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GREAT! TEXAS CONGRESSMAN Rips Media After Election: “Has the media learned any lessons?” [Video] | 1real | |
NEW YORK GOV CUOMO Thinks He’s The Boss of You: Bans Travel To Mississippi! | NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) thinks he s the boss of you! He banned all non-essential travel to Mississippi after the state passed a religious liberty bill that he called a hateful injustice against the LGBT community. Can you believe this guy? The bill, known as House Bill 1523 or the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, was signed into law by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) Tuesday and will go into effect July 1.The legislation guards against the discrimination of individuals, religious organizations and certain businesses who have sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions that marriage should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman. Under the law, religious leaders can decline to solemnize any marriage or provide wedding-related services based on religious or moral objections. In addition, Mississippians can decided whether or not to hire, terminate or discipline an individual whose conduct or religious beliefs are inconsistent with their own ideals.After the passage of the new law, Cuomo issued an order Tuesday that requires all New York State agencies, departments, boards and commissions to immediately review all requests for state funded or state sponsored travel to Mississippi.Last month, Cuomo did the same thing for travel to North Carolina.Read more: The Blaze | 1real |
Alex Rodriguez to Retire and Join Yankees as an Adviser - The New York Times | Wednesday morning, not long after a struggling Alex Rodriguez had made the final out in a loss to the Mets, Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ managing general partner, sent him a text message: It was time, he said, for them to speak face to face. Later that day, they did, in a room off the clubhouse in Yankee Stadium. And it was there that Steinbrenner told Rodriguez, 41, that there would be no more for him as a Yankee, not this season or the next one, either, when he would be in the last year of his enormous $275 million contract. It was no secret, Steinbrenner told Rodriguez, that the Yankees had made a significant change of course and were now looking to the future. A fading slugger hitting . 204 this season simply did not fit in. Later that day, Steinbrenner and Rodriguez met again. On Thursday morning, there was a third session. And by then, Steinbrenner also had a proposal for Rodriguez to consider: Instead of sitting on the bench for the rest of the season, doing nothing, Rodriguez would be given his release by the Yankees and then appointed a special adviser and instructor for the club. He would get the $27 million still owed him for this season and for 2017, but he would no longer be playing. For Steinbrenner, the proposal was a way to get something positive out of the money the Yankees still owed Rodriguez and to keep things on good terms with a player with whom the team had had far too many recriminations in the past. The other course of action — simply not playing him again in 2016 and then unceremoniously cutting him loose — had the potential to anger Rodriguez and lead to more unhappy headlines. Later that day, Rodriguez told Steinbrenner he needed a couple of days to mull it over, and on Saturday he accepted the offer. Then, on Sunday, in a tearful news conference at Yankee Stadium to announce his decision, Rodriguez said he had taken it to mean that his remarkable playing career would end this Friday, when the Yankees play at home against Tampa Bay. “The last four weeks have not been fun,” Rodriguez said. “It’s been very painful and embarrassing to sit on the bench. It’s been awkward. So, from that sense, I’m very happy that we found a solution. ” Although it is always possible that some other team, at some point, may ask Rodriguez if he would like one more shot at playing, the game on Friday appears set to be his final one after 22 seasons, a number of which he spent as, perhaps, the best player in the game. He won three American League Most Valuable Player Awards over the course of his career and has more than 3, 000 hits and nearly 700 home runs. However, he also left himself with a legacy as one of the game’s most notorious users of drugs. As with almost everything involving Rodriguez’s dozen seasons in New York, his departure will be a little complicated. Had he simply announced that he was retiring, no strings attached, the Yankees would not have had to pay him the money still owed him under his contract. By instead giving him his unconditional release, they will have to do so. After his release, Rodriguez will then sign a new contract for his adviser role that will pay him a small amount in addition to the $27 million he was already owed. That contract will run through December 2017, when his current deal with the team would have ended anyway. Financially, at least, Rodriguez is coming out ahead. “He can negotiate the heck out of it,” General Manager Brian Cashman said of Rodriguez’s discussions with Steinbrenner in recent days. “He negotiated probably the greatest sports contract in the history of sports, so he has a lot of gifts. He doesn’t just play baseball. ” For Rodriguez, who will head home to Miami after Friday’s game and take up his new responsibilities in spring training, the choice was clear: Hang on stubbornly through the rest of this season, be released and then try to catch on with another club for 2017, or accept the Yankees’ offer and remain in the good graces of a team he loves being associated with. Given those two options, Rodriguez chose to stay put. “I was incredibly humbled and flattered that he wanted me to spend time with the next generation of Yankees,” Rodriguez said of Steinbrenner. “That’s a role I’ve enjoyed my entire career. ’’ Cashman has long regarded Rodriguez as someone who can be a good mentor to other players and a skilled evaluator. He noted that Rodriguez had once told him about a promising high school player named Manny Machado, now an with the Baltimore Orioles, and had come away from a minor league rehabilitation assignment raving over Greg Bird, the Yankees’ top hitting prospect. “He loves that aspect of the game,” Cashman said. “I think he wants to be an owner one day, but anything below that in a field uniform, he’s already plug ’n’ play. He’s exceptional on the baseball end in terms of the teaching and evaluating side. He always has been. ” Cashman said that Rodriguez would remain free to do broadcast work and that, should a team at some point seek his services as a player, the Yankees would not stand in the way. But Cashman seemed skeptical as to whether that might happen. Meanwhile, Rodriguez sounded like a man who had accepted that his final game was less than a week away. “This is a tough day,” he said in words he acknowledged had been prepared the night before. “I love this game, and I love this team, and today I am saying goodbye to both. ” Rodriguez spent 13 years with the Yankees, who acquired him in a blockbuster deal in February 2004 that sent Alfonso Soriano to the Texas Rangers in exchange. He went on to win two of his three M. V. P. Awards in pinstripes, but few days went by without Rodriguez creating distractions with some type of malfeasance, whether it was his strained relationship with his teammate Derek Jeter, the revelations of Rodriguez’s drug use or his notable failures in numerous Yankee postseasons. Still, the Yankees and Rodriguez now think that his flaws, along with his accomplishments, can be turned into assets in his work with young players. “A guy like me who has been to hell and back and made every mistake in the book, I think they can learn equally from all the mistakes that I’ve made and hopefully not make them,” he said. Three years ago, the notion that the Yankees would even consider Rodriguez for the role they are now giving him would have been ridiculed. At the time, he was at war with the organization and with Major League Baseball over his alleged links to the Biogenesis doping scandal. Rodriguez filed several lawsuits and at first battled the record suspension that was levied against him in August 2013 by Commissioner Bud Selig, but he ultimately relented. He accepted a ban for all of 2014 made peace with baseball’s incoming commissioner, Rob Manfred and returned to the Yankees in 2015 as a contrite and dedicated teammate. To considerable surprise, he also slugged 33 home runs last season and drove in 86 runs. But this season, his numbers dwindled sharply. Through Sunday, he was batting just . 204 with nine home runs and 29 R. B. I. He also has 696 career homers, which means that by departing now, he will almost certainly fall short of 700 — a figure only Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds have surpassed. Still, Rodriguez said he was at peace with his decision, and with his place in baseball history. “I do want to be remembered as someone who was madly in love with the game of baseball,” he said, and then added, “I also will hopefully be remembered as someone who tripped and fell a lot, but kept getting up. ” | 0fake |
BREAKING: HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN On Close Friend, Top DOJ Official In Hillary FBI Probe: He “Kept Me Of Jail” | It s good to know Hillary s Campaign Chairman has such extraordinary ties with a top official involved in the reopening of Hillary s FBI probe Will this woman ever get the justice she deserves for decades of criminality? With all of her ties and crooked connections, is it even a possibility? The Justice Department official in charge of informing Congress about the newly reactivated Hillary Clinton email probe is a political appointee and former private-practice lawyer who kept Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta out of jail, lobbied for a tax cheat later pardoned by President Bill Clinton and led the effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Peter Kadzik, who was confirmed as assistant attorney general for legislative affairs in June 2014, represented Podesta in 1998 when independent counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating Podesta for his possible role in helping ex-Bill Clinton intern and mistress Monica Lewinsky land a job at the United Nations. Fantastic lawyer. Kept me out of jail, Podesta wrote on Sept. 8, 2008 to Obama aide Cassandra Butts, according to emails hacked from Podesta s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks.Kadzik s name has surfaced multiple times in regard to the FBI s investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for using a private, homebrewed server. After FBI Director James Comey informed Congress on Thursday the FBI was reviving its inquiry when new evidence linked to a separate investigation was discovered, congressional leaders wrote to the Department of Justice seeking more information. Kadzik replied. We assure you that the Department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible, Kadzik wrote on Oct. 31.The DOJ is responsible for approving the bureau s warrant applications and ultimately for convening a grand jury.Fox News has previously confirmed the Justice Department was opposed to Comey making public the latest Clinton revelations. FOX News | 1real |
Watch: First Trailer for Al Gore’s ’An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’ | Al Gore is back again to warn about the dangers of climate change in the first trailer for An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, the to his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. [“Storms get stronger and more destructive. Watch the water splash off the city,” the former vice president and climate change activist warns in the trailer as newsreel footage of severe weather plays in the background. “This is global warming. ” “Despair can be paralyzing,” he adds, “but this, to me, is the most exciting new development. We’re seeing a tremendous amount of positive change. The basis is there. But it’s still not enough. ” The trailer also features several brief excerpts of President Donald Trump’s comments on global warming, and shows Gore delivering lectures and traveling around the world to survey damage up close. Inconvenient 2 premiered as the opening night film at the Sundance Film Festival in January, reportedly drawing a standing ovation after the screening from the audience in Park City. “This movie gives me an extra burst of hope because I think … it really effectively tells the story of how much hope is out there for transforming our energy system to become much more efficient,” Gore said at the screening, according to Variety. “We are going to win this. ” The trailer’s release came the same day President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will roll back several key energy industry regulations signed into law by former President Barack Obama. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, with original director Davis Guggenheim returning as executive producer. Paramount Pictures will release the film on July 28. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0fake |
Love Him or Hate Him | Love Him or Hate Him Love Him or Hate Him By 52
The U.S. Elections: The Latest Crack in the System
The 2016 U.S. presidential elections are unprecedented: I don’t believe we have ever witnessed before a campaign year so toxic, so dangerously divisive and full of ad hominem attacks. Both camps have vilified the opposition and their followers, creating a schism in society. There has been no rational dialogue on the issues that truly concern the American public.
Instead, we have witnessed personal insults and petty attacks, rumors and gossip. At this point, as a result of this catastrophic campaign, the public will not vote in favor of the candidate they agree with the most or the one they like, but against the one they hate!
In this article, we do not focus on comparisons between Clinton and Trump; enough has been said and written about the candidates themselves. Here, we look at their supporters – the crowd behind the candidates, those that will in fact shape American policy making in the coming four years.
Hillary Clinton: The Establishment Remains in Control
Current Prices on popular forms of Gold Bullion
The most important and formidable group within those backing Clinton belong to the upper echelon of society: Wall Street’s movers and shakers, big business, the top of the political pyramid and the servants and profiteers of the public sector. In one word: the establishment.
Clinton’s support base includes therefore practically everyone who profits from government regulations and government corruption – they have everything to lose if Hillary doesn’t win. It is the same group that advocates and leads the political correctness movement ; they are those state-bred and fed intellectuals who poison the university campus and mass media circus with their belief that they can transform the U.S. into a “utopia”.
In reality, this “utopia” will be created through intense centralization, endless wars and plundering, only to create a totalitarian government where the political elite enforces its will and instructs the public on how to live a happy life, which only benefits the top strata of society that designed it in the first place. Years ago, Jewish American philosopher Hannah Arendt summarized the toxic impact of political correctness as follows:
“There is no thought process without freedom. To deprive man of his liberty is to deprive him of his own ideas, and if one is not allowed to think, only subjugation and slavery remain.”
This can only be achieved through a strong foothold on the centralized state and its propaganda engine, the mass media, operating under the doctrine of Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, better known as public relations.
Then there’s the other extreme of Clinton’s supporters: the artificially created underprivileged minorities. These groups have come to depend on the state for support and protection, which has also made it easy for the state to indoctrinate them and reset their mindset to its advantage.
Those are the people who have fallen in the trap of thinking that only the state can provide them with what they need for a good life, when in reality it only disempowered them. The globalist Clinton herself accuses Trump of “populism”, casting “nationalism” in a negative light, but she is actually the one promising free lunches for everyone: lenient immigration laws, higher minimum wages, universal healthcare, etc.
Clinton also preaches against income inequality and condemns Wall Street greed in her speeches, while her campaign cashes in from Wall Street’s finest: JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Under those circumstances… what can you possibly do? Ms. Clinton’s top five donors are Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, DLA Piper, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley. Somehow we don’t think Wall Street has reason to fear her much. Cartoon by Cataslino
Trump – the Greatest Politically Incorrect Shock in Decades?
Whenever people are forced by the government to accept and pay for things they do not want, the outcome is discontent and opposition, typically suppressed and downplayed by the mainstream media in accordance with the state’s agenda of political correctness. This further escalates the situation and things often take unpleasant turns, including the fostering of racist and bigoted subsections that we see within the Trump voting base.
But they are not the majority, not by long shot! One might get this impression, because the mainstream media tend to focus exclusively on this sub-set of supporters through footage and interviews at Trump rallies, because they are considered “interesting” material; after all, they say outrageously horrible things and are therefore great for TV sensationalism.
What does Donald Trump stand for? From my perspective, for anything and everything! He stands for everyone who is sick and tired of the current system and the political elite who have grown out of touch with ordinary American citizens. You will find them among the working class, small business owners, and the segment of society that used to be known as the middle class before the crisis; they all harbor grievances against the establishment.
These are people who understand that the slogan “the Union and the Constitution forever” has been under attack and downgraded to nothing more than an empty phrase by the power elite and the Deep State. We see first hand how the Patriot Act directly violates not only the first amendment’s guarantee of free speech, but also the fourth and fifth amendments, thereby tearing apart the very foundation of a country once based on respect for civil liberties.
There is no doubt that the second amendment will be crushed under Clinton as well, “regulating to extinction” the natural right to self-defense and personal sovereignty. We must never forget that we are born with inherent rights, that can neither be granted nor taken away from us by the State. As Judge Napolitano once put it:
“Natural law teaches that our freedoms are pre-political and come from our humanity and not from the government. As our humanity is ultimately divine in origin, the government, even by majority vote, cannot morally take natural rights away from us. A natural right is an area of individual human behavior – like thought, speech, worship, travel, self-defense, privacy, ownership and use of property, consensual personal intimacy – immune from government interference and for the exercise of which we don’t need the government’s permission.”
Even though polls suggest that Trump is trailing nationally, they probably underestimate exactly how big the Trump wave is, and it is significant: between 74% and 83% of Republicans said they will support him (according to polls conducted between Oct 9 th -11 th ). But there is also the silent majority that has been present at his rallies. This silent majority does not necessarily consist of Trump fans, but they do not want to see the country falling into the abyss of state centralization and political correctness.
They want to discontinue the economic system that has taken them from bad to worse – they are the American version of the European anti-establishment movement. They are well aware of Trump’s coarse character and crude remarks, but feel they can overlook that, for the sake of his main strategic advantage: Trump’s promise that he does not want America to be controlled by the establishment anymore.
A Tale of Two Hatreds
“Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching… then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.” Hillary Clinton, National Multi-Housing Council, April 2013
One key reason behind the peoples’ hostility towards Clinton is that she personally embodies the hypocrisy and the hubris of the U.S. federal government itself: a government that maims and kills millions with its war on terror, it arms and supports murderous regimes and ideological fanatics and it is known to deploy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And yet, it somehow pretends to hold the moral high ground and lectures others on human rights.
Just as America is an “exceptional” country, for which normal standards don’t apply, Clinton is its “exceptional” candidate. She accuses her opponent of populism, when her own platform is entirely based on crowd-pleasing promises.
She calls Trump’s policies fascistic while her own would put the final nail on the coffin of free speech. She claims to stand up for the little guy, while she funds her campaign with Wall Street money. She positions herself as the defender of minorities’ and women’s rights, while her Foundation accepts donations from the most oppressive regimes on the planet.
At the same time, the American electorate also feels hostility for Trump; that hate is not equivalent though, as few would argue he is trying to hide who he is. The reason why so many dislike him is very different, and it has to do with the identity he projects. He is the ultimate “anti-intellectual”.
Of course the term “intellectual” is quite broad these days, and many intellectuals dislike Trump solely because of what it would say about who they are (in the eyes of their like-minded peers). But these people share a common denominator: they are educated beyond their intelligence and critically depend on repeating what other “intellectual” people say, as they feel (consciously or not) their ignorance would be exposed if they dared to express an original idea. Trump’s world, according to a recent NYT cartoon. The statist intelligentsia certainly feels threatened by Trump. Cartoon by Chappatte
The Day After: The Legacy of a Bitter Campaign Year
Unfortunately, whoever wins, the nation will pay a price for this “divide and conquer” rhetoric. Americans today are too polarized and the tensions that are brewing in the background will not just go away the day after the election: racial and social divisions, as well as the split caused by the choice between a planned vs. a free market economy, a big or a small government.
Under Trump, we can only hope that America will be given time to heal and to overcome these divisions. Free speech is key: Society can only heal if it returns to a culture of debate with a willingness to agree to disagree.
From what we know from modern American history, we shouldn’t be surprised that the financial markets appear to prefer Hillary over Trump. Wall Street, the bankers and the military industrial complex are expected to continue to thrive under President Clinton. The establishment will live on. Right now the establishment is seemingly pushing for war against Russia and Clinton is undeniably on board with this aggressive narrative.
And then we have Trump, who is certainly far from perfect. His objectification of women, his comments about Muslims and minorities, his crass demeanor: All these have made it very hard for him to find support for his genuine policy points.
Even if the actual net effect of his policies were to benefit women, he won’t get them on his side by calling them pigs – there is a difference between free speech and just being plain rude, uncivil and vulgar. We may disagree with his infamous “wall” with Mexico and demands for “a new budget to rebuild our depleted military” (which makes him no different from Clinton). But he is an outsider, a businessman, and most importantly, a crack in system!
He challenges the status quo, and that’s why the status quo attacks him, by trying to ridicule both him and his voters, by painting them as extremists, or as ignorant and racist. The question is, why don’t we just let Trump be Trump?
As he himself said: “It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to!”. Consider the boldness of this statement – regardless of whether one agrees with him, he stands confidently for his principles and ideas, even against his own party’s leaders (many of which have withdrawn their support). This is a clear projection of power and independence; it says that no one can dictate their demands to him. It says that he is unafraid to speak his mind.
I say, we should trust his followers. It seems clear that most Trump voters are striving to defend the essence of the constitution and its original intent – to be the basis of a free society. And for me as a believer in civil rights and sovereignty, this is enough to give him or let me rather say, his voters, the benefit of the doubt. | 1real |
With Help From an Error, the Blue Jays Sweep the Rangers and Advance - The New York Times | TORONTO — It was not an obvious moment of infamy — no ground ball through the legs, no fastball down the middle just begging to be a hit. But the record will show that the play that sent the Toronto Blue Jays to the American League Championship Series on Sunday was scored as an error against the most notorious member of the Texas Rangers. Second baseman Rougned Odor, who punched the Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista in the jaw in May, made a wild throw while trying to turn a double play in the bottom of the 10th inning at Rogers Centre in Game 3 of this division series. Josh Donaldson, who had led off with a double, slid headfirst into home to complete a victory and a sweep. Odor’s error was the first in baseball history to end a postseason series. “I threw it a little bit to the side,” he said. “I pulled the ball a little bit. I tried to do my best, and that’s it. I had a chance at first. If it was a good throw, we can make the double play. ” Toronto returns to the A. L. C. S. after having lost in six games to the Kansas City Royals last fall. The series starts Friday in Boston or Cleveland the Indians can eliminate the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Monday to finish a sweep of that series. The Blue Jays emphatically stomped the Rangers, who had the A. L.’s best record but fell to Toronto in the division series for the second year in a row. The Rangers hit . 204 and posted a 6. 18 earned run average. “We got cold at the worst moment,” said Adrian Beltre, the veteran Texas third baseman. “We’re facing a team that got hot, and we couldn’t find a way to beat them. ” Bautista — whose bat flip in last year’s division series angered the Rangers — had a chance to win the series against Matt Bush, the reliever who plunked him in May before Bautista’s hard slide led to Odor’s punch. But after Donaldson’s double and an intentional walk to Edwin Encarnacion, Bush struck out Bautista to bring up Russell Martin. Martin saw eight pitches, all fastballs from 97 to 99 miles per hour. After two fouls, he lashed a grounder to the shortstop hole, where Elvis Andrus backhanded it and flipped it to Odor, who was covering second base. Encarnacion slid into second, but Odor said that did not affect him. Still, he fired a throw into the dirt that pulled Mitch Moreland off first base. The ball skipped off the glove of Moreland, who scrambled to pick it up and fling it home, but too late. “If it gets past me, we have no shot,” Moreland said. “I knew I had to knock it down and try to keep it close. It just got a little too far from me. ” Moreland said that if the ball had stayed in his glove, or fallen right at his feet, he doubted that Donaldson would have even tried for home. But when the ball got away, the Moreland had to set his feet as he gathered it, emboldening Donaldson to make his dash. “What’s kind of crazy is, I played against Mitch Moreland for a long time and played against him in college as well,” said Donaldson, who attended Auburn when Moreland played for Mississippi State. “So it wasn’t one of those situations where I was just wheeling around third to score, because I respect Mitch’s arm. For me, the deciding factor was once I saw the ball get away from him, I felt like I had to take a chance. That situation in the game, if he ends up throwing me out, making a great play, you kind of have to tip your cap to him. But I’m banking on the fact that I’m going to make it more times than not. ” The Rangers’ last hope was a replay review to examine whether Encarnacion’s slide could be considered interference. Although the Blue Jays paused their reveling for a moment, the umpire crew chief, Joe West, soon removed his headset and gently signaled safe. “It was a little bit of a buzzkill,” Martin said, but the Blue Jays were not complaining. Just five days after celebrating a thriller against Baltimore in the game — which was won on an Encarnacion homer in the 11th — the Blue Jays partied in their clubhouse again. Toronto did not secure a berth until the final day of the regular season, struggling at times with inconsistent offense despite a sturdy pitching staff. But the team has won six games in a row to clinch a playoff spot and advance through two rounds. The Blue Jays mauled the Rangers’ star pitchers, Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish, to win the first two games by a combined . “Even when people around them doubted, the belief was here — we’re going to play well and we’re going to be a championship team,” said Mark Shapiro, the Blue Jays’ president and chief executive. “We’ve had isolated moments, but this is probably the best baseball we’ve played all year — at the right time. ” There was no misbehavior on Sunday, no beanballs or punches or beer cans flung from the stands. After a fan just missed hitting Orioles outfielder Hyun Soo Kim with a beer can on Tuesday, the Blue Jays announced they would serve beer only in plastic cups for the rest of the postseason. And the teams made good on their promise to leave behind their tense history and play clean. “We kind of put our emotions aside and played good baseball,” Martin said. Some Rangers fans chanted Odor’s name at Bautista when he batted at their park, and most Blue Jays fans vigorously booed Odor whenever he was announced Sunday. But Odor said that did not bother him. “I’ve been playing like this in my country,” said Odor, who has played winter ball in his native Venezuela. “We have really good fans in Venezuela and I play with one of the best teams in Venezuela. It’s always a lot of people, a lot of crowds. I’ve been in that situation before. ” The Rangers have been in this situation before, too, hurting themselves in a playoff game in Toronto. Last year while leading in the seventh inning of the decisive fifth game, Texas fell apart thanks to two errors by Andrus and another by Moreland. Andrus, 28 and also from Venezuela, said he consoled Odor, who is 22, after the game. Odor said he appreciated the support. “I was the one making errors last year,” Andrus said. “I know how it feels. It’s the worst feeling ever. But we still have a lot of years in our career. Sooner or later, we’re going to be back in the playoffs, and hopefully we can go deeper. ” The Rangers made other mistakes in Game 3: Two misplaced sliders by Colby Lewis turned into homers for Encarnacion and Martin in the first inning, and a passed ball by catcher Jonathan Lucroy brought in the tying run in the sixth. Texas briefly held two leads, and Andrus and Odor homered off Aaron Sanchez, who gave up six runs and walked four over five and innings. But the Rangers were nearly helpless against the Blue Jays’ bullpen. Moreland greeted Joe Biagini with a double in the sixth, but Biagini and three others retired the final 13 Texas hitters. Roberto Osuna worked the last two innings for Toronto, earning the victory after securing a save in Game 2. Now Osuna and his teammates get four days to rest before the A. L. C. S. Donaldson has been playing hurt, without disclosing the injury. It is safe to say he felt just fine diving into the next round. “When you have 50, 000 fans screaming,” Donaldson said, “it kind of numbs the pain. ” | 0fake |
Heaven’s Gatekeeper? Jesse Jackson Proclaims That Trump ‘Would Not Qualify to Get Into Jesus’ Kingdom’ | Jesse Jackson thinks he s Heaven s gatekeeper The arrogant reverend proclaimed that President Trump might not qualify to enter Jesus Kingdom. How dare he!Jackson made the comments at the Ministers March for Justice : Trump says you must be able to speak the language of English, be qualified, and have a job skill. Jesus would not qualify to come in Trump s country he would not qualify to get into Jesus kingdom. Jackson used religion to bash Trump during the event: He quoted part of a passage from the gospel of Matthew: I was hungry, you fed me; naked, you clothed me; captive, you set me free. Jackson was referring to the fact that he believes in open borders and welcoming arms for everyone. Nice try, it s just not true that a nation can survive without borders. This is typical of the pandering reverend who s been using minorities his entire life to profit off of. He s a grifter along with Sharpton who was in attendance of course. These shysters detest Trump because they know he s the real deal and will REALLY help all Americans. | 1real |
THERE IS ONLY ONE THING CONSERVATIVES WANT TO HEAR THIS GUY SAY TODAY… | I m leaving the GOP and running as a Democrat!Unfortunately, it doesn t look like that s what we re going to hear from our amnesty loving RINO (Republican In Name Only) friend.Reporting from Washington Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina defense hawk, plans to enter the crowded Republican presidential primary field Monday with a campaign that probably won t deliver him to the White House, but will highlight the party s divide over national security.Graham lacks the big-money backing and name recognition that s likely to be needed to pull away from the party s increasingly unwieldy field.But for him, that may not matter.For the last several years, Graham, a former Air Force colonel and legal officer, has played a central role in a sometimes-bitter battle between the GOP s traditional defense advocates and newly emergent isolationist-leaning libertarians led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is also seeking the party s presidential nomination. The South Carolina senator did not originate the wacko birds label for Paul and his allies that was coined by Graham s best friend in Congress, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) but he might as well have.Last week Graham was caught on camera rolling his eyes as Paul objected to Senate efforts to continue the National Security Agency s once-secret collection of records of Americans telephone calls.Paul returned the favor by releasing a video denouncing the NSA program. It ridiculed both Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for their support of NSA surveillance, depicting Graham as trying to read Americans emails while sitting in a 1997-era car.In an interview during the heat of the Senate debate, Paul also accused Graham, McCain and other Republicans who support arming insurgents in Syria of having contributed to the rise of Islamic State, also referred to as ISIS. ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party, who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS, he said.Graham said in an email to supporters that his presidential announcement will be one of the biggest and most memorable moments of my life. As he approaches the military s mandatory retirement age and eyes the White House, Graham said last week he was retiring from the Air Force after nearly 30 years. He had continued to serve as a reserve officer, at times using his skills as a military lawyer to handle legal affairs in Iraq during breaks from the Senate.A Southern Baptist and conservative on social issues, Graham, who never married, is known as a deal-maker in Congress. In 2013, he led efforts with Democrats to reform immigration laws to allow a path to citizenship for those living illegally in the U.S.Graham, 59, was born in Seneca, S.C., and lived with his family behind their liquor store, restaurant and pool hall on Main Street in Central, S.C., where he plans to announce his campaign.His personal story has helped shape his policymaking. After his parents death, he helped raise his younger sister and has championed the Social Security survivors benefits they relied upon as young people.But it is his military service and alliance with McCain that have come to define much of Graham s work in Washington as the two tried to defend hawkish foreign and defense policies against attack from some in the party s new generation. Now, he ll try to bolster those policies on the presidential campaign trail.Via: Virginia Gazette | 1real |
Lebanon's PM Hariri shelves resignation, easing crisis | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri on Wednesday shelved his decision to resign as prime minister at the request of President Michel Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East. Hariri made his announcement after returning to Beirut for the first time since he quit abruptly on Nov. 4 in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia. Top Lebanese officials have said Riyadh forced him to quit and held him in the kingdom. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. At the presidential palace near Beirut, Hariri said he hoped his move would lead to a responsible dialogue...that deals with divisive issues and their repercussions on Lebanon s relations with Arab brothers. Hariri said all Lebanese sides must commit to keeping the country out of regional conflicts, a reference to the Iran-backed Hezbollah political and military movement. Hezbollah s regional military role has greatly alarmed Saudi Arabia, Hariri s long-time ally. I presented today my resignation to President Aoun and he urged me to wait before offering it and to hold onto it for more dialogue about its reasons and political background, and I showed responsiveness, he said in a televised statement. The resignation had shocked even Hariri s aides. He returned to Lebanon late on Tuesday night after French intervention. Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, had refused to accept the resignation because it happened in mysterious circumstances abroad. He had called Hariri a hostage in Riyadh. Hariri appeared to express relief that Aoun had not accepted the resignation right away. He thanked Aoun on Wednesday for respecting constitutional norms and his rejection of departing from them under any circumstances . The resignation pitched Lebanon to the forefront of the regional rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran, which backs Lebanon s Hezbollah, and raised concerns of a protracted crisis. In his resignation speech, Hariri had cited fear of assassination, and attacked Iran along with Hezbollah for sowing strife in the Arab world. Hundreds of Hariri supporters packed the streets near his house in central Beirut, waving the blue flag of his Future Movement political party. The Sunni leader told them he would stay with (them)... to be a line of defense for Lebanon, Lebanon s stability and Lebanon s Arabism . His presence in the country alone brings stability, said Manar Akoum, 26, as she stood with the celebrating crowd. Hariri s resignation was followed by a steep escalation in Saudi statements against the Lebanese government, which includes Shi ite Hezbollah. Riyadh said the government as a whole - not just Hezbollah - had declared war against it. Western governments including the United States struck a different tone, affirming their support for Hariri and the stability of Lebanon, which hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees - nearly one-in-four of the population. Ahead of his return to Beirut, Hariri had stressed the importance of the Lebanese state policy of staying out of regional conflicts, notably Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi fighters. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who had also called for Hariri s return, said on Monday his group was open to any dialogue and any discussion . Nasrallah also issued his clearest denial yet of any Hezbollah role in Yemen. A senior source in a political alliance that includes Hezbollah said Hariri s move on Wednesday would start a breakthrough in the crisis. This step is not detached from the framework of a complete solution whose features will appear in the coming days, the source told Reuters. Lebanese dollar bonds, which had fallen in response to Hariri s resignation, gained following Wednesday s announcement. A government minister from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a close ally of Saudi Arabia, said Lebanon must implement its policy of keeping out of Middle East conflicts in order to get out of its own crisis as well as regional troubles. The main problem facing that is the selective implementation of (this) principle and the functional Iranian role of Hezbollah outside the Lebanese framework, Anwar Gargash, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, wrote on Twitter. Cyprus, where Hariri had briefly stopped on his journey home, said it would attempt to help defuse the crisis. Our common objective is stability in Lebanon, stability in our area. Within this context... the President of the Republic will undertake some initiatives precisely to promote this objective; stability in Lebanon, Cypriot government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides said. Hariri took office last year in a power-sharing deal that made Aoun head of state. He arrived in Beirut in time for independence day celebrations on Wednesday morning, taking the premier s seat alongside Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Hariri said he looked forward to real partnership with all the political powers, in placing Lebanon s interests high above any other interests and preserving coexistence among Lebanese. | 0fake |
Chancellor announces £2bn cybercrime fund to combat internet hackers | November 1, 2016
The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has announced a £2bn investment in fighting cybercrime to prevent internet hackers assaulting Britain’s digital infrastructure and make Britain one of the world’s safest places to do business online.
In a statement unveiling the measures, the Chancellor said: “open secure channel: var posX = 20; var posXm = 40; var posXc = 5 ; var data = [ “a” , “b” , “W” , “X”, “45Z”, “@”, “£#” ] ; fill(255, 0, 0); var comm = function (xo,co,yo) { text (data[xo],co,yo); } access secure systems }} var “trojan” ; access “UKgovernment net”>cmd {delete all data}; function{ransomware 1.0} PRINT “transmit £120bn to Moscow or you will never see your data again” {var 1.0}.”
“Beep beep boop.” | 1real |
WHOA! BILL O’REILLY DROPS BOMBSHELL Report About Key Accuser In Sexual Harassment Case That Could Prove He Was Unjustly FIRED By FOX News | Bill O Reilly needs to ask the investigators assigned to defend him in a sexual harassment case that eventually led to his firing for a full refund. O Reilly s reputation, as well as his career, were destroyed by a woman, who it turns out, is not only a two-bit phony, but a liar as well.O Reilly tweeted, Sorry to have to post this article but it is necessary to expose the evil in play in this country. More to come. after Newsmax broke the story about a key accuser in the O Reilly sexual harassment case that eventually led to his firing by the liberal Murdoch brothers at the Fox News network.Newsmax has obtained two documents that cast doubt on Burgess s credibility.A Detroit Police report dated Feb. 11, 2015, documents Burgess s arrest on charges of making a false report and obstructing a court order.According to the police document, Burgess called authorities and alleged her boyfriend had struck her in the face with a gun. Police said when they arrived at the scene Burgess appeared intoxicated. The arresting officer stated: I asked Ms. Burgess where the gun was that she was struck with in the face, she replied there is no gun. I again asked her where the gun was, and if she had been assaulted. Ms. Burgess stated there was no gun, and he didn t assault me! The boyfriend told police she had threatened him, saying she would call the cops saying you hit me with a gun! According to the police document, Burgess was arrested for filing a false felony report and for violating a personal protection order.In a statement provided to Newsmax, Lisa Bloom, Burgess s attorney, acknowledges the police report involving her client, but states that Burgess and her former boyfriend both believe the charges were based on a misunderstanding and were not pursued by the police or prosecutors. In another document, a social media user thought to be Burgess tweeted on Nov. 24, 2012: up until 10 years ago Laurence Fishburne could get every oz. of my hot chocolate. Addressing that tweet, Bloom stated: Ms. Burgess has used many terms to refer to herself, including on occasion bitch and the N word. That does not give others especially her superiors in her workplace permission to use offensive language about her. Here is attorney Lisa Bloom celebrating with her client, Perquita Burgess who we now know, has a history of filing false reports against men:With my beautiful and brave client Perquita Burgess as she walked through her fear and emerged triumphant yesterday. pic.twitter.com/Qw1wihd0zh Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) April 21, 2017In April, O Reilly was fired from Fox News shortly after Perquita Burgess claimed the host made sexually suggestive comments to her, including calling her hot chocolate. Burgess worked at Fox News for several weeks in 2008 as a clerical temp.Shortly after an April 1st New York Times report detailed sexual harassment allegations by several women against O Reilly, Burgess called a 21st Century Fox hotline claiming alleged workplace misconduct by O Reilly. 21st Century is the parent company of Fox News.At the time her charges emerged, O Reilly s program, The O Reilly Factor, was already in the throes of an advertiser-boycott campaign being pushed by several liberal organizations. I had no idea who this woman was, O Reilly told Newsmax. O Reilly denied ever having a conversation with her. So when it came out, it was stunning, he said.The day after O Reilly was fired, Burgess went public with her account in a high-profile appearance on ABC s The View. NewsmaxBill O Reilly accuser Perquita Burgess told the dingbats at The View that she felt triumphant when the Fox News Channel host was fired following an investigation into claims of harassment by women. Perquita Burgess, a former clerical worker at Fox, went on The View Thursday to talk about encounters with O Reilly nine years ago.Watch Perquita tell The View dingbats how Bill O Reilly allegedly calling her Hot chocolate is racist. Not only was it sexual, I took that as very plantational remark. You know, I ve been around enough racism, whatever. | 1real |
US "lost cause" North Korea policy to be reviewed | US "lost cause" North Korea policy to be reviewed Thu Oct 27, 2016 6:31PM US Secretary of State John Kerry listens during a trilateral meeting discussing North Korea with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts (both unseen), in New York, September 18, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Frank SmithSouth Korea, Press TV
American, Japanese and South Korean officials met in Tokyo this week to coordinate their policies toward North Korea, suggesting they will continue with their policy of sanctions and pressure against Pyongyang. Meanwhile, a leading US intelligence chief says Washington's pressure policy on North Korea needs to be revised as it's no longer effective. | 1real |
Trump Demands Apology From The Media And Gets Told To Go F*ck Himself | Donald Trump, the pathetic man who has yet to apologize for all the hateful and divisive things he said throughout his campaign, is demanding an apology from the media.Seriously.Trump has been lashing out at the media and the intelligence community all weekend over a dossier revealing that he paid prostitutes to pee on the bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow, and also reveals that his campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.He whined about the media during his first press conference in six months, resorting to calling CNN and Buzzfeed fake news for running the story.Now Trump is crowing because legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who shall now be known as a sell-out, agreed with him that the dossier should never have been reported on, which would have hidden information from the American people. His demand for an apology was written in all caps, even though he has failed to apologize for any of the insults and offensive statements he said during his campaign.Thank you to Bob Woodward who said, That is a garbage document it never should have been presented Trump s right to be upset (angry) Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017about that Those Intelligence chiefs made a mistake here, & when people make mistakes, they should APOLOGIZE. Media should also apologize Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017And because Trump is being a hypocrite when it comes to apologies, Twitter told him to go to hell.@realDonaldTrump We are sorry you are such a douche. Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/RlgFOqSVr2 NotABillionaire (@BillionairesNo) January 15, 2017.@realDonaldTrump You MUST stop fixating on the pee story. The more you bring up the pee story the more people will think about it, Donald. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 15, 2017.@realDonaldTrump And if you continue to vilify the media, it s very unlikely they ll apologize to you about anything, dear. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 15, 2017@bessbell @realDonaldTrump Maybe it s me, but he seems frustrated. Almost as if he is guilty of something? Tara (@tgruka) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump stop asking people to apologize you oversensitive man-child. Also stop paying people to piss on each other. TJ Fixman (@TJFixman) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump MSM: Hillary used private email servers DJT: LOCK HER UP! MSM: Trump may be feeding intelligence to Russia DJT: MSM LIES! Mike Denison (@mikd33) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump My God, do you EVER get tired of hearing yourself whine? Give it a rest for once in your life. Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Couldn t agree more Sir. We re waiting. pic.twitter.com/GMewlFpC6D Mike Polk Jr. (@mikepolkjr) January 15, 2017@realDonaldTrump Like you APOLOGIZED to Jeb s wife or to OBAMA for that Birther bullshit, or to the women who you called pigs, or to the . pic.twitter.com/ykBdM2W1jd Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 15, 2017Donald Trump really needs to stop whining and making demands on Twitter. He is five days away from taking over the White House. It s time for him to grow up and start acting like an adult instead of the petulant child he has been his entire life.Featured image by Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images | 1real |
Grab The Popcorn, Trump Unloads On Ted Cruz: ‘Nobody Likes Him’ (VIDEO) | Donald Trump continued to unload on rival Ted Cruz as the reality star once again went on the attack on Sunday.Appearing on ABC s This Week, Trump talked about just how unlikeable Cruz is. Nobody likes him, nobody in Congress likes him, nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him, Trump said in an interview airing on ABC s This Week. Trump also hit Cruz over his secret dark money loan that he secured from Goldman Sachs in order to win his Senate race. Cruz failed to disclose the loan on forms submitted to the Federal Elections Commission. He wants to look like Robin Hood, Trump said. That he s the one protecting the people from the banks, while he s actually borrowing money and personally guaranteeing it and not disclosing it, which is illegal. For months Trump and Cruz refused to directly attack each other, preferring to aim their arrows at other Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. But now as Cruz has started nipping at Trump s heels in Iowa polls, the front runner has begun to give Cruz the business.For his part, Cruz has also fired back. He accused Trump of having New York values a phrase that some have seen as a dog whistle to base Republican voters about New York s more diverse culture with is large population of Jewish people, gays, and minorities.Trump responded by pointing out that New York values are what terrorists targeted on 9/11. To add insult to injury, Trump received praise for those comments from both Hillary Clinton (who was New York s senator at the time) and current New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.Additionally, Trump has been concern trolling Cruz about his eligibility for the presidency. Citing the fact that Cruz was born in Canada, Trump has been egging on Cruz to defend himself against possible challenges to his candidacy if he s the nominee. Trump has been a long-time promoter of the conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the United States.Over the course of the race, Trump has shown a propensity to dig in and go nuclear in his attacks on anyone who directly challenges him, and this latest salvo directed at Cruz seems to signal that the next two weeks ahead of the caucus could be immensely entertaining.Featured image via YouTube | 1real |
BOILER ROOM – EP #44 – Dig, Dug, Dirt! | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday.Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot, Daniel Spaulding from Soul of the East, 21Wire & ACR contributor Randy J and Boiler Room Presidential Candidate select: Stewart Howe. In this broadcast listeners will be hearing us go around the BOILER ROOM on a veritable feast of topics including Cloppers, GOP Politics, Donald Trump, Hunting with Dick Cheney, Fat Shaming and the Golden Corral, the 5th anniversary of the NATO sacking of Libya, TX arresting people for outstanding student loan debt, the death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia, Glen Beck telling listeners that Ted Cruz will get them through the rapture, Mark Levin calling Donald Trump a kooky truther, Jim Baker selling buckets of Food and more. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLITICALLY CORRECT ZONE! LIVE ACR PLAYER BELOW Show goes live at 6 PM PST: | 1real |
Airlines at Beirut implement measures in line with Trump travel ban - airport sources | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Airlines operating at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport have begun implementing measures in compliance with U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban on refugees and nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries, airport sources said on Sunday. The measures would include denying U.S.-bound travel for nationals from those countries - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen - who were not U.S. green card holders, the sources said. U.S.-bound journeys from Beirut typically involve transfers in Europe, Turkey or Gulf Arab countries. | 0fake |
Впервые за 30 лет США направили подводный ракетоносец в Тихоокеанский регион | Аналитический центр Катехон. Геополитика и Традиция. | Главная » Новости » Впервые за 30 лет США направили подводный ракетоносец в Тихоокеанский регион Впервые за 30 лет США направили подводный ракетоносец в Тихоокеанский регион вторник, 1 ноября, 2016 - 12:45
США направили на военную базу на Гуаме стратегический подводный ракетоносец "Пенсильвания". При этом Стратком (Стратегическое командование США) подчеркивает, что сроки, как и цели нахождения подводной лодки на тихоокеанской базе не раскрываются.
"Данный конкретный визит на Гуам отражает приверженность США обороне союзников в Индо-Азиатско-Тихоокеанском регионе и дополняет многочисленные учения, операции и другую деятельность в рамках военного сотрудничества с государствами-партнёрами" - сообщает пресс-служба ВМС США.
Несмотря на то, что руководство США считает одну лодку "критически важным, стабилизирующим и чрезвычайно эффективным элементом американских сил ядерного сдерживания", вряд ли Вашингтон пойдёт на открытую конфронтацию с сильным соперником - Россией или Китаем. Таким образом, можно сделать вывод о том, что ракеты могут быть направлены либо на Корейский полуостров, либо на Индо-Пакистанский регион. Однако то, что в последнее время не прекращаются американо-южнокорейские учения и консультации, наиболее вероятной целью видится КНДР.
Тем не менее, Россия, Китай и, вероятно, ряд других стран примет к сведению факт переброски. Особенно в свете того, что в Китае проходит сейчас крупнейшая военно-техническая выставка, в ходе которой китайскому руководству представлены, в том числе, секретные виды вооружения. Материалы по этой теме | 1real |
null | I don't think any different than I did before he was elected, he was a fraud before he was elected and he's still a fraud. One day when we once again live in a country where justice is blind and the rule of law prevails he as well as HRC will be prosecuted and thrown in prison. | 1real |
10 Key Moments From Thursday’s Trump Nominee Hearings - The New York Times | On the third day of confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, there was one emerging theme: Many of the nominees of Donald J. Trump have disagreements with him on policy. There were serious questions, efforts at diversion with humor, and statements by senators. Overall, though, none of the nominees made any major mistakes, and one of them, James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, was approved as Mr. Trump’s choice for defense secretary by the Senate Armed Services Committee, 24 to 3. Fun fact: He doesn’t care for the nickname “Mad Dog. ” ■ Mr. Mattis diverged sharply from his prospective boss on Russia, calling Moscow one of the top threats to the world order. “I’m all for engagement,” Mr. Mattis said, “but we also have to recognize reality in terms of what Russia is up to. ” ■ Mr. Mattis also put daylight between himself and Mr. Trump on NATO and indicated strong support for the alliance’s principle of collective defense. “My view is that nations with allies thrive, and nations without allies don’t,” Mr. Mattis said. ■ Mr. Mattis said he supported the Iran nuclear agreement, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized. ■ And finally, he said that he had no intention of revisiting the Obama administration’s decisions on social issues at the Defense Department, like the opening of combat roles to women. ■ Representative Mike Pompeo, the Kansas Republican who is Mr. Trump’s nominee for director of the C. I. A. said the agency would pursue information about efforts by Russia to interfere with the American election, including any possible links to the Trump campaign. “I promise I will pursue the facts wherever they take us,” he said. ■ In a reversal, Mr. Pompeo said emphatically that he would not endorse torture, including coercive methods like waterboarding. Mr. Pompeo had previously said he did not believe waterboarding was torture, and that it was legal. ■ Mr. Pompeo signaled that he agreed with the assessment of United States intelligence agencies that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy and to undermine the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, describing the report that was delivered last week to Mr. Trump and President Obama as “sound. ” ■ Ben Carson’s confirmation hearing for secretary of housing and urban development was not attended by Mr. Trump. But Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, directed biting comments at the . Ms. Warren, while accusing Mr. Trump of hiding his assets, repeatedly asked Mr. Carson if he would commit to keeping taxpayers’ dollars away from Trump businesses. ■ Mr. Carson successfully parried questions about whether someone who had gained acclaim as neurosurgeon was qualified to oversee the vast federal housing agency. Though he has no background in housing, he avoided any major stumbles. ■ Democrats seemed to take it a bit easy on Mr. Carson, with some talking about his young granddaughter attending and others questioning him without being too adversarial. | 0fake |
Three in Florida, Virginia charged with voter fraud | Three in Florida, Virginia charged with voter fraud Reuters
Officials in Florida and Virginia filed voter fraud charges against three people in apparently unrelated cases on Friday, just 11 days before American voters cast ballots in the hotly contested presidential race.
The charges targeted a Florida woman and a Virginia man accused of filing bogus voter registration forms and a Florida woman alleged to have tampered with absentee ballots she was opening at the Miami-Dade Elections Department.
In the Iowa capital of Des Moines, county election officials referred three cases of suspected voter fraud to police earlier this week, leading to one arrest on Thursday, police said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has charged in recent weeks that the election will be rigged in favor of Democrat Hillary Clinton, though he has shown no proof for these claims and many Republicans have called them unfounded.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in Florida said that 74-year-old Gladys Coego had been working as an absentee ballot opener when a supervisor allegedly saw her changing ballots that had been left blank to support a mayoral candidate. Prosecutors said that Coego admitted to marking the ballots and was charged with two felony counts of marking or designating the ballot of another. | 1real |
Denuclearizing N. Korea a ‘lost cause,’ US intel chief says | October 26, 2016 Denuclearizing N. Korea a ‘lost cause,’ US intel chief says Convincing North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons is a “lost cause,” America’s top intelligence official said, causing concern in the State Department and ally South Korea over an issue of long-standing US policy. The United States has always maintained it cannot accept North Korea as a nuclear state and, under President Barack Obama, has made any talks with the North conditional on Pyongyang first making some tangible commitment towards denuclearisation. But in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Tuesday suggested such a policy was based on wishful thinking. “The notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause. They are not going to do that. That is their ticket to survival,” Clapper said. “They are under siege, and they are very paranoid. So the notion of giving up their nuclear capability, whatever it is, is a nonstarter with them,” he added. | 1real |
Newt Gingrich Puts The WEIRDEST Spin On Trump’s Incessant, Shallow Tweeting | Trump has a serious lack of impulse control, particularly on social media. We ve known this forever, and it s to the point where some have begun calling for the media to return to real journalism and stop focusing on his damn tweets. Part of the reason so many feel we can t ignore them is because they represent a lack of control, and because they re the inner thoughts of a madman who thinks he s still a private citizen and can say what he wants.Newt Gingrich, one of Trump s biggest and most shameless fanboys, has a different idea and it s pretty wild. To Gingrich, Trump is intentionally using social media to manipulate what information gets out. He believes this is Trump s amazing creative skill at work: [The Apprentice] was a remarkably popular show [Trump] understands the value of tension. He understands the value of showmanship. And candidly, the news media is going to chase the rabbit. So it s better off for him to give them a rabbit than for them to go find their own rabbit. He s had them fixated on Mitt Romney now for five or six days. I think from his perspective, that s terrific. It gives everyone something to talk about.He does not think of this as chaos. He thinks of this as creativity. Gingrich went on to say how Trump has used social media to get regular Americans to attack the media for going after real issues. In other words, he believes Trump has come up with this amazing solution to the media exposing truths he doesn t want exposed. President-elect Trump s ability to communicate directly to the American people when he wants to through Facebook, through Twitter, through a variety of mechanisms that aren t traditional gives him an ability to communicate and build on majority unlike any president we have seen up until now and I suspect he will continue to use it.He is not going to fall into allowing the elite media to define who he is and allowing them to censor what the American people learned. Some think Trump is an egotistical nincompoop with onion-paper thin skin and no impulse control at all, and they re probably not wrong. Entire columns, like this one, have been devoted to his numerous, bizarre and vague statements on foreign policy, on climate change, on pretty much everything. They make Trump into a joke.Gingrich doesn t want people making Trump into a joke, so of course he s going to say that his crazy Twitter tirades are carefully calculated distractions that he crafted using his reality show expertise. There s probably no way to know for sure what Trump is up to, but we can say this: Some of his surrogates will spin any wild yarn at all to make him look like the smartest president we ve never had.And largest majority? I do not think that means what you think it means.Featured image by John Sommers II via Getty Images | 1real |
Grandfather Apologizes After Dylann Roof’s Guilty Pleas Add to Sentence - The New York Times | CHARLESTON, S. C. — As Dylann S. Roof made what was probably his final appearance in open court, his grandfather offered the earnest apology to the families of Mr. Roof’s nine victims that the Charleston church killer has steadfastly declined to make on his own. “I just want to say loudly and repeatedly and constantly we’re sorry,” Joseph Roof, a Columbia, S. C. real estate lawyer, said on Monday in Charleston County Circuit Court. “We’re just as sorry as we can be that this has happened. We regret it. It has ruined lives, and I cannot put those back together. ” His grandson, a white supremacist who had just pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder for the June 17, 2015, massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, looked ahead impassively, just as when sentenced to death in federal court in January. Under a plea arrangement, he received life terms for each of the murder charges, which will be appended consecutively to the 18 death sentences imposed by a judge and jury in his federal trial. Mr. Roof turned down an offer to address the court directly on Monday, leaving his grandfather as his only advocate. It was the first time a relative had spoken on his behalf in court. “Everyone should understand that nothing is all bad, and Dylann is not all bad,” Joseph Roof said, adding that he and his wife pray each day for the victims’ families. “There’s no way we could ever feel what they’ve felt and what they’ve lost, just as no one can understand what we’ve been through. ” The elder Mr. Roof, who occasionally attended the federal trial, said he still could not fathom what had driven his grandson to such violence in the expressed hope of inciting a race war. “I will go to my grave not understanding what happened,” he said. The hearing Monday effectively ended the prosecution of Mr. Roof, who turned 23 a week ago. He is expected to be transferred soon to a federal penitentiary to await execution while appealing the death sentences he received in United States District Court. A federal jury found Mr. Roof guilty in December on 33 counts of hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of exercise of religion and use of a firearm to commit murder, then returned after the holidays to determine his punishment. Both state and federal prosecutors pursued the death penalty against Mr. Roof for different charges, but the federal government won the race to try him first. The Justice Department rejected Mr. Roof’s offer to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, citing the number of his victims and the heinous nature of his crimes. His sentencing in federal court — directly across Broad Street from the county judicial building — left Scarlett Wilson, the chief prosecutor for Charleston County, to decide whether redundant death sentences were necessary. She said she chose to spare the survivors and victims’ families the added trauma of sitting through a second presentation of gruesome crime scene photos and remorseless confessions. “We believe this is the surest way to see that Dylann Roof is executed,” she said on Monday. The testimony in Mr. Roof’s federal trial showed that he had plotted his attack for months, scouting the location during numerous visits from his home near Columbia. On the night of June 17, 2015, he walked through the church’s unlocked side door and joined 12 worshipers gathered for Bible study in the fellowship hall. The pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was also a state senator, invited the visitor to sit next to him. Mr. Roof said little until the church members closed their eyes in benediction. At that point, he removed a Glock . 45 caliber handgun from his fanny pack and began picking off his victims, one after the next, starting with Mr. Pinckney. Two women and a girl survived, and Mr. Roof’s guilty pleas on Monday included three counts of attempted murder. Several victims’ family members spoke briefly at the hearing, including Nadine Collier, the daughter of Ethel Lance, a victim. It was Ms. Collier who stunned the nation by leading a procession of family members who expressed forgiveness for Mr. Roof at his bond hearing, only two days after the shootings. She reinforced that message in addressing Mr. Roof on Monday. “I just want to say,” Ms. Collier said, “have mercy on your soul. ” | 0fake |
Kim Jong-nam Killing Was ‘Terrorist Act’ by North Korea, South Says - The New York Times | SEOUL, South Korea — The acting president of South Korea, Hwang on Monday called the killing of Kim the estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader, “an intolerable crime against humanity and terrorist act” masterminded by the North Korean regime. The remarks were the strongest yet by the South Korean leadership linking the North Korean government, led by Kim to the brazen killing of Mr. Kim’s half brother on Feb. 13 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. In his remarks, Mr. Hwang also urged the world to hold North Korea accountable for the killing. “It starkly demonstrated the North Korean regime’s recklessness and cruelty as well as the fact that it will do anything, everything in order to maintain its power,” Mr. Hwang said during a meeting of cabinet ministers on Monday. “We need to cooperate with the international community to ensure that North Korea will pay a just price for its terrorist act. ” Mr. Hwang’s comments escalated pressure on North Korea by formally accusing Mr. Kim’s government of carrying out a terrorist attack, which could encourage other nations, including the United States, to try to punish the government in Pyongyang. Mr. Hwang instructed his government to strengthen vigilance and precautions against possible North Korean terrorist attacks on the government and citizens of the South. He also warned that North Korea may try military provocations to divert international attention from the killing. The statement came as tensions escalated Monday between North Korea and Malaysia as the police in Kuala Lumpur press on with their investigation of the killing, in which several North Korean citizens are being sought. Fuji TV in Japan posted what appeared to be airport security video footage of the attack on YouTube, which was later reposted by other sources. The North Korean ambassador to Malaysia, Kang Chol, called the Malaysian inquiry politically motivated and demanded that his government be allowed to take part. Mr. Kang also found fault with Kim ’s autopsy. “It has been seven days since the incident, but there is no clear evidence on the cause of death, and at the moment we cannot trust the investigation by the Malaysian police,” Mr. Kang said. The North Korean Embassy later released a statement trying to raise doubts about whether the body was that of Mr. Kim, faulting the Malaysian authorities for “identifying the other name alleged by the hostile foreign forces. ” The statement said the deceased man, whom it identified as Kim Chol, held a diplomatic passport, and it criticized the Malaysian authorities for requiring the presence of next of kin for the body to be released. The Malaysian Foreign Ministry said it had summoned Mr. Kang to explain his accusation that Malaysia was “colluding” with North Korea’s enemies in its handling of Mr. Kim’s death. Late Monday, the Malaysian foreign minister, Anifah Aman, responded to Mr. Kang’s charges, saying they were based on “delusions, lies and . ” Mr. Kang’s suggestion that someone else’s hand was behind the investigation was “deeply insulting to Malaysia,” he said in a statement issued by his office. “In all civilized nations, it is the norm for cases such as these to be comprehensively investigated,” Mr. Anifah said. “It is the responsibility of the government to do so. ” Mr. Kim was apparently poisoned by a woman who grabbed him from behind at the airport and wiped his face with a cloth. He died on the way to a hospital. The Malaysian police have arrested four people and are seeking seven others, most of them North Korean. In its meeting with Mr. Kang, the Malaysian government called his accusations “baseless” and said the police were following normal procedures in the case of a death “under mysterious circumstances. ” Malaysia has told North Korea that it will give the body to Mr. Kim’s next of kin once the investigation is complete. “The Malaysian government has been transparent,” the statement said. “The Malaysian government takes very seriously any unfounded attempt to tarnish its reputation. ” The South Korean unification minister, Hong said on Monday that eight North Koreans were involved in the case, including one who was arrested, four who were believed to have returned home and three others who were still being sought by the Malaysian authorities. Speaking to reporters in Seoul, Mr. Hong declined to reveal the additional information his government had that helped it determine North Korean involvement. But he said the fact that several suspects were from North Korea was significant evidence itself. He also noted that North Korea had a history of committing terrorist attacks abroad and executing its own officials deemed a threat to the country’s leader. “The North Korean regime depends on a reign of terror and fears to help maintain its grip on power,” Mr. Hong said about the possible motive behind the killing. In Indonesia, Agung Sampurno, an Immigration Department spokesman, said that at least three North Korean suspects who left Malaysia in the hours after the killing on Feb. 13 arrived in Jakarta later that day. They left Jakarta at 10:20 p. m. on a flight to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, before they were believed to have returned to North Korea. | 0fake |
Federal Court Blocks Trump Admin’s Immigration Executive Order - Breitbart | A second federal judge — this one in Wisconsin — on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s new executive order (EO) on immigration travel, while the federal judge who blocked the first EO is reserving judgment on the revised EO. [Trump signed EO 13780 on Mar. 6, replacing his original order (EO 13769) temporarily restricting immigration from several nations. Judge James Robart of the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the first EO. The San U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit kept the TRO in place. Lawsuits have also been filed against the new EO 13780. The plaintiff states in the original TRO lawsuit — a growing list that currently includes Washington, Minnesota, and Oregon — asked Robart to rule that the TRO blocking EO 13769 likewise applies to the new EO. Robart released an order Friday stating that none of the parties have properly filed new motions in that litigation — and that he will reserve judgment until there is a relevant motion and the legal issues have been fully briefed before his court. However, on that same day, Judge William Conley of the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin did issue a new TRO against the new EO, holding that the plaintiff in that new lawsuit had a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, and would suffer irreparable harm unless the court provided immediate relief. This new lawsuit in Wisconsin concerns a man with a family member in Syria who has applied for asylum and claims that EO 13780 is thwarting that asylum request. A TRO is a temporary emergency measure that typically lasts less than two weeks, only long enough to give a district court judge enough time to fully consider an urgent matter in a lawsuit. A TRO is only issued in extraordinary situations. Conley has ordered legal briefs filed on an expedited basis for the next stage of litigation and will hold a court hearing on Mar. 21 on whether to convert the TRO into a preliminary injunction, a remedy that could stay in place for however long it takes to reach a final decision on the legality of EO 13780. Although a TRO cannot be appealed, a preliminary injunction can, which could take either case quickly to the next level of the federal judiciary. The Washington case would go back to the Ninth Circuit, while the Wisconsin case would go to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago. The first case is Washington v. Trump, No. 2: in the Western District of Washington. The second case is Doe v. Trump, No. 3: in the Western District of Wisconsin. Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 0fake |
Trump: I’m Reopening 9/11 Investigation | Email
Donald Trump’s plans for his first 100 days in office are raising eyebrows around the world, but of all the items on his agenda it is the reopening of the 9/11 investigation that will provide the greatest earthquake for the establishment. Via Yournewswire
Trump believes that 9/11 has not been properly investigated and he plans to get to the bottom of it. “First of all, the original 9/11 investigation is a total mess and has to be reopened,” Trump said. SPONSORED LINKS
The election of Donald Trump has rocked the establishment and things are only going to get rockier for them during his first term. There is a reason George W. Bush didn’t vote for Trump in the election, leaving the presidential line blank and voting Republican down-ballot. Trump has pledged to investigate 9/11 in a way it has not been investigated before.
For the first time 9/11 will be investigated by someone who isn’t part of the establishment, with skin in the game and plenty to lose.
“First of all, the original 9/11 investigation is a total mess and has to be reopened” Trump announced to supporters. “How do two planes take out three buildings in the same day? I never got my head around the fact that nothing is mentioned about the destruction of Building 7 in the 585 page document,” he explained, talking about World Trade Center 7 which also collapsed – inexplicably – during the September 11 attacks.
Donald Trump has also taken cracks at former president George W. Bush. There will be no covering up for former presidents on Trump’s watch. “The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush,” he said in a February debate. “He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe.”
“Why did the administration at the time not take legal means against Saudi Arabia? Weren’t 19 of the high-jackers from Saudi Arabia? Americans deserve answers and I will definitely request a new investigation so that this horrible tragedy never happens again.”
Donald Trump and the 9/11 Truth movement
While Trump might be railing against the establishment in reopening the 9/11 investigation, he has received support on this issue from a number of public personalities who have demanded the case be revisited – and not behind closed doors.
Former Senator Bob Graham has been demanding a new, transparent investigation “For years I have been campaigning for the release of the 2002 Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee 9/11 Inquiry’s report, to no avail” explains the former Governor of Florida. “These missing pages point to the direct involvement of the government of Saudi Arabia. Why are these being kept secret? Who has to gain from these games of secrecy?” he asks.
“I have read these documents myself and if the American public knew what was in these documents, there would be a revolution tomorrow in the streets of America” he acknowledged during a radio interview. “Americans deserve to know the truth” he concluded, visibly angered by the whole affair.
Since 2002, the release of a number of 9/11 Commission Report documents is hindered because they are congressional records, hence they are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The long withheld 28 pages were partially released to the public this year – heavily redacted – and the Saudi government claimed the release proved they were not responsible for supporting or financing the attacks. But it’s not as simple as that. There are direct ties to the Saudi hierarchy in the 28 pages. There are a lot of questions that need answering, and they were never going to be addressed under a Clinton presidency with all her ties to Saudi Arabia.
But with President Trump’s executive powers, everything has changed. The establishment are on edge. More than half the country doesn’t believe the official version of what happened that day. There is now a renewed belief that this biggest of lies and cover ups is about to be dismantled. The establishment did all it could to destroy Trump the outsider’s election chances at election. Now they are on edge. | 1real |
The Iran Deal and the Cost of Political Polarization | RealClearPolitics | In just a week or two, Congress will consider (actually, “consider” may be too generous a term in this instance), the negotiated agreement between Iran and the “P5+1” (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany), curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The United States and its negotiating allies claim the agreement will prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb. Opponents say that’s not so.
But—and this may upset people on both sides—the arguments for and against the agreement are not what interest me most. In fact, I am most troubled by what the debate has revealed about the disintegration of our political institutions and traditions, and of the increasing inability of those institutions to function on behalf of the American people and their interests.
Opposition to the Iran nuclear deal has been fomenting for years. Aroused and whipped by Israel’s hardline prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his troops in AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), congressional Republicans long ago decided to make this a “make or break” showdown with President Barack Obama. Forty-seven GOP senators, led by a young, freshman right-winger from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, even went so far as to write the leaders of Iran disavowing the deal before it was finalized. Few longtime students of the presidency or Congress can remember an affront of similar magnitude or possible consequence—short or long-term. The one that comes closest (even though we didn’t learn about it until decades later, and then only after all the key players were dead), was candidate Richard Nixon’s interference with the Paris Peace Talks (aimed at ending the war in Vietnam) in 1968.
What strikes me, in particular, is that the Republicans’ behavior vis-à-vis the negotiations with Iran stands in sharp contrast to the debate and the votes on the two Panama Canal treaties in 1978.
The Panama Canal issue in the 1970s was every bit as contentious as the situation with Iran is today. Negotiations of the treaties—one guaranteeing the neutral operation of the canal and the second ceding control of the canal to Panama (effective at midnight Dec. 31, 1999)—began in the Nixon administration, continued under President Ford, and were finalized by President Carter in August of 1977.
The uproar from the far right to Carter’s decision was immediate and intense; after all, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan had used the issue to bludgeon Gerald Ford in their fight for the Republican nomination in 1976, and he damn near succeeded (Reagan won the North Carolina primary largely because of the Panama Canal issue, as his chief in-state backer, the late Sen. Jesse Helms, was leader of the opposition).
Once Carter decided that he was going to agree to the treaties’ terms, Vice President Walter Mondale, congressional relations chief (and my boss at the time) Frank Moore, and the president himself divided up a call list of all 100 senators to let them know where things were headed, and to make a simple and singular request: That they not make any public statement, one way or another, until each senator had been briefed by officials from the administration—White House, State Department, Defense and the intelligence community—on the details and ramifications of either acceptance or rejection. Ninety-nine of the 100 agreed to and abided by the request; the only one who refused to do so was North Carolina’s Helms.
The ensuing debate was as vigorous and heated as one might imagine, and it went on for many months. Carter’s chief aide, Hamilton Jordan, orchestrated the administration’s campaign on behalf of ratification. Leading citizens from states whose senators were on the fence or shaky were invited to the White House for briefings and were subsequently dispatched to Capitol Hill to lobby for ratification. Newspaper editors, columnists and commentators were briefed by the president himself. My colleagues on the White House Congressional Liaison staff worked non-stop advocating and counting. Former Presidents Nixon and Ford made calls to key Republican senators; even conservative icon and Hollywood star John Wayne weighed in with his support.
On March 16, 1978, the first of two treaties (guaranteeing neutrality), was ratified by the Senate with only one vote to spare, 68 to 22; the second treaty (the one conveying the canal to Panama) was approved on April 18, 1978, by the exact same number. The vote breakdown is telling: 52 D/16 R “Aye” to 10 D/22 R “No.” Among the “yes” votes was that of Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.); Baker not only voted right, but he brought several of his Republican colleagues along with him.
It is important to note, as well, that the administration’s strategy was to reach at least 68 votes, rather than the minimum 67 required, so that no single senator could be accused of being the one who “gave away the Panama Canal.” Even so, many Democrats lost in the 1978 midterm elections and also in 1980, at least in part because of the courageous stand they took on the treaties. It will be interesting to see how political courage plays out on the Iran nuclear agreement; so far at least two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, have failed the test.
Were the votes on the Panama Canal treaties examples of “good old days” in American politics? Perhaps not. But they sure beat the hell out of what we are being subjected to today, and the price our representative democracy is paying as a result. | 0fake |
British child sex-abuser, 102, sentenced for crimes from 1970s | LONDON (Reuters) - A 102-year-old man given a suspended sentence on Monday for sexually abusing a girl in the 1970s is thought to be the oldest person convicted of a crime in Britain, prosecutors said. Douglas Hammersley was given a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to three counts of indecent assault. The Crown Prosecution Service said the incidents took place in the Buckinghamshire area, to the west of London, when the victim was between five and eight years old. We were able to prosecute Hammersley thanks to the victim coming forward, even though the offences were committed more than four decades ago, said Jennie Laskar-Hall, senior prosecutor for the CPS. In December, a 101-year-old man was jailed for 13 years for a string of historical sex crimes against two young sisters and their brother. Police said he was the oldest person to have been found guilty of a crime in British legal history. | 0fake |
Ooh Fuck | Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Lucas Wilde Ooh Fuck
“Ooh Fuck”, according to reports.
Not much more is known regarding the statement, although some are speculating that it may have something to do with some kind of earthquake that happened in America last night.
It is unknown if the earthquake was literal or simply a clumsy metaphor from a lazy satirist.
“Ooh Fuck,” confirmed Democrat party spokesperson, Jay Cooper.
“That’s all I have to say on the matter. I think it’s fairly conclusive.
“You can direct any other questions to my secretary. I have several lines of coke to attend to.”
“Ooh fuck,” verified Cooper’s secretary, Elizabeth King.
“This is going to require a lot of alcohol and a fair few enquiries to the Canadian passport office- forgive me, I have said too much. Excuse me, I need to leave the room immediately.”
Americans nationwide were either weeping while exclaiming “Ooh Fuck” or, in some cases, whooping and hollering and high-fiving while cheerfully exclaiming “Ooh Fuck!”
A bleary-eyed Donald Trump reportedly awoke from his slumber this morning, remembered what happened last night and exclaimed “Ooh Fuck”; presumably having been hit with full magnitude of some kind of job that lay before him. Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 1real |
Trump Attacks President Obama For Trying To Make Peace With Iran, Denies He Is Putin’s Puppet | Donald Trump is once again whining about the media investigating his ties to Russia, and attacked President Obama in the process.Despite having extensive business ties in Russia and connections to Vladimir Putin, whom he admires, Trump claimed in a Tuesday morning Twitter tantrum that he doesn t know the Russian tyrant nor does he have any deals there. And Trump appeared to try and excuse any deals he may have by attacking President Obama for making a diplomatic deal with Iran.I don t know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2017First of all, Trump has plenty of business and financial ties to Russia.According to Time,[F]or all of his denials of Russian ties lately, Trump has boasted in the past of his many meetings with Russian oligarchs. During one trip to Moscow, Trump bragged that they all showed up to meet him to discuss projects around the globe. Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room just to meet with him, Trump said at the time.And when Trump built a tower in Panama, his clients were wealthy Russians, the Washington Post reported. Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia, Trump s son, Donald Jr., said at a real estate conference in 2008.Trump has also borrowed a lot of money from Russian financial institutions over the years because American banks see him as too much of a risk due to his many bankruptcies.And second, President Obama s deal with Iran was not a business deal or one that President Obama personally profits from. It s a diplomatic deal reached to reduce Iran s nuclear program. In other words, President Obama was doing his job to keep Americans safe, unlike Trump, who has escalated tensions between the United States and Iran along with China since taking office more than two weeks ago.What s truly amazing is that Trump is still whining about being outed for his ties to Russia and Putin. And the fact that he would use President Obama s deal with Iran to justify his personal business deals in Russia is pathetic.And Twitter wiped the floor with him.@realDonaldTrump You mean Americans? Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) February 7, 2017Trump talks about his relationship with Putin back in 2013 ? #Confused #1in pic.twitter.com/nDdzldE1gf AJ Joshi (@AJ) February 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump get told he is a killer and you shrug. Get told the New York Times wrote something bad and you break the internet. Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump, we re upset because you continue to praise and desire a closeness w/ authoritarian leaders while pushing our allies away. Joseph Amodeo (@josephamodeo) February 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/HKojCMibKz The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) February 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump you had a nearly hour long phone call with Putin a little over a week ago. What are you even talking about anymore? Alex Zalben (@azalben) February 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Honey I know you just want people to like you the way they liked the birth certificate man, but lying isn t the way. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) February 7, 2017Read more:Featured image of Donald Trump by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. Vladimir Putin by Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images | 1real |
Now Live: View Full Text of Job Postings | Economy | (Before It's News)
As advanced as our Job Posting Analytics have become—including the ability to filter by keyword search, employer, region, title, skill, or certification—there’s something that no filter or datapoint can replace: viewing the actual job posting.
Now within Job Posting Analytics reports in Analyst and Developer , users can view the full text of the most relevant and recent job postings tailored to their search.
Not only will the viewable postings be filtered by the selected variables, but the keyword searched will also be highlighted in the full posting text. This extra detail makes it even easier to analyze how employers are asking for certain credentials.
With the quick addition of new filters, the postings displayed can be narrowed from all in New York, to all in New York that mention “javascript,” to all in New York that mention “javascript” from Oracle Corporation.
The real power of this new functionality is in the context it provides. Now, users can step into the shoes of the employer and understand exactly what kind of talent they’re seeking in prospective candidates. We’re thrilled to see how this new functionality will empower users to better align programs with employer needs, identify emerging skills and occupations, and more.
Over the next few weeks, our development team will be working to increase the number of viewable postings from five to at least 50.
The post Now Live: View Full Text of Job Postings appeared first on Emsi . | 1real |
Myriad of ways the CIA tried (and failed) to assassinate Fidel Castro | RTThe father of the Cuban Revolution remains unbeaten by his foes even in death. We look over the most dramatic assassination plots on El Comandante from character-assassinations by way of LSD, to Italian mobsters, tuberculosis wetsuit, and exploding cigar. If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal, Castro is famously quoted as saying. Cuba s ex-intelligence chief Fabian Escalante the person tasked with guarding Fidel s life puts the number of attempts at 638. The man also claimed to Reuters in a 2010 interview that the John F. Kennedy assassination could well have been an attempt to expedite the process of removing Castro from power: the American president, some said, was not doing enough. Of course, by the time of Kennedy s 1963 shooting death in Dallas, Texas, there had already been numerous attempts on Castro s life intended to bolster Kennedy s own reputation back home as a strong president, with his administration exerting great pressure on the CIA to take care of it. It is fitting then to start at the beginning.When a sizable cache of classified CIA documents, amicably called Family Jewels, was finally released in 2007, Cuban communists felt a sense of vindication, finally gaining the ability to publicly accuse the United States government of what they claimed was already common knowledge.In the summer of 1960, the CIA recruited former FBI agent Robert Maheu. He became the go-between from the agency to two prominent Italian gangsters on the FBI s Ten Most Wanted List Santo Trafficante of the Miami Syndicate, and Salvatore Giancana Al Capone s successor in Chicago. They were gotten hold of by way of Las Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli. A payment of $150,000 was on the table. According to the declassified documents, Giancana suggested using poisoned pills six of them. But despite gaining access to officials inside the Cuban government, the plan had been unsuccessful, and was later scrapped in the run-up to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. It is said the agency was able to retrieve all the poison pills.The closest the Americans got to killing Castro was with a poisoned chocolate milkshake, Escalante claimed to Reuters. According to the 2007 documents, another batch of poison was delivered through the Mafia in 1963 in a bottle of Bayer aspirin pills. An opposition group, it was believed, had a good chance. But the plot failed when a disguised waiter did not manage to lace Castro s milkshake in the cafeteria of the then-Hilton Hotel (now Havana Libre), as the pill got stuck in the freezer where it was hidden and broke apart when the assassin attempted to dislodge it from the wall.This was not just about spiking drinks or cigars. The CIA went all-out. After a failed attempt to embarrass El Comandante by having his beard fall out due to boots spiked with chemicals, the agency had opted for a box of cigars spiked with LSD. The plan was to have Castro burst into laughter during a televised interview, thus subjecting him to ridicule in the public eye. But it was not just cigars. The CIA planned to lace the entire studio. This plot was not implemented, but was high in the running for ways to spark a national uprising against Castro.The CIA had back-paddled on another of its ingenious plans to kill Castro, leading to the poisoned scuba gear idea. The agency knew the revolutionary was an avid diver. The plan had been to attract El Comandante with a sea shell practically impossible to miss, having been painted in colors bright enough to attract him. Castro would swim closer to inspect it, whereupon a lethal amount of explosives would detonate. But the idea was aborted due to impracticality, the declassified documents claimed. So the spies went the more practical way: lacing Castro s scuba gear with tuberculosis to trigger a deadly skin disease. The man who was supposed to give Castro the suit had opted to give him an ordinary one, it turned out.According to a Saturday Evening Post report on November 4, 1967, a CIA agent had approached a New York cop with the idea of handing Castro an exploding cigar during a UN meeting. That was reportedly after the plan to poison the cigar had been abandoned. This was despite the poison having already been injected into the cigar, with the CIA dismissing the person tasked with carrying the plan out in the final stages.However, the exploding-cigar plan also failed due to the double agent changing his mind at the last instant.ne of Castro s many lovers CIA informant Marita Lorenz, was also tasked with poisoning Castro in a daring operation involving a secret unit tasked with the assassination Operation 40. According to the FBI, Lorenz had become a contract agent for the CIA, and willingly accepted the task of assassinating him following a miscarriage or an abortion a story she told in 1959. Castro s reaction to her not having the child had reportedly enraged her so much, she had eagerly taken up the task. And so she met with CIA double agent Frank Sturgis in 1960, who had handed her a bottle of poison pills.Lorenz was to drop one into her lover s drink, containing enough poison to kill him within 30 seconds. But as with the countless other attempts, it did not succeed because Lorenz herself could not go through with it. The mission was wrought with pitfalls. According to Ann Louise Bardoch s Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, Lorenz recalled that They said, we want you to take him out. But, I knew the minute I saw the outline of Havana I couldn t do it. Even then, she had made the mistake of stashing the pills in her pot of cold cream, in fear of being discovered by customs. The substance had stuck to the pills, and Lorenz couldn t unmix the two. As she attempted to flush the pills down the toilet, Castro who had got wind of the plot walked in with a cigar. He removed his handgun from the holster, and handed it to Lorenz with the words: Did you come to kill me? According to Lorenz, he handed her the gun and puffed on his cigar with his eyes closed. He made himself vulnerable because he knew I couldn t do it. He still loved me and I still loved him. She feared the CIA would kill her for being with Castro after the foiled assassination attempt. Upon her return to Miami, Lorenz never again met with Castro. Later, however, she had a daughter with another Latin American military leader, Venezuela s Marcos Perez Jimenez.According to Escalante, it was the Cuban revolutionary s vigilance and the efforts of his security apparatus that kept him alive all those years. Numerous books have been written on the matter.READ MORE CUBA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Cuba Files | 1real |
Zimbabwe opposition wants Mugabe's pillars of repression dismantled | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s main opposition said on Thursday it wanted incoming president Emmerson Mnangagwa to dismantle all pillars of repression that helped sustain Robert Mugabe s 37 years in power. In its first official comments since Mugabe resigned on Tuesday, the MDC said it was cautiously optimistic that a Mnangagwa presidency would not mimic and replicate the evil, corrupt, decadent and incompetent Mugabe regime. | 0fake |
World Bank approves $400 million to rebuild liberated Iraqi areas | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank on Tuesday approved $400 million in additional funding to help rebuild services to Iraqi areas recaptured from Islamic State militants after a three-year military campaign, the global development bank said. The World Bank also said it would fund studies on how to involve the private sector in the reconstruction of Mosul s airport and restoring public transport terminals as well as parts of the railway network. The package represents an additional financing to the Iraq Emergency Operation for Development Project ($350 million) approved back in July 2015 and already underway in seven cities in Diyala and Salah Ad-Din governorates, the World Bank said in a statement. It said the new funding would focus on rebuilding in five sectors - water and sanitation, electricity, health, transport and municipal services. The funds will also help with the restoration and preservation of cultural heritage sites in Mosul s Old City, which was heavily damaged by fighting. Iraqi government forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, retook Mosul in May - by far the largest city to fall under militants control - after nearly nine months of urban warfare. Iraqi government officials have estimated it will take at least five years and billions of dollars to rebuild Mosul. | 0fake |
Cambodia – a Thorny Path to Elections | New Eastern Outlook | Region: Southeast Asia Two years remain until the parliamentary elections in Cambodia. This is a really rather short period considering that the position of the current political regime of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) remains in doubt. Despite the Party’s success at the municipal elections in 2015, there is no confidence that it may win and retain power at the parliamentary elections. The CPP is overloaded with a host of problems. Primarily, everyone is talking about corruption in the party, its nepotism, detachment from the people, who analysts state have long tired of seeing one and the same governing figures at the top of Cambodia’s political hierarchy. There is even the feeling that the leadership of the Party won’t plan to renew its policy and introduce new leaders even if it recognizes its problems. In January 2015, at an emergency session of the CPP, it was noted that “the corruption, nepotism, abuse of powers, violation of the laws spread among the Party’s members had undermined the confidence of the people and raised doubts about its right to rule the country.” The introduction of reforms inside the Party and society was named as a life-and-death issue for the CPP’s future at the session. However, almost two years have passed since the session and the Party has not even started to solve its acute problems. There are no new young and attractive leaders in its leadership, yet the provincial level has rather competent and authoritative governors of provinces – CPP members that might change the image of the ruling party if they became members of its leadership. Despite the fact that the number of members of the Central Committee has doubled, it is still dominated by the same veterans of the People’s Revolutionary Party who together with Hun Sen and supported by Vietnam and the Soviet Union built the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1991). Over this period, they went from being “comrade” to “Mr” and became even more detached from real life. The style of the political leadership was supposed to be corrected, and the session would promote steps aimed at a symbolic detachment from the personal leadership of Hun Sen. These expectations were not met. Soon after the session, he took up the position of CPP Chairman and consolidated both administrative and party powers into his own hands. The relations of the authorities and the opposition have been developing in a complicated and ambiguous way. At first, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) headed by openly pro-Western and anti-Vietnam policy maker Sam Rainsy, which obtained only 12 seats fewer than the ruling party at the elections in 2013, boycotted the National Parliament in protest against the alleged falsification of the figures and violations that prevented their victory. Then, pro-Western nationalists agreed with Hun Sen to return to the Parliament and started active work aimed at spreading their influence in the rural areas by opening its branches in the traditional CPP territories and carrying out protests in their interest. This activity led by the opposition clearly frightened the ruling regime and Sam Rainsy emigrated while the other leader Kim Socha and his supporters were brought to justice for the organization of illegal anti-governmental protests. At the same time, Cambodia’s leader initiated propaganda attacks on the opposition leaders, organised protests demanding the resignation of its representatives from public offices. A number of opposition members were even beaten, which was followed by the initiation of criminal cases against them. The situation became so serious that the Deputies of the European Parliament threatened the authorities of Cambodia with suspending the provision of economic assistance. This is a serious warning for Hun Sen, as the European Union is one of the leading donors to Cambodia’s economy. As for the tactics of the opposition, it is now refraining from mass protest campaigns in order not to give the authorities reason to expand repressions. At the same time, using non-commercial organisations related to it and gaining Western subsidies, the opposition is generating the conviction in society that the ruling regime is against the people, and its leaders should be judged and their property should be confiscated. It also proposes a social and economic program that presupposes an increase in the minimum wage and retirement benefits, and a reduction in fuel and electricity prices. Though the program is purely populist and unreal, it is attracting people who have started to perceive the CNRP as a political force able to change the situation in the country. While assessing the situation in Cambodia and its prospects, it becomes clear that the People’s Party has no clear pre-election strategy and it is not mobilizing party members for successful elections. The elaboration and presentation of a pre-election strategy might influence those who have doubts about their preferences and those who have not decided how to vote in 2018. In September, I had a chance to talk with the delegation from Cambodia at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. I was interested in the mood in the People’s Party in the run-up to the elections. One of the high-ranking members of the delegation answered, “We are very scared”, which just confirmed that our conclusions were correct. Dmitry Mosyakov, Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Director of the Centre for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook. “
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White House says focused on getting lowest possible corporate tax rate | (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday it was focusing on getting the lowest corporate rate possible in tax reform legislation being considered on Capitol Hill. “Fifteen (percent) is better than 20, 20 is better than 22 and 22 is better than what we have,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. | 0fake |
TROLL CONGRESSWOMAN WANTS YOU TO SELL YOUR GUNS TO THE GOVERNMENT | It s not for her to decide! We have the Second Amendment and that s enough for any American. DeLauro doesn t get to decide for us what s a gun that s ok to own. It might be a good idea to pick up the phone and voice your objection to this bill.Gun owners would receive tax breaks for voluntarily turning in high-powered assault rifles under new legislation proposed Monday.The Support Assault Firearm Elimination and Education of our (SAFER) Streets Act expected to be reintroduced next week by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) would provide gun owners with an incentive to turn in their firearms to local police departments. Assault weapons are not about hunting, or even self-defense, DeLauro said. There is no reason on earth, other than to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, that anyone needs a gun designed for a battlefield. Though DeLauro is in favor of stronger guns laws that would completely ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, she emphasized this bill would not force gun owners to turn in their firearms. The legislation would provide up to $2,000 in tax credits for gun owners who voluntarily hand over assault weapons to their local police departments.The assault weapons legislation comes in response to the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., DeLauro s home state, in December 2012.Via: The Hill | 1real |
Germany keen to avoid new 'ice age' in ties between Russia, West | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Germany and Europe want to ensure that new U.S. sanctions against Russia do not lead to a new ice age in ties between Russia and the West, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Tuesday. Gabriel said he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about the sanctions in a meeting in Washington, adding that he was grateful that U.S. President Donald Trump had agreed to coordinate on further measures with U.S. allies. We as Europeans have great concerns that this will have unintended consequences for Europe. We don t want to completely destroy our business relations with Russia, especially in the energy sector, Gabriel said. Trump this month approved new sanctions on Moscow for its 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea peninsula and for what U.S. intelligence agencies say was its meddling in the U.S. presidential election, a charge Russia denies. Gabriel has criticized the United States for the move, saying the new punitive measures expose European companies involved in energy projects in Russia to fines for breaching U.S. law. Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries even urged the EU to retaliate against the United States if the new sanctions on Russia should end up penalizing German firms. Gabriel said European leaders were concerned that the latest sanctions would not only have economic consequences, but could also lead to a new ice age between Russia and the United States and the West. Despite European concerns about the sanctions, Gabriel insisted that Moscow must do its part to implement a fragile ceasefire agreement in place for eastern Ukraine, including the withdrawal of heavy weapons. That would be a starting point for improved relations, Gabriel said. Kurt Volker, the newly appointed U.S. special representative for Ukraine, told broadcaster Deutsche Welle, that Washington would not forge any agreement with Moscow over the heads of the Ukrainians or behind the backs of the Europeans. The U.S. has made clear we fully support the Normandy process, and it s not our intention to become a part of it or to try to go over the top of it, Volker told Deutsche Welle. He acknowledged Russian concerns about Washington s decision to consider arming Ukraine in the conflict, but said it was quite reasonable for Ukrainians to want to be better able to defend themselves. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President on Monday called for Russia and Ukraine to increase their efforts to implement the ceasefire agreement. The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Germany and France have tried to convince both sides to implement a peace deal agreed in Minsk in 2015 under the so-called Normandy process but with little success so far. Merkel told reporters on Tuesday that sanctions against Russia would be lifted when the situation in eastern Ukraine improved. | 0fake |
Eurosceptics in Finland Call for Referendum on European Union and Euro | An leader of Finland’s only Eurosceptic party has proposed a national referendum on leaving the European Union as well as on abandoning the euro in favor of a national currency. [Sampo Terho, a former member of the European Parliament and one of the top figures of the new populist and Eurosceptic party called Peerussuomalaiset (the True Finns, or just the Finns) is pushing for Finland’s exit from the Eurozone, an outcome he considers inevitable. Terho is the current frontrunner in his bid for Finn party chairmanship in the upcoming party convention to be held in June. The Finn party is presently the junior partner in the government led by Prime Minister Juha Sipila, with Finn’s current leader, Timo Soini, in the role of foreign minister. Within the ranks of Perussuomalaiset, calls for a “Fixit” (coined to mimic “Brexit”) as well as a disentanglement from the single euro currency are growing louder. Terho’s chief competitor for leadership in the party comes from Jussi a member of the European Parliament (MEP) a Eurosceptic who believes that Europe is heading towards a disaster because of unchecked immigration. Terho has argued that from an economic point of view, Finland’s detachment from the euro is imperative. “The only way to support our competitiveness is an internal devaluation, and we have already done that,” Terho said recently, suggesting that Finland cannot be economically competitive while anchored to the euro. Finland is the only country in the Nordic Community (also comprising Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland) to be a member of the Eurozone. Notably, it is also the only Nordic country facing severe economic and social problems, including weak growth after years of recession, unemployment well higher than in surrounding countries, and social tensions. “The alternative option, looking to 2020, 2030 or 2040, is a return to the national currency,” Terho said. “When we take this long view, that option seems possible, even likely. ” The euro is suffering similar rethinking in various sectors throughout Europe. One need think only of the Czech Republic’s recent announcement to break away from the fixed parity between the euro and Czech koruna, as well as Sunday’s first round of French elections, which have sent Eurosceptic Marine Le Pen to the final runoff in June against progressive Emmanuel Macron. Terho has called for a national referendum for or against the stay in the European Union itself, which he suggested should be discussed during the campaign for the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2019. Currently, polls indicate that some 68 percent of Finnish voters favor remaining in the EU. The youth organization of the Finns party launched a “Fixit” petition last June following Britain’s referendum vote to leave the EU, but at the time the proposal was unable to garner the 50, 000 supporters required to justify the referendum. Sebastian Tynkkynen, head of the Finns Party Youth, said at the time that the group’s next goal was to make a Fixit referendum the main campaign demand for the party in Finland’s next general election in 2019. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 0fake |
