title stringlengths 1 456 ⌀ | text stringlengths 1 143k ⌀ | label class label 2
classes |
|---|---|---|
Sioux Indians Wish Dakota Pipeline Protesters Would Go Home | Sioux Indians Wish Dakota Pipeline Protesters Would Go Home October 30, 2016 Daniel Greenfield
The ecoloons protesting the Dakota pipeline have the support of the media and the White House. But many of the local Sioux don't see them as defenders. They just wish they would go home .
Ask around and you'll hear stories of pipeline protesters who've traveled great distances. They've come from Japan, Russia and Germany. Australia, Israel and Serbia. And, of course, there are the allies, not exclusively Native American or indigenous, who've flocked here from all corners of the US.
Demonstrating is their proud daily work.
The obnoxious leftists of the world have united. And they want no pipelines or showers.
No one makes this clearer than Robert Fool Bear Sr., 54, district chairman of Cannon Ball. The town he runs, estimated population of 840, is just a few miles from the action. It's so close that, given the faceoffs with law enforcement, you have to pass through a police checkpoint to reach it.
It's about time people heard from folks like him, he says.
Fool Bear has had it with the protesters. He says that more than two years ago, when members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe could have attended hearings to make their concerns known, they didn't care. Now, suddenly, the crowds are out of control, and he fears it's just a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt.
Go down to the camps, he says, and you won't see many Standing Rock Sioux.
"It irks me. People are here from all over the world," he says. "If they could come from other planets, I think they would."
And the Sioux are stuck helping leftist idiot protesters.
Not long ago, he found three teenage girls from Ontario, Canada, camped out inside his storage shed. A white woman from Spokane, Washington, came to see him for help, saying she'd come here with nothing and her car had broken down. When he was at the casino recently, someone approached him about two young kids who were on their own because their parents had been arrested.
Even though Fool Bear is against the protests, that doesn't mean he's not preparing to help people out, too. He anticipates opening the community gymnasium for people without beds come winter, and a growing pile of sleeping bags and blankets sits in his office.
Those protesters from Arizona, Georgia and California won't know what hit them when the cold rushes in, he says.
Instead of helping the Sioux, privileged leftists have become a burden for them to take care of. | 1real |
Thai PM says no trade with North Korea, ahead of U.S. envoy's visit | BANGKOK (Reuters) - No trade takes place between Thailand and North Korea, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Tuesday, ahead of an expected visit by a U.S. envoy seeking to step up pressure on North Korea over its weapons programs. The United States has been urging Southeast Asian countries to do more to cut funding streams for North Korea as tension mounts over its development of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them as far as the United States. Thailand guarantees ... that we have abided by the United Nations resolutions, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters at his official Government House offices. There have been reports about North Korean boats in our waters ... I prohibited them a long time ago. There is no trade ... there is no commerce, he said. Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, is due in Bangkok this week to discuss stepping up pressure on North Korea which has been pressing ahead with its weapons tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions. During a visit to Bangkok in August, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed Thailand, the United States oldest ally in Asia, for more action on North Korea. At the time, the United States said it believed North Korean companies were active in Thailand and said it was encouraging the Thailand to close them. Following Tillerson s visit, Thailand s foreign ministry said trade with North Korea had dropped by as much as 94 percent over the previous year. It did not give any more detail. North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile late last month. The U.N. Security Council is due to hold a ministerial meeting on North Korea s nuclear and missiles programs on Friday. | 0fake |
House Republican group moves to impeach IRS chief: Politico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives has filed a measure aimed at forcing a vote to impeach Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen, a newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the plans by the House Freedom Caucus. Members of the group had told House Speaker Paul Ryan they would file a privileged resolution, effectively sidestepping leaders in the Republican-dominated chamber, if he did not agree to start impeachment proceedings in the House Judiciary committee, Politico reported. Ryan has declined to do so because of doubts the judiciary panel can make an impeachment case against Koskinen. Politico said Louisiana Representative John Fleming filed the motion. Koskinen faces allegations from the judiciary panel of ignoring congressional subpoenas and misleading lawmakers. The accusations stem from a 2013 case in which Republican lawmakers said the IRS scrutinized more conservative groups than liberal organizations in applications for tax-exempt status. (This version of the story corrects spelling of Representative Fleming’s surname, paragraph 4) | 0fake |
Farage Says Geert Wilders-Style Islam Ban Will ‘Alienate’ Moderate Muslims | Nigel Farage has said the UK should adopt Donald “extreme vetting” after the Westminster attack, but not follow Geert Wilders’ plan “for an entire religion to be outlawed” as that will “alienate” moderate Muslims. [“I’ve long taken the view we should be deeply intolerant of sharia law,” the former UKIP leader told Australia’s ABC News. “But I’ve also long taken the view, that if you go down the route of say in The Netherlands, who says he wants in that country for all the mosques to be closed for the Quran to be banned and for an entire religion to be outlawed, then we will lose. ” He said such policies will “alienate the 80 per cent who are with us” adding: “We have got to try to get [moderate Muslims] on our side. ” Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, argues that there is little distinction between Islamism, radical Islam, and mainstream Muslim beliefs. Mr. Farage, however, said the difference in the spectrum of Islamic beliefs is great — larger than that between moderate Muslim beliefs and Western belief systems. “Let’s be honest: this division, actually, is in some ways less between the Muslim and the Christian community, than it is a division within the Muslim community,” he said. “There is a percentage of people within the Muslim faith in this country who have sympathy with [Islamic State] but the vast majority don’t,” he added. pic. twitter. — Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) March 26, 2017, Mr. Farage also defended his statement that the Westminster terror attack was further evidence of the need for a temporary travel ban from some states. “If you’ve got a problem already, why on earth would you add to it?” he said. “I want us to have extreme vetting. Of course, why wouldn’t you?” The Westminster attacker was indeed born in the UK, but a travel ban “might stop the next one” he said, However, the distinct problem of “ Islamic terrorism” and radicalisation happening in schools, prisons, and online must also be tackled, he said. “We have been, franking, cowardly with dealing with the divisions within out communities,” Mr. Farage said. “We’ve got to get rid of this failed doctrine of multiculturalism. What that meant, is that we have encouraged division within our communities rather than integration and unity. ” | 0fake |
Trump University lawyers ask judge for another shot at ending class action | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawyers for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump asked the California federal judge he attacked last week as biased based on his Mexican heritage to end the Trump University fraud class action currently scheduled to go on trial in November. In filings late on Friday, Trump’s lawyers argued the case should not continue as a class action including all students who took the classes in California, New York and Florida. The lawyers claimed the students’ cases were too dissimilar to be heard as a class because they were exposed to different marketing and advertisements and were told different things by Trump University employees. San Diego U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel is overseeing two class action lawsuits over Trump University. Last week, the presidential candidate said Curiel had treated him unfairly because he was a Mexican opposed to Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. The judge was born in Indiana to Mexican parents. Trump’s lawyers on Friday sought permission from Judge Curiel to renew an earlier motion to decertify the class. The judge previously ruled the case could proceed as a class action on the issue of liability, though each student would have to prove damages separately. In April, Trump’s lawyers also filed a motion to decertify the class in the other California case. The judge has not yet ruled on that motion. If the judge were to decertify the classes, former Trump University students would have to bring individual lawsuits. Trump and his for-profit real estate seminars have been accused of bilking students who paid as much as $35,000 for an opportunity to learn the businessman’s real estate investment strategies. The students claim they were defrauded, including by false claims that he had handpicked instructors to teach them his secrets. “Given TU students’ radically different experiences, plaintiffs cannot show that TU students were exposed to the same ‘core’ misrepresentations,” Daniel Petrocelli, a lawyer for Trump, wrote in Friday’s filing. Lawyers for the plaintiffs declined to comment on the filing. | 0fake |
OBAMA’S BACKDOOR GUN CONFISCATION: 260,000 VETERANS STRIPPED Of Second Amendment Rights | Obama s cowardly backdoor gun confiscation starts with those who ve risked their lives defending our rights.In what amounts to a backdoor gun grab, two Senate Republicans are demanding to know why the VA stripped 260,000 veterans of their Second Amendment rights.As of December, the VA has reported 260,381 individuals to the FBI as mentally defective and therefore not permitted to purchase a gun, Guns.com is reporting.U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa lawmaker who is currently the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, finds this unacceptable. Our military heroes risked their lives to protect and defend this country and all that we stand for, including our most basic constitutional rights, said Grassley in a statement. Now the very agency created to serve them is jeopardizing their Second Amendment rights through an erroneous reading of gun regulations. The VA s careless approach to our veterans constitutional rights is disgraceful. In an effort to fix the issue, Grassley, along with Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., penned a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald last week and another to the subcommittee over the agency s funding, questioning the practice.Making a due process argument, the lawmakers argue the VA uses the fiduciary trustee status of a veteran to regulate firearms possession without ever seeking to find out if the service member is a danger to themselves or others. The use of the VA regulation, adopted for a totally unrelated purpose, is suspect, especially in light of the Supreme Court holding that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right, reads the letter to McDonald. That holding changed the legal calculus by which a regulatory scheme can survive constitutional scrutiny and it is not clear how these regulations would fare under that increased scrutiny. Via: DownTrend | 1real |
Only five ministers, attorney general turn up for Zimbabwe cabinet meeting: sources | HARARE (Reuters) - Only five Zimbabwe cabinet ministers and the attorney general turned up for a meeting called by President Robert Mugabe as 17 others opted to attend a meeting to plan the 93-year-old leader s impeachment, sources said on Tuesday. The cabinet meeting is the first called by Mugabe since a military takeover last Wednesday. Mugabe faced the start of an impeachment process later in the day as his party sought to end his nearly four decades in power. | 0fake |
Sanders not ruling out requesting a recount in Missouri Democratic primary | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will not rule out the possibility of requesting a recount in Tuesday’s narrow Missouri nominating contest, the campaign said on Wednesday. A winner of the state’s primary had not yet been officially called, but by early Wednesday evening, a tally by the Associated Press showed Clinton ahead of Sanders by just 0.2 percentage point, with each candidate being awarded 32 of the state’s 71 pledged delegates. “We are assessing right now how the process works,” the campaign told reporters during a phone conference regarding the state of the Democratic race on Wednesday. | 0fake |
#CNNBlackmails Private Citizen! Threatens to Expose Reddit User Who Made Hysterical WWE/Trump Video…Protects Identities of Fake Russia Story Sources Who Lied. | CNN reported that they declined to expose a private citizen who made the WWE video of President Trump wrestling with a CNN logo if the guy promises not to do it again: CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change. This is blackmail right?#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017 The hysterical video has been seen over 1 million times after it was tweeted out by President Trump. It was produced by a Reddit user who is private:Soon after the CNN statement, twitter was abuzz over the fact that CNN was extorting this private citizen: DONALD TRUMP JR RETWEETED THE THREAT:CONGRESSMAN SCOTT TAYLOR TWEETED OUT: @CNN U basically coerce apology & threaten release of identity if something changes? Pretty sure a line is crossed here. #CNNBlackmail https://t.co/k4W9AepP6W Scott Taylor (@Scotttaylorva) July 5, 2017 #CNNBLACKMAIL IS TRENDING WORLDIWDE!What CNN thought was a gotcha moment turned putto backfire on them. It s being reported that the private Reddit user who made the WWE video is only 15-years old! | 1real |
Leaked Emails Show Colin Powell Has STRONG Opinions On Donald Trump | Colin Powell is NOT voting for Donald Trump, at least according to emails disclosed by a hacker group to BuzzFeed and on DCLeaks.com, who reported that the leaks came from Russia.The emails reveal that Powell thinks Trump is a national disgrace, and that his campaign is built on racism. He also has strong opinions on the birther movement, which Trump thoroughly embraced.In an Aug. 21 email from Powell to Miller, he blasted Trump for embarking on a racist movement that believes President Obama was not born in the US. Yup, the whole birther movement was racist, Powell wrote. That s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim. Powell says that Trump has no chance at the African-American vote:The leak shows that Powell criticized Trump s lack of outreach to black voters, saying there is nothing he can say to convince black Americans to give him their votes, and criticizing the birther movement. He takes us for idiots, Powell wrote, according to CBS. He can never overcome what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate the whole birther movement was racist. Source: Huffington PostPowell doesn t think Trump has a much better chance with women, at least not after he aligned himself with disgraced former Fox News head, Roger Ailes, who left after numerous allegations of sexual harassment. And Ailes as an advisor wont heal women, don t you think? Powell wrote.The Republican former Secretary of State isn t a Hillary Clinton fan either.The latest email leak reveals Powell also criticized Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her handling of her email scandal, saying she could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it, according to The Intercept.Documents released this month as part of the FBI s investigation into Clinton s emails showed Powell had told Clinton to be very careful if she used a Blackberry for email, warning that if her use of a BlackBerry became public knowledge, those emails could become official record[s] and subject to the law. Powell s only advice seemed to be for the media, which he accused of giving him too much attention. You guys are playing this game, you are his oxygen. A spokesman for Powell admits that the emails are legitimate and that Powell was hacked, although, if Powell s people know who did the hack, they aren t admitting it. As for Powell s advice to Clinton, well, perhaps he should have followed it as well.Featured image via Kris Connor/Getty Images. | 1real |
Russia casts 10th U.N. veto on U.N. action on Syria | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia cast its 10th veto on Thursday of United Nations Security Council action on Syria since the war began in 2011, blocking a U.S.-drafted resolution to renew an international inquiry into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The mandate for the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which found the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack, expires at midnight Thursday. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. Russia withdrew its rival draft resolution to renew the inquiry shortly before the council vote on the U.S. draft. | 0fake |
Why Nevada was a bad sign for Bernie Sanders's "political revolution" | It was bad news for Bernie Sanders that he lost in Nevada Saturday. But there may be a bigger crisis embedded in the loss: It suggested he isn't delivering on a key ingredient needed for his "political revolution."
On Saturday, about 80,000 voters participated in Nevada's caucus — roughly two-thirds of the total that came out in 2008.
Sanders's reason for running, as he describes it, is to upend how money and special interests shape American politics by empowering voters. This means bringing out an unprecedented number of people on Election Day.
So as bad as it was to lose Nevada on Saturday night, the tepid voter turnout in itself is almost a more significant problem for him.
Throughout the course of his campaign, Sanders has promised to transform American government by bringing "millions and millions" of new voters to the ballot box.
This is in contrast to the incrementalism of Clinton's campaign, which recognizes the confines of a bitterly divided American electorate and offers to fight for whatever gains are available.
Sanders rejects the limits of this system. His "political revolution" is based on the idea that Democrats could win big with a message that gets a massive number of new lower- and middle-income voters continually engaged in the political process.
It's an inspiring vision. But there is little sign that it's actually happening.
Low turnout in Nevada wasn't an outlier. New Hampshire saw 10 percent fewer voters in 2016 than it did eight years ago. In Iowa, turnout was also down — from 287,000 in 2008 to 171,000 this year. (By contrast, voter numbers are exploding on the Republican side, with records for GOP turnout being crushed in Iowa, New Hampshire, and, from the early results, South Carolina.)
Sanders needs this to change, and quickly, to validate one of his key arguments against Clinton.
As Vox's Ezra Klein has written, Sanders thinks "the core failure" of Obama's presidency is its failure to convert voter enthusiasm in 2008 into a durable, mobilized organizing force beyond the election. Sanders vows to rectify this mistake by maintaining the energy from the campaign for subsequent fights against the corporate interests and in congressional and state elections.
The relatively low voter turnout in the Democratic primary so far makes this more sweeping plan seem laughably implausible. Three states have voted, we've had countless debates and town halls, and there's been wall-to-wall media coverage for weeks. Sanders has drawn close to Clinton in the polls, and there are real stakes in a closely divided race.
And yet ... we have little evidence that Sanders has actually activated a new force in electoral politics. If he can't match the excitement generated by Obama on the campaign trail, how can he promise to exceed it once in office? | 0fake |
Trump Signs Resolution Overturning Obama Planned Parenthood State Funding Mandate | President Donald Trump signed a resolution Thursday that overturns former President Barack Obama’s rule that forced states to provide family planning grants under Title X to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. [In a signing ceremony that was closed to the press, Trump signed H. J. Res. 43, which allows states to withhold federal funds from facilities that provide abortions. In attendance were Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Seema Verma, Susan B. Anthony president Marjorie Dannenfelser, and Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America. “Prioritizing funding away from Planned Parenthood to comprehensive healthcare alternatives is a winning issue,” said Dannenfelser, reports the Washington Examiner. “We expect to see Congress continue its efforts to redirect additional taxpayer funding away from Planned Parenthood through healthcare reform after the spring break recess. ” “I think the president’s signature today is an important step and it shows that the president is keeping his campaign promises,” Verma said. “This shows that we want states to be in charge of their own decision making. ” Planned Parenthood tweeted its disapproval of the measure: BREAKING: Trump signs bill undoing protections for 4 million people getting care through #TitleX. #HandsOffMyBC https: . pic. twitter. — Planned Parenthood (@PPact) April 13, 2017, The House approved H. J. Res. 43, introduced by Rep. Diane Black ( ) in February. The resolution used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to rescind the Obama administration rule, enacted during the last days of the former president’s term. Sen. Joni Ernst ( ) sponsored the measure in the Senate. Vice President Mike Pence cast a vote at the end of March to enable approval in that chamber after Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against it. In a floor speech in the House, Black said the purpose of the resolution is to “affirm the right of states to fund the healthcare providers that best suit their needs, without fear of reprisal from their own federal government. ” Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the U. S. performing at least 300, 000 abortions every year. About a dozen states have attempted to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s funding in the wake of the release of videos that alleged the group harvests the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics and sells them for profit. These states have attempted to redirect the funding to other community healthcare centers, which provide more expansive services than Planned Parenthood and outnumber the abortion chain by at least 20 to 1. Despite the overwhelming number of community healthcare centers, however, the Obama administration, an avid supporter of Planned Parenthood, said that by redirecting funding away from the group, the states “have interfered with” individuals’ ability to access federal assistance quickly. The Heritage Foundation’s Melanie Israel wrote at The Daily Signal the resolution was necessary “to both protect life and reassert that the states have Tenth Amendment rights to allocate Title X family planning grants in such a manner that prioritizes community health clinics and true family planning over the industrial abortion industry as represented by Planned Parenthood. ” “The HHS rule is a classic example of excessive federal rulemaking and executive overreach for partisan political gain, making it a perfect target for nullification under the CRA,” she added. | 0fake |
Clinton aides sought to minimize fallout with White House on Keystone: emails | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign looked for ways to avoid damaging its relationship with the White House as she considered how to publicly announce her position on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, according to emails published this week by WikiLeaks. Clinton aides weighed having the Democratic candidate say she opposed the pipeline in a closed-door union meeting, leaking it to news media outlets or including it without fanfare in a policy fact sheet, the emails show. Clinton eventually announced that she opposed the pipeline on Sept. 22, 2015, at a town hall event in Des Moines, Iowa, early in the contest to win the Democratic presidential nomination. President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, announced that he too opposed the project on Nov. 6, 2015. The WikiLeaks group released its latest batch of apparently hacked personal emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta on Wednesday, just weeks before the Nov. 8 presidential election in which Clinton is facing Republican Donald Trump. Whether Clinton would oppose TransCanada Corp’s pipeline to bring Canadian crude tar sands oil to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico was a major issue in her Democratic primary race against chief rival U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who opposed the project. Clinton was walking a fine line on supporting or opposing the pipeline. The Keystone XL controversy put at odds labor unions, which thought the project would spur job creation, and environmentalists, who advocated moving away from tar sands-derived oil to cleaner forms of energy. Clinton’s decision was further complicated by the fact that the pipeline approval process began when she was Obama’s secretary of state from 2009-2013. She said repeatedly that she would wait to announce her position until after the State Department had repeated its review of the project, in deference to her former boss. Privately, aides were figuring out the best way to announce her opposition to the project. “We are trying to find a good way to leak her opposition to the pipeline without her having to actually say it and give up her principled stand about not second-guessing the President in public,” speechwriter Dan Schwerin wrote on Aug. 7, 2015, in one of the apparently hacked emails. Schwerin was responding to a suggestion by Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook that they could use the Keystone announcement to draw news media attention away from Clinton’s use of a private email system while she headed the State Department. The Clinton campaign has declined to verify the authenticity of the Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks. Podesta told reporters on Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had notified him it was investigating the “criminal” hack of his emails as part of a broader probe. The White House last week formally accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party organizations in an effort to influence the presidential election, a charge Russia has denied. As a result, Clinton campaign officials and supporters have warned that such email releases could include fraudulent or misleading documents among genuine emails. There was no evidence to indicate that the Keystone emails - which provided insight into the campaign’s struggle to announce Clinton’s position on a major Democratic issue that could put her at odds with the White House - were not genuine. Clinton’s campaign considered having the former secretary of state address the Keystone issue in a private meeting with a building trades union, then immediately roll out a fact sheet on her infrastructure proposals and publish an opinion article on the topic, the leaked emails show. But Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon thought it might be easier to forgo including Keystone in the policy rollout, skip the opinion piece and have Clinton state her opposition in the union meeting. “I think we could seem consistent with our past statements about not wanting to get ahead of POTUS on Keystone if her position merely leaked out of the meeting,” Fallon wrote in a Sept. 8, 2015, email, using an acronym for the president. “That would seem like a private comment that she didn’t intend to become public.” “Perhaps we could just issue an infrastructure fact sheet” without mention of Keystone, “and rely on the (Clinton) Keystone (position) to leak, either organically or with an assist from us,” Fallon added. After Clinton warned at a New Hampshire campaign event on Sept. 17, 2015, that she could not “wait too much longer” and was “putting the White House on notice” that she would soon tell voters her position, Podesta checked in with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “Trying to calibrate whether we are threading the needle ok with you guys after Valerie getting her nose out of joint on Keystone,” Podesta wrote in a Sept. 20, 2015, email, in an apparent reference to Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama. Podesta said that Clinton’s “comments on being frustrated with the delay” were not a “frontal attack” on the president. | 0fake |
Russia Asks CIA: Why Did Hillary Clinton Just Buy $137 Million Worth Of Illegal Arms? |
A stunning Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today reveals that the Security Council (SC), this morning, authorized the sending to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of an emergency communiquĂŠ requesting an immediate explanation as to why Hillary Clinton’s money laundering organization, known as the Clinton Foundation, this past week, purchased over $137 million of illegal arms and ammunition—and whose destination is to be the United States, with delivery being marked as “mid-November 2016â€. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
According to this report, SVR analysts began expressing “urgent concern†earlier this year when the main “elements/factions†of the feared Viktor Bout’s international arms smuggling crime organization began arriving in the Republic of Albania—that is the only Muslim nation in Europe.
