title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
Thousands Of Doctors Agree: Single-Payer Is The Way To Go | Despite recent assertions from certain Democratic presidential candidates, the dream of a single-payer national healthcare system in the United States is alive and worth fighting for even if it may not be implemented tomorrow. Thousands of physicians have recently endorsed a proposal to make that dream a reality.On Thursday, the Physicians for a National Health Program released their final proposal for creating a single-payer or as it is commonly referred to a Medicare-for-all national health care plan. The proposal was crafted by 39 top physicians and released in an editorial titled Moving Forward from the Affordable Care Act to a Single-Payer System, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health. The proposal also came with a political punch. At the time of the proposal s release 2,280 physicians and 168 medical students endorsed the plan. If you are a physician or work in the healthcare industry, you can endorse the proposal on PNHP s website. Our nation is at a crossroads, said Dr. Adam Gaffney, a Boston-based pulmonary disease and critical care specialist, lead author of the editorial and co-chair of the Working Group that produced the proposal. Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act six years ago, 30 million Americans remain uninsured, an even greater number are underinsured, financial barriers to care like co-pays and deductibles are rising, bureaucracy is growing, provider networks are narrowing, and medical costs are continuing to climb. PNHP notes that their proposal would save about $500 billion annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of insurance firms, and the massive paperwork they inflict on hospitals and doctors. Furthermore, since there is only one health insurance plan, there would be no bars in place from insurers that prevent individuals from seeing whichever doctor they choose. That has been a major talking point for conservatives over the past few years that would be immediately invalidated. Going back to the cost savings benefits of the program, since there would only be one major healthcare provider, the cost of medications and other medical devices would almost instantly decline, due to strengthened negotiating power.It almost understandable why some progressives might think that a serious push for a single-payer healthcare system might be a waste of resources, and instead advocate for small reforms. However, I don t think that there has ever been a better time to go all in for a single-payer healthcare system.Republicans have been fighting the Affordable Care Act tooth and nail since its implementation. During this time, they have not been able to come out with any real alternative proposals or ways to improve the system. Instead, right-wing politicians and pundits have programmed their supporters to hate the ACA, or Obamacare, without question. Despite having an outright hatred for the concept as a whole, conservatives actually tend to have fairly high favorable attitudes towards specific elements of the plan.This gives progressives an incredible talking point to make that they, too, want to end Obamacare. That may sound like a heretical statement to make considering the all-out rhetorical war that has raged over keeping the healthcare reforms in place for over half a decade. However, progressives shouldn t shy away from such a statement. The ACA was meant to end one day. It was created with the intention of being a stepping stone towards a single-payer system. That doesn t mean that the successful aspects of the law would need to be done away with if we switched to a single-payer system; if anything, the last few years have taught us much about how such a system would need to work in order to be successful. Featured image from Photo by Lefteris Pitarakis WPA Pool/Getty Images | 1real |
Fox News Martha Maccallum SHREDS Hillary’s RUSSIAN Theory in ONE TWEET – TruthFeed | Fox News Martha Maccallum SHREDS Hillary’s RUSSIAN Theory in ONE TWEET Fox News Martha Maccallum SHREDS Hillary’s RUSSIAN Theory in ONE TWEET Politics By Amy Moreno November 4, 2016
As the Wikileaks emails start getting more and more damaging the Clinton campaign is doubling down on their Russian conspiracy theory by now suggesting the Russians are writing FAKE emails.
Que?
However, Fox News’ Martha MacCallum pointed out a rather YUGE flaw in the logic of the Hillary camp claiming Russians created “fake” emails to try and interfere with the election.
In one recently released email, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta writes that they needed to “dump emails.”
After that had hit the news, Podesta tried explaining that by “dump” he meant the emails should be made public.
Ha ha ha….O….K, pal.
Afterward, Martha tweeted out a tweet that pretty much destroys the “Russians made fake email” story. Once you start haggling over what you meant in an email, the idea that it was written by the Russians kind of goes out the
— martha maccallum (@marthamaccallum) November 2, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 1real |
RADICAL NYC MAYOR Skips NYPD Swearing In Ceremony To Join Violent G-20 Protesters In Germany…GOP Mayoral Candidate Slams Him On Social Media | Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday skipped an NYPD swearing-in ceremony made somber by this week s assassination of a cop then hours later revealed he was busy preparing to jet off on a surprise trip to join leftist protesters at the G-20 summit in Germany.Hizzoner s overseas jaunt was kept under wraps until just 90 minutes before he took off from Newark Airport. A last-minute announcement said he will attend several events surrounding the G-20 Summit, including Saturday s Hamburg Zeigt Haltung rally. De Blasio will be the keynote speaker, organizers of the demonstration Hamburg Shows Attitude tweeted. The mayor also made sure the free trip will include a visit with his son, Dante, a Yale University student who s spending the summer on an internship in Berlin, a City Hall spokesman said.Presumptive Republican challenger Nicole Malliotakis accused de Blasio of abandoning pressing issues in the Big Apple to pursue his progressive agenda in Europe. Unbelievable. Instead of jet-setting around the world, he should be here doing his job, said the Staten Island assemblywoman. A police officer was murdered, street homelessness has skyrocketed and people continue to get delayed on the trains. Malliotakis who later tweeted a doctored image showing de Blasio in an Alpine hat and lederhosen, grinning behind a plate of bratwurst, wienerschnitzel and Pilsner glasses also blasted him for blowing off the NYPD ceremony at the Police Academy in Queens.Malliotakis jabs de Blasio with Photoshopped tweet over Germany trip https://t.co/DtTRaAQBXD via @nypmetro carl campanile (@ccampy) July 7, 2017 The mayor should be embarrassed by the way he has treated the men and women of our police department, she said.He is off gallivanting & I'm here pointing out problems w/ garbage collection, the most basic of city services https://t.co/yW4MZ02u3O Nicole Malliotakis (@NMalliotakis) July 7, 2017New Jersey Transit tweeted about a schedule change after a train was derailed yesterday while entering Penn Station in NYC, causing delays in transit for commuters:All Midtown DIRECT trains are being diverted into Hoboken Terminal. NJT is cross-honoring w/ PATH, & NJ TRANSIT & Private bus carriers. NJ TRANSIT (@NJTRANSIT) July 7, 2017GOP Mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis retweeted NJ Transit s message to keep New Yorker s apprised of the change, in the absence of the protesting NYC Mayor DeBlasio:I'm retweeting this to keep #NYC residents informed since our mayor is in Germany where it is 4:57a.m. https://t.co/qV1nXSGHHM Nicole Malliotakis (@NMalliotakis) July 7, 2017I m so old, I remember when mayors stayed in their city to do their job rather than try to make themselves ideological symbols. https://t.co/deDbXzWU3g John Avlon (@JohnAvlon) July 7, 2017The head of the NYPD sergeants union also attacked de Blasio. As the city mourns, its leader flees, Ed Mullins said. And then he wonders why he has a problem with the police. A real leader stays with the city in this time of hardship. NYP | 1real |
WHOA! THIS DC DIVA Blows Off Traffic Laws In An SUV To Shop At a Fancy Shoe Store | What the heck! First it s Hillary Clinton who gets off even though she s guilty and now it s Pelosi screeching through traffic to shop at a fancy shoe store! The thing that s so infuriating is that she s racing around town ignoring laws in an SUV! I guess global warming is for the little people too but not for DC Divas U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is above the law, as St. Helena, California residents learned last month.Local Paul Smith wrote in to the St. Helena Star in June to describe Pelosi s recent shoe shopping excursion at a fancy boutique, prompting a response from police chief Bill Imboden about the former House Speaker s special status (see below). Last Saturday afternoon (June 4) I m standing on the west side of Main Street directly across from the Hunt Avenue intersection chatting with friends. Of course, traffic was heavy in both directions, Smith wrote. A large perfectly polished and gleaming black SUV is attempting a left turn from Hunt onto southbound Main (not easy). Suddenly blue/red lights are flashing from the windshield area of the SUV (like you would see in an official fire/police vehicle), he continued. I said to my friends, I ve never seen that before on a regular vehicle and I d think that s illegal and dangerous. They agreed. That s when the large black SUV jolted across two lanes of traffic, lights flashing, to park in front of a fire hydrant at the high end shoe boutique Footcandy. A St. Helena police car happens to be going northbound and pulls into the center lane and the officer starts shaking his arm and hollering at the driver of the SUV. While this goes on a man exits the SUV assisting a woman from the vehicle. She dashes off to Footcandy while he waits by the SUV in the red zone, Smith explained.The SHPD car leaves and proceeds northbound.My friends and I are puzzled, say goodbye and I walk south on Main. As I approach Footcandy, Nancy Pelosi comes out with her shopping bags and the man assists her into the awaiting SUV. The SUV, with lights flashing, bursts back into southbound traffic.Wow!Privilege? Power? Arrogance? Whose SUV, taxpayers? Say it ain t so, Nancy.Paul SmithSt. HelenaEditor s note: The Star asked St. Helena Police Chief Bill Imboden to respond, and here s what he wrote: The St. Helena Police Department has received similar complaints in the past, and on occasion we come across a scenario like what is mentioned in the complaint. Unfortunately local law enforcement has no authority to prevent this type of activity. The U.S. Capitol Police and the U.S. Secret Service provide dignitary protection for certain high-ranking members of the Federal Government, and this protection comes with the discretion to violate some state and local laws (illegal U-turns, parking in a red zone) under the guise of providing the best possible protection to the dignitary. In the case of Congresswoman Pelosi, she receives her protection detail from the Capitol Police. As the Chief of Police in St. Helena I can assure you we don t like or condone their behavior, but I can tell you from personal experience that while they sympathize with the position they put us in, they will not alter their tactics to appease us. Anyone who wishes to lodge a complaint about Congresswoman Pelosi can email her at the following website: pelosi.house.gov. You can also lodge a complaint with the protection agency at: U.S. Capitol Police Office of Professional Responsibility OPR@uscp.gov. Read more: The American Mirror | 1real |
THE BEST ANTI-HILLARY AD EVER MADE…You’ll Want To Watch This BRUTAL VIDEO More Than Once | The Ted Cruz campaign has identified the enemy and they ve placed a target squarely on their backs. It s about time the GOP candidates stopped targeting each other and focused on the real enemy, Hillary Clinton. It Feels Good To Be A Clinton brilliantly points out the corruption, cover-ups and lies of the Clinton Crime Syndicate. The Cruz campaign uses a very creative rap song in the background to hammer home some brutal truths about Hillary and how she operates We guarantee you ll want to watch this more than once: | 1real |
WOW! Why Florida Jews Deserted Hillary…Helped Trump To Win Florida | Hillary Clinton matched President Obama s historically low percentage of the Jewish vote, driving a third of Jews into the Republican camp, an unheard of percentage before Obama s pro-Iran policies. Obama also turned Jews off by his blatant personal antipathy to Israel s prime minister, so the question was whether Jews would come back as a voting bloc for Clinton, who is thought of as a friend to Israel by many Jews, merely by association with her husband.The answer is no, Jews did not return to the Democratic fold.The retired Democratic Jews of Florida were a crucial demographic Clinton had to carry, and she didn t, according to Lori Lowenthal Marcus, co-founder of jewschoosetrump.org.Experienced political strategist Dan Rodriguez, founder and CEO of the MGR Group, spent the run-up to Election Day and the big day itself in Florida. In the aftermath of the election, he has been traveling to boards of elections in heavily Jewish voting districts. He explained that from raw data, Jewish votes are difficult to distinguish because they get lumped in with white votes. Yet Clinton received only 32 percent of the white votes (into which Jewish votes are lumped) in Miami-Dade [County], whereas Obama took 37 percent, Rodriguez told me. In addition, he said, voters 45 or older, a significant portion of whom are Jewish, went strongly for Trump, 56 percent to Clinton s 42 percent. Trump also won the support of passionately pro-Israel Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who may have donated more than $75 million to fuel a much needed ad campaign, which ran on all the sports channels and elsewhere in the final two weeks before the election. American Thinker | 1real |
Michele Bachmann Says Trump Is The GOP Nominee ‘Cause God™ Was Godding It Up | Michele Bachmann is a special snowflake. If there is anyone who is crazier than Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, it is definitely her. Last week we learned that the former congresswoman is one of the people advising Trump on foreign policy because she knows soooo much about foreigners and stuff. She s an expert, she can see ISIS from her house .in Minnesota!Now this week we are learning the real reason good ol Michele thinks the billionaire was chosen as the GOP nominee. During an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network s show The Brody File she said: I actually supported Ted Cruz. I thought he was fabulous but I also see that at the end of the day God raised up, I believe, Donald Trump who was going to be the nominee in this election. I don t think God sits things out. He s a sovereign God. Donald Trump became our nominee.I think it s very likely that in the day that we live in, that Donald Trump is the only individual who could win in a General Election of the 17 who ran. Maybe I m wrong, I don t know but I do know that the Bible is true and that Daniel teaches the most high God, which is one of God s names, is the one who lifts up who he will and takes down who he will. OBVIOUSLY, the real reason Trump is trumping all over the place is because he is the chosen one. Why didn t we think of that? Hmmmmm .maybe because it is a batshit crazy way of thinking? Yep, that s it!As Wonkette (if you don t know who Wonkette is we highly recommend you check them out) points out, it is incredibly unlikely that Bachmann believes Obama is president because God raised up and had him elected; after all, the GOP seems to believe that God only works for them.Michele clearly doesn t want to admit that the only reason Trump is the nominee is because he was the most racist of all of the candidates and the GOP base LOVES racists. They wanted a candidate who represented their beliefs that the blacks should still be drinking out of different water fountains and the Hispanics should pick vegetables and shut up. It had nothing to do with God and everything to do with the disgusting rhetoric that his infected the minds of Republican voters.Featured image via T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images | 1real |
Robert Kennedy Jr. says tapped by Trump to head vaccine safety review | CHICAGO (Reuters) - Vaccination skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would chair a presidential panel to review vaccine safety and science at U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s request, drawing fierce criticism from vaccine experts who fear such a panel would give credence to debunked theories tying childhood immunizations to autism. “President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policy, and he has questions about it,” Kennedy, who has raised questions about the safety of vaccines, told reporters after a meeting with Trump in New York on Tuesday. “He asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity. I said I would,” said Kennedy. However, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks later told Reuters that, while the president-elect was exploring the possibility of forming a committee on autism, “no decisions have been made at this time.” Kennedy, an environmentalist and lawyer, is the son of the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and the nephew of assassinated Democratic President John F. Kennedy. Vaccine experts decried the announcement by a vaccination skeptic that he would head a panel to explore the safety of vaccines and their purported link with autism. The association was raised by a paper published in the British medical journal in The Lancet in 1998 that claimed to find a connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. That paper has been debunked, and The Lancet withdrew the study. Since then, numerous studies have affirmed the safety of the vaccine. The American Academy of Pediatrics said vaccines are “the most significant medical innovation of our time,” adding that claims that vaccines are linked to autism or are unsafe have been disproven “by a robust body of medical literature.” In addition to measles, mumps and rubella, vaccines protect children and adults against a wide variety of deadly or crippling diseases, including polio, typhoid, diphtheria and tetanus. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University’s medical school in Nashville, Tennessee, who advises the federal panel that sets U.S. vaccine policy, said the Kennedy news reinforces the concerns of public health officials, pediatricians and family doctors. Schaffner said Kennedy has “raised issues that have been settled securely and completely by good science.” Nevertheless, concerns have persisted over a link between vaccines and autism, a range of symptoms that often includes difficulties with communication and social interaction. Kennedy, 62, said Trump, 70, was “very pro-vaccine, as am I,” but said, “Everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines that we have (are) ... as safe as they possibly can be.” In 2014, Trump, a New York businessman who was not yet a presidential candidate, posted on Twitter, “I believe in vaccinations but not massive, all at once, shots. Too much for small child to handle. Govt. should stop NOW!” Kennedy in 2005 wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine and the Salon.com website asserting that the government was conspiring to cover up the connections between autism and thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative formerly used in vaccines. Salon.com later retracted the article because of factual errors, and Rolling Stone deleted it. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence of harm caused by thimerosal in vaccines. Thimerosal was never used in the MMR vaccine. CDC said research does not show a link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. As a precaution, it was removed from childhood vaccines in the United States in 2001. Daniel Johnson, a pediatric infectious disease expert at University of Chicago Medicine, said he thought yet another investigation into vaccine safety was a waste of public money. “There’s already many systems in place to provide oversight, to record data, which is constantly being reviewed by many in government and the scientific community,” Johnson said. “There is no need for still yet another system for doing this.” Johnson said he was “very concerned” that parents may delay getting their children vaccinated as they await word from a vaccination safety panel, which could result in “increased harm, illness and potentially death” of children from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines. | 0fake |
Man wildly optimistic ahead of flat pack assembly | October 29, 2016
A man with no DIY experience has set aside around 15 minutes to assemble a 300 piece cabin bed this weekend.
Having glanced through the 36-page instruction booklet, 40-year-old Nick Ferguson plans to start the job at around 6pm on Saturday and will definitely be done by quarter past if not slightly before.
‘I’ll simultaneously be making a vegetarian chilli,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to complete both tasks in a cool and fun way that involves my three young children.’
Meanwhile Mrs Ferguson was hastily making plans to take the kids to her mothers.
‘DIY with Nick is what you might call a journey,’ she said.
‘One that begins relatively calmly, progresses to high strength alcohol and ends with him screaming Rudyard Kiplings ‘If’ into the mirror at around 1.30am.
‘Usually with a serious injury to his face or hands.’ Matt Ward | 1real |
Factbox: Belgian procedures for executing a European arrest warrant | BRUSSELS (Reuters) - According to Spanish media, a judge issued a European arrest warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont on Thursday after he defied a court order to appear at a hearing earlier that day. The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand the extradition from other EU states of people wanted for crimes, and removes political decision-making from the process. EU countries issue thousands of the warrants each year. Belgium follows a series of procedural steps for extradition under the European arrest warrant: - After the suspect wanted by another country is detained by police, he is questioned by a judge within 24 hours, who determines whether the formalities for the extradition request have been fulfilled. The defendant can agree to the extradition immediately. If not, the judge can set bail and order him to be detained. - A European arrest warrant can be blocked for several reasons in Belgium, but most are procedural in nature such as when the crime in question would be past the statute of limitations in Belgium or has already been ruled on in another country. - There is also an exception on human rights grounds, when extradition would harm the fundamental rights of the defendant. - The court has to decide within 15 days on whether there are sufficient reasons to stay the extradition. There are several possibilities to appeal, but in each case with a time limit of 15 days. - Belgian authorities have to inform their European counterparts if a European arrest warrant cannot be executed after 90 days. - The European arrest warrant procedure can be halted by applying for political asylum. However nearly all applications by EU citizens in Belgium have been rejected within five days, law professor Dirk Vanheule told Reuters earlier this week. - Even if the extradition has been cleared by a judge, the order can still be halted over serious humanitarian reasons such as the defendant s life or health being endangered by the move. | 0fake |
LANGUAGE WARNING BUT SO FUNNY! LISTEN TO TWO BLACK LADIES “STUMP FOR TRUMP” | This is a little racy but pretty funny. | 1real |
Review: Kanye West, Both Close and Out of Reach at His Tour Opener - The New York Times | INDIANAPOLIS — Back in June, Kanye West was rumored to be playing a secret concert at the New York club Webster Hall after Hot 97’s Summer Jam festival. Well after midnight, the street was filled with hundreds of young people waiting for a chance to see their hero. The show itself didn’t happen, but at one point, a car drove past, and Mr. West poked his head out of the sunroof. The crowd surged and surrounded him after a minute or two, the car pulled away from the throng, leaving a trail of fans chasing it up Third Avenue. It was a beautiful expression of fanaticism engineered by an artist who uses frenzy as paint. And it provided an unexpected foreshadowing of the opening night of Mr. West’s “Saint Pablo” tour — celebrating his February album, “The Life of Pablo” — which came to Bankers Life Fieldhouse here on Thursday night. This performance was like that scene writ large, captured in a consumable experience. There was no formal stage: Mr. West delivered the entire concert from platforms that hovered about 20 feet above the arena floor and beamed light in every direction. The platforms floated out above the crowd slowly, like an Imperial Star Destroyer soaring through space in “Star Wars. ” At one end of the room was a large screen projecting blurred images from cameras filming Mr. West from various angles, including the ceiling. For much of the night, Mr. West performed on a smallish square platform, tethered to the center by a rope that ran up under his coat as it tilted at various precarious angles. He moved in circles and danced across the floor, using the restraint as a tool at times he sat at the edge and let his feet dangle, and at one point lay prostrate and extended his hand to the crowd, offering a benediction. It made Mr. West both improbably close and tantalizingly out of reach. He was the host, but also a reveler. For the first 20 or so minutes, the crowd maintained a circle around the platform as it crept from one side of the room to the other, staring up at Mr. West and pointing their camera phones while he worked through the more bruising end of his catalog: “All Day,” “Famous,” “Mercy,” “Don’t Like (remix). ” But then, those in the throng realized that they could use the space beneath Mr. West as well, and the floor became a party, like a warehouse rave or, when the beers were flying, a mosh pit at a hardcore show. On each side of the floor, a couple of dozen speakers were blasting physically overwhelming bass, literally pushing fans away from the edges and toward the center. It was a minimalist, elaborately efficient way to deliver an arena show: It got Mr. West closer to both ends of the room, and also to both the fans on the floor and those in the cheap seats way up top. There was even blurring between the insiders and the outsiders — among the revelers on the floor were some of Mr. West’s intimates and members of his extended creative team: Virgil Abloh, Scooter Braun, Travis Scott, ASAP Bari. If you were on the floor, you could choose your own way to experience the show — in thrall to Mr. West in the sky, dancing in the light beneath him, or soaking it all in from the fringes. There was little distraction: Mr. West performed to a combination of prerecorded tracks and live accompaniment by the singer Tony Williams the producer and Mike Dean and Caroline Shaw, the Pulitzer composer and vocalist, all of them dressed in black and occupying a small stage at one end of the floor. Mr. West’s innovation is the latest in a year full of them Drake, Beyoncé and Rihanna have all made concerted efforts on their tours to shrink oversize spaces, a reconsideration of the power dynamic of live concerts for the age of intimacy and immediacy. The setup wasn’t without its complications, though. On two occasions, Mr. West stopped the music because he perceived the tangle of people beneath him to be a little too rowdy. And he spent much of the second half of the show on a larger platform — banging out a beat on an MPC for “Runaway,” speaking to the crowd and playing some brighter songs, like “Good Life” and “All of the Lights” — but stayed closer to the center of it, making him harder to see from the floor. Often Mr. West uses speeches during his shows as a way of collapsing the space between him and the audience, but given that this concert’s physical dynamism did that for him, he kept the talking to a minimum. He began one segment by saying, “Now that I have kids, my perspective has changed,” before thanking the chief executive of Nike, a company he’s had a contentious relationship with in the past, and also Adidas, his current footwear partner. He doubled down on his insistence that art and commerce should play nice. “Dreams are possible,” he said, but conceded, “Every day is a struggle. ” It was almost two hours into the performance at that point, and the crowd’s bubbling energy had crested and leveled off. The lights were brighter, and Mr. West remained contemplative, working through bits of “30 Hours” and “Real Friends,” some of the quieter moments from “The Life of Pablo. ” By the time he got to “Only One,” from 2014 — delivered from the perspective of his mother, who died in 2007 — the room was almost quiet. Here again, Mr. West played with spatial relations — not between him and the crowd, but between him and the unknown, as a circular red light descended over him like a portal to the heavens. Then came snippets of the gospel choir in “Ultralight Beam,” delivering slashes of ecstatic faith, followed by the cleansing pulse of “Fade,” and a bath of ambient vocals and synthesizers. When the lights came up, Mr. West had evaporated into the mist. | 0fake |
OBAMA UNDERMINES AMERICA…Plans To Slash Nuclear Stockpiles…Again | Dinesh D Sousa warned us about Obama s reduction of our nation s nuclear stockpile in his movie, 2016, Obama s America. Shortly after his blockbuster movie appeared in theaters across America, Dinesh D Souza was charged with violating federal campaign finance laws and was sentenced to five years of probation, a $30,000 fine, and eight months in a San Diego community confinement center where he was forced to undergo therapeutic counseling. Here is what Dinesh D Souza predicted:Driven by the alleged anti-colonialist ideology of a father he barely met, President Barack Obama systematically is undermining America economically and militarily leaving it vulnerable to financial collapse, and even as unlikely as the possibility may seem, nuclear attack.And it charges as he slashes the defense budget, Obama is simultaneously pushing to reduce the nation s nuclear stockpile to as low as a few hundred missiles even as other countries like China, Russia and North Korea are modernizing and expanding their arsenals, and Iran widely believed to be close to developing nuclear weapons is threatening to annihilate Israel. From Dinesh D Sousa s controversial 2010 book, The Roots Of Obama s Rage WNDHere is what is actually happening today:The United States cut its nuclear stockpiles by 20 percent between 1996 and 2013, with more reductions likely to come, according to recently declassified information released by the White House.Stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, which is used to fuel a nuclear weapon, were cut from 740.7 metric tons to 586.6 metric tons from 1996 to 2013, according to recently declassified information made available by the Obama administration. This reflects a reduction of over 20 percent, the White House announced. Moreover, further reductions in the inventory are ongoing; the U.S. Department of Energy s material disposition program has down-blended 7.1 metric tons of HEU since September 30, 2013, and continues to make progress in this area. The stockpile reductions are part of an effort by the Obama administration to eliminate nuclear materials and move away from these types of weapons.The move comes as countries such as Russia and North Korea move to increase their nuclear stockpiles. Russia, for instance, has made several announcements about its intent to boost its nuclear stockpile and number of weapons.However, the United States is moving in the opposite direction.Via:WFB | 1real |
Hope to See You at Our Dallas Meetup Tomorrow, November 2 | A wee reminder! Hope you can join us for some post-Halloween fun at our meetup on Wednesday, November 2.
Steve in Dallas has graciously arranged for us to convene at
Cantina Laredo 4546 Belt Line Rd Dallas, TX 75244
We’ll start at 5:00 PM. I’m sure I’ll be there until at least 8 PM.