In Trump strongholds, Democrats walk tightrope ahead of 2018 elections | KATY, Texas (Reuters) - As Democrats try to win control of the U.S. Congress in next year’s midterm elections, their hopes of picking up a Senate seat in Republican-dominated Texas rest with a telegenic ex-punk rocker who wants to impeach President Donald Trump and legalize marijuana. Beto O’Rourke’s long-shot bid to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz illustrates the tightrope Democrats must walk as they gear up for the November 2018 elections. Democrats will have to win in areas that backed Trump last year in order to gain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate but even in Texas the party’s left-wing base is pressing candidates to stop the president by any means necessary. O’Rourke, who currently represents El Paso in the House, is drawing big crowds across Texas as he calls for universal healthcare and new restrictions on gun ownership. At a recent rally outside Houston, hundreds of supporters stood in line for up to an hour to shake his hand. O’Rourke, 45, said Trump’s surprise victory last year was a big reason he decided to run for the Senate. He said Trump’s racially charged rhetoric and divisive governing style have led him to support impeachment. “I’m now convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump is unfit for that office,” O’Rourke told Reuters in an interview. “This is a moment unlike any other, certainly in my lifetime, I think in this country since the Civil War, where we have to really decide who we are, and there are two very clear paths that we can take,” he said. The end of the path laid out by Trump “is tyranny, it is not democracy,” O’Rourke said. O’Rourke’s unapologetic progressivism stands out among Democrats who are campaigning outside the party’s liberal strongholds in the Northeast and on West Coast. In deeply conservative Alabama, Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones has been running as a pragmatist ahead of a Dec. 12 special election, saying he wants to be a “voice for reason” in Washington. He has run ads attacking Republican opponent Roy Moore over a sex scandal, but has steered clear of harsh anti-Trump rhetoric. In Virginia, Ralph Northam denounced Trump as a “narcissistic maniac” as he sought the Democratic nomination for governor, but dialed back the rhetoric during the general election, telling voters ahead of his Nov. 7 victory that he would work with Trump when it was in his state’s interest. In Congress, a handful of rank-and-file House Democrats have filed articles of impeachment even though U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is still investigating whether Trump’s campaign worked with Russia in last year’s election. Russia has repeatedly denied meddling and Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt.” Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi said earlier this month that she would not make impeachment a priority if her party won the House next year but Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer has said it is premature to consider impeachment. Even some of O’Rourke’s supporters say impeachment talk is counterproductive as long as Republicans control Congress. “Otherwise, in my view, it’s just chest-beating,” said Nikki Redpath, a Houston-area homemaker and O’Rourke campaign volunteer. O’Rourke is seen as the favorite to win the Democratic nomination in March but analysts say his progressive views could prove a liability as he tries to reverse his party’s long losing streak in the Lone Star State. Trump finished nine percentage points ahead of Democrat Hillary Clinton in Texas last year and the state has not elected a Democratic governor or senator since 1994. Democrats have lost recent statewide elections by double-digit margins and have struggled to recruit top-tier candidates for major races. Still, O’Rourke’s anti-Trump message has resonated with oil-industry executive Katherine Stovring, who said she used to vote for candidates from both parties but now has been motivated to work for Democratic candidates as a way to stop Trump. “I’m looking for ways to engage. This is our democracy at risk,” she said. Texas Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak said he thought O’Rourke would be trounced by Cruz unless voters turn en masse against Trump nationally. “He’s a more interesting candidate than the traditional sacrificial lamb the Democrats put up,” Mackowiak said. “But he’s far too liberal to be elected statewide.” In an era where differences between Republicans and Democrats are stark, candidates like O’Rourke have little incentive to moderate their positions, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. At this point there is little downside for O’Rourke to make polarizing statements on impeachment and other issues. “I think you can expect to hear a lot more of that as the campaign unfolds,” he said. | 0fake |
‘Satanic Giants Built Stonehenge’ Is Now A Thing With Creationists (VIDEO) | There are times I want to just get up from my computer, walk out of my apartment, find a cave in the woods and live there until the human race inevitably wipes itself out. After reading about this Creation scientist expert s scientific bat-shit insane theory about how Stonehenge was built, I was two miles down the road before deciding it would just be easier to sit at home and wait for the end to come.In the meantime, I will torment you with the following:Televangelist Jim Bakker invited Dr. Dennis Lindsay on to his program on Wednesday to discuss Lindsay s latest discovery in the realm of Creation Science: the truth behind Stonehenge.Hold on to your hats: Stonehenge, it turns out, was built by giants who were created by Satan.Lindsay told Bakker that these giants were tools of the devil, who seeks to destroy Israel because he s out to destroy God s creation and his whole plan of redemption and contaminate the human race. Yes, I just deliberately inflicted permanent brain damage on you. No, you will never get those brain cells back. They re gone. Dead. Burned out for all time.After making my eyes bleed with this, it occurs to me that Creationists hate human achievement. The very idea that primitive humans could accomplish the wonders of Stonehenge or the pyramids of Egypt infuriates them. Especially if they occurred before or independent of Christianity. These bible-humping freaks have a startlingly low opinion of humanity and would prefer to believe that giants and demons were responsible instead of human ingenuity and genius.Oh, and just to get in a bit of Muslim-bashing (because of course), he referred to the mosque on the Temple Mount (one of the most holy sites in Islam) as a squatter s hut because why stop at being a douche when you can go all the way to raging dickhead? Here s the imbecilic video via Right Wing Watch:The only upside to this entire story is that it made me want to listen to They Might Be Giants so there s that.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
SUPREME COURT DECISION Lead By Justice Ginsburg Delivers Blow To Big Business | Oh boy! Ginsberg woke up and is leading a decision against big business is anyone surprised by this? We d love to know your opinion.WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday issued the first decision in a series of class action cases this term that are widely viewed as attempts by business interests to shut the courthouse door to consumers and everyday plaintiffs.In a 6-to-3 opinion in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez, a case testing the limits on federal courts considering class-action disputes, the justices ruled that businesses can t just moot a case by simply offering to settle it with the person who first brought it let alone if the person rejected the offer.Relying on contractual principles, Ginsburg said such offers have no force. Like other unaccepted contract offers, it creates no lasting right or obligation, Ginsburg said. With the offer off the table, and the defendant s continuing denial of liability, adversity between the parties persists. That adversity matters because, under the Constitution, federal courts can only hear actual cases or controversies. But Campbell-Ewald a marketing firm that was sued for sending unwanted mass text messages said that requirement evaporated after it offered Jos G mez, the lead plaintiff in the dispute, some money to make his case go away.G mez had sued Campbell-Ewald, a Navy contractor, for a text message he received from the company recruiting him to join the Navy. But because he was almost 40 at the time and he never consented to receiving the text, G mez alleged in his lawsuit that the company violated a federal law that forbids unsolicited advertisement. But he didn t want to just go it alone he wanted to form a class action against the firm.It was at that point that Campbell-Ewald sought to make G mez whole by simply making him an offer it thought he wouldn t resist: a sum of $1,503, or about three times what federal law allowed him to recover. G mez, however, refused to settle and said he wanted to press forward as the leader of the class action.Ginsburg said that was good enough for his claim to remain active in the courts.A person who is a would-be class representative with a live claim of her own must be accorded a fair opportunity to show that she can vindicate the interests of others in the class, she said.Practically, this detail is important for the vitality of class actions, which depend on the willingness of people like G mez to become the public face of a lawsuit. If this person or class representative somehow falls out of the case by virtue of accepting a settlement offer or other circumstances the whole class action runs the risk of falling apart. And not just any plaintiff is ready to act as a backup in federal court.Via: Yahoo | 1real |
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AFFILIATE INVITED To Obama’s State Of The Union…Will This Terror Group Also Be Invited? | So in an effort to reach out to Muslims living in America, we need to invite groups that are tied to terrorists? Why stop at groups like CAIR? Why not invite ISIS? Perhaps we missed it, but we haven t seen the list of prominent Christian leaders invited to Obama s SOTU, who will represent the worldwide mass persecution of Christians As many as 25 House Democrats are expected to have Muslim guests during Tuesday night s State of the Union speech. It s in response to a call from Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim voted into Congress, to counter an alarming rise in hateful rhetoric against Muslim Americans and people of the Islamic faith worldwide. The gesture might not generate much more than a shrug, except that in at least two cases, Democrats invited officials from a group the FBI formally avoids due to historic ties to a Hamas support network.Delray Beach Rep. Alcee Hastings invited Nezar Hamze, regional operations director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Florida. And San Jose, Cal. Rep. Zoe Lofgren invited Sameena Usman, a 10-year veteran government relations official with CAIR s San Francisco chapter, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.CAIR officials routinely accuse federal law enforcement of entrapping otherwise innocent and peaceful Muslims in order to gin up terrorism prosecutions. Hamze s colleagues in CAIR-Florida are helping a family sue the FBI over the 2013 fatal shooting of a terror suspect who attacked agents after extensive questioning. Usman s office published a notorious poster urging Muslims to Build a Wall of Resistance [and] Don t Talk to the FBI. For its part, the FBI cut off contact with CAIR, except in investigations, in 2008 based on evidence its agents uncovered which placed CAIR in a Hamas-support network in the United States. Until it can be shown that those connections no longer exist, an FBI official explained in 2009, CAIR is not an appropriate liaison partner. In addition, several CAIR officials have compared Israel to ISIS.Calls to press contacts in Lofgren and Hastings offices were not returned Monday.Last month, the IPT provided exclusive details from eyewitness accounts about CAIR s creation, including an account of how a co-founder sought approval from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for CAIR s bylaws, and how Executive Director Nihad Awad s move to Washington was in order to represent Hamas. Hastings and Lofgren either failed to check out their guests employer or they don t care. These connections have nothing to do with the faith of CAIR officials. But the organization has a record that elected officials stubbornly insist should be ignored. Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern of outreach House Democrats seek out with the wrong people. Last month, CAIR-Florida s Hassan Shibly was invited to the White House for a discussion about religious discrimination. Then, as with the State of the Union speech, no one from the new Muslim Reform Movement which issued a declaration clearly rejecting interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam and standing for peace, human rights and secular governance. Via: Family Security Matters | 1real |
Wells Fargo’s Reaction to Scandal Fails to Satisfy Angry Lawmakers - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — He is forfeiting at least $41 million in pay. He vows that his bank will drop its sales incentive program — blamed for prompting bankers to set up illegal and unauthorized bank and credit card accounts to meet their sales goals — by the end of the week, not in January, as he had previously promised. But at a hearing Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee, nobody was impressed. If anything, the House lawmakers who interrogated John G. Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, were even angrier and more hostile than their Senate counterparts who questioned him last week, before either of those steps had been taken. One by one, Democrats and Republicans alike took turns ripping apart Mr. Stumpf and what took place at the bank he leads. They denounced the actions as “theft,” “a criminal enterprise,” identity fraud, an outrage and a devastating blow to the entire banking industry. But that was not all of Wells Fargo’s bad news for the day. Also on Thursday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fined Wells Fargo $20 million for violating rules on lending to members of the military, including a rate cap on how much interest can be charged to service members on active duty. In a separate action, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $4 million to resolve a Justice Department investigation into improper seizures of vehicles owned by soldiers who fell behind on their loans. “In those instances where some service members did not receive the appropriate benefits and protections, we did not live up to our commitment and we apologize,” the company said in a statement. “We have been notifying and fully compensating customers and will complete this work in 60 days. ” The news did not play well with members of the House committee, who spent more than four hours on Thursday questioning and castigating Mr. Stumpf about the misdeeds under his leadership. “It appears that the company just can’t make it through even this congressional hearing without us learning more and more information about what is going on at Wells Fargo,” Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat of California, said as word began to spread of the coming sanctions over military lending. But Mr. Stumpf — whom the members of the House committee personally blamed for the persistent and widespread misdeeds — stuck to the same script he has used throughout the crisis. The problem, he explained, was an ethical lapse among the 5, 300 employees, most of them bankers and tellers, who had been fired for their actions since 2011. At the hearing on Thursday, Mr. Stumpf apologized repeatedly for his bank’s failings and repeated his earlier pledge — given last week to the disgruntled Senate Finance Committee — to accept “full responsibility” for them. But he again rejected lawmakers’ attempts to cast the scandal as a consequence of broader failings in Wells Fargo’s leadership and corporate culture. “I led the company with courage,” Mr. Stumpf said, while admitting that the company “should have done more sooner” to address the problem of unauthorized accounts being created by employees in the names of real customers. After the Senate hearing and before the House hearing, the board of directors of Wells Fargo agreed to claw back $41 million of Mr. Stumpf’s unvested stock awards, deny him his annual bonus and strip away a portion of his $2. 8 million base salary. Mr. Stumpf said he approved of the decision. Carrie L. Tolstedt, who until recently ran the Wells Fargo retail banking operation, will lose $19 million in compensation. Confronted by the lawmakers with evidence that the practice of setting up phony accounts to meet sales goals might have gone back much further than the bank has admitted, perhaps to 2007, Mr. Stumpf said that Wells Fargo was continuing to investigate the extent of the problem, how far back it stretched and who knew. But those steps did not appease the lawmakers. Several called for Mr. Stumpf’s resignation, and others asked why he shouldn’t be jailed, like a bank robber. “Something is going wrong at this bank, and you are the head of it,” said Gregory Meeks, Democrat of New York, adding, “You should be fired. ” Mr. Stumpf replied, “I serve at the pleasure of the board. ” Mr. Stumpf is the board chairman. Mr. Meeks, at times pounding the table for emphasis, asked if Mr. Stumpf would have set free someone who had robbed a Wells Fargo Bank, then simply apologized and taken responsibility. Criticizing Wells Fargo’s “criminal activity,” Mr. Meeks said: “Your bank, Wells Fargo, has given the entire financial services industry a black eye. ” “To the American people, this kind of feels like déjà vu all over again,” said Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the committee. “Some institution is found engaging in terrible activities. There is a headline, fine, and yet no one seems to be held accountable. ” As Mr. Stumpf testified, a video screen on the hearing room’s wall displayed a scroll of more than a dozen fines Wells Fargo has paid in recent years, totaling more than $10 billion. The list included penalties for subprime loan abuses, discriminating against and Hispanic mortgage borrowers, and foreclosure violations, among others. Mr. Hensarling asked whether such fines are simply the “cost of doing business. ” Mr. Stumpf answered no, adding, “I don’t want our culture to be defined by these mistakes. ” Wells Fargo has been in crisis mode since it acknowledged this month that its employees had, over the course of several years, opened as many as 1. 5 million bank accounts and 565, 000 credit card accounts that may not have been approved by customers. The company agreed to pay $185 million in penalties and fines to settle cases brought by federal regulators and the Los Angeles city attorney. Wells Fargo has said it is contacting all of the customers who may have been affected. So far, the bank has contacted 20, 000 customers with questionable credit cards. About a quarter of them have said that they did not apply for the card or could not remember if they had, Mr. Stumpf said at the hearing. He also said that Wells Fargo would eliminate its product sales goals for retail bankers by the end of the week, accelerating the bank’s previously announced plan to drop them by the start of next year. say those sales goals led to intense pressure on workers to cheat to fulfill unrealistically high quotas. Mr. Stumpf carried with him a binder filled with material to help him form his answers, and he consulted it repeatedly as lawmakers questioned him about how many customers with potentially unauthorized accounts had been affected in their own home states. He reeled off the answers: Texas, 149, 857 Missouri, 1, 191 Delaware, 4, 255. The plight of Wells Fargo workers who lost their jobs for not meeting sales goals came up several times during the hearing, with lawmakers citing personal experiences from their constituents. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, Democrat of New York, asked how many workers Wells Fargo had fired for falling short. “My understanding is that people should not be fired, terminated for missing sales goals,” Mr. Stumpf answered. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen. We’re doing a review of whatever, whoever might have been terminated for that. ” As for those who did take the fall for the illegal account openings, Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat of California, was particularly acerbic. “You fired 5, 300 people,” he said at the hearing. “You took 5, 300 good Americans and turned them into felons. ” It is time, he concluded, to break up the big banks. | 0fake |
Syrian army sends more troops across Euphrates, near U.S.-backed forces | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian troops crossed to the eastern side of the Euphrates in Deir al-Zor on Monday, state media and a monitoring group said, increasing their presence in an area where U.S.-backed militias have also advanced. The rival forces are conducting offensives against Islamic State and have generally stayed out of each other s way, with the river often acting as a dividing line. However, incidents this year have raised tension between the government side, backed by Russia, and the U.S.-backed forces. Talks have been under way to extend a formal demarcation line, officials have said. A commander in a militia of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) confirmed Syrian army units had crossed and said his fighters were ready to drive them back. If there are clashes between us and them - we re ready for those if the forces of the regime don t go back to the other bank, Ahmed Abu Khawla of the SDF s Deir al-Zor military council said. Russia s foreign ministry said on Friday Syrian government forces crossed the river for the first time in their offensive against the jihadist group in Deir al-Zor province. Monday s crossing took place near a southern suburb of the city seized by the army on Saturday, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Syrian state news agency SANA said heavy fighting took place against Islamic State in the area. The militant group said via its online Amaq news agency that it had deployed at least two suicide car bombs against government forces. The convergence of the Syrian army offensive from the west and the SDF operation from the east has led to increased tensions. The SDF said they came under attack from Syrian forces and Russian jets backing them on Saturday, after Abu Khawla said they would not allow the army to cross the river and would consider shots fired in their direction as an attack. The SDF has advanced to within kilometres of the river, while the Syrian army has retaken much of the city, most of it on the western side. President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to recapture all of Syria. Assad controls the main urban centres in the west of the country. The SDF, dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia, controls much of Syria s northeast. Syrian rebel groups which have fought against Assad since 2011 hold pockets of territory in western Syria. Islamic State s shrinking territory includes much of oil-rich Deir al-Zor province. | 0fake |
House lifts block on Google-hosted apps, Yahoo Mail remains blacklisted | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives’ information technology team this week reinstated access on its internet network to software applications hosted on a Google cloud service after the company addressed potential security fears, according to an email seen by Reuters. Yahoo Mail remains inaccessible, however, and has been blacklisted since the House Information Security Office said in an April 30 memo it had detected an increase of ransomware attacks on the network. The two restrictions were not related, but came within days of each other and made some communication among lawmakers and their staff more difficult, several congressional aides said. Devices connected to the House’s internet via Wi-Fi or ethernet cables were barred from accessing appspot.com, the domain where Alphabet Inc’s Google hosts custom-built apps, on May 3 due to concerns about a potential security vulnerability identified publicly by the FBI in June 2015. “Based on Google’s corrective actions of removing suspicious applications from appspot.com, InfoSec has unblocked access to appspot.com on the House Network,” an email sent by the House’s technology service desk on Monday said. It is unclear if that apparent appspot.com flaw caused any damage or presented any actual threat. The House Information Service Office did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, a Yahoo spokesperson said it had been working with the House’s technology staff to address their questions. “Unfortunately, we have been disappointed that they have not moved as quickly on recommended changes that would better protect its employees” the spokesperson said. Two individuals fell victim to ransomware by clicking on infected Word document email attachments, sources familiar with the hacking said. The infected files were able to be recovered without paying any ransom, sources told Reuters last week. | 0fake |
PUTZ OBAMA Calls Electoral College A ‘Vestige’ Of An ‘Earlier time In America’ | 1real | |
Turkey's Erdogan calls Syria's Assad a terrorist, says impossible to continue with him | TUNIS (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a terrorist and said it was impossible for Syrian peace efforts to continue with him. Syria s foreign ministry quickly responded by accusing Erdogan of himself supporting terrorist groups fighting Assad in Syria s civil war. Turkey has demanded the removal of Assad from power and backed rebels fighting to overthrow him, but it has toned down its demands since it started working with Assad s allies Russia and Iran for a political resolution. Assad is definitely a terrorist who has carried out state terrorism, Erdogan told a televised news conference with his Tunisian counterpart Beji Caid Essebsi in Tunis. It is impossible to continue with Assad. How can we embrace the future with a Syrian president who has killed close to a million of his citizens? he said, in some of his harshest comments for weeks. Though Turkey has long demanded Assad s removal, it is now more focused in Syria on the threat from Islamist militants and Kurdish fighters it considers allies of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who it says have formed a terror corridor on its southern border. Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara views as an extension of the outlawed PKK which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since the 1980s, cannot be invited to Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana. The YPG is the main element in a force that Washington has assisted with training, weapons, air support and help from ground advisers in the battle against Islamic State. That U.S. support has angered Ankara, a NATO ally of Washington. Despite its differences with Russia and Iran, Turkey has worked with the two powers in the search for a political solution in Syria. Ankara, Moscow and Tehran also brokered a deal to set up and monitor a de-escalation zone to reduce fighting between insurgents and Syrian government forces in Syria s rebel-held northwestern Idlib province. We can t say (Assad) will handle this. It is impossible for Turkey to accept this. Northern Syria has been handed over as a terror corridor. There is no peace in Syria and this peace won t come with Assad, Erdogan said. Syria s state news agency SANA quoted a foreign ministry source as saying Erdogan continues to misdirect Turkish public opinion with his usual froth in an attempt to absolve himself of the crimes which he has committed against the Syrian people through advancing support to the various terrorist groups in Syria . | 0fake |
BUSTED! BLACK PROTESTER CAUGHT Dressing In KKK Garb Pretending To Be Trump Supporter | The Democrat motto: Whatever it takes UPDATE: An eyewitness stated that one of the alleged Klansmen was Black.Lol I wonder who on the democrat side who set this up. Cause these "KKK" members were silent. Not trump supporters pic.twitter.com/q2hf5ikEzh Kevin Smith (@Sbstud11) February 24, 2016 Lol I wonder who on the democrat side who set this up. Cause these KKK members were silent. Not trump supportersAnd of the "clan" members is black so I don't buy it for a second lol Kevin Smith (@Sbstud11) February 24, 2016And of the clan members is black so I don t buy it for a second lol It s hard to tell in the photo (I didn t notice till I got closer) but the one on the right had a black hand @KristinnFR it's hard to tell in the photo (I didn't notice till I got closer) but the one on the right had a black hand Kevin Smith (@Sbstud11) February 24, 2016A photo taken outside a Nevada Republican caucus site has stirred controversy as it was presented un-factchecked as being of two Trump supporters dressed as KKK members despite it being known that leftists have a history of dressing as Klansmen to protest Trump.The person who posted the photo, Krystal Heath, the general manager of a Nevada radio station, said the photo was sent to her by a friend. Forty-five minutes after posting the photo she admitted she did not know for certain if they were actually Trump supporters but the damage was done.#Trump supporters dressed as KKK outside #NVCaucus location. pic.twitter.com/iPfPcEghqW Krystal Heath (@TheFriddle) February 24, 2016 KKK pic was taken tonight at Cimaron-Memorial High School. Volunteers asked caucus goers to ignore them. #NVCaucus Two other photos were posted to Twitter, again second hand, by Nevada state Senate Minority Leader Aaron D. Ford, who is African-American. So, friends of mine observed this at a republican caucus location this evening. I ll admit, I m boiling right now. ? So, friends of mine observed this at a republican caucus location this evening. I'll admit, I'm boiling right now. pic.twitter.com/baDftDUyxm Sen. Aaron D. Ford (@AaronDFordNV) February 24, 2016https://twitter.com/DrZacRobbins/status/702331551158128641In September leftist protesters dressed as Klansmen gathered outside Trump Tower in New York City. That protest received nationwide coverage by the media.Via: Gateway Pundit | 1real |
Clinton leads Trump by 2 points in Fox News poll | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 2 percentage points in a four-way race, according to a Fox News opinion poll released on Friday. The poll of 1,211 registered voters was conducted Tuesday to Thursday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2-1/2 percentage points, Fox News said. Clinton had 45 percent support and Trump 43 percent. Clinton was up by 3 points a week ago and by 6 points in mid-October, Fox News said. | 0fake |
Republican Party, Central Intelligence Agency: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. WikiLeaks’ latest release, if confirmed, appears certain to rock the technology world and deliver a serious blow to the C. I. A. The Vault 7 documents offer details of what are described as highly classified C. I. A. hacking tools used to break into smartphones and computers, turn TVs into spies and bypass encryption on messaging services like Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. WikiLeaks said the source of the leak was raising policy questions that “urgently need to be debated in public. ” _____ 2. “Obamacare Lite. ” That was Senator Rand Paul, who like many other conservatives is in revolt over the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. The legislation would end mandated coverage but maintains many of the basic benefits that critics — including the Club for Growth, Heritage Action for America and the brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch’s Americans for Prosperity — see as warping the free market. _____ 3. Senate Republicans rejected Democrats’ calls for a special counsel to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election. The sparring came at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Mr. Trump’s nominee to be deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein. He would oversee any such inquiry since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. _____ 4. In the Netherlands, there’s also concern about foreign influence in coming elections — by American money. The leader, Geert Wilders, is getting donations from American conservatives attracted to his Union and views. “We would not have thought that people from other countries would have been interested in our politics,” said a member of Parliament. “Maybe we underestimated ourselves. ” _____ 5. China warned of a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia after the United States began delivering parts of an advanced missile defense system, known as Thaad, to South Korea. The system, meant to counter the growing threat from North Korea, could be operational as early as April. And North Korea blocked all Malaysians from leaving the country, deepening tensions over last month’s assassination of Kim . _____ 6. Mr. Trump’s revision of the U. S. program for refugees reduces the number the country will accept by more than half. This year’s arrivals already approach the new ceiling of 50, 000. Thousands of Central Americans seeking to escape brutal gang violence may not make the cut, like two girls in El Salvador who saw their grandparents gunned down and who are themselves being hunted. “We got a call last weekend telling us that they’d find us under whatever rock we were hiding,” their aunt said. _____ 7. And some migrants in the U. S. are trying to make their way out. People from Yemen, Turkey and elsewhere have been streaming through a small town in upstate New York en route to Canada, driven by anxieties over the travel ban, sentiment and frustration over the immigration process. It’s almost impossible to apply for asylum at border posts, so they slip by to get arrested on Canadian soil and try their luck from inside Canada’s legal system. _____ 8. Canada came in second in the annual U. S. News World Report survey of the best countries in the world. The 2017 rankings prioritized countries that enjoy peace, quiet and prosperity, after surveys indicated widespread anxiety over social and geopolitical change. Switzerland took the No. 1 spot. Third? Britain. _____ 9. Travel advice: Cash redemption is often the worst value for your credit card points. We took a close look at the Chase, American Express and Citi rewards programs, and found better deals if you bank the points and use them to book flights through your card or partner sites. _____ 10. Finally, “huge news for refrigerators everywhere. ” That was a blogger’s take on the pending retirement of the longtime cartoon editor of The New Yorker, Bob Mankoff. We talked with him about some of his favorites from among the hundreds of his own cartoons that have appeared in the magazine. The one above was such a hit that he had the phrase trademarked. “One of the things you have to recognize about humor is that at its heart it’s stupid, and we should enjoy that stupidity,” Mr. Mankoff said. Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 0fake |
The End of Obama’s Term: A Report Card on Latin America | Share This
As the end of Obama’s term in office approaches, it may be of interest to evaluate his performance on Latin America. One of Obama’s foreign policy promises at the beginning of his first term was to change the way America does business with Latin America.
