holbrooke, who died in 2010, acted as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and actively sought to curb funding to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The funding from the gulf extended well beyond that period and to other groups besides the Taliban, including the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a leaked email from 2014, Mrs. Clinton described the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia as “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region. ” Financing such groups, she wrote, was part of a contest between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who were in “ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world. ” It was September 2008, the holy month of Ramadan, and King Abdullah was hosting an iftar dinner in Mecca. But this was no routine breaking of the fast at sunset. The feast was an important signal of the king’s personal support for a covert yet still evolving peace effort. Among the dozens of guests were Afghan officials and elders, as well as former Taliban members. Within months, at a more discreet venue in the Red Sea port of Jidda, the Saudi intelligence agency convened Afghanistan’s chief adversaries to hash out a peace deal. Mr. Motasim, the same man who had been collecting money for the insurgency, was named by the Taliban as its representative. On the other side, the emissary for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was his brother, Qayum Karzai. During three days of intense discussions — breaking at intervals when the men locked horns — a Saudi intermediary nudged the two sides forward. The peace effort had begun in 2006. The initial broker was Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who had won credibility by fighting the Soviets for 10 years in Afghanistan. In an interview, Mr. Anas said his decision to seek out the Saudis as a mediator was obvious, because of the kingdom’s special status as home to Islam’s two holiest sites and its support during the fight against the Soviet occupation. “Even in a very far village in Afghanistan, Saudi means something,” said Mr. Anas, who today runs Al Magharibia, a satellite television channel based in London. Still, getting the Saudis on board took some persuading. The events of had deeply embarrassed them. Both the kingdom and the United States had nurtured the mujahedeen to push out a Soviet occupation in the 1980s, but the subsequent behavior of the Taliban infuriated the Americans. Harboring Osama bin Laden was the last straw. For the Saudis, it was more complicated. Even when the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden — Prince Turki, the Saudi intelligence chief, requested it in person in 1998 — the kingdom still did not break with them. Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban government up to 2001 and beyond, in alignment with Pakistan, the kingdom’s main ally to check Iranian influence in the region. “The problem is Saudi Arabia sees Afghanistan through the lenses of Pakistan,” Mr. Anas said, describing a prime challenge of his peace initiative. To achieve peace, Mr. Anas said he wanted to encourage the Saudis to build a relationship with Afghanistan directly. People involved in the effort — who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was conducted in confidentiality — say King Abdullah was moved to back the effort out of a sense of compassion. He did so, they said, even in the face of resistance from other Saudi royals who were unhappy with the American occupation. Yet others were wary of further involvement in Afghanistan. To overcome Saudi reluctance, Mr. Anas took the Saudi emissary to Afghanistan to show that it remained a freely practicing Muslim society, despite the presence of American troops. President Karzai wrote King Abdullah, who had ascended to the throne in August 2005, a deferential letter requesting his intercession. It worked. King Abdullah met the Afghan leader at the door of his plane on a pilgrimage visit. Mr. Karzai still speaks highly of his friendship with King Abdullah, who died in 2015. “He would never, never, never leave my call unanswered,” he recounted in an interview. “The same day he would get back to me, talk to me and do all that I asked. ” The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, personally oversaw the negotiations, sending his emissary between Mr. Motasim of the Taliban and the Afghan government for two years. But when talks neared a critical endpoint, the Taliban were gripped by a vicious power struggle. The Saudi demand that the Taliban renounce terrorism and its ties to Al Qaeda was never met. Mr. Motasim was accused of embezzlement and removed. The next year, 2010, his main protector, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s chief operational commander, was arrested in Pakistan, while an assassin shot Mr. Motasim and left him for dead outside his home in Karachi, though he survived. Both events were interpreted as Pakistan’s opposition to any peace process being negotiated without its participation, several of those involved in the process say. “It was then that this process was sabotaged,” Mr. Motasim said. King Abdullah intimated to President Karzai in 2010 that there were obstructions beyond his control. “I wish to help Afghanistan,” Mr. Karzai recalled the king’s saying. “I want it to be peaceful, I want you to sit down and talk to the Taliban, but you must recognize that all I can do is what Saudi can do. “That was a very meaningful word,” Mr. Karzai concluded, “meaning that there were other forces who were probably not willing to allow this to happen. ” Despite those covert efforts, the Saudi kingdom, publicly and officially, has been largely absent in Afghanistan. While paying lip service to the American mission, Saudi Arabia has not built a significant project in its own name in Afghanistan in 15 years. Yet official Saudi neglect stands in stark contrast to the wealth of private Saudi funding that has done more than bolster the Taliban and allied militant groups in the region. It has also spawned hundreds of universities, madrasas and radical groups that have extended Sunni influence and that Afghans fear are sowing seeds of future turmoil. One of those Afghans is Nisar Karimzai, who runs a small research office, the Organization for Research of Peace and Stability. During the Soviet occupation, Mr. Karimzai went to school in Pakistan, where he fell in with a Sunni extremist crowd. “They teach that the Shia are not Muslim,” he recalled, referring to Shiites. He eventually discarded extremist thinking. But his own experience made him wary when he saw a cousin become involved with an Islamist group called Jamiat Eslah. “I recognize the way they are training them,” Mr. Karimzai said. “It was exactly the same way they taught me. “Personally I am scared,” Mr. Karimzai added. “In five years we will face a danger from them. One day they will fight and we will have a very big problem. ” Jamiat Eslah promotes a strict Islamist worldview and describes itself as a nonpolitical organization focused on humanitarian and educational work. But the size of its operations, with 40 to 50 buildings including offices, a university and a hospital, indicates substantial outside funding, said Mr. Nabil, a former head of Afghan intelligence. The group’s bank accounts show no foreign bank transfers, according to an internal government report. Nevertheless, the report concluded that the group is financed by sources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The group is just one of a proliferating number that have sprouted in recent years as Sunni Arabs from the Persian Gulf compete with Shiite Iran for influence here. The Iranians, too, have been busy building madrasas, universities and cultural centers for the Shiite population, and even a road to the border with Iran. The rivalry underlying the scale of such competing funding, Afghan officials and others warn, spells trouble. In 2001, Afghanistan had just 1, 000 madrasas. Today, there are more than 4, 000, the majority of them built in the last few years. After a summer and fall of violent attacks, including at the American University of Afghanistan and against Shiite gatherings, Afghans worry at the growing sectarian tilt of Sunni extremist groups. Hajji Abdul Qahar Abed, who serves as chief of staff to the chief executive of the government, Abdullah Abdullah, warns that after decades of war and dislocation, Afghans are particularly vulnerable. “My personal fear is that their associates will lead them somewhere that will hurt the people again,” he said of Jamiat Eslah. Another youth movement gaining traction is Hisb a secretive, group that has a wide underground following in Central Asia, according to several government officials. Officials and former insiders of the group said they believed it was funded by foreigners including Saudis and other gulf Arabs, as well as donors in Egypt and Europe. “They want to reach as many people as they can and bring them into the party and eventually strengthen their ranks and announce a caliphate,” said Massoud Rahimi, a student at Kabul University, who said he declined when a cousin tried to recruit him. “It is going to put Afghanistan on the road of conflict,” he said. Upon his election 2014, Afghanistan’s current president, Ashraf Ghani, chose Saudi Arabia for his first official trip. Then five months later, after a second trip to meet the new Saudi king, Salman bin Al Saud, Mr. Ghani pledged Afghan support for the Saudi military coalition for Yemen. In return, Mr. Ghani wanted Saudi Arabia’s rulers to stop the flow of funds from rich Saudi sheikhs to the Taliban and encourage the Taliban back into negotiations. “The signs are positive,” said Mr. Atmar of the National Security Council. “We have not yet seen concrete movements against this, but we believe that we have a strong commitment. ” Yet other Afghan officials and local diplomats are deeply skeptical. One diplomat in Kabul said tracking the flow of illegal money was virtually impossible. Another, who had served in Saudi Arabia, doubted that Riyadh would change, adding that the vast royal family is split into fiefs often working at odds with each other. The scale of the Taliban’s recent offensive also has left many Afghans wary. “The level of finance, the level of logistical support in terms of weapons and other materials, and the level of organizational support in terms of leadership of the war they have received is unprecedented,” said Nader Nadery, chief adviser on strategic affairs to the president. “It clearly indicates a declared war against Afghanistan,” he added, accusing Pakistan, the stalwart Saudi ally. Mr. Abdullah, Afghanistan’s chief executive, recently led a delegation to Saudi Arabia. They went seeking investment, but also asked Saudi leaders to press Pakistan to end its safe haven for terrorists, a request President Karzai also made repeatedly. “They said they will do that, and they said they will try in the gulf region to use their influence to mobilize against terrorism,” said Nasrullah Arsalai, director general of the council of ministers secretariat in Afghanistan, who was part of the delegation. “Saudi Arabia knows if we fight together, it means the Taliban will not be able to bring money from there,” he said. Yet Ruhullah Wakil, a tribal elder who is now a member of the Afghan peace council says he, too, recently beseeched Saudi officials to sponsor the work of the council, which is authorized to pursue negotiations. The Saudis were uninterested. “They are deaf,” he said. “We asked them to help. We asked them even just to give us some dates to serve to guests. “But they gave us nothing. ” | 0fake |