Looking forward to another engaging and enjoyable event. I am flying into Dallas that AM, so the only caveat is that if the Dallas or NY airports are reported to be having serious problems in the morning, you might double check the site for updates (although I think you should plan on meeting regardless even if I wind up being delayed). See you soon! 0 0 0 0 0 0 This entry was posted in Notices on | 1real |
Thousands of voters in limbo after Kansas demands proof they're American | WICHITA, Kansas (Reuters) - After moving to Kansas, Tad Stricker visited a state motor vehicle office to perform what he thought was the routine task of getting a new driver’s license and registering to vote. It was a familiar procedure for Stricker, 37, who has moved from state to state frequently in his work as a hotel manager. He filled out a voter registration form and got his driver’s license. He was not asked for more documents, he said. So he was stunned when he tried to cast a ballot in November 2014 and was told he was not on the voter rolls. A month later, a letter from the state said why: His registration had been placed “in suspense” because he had failed to meet a state requirement he did not know about - proving he was an American. Spurred by Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a national leader in pushing for anti-immigration and voting changes, more than 36,000 Kansas residents have joined Stricker in limbo since early 2013 under a state law that raises a new and higher barrier to voting in the United States: proof of citizenship. While you must be a U.S. citizen to vote in American elections, most states allow those wishing to register to simply sign a statement affirming they are citizens and provide a driver’s license number, Social Security number, or other proof of residency. A Reuters analysis of the Kansas suspense list shows the law disproportionately hits young voters, who often do not have ready access to the needed documents, as well as unaffiliated and Democratic voters in the Republican-controlled state. “What a shock,” said Stricker, who was born in Missouri and moved to Kansas with his wife from Illinois. “I was under the impression I had registered to vote, I had done everything I needed to. I just thought, ‘This can’t be happening.’” While the law won’t affect its status as a safe Republican state in November’s presidential election, it thrusts Kansas into a national debate over voting restrictions that has accelerated since the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, a signature legislative achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement. Kobach’s involvement has raised the stakes in the fight against the Kansas law. Democrats and voting rights advocates say his influence with conservatives could help spread the concept to other states. His critics scored a victory on May 17 when a federal judge weakened the law. Kobach quickly appealed. The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, and Stricker was a plaintiff in the case. Photo identification laws and other voting measures have proliferated in recent years in Republican-held states, but “the one that gets me most nervous” is the proof of citizenship requirement in Kansas, said Pratt Wiley, director of voter expansion for the Democratic National Committee. “What you will see is that what is learned in one state, or doesn’t work in one state, there is a small adjustment and then it’s applied in a different state,” Wiley said, calling Kansas “patient zero” in that process. Kobach has gained a national reputation for pushing a series of voting and anti-immigration measures across the country, leading one Democratic congressman to dub him “the dark lord” of the anti-immigration movement - a label he wears proudly. “I don’t know if I would call it a badge of honor but it reflects that I’m moving the ball in what I think is the right direction,” Kobach said in an interview in his Topeka office across from the state Capitol. Three other states have adopted proof of citizenship laws championed by Kobach, although officials said two of them had not implemented them. Bills have been introduced in at least nine other states to create a similar law since 2012, although none have advanced very far, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The law Kobach spearheaded in Kansas requires registrants to prove their citizenship by providing one of a series of documents, including birth certificates and passports. They are placed on the suspense list if they can’t. Since late last year, those who did not complete the requirements for registration have been purged from the voter rolls after 90 days and had to begin the process over again. About 14 percent of Kansans who tried to register between the law’s onset in 2013 and late 2015 failed to meet the requirement and went on the suspense list, according to documents filed in a lawsuit challenging the requirement. “It’s created a system that is needlessly complex and very discouraging, particularly for young people,” said Steve Lopes, head of the Johnson County Voting Coalition, which helps register voters. “Now people just say, ‘Forget it, I’m not going to vote’.” Kobach rejects accusations the law is designed to suppress voter turnout, particularly among minority and low-income voters who tend to back Democrats. He says it is aimed at stopping what he describes as a rampant problem of non-citizens voting in U.S. elections - even though there is little evidence of the problem. “Every time an alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen. That’s real disenfranchisement, it’s happening every election and it’s happening in every state,” Kobach said, estimating thousands of non-citizens are on voting rolls in big states with large immigrant populations. Citing that threat, Kobach convinced the Kansas legislature in 2015 to give him the power to prosecute voter fraud. But he has won just four misdemeanor illegal voting convictions, mostly involving people who owned at least two properties and cast votes in both locations. None involved non-citizens voting, although Kobach said more complaints will be filed. U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson, who issued a May 17 order that Kansas begin to register more than 18,000 voters kept off the rolls by the proof of citizenship law, noted Kansas could identify only three non-citizens who voted between 2003 and the onset of the law in 2013. “The court cannot find that the state’s interest in preventing non-citizens from voting in Kansas outweighs the risk of disenfranchising thousands of qualified voters,” she wrote. Of the 16,775 people on a late-April suspense list obtained by Reuters, more than half were ages 17 through 21, and more than 60 percent were age 25 or under. They were clustered in the high-population areas of Wichita, Topeka and the Kansas City suburbs, and the college towns of Lawrence and Manhattan. About 41 percent were unaffiliated, more than the approximately 30 percent of registered Kansas voters who are unaffiliated. About 35 percent of those on the list were Democrats, compared to 24 percent of registered voters. Twenty-three percent were Republicans, compared to 45 percent of registered voters, according to a Reuters analysis of the data. Younger voters, who are more likely to register as unaffiliated or Democrats, have a harder time getting the documents needed and have less patience with what has become an unwieldy process, said Michael Smith, a professor at Emporia State University who has studied the Kansas suspense list. Kobach said it was “natural” that young people were heavily represented on the suspense list because they are the majority of new registrants. He rejected criticism that a proof of citizenship requirement created a higher barrier for registrants. “If you define a barrier to voting as just having to do something before you vote, every state has that barrier, virtually every state requires proof of address,” he said. In her court ruling, Robinson said the Kansas requirement conflicted with a federal law designed to make it easier to register while getting a driver’s license. She ordered Kansas on June 14 to begin registering Stricker and other residents who had submitted voter applications through state motor vehicle offices but failed to provide proof of citizenship. They will be able to vote in federal elections for the presidency and U.S. Congress. But Robinson’s ruling did not end the proof of citizenship requirement for Kansans who register by mail or at locations other than motor vehicle offices, and it left even those registering while getting a driver’s license ineligible to vote for state and local offices. For now, that has created a chaotic two-tier system where some Kansans can vote in state elections and some cannot, some need to provide proof of citizenship and others do not, and many county election officials are uncertain how to proceed. “It’s a complete mess,” said Marge Ahrens, co-president of the nonpartisan Kansas League of Women Voters. | 0fake |
THIRD GRADE BOYS COMPLAIN About 9 Year Old Girl Using Boys’ Bathroom…Boys Told To Stand Closer To Urinals | Girls aren t the only gender who will suffer embarrassment, humiliation and even the prospect of sexual predators in their bathrooms and locker rooms. Shame on American parents for not making more of a fuss about this horrendous decree by a dictator with only seven months left in his final term A Southwest Elementary School parent said he s keeping his three sons out of school until the Howell, MI Public Schools Board of Education explains why a girl is using the boys bathroom.Matt Stewart said his 9-year-old son informed him Friday that there was a girl in the bathroom and the girl was told to look at the wall while boys were told to stand closer to the urinals. He said his son indicated the information came from a school staff member. I have three children in Southwest Elementary School and they are being humiliated and intimidated, Stewart said Wednesday. Our kids are absent from school until there s a policy in place that keeps them from being humiliated or intimidated. The bottom line: A 9-year-old girl is in the boys bathroom with my son, the father said, adding there is no precaution to keep the girl from walking out of a stall and seeing a male classmate urinating.Messages to Southwest Principal Jennifer Goodwin and district Superintendent Erin MacGregor as well as public information officer Tom Gould were not returned late Wednesday.School board President Michael Yenshaw said the matter is not one that has reached the board at this time, and Vice President Stacy Pasini said she preferred to have no comment. It does not pertain to an immediate threat to the public safety of the district, Yenshaw s written reply stated. It may also involve FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) issues, which limit the content of information that the district is permitted to release.FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records.Stewart said he spoke with the school principal and MacGregor, both of who would not confirm if the third-grade female student is transgender due to privacy issues.Stewart sought an approved policy through the Freedom Of Information Act, but was told there is no districtwide policy in place on the issue of transgender bathroom use. He said MacGregor took ownership for the final decision on this matter allowing students to use the bathroom of their choosing. This was (decided) quietly, behind closed doors, Stewart said.The issue of transgender usage of bathrooms exploded nationally after the passage of House Bill 2 in North Carolina, which became law March 23. It bans transgender people from using bathrooms that don t match the gender on their birth certificate.Via: Livingston Daily | 1real |
Trump administration limits government use of Kaspersky Lab software | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Tuesday removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from two lists of approved vendors used by government agencies to purchase technology equipment, amid concerns the cyber security firm’s products could be used by the Kremlin to gain entry into U.S. networks. The delisting represents the most concrete action taken against Kaspersky following months of mounting suspicion among intelligence officials and lawmakers that the company may be too closely connected to hostile Russian intelligence agencies accused of cyber attacks on the United States. Kaspersky products have been removed from the U.S. General Services Administration’s list of vendors for contracts that cover information technology services and digital photographic equipment, an agency spokeswoman said in a statement. The action was taken “after review and careful consideration,” the spokeswoman said, adding that GSA’s priorities “are to ensure the integrity and security of U.S. government systems and networks.” Government agencies will still be able to use Kaspersky products purchased separate from the GSA contract process. Kaspersky’s anti-virus software is popular in the United States and around the world, and the firm has been a leading player in the cyber security market for decades. In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said it had not received any updates from GSA or any other U.S. government agency regarding its vendor status. “Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts,” the company said. It added that it had been “caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight where each side is attempting to use the company as a pawn in their political game.” The delisting was done the same day that ABC News reported the Trump administration was considering implementing a broader ban that would block agencies from using Kaspersky software. Last month the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a defense spending policy bill that would ban Kaspersky products from use in the military. The move came a day after the FBI interviewed several of the company’s U.S. employees at their private homes as part of a counterintelligence investigation into its operations. In May senior U.S. intelligence officials said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that they were reviewing government use of software from Kaspersky Lab. Lawmakers raised concerns that Moscow might use the firm’s products to attack American computer networks, a particularly sensitive issue given allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked and leaked emails of Democratic Party political groups to interfere in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Russia denies the allegations. | 0fake |
Here’s What Happens When Children Win A Science Contest In Trump’s America (VIDEO) | In Indiana, schools staged a robotics competition for fourth graders. The winning team was comprised of two African-American children and three Latino children, ranging in age from 9-10. While this fact should (and does) demonstrate that science doesn t know skin color, it also brought out the ugliness that s become pervasive in Trump s America.The winning team was from Pleasant Run Elementary in Indianapolis. As they were leaving the competition, though, things got really ugly. Some children screamed Go back to Mexico, to the team. Then, parents got involved and it got even worse.This verbal attack had spilled over from the gymnasium. While the children were competing, one or two parents disparaged the Pleasant Run kids with racist comments and loud enough for the Pleasant Run families to hear. They were pointing at us and saying that Oh my God, they are champions of the city all because they are Mexican. They are Mexican, and they are ruining our country, Diocelina Herrera, the mother of PantherBot Angel Herrera-Sanchez, heard a woman say.Source: USA TodaySchool officials, naturally, apologized and said that that sort of behavior isn t tolerated, but unfortunately, this is Trump s America and enabling that sort of behavior is what the non-political correctness crowd is all about.Trump s America is why Rep. Steve King (Iowa), who literally preached eugenics on Twitter, had almost zero consequences from Republicans.Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can t restore our civilization with somebody else s babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017Trump s America is why hate crimes have been on the rise since the election.No, Trump is not the cause of racism, but he is an enabler. Racism has suddenly become socially acceptable, at least among certain people. Trump has filled his cabinet and administration with white supremacists. Steve Bannon is a known white supremacist and he is the de facto Chief of Staff (sorry Reince Priebus, but you know this to be true). Their policies even want to make it easier (and slightly more legal) to be a radical right-wing extremist.The winning kids, fortunately, were much more mature than some of the adults. One gave the most heart breaking comment of all: They yelled out rude comments, and I think that they can talk all they want because at the end we re still going to Worlds, said team leader Elijah Goodwin, 10. It s not going to affect us at all. I m not surprised because I m used to this kind of behavior.He shouldn t have to be used to it. No one should ever be used to this.Featured image via Pleasant Run Elementary website | 1real |
WATCH: Texas Pastor Cheers Orlando Mass Shooting, Prays God Will Finish Off Those In ICU | Another conservative Christian pastor is praising the killing of 49 people who were shot at an Orlando gay nightclub last weekend.In response to Sacramento Pastor Roger Jimenez lamenting that the Orlando shooter didn t kill every last person in the club that night and calling for the government to line every gay person in America against a wall and execute them via firing squad, Fort Worth Pastor Donnie Romero of the Stedfast Baptist Church applauded the hateful sermon and added his sickening two cents.Romero claimed that all gay people are pedophiles even though that s a complete and utter lie, and he asked God to finish the job and kill any of the wounded victims who are still in the hospital. These 50 Sodomites were all perverts and pedophiles and they are the scum of the earth and the earth is a little bit better place now, and I ll even take it a little further I heard on the news today that there are still several dozen of these q****s in ICU and I will pray that God will finish the job that that man started, that he will end their lives and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell so that they don t get any more opportunities to go out and hurt little children. Here s the video of the full sermon via YouTube if you can stomach it. The remarks above are at the beginning of the video.Romero was also echoing Arizona pastor Steven Anderson, who also had no sympathy or compassion for his fellow human beings and also called for all gays people to be executed.In an interview with Fox 4 about his hateful remarks, Romero showed no regret whatsoever. The Bible teaches they are predators, and I believe that every Sodomite is a pedophile and is a predator, Romero said.But Fox 4 also consulted a Bible scholar, who made it clear that Romero knows nothing about the book or Christianity. No Christian who has any formal understanding of the interaction between the Old and the New Testament would say such a thing, said theologian Steve Kellmeyer, He s just one more in a long list of people who don t get what it means to be Christian. It s disgusting how so-called men of God have been reacting to this tragedy all week long since it happened. The way they are cheering this loss of life makes them no better than ISIS, whose leaders we all know must be praising this attack just as fervently. These people who dare to call themselves Christians have thrown in with the terrorists against American citizens and that should not go unpunished. Each of these churches should lose their tax exemptions and be shut down for inciting hate crimes against the LGBT community.And if conservatives are still wondering why more people are rejecting religion today, they should look no further than these fundamentalist pastors they have allowed to lace Christianity with hate and violence.Featured image via screen capture | 1real |
HILLARY CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF Breaking The Law In NY To Get Votes [VIDEO] | Imagine what it must be like to be one of the only people in America who doesn t have to abide by any of our laws. Apparently it pays to be a Clinton.Even though it s against the law to campaign inside the polling place or within 100 feet of the measured entrances of the polling place in NY, Hillary and Bill can clearly been seen breaking that law in the video below. Much like Obama though, Hillary knows that no one will hold her accountable for her actions. She and Bill are above the laws that the everyday people Hillary claims to be a champion for, are required to follow.Watch Hillary and Bill pander for votes in the video below:NY State Law Prohibiting Electioneering Activities In NY: While the polls are open no person shall do any electioneering within the polling place, or in any public street, within a one hundred foot radial measured from the entrances designated by the inspectors of election, to such polling place or within such distance in any place in a public manner; and no political banner, button, poster or placard shall be allowed in or upon the polling place or within such one hundred foot radial. (N.Y. Election Law 8 104(1)) | 1real |
House Republicans float controversial budget plan | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Republicans on Tuesday insisted they will proceed with a fiscal 2017 budget plan despite a flat-out rejection from their party’s fiscal hawks that poses an important test of Speaker Paul Ryan’s leadership. The $3.9 trillion proposal, which the House Budget Committee hopes to embrace formally on Wednesday for an eventual floor vote, would provide Ryan with a first step in his political goal of uniting the Republican Party behind a detailed policy plan ahead of November’s presidential and congressional elections. The plan aims to achieve a balanced budget within a decade. “I promise in this speakership that we’re not going to have a top-down, cram-it-down-people’s-throat kind of leadership,” Ryan told reporters. “We’re going to make decisions as a team. We’re going to push power out to the members, and we’re going to make a team decision on this issue,” he added. But the House Freedom Caucus, which includes dozens of outspoken conservatives who dethroned Ryan’s predecessor John Boehner, has been complaining for months about a $1.07 trillion ceiling for discretionary spending that was enacted into law last November. It says the cap should be $30 billion lower and has warned leaders of its opposition. Several Freedom Caucus members sit on the House budget panel, including Representative Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican who described the group’s position as mainstream: “We’re where the American people want us to be.” Brat said he was leaning toward voting against the proposal in a committee work-session set for Wednesday. Stubborn opposition among Freedom Caucus members, despite weeks of behind-the-scene talks among House Republicans, call into question the ability of party leaders to muster the 218 votes needed to pass the budget without help from the chamber’s 188 Democrats. Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the panel’s top Democrat, slammed the Republican proposal as a plan that would hurt the middle class and harm the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and disabled. Democratic attacks and fiscal hawk opposition are leading some Republicans to call for a seldom-used “Queen of the Hill” strategy that would allow members to consider different proposals but deem the one with the most votes as having passed the chamber. The budget blueprint is non-binding, meaning it is not subject to President Barack Obama’s approval. But it provides guidance to appropriators as they write bills to fund an array of government programs beginning Oct. 1, the start of the next fiscal year. | 0fake |
EXCLUSIVE: Kentucky Clerk: 'This is a fight worth fighting' | UPDATE: A federal judge has ordered a defiant Kentucky clerk to jail after she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning told Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis she would be jailed until she complied with his order to issue the licenses. Davis said "thank you" before she was led out of the courtroom by a U.S. marshal. She was not in handcuffs.
Bunning also warned deputy clerks around the state that they could suffer the same fate should they refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
Davis has refused to issue marriages licenses for two months since the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. She argues that her Christian faith should exempt her from signing the licenses.
Liberty Counsel attorney Mat Staver, who is representing Davis, called the ruling “outrageous.”
“If this country has come to this point where a judge jails someone like Kim Davis for their religious convictions – then we have lost our religious liberty,” Staver told me.
He said Davis will be fingerprinted and photographed “just like a criminal.”
“This cannot be tolerated,” he said. “This is ultimately going to spark a huge debate around the country. This is not the kind of country – this is not the America that our founders envisioned.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Kim Davis could become the first Christian in America jailed as a result of the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
“I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to go to jail, I sure am,” Mrs. Davis told me in an exclusive interview. “This has never been a gay or lesbian issue for me. This is about upholding the word of God.”
“This is a heaven or hell issue for me and for every other Christian that believes,” she said. “This is a fight worth fighting.”
Click here to join Todd’s American Dispatch –a MUST-READ for Conservatives!
Davis is the clerk of Rowan County, Ky. – a small patch of earth in the northeastern part of the state. She was elected last November – taking the place of her mother, who held the position for nearly 40 years.
It’s fair to say that issuing marriage licenses was something of a family business – until the day the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
Davis is a devout Apostolic Christian, and she knew that should gay marriage become legal, she could not and would not sign her name on a same-sex marriage certificate.
“I would have to either make a decision to stand or I would have to buckle down and leave,” she said, pondering her choices. “And if I left, resigned or chose to retire, I would have no voice for God’s word.
So when that day came, she issued an edict: No more marriage licenses would be issued in Rowan County. It was a decision that would bring down the wrath of militant LGBT activists and their supporters.
“They told my husband they were going to burn us down while we slept in our home,” she said. “He’s been told that he would be beaten up and tied up and made to watch them rape me. I have been told that gays should kill me.”
Liberty Counsel, the public interest law firm that represents Davis, says forcing her to issue same-sex marriage licenses violates her religious beliefs. But the courts don’t seem interested in that argument.
A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, an appeals court upheld that decision and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. Should Davis continue to defy the law, she could be fined or sent to jail.
No matter what the court decides, Davis says she will not violate her religious beliefs – and she will not resign her post.
“I’m very steadfast in what I believe,” she told me. “I don’t leave my conscience and my Christian soul out in my vehicle and come in here and pretend to be something I’m not. It’s easy to talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?”
The mainstream media and the activists have been ruthless. They’ve portrayed her as a monster – a right-wing, homophobic hypocrite. She’s been smeared by tabloid-style reports on her checkered past. They’ve written extensively about her failed marriages.
It’s true, she’s been married four times. But what’s missing in the mainstream media coverage is the context. Her life was radically changed by Jesus Christ in 2011, and since then she has become a different person.
“My God in heaven knows every crack, every crevice, every deep place in my heart,” she said. “And he knows the thoughts that are in my mind before I even think them. And he has given me such a beautiful and wonderful grace through all of this.”
She once lived for the devil, but now she lives for God. She’s a sinner saved by grace.
“I had created such a pit of sin for myself with my very own hands,” she told me.
So how does she handle the reporters and talking heads who call her a hypocrite?
“All I can say to them is if they have a sordid past like what I had, they too can receive the cleansing and renewing, and they can start a fresh life and they can be different,” she said. “They don’t have to remain in their sin, there’s hope for tomorrow.”
Davis did not seek the national spotlight. She had no intention of becoming a spokeswoman for religious liberty, and she bristles at the idea that she is a hero of the faith.
“I’m just a vessel God has chosen for this time and this place,” she said. “I’m no different than any other Christian. It was my appointed time to stand, and their time will come.”
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter @ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.
| 0fake |
ICAN chief's message to Trump and Kim: nuclear weapons are illegal | GENEVA (Reuters) - The head of the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should know that nuclear weapons are illegal. Asked for her message to the two leaders, ICAN s Executive Director Beatrice Fihn told Reuters: Nuclear weapons are illegal. Threatening to use nuclear weapons is illegal. Having nuclear weapons, possessing nuclear weapons, developing nuclear weapons, is illegal, and they need to stop. | 0fake |
Canada says ready to come to NAFTA talks 'at any time' | OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is ready to come to talks on renewing the North American Free Trade Agreement at any time, a Canadian official said on Wednesday in reaction to reports that a draft executive order to withdraw the United States from the pact was under consideration. “At this moment NAFTA negotiations have not started. Canada is ready to come to the table at any time,” said Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. | 0fake |
FBI DATA Shows Black-On-Black Murders Off The Charts During Obama Presidency…So Why Is Obama Chasing Cops From Black Neighborhoods? | America has never seen two people living in the White House play the victim card with such frequency and with such passion. The truth of the matter is, Barack Obama and his race-obsessed wife will go down as two people who did less for the black community than any President in modern-day history.The data suggest that even as whites enjoy the benefits of improved public safety from the last two decades, blacks cannot do so in anything like the same way. In 2015, there was an overall 13 percent uptick in the murder tally compared to 2014, all of it concentrated in cities and neighborhoods where large numbers of black people live. Murder rose by more than 50 percent in Washington, D.C., and by 63 percent in Baltimore, which alone account for about 15 percent of the national increase.Black victims accounted for nearly two-thirds of the year-over-year increase, which translates to 944 additional black people murdered out of just under 1,500 additional victims nationwide. More than half of this increase (about 811 additional murders) came just from among blacks aged 17 to 39.Whatever the cause of last year s increase in murders, blacks were the only group represented so disproportionately within it. The number of Hispanic murder victims ticked up by 8 percent, about the same as the increase in white victims.These FBI data should alarm any person of good will who thinks that all black lives matter. They reveal a true and massive problem. The fact that most African-American murder victims were slain by other African-Americans (as most white victims are killed by other whites) should not lessen the appeal within the black community of a strong law and order message from political candidates. They would, after all, be the chief beneficiaries of strong law and order policies to precisely the same extent that they are currently the chief victims of rising violent crime.popThe data suggest that even as whites enjoy the benefits of improved public safety from the last two decades, blacks cannot do so in anything like the same way. In 2015, there was an overall 13 percent uptick in the murder tally compared to 2014, all of it concentrated in cities and neighborhoods where large numbers of black people live. Murder rose by more than 50 percent in Washington, D.C., and by 63 percent in Baltimore, which alone account for about 15 percent of the national increase.Black victims accounted for nearly two-thirds of the year-over-year increase, which translates to 944 additional black people murdered out of just under 1,500 additional victims nationwide. More than half of this increase (about 811 additional murders) came just from among blacks aged 17 to 39.Whatever the cause of last year s increase in murders, blacks were the only group represented so disproportionately within it. The number of Hispanic murder victims ticked up by 8 percent, about the same as the increase in white victims.Reuters On the sidewalk of a public housing development in Brooklyn, New York notorious for gang violence and drug activity, the words Fascist pig, go home! in black spray paint are fading but still legible.These are the Marcy Houses, 27 brick H-block buildings, each six stories high, that are home to nearly 4,300 people, many of whom are black or Latino. The rapper Jay-Z, who grew up in the complex, described Marcy as a block away from hell, the place where news cameras never come, in a song called Where I m From. In recent years, Marcy has had a group of very reliable visitors: the police, who patrol on foot and in cars as part of a controversial broken windows strategy that focuses on cracking down on small crimes to prevent bigger ones. Until three weeks ago, they had been an ever-present, highly visible presence in Marcy Houses.Now, the police have all but disappeared, raising safety concerns among some residents while pleasing others who view the police strategy as oppressive. A reporter saw only one police car on a visit on Thursday.These FBI data should alarm any person of good will who thinks that all black lives matter. They reveal a true and massive problem. The fact that most African-American murder victims were slain by other African-Americans (as most white victims are killed by other whites) should not lessen the appeal within the black community of a strong law and order message from political candidates. They would, after all, be the chief beneficiaries of strong law and order policies to precisely the same extent that they are currently the chief victims of rising violent crime. Via:Washington Examiner | 1real |
Extremism stems from repressive states, not Western policy, says UK's Johnson | LONDON (Reuters) - Repressive states are to blame for breeding terrorism, Britain s foreign minister Boris Johnson will say on Thursday, in a speech defending Western foreign policy and denouncing Islamist extremism. Britain suffered four deadly attacks in London and Manchester between March and June this year that killed 36 people, and on Wednesday a man appeared in court accused of plotting to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May. Speaking to diplomats and experts at the Foreign Office in London, Johnson will call for better engagement with Muslim populations worldwide and argue that blaming Western intervention for the rise of Islamist extremism plays into the jihadi narrative, according to a briefing note issued by the Foreign Office. To assert, as people often do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited on peoples Swedes, Belgians, Finns or the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh - with no such history in the region, he will say according to advanced extracts of his speech. He will say that Islamist jihadism can have the addictive power of crack cocaine . | 0fake |
Four Simple Reasons Why the Global Elite Hate Russia | By wmw_admin on October 31, 2016 Zero Hedge — via Russia Insider Oct 28, 2016
In our previous article The Secret Truth about Russia Exposed, we elaborated on how Russia is a convenient enemy for politicians and specifically the Democratic party, to create an enemy that really , well – doesn’t exist to distract and confuse voters. But like with any ‘enemy’ if you bomb a village, you may have some pissed off villagers. As we explain in our best selling book Splitting Pennies – the world doesn’t work the way you see on TV – in fact, it works more closely as seen on Zero Hedge.
Although Russia simply is just a country in the wrong place at the wrong time (which, throughout Russian history, seems to be a theme for them) – there really is a reason the Elite hate Russia. It’s not because they’re Xenophobic, although there’s that too – it’s because of several key factors that make Russia a unique power in the world, compared to similar countries. Russia is an independent country. It’s not possible to manipulate Russia via external remote control, like it is most countries. The Elite don’t like that! Russia kicked out Soros “Open Society” :
Russia has banned a pro-democracy charity founded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros, saying the organization posed a threat to both state security and the Russian constitution. In a statement released Monday morning, Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office said two branches of Soros’ charity network — the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) — would be placed on a “stop list” of foreign non-governmental organizations whose activities have been deemed “undesirable” by the Russian state. Russia is not easy to cripple via clandestine means, whether it be CIA, MI6, or outright military conflict. Some other BRICs however, that’s not the case. Say what you will about Russia’s military – it’s on par and in many cases, advanced, compared to the US military. And that’s not AN opinion, that’s in the opinion of top US military commanders:
Late in September, we brought you “ US Readies Battle Plans For Baltic War With Russia ” in which we described a series of thought experiments undertaken by The Pentagon in an effort to determine what the likely outcome would be should something go horribly “wrong” on the way to landing the US in a shooting war with Russia in the Balkans.
The results of those thought experiments were not encouraging. As a reminder, here’s how Foreign Policy summed up the exercises: Russian culture, and language, is too complex for the average “Elite” who pretends to be internationally well versed because they had a few semesters of French. For example, when the diplomat Clinton was Secretary of State, she presented a reset button translating the opposite meaning… ooops .
“I would like to present you with a little gift that represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is: ‘We want to reset our relationship, and so we will do it together.’…
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” she asked Lavrov, laughing. “You got it wrong,” said Lavrov, as both diplomats laughed.
“It should be “perezagruzka” [the Russian word for reset],” said Lavrov.”This says ‘peregruzka,’ which means ‘overcharged.’”
Yes, it’s almost a certainty that if Clinton by some horrible fate is President there will be Nuclear war. Wars have been started over much more subtle mistakes. One would think, that Clinton would have had an advisor CHECK THIS before presenting it in a public ceremony, in front of reporters? How much more blatantly unprofessional can one be? If politicians worked in the private sector, they wouldn’t last a day! How do these people advance so far in politics? Plain and simple, the Elite do not control Russia. While there are backchannels of Russian oligarchs that work directly with Western Rothschild interests, for example, they simply don’t have the same level of control as they do European countries, like Germany for instance. Or another good example is China, there’s this fanatical talk that China can dump US Treasuries blah blah blah the fact is that China is completely dependent on USA and US Dollars, and will be for the rest of our lives. Maybe in 1000 years in the Dong Dynasty still to come they will rule the world but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Russia is one of the most highly misunderstood cultures in the West. Which is strange, because Russia is more like America than any European country: Both Russia and America share huge landmasses with large undeveloped territory Both Russia and America are predominantly white christian majorities (although in last decades, America tries to be more of a melting pot whereas Russia favors ethnic cleansing) Both Russia and America fought against Hitler and the Nazis during World War 2, the defining event of the last 60 years
There have been numerous interesting situations where Russia helped America and America helped Russia on a number of levels, to learn more about it checkout the following books:
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution . Armand Hammer: The Untold Story
Most interestingly, during the Nixon administration Kissinger was prodding Nixon to partner with Russia that would, in Kissinger’s view would create an unstoppable alliance, that no one could compete with such a superpower axis. But, it didn’t happen, as there were ‘neo-cons’ who were against it, mostly Polish Catholics who have some deep genetic fear of any culture using the Cyrillic alphabet.
Nixon instead chose China (what a mistake!) and created Forex. But the point being that, through a small slip of fate, “China” may have been in this alternative Kissinger reality the ‘Great Evil Enemy’ hacking our elections, as we drive across the Alaskan-Siberian highway without any speed limit, oil would be ten cents a gallon, and we wouldn’t need to war with the Middle East. | 1real |
(VIDEO) PATRIOTS DEMAND REMOVAL OF COMMUNIST FLAG | Patriots removed the the Chinese flag between the American flag and the state flag at the capitol building in Olympia,Washington. Governor Jay Inslee had the POW/MIA flag lowered and replaced by the Chinese flag in honor of his meeting with China Ambassador Cui Tiankai. | 1real |
BREAKING: CLOSE FRIEND Of Bill And Hillary Clinton, Huge Democrat Donor ARRESTED For Threatening To Kill President-Elect Trump At Inauguration | The man arrested by Miami Beach police Tuesday for allegedly threatening President-elect Donald Trump online is a member of a prominent northeast family close to Bill and Hillary Clinton. According to the Daily Mail, he once gave $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee.Suspect Dominic Puopolo Jr., 51, sat near Hillary Clinton when she delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Puopolo s mother, Sonia, who died in one of the jets that flew into the World Trade Center on 9-11.During that eulogy on Oct. 6, 2001 in Boston, the former presidential candidate referred to Dom Jr. s latest computer wizardry. The wizard is now being held in a Miami-Dade County jail after using Twitter to threaten Trump s life.Trump is scheduled to be sworn in Friday in Washington, D.C. as Puopolo remains incarcerated on a charge of threatening to harm a public servant.Puopolo reportedly admitted to posting a video to Twitter, saying: This is the 16th of January 2017, I will be at the review/ inauguration and I will kill President Trump, President elect Trump today. He was nabbed after leaving a Washington Avenue Subway sandwich shop about 4 p.m. Tuesday.Puopolo, however, may not be the average Trump hater. On various social media platforms, where he posts as JesusChrist1701, the computer consultant claims to have testified in terror cases as an expert witness in a German federal court in Hamburg from 2003 to 2008.He also says he served in the Navy.He once posted a photo of himself holding an image of his mother in front of a wall that sports a picture of him with Colin Powell and a famous shot of Ronald Reagan.Puopolo has published a number of pictures of outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry, whom he calls a friend. Daily Mail | 1real |
Jealous Donald Trump Attacks Megyn Kelly Again, Says Nobody Wants To Woo Her (TWEET) | After Megyn Kelly shut down his attempts to woo her, Donald Trump posted an attack on Twitter that sounds just like the jealous rant of a creep who got shot down.During an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this month, the Fox News host described how Trump made multiple efforts to gain her favor in the run up to announcing his campaign for president last summer, declaring that she can t be wooed. He would send me press clippings about me that he would just sign Donald Trump. And he called from time to time to compliment a segment. I didn t know why he was doing that. And then when he announced that he was running for president, it became more clear. But I can t be wooed. I was never going to love him, and I was never going to hate him. Indeed, Kelly has refused to take shit from Trump. During a debate in August, Kelly took Trump on and didn t make things easy for him. Offended, Trump lashed out at Kelly, claiming she was bleeding out of her whatever. Even after Kelly went on vacation, Trump continued the vicious assaults with the help of his rapid conservative supporters.And now Trump has responded to Kelly s remarks in Vanity Fair by attacking her once again, this time targeting her for her looks and claiming that nobody wants to woo her. Megyn Kelly recently said that she can t be wooed by Trump, the billionaire Republican presidential wannabe wrote on Twitter. She is so average in every way, who the hell wants to woo her! .@megynkelly recently said that she can t be wooed by Trump. She is so average in every way, who the hell wants to woo her! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2016And, of course, Trump is only embarrassing himself. Say what you want about her political beliefs, it is undeniable that Megyn Kelly is not only a beautiful woman, she has a brain as well. Also, it s pretty ridiculous to say that nobody wants to woo her since she has been married twice. Clearly, at least two men have succeeded in wooing her while Donald Trump has failed repeatedly. It sounds like Trump is just jealous because a smart and sexy woman said no to him and refused to let him walk all over her.Featured Image: YouTube | 1real |
Ten inconsistencies in Donald Trump's big foreign policy address | For a speech purporting to challenge Washington’s accepted wisdom, there was much that was familiar about Donald Trump’s first big foreign policy address, not least the customary certainty of its delivery.
A call to challenge radical Islam through “philosophical struggle” as well as military force might even have come from the lips of Barack Obama. Certainly no mainstream Republican would ever disagree with the somewhat motherhood-and-apple-pie exhortation for US presidents to view the world “through the clear lens of American interests”.
But how closely the speech stands up to detailed scrutiny is already the subject of fierce political debate. Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state put up to respond on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, claimed she had never seen so many “simplistic slogans, contradictions and misstatements” in one speech. Trump’s supporters argue instead that he was at his strongest, skewering the inconsistencies of the Democratic establishment’s approach under Obama and Clinton.
Here are 10 passages that suggest Trump may instead be doing what all politicians like doing best: having his cake and eating it.
Some groups “will never be anything but our enemies”, Trump said after attacking Obama for doing deals with Iran. Only he claimed shortly afterwards: “The world must know we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies.”
Trump also blasted Obama for letting down existing overseas partners, promising “America is going to be a reliable friend and ally again”. Yet he delivers warnings about paying for Nato membership that might sound more like blackmail to some. “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense – and, if not, the US must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”
He was also ambiguous about America’s role in promoting democracy in the world, claiming “we are getting out of the nation-building business” but then adding: “I will work with our allies to reinvigorate western values and institutions.” He also argued that promoting “western civilization and its accomplishments will do more to inspire positive reforms around the world”.
Then there is the standard section of any recent US presidential speech that calls on Middle East nations to do more to fight Islamic extremism. “This has to be a two-way street. They must also be good to us and remember us and all we are doing for them,” he said of allies in the region. These comments might have more clout coming from someone who had not recently offended much of the Muslim world by threatening to ban their citizens from entering the US.
Some criticisms of Obama’s “humiliations” at the hands of foreign governments do not stand up to much scrutiny either. Trump said that Obama was snubbed during recent state visits to Cuba and Saudi Arabia because he was not greeted at the airport by a senior leader. “Perhaps an incident without precedent in the long and prestigious history of Air Force One,” claims Trump. Strangely, the Queen’s decision to send the lord-lieutenant of Essex – hardly the most prestigious of British officials – to meet Obama at London’s Stansted airport last week was not mentioned, perhaps because it is a pretty standard way of doing things.
A similar non sequitur arises in criticism of Obama’s failed attempt to persuade the International Olympic Committee to award the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago. The president should not have flown all the way to the IOC meeting in Copenhagen if he did not already know they were going to award the games to the US, argued Trump. But what would have been the point of flying all that way to lobby for something that had already been secured?
Perhaps Trump is just trying to live up to his maxim of keeping the world guessing. “We have to be unpredictable and we have to be unpredictable starting now,” he argued at the start of the speech. Except, by the end, he argued for the virtues of a more transparent and principled approach: “The best way to achieve those goals is through a disciplined, deliberate and consistent foreign policy.”
Sometimes it is best not to apply too much mathematics. Trump claimed, for example, that “there are scores of recent migrants inside our borders charged with terrorism”, an assertion already open to dispute, but went on to add on top “for every case known to the public there are dozens and dozens more”. If “scores” means at least 40, then by this logic, Trump is claiming the existence of around 1,000 more people than anyone else has.
If the speech has one abiding slogan, it too could have done with some more fact-checking. Putting America first sounds at first just like an extension of Trump’s hallmark promise to make America great again. Yet it also harks back to the America First Committee of the 1940s, a group set up to prevent the US from joining the second world war, only to be disbanded three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But perhaps this just points to the biggest contradiction of the speech: the tension between its isolationism and its interventionism. At once, Trump urges more of a pragmatic and realist approach to the exercise of US power, unconstrained by the niceties of political correctness, and yet blasts Obama for having “no vision, no purpose, no direction, no strategy”.
It is perhaps unfair, however, to dwell too closely on textual analysis of a speech clearly written by a number of people. “We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism” is a powerful line, but it does not sound very much like it was written by the same man who told a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday: “Do I look like a president? How handsome am I?” | 0fake |
HILLARY’S BIGGEST GUN CONTROL FAN LET’S LOOSE AT RALLY [Video] | Are there any real men left in the Democrat party? This Hillary supporter cheering for gun control would be the first guy hiding under the skirt of a woman packing heat if a crisis went down and he was in harms way. Criminals love gun control maybe that s why Hillary s out pushing it This Hillary supporter has a hunger that only gun control can satisfy. https://t.co/rILuCoLpwH Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) October 2, 2015 | 1real |
Loser Trump EXPLODES On Twitter, Claims Ted Cruz ‘Illegally Stole’ Iowa (TWEETS) | When Donald Trump stepped on the stage in Iowa Monday night, we almost thought he might behave like an adult after being defeated by Ted Cruz. He gave a very, very short speech (a strange breath of fresh air after Rubio s), and stayed pretty upbeat and positive until Tuesday.The day after his loss Trump started tweeting whining about losing. In one tweet he claimed that the people of Iowa didn t appreciate that he hadn t taken money from super PACS. He even implied that he was wasting his money by self-funding his campaign.On Wednesday morning, Trump continued his temper tantrum and tweeted that Cruz stole the caucus. Ted Cruz didn t win Iowa, he illegally stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong any why he more votes than anticipated. Bad! Shortly after the tweet went out, he deleted it and posted one that left the word illegally out.Ted Cruz didn t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016But he couldn t leave it at just one tweet, he kept going:During primetime of the Iowa Caucus, Cruz put out a release that @RealBenCarson was quitting the race, and to caucus (or vote) for Cruz. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016 Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud. Also, Cruz sent out a VOTER VIOLATION certificate to thousands of voters. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016The Voter Violation certificate gave poor marks to the unsuspecting voter(grade of F) and told them to clear it up by voting for Cruz. Fraud Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016 And finally, Cruz strongly told thousands of caucusgoers (voters) that Trump was strongly in favor of ObamaCare and choice a total lie! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016The butthurt is so strong there.He is acting exactly the way we thought he would act if he lost, only it s even more pathetic than we could imagine. Instead of behaving like an adult and moving on, he is literally acting like a raging toddler. Ted Cruz came out on top because the Republicans in Iowa are ber conservative Trump is not. Perhaps he also lost because of his brilliant dumbass decision to skip the last debate (over more hurt feelings).Whatever the reason, voters are not going to look at his recent behavior and think, Yep, this is the guy we want with the nuclear codes. This meltdown is just solidifying the fact that he definitely doesn t belong in the White House. Featured image from Rolling Out | 1real |
International Criminal Court Demands Immediate Arrest of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi - Breitbart | Moammar Qaddafi’s son Saif recently released from half a decade of captivity by a Libyan militia group, has hit a major stumbling block in his bid to become a unifying figure for Libya: the International Criminal Court wants him arrested and hauled before a war crimes trial in the Hague. [This is not an entirely surprising development because the ICC has made it clear all along that it considers Qaddafi’s case very much open. It was not clear until now just how aggressively the court would pursue him, but it was made very clear indeed in a statement on Wednesday from chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Bensouda declared that the 2011 arrest warrant against Saif “remains valid, and Libya is obliged to immediately arrest and surrender Mr. Qaddafi. ” She called upon any other state that has an opportunity to arrest Qaddafi to do so if he leaves Libya. “Helping a fugitive to escape justice must not be tolerated, and Mr. Gaddafi must be surrendered to the custody of the Court,” Bensouda declared. She added this directive supersedes “any purported amnesty law in Libya. ” One of Libya’s several governments declared an amnesty throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Another Libyan government sentenced Qaddafi to death in absentia in 2015 and has given no indication of rescinding its judgment. Human Rights Watch (HRW) applauded the ICC’s demand to bring Saif to justice, citing a U. N. Security Council resolution requiring Libyan authorities to cooperate with the ICC, while also accusing his former captors of abuses for their treatment of him. “The reported release of Gaddafi based on a flawed amnesty law does not change the fact that he is wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. The Zintan brigade, which alleges that it released him, should urgently disclose his current whereabouts,” said HRW International Justice Director Richard Dicker. However, Human Rights Watch also noted that the Zintan brigade held Qaddafi incommunicado, subjected him to solitary confinement, denied him access to legal counsel, illegally interrogated him, and held him long after the Libyan government the brigade nominally answers to ordered his release. Also, HRW noted that the Libyan court which sentenced Qaddafi to death did not meet international fair trial standards and cited the wording of the Libyan amnesty law to point out that it does not cover the offenses Qaddafi stands accused of, concluding that only the International Criminal Court can handle the case. In fact, Human Rights Watch wants the ICC to take over more investigations and prosecutions of Libyans on all sides of its conflict for human rights violations, including the abuse of migrants. | 0fake |
Alleged Islamic State recruiter goes on trial in Germany | Berlin (Reuters) - An Iraqi man preacher accused of recruiting fighters for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, including two believed to have killed more than 150 Iraqi soldiers in suicide bombings, went on trial in a German court on Wednesday. Four alleged members of the Islamist network he had set up also stood trial. Prosecutors say the 33-year-old preacher, identified as Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. in court documents, recruited at least seven individuals who ended up traveling to the Middle East where they fought alongside Islamic State militants. Two died in two separate suicide bombing attacks against Iraqi army positions in 2015 in which more than 150 soldiers were killed, prosecutors said. The two recruits, identified as Mark and Kevin K, joined Islamic State in 2014. The main suspect, known by the nickname Abu Walaa, which in Arabic means Father of Loyalty, and the four others a Turk, a German, a Serbian-German dual citizen and a national of Cameroon were arrested in November in raids in the states of Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia. They have been held in custody since then. The defendants have chosen to remain silent during the trial. The men had held religious lessons during which potential recruits were handed radical Islamic material, prosecutors said. Prosecutors believe Abu Walaa preached at the Fussilet Mosque in Berlin, which was attended by a failed asylum seeker who killed 12 people at a Christmas market in the German capital last year. The federal prosecutor essentially accused the suspects of being members of and supporting a foreign terrorist organization, a spokeswoman for the Higher Regional Court in the northern city of Celle said. Michael Murat Sertoez, a lawyer for one of the suspects, said: There will be a lot of protected witnesses who will testify and that is not acceptable for us . | 0fake |
Iranian Director Asghar Farhadi Won’t Attend Oscar Ceremony - The New York Times | TEHRAN — The Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film “The Salesman” is nominated for an Academy Award for best movie, said on Sunday that he would not attend the Oscars ceremony next month even if he were granted an exception to President Trump’s visa ban for citizens from Iran and several other predominantly Muslim countries. Mr. Farhadi said he had planned to attend the Feb. 26 ceremony in Los Angeles and while there bring attention to a decision he called “unjust. ” But the executive order signed by President Trump on Friday presented “ifs and buts which are in no way acceptable to me even if exceptions were to be made for my trip,” he said in a statement to The New York Times. The executive order blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It also suspended entry of all refugees for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely. Here is Mr. Farhadi’s statement: [See where to stream Asghar Farhadi’s dramas at Watching, The New York Times’s film and TV recommendation site. | 0fake |
Colbert Hilariously Humiliates Ted Cruz For Losing New York By A Landslide (VIDEO) | Ted Cruz paid dearly for insulting New York values on Tuesday night, and Stephen Colbert couldn t resist rubbing the loss in Cruz s smug face.During the Late Show on Wednesday night, the audience applauded after Colbert told Cruz to Suck it. The clearest message coming out of New York last night was: Suck it, Ted Cruz, Colbert quipped. Suck our New York values! Indeed, Ted Cruz had hoped to win New York even though he had been trashing the state throughout his campaign for not having the same values as him.And New York voters delivered a crushing defeat to the Texas Senator by voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.In fact, New York hated Cruz so much that Ben Carson received more votes than he did even though he hasn t been in the race for a month, a fact that Colbert found amusing. And in one county he even lost to Ben Carson, who dropped out of the race a month ago, Colbert reported. Though, to be fair, Dr. Carson may not be aware that he dropped out of the race. But even though Cruz was beaten like a speed bag in a loose suit, at the end of the night Ted Cruz managed to keep it positive, and also kind of creepy, Colbert continued before playing a clip of Cruz talking about America lying down with her back on the mat during his concession speech.Colbert smiled and chuckled and then interpreted Cruz s words. That is when America is at her best, lying down with her back on the mat, lights on and with a firm handshake and then back to your separate beds for some quiet weeping. If you know what I mean. Here s the video via YouTube.If Ted Cruz learned anything from his loss on Tuesday, it s that you should avoid insulting an entire state when you are trailing your opponent in a race you desperately want to win, especially if your opponent is a native of the state you are insulting.Cruz had hoped that New Yorkers would forget all about what he said about them and vote for him anyway. He was wrong. Featured image via screenshot | 1real |
HUCKABEE NAILS IT: Says Obama’s Radical List Of Invited Guests To Meet Pope Proves His Fake Christianity | Welcoming a pro-life, pro-marriage leader at the White House with a crowd of abortion and gay rights activists, is as classy as hosting an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with an open bar. Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that Barack Obama pretends to be a Christian, after the president s guest list for Pope Francis White House welcome ceremony included a short list of Catholics and other Christians who haev visibly parted with Church doctrine. Huckabee told Newsmax TV that he is concerned about a guy that believes he s a Christian, and pretends to be and then says he is, but does things that makes it very difficult for people to practice their Christian faith. I m disappointed if a person says, I m a Christian, but you invite the Pope into your home and then you invite a whole bunch of people who are at odds with the Catholic Church policy. I think there s something very unseemly about that. The guest list for Wednesday morning s pomp and circumstance on the South Lawn of the White House included a pro-choice nun, a transgender woman and an openly gay retired Episcopal bishop plus a Roman Catholic teacher from suburban Philadelphia who was fired this year for marrying her girlfriend.Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, divorced his partner last year after previously divorcing his first spouse, a woman.Margie Winters, the suburban Philadelphia educator, said Monday that she hoped the pontiff would address issues facing gay Catholics during his visit to the U.S.The 50-year-old Winters lost her job as religious instruction director at Waldron Mercy Academy in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in June over her 2007 same-sex marriage.Winters says the school principal knew she was gay and married to Andrea Vettori, clinical director at a health center for the homeless, when she was hired eight years ago.Her invitation to join a crowd of 11,000 on Wednesday morning came via the Human Rights Campaign, an gay-rights activist group.Huckabee was answering a question Tuesday night about whether Muslim politicians should be disqualified from running for president. There is no religious test for a person to hold public office in America, he said. I m less concerned about what faith a person has. I m more concerned about the authenticity of their faith and how that plays out in their policies. Huckabee lashed out at Obama on Tuesday in an essay published by The Daily Caller, saying he shows total disrespect to millions of Americans by transforming Pope Francis White House visit into a politicized cattle call for gay and pro-abortion activists. Via: UK Daily Mail Online | 1real |
Donald Trump, Interrupted. He Calls Flint Pastor Who Cut In ‘a Nervous Mess.’ - The New York Times | Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that the pastor who interrupted his remarks at an church in Flint, Mich. was “a nervous mess” when she introduced him and that he thought “something was up” with her. During his visit to Bethel United Methodist Church on Wednesday, Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, started to assail his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for being a failure. As he spoke, the Rev. Faith Green Timmons came over to him and said, “Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us,” and added, “not make a political speech. ” Mr. Trump addressed the awkward exchange in an interview on Fox News on Thursday, suggesting that Pastor Timmons had a political agenda. “Everyone plays their games, it doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said, claiming Pastor Timmons was shaking when she came up to him. He added: “She was so nervous, she was like a nervous mess. I figured something was up. ” Some conservatives defended Mr. Trump on Thursday, pointing to a Facebook post in which she wrote that the visit was an opportunity to educate Republican candidate as evidence that she was planning to embarrass him. While that post does not appear on her Facebook page, Pastor Timmons did address the controversy there on Wednesday night. “Had he stuck to what his camp claimed he came to do, we would not have had a problem!” she wrote. Mr. Trump has shown more discipline on the campaign trail in recent weeks, but his criticism of the pastor demonstrated that he is still willing to push back against perceived slights. Mr. Trump also allowed himself to belittle Mrs. Clinton’s recent illness at a rally on Wednesday night, suggesting that she could not stand for such an event and that she was probably “lying in bed. ” After the interruption at the church, Mr. Trump went on to discuss the economic situation in Flint. He said on Thursday that most of the people who attended the event at the church welcomed him warmly. “The audience was saying ‘let him speak, let him speak,’ ” Mr. Trump said. “The audience was so great. ” But a pool reporter who was traveling Mr. Trump disputed his account, describing a scene where several members of the audience actually heckled Mr. Trump and questioned him about reports that he had discriminated against black people as a landlord. According to the pool report, Pastor Timmons defended Mr. Trump and told the crowd that he was “a guest of my church and you will defend him. ” Mrs. Clinton, in North Carolina on Thursday, lamented Mr. Trump’s attack on Pastor Timmons, saying it was unwarranted. “He called her a nervous mess,” Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference. “That’s not only insulting, it’s dead wrong. ” She added: “She’s a rock for her community in trying times. She deserves better, and Flint deserves better — in fact, so does America. ” | 0fake |
FUNNIEST VIDEO EVER…Sean Spicer Conducts Press Conference With Media Members Who Act Like Toddlers | This is by far the funniest video I've EVER seen showing WH reporters behaving like kindergartners. LMAO #FlashbackFriday pic.twitter.com/X9PO7oOnOg Cris (@ThePatriot143) April 7, 2017WE THINK SEAN SPICER LEADS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR THE BEST ZINGERS HERE ARE A FEW OF OUR FAVORITES:The mainstream media is clearly a leftist clique united against the Trump administration. On Thursday, Spicer called on Simendinger during a heated press briefing.Instead of asking her own question, Alexis snarked: Could you help us all by calling on Peter right now? Could you call on the New York Times, please? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dT68A4lQXUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRtFbDEe6e4CNN is Disgusting!You ve Asked Me Eight Times!Sean Spicer Blows Up When Wolf Blitzer (Wolfie the blinker) Pushes on Neo-Nazis #CrookedMedia pic.twitter.com/Gf57Wv6WyI TRUMP ANOMALY (@ANOMALY1) November 23, 2016 | 1real |
BREAKING: Fresno Police Release GRAPHIC Video Of FATAL SHOOTING OF UNARMED WHITE MAN By Veteran Cops | The mainstream media, Hillary, Barack and Black Lives Matter terrorists yawn The Fresno Police Department released body camera video Wednesday showing Dylan Noble repeatedly ignoring officers demands that he stop moving back and forth at a gas station parking lot and show his hands before officers fired their weapons.Police Chief Jerry Dyer said the investigation into the shooting is still underway, and he has not made a decision whether it was justified. But he said he wanted to release the video so the public could see a more complete picture of what officers faced as they confronted Noble and had to make decisions in mere seconds.Dyer told reporters he had originally planned to release the names of both officers, but he declined to do so Wednesday because the department s legal counsel instructed him not to. The department has intercepted several threats made against the officers involved, although not by name. He noted that the recent shooting of 12 police officers in Dallas has caused him to fear for the safety of his own officers, especially given the controversy swirling around Noble s death.He said the officer driving the patrol car was a 20-year veteran at the department. In a second unit was an officer with 17 years of experience 10 with the department. The 20-year veteran had never been a part of a police shooting, but the 17-year officer was involved in a 2009 shooting.Dyer said the officers had interviewed a person who had called 911 about an armed man walking around the area. About 12 minutes later, they encountered Noble s truck.The videos pick up from there.The cameras capture what sounds like screeching tires. One officer notes that Noble was peeling out. They then attempt to stop Noble, who continues to drive for some time before pulling into the gas station at Shields and Armstrong avenues.Although some of the road had no-stopping zones to Noble s right, Dyer said Noble had several opportunities to pull over.The officer behind the wheel pulls out his handgun and points it at Noble s truck as it is slowing and turning into the gas station. Dyer said this was because the officer believed Noble may have been armed, given the officers initial call. That officer also believed Noble was taunting him and making the officer feel as if he did have a gun, Dyer added.Both officers exit their vehicles with guns drawn. They begin yelling for the driver to put both of his hands outside of the driver s side window of his truck. Noble puts his left hand out of the window but not his right, despite multiple requests for him to do so.After some time, Noble begins to exit the truck. One officer yells that he did not tell Noble to get out of the truck. Noble appears to stagger as he gets out of the lifted truck. He then walks a few steps away from the officers, who move toward him. The officers repeatedly tell Noble to put both of his hands up. He continues to walk toward and away from officers in a circular way raising and lowering each hand at different intervals.Dyer said that one officer believed Noble had something in his hand. This was later determined to be a 4-inch-by-4-inch piece of clear plastic with what appears to be a grayish clay inside. It is currently being analyzed by the U.S. Department of Justice.***WARNING***VIDEO IS VERY GRAPHIC! Watch HERE: Noble was fatally shot by officers on June 25 during traffic stop Video shows Noble repeatedly ignoring officers commands to show his hands Department has said officers believed Noble was about to shoot themVia: Fresno Bee | 1real |
WHY THIS BLUE-COLLAR DEMOCRAT STRONGHOLD County Is Still Fighting For Trump: “He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse” [VIDEO] | AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office; mining companies have added 1,200 jobs across the country since his inauguration, more than 180 of them in Kentucky. But industry analysts say that was tied largely to market forces and dismiss Trump s repeated pledges to resuscitate the coal industry as pie in the sky. Coal has been on the decline for many decades for many reasons outside of regulation: far cheaper natural gas, mechanization, thinning Appalachian seams. With the opposition he s had, I think he s pulling the plow pretty good, offers Wes Lewis from the card table. A few months ago, he says, he saw four brand-new coal rigs going through town. For the longest time, under Obama, all we saw were trucks being pulled on wreckers, because people turned belly up, they went broke. Lewis says he s heard about friends of friends being called back to work. He s noticed new trucks in people s driveways, too, which he takes as evidence that his neighbors are feeling confident about their futures. These tiny signs stack up to him as proof. Lewis fishes the tag out of the bib of his overalls: Made in Mexico, it reads. Trump s bringing them back, he says.Lewis, a registered Democrat, trusts Trump because he trusts his values. And because of that, he trusts Trump s other promises so strongly he can t think of anything that would shake that faith in him. If the factories and mines don t come back, he ll blame the opposition. If there isn t a wall on the Mexico border, he says, it won t be because Trump didn t try. If investigators find his campaign colluded with Russians, it s because so many people are so determined to bring him down.Go HERE to read entire story. | 1real |
How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil - The New York Times | EL FURRIAL, Venezuela — One oil rig was idle for weeks because a single piece of equipment was missing. Another was attacked by armed gangs who made off with all they could carry. Many oil workers say they are paid so little that they barely eat and have to keep watch over one another in case they faint while high up on the rigs. Venezuela’s petroleum industry, whose vast revenues once fueled the country’s revolution, underwriting everything from housing to education, is spiraling into disarray. To add insult to injury, the Venezuelan government has been forced to turn to its nemesis, the United States, for help. “You call them the empire,” said Luis Centeno, a union leader for the oil workers, referring to what government officials call the United States, “and yet you’re buying their oil. ” The declining oil industry is perhaps the most urgent chapter of Venezuela’s economic crisis. Oil accounts for half of the Venezuelan government’s revenues, what former President Hugo Chávez once called an “instrument of national development. ” The state oil company poured its profits, more than $250 billion in all from 2001 to 2015, into the country’s social programs, including food imports. But those profits have evaporated with mismanagement and the drop in global oil prices over the past two years. Now, even Venezuela’s subsidized oil shipments to its vital ally Cuba are slowly being phased out, oil executives with operations in Venezuela contend, forcing Havana to look to Russia for cheap oil. For President Nicolás Maduro — like Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, before him — Venezuela’s oil wealth has been essential to the nation’s identity and sovereignty, the financial might behind its regional ambitions and its angry defiance of the United States. The United States has always been a huge market for Venezuela’s oil. But with Venezuela’s state oil company hobbling along, it was actually forced to start importing oil from the United States. Early this year, the United States began shipping more than 50, 000 barrels a day of the light crude that Venezuela needs to prepare its own oil for export, joining a handful of suppliers that have become vital to keeping the country’s oil industry afloat. Even that lifeline is tenuous. Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, is struggling to pay for the foreign oil. Some tankers wait in port for as long as two weeks to be paid, and sometimes they leave because of a lack of payment, said an oil executive who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals from the government. The problems are just some of the reasons Venezuela’s oil production has plummeted to 2. 4 million barrels a day, down 350, 000 barrels from a year ago. That is nearly a million barrels below what it was in 1998 when Mr. Chávez took power. Venezuela is racked by shortages of foods like corn and rice, which it once easily imported using the company’s vast foreign currency revenues. Essential medicines like antibiotics have disappeared. The economy is set to contract by 10 percent by the end of the year and has already seen inflation. The price of bread alone has doubled from month to month, now about 50 cents a loaf in many places, at a time when the oil workers here say they are making less than a dollar a day because of the inflation. “We are practically working for free,” said Pedro Velásquez, a supervisor at an oil field in the town of Punta de Mata. Whatever money the government can muster to improvise patchwork repairs in its oil fields and processing plants is now drying up. With the state oil company hobbled by debts, of its exports go to paying off Chinese and other lenders. The company is running out of resources to pay international technicians, or even its own people. “The decline is speeding up, and that will continue to happen,” said Lisa Viscidi, a Latin America energy expert at the Dialogue, a Washington research institute. “Conditions are getting worse and worse there’s less and less money to invest. ” The condition of Venezuela’s state oil company has international oil traders concerned that its collapse could jolt an otherwise oversupplied global market. They note that when labor strife brought nearly all production in Venezuela to a halt for several weeks at the end of 2002 and in early 2003, global prices jumped more than 30 percent, marking the first in a series of international crises that ushered in a decade of climbing oil prices. Venezuela accounts for less of the international oil market today, but its exports still make up roughly 2 percent of the world’s output. That means that a serious decline in Venezuelan exports, especially if accompanied by a crisis in Nigeria or Iraq, could tighten the market enough to send oil prices climbing again. “A collapse in Venezuela would be an accelerator for oil prices it would be a total shock,” said Helima Croft, the chief commodity strategist for Royal Bank of Canada. “This country is literally imploding. ” Right now, she added, “There is no oil producer that is falling apart as fast as or as dramatically as Venezuela. ” Neither PDVSA nor its American subsidiary Citgo agreed to requests for interviews. The challenges ahead are here in the vast oil fields of El Furrial, in northeastern Venezuela. Beneath the flat, grassy expanses lies the very grade of oil that Venezuela must now import to blend with its large reserves of heavy oil to ship them abroad. At its peak, El Furrial alone produced 453, 000 barrels a day, equivalent to about 80 percent of the national production of Ecuador. But in 2009, Mr. Chávez nationalized Wilpro, an American consortium that handled the complex natural gas injection at the site designed to coax more oil out of the ground. Production has declined by more than half. Workers at El Furrial today tell a story of decline and mismanagement. There is not even enough drilling mud — the most basic fluid required to keep drill bits cool and well bores clear — to keep all of the rigs running. At one PDVSA well pad here, China National Petroleum Corporation now fills the gap left by Wilpro. But the site had not been operating for several weeks because PDVSA had not delivered a vital piece of equipment that suspends tubing over the well. Once completed, the well might produce 3, 500 barrels of oil per day, but it was not clear when that would be. “It’s the first time we’ve ever gone three weeks waiting this way,” said Nelson Ruiz, a manager. “Normally we would get the project going after one signature, and the drill would be in the ground. ” But it is the issue of food that is demoralizing the workers the most. Workers at one production site described how they eat so little food now, they watch out for their in case they faint. Claudio Lezama, who has spent the past eight years at the site, said he weighed about 200 pounds several years ago. Between his manual labor and being able to afford only one meal a day, he is now 145 pounds. Sitting in a trailer where workers take their breaks, he said that he worked as a stone mason to afford to feed himself during his time off. A colleague said she had taken to reselling food like yucca, cheese and eggs. “You’re a seller,” Mr. Lezama said, chiding her for raising prices when food was in short supply in Venezuela. In a complaint filed in July by a group of workers at the state oil company, the workers detailed a history of extensive petroleum leaks since 2012 in El Furrial stemming from lack of maintenance and costly infrastructure that was left abandoned. The complaint said the problems also posed a health risk for surrounding communities. “All this has been hidden from view, generating losses,” the complaint said. “We workers are extremely angry because no one has done anything to put a stop to this disaster. ” These days, some oil workers fear that simply going to work puts them at risk. Carlos Robles, a union leader, spent a recent afternoon talking to supervisors of a well about a number of attacks by armed gangs who robbed that facility and others of laptops, units and metal equipment. It was getting to be 6 p. m. the time that workers warned that the gangs begin to prowl the streets of El Furrial were empty, looking as if a curfew were in place. “The only thing between us and being robbed is God and the Virgin,” said Juan Díaz, a supervisor at the site, as his shift continued into the night. International service companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger are scaling back their operations as Venezuela’s state oil company struggles to pay its debts to them — as much as $25 billion — with a flurry of bonds and promissory notes. And as the production from El Furrial and other fields plummets, the state oil company has to lean ever more heavily on Citgo, which is being forced to leverage to the hilt. Last year, Citgo borrowed $2. 5 billion to keep PDVSA afloat. And now it plans to borrow an additional $800 million to update a refinery on the island of Aruba to produce synthetic light oil, according to executives who have been briefed on the plans. Mr. Centeno, the union leader, said Venezuela’s state oil company had become so strapped that it had stopped providing its workers with new boots, helmets and gloves. “PDVSA is on the floor now,” he said. | 0fake |