The promise to change the way America does business in its backyard was a significant one because the way America has played in its backyard has a long and consistently appalling history. The history of interference and regime change began early when President McKinley betrayed Cuba and stole it under the deceptive promise of liberating it from Spain. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt severed Panama from Columbia, declared it an independent nation and put in power a government whose first act was to sign over the future Panama Canal. In a little discussed maneuver, the U.S. cooperated with the 1908 removal of Venezuelan President Juan Vicente Gómez. In 1909, President Taft removed Nicaragua’s José Santos Zelaya because he insisted that US companies in Nicaragua honor their agreements and tried to make his country less dependent on the US by borrowing from European, and not American, banks.
In the modern era, 1954 saw Eisenhower order the CIA overthrow of Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz. In 1959-1960, Eisenhower would also start the covert action to remove Fidel Castro from Cuba. Kennedy would continue to rain "the terrors of the earth" on Cuba. He would also begin the Brazilian coup that would overthrow Goulart in 1964 and undertake a political action to encourage the removal of Cheddi Jagan from power in Guyana. In 1971, Nixon would brutalize Chile with the coup against Salvador Allende. President Omar Torrijos of Panama would die in a plane crash in 1981. In The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now , John Perkins has claimed that Torrijos’ plane crash was another US assassination. Though it has never been proven that Torrijos’ death was a CIA assassination, there is some evidence that, at least earlier, consideration of his assassination was on the table. At the close of 1989, George H.W. Bush, in an unprovoked attack on the civilian population of a nation that had never threatened America, would take out Panama’s Manuel Noriega. At the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was twice removed from power over the popular voice of Haitians. The Latin American coups would continue through George W. Bush’s unpopular and short lived 2002 removal of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
So, it is not unimportant to evaluate Obama’s performance on his promise to change this tragic and shameful history. It’s not unimportant, but it is unimpressive.
It didn’t take long for the first indication that nothing had changed. On June 28, 2009, Honduras’ democratically elected President, Manuel Zelaya, was seized at gunpoint, removed in a coup and whisked away in a plane that refueled at a US military base.
After the coup, US support to the Honduran military only increased. The American ambassador was never recalled, and the US refused to join the call of the United Nation’s General Assembly and the Organization of American States for the return of the elected President. Though the Organization of American States (OAS) refused to recognize the new coup president, the US State Department refused to join in that too. In fact, following an election that the OAS, the U.N. and others refused to recognize, the US would insist on recognizing the coup government as the victor of the election.
But, despite the refusal to call Zelaya’s removal at gunpoint a coup, and despite recognizing the coup government as the legitimate government of Honduras, the Obama White House knew it was a coup. By July 24, 2009, less than a month after the coup, the White House was in receipt of a cable sent from the US embassy in Honduras. In an almost comic lack of subtlety that was clearly never meant to be public, the cable is called "Open and Shut: the Case of the Honduran Coup". In it, the embassy says "There is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup . . . ." Their conclusions could not be clearer: the embassy explicitly calls it a "coup" and says that "[t]here is no doubt". And just in case there were any remaining objections, the cable adds that ". . . none of the . . . arguments [of the coup defenders] has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution".
At best, Obama cooperated with the coup by maintaining silence, though his administration was engaged in dialogue with the rebellious military up to the day of the coup, and by recognizing the coup government as the legitimate government of Honduras. Latin American expert Mark Weisbrot told me in a correspondence that "the Obama administration acknowledged that they were talking to the [Honduran] military right up to the day of the coup, allegedly to convince them not to do it". But, he added, "I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t convince them not to do it if they really wanted to: the Honduran military is pretty dependent on the US" The charge was reiterated by Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle , the minister of culture in the Zelaya government, who said on Democracy Now that "I know for a fact that CIA operatives and military personnel of the United States were in direct contact with the conspirators of the coup d’état and aided the conspirators of the coup d’état." At worst, Obama was, as Zelaya has always insisted, involved in the coup. Zelaya claims that "the coup came from the north form the US" In the heat of the coup, the plane that was carrying the kidnapped president landed at the US military base of Palmerola for fifteen to twenty minutes while it refueled, despite the close proximity of its destination. After the coup, then Secretary of State Clinton has admitted that she aided the coup government by shoring up the coup government blocking the return of the elected government: "In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot."
After the coup against Zelaya, Ecuador’s popularly elected president, Rafael Correa, said, "We have intelligence reports that say that after Zelaya, I’m next." He may have been right.
The year after the Honduran coup, there was an attempted coup on Correa. Although the action failed, Latin American expert Mark Weisbrot says it was clearly an attempted coup to overthrow the government of Rafael Correa.
Corrrea had renegotiated oil contracts and demanded a bigger share of the big oil companies’ revenue for the people of Ecuador. He also opposed a free trade agreement with the US and closed the US military base in Ecuador. He joined Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and successfully defaulted on over $3 billion of foreign debt that was illegitimately contacted by Ecuadorian leaders Correa said were CIA supported dictators.
Prior to Obama, the US had started action against Correa. An October 2005 embassy cable sent by US ambassador Linda Jewell outlined action for "desirable political and economic change in Ecuador." In 2006, she cabled that a Correa election would "derail" US hopes as the embassy expects Correa to join Chavez and other nationalist South American leaders." In the same cable [06QUITO2150], Jewell said that the US has "actively discouraged potential alliances" with Correa. She admitted [06QUITO2991] to "working in concert with other Ecuadorians and groups who share our vision."
During the Obama years, the US would continue to intervene in Ecuador. In March 2009, Ecuador expelled Mark Sullivan, an American official whom they accused of being the CIA station chief in Quito and whom they accused of playing a role in the suspension of US assistance to a special investigative police unit when Ecuador named a new chief of whom the US didn’t approve.
On October 30, 2010, the coup Correa had been expecting came. The coup leader was a graduate of the School of the Americas. A government appointed commission found that "foreign actors" had been involved in the coup. One of members of the commission announced his belief that the US State Department and the CIA had been involved.
The same year, Obama failed his next test. That year, America bankrolled the Haitian elections. The cost was 14 million dollars: a price tag that presumably gave America some say. But Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) banned fourteen parties from running in the election. The CEP was handpicked by the ruling party in a process that is not recognized by Haiti’s constitution.
Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was twice removed in US sponsored coups, is the largest and the most popular party in Haiti. It has won every election it has been allowed to participate in. That it has been allowed to participate in, that is. But in this US backed election, Fanmi Lavalas was not allowed to participate: it was banned by the CEP.
The US and its allies continued to influence the Haitian elections when they supported a runoff between two unpopular candidates representing essentially the same side. But the second round runoff between the two candidates was illegal because the CEP never accomplished the number of votes to ratify the first round results that selected them.
The Obama administration financed the election that specifically excluded the party the people wanted to elect. And, in doing so, Obama broke his foreign policy promise to Latin America and very quietly continued to do business with Latin America in the same interventionist way the US had always done business with Latin America.
The next indicator of a failing grade came in Paraguay, where in June 2012, Fernando Lugo, the democratically elected leader of Paraguay was removed in a coup. The right wing opposition opportunistically capitalized on a skirmish over disputed land that left at least eleven people dead to unfairly blame the deaths on President Lugo. It then impeached him after giving him only twenty-four hours to prepare his defense and only two hours to deliver it. The Latin American organizations Unasur and Mercosur suspended the new Paraguayan government; the US spent coup day negotiating a new military base in Paraguay. As in Honduras, they never used the word “coup”.
But they could have used the word if they hadn’t wanted to support the coup with their silence. As early as 2009, US embassy cables say that Lugo’s political opposition has as its goal to "Capitalize on any Lugo missteps" and to "impeach Lugo and assure their own political supremacy". The cable notes that to achieve their goal, they are willing to "legally" impeach Lugo "even if on spurious grounds". Obama knew it was a coup: the US had been tipped off about the strategy and told what it would look like.
The next year, 2013, the interference moved to Venezuela. Against the wishes of the United States, Hugo Chavez’ successor, Nicolás Maduro, won the right to continue the Bolivarian Revolution by winning the next national election. America was the only country in the world to refuse to recognize the election results , though 150 electoral monitors from around the world monitored Venezuela’s election, including delegations from the Union of South American Nations and the Carter Center.
Two years later, in 2015, the Obama administration again became involved in Venezuela. Contrary to Obama’s promise, business went on as usual with American money being pumped into Venezuela to fund groups who oppose Maduro. Since 2000, $90 million has poured into Venezuela. That sort of interference in Venezuela is not suggestive of a new way of doing business in Latin America. In 2015, that US funded opposition once again attempted to pull off a coup in Venezuela. Maduro explicitly accused the Americans of, as in 2002, being involved.
The accusation is not an empty one. Venezuelan officials have produced a significant volume of evidence that the events constitute a failed coup and that the US was involved. They have produced a recording of a communique that was to be issued after the Maduro government was removed from power. They have shown confessions by military officials. And they have admitted as evidence a recorded phone conversation between opposition leaders discussing the coup. The day before the planned coup, Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who is known to have made phone calls to a US number, Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, both major opposition leader of last year’s attempt to remove Maduro from power – an attempt that they made clear was an attempted coup by saying that they would not to stop until they “ got rid of Maduro " – signed a National Transition Agreement. Weapons were also found in the office of the opposition party.
Lucas Koerner of Venezuelanalysis.com adds that the aircraft to be used as part of the failed coup has links to the notorious American security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater). And it has been reported that a number of the coup leaders obtained US visas from the American embassy to facilitate escape should the coup fail.
And, just this past May, President Maduro has declared a state of emergency, accusing the US of once again conspiring with right wing groups in Venezuela to overthrow his government. Maduro says that “Washington is activating measures at the request of Venezuela’s fascist right.”
In perhaps his final chance to make good on his promise to do business with Latin America differently, Obama has, once again, disappointed by maintaining American silence on the coup in Brazil. How do we know that Obama should have spoken out against the take over of parliament by an unelected party? How do we know that it was a coup? Because the unelected party said so. Twice: both before the coup and after.
The publication of a transcript of the call between Romero Jucá, who was a senator at the time of the call and is currently the planning minister in Michael Temer’s new government, and former oil executive Sergio Machado, provides incontrovertible proof that the removal of the elected President was a coup. The phone call lays bare “a national pact” to remove Dilma and install Temer as President. Jucá reveals that, not only opposition politicians, but also the military and the Supreme Court are conspirators in the coup. Regarding the military’s role, Jucá says, “I am talking to the generals, the military commanders. They are fine with this, they said they will guarantee it.” And, as for the Supreme Court, Glenn Greenwald reports that Jucá admits that he “spoke with and secured the involvement of numerous justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court.” Jucá further boasted that “there are only a small number” of Supreme Court justices that he had not spoken to.
So confident is Michel Temer that he has US support for his coup that he is comfortable to openly boast about it in the US in front of an audience of business and foreign policy leaders. Temer clearly told his American audience that elected President Dilma Rousseff was not removed from power for "violating fiscal laws by using loans from public banks to cover budget shortfalls, which artificially enhanced the budget surplus" as the official charge stated. She was, the new, unelected President admitted, removed because of her refusal to implement a right wing economic plan that was inconsistent with the economic platform Brazilians elected her on. Temer’s economic plan featured cuts to health, education and welfare spending as well as increased emphasis on privatization and deregulation.
Rousseff was not on board. So she was thrown overboard. In the words of Temer’s comfortable confession :
And many months ago, while I was still vice president, we released a document named ‘A Bridge to the Future’ because we knew it would be impossible for the government to continue on that course. We suggested that the government should adopt the theses presented in that document called ‘A Bridge to the Future.’ But, as that did not work out, the plan wasn’t adopted and a process was established which culminated with me being installed as president of the republic.
Confession. Cased closed.
And just to remove any doubt that the coup government’s motivation was not indignation at Rouseff’s fiscal maneuver, one of the coup government’s first acts of legislation was to explicitly legalize the very budgetary act they had impeached Rousseff for two days earlier.
So, once again, at best, Obama gets a low grade on his foreign policy promise for maintaining silence on what he knows to be a coup in Latin America. Silence is support. At worst, he gets a failing grade for cooperating with the coup.
American participation in the Brazilian coup has not been established. But, “there is no doubt that the biggest players in this coup attempt – people like former presidential candidates José Serra and Aécio Neves – are US government allies," according to Latin American exert Mark Weisbrot. And Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that Brazil is awash in financing from American sources, including “CIA-related organizations.”
The very day after the impeachment vote, Senator Aloysio Nunes of the coup government began a three day visit to Washington . Nunes is a significant player in the coup government: he was the vice-presidential candidate on the 2014 ticket that lost to President Rousseff and a key player in the effort to impeach President Rousseff in the senate. Nunes scheduled meetings with, amongst others, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker and Ben Cardin, as well as with Undersecretary of State and former Ambassador to Brazil Thomas Shannon. Though Nunes denies it, there are reports that his trip to Washington was ordered by Michel Temer. The willingness to go ahead with the planned meetings with Nunes right after the impeachment vote demonstrates, once again, at least tacit acceptance or approval on the part of Washington.
So, Obama broke his promise. His foreign policy in Latin America may be more silent and more subtle, but the way he has done business with Latin America has not broken from the long line of Presidents who preceded him. At a rapid and consistent rate of almost one each year, Obama has done business as usual in America’s backyard: 2009 in Honduras; 2010 in Haiti and, perhaps, Ecuador; 2012 in Paraguay; 2013 in Venezuela; 2015 in Venezuela again and 2016 in Brazil.
Ted Snider writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history. An earlier version of this article was published on ConsortiumNews . Read more by Ted Snider | 1real |
'Deadline of deadlines' in Brexit divorce talks this week | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Theresa May must deliver her offer on a Brexit divorce package this week if she wants European Union leaders to grant Britain s request for talks on future free trade when they meet next week, EU diplomats and officials said on Tuesday. Failure could mean a delay until February, adding to the risk of businesses scaling back investment plans in Britain as uncertainty clouds the outlook beyond Brexit in March 2019. The deadline of deadlines is this week, one senior EU diplomat said, a day after the prime minister had to leave Brussels empty-handed when her Northern Irish allies denounced an offer on the border with Ireland as she was presenting it. May has found it difficult to come up with a formula that satisfies both EU member Ireland, which wants to avoid creation of a hard border, and Northern Ireland s DUP party which says the British province must quit the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK. A tentative deal on the border, promising regulatory alignment on both sides of the island of Ireland, was agreed on Monday. But it was later rejected by the DUP which says it can not allow any divergence in regulation between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. Brussels officials said they had no reason to doubt the confidence being expressed in London that May would sort out the hitch in the coming days and expect her to return to brief EU Brexit negotiators as early as Wednesday. But, they warn, other member states, including powerhouses Germany and France, are growing nervous that they will not have enough time to scrutinize draft guidelines for the trade negotiations if they do not receive them a week before a summit next Friday at which leaders would approve them. If a proposal doesn t come this week, the EU 27 won t have enough time to prepare new guidelines for the summit, the diplomat said. Some leaders had already grumbled that the deadline missed on Monday was too tight. And if governments refuse to sign off on proposals for what the EU should seek in a post-Brexit free trade deal with London, then May s hopes of being able to show those guidelines at home as a trophy won in exchange for giving in to most of the EU s divorce demands would be thwarted. If the trade offer cannot be made at the Dec. 15 summit, a senior EU official said, the whole process might have to be put back until February - a delay which could increase pressure at home on May and raise a risk of disrupting the existing process. Summit chair Donald Tusk said on Monday he had been planning to distribute his draft negotiating guidelines to member states on Tuesday, had the EU executive s negotiator Michel Barnier given the crucial signal that Britain had made sufficient progress on three key elements of the divorce. Bound by previous EU internal agreements not to share the draft until May has formally committed Britain to covering outstanding EU payments, guaranteeing EU citizens rights and an open border for Northern Ireland, Tusk must now wait until May returns and EU negotiator Michel Barnier has signed off a deal. The guidelines, which are likely to include a commitment to the two-year, status-quo transition period May asked for, will then be scrutinized closely in EU capitals. The other 27 have held a common front on making Britain pay for past commitments, but all have varying interests in a trade deal and so will want time to ensure the guidelines defend their own positions. Leaders advisers, known as sherpas , meet in Brussels in Monday to prepare the summit. The less time they have to digest Tusk s draft negotiating guidelines, the shorter and less detailed those are likely to be, said EU officials who expect a further more detailed set of guidelines to be prepared later. | 0fake |
9-YEAR OLD TRUMP FAN FOUND After Liberal Media Tries to Prove His Letter to Trump is Fake [VIDEO] | After Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a letter from a little boy to the press (see below), liberal media like the Washington Post tried to prove that it was fake by using a handwriting analyst! It s NOT! Meet Dylan:Dylan aka Pickle from Stockton, CA came out to speak up about why he wrote the letter to President Trump. Sarah Huckabee Sanders read Dylan s letter on Wednesday to the press They immediately tried to prove the letter was fake:Dylan aka Pickle thank you for your letter and hope to meet you soon! pic.twitter.com/XZlJARZ9cs Sarah Huckabee (@SarahHuckabee) July 26, 2017THE LIBERALS TRY THEIR BEST TO PROVE THE LETTER IS FAKE:The Washington Post reported: Handwriting and children s cognitive experts were called and asked whether the letter appeared to be written by a child. We called one ourself. Two, actually.Deborah McCutchen is a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies cognitive processes in reading and writing ability. She looked at the letter. She noted that the handful of small spelling errors followed the phonetic sounds of words pitcher instead of picture which would be common in the writing of a young child. Then again, the letter also included a hyphen, which seemed sophisticated for a 9-year-old.Sheila Lowe, president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, said she didn t see anything that would be inconsistent with a 9-year-old s writing, but she also clarified that she did not specialize in analyzing the writing of children. She noted that the margins on the right side of the paper were very wide, which can indicate a feeling of concern about the future.#PickleTruther suddenly appeared on twitter as the lefty media furiously tried to prove that the letter was fake.We hope Dylan has a chance to meet President Trump and isn t bullied for his support of Trump like so many adults are. He s adorable! | 1real |
James Okeefe LIVE RADIO Wed Oct 26 th at bottom of hour 2:30 PM EDT on the Texas man's Radio show | 2:30 EDT > James Okeefe LIVE RADIO Wed Oct 26 th at bottom of hour 2:30 PM EDT on the Texas man's Radio show James Okeefe at bottom of hour 2:30 PM EDT on the Texas man's Radio show2:30 EDT Last Edited by LunaFlora on 10/26/2016 02:18 PM LunaFlora | 1real |
Good U.S.-Cuba ties are in Russia's interests: Kremlin | MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin on Monday commented on U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba, saying it was in Russia’s interests for Havana, its long-time ally, to have good relations with the United States. “Decades of friendly partner-like relations link Russia and Cuba,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a teleconference with reporters. “We are interested in Cuba, which is friendly to us, maintaining good relations with all its neighbors and above all with the United States.” Obama arrived to small but cheering crowds on Sunday at the start of a historic visit to Cuba that opened a new chapter in U.S. engagement with the island’s Communist government after decades of hostility between the former Cold War foes. | 0fake |
U.N. rights chief says Trump's travel ban is illegal | GENEVA (Reuters) - Discriminating against people on the basis of their nationality is illegal, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Twitter on Monday, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban on nationals from seven Middle Eastern countries. “Discrimination on nationality alone is forbidden under #humanrights law,” Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said in a tweet sent by his office. “The U.S. ban is also mean-spirited, and wastes resources needed for proper counter-terrorism.” After a weekend of confusion, protests and worldwide outcry over Trump’s sweeping immigration order, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said late on Sunday that legal permanent residents, holders of so-called green cards, would be admitted, subject to security checks. | 0fake |
Turkey's Erdogan says Iraqi Kurdish authorities "will pay price" for vote | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Iraqi Kurdish authorities would pay the price for an independence referendum which was widely opposed by foreign powers. Iraq s Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in Monday s referendum, defying neighboring countries which fear the vote could fuel Kurdish separatism within their own borders and lead to fresh conflict. They are not forming an independent state, they are opening a wound in the region to twist the knife in, Erdogan told members of his ruling AK Party in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum. Erdogan has built strong commercial ties with Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, which pump hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily through Turkey for export to world markets. We don t regret what we did in the past. But since the conditions are changed and the Kurdish Regional Government, to which we provided all support, took steps against us, it would pay the price, he said. Turkey has repeatedly threatened to impose economic sanction, effectively cutting their main access to international markets, and has held joint military exercises with Iraqi troops on the border. However, after Erdogan said that Iraqi Kurds would go hungry if Ankara halted the cross-border flow of trucks and oil, it has said that any measures it took would not target civilians and instead focus on those who organized the referendum. Iraq s Defense Ministry said on Friday it plans to take control of the borders of the autonomous Kurdistan region in coordination with Iran and Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Bin Yildirim, speaking on Saturday, did not refer specifically to those plans, but said Ankara would no longer deal with Kurdish authorities in Erbil. From now on, our relationships with the region will be conducted with the central government, Baghdad, he said. As Iran, Iraq and Turkey, we work to ensure the games being played in the region will fail. | 0fake |
Tennessee bill would allow counselors to deny service based on religion | (Reuters) - The Tennessee House passed a bill on Wednesday allowing mental health counselors to refuse service to patients on religious grounds, the latest in a list of U.S. state measures that gay rights activists have criticized as discriminating against the LGBT community. A vote by the state House of Representatives protects therapists and counselors from civil lawsuits and criminal action if they deny services to clients whose religious beliefs conflict with their own. The bill passed by a 68-22 vote and sent to Gov. Bill Haslam for his signature. The state Senate passed the bill earlier this year. Supporters of the bill say it protects the rights of counselors who object on religious grounds to the adopted code of ethics of the American Counseling Association. But opponents say it is an attempt to deny service to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, a vulnerable population often in need of counseling services. The House bill, which was sponsored by Republican Rep. Dan Howell, is one of many that are being challenged by human rights organizations claiming the legislation is anti-LGBT. Howell was unavailable for comment Wednesday afternoon. The Tennessee Equality Project, which supports gay rights, condemned the House passage of the bill even though it does not specifically refer to the LGBT issue. The group called on the governor to veto the legislation. Haslam told Nashville Public Radio he has not decided whether to sign or veto the counseling legislation, but he was considering the impact it may have on the state and its citizens. “They (state lawmakers) need to obviously always vote their conscience,” he told the radio station. “One of the things, though, that we should be mindful of is, is there a broader impact?” On Tuesday, PayPal Holdings Inc canceled plans to open a global operations center in Charlotte, North Carolina and invest $3.6 million in the area after the state passed a law requiring people to use bathrooms or locker rooms in schools and other public facilities that match the gender on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity. Tennessee is considering similar legislation related to school bathrooms, and civil rights groups are watching a Missouri measure seen as discriminatory. Last week, the governors of Georgia and Virginia vetoed “religious liberty” bills. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant on Tuesday signed a far-reaching law allowing people with religious objections to deny wedding services to same-sex couples and protecting other actions considered discriminatory by gay rights activists. | 0fake |
Chinese sub docks at Malaysian port for second time this year | KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Chinese submarine has docked in Malaysia, the second such visit to the Southeast Asian country this year, as western powers fret over China s expanding reach in the South China Sea. China claims nearly all the South China Sea, through which an estimated $3 trillion in international trade passes each year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have claims. Tensions between China and Malaysia over their overlapping claims, however, appear to have eased after Malaysia agreed in November to buy four Chinese naval vessels and pledged with Beijing to handle South China Sea disputes bilaterally. The Royal Malaysian Navy confirmed the visit by the Chinese submarine, which docked at the Sepanggar naval base in the state of Sabah in Borneo between Friday and Monday. RMN chief Admiral Ahmad Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin said it was standard international procedure to welcome visits by foreign navy vessels, based on each nation s request and upon diplomatic clearance . This is part of our efforts to enhance defense diplomacy and strengthening bilateral relations, he told Reuters. The submarine was escorted by a surface ship from the PLA Navy and was returning to China after conducting escort missions in the Gulf of Aden, according to defense magazine Jane s 360, which first reported the submarine s docking. In January, a Chinese submarine docked in Sepanggar, only the second confirmed visit of a Chinese submarine to a foreign port, according to state media. Chinese warships have also been calling at ports in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, unnerving regional rival India. | 0fake |
Trump proposes disarming Clinton guards: 'Let's see what happens to her' | MIAMI (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Friday called for disarming the bodyguards who protect his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and mused about the consequences of such a move by saying “Let’s see what happens to her.” The Republican presidential nominee was speaking at a rally in Miami, where he contrasted his supporters, who he said back police and want crime reduced, to Clinton, who he derided as someone who “lives behind walls and raises money from hedge funds.” “I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. I think they should disarm immediately, what do you think, yes?,” he said. “Take their guns away, she doesn’t want guns. Take them, let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay. It will be very dangerous.” Both candidates have been protected by the Secret Service for months, but Trump’s latest take on Clinton’s security detail brought swift denunciations, particularly from Clinton allies. “Tonight, Donald Trump once again alluded to violence against Hillary Clinton,” said Elizabeth Shappell, spokeswoman for Correct The Record, a pro-Clinton media watchdog group. “This is a truly deplorable comment that betrays our nation’s most fundamental democratic values,” Shappell said in a statement. Stuart Stevens, a Washington-based political consultant who worked on Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, tweeted: “The Secret Service should investigate this threat” Trump made a similar comment about Clinton and her armed protection in May while accepting the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, when he said Clinton would end the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms. “Let’s see how they feel walking around without their guns or their bodyguards,” he told the gun lobby group, speaking about Clinton and her Secret Service detail. Trump was criticized by opponents last month when he suggested that gun rights activists could act to stop Clinton from nominating liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices, a comment some interpreted as encouraging a political assassination. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” Trump told a rally in North Carolina on Aug. 9. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know,” he continued. Clinton has called for tighter access to guns, including universal background checks, but has never said she planned to get rid of the Second Amendment. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Friday’s remarks fall into a pattern of Trump inciting people to violence. “Whether this is done to provoke protesters at a rally or casually or even as a joke, it is an unacceptable quality in anyone seeking the job of Commander in Chief,” Mook said in a statement. | 0fake |
MUSLIM INVASION OF AMERICA In Full Swing: Obama On Pace To Issue Over 1 Million Green Cards To Migrants From Muslim Majority Nations | (Welcome) to America We hope you enjoy our benefits. Please feel free to NOT assimilate Coming soon: Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish and 3 for Arabic The Obama Administration is on pace to issue more than a million green cards to migrants from majority-Muslim countries, according to an analysis of Department of Homeland Security data.A chart released by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest Friday details the surge in immigration to the U.S. from majority-Muslim countries since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.Specifically, in the first six fiscal years of Obama s presidency (FY2009 FY2014), his administration issued 832,014 green cards to migrants majority-Muslim countries, the most of which were issued to migrants from Pakistan (102,000), Iraq (102,000), Bangladesh (90,000), Iran (85,000), Egypt (56,000), and Somalia (37,000).The total 832,014 new permanent residents do not include migrants on temporary, nonimmigrant visas which allow foreign nationals to come to the U.S. temporarily for work, study, tourism and the like. As the subcommittee notes, the number also does not include those migrants who overstayed the terms of their visas.Regardless, as the subcommittee explained in its analysis, the U.S. is playing host to immigrants from majority Muslim countries at an increasing pace.Between FY 2013 and FY 2014, the number of green cards issued to migrants from Muslim-majority countries increased dramatically from 117,423 in FY 2013, to 148,810 in FY 2014, a nearly 27 percent increase. Throughout the Obama Administration s tenure, the United States has issued green cards to an average of 138,669 migrants from Muslim-majority countries per year, meaning that it is nearly certain the United States will have issued green cards to at least 1.1 million migrants from Muslim-majority countries on the President s watch. It has also been reported that migration from Muslim-majority countries represents the fastest growing class of migrants.Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
Trump studying executive action on healthcare, senator Rand Paul says | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Rand Paul said he spoke to President Donald Trump by phone about healthcare reform on Monday and told the president he thought Trump had the authority to create associations that would allow organizations to offer group health insurance plans. Paul, a Republican, told reporters that Trump was considering taking some form of executive action to address problems with the healthcare system after the Senate failed last week to pass a measure to reform the system. Allowing groups like AARP, which represents retirees, to form health associations could enable individuals and small businesses to form larger groups to negotiate with health insurance companies for lower rates. | 0fake |
Just Mariah Carey dancing to the Postman Pat theme tune | Just Mariah Carey dancing to the Postman Pat theme tune Mariah Carey loves Postman Pat. pic.twitter.com/OhflkNS3dO | 1real |
MS-13 Gang Members Indicted for NY Teen Murders | A number of Gang members, some of which are illegal immigrants, were indicted in federal court for their involvement in the slayings of two New York teenagers. [Some 13 gang members, 10 being illegal immigrants, were indicted for murder charges against Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, as well as five other individuals who were allegedly murdered by the criminal organization, according to NBC New York. According to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, Mickens’ body was found brutally beaten in a area of the region of Brentwood. Just a day later, her lifelong best friend Cuevas was found beaten and killed in a wooded area in the same area. New York Attorney Robert Capers said the gang members noticed the two teenage girls while they were looking for rival gang members to spar with. The gang members had previously known Cuevas from a past altercation and called their gang leader for approval to kill the girls. Capers told the media that the two girls were killed from gang members “swinging baseball bats and machetes” at them, pointing out that both were running for their lives. Alexi Saenz, 22, Enrique Portillo, 19, and Selvin Chavez, 19, as well as two other members are accused specifically with the girls’ deaths. The bodies of Oscar Acosta, 19, Miguel 15, and Jose 18, were also found in the same period as the two teenage girls. All victims were students at Brentwood High School. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 0fake |
US intelligence warns public of pre-election day terror | US intelligence warns public of pre-election day terror November 04, 2016 The rising sun lights One World Trade as it stands over the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., November 2, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
U.S. intelligence officials have warned authorities in New York, Texas, and Virginia about possible attacks by al Qaeda on the day prior to election day. No specific locations were mentioned, but polling station are suspected as targets. U.S. intelligence officials alerted joint terrorism task forces about the possible threat. Senior FBI official: “The FBI, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety.” Local authorities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Florida said they are not boosting election-related law enforcement personnel or resources above 2012 levels.
(ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA) U.S. intelligence officials have warned local authorities in New York, Texas and Virginia about possible attacks by al Qaeda on Monday, a day before the U.S. presidential election, CBS News reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.
No specific locations were mentioned, but U.S. intelligence officials alerted joint terrorism task forces about the possible threat, CBS reported.
“The FBI, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety,” a senior FBI official told CBS.
TRUNEWS could not immediately verify the report, and officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | 1real |
Climber Conquers El Capitan Without Rope, Using His Bare Hands - Breitbart | On Saturday, Alex Honnold, one of the world’s most climbers, scaled the side of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan in just under four hours using his bare hands and a bag of chalk on Saturday. [“So stoked to realize a life dream today,’ Honnold, 31, wrote on Facebook after he completed the steep vertical climb, which some have described in the past as a suicide mission. Honnold, who has been climbing since he was 11, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he has dreamt about conquering El Capitan free style for eight years. “The hardest part was 2, 300 feet off the ground,” Honnold reportedly said. Others have not dared conquer El Capitan without ropes or safety backups. The feat Honnold accomplished was so bold that Alpinist magazine wrote on its Facebook page, “This is indisputably the greatest free solo of all time. Congratulations, Alex!” While likely his most dangerous, this is not Honnold’s first risky climb. According to the Chronicle, in 2008, he climbed the Moonlight Buttress in Utah’s Zion National Park, and the northwest face of Yosemite’s Half Dome, without rope. Just one moment of distraction could have cost him his life. In 2015, two men reached the peak of El Capitan after climbing the face of the granite Dawn Wall for 17 days using only safety ropes and their hands and feet. This March, a mountain climber fell off a mountain in Colorado, but survived. He was discovered by a jogger after he was reported missing for several days. Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter. This post has been updated. | 0fake |
Brazil's Temer says new graft charges part of 'irresponsible campaign' | BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Michel Temer, shortly after being hit with fresh graft charges on Thursday, said in a written statement that the nation s top prosecutor is on an irresponsible campaign of making allegations to cover his own failures. Temer was charged by Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot with obstruction of justice and racketeering based on the plea-bargain testimony of the owners of the world s largest meatpacker, JBS SA. They accused Temer of taking bribes in return for political favors and of conspiring to buy the silence of a witness who could implicate the president. | 0fake |
These guys have found a cunning way to get around licensing Sega’s character designs | These guys have found a cunning way to get around licensing Sega’s character designs
@Sonic_hedgehog over on Twitter has spotted this amazingly shoddy bit of kit:
One size fits most. | 1real |
Federal Employee With Stage IV Cancer May Lose Job For Taking Medical Marijuana | A 36-year-old U.S. man diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in March of this year is now being forced to confront the likelihood of losing his job should he choose to use marijuana for the purpose of relieving symptoms caused by his cancer and cancer treatments.
John Doe is a married father of one. He spent at least ten years as a biologist and environmental protection specialist and planned large scale projects to minimize environmental impacts. He also directed the cleanup of solid waste sites and oil spills for several federal agencies. (We granted him anonymity because if he is suspected of using marijuana he will be fired.)
He told Shadowproof that he hoped to move to the private sector in the months leading up to the diagnosis to be closer to his wife’s family or his own family. “But the diagnosis changed that, since a stage IV cancer patient can’t get life insurance on the private market and the health insurance available to federal employees was a better deal” for him than what was available under the Affordable Care Act. “It’s gotten worse since then.”
After experiencing complications with the prescribed medicines for his cancer, the doctor recommended medical marijuana, “which is required to get a card in the state I had been living in and also in the state in which I live now.”
Since marijuana is listed under the Controlled Substances Act as a schedule 1 substance by the DEA, doctors cannot prescribe it. “Dronabinol/Marinol gets around that by being a synthetic analog— apparently it’s okay if you pay a pharmaceutical company for it, but not okay if you grow it yourself,” Doe said.
Doe was never offered a prescription for dronabinol. Instead, it was recommended he use medical marijuana should he need nausea relief and appetite stimulation, and he used it when he needed it to function, “which was typically for the several days following chemo so that I could stop the nausea. It’s constant, by the way, readers should know that it does not come in waves, and there is no relief.”
But Doe had to hide his medical marijuana use from everyone. “Federal employees are barred from using any illegal drug and can be fired even if the use is on their own time away from work.”
“All federal employees receive a memo each year from their agency solicitor or DOJ reminding them specifically that medical marijuana is not recognized as valid by the DEA, and since all marijuana (except dronabinol) is listed as schedule 1, it’s use is ‘inconsistent with federal employment’ and employees can be fired if they are caught using it or if they test positive during a drug test.”
Unfortunately for Doe, drug testing is likely to expand from law enforcement, firefighters, commercial drivers, and seasonal employees to his position at the agency. Any employee may be forced to submit to a test if there is “reasonable suspicion” that employee is using drugs. “I’m not sure the threat of a lawsuit for discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act would help me forestall a drug test. I’d like to point out as well that my use has been limited to edibles, and that I do not work under the influence. When I use, it is after work so that I can eat.”
Back in August 2015, Doe suffered bouts of constipation and diarrhea, symptoms he assumed were triggered by all the stress brought on after having his first child. While the constipation and diarrhea diminished, the issues did not entirely go away.
Doe mentioned these symptoms to his doctor in October, who noticed that Doe had also lost around five or six pounds. “He then asked how the baby was doing and said that I was probably just dealing with stress and asked me to track how I feel and report back to him if things didn’t improve in a week.”
Things did not improve, and he found himself having to use the bathroom more often than usual. After another doctor’s visit, he was asked to make some dietary changes and prescribed a laxative and stool softener with instructions to call back after a week or two if things didn’t improve.
In November, after Doe’s symptoms continued to worsen, he made an appointment for a colonoscopy. Unfortunately, the hospital was booked so he had to wait.
By mid-January, he used the bathroom nearly 10 times a day. “[The doctor] finally ordered a thorough set of blood and stool tests to look for a range of disorders, parasites, etc. Results that came back in mid-February were all in the middle of reference range for blood chemistry and negative for parasites. According to the doctor, I was healthy as a horse, and he gave me a large stack of literature on irritable bowel syndrome. It was at this point that the hospital finally found time to get me in for a colonoscopy.”
In March, Doe finally had a colonoscopy. “I fell asleep on the gurney fully expecting to wake up and hear that it was IBS.” After waking up in the recovery room, the doctor came in and told him that she had some bad news. They found and removed a polyp in his sigmoid colon, which was the good news. He was then shown a picture of an obstruction a few inches further into his sigmoid colon.
“There was a obstructing tumor so large that she couldn’t push the scope beyond that point. Preliminary diagnosis was colon cancer,” he shared. They had to do a CT scan immediately to see if the cancer spread, and he needed surgery within a week to install a colostomy bag to bypass the blockage.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, if they’d been able to get me in for a routine colonoscopy back in November I might not be in this situation,” followed by “I guess this means I can eat onions and garlic again since it’s not IBS.”
Days after having a CT scan, Doe went in to work to fill out several forms, “mostly making sure my designations of beneficiaries were current and submitting an open-ended sick leave request.” While he was there, he received a call from the gastroenterologist. “My CT results were in, and they weren’t good. In addition to the tumor in the colon I also had numerous tumors in my liver and lungs. That was…hard to hear.”
The doctors put off the consultation for surgery to install the colostomy until Wednesday of that week, but he didn’t make it that far. “My digestive tract was not happy after a full week of nothing but clear liquid, and I had trouble passing anything. My wife and I went to the emergency room on Tuesday and after waiting several hours had surgery to install the colostomy. That went well. Then we met with the local oncologist.”
Doe was told they would focus on palliative care with drugs, and that surgery was not an option. “I give you about a fifty percent shot at living another two years.”
He sought second opinions and got two, one at the University of Wisconsin and another at the University of Iowa. “Those doctors were more encouraging. Despite a stage IV diagnosis and spread [of cancer] to more than one distant organ, they held out hope that if my cancer responded well to chemotherapy perhaps we could consider surgery given my age and otherwise great health.”
As of publication, Doe has done one course, or twelve rounds, of FOLFOX plus Avastin. FOLFOX is a chemotherapy regimen for colorectal cancer, and Avastin is a cancer medicine that is supposed to disrupt the growth of cancer cells.
“I also took and continue to take several supplements my doctors have suggested to me: curcumin, vitamin D, vitamin E, etc. The tumor marker CEA in my blood samples dropped precipitously each time I went in for the next round of chemo, and CT scans at various points during treatment documented shrinkage of the tumors in the liver and lungs.”
While comparing his most recent CT scan to the first scan, doctors have pointed out just how much the tumors had shrunk and noted that some of the tumors in the liver appeared to be mostly dead. “They also said that given my response to chemo, they’d like to give me a shot at surgery. To do that, they need to grow the unaffected lobe of my liver before surgery and then the surgery, assuming it happens, will be a great big invasive procedure to remove the tumor in my colon, some lymph nodes, and the still-affected part of my liver, and burn out the remaining tumor tissue in my lungs. I am looking forward to that, believe it or not.”
Despite undergoing a series of traumatic symptoms, medical treatments, and consultations, Doe continues to work full time, and on a number of occasions he has worked during chemotherapy sessions in the hospital.
At first, the only side effects he felt from the chemotherapy were fatigue and nausea. He told Shadowproof that each chemo session involves receiving an IV drug that helps minimize nausea, and that he was also prescribed prochlorperazine, which is to be taken every 8 hours and scopolamine patches to wear behind his ear to prevent motion sickness.
The prochlorperazine worsened his fatigue, and after a few days of struggling to stay awake on prochlorperazine, he asked if there was anything else they could prescribe. “They gave me ondansetron, which also was to be taken every 8 hours. One doctor mentioned dronabinol, AKA marinol, synthetic THC (and approved by the FDA for treating nausea), but said that would be a last resort if nothing else worked.”
“I wondered why, since I had been researching the hell out of my treatment options and a lot of patients strongly suggested that marijuana was by far the best thing to prevent nausea and stimulate appetite. The ondansetron worked to a degree. By six hours into a dose, I would feel nauseous, and my appetite wasn’t good for several days following treatments. This worsened over time, such that my nausea and suppressed appetite would last longer and longer after chemo sessions.”
“I still continued to work but there would be long stretches of feeling uncomfortable when my nausea wasn’t controlled.”
Should Doe lose his federal employment because he is taking marijuana to help him through cancer treatment, it will mean he also loses the life insurance policy he has through the government. If he loses that, he would be unable replace it, “as no insurance company will underwrite a new policy for a stage IV cancer patient.”
“Being fired would cost my family dearly in the event that I die sooner rather than later, and losing the health insurance virtually guarantees that I would die sooner rather than later.”
The cost of Doe’s chemotherapy runs between $10,000 and $20,000, depending on the hospital. “The insurance for families has quite a few copays and an annual $11,000 deductible for the family, $5,000 for the first family member to reach that number. I hit $5,000 pretty quickly after my diagnosis so while I still make copays for my family’s medical care I haven’t had to pay any for myself since May of 2016.”
“I will have to start paying the deductible again on January 1 until I hit whatever deductible the insurance company sets for next year, which I assume will be higher than it was this year. I pay something like $350 a month for this insurance and the government pays an additional $900+ as part of my compensation package.
Doe continued, “I haven’t seen how much the premiums in my state of residence will be going up for 2017, but I know the number of providers has dropped to one or two and those providers have limits on office visits, larger copays, and higher deductibles that I currently pay. Were I to be drug tested and fired, I would have to make do with one of those plans that carries larger costs and offers fewer benefits.”
Right now, Doe has friends writing letters to the White House, their Representatives, and their Senators asking for either executive action to modify the 1986 Reagan Executive Order regarding off-duty drug use and to recognize state laws regarding medical marijuana. They are also helping him push for congressional action to grant marijuana the same exemption from the Controlled Substances Act “enjoyed by the alcohol and tobacco lobbies.”
“I’d like to note that the White House responses so far have been tone deaf, and that while the responses have focused on a supposed lack of any therapeutic use of marijuana—despite the FDA approval for dronabinol, lots of state laws, and lots of very sick people saying it works—to avoid action. I’d like to know what therapeutic use alcohol and nicotine serve.”
The White House’s response to these letters is distressing. It shows little concern for those impacted by blanket drug testing and zero tolerance drug policies. It reads in part:
“This Administration opposes marijuana legalization, and our policy approach focuses on improving public health and safety through prevention, treatment, support for recovery, and innovative criminal justice strategies to break the cycle of drug use and crime. A considerable body of evidence shows that marijuana use, especially chronic use that begins at a young age, is associated with serious health and social problems. Studies also reveal that marijuana potency has tripled since 1990, raising serious public health concerns.
At the same time, we share public concerns about ensuring limited Federal enforcement resources are dedicated to pursuing our highest enforcement priorities, such as preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors, preventing the sale of marijuana by criminal enterprises and gangs, preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana, and preventing drugged driving and other adverse public health consequences. We will also closely monitor implementation of marijuana legalization in individual States and prevent the diversion of marijuana to States that have not legalized its use, sale, or distribution. Outside of its highest enforcement priorities, the Federal Government has traditionally relied on State and local agencies to address marijuana activity through enforcement of their own narcotics laws.”
Attorney Stefan Borst-Censullo, Counsel to Hoban Law Group, who specializes in cannabis legislation, explained that the federal government “defined the idea that employers have the right to terminate for off work drug use, and they’ve continued this tradition, regardless of state laws for medical marijuana.”
Borst-Censullo told Shadowproof that this applies to “everyone,” as there is no existing marijuana law in the states which offers worker protection to patients, “and most state courts that look at the issue side with federal supremacy.” When it comes to whether or not medical marijuana users should be hopeful that they will see any changes, Borst-Censullo says no.
“The Colorado Supreme Court ruled against a man with [multiple scoliosis] who was being blatantly discriminated against due to his ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act] status. But because marijuana is federally illegal, ADA doesn’t apply,” Borst-Censullo added.
Doe hoped more exposure will pressure the President and Congress “to step into the 21st century” because “that is apparently what it will take to allow people access to medicine they need without fear of punishment for simply trying to control nausea or pain.” This isn’t just for him, he said. “This is for anybody and everybody in my situation.” He added, “And there are many of us.”
The post Federal Employee With Stage IV Cancer May Lose Job For Taking Medical Marijuana appeared first on Shadowproof .
| 1real |
EPIC! COMMIE OBAMA PICTURED With Vietnam President In Front Of This! | Wow! What a commie putz! After lifting the arms restrictions on Vietnam, Obama gleefully gets a photo right in front of the bust of Ho Chi Minh. That s some rich symbolism right there! | 1real |
Why the latest Patriot Act reform won’t be enough to rein in the NSA | Recent debates over US government spying have focused on one specific program: the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records — and the Patriot Act provision that supplied the program's legal justification. From that perspective, the partial expiration of the Patriot Act a week ago and the subsequent passage of surveillance reform legislation might seem like a decisive victory against mass surveillance.
But the surveillance debate is actually a lot bigger than the phone records program and the Patriot Act. The NSA has other spying programs with other legal foundations. And the USA Freedom Act, which President Obama signed on Tuesday, doesn't do anything to rein them in.
On Friday, I talked to John Napier Tye, a former State Department official who resigned last year over what he regards as unconstitutional surveillance by the US federal government. He sees the USA Freedom Act as "a small step in the right direction," but he's hoping the next step will be a broader debate about other ways the US government spies on innocent Americans.
Most people have heard about the Patriot Act, which was signed just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, and was reformed this week by the USA Freedom Act. But Tye argues the real action is elsewhere.
"You have to keep in mind that most NSA collection on Americans was not under the Patriot Act. It was under other legal authorities. And none of that surveillance is affected by this new law," he says. "When you think about all the collection that the NSA has been doing on Americans, a small percentage — 5 or 10 percent, maybe less — was under the Patriot Act."
Tye points to two other sources of authority for government spying. One is the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which is the legal basis for a controversial NSA program called PRISM that collects private data from major internet companies like Google and Facebook. The other is Executive Order 12333, a Reagan-era directive that has become the basis for a lot of NSA spying.
Tye says that EO 12333 is "an executive order, it's not a statute. It was never passed by Congress. It was originally issued by President Reagan in 1981 and has been amended several times since then — including by George W. Bush."
A huge amount of our data is collected: Gmails and Yahoo messages, Facebook messages, Apple iMessages
EO 12333 "gives a very broad grant of authority to intelligence agencies to do all kinds of things," Tye says. "There's one section in there that allows the NSA to collect data on US persons as part of a lawful foreign intelligence investigation. That provision is being used to collect a huge amount of Americans' communications and data."
When the government collects information overseas, it isn't bound by most US surveillance laws. The NSA has reserved the right to "incidentally" collect Americans' private communications overseas so long as Americans are not the target of a particular surveillance effort. But Tye argues that this is a huge loophole in practice.
"I don't think most Americans understand that almost all of their internet and phone data is either stored on backup servers overseas or transits outside of our borders," he says. "A huge amount of our data is collected under this authority outside the borders of the US — Gmails and Yahoo messages, Facebook messages, Apple iMessages, Twitter, every service you can think of."
Tye says he has firsthand knowledge of the extent of NSA spying programs. That's because he was an official in the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in 2013 when Edward Snowden's revelations became public.
"My jobs was internet freedom, promoting free and open internet around the world," Tye says. "When the Snowden leaks happened in June of 2013, I was not surprised. I knew that a lot of stuff had been happening. I knew that a lot of surveillance was going on that no one knew about. And it didn't surprise me that this was finally front-page news."
Congress should take a more active role in overseeing executive branch activity
Tye says that after the Snowden leaks, "part of my job was to help develop responses to initiatives within the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly by Germany, Brazil, and other countries that were very concerned with online privacy. To be able to properly negotiate those efforts, I was briefed on the scope of US intelligence practices. In two different classified briefings, one in the fall of 2013 and one in the first part of 2014, I learned about activities under 12333."
Tye believed these programs were unconstitutional and began filing complaints inside the government about them. He met with the intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate and filed complaints with the inspectors general of both the State Department and the National Security Agency. He says none of them were very interested in the issue.
So last summer, Tye quit his job and went public with his concerns in an op-ed for the Washington Post. He says he ran the op-ed through government censors to make sure it didn't disclose any classified information. Tye has spent the last year at the public interest group Avaaz and is now starting his own law firm that will focus on civil rights and human rights issues.
Tye would like President Obama to unilaterally revise Executive Order 12333 to better protect the privacy of Americans. If Obama doesn't, Tye would like Congress to hold hearings on the issue. "I think that Congress should take a more active role in overseeing executive branch activity under 12333," Tye says. "Congress should hold hearings and find out what protections really exist for Americans and how much our data is being collected."
He also favors reforms to the FISA Amendments Act, which was passed by Congress in 2008. Whereas some provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire this year — and have now been renewed until 2019 — the FISA Amendments Act is permanent. The most controversial part of the FISA Amendments Act is Section 702, which allows warrantless surveillance to collect Americans' communications so long as the target is a foreigner located overseas.
"Under Section 702, the NSA is collecting a lot of stuff inside the United States that's nominally targeting foreigners but in fact is scooping up innocent communications from hundreds of millions of Americans," Tye says. Even worse, "the FBI has access to that database and can search it for domestic criminal reasons. So the purpose of the law nominally was to allow the NSA to conduct foreign intelligence investigations. But as it's currently being used, the FBI is using this data for domestic criminal investigations. The protections that we normally want in place for domestic criminal investigations are not necessarily there." | 0fake |
Nusra Front Launches New Offensive Around Syria’s Aleppo | Offensive Aims to Reopen Supply Lines to Nusra-Held East by Jason Ditz, October 28, 2016 Share This
With al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front losing territory in recent weeks around Aleppo, and seeing their main stronghold in the city’s east increasingly surrounded, the group and some of its allies have launched a new offensive south of the city aimed at opening the supply lines back up.
Clashes have been reported throughout the day in several areas around government-held western Aleppo , with the attackers coming from further west, likely reinforcements from Nusra’s main territory, the Idlib Province. Locals described substantial fighting.
This has been a recurring feature in the battle over Aleppo since 2012, but particularly over the past several months, with each side getting a sizeable advantage only to lose it to a sudden counterattack from the other, leaving the civilian population trapped within.
Over the past few weeks, however, it had seemed like Aleppo was really going to be reunified by the military, with Nusra forces on their heels and Russia feeling confident enough to put their airstrikes on hold. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the ceasefire to continue, despite calls from the military to resume attacks.
Exactly how far the latest offensive has gotten is a major of debate, with Nusra claiming they’d captured a suburb that amounts to the whole southwestern corner of Aleppo, and government officials denying that they’d lost anywhere near so much. As usual, it will take some time for this to shake out and become clear what territory changed hands. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1real |
Typhoon leaves flooding, four dead in Japan before moving out to sea | TOKYO (Reuters) - A rapidly weakening typhoon Lan made landfall in Japan on Monday, setting off landslides and flooding that prompted evacuation orders for tens of thousands of people, but then headed out to sea after largely sparing the capital, Tokyo. Four people were reported killed, hundreds of plane flights canceled, and train services disrupted in the wake of Lan, which had maintained intense strength until virtually the time it made landfall west of Tokyo in the early hours of Monday. At least four people were killed, including a man who was hit by falling scaffolding, a fisherman tending to his boat, and a young woman whose car had been washed away by floodwaters. Another casualty was left comatose by injuries and a man was missing, NHK public television said. Around 130 others suffered minor injuries. Rivers burst their banks in several parts of Japan and fishing boats were tossed up on land. A container ship was stranded after being swept onto a harbor wall but all 19 crew members escaped injury. Some 80,000 people in Koriyama, a city 200 km (124 miles) north of Tokyo, were ordered to evacuate as a river neared the top of its banks, NHK said, but by afternoon water levels were starting to fall. Several hundred houses in western Japan were flooded. My grandchild lives over there. The house is fine, but the area is flooded, and they can t get out, one man told NHK. Lan had weakened to a category 2 storm when it made landfall early on Monday, sideswiping Tokyo, after powering north for days as an intense category 4 storm, according to the Tropical Storm Risk monitoring site. Lan is the Marshall islands word for storm . By Monday afternoon the storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression and it was in the Pacific, east of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. Around 350 flights were canceled and train services disrupted over a wide area of Japan, although most commuter trains were running smoothly in Tokyo. Toyota Motor Corp canceled the first shift at all of its assembly plants but said it would operate the second shift as normal. | 0fake |
U.S. will have to work with others to deny North Korea fuel supplies: Tillerson | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will have to work with other countries to deny North Korea access to basics like oil and will have to consider whether to impose secondary sanctions on those doing business with North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday. “We are going to have to move to work with others to begin to deny North Korea basic needs like crude oil supplies, petroleum fuel supplies, things that are ... easier ... to monitor, whether we are getting cooperation from people or not,” Tillerson told a congressional hearing. | 0fake |
Gruesome Video Shows Turkish Soldiers Execute Female Kurdish PKK Fighters by Shooting in Their Heads | Gruesome Video Shows Turkish Soldiers Execute Female Kurdish PKK Fighters by Shooting in Their Heads 2 Shares 1
Amateur footage emerged on Saturday showing what appears to be Turkish soldiers executing two female PKK insurgents at point-blank range.
Al-Masdar News that released the footage says they are not able to independently verify it.
A ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK ended last year and clashes have since claimed hundreds of lives on both sides.
The PKK operates primarily in the mountanious terrain of southeastern Turkey and often uploads footage of its Kurdish fighters ambushing Turkish government troops. MORE... Erdogan vows heavy price for coup plotters
The tension between Kurdish fighters and Turkish government have always been high in past years. In yet one of the most recent cases, a Turkish court banned the co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition from traveling abroad as part of a court case in which she has been accused of being a member of an armed terrorist group, Hurriyet daily reported on Saturday, Reuters reported.
Figen Yuksekdag, co-chair of Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), is facing jail time up to 15 years over comments she made last year in the southeastern border town of Suruc. The prosecutor of the case requested the ban.
HDP described the court's decision to bar Yuksekdag from foreign travel as 'political and arbitrary', saying in a statement that it will make a formal appeal for its overturn.
The move comes days after the co-mayors of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the southeast, were detained as part of a security crackdown. Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast has been rocked by violence following the collapse of a ceasefire between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) last year.
President Tayyip Erdogan has accused the HDP of being a political extension of the outlawed PKK and repeatedly called for the prosecution of its members. He has also said the removal of elected officials and civil servants accused of links to the PKK was a vital part of the battle against it.
Several other HDP lawmakers including co-chair Selahattin Demirtas are also being prosecuted, largely over terrorism charges, after the parliament earlier this year lifted the immunity of HDP deputies, along with the immunity of MPs from other parties.
Meanwhile three Turkish soldiers were killed and five others were wounded by mortar fire from PKK militants near the southeastern town of Cukurca, security sources said.
Soldiers who were on an operation in Cukurca in Hakkari province bordering Iraq and Iraq returned the fire, sources said. Operations were under way to hunt down the militants.
The autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms in 1984, and more than 40,000 people have died in the conflict. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. | 1real |
Regards ‘changés’ et ‘langues déliées’ : Des musulmanes évoquent l’Europe d’aujourd’hui - The New York Times | Les voix des femmes musulmanes ont été quasiment noyées par le débat agité sur l’interdiction de se baigner en burkini sur les plages de plus de 30 municipalités françaises femmes pour qui ces maillots couvrant complètement le corps ont été conçus. Le New York Times a sollicité leurs avis, et les réponses — plus de 1000 messages de Belgique, de France et d’ailleurs — vont bien de la question des tenues de plage. Le résultat brosse le portrait de la vie de la femme musulmane, voilée ou pas, dans les parties d’Europe où le terrorisme a le plus tendu les sociétés. Le mot “combat” a été utilisé des dizaines de fois. Beaucoup de celles qui sont nées en France parlent de confusion quand on les enjoint de rentrer là d’où elles viennent. Les tribunaux ont suspendu plusieurs interdictions suite à une décision du Conseil d’État la semaine dernière — l’interdiction à Nice, où s’est déroulé un horrible attentat terroriste le 14 juillet dernier, a été suspendue ce jeudi — mais le débat est loin d’être terminé. “Depuis des années, nous supportons les regards et les propos menaçants,” écrit Taslima Amar, 30 ans, enseignante en banlieue parisienne. “On m’a demandé de rentrer chez moi (alors que je suis chez moi). ” Désormais, Mme Amar a ajouté, elle espère quitter la France avec son époux. Laurie Abouzeir, 32 ans, écrit qu’elle envisage de se mettre à son compte et de s’occuper d’enfants à son domicile toulousain. Cela lui permettrait de porter le voile, qui est vu d’un mauvais il et parfois même interdit sur certains lieux de travail. Beaucoup de femmes écrivent que les préjugés se sont intensifiés ces derniers mois et années, citant les attaques terroristes de Paris en 2015, ainsi que celles de Bruxelles et de Nice cette année. Halima Djalab Bouguerra, étudiante de 21 ans à évoque une date antérieure, estimant que les choses avaient déjà commencé à changer en 2012, avec les meurtres de Mohammed Merah dans le du pays. “Il y a surtout eu des regards qui ont changé” écrit Mme Bouguerra. “Les langues se sont déliées, plus personne n’a peur de dire à un musulman : “Rentre chez toi. ” Voici quelques extraits des commentaires que nous avons reçus, parfois condensés et modifiés pour plus de clarté, et traduits en français lorsqu’ils nous ont été envoyés en anglais. _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ | 0fake |
Ryan: ’Tomorrow, We’re Proceeding’ on American Health Care Act - Breitbart | While speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill about the American Health Care Act after the GOP’s meeting on the bill on Thursday, Speaker of the House Representative Paul Ryan ( ) stated, “tomorrow, we’re proceeding. ” Ryan said, “We have been promising the American people that we will repeal and replace this broken law [the Affordable Care Act] because it’s collapsing, and it’s failing families, and tomorrow, we’re proceeding. ” After he concluded with his statement, Ryan left, and did not answer a shouted question on whether the bill has enough members who are willing to vote for it to pass. Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0fake |
Comment on Hemp vs Cotton: The Ultimate Showdown by Hemp: Readdressing Cannabis – kuebiko.co | Hemp has been making a lot of noise lately, especially with the growing awareness surrounding the use of hemp oil for treating cancer. Although the word ‘hemp’ still often gets confused and lumped into the same definition as Cannabis, a similar but psychoactive plant, it’s important to realize hemp can be a major game changer for our world if used to its potential. As we go through this post, you will be wondering ‘why don’t we use this stuff all the time.. for everything?!’ Simple answer, farming hemp was banned in the US and other countries in the 1937 because of the threat it caused to certain companies and their businesses. More about that here. Although hemp has many practical uses , let’s focus on one that would affect us every day; clothing. For this, we will compare hemp to cotton, as cotton is a very popular resource used in clothing production. We’ll need to focus on various areas that have to be taken into consideration when comparing the two so we can determine not only what is better for us, but also what is best for our environment as it’s important to view things holistically. Let’s do it. Water Cotton : To grow cotton you require about 1400 gallons of water for every pound you intend to produce. That’s a lot of water! Some areas of the world that produce cotton are running out of fresh water due to the production of cotton as well as clothing. Some areas of the world have even experienced desertification as a result of producing cotton. Hemp : You require about half the amount of water to produce hemp as you would if producing cotton. Hemp is a strong and reliable plant that grows very quickly. Not only that, hemp produces about 200% – 250% more fibre in the same amount of land compared to cotton.
The victor: Hemp Pesticides Cotton : One of the biggest downsides to cotton is how much pesticides are used to grow the plant. Although organic cotton farming is beginning to catch on a bit more, the production of cotton worldwide takes up about 25% of the world’s pesticide use. The other unfortunate factor is that these chemicals can end up being absorbed into our skin as we wear clothing. Hemp : The beauty of hemp is that it requires no pesticides to grow. In fact, it doesn’t require any chemicals at all to grow. The growing nature of the plant competes with weeds and over-powers their ability to sustain themselves. This allows the hemp plant to grow freely and quickly.
The victor: Hemp Comfort & Longevity Cotton : Generally very comfortable to begin with, as you continue to wear cotton it ‘breaks in’ to become even more comfortable. There is no denying how soft cotton can be, but it is also true that cotton fibres break down over time and the more it is washed the faster it breaks down. Hemp : The hemp fibre used in clothing is a strong natural fibre that, like cotton, gets progressively softer with each passing day you wear it and each time you wash it. Although it may not start off quite as soft, it is still soft and certainly would not be considered uncomfortable. The plus is that the fibre is much stronger and durable. Repeated washed will not break the fibre down anywhere near as quickly as cotton. Creating more hemp clothing would mean we would need to produce much less clothing.
The victor: Hemp B reathability & Wicking Cotton : Breathability is certainly a strong suit for cotton. It also does not hold odours for very much. This is quite possibly one of the biggest downsides to synthetic fibres, they don’t dispel odour well and don’t often deal with moisture well either. While cotton has a natural wicking system, it also holds moisture a little longer than what might be considered most desirable. Hemp : Performs very well when it comes to breathability and wicks moisture away from the body effectively. Hemp also carries anti-bacterial properties that trump any other natural fibre. This means hemp will not mold or grow mildew very easily. Since it also does not hold odours, hemp clothing edges out cotton slightly on this one The victor: Almost a tie, but hemp is our pal on this one again Aesthetics Cotton : Without the use of dyes, cotton comes naturally in white, cream and off-white. Cotton can be dyed naturally or synthetically to achieve a desired color. The growing knowledge that cotton is very taxing on the environment and not healthy for our skin is creating quite the demand for organic cotton. In terms of the fashion market, organic cotton is showing up more and more. Hemp : Given the various processes available to remove fibres from the stem of a hemp plant, hemp can be naturally creamy white, black, green, grey or brown. Without even requiring the use of dye, hemp comes in a variety of colors. Of course, you are still able to dye hemp both naturally and synthetically. Hemp is quickly becoming more and more popular in the fashion market as designers see the potential in the material while being a very environmentally sound option. Since it is durable and lasts a long time, it can be attractive to certain designers.
The voctor: Hemp Final Decision Winner by knockout and growing undisputed champion of natural harmony, HEMP! This isn’t to say that cotton, especially grown organically, is not a good material, it simply isn’t better all around than hemp. In some cases, cotton could be a must use if something specific is being produced. The biggest differences are in the facts that hemp requires much less water and no pesticides to produce. Not only that, it boasts a lot more fibre per acre. Concerned about excess CO2 in the atmosphere? Hemp is spectacular at sequestering CO2! Take the time to check out some hemp clothing around the internet or see if there are some local stores who sell it. Although options can sometimes be limited right now, look out for more hemp clothing as awareness continues to spread!
| 1real |
Republicans could lose U.S. House in 2018 over immigration fight: Bannon | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican infighting over the fate of immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children could be so vitriolic that the party loses control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, said in an interview airing on Sunday. Bannon, whose far-right views on immigration, climate and trade helped shape Trump’s presidential campaign and his first months in office, was fired by the Republican president last month in a push to end factional fights within the White House. In an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes,” Bannon predicted Republicans could lose control in the House in the 2018 congressional elections because of a looming battle over what to do about 800,000 immigrants known as “Dreamers.” Trump said last week he would scrap a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that allowed the young immigrants to live and work in America. Bannon supported ending the program, which had been put in place by Democratic former President Barack Obama. Trump gave the Republican-controlled Congress six months to come up with an alternative, saying he would “revisit this issue” if lawmakers could not agree. “I’m worried about losing the House now because of this,” Bannon told CBS. “If this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party,” he said. “And to me, doing that in the springboard of primary season for 2018 is extremely unwise.” Republicans are divided over the Dreamers. Some believe they are illegal immigrants who are taking American jobs, while others say they contribute to the country and deserve compassion. Bannon, who said he left the White House on his own terms, lashed out against “establishment” Republicans who have at times grappled with Trump, a real estate celebrity who had never before held elected office. “The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election,” Bannon said, saying it was an “open secret on Capitol Hill” that many Republicans did not support Trump’s agenda, and singling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan for criticism. “They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented,” Bannon said. He called Republican national security officials who had served in the George W. Bush administration “idiots,” including former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, and former Vice President Dick Cheney. “I hold these people in contempt, total and complete contempt,” Bannon said, blaming them for U.S. trade problems with China and involvement in Iraq. “They’re idiots, and they’ve gotten us in this situation, and they question a good man like Donald Trump,” Bannon said. | 0fake |
The Star Trek Franchise Mobilizes Against Donald Trump For A Brighter Future | Star Trek opposes Donald Trump for obvious reasons.In a lot of ways, Star Trek has predicted the future of Earth and humankind. Technologically, Star Trek has inspired many of the inventions we take for granted today such as cell phones, tablets, and laptop computers. Currently, scientists are working on developing transporters, tractor beams, and other tech found in the Trek universe.But the vision of Star Trek is a Utopian future where war, disease, hate, hunger, and sexism no longer exist and the only thing people work for is to better themselves because money is unnecessary. The nations of Earth are united and so we set out into the wider universe in search of new life and new civilizations to join us.But Donald Trump has no interest in creating a better future designed to help and unite all humans. If elected to the presidency, Trump will slam the brakes on progress and take us back to an era before Star Trek was even an idea. And that is so scary that the casts and crews across the various Star Trek series are uniting against Trump and urging people to vote for Hillary Clinton if we want to continue the path toward a brighter and more hopeful future. Star Trek has always offered a positive vision of the future, a vision of hope and optimism, and most importantly, a vision of inclusion, where people of all races are accorded equal respect and dignity, where individual beliefs and lifestyles are respected so long as they pose no threat to others, the group Trek Against Trump wrote on Facebook.We cannot turn our backs on what is happening in the upcoming election. Never has there been a presidential candidate who stands in such complete opposition to the ideals of the Star Trek universe as Donald Trump. His election would take this country backward, perhaps disastrously. We need to elect a president who will move this country forward into the kind of future we all dream of: where personal differences are understood and accepted, where science overrules superstition, where people work together instead of against each other.The resolution of conflicts on Star Trek was never easy. Don t remain aloof vote! We have heard people say they will vote Green or Libertarian or not at all because the two major candidates are equally flawed. That is both illogical and inaccurate. Either Secretary Clinton or Mr. Trump will occupy the White House. One is an amateur with a contemptuous ignorance of national laws and international realities, while the other has devoted her life to public service, and has deep and valuable experience with the proven ability to work with Congress to pass desperately needed legislation. If, as some say, the government is broken, a protest vote will not fix it. Do this not merely for yourself but for all the generations that follow, the post concludes. Vote for a future of enlightenment and inclusion, a future that will someday lead us to the stars. Those who signed the statement include George Takei, Walter Koenig, and the families of Leonard Nimoy and Jimmy Doohan of the original series, Jonathan Frakes, Wil Wheaton, and Brent Spiner of The Next Generation, Kate Mulgrew, Robert Picardo, and Tim Russ of Voyager, Scott Bakula, Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer of Enterprise, Ren Auberjonois and Armin Shimmerman of Deep Space Nine, and Chris Pine Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana from the new Star Trek film series. Along with many other Trek actors, the signatories also include writers, directors, and the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.Here s the full post via Facebook:Star Trek is the idea of the future we all want to believe can be reality one day. But letting Trump become president would be a major setback for that dream. We need a president who will boldly take America into the future, not a coward who fears it.Featured image via Wikimedia | 1real |
Obama says he does not think FBI's Comey is trying to influence election | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday that he does not believe FBI Director James Comey was trying to influence the presidential election when he decided the agency would examine newly discovered emails in its probe of Hillary Clinton’s private server. “Now I’ve said before and I’ll say again, Jim Comey is a good man,” Obama said in an interview on MSNBC. “And I do not believe that he is in any way trying to influence the election one way or another. I think he is a serious public servant who wants to do the right thing,” Obama said. | 0fake |
Obama again delays Afghanistan troop drawdown | Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama announced Thursday that U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan at their current levels throughout much of 2016, yet another delay in their scheduled withdrawal and an acknowledgment that America's longest war won't be concluded on his watch.
Obama campaigned as the president who would end two wars, and Thursday's decision was a major political reversal that jeopardizes a cornerstone of his legacy. Taliban gains in Afghanistan and appeals from Kabul for ongoing U.S. assistance contributed to postponing the troop withdrawal and underscored Obama's continuing difficulty in fulfilling his intention to remove all American forces by the time he leaves office.
On Thursday, however, he told reporters at the White House that he wasn't disappointed at having to make the announcement that plans for the withdrawal had been put on hold. Instead, he said, his job was to make necessary adjustments given events on the ground.
He also stressed that the formal combat mission there has ended, and that he is a president who does "not support the idea of endless war." He ended the Iraq war and removed American troops there in 2011.
The plan announced Thursday keeps 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan before an anticipated drawdown to around 5,500 by the time Obama leaves office. The troop's mission will remain the same, Obama emphasized -- to train and support Afghan security forces and carry out counterterrorism operations.
Obama began his announcement by highlighting U.S. gains in Afghanistan and noted that the Afghan government and its security forces are now "fully responsible for securing their country." But he also said that the U.S. still needs to bolster those forces to maintain the progress achieved and because "it's the right thing to do."
"While America's combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and and its people endures," Obama said from the Roosevelt Room. "As commander in chief, I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again."
Obama stressed that the decision to maintain 9,800 troops in Afghanistan until late 2016 came after months of discussions with Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani, and the nation's chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah -- a nod to the fact that the U.S. is maintaining a presence in the country with the support of its leaders, unlike in Iraq, where the Obama administration could not reach an agreement with the Iraqi government on leaving a residual military force.
"The decision to maintain the current level of the United States' forces in Afghanistan once again shows renewal of the partnership and strengthening of relations of the United States with Afghanistan on the basis of common interests and risks," he said.
NATO also welcomed the move, saying in a statement that it "paves the way for a sustained presence" in Afghanistan for the organization and its allies.
Obama also noted that he had consulted with U.S. military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan as well as his entire national security team before deciding to maintain the current troop level.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest later told reporters that Obama chose to go with the Pentagon's greatest suggested number of troops.
"The highest recommendation that came into the President was the level that the President announced today," he said.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a news conference Thursday that while the fight in Afghanistan "remains a difficult fight," the adjusted force numbers will ensure that the U.S. can carry out its mission and help Afghans confront the continued challenge posed by the Taliban.
"Today's decision from the president to adjust our troop presence in Afghanistan honors that sacrifice (of U.S. troops) and gives us a chance to finish what we started," Carter said at the Pentagon.
The decision comes on the heels of recent Taliban gains in Afghanistan, notably the militant group's takeover of Kunduz, the first major city to fall to Taliban hands since 2001. Two weeks later, the Taliban pulled out of the city -- but the incident sent ripples through Afghanistan and shook Washington.
Obama noted as much when he said that while Afghan forces are "taking the lead" and fighting "bravely and tenaciously," those forces "are still not as strong as they need to be."
The U.S. plan is to now maintain 5,500 U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan after a drawdown set to take place in late 2016 or early 2017, more than five times the number of troops previously set to remain in the country at the start of 2017. Only about 1,000 troops had previously been set to remain in Afghanistan at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Obama said the 5,500 troops post-drawdown would be based at the U.S. embassy and at military bases in Baghram, Jalalabad and Kandahar.
Carter said the Pentagon viewed that figure as "enough" to sustain the U.S. mission and accomplish the two-pronged goal of assisting the Afghan security forces and carrying out counterterror missions.
Though the decision clearly was a break from the game plan he had laid out and pitched to the American public, on Thursday he downplayed any suggestion that the delay in the withdrawal was a major setback.
Obama said the decision was not "disappointing" and said his mission has consistently been to "assess the situation on the ground" and make adjustments as necessary.
"This is not the first time those adjustments have been made," Obama said. "This won't probably be the last."
While Obama highlighted the sacrifices of the Afghan people and American forces who have circulated in and out of the war-torn country for more than 14 years of U.S. operations, Obama stressed that casualties are down overall and that U.S. troops will not be heading back into combat.
"The nature of the mission has not changed and the cessation of our combat role has not changed," Obama said.
Still, speaking to the American service members who will need to deploy to Afghanistan, he said: "I do not send you into harm's way lightly."
This is the second draw-down delay announced by Obama this year. In March, Obama said he planned to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan 5,500 U.S. military personnel by the end of this year, and then to an "embassy-only" presence by the end of 2016.
"The timeline for a withdrawal down to a embassy center presence, a normalization of our presence in Afghanistan, remains the end of 2016," Obama said in a joint press conference with Ghani last March.
Administration officials stressed U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan would continue to serve under two missions -- to root out remnants of al Qaeda as well as train and equip Afghan security forces. U.S. forces could also conduct counterterrorism operations against elements of ISIS in Afghanistan, should the group present a threat to the U.S. homeland, senior administration officials added.
The original White House goal was to hand over the counterterrorism side of the U.S. mission to Afghan security forces this year.
"It's in our interest to build up the Afghan security forces," said a senior administration official.
The estimated annual cost of maintaining current U.S. force levels in Afghanistan is $14.6 billion, a separate senior administration official said.
Obama had previously vowed to conclude the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan before he leaving office.
"We will bring America's longest war to a responsible end," Obama said at a Rose Garden ceremony in May 2014.
Retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst and former intelligence officer, said Obama's decision is simply "kicking this can down the road" for the next president. Obama will be out of office by the time troops are set to be drawn down again.
"This is this administration pushing this off to the next administration because the next time they have to make this decision, it will be a different president in the White House," Francona said.
Republicans who have been seeking higher U.S. troop commitments gave a lukewarm response to Obama's announcement Thursday.
"While this new plan avoids a disaster, it is certainly not a plan for success," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry said in a statement. "Given the troubling conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and the other security problems in the region, keeping 9,800 troops there through at least 2016 is necessary to our security interests." | 0fake |
Republicans take knife to post-crisis Wall Street reforms | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, a move that is expected to die in the Senate but open the door to revamping or eliminating regulations that came out of the 2007-09 financial crisis. House passage of the CHOICE Act is the farthest Republicans have gotten so far in undoing regulations they say hurt small banks and make the government responsible for bailing out big financial institutions should they fail. Republican President Donald Trump is pushing for deregulation across the federal government. Next week the Treasury Department is expected to release the first in a series of reports on lightening financial rules and re-interpreting Dodd-Frank provisions. Lawmakers in the near future could also approve smaller bits of legislation to undo specific measures in Dodd-Frank, one of the biggest achievements of former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Earlier on Thursday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, a Republican, said he would hold several hearings in coming months with the goal of “ultimately passing a meaningful and bipartisan reform package.” On a day when the national spotlight was on the Senate testimony of former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, the fight over repealing Dodd-Frank consumed the House. The bill was approved along party lines by a vote of 233-to-186 after four hours of often-loud debate. The most powerful Democrat in the chamber, California’s Nancy Pelosi, described the legislation as “dastardly.” The argument even spilled over to a House committee hearing on the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. There, Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro demanded that acting CFTC chair J. Christopher Giancarlo, a Republican, provide three examples in writing to prove his statement that overregulation was hurting the economy. Authored by Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Republican, the CHOICE Act allows banks to choose between complying with Dodd-Frank or holding onto more capital. While the act was meant to address bankers’ concerns, many in the banking sector do not support it because they consider the required capital level too high. Also, the American Bankers Association expressed disappointment that the bill had retained Dodd-Frank limits on debit card fees. The act restructures the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created to guard against fraud in lending. It eliminates the Volcker rule that limits trading activities by banks. Also, the government would no longer be able to designate non-bank institutions as “systemically important,” which triggers increased oversight. The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan evaluator of legislation, estimates the bill would save the federal government $24 billion over a decade, mostly by lifting the government’s authority to step in and unwind failing institutions. Republicans described the act as a jobs-creator, saying Dodd-Frank’s numerous requirements made it impossible for community banks to lend to small businesses. They said changing the independent CFPB would make the agency more accountable to lawmakers. Democrats said the legislation would bring about another economic catastrophe by eliminating vital checks on the financial system. They said the CFPB changes, including eliminating its complaints database, would make it easier for firms to take advantage of consumers along the lines of the housing crisis, where millions were trapped in mortgages they could not afford. The Senate is not expected to take up the bill in its entirety, even though it has Trump’s backing. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democrat, initially conceived of the CFPB and was Obama’s first choice to lead it. She is expected to rally opposition in the form of a filibuster against changes to the agency. Still, Crapo lauded the bill’s passage in the House as a “significant and thoughtful effort,” a sign he may include some of its provisions in a future bill. “The CHOICE Act makes a positive move away from government micromanagement, and returns to basic principles of safety and soundness and market-driven principles,” he said in a statement. | 0fake |
Ryan Lochte, ’12 Olympic Champion, Misses Rio Cut in 400 I.M. - The New York Times | OMAHA — Ryan Lochte was off to a rough start at the United States Olympic trials even before he climbed on the blocks Sunday night for the second step in his defense of his Olympic gold medal in the individual medley. The nonstop American Airlines flight that Lochte and his SwimMAC teammates had taken from North Carolina had encountered problems. The plane flew below 10, 000 feet for several minutes before the pilots made an emergency landing in Kansas City, Mo. Instead of arriving here Thursday at 3 p. m. Lochte and his teammates pulled into their downtown hotel in two vans around midnight. It made for a long traveling day but provided perfect preparation for the inconveniences that the swimmers are likely to encounter if they qualify for the Games in Rio de Janeiro. Lochte, 31, a Olympian and medalist who had the world’s time last year in the individual medley, had not planned to defend his 400 I. M. title. He figured his winning effort at the London Games of 4 minutes 5. 18 seconds, the time in history, was a fitting finale. Like shoveling snow, the 400 I. M. is a physically taxing activity best left to the youth. The proof was in the composition of the field Sunday at CenturyLink Center. The 94 men averaged 19. 5 years old. The youngest was Carson Foster, who finished 43rd in the heats. The oldest, by two years, was Lochte, who qualified second in the first step of his title defense. He finished of a second behind the preliminaries pacesetter, Chase Kalisz, whom Lochte afterward described as “a young buck. ” Kalisz, 22, has trained for the past several years, most recently at Arizona State, with Michael Phelps, the only swimmer to have finished faster than Lochte in the event. Lochte channeled Phelps in the first half of the final, taking the butterfly out fast and extending his lead on the backstroke leg. But Kalisz made his move on the third leg, bettering Lochte by more than four seconds in the breaststroke, and won going away in 4:09. 54. Jay Litherland, 20, from Georgia, passed a fading Lochte on the freestyle leg to secure the second and final Olympic berth with a personal best of 4:11. 02. Lochte was third in 4:12. 02. “We’re going to have our two best guys in that event in the Olympics representing the U. S. A. ,” said Lochte, who revealed that he had pulled his groin muscle on the breaststroke leg of his morning race. He said the injury had forced him to start hard in the final with the hope he could build an unbeatable lead by the time he got to the breaststroke leg, where the injury rendered his kick ineffectual. Lochte never considered skipping the final, he said. At his age, he was perhaps tempting fate in swimming the race at all. “I’m sure someone in their 30s could do it if they could get the motivation to do the training, but that’s tough,” said Kalisz’s coach, Bob Bowman. He added, “There’s only so long you can sustain that kind of work. ” Kalisz’s time was the second best in the world this year, behind Kosuke Hagino’s 4:08. 85. Hagino and a fellow Japanese swimmer, Daiya Seto, who has clocked a 4:10. 53, had pushed Lochte to enter the event. David Marsh, who coaches Lochte at SwimMAC in Charlotte, N. C. appealed to Lochte’s patriotism, telling him that if he was the best swimmer to have on the blocks for the United States, then he ought to swim. Generation Next had other ideas, and when its leader, Kalisz, climbed out of the water, Phelps was on the deck to hug him — twice. “He told me he was proud of me, and it was a very emotional moment,” Kalisz said. “Michael has been like an older brother to me that I never had, and he’s been the one guy that I have looked up to my entire life. ” Phelps, who turns 31 this week, had qualified to compete in the 400 I. M. at the Olympics three times, doing so in 2012 despite a training regimen that was less than diligent. He finished fourth at the London Games with a time more than five seconds slower than his winning effort of 2008. When Lochte mentioned to him this year that he was thinking about taking the 400 I. M. out of mothballs and adding it to his trials program, Phelps was blunt, he said. “I just said to him, ‘If you’re going to swim it, you better train because you can’t do it without it trust me,’” Phelps said Saturday. He added, “There’s no way to hide in that race. ” Phelps’s words proved prophetic. “I did everything I could in that race,” Lochte said. “It just wasn’t enough. Just got to forget about it. ” How will his injury affect his performance the rest of the week? “I don’t know,” Lochte said. “I’m just going to have to keep working on it, and hopefully it gets better. ” | 0fake |
Hillary’s Latest Ad Pushes Muslim Agenda Of Submission To Men | So the irony isn t lost on me when I saw the still shot of Hillary wearing the Muslim symbol of submission to men in her new ad. This woman wants to be seen as strong and knowledgeable on foreign policy but obviously doesn t understand the message she s sending out. Does Hillary Clinton not know what wearing a hijab means or is she just that stupid to throw one on for votes? It s like when she puts on the phony Southern accent when she s in South Carolina. Pandering to the Muslims and those that think it s just so great that she s so diverse tells us all we need to know about this hag. She d do anything to get elected even wear a symbol of oppression how ironic! Daniel Greenfield gives us the lowdown on the symbolism of wearing a hijab:Hillary s latest campaign video tries to build up her non-existent foreign policy experience. That means making as much as possible out of her feminist speech in China which avoided criticizing a Communist regime that forces women to have abortions. (Or as her Planned Parenthood pals call it, health care outreach.) And showing her travel photo slideshow.It s basically like those travel videos friends force you to watch except this is a really expensive commercial and no one can force you to watch it.But in odd contrast to touting Hillary s feminism and strength, is this shot of her wearing a Hijab; an Islamic garment of submission.Not only has the Hijab consistently been a source of Muslim violence against women, both in punishing women who don t wear it and punishing women who take it off, but its origins lie in an Islamic commandment distinguishing Muslim women, who couldn t be raped, from non-Muslim slave women captured by Mohammed s rampaging gang.It s really quite explicit.The Koranic verse that mandates covering states, O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks all over their bodies that they may thus be distinguished and not molested (Koran 33:59)That s not modesty. The covering is being worn to avoid rape.The key words here are distinguished and not molested . Whom are these women being distinguished from? Women who don t cover up and can be molested.Hillary s cloak is incomplete by Saudi or Taliban standards, but all these coverings are meant to be a symbolic form of Purdah, the physical confinement of a woman, even within her home.In her commercial, Hillary Clinton, by wearing the Hijab, is advertising that she is the property of a man and therefore not to be molested . Of course since Islamic law doesn t recognize the marriages of non-Muslim peoples it is at war with, enabling Jihadis to sexually assault even married non-Muslim women, as the Islamic prophet Mohammed allowed his Muslim followers to do, it s also a meaningless gesture.Is it really a feminist gesture to voluntarily accept the Islamic distinction between women who can be assaulted and women who can t?Either way it s certainly a step back for a female politician who wants to be seen as a leader and a fighter for women.Via: Front Page Magazine | 1real |
THE TRUTH ABOUT Why SORE LOSER Obama Is Using “Russian Hackers” Story [VIDEO] | Make no mistake: it s payback time. In ordering up a deep dive into possible Russian interference in the election of Donald Trump, sore loser Barack Obama wants to delegitimize the real estate magnate s win. His motive? Punishing Trump for the years the mogul spent publicly questioning whether Obama was an American citizen, which cast doubts on the legitimacy of his presidency. Ah, how sweet the revenge. And how pitiful.Never mind the ACTUAL exchange that was caught on a hot mic between Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, where Obama promised to have more flexibility to deal with missile defense issues after the 2012 presidential election.President Obama has searched high and, increasingly, low, for the reasons he and Hillary Clinton lost the election. He has blamed Fox News, insufficient grass-roots campaigning by Hillary, fake news , and now has singled out Russian meddling for the loss of 194 of 207 counties that voted for him in either 2008 or 2012.The suggestion is that Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win; the liberal media has hinted darkly that the president-elect and his campaign team have ties to the Russian head of state.As most Americans review Trump s defense and security picks, the notion that the new administration will go easy on our adversaries including Russia is laughable. Retired General James Mattis, whom Trump has nominated to head Defense, has described Russia s annexation of Crimea as a severe threat, one underestimated by the Obama White House. Mattis is not to be trifled with.On Sunday, Ambassador John Bolton claimed that hacks during the election season could have been a false flag operation possibly committed by the Obama administration itself.In an interview with Fox News Eric Shawn, Bolton questioned why FBI Director James Comey said during the investigation of Hillary Clinton s private server, there was no direct evidence found of foreign intelligence service penetration, but cyber fingerprints were found in regards to the presidential election.The media has ignored the reality that Moscow s possible hacking of DNC and Podesta s emails were retaliation for Hillary Clinton s assertions that Russian elections in 2011 were rigged an accusation that infuriated Putin. When protests erupted in Russia over the election outcome, Putin blamed Clinton. She said they were dishonest and unfair, Putin said at the time. He accused then Secretary of State Clinton for giving a signal to demonstrators organized with the support of the U.S. State Department We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs, Putin said. Does this sound familiar? Turnabout is fair play, and Putin has made it clear that if we mess with his elections, he will mess with ours.Obama knows this. Politico reported in a July piece entitled Why Putin Hates Hillary that the Russian leader s anger about Clinton s interference was communicated directly to President Barack Obama. Former administration officials involved with Russian policy say the Kremlin saw Clinton as taking a harder line against Russia reset notwithstanding than others in the White House. And they say Putin sees Clinton as a forceful proponent of regime change policies that the Russian leader considers a grave threat to his own survival. That is why the Russians may have tried to undermine Hillary Clinton, not because they see Trump as an ally. Like most of the world, Moscow no doubt expected Clinton to win. Coming into office weakened by Putin s meddling would have undoubtedly pleased Moscow no end.Obama s call for an investigation is transparently bogus. First, the CIA offers up only scant circumstantial evidence evidence that even the New York Times admits does not support firm judgements to make the charge that Russia worked to favor Trump. The FBI isn t even on board with the conclusion.Second, everyone knows that no serious inquiry could possibly be completed by January 20, when Trump will be sworn in. The federal government operates with glacial pacing; Obama knows the report will likely never be completed, and so the issue of Russian hacking will hang like a cloud like the birther rumors over the Trump White House.While muttering about how the need for transparency might inspire the investigation into the hacking, the Times et al ignore the reality: the emails released via WikiLeaks that outed cheating by the DNC in favor of Hillary Clinton, or showed how disrespectful her camp was of Catholics and average Americans, actually increased the transparency of the election. The United States should not tolerate cyberattacks from a foreign government; nor should we tolerate cheating in our politics.Obama is still smarting from having put himself on the line during the campaign, telling the Black Congressional Caucus, for instance, I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. He made Hillary s campaign all about him, but she lost anyway. That has to sting. Especially since Americans, in choosing Trump, also chose to undo most of Obama s most precious accomplishments. For entire story: FOX News | 1real |
VIDEO: Student Knocks Out Classmate Who Viciously Assaulted Teacher | Protester Pies Ex-NBA Mayor… Not So Funny When Mayor Brutally Evens the Score
That’s when the kid in the red hoodie hit her right in the face.
The teacher, stunned, stepped back and eventually left the room. Thankfully, though, another kid leaped in and taught the red hoodie punk a lesson. The third student took Mr. Red Hoodie to the ground in one of those “only two hits, me hitting you and you hitting the floor” kind of fights.
“Watch the f*** out, you just hit the f***ing teacher!” the third student said. “Chill your s***, you just hit the f***ing teacher, you don’t f***ing do that. Who the f*** do you think you are?” Advertisement - story continues below
Here’s the video of the sick encounter ( WARNING: There is a lot of bad language involved. Obviously not safe for work, and viewer discretion is advised ):
It may have been brutal, but the red-hoodied punk had it coming to him. After all, what kind of sick country are we in when it’s considered OK to beat up your teacher ?
However, at least one student had some sense — and managed to knock it into the punk, quite literally. Advertisement - story continues below | 1real |
White People Have Gone Absolutely CRAZY In SNL’s ‘The Day Beyoncé Turned Black’ (VIDEO) | After Beyonc came out with her new single Formation, which instantly became another hit for the artist, there was a lot of buzz surrounding the content of the lyrics. The song speaks truth to power and depicts the ongoing conflict that far too many people of color face in regards to police brutality. The song, however, doesn t have the usual music behind it that many of her past hits have had. So, if people aren t being critical of the content of the song, they re being critical of the composition and beat. Well, not all people, pretty much just white people. White people who would prefer Beyonc stick to pure pop and dance.To top it off, after Beyonc stole the show at the Super Bowl halftime performance, even more people became critical of the legendary singer. She was far too black for the folks over at Fox News, and seemingly many other places as well. After all, how dare she speak the truth and hurt the feelings of those who are too afraid to hear it?Saturday Night Live, noticing the ridiculousness of everyone criticizing Beyonc for her new song, perfectly satirized the outrage and confusion coming from far too many white people. In a sketch titled The Day Beyonc Turned Black, they show white people everywhere freaking the f*ck out and losing their damn minds after listening to her new song. It s as though they just found out, that after all these years of Beyonc releasing hit after hit that white people adore, all of a sudden she releases a song that shows her as a powerful black woman speaking truth to power, and no one knows what to do with themselves. Heaven forbid people of color have their own voice and not just be forced to cater to white people all the time, right?Anyway, this is absolutely brilliant.Featured image: Screencap | 1real |
BREAKING: OBAMA JUST RELEASED GITMO Prisoner Who Said He Would “Kill Americans” If He Was Released [VIDEO] | // <![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]>Gitmo detainee, who said he would kill Americans if he was released, has just been freed Posted by Fox & Friends on Tuesday, 12 January 2016Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) eviscerates Obama and his regime for the release of this terrorist: | 1real |
Factbox: Why the Zika virus is causing alarm | Global health officials are racing to better understand the Zika virus behind a major outbreak that began in Brazil last year and has spread to many countries in the Americas. The following are some questions and answers about the virus and current outbreak: How do people become infected? Zika is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female mosquitoes, primarily the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the same type that spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Aedes mosquitoes are found in all countries in the Americas except Canada and continental Chile, and the virus will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found. How do you treat Zika? There is no treatment or vaccine for Zika infection. Companies and scientists are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for Zika, but the World Health Organization (WHO) had said early in 2016 that it would take at least 18 months to start large-scale clinical trials of potential preventative shots. A vaccine is not expected to be ready for widespread use for at least two or three years. U.S. government researchers said they started their first clinical trial of a Zika vaccine. How dangerous is it? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that infection with the Zika virus in pregnant women is a cause of the birth defect microcephaly and other severe brain abnormalities in babies. The CDC said now that the causal relationship has been established, several important questions must still be answered with studies that could take years. According to the World Health Organization, there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can cause the birth defect microcephaly in babies, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems. In addition, the agency said it could cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that can result in paralysis. Conclusive proof of the damage caused by Zika may take months or years. Brazil reports the number of confirmed cases of microcephaly at more than 1,700 as doctors and Brazilian health officials find that some suspected cases of microcephaly are not the disorder. Suspected ones under investigation had declined to 3,257. Brazil registered 91,387 likely cases of the Zika virus from February until April 2. Current research in Brazil indicates the greatest microcephaly risk is associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy, but health officials have warned an impact could be seen in later weeks. Recent studies have shown evidence of Zika in amniotic fluid, placenta and fetal brain tissue. What are the symptoms of Zika infection? People infected with Zika may have a mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain and fatigue that can last for two to seven days. But as many as 80 percent of people infected never develop symptoms. The symptoms are similar to those of dengue or chikungunya, which are transmitted by the same type of mosquito. How can Zika be contained? Efforts to control the spread of the virus focus on eliminating mosquito breeding sites and taking precautions against mosquito bites such as using insect repellent and mosquito nets. U.S. and international health officials have advised pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin American and Caribbean countries where they may be exposed to Zika. How widespread is the outbreak? Active Zika outbreaks have been reported in at least 54 countries or territories, most of them in the Americas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Brazil has been the country most affected. (1.usa.gov/1ovAJyh) Africa (1): Cape Verde Americas (45): Anguilla, Antigua, Argentina, Aruba, Barbados, Barbuda, Belize, Bolivia, Bonaire, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saba, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelmy, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Eustatius, St. Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Cacos, U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela. Oceania/Pacific Islands (8): American Samoa, Fiji, Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga. What is the history of the Zika virus? The Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations. Outbreaks of Zika have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and the Western Pacific. The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys and was first identified in people in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania, according to the WHO. Can Zika be transmitted through sexual contact? The World Health Organization (WHO) said sexual transmission is “relatively common” and has advised pregnant women not to travel to areas with ongoing outbreaks of Zika virus. It also advised women living in areas where the virus is being transmitted to delay getting pregnant. The U.S. CDC is investigating about a dozen cases of possible sexual transmission. Those cases involved possible transmission of the virus from men to their sex partners. But the CDC issued updated recommendations for preventing and testing for Zika infection on July 25, warning that the virus can be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected female partner. A reported case of female-to-male sexual transmission in New York City, and limited human and non-human primate data indicating that Zika virus RNA can be detected in vaginal secretions, led to the new warning, the agency said. CDC’s expanded warnings on sexual exposure to Zika now caution against sex without a condom or other barrier method of protection with any person, male or female, who has traveled to or lives in an area with Zika, including female to female transmission with a pregnant partner. British health officials reported Zika was found in a man’s semen two months after he was infected, suggesting the virus may linger in semen long after infection symptoms fade. The PAHO said Zika can be transmitted through blood, but this is an infrequent transmission mechanism. There is no evidence Zika can be transmitted to babies through breast milk. The WHO has identified Zika cases in Argentina, Chile, France, Italy and New Zealand as likely caused by sexual transmission. What other complications are associated with Zika? Zika has also been associated with other neurological disorders, including serious brain and spinal cord infections. The long-term health consequences of Zika infection are unclear. Other uncertainties surround the incubation period of the virus and how Zika interacts with other viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes, such as dengue. | 0fake |
This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For | Waking Times
The months long Dakota Access Keystone XL pipleine protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation by Native Americans and those sympathetic to protection of our water supply has been met with heavy-handed and brutal clamp down by police and national guard. Militarized goons in battle dress have stormed protector camps with LRAD sonic weapons, attack dogs , tear gas, tazers , and even live ammunition ( killing horses ), while politicians and mainstream media do their best to ignore this growing atrocity, hoping to wait it out until the protestors give up.
But, as the saying goes, Water Is Life , and the issue of life and death is at the root of this protection movement, therefore, for people concerned with life, giving up on this is simply unthinkable. The root issue justifying state oppression of the protest is capitalism, and the perception that money is more important than life itself. When the police and national guard attack U.S. citizens on private property to protect corporate interests, who are they really working for?
The corporate dream of the Keystone XL pipeline is to create a profit stream for a small number of people at the expense of the natural world and anyone in the way. At the top of this pyramid of profit is Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project.
So who is Kelcy Warren?
A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company’s holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners.
Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren’s personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described him as “among America’s new shale tycoons” — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he “takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it’s worth more than when it burst from the wellhead.” [ Source ]
Shockingly, in 2015 the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, appointed Warren to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission which is an insult to environmentalists working to protect Big Bend National Park and surrounding sacred tribal lands from another $770 million pipeline project .
“According to the governor’s office, the state parks and wildlife commission “manages and conserves the natural and cultural resources of Texas,” along with ensuring the future of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation opportunities for Texans.” [ Source ]
This glaring conflict of interest has inspired Environmental Science major at UTSA and former Texas State Park Ambassador Andrew Lucas to begin a drive to have Warren removed from this environmental post. His petition is described here :
Most people may know Kelcy Warren as the man behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dallas-based billionaire and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners has been making headlines for fast-tracking a 1100 mile crude oil pipeline across the Midwest and under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. No environmental impact assessment, no respect for cultural sites, and no regard for the local and widespread communities living along the river. A similar story is unfolding out in West Texas, where Warren’s company has split through the pristine Big Bend region with the 200 mile Comanche Trail Pipeline and nearly-complete 143 mile Trans Pecos Pipeline. These Pipelines mark the way for massive natural gas and oil developments in the Trans Pecos region.
With untold damages unfolding for cultural and environmental resources at the hands of Energy Transfer Partners, it would surprise most to know that nearly a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed Kelcy Warren for a 6 year term as 1 of the 10 commissioners who preside over Texas Parks And Wildlife… Why? Probably the $550,000 in campaign contributions Abbott received from Warren.
Footage of militarized police using the Long Range Acoustic Device ( LRAD ) crowd control weapon against protectors at standing rock on October 27th, 2016: Final Thoughts
Warren is listed as number 150 on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion in September of 2016. He is the head of the Dakota Access Pipeline snake.
If you are scratching your head wondering why militarized police and private security contractors are beating, gassing and attacking peaceful resistors, including women, children and the elderly, the answer is, they are doing it to protect the interests of Kelcy Warren and others invested in this pipeline project. Read more articles by Isaac Davis . About the Author
Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here . This article ( This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Isaac Davis and WakingTimes.com . It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. | 1real |
Hillary Clinton Finally Weighs In On Dakota Access Pipeline | Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.
No longer able to sit on the sidelines and remain silent about the battle raging in North Dakota over Indigenous rights to clean water and sacred land, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton released a statement on Thursday about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) fight—and it says “literally nothing.”
The statement was delivered via email to a handful of Indigenous journalists and news outlets and was said to be in response to a letter that Native leaders had sent to the former secretary of state asking for her help, as the Indigenous water protectors and their allies have faced tanks, militarized police forces, mace, and attack dogs as they’ve stood their ground in protest of the tar sands pipeline.
Fed-up about her months-long silence , Indigenous youth from the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes also demonstrated outside Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday asking for some sort of acknowledgement.
But coming the same day that over 300 police officers in riot gear and armored vehicles—brandishing pepper spray, percussion grenades, sound cannons, and non-lethal shotguns, according to observers— forcibly cleared hundreds of water protectors from the frontline camp recently reclaimed through eminent domain , the response struck many as non-committal and lacking appropriate “outrage.”
The statement from director of coalitions press Xochitl Hinojosa, who oversees Hispanic, black, and women’s media for the Clinton campaign, reads in full:
We received a letter today from representatives of the tribes protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. From the beginning of this campaign, Secretary Clinton has been clear that she thinks all voices should be heard and all views considered in federal infrastructure projects. Now, all of the parties involved—including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes—need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest. As that happens, it’s important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators’ rights to protest peacefully, and workers’ rights to do their jobs safely.
“What a crock,” said Ruth Hopkins, a Dakota-Lakota Sioux writer for Indian Country Today Media Network .
“Hillary Clinton managed to make a statement about the Dakota Pipeline that literally says nothing. Literally,” 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben tweeted in response.
“Kind of a BS statement by the Clinton camp on #NoDAPL, frankly,” wrote MSNBC host Joy Reid. “The outrage taking place out there cries out for outrage.”
Others noted that the statement “is the most Clinton thing of all times,” as Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting journalist Adam Johnson put it .
In a lengthy Twitter thread , anonymous commentator @ActualFlatticus breaks down what they say is the campaign’s “triangulation” of the protest.
In other words, you're going to protest by our rules. You're going to do it as we tell you. Or you can't protest.
— Alan Smithee (@ActualFlatticus) October 28, 2016
No part of this statement is concerned with the safety of the water protectors in any way. But the workers are in danger? How, exactly.
— Alan Smithee (@ActualFlatticus) October 28, 2016
The corporations (her donors) have a right to push their pipeline through sacred land (never mentioned). Despite the treaties we made.
— Alan Smithee (@ActualFlatticus) October 28, 2016
And what makes it all so unbelievably offensive? Is we all know Hillary Clinton didn't write this. Not a word. She approves, that's it.
— Alan Smithee (@ActualFlatticus) October 28, 2016 | 1real |
Chart Of The Day: The Bond Vigilantes Are Back! UST Yield Up 65bps Since Election | Chart Of The Day: The Bond Vigilantes Are Back! UST Yield Up 65bps Since Election By David Stockman. Posted On Friday, November 18th, 2016
David Stockman's Contra Corner is the only place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked. Subscribe now to receive David Stockman’s latest posts by email each day as well as his model portfolio, Lee Adler’s Daily Data Dive and David’s personally curated insights and analysis from leading contrarian thinkers. | 1real |
Iran parliament speaker: nuclear deal will collapse if U.S. quits - agencies | MOSCOW (Reuters) - If the United States leaves the Iran nuclear deal, this will be the end of this international agreement, the TASS news agency cited Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani as saying on Friday. Larijani, in Russia s second largest city of St Petersburg for an international parliamentary forum, also said that Washington s withdrawal from the nuclear deal could lead to global chaos, TASS reported. Iran hopes that Russia will play a role in resolving the situation around the nuclear deal, Larijani said meeting Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma lower house of Russia s parliament, the Interfax news agency reported. | 0fake |
Brexit talks cannot move to phase 2 without border clarity, Ireland says | DUBLIN (Reuters) - Britain s talks on exiting the European Union cannot progress, as London wishes, to cover trade relations until it gives more clarity on what will happen at the border with Ireland, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Friday. On the border issue, I m sorry but we need more clarity than we have right now. We cannot move ahead to phase 2 on the back of a promise that we don t see any delivery mechanism to make a reality, Coveney told a conference. | 0fake |
A Closer Look at Simone Manuel, Olympic Medalist, History Maker - The New York Times | When Simone Manuel touched the wall of the pool in the women’s freestyle race Thursday at the Rio Olympics, she turned around, her eyes searching for the clock. The moment she registered her win is now a reaction for the history books. Manuel, a swimmer from Sugar Land, Tex. became the first woman to win an individual event in Olympic swimming. She also set an Olympic record, along with Penny Oleksiak of Canada: They tied for the win, clocking in at 52. 70 seconds. (Manuel also helped the American women’s team win silver in the freestyle relay.) The swimming world has known about Manuel, a N. C. A. A. swimming champion, for years, but her status as a newly minted gold medalist rocketed her to wider popularity overnight. Here’s a closer look at a swimmer who just made history. Manuel’s supporters have high hopes that she could affect diversity in the sport, encouraging more minorities to join. She addressed the issue after her win on Thursday: “I definitely think it raises some awareness and will get them inspired,” Manuel told reporters. “I mean, the gold medal wasn’t just for me it was for people that came before me and inspired me to stay in the sport. “For people who believe that they can’t do it, I hope I’m an inspiration to others to get out there and try swimming. You might be pretty good at it. ” Miriam Lynch of Diversity in Aquatics, a nonprofit organization focused on curbing high numbers of drowning deaths among said Manuel’s victory could help reverse what she called a cultural fear of swimming in that group. The phenomenon has been traced to slavery and to Jim Crow laws, which segregated swimming pools. The hope is to encourage more young people to become lifeguards, coaches and swimmers. “When you see that the lifeguard is from the community, you think, ‘I can be a lifeguard I can be a coach,’ ” Ms. Lynch said. “Now, with Simone, it’s, ‘I can be an Olympian.’ ” Chuck Wielgus, the executive director of USA Swimming, said in an interview on Friday that Manuel’s achievements, compounded by the success of black gold medalists like Cullen Jones, who came before her, might spur a bump in minority memberships. Michael Phelps did something similar when he first started swimming: When Phelps made the Olympic team in 2000, membership in USA Swimming was about 37 percent male today, male membership of the organization is around 44 percent. “I think we’ll see it now with Cullen and Simone,” Mr. Wielgus said. “The benefits of it will be seen 10 years from now. ” membership grew by 55 percent from 2004 to 2015, he said. But that still amounts to only about 1 percent of USA Swimming. Manuel comes from a family of athletes — her two older brothers and her father played college basketball — but after her victory, she spoke to reporters about the pressure of being a black athlete in a sport that has historically lacked diversity. “It is something I’ve definitely struggled with a lot,” Manuel said. “Coming into the race, I tried to take weight of the black community off my shoulders. It’s something I carry with me. I want to be an inspiration, but I would like there to be a day when it is not ‘Simone the black swimmer.’ ” The network drew sharp criticism on social media from fans who said it should have prioritized Manuel’s medal ceremony as it happened instead of broadcasting the women’s gymnastics event. The sports site Deadspin linked to a BBC video, which has since been taken down, so that people could watch Manuel’s historic moment. A few people caught the footage and posted it to Twitter. Before Manuel won a gold medal, Lia Neal, who is of Chinese and African descent, made headlines in 2012 for winning a bronze medal in the freestyle relay at the London Games. They follow in the wake of Maritza Correia, a Puerto swimmer of Guyanese descent who was the first black woman to join the United States Olympic team, and was on the freestyle relay group that won silver in Athens in 2004. Both freestyle sprinters, Manuel and Neal are friends and rivals, and they’re teammates at Stanford University. Greg Meehan, the university’s lead swimming coach, told ESPN last year that Manuel’s arrival to the team took some pressure off Neal, who is a year older. “She has a huge spotlight on her, and she’s managed it well,” Meehan said of Manuel. “And it’s given Lia some freedom to do what she needs to do. ” In the fall, Stanford will add even more Olympic firepower when Katie Ledecky, the team’s most dominant female swimmer, comes aboard. The tennis powerhouse Serena Williams, who has four gold medals of her own, shared a photo on Instagram that praised Manuel and another famous Simone — that would be Simone Biles, who is widely regarded as the best gymnast in the world. Biles is a friend of Manuel’s and, of course, a fellow Texan. | 0fake |
Catalan foreign affairs chief says not planning regional snap elections | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Catalonia s regional government is not planning to hold a snap election following a disputed independence referendum, the region s foreign affairs chief said. Elections are not on the table now, Raul Romeva told a new conference in Brussels on Wednesday. | 0fake |
Pentagon seeks $583 billion budget for 2017; Republicans say not enough | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Tuesday proposed a $582.7 billion defense budget that emphasizes emerging threats from Russia, China and Islamic State rebels, but the plan is already under fire from Republican lawmakers who charge it short-changes the U.S. military. President Barack Obama’s last budget would boost spending on the war against Islamic State militants to $7.5 billion during the 2017 fiscal year, a 50 percent jump over the $5 billion approved this year. Some $200 million of that would go to fight militants in north and west Africa. The proposal also would quadruple funds to counter Russian pressure in Europe, including its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and repeated strategic bomber flights near NATO air space. Spending to boost U.S. military presence and training in Europe would rise to $3.4 billion from $800 million this year. The budget heralds a strategic shift as Washington looks beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and enters a new period of great power competition from Russia and China as well as threats from smaller rivals like Iran and North Korea, officials said. “This budget marks a major inflection point for the Department of Defense,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement. “Even as we fight today’s fights, we must also be prepared for the fights that might come in 10, 20 or 30 years.” Overall, the administration is seeking a Pentagon base budget of $523.9 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, plus $58.8 billion for war funding and overseas operations. The base budget is about $2.5 billion more than this year’s while war spending remains relatively flat, officials said. The spending proposal is in line with a congressional budget deal last year that set Pentagon funding guidelines for 2016 and 2017. But Republican lawmakers have criticized the war funding plan, saying the $59 billion figure in the budget deal was a floor, not a ceiling, and the president should have sought more. “This request is inadequate to address the national security threats we face,” Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. Congressman Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, accused the administration of playing “budgetary games.” McCain said by seeking the minimum level of war funding in the budget deal, the president had left the Pentagon with $17 billion less than it estimated it would need for 2017 in last year’s budget. To make up the shortfall in planned spending, the Pentagon cut more than $5 billion by adjusting its assumptions about expected fuel costs and inflation levels, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord said. It also cut procurement to $112.1 billion, down 6 percent, from this year. The reductions would come mainly from planned aircraft purchases, including five fewer F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (LMT.N) and a reduction in several types of Army helicopters(BA.N), budget documents show. While cutting procurement, the Pentagon proposed increasing spending on research and development by 4 percent, to $71.8 billion, as it looks to develop new technologies to give it a military edge. The department said it would spend $16.8 billion in its classified military intelligence accounts. It also agreed to delay until 2022 its controversial plan to retire the A-10 close air support aircraft, which is being used in the fight against Islamic State. Retaining the aircraft will cost $3.4 billion over the five-year period. The budget would continue to shrink the size of the U.S. Army, which will drop to 460,000 soldiers in 2017 from the current 475,000. Separately, the president’s budget would fund a new $150 million polar icebreaker vessel to ensure year-round accessibility to the Arctic for Coast Guard missions. | 0fake |
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