Five Struggles Working Americans Face That Trump Will NEVER Understand | In 2015, shortly after Donald Trump announced that he d be running for president, I went to one of his rallies in Sarasota, Florida. While standing outside of the rally it struck me as hilarious that the people who attended genuinely believed this self-proclaimed multi-billionaire was just like them. When Trump s helicopter flew over our heads with his name scrawled across it and he offered his supporters children rides in his chopper, it cemented the fact that he was totally just like them! It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life, and I live in Florida so that says a lot.In the months since that day, the same narrative has been repeated far and wide. At the Republican National Convention, Trump s daughter Ivanka told the GOP that her dad was the people s champion. There is a Facebook page called Trump The People s President and there are blue-collar workers all over the country who think the real estate mogul is just like us. These people think that just because he is a loudmouth who lacks a vocal filter that he is some kind of everyman, but he s not.So, we have decided to compose a list of some of the things the working poor face every day that Trump has never had to deal with in his life.It is a fact that nowadays there is no chance of upward mobility without an education. This reality is the reason why Democrats are fighting so hard to make college free or at the very least, affordable, for every American. Although parents know that the only chance their kids have of achieving success is by going to college, when you are living below or just above the poverty line there is no way you can put money away for their college education. This is the reason we have 1.3 trillion dollars in student loan debt in the country and a student loan debt crisis. Donald Trump, however, has no idea what this is like. All of his children went to prestigious schools (the Wharton School and Georgetown) and so did he. He doesn t know the guilt you experience as a parent when you see your child stressed out about their mounting debt. He absolutely cannot wrap his mind around this and he isn t even talking about it in his campaign which proves that not only does he not understand it, he doesn t care.According to a 2015 Pew Research study, 11 percent of Americans said they take public transportation on a regular basis. The people who take the bus or subway on a regular basis are also more likely to be minorities or elderly who live below the poverty line:Among urban residents, 34% of blacks and 27% of Hispanics report taking public transit daily or weekly, compared with only 14% of whites. Foreign-born urban residents are more likely than urban dwellers born in the U.S. to regularly use public transportation (38% vs. 18%).Meanwhile, Trump the everyman flies around the country in a jet or uses a chauffeured car. This man has absolutely no idea what it feels like to wake up three hours before his shift at work so that he can make sure that he is on time. He has no idea what it is like to wait for the bus in a thunder or snow storm. He has no idea what it is like to sit next to weirdos who invade your personal space and stare at you. He has no idea what it is like to worry about whether or not he will have the $1.50 it costs to ride the bus. And again he isn t talking about this on the campaign trail and he is against raising the minimum wage.Since President Obama s Affordable Healthcare Act went into effect millions of Americans finally have the medical insurance they desperately need, but many still do not. More than 28 million people are still without insurance in our country. That means millions of people are not getting the annual physical exams they need to stay healthy this is not something Trump has to deal with. He has been seeing the same doctor for thirty years and even if he did not have medical insurance he could just pay his doctor bills without a second thought.Further, even though 9 in 10 Americans now have health coverage, that does not mean they have dental coverage:The Affordable Care Act (ACA) made dental care a required benefit for children s insurance, but it did not extend this requirement to insurance for adults. Therefore, many adults who buy non-group insurance may still have no dental coverage. In 2008, nearly 70 percent of people who bought health insurance on their own did not have dental coverage. And without dental coverage, many adults struggle to get the dental care they need.Trump has never woken up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain with a swollen face because of his inability to afford the dentist. He has never had to ask friends and family for money to have oral surgery. He has never searched his cabinets for old antibiotics. He has no fucking idea what that is like and wants to repeal the ACA.For millions of Americans the only way to survive is to apply for government assistance. The vast majority of the 52 million people receive help are hardworking Americans who just have too much month at the end of their money. They pay their taxes, work multiple jobs sometimes and just cannot stay afloat without help. And let me tell you, applying for it is the worst. Donald Trump has no idea what it is like to sit on pins and needles hoping the government deems you worthy of being able to purchase food. He has no idea what it feels like to go to bed hungry; and ironically, if he was ever put into a situation where he needed a hand up, he d be one of those moochers his party talks about all the time. You know the one, the person the GOP claims doesn t pay taxes but expects a hand out. Well, Trump hasn t paid taxes in almost 20 years making him the ultimate moocher.By now you have all heard about Donald Trump s visit to Flint, Michigan last month. Trump wanted the people of that city to know that he was on their side. His visit to the city came almost a year after America found out that the state had been poisoning the mostly African-American residents of the city for two years with lead-contaminated water. Trump, the guy who lives in penthouses and mansions has absolutely no idea what it is like to worry about drinking poisoned water. This is a very real struggle for not just the people of Flint, but in every state across the country according to reports. The idea that he can relate to this struggle is as preposterous as his visit to Flint. Furthermore, Trump is an anti-regulation Republican, so there is no chance in Hell that he is going to prevent this from happening in other cities around the country if elected.These are just five of the ways Trump is nothing like us, but there are many more. Trump also has no idea what it is like to run out of toothpaste or toilet paper and not have the money to buy more. He has no idea what it is like to look at his children and tell them that he cannot afford a $5 toy. He has no idea what it is like to not be able to get his children a pet because he cannot afford the vet bills. He has no idea what it is like to watch his children go off to war so that they can hopefully live through it and get a free education. He has no idea what it is like to go hungry, go without heat, go without shoes or any of the other things Americans face every single day.He is NOTHING like us and we must do everything we possibly can to keep him out of the White House.Featured image via Ethan Miller/Getty Images | 1real |
’Deport Fat People’ Posters Appear At CU Boulder Ahead of MILO Event - Breitbart | Posters calling on Donald Trump to “Deport Fat People” have appeared at the campus of CU Boulder where MILO is scheduled to appear tonight.[ Another poster urged fat people to “please stop eating. ” Flyers initially appeared alongside the posters advertising MILO’s event at CU Boulder today, calling the Dangerous Faggot a Nazi and stating that “It’s always OK to punch a Nazi. ” A photograph of the poster, reportedly placed there by protesters that plan to attempt to stop MILO’s event tonight, can be seen below. MILO’s event at the college is set to take place tonight at 9PM EST where he will be delivering a speech titled, “Why Ugly People Hate Me. ” The event will be available to watch here. | 0fake |
Study: Breitbart Dominated Right Wing Coverage, ’Altered Media Agenda’ In 2016 - Breitbart | A study from the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) and funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation among others, shows that Breitbart News dominated coverage of the 2016 election and influenced narratives in the mainstream media. [Breitbart’s rise, according to the CJR’s writeup is “disconcerting. ” We have a less exotic, but perhaps more disconcerting explanation: Our own study of over 1. 25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a perspective to the world. This media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton. Clearly unfamiliar with the concept of irony, Columbia Journalism Review claims that media led by Breitbart, practices “disinformation” and creates an “insulated knowledge community. ” (We’re actually not a fan of safe spaces). Attacks on the integrity and professionalism of opposing media were also a central theme of media. Rather than “fake news” in the sense of wholly fabricated falsities, many of the stories can more accurately be understood as disinformation: the purposeful construction of true or partly true bits of information into a message that is, at its core, misleading. Over the course of the election, this turned the media system into an internally coherent, relatively insulated knowledge community, reinforcing the shared worldview of readers and shielding them from journalism that challenged it. The study’s analysis of social media shares during the 2016 election shows Breitbart eclipsing most conservative and outlets, and challenging mainstream sources. Source — Columbia Journalism Review. The study’s authors also argue that Breitbart’s coverage of FOX News during the Republican primaries successfully “sidelined” that organization, which only recovered its popularity on social media after the primaries had concluded, and the focus of Breitbart’s coverage shifted to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. This sidelining of Fox News in early 2016 coincided with sustained attacks against it by Breitbart. The stories in the media ecology during January included, for example, “Trump Campaign Manager Reveals Fox News Debate Chief Has Daughter Working for Rubio. ” More generally, the five shared stories in which Breitbart refers to Fox are stories aimed to delegitimize Fox as the central arbiter of conservative news, tying it to immigration, terrorism and Muslims, and corruption. As the primaries ended, our maps show that attention to Fox revived and was more closely integrated with Breitbart and the remainder of the media sphere. The primary target of the media then became all other traditional media. The authors of the study, who were funded by the Open Society Foundation, the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Woods Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, are not happy about the rise of media. Imagine that! What we find in our data is a network of sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. “Fake news,” which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible. Read the butthurt full study at the Columbia Journalism Review. You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart. com. | 0fake |
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