BREAKING NFL COMMISH GOODELL Pens Bombshell Letter To Players After Trump Tweet | Wow! It s about time Roger Goodell stepped up to tell the players to stand for our national anthem. Goodell released a statement today that he expects the NFL players to stand for our anthem. He said in his statement below: We need to move past this controversy, and we want to do that together with our players. This came after President Trump Tweeted out that the NFL should stop receiving tax dollars from their fellow Americans because they won t support the anthem: Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law! PDJTGoodell also addressed the underlying issues : The controversy over the Anthem is a barrier to having honest conversations and making real progress on the underlying issues. What do you think will happen now? Do you think the players will give up kneeling or do you think the protests will get worse?He began his letter with: We live in a country that can feel very divided. Sports, and especially the NFL, brings people together and lets them set aside those divisions, at least for a few hours. The current dispute over the National Anthem is threatening to erode the unifying power of our game, and is now dividing us, and our players, from many fans across the country. JUST IN: In letter to NFL owners, Roger Goodell says: "We believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem." pic.twitter.com/iveGOQgJnz NBC News (@NBCNews) October 10, 2017 | 1real |
Hillary Completely Blew Away This Woman Who Receives Terrifying Hate From The Alt-Right | When Ella Dawson started a blog discussing her trials with genital herpes, along with STI stigma, she expected prudes to come out of the woodwork and snipe at her for putting such a personal topic out for all to see. What she didn t expect was for the dangerous alt-right to find her and make her a target for their sick form of entertainment.When she decided to write about that, she likely also didn t expect to catch the attention of Hillary Clinton, let alone grab it enough to receive a personal letter back.The letter starts with: Thank you for the brave and insightful piece on Medium this week. I am so grateful for you for not only speaking out against the stigma surrounding sexually transmitted infections, but for also taking a courageous stand against the ridiculous, but very real, barrage of hate you have received online. She reiterated that love and kindness are among the central components of her campaign, and that the decline of civil public discourse is one of the more alarming problems in the digital age. Then she dropped this truth bomb: It s going to take all of us, working together, to restore our discourse and that work starts by calling out the bullies, chief among them Donald Trump and the alt-right. Read the whole letter below:Thank you, @HillaryClinton, for reading. I m incredibly moved. To be accurate, I m ugly crying. #ImWithHer pic.twitter.com/kt5tAVWrFX Ella Dawson (@brosandprose) September 6, 2016The blog post that caught Hillary s attention discusses Dawson s very real and terrible problems with the alt-right. Her broader discussion, though, is about how rape threats, death threats, doxxing, shaming, and more, happen to women all over the Internet because we dare to Internet while female. The sheer gall of us to have an opinion and put it out there we should, in the eyes of the misogynistic alt-right, stay silent. We bring the harassment on ourselves in their view.What s worse is that some of the people harassing Dawson aren t the typical cretins that inhabit the alt-right. Mike Cernovich, who s a lawyer, but more well-known for his sexist Internet presence, tweeted: Ugly and has herpes. Maybe an SJW male might actually be able to get at these table scraps. (Doubtful). Paul Joseph Watson, an editor-at-large at Alex Jones InfoWars, recorded a five-minute YouTube video talking about how vile were the women who were tweeting under the hashtag #ShoutYourStatus for STD Awareness Month. He ended it with the typical sexist attack of: I don t think we should be that surprised that feminists are bragging about their STDs. After all, they re so fat and ugly, the mere fact that they re having any kind of sex at all is a massive achievement. Because the women the alt-right considers to be their eye candy all know their places and would never be so hateful towards men as to become a feminist. Sure.The response to that video caused Dawson to lock her Twitter account, lest Breitbart writers, and other misogynistic writers, embed her tweets in their stories, causing an ever-growing cycle of harassment. A man writing about this stuff would never receive this treatment. Ever.That s what Hillary knows, and has dealt with as a strong woman in a position of power for most of her life. Hillary stood up in Reno and read off Breitbart headlines while many other women are afraid to even mention that cesspool of a news site. Dawson has been a Hillary supporter for years, but her admiration for Hillary went through the roof when she witnessed this speech.Dawson ended her post with a thank-you to Hillary for having the guts (yes, it takes guts to stand up to the hate of the alt-right) to call the alt-right out for what it is. Misogyny, racism, white nationalism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and all-around hate are what the alt-right is about. That s despite the fact that, according to Dawson, they delusionally bill themselves as: [A] trendy new generation of conservatism, pushing boundaries and buttons in response to political correctness and liberal oversensitivity. Please. That is vile on its face.Bravo to Dawson for continuing to Internet while female, and bravo to Hillary for standing with her. That is what makes a president.Featured image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1real |
U.S. senator calls for probe into promotion of Kushner Cos deal | SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has called for an investigation into “potentially fraudulent statements and misrepresentations” made by companies promoting investment in a property development involving the family company of White House advisor Jared Kushner. Citing a May 12 report by Reuters, Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, requested a review of claims made by Chinese migration agency Qiaowai and the U.S. Immigration Fund (USIF) in the marketing of the One Journal Square project in Jersey City, New Jersey to potential investors in China. Grassley flagged his concerns to the Department of Homeland Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission in a May 24 letter that was later posted on his website. Jupiter, Florida-based USIF contracted with Beijing-based Qiaowai to market projects including One Journal Square to potential investors through the controversial EB-5 scheme. The program offers qualified foreign investors the chance at a green card in exchange for a $500,000 investment in a U.S. business. Kushner Companies is also working with KABR Group, a private equity fund, on the One Journal Square project, according to marketing materials on Qiaowai’s website. The developers are seeking to raise $150 million, or 15.4 percent of the funding, from EB-5 investors. Because the SEC considers some EB-5 investments securities, companies and individuals that market these investments must comply with U.S. securities laws. EB-5 schemes must also comply with immigration rules. Under United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) guidelines, EB-5 investors must put their capital at risk and the green card is not guaranteed. USCIS is part of the Department of Homeland Security. In an emailed response to a request for comment on Grassley’s letter, Stu Loeser, a spokesman for USIF, said: “Qiaowai and U.S. Immigration Fund are fully in compliance with all laws relating to the sale of securities to immigrant investors. These allegations are gross distortions and unsupported by the facts.” Reuters previously revealed that Qiaowai’s promotional materials online and on social media, including for the One Journal Square project, sometimes referred to a green card guarantee or “safeguard” and the safety of capital invested in EB-5 projects. After Reuters contacted Qiaowai for comment, these phrases were deleted. Qiaowai has also dropped the phrase “government-supported” from its online promotion of the One Journal Square project. “It is a fundamental rule of the EB-5 program that an applicant’s investment must remain “at risk” up to the end of the alien’s conditional permanent resident status, and a “guaranteed” investment fails this basic EB-5 test; if Qiaowai is in fact guaranteeing the safety of the investment principal, all related EB-5 petitions should be rejected by USCIS,” wrote Grassley, who has long advocated for reform of the EB-5 program. Qiaowai’s assurances to investors that their green cards were guaranteed and their funds were safe appeared to violate U.S. securities laws, Grassley’s letter said. It also cited a report on the project’s promotion by the New York Times. Kushner Companies and the SEC declined to comment. Qiaowai, KABR Group and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend. Chinese investors account for around 80 percent of the nearly 10,000 EB-5 visas issued annually. Criticism of the program has centered on instances of fraud and the fact that most of the funds in a program originally intended to help impoverished areas have instead gone to wealthy urban districts. Despite these concerns, earlier this month, Congress extended the EB-5 program until September 30. The Chinese road show for One Journal Square earlier this month also attracted criticism. Kushner Companies apologized for Nicole Kushner Meyer’s reference to her brother, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, during the road show. The company stressed that he was only mentioned in order to make clear that he was not involved with the project. Kushner Companies representatives skipped some later road show events. Jared Kushner, whose White House portfolio includes relations with China, sold his stake in Kushner Companies to a family trust early this year. | 0fake |
FEDERALLY FUNDED RIOT: BALTIMORE MAYOR WANTS FEDS TO PAY $20 MILLION FOR REPAIR OF CITY | After giving ROOM TO DESTROY , Baltimore s mayor now says she s confident she can get Uncle Sam to pay for the damage. What is this, the new age of federally financed riots? One month after the race riots that trashed Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said that the city would apply for a $20 million Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant to replenish the rainy day fund being used to pay for cleanup and police overtime costs in the wake of the mayhem that she herself is on record as encouraging. In order to replenish this fund, we ve already worked with the state to apply for a federal FEMA reimbursement, and we are confident that we will receive a significant reimbursement from the federal government, CBS Baltimore affiliate WJZ reported her as saying Wednesday. This smells pretty funny, given that FEMA funds are meant mostly for natural disasters, not riot damage. But more to the point, it s effectively an escape from fiscal accountability and political responsibility, given Rawlings-Blake s role in fueling the riots. Rawlings-Blake, remember, is the one who lit the fuse by saying, We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that a clear incitement to riot, even as she unconvincingly denied meaning any such thing while Baltimore burned. Instead of resigning, or being asked to, Rawlings-Blake is now more confident than ever that cash is on its way, according to press reports. This may very well be true, given all the evidence of political dealmaking with the Obama White House and Eric Holder s Justice Department. As the riots raged, Rawlings-Blake was in telephone contact with White House advisor Valerie Jarrett. Then she initiated a quickie-justice prosecution of six Baltimore cops, as well as a broader federal investigation of the city s police force that the White House wanted. Last week, she joined one group of Maryland officials and another of big-city mayors to seek federal dollars, using the riots as reason. No cash has been explicitly promised at this point, but in the world of one hand washes the other, it s pretty obvious that deals are being cut.Read more: IBD | 1real |
Russia's Putin says to decide soon if he will run for re-election | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he would decide very soon whether to run for re-election next year, something he is widely expected to do and comfortably win. Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000. If, as expected, he contests and wins what would be a fourth presidential term in March, he would be eligible to serve another six years until 2024. In a glitzy event in Moscow attended by young people, a host asked Putin if he would be running for re-election in March. The Russian leader, who polls regularly show enjoys a popularity rating of around 80 percent, asked the audience if they supported him running in the elections. Yes, the audience shouted back, applauding him loudly. I understand that this decision must be taken in the near future and it will be taken in the near future, Putin told the audience. And when taking it I will of course take into account our conversation today and your reaction. | 0fake |
Brother of Marseille attacker arrested in Italy: police | ROME (Reuters) - (This October 8 story has been refiled to correct names of Marseille attacker and his brother, which had been switched in previous story.) Italian police said on Sunday they had arrested the brother of Ahmed Hannachi, the Tunisian man who killed two young women with a knife outside the Marseille train station a week ago in a suspected terrorist act. An Italian anti-terrorism squad arrested 25-year-old Anis Hannachi in Ferrara, Italy, on Saturday evening on an international warrant issued by France, a police statement said. On Oct. 1, Ahmed Hannachi shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) as he killed the women, French police sources said. Ahmed Hannachi was shot dead by a French soldier. The militant Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, but did not name the assailant. After what Italian police described as a very complex investigation, Anis Hannachi was tracked down in Italy, the statement said, and is being held on suspicion of complicity in his brother s attack and membership in a terrorist group. No other information was provided about the operation, which was coordinated with French judicial and anti-terrorism authorities, the statement said. | 0fake |
Hillary Clinton Received Over 800,000 Illegal Votes, Research Claims - Breitbart | Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received over 800, 000 illegal votes from noncitizens of the United States, according to academic research. [A study by political scientist Jesse Richman from Old Dominion University in Virginia found that 6. 4 percent of the 20 million noncitizens who reside in the United States voted in November’s presidential election. He then extrapolated these results into support for each presidential candidate, estimating that Clinton would have received 81 percent support from noncitizens, therefore receiving an extra 834, 000 votes. The number of 834, 000 is significant enough to have tipped some of the closest races in Clinton’s favor, including New Hampshire, Nevada, and Maine, all of which Clinton won by margins of under 3 percent. It would also have reduced Clinton’s margin of victory in the popular vote, which she won by 2. 8 million by dominating cosmopolitan centers such as New York and California. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he would be opening up a “major investigation into voter fraud,” promising to “strengthen up voting procedures. ” I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and … . — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017, even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017, He has also previously questioned Hillary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, saying that he would have won it “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. ” In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally, — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016, However, Richman rejects Trump’s theory, stating in his paper that it was “not at all plausible that votes account for the entire popular vote margin held by Clinton. ” In the run up to the election, a number of cities were found to be pushing plans to increase the voting rights of in order to further strengthen Democrat incumbents. The Democratic Party has long been in favor of increasing voting rights for noncitizens, as well as felons, in the knowledge that these groups are more likely to vote Democrat rather than Republican. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0fake |
How Technology Has Failed to Improve Your Airline Experience - The New York Times | There are many reasons for the sorry state of commercial aviation in America. When it comes to your routinely terrible flight — not to mention the sort of exceptional horror that took place aboard United Airlines Flight 3411 last weekend — regulatory failures as well as consolidation, which the authorities have allowed to occur unabated for decades, can be blamed. But I come to you as a technology columnist to tell you that technology, too, has failed you. People in Silicon Valley pride themselves on their capacity to upend entrenched industries. Uber defeated taxi cartels. Airbnb made getting a room cheaper and more accessible. Streaming services are undoing the cable business. Yet the airline industry has not just stubbornly resisted innovation to improve customer service — in many ways, technology has only fueled the industry’s race to the bottom. Everything about United Flight 3411 — overselling, underpaying for seats when they are oversold, a cultish refusal to offer immediate contrition, an overall attitude that brutish capitalism is the best that nonelite customers can expect from this fallen world — is baked into the airline industry’s business model. And that business model has been accelerated by tech. Travel search engines rank airlines based on price rather than friendliness or quality of service. Online airport kiosks and apps allow airlines to serve customers with fewer and fewer workers. What we are witnessing is the basest, ugliest form of capitalism — one concerned with prices and profits above all else, with little regard for quality of service, for friendliness, or even for the dignity of customers. “The airline industry has been on a steady downward trajectory when it comes to customer service for nearly 40 years,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, the president of the Atmosphere Research Group, a travel industry research firm. He noted that American carriers were improving on some metrics — service is up, baggage loss is down and prices keep getting better. What keeps deteriorating are comfort and quality of service for passengers (i. e. most people). Legroom keeps shrinking. Airlines keep tacking on separate fees for amenities we used to consider part of the flight. And customers keep going along with it. “Consumers have shown that they’re willing to put up with an awful lot, including lack of legroom, lack of amenities, mediocre or worse customer service, dirty airplanes and more to save money,” Mr. Harteveldt said. “And the airline industry has evolved to meet that desire” for cheap fares. Part of the problem is how we buy tickets today. The whole system is mercilessly transactional. When you search online, you look for price and travel times, and perhaps you consider some airline loyalty program. Customer service — that is, how the airline treats you — isn’t often part of the transaction. As a result, airlines have little incentive to reform themselves. “Airline executives will tell you they don’t view themselves as being service companies,” Mr. Harteveldt said. “They want Wall Street to view them as industrial companies, and they want consumers to view them as transportation providers. Customer service is just not what the airlines are about. ” You can see this in United’s initial response to what happened on Flight 3411. “I apologize for having to reaccommodate these customers,” Oscar Munoz, United’s chief executive, said in a statement dripping with all the warmth of a ransom note. In a letter to employees, he repeatedly suggested that the customer, not the airline, was at fault. After all, the passenger was offered a bountiful $1, 000 in United vouchers for his trouble. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. As a United spokesman told The Times, the passenger was “asked several times, politely,” for his seat before anyone beat him up. It took two days — and a plunge in United’s stock price — for the airline to offer a real apology. “I want you to know that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right,” Mr. Munoz said in a statement on Tuesday. Can technology improve how airlines work? Some people have ideas for how that may happen. One of them is obvious and sensible: customer reviews. Last year TripAdvisor, the travel reviews site that has become indispensable for hotel bookings, began rating airlines. Its new rankings, released this week, show that over all, airlines get an average rating of 3. 7 out of 5 from customers. Emirates and Singapore Airlines are rated the best in the world two American airlines, JetBlue and Alaska, made TripAdvisor’s Top 10 list. But Delta was the only major American airline to receive TripAdvisor’s seal of approval. United and American Airlines did not meet the site’s minimum threshold, though Bryan Saltzburg, senior vice president for TripAdvisor’s global flight business, said that the two had been improving. One can imagine how such reviews could prompt improvements in airlines. If instead of just price, travel search engines included prominent warnings from reviewers — “This airline might give you a bloody lip while kicking you from your seat, !” — that could alter travelers’ calculations in booking. “That would be a good idea — a filter on travel search that says, ‘Click this filter and it might cost you a few dollars more, but we’ll bias you towards airlines that treat their customers well,’ ” said Paul English, the of the travel search company Kayak who now runs another travel Lola. That is small potatoes, though. A bigger disruption would come from altering how we pay for airfares. In the same way that Netflix changed the DVD business by charging a monthly fee, some consultants argue that a membership fee could radically improve flying. “We’ve prototyped a subscription airline in the past, and it basically gets the airline out of the business of reducing service for offering the lowest fares,” said Devin Liddell, the principal brand strategist for Teague, a design firm that works with Boeing and other transportation companies. Some have tried a monthly subscription model, and none have taken off. But airline face high capital costs a new business model might work, Mr. Liddell said, if an established airline tries it as a way to break free from the accepted way of doing things. You might wonder why an airline would dare try such a thing. After all, airlines are doing well profits are up across the globe, despite your annoyance about flying. But Mr. Liddell warned of competition from other kinds of transportation. If cars make driving easier and more comfortable, midrange flights would face competition. Counting the time it takes to clear airport security and get to and from the airport, it takes just as long to drive between some places — Los Angeles to San Francisco, say — as to fly. If technology makes driving much more comfortable, too, lots of people might abandon planes for cars, Mr. Liddell said. An even idea is the Hyperloop, Elon Musk’s vision for superfast tunnel travel. It’s a pretty speculative idea, but if it works, airlines would need to radically alter how they work. For now, though, none of that hurts the commercial air business. Airlines are safe from cars and the Hyperloop. They are content to feed you service for lower prices, because that is what the web wants. Your only technological hope for better service is your smartphone camera and the viral push of social networks. If you are violently kicked off your flight, at least your fellow passengers will post a video to Facebook. | 0fake |
Biden asks U.S. Congress to allow unencumbered Zika funding vote | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday called on the Republican-led U.S. Congress to allow an up-or-down vote on funding to combat the Zika virus without other provisions attached, calling the health threat posed by the pathogen a national emergency. Congress has failed to approve any funding to fight the mosquito-borne virus since President Barack Obama asked for $1.9 billion in February. Lawmakers have been deadlocked for months over a $1.1 billion funding bill. Democrats have accused Republicans of attaching controversial provisions related to abortion that they cannot accept. Republicans have accused Democrats of blocking the bill to gain political advantage by portraying Republicans as obstructionists on Zika funding. “Give us an up-or-down vote, straight, on Zika,” Biden said at an event on Capitol Hill with fellow Democrats from the Senate and House of Representatives. “I understand attaching controversial issues to important legislation ... but this is a national emergency,” Biden added. “People’s health, the well-being of unborn children, the health of the country at large, is at stake. Act.” U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika. Two top federal health officials also visited Congress on Thursday to underscore the importance of Zika funding. “We’re all hopeful that the Congress will come through with the money that’s needed to respond effectively to Zika,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters after meeting with Senate Democratic leaders alongside Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters that Democrats want Zika funding added to stop-gap legislation that Congress must pass by Oct. 1 to keep federal agencies operating. “By Zika, I mean for a year. I don’t mean for three months,” Pelosi said. “Zika should be emergency spending. It should not be off-set (requiring cuts in other government programs), because it is an emergency.” A main issue is Democrats’ opposition to language, backed by Republicans, that they say would prevent Zika funds for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, mainly in Puerto Rico. The virus, first detected in Brazil last year, has spread rapidly through the Americas. Florida is the only U.S. state so far where local mosquitoes are known to be transmitting Zika. | 0fake |
Former Israeli Prime Minister BLASTS Israeli Government, Says Israel Has Become A Fascist State | It appears that the curtain that hides the true nature of Israel is finally beginning to be pulled back. On Friday, former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak told reporters that Israel has been infected by the seeds of fascism. That may be one of the biggest understatements of the year, though it does show the beginnings of a new internal outcry against Israel s government.Haaretz reports:Responding to the resignation of Defense Minister Moshe Ya alon earlier in the day, Barak said that it should be a red light for all of us regarding what s going on in the government. Life-sustaining Zionism and the seeds of fascism cannot live together, Barak told a Channel 10 interviewer.Ya alon s resignation is the end of a chain that began with the case of the soldier who shot [a wounded Palestinian assailant to death], Barak said. Such incidents give us an X-ray image that is opposed to the will of the people. What has happened is a hostile takeover of the Israeli government by dangerous elements. And it s just the beginning. This government needs to be brought down before it brings all of us down, Barak added. There are no serious leaders left in the world who believe the Israeli government. That last quote is particularly relevant to the United States, seeing as the U.S. has acted as Israel s vanguard for quite some time now. The Obama administration s relationship with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been tense, to say the least. Much of this has to do with Netanyahu s avowed disapproval of President Obama s Iran nuclear deal.However, due to rapid changes in the political ideology of people in the U.S. that may change depending on the administration in power. While a majority of Americans still have a favorable opinion of Israeli, Democrats and Independents favorability of Israel is plummeting. The Republican Party s positive outlook on Israel remains rock solid, showing support for Israel has become an increasingly partisan issue.Featured image from (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) | 1real |
Running Into Danger on an Alaskan Trail - The New York Times | It happened so fast: One moment I was running trails, the next I was staring a sow in the face, so close I could smell it, wild and pungent and alarming, and I knew it could smell me, too, my fear. I was in the middle of a rainy run in Far North Bicentennial Park on the outskirts of Anchorage, where I live. It was late July, a time when grizzlies sweep down from the mountains to feast on the salmon swimming up Campbell Creek. But I was miles from the water. I had planned my route away from the creek, and I hadn’t seen bear scat in more than an hour. As I crested a hill, a crash sounded from my right, and I instinctively moved to the left, expecting a moose. But it was the sow with three cubs. The cubs fled up a tree. The sow paused in front of me, as if waiting. I backed into the brush, fortifying myself behind a skinny grove of alder trees, moving slowly, carefully, never taking my eyes off the bear. When it veered as if to leave I felt such relief that my throat loosened and small gasps escaped my lips. Then it abruptly turned and charged directly at me. It’s impossible to run the trails around Alaska without thinking about bears. There are piles of scat everywhere, dotted with blueberry and cranberry seeds that glint in the sun, reminders that you have to be careful. You have to be versed in bear awareness, bear etiquette and bear protocol. Headphones are a and going alone is discouraged. Making noise and carrying bear spray is recommended. Still, I often ran alone. I preferred it that way. I liked the serenity and the loneliness, liked the hours of nothing but me and the mountains and the trees. That day, I wore a bear bell attached to my hydration pack, and I sang, too, whenever I came to dense areas. I sang old rock ’n’ roll songs, loudly and badly. I was cautious but not afraid. I ran these trails all summer and the summer before, and while I saw bears on many other trails, I only twice saw them on these sections. Maybe I let down my guard. Maybe I felt invincible, the way you feel when you repeat risky behavior without negative results. Maybe the bear was having a bad day. When the bear charged, time stood still. I felt every millisecond. I stood in the drizzle, rain coating my face like tears, and I did what they tell you to do if a black bear charges: I waved my arms and yelled. “I’m human!” I cried, my voice rising through the birch trees, through that silent and moment. “I’m a person!” The bear paused and ran back toward the brush. A minute later, it charged a second time. And again I waved my arms and yelled and again it stopped, this time so close I could almost reach out and touch its snout. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. I wondered, briefly and almost idly, if this was how I would die. Suddenly, I wanted to talk to my son, who was grown and off living his own life. I wanted to hear his voice. A lifetime later, the bear turned and ran off, its backside swaying into the trees. I had to get back to the trail, to the possibility of safety, yet I couldn’t step away from the alders. It was my only protection. That’s when the bear began circling around me in a wide arc. That’s when I knew I was in trouble, became really afraid. When my son was young and nothing would comfort him, I would talk. It didn’t matter what I said, he needed my voice, the steady flow of words. As I stepped from the shelter of the alders, I talked out loud, my voice surprisingly calm. I talked to the bear to show that I meant no harm, but mostly I talked to reassure myself. As the bear circled for a second time, I stumbled through devil’s club, snagging my shorts and scratching my legs, and I talked about the day my son was born, how I recognized his face immediately. When I reached the trail, I kept talking. The bear followed, but I didn’t look back. A half a mile later, I glanced over my shoulder, and the bear was gone. I started running and didn’t stop until I encountered two hikers, and I collapsed at their feet. For weeks I saw that bear’s face in my dreams, and I woke up, heart pounding. I swore I would never run trails again, but I missed it too much, and soon I was out with the trees and that big, big sky. Some things are worth the risk, though I made sure to carry a canister of bear spray, just in case. And sometimes even now when I’m running, I think of that bear charging and how I stood there, so still and yet so alive. It opened something inside of me that can never be closed. It offered a taste of the unknown: At any time I might find myself crouched in the brush, face to face with my own fragile existence. So much of life is chance. There are no guarantees. But there are vast landscapes and dangers and wild moments of good luck. | 0fake |
Fact check: Trump and Clinton at the 'commander-in-chief' forum | Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made some inaccurate claims during an NBC “commander-in-chief” forum on military and veterans issues:
• Clinton wrongly claimed Trump supported the war in Iraq after it started, while Trump was wrong, once again, in saying he was against the war before it started.
• Trump said that President Obama set a “certain date” for withdrawing troops from Iraq, when that date was set before Obama was sworn in.
• Trump said that Obama’s visits to China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba were “the first time in the history, the storied history of Air Force One” when “high officials” of a host country did not appear to greet the president. Not true.
• Clinton said that Trump supports privatizing the Veterans Health Administration. That’s false. Trump said he supports allowing veterans to seek care at either public or private hospitals.
• Trump said Clinton made “a terrible mistake on Libya” when she was secretary of State. But, at the time, Trump also supported U.S. action that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi from power.
• Trump cherry-picked Clinton’s words when he claimed Clinton said “vets are being treated, essentially, just fine.” Clinton had said the problems in the Department of Veterans Affairs were not as “widespread” as some Republicans claimed, but she went on to acknowledge problems, including the issue of wait times for doctors.
The forum, sponsored by NBC News and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, was held Sept. 7 at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. Today show host Matt Lauer, and members of the military and veterans in the audience, questioned the candidates separately.
Trump said he “was totally against the war in Iraq,” while Clinton claimed that he supported the Iraq War before and after it started. The facts don’t support either candidate’s strong assertions.
Our review of Trump’s statements before and after the Iraq War started found no evidence that Trump opposed the war before it started. In fact, he expressed mild support for invading Iraq when asked about it on the Howard Stern radio show on Sept. 11, 2002 — about six months before the war started.
Stern asked Trump if he supported a war with Iraq, and Trump responded, “Yeah, I guess so.”
In the NBC commander in chief forum, Trump cited an Esquire article that appeared in August 2004 to show his opposition to the war. But that article appeared 17 months after the war started.
As for Clinton, who as a senator voted in October 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq, the Democratic nominee claimed that Trump “supported it before it happened, he supported it as it was happening and he is on record as supporting it after it happened.”
But just as there is no evidence that Trump opposed the Iraq War before it started, the Clinton campaign offered no evidence that Trump supported the war “after it happened.”
The Clinton campaign cited Trump’s interview on March 21, 2003, with Neil Cavuto of Fox Business just two days after the war started.
Cavuto asked Trump about the impact of the war on the stock market. Trump said the war “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint,” and he predicted the market will “go up like a rocket” after the war. But Cavuto does not ask Trump whether the U.S. should have gone to war with Iraq or whether he supports the war, and Trump doesn’t offer an opinion.
As early as July 2003, Trump expressed concern on Hardball with Chris Matthews about money being spent in Iraq rather than in the U.S. Two months later, Trump told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq.”
Clinton invited her audience to read Trump’s comments on the Iraq War. They can read our timeline, “Donald Trump and the Iraq War.”
Trump said President Obama set a “certain date” for withdrawing troops from Iraq, but that date was actually set by President George W. Bush.
NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Trump about his tendency to respond, when pushed for details on his military proposals, that he’s not going to give details because he wants to be “unpredictable.” Trump responded, “Absolutely,” and went on to criticize Obama for revealing the withdrawal date.
As we said then, Republicans and Democrats disagree on whether Obama or Bush is to blame for withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq at the end of 2011. But that date was set when Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement on Dec. 14, 2008. It said: “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”
In the NBC forum, Trump also called the withdrawal of troops “a terrible decision.” As we’ve explained before, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of State, later wrote that Bush wanted an agreement for a residual force to remain, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki objected.
Once Obama took office in January 2009, he had three years to renegotiate the deal, which his administration tried to do, to leave a residual American troop force. But Maliki still didn’t agree. Negotiations broke down in October 2011 over the issue of whether U.S. troops would be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Whether Obama did enough is a matter of opinion: His then defense secretary, Leon Panetta, later wrote that the president didn’t press hard enough for a deal. But some experts say Iraq was more closely aligned at the time with Iran and there wasn’t a deal to be made with Maliki.
So, both presidents had a role in the withdrawal of troops. But Trump wrongly said that Obama was the one who set a “certain date” for withdrawal and let U.S. enemies know about it, when that date was set before Obama was sworn in.
It’s worth noting that Trump said in a March 16, 2007, interview on CNN that the troops should be withdrawn quickly from Iraq.
Trump said that Obama’s visits to China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba were “the first time in the history, the storied history of Air Force One” when “high officials” of a host country did not appear to greet the president.
That’s not true. Other presidents have encountered similar low-key greetings on foreign trips aboard the presidential aircraft.
Trump referred to the fact that Cuba’s president, Raul Castro, did not greet Obama at the airport on his historic visit to Cuba in March, that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman did not meet Air Force One at the start of Obama’s trip to Riyadh in April, and he referred to China’s handling of the president’s arrival in Hangzhou last Saturday for a Group of 20 meeting.
Whether or not those arrivals constituted snubs of a U.S. president as Trump claims is a matter of debate. But Trump is wrong on the facts when he claims it has not happened before. It has.
In 1984, for example, Ronald Reagan landed in Beijing and was received by China’s foreign minister rather than the president, whom he met only later. Similarly, on a 1985 trip to West Germany, Reagan was met by the foreign minister and not Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
These and other examples were dug up by our friend Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post‘s “Fact Checker,” who researched a Trump claim in April that Cuba’s and Saudi Arabia’s handling of Obama’s visits were “without precedent.” Kessler said of Trump, “once again he’s wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Kessler also noted that during Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China he was greeted at the airport by the country’s number two man, Premier Zhou Enlai. His boss, Chairman Mao, didn’t even agree to meet with Nixon until after he had arrived at a guest house.
Clinton said that her plan to overhaul the Veterans Health Administration would not include privatization, which she said Trump supports.
But Trump refuted that statement when it was his turn to discuss his plan to help veterans. “I would not do that,” Trump said, referring to Clinton’s claim that he supports privatization.
Trump’s campaign published “The Goals Of Donald J. Trump’s Veterans Plan” on its website last October. It doesn’t call for the VA to be completely privatized.
One of the biggest changes that plan would make to the current VA health care system is allowing veterans to get care at any non-VA medical center that accepts Medicare.
“Under a Trump Administration, all veterans eligible for VA health care can bring their veteran’s ID card to any doctor or care facility that accepts Medicare to get the care they need immediately,” the plan states.
“The power to choose will stop the wait time backlogs and force the VA to improve and compete if the department wants to keep receiving veterans’ healthcare dollars,” the plan says.
Trump’s proposal would seemingly go further than the Non-VA Medical Care Program, which allows eligible veterans to access care outside of the VA under certain circumstances, such as when VA medical centers cannot provide services. The program requires pre-approval for veterans to receive care at a non-VA facility in non-emergency situations.
Trump’s proposal would also go further than the bipartisan Veterans Choice Act of 2014 that President Obama signed into law, creating a temporary program, separate from the Non-VA Medical Care Program, that allows eligible veterans to receive health care at a non-VA facility if they would have to wait more than 30 days for an appointment at a VA medical center, or if they live more than 40 miles from the nearest VA hospital.
Trump stuck to the idea of allowing veterans to choose between public and private hospitals when he released his most recent “Ten Point Plan To Reform The VA” in July.
Point 10 of the plan says: “Mr. Trump will ensure every veteran has the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice. Under a Trump Administration, no veteran will die waiting for service.”
Trump reinforced that part of his plan during the NBC News forum as well.
To be clear, Trump supports giving veterans a choice between VA hospitals and private ones. That’s not the same thing as supporting the complete privatization of the system that provides care to veterans.
Trump criticized Clinton for making “a terrible mistake on Libya” when she was secretary of State. But, at the time, Trump also supported U.S. action that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi from power.
Trump made his claim in response to a question posed by Lauer on whether Trump will be “prepared on Day One,” if elected president, to tackle “complex national security issues.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has ignored his past support for the U.S. intervention in Libya.
During the 10th GOP debate, Trump said he had “never discussed that subject” when Sen. Ted Cruz called him out on supporting U.S. action in the country. But, as we wrote, Trump said in 2011 that the U.S. should go into Libya “on a humanitarian basis” and “knock [Gadhafi] out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively and save the lives.”
Trump made that comment in a video posted to his YouTube channel in February 2011:
Even though Trump now says Clinton’s support for intervention in Libya was a “terrible mistake,” it doesn’t change the fact that five years ago he supported Gadhafi’s removal.
Trump twisted Clinton’s words when he claimed Clinton said “vets are being treated, essentially, just fine.” Clinton said the problems in the Department of Veterans Affairs were not as “widespread” as some Republican supporters of privatization of the VA claim, but she went on to acknowledge problems in the VA system — including the issue of wait times for doctors — and what she would do to address them.
Trump highlighted the issue of wait times to see a doctor as “one of the big problems” in the VA, and then suggested Clinton doesn’t think the VA has problems.
Lauer interrupted, noting that Clinton “went on after that and laid out a litany of problems within the VA.”
Trump insisted his version was accurate, adding, “I’m telling you … she said she was satisfied with what was going on in the Veterans Administration.”
That’s not accurate. The comments in question from Clinton came during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Oct. 23, 2015. Maddow asked about talk among some Republicans of abolishing the VA and privatizing it. “The reason they are able to propose something that radical is because the problems at the VA seem so intractable,” Maddow said.
Maddow asked if Clinton had any “new ideas for trying to fix” the VA. Here was Clinton’s response, with the part Trump is referring to in bold.
Clinton accused Republicans of underfunding the VA because they “want it to fail” so they can privatize it.
Clinton added, “But we have to be more creative about trying to fix the problems that are the legitimate concern, so that we can try to stymie the Republican assault.”
Indeed, the Clinton campaign website states that Clinton wants to “fundamentally reform veterans’ health care to ensure access to timely and high quality care.” The campaign says Clinton “was outraged by the recent scandals at the VA, and as president, she will demand accountability and performance from VA leadership.” The site specifically mentions Clinton’s dissatisfaction that “[m]any veterans have to wait an unacceptably long time to see a doctor or to process disability claims and appeals” and promises she will “[b]uild a 21st-century Department of Veterans Affairs to deliver world-class care.”
Trump cherry-picked the part of Clinton’s response that said problems in the VA have “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be,” to make the blanket claim that Clinton is “satisfied with what was going on in the Veterans Administration” and that “vets are being treated, essentially, just fine.” But Trump is leaving out the parts of Clinton’s answer that acknowledged problems in the VA — including the wait time issue Trump highlighted as one of his biggest concerns. | 0fake |
MOOCH FOR PRESIDENT? Surprising New Poll Shows How Michelle Stacks Up Against Hillary In 2016 Presidential Bid | If nothing else, Mooch makes Hillary seem like she s not such a bad candidate after all .If Michelle Obama decided to run for president in 2016 she would represent the most significant threat, among likely contenders, to Hillary Clinton s chances of winning the Democratic nomination, according to a new Rasmussen poll.A telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted by the polling company found that, in a hypothetical match-up between the current First Lady and the former secretary of State, Clinton would best Obama 56 percent to 22 percent.That may seem like a significant margin, but according to the most recent RealClearPolitics polling average, Elizabeth Warren Clinton s other biggest hypothetical challenger nets just 12.5 percent to Clinton s 64 percent.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the only other declared Democratic candidate for President, is even further behind with 7.4 percent. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O Malley, who is expected to announce his bid on May 30, fares the worst against Clinton with 1.2 percent of support from likely voters.The first lady is highly unlikely to mount a presidential campaign, however. In fact, of the people surveyed by Rasmussen, just 14 percent thought she should run.Still, 40 percent of black voters welcomed the idea of her running, and she bests Clinton among those voters, with 44 percent support among African-Americans compared with 36 percent for Clinton.Obama herself recently joked about a possible October surprise, hinting to Late Show host David Letterman that the thought had crossed her mind.Via: The Hill | 1real |
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan pledge to improve ties in wake of trade war | ALMATY (Reuters) - The leaders of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan pledged on Monday to improve relations, after ties between the two former Soviet republics degenerated into a trade war under the previous Kyrgyz leadership. The standoff between Astana and the government of former Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev strained a Russian-led economic bloc and disrupted supplies of Kyrgyz goods to some European countries. We have established a constructive and trust-based dialogue in all areas, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev s office quoted him as telling his Kyrgyz counterpart Sooronbai Jeenbekov. Jeenbekov was elected president last month. In the run-up the vote, his predecessor and backer Atambayev accused the Kazakh government of interfering in Kyrgyz politics and supporting an opposition candidate. Astana denied those charges but introduced tough border controls that nearly halted the flow of goods out of Kyrgyzstan, which is landlocked and sends most of its exports out through Kazakh territory. Kyrgyzstan filed complaints both to the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, a post-Soviet bloc, and the World Trade Organization, accusing Kazakhstan of imposing a blockade . Bishkek also briefly suspended operations at a copper and gold mine operated and run by Kazakhstan-based and London-listed Kaz Minerals. But tensions started easing after Jeenbekov, a former prime minister, took office this month. Last week, Bishkek informed the WTO it had settled its dispute with Astana. Kyrgyzstan will continue to carry out its foreign policy aimed at deepening and intensifying bilateral ties with Kazakhstan, Jeenbekov s office quoted him as saying at the meeting in Astana. | 0fake |
California Today: The State’s Hate Landscape - The New York Times | Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) California appeared to witness a rise in hate last year. In 2016, the state was home to 79 organizations with animus toward blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims and other groups, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an group that tracks extremism. That’s up from 68 the year before. The report found that California had more hate groups than any other state — followed by Florida, with 63, and Texas, 55 — a result presumably of its sheer size. But the data also revealed a notable cluster of activity in the corridor between the Los Angeles area and San Diego, where at least 40 of the groups operate. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center, suggested the presence of a heavy Latino population in Southern California played a part in fueling sentiment. To earn a place in the hate index, an organization must publicly espouse the idea that a class of people is inferior by virtue of its characteristics. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, has faced criticism in the past for applying the designation to mainstream conservative groups, such as the Family Research Council. In 2015, it apologized after labeling Ben Carson an “extremist. ” The latest report included many California groups, such as the Golden State Skinheads, Identity Evropa and Islam Threat, whose platforms are explicitly discriminatory. But the classification of other groups drew pushback. Californians for Population Stabilization, a Santa Barbara group with thousands of members, was labeled by the center. Mr. Potok attributed the determination in part to troubling remarks about race and eugenics made by people formerly linked to the group. Benjamin Zuckerman, the group’s president, vehemently objected to the characterization. The organization’s objectives, he said, are twofold: environmental conservation and fairness to working Americans who are harmed by “over immigration. ” “I consider us pretty much just ordinary people,” said Dr. Zuckerman, who is also an astronomy professor at U. C. L. A. “We just have a view that too many people for a given environmental carrying capacity is just not good. ” (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • Nearly 250 people were rescued from flooding in San Jose after rain combined with water from the overflowing Anderson Reservoir. [The Mercury News] • A water expert on the continuing flood threat: “If you are protected by a rural levee or levees in the delta, you are not sleeping well. ” [Los Angeles Times] • The Trump administration’s new immigration policy greatly expands the categories of people subject to deportation. [The New York Times] • The untold story of how Kevin Leon became Kevin de León, leader of the California State Senate. [Sacramento Bee] • A program in Richmond treats gun violence as an epidemic that spreads by exposure to it. [Opinion | The New York Times] • A California secession advocate has faced scrutiny over where he’s based: Russia. [The New York Times] • “I don’t think I’ve been as sorry. ” Milo Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart News after his remarks on pedophilia. [The New York Times] • Kenneth Arrow died in Palo Alto at 95. He was one of the most brilliant economic minds of the 20th century. [The New York Times] • In a momentous the Lakers put Magic Johnson in charge of the team’s front office. [The New York Times] • Candice Wiggins, the former W. N. B. A. player and at Stanford, said she was targeted for being heterosexual. [San Diego ] • Led by Cheryl Boone Isaacs, its first black president, the motion picture academy is trying to solve its diversity problem. [The New Yorker] • A WikiLeaks opera is arriving in San Francisco after a bruising election year. [The New York Times] • With its sunshine, gorgeous beaches, breweries and restaurants, San Diego is the spot for fun. [The New York Times] Congress is in recess this week. That means it’s town hall time. The contentious first month of the Trump administration has left many Californians with questions, and in some cases complaints, as Representative Tom McClintock has learned. On Feb. 4, Mr. McClintock, a Republican from Elk Grove, faced a raucous crowd during a town meeting in Roseville, where he was escorted from the venue by the police. Mr. McClintock was back for another meeting with constituents on Tuesday, this time in Mariposa, where more than a dozen police officers were on hand. According to The Fresno Bee, the questioning from the crowd was boisterous, but peaceful. Have something to say to your representative? He or she may have a town hall scheduled. KQED in San Francisco compiled a list: Wednesday • Representative Jared Huffman in Weaverville. 4:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Salud Carbajal in Arroyo Grande. 6 p. m. [Details] • Representative Tom McClintock in Sonora. 6 p. m. [Details] • Representative Scott Peters in San Diego. 6:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Susan Davis in San Diego. 6:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Ro Khanna in Fremont. 7:30 p. m. [Details] Thursday • Representative Lou Correa in Santa Ana. 6 p. m. [Details] • Representative Mark DeSaulnier in Pleasant Hill. 6:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Mark Takano in Riverside. 6:30 p. m. [Details] Friday • Representative Brad Sherman in Van Nuys. 3:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Lou Correa in Santa Ana. 5 p. m. [Details] Saturday • Representative Mike Thompson in Santa Rosa. 9 a. m. [Details] • Representative Nanette Barragán in San Pedro. 1 p. m. [Details] Want to submit a photo for possible publication? You can do it here. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 0fake |
At BlackRock, a Wall Street Rock Star’s $5 Trillion Comeback - The New York Times | LOS ANGELES — Laurence D. Fink, the leader and founder of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, had come home. A Bruin to the bone — class of 1974 — he had a story to tell the 5, 000 giddy graduates packed into the cavernous basketball arena at the University of California, Los Angeles. Once upon a time he was a rock star on Wall Street. He had big hair and flashed turquoise jewelry, and making money had never seemed so easy. Until it wasn’t. “I screwed up,” Mr. Fink declared, recalling the $100 million he blew thanks to failed mortgage trades in 1986. “And it was bad. ” For the graduating millennials, the morality tale resonated not least because it came from a U. C. L. A. grad who had ascended, fallen from and again scaled Wall Street’s treacherous peaks. But it was his description of why he stumbled that truly explained his evolution from bond trader to master of a firm that has its eye on a sum about equal to the $16 trillion United States economy. “I had become complacent — too sure of what I thought I knew,” Mr. Fink said. “I believed I had figured out the market. But I was wrong because while I wasn’t watching, the world had changed. ” Over the last decade, no other financial firm has gone further in challenging the classic Wall Street moneymaking model for investment banks and traditional mutual fund companies: Hire — and handsomely pay — hotshots to make big bets with other people’s money. The future of finance, Mr. Fink has argued, lies with investment styles such as funds, which track a variety of stock and bond indexes or adhere to a set of financial rules. The idea is that such an approach eliminates at least some of the potential for human error, while lowering costs. It is this notion of using technology to root out investment risks that lies at the heart of BlackRock’s investing strategy. Putting this into practice is the firm’s platform, Aladdin, which enjoys a ubiquity within the firm — it tracks everything from bond trades to head count — that evokes HAL 9000, the sentient computer in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey. ” Some employees even use Aladdin as a verb, as in, “Has the new portfolio manager been Aladdinized yet?” On Wall Street, prestige and influence have always been functions of a firm’s ability to capture a large amount of what investors call flow — the trillions of dollars in securities that are bought and sold on a given day worldwide. Before the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs’s reputation was made because the choice transactions ran through its bankers and traders. The same could be said of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors under Steven A. Cohen, who rose to fame (and also became the target of regulators) on his ability to trade off this cascade. But in today’s world of violent price swings and markets, those with near infinite buying power — central banks, sovereign wealth funds and the largest money manager in the land — have become the new arbiters of flow. “We have never seen a paradigm shift like this,” said Anthony J. Perrotta Jr. an analyst with the Tabb Group, which analyzes the structure of financial markets. “It is not about the flow of securities anymore, it is about the flow of information and indications of interest. ” BlackRock’s strategy was forged, and ultimately empowered, by two market calamities over the last three decades. The first, of course, was Mr. Fink’s experience at First Boston in 1986, when he bet big on mortgages without assessing how the securities would trade in a period of extreme stress. But BlackRock became the behemoth it is today only after the events of 2008. That is when a toxic variety of the securitized mortgages that Mr. Fink helped design years earlier at First Boston imploded — setting off a chain of bank failures and the deepest global economic downturn since the Great Depression. Chastened investment banks were forced to exit these businesses under pressure from regulators. And in stepped BlackRock. Its assets under management swelled as investors — starved for higher returns — piled into the company’s E. T. F. s, which tracked the highflying markets. “The balance of power is now with firms like BlackRock because they have the ‘bid,’” said Mr. Perrotta of Tabb, using Wall Street argot to describe the buying power of large asset managers. The power shift was on display this spring, when Mr. Fink took the stage at an investor conference alongside John Cryan, recently charged with reviving the sagging fortunes of Deutsche Bank, one of the global investment firms that was minting money before the markets collapsed in 2008. While the event was billed as a cozy exchange of ideas between two Wall Street it played out instead as a series of slightly peevish questions posed by Mr. Cryan to Mr. Fink. “You are effectively becoming the supplier of liquidity of last resort — beyond the central banks,” Mr. Cryan said to Mr. Fink. The assertion bordered on the impudent — suggesting that BlackRock and its $5 trillion stash of assets had become the new guarantor of stability because of its ability to buy and sell stocks and bonds in times of duress. Investment banks, which previously aspired to this duty, have been complaining for years that the financial system has become riskier because BlackRock and similar firms cannot perform such a function. But to say as much to Mr. Fink directly — and in a room full of investors, no less — was highly unusual. Mr. Fink was clearly irritated by the query. “Well that is not our role — we won’t play that role,” he replied stiffly. It was not the most convincing of replies. Over the last 10 years, Mr. Fink has transformed BlackRock from a bond shop catering to pension funds and insurance companies into an machine that uses advanced technology to reimagine how investors buy, sell and assess the risks of a wide variety of securities. Via its $1 in funds, BlackRock has been instrumental in creating newly liquid markets in and corporate bonds — a direct attack on the business model of banks like Deutsche Bank. And through its big risk platform, Aladdin, or Asset Liability and Debt and Derivatives Investment Network, BlackRock says it has developed the market’s most highly evolved framework for how securities will respond to certain situations — such as a sudden rise in interest rates or what happens in the event of a political surprise, like Donald J. Trump being elected president. Staffed by 2, 300 of BlackRock’s 13, 000 employees, Aladdin promises to help firms trade, analyze and keep a compliant eye on the assets they manage. In an era of severe regulatory scrutiny, the service has become quite popular. firms — including Deutsche Bank’s asset management unit and Freddie Mac — managing a total of $10 trillion, now use it. For a man who, in his speeches, consistently spends more time talking about technology and risk analytics than the vagaries of the capital markets, Mr. Fink is no techie. Like many Wall Street titans of his vintage, the Mr. Fink rarely sends emails. An infrequent texter, he does most of his communicating by phone, in meetings or over a plate of spicy pasta at his Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Fink maintains a grueling schedule, mixing regular bicoastal trips in the United States with frequent client jaunts to China and the Middle East. “This job requires an enormous commitment,” he said. “The pace is relentless. There will be a day when I wake up one day and say I just can’t do it anymore. ” That day remains well in the future, he says. Still, with BlackRock’s growth in size and sway, the issue of who, if anyone, from within the firm is qualified to succeed Mr. Fink has become an existential question for the company’s board of directors. The problem is typical when replacing a founder: Mr. Fink has increased assets to $5 trillion from zero, and the imprint of his domineering personality has become so profound that virtually anyone will suffer to some degree in comparison, considering his track record. After all, in 1983, he structured one of the first collateral mortgage obligations, and along with Lewis Ranieri at Salomon Brothers made it possible for large investors to enter the market for mortgages. A quarter of a century later, Mr. Fink recognized that the time was right for E. T. F.s and — in the depths of the financial crisis — bought Barclays’s iShares business, a deal analysts consider one of the shrewdest in recent Wall Street memory. And beyond a soaring stock price, there are few better ways for a financial chief to command the respect of his peers than to slip through the grasp of regulators. So when Mr. Fink and his lobbyists in Washington were able to make the case, after the 2008 financial crisis, that major fund companies like BlackRock posed no risks to the markets because of their size, it only added to his aura. There is a moment in Don DeLillo’s “Cosmopolis,” his meditation on the alienating effects of money and machines, when the protagonist financier offers a bit of advice to a colleague. There’s only one thing worth pursuing professionally and intellectually, he says: the interaction between technology and capital — its inseparability. That, more or less, is what Mr. Fink told Dexter Senft, his computer expert at First Boston in 1982. “We are bringing the computer onto the trading floor, Dexter,” Mr. Fink recalls saying at the time. “If we can do this, it will change our business forever. ” Not only would Mr. Fink and his bond wizards be able to sell billions of dollars of new securities, giving birth to today’s market for asset backed mortgages, they could also analyze how these securities would trade in certain situations. The immense losses at First Boston in 1986 taught a lesson that eventually shaped BlackRock. Mr. Fink realized that his clients on the “buy side” (the fund managers, insurance companies and pension funds shopping for investments) had become dependent on the ability of the “sell side” (the Wall Street investment banks) to analyze mortgages. That was because few clients had invested in computers and technology to the level First Boston had. Most money management firms highlight their investment returns first, and risk controls second. BlackRock has taken a reverse approach: It believes that risk analysis, such as gauging how a security will trade if interest rates go up or down, improves investment results. That is where Aladdin comes in. Aladdin is a network of code, trades, chat, algorithms and predictive models that on any given day can highlight vulnerabilities and opportunities connected to the $15 trillion the firm tracks — $10 trillion of which belongs to outside firms that pay BlackRock a fee to have access to the platform. Aladdin fills the monitors of most BlackRock employees. One portfolio manager even went so far as to hang a nearly screen on his office wall in order to get the full Aladdin experience. And at the company’s investor day in June, Mr. Fink and other top executives mentioned Aladdin 82 times — more than any other business line — even though the platform represents just 5 percent of the $11. 3 billion in revenues BlackRock took in last year. Or consider a recent marketing video that shows Mr. Fink and other top executives gazing at the camera and intoning one after the other, “I am Aladdin. ” From Mr. Fink’s early days on Wall Street, his ambition has been stoked by a sense that he has not been receiving the proper credit for his achievements. At First Boston, even though he was among the earliest to popularize trading in mortgage securities, his peers including Mr. Ranieri and others drew more public attention as innovators and moneymakers. As a successful, albeit mostly anonymous, bond manager at BlackRock in the 1990s and 2000s, he saw acclaim, pay and influence go to the chief executives of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. That began changing only in 2009, when he bought Barclays’s E. T. F. business. Last year he was among a small circle of Wall Street executives to attend the state dinner at the White House for the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. A part of Mr. Fink — a fervent Democrat today — believes he would make a pretty good Treasury secretary, say people who have discussed politics with him. Although he recently persuaded Cheryl Mills, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers, to join the board of BlackRock, the view is fairly strongly held that if Mrs. Clinton becomes president, there is little chance that she will tap a Wall Street insider for the Treasury job. With BlackRock’s stock having more than doubled since 2011, far outpacing the likes of Goldman and JPMorgan and trading close to its record high, it seems that the market has come around to Mr. Fink’s financial worldview: that a low cost, systematic style of investing will, over time, grow faster than the costlier “active investing” model in which individuals, not algorithms, make stock, bond and asset allocation decisions. And the numbers in that regard are arresting. Through July, E. T. F.s and traditional index funds made up 30 percent of total mutual fund assets, according to the Investment Company Institute, a ratio that has doubled in just under 10 years. Of course, with close to $1. 5 trillion in actively managed funds, Mr. Fink is not ready to write off a segment of the industry that even after years of outflows clocks in at $11 trillion. And he underlines the importance of being able to offer the best of both active and passive investing styles to BlackRock clients. But inside the firm and out, there is little doubt that he is betting the ranch on E. T. F.s and similarly themed investments choices. These include factor strategies, in which a bet is made on a certain investment outcome — like value stocks outpacing growth stocks, or a basket of equities beating the broader indexes. In San Francisco, a team of equity investors deploys data analysis to study the language that a chief executive uses during an earnings call. Does he seem unusually bearish this quarter, compared with last? If so, maybe the stock is a sell. “We have more information than anyone,” Mr. Fink said. Some analysts, in fact, argue that BlackRock should be valued as a technology company, as opposed to an asset manager. Mark Wiedman, 45, a BlackRock executive who is on the short list to succeed Mr. Fink, believes that bond E. T. F. s, in particular, are creating a liquid market where a new generation of bond investors can freely buy and sell. For years, he and Mr. Fink have been pitching insurance companies and pension funds to stop buying individual bonds (from the likes of Deutsche Bank) and instead choose a BlackRock bond E. T. F. Now it’s happening. “I think of E. T. F.s as technology,” Mr. Wiedman said, as he leaned back in a swivel chair in his office. “It is a product that bundles up a bunch of securities, puts them on a screen and makes them easier to trade. ” Like many top executives here, Mr. Wiedman can get a bit manic when discussing the subject: Midway through an interview, he felt the need to somewhat violently undo his tie and cast it aside. Regulators are less enthusiastic. Global watchdogs like the Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund have described these bountiful flows into and out of BlackRock bond E. T. F.s as a liquidity illusion. Which means, according to Ken Monaghan, an investor in corporate bonds, that E. T. F.s have lured “tourist” investors — people seduced by the rich yields, but who may not be able to stomach a sustained market reversal. And if they all leave at once, watch out. “E. T. F.s do not create liquidity,” said Mr. Monaghan, of the global fund manager Amundi Smith Breeden. “These new investors are not permanent. ” Aside from Mr. Wiedman of BlackRock, the short list to succeed Mr. Fink includes Robert S. Kapito, 59, a founding partner and current president of the firm who is seen as the top choice if a handover occurs sooner rather than later. Other candidates are Rob Goldstein, the chief operating officer and driving force behind Aladdin’s growth Mark McCombe, 50, a former HSBC executive who looks after the firm’s big clients Rich Kushel, 50, who oversees investment strategies for clients and Gary Shedlin, 52, the chief financial officer. There is also Mark Wiseman, a new hire who joined the firm this month to oversee its equity business. It is a long list, and purposely so. For Mr. Fink, recommending a successor to his board is probably the weightiest decision he will make as BlackRock chief. He has taken pains to not tip his hand. “I want to make sure that the day after I leave, the firm is better off without me,” he said. This spring, Mr. Fink called together more than 100 of the firm’s most senior executives for two days of meetings in Barcelona, Spain. BlackRock was approaching its 30th anniversary and Mr. Fink was in a nostalgic mood. Yet there was an edge to his remarks. Yes, BlackRock was thriving because of its focus on funds and the wonders of Aladdin. But now was not the time to coast. “We cannot let someone brand us as a vampire squid,” warned Mr. Fink, referring to a defining article in Rolling Stone magazine that so described Goldman Sachs. Nor was this a time to sit fat and happy on a big pile of assets and let the fees roll in, an indirect slap at actively managed giants such as Franklin Templeton and Pimco, where assets under management have recently been declining. Never before, he said, had the fund management industry been so competitive and changing. “If you think you know everything about our business, you are kidding yourself,” he said. “The biggest question we have to answer is: ‘Are we developing the right leaders? ’” And then, looking out over the striving BlackRock executives gathered before him, he put it to them directly. “Are you,” he asked, “prepared to be one of those leaders?” | 0fake |
On Trump's Jerusalem move, Merkel says Germany sticking to U.N. resolutions | BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that Germany would stand by U.N. resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. We re sticking to the relevant U.N. resolutions - they make clear that the status of Jerusalem needs to be negotiated as part of negotiations on a two-state solution for Israel and that s why we want this process to be revived, she said. On Wednesday Merkel had already said Germany does not support the Trump administration s decision. | 0fake |
SXSW Focuses on Anti-Trump Rhetoric, Links Rise of A.I. with ’Fascism’ - Breitbart | This year’s SXSW festival is taking on President Trump, according to The Hill, which reported that the proceedings largely focused on negative rhetoric against the president. [“The centerpiece of the panel discussions is a series titled ‘Tech Under Trump,’” reported The Hill on Saturday, adding that the panel discussions “aren’t pulling any punches. ” “NPR reporter Sam Sanders is hosting an event titled the ‘2016 Election: How We Got it Wrong! ,’ reflecting on his experiences covering the 2016 presidential race,” they continued. “Another discussion titled ‘Building Bridges When Others Want to Build Walls,’ is intended to highlight the uncertainty facing immigrants. One panel is discussing ‘From Trump to Trolls: How Muslim Media Fights Back. ’” “Some of the panels aren’t but do highlight the tech industry’s policy priorities, including a discussion titled ‘Can You Hear Me Now? The Rural Broadband Debate,’ featuring Rep. Vicente González ( ) and Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield,” The Hill concluded. “Even the festival’s art and music events are taking on a stronger political tone than in years past. One music showcase is titled ‘Contrabanned,’ and will feature acts from countries including Libya and Somalia, whose citizens are banned from entering the U. S. under Trump’s travel executive order. ” “I’ve never seen in my lifetime an atmosphere of fear as I’ve seen now,” said Sen. Cory Booker at the festival. “I feel a sense of pain about my country right now. “[Trump] isn’t backing away from his rhetoric. But if we don’t engage, we are the source of the problem, not the elected person we don’t like,” he added. In a SXSW session titled “Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fascism,” Microsoft’s Kate Crawford even attempted to compare the rise of artificial intelligence with fascism. “Just as we are seeing a step function increase in the spread of AI, something else is happening: the rise of rightwing authoritarianism and fascism,” Crawford declared. “We should always be suspicious when machine learning systems are described as free from bias if it’s been trained on data. Our biases are built into that training data. ” SXSW’s chief programming officer Hugh Forrest praised the political slant on this year’s festival. “There is definitely a degree of politics or political focus that may not have been there in previous years,” said Forrest. “We hope people walk away with a little better understanding of issues and the players driving the issues. ” Forrest, who voted for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, previously claimed to be “grieving” following President Trump’s victory in November. He also claimed to be excited about SXSW’s “role” in “paving a more progressive path to the future. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0fake |
WATCH: REMEMBER When President Clinton Took Credit for ENDING NUCLEAR THREATS from North Korea? | Bill Clinton was falsely confident in his plan to end North Korea s nuclear threat with diplomacy. Over 20 years later, his efforts, along with those of every president succeeding him, have been futile.Every president since Clinton has allowed North Korea s nuclear ambitions to go unchecked. Perhaps now that North Korea allegedly has the capability of striking our mainland, America really needs is a president who is willing to stand up to North Korea s brutal dictator and let him know he s not playing with Barack Obama anymore.Will President Trump be the one to finally put an end to North Korea s threatening rhetoric by refusing to ignore Kim Jong Un s threats?North Korea now has an intercontinental ballistic missile that can range most of the continental U.S., and a new Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggests that North Korea has successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads for its missiles.In the early 1990s, Clinton faced a growing nuclear threat from North Korea, but he ultimately chose diplomacy and deals over the application of military force. I was determined to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal, even at the risk of war, Clinton wrote in his memoirs. He decided to change course after receiving a sobering estimate of the staggering losses both sides would suffer if war broke out. Watch Clinton brag about his great success with North Korea:NKorea Flashback: Bill Clinton on his deal with North Korea "The world will be safer." Whoops. pic.twitter.com/HDf86yqbEq Mark Dice (@MarkDice) August 8, 2017Clinton chose the Agreed Framework, promising billions of dollars in aid for a North Korean nuclear freeze. This is a good deal for the United States, he said at the time. North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons. The North Koreans negotiated in bad faith, however, offering false promises to convince the U.S. to unwittingly subsidize their nuclear program. The country began enriching nuclear material, and North Korea conducted its first nuclear test a little over a decade later. North Korea has since continued its steady march to becoming a fully-armed nuclear power. Evidence suggests that North Korea will achieve its nuclear weapons goals much sooner than analysts and experts previously expected.North Korea advanced its program throughout the Bush and Obama administrations, bringing the U.S. to the risky situation it now faces. North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States, Donald Trump declared to the White House press pool Tuesday. They will be met with the fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said, they will be met with the fire and fury and, frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before. While the casualty count in a North Korean crisis might have been high in the 1990s, the cost of a conflict now that North Korea has nuclear weapons would be in the millions. The Daily Caller | 1real |
WATCH: Morning Joe Hosts Urge Republicans To Abandon Trump After FBI Director Comey’s Testimony | If Republicans listen to this sage advice, Donald Trump would be a lame duck president before completing his first 100 days.In stunning testimony to Congress on Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that Donald Trump lied when he accused President Obama of wiretapping him.For more than two weeks, Trump has been desperately trying to make his accusations against President Obama stick, but has repeatedly failed to provide evidence to support his claims.That culminated in Comey s testimony under oath in which it was revealed that Trump is full of shit and he is being investigated for colluding with Russia during the 2016 Election.Apparently, the investigation has been ongoing for months, which means Trump s Russia scandal just got a whole lot worse, especially for Republicans who continue to defend him.Comey s testimony was aired on national television and was seen by millions of Americans.At a time when Trump s poll numbers are in the toilet, one would think that Republicans would abandon his sinking ship before they drown with him. But so far, Republicans are stubbornly standing by him because they don t want to lose their rubber stamp in the White House.Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, however, are urging Republicans to run away from Trump or face serious consequences in 2018 when the midterm elections roll around and give Americans their first chance to tell Trump and his Republican allies to go f*ck themselves. Republicans have to understand right now, if this continues, and this is awfully early to say this, but if this continues, at least in the House, and there were a lot of Senate seats, they are going to be shocked on Election Night if they don t take care of themselves, Scarborough predicted. If the Republican Party doesn t start taking care of itself and stop making fools of themselves for a guy who is going to keep tweeting lies and nonsense they can t chase that around, Scarborough continued. They can t defend the indefensible. Here s the video via YouTube: If Republicans continue to pretend that Trump is not a threat to our nation there will be hell to pay. Millions of Trump voters are experiencing buyer s remorse right now and millions of voters who sat out in 2016 are itching to make up for that mistake in 2018 and 2020. But regardless of what Republicans in the House and Senate do, they should be ousted from office anyway. They had a chance to prevent Trump from ever becoming president and put their greed and lust for power above the security and well-being of the nation. They betrayed the United States by turning a blind eye to Trump s associations with Russia and Vladimir Putin and they continue to betray our country now. Republicans should abandon Trump to save their souls, not their jobs.Featured image screenshot | 1real |
North Carolina Republicans try to strip powers from incoming Democratic governor | RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) - North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature is moving to strip powers from the state’s incoming governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, three weeks before he is to succeed a Republican in the executive mansion. Lawmakers on Thursday began debating a bill to require Senate confirmation for cabinet appointments, reduce by 1,200 the number of state employees the governor can hire and fire at will, and eliminate the governor’s power to pick University of North Carolina trustees. The legislation and related bills came as a surprise, filed late on Wednesday on the heels of a special “lame duck” session of the General Assembly called to consider relief for Hurricane Matthew victims. Cooper, to be sworn in on Jan. 7 after defeating incumbent Republican Pat McCrory by 10,000 votes last month, said the proposals are aimed at holding him back. “Most people might think that this is a partisan power grab, but it is really more ominous,” Cooper said at a news conference in Raleigh on Thursday. “This is about thwarting the governor’s ability to move us forward on education and healthcare and clean air and water.” Cooper, currently state attorney general, said his office is reviewing the proposals and will sue if lawmakers approve any measures he believes are unconstitutional. McCrory’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would sign the legislation. Republican lawmakers called the changes justified by the state’s constitution. Senate confirmation hearings were held earlier in the state’s history, they said. “This bill is a good step forward in reasserting legislative authority vested by the constitution and entrusted to the members of this body,” Representative David Lewis, a Republican and a sponsor of the bill, said during a debate on Thursday. A House of Representatives committee, in an unrecorded voice vote, advanced the bill on Thursday, as about 100 people gathered at the legislature to demonstrate against the proposals. The Senate debated a separate measure that would weaken the governor’s control over the state elections board, changing it from a five-member panel appointed by the governor to an eight-member panel with only half the members appointed by him. Protesters who chanted “You work for us” and other slogans were cleared out of the Senate chamber after legislative leaders said they were disrupting debate on the bill. North Carolina, the ninth most-populous U.S. state, has been roiled by sharp political divisions. The state voted for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and then turned to the right, electing McCrory in 2012 and Republican super-majorities in its state legislature. The state became a target of boycotts by companies, musicians and sports leagues after it passed a law this year restricting bathroom access for transgender people in government buildings and public schools. | 0fake |
Trump says Obama 'colluded' on Russia, without giving evidence | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that investigators apologize for looking into Russian interference and possible collusion with his 2016 election campaign, accusing predecessor President Barack Obama of having “colluded or obstructed,” but he did not provide evidence. Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller, along with several congressional committees, are investigating allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia used cyber attacks and fake media stories to help Republican Trump against his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton. “The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win... and did not want to ‘rock the boat.’ He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good,” he wrote on Twitter. Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has repeatedly called the investigations a witch hunt. In a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday, Trump said he had learned that Obama had known about the Russia issue long before the election but that he “did nothing about it.” An official from Obama’s White House, who spoke on condition of anonymity, rejected Trump’s criticism and noted that Obama had raised the meddling issue directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Obama administration’s interest in making sure the response was bipartisan wasn’t for the sake of being bipartisan. It was necessary because we needed the buy-in from state and local election administrators – many of whom were Republican partisans and/or skeptical of federal government,” the official said. The White House referred any questions about the Russia investigations to Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. Representatives for Kasowitz did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Trump’s latest statement. “With 4 months looking at Russia...they have zero “tapes” of T (Trump) people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!” Trump said in another Twitter post on Monday. The Obama administration formally accused Russia in October of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 election. In December, Obama ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention in the election and to deliver a report before he left office on Jan. 20. The intelligence agencies said in January they had concluded that Moscow tried to tilt the election in Trump’s favor, including by hacking into senior Democrats’ emails and leaking them. Following a weekend Washington Post report about the Obama administration’s responses to the Russian matter, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, criticized the Obama administration on Sunday for not taking earlier and tougher action against Russia. | 0fake |
Taiwan says no plans 'at this stage' for phone call with U.S. president | TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan’s presidential office on Friday said it had no plans “at this stage” to hold a telephone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, and understood that the United States had priorities in handling Asia-Pacific regional affairs. The response came after Trump brushed aside the idea of such a phone call, following a comment by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen that she would not rule one out, in separate interviews with Reuters on Thursday. “Based on the good mutual trust and understanding between Taiwan and the United States, we understand the United States has priorities in handling regional affairs,” Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang said in a statement. “At this stage, we don’t have such a plan.” The government would pursue Taiwan’s best interests, Huang added. | 0fake |
The Internet Brutally Mocks Disney’s New Trump Robot At Hall Of Presidents | A new animatronic figure in the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World was added, where every former leader of the republic is depicted in an audio-animatronics show. The figure which supposedly resembles Jon Voight Donald Trump was added to the collection and it s absolutely horrifying. The internet noticed that, too.Here s a few more pictures of the Donald Trump animatronic. #HallOfPresidents pic.twitter.com/a45En9Jwys WDW News Today (@WDWNT) December 19, 2017Trump robot in the Hall of Presidents looks like a 71-year-old Chucky doll. pic.twitter.com/yLCBmhpNvG John Cohen (@JohnCohen1) December 19, 2017Breaking: 7 Disney Princesses and a Storm Trooper have come forward alleging Hall of Presidents Trump made lewd comments to them Brohibition Now (@OhNoSheTwitnt) December 19, 2017Trump s animatronic figure for the Disney Hall of Presidents looks like it was carved out of Play-Doh and left out in the Florida heat, where it was discovered by a dying albino squirrel who settled atop its head and has been left there to decompose. pic.twitter.com/3vMZUTEylx Elizabeth M. (@_ElizabethMay) December 19, 2017In a time w/ so many heavy items, thank you to Disney for the laugh. They did so much so well in the @realDonaldTrump animatronic. Little hands, check Absurdly long tie, check Horrifying face, checkmateWhen Trump is impeached, can they move this to the Haunted Mansion? https://t.co/XrOvu32EV8 State of Resistance (@AltStateDpt) December 19, 2017all the other presidents in Disney s new Hall of Presidents look like they can t believe Donald Trump is president either pic.twitter.com/eMP9UX1bM8 Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 18, 2017Disney unveiled Trump figure at the Hall of Presidents. To save production costs, they pulled the animated hands off of a retired figurine from the Its a Small World ride. Tim Hanlon (@TimfromDa70s) December 19, 2017The best part of Donald Trump being in Disney s Hall of Presidents will be when they remove him from the Hall of Presidents and put him in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride s jail. pic.twitter.com/XViyKFQCET Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) December 19, 2017Comment today by local news channel anchor in Orlando: Donald Trump robot just added to Disney s Hall of Presidents. I hope they programmed all the former presidents to not roll their eyes and shake their heads while he s talking. Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) December 19, 2017NPR: Disney World Adds Trump Animatronic Figure, But Likeness Is Lacking. But who REALLY wants to look at an accurate Donald? The man is about as presidential looking as a fucking Pokemon. https://t.co/HFYJRkefJ1 Stephen (@Harvest_This) December 19, 2017Could we put the animatronic version in the White House and the real one in Disney World? Asking for 7.6 billion people and the future of the planet. https://t.co/65FhbQHuV4 #Disney #Trump #JonVoight David Schmid (@DavidSchmid1) December 19, 2017We re pretty sure Disney is trolling Trump.Image via Twitter. | 1real |
Someone Just Donated $2.5 Million to Bail Out Everyone Arrested at Standing Rock | Someone Just Donated $2.5 Million to Bail Out Everyone Arrested at Standing Rock Source: Nick Bernabe
North Dakota — Following the recent mass arrests of 141 people at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site located near Standing Rock, North Dakota, an anonymous donor just donated $2.5 million to bail out everyone who was arrested at the protests.
The news came after Tamara Francis-Fourkiller, a tribal leader from the Caddo Nation tribe in Caddo County, Oklahoma, was arrested at Standing Rock. Francis-Fourkiller was released after spending two days in jail, but her family says she was just an innocent observer in the clashes between militarized law enforcement and Native American activists, or “water protectors.”
According to local news affiliate News On 6 :
“Family members of Caddo Nation chairwoman Tamara Francis-Fourkiller said an anonymous donor paid $2.5 million late Saturday afternoon to release everyone arrested on Thursday at the Dakota Access Pipeline site. They said, however, that Francis-Fourkiller should not have been arrested in the first place.”
Though the donor who sent the $2.5 million remains anonymous, it appears the person is connected to the Caddo Nation tribe in some way .
The anonymous donation is welcome news to those arrested in the mass crackdown last Thursday, however, Standing Rock is still raising legal defense funds for future arrests — which are all but guaranteed to happen. | 1real |
Former President Carter hospitalized over dehydration in Canada | WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was receiving hospital care on Thursday after becoming dehydrated at a charity house-building project in Canada, but he is doing “OK,” Habitat for Humanity said. Carter, 92, became unsteady at the construction site and slumped away from his work area to a chair, according to eyewitnesses, who said he was working for more than an hour on steps of the home, using a drill. Several workers helped him to sit, and he was later taken away by ambulance. His medical issue resulted from dehydration, the Carter Center said in a statement. He had been working on a building project with Habitat for Humanity, a charitable organization promoting affordable home ownership. Carter was taken to St. Boniface General Hospital for treatment, according to the Carter Center, which is based in Atlanta. “President Carter told us he is OK and is being taken offsite for observation,” Habitat said in a statement, noting he had been working in the hot sun. “He encourages everyone to stay hydrated and keep building.” Carter, a Democrat who served in the White House from January 1977 to January 1981, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work. Carter, whose family had a history of cancer, disclosed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with melanoma, a form of skin cancer, that had spread to his brain and elsewhere and had been spotted during liver surgery. But by December of that year Carter told his church that his latest brain scan showed no sign of the disease. The peanut farmer from Georgia has lived longer after his term in office than any other president in U.S. history. Through his work on global issues, he became widely regarded as a better former president than he was a president, having left office profoundly unpopular. In Canada, Carter had been volunteering with a project to build 150 homes with Habitat for Humanity in honor of the country’s 150th birthday. The organization noted that Carter had requested that others involved with the effort continue their work for the day. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, have traveled around the world working with Habitat since 1984, according to the organization. She was with him at the hospital, the Carter Foundation said. | 0fake |
Trump says to spend extra day in Philippines during Asia trip | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he would spend an extra day in the Philippines during his trip to Asia, which the White House confirmed would be to attend the East Asia Summit taking place there. “We’re actually staying an extra day in the Philippines. We have a big conference, the second conference, and I think we’re going to have great success,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for his trip. | 0fake |
Tensions, talks, courts: three scenarios for Spain-Catalonia stand-off | MADRID (Reuters) - Leaders of Spain s industrialized northeastern region of Catalonia said the regional population had voted for independence in a ballot on Sunday that the central government said was illegal and non-representative. With 95 percent of the vote counted, authorities said the Yes vote stood at 90.1 percent, albeit with a turnout of just a little over 40 percent - 2.26 million out of 5.34 million registered voters. On Tuesday, Barcelona metro stations were closed, pickets blocked main roads and civil servants walked out in response to a strike called by pro-independence groups. The stand-off could now take three different paths. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont continues with his pledge to declare unilateral independence, likely prompting the central government to trigger Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which would strip the region of its autonomous status and put it under direct Madrid rule. If Article 155 is triggered, the next step would be snap elections in Catalonia. Pro-independence parties only hold the majority in the regional parliament with the help of the far-left group CUP, and polls, before Sunday s ballot, suggest these groups could lose their hold on power if a new election was called. However, after events on Sunday, when police swung truncheons and fired rubber bullets in the direction of mostly peaceful demonstrators to shut down the referendum, pro-independence parties may again win the election. Such a result would raise doubts surrounding Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s ability to govern. Rajoy s immediate opposition in the national parliament lacks the numbers to force him out through a no-confidence vote, but without cross-party support on Catalonia, he may be forced to call a snap national election himself. Rajoy was voted in as a minority leader twice in last year s two elections and a fractious parliament suggests a snap election may prompt a similar result. If the Catalan parliament gives up the push for independence, Rajoy may sit down with Puigdemont to hammer out a new deal for the region including a better tax deal and greater fiscal autonomy. Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro and Economy Minister Luis de Guindos have suggested this may be a possibility if the independence drive is completely abandoned. Puigdemont has yet to make a unilateral declaration of independence, instead calling for a period of reflection, leaving the door open for such a scenario. However, after the violent scenes on Sunday and continued protests on Tuesday via a partial strike across the region, the Catalan leader may be keen to keep face and avoid being seen bowing down to Madrid. If the Catalans do not go ahead with a declaration of independence but also fail to sit down for talks with Rajoy as the two party s positions diverge beyond a possible compromise, Madrid may refer the matter to the constitutional courts. Legal and financial action against Catalan leaders is likely to fuel animosity and could prompt further protests, pushing leaders on both sides into difficult positions. | 0fake |
Mike Pence, N.S.A., Nobel Prize: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing - The New York Times | (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. News about digital surveillance dominated the day. The F. B. I. announced it had arrested an N. S. A. contractor on suspicion of stealing computer code developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments. Like Edward Snowden, the contractor worked at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. Separately, a government official confirmed that the Justice Department had ordered Yahoo to scan its users’ emails in search of the “signature” of a foreign terrorist organization. ____ 2. The United Nations Security Council announced its pick to succeed Ban as secretary general: António Guterres of Portugal, who led the U. N. refugee agency for 10 years. If approved in a final vote, Mr. Guterres would assume the post next year. ____ 3. Emergencies have already been declared in several Southern states in the projected path of Hurricane Matthew. The storm is expected to start pelting Florida with rain and damaging winds late Thursday. “Regardless of if there’s a direct hit or not, the impacts will be devastating,” Gov. Rick Scott said. The storm was blamed for the deaths of five people in Haiti, where the scope of destruction is still becoming clear. ____ 4. Three pioneers of molecular machinery were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa, above, won for the design and synthesis of “molecular machines,” which are the width of a strand of human hair. “Think about tiny robots that the doctor in the future will inject in your blood veins, and they go search for cancer cells,” Dr. Feringa said. ____ 5. So who won the debate? Commentators are giving the edge to Mike Pence, the Republican, who stayed calm as Tim Kaine, the Democrat, pressed him to defend Donald Trump. Or, as our television critic said: “Mr. Kaine made the case against Donald Trump. Mr. Pence made the case for Mr. Pence. ” Mr. Trump’s support has plunged across the map over the last 10 days, worrying Republican Congressional candidates. ____ 6. Mr. Pence and Mr. Kaine did largely agree on one issue: Both said they favored a plan to create “safe zones” in Syria to protect civilians from government bombs, although neither offered details. Analysts say Russia is using the waning days of the Obama administration to strengthen President Bashar ’s hold on power in the country. ____ 7. Tens of thousands of Afghans whose asylum applications were rejected in Europe will be sent back to Afghanistan. The European Union and Afghanistan announced the deal at a gathering in Brussels where dozens of governments pledged more than $3 billion in aid to the country. ____ 8. And more than 11, 000 African migrants trying to reach Italy on perilously overcrowded boats were rescued from the Mediterranean this week. A photographer captured scenes of panicking migrants, including children, who had been stranded at sea for at least 12 hours. Dozens had died, asphyxiated, crushed or pushed overboard. Hundreds of people were found in the cargo hold of a shipping vessel, in conditions that an aid worker likened to those of a slave ship. ____ 9. In this week’s magazine, dedicated to the subject of food, Michael Pollan examines the impact — and lack thereof — that the Obama administration has had on the food industry. Mr. Pollan had, in a 2008 letter, lobbied for Mr. Obama to use his presidency to challenge Big Food. (Here are some dizzying photos of today’s agriculture industry.) The Obamas made an effort, he writes, but often did not succeed. Now, the industry appears to be facing a much more powerful force: shoppers’ evolving preferences. ____ 10. Maria Sharapova, whose doping ban from tennis was reduced Tuesday, has lashed out at the sport’s top officials. “I knew that I would have the final say,” she said in an interview, criticizing the International Tennis Federation for how it communicated changes to banned drugs and how it handled her case. ____ 11. From MailChimp. Mail … ? If that mispronunciation sounds familiar, then you were probably hooked on “Serial,” the podcast sponsored by the email marketing . MailChimp is on track to top $400 million in revenue this year, but its story of success goes beyond a deft advertising choice. The company’s founders broke the typical mold, rejecting outside funding and growing slowly. Where does the name come from? A failed online greeting card business. One of the cards featured a chimp. ____ 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 |
Gov. Jindal 'thinking and praying' about 2016 run - Politics.com | Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said on Monday he was "thinking and praying" about a presidential run and said that an announcement could follow the midterm elections or "sometime after the holidays."
If he decides to run, Jindal would likely be the first Republican candidate to announce his decision. Most potential challengers have said they are waiting until spring 2015.
In his speech, Jindal tried to rouse hawks in the party by harshly criticizing President Barack Obama.
"The Russian reset, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Europe, China, and the list goes on. In each of these areas, it's not just the President took too long to come up with an answer. It's that the answer was wrong," he said at an American Enterprise Institute event.
Jindal called Obama's cutting back on defense spending "foolish" and "unacceptable" at a time when the administration has considered intervening in several foreign conflicts.
The two-term governor went on to say that the U.S. is at war with ISIS and that the President's hesitancy to call it a fight is "a projection of weakness."
He also slammed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, for making decisions the he believes has set America on a path for "more chaos, more conflict and more wars."
"Today, we are living with the consequences of the Obama-Clinton ideas when it comes to foreign, domestic and defense policy... If only it had the help of a wise, steady hand, a policy expert in dealing with foreign affairs, he'd have come up with better answers. But instead he just had Hillary Clinton," he said.
In a set of policy proposals, Jindal suggested that defense spending should be 4% of the country's GDP. He also called for increasing the Pentagon's funding, following the administration's decision to cut back $78 billion in 2011 as a way to decrease the deficit.
In the interim before potentially launching his campaign, Jindal hopes to see the Republican Party take the initiative rather than being known as the opposition party. Jindal mentioned that several Republican members have sided with Obama in the past, including on defense spending cutbacks.
"[The people] are frustrated with the President, but they have yet to hear a comprehensive alternative from the Republicans. All they heard so far is that we are opposed to many of his policies," he said. "What they are hungry for is a positive agenda from the Republican side." | 0fake |
Amid New Airstrikes in Syria, an Aid Convoy Arrives - The New York Times | The United Nations resumed aid convoys to besieged communities in Syria on Thursday for the first time since a deadly attack on trucks loaded with supplies on Monday. But that accomplishment seemed fragile as talks in New York between the United States and Russia failed to produce agreement on how to restore a in Syria, and as the Syrian military announced that it had begun a new offensive in eastern Aleppo and warned residents to stay away from rebel positions. That announcement was made after two days of intensive bombing of eastern Aleppo by the Syrian forces. A aid convoy left Damascus on Thursday with supplies for 40, 000 people in Moadamiya, a suburb of the capital, according to Jan Egeland, a United Nations special adviser for humanitarian affairs. Officials said later that the convoy had arrived in the afternoon, after delays but without incident. “We seem to be getting the permits and support we need,” Mr. Egeland said, while cautioning that the attack on the convoy on Monday, the deadliest in Syria’s civil war, had cast doubt on the safety and reliability of procedures that have provided the basis for aid deliveries to millions of Syrians. The Syrian government prohibited United Nations staff members from accompanying the convoy earlier in the week, Mr. Egeland said. “We were not there,” he told reporters Thursday in Geneva. “As U. N. we were not allowed in. ” The presence of United Nations officials can shield local relief workers in dangerous areas. Monday’s mission by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had no such cover. “We need a reboot, a restart for security assurances and guarantees for the humanitarian lifeline,” Mr. Egeland said, adding that the United Nations had trucks loaded and ready to leave for other besieged towns, including Madaya, Kfarya, Fouaa and Zabadani, before the end of the week. Hours later, Secretary of State John Kerry said that he had exchanged ideas to restore the with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov. He suggested that the onus was now on Russia to uphold the previous agreement and to respond to Mr. Kerry’s proposals with credible ideas of its own. “If the Russians come back to us with constructive proposals, we will listen,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement he read to reporters. “The key is to restore credibility where there is none. ” Mr. Kerry declined to take questions and did not provide more details. It was not immediately clear what ideas were being discussed or why the Obama administration believes its diplomatic efforts with the Russians might yet succeed after days of frustrating exchanges. Hopes had been raised earlier this week that the International Syria Support Group, the multinational body that has been trying to maintain the would agree to urgent measures to revive it. Chief among the proposals on the table was Mr. Kerry’s call for a ban on military flights in “key areas,” which he put forward on Wednesday before the United Nations Security Council. A senior Foreign Ministry official in Moscow rejected that idea. “This plan is unworkable,” said Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, according to the RIA news agency. The United States and other supporters of rebel groups trying to topple Mr. Assad must ensure that they lay down their arms, he added. Mr. Kerry’s proposal would prevent another aid convoy from being struck by banning planes from flying over areas where the assistance is to be delivered, and American officials have cast the proposal as a test of Russia’s intentions. American officials have said intelligence information indicates that it was a Russian aircraft that bombed the convoy headed to the besieged city of Aleppo on Monday. The Russians have denied the allegation and questioned whether an airstrike even occurred. At this stage, Mr. Kerry said in his statement, only “major gestures,” like banning warplanes over areas, would be sufficient to revive the rapidly vanishing hopes that a agreement can be reinstated and endure. A senior Obama administration official told reporters on Thursday evening that the meeting of the International Syria Support Group had been “pretty contentious” and that he was unsure whether an agreement was still possible. While the administration is not closing the door to new ideas from Moscow, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with diplomatic protocol, any Russian proposals need to include major steps to stop the violence. The death toll in Monday’s attack remains uncertain. In an interview with The Associated Press published on Thursday, President Bashar of Syria denied involvement and sought to shift the blame to opposition groups. “Those convoys were in the area of the militants, the area under the control of the terrorists,” he said. “We don’t have any idea about what happened. ” areas of Aleppo endured heavy airstrikes overnight, including with incendiary weapons, leaving a breakthrough in peace talks looking like a distant prospect. Strikes on Thursday destroyed one of the city’s two water treatment stations, serving both and areas, according to activists and medical workers in Aleppo. The Syrian military’s declaration of its new offensive was reported by websites and by RT, the satellite network financed by the Russian government. As violence reignited, trucks carrying food and medicine for Aleppo remained on the border with Turkey, unable to move from the customs zone where they have been stuck for a week until government forces and armed groups pull back from the road leading into the city, Mr. Egeland said. Mr. Assad, in his interview with The A. P. denied that Aleppo was under siege, but Mr. Egeland told reporters that it was encircled by military forces and that “it’s impossible to get in. ” | 0fake |
Jodie Foster Is Still Afraid of Failure - The New York Times | CULVER CITY, Calif. — Because of the political moment in which it’s landing, the new movie “Money Monster” — about a cheesy TV financial guru and the viewer who takes him hostage — will almost surely be seen as a parable of income inequality and a rigged economy. Which, in large part, it is. But to its director, Jodie Foster, it covers terrain more intimate than that, and more personal. It’s a meditation on failure: how keenly people fear it, what they do when confronted with it. Its two main characters, captor and captive, inhabit the same purgatory. They’re coming to terms with their own inadequacy. “Failure is a big one for me — people in spiritual crisis, in a moment in life of total ” Ms. Foster told me recently, explaining how the movie, to be released May 13, connects to her. Does she often think of herself as a failure? “Oh yeah,” she said. “Oh my God, yeah. If Mother Teresa is propelled to do good works because she believes in God, I am propelled to do good works because of how bad I feel about myself. It’s the first place I go. ‘Oh, what did I do wrong? ’” This is not the direction in which you expect a conversation with a Oscar winner to turn. But as guarded as so many decades in the spotlight have made Ms. Foster, there’s also something naked about her, a too fervent to stay hidden. You see it in her best performances. You saw it at the Golden Globes in 2013, when she accepted an honorary award with a raw, rambling speech that set the Internet ablaze: Had she just come out of the closet? Had she even been in the closet? She was asking at once to be understood and to be left alone, still searching all these years later for a resolution to the contradiction of celebrity, and her remarks were so messy in their way that I was stunned when she told me that she’d scripted them carefully in advance. “Every word,” she said, adding that she even had them put on a teleprompter. “I didn’t want to get it wrong. ” But what precisely was she trying to get right? The world was fixated on her allusions to her private life. She was focused on an announcement about her professional one: On the far side of 50, she was pivoting toward less glamorous work behind the scenes. She hasn’t taken a new acting assignment since, instead concentrating on directing. “Money Monster” is her fourth effort along those lines, after “Little Man Tate” (1991) “Home for the Holidays” (1995) and “The Beaver” (2011) and it’s by far the most ambitious, a New York City thriller with SWAT teams, explosives, George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Mr. Clooney is the financial guru, who loosely evokes Jim Cramer, the host of the CNBC cable show “Mad Money. ” Ms. Roberts is his producer, who’s in his ear throughout the hostage crisis, talking him through it, as steady as he is spastic. (The captor is played by Jack O’Connell.) One striking aspect of the movie is how large Ms. Roberts’s character looms, and I asked Ms. Foster if that would have been the case in a male director’s hands. She said that she hadn’t thought about that, but, in fact, many of the screenplay revisions that she requested involved fleshing out that role. Strong women are her trademark as a performer, the thread running through “The Accused” (her first Oscar for best actress) “The Silence of the Lambs” (her second) “Panic Room,” “Flightplan,” “The Brave One” and more. But not just strong women: women who don’t turn to a man in the clutch women whose strength is inseparable from the walls they’ve built around themselves. They’re “solitary characters who don’t have mothers and fathers and boyfriends,” she told me, and they demonstrate her desire, when acting, “to have an experience that’s all mine, and I don’t really want to share it. ” “Yet I’m totally desperate to communicate it to you,” she said. “It’s a really weird dichotomy. And I think that’s me in life. ” She sat on a couch, legs curled under her and shoes kicked off, in an office here on the lot of Sony Pictures, which is distributing “Money Monster. ” I’d last seen her in downtown Manhattan months earlier, when she was shooting a crucial scene and when she described, within minutes of our meeting, how powerfully the Clooney part spoke to her. “He’s just a guy on TV, but he’s imbued with this sense of power,” she said, adding that he’s forced to ask questions that she has asked herself: “Am I real? Am I a sellout? Is all of this real?” She meant the adulation that comes with fame, which she achieved early. The year she turned 14, she had five movies released, including “Freaky Friday,” “Bugsy Malone” and “Taxi Driver,” in which her precocious turn as an underage prostitute earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. During her time at Yale University, she acted in another five movies, juggling them with her studies, including a thesis on literature. Henry Louis Gates Jr. then teaching there, was one of her advisers. She babysat for his two young children, and he recalled arranging an interview for her with Toni Morrison and telling the novelist only that his student Alicia Foster — that’s Jodie’s real name — was en route. “When she walked in, I think Toni almost had a heart attack,” Professor Gates, now at Harvard, told me. He and Ms. Foster remain friends, and he said that he still marvels at the poise that “allowed her to get through a crisis that probably would have been crushing to most of us. ” He was referring to John Hinckley Jr. ’s shooting of President Reagan, which Mr. Hinckley, who had stalked Ms. Foster, said he did to impress her. She was in her freshman year at Yale. Not long after she graduated, she considered ditching movies altogether and doing graduate work with Professor Gates. “The Accused” was about to be released, and she was convinced that the movie and her performance were no good. Her mother, Evelyn, worried that “The Silence of the Lambs” would be a mistake and, as Ms. Foster remembers it, said to her: “The good part is Hannibal Lecter. Why are you taking the dull part?” The two have always been extraordinarily close — her mother was a single mom and carefully steered her career early on — so it pained the actress when they had a much bigger tussle over “Nell,” in which Ms. Foster played a wild woman (literally) who spoke a gibberish of her own invention. Evelyn Foster channeled her broader apprehensions about the movie into her daughter’s specific decision to darken her hair for the role. “She was relentless, and she wouldn’t get off it,” Ms. Foster said. “She was yelling at me. Why did I have to dye my hair? She was just like, ‘You’re ruining your image,’ or whatever it was. And I remember sending her this really long letter, and the letter was, ‘I really love you, but I’m not going to talk to you for four and a half months,’” until the movie wraps. “She totally got it — she sent me flowers,” Ms. Foster added. “And then I talked to her four months later. That was one of the movies where if I thought for one minute that I was making a fool of myself, I would not be able to perform. ” She made clear to me that she was sharing that story only because it couldn’t embarrass her mother, who has advanced dementia. Ms. Foster is mindful of the privacy of family members, including her two sons, the oldest of whom will leave for college in the fall, and her wife, the photographer Alexandra Hedison. The couple began their relationship soon after that Golden Globes speech and were wed in early 2014. Ms. Foster deflected questions about that. “I never will talk about marriage and friends,” she said. “There are only so many steps I can take to protect people I love. There’s only so much I can do to keep them safe. It’s kind of a horrible feeling to know that if somebody’s close to you, you put them in danger of being hurt, of being sullied — trivialized — just by virtue of knowing you. ” In the Globes speech, she fleetingly acknowledged a previous relationship to Cydney Bernard, describing her as “my heroic my in love but righteous soul sister in life. ” Did she intend that as the kind of declaration about her sexual orientation that some advocates had long pressed for? “Everything I have to say on that subject, I said that night,” she told me, acknowledging that some people remained puzzled. “I can be vague. Vague is moving to me. ” In recent years, she has directed episodes of “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” picking up Emmy and Directors Guild of America nominations. But her chance to helm movies came earlier, even though that opportunity still eludes many women. She was spared such resistance because so many male executives “knew me as the who showed up on time, and they didn’t see it as a risk,” she said. “They looked at me as if I was a daughter. They’d seen me grow up. They knew my professionalism. ” So did the “Money Monster” producers. “Talk to anyone who has worked with her,” said one of them, Lara Alameddine. “They’ll tell you the same thing. She is the most prepared person. She’s the first one there and the last one to leave. ” Mel Gibson, who starred in “The Beaver,” said that “the way she directs films, the way she does anything — it’s just very smart. She attacks it and deals with it and delivers. ” The two formed a deep friendship after making “Maverick” more than two decades ago, though their bond baffles outsiders. “It’s not my job to adjudicate his behavior,” she said. “He’s certainly not sexist and certainly not racist. I know the guy I know, somebody who’s really emotional, who I can have long, long conversations with, who’s trustworthy, who shows up for me. ” Mr. Gibson said: “I just love her, that’s all. You meet people like that sometimes. You just instantly fall in love, and that’s it, and it’s the purest kind of thing. We call each other up all the time and just say, ‘Hey, I love you. ’” Ms. Foster’s current emphasis on directing over acting partly recognizes that at 53, she won’t find as many great roles as she once did. But it also reflects her ceaseless process of and . “Everybody in my life said to me: When you stop acting, you’re going to be lost,” she said, meaning that directors don’t quite have the visibility and currency of actual movie stars. “What are you going to do when people don’t take your phone call or when you can’t get a reservation in a restaurant?” I looked for some sign that she was being falsely modest or pulling my leg. Amazingly, she wasn’t. “Maybe I’ll lose my identity,” she said. “But I guess I need to find out, and I’m willing to take that chance. ” | 0fake |
These Celebrities Say They'd Leave the Country If Trump Wins
| These celebrities had some, uh, extreme responses to the possibility of Donald Trump winning the White House.
Rev. Al Sharpton has said hes reserving my ticket to get out of here if he wins.
The Views Whoopi Goldberg said, I dont think thats America. I dont want it to be America.
Maybe its time for me to move, she added.
Sienna Miller and Bryan Cranston also made it clear that they intend to leave the U.S. due to a Trump presidency.
And Raven-Symone imparted this gem.
Hannity.com published a list of celebrities who have made similar declarations.
Funnily enough, someone on a Nova Scotia island may have the answer to their problems.
An online campaign called Cape Breton If Donald Trump Wins is offering Trump haters a new home. | 0fake |
Trump Displays Incredible Ignorance Yet Again — Claims Credit For Term Coined Over A Hundred Years Ago | Have you ever wondered where a phrase started? How about the phrase prime the pump? It is widely considered to mean the use of government money to get a project going. While it dates back to the 1800s, President Donald Trump is now claiming that he invented the phrase. In reality, the use of the phrase prime the pump predates Trump s own birth by a hundred years, and the use of it in the current economic sense has existed since the 1930s.In a recent conversation with The Economist, this exchange happened (they were talking about Trump s tax plan):The Economist: But beyond that it s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit? Trump: It is OK, because it won t increase it for long. You may have two years where you ll you understand the expression prime the pump ? The Economist: Yes. Trump: We have to prime the pump. The Economist: It s very Keynesian. Trump: We re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event? The Economist: Priming the pump? Trump: Yeah, have you heard it? The Economist: Yes. Trump: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven t heard it. I mean, I just I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It s what you have to do.According to The Free Dictionary:Prime the Pump: Encourage the growth or action of something, as in Marjorie tried to prime the pump by offering some new issues for discussion. In the late 1800s this expression originally was used for pouring liquid into a pump to expel the air and make it work. In the 1930s it was applied to government efforts to stimulate the economy and thereafter was applied to other undertakings.It is hardly surprising that a) Trump had never heard this phrase, as it is rarely used on Twitter and b) he would take credit for it. In a week with so many gaffes, lies and just strange behavior, this may not be as big an issue but it s clear how little this man knows and how little he understands the world and reality that the rest of us live in. Another explanation could be that Trump is much, much older than we have been led to believe and has gone completely senile.Featured image via Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. | 1real |
Pakistan bars a militant-linked group from forming new political party | ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan s electoral commission on Wednesday barred from contesting elections a new political party that is backed by an Islamist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, a government official said. Haroon Khan, a spokesman for the commission, said a four-man panel rejected the registration of Milli Muslim League (MML) as an official political party. Khan said Muhammad Raza Khan, chief of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), told MML s lawyer at the final hearing of the registration that the new party has links with militant groups and as such We can t enlist you. The ECP spokesman said the commission cited an interior ministry recommendation that the MML was affiliated with Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), a militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, and that such groups could breed violence and extremism in politics. The United States has designated LeT founder Hafiz Saeed a terrorist and offers a $10 million reward for information leading to his conviction. Saeed, currently under house arrest, heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Islamict charity, which Washington says is a front for LeT. Pakistan s reluctance to press charges against him has been a sore point in relations with Washington and India over the past decade. Saifullah Khalid, the head of MML, said his party would challenge the decision. An attempt is being made to keep patriotic forces away from politics, he said. The party is likely to continue operating unofficially, as it did last month when one of its leaders contested a by-election in the eastern city of Lahore as an independent candidate. The candidate, Yaqoob Sheikh, won several thousand votes, though officials from MML and JuD ran his campaign. Saeed s portraits adorned posters promoting Sheikh. The move to bar the party appears at odds with what political and former military sources told Reuters was a plan by the military s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency to integrate militant-linked organizations by bringing them into politics as part of a de-radicalization drive. Pakistani army spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor also said last week the integration of militants into the country s politics would be based on seeking a constructive role for the militant-linked groups, although he did not comment on the military s role in any such strategy. It is in my knowledge that the government has started some discussion over it, that is, how do we mainstream them, Ghafoor said. Neighbors India and Afghanistan accuse Pakistan s military of backing and using militant groups such as LeT as proxies, a charge the army denies. The MML is actively running a campaign for its candidate contesting another by-election on Oct 26., to be held in the northwestern city of Peshawar. | 0fake |
Obama says he is confident Europe will come up with prudent post-Brexit plan | OTTAWA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he is confident Europeans will come up with a prudent plan to move forward after Britain’s vote last week to leave the European Union. “Despite some of the initial reactions, I am confident that the process can be managed in a prudent, orderly way. I expect that our friends on both sides of the Channel will develop a workable plan for how to move forward,” Obama said in a speech to the Canadian Parliament. | 0fake |
France's Macron says world is losing battle against climate change | PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday told dozens of world leaders and company bosses gathered at a climate summit in Paris that we are losing the battle against climate change. We re not moving quick enough. We all need to act, Macron said, seeking to breath new life into efforts to combat global warming after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of an international accord brokered in the French capital two years ago. | 0fake |
BREAKING: EMERGENCY Room Doctor In Dearborn, MI Hospital Arrested, Charged With Genital Mutilation Of 6-8 Yr Old Girls [VIDEO] | B b b but that doesn t happen in America does it? A Henry Ford Hospital emergency room doctor has been arrested and charged in connection to performing female genital mutilation on young girls.Jumana Nagarwala, 44, of Northville Michigan is accused of performing female genital mutilation on underage girls.According to a criminal complaint, Nagarwala performed the procedure on girls ages six to eight years old at a medical clinic in Livonia.Some of the children were brought from out of state for the illegal procedure. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is considered the complete removal or partial removal of the clitoris, known as a clitoridectomy. FGM is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of women and girls.The investigation revealed that in one particular case, a 7-year-old was brought by her family from Minnesota. An investigation into phone records revealed their location. The child was interviewed on April 10. She stated that she was brought to Detroit for special girls trip. The child victim also stated that she said she had to go to the doctor to get the germs out. Upon a medical exam on April 11, a doctor determined that the child s genitals had been altered or removed. The child identified Dr. Nagarwala as the doctor who performed the procedure.Some consider FGM as a religious and cultural practice. The purpose of this illegal practice is to suppress female sexuality in order to reduce sexual pleasure.In the criminal affidavit, Nagarwala performed FGM on girls who were approximately 7 years old at the time at a clinic in Livonia. According to the complaint, despite her oath to care for her patients, Dr. Nagarwala is alleged to have performed horrifying acts of brutality on the most vulnerable victims, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Blanco. The Department of Justice is committed to stopping female genital mutilation in this country, and will use the full power of the law to ensure that no girls suffer such physical and emotional abuse. Female genital mutilation constitutes a particularly brutal form of violence against women and girls. It is also a serious federal felony in the United States. The practice has no place in modern society and those who perform FGM on minors will be held accountable under federal law, stated Acting United States Attorney Daniel Lemisch. The allegations detailed in today s criminal complaint are disturbing. The FBI, along with its law enforcement partners, are committed to doing whatever necessary to bring an end to this barbaric practice and to ensure no additional children fall victim to this procedure , said Special Agent in Charge David Gelios.Via WXYZ TV | 1real |
WATCH WHAT HAPPENS WHEN COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE ASKED “Are you ready for Hillary” | Listen to the mind boggling answers to these questions asked by Caleb Bonham, founder of Campus Reform. Just for fun, we ve included the latest ad by the AmericaRisingPAC (You won t want to miss it. We promise it s pretty awesome!)What is the biggest reason you re voting for Hillary?What is the #1 reason you would support a woman President?Like if I said I support Scott Walker because he s a man would that be sexist? Do you think that s a qualifying factor to be President, the Commander in Chief that she s a woman? WATCH THIS AMAZING NEW ANTI-HILLARY AD BY THE AMERICA RISING PAC: | 1real |
‘PAY TO STAY’: Feds Open Fake University To Catch Fake Visa Scam [Video] | This is such a huge opportunity and the feds probably just scratched the surface.The current state of some American institutions of higher learning, flush with debates about trigger warnings, sexual assault and affirmative action, have left some critics wondering whether college students have time to learn anything anymore. But on the campus of the University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ), nestled in idyllic Cranford about 20 miles from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, no students were concerned with such matters because the school, as authorities just announced, was an elaborate front used by undercover federal agents to trap people illegally trying to score fake visas for foreign nationals.Now, the UNNJ sting is over, but leaves quite a wake: the indictments of 21 brokers, recruiters, and employers from across the United States who allegedly conspired with more than 1,000 foreign nationals, as the Department of Justice explained, to keep them in the country under the auspices of an ersatz alma mater. Some who purchased fake papers ended up working at Facebook or working for the U.S. military, as ABC reported. Pay to Stay schemes not only damage our perception of legitimate student and foreign worker visa programs, they also pose a very real threat to national security, New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said in a statement. Today s arrests, which were made possible by the great undercover work of our law enforcement partners, stopped 21 brokers, recruiters and employers across multiple states who recklessly exploited our immigration system for financial gain. Via: WaPo | 1real |
Review: ‘Sweetbitter,’ a ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ for the Restaurant Set - The New York Times | Stephanie Danler’s first novel, “Sweetbitter,” about a young woman in New York City’s restaurant world, is going to make a lot of people hungry. It did me, at any rate. My copy, I notice, has some grease stains in it, a few red pepper flakes, a stubby bit of mint. “Sweetbitter” will be consumed with special avidity by young food people — sommeliers, cheesemakers, sous chefs, managers, pastry wizards — who dream of making it in the big city, or at least of making it by standards. It’s an unpretentious, novel — bought by Knopf in an deal — that reads like a letter home from a friend. In this case, that friend is named Tess, like Thomas Hardy’s heroine and Melanie Griffith’s striving secretary in “Working Girl. ” This Tess is 22 when she escapes her unnamed hometown and its “twin pillars of football and church” and drives into Manhattan. “Let’s say I was born in late June of 2006 when I came over the George Washington Bridge at 7 a. m.,” she says, “with the sun circulating and dawning, the sky full of sharp corners of light, before the exhaust rose, before the heat gridlocked in, windows unrolled, radio turned up to some impossibly hopeful pop song, open, open, open. ” Thanks to her poise and friendly good looks, Tess finds a job as an apprentice server at a restaurant that’s clearly modeled after Union Square Cafe, one of Manhattan’s best. (The author has worked at Union Square Cafe and at another cheerful restaurant, Buvette.) She finds a scuzzy apartment in a cheap section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tess falls deeply into her work and feels the city begin to unfold for her. Ms. Danler is a sensitive observer of the almost wartime camaraderie among workers at a restaurant that’s humming at full capacity, of the exhaustion, of the postshift drinking in dive bars until dawn, of the sex and other stimulants — the biggest one simply being young and alive and open to the animal and intellectual possibilities that New York offers. Once upon a time, this sort of aspirational, young person’s novel was written about writers and artists. Food workers are climbing the status ladder. Now these novels are about chefs or even, in this case, servers. This book has an onrushing “Bright Lights, Big City” vibe and falls into an emerging genre you might call Bright Lights, Small Plates. A restaurant, like a platoon in a war novel, allows a writer to deploy a large cast with relative ease. In “Sweetbitter” we meet a handsome if young bartender (“He drank like he was the only person who understood beer”) an enigmatic female head server who is Tess’s mentor and tormentor a harried chef a manager who does more than ogle his favorite female employees. None feel like stereotypes. A subtle sense of melancholy hangs over these men and women. They’re happy to be where they are in fact, they feel chosen. But they’re nearly all here because of other dreams that were thwarted. They’re failed poets or academics. Tess had hoped to be a photographer. “Sweetbitter” is the story of Tess’s sentimental education. We don’t learn much about her past. But in Manhattan we watch her — she is vulnerable but rarely weak — pour herself full with books and art and music, and blossom like a daisy. Mostly she fills herself with lovely things to eat and drink. Tess isn’t a hipster (“I cared too much about the wrong things”). And Ms. Danler isn’t another Anthony Bourdain manqué, delivering a caustic exposé. She takes the reader by the hand as Tess learns dozens of lessons, from distinguishing among varieties of oysters, types of winter lettuce and appellations of Burgundy to opening wine properly to appreciating a pig’s head terrine. Tess knows she will, at some point, want more than this. But for now this punishing life feels like ravishment. When a college acquaintance comes into the restaurant one night and condescends to her, only politeness prevents her from speaking aloud: “I chose this life because it’s a constant assault of color and taste and light and it’s raw and ugly and fast and it’s mine. And you’ll never understand. Until you live it, you don’t know. ” This novel, which reads a bit like a food world version of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep,” gets off to a bad start. You notice that its four sections are named after the seasons, as if they were George Winston albums. At the beginning there are gimmicky interpolated sections about things like the nature of sweet versus sour. You fear you may be headed into a genre fiction tunnel of love. Those fears are quickly dispelled. Ms. Danler is a gifted commenter (chilly autumn air in Manhattan “tasted of steel knives and filtered water”) on many things, class especially. An awareness of privilege runs through this novel like a tendon. “If you’re good at this job,” she asks, “what exactly are you good at?” “Sweetbitter” grows darker than you might expect, in terms of where Tess’s desires lead her. It’s a book about hunger of every variety, even the sort that can disturb you and make you sometimes ask yourself, as does Tess, “Was I a monster or was this what it felt like to be a person?” | 0fake |
Meeting Between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch Provokes Political Furor - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — An airport encounter this week between Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton has welled into a political storm, with Republicans asserting that it compromised the Justice Department’s politically sensitive investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state. The Obama administration declined to say on Thursday whether the meeting between Ms. Lynch and Mr. Clinton, in Phoenix on Monday night, was appropriate. The press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that the investigation of Mrs. Clinton would be free of political influence and that he would leave it to the attorney general to explain the meeting. Ms. Lynch said the meeting with Mr. Clinton was unplanned, largely social and did not touch on the email investigation. She suggested that he walked uninvited from his plane to her government plane, which were both parked on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. “He did come over and say hello, and speak to my husband and myself, and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that,” Ms. Lynch said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where she was promoting community policing. “That was the extent of that. And no discussions were held into any cases or things like that. ” That did not mollify Republican lawmakers, who said the meeting raised questions about the integrity of the government’s investigation. Since last summer, the F. B. I. has been investigating whether Mrs. Clinton or her aides violated laws on the protection of classified material by using a private email address and server in the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, N. Y. The F. B. I. is expected to make a recommendation to the Justice Department in the coming weeks. While some legal experts said they believed criminal indictments in the case were unlikely, the investigation continues to cast a shadow over Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. “In light of the apparent conflicts of interest, I have called repeatedly on Attorney General Lynch to appoint a special counsel to ensure the investigation is as far from politics as possible,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “This incident does nothing to instill confidence in the American people that her department can fully and fairly conduct this investigation, and that’s why a special counsel is needed now more than ever,” he said. Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, seized on the incident, describing it in a radio interview as a “sneak” meeting and saying it exposed the rigged nature of the process. Even some Democrats expressed uneasiness with the appearance the meeting created. “I do agree with you that it doesn’t send the right signal,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said in response to a question on CNN’s “New Day” program. Ms. Lynch “has generally shown excellent judgment and strong leadership of the department, and I’m convinced that she’s an independent attorney general. But I do think that this meeting sends the wrong signal, and I don’t think it sends the right signal. I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual, social meeting with the former president. ” At the White House, Mr. Earnest was asked repeatedly about the propriety of the meeting. He defended what he said was Ms. Lynch’s long record of independence as a federal prosecutor. But he stopped short of saying the administration viewed the meeting as appropriate. “I wasn’t there for the meeting,” Mr. Earnest said, “but the attorney general was, and she was asked a direct question about it, and she answered it. I think that is consistent with everybody’s expectations. ” | 0fake |
Duo Played a Vital Role in Venezuelan Drug Trafficking Case | AP News reported on Nov. 19, 2016, that a father and son duo played an important part in a cocaine trafficking trial. The trial persecuted the nephew of the first lady of Venezuela.
The United States Federal Government and several other law enforcement agencies paid Jose Santos-Penta an estimated $1 million. They also paid over $100,000 more to his son Jose Santos-Hernandez.The U.S. Federal Government purchased information from them on drug trafficking.
The two men traveled to several different countries. Some of the countries the DEA are not welcome. The duo made secret recordings of people allegedly believed to be involved in the illegal drug trade.
One of the nations involved was Venezuela, where the Santos-Pena family recorded two of Cilia Flores nephews. Cilia Flores is the wife of the nation’s president who was handling a large amount of cocaine.
However, in April 2016, federal agents discovered that the father-son duo was illegally involved in illegal drug trafficking. Just as the nephew of the Venezuelan first lady was about to go on trial in New York, the duo pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges.
They also admitted to trafficking drugs while they were assisting the DEA of building the Venezuelan case last fall. However, prosecutors continue their case against Cilia Flores’ two nephews, although Jose Santos-Hernandez did not testify at their trial.
Written by John A. Federico
Edited by Cathy Milne
Source:
AP: Latin America Father-son informants trafficked drugs while on US payroll
Featured Image Courtesy of Julio César Mesa’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License Duo , HOmeless Veterans | 1real |
Ted Cruz Accepts Endorsement Of Pastor Who Says God Sent Hitler To Kill The Jews (VIDEO) | Ted Cruz proudly announced the latest endorsement of his presidential bid. It comes from Pastor Mike Bickle, founder and director of the International House of Prayer of Kansas City. Bickle is a figure well known for his attack on on same sex-marriage, calling it a sign of the end of times. He has also blamed the Jews for the Holocaust. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hE_AOR2JBE]In a 2011 speech, Bickle suggested that millions of Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust because they didn t accept God s gift, Jesus Christ. He quoted Jeremiah 16:16 from the Bible to explain why Hitler murdered millions of Jews. He said: The Lord says, I m going to give all 20 million of them the chance to respond to the fishermen. And I give them grace. And he says, And if they don t respond to grace, I m going to raise up the hunters. And the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler. It doesn t get more anti-Semitic than this guy. His statement not only blames Jews for the Holocaust, but also justifies it: because Jews didn t accept Jesus, they deserved to die.Bickle also says that in the coming end of days, Jews will be put in prison and death camps. When all is said and done, 2/3rds of the Jewish population will be destroyed and off to hell because they didn t accept Jesus. Thus, not only were they murdered for not accepting Jesus, the Jews will be murdered again for continuing their rejection of Jesus.Ted Cruz is excited about the endorsement of the genocidal Bickle. He said: Through prayer, the Lord has changed my life and altered my family s story. I am grateful for Mike s dedication to call a generation of young people to prayer and spiritual commitment. Heidi and I are grateful to have his prayers and support. With the support of Mike and many other people of faith, we will fight the good fight, finish the course, and keep the faith. Cruz and Bickle are of the same ilk and ideology when it comes to religion and so it should come as no surprise to all of us that Cruz would be proud of this endorsement. Bickle s statements are not only anti-Semitic, but they are also genocidal. To actually believe that Jews have been and will be exterminated because they don t believe in Jesus (whatever that means) justifies the Holocaust and also justifies a future one for millions of so-called Christians.Featured Image Via Wikimedia Commons. | 1real |
WATCH: JUDGE JEANINE Is FURIOUS After It’s Revealed That Session Says He Won’t Prosecute Hillary and Cronies: “What Does The President Have To Do To Get Sessions To Do His Job?” | Former House of Representatives member and Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Jason Chaffetz (UT-R) was a guest on the Judge Jeanine show last night. Judge Jeanine started out her segment with Chaffetz talking about how Hillary Clinton and friends keep lying and obfuscating the law. She asked Chaffetz what he could tell her about what s being done, and asked Chaffetz, What can you do? Chaffetz replied to Judge Jeanine: Yeah, it s been more than a year now, and the State Department is holding tens of thousands of documents on a case that they claim is closed! And when I met with Attorney General Sessions much like Ron DeSantis did, I basically got a stiff arm. I got an Attorney General that said he would not comply, he wasn t going to do any sort of prosecutions and it s, it s such a huge difference. When he was a Senator he would have never put up with that. But the deep state is very real. They re pushing back, and we need to do an investigation on this. Judge Jeanine asked if Attorney General Jeff Sessions was afraid of them? She then went on to ask Chaffetz, What does a president have to do to get Sessions to do his job? Judge Jeanine also asked Chaffetz, Should Jeff Sessions should be out? Chaffetz replied, Well, I don t know what the case is to keep him in this place, if he s not going to look at the obvious conflicts of interest. Watch: | 1real |
Halloween Fireside Book of Suspense Vol. 2: Boiler Room EP #133 | Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Daniel Spaulding (of Soul of the East) Andy Nowicki (The Nameless One.) Randy J & Fvnk$oul (ACR & 21Wire Contributors) for the hundred and thirty third episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.On this episode of Boiler Room the ACR Brain-Trust is kicking back with a Halloween vibe, discussing the absurdity of the British government creating a beef with the U.N. over the linguistic virtue of referring to pregnant women as pregnant people so as not to offend any trans people (I ve never put so many sarcastic quotations in one sentence before now.) The Boiler gang is also discussing Twitter, Google, Facebook and Youtube suppressing freedom of speech in the U.S. while serving as a lapdog to the intelligence agencies and the left leaning technocrats to literally do social engineering (not kidding, that is in Mark Zuckerberg s own words.)Direct Download Episode #133 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 1real |
Did Donald Trump Jr. Just Say His Dad Beat Him For Refusing To Get Him Coke? (VIDEO) | It s hard to imagine Donald Trump showing anything approaching respect to his kids. From openly fantasizing about his infant daughter s future breasts, to posing for creepy photos with Ivanka, to pretty much flat-out saying he wants to f*ck Ivanka, it s clear that The Donald probably isn t that great of a father. Watching him speak at his rallies or on television easily gives one the impression that Trump is a boiling pot of rage ready to spill over on whomever is nearby at the time. But in an interview on Fox News, Donald Trump Jr. implied that the aforementioned boiling took physical form, and that he was the closest in proximity to his father when it happened at least once. You told me a story once, you told me on your radio show, your dad you re 7 or 8 years old and he asks you to get him a coke can and you didn t get it? host Sean Hannity asked. Trump Jr. explained: He came back from a rather rough day at work and he was like Run to the kitchen and get me a coke. I said I m not your EXPLETIVE maid, and I ve never seen the man move so fast in my life. Apparently, Trump Jr. ran from his father, but his mother stopped him at the top of the stairs. He says his mom, who is the European tough disciplinarian type, handed him to Trump for punishment. I learned never to do that one again, Trump Jr. said with a grin on his face. He did not say what form his punishment took, but it certainly was not pretty. Most parents don t chase their kids around the house over simple backtalk. Most children are not so terrified of what would happen as a punishment that they flee in terror.Did he beat his son for refusing to grab him a coke? We ll never know until he clarifies but The Donald is certainly a violent man. Before he ran for President, ex-wife Ivana Trump said during divorce proceedings that he would rape and humiliate her, once assaulting her after a failed surgery to remove a bald spot. The Daily Beast gives a rundown of the horrific incident:What followed was a violent assault, according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants. Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified It is a violent assault, Hurt writes. According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, he raped me. Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified It is a violent assault, Hurt writes. According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, he raped me. Obviously, if he would do this to his wife, he would not hesitate to be violent with his children.Did Donald Trump Jr. just reveal another horrific fact about his family? Watch the video below and decide for yourself: Featured Image via Ethan Miller/Getty Images | 1real |
BOX OFFICE BOMB: Seth Rogan Tweeted F*ck You To Ben Carson…America Responds By Boycotting His Steve Jobs Movie | Who s laughing now funny guy?We asked everyone to boycott the Steve Jobs movie after not-so-funny guy sent this vulgar tweet directed at GOP Presidential contender and brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson: Steve Jobs didn t just bomb this weekend, it BOMBED. Although director Danny Boyle s biopic sits in nearly 2500 theaters and was predicted to clear around $12 million, according to Deadline, by Monday the $30 million film (closer to $60 million with distribution costs) will bottom out at $7 million.It wasn t supposed to be like this.Not even close.First there was the pedigree: an Oscar-winning director, an Oscar-winning screenwriter, and a biopic subject who is also a national brand.Then there is the track record: just five years ago The Social Network, a similar film about a similar subject written by the same Aaron Sorkin, opened to $22.4 million. On top of that, in limited release, Steve Jobs was nearly breaking records.The good juju was apparently broken when one of the film s stars, Seth Rogen, the guy who was supposed to provide some box office insurance, launched a profanity-laced attack against Dr. Ben Carson, an attack many saw as race-based against the black Republican presidential candidate.Two weeks ago, just as the film s public relations campaign was gearing up for its national release (and Oscar grab), Rogen fired off a hate-tweet, Fuck you @realBenCarson. Rogen claimed he was angry at Carson for suggesting German Jews would have been able to better resist the Nazis had the government not confiscated their firearms in advance of the Holocaust.The backlash against Rogen and Steve Jobs was immediate and intense. Many people used their social media accounts to call for a boycott of the film.Just six days ago, Rogen doubled down.The racism charge against Rogen is not without merit. Carson is a black Republican, Canadian Rogen is a white liberal. Going back to the days of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow, white Democrats have attacked and attempted to intimidate black people who don t think right, who defiantly stand up for their civil rights and threaten the Democrat power structure.Democrats and their DC media allies vehemently disagree with Carson s strong stance in favor of his Second Amendment civil rights. While Democrats can no longer use German Shepherds and fire hoses like their ideological brethren did 50 years, today they use social media to destroy black people who stray from the Liberal Thought Plantation.With Emily Blunt s Sicario, Steve Jobs is now the second film this month to under-perform in the wake of one of its left-wing stars hurling partisan insults. Via: Breitbart News | 1real |
null | No she doesn’t have more money than God, everything we have comes from God, He is King of heaven and earth | 1real |
Facebook user wastes two hours sharing things to impress his insurance company | Wednesday 2 November 2016 Facebook user wastes two hours sharing things to impress his insurance company
Facebook user Simon Williams has admitted he only shares things on social media to impress other people, so trying to impress his insurance company seemed like a sensible thing to do.
Williams said Admiral Insurance’s decision to offer better insurance deals to people with Facebook profiles that looked ‘safer’ to their quotation algorithm had led to an afternoon of frantic social activity.
He explained, “Obviously, as a millennial social media user, I only ever share things that will impress my friends, future employers and potentially those women who happen across my Facebook profile from any of the number of dating apps I use.
“So sharing and posting things purely to make myself look better is nothing new to me. Tweaking that for an insurance company was pretty easy.
“I simply liked a number of Facebook pages about driver safety, signed a petition calling for lower speed limits on UK roads, added a couple of driving safety courses as Life Events, and even put a couple of posts on my historic timeline about how people are ‘driving way too fast past the school these days’.
“Also, Driving Miss Daisy is now my favourite film, by the way.
“It would definitely have got me cheaper car insurance. It was a flawless plan.
“Of course, Facebook has now put an end to that – the bastards. Two hours of my life I won’t get back.
A spokesperson for Facebook told us, “We simply can’t have a third party business exploiting the information our users share on the Facebook platform for commercial gain.
“That’s what our advertising business is for.” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 1real |
Exclusive: Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians: sources | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters. The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Six of the previously undisclosed contacts described to Reuters were phone calls between Sergei Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and Trump advisers, including Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, three current and former officials said. Conversations between Flynn and Kislyak accelerated after the Nov. 8 vote as the two discussed establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could bypass the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations, four current U.S. officials said. In January, the Trump White House initially denied any contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. The White House and advisers to the campaign have since confirmed four meetings between Kislyak and Trump advisers during that time. The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far. But the disclosure could increase the pressure on Trump and his aides to provide the FBI and Congress with a full account of interactions with Russian officials and others with links to the Kremlin during and immediately after the 2016 election. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment. In Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry official declined to comment on the contacts and referred Reuters to the Trump administration. Separately, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington said: “We do not comment on our daily contacts with the local interlocutors.” The 18 calls and electronic messages took place between April and November 2016 as hackers engaged in what U.S. intelligence concluded in January was part of a Kremlin campaign to discredit the vote and influence the outcome of the election in favor of Trump over his Democratic challenger, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Those discussions focused on mending U.S.-Russian economic relations strained by sanctions imposed on Moscow, cooperating in fighting Islamic State in Syria and containing a more assertive China, the sources said. Members of the Senate and House intelligence committees have gone to the CIA and the National Security Agency to review transcripts and other documents related to contacts between Trump campaign advisers and associates and Russian officials and others with links to Putin, people with knowledge of those investigations told Reuters. The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential campaign and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Mueller will now take charge of the FBI investigation that began last July. Trump and his aides have repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia. In addition to the six phone calls involving Kislyak, the communications described to Reuters involved another 12 calls, emails or text messages between Russian officials or people considered to be close to Putin and Trump campaign advisers. One of those contacts was by Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and politician, according to one person with detailed knowledge of the exchange and two others familiar with the issue. It was not clear with whom Medvedchuk was in contact within the Trump campaign but the themes included U.S.-Russia cooperation, the sources said. Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter. Medvedchuk denied having any contact with anyone in the Trump campaign. “I am not acquainted with any of Donald Trump’s close associates, therefore no such conversation could have taken place,” he said in an email to Reuters. In the conversations during the campaign, Russian officials emphasized a pragmatic, business-style approach and stressed to Trump associates that they could make deals by focusing on common economic and other interests and leaving contentious issues aside, the sources said. Veterans of previous election campaigns said some contact with foreign officials during a campaign was not unusual, but the number of interactions between Trump aides and Russian officials and others with links to Putin was exceptional. “It’s rare to have that many phone calls to foreign officials, especially to a country we consider an adversary or a hostile power,” Richard Armitage, a Republican and former deputy secretary of state, told Reuters. Beyond Medvedchuk and Kislyak, the identities of the other Putin-linked participants in the contacts remain classified and the names of Trump advisers other than Flynn have been “masked” in intelligence reports on the contacts because of legal protections on their privacy as American citizens. However, officials can request that they be revealed for intelligence purposes. U.S. and allied intelligence and law enforcement agencies routinely monitor communications and movements of Russian officials. After Vice President Mike Pence and others had denied in January that Trump campaign representatives had any contact with Russian officials, the White House later confirmed that Kislyak had met twice with then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who later became attorney general. Kislyak also attended an event in April where Trump said he would seek better relations with Russia. Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, also attended that event in Washington. In addition, Kislyak met with two other Trump campaign advisers in July on the sidelines of the Republican convention. Trump fired Flynn in February after it became clear that he had falsely characterized the nature of phone conversations with Kislyak in late December - after the Nov. 8 election and just after the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Russia. Flynn offered to testify to Congress in return for immunity from prosecution but his offer was turned down by the House intelligence committee. | 0fake |
Trump Tells G.O.P. It’s Now or Never, Demanding House Vote on Health Bill - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — President Trump issued an ultimatum on Thursday to recalcitrant Republicans to fall in line behind a broad health insurance overhaul or see their opportunity to repeal the Affordable Care Act vanish, demanding a Friday vote on a bill that appeared to lack a majority to pass. The demand, issued by his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, in an evening meeting with House Republicans, came after a marathon day of negotiating at the White House and in the Capitol in which Mr. Trump — who has boasted of his prowess — fell short of selling members of his own party on the health plan. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan emerged from the session and announced curtly that Mr. Trump would get his wish for a vote on Friday. Mr. Ryan refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether he expected the measure to pass. Although the House Republicans’ meeting became a cheerleading session for the bill, their leaders braced for a showdown on the floor, knowing they were likely to be at least a handful of votes short of a majority for the health insurance bill and would need to muscle their colleagues to the last to prevail. Some conservatives were still concerned that the bill was too costly and did not do enough to roll back federal health insurance mandates. Moderates and others, meanwhile, were grappling with worries of their states’ governors and fretted that the loss of benefits would be too much for their constituents to bear. Mr. Ryan had earlier postponed the initial House vote that was scheduled for Thursday to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Affordable Care Act’s signing. Mr. Trump confronted the possibility of a humiliating loss on the first significant legislative push of his presidency. At a White House meeting with members of the Freedom Caucus earlier on Thursday, Mr. Trump had agreed to the conservatives’ demands to strip federal health insurance requirements for basic benefits such as maternity care, emergency services, mental health and wellness visits from the bill. But that was not enough to placate the faction, part of the reason that Thursday’s vote was placed on hold. As House leaders struggled to negotiate with holdouts in the hopes of rescheduling the vote, Mr. Trump sent senior officials to the Capitol with a blunt message: He would agree to no additional changes, and Republicans must either support the bill or resign themselves to leaving President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement in place. “We have a great bill, and I think we have a good chance, but it’s only politics,” Mr. Trump said earlier Thursday, as it was becoming clear that his negotiating efforts had failed to persuade enough members of his party to back the plan — which was years in the making — to repeal and replace the health law. Privately, White House officials conceded that competing Republican factions were each demanding changes that could doom the effort, placing the measure in peril and Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding at a legislative deal in jeopardy. With some of its demands in place, the Freedom Caucus ratcheted up its requests, insisting on a repeal of all regulatory mandates in the Affordable Care Act, including the prohibition on excluding coverage for medical conditions and lifetime coverage caps. Mr. Trump, who has touted his negotiating skills and invited the label “the closer” as the vote approached, was receiving a painful reality check about the difficulty of governing, even with his own party in power on Capitol Hill. “Guys, we’ve got one shot here,” he told members of the Freedom Caucus at a meeting in the Cabinet Room, according to a person present in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. “This is it — we’re voting now. ” “The choice is yes or no,” Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas and a member of the Freedom Caucus, said on Thursday night. “I’m not going to vote no to keep Obamacare. That’d be a stupid damn vote. ” Others were unconvinced. Having secured Mr. Trump’s acquiescence to eliminate the requirement that insurers offer “essential health benefits,” members of the Freedom Caucus pressed their advantage. While they did not specify precisely which regulations they wanted to eliminate, the section they wanted to gut requires coverage for health conditions, allows individuals to remain on their parents’ health care plans up to age 26, bars insurers from setting different rates for men and women, prohibits annual or lifetime limits on benefits, and requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium revenue on medical care. “We’re committed to stay here until we get it done,” said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Freedom Caucus. “So whether the vote is tonight, tomorrow or five days from here, the president will get a victory. ” He said 30 to 40 Republicans planned to vote “no” House leaders can afford to lose only 22 in order to pass the bill. But for every concession Mr. Trump made to appease critics on the right, he lost potential supporters in the middle, including members of the centrist Tuesday Group who had balked at the bill’s Medicaid cuts and slashed insurance benefits. Moderate Republicans in that group went to the White House on Thursday but emerged unmoved in their opposition. “There’s a little bit of a balancing act,” conceded Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. Representative Leonard Lance, Republican of New Jersey, said he still opposed the bill because he did not believe it would give people “complete and affordable access” to health insurance. At the same time, a new estimate of the bill’s cost and its impact on health coverage further soured the picture for wavering lawmakers. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday issued a report on the revised version of the health care bill showing that it would cost more than the original version but would not cover more people. The report said the bill, like the original version, would result in 24 million fewer Americans having health insurance in 2026 than under current law. But recent changes to the bill, made through a series of amendments introduced on Monday, would cut its deficit savings in half. Instead of reducing the deficit by $337 billion, the new version of the bill would save only $150 billion over the decade. The budget office did not consider the effects of various additional changes that remain under negotiation, including eliminating benefit requirements and other health insurance regulations. A Quinnipiac University national poll found that voters disapproved of the Republican plan by lopsided margins, with 56 percent opposed, 17 percent supportive and 26 percent undecided. The measure did not even draw support among a majority of Republicans 41 percent approved, while 24 percent were opposed. President Trump appealed to supporters to weigh in, assuring them in a video on Twitter, “Go with our plan. It’s going to be terrific. ” The chaotic process that unfolded on Thursday exposed Republicans to criticism that they were moving recklessly in a desperate bid to get their plan passed. Representative Raúl Labrador, Republican of Idaho and a Freedom Caucus member, said the party’s leaders had tried to ram through the measure over their members’ objections. He panned what he described as a “brute force” strategy that resembled the approach of former Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. “It’s better to get it right than to get it fast,” Mr. Labrador said. It was not clear that the changes that Mr. Trump has agreed to and those being demanded could survive. Under the strict budget rules being used to advance the bill, changes to the Affordable Care Act must affect federal spending or revenues. Regulatory measures that affect private health policies, not government programs like Medicaid, are highly likely to be challenged by Senate Democrats. If the Senate parliamentarian rules in the Democrats’ favor, those changes in the House would be stripped from the bill. The emerging power of the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been historically marginalized in policy making but a thorn in the side of leadership, is one of the surprises of the rushed health care debate. The group has been empowered by the addition of Mr. Mulvaney to the senior White House staff, and Mr. Trump’s disengagement from policy details, coupled with his intense desire to score a win after a rocky start to his presidency. Mr. Obama stepped into the fray on Thursday with a lengthy defense of his law on the seventh anniversary of its signing, and a call for bipartisan improvements. “I’ve always said we should build on this law, just as Americans of both parties worked to improve Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the years,” he wrote in a mass email to followers. “So if Republicans are serious about lowering costs while expanding coverage to those who need it, and if they’re prepared to work with Democrats and objective evaluators in finding solutions that accomplish those goals — that’s something we all should welcome. ” The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to provide “essential health benefits” in 10 broad categories, including maternity care, mental health care, addiction treatment, preventive services, emergency services and rehabilitative services. Mr. Spicer defended the removal of the “essential health benefits” regulations, saying that it would accomplish Mr. Trump’s stated goal of reducing health care costs. “Part of the reason that premiums have spiked out of control is because under Obamacare there were these mandated services that had to be included,” Mr. Spicer said. Family planning groups and advocates for women’s rights criticized Republican plans to roll back these requirements. “Paul Ryan and his House members are willing to sell out the moms of America to pass this bill,” said Dawn Laguens, an executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Conservatives say the mandates, as interpreted in rules issued by the Obama administration, add to the costs of health insurance and make it difficult for insurers to offer options to meet consumers’ needs. Democrats say that the purpose of insurance is to share risk, and that without federal requirements, insurers would once again offer policies. Before the Affordable Care Act took effect, maternity coverage was frequently offered as an optional benefit, or rider, for a hefty additional premium. | 0fake |
2016 Tribute to our Troops: veterans who continue to serve | ‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. 2016 Tribute to our Troops: veterans who continue to serve By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 4, 2016 veterans By fox2detroit.com Since 2003, FOX 2 has honored the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country. Each year, our goal is to pay “Tribute to our Troops” from Michigan and with ties to the Great Lakes State. That tradition continues this year, as we honor our veterans who continue to inspire us, long after their service. We also focus on issues facing our veterans, including homelessness, PTSD and the unique battles for female veterans. Here are some of the highlights from this year’s program: – President Obama presents the Medal of Honor to LTC Charles Kettles of Ypsilanti, nearly 50 years after his service. Kettles is a U.S. Army veteran. The war hero saved dozens of American soldiers in Vietnam.
Read the Full Article at www.fox2detroit.com >>>> Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on November 4, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment Login WHAT'S HOT | 1real |
OBAMA’S RACE WAR BACKFIRES: Shocking Number Of Students Chose NOT To Attend U Of Missouri After Black Lives Matter Tantrums | The University Of Missouri students, and many on the faculty joined Obama s race war in November, 2015. Together, they began a PR campaign to ensure black students were guaranteed special treatment on campus that would only be afforded to them. Of course white students who ve been ovewhelmed by White guilt, (thanks to professors and teachers who make it their business to shame students for being born white) joined the cause to help relieve them of the burden they carry, as a result of their ancestors crimes. As a side note, it makes no difference if you just became a citizen last year. If you re white and live in America you re guilty! We covered the Black Lives Matter protests at Mizzou extensively. We told you about Dr. Dale Brigham, a beloved University of Missouri professor, who resigned after he refused to cancel a school exam during the Mizzou hunger strike and athlete s boycott. We showed you a DISTURBING VIDEO of an innocent Asian reporter who was bullied by Black Lives Matter protestors while attempting to cover the hunger strike of a not-so-poor oppressed student, who we exposed as the son of a multi-millionaire railroad executive. We reported about the Mizzou teacher who assaulted a reporter. We exposed the spoiled and self-centered behavior of the students involved in this divisive movement, when they admonished the world for caring more about the Paris terror attacks than their plight for justice. And finally, we reported about a highly recruited football player who after watching the hateful, divisive rhetoric being spewed by the professors and students at Mizzou decided to decline their offer to play football. This was the first step in the unravelling of the University Of Missouri.Here are a few of the tweets we saw from protestors and supporters claiming victory in their fight for justice :Protest works y'all. Proof. We know where the power lies. #ConcernedStudent1950 Brian Kennedy II (@BrianEKennedy2) November 9, 2015The #ConcernedStudent1950 protest at @mucampusdining Plaza 900 earlier today. pic.twitter.com/ryEJ82uqSe Anurag Chandran( ) (@AnuragRC) November 7, 2015To have the university system president to resign, that's huge! Wow great work #ConcernedStudent1950 other schools are on notice! Antifa Jackson (@dthom24) November 9, 2015Jump to March, 2016, to see what the Black Lives Matter students and professors were able to accomplish for the good of the University:University of Missouri (MU) is losing about 1500 students and is facing a huge $32 million budget shortfall four months after it attracted national attention as the site of massive race-based campus protests. I am writing to you today to confirm that we project a very significant budget shortfall due to an unexpected sharp decline in first-year enrollments and student retention this coming fall. I wish I had better news, said MU interim chancellor Hank Foley in a Wednesday letter to school staff that was obtained by Fox Sports.According to Foley s letter, MU will have about 1500 fewer students in fall 2016 compared to last year, an unexpected drop that is in turn causing a big dip in the school s tuition income.Because of the abrupt and unexpected nature of the shortfall, Foley is taking immediate and severe steps to fix the situation: The school budget is being cut 5 percent across the board, all hiring is being frozen (barring exceptional circumstances), and annual raises have been canceled. | 1real |
USA: The questions the people should be asking | USA: The questions the people should be asking 06.11.2016 Given the dimension of the United States of America, given its economic power and given the fact that it is one of those nations that cannot help sticking its nose into other people's business, meddling and intruding where it was not invited, the forcoming election is of global importance and requires responsible voting. Here are some questions the people should be asking. Question 1: Has Hillary Clinton amassed a substantial or any part of her reported great wealth (some say hundreds of millions of dollars) while in public office? If so, how is that compatible with public service? Question 2: Is there a rumor that Hillary Clinton has used the Clinton Foundation to amass a fortune and if there is, to what extent is it truthful? The Clinton Foundation and foreign policy Question 3: There is an allegation that Hillary Clinton has used the Clinton Foundation to receive millions in payments from foreign states for access to contracts in return. This being the case, how ethical is it for a public figure to use a private foundation to conduct government policy, and obtain a fortune to boot? Is this what the USA's foreign policy ethics is about? Then why vote for her? Print version Font Size Question 4: Hillary Clinton laughed and sneered when she heard that Muammar al-Qathafi, the Leader of the Libyan Jamahariya, had been cruelly murdered by terrorists. Is it correct for the leader of a country's diplomacy to giggle and guffaw at the news of a terrorist murder? Backing terrorists Question 5: Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time when the Libyan government was toppled in an illegal act by NATO forces using terrorists on their own lists of proscribed groups. Is this in line with the established law of the United States of America? If not, then what does the law of the United States of America have to say about the chief of the country's diplomacy using terrorists to conduct foreign policy? Question 6: Hillary Clinton was responsible for sending Libya, the country with the highest Human Development Index in the African Continent, back to the dark ages, crawling with terrorists and infested by Islamic State. If she was capable of that as Secretary of State, then what would she do as President and how competent is she for that role? Question 7: Hillary Clinton, as mastermind of the Libyan debacle, is ultimately responsible for the acts of the terrorists she unleashed in that country. Has she, have the citizens of the United States of America, any idea of what these terrorists did? Reader discretion advised, for those easily offended please scroll down to question 8. These terrorists sliced the breasts off women in the streets, these terrorists forced five-year-old girls to watch their parents being tortured and raped and murdered with their throats cut, and as their parents' throats were still spurting blood and gasping for breath, these five-year-old girls were themselves raped before and after being beheaded. Boys as young as six have been impaled on railings (metal rails thrust through their anus until they come out of the child's throat). You cannot unleash this sort of filth, then laugh and giggle and turn your back and walk away. Or can you if you are the US Secretary of State, and get voted in as President despite it all? Question 8: How long has Hillary Clinton been in or around Government? How long has Hillary Clinton been in or around the White House? What has she actually achieved? Can she rightfully claim she is the Queen of Change? Or the Queen of barefaced liars who feathered her nest at the expense of the hard-working people of the United States of America? Question 9: Is there a rumor that a lady was paid 500,000 dollars to come on stage and lie about Donald Trump having abused her? Was it not more than a rumor? Wasn't it proven that she was paid to come into the campaign and lie? When they go low, you go high. I am not going to mention any names, but wasn't there more than a rumor about a certain family of Hillbillies in the White House, lies and er...? Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey | 1real |
U.S. Senate panel suspends rules, backs Price, Mnuchin for Cabinet | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee suspended committee rules and confirmed U.S. Representative Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services and banker Steven Mnuchin to be Treasury secretary Wednesday on a straight party line vote, sending the nominations to the Senate floor. Under pressure from their political base to block President Donald Trump’s nominees, Democrats stayed away from the meeting for a second day running. This normally would have stopped action, but Republicans plowed ahead by voting to suspend the rule that required at least one Democrat to be present for business to be conducted. Republican members of the committee, who were all present, then approved the nominees 14-0. The nominees are considered likely to be confirmed by the Republican-majority Senate. “We took some unprecedented action today due to some unprecedented obstruction on the part of our colleagues,” said the panel’s chairman, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who was furious over the Democrats’ no-show. He said he had obtained approval from the Senate parliamentarian for the move suspending the rule. Democrats were also unhappy. “It’s deeply troubling to me that Republicans on the Finance Committee chose to break the rules in the face of strong evidence of two nominees’ serious ethical problems,” the Finance Committee’s top Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, said in a statement. The Democrats said Tuesday they were boycotting Finance Committee proceedings because they wanted more information on Price’s stock trades in an Australian medical company and reports that Mnuchin’s former bank, OneWest, used automated “robo-signings” of foreclosure documents, which apparently contradicted statements the nominees had made to senators. Senate Democrats on Wednesday boycotted another committee vote on Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, who has expressed doubts about the science of climate change. That session ended without any committee action. Republicans accused the Democrats of deliberately stalling the functions of Trump’s new administration. “They (the Democrats) had tons of information (about Price and Mnuchin),” Hatch said. “It’s another way of roughing up the president and his choice of nominees.” But Democrats have come under pressure from liberal activists who want them to counter Trump at every turn, especially after his order last week blocking immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. It sparked a wave of protests in major U.S. cities. One group that has been running television ads against Mnuchin blasted Republicans for the vote. “Steven Mnuchin is such an illegitimate, compromised nominee that Republicans had to change the rules to force through his nomination,” said Kait Sweeney, press secretary of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. | 0fake |
Art of the spin: Trump bankers question his portrayal of financial comeback | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump, who often says he only likes winners, tells one grand tale of loss: In 1990, he nearly went bankrupt and was forced to ask dozens of banks to whom he owed money to change the terms on their loans and forgive some of his debts. It was, the real estate developer admits in his 1997 book “The Art of the Comeback,” the darkest period of his professional life. In his telling, it’s a story of redemption, of resilience, and proof of his exceptional negotiating skills and shrewd thinking. Six people who participated in the loan workout negotiations have a different recollection, raising questions about a key part of the personal narrative that many of Trump’s supporters have found compelling as he campaigns to be the next president of the United States on Nov. 8. On the campaign trail he has portrayed himself as a survivor and a master negotiator. Trump says his comeback began when he recognized a downturn in the real estate market and quickly asked banks to renegotiate his loans. “That decision was perhaps the smartest thing I did,” he wrote. The six bankers and lawyers involved in the talks say the bailout wasn’t based on any overture Trump initiated with the banks - and the terms of the deal were dictated by what was best for the banks, not Trump. Three of the participants say Trump didn’t acknowledge he had a problem until his lenders reviewed his books, realized he was on the brink of collapse, and summoned him for debt restructuring talks. While much has been written about Trump’s financial troubles at the time, there has been little examination of his description of the bank negotiations in “The Art of the Comeback,” including his assertion that he chose to initiate those talks. Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined to comment for this story. Following the U.S. stock market crash of 1987, a global recession hit New York real estate. New construction stalled, and several big developers declared bankruptcy. As the real estate market slumped, Trump ran out of cash. At the beginning of 1990 he owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with $800 million personally guaranteed by his own assets, according to Alan Pomerantz, a lawyer whose team led negotiations between Trump and 72 banks to restructure Trump’s loans. Pomerantz was hired by Citibank but became lead counsel for the negotiations. At the time, Trump was not considered a major developer, but he was a New York celebrity. His affair with the actress Marla Maples and his divorce from his first wife Ivana Trump made national news headlines, and his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” was a bestseller. He didn’t have a large portfolio of real estate in New York, with the notable exceptions of his 5th Avenue building, Trump Tower, completed in 1983, and the Plaza Hotel, which he bought in 1988 after borrowing heavily from Citibank. He also owned three casinos in Atlantic City, having made a financial bet that he could revive the East Coast gambling destination. And in 1989 he added part of an airline to his portfolio, again turning to Citibank for a loan to help finance the acquisition of bankrupt Eastern Airlines Shuttle. He turned it into Trump Shuttle. In 1989, in response to growing concerns about the economic downturn, the Federal Reserve began asking big banks to review their exposure to the sinking real estate market. At the beginning of 1990, a credit specialist at one of Trump’s biggest lenders decided to take a look at the bank’s book of loans to him. The decision was prompted in part by the Fed’s questions, as well as concerns within the bank about its exposure to the real estate market. The credit specialist, who did not want to be identified, concluded at the time that Trump was “about to go into bankruptcy.” “The banks were onto the problem before he was onto the problem,” the specialist told Reuters. Pomerantz said some of the banks became aware of the magnitude of Trump’s financial problems when, on a single day, he drew down every cent of a $100 million line of credit one of the banks, Banker’s Trust, which was purchased by Deutsche Bank in 1999, had given him to meet his obligations. Reuters was unable to independently confirm this. “He did not come to the banks and say ‘I have a problem.’ That did not happen,” said Pomerantz. Pomerantz, who says he is not a member of any political party, argued in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s record in real estate was not a good way to measure whether or not he would be a good president. In “The Art of the Comeback,” Trump says he began loan workout talks in March 1990 when he informed his bankers he might miss a payment on his casino debts. “If I had waited just six months longer to renegotiate terms with the banks, I might have lost everything,” he wrote. “I would have had to stand in line with a whole bunch of other moguls who were trying to do the same thing.” Soon, in boardrooms of banks and law firms around Manhattan, Trump’s deputies and lawyers began a series of meetings with representatives of the 72 banks, which had billions in outstanding loans, according to Pomerantz. During the same period, Trump was separately renegotiating a series of loans on his Atlantic City casinos. One of the bankers involved in those negotiations, Ben Berzin, said Trump seemed unaware of the depths of his financial troubles even after the banks had stepped in. “There was a period during these negotiations when he was still spending money like a drunken sailor,” Berzin said, recalling the uproar among the bankers when, in a TV interview in the summer of 1991, Trump displayed a large diamond engagement ring he had given Maples. Media reports said the ring cost $250,000, and Pomerantz said the bankers complained about it to Trump in their next meeting. At one point, Trump invited all of the bankers to a Broadway show that Maples had a role in, according to Berzin and a banker who took part in the larger talks with the 72 banks. Both said they believed Trump was trying to curry favor to win better terms in the workouts. Berzin attended the show but the other banker did not. Trump described Berzin in “The Art of the Comeback” as a “jerk” who would “scream at people at the top of his lungs about nonsense.” Berzin said he was irritated by Trump’s characterization and denied ever raising his voice in a meeting. In his book, Trump says he told representatives of the 72 banks he would declare bankruptcy and “tie you guys up for years” in the proceedings unless they staked him $65 million to keep his businesses running until the real estate market recovered. He also wanted them to agree to defer all loan payments until that time. “The banks more than capitulated - they enthusiastically agreed to my proposal,” Trump wrote. The bankers and lawyers interviewed dispute this. Though it was true that a personal bankruptcy would have made it harder for the banks to collect what Trump owed them, he had little leverage in the talks, they said. He, too, would have been seriously hurt in a bankruptcy, especially since he had personally guaranteed so much of what he had borrowed. In Pomerantz’s analysis, he would have been able to hold on to little else beyond his home and his pension plan. During the 18-month process of negotiations and asset sales, Trump also asked for more time to develop his business ideas, like his plan to turn hotel rooms at the Plaza Hotel into condominiums, according to one of the bankers, who declined to be identified. That proposal was vetoed. While he did receive a $450,000-a-month allowance from the banks to keep his business operations going, it was structured and executed on the banks’ terms, several of the negotiators said. The banks decided they could recover more of the $4 billion they were collectively owed if they sold Trump’s holdings one by one, waiting until the market recovered, rather than taking possession of the assets, four participants in the talks said. These individuals said the banks agreed to forgive Trump’s personal liabilities in exchange for his help in selling the properties. The proceeds of the sales would then be split among the banks. Trump agreed that the banks could take away all his personal property, including his beloved Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, if he failed to execute the agreement. “We had to be sure he would pay attention,” Pomerantz said of the liens on Trump’s personal holdings. “We would meet with him every Friday morning. He was under very strict restrictions by the banks.” Trump worked with the bankers to sell his assets, even when he disagreed about the timing of the sales, most notably when Citibank eventually sold The Plaza. The banks did not recover 100 percent of what they were owed and several lenders vowed never to work with Trump again. | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.