Viktor Bout, this report explains, is most popularly known in the West as the “Lord of War†for his workings with the CIA to smuggle illegal weapons throughout the world to further the maniacal interests of the United States—until 2011 when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had him jailed.
Though a citizen of the Federation, this report continues, the SVR had no “complaint/concern†with Hillary Clinton having Bout jailed for 25 years as it was an internal matter of the CIA—but whose intelligence analysts expressed “worry/confusion†this past May (2016) when US Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin said he should have had a reduced sentence—and that led, yesterday, to Bout “suddenly/magically†being transferred out of maximum security to the “country club atmosphere†of the general ward of the US Federal Prison he’s been confined to.
CIA illegal arms smuggler Viktor Bout
Coinciding with Bout’s “mysterious/magical†prison transfer yesterday, this report notes, was Hillary Clinton’s money laundering Clinton Foundation transferring $137.7 million to the Socialist Party of Albania (SPA) controlled by that nations Prime Minister Edi Rama—who is not only the head of the Xhakja Clan (known in the West as the Albanian Mafia) but who was, also, and shockingly, put into power by the Obama-Clinton regime over the protests of the Albanian people who did not want a “mafia government†controlling them.
Hillary Clinton (left) and Albanian Xhakja Clan mafia crime leader Edi Rama (right)
With Hillary Clinton’s international arms merchant Prime Minister Rama having turned the entire Balkan region into one of the world’s largest areas for arms smuggling that now threatens its very security, this report warns, she has been aided in this effort by what many are calling her “puppet masterâ€â€”the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros that recently released, and shocking, secret emails show him ordering Hillary Clinton to install this mafia criminal as the leader of Albania.
To fully understand why Hillary Clinton made this massive arms purchase, and no doubt was aided in doing so by the CIA’s arms smuggler Viktor Bout, SVR analysts in this report explain, is her adherence to George Soros’s radical vision of open borders—and that he singlehandedly began implementing by creating the European refugee crisis that will, likewise, engulf the United States should Hillary Clinton become president, and as exactly as her secret emails reveals she plans on doing.
Also, this report continues, and as the Federation knows all to well, the Soros-Clinton “master plan†to take down a nation begins with the establishment of what are called Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) to act as a “shadow government†ready to take power once the established order is thrown into chaos by massive protests—and why, in 2013, President Putin banned them from operating in Russia.
In the United States, however, this report grimly states, the American people have no defense against these “shadow government†NGO’s—and that SVR intelligence assests have documented in this report as being the “receiving parties†of Hillary Clinton’s massive arms purchase and include the George Soros created NGO’s called: Open Society Foundations, Media Matters, American Institute for Social Justice, The New America Foundation, The Migration Policy Institute, Tides Foundation, Center for American Progress, and the Democracy Alliance—every single one of which stands violently opposed to the US Constitution and the American people.
Once these weapons are in the hands of Hillary Clinton’s “new revolutionariesâ€, this report continues, they will then be used to unleash a “terror wave†across America protesting Donald Trump’s landslide victory—thus enabling President Obama to declare martial law to disarm all of these people, and once doing so, allow the US Electors to place Hillary Clinton in power. [Note: American presidents are NOT elected by the voting of citizens, but by the vote of the Electors selected from each of that nations 50 States.]
This report sadly concludes, though, by noting that the massive vote fraud already being committed by Hillary Clinton’s “new revolutionaries†throughout the United States, and that led this past week to former US Congressman Joe Walsh stunningly stating “If Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musketâ€â€”a reference to one of the darkest times in American history when that nation’s ordinary citizens banded together to fight the British Empire for their freedom—should strike fear into all Americans of what Hillary Clinton’s “new revolutionaries†are doing right now—and if not, nothing will.
| 1real |
Trump Celebrates America’s Faith-Based Foundation, Vows to Defend Religious Values | President Donald Trump praised America’s values, vowing to defend them from an increasingly dangerous world, in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday. [“America will thrive as long as we continue to have faith in each other and faith in God,” Trump said. “That faith in God has inspired men and women to sacrifice for the needy, to deploy to wars overseas, and lock arms at home to ensure equal rights for every man, woman, and child in our land. ” He vowed to protect religious liberty in America, specifically promising to get rid of the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches and organizations from endorsing and opposing political candidates. “Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God,” Trump said. But Trump warned that Islamic State terrorists were specifically targeting Christians and “peaceful Muslims. ” He also mentioned that the Jewish people were under attack from terrorists. “The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out. That’s what I do,” Trump said. “I fix things. We’re going the straighten it out. Believe me. ” The president paid tribute to slain Navy SEAL Mark Owens and quoted John 15:13 to recognize his sacrifice. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” he said. Trump also used his speech to defend his decision to restrict refugees and immigration from seven Middle East countries, calling it a “necessary” step to prevent opponents of American values from entering the country. “We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation,” he said, promising to develop an immigration system to only allow people into the country who would share American values. “In the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination,” Trump said. “We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values. ” Trump spoke about his mother, who raised him with faith, and he explained that personal wealth fails to bring true happiness. “I tell you that from somebody who has had material success and knows tremendous numbers of people with great material success, the most material success,” he said. “Many of those people are very, very miserable, unhappy people, and I know a lot of people without that, but they have great families. They have great faith. ” | 0fake |
OBAMA STONEWALLING ON Why He Sent 13 Payments Of $99,999,999.99 To Iran…Where Was Congress? | Leave it to the one and only Andrew McCarthy to put together a fantastic case against Obama and his lying administration when it comes to the latest race on the Treasury. This time it was a raid on a Treasury slush fund to give $1.3 billion to Iran. The Iran Deal is a great example of just how corrupt and dysfunctional our government is. Please take the time to read this incredible overview of the inner workings of giving billions to Iran It s UNREAL!The structured transfers of $1.3 billion from a Treasury slush fund remain shrouded in mystery. Confidentiality ? Yes, that s the State Department s story on why the Obama administration is stonewalling the American people regarding the president s illegal and increasingly suspicious Iransom payoff. The administration refuses to divulge any further information about the $1.7 billion the president acknowledges paying the world s leading state sponsor of terrorism.Grilled on Wednesday about how Obama managed to pay the final $1.3 billion installment particularly given the president s claim that it is not possible to send Tehran a check or wire-transfer State Department spokesman Mark Toner decreed that the administration would continue withholding this information in order to protect confidentiality. Whose confidentiality? The mullahs ? That of the intermediaries the president used? Whose privacy takes precedence over our right to know how Obama funneled our money to our enemies?The closest thing to an answer we have to the latest round of questions comes courtesy of the perseverance of the investigative journalist Claudia Rosett. (You weren t expecting the Republican Congress to be minding the purse, were you?) Recall that we have been asking about the $1.3 billion payment since the first revelations about this sordid affair. After all, if, as Obama and his toadies maintain, the payment is totally on the up and up just a routine legal settlement involving Iran s own money then why won t they answer basic questions about it? Why are such matters as the administration s process in tapping a congressionally appropriated funding source for the settlement a settlement Congress did not approve and seems to be in the dark about paying for being treated as if they were state secrets so sensitive you d need have a Clinton.mail account (or be a Russian hacker of a Clinton.mail account) to see them?Generally speaking, the State, Treasury, and Justice Departments cannot issue press releases fast enough to salute themselves over legal settlements that supposedly benefit taxpayers by billions of dollars at least according to the same math that brought you all those Obamacare savings. How is it that, in what is purportedly a completely aboveboard legal case, we are not permitted to know how our own money was transferred to the jihadist plaintiff?With the administration taking the Fifth, it was left to Claudia to crawl through Leviathan s catacombs. In her New York Sun report on Monday, we learned that she hit pay dirt: stumbling upon a bizarre string of 13 identical money transfers of $99,999,999.99 each yes, all of them one cent less than $100 million paid out of an obscure Treasury Department stash known as the Judgment Fund. The transfers were made to whom, it is not said on January 19, just two days after the administration announced it had reached the $1.7 billion settlement with Iran. They aggregate to just 13 cents shy of $1.3 billion, the same amount the State Department claims Iran was owed in interest from the $400 million that our government had been holding since the shah deposited it in a failed arms deal just prior to the Khomeini revolution. So, stacked atop of the pallets of $400 million in foreign cash that Obama arranged to shuttle from Geneva to Tehran as ransom (or, as the administration prefers, leverage ) for the release of American hostages via an unmarked cargo plane belonging to Iran Air, a terrorist arm of the mullahs terrorist coordinator, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps we now have a second whopping money transfer that (a) violates federal criminal laws against providing things of value to Iran and (b) looks like it was conceived by Nicky Barnes.Read more: NRO | 1real |
BREAKING: [AUDIO] CHILLING 911 CALL THREATENS LIVES OF POLICE OFFICERS IN AURORA, CO…Hours Later, Shots Are Taken At Cops | We re not gonna go away, we re not gonna quit. Cuz if you re willing to kill me, who else are you gonna kill? An Aurora police officer wants this person (or people) threatening cops to know they are only strengthening his resolve to be a police officer because it s people like this creep who they re protecting others from. The Aurora Police Dept. has released audio of an alarming 911 call over the weekend, when an anonymous caller threatened to shoot any officer found alone in the streets. It s a credible threat, police said one that they wanted the community to be aware of.According to 9News, the menacing call came in about 5:45 p.m Sunday via a disconnected Cricket cell phone. The male caller heard on the audio recording appears to be disguising his voice and possibly using a recording, several local news stations reported.Police announced over the holiday weekend, and following the call, that they will always have two people to a car, to ensure the safety of their officers. The threat involved shooting down officers in both Denver and Aurora, Colorado.FOX31 Denver obtained the audio recording, in which the caller says in part: It s time that you guys know we are no longer playing around with the police departments. Aurora and Denver, we are about to start striking fear shooting down all cops that we see by their selves. Both Aurora and Denver police say they are not scared away by this, it s only making them stronger. It s going on nationally. It s going to come here. There s nobody that s immune to it. Nobody in law enforcement, Denver police Det. Nick Rogers said. Via: LEO AffairsAccording to a warning sent to law enforcement Monday, a caller contacted Aurora 911 dispatch around 5:45 p.m Sunday via a disconnected Cricket cell phone. The male caller sounded as if he was attempting to disguise his voice, or was possibly using a recording, the warning said.The call lasted 37 seconds, and the caller reportedly said It s time you guys know that we are no longer playing around with the police departments. Aurora and Denver we are about to start striking fear, shooting down all cops that we see by their selves. The caller went on to say, You guys are evicting innocent people. Let us catch you by yourself and it s shots fired. Approximately four hours later, Aurora police officers were fired upon while responding to a call, the warning said. It is unclear if the shooting was an ambush situation. Via: 9 News | 1real |
The Best Mayor in Lima´s History | DISPATCHES FROM DANIEL ESPINOSA working to defeat the Big Lie in all its forms A s the Shipibo community living in Lima loses the very little they have to fire, Luis Castañeda, self-appointed “Best Mayor in Lima’s History”, breaks his typical silence only briefly, to improvise some of the usual lies. His silence has worked well in the past. Despite having participated in the infamous “Comunicore” case in his first term as mayor of Lima, back in 2006 -where millions of Peruvian Soles, intended to pay the cities’ debts with a contractor, were diverted to a mysterious company with ties to cocaine trafficking- his popularity has always been around a fairly decent 60% percent. ( http://gestion.pe/politica/pese-denuncias-crece-popularidad-castaneda-2173916 ) ABOVE: LIMA—Shipiba community in CantaGallo. It’s been about a year that the authorities offered to relocate them, but so far the government ha snot made good on its promises. (Photo credit: Alessandro Currarino / El Comercio) This is probably his best accomplishment: having been able not only to avoid jail but to earn a second term as Mayor. But Peruvians are short-sighted when it comes to our politicians’ obvious venality (we also elected Alan García Pérez for President twice), and as the popular slogan goes, as long as he develops some visible infrastructure, some public works, for the city, he can very well steal money with impunity. (“ Roba pero hace obras ”) The superfluous Shipibos Luis Castañeda (l), and Jose Pinheiro (El Comercio) The community arrived at Lima by the turn of this century, some of them invited by ex-president Toledo to participate in the popular marches to oust Fujimori from the presidency (2001), others to support their children, some of them studying in Lima, or just looking for better opportunities. Having no means to go back to the Peruvian rainforest in Ucayali, many Shipibo families established themselves near the Rímac River, in the island of Cantagallo, right in the center of Lima’s most traditional district, where they built precarious housing and started to earn a living by selling the products of their craftsmanship, without asking for anything but basic services. After more than a decade getting used to the extreme differences of living in an overcrowded and polluted city like Lima, and standing in the way of municipal construction works, (Castañeda´s favorite projects involve hundreds if not thousands of tons of concrete) they finally asked for relocation when they got fed-up with the noise and started to get sick from the clouds of dust coming from the construction sites. In a stroke of luck, this happened when Castañeda was leaving office to make an attempt at becoming President of Peru. The new Mayor, Susana Villarán, was more open to the communities’ plight. She decided to dedicate a sum of money from the ongoing project affecting the community, ‘Río Verde’ (‘Green River’), to relocate them to a different district, and in agreement with the leaders of the community, closed a deal that, only a couple years later, Castañeda decided not to honor. During the first year of Castañeda’s second term as Mayor, his deputies assured the community that everything was still going as planned, this was in April 2015. Right after that, the commune went “mute”, as Limeños have nicknamed their mayor for his reluctance to respond for the many scandals he has been involved in, or establishing open channels to communicate his decisions. Receiving the silence treatment by the authority responsible for their relocation, which, as law demands, also promised to share with them the documents regarding the advancement of the project, they approach the judiciary to start a long and Kafkaesque set of procedures, stating also that: “…some officials show a paternalistic and disrespectful attitude toward us and the people protecting our rights. We are not going to accept this behavior in the next meetings, as we believe in dialogue and respect among peers as a necessity for arriving to a solution. We are being patient despite the terrible toll, both physical and psychological, we are suffering because of the construction works…” ( https://www.facebook.com/limashipibo/posts/895889667140366 ) T his is the kind of treatment native communities suffer in Peru, as they not only contribute very little to the capitalist agenda driving our society, but often stand against the wholesale extractive policies in their ancestral lands. In recent years more than a hundred activists have been murdered, most of them in Honduras, Brazil and Peru. In the scheme where all resources must be exploited, native communities are regarded as “superfluous” —a nagging anachronism—in the way to economic progress and material profit by corporations and politicians. Some Peruvian journalists protect this kind of politician with the usual hypocritical rhetoric about public moneys being used to fund social projects, something outrageous (yet normal) for mainstream journalists who have forgotten any sense of duty towards the voiceless, but remain fierce defenders of the rights of capital. As anyone with an idea of what propaganda is, or how it works would clearly see, these journalists are chosen because they can incorporate the principles of capitalism and the right of “second class citizens” to participate in our democracies as cheap labor force, or not at all. Most of these journalists have no other talent than an outstanding tolerance for institutionalized inequality and racism, the kind of character trait some mainstream media seem to look for in their employees: “…you were not born in Lima, ¿isn´t it? You came from somewhere else, ¿what for? It’s as if people from Lima went to Ucayali. I can´t go there and just grab public precincts,” mumbled the renowned homophobe and radio host Phillip Butters, living in a city of almost ten million people, most of them migrants from Peruvian provinces (and being himself one!) who came with very little and “grabbed” public premises to build their homes. ( http://larepublica.pe/sociedad/819211-phillip-butters-genera-polemica-en-las-redes-sociales-por-su-comentario-sobre-shipibos-de-cantagallo ) Shipibo traditional garments. The Shipibo community is poor, they lack representation in Peruvian politics and “The Best Mayor in Lima’s History” have very little to gain by relocating them or even listening to their plight. As other communities from the Amazon rainforest, they survive through their own talent. Most houses in the Cantagallo shantytown are also independent workshops where the Shipibos make all sorts of traditional handicrafts to sell in their own market. They value their culture above everything else, which among many other principles, leans toward self-sufficiency, creating all the things they need by themselves, and aren’t very adept at finding corporate jobs or asking for bank loans, as most people in Lima are. Also in ashes now, they built a bilingual school for their children. Nothing to gain here I t might be useful to understand the logic behind some of Peru’s officials, in this case, the only benefit Castañeda could attempt to win would be publicity, as a mean to strengthening his already fair popularity. But now that ship has sailed. Even more, some argue that the Shipibos were standing in the way of big profits, as the value of the land where they were being relocated adds up to almost five millions dollars. We are talking about a Mayor who overprices public works, urbanization, and city infrastructure, and who has had shady associations with local and foreign contractors, a fact recently uncovered in another case of corruption involving Brazilian construction companies and Peruvian politicians. (The ‘OAS’ Case: https://idl-reporteros.pe/el-correo-delator-1/ ) So it is that the site destined for the relocation by former Mayor Villarán, was covertly sold by the commune without sharing this detail with the community, as journalist Daniel Yovera revealed a day before the fire ( http://rosamariapalacios.pe/2016/11/05/castenada-vendio-terreno-de-los-shipibos/ ). The money, originally earmarked for them and their children’s well-being, went back to the original construction project, instead of to the fund put aside in first place, specifically for the Shipibo’s new home, taking them back to where they started. As the OAS case revealed (IDL Reporteros, 10/19/16) one of Castañeda’s representatives was already planning to cancel the project “Río Verde” even before he started his second term as Mayor. The President of OAS, Jose A. Pinheiro, was arrested two days after the telephone conversation regarding the cancelation of the project, for crimes in Brazil related to fraudulent concessions in construction works, which means the law applies, somewhere. In the ashes of Cantagallo As the fire is extinguished in Cantagallo, four hundred Shipibo families have lost everything, and Castañeda keeps talking through deputies and press aides, only coming out of his “muteness” to blame the former Mayor, although everything indicates this time he won´t be able to dodge his responsibility for his crimes of negligence by giving Lima the silent treatment. As Limeños gather food, water and other supplies for the Shipibos, the outrage against Castañeda grows, while marches are being organized in protest. The Shipibos are not leaving Cantagallo, despite the fact that now it represents no more than the ashes of their past, and the memories of loss and indifference. They are afraid they will lose this patch of land near the Rímac River if they leave, and dislike the idea of moving to the cluster of tents pitched for them by a commune they distrust. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Associate Editor Daniel Espinosa Winder (34) lives in Caraz, a small city in the Andes of Peru. He graduated in Communication Sciences in Lima and started researching mainstream media and more specifically, propaganda. His writings are a often a critique of the role of mass media in our society. Daniel also serves as Editorial Director for TGP’s Spanish Language edition. =SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.= free • safe • invaluable If you appreciate our articles, do the right thing and let us know by subscribing. It’s free and it implies no obligation to you— ever. We just want to have a way to reach our most loyal readers on important occasions when their input is necessary. In return you get our email newsletter compiling the best of The Greanville Post several times a week. | 1real |
ESPN Gives Tim Tebow a Contract Extension - Breitbart | During a time when sports journalists seem to be getting laid off left and right, Tim Tebow, between playing minor league baseball, analyzing college football for the SEC Network, and writing books, has established himself as perhaps the most man in sports media. [On Monday, Tebow received news that he will stay busy for the foreseeable future. According to Pro Football Talk, “ESPN announced (Monday) that it has extended Tebow’s contract, and he’ll keep working on the SEC Network as a college football studio commentator, and also work on the college football playoff. ” ESPN Senior VP of Event and Studio Production, Stephanie Druley explained the network’s decision to extend Tebow, “Tim brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to his analysis of college football and surprised many fans with his strong opinions and engaging presence on SEC Nation. His unique experiences within the SEC and his broad national fan base are huge assets to SEC Nation and ESPN’s larger CFP coverage. ” Tebow, understandably, approves of ESPN’s decision. The former Heisman winner said, “Over the last three years, ESPN and the SEC Nation crew have become like family. I love the passion that SEC fans bring to our set every Saturday morning, and I look forward to continuing to share my own love of the game with fans on ESPN and SEC Network. ” ESPN laid off a lot of good people over the last couple weeks, while retaining too many of the personalities who gave the network a dirty name. However, in this case, they got it right. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 0fake |
Fake Hate Crime Blames Trump-Supporting ’White America’ for Arson - Breitbart | Curtis Flournoy dislikes white people almost as much as the Oxford comma. [Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, arrested the for allegedly setting fire to a market owned by an immigrant from Bhutan. The arsonist left a note, which began: “Our newly elected president Donald Trump is our nation builder for white America. ” The culprit in the and fire not only attempted to depict white supporters of the president as violent racists, but as as well. “You all know that, we want our country back on the right track,” he informed. “We need to get rid of Muslims, Indians and all immigrants. Specially, we don’t want business by refugees and immigrant any more. ” The staged hate crime mirrors several other faux attacks on religious and ethnic minorities in the wake of Donald Trump’s political emergence. In Manhattan in December, a Muslim woman claimed a trio of white drunks assaulted her on a crowded subway train and pulled on her hijab while chanting slogans and issuing taunts. Earlier in Mississippi, news reports indicated a hate crime when “Vote Trump” appeared on a black church. Police later arrested an parishioner for the crime. Whereas the Muslim college allegedly made up the story to avoid the wrath of her father after breaking curfew, the culprit in the Charlotte attack appears to have harbored no motive save for embarrassing white Trump supporters. He broke a window and set fire to the establishment. He did not steal anything, save for a sentence’s right to agreement. “We are ready to wake up some of our great state including North Carolina and we will take care of the country he typed. “Immigrants and refugee are taking our job, doing business and leaving us standard. So, you are not allowed to do business any more. ” After a “God Bless America” complementary close, the identified himself as “White America. ” But the racist surveillance video shows a black American. Throw the book at him — Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. | 0fake |
Amazon’s Ambitions Unboxed: Stores for Furniture, Appliances and More - The New York Times | SEATTLE — Last Sunday in Palm Springs, Calif. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, climbed into the cockpit of a robot and began flailing his arms as though warming up for a workout, causing the robot’s enormous appendages to mimic his movements. “Why do I feel so much like Sigourney Weaver?” Mr. Bezos said, referring to the actress who wore a mechanical suit in a climactic battle in the 1986 movie “Aliens. ” The intimate audience of entrepreneurs and academics, attending an Amazon conference on robotics and artificial intelligence, chuckled. Later, Mr. Bezos posted a photo on Twitter of himself in the suit with a more menacing air, the robot’s arms raised as if about to deliver a bear hug. For years, retailers have been haunted by the thought of Amazon using its technological prowess to squeeze them into powder. That battle has mostly played out on Amazon’s home turf, the world of online shopping. Now the fight is coming directly to retailers on actual streets around the globe, where Amazon is slowly building a fleet of physical stores. And while most of the attention has been focused on Amazon’s grocery store dreams, the company has a more ambitious collection of experiments underway. If those experiments work — and there is no guarantee of that — they could have a profound influence on how other stores operate. Over time, they could also introduce new forms of automation, putting traditional retail jobs in jeopardy. At the same time, locating those stores close to customers’ homes could also help Amazon further its ambitions of delivering internet orders within hours. The company is exploring the idea of creating stores to sell furniture and home appliances, like refrigerators — the kinds of products that shoppers are reluctant to buy over the internet sight unseen, said one of several people with knowledge of the discussions who, in conversations with The New York Times, spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans were confidential. The stores would serve as showcases where people could view the items in person, with orders being delivered to their homes. These would not be your average Home Depots: Amazon has considered using forms of augmented or virtual reality to allow people to see how couches, stoves and credenzas will look in their homes, the person briefed on the discussions said. Amazon is also kicking around an concept similar to Apple’s retail emporiums, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. These shops would have a heavy emphasis on Amazon devices and services such as the company’s Echo smart home speaker and Prime Video streaming service. And in groceries — a giant category in which Amazon has struggled — the company has opened a convenience store that does not need cashiers, and it is close to opening two stores where drivers can quickly pick up groceries without leaving their cars, all in Seattle. It has explored another grocery store concept that could serve customers and act as a hub for home deliveries. Overseas, Amazon is quietly targeting India for new grocery stores. It is a vast market, and one still largely dominated by traditional street bazaars where shoppers must wander from stall to stall haggling over prices and deliberating over unrefrigerated meat sitting in the dusty open air. Amazon’s internal code name for its India grocery ambitions: Project Everest. Last week, Amazon opened its fifth physical book store in Chicago, and it has five more announced locations under construction. It is possible that some of the store ideas will never see the light of day. Groups within Amazon are often encouraged to come up with zany initiatives (this is the company that popularized the idea of drone deliveries). Many ideas are chucked after deeper scrutiny by executives. Amazon declined to talk about any stores it has not announced publicly. “We are always thinking about new ways to serve customers, but thinking is different than planning,” said Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman. Since the late ’90s, pundits have asked when Amazon — the company Mr. Bezos founded on the premise that people would rather shop from the comfort of their screens — would finally start building stores. But Amazon executives saw plenty of opportunities in online retail and new ways to reach people, from creating digital devices like Kindle to building up the Prime membership service for getting faster deliveries and other benefits. In 2012, Mr. Bezos told the television interviewer Charlie Rose that shoppers were already well served by existing retailers and that Amazon had no interest in a effort. “We want to do something uniquely Amazon,” he said. “If we can find that idea, and we haven’t found it yet, but if we can find that idea, we would love to open physical stores. ” Despite Amazon’s internet retailing success, over time it has become clear that there is a lot of shopping that people prefer to do in person. The most glaring example is groceries — the mother of all shopping categories, with about $770 billion for the supermarkets represented by the Food Marketing Institute, a nonprofit group that includes the majority of such stores in the United States. After pouring resources into an online grocery service, AmazonFresh, for almost a decade, the company has made only modest progress. According to people familiar with the workings of the company’s grocery business, it has struggled to operate it profitably, leading to a slow rollout of the service in new locations. One big desire many customers have is that they want to see fresh fruits, vegetables and meat in person before buying them. The relatively high cost of home delivery — Amazon charges $15 a month for its Fresh service, on top of a $99 annual Prime membership — is another barrier. Online grocery delivery accounts for only about 3 percent of the market in the United States, though it is closer to 10 percent in Britain, said Randy Burt, a partner in the food and beverage practice of A. T. Kearney, a strategy and management consulting firm. Mr. Burt said Amazon’s growing interest in stores mirrored the conclusion that other online merchants with physical stores — the apparel seller Bonobos and the eyewear seller Warby Parker — had come to. “I think they are recognizing, for certain things you can’t digitize and replicate online all the experience one has in a store,” Mr. Burt said. “The ability to create experiences is going to be critical for them to continue to get share. ” Joe Thompson, a former general manager in Amazon’s retail business, sees physical retail as key to Mr. Bezos’s outsize ambitions for the company. ”I can’t help but feel that, in Bezos’s mind, he wants to be the first valuation company,” said Mr. Thompson, who is now an executive at BuildDirect, an online home improvement store. To do that, he said, Amazon would have to “crack” a couple of “completely underpenetrated markets online. ” Amazon’s current market value is bobbing around $400 billion. In the coming weeks, Amazon is expected to open its first two grocery pickup stores, in Seattle’s Ballard and SoDo neighborhoods, which will allow customers to order food online and schedule brief windows for picking them up in person. Recently, as cars ripped by, workers hung a sign on the exterior of one of the stores — to be called AmazonFresh Pickup, according to city permit documents obtained by GeekWire — before quickly covering it up. A growing number of established grocery retailers are experimenting with this “click and collect” approach to shopping, including Walmart, Kroger and others. According to one person briefed on Amazon’s plans, the company has been developing technology for automatically detecting when a customer pulls into the parking lot so orders can be brought to them more quickly. A few miles away from its other Seattle stores, on the ground floor of one of its many office towers in the city, the company is testing Amazon Go, a convenience store concept stocked with beverages, sandwiches and prepared meals, which are put together by chefs in a kitchen that is visible from the street. The retail industry has been captivated by Amazon Go’s technology since the company unveiled the store late last year. The store uses a combination of sensors and artificial intelligence to automatically detect the food items shoppers remove from shelves, so they can leave the store without visiting a cashier — the way customers do when they bolt from an Uber. “Amazon is wonderful at frictionless commerce,” said Timothy Laseter, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. There have been glitches with the technology that Amazon engineers continue to work on, according to a person familiar with the operations. For now, only Amazon employees are allowed to use the store. Amazon previously said it would open Amazon Go to the public in early 2017. If Amazon is successful at automating the checkout process, the implications for employment could be because other retailers would probably do everything possible to copy it. More than 3. 4 million people are employed as cashiers in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Amazon Go technologies like artificial intelligence are “Latin for ‘fire cashiers,’” said Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “I’ve probably been in 30 boardrooms of retailers in the past year,” Mr. Galloway said. “I would say the No. 1 topic of conversation is Amazon. ” For months, reports have circulated that Amazon was considering a concept for a larger grocery store that would combine shopping formats like traditional purchases, and home delivery. One of those articles, a February piece by The New York Post, described a futuristic Amazon grocery store staffed by robots, requiring only three human workers. That was too much, apparently, for Mr. Bezos, who became uncharacteristically feisty on Twitter, attacking the article by saying The Post’s sources had “mixed up their meds. ” But a group within Amazon has explored another larger grocery store format, according to both a person familiar with the concept and to internal Amazon documents reviewed by The New York Times. The store could stock fresh produce, meats and other items in a public area of the store, while keeping frozen foods, cereals and other items traditionally found in the center of a grocery store behind a wall, in what would be a kind of small Amazon warehouse. Workers behind the wall, not robots, could quickly package orders for customers. The idea resembles a concept laid out in a paper, “A Beautiful Way to Save Woolworths,” written by the retail industry consultant Brittain Ladd, who was later hired by Amazon. The status of that project at Amazon is unclear: One person said it never advanced far and was effectively dead, and another disputed that characterization. While Mr. Bezos was known for coining the motto “Get Big Fast” in the early days of Amazon, the company’s plans in physical retail could be better described as “Get Big Slow. ” Some reports have said Amazon has discussed building up to 2, 000 grocery stores. But that figure was floated mainly as a hypothetical to consider the impact on Amazon’s supply chain, not as a goal that was under serious consideration, a person familiar with the discussions said. In addition to the two soon to open in Seattle, as many as five more AmazonFresh Pickup locations could open by next year, and the company hopes to expand Amazon Go to Britain and several cities in the United States in the same time frame, this person said. India could represent another big market for Amazon in physical retail. The company, which has vowed to spend billions of dollars on its efforts in the world’s populous country, recently sought approval from the Indian government to open online and physical food stores in the country, The Economic Times reported in February. According to a person familiar with Amazon’s India grocery efforts, the company hopes to open its first Indian grocery store in Bangalore. In a statement, Amazon said the company was excited by the Indian government’s efforts to encourage foreign investment in a “stronger food supply chain. ” “We have sought an approval to invest and partner with the government in achieving this vision,” Amazon said. For Mr. Galloway at N. Y. U. the slow pace of Amazon’s rollout of stores is a sign that it has not figured out physical retail yet, and that has surprised him. Five years ago, he believed Amazon would have hundreds of stores by this time. “What appears to be clear is they haven’t yet zeroed in on a format they’re willing to massively scale,” he said. “This is a company that the moment it figures out something that works, it puts nuclear energy behind it. ” | 0fake |
Australia causing refugees 'severe and lasting harm': Human Rights Watch | SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia’s poor treatment of refugees in offshore detention camps is “draconian” and is causing lasting damage to refugees and to Australia’s reputation as a rights-respecting country, Human Rights Watch said on Friday. Conditions in the camps are abusive and detainees “regularly endure violence, threats and harassment”, Human Rights Watch said in the Australian chapter of its annual global report. Under Australian rules, anyone intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat is sent for processing to camps in the Pacific Island nation of Nauru and at Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea (PNG). They are never eligible to be resettled in Australia. A spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration, asked about the report before its release, declined to comment but referred to earlier department assertions that conditions at the camps were adequate and were the responsibility of Nauru and PNG. Those governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Australia said in November it had agreed with the United States to resettle some of the refugees in the Nauru and PNG camps, in return for Australia taking refugees from Central America. But subsequent White House comments cast doubt on whether the new U.S. administration would proceed with the deal. The arrangement offered “no solution” in any case, Human Rights Watch said, adding Australia should close the camps and better protect refugees. Australia’s tough policy has drawn strong criticism from the United Nations and other international rights organizations amid a global debate on how to manage huge numbers of asylum seekers displaced by conflict. Successive Australian governments have supported the policy, which they say is needed to stop people drowning at sea during dangerous boat journeys. More than 1,990 asylum seekers have drowned on voyages to Australia since January 2000, according to Monash University’s Australian Border Deaths Database. More than a third of the deaths occurred between 2007 and 2012, when Australia suspended its offshore detention program, including an accident in 2010 when 50 people were killed when their boat was thrown onto rocks at Christmas Island. That accident swung political and public opinion behind the offshore detention policy, which has enjoyed bipartisan and public support in Australia. Human Rights Watch also criticized PNG for police brutality, after officers opened fire on student protesters in June. PNG was also “one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman”, and the government had failed to address corruption, Human Rights Watch added. Australia and PNG agreed to close the Manus Island camp in August, but gave no date and it remains open. It held 871 people and the Nauru camp 383 people, according to the most recent statistics released by Australia in November. | 0fake |
London Attack Leaves Citizens of 10 Nations Dead or Injured - The New York Times | LONDON — One was a police constable who spent 15 years with the Metropolitan Police in London. A second was a teacher who, according to reports, was walking from her school along Westminster Bridge. Another was a man from Utah who was on vacation with his wife, celebrating their 25th anniversary. The fourth was a man, whose family removed him from life support. They were all killed by an assailant who plowed through pedestrians on the bridge — injuring at least 50 others in the heart of the city — crashed his vehicle into a fence and then emerged with knives to stab the constable on Wednesday. Among the wounded, many of them foreign tourists, were 12 Britons, four South Koreans, three French high school students, two Romanians, two Greeks and one citizen each of China, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United States. On Thursday afternoon local time, the police identified the assailant, who was shot and killed by officers, as Khalid Masood, 52. In a speech at Parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May said the attacker was and was previously investigated by MI5, Britain’s domestic counterintelligence agency, for possible ties to violent extremism. The prime minister visited victims at a hospital in London for 40 minutes on Thursday, according to her office. Many of them had not been publicly identified. At a news conference, Mark Rowley, the assistant police commissioner, cited both the police investigation and the need to notify family members as reasons. But information has dribbled out. ■ Police Constable Keith Palmer, 48, a member of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, was patrolling the Parliament building when the assailant fatally stabbed him. Tributes for Constable Palmer have poured in. “He was someone who left for work today expecting to return home at the end of his shift, and he had every right to expect that would happen,” Commissioner Rowley said in a statement. Mayor Sadiq Khan said, “Keith Palmer was killed while bravely doing his duty — protecting our city and the heart of our democracy from those who want to destroy our way of life. ” James Cleverly, a lawmaker, said on Twitter that he had served in the Royal Artillery with Constable Palmer, calling him “a lovely man, a friend. ” On Thursday, the Metropolitan Police announced in a Twitter post that his badge number would be retired. ■ Kurt Cochran, an American traveling in Europe with his wife, Melissa Payne Cochran, died of injuries sustained in the attack, according to a statement from the family issued through the Church of Jesus Christ of Saints in Salt Lake City. Clint Payne, Mr. Cochran’s said in the statement: “Our family is heartbroken to learn of the death of our and Kurt W. Cochran, who was a victim of Wednesday’s terrorist attack in London. Kurt was a good man and a loving husband to our sister and daughter, Melissa. They were in Europe to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, and were scheduled to return to the United States on Thursday. ” Mr. Cochran’s wife was also wounded in the attack, and she was hospitalized with “a broken leg, a broken rib and a cut on her head,” said her sister Sarah in a post on Facebook. Their parents were serving as missionaries in London, according to the church. The couple ran a recording studio in West Bountiful, Utah, and Mr. Cochran had shared pictures of their stops in Germany and Scotland. ■ Aysha Frade, 43, a British teacher, lived in London with her husband and two daughters. She taught Spanish not far from Westminster Bridge, according to the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia, and she had family in Spain, according to the Spanish Foreign Ministry. Ms. Frade’s mother immigrated to Britain from Betanzos, a Galician town in northwestern Spain. Ms. Frade’s two sisters run the Academia Notting Hill language school in Betanzos and live in a village nearby. Her father is of Turkish Cypriot descent, a family friend said. On Thursday, the Betanzos town hall held a moment of silence at noon to honor Ms. Frade. Local leaders decreed three days of mourning. Ms. Frade, 43, was a British citizen, but “her link with our town was always very strong,” José Luis Pariente, a Betanzos town hall official, said by phone. “She came back here to visit every summer. ” Amy Winter, the family friend and a neighbor in the Notting Hill district of London, said on the phone: “When I think of Aysha, I think of her radiant smile. She always cheered people up. ” “It crushes me to know that she was going to pick up her girls when she was killed,” she said, adding, “They were everything to her. ” Rachel Borland, the principal of DLD College London, said in a statement: “We are all deeply shocked and saddened at the news that one of the victims yesterday was a member of our staff, Aysha Frade. All our thoughts and our deepest sympathies are with her family. ” ■ Leslie Rhodes, 75, a retired window cleaner from the Streatham neighborhood of south London, was injured in the rampage. He was removed from life support on Thursday. One of his neighbors, Michael Carney, told local news media that he had known Mr. Rhodes for 40 years, calling him “the nicest mind you ever met. ” Another neighbor described Mr. Rhodes as “fit as a fiddle” and said he wasn’t married and had no children. Mr. Carney said his own relatives went to the hospital to be by Mr. Rhodes’s side. “My wife and my two girls went up there and were with him until he died, playing him music,” Mr. Carney said. “He liked Queen and that. ” He added: “He had no one. You can’t have someone dying on their own. ” ■ Three of the wounded were boys from France who were on the bridge with other visiting students. The three attended St. high school in Concarneau, Brittany, according to the French Foreign Ministry. The mother of one of the injured students told the French news media that he had borrowed a friend’s cellphone to text that he was O. K. “His phone didn’t work, but he must have known I would try to reach him because I immediately got a text message from him,” the mother, Isabelle Calvez, said on French television. “He told me he was O. K. but had the incident happened 20 seconds later, he would’ve been hit by the car. ” She added that two of the other students had fractured arms and legs, while another had a neck injury. On Thursday, the French Education Ministry said that the injured students from Brittany had been treated and that their conditions were no longer . Juliette Meadel, the government minister for victims’ affairs, told CNEWS that the three students were among a group of 56 that went to a nearby hostel after the attack. A second group from the high school, with 36 students, was in another location in London when the attack occurred. Ms. Meadel said the uninjured students would return to France on Thursday. There are more than 4, 200 students in London on school trips from France, according to the Education Ministry. Most of the other planned school trips to London on Thursday or Friday have been postponed. Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve of France expressed solidarity with “our British friends” hurt in the attack and offered “full support to the injured French pupils, their families and their classmates. ” ■ Five South Koreans were among the 29 people hospitalized. They were wounded when they were mobbed by a crowd fleeing the attack site, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry. Four of them — three women and a man in their 50s and 60s — sustained fractures and other injuries that were not believed to be . A woman, however, suffered a head injury when she was pushed by the fleeing crowd, according to South Korean news reports. She later had surgery to treat her injuries. ■ The two Romanian victims, Andrei Burnaz, 32, and Andreea Cristea, 31, are from the Black Sea port city of Constanta, according to the Romanian news agency Mediafax, which quoted an official as saying they were in London to celebrate Mr. Burnaz’s birthday. Ms. Cristea went into the Thames off Westminster Bridge when the assailant drove through the crowd, and news reports said she suffered serious head injuries and lung damage. She was rescued, and Mr. Burnaz’s foot was fractured. ■ At least three of those injured after being “driven at by a vehicle” were members of the police force, and were in stable condition. ■ A woman described as “an Australian permanent resident” was among the wounded, according to that nation’s government. Australian news outlets reported that the assailant’s vehicle had run over her foot on the bridge. The woman, originally from Germany, lives in South Australia, according to an Australian news report. ■ Two Greeks were hospitalized for minor injuries, according to Alexis Georgiades, the press counselor at the Greek Embassy in London. | 0fake |
Obama Continues To PUMMEL Trump With Some Pretty Harsh Truths He Won’t Want To Hear | While Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump can boast and claim he s going to win the presidency hands down, he s forgetting that he s only been in the Republican primary against some incredibly weak and equally as unappealing candidates. Sure, he s popular among his band of merry morons who want a wall to keep out foreigners and may not have learned how to use a fork yet, but when it comes to the general election, he s pretty much toast.No matter who the Democrats run up against Trump, whether it be the frontrunner Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they both would kick his ass at the ballot box come November. Clinton is even ahead in the popular vote by millions against anyone running, if that s not already a clear indicator of what s to come later this year.Another person who knows Trump will lose is President Obama, and he s also very blunt in explaining that the real estate mogul/reality television star isn t qualified to be president, nor would he be able to actually fulfill the duties of commander-in-chief.During the White House Correspondents Dinner the president quipped, They say Donald lacks the foreign policy experience to be president. But in fairness he has spent years meeting with leaders from around the world: Miss Sweden, Miss Argentina, Miss Azerbaijan. Then on Monday, President Obama said during an interview with WMUR in New Hampshire: I think that he is not somebody who even within the Republican Party can be considered as equipped to deal with the problems of this office, but look, we live in a democracy. Clearly indicating that people are more than allowed to vote for him, but he added: If in fact the Republicans nominate Mr. Trump, then it s going to be an interesting Fall season. I m confident that ultimately the Democrat in that circumstance will win. Which is absolutely correct. It would also be a rude awakening for the Republican party that clearly has let itself fall apart before our very eyes. Which honestly is very entertaining, but equally as terrifying.What it comes down to is this: Donald Trump is not only a dangerous choice for president, but him running is just absolutely ridiculous. He s not at all prepared for the role of President of the United States. He doesn t even talk the talk. He just goes around bullying his competition, women, minorities, and Muslims all while talking about a wall that is never gonna happen, nor does it even make logistical sense.Enough is enough, folks. Just remember, no matter who vote blue.Featured Photos by Bill Pugliano/ Joshua Lott/Getty Images | 1real |
JUST IN: Mueller Fired ‘Top FBI Agent’ Who “Helped Lead” Hillary Investigation Over Discovered Text Messages | This is an interesting development in the Mueller investigation because we don t trust the FBI. Is this new news from the New York Times an effort to make Mueller and McCabe appear unbiased? We re not buying it because this guy was the lead investigator in the Hillary email case Really??? Talk about compromised! Please see our previous report below on the FBI giving special status to Hillary s email investigation. Robert Mueller kicked a top FBI agent off the special counsel investigation this summer over potential anti-Trump texts he sent, per a new report today.According to The New York Times, Peter Strzok not only helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton s emails, but he played a major role in the Trump-Russia investigation.But he is no longer on the investigation:Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller s investigation to the F.B.I. s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear anti-Trump.ABC News reported back in August that Strzok had left the investigation, but said at the time it s unclear why Strzok stepped away from Mueller s team of nearly two dozen lawyers, investigators and administrative staffers. And The Washington Post s report today on Strzok contains some rather, well, personal details:During the Clinton investigation, Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.The extramarital affair was problematic, these people said, but of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season, in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton Officials are now reviewing the communications to see if they show evidence of political bias in their work on the cases, a review which could result in a public report, according to people familiar with the matter. Via: mediaiteFBI INVESTIGATORS GAVE SPECIAL STATUS TO HILLARY:Friday on Fox News Channel s Fox & Friends, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said evidence had been uncovered showing that the FBI gave the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s improper use of an unauthorized email server while secretary of state a special status. According to the Florida Republican, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the process afforded to Clinton was different than it would have been for any other American. We now have evidence that the FBI s investigation of Hillary Clinton did not follow normal and standard procedures, he said. The current deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe sent emails just weeks before the presidential election saying that the Hillary Clinton investigation would be special that it would be handled by a small team at headquarters, that it would be given special status. GOETZ CALLED FOR AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION: I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: "I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton." #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else? | 1real |
(VIDEO) OBAMA DANCES IN KENYA ON THE TAXPAYER’S DIME…AND THE PURPOSE FOR THIS NEAR BILLION DOLLAR TRIP IS WHAT? | Dining and dancing giving Kenya one billion dollars to boost young entrepreneurs in Africa His agenda in Kenya was focused on economic development, counter-terrorism and human rights. Wouldn t it be great if he really focused on those three issues in the U.S.? This is personal for me, Mr. Obama said. There s a reason why my name s Barack Hussein Obama. My father comes from these parts. The president said Africa s economic growth will depend on young dreamers with ideas. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don t see a future for themselves, Mr. Obama said. READ MORE: CBSNEWS | 1real |
BREAKING NEWS: GOP Controlled House Votes To REPEAL Obamacare | After years of debate, the House on Thursday voted to repeal key parts of the Affordable Care Act and replace them with new provisions.The vote, which President Donald Trump was planning to tout as a big victory, sends the Republican-sponsored bill to gut Obamacare to the Senate for consideration.But winning approval for the bill could be even more difficult in the Senate than it has been in the House, where Republican leaders struggled for nearly two months to wrangle enough votes in their caucus to secure its passage.The bill passed by a vote of 217 to 213. All 193 Democrats voting opposed the bill; they were joined by 20 Republicans voting no. A lot of us have waited seven years to case this vote, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said shortly before the voting began. Many of us are here because we pledged to cast this vote: to repeal and replace Obamacare. This bill delivers the promises we have made to the American people, Ryan said.House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., told MSNBC shortly before the vote began, We were elected to do this. After the vote, protesters outside the Capitol building yelled, Shame, shame! at members of Congress walking down the front steps. CNBCWashington Free Beacon One of the amendments, introduced by Rep. Tom MacArthur (R., N.J.), co-chair of the Tuesday Group, allows states to obtain a waiver from federal standards such as essential health benefits and community rating rules. This measure gained the support of House Freedom Caucus members, who said it will significantly lower health costs, even if it does not fully repeal Obamacare. The MacArthur amendment will grant states the ability to repeal cost driving aspects of Obamacare left in place under the original AHCA, said the House Freedom Caucus. While the revised version still does not fully repeal Obamacare, we are prepared to support it to keep our promise to the American people to lower health care costs. Another amendment, introduced by Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.) adds $8 billion to the Patient and State Stability Fund, which helps reduce premiums and out-of-pocket costs. This amendment would provide additional funding, $8 billion over five years, to ensure a strong safety net and reduce premiums, or other out-of-pocket costs, for those with preexisting conditions, said Upton.Following the amendment, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the White House supported the measure and that President Trump has been working to ensure that Americans have more affordable care. Overall the efforts that were made, and especially the effort this morning with congressmen Long and Upton, help bring more people into this effort and make it even a stronger bill, and ensure that Americans have a health care system that gets them the care that they need at a price that s affordable, Spicer said. The president has been on the phone constantly, Spicer said. I think we have made this an unbelievable bill and an unbelievable replacement for Obamacare, which is failing, and that s what we ve sought to do from the beginning. | 1real |
France Presidential Election 2017 Livewire | Polls have closed for the second and final round of voting in the French 2017 presidential race. Join Breitbart London for the latest news and analysis of the vote, count, and aftermath. [The late stages have been hotly contested between former leader of the Front National, now independent candidate Marine Le Pen, and En Marche! leader and key globalist figure Emmanuel Macron. In the past week the two candidates have gone in a televised debate, and have toured the country seeking to drum up last minute support. Preliminary results show Emmanuel Macron has won a convincing victory in the second round, and will be the next president on France. Follow the action as it unfolds with Breitbart London through Sunday evening into Monday morning. | 0fake |
NANCY PELOSI Thanks Dreamers for Coming to U.S. Illegally: ‘They’re so lovely’ [Video] | This is what Democrats think of people who broke our laws to come to America? Nancy Pelosi thanked a Dreamer s parents Wednesday for bringing him to the United States illegally. Pelosi made the remark during a town hall with CNN s Chris Cuomo where she took a question from Dreamer Adrian Reyna. Our Dreamers, they make America dream again, Pelosi said. They re so lovely and we, frankly, owe a debt to your parents for bringing you here to be such a brilliant part of our future. AND she s happy to let the tax payers foot the bill for these illegals:The swelling population of illegal immigrants and their kids is costing American taxpayers $135 billion a year, the highest ever, driven by free medical care, education and a huge law enforcement bill, according to the the most authoritative report on the issue yet.Dreamers are individuals who were brought illegally to the United States as children. Former president Barack Obama s administration provided cover to Dreamers from possible deportation to their countries of origin with the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) executive order in 2012.The Trump administration rescinded the order last month and called on Congress to replace it within six months. Reyna expressed concern about Democrats coming to a deal with President Donald Trump about illegal immigration and Dreamers.Pelosi promised Reyna that a clean Dream Act would be passed before December.Pelosi continued to heap praise on Dreamers and their families and laid out Democrats plan to block the Trump administration and Republicans from taking any kind of potential action against illegal immigration.Read more: WFB | 1real |
New York, other states take on Trump over energy efficiency | NEW YORK (Reuters) - A coalition of U.S. states has mounted a broad legal challenge against what it called the Trump administration’s illegal suspension of rules to improve the energy efficiency of ceiling fans, portable air conditioners and other products. The challenge, also joined by environmental groups, came after the U.S. Department of Energy last month delayed standards proposed under the Obama administration to reduce air pollution and operating costs associated with the products. Ten Democratic attorneys general, plus New York City and a Pennsylvania regulator, on Monday notified Energy Secretary Rick Perry of their plan to sue in 60 days for stalling proposed standards for air compressors, commercial boilers, portable air conditioners, power supplies, and walk-in coolers and freezers. The same group, excluding Maryland, on Friday petitioned the federal appeals court in New York to force the administration to implement ceiling fan efficiency standards that were to have taken effect two weeks ago, but have been delayed to Sept. 30. Implementation was delayed after White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Jan. 20 directed federal agencies to put new regulations on hold until their new leaders could review them. The Obama administration issued a similar directive in 2009. The Energy Department said it does not comment on pending litigation. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said adopting the “common-sense” efficiency standards would dramatically reduce air pollution, including from carbon dioxide, mercury and methane. He said enough electricity would be saved to serve 36 million households annually, and save consumers and businesses close to $24 billion. “Leaving the final rules in regulatory ‘limbo’ has very real, negative economic and environmental consequences, essentially frustrating Congress’ energy conservation goals,” the states said in their letter to Perry. The letter was signed by officials of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, New York City and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The Consumer Federation of America, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club on Monday sent Perry a similar letter threatening litigation. Both letters accused the Energy Department of ignoring its obligation under federal law to publish final efficiency rules in the Federal Register. In notices published last month, the Energy Department said Perry had only begun his job on March 3 and needed more time to conduct “further review and consideration of new regulations.” The petition is New York et al v U.S. Department of Energy et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 17-918. | 0fake |
Dentist Waiting Room Contains Disproportionate Number Of Boating Magazines | We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Dentist Waiting Room Contains Disproportionate Number Of Boating Magazines November 11, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , LIFESTYLE Share 0 Add Comment
PATIENTS waiting for treatment in a Waterford dental clinic have informed WWN of the curious ration of magazines about boats to magazine about any other topic in the waiting room.
Maguires Dental on St. Kenneth’s street in Waterford city appears to have four magazines about maritime affairs in it’s 9-strong pile of reading literature, with the remainder of the browsing material consisting of 5-year-old issues of Heat, Bella, and an Argos catalogue from 2012 with the back cover ripped off.
Declan Hanlon, in for a filling, spoke exclusively to WWN about the difficulties in passing the time in the waiting room when one hasn’t got much interest in yachting or yacht maintenance.
“I’m here over an hour like, and I’ve read up on Ashton Kutcher getting divorced from Demi Moore, the price of an electric shower, and how to make sure you’ve hired the right people to de-barnacle the side of your boat” said Hanlin, sounding kinda funny because his jaw is sore.
“Whoever puts out the magazines, take a bow. I’ve seen some terrible reading material in waiting rooms in my time, but Jesus Christ this stuff is the worst. Trust me, if you’re coming to this place, you sure as fuck don’t need to learn about boat maintenance”.
When pressed for better magazines in the waiting room, staff at Maguire Dental said they’d have a root around in a skip at the weekend, if they had time. | 1real |
Acting FBI Director: There Has Been ’No Effort’ to Impede Russia Investigation - Breitbart | Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told senators that there has been “no effort” to impede the bureau’s investigation of Russian interference in the election and any Trump campaign collusion. [“There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date,” McCabe said. His comment came in response to a question by Sen. Marco Rubio ( ) about whether President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey has impacted the investigation in any way. McCabe added, “Simply put, sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people, and upholding the Constitution,” he said. Democrats have accused Trump of firing Comey to stymie the investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI’s investigation had begun to pick up steam in the last few weeks, and Comey had asked for more resources from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told the WSJ that Comey last met with Rosenstein on May 1 and “there was no discussion of resources or funds related to the Russia investigation at that meeting. ” Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told senators on Thursday that he could not confirm that such a request was made, but said such a request would have been made to Congress, not through the Justice Department. “It’s not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources,” he said. | 0fake |
Spanish Court Clears Priest in Abuse Case Taken Up by Pope Francis - The New York Times | Ending a sexual abuse case in which Pope Francis intervened three years ago, a Spanish court on Tuesday cleared a parish priest in Granada who had been accused of molesting an altar boy. The court found no evidence that the Rev. Román Martínez had sexually abused one of his former altar boys more than a decade ago. An investigation began after David Ramírez Castillo wrote to Pope Francis in 2014, detailing the sexual abuse that he said he and others suffered repeatedly when they were teenagers at the hands of a group of priests led by Father Martínez. Pope Francis phoned Mr. Ramírez Castillo and urged him to pursue his complaints. The pope also ordered a church investigation into the case, demanding complete transparency. In an ruling, the court said it had exonerated Father Martínez not only because of the lack of evidence against him but also because the testimony of Mr. Ramírez Castillo included elements that were “completely implausible. ” The court listed several events and details provided by Mr. Ramírez Castillo that could not be corroborated or proved false. For instance, there was no birthmark on Father Martínez’s genitals, contrary to what Mr. Ramírez Castillo had claimed. The priest’s lawyer, Javier Muriel, said the verdict showed the case was based on lies. “It is easy to make an accusation of pedophilia, a crime that happens in privacy and in which the testimony of the victim is really the only proof,” Mr. Muriel said. Mr. Ramírez Castillo and his lawyer did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The case could still be appealed to the Spanish Supreme Court. The archdiocese of Granada welcomed the ruling on Tuesday. In a statement, it noted “the suffering that this case has caused, within the diocese but in reality within the whole church. ” | 0fake |
Bernie Sanders, Party Crasher: Notes On The (Looming) End Of A Campaign | Bernie Sanders, Party Crasher: Notes On The (Looming) End Of A Campaign
Three days ahead of California's Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders made several appearances in Southern California before headlining a rally in San Diego.
There was a Sunday morning walk through a farmers market in Downtown Los Angeles. There was a walk through West Hollywood, LA's gayborhood, with a pre-drag brunch address to diners at a hamburger joint on Santa Monica Boulevard. That was followed by a stroll through Santa Monica Pier, where the candidate rode a merry-go-round and even interrupted an outdoor spin class fundraiser to give an impromptu stump speech.
And there was a stop at Plaza Mexico, an outdoor market that caters to a primarily Latino audience in Lynwood, a bit south of LA. Once Sanders arrived, with traveling press in tow, he walked through the crowded mall, which happened to be hosting a music festival that day. After shaking hands and hugging fans, Sanders tried to take the main stage of the festival. As he and his entourage approached the side of the stage, he was denied by several of the event staff. There were vigorous head shakes of disagreement and, as a female event staffer pulled a barricade closer to keep Sanders and his crew out, she said, angrily, "This is our event."
Sanders staffers walked away from the exchange flustered, some muttering profanities. Sanders himself seemed befuddled. It was the exact opposite of the reception he received earlier in the day when he took over the stage at that outdoor spin fundraiser, stumping in front of stationary bikes and large images of the black and brown inner-city youth the event was raising money for.
Sanders' experience in Southern California offers glimpses into everything that went right — and wrong — for his campaign. In more ways than one, at Lynwood and in Santa Monica and all throughout the primary season, Sanders was a party crasher. Sometimes that worked out for him. And sometimes it did not.
This week marked the final presidential nominating contest for the Democratic Party, in Washington, D.C. Bernie Sanders lost. And he isn't throwing in the towel just yet, he says. But Sanders also says he can do "arithmetic." And that math shows he did not get enough votes or delegates to be the Democratic nominee. (He trails Clinton by millions in the Democratic popular vote, and hundreds in party's delegate count, with or without superdelegates.) Hillary Clinton was declared the "presumptive nominee" last week, and she is now campaigning as one would expect a presumptive party nominee to campaign, complete with the endorsement of a sitting president. It'd be fair to say that the only thing keeping Bernie Sanders' campaign alive is that he hasn't yet said it is dead.
Sanders met with Clinton on Tuesday night for what both campaigns called a "positive discussion," but did not drop out. He has said he will do everything he can to defeat Donald Trump — even if Sanders is not the nominee. And he will address his supporters Thursday evening, online, in a live stream.
His plans for the future aren't yet clear, but looking back, Sanders' insurgent campaign accomplished more than anyone could have expected — even the senator himself. From the way he fundamentally changed how presidential campaigns can raise money, with the millions he raked in from small donations from supporters, often averaging $27 (as he repeatedly proclaimed on the stump), to his introduction of many of the ideas of Democratic socialism into the mainstream.
In many ways, his successes seemed to come out of nowhere. Sanders had been a senator from Vermont for decades, with low name recognition and single-digit showings in early presidential polls. And he wasn't even a Democrat.
It would be easy to see the Sanders campaign as something that just happened. But, in fact, he was part of a concerted effort, the outgrowth of a social movement that began a few years back in Zuccotti Park in New York. The Sanders campaign has direct links to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Winnie Wong, founder of the online group People for Bernie, is one of the former Occupy Wall Street activists who helped draft Bernie Sanders to run. And she said Sanders actually wasn't the first senator activists approached.
"We started the Draft [Elizabeth] Warren effort first," she told NPR. "Ready for Warren came out of Occupy. And People for Bernie came out of Ready for Warren."
Wong is not shy about identifying Sanders and his candidacy as a tool to get Occupy Wall Street ideals into the mainstream. "It was always a tactic," she said at a Sanders rally in San Francisco. "In every way, at every step of the way."
But if Sanders was in some ways an outgrowth of Occupy, his reach quickly expanded beyond that movement's confines. It would have been hard to predict that from the beginning, though. Sanders' press conference announcing his run in April of last year had little in common with the rock concert-like rallies he's become known for this campaign. That April announcement was small, organized on a lawn outside the U.S. Capitol, with Sanders seemingly startled by the microphone itself, urging reporters to keep it quick because he had to get back to his day job as a senator.
In fact, many of Sanders' campaign staff had day jobs as well; early on, a lot of them worked for the campaign for free, after they finished those. But within months, Sanders had made a movement. Tapping into a new wave of progressive populism, first hinted at during the Occupy movement, Sanders' self-described "political revolution to transform our country economically, political, socially and environmentally" quickly became a force.
By February, Sanders' razor-thin finish with Clinton in the Iowa caucuses (he lost by only 0.3 percentage points), it became official: The Sanders campaign was now no longer outsider, but insurgent.
Sanders rallies grew larger and took on their own feel — part concert, part picnic, part love fest. Sanders' fans danced freely before his rallies began. Mothers breast-fed their young children in the aisles. Tie-died shirts could be spotted throughout the crowds. Sanders himself seemed like a kind, loving grandfather to many of his supporters. Famously, at one Sanders rally in Portland, Ore. (because Portland), a bird landed on the candidate's lectern.
In many ways, the Sanders campaign was a love revolution, with a message of unity, diversity and prosperity for all. But under the surface, the Sanders movement was just as much an exercise in anger.
Over time, another side of the Sanders phenomenon began to reveal itself: a palpable disgust not just for Sanders' opponent, Clinton, but for the party she is a part of, the media that covered her and a system that many Sanders supporters thought was rigged.
The night of California's presidential primary, Sanders held a rally in an airplane hangar at the Santa Monica airport. The tall and wide half-circle roof made for a dramatic scene as thousands of supporters poured into the space to support their candidate, even as his chances at winning the Democratic nomination were all but zero.
Beneath the sweeping metal roof, while a man dressed as Jesus holding a Sanders sign paced the room, the anger that had been building in Sanders' supporters for months was on full display.
When a big screen at the rally showed Hillary Clinton leading in the California race, the crowd chanted "Bullshit!" over and over again until the image on the screen changed. The crowd also chanted things like "CNN sucks!" When Clinton's name was mentioned in Sanders' speech, the crowd booed.
Many in attendance cornered reporters to share disgust with their coverage of the election, particularly reporting on the Associated Press' announcement the night before that Clinton had secured the support of enough superdelegates, or unpledged party leaders and elected officials, to put Clinton over the top to become the party's presumptive nominee.
Many of Sanders' supporters didn't believe he lost fair and square. (Sanders himself still hasn't said he has. The day President Obama endorsed Clinton — and told Sanders in the Oval Office that he was about to do so — Sanders pointed to ballots still out in California. On Tuesday, after a statement about the Orlando massacre, Sanders talked about long lines in Arizona.)
Instead, Sanders supporters, in the crowd in Santa Monica that night and elsewhere, called the delegate count itself a conspiracy. A day earlier, Sanders surrogate Nina Turner (a former Ohio state senator) suggested the AP call, coming the night before California voted, was intended to suppress voter turnout there.
Dutch Merrick was in the crowd that Tuesday night. He said he was hopeful that Sanders would take his fight to the Democratic convention, and "demand an actual count of the actual votes." He felt the Democratic Party establishment had decided Clinton would be the nominee months ago, before the primary election was complete.
"It's a fait accompli. ... That message had not changed in a year," he said, holding a Sanders poster. "All the coverage went to one woman candidate: Hillary."
For Merrick, the entire system was rigged in Clinton's favor. He pointed to voting irregularities in several states over the past few months, long lines at polling places in Arizona, and names disappearing from voter lists in places like New York.
"She [Clinton] just puts a friendly face on fascism," Merrick continued. "I was excited, eight years ago, to vote for an African-American for president. But it essentially put someone that pushed the same agenda, kept the same Defense Department, the same CIA, the same Wall Street policies, with a black face. It didn't do us any good. So now we're going to get a female face on the same policies. Not going to do us any good."
He concluded, "I would probably vote for Trump, to burst the bubble, to finally pop the zit."
Sigma Scott, who was at the rally with Merrick, said, "If she takes it [the nomination] by petty theft, or grand theft, I would rally and vote that she's impeached."
That mood seemed to be present at Sanders events all throughout California in the lead-up to the primary in these waning days of the campaign. It wasn't just that Bernie Sanders was the truth and the light to these super supporters — it's that in their eyes, Hillary Clinton was the lie and the darkness.
Clinton wasn't just an opponent to many Sanders supporters; she was a cheater, perhaps even a criminal. The Democratic Party wasn't just a political party; it was an apparatus focused solely on doing whatever it took to grant Clinton the nomination. And whatever math would justify her win was fraudulent, because the system itself was an undemocratic sham.
At a San Francisco rally for Sanders the previous day, Sanders supporter Aaron Selverston seemed to crystallize the emotions of many who felt alienated by the Democratic Party and the primary process.
"I think the whole argument about the [delegate] math is irrelevant to most Bernie supporters," he said, as Dave Matthews played in San Francisco's Crissy Field before Sanders took to the mic. "Because it's not about some sort of allegiance to a party. The party has failed. The party has failed half of the people who typically vote Democratic. And those are the people who are supporting Bernie."
Though much of the anger some Sanders supporters show is directed at the media or Clinton or Trump, some of the blame for Sanders' failing to reach the nomination is his own.
From the start, Sanders said he would run a positive campaign, on the issues, refusing to directly attack his primary opponent, Clinton. He famously declared at one Democratic presidential debate, "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails," when asked about Clinton's use of a private server during her time as secretary of state. The emails have been a constant line of attack for Republicans against Clinton, but Sanders refused to hit her on the issue, even as staffers urged Sanders to find some line of attack on her.
Over time, Sanders did attack, particularly on paid speeches she gave to Wall Street executives after her time as secretary of state, repeating in stump speeches, "I kind of think if you get paid a couple hundred thousand dollars for a speech, it must be a great speech. I think we should release it and let the American people see what the transcript was."
By the time that message stuck, though, Clinton's lead had become all but insurmountable.
Another sore spot for his campaign, that would perhaps inflict even more damage, was an inability to connect with large numbers of minority voters.
In several nominating contests throughout the primary season, Sanders did win a majority of black and Latino primary and caucus voters ages 35 and under. But in South Carolina's primary, after strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders lost the black vote by almost 70 percent, even admitting himself, "We got decimated."
At a Seattle rally last year, Sanders was forced from the stage by two Black Lives Matters protesters; he had to end his own event without finishing his stump speech. For many minority voters, Sanders' message on income inequality failed to connect the dots between wealth disparity and institutional racism, and many people of color felt that white Sanders supporters were too eager to dismiss them as low-information when they did not support the Vermont senator.
Sanders responded. He hired minority staff in key positions, namely hiring Symone Sanders, a BLM activist, as his national press secretary soon after the Seattle incident. Sanders' campaign recruited surrogates of color as well, like the rapper Killer Mike and actress Rosario Dawson. And he had no shortage of key celebrity endorsements from the likes of Danny Glover and Spike Lee.
But it wasn't enough. Sanders' coalition of liberals, working-class whites, and young voters of all colors couldn't shake Clinton's lead with women and older minority voters.
Sanders' campaign also did not focus on the sweep of Super Tuesday states on March 1. That's when Clinton put real separation between herself and Sanders. His campaign was often outmatched by Clinton's superior ground game, with its infrastructure seemingly never dismantled after her 2008 Democratic primary loss, and bolstered, even, by remnants of the Obama political machine.
As time went on, Clinton racked up an increasingly bigger lead, one that Sanders would never be able to overcome, even as he regularly out-fundraised his Democratic opponent and his rallies filled stadiums throughout the country.
Maybe there's nothing Sanders could have done to overcome the Clinton machine on the ground. But University of Vermont professor Huck Gutman, a close friend of Sanders and his former chief of staff, seemed to predict the problems Sanders would have with minority voters in an interview with NPR soon after Sanders launched his presidential campaign.
"One of the differences between Bernie and so many other people who are liberals," Gutman said, "is that Bernie's central concern has always been with the condition of what he calls working-class families. He is consumed by the need for economic justice."
Even as Gutman pointed out Sanders' track record of support for other progressive causes, he said of Sanders, "His central concerns have never been war or civil rights or gay rights or women's rights."
"The very idea that something has failed, it's not a part of our language"
The day of the California primary, after the AP had declared Clinton the presumptive nominee, it was really hard to find anyone saying Sanders actually lost the race — or would lose it soon.
You didn't hear it as Sanders block-walked and greeted thousands on Hollywood Boulevard and at coffee shops and the farmers market in Silver Lake in Los Angeles. You didn't see it when the senator was on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, greeting fans and celebrity impersonators alike. You didn't hear it in his speech that night, or even later in the week, after President Obama endorsed Clinton.
Sanders campaigned that day, and in many of the days before and after, like a winner. And if you just saw those scenes from the trail in California, and not the news, you could have been convinced that Sanders had actually won the whole thing.
And perhaps that is the lingering juxtaposition of the Sanders campaign. Numerically, he has lost. Sanders will not be his party's nominee. But in so many ways, he has won, just by surviving this long. And not just surviving, but at many points thriving and influencing a movement that could have a very long tail.
"One of the great successes of this campaign is that Bernie Sanders has really electrified a whole new generation of young people to become engaged in the political process," Winnie Wong said. "And they're young, and they're not apathetic, and they're energetic, and they're smart."
Wong contends that Sanders fundamentally changed America's political conversation, making a movement like Occupy, and an ideology like Democratic socialism, mainstream.
"Prior to Bernie Sanders, nobody ever dared utter the word socialism," she said. "Forget about the 10 million who cast their vote for a Democratic socialist. Think about the many more millions, across this country, who are talking about it, probably right now. That's even more important."
If you look at Sanders' campaign as part of a larger progressive, populist movement that had been building for years — from Zuccotti Park to Burlington, Vt., and almost to the White House — all of a sudden it makes more sense. And it also feels, in many ways, not finished just yet.
"People in social movements don't really see an end to their work," Wong said. "The very idea that something has failed, it's not a part of our language."
After being rejected from the stage at Plaza Mexico in Lynwood, Calif., that Sunday before the state primary, Sanders walked into a Mexican restaurant at the mall and enjoyed a meal with his family. A mariachi band played and, at one point, Sanders danced with one of his grandchildren.
The embarrassment of the moments before seemed to have been forgotten; the candidate was having a good time. And when he left the mall, a large crowd was waiting to greet him. Regardless of what happened at the stage, he was able to interact, positively, with hundreds of potential voters.
But already, tweets and videos recounting the details of Sanders being blocked from the stage were circulating on social media, with many using the moment to mock Sanders and critique his record of outreach to Latino communities.
Traveling press asked for comment on the incident, and soon spokesman Michael Briggs told a Washington Post reporter that, in fact, Sanders hadn't been denied a microphone in Lynwood, contradicting multiple eyewitness reports.
Briggs told a Washington Post reporter that another supervisor at the event had come to offer Sanders a place on the stage and "to say Bernie was welcome." But, Briggs said, it was, in fact, the Sanders campaign that denied the festival organizers.
"By that point," he said, "we had moved on."
It was a moment that, in several ways, could symbolize Sanders' entire campaign — a victory and a defeat, all at the same time. And, in spite of it all, a dogged determination to keep pressing ahead — and to seemingly never, ever admit you've lost. | 0fake |
When Obama Admin Went After Banks, It Forced Them to Give Big Money to Some...Questionable Groups | Share on Twitter
A new study shows that after the Obama administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) collected billions in settlement money from U.S. banks after the mortgage collapse of 2008, it directed millions upon millions of dollars to several non-government organizations.
Peter Schweitzer, author of the book “Clinton Cash” and founder of the Government Accountability Institute , told Fox News's Megyn Kelly that tens of millions of dollars from the record-breaking settlements in the bank deals were sent to these ' charitable' groups , some of whose jobs would be to get out the vote for... Democrats:
“The banks are obviously eager to settle [and not go to trial]. [P]art of that settlement... will go to the victims of the crime you committed, but some of the money will go to pay restitution in the form of giving that money to non-profit organizations. These are non-profit organizations that are overwhelmingly progressive and serve as an adjunct to the Democratic party.”
One group he mentioned on “ The Kelly File ” was fairly benign-sounding:
“One organization that has received millions of dollars is in New York called the Asian Americans for Equality. Sounds like a great idea, right? The problem is, when you look into this organization which got money from banks via the Department of Justice, this is an organization affiliated with the Communist Workers Party. I didn't even know the Communist Workers Party was around anymore and, in fact, the organization that received this money is sympathetic to the North Korean regime.”
Indeed, the New York Times reports that many of the founders of Asian Americans for Equality (AAE) were active members of the Communist Workers Party, though AAE has since distanced itself from any modern-day ties.
In August, Andy Koenig of the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the giveaways by the DOJ to friendly groups, or as he put it, “a handout to the administration's allies” [emphasis added]:
"Some groups on the list—Catholic Charities, for instance—are relatively nonpolitical. Others—La Raza, the National Urban League, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and more—are anything but.
Many of these groups engage in voter registration , community organizing and lobbying on liberal policy priorities at every level of government. They also provide grants to other liberal groups not eligible for payouts under the settlements. Thanks to the Obama administration, and the fungibility of money, the settlements’ beneficiaries can now devote hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to these activities."
Judicial Watch began an investigation in 2012, and here's what it said about how the Obama administration ladled out the vast amounts of money:
“The Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine which 'qualified organizations' get leftover settlement cash and Democrat-tied groups like the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR) stand to get large sums based on the hastily arranged deal which got court approval in just a few days.”
The disgraced ACORN , the group that used protests to pressure banks into giving mortgages to people who couldn't qualify , was among those receiving Obama justice department funds. The group is now known under its new name, Mutual Housing Association of New York.
The DOJ also gave funds to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which carries the very name of the legislation signed into law by Bill Clinton — The Community Reinvestment Act — believed by many to be responsible for the implosion of the mortgage-lending industry.
Some additional groups receiving the bank settlement money included:
Minneapolis High Rise Representative Council [ACORN affiliate]
La Raza | 1real |
Arkansas limits on abortion pill can proceed: appeals court | (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that an Arkansas law restricting the use of the so-called abortion pill could proceed, overturning a lower court’s decision in 2015 that blocked the law a day before it was to go into effect. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis sent the case back to the federal district court in Little Rock, telling the court it must estimate approximately how many women would likely be harmed by the law before the case could proceed further. Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which runs two of the three clinics providing abortions in Arkansas, sued the state in 2015, saying the law would deprive many Arkansas women of their right to an abortion. The law requires that any doctor dispensing abortion-inducing drugs sign a contract with another doctor who would agree to handle any medical complications that might stem from the drugs. The contracted doctor must have admitting privileges at a hospital designated to handle emergencies related to abortion pills. Planned Parenthood said it ran a 24-hour telephone helpline for patients and that medical complications were extremely rare, but that in those instances its doctors and nurses already have procedures to ensure a patient receives any care they need at a nearby hospital. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker sided with Planned Parenthood in 2015, concluding that it would not be able to find such a doctor and be forced to stop offering abortion services at its clinics in Little Rock and Fayetteville. Women in Fayetteville, for example, would then have to make two 380-mile (610-km) round trips to get an abortion at what would be the state’s last remaining abortion clinic, Baker’s ruling said. Ruling that this was an undue burden on those women and that Planned Parenthood would likely win its lawsuit, Baker granted a preliminary injunction stopping the law from taking effect. On Friday, the appeals court overturned that injunction. The ruling said the district court had “abused its discretion” and criticized it for not determining even approximately how many women would be affected. Planned Parenthood could win its case if the court found a “large fraction” of women seeking abortion-inducing drugs would face an undue burden, but the lower court failed to determine this, the ruling said. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement that “Planned Parenthood failed to show that the state law is a substantial obstacle preventing most women from having access to abortion services.” Danielle Wells, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the organization was mulling its next steps, but noted it would have two weeks under the appeals court rules to petition for a rehearing. “This law was written by politicians, and not doctors, and is part of a national strategy to end access to abortion step by step and law by law,” Wells wrote in an email. | 0fake |
THE CASE AGAINST SEAN PENN: Why Do Americans Who Love Their Country Still Support Him? [VIDEO] | From claiming any American who speaks out against Hugo Chavez should be jailed, to a photo op and interview with one of the most brutal Mexican drug lords in history. Sean Penn has openly supported Cuba s brutal dictator Fidel Castro, and made known his radical opposition to capitalism by supporting the former occupy movement (now the #BlackLivesMatter terrorist group). Despite the fact that he was a gun owner, Penn came out one year ago against the Second Amendment.The journalistic coup of the two-time Oscar winner secretly interviewing El Chapo and posing for a handshake pic with the world s once-most-wanted drug lord is only the latest surreal saga in Penn s personal life. Since the early 2000 s, Spicoli has staked himself as one of the politically active stars in America whether or not anyone likes it.Scores of people however, have called for Sean Penn to be arrested for meeting the world s most wanted drug lord El Chapo while he was on the run and not turning him in to the authorities. Twitter users demanded Penn be questioned by investigators as to why he met with the violent cartel leader and did not help the military track him down.The double Oscar-winning actor and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo who brokered the meeting with the self-confessed biggest drug trafficker in the world are now under investigation in Mexico.His secret meeting with the notorious drug lord, is just one of many activist stunts by leftist actor Sean Penn.Penn s previous diplomatic doozies have led to eye-rolling Oscar jokes, dubious friendships with foreign leaders and accusations of hiring a PR team to show off his odd brand of good will.Here is Penn in a repulsive attempt to paint brutal dictators, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro as leaders we should respect. Penn says, the demonization of these people is a myth :Here s a short look at Penn s past political antics.As America s violent response to the 9/11 attacks started escalating in 2002, Penn spent $56,000 to publish an open letter in the Washington Post urging President Bush to ease up on Middle East involvement. You lead, it seems, through a blood-lined sense of entitlement, Penn wrote to the president.Many others in Hollywood may have found Penn sentiments sensible but some of his specific recommendations, not so much.Among his peacetime prescriptions for the prez: I beg you Mr. President, listen to Gershwin, read chapters of Stegner, of Saroyan. But at least one world leader apparently agreed with Penn s prose: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who used Penn s letter to trash Bush during some of his own speeches, according to The Telegraph.The Washington Post apparently wasn t a big enough forum for Penn s Bush bashing.Here s an excerpt from an interview with Piers Morgan where Penn explains his support for a second term for Barack Obama in a completely incoherent manner:Penn pulled off one major upset at the 2004 Oscars by nabbing the Best Actor statue for Mystic River, beating out Bill Murray in Lost in Translation as the expected winner.But the second shock came as soon as Penn opened his mouth following a standing ovation. If there s one thing that actors know other than that there were no WMD s it s that there is no such thing as best in acting, he said at the start of his speech, earning some scattered claps and cheers before beginning his long-winded thank yous.More than a decade later, his ill-timed political jab hasn t fared much better: The film site Next Movie cited Penn s speech as one of the worst in Oscar history.At first, Penn defensively denied rumors that he was close with the Venezuelan president, who reportedly took an interest in Penn thanks to his anti-Bush newspaper ads. You don t know that I have a friendship with Hugo Ch vez, you just read it in some piece, he told the Telegraph in 2007.Watch here at the 1:12 mark, where Penn talks about imposing a jail sentence on anyone who speaks out against Chavez:But over the years, Penn opened up about his Chavez love as many others accused the president of running his country as dictator. Penn admitted a relationship and told Bill Maher that American journalists who slam Chavez should be imprisoned.Penn sealed the deal upon Chavez s death from cancer in 2013, calling the president a friend in a statement and adding: Today the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. For entire story: NYDailyNews | 1real |
Trump Retweets Article That Destroyed Him, And He Was Too Dumb To Know It | Donald Trump is perhaps the most predictable person who s ever run for president. If someone disses him, they are enemies for life, and if someone says something positive about the self-proclaimed (we won t believe it unless he releases his tax returns) billionaire, brutal dictator or not, they will have Trump s loyalty and respect.Now, things get a little weird when people are sarcastic, as is the case with a Washington Post article that, if you didn t read it, might be something somewhat positive about the GOP nominee. Trump obviously didn t read the article. He would have hated it, but he did retweet the article entitled Donald Trump s birther event is the greatest trick he s ever pulled : Donald Trump s birther event is the greatest trick he s ever pulled https://t.co/zvVQnxeiQ9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2016Most of us, at least those of us who are capable of critical thought, would probably not assume that the article was a positive portrayal of Trump s birther farce, but, well, we re talking about Trump. As for the article, no, it was pretty brutal toward Trump. Here are a few snippets:Donald Trump is, at heart, a showman. He rose to national fame thanks to star turns on reality TV in which he played the tough-talking boss to a group of aspirants hoping to become as successful as he has been in business. His great gift is the ability to draw attention and then use that attention for his own, usually commercial, purposes.Trump might have read that far. He s proud of being a showman and he s pretty damned good at it, in much the same way that snake oil salesmen were good at their jobs.Trump may have outdone himself on Friday morning. He and his campaign touted a major announcement at his newly opened hotel in Washington, D.C., at 10 a.m. The word was that Trump would walk away from his past skepticism about President Obama s citizenship while also laying the blame for the birther movement at the feet of Hillary Clinton. (That, of course, isn t true according to numerous fact-checkers but no matter: Trump planned to say it anyway.)The article goes on to fact check some of Trump s many lies, especially in regard to the birther controversy. No, Hillary Clinton didn t start it and yes, Donald Trump has long been a birther.The Washington Post then went on to describe the event, and it wasn t flattering. This is how they described Trump s announcement:Three sentences from Trump himself one that is totally false and two others that represent a total reversal from a position he held as recently as, well, Thursday night.Clearly, Trump didn t read the article, which is a little frightening. Presidents are given several pages, if not hundreds, of important documents ever single day. It s critical that our President read and not just assume and retweet.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1real |
Creating an Anti-Muslim Bias at a Canadian University | Professor Dr. Mujahid Kamran, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Punjab, on the Suspension without Pay of Prof. Tony Hall 1 Shares
1 0 0 0
Professor Mike Mahon President and Vice Chancellor Lethbridge, Canada
Dear Professor Mike Mahon,
It is with a sense of great sadness that I have learnt of the suspension, without pay, of Professor Anthony Hall, one of the most distinguished scholars, not only of the , but a researcher and writer who is recognised and respected globally. In a country like Pakistan, which is far behind Canada in term of education, research and scholarship, no teacher, or non-teacher, of any university can be suspended without pay. When someone is suspended, he or she is entitled to draw full pay for the period of suspension. If Canada is doing better than us on various scales, then one would expect that suspension without pay puts Canada behind us in terms of due process and in terms of requirements demanded by the principles of justice and fair play. I may add respectfully that in Pakistani universities no one is generally suspended unless a fact finding committee has first looked into the matter thoroughly and found prima facie evidence of wrong doing. The decision of the administration also destroys the concept of a tenured appointment.
From his writings, that I have read over a period of time, it is evident that Professor Anthony Hall is a scholar whose work exposes the crimes and conspiracies of those who are taking the world headlong into a global war and simultaneously transforming it into a global slave state. His analysis is impeccable and his grasp of facts masterly. And his writings are devoid of any prejudice against any ethnic group or nation. , or any university for that matter, should have been proud to have Professor Hall on its faculty. His suspension creates an impression, even from this distance from where I write, that certain powerful interests that aim destroying free speech, have targeted people like Professor Anthony Hall, who speak out for democracy, decency, peace and justice.
I have found out from the internet that B’nai Brithis behind this movement against shutting down free speech. It is quite evident that the charge that Professor Anthony Hall has created a discriminatory atmosphere is highly dubious. To the contrary, it appears that an anti-Muslim bias has been created in your institution by Professor Hall’s unfortunate suspension.There is also a strong impression that B’nai Brith has taken over the administrative decision making at Lethbridge.
MORE... Suspension of Tenured Professor Lacks Due Diligence Toxic Mind Control Contaminates The Public Sphere Irish human rights activists against freedom of speech? B’nai Brith attack on Canadian professor has roots in Zionist false flag tactics It is also worrying that B’nai Brith have now targeted Canadian universities and Canadian society. If this is the case then the situation is disturbing, not just for Lethbridge and Canada, but for all freedom loving people worldwide. When I was a young student at University of Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1970s, I used to meet many Canadian students and I found that they invariably stood for freedom of speech and for tolerance and justice. The suspension of Professor Hall is inconsistent with my image of the Canadian people that I had then formed.
On behalf of the academic community of the University of the Punjab (established 1882) I urge you to kindly reconsider your decision to suspend Professor Hall. It will go a long way in rehabilitating the impression of people worldwide about the upholding of free speech, academic freedom, and genuine scholarly discourse at Lethbridge.
With my humble regards and very best wishes
Professor Dr. Mujahid Kamran Vice Chancellor University of the Punjab (since January 2008) Author of a dozen books including: Einstein and Germany 2009 The Grand Deception: Corporate America and Perpetual War 2010 The Inspiring Life of Abdus Salam 2013 9/11 & The New World Order 2013 International Bankers, World Wars I, II and Beyond 2015 Winner Abdus Salam Prize 1985 (this prize was instituted from Salam’s Nobel Prize money) Presidential Pride of Performance Award 1999 Awarded Sitara- e -Imtiaz (i.e. Star of distinction, awarded by Government of Pakistan) 2015, etc | 1real |
PRESIDENT TRUMP To CBS This Morning: “I have no relationship with Barack Obama” [VIDEO] | Here is a bit of the transcript of their discussion via CBS:JOHN DICKERSON: Did President Obama give you any advice that was helpful? That you think, wow, he really was DONALD TRUMP: Well, he was very nice to me. But after that, we ve had some difficulties. So it doesn t matter. You know, words are less important to me than deeds. And you you saw what happened with surveillance. And everybody saw what happened with surveillance JOHN DICKERSON: Difficulties how?PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: and I thought that well, you saw what happened with surveillance. And I think that was inappropriate, but that s the way JOHN DICKERSON: What does that mean, sir?PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You can figure that out yourself.JOHN DICKERSON: Well, I the reason I ask is you said he was you called him sick and bad .PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look, you can figure it out yourself. He was very nice to me with words, but and when I was with him but after that, there has been no relationship. "Words are less important to me than deeds." President Trump on why he now has "no relationship" w former President Obama. #WHThisMorning pic.twitter.com/16UimVudb3 CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) May 1, 2017JOHN DICKERSON: Every president makes the Oval Office theirs. What have you done to make this yours?PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, a lot of things. We had these incredible flags including the American flags. And they were in different rooms. And they were always being pushed around because they didn t have enough room. And I said, How beautiful, the base, the flags, Army, Navy, Marine Corps. I mean, just so beautiful. Just so beautiful. The Coast Guard flag over here.And I said, Well, let s see how they look in the Oval Office. So the flags were up. The picture of Thomas Jefferson I put up. The picture of Andrew Jackson I put up because they said his campaign and my campaign tended to mirror each other. So we did a lot of actually we did a lot of work. It s it s a much it s a much different look than it was previously. | 1real |
Rachel Maddow Airs Headline Linking Venezuelan Protests to Trump, Retracts Online - Breitbart | A segment of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show displayed a chyron implying the widespread protests in Venezuela were actually against President Donald Trump. [The show, which aired on Thursday, implied that a donation to Donald Trump’s inauguration of $500, 000 from a subsidiary of a Venezuelan oil company was a cause of recent protests. A headline at the bottom of the screen during a segment explaining the donation read: “Unrest in Venezuela Over Trump Donations,” without noting the growing food and medicine shortages that have occurred there as a direct result of nearly two decades of socialist mismanagement. During the segment, Maddow claimed, “Venezuelans are enraged anew over by this brand new FEC filing from the White House [showing] … that Venezuela’s oil company somewhere found a half million dollars to donate to the very, very, very inexplicably overfunded Trump inauguration. ” Maddow was referring to a report showing that Citgo Petrol, the American affiliate of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) the oil company, donated $500, 000 to the Trump inauguration. A report from November last year found that Venezuela’s oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela, has $11 billion unaccounted for in the past decade. While Maddow did not directly link the protests to the donation, the only thing close to an explanation for the protests she gave was that “the sanctions that the U. S. put on Venezuela were put there in 2014, after 43 people got killed while participating in protests. ” Nowhere in the segment are socialist policies or political oppression, including the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience, mentioned, nor does she mention that the victims in the 2014 protests were largely killed by state police, national guard, or socialist gangs. There is no evidence suggesting the reason behind the civil unrest was the donation. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who was recently banned from holding public office for 15 years without cause, called for protests to fight the government’s military plan designed to silence opposition, promising that they “will not rest until Venezuela returns to constitutional order. ” Many Venezuelans are starving living under the socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro. The average Venezuelan lost nearly 20 pounds throughout 2016 due to food shortages, according to a recent poll. Over 15 percent of Venezuelans rely on industrial waste as food to survive. Maddow failed to link any of Venezuela’s socialist policies, such as the mass nationalization of industries, to the country’s current crisis. The show later apologized for the chyron and updated it in its web version of the broadcast. “Rachel was clear in calling the protests in Venezuela ‘’ but the banner on the screen while she said it was not correct. As a TV show, we have to get them both right, and sometimes we miss,” MSNBC said in a statement. The version of the segment posted online no longer includes the chyron to reflect the fact that producers did not, in retrospect, consider it an accurate representation of the situation in Venezuela or of Maddow’s commentary. Late dictator Hugo Chávez enacted sweeping socialist reforms to cripple the nation’s economy, including the aforementioned seizures of corporations, which resulted in many international corporations fleeing the country. Following his death, Nicolás Maduro has overseen mass shortages of food, medicine, and electricity, imposing a ration system and strict price controls, which have exacerbated the problem. This week, the Venezuelan opposition held the “mother of all protests” across the country, calling for an end to Maduro’s rule and the socialist policies that have led to the country’s decline. On Thursday, General Motors announced it had ceased all its Venezuelan operations after the government seized control of its plant in the city of Valencia. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that 20 people have been killed in recent demonstrations, as protesters clashed with riot police and militias. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0fake |
Difficult Questions: How Much the Clinton-Trump Debates Matter - The New York Times | Forty years later, a moment in the annals of presidential debates remains a classic, worth recalling as Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump prepare to go head to head on Monday. “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” President Gerald R. Ford declared when he went up against Jimmy Carter in 1976, “and there never will be under a Ford administration. ” Reality could not have been more starkly different, and it was reflected in the startled reaction of a debate panelist who had brought up the issue: Max Frankel, a senior editor at The New York Times, who then became the newspaper’s editorial page editor and later executive editor. “I’m sorry,” Mr. Frankel said. He continued: “Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence and occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it’s a Communist zone?” Undeterred, Ford went on to say that several Eastern European nations he named did not think of themselves as and that “the United States does not concede” any domination exists. His misstep and the panelist’s instant response are recalled in an examination of presidential debates by Retro Report, a series of documentaries that explore important news stories of the past and their lasting impact. How deeply the debaters should be scrutinized is a question with special resonance this year, given that Mr. Trump, in particular, has earned enough “Pinocchios” from fact checkers to fill many Geppetto workshops. Then, too, the scheduled moderator for a third debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News, has shrugged off suggestions that it is his duty to hold the candidates accountable if they leave critical facts in the dust. “I don’t view my role as ” he said, a comment that has drawn considerable fire. “” even if it was not called that, became the most enduring memory from that 1976 debate. Actually, Mr. Frankel thought he was tossing the president a lifeline, not a gotcha line. “My giving Ford a chance to clarify was instinctive,” born of journalistic tradition, he said in a recent email exchange. “We do not trap a president with trick questions or acquiesce in confusion. We aim to explain policy, and should follow up if he has left his meaning unclear. ” Across the years, presidential debates have tended to be remembered less for their intellectual heft than for their gaffes and be it Ford’s stumble, or Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again” riposte in 1980, or Michael Dukakis’s bloodless answer in 1988 on how he would react if his wife were raped and murdered, or George Bush’s impatient glance at his wristwatch in 1992, or Al Gore’s exasperated exhaling in 2000 — proof that Herman Hupfeld didn’t get it quite right in his song, “As Time Goes By,” of “Casablanca” fame. Sometimes, a sigh is not just a sigh. But whether bloopers and snappy retorts are game changers is a question that has dogged presidential election debates since the first one, held on another Sept. 26, in 1960, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Their encounter is Retro Report’s main focus, notably the story line that swiftly took root. It held that Kennedy won on good looks alone, that against a light backdrop he appeared crisp and commanding in his dark suit while Nixon, recovering from an injury, looked pale and sweaty, his bearing hardly improved by an gray suit. Those who saw none of that and only listened on radio — a far more common situation in 1960 America than today — believed Nixon had triumphed. So the story went. Many scholars have debunked that narrative, among them David Greenberg, a professor of history, journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. In the Retro Report video, Professor Greenberg contends that Kennedy’s overall performance, not just his looks, won the day. He showed, as a senator, that he could hold his own again a sitting vice president. As for Nixon’s supposedly prevailing on radio, the evidence for that is skimpy because, Professor Greenberg noted, no scientifically rigorous surveys were done at the time. (Whatever the reality, Nixon felt burned by the experience and came to view television warily — until he ran again for president in 1968, this time successfully, tutored in the art of the camera by a young producer named Roger Ailes. Mr. Ailes, ousted in July as chairman of Fox News, is once again a media mentor, for Mr. Trump.) When it comes to substance, and not just a stumble here or a clever line there, can a debate make or break a candidacy? Experts have long been divided. Some consider the debates decisive. That view was offered last month by Gary May, a University of Delaware historian, who wrote on the Daily Beast website, “For good or ill, television’s laserlike eye reveals the candidates’ fitness for the presidency. ” Well, maybe not, suggests another academician, John Sides, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University. Writing in Washington Monthly in 2012, Professor Sides said, “Scholars who have looked most carefully at the data have found that, when it comes to shifting enough votes to decide the outcome of the election, presidential debates have rarely, if ever, mattered. ” Even blunders may not be right away. Mr. Frankel acknowledged that he himself had not immediately recognized the damaging potential of Ford’s “no Soviet domination” remarks. Many other Americans also failed to see it until newspaper and television analyses shaped their consensus that a serious presidential slip had occurred. These days, voters no longer need to wait for received wisdom to form. They can get it, or at least what passes for wisdom, in real time by watching squiggly lines on their television screens that represent focus group impressions of the candidates, or by following an avalanche of opinions put forth by the commentariat on Twitter and other social media. As a share of the United States population, the television audience for debates has declined. The number of viewers in 2012, about 67 million, was pretty much what it was in 1960. But there were an estimated 314 million Americans in 2012 and only 180 million in 1960. Of course, millions of people these days, both in this country and overseas, may be tuning in via online streaming services. In decline or not, “debates are important,” Mr. Frankel said, “because we normally get so few opportunities to meet the candidates and confront them with difficult questions. ” For Professor Greenberg, the merits of what the candidates say onstage may not be as important as the mere fact that they stand there, subjecting themselves to a grilling before millions of eyes and ears. “Debates draw strength from their status as important rituals,” he wrote in the journal Daedalus in 2009. The experience, he said, “serves, in some quiet way, to thicken our commitments to political life. ” | 0fake |
WOW! Do Anti-Trump Protesters REALLY Know What They’re Protesting? [Video] | Wow! Talk about clueless! Austen Fletcher approaches anti-Trump protesters and gets clueless answers on why they re against Trump:Thought you might enjoy this @PrisonPlanet @allidoisowen @JackPosobiec pic.twitter.com/kdYm2WlfdB austen fletcher (@fleccas) July 17, 2017One individual in a Spiderman mask crouching on the floor begins rambling semi-incoherantly, stating, No Trump says no to racism. Let s have a color-filled America, a melting pot, like America was supposed to be built on, he adds. The man is then asked by Fletcher, What about the diversity you re seeing on the Trump side? There s blacks, Hispanics, gays for Trump, there s a lot of different people that support Trump? Via: InfowarsHere s yet another video from Fletcher that proves the left is clueless and just protesting like sheeple:If You Thought Liberal Protesters Were Inarticulate, Uninformed & Indoctrinated, You Are Wrong OK, That s A Joke YOU RE RIGHT!!ENJOY pic.twitter.com/9zBT49gFPA Love America (@POLITICSandFUN) July 16, 2017Please check out and follow austen fletcher on twitter! | 1real |
Budget Cuts Agencies’ Reserve Funds to Block Border Wall Construction - Breitbart | The fine print in the bipartisan 2017 budget plan includes several paragraphs designed to prevent Donald Trump’s deputies from building a border wall with the reserve cash routinely stored in agency savings accounts. [That language in the 2017 funding bill means wall construction is even further away from starting than it was last week, said Dan Horowitz, editor at Conservative Review. “This [bill] would make it effectively that you are worse off than you are before — Donald Trump is signing into law a bill that downright violates his promise“ to build a wall, Horowitz said. The funding bill drafted by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and top GOP leaders does not offer any new funding for the wall, despite Trump’s request for at least $1 billion to build 62 miles of barrier this year. Instead, the bill grabs back more than $300 million from accounts at the Department of Homeland Security, including a $187 million in cash seized from drug smugglers and other criminals. The $187 million is held in the Treasury Forfeiture Fund. According to the agency website: The Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF) administers the Treasury Forfeiture Fund (TFF). The TFF is the receipt account for deposit of forfeitures made pursuant to laws enforced or administered by it participating Treasury and Department of Homeland Security agencies. The Fund was established in 1992 as the successor to what was then the Customs Forfeiture Fund. The TFF participating agencies are: Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division ( ) U. S. Department of the Treasury, U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Department of Homeland Security, U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Department of Homeland Security, U. S. Secret Service (USSS) Department of Homeland Security, U. S. Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security. That forfeiture language is intended to stop Trump’s deputies from using leftover funds to start building the wall, whose construction was authorized by Congress in 2006. The language in the bill also shows the Democrats will oppose Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposal to fund the wall with funds recovered from criminals. Cruz’s proposal is the “Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order” bill. The spending bill does offer $497 million for various construction programs, including “$341, 200, 000 to replace approximately 40 miles of existing primary pedestrian and vehicle border fencing.“ But it also says the money can’t be spent unless the agency develops a huge master plan within just 90 days that is approved by the undersecretary of management at the Department of Homeland Security. But every “dollar is earmarked for a specific wall purpose so there is no flexibility to reallocate funds,” said Robert Law, an advocate at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The budget deal does not include funds to hire extra border guards, as demanded by Trump. Democrats celebrated. “In a defeat for President Trump, the [bill] does not fund the immoral and unwise border wall or create a cruel new deportation force,” said a statement by the Democratic leader in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The bill included “key victories for Democratic priorities,” she said. The bipartisan budget deal was slammed by Law at FAIR. He said: In another backroom deal to fund the government, Congress has yet again ignored the will of the American people. President Trump campaigned on building a wall along the U. S. border and the American people demand it. Unfortunately, Congress continues to show how tone deaf it is by not allocating a single dollar for new border wall construction. Physical barriers are a proven, successful deterrent to illegal immigration. Even if a border wall is not practical along the entire southern border, there are definitely places where it would work. The failure to fund even that portion of a wall in this government funding bill shows that Congress is not serious about permanently securing our nation’s borders. On Monday, the Democrats’ restrictions were downplayed by White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who said: We have five months left in this fiscal year. We’re getting $1. 52 billion for border security, there’s a lot that can be done with that. We’ve got a lot of things that happen before the wall is built in terms of planning, technology, gates. There’s a lot of things that can do to prepare for that wall being constructed … this was a down payment for 2017 and as we get ready for fiscal year 2018 that’s start in the beginning of October, this will be a major priority. GOP leaders got some of what they wanted from Democrats by trading the away the priorities of Trump’s voters and ordinary conservatives, Horowitz said. The giveaways included cuts in funding for Planned Parenthood plus funds for the wall, while the gains include healthcare funds for Kentucky miners and language preventing curbs on major donations, both of which were sought by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell. McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan “do not share out values,” Horowitz said. The Trump administration’s inability to fight for its supporters goals is a huge threat to the Trump presidency, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “There’s a certain amount of political flexibility any president has to have — the problem is that on immigration ever time Trump has faced pushback [from Democrats or business groups] he either has retreated or has not asserted himself at all,” Krikorian said, adding: Telling the Border Patrol and ICE [U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] that they could start doing their jobs again was easy to do … but there are proactive things that need to get done, accomplishments that require pushing and work, and those so far we have not really see out of the administration … if there were some things they were strong on, and a couple of places where they were willing to give ground, I don’t think that would necessarily hurt him. But on DACA [former President Barack Obama’s 2012 ] they’re still issuing new work permits … so they have not met the concerns of their own voters a quarter of the way. “In the latest challenge on funding for the wall, as soon as Chuck Schumer said ‘Boo,’ the White House surrendered, and although some think it will be different in September, It won’t be,” warned Krikorian. Democrats fervently oppose Trump’s proposed border wall, which would literally and symbolically cement his 2016 victory and also block the northward migration of consumers, cheap workers, and future voters into cities. GOP leaders know their business donors oppose the wall, which would reduce the inflow of consumers and workers to the corporate members of the many Chambers of Commerce throughout the United States. In a Monday meeting with reporters, Schumer said several GOP Senators had told him they oppose the wall. | 0fake |
Iran nuclear deal must be changed for U.S. to remain in pact: Tillerson | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday the Iran nuclear agreement must be changed or the United States could not remain part of the pact. Tillerson, in an interview on Fox News, said the so-called sunset clauses, under which some of the 2015 deal s restrictions on Iran s nuclear program expire over time, were of particular concern. If we re going to stick with the Iran deal there has to be changes made to it. The sunset provisions simply is not a sensible way forward, Tillerson said. It s just simply ... kicking the can down the road again for someone in the future to have to deal with. | 0fake |
An Ambrosial Cake, and That’s Just the Filling - The New York Times | I’ve long been a fan of shaggy white coconut layer cakes, filled and frosted with meringue. But it was only recently that I encountered its more flamboyant cousin, the ambrosia cake. It’s got the white cake layers, billowing frosting and shredded coconut of the classic, crossed with the juicy citrus of ambrosia, the salad or dessert of oranges or mandarins, pineapple, strawberries and coconut embedded in whipped topping or sour cream. Sometimes a few marshmallows are thrown in for good measure. I didn’t grow up eating ambrosia. I didn’t even meet it in the flesh until college, when the cafeteria served it at the salad bar. One of my friends spooned up a hefty portion, explaining that it reminded her of her granny. It also came with a warning: “If your granny didn’t make it, it might not be your thing. ” My granny didn’t make it, and it isn’t my thing. But those same elements combined in a cake? That I can appreciate. Because there are so many ambrosia variations — almost as many as there are grannies — there are many versions of ambrosia cake. Some go all out in the fruit department, using oranges or mandarins, pineapple and bananas. Some add the likes of pecans, maraschino cherries and miniature marshmallows. All have some kind of white frosting and a liberal coating of shredded coconut. In my version, I opt for fewer elements and use them in several ways. I skip pineapple and bananas and stick with citrus, choosing seedless clementines over mandarins and oranges. Some are juiced and stirred into a tangy curd to slather between the layers. I cut others into sections to add a fresh burst of fruit. If you miss the pineapple and bananas, feel free to add some to the filling. Similarly, the coconut appears in the cake itself (as coconut milk, oil and, if you would like, coconut rum or extract) and again in a shredded form in the filling and as a garnish. You can use either sweetened or unsweetened shredded coconut. Sweetened is the more traditional choice. But with its abundance of marshmallowlike meringue frosting, this cake doesn’t need the extra sugar. But I go for sweetened coconut every time. I don’t love it as a salad garnish, but on a cake, it’s ambrosial. Recipe: Ambrosia Cake Follow NYT Food on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. | 0fake |
Trump gifts Farage Idaho | November 16, 2016
The President-erect has rewarded Nigel Farage, the People’s Prime Minister, with a significant portion of real estate and the keys to Ivana Trump. Addressing a packed crowd of cowering press, Mr. Trump said: ‘To thank Mr Farage for being a really great guy and good people, very good people, I have decided to give him the state of Idaho, for his own use and which he can pass on to whoever he wishes should he not be like me and immortal’.
‘He can do whatever he fancies to it. My advice would be to turn it into a golf course. And if you see any Canadians on it, shoot them. Only kidding there folks. Canadians never bother to go to Idaho, it’s too nondescript even for them. Anyway, Neil, go ahead. The state is all yours. You can twirl it around by the fuzzy bits for all I care. We’ve got plenty more states, 50 of them. You may need it to retire to, if what Mr Putin tells me is true. And I don’t care what all you carpet munching communists of the press say, Mr Putin’s great people, believe me.’
Mr Farage, 37, clearly delighted, said: ‘I am clearly delighted. This is the greatest day of my life apart from the one where we left Europe, the one where I asked the head of the European Commission, ‘Who are ya, who are ya?’, and when I won eight per cent of the vote in Bromley & Chislehurst, pushing Labour into fourth place. I shall be delighted to own Idaho, and thanks to a loan from Trumpfinance Inc, will be building a palace, the Farage Tower, in the state capital. Uh, what is the state capital of Idaho again?’
‘Who’s got the last laugh, eh? And I shall be advising President Trump that the sooner he leaves this treacherous union of states that is ruining America, the better. It’s time for Amexit.’ immacagain | 1real |
The Importance of Recreational Math - The New York Times | Baltimore — IN 1975, a San Diego woman named Marjorie Rice read in her son’s Scientific American magazine that there were only eight known pentagonal shapes that could entirely tile, or tessellate, a plane. Despite having had no math beyond high school, she resolved to find another. By 1977, she’d discovered not just one but four new tessellations — a result noteworthy enough to be published the following year in a mathematics journal. The article that turned Ms. Rice into an amateur researcher was by the legendary polymath Martin Gardner. His “Mathematical Games” series, which ran in Scientific American for more than 25 years, introduced millions worldwide to the joys of recreational mathematics. I read him in Mumbai as an undergraduate, and even dug up his original 1956 column on “hexaflexagons” (folded paper hexagons that can be flexed to reveal different flowerlike faces) to construct some myself. “Recreational math” might sound like an oxymoron to some, but the term can broadly include such immensely popular puzzles as Sudoku and KenKen, in addition to various games and brain teasers. The qualifying characteristics are that no advanced mathematical knowledge like calculus be required, and the activity engage enough of the same logical and deductive skills used in mathematics. Unlike Sudoku, which always has the same format and gets easier with practice, the disparate puzzles that Mr. Gardner favored required different, inventive techniques to crack. The solution in such puzzles usually pops up in its entirety, through a flash of insight, rather than emerging steadily via deduction as in Sudoku. An example: How can you identify a single counterfeit penny, slightly lighter than the rest, from a group of nine, in only two weighings? Mr. Gardner’s great genius lay in using such basic puzzles to lure readers into extensions requiring pattern recognition and generalization, where they were doing real math. For instance, once you solve the nine coin puzzle above, you should be able to figure it out for 27 coins, or 81, or any power of three, in fact. This is how math works, how recreational questions can quickly lead to research problems and striking, unexpected discoveries. A famous illustration of this was a riddle posed by the citizens of Konigsberg, Germany, on whether there was a loop through their town traversing each of its seven bridges only once. In solving the problem, the mathematician Leonhard Euler abstracted the city map by representing each land mass by a node and each bridge by a line segment. Not only did his method generalize to any number of bridges, but it also laid the foundation for graph theory, a subject essential to web searches and other applications. With the diversity of entertainment choices available nowadays, Mr. Gardner’s name may no longer ring a bell. The few students in my current batch who say they still do mathematical puzzles seem partial to a website called Project Euler, whose computational problems require not just mathematical insight but also programming skill. This reflects a sea change in mathematics itself, where computationally intense fields have been gaining increasing prominence in the past few decades. Also, puzzles, so addictive and easily generated by computers, have squeezed out “insight” puzzles, which are much harder to design — and solve. Yet Mr. Gardner’s work lives on, through websites that render it in the visual and animated forms favored by today’s audiences, through a constellation of his books that continue to sell, and through biannual “Gathering 4 Gardner” recreational math conferences. In his final article for Scientific American, in 1998, Mr. Gardner lamented the “glacial” progress resulting from his efforts to have recreational math introduced into school curriculums “as a way to interest young students in the wonders of mathematics. ” Indeed, a paper this year in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics points out that recreational math can be used to awaken “joy,” “satisfaction,” “excitement” and “curiosity” in students, which the educational policies of several countries (including China, India, Finland, Sweden, England, Singapore and Japan) call for in writing. In contrast, the Common Core in the United States does not explicitly mention this emotional side of the subject, regarding mathematics only as a tool. Of course, the Common Core lists only academic standards, and leaves the curriculum to individual districts — some of which are indeed incorporating recreational mathematics. For instance, math lesson plans in Baltimore County public schools now usually begin with game and puzzle suggestions that teachers can choose to adopt, to motivate their classes. The body of recreational mathematics that Mr. Gardner tended to and augmented is a valuable resource for mankind. He would have wanted no greater tribute, surely, than to have it keep nourishing future generations. | 0fake |
U.S. Treasury adds cash management measures due to debt limit | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday announced cash management measures to avoid a U.S. default. In a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, Mnuchin said the Treasury would no longer be able to fully invest in two retirement funds for federal workers. They are the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, according to the letter. All the funds would be made whole once the debt limit is increased, Mnuchin said. The U.S. Treasury is bumping up against the cap on how much money it can borrow to cover the budget deficit that results from Washington spending more than it collects in taxes. Only Congress can raise that limit. A temporary measure that suspended the debt limit expired on Dec. 8, although the Treasury has emergency means to continue to pay all its bills through January, the department has said. The United States is one of only a few nations that requires the legislature to approve periodic increases in the legal limit on how much money the federal government can borrow. | 0fake |
Steve Bannon Named Senior Counselor Signals Nationalist White House | President-elect Donald Trump has named Steve Bannon as his senior counselor and chief strategist. Reince Priebus will be the White House chief of staff.
The uproar came when the press release announced that the two would be equal partners in the White House, thus making Bannon one of the most powerful people in the Executive Mansion. It has been stated that the most effective way to influence the White House is to be named the president’s most important advisor.
Bannon’s place in the Trump administration is of significance in American politics. It is also one of controversy. The president-elect’s choice for his top aide was criticized by the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and multiple Democratic leaders. Harry Reid stated, “President-elect Trump’s choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that White Supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump’s White House.”
John Weaver, a Republican consultant to Governor John Kasich, sent a tweet stating “a racist, anti-Semite” was named an equal to Trump’s chief of staff and warned the nation to stay vigilant.
Bannon was a significant part of the creation and growth of the nationalist right, or alt-right movement, which welcomes those who are openly anti-Semites and racist. The Washington Post printed a similar comment when he became chairman of the Trump campaign, stating: “it was the latest sign for white nationalists, once dismissed as fringe, that their worldview was gaining popularity and that the old Republican Party was coming to an end.”
The Bannon Climb to the White House A former spokesman for Breitbart News, Kurt Bardella, told The New Yorker that Bannon attempts to ride the coattails of anyone who could grant him political power. He supported Sarah Palin, then the Tea Party, on to Ted Cruz, jumped to Ben Carson, and so on.
From 2008 to 2016, he studied Sarah Palin and political figures that held a right-wing status. He even made documentaries about these people, creating a kind of epicenter for the nationalist right, or alt-right, movement.
After President Barack Obama was re-elected, Republican leaders, the GOP business wing, and consultants decided their focus needed to be on immigration. Priebus was the chairman of the Republican National Committee and submitted a report stating that passing legislation for immigration reform was a necessary means for the survival of the party. This situation became Bannon’s window of opportunity.
He was open about his disdain for Fox News and believed Rupert Murdoch was a globalist. He thought of Priebus, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders as enemies. Bannon made Breitbart a rebellious hub, resisting all efforts to immigration reform. He developed a friendship of support with Senator Jeff Sessions, leader of the Senate opposition.
This divide created an opening for an unnoticed group of conservatives, who had been marginalized. They shared an idea to “promote the restoration of white culture.” Bannon provided Breitbart as an outlet to further the alt-right movement and bring it into mainstream conversation.
Journalists were sent to the Mexican border to interview Americans who believed they were victims of immigration. The writers used anti-Semitic terms in their articles while criticizing globalists and international bankers. Weeks before Bannon became chairman of the Trump campaign, he told a reporter for Mother Jones, “We’re the platform for the alt-right,” referring to the Breitbart News site.
The nationalist-right website encouraged any outsider who was a threat to Republican leadership. Ted Cruz was a key element of the government shut-down, in 2013. The news site celebrated the accomplishment. It supported David Brad when he defeated Cantor, in a primary, by verbally assaulting his Wall Street connections. The site even assisted in instigating the uprising against Speaker of the House John Boehner.
During the 2015 Republican primaries, Breitbart shredded the reputations of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. By the fall, Breitbart was the “Trump propaganda machine or Trumpbart News,” as referred to by critics.
When Breitbart News reporter, Michelle Fields, was grabbed by Corey Lewandowski for approaching Trump, Bannon took the side of the presidential campaign. He did not protect his own reporter while the campaign denied the incident.
In August 2016, he found the Golden Ticket. Trump asked Bannon to chair his presidential campaign.
Under the Wing of Trump The presidential candidate had already received criticism for using the vocabulary of white nationalists and anti-Semitic radicals. This, combined with his approval from the Ku Klux Klan made Trump an even more favorable ally. Allegedly, Bannon inserted anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric in Trump’s written campaign speeches and television ads. When asked about these invocations, Bannon stated that he supported “nationalism, not white nationalism.” He believes the European movements focus on the identity of the people as a nation, not racial identity.
He stated the approval of white working-class Americans could win Trump electoral votes from Michigan and Wisconsin, in the presidential election. These states have voted Democrat since the ‘80s. He did not believe Hillary Clinton had the same Hispanic and African-American support Obama had garnered in 2012. This would cause her to lose the Florida electoral votes. Bannon was right.
The alt-right nationalist has nurtured his connections with like-minded people in France, the U.K., Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. The first foreign national the president-elect met with was Nigel Farage, a friend of Bannon.
He has stated multiple times that American capitalism was constructed on “Judeo-Christian values.” He believes that when capitalism was most beneficial, the strongest leaders were also faithful Judeo-Christians. They were either active in the Christian or Jewish faith and it was manifested in their accomplishments. Would the Founding Fathers considered white supremacists?
Senior Council The senior counselor position has been held by David Axelrod and Karl Rove, most recently. The role is a high-level function in the Oval Office that involves communication with national and foreign governments. It could involve writing speeches for the president on any occasion.
Appointing Bannon to this position tells the nation that the philosophy of the alt-right voters will integrate into American policy. Indeed, it is the plan, of the president-elect, to deport millions of immigrants after his Inauguration Ceremony. Could this begin a new Holocaust?
By Jeanette Smith
Sources:
The New Yorker: Steve Bannon Will Lead Trump’s White House
The Jerusalem Post: Stephen Bannon in 2014: Racism will get ‘washed out’ of nationalist right
Fortune: Trump Taps Reince Priebus for Chief of Staff, Stephen Bannon as Senior Counselor
Featured Image Courtesy of Joel Hageman’s Flickr Page
Top Image Courtesy of Travis Nep Smith’s Flickr Page Bannon , Trump , white house | 1real |
Don Buchla, Inventor, Composer and Electronic Music Maverick, Dies at 79 - The New York Times | Don Buchla, a pioneer and maverick of electronic music who had a lifelong fascination with the ways that humans, technology and sounds interact, died on Wednesday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 79. His death was confirmed by his son, Ezra, who said the cause was complications of cancer. Mr. Buchla was an instrument builder, musician and composer. He conceived his instruments, including a modular synthesizer, as tools for creating previously unheard sounds and gave them names like the Music Easel, Thunder or simply the Buchla Box. His inventions were prized for the flexibility and richness of the sounds they produced and the possibilities they suggested. Mr. Buchla disliked the term “synthesizer,” which suggested to him a synthetic imitation of existing sounds. He was best known for the many devices he designed for his own company, Buchla Associates. But in a career, he also helped build (and sometimes ran) the Grateful Dead’s sound system in the 1960s, worked on NASA projects and devised early transistorized hearing aids and navigation devices for the blind. At least one sound from a Buchla instrument has been heard worldwide: the “pop and pour” sound created by the composer Suzanne Ciani and used in countless advertisements. In the 1960s, Mr. Buchla’s instruments represented what became known as the West Coast philosophy of electronic music: more experimental and less commercial, breaking away from tradition and virtuosity. “I always figured that if I made something that was too popular, that I was doing something wrong and had best move on,” Mr. Buchla told Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, the authors of “Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer” (2002). “And I’ve always enjoyed being on the edge. ” In the early ’60s, the Robert Moog, who died in 2005, and Mr. Buchla arrived independently at the idea of the modular synthesizer: an instrument assembled from various modules that controlled one another’s voltages to generate and shape sounds. Voltages could control pitch, volume, attack, timbre, speed and other parameters, interacting in complex ways. Mr. Buchla began designing his first instrument in 1963, but it was not completed until 1965. The first Moog prototype was unveiled in 1964. On the East Coast, Mr. Moog built synthesizers that could be played from a keyboard, a configuration that working musicians found familiar and practical. Mr. Buchla, in San Francisco, wanted instruments that were not necessarily tied to Western scales or existing keyboard techniques. To encourage unconventional thinking, his early instruments deliberately omitted a keyboard. “A keyboard is dictatorial,” he said. “When you’ve got a keyboard, it’s hard to play anything but keyboard music. ” While the modules of Moog synthesizers had straightforward names out of electrical engineering — oscillators to generate tones, filters to modify them — Mr. Buchla’s instruments had modules with more colorful names, like Multiple Arbitrary Function Generator, Quad Dynamics Manager and, for his noise generator, Source of Uncertainty. “I have always been outside, and I’ve chosen to remain there,” he said in a 1983 interview with Polyphony magazine. “I’ve been an experimentalist since really early childhood. ” Mr. Buchla was born in South Gate, Calif. on April 17, 1937, and grew up in that state and in New Jersey. He studied piano and, discovering a knack for electronics, began building radio sets. He studied astronomy, music and physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated as a physics major in 1959. While at Berkeley, where he stayed for postgraduate study, he worked on NASA projects, including controls for the Gemini space capsule. He also developed a navigational aid for the blind for RCA and the Veterans Administration in the early 1960s. And he made music, building string instruments and sound sculptures. His composition “Cicada Music” (1963) calls for “approximately 2, 500 performers. ” Mr. Buchla grew interested in musique concrète, an experimental technique using recording tape to manipulate sounds, and worked at the San Francisco Tape Music Center as both a composer and a technician. In 1965, with $500 from a Rockefeller Foundation grant made to the Tape Music Center, the composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender commissioned Mr. Buchla to build his first instrument, the original Buchla Box. It included a module that would transform both and popular music. Called a sequencer, it vastly expanded the concept and functionality of a tape loop by generating and repeating a chosen series of voltages, enabling it to control a recurring melody, a rhythm track or other musical elements. It would become an essential tool of electronic dance music. Mr. Subotnick used a Buchla Series 100 Modular Electronic Music System to create “Silver Apples of the Moon,” a 1968 album commissioned by Nonesuch Records. The composer Vladimir Ussachevsky ordered three for the studios of the Electronic Music Center (now the Computer Music Center at Columbia University). That order led Mr. Buchla to start his instrument factory in a Berkeley storefront so small that the instruments were often assembled out on the sidewalk. The Buchla Box also supplied sound for the writer Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, the freewheeling multimedia happenings at which attendees, including Mr. Buchla, used LSD. Mr. Buchla was at the electronic controls for sound and visuals at the Trips Festival in San Francisco in 1966, a pinnacle of the psychedelic era. In his book “The Electric Acid Test” (1968) Tom Wolfe wrote about the “Buchla electronic music machine screaming like a logical lunatic. ” After building part of the Grateful Dead’s sound system in the 1960s, he sometimes mixed the band’s live shows, adding electronic sounds from his Buchla Box. CBS licensed Mr. Buchla’s designs in 1969 for a division it owned at the time, but the partnership did not last Mr. Buchla’s instruments were not geared toward a mass market. He returned to developing and manufacturing instruments on his own. As the 1970s began, he saw possibilities in minicomputers, inventing hybrid electronic instruments, beginning with his 200 series Electronic Music Box. Mr. Buchla was the technical director, from 1970 to 1971, at the California Institute of the Arts, designing both musical equipment and computer languages for music composition. As technical director of the Electric Symphony during that period, he used electronics to capture and extend the sounds of orchestral instruments. He introduced his portable, programmable Music Easel in 1973 and started the Electric Weasel Ensemble, a quintet of Music Easel players. He also built electronic music studios for educational institutions, including Stony Brook University on Long Island and the Norwegian Center for Electronic Music in Oslo. By the end of the 1970s, he had invented a keyboard instrument, the Touché, and an electronic cello interface. His 1982 Buchla 400 Series included a video display. Mr. Buchla was a consultant to the contemporary music organization Ircam (Institute for Research and Coordination in ) in France, and he received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to design instruments and write music for a electronic orchestra. During the 1990s, he turned to designing MIDI controllers, alternatives to keyboards that send signals from a physical performance to a synthesizer. One controller, the Thunder, had 50 plates that responded to contact, pressure and location another, the Lightning, had wands responding to motion and gesture. And the Marimba Lumina, played with mallets, responded to velocity, position and contact each of its four mallets could be assigned its own sound. Mr. Buchla consulted for other instrument companies, including Oberheim, for which he designed the 1995 Oberheim and Moog, which manufactured his 2002 PianoBar, which employed sensors placed on a piano’s keys and pedals to translate a pianist’s performance into MIDI signals. As the 21st century began, there was a surge of interest in modular analog synthesizers — a backlash against predictable, sterile digital sounds. Mr. Buchla revisited his 200 series from the 1970s, updating it as the 200e. Yet his business ran into financial problems, and in 2012, as Mr. Buchla struggled with cancer, he sold the company to Audio Supermarket, which changed its name to Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments and made Mr. Buchla its chief technical officer, only to fire him in 2013. Mr. Buchla had a stroke in 2014. In 2015, he sued Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments to regain control of the company, contending that he had not been fully paid for the sale, that he was terminated without good cause and that the company had failed to “use reasonable business efforts to reach sales targets. ” The case went to arbitration in July 2015 and reached a confidential resolution this year. Besides his son, who is also a musician, Mr. Buchla is survived by his wife, Bonnel two daughters, Jeannine Serbanich and Erin Buchla and two grandchildren. | 0fake |
Scientists About To Pour $100 Million Into Looking For Aliens Around Weird Star | Scientists About To Pour $100 Million Into Looking For Aliens Around Weird Star 10/26/2016
THE DAILY CALLER
Astronomers are about to pour $100 million into investigating a star that may be surrounded by a large structure built by an alien civilization.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Breakthrough Listen project of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) are turning the program’s $100 million budget into investigating the star’s unique behavior.
“Everyone, every SETI program telescope, I mean every astronomer that has any kind of telescope in any wavelength that can see Tabby’s star has looked at it,” Dr. Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, said in a press statement . “It’s been looked at with Hubble, it’s been looked at with Keck, it’s been looked at in the infrared and radio and high energy, and every possible thing you can imagine, including a whole range of SETI experiments. Nothing has been found.”
Researchers will repeatedly scan the star for eight hours per night over the next two months to examine its extremely unusually dimming behavior. The star randomly dims by as much as 22 percent of its output at extremely irregular intervals. This is consistent with large orbiting masses, much larger than planets, blocking out some of the star’s light when they pass in front of it. All the natural forms of large masses which could cause KIC 8462852’s dimming aren’t consistent with the star’s age .
Scientists found the first possible evidence of this extraterrestrial civilization around KIC 8462852 last October , when astronomers with Yale University and other top schools published a study that used NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.
So far, astronomers haven’t found a single naturalistic explanation for the star’s exceedingly unusual dimming, which explains the extremely unusual behavior of the star. Astronomers have examined 500 other stars in the vicinity of KIC 8462852, and seen nothing else like it.
The dense formations near KIC 8462852 are similar to “Dyson Spheres,” hypothetical, are energy-harvesting “megastuctures” theoretical aliens could hypothetically build by rearranging the solar system. Scientists have pondered the existence of Dyson Spheres since the 1960s, thinking they could be a potential solution to energy problems faced by an extremely old civilization. SETI scientists have long argued humans could detect distant alien civilizations by looking for technological artifacts like Dyson Spheres orbiting other stars.
“We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real. We just weren’t able to,” Ben Montet, a Caltech astronomer who co-authored research on the star, told Gizmodo . “None of the considered phenomena can alone explain the observations.”
The best naturalistic explanation favored by astronomers, involves a huge mass of comets erratically orbiting the star and creating enough dust to dim the light, but a January analysis of the star’s history renders that hypothesis implausible, since the unprecedented dimming has continued for over a century. In order to dim for such a long time period, the star would need to have millions of times more dust and comets orbiting it than is the case.
Astronomers estimate that the dimming would require roughly 648,000 giant comets of 200 kilometers in diameter, all aligned to pass in front of the star. The chances of such a formation render it essentially impossible, and there is currently no remotely plausible scientific explanation for what is going on with KIC 8462852.
Astronomers have previously frequently misjudge abnormal stellar occurrences and, usually, the abnormalities are simply a new phenomenon.
A graduate student in astronomy, found an usual pulsing radio signal so predictable it seemed to be a sign of intelligent life in 1967. The astronomers even nicknamed the signal LGM-1, for “little green men,” and believed they had detected a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization , but it turned out to be the first pulsar. | 1real |
WOW! BARBARA BUSH Will Be Keynote Speaker For Baby-Killing Planned Parenthood Fundraiser | Her father is a staunch supporter of life. Although her mother was not vocal about it during her conservative husband George W. Bush s presidency, Laura Bush was an advocate of abortion and of homosexual marriage. Here she is two years after leaving the White House expressing her liberal views to Larry King:Their daughter Barbara Pierce Bush was a vocal supporter of gay marriage. She also supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Although it s probably a huge slap in the face to her father, Barbara Pierce Bush plans to help Planned Parenthood, the federally funded (for now) baby killing business to raise money at an upcoming fundraiser. Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush, will headline a Planned Parenthood fundraiser next week in Texas, according to a report from the Texas Tribune.Bush is expected to be the keynote speaker at the Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas s annual Fort Worth fundraising luncheon.President Bush pushed for anti-abortion policies during his time in the White House, but his wife Laura Bush has supported legal abortion in the past.The announcement comes amid the continuing debate over federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides a variety of reproductive health services to women, including abortions.Barbara Bush is the CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps and called Planned Parenthood an exceptional organization last year in an interview with the New York Times. Bush also attended an event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Paris. The Hill | 1real |
Checking In at Trump Hotels - The New York Times | If you were an alien and had just beamed down to Doral, Fla. the gold letters on a Spanish building amid 800 acres of golf courses would leave no doubt as to who owns the resort: TRUMP. You might, however, find yourself wondering if this Trump fellow is a reality television star, a titan of industry or a vintner. Trump chardonnay and Trump sauvignon blanc (about $25 each) line the shelves of the Marketplace Cafe at Trump National Doral Miami. Trump nail polish sets ($25) glittery Trump pouches ($30) and Empire by Trump eau de toilette ($62) are sold in a gift shop. A lounge area is replete with framed magazine covers of Donald J. Trump. There he is on Newsweek, mouth agape, pointing at the viewer, beside the words, “You’re Fired!” There he is in a tuxedo on the cover of Playboy with Brandi Brandt, a former Playmate, who appears to be clad in nothing more than his suit jacket. And there he is gazing at the camera, chin in hand, on the cover of GQ in an issue about “men who take risks and make millions. ” But it is the 2011 cover of a golf magazine, Fairways and Greens, that really grabs the viewer. Mr. Trump, with a golf club at his side, is shown next to the words: “President Trump?” Turns out, it was a prescient question. Mr. Trump’s candidacy has drawn attention not only to his policy positions, but also to everything that bears the Trump name, including about a dozen hotels and resorts from Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, to Turnberry Ayrshire, Scotland. This year, Trump Hotels — the hotel company founded in 2007 by Mr. Trump and three of his children (Donald Jr. Ivanka and Eric) — is planning to open Trump International Hotel Tower Vancouver, Trump Hotel Rio de Janeiro and Trump International Hotel, Washington, D. C. In coming years, the company said it will expand to Asia. And next year, it will introduce a lifestyle hotel brand. While the Trump name is ubiquitous, Trump Hotels may not be as familiar to travelers as larger brands with longer histories like Marriott and Hilton. Are Trump Hotels as big, brash and over the top as the man for whom they’re named? In visits to Trump properties in and around New York, Miami and Las Vegas, I set out to see how it feels to be a guest of the man who would be president. As you roll across the paths of Trump National Doral Miami in a golf cart emblazoned with a Trump crest, bird calls alternate with the thwack of golf balls, and every staff members offers a friendly nod or hello. Acre after acre is manicured with flower beds, orderly rows of palm trees and clipped greens where golf luminaries like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have trod. A fallen palm frond the size of a surfboard hadn’t been on the ground more than a few minutes before an employee pulled up in a golf cart, lifted it onto the roof and drove off, trailing an electric whir, and then, silence. It was a muggy spring afternoon, and the quietude belied the news that had broken days earlier. A staff member said the PGA Tour, which has held an annual tournament at Doral for more than half a century (the Trumps bought the property in 2012) was planning to move it — to Mexico. Mr. Trump, who last year had choice words for Mexican immigrants, broke the news on May 31 that the Tour is moving: “They’re moving it to Mexico City which, by the way, I hope they have kidnapping insurance,” he told Fox News. The PGA Tour commissioner said the move was not a political statement. The next day, however, Ricardo Salinas, the chief executive of the Mexican conglomerate that’s moving the tournament, tweeted at Mr. Trump: “You’re welcome to join us at the WGC,” he wrote, referring to the World Golf Championships. “Only good things can turn out, if you know the real Mexico. ” Though the PGA Tour may be a thing of the past, Mr. Trump has poured some $250 million into the resort’s future. In April, nearly 50 “spa suites” were opened near the Trump Spa, part of the property’s extensive renovation. The suites, decorated in rich blues with abstract art that evokes the ocean, include soaking tubs use of the Trump Spa lounge areas and, in the evening, Trump wine. Inside the suites (a night in a in June was $425) one finds Trump Hotel Collection products like bath crystals and a Trump yoga mat bag, one of several amenities to encourage “wellness. ” Gold is used sparingly: Objets d’art and glass boxes for storing jewelry or sunglasses lend an understated glamour. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that the spa suites were overseen not by Mr. Trump, whose aesthetic is more aligned with opulent hotels in the Middle East and Asia, but by Ivanka Trump, an executive vice president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization. Admiring a decorative gold sphere, I turned over a nearby vase to see if it had a mark from a designer like Kelly Wearstler or Jonathan Adler. It had a sticker: West Elm. Maybe someone ought to have peeled it off. But I’m glad they didn’t: Design trends today mix high and low with abandon one can picture young décor buffs sharing photos of the suites on Pinterest. The gold sphere was $29 to $39 on WestElm. com cream and gold coasters on the coffee table were $31 for four. A charming bud vase had a CB2 sticker ($10. 95 on CB2. com). Generally speaking, the hallways and rooms of Trump Hotels are surprisingly subdued, save for the occasional Trumpian flourish: a gold toilet handle, or chandeliers that appear to have been sized for the “Game of Thrones” giant Wun Wun. Beyond the gold and glossy exteriors and marble lobbies, the private spaces are decorated in grays, cream and chocolates. That restraint extends to other aspects of the properties. Music at the pools and restaurants is often, refreshingly, not at full volume. And the hotels are nonsmoking, even in Las Vegas, a city where you can burn your paycheck at any number of hotel casinos. Yet Trump International Hotel Las Vegas doesn’t have a casino. Rather, it sells Trump piggy banks for $10. The facade of the Las Vegas property is another matter it’s the hotel with the unrepentant Midas touch. The building looks like a bar of gold bullion but, after all, it’s Vegas Mandalay Bay is equally blinding. “Make America Great Again” baseball caps are proffered in the Trump Store ($30) and adorn the bar at the poolside cafe, H2 Eau, amid bottles of vodka. “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway,” reads a quote from Mr. Trump splashed across a mirror at H2 Eau, “think big. ” The maxim applies to the rooms. My room in Las Vegas, upgraded to a suite at — possibly because the staff is attentive and it was the third time I booked a hotel as a Trump Card member (the brand’s free loyalty program) or because the hotel figured out where I work (I didn’t book using a New York Times email or phone number, though I used my name) — included a refrigerator, a Wolf stove and a Bosch dishwasher. Even at Trump SoHo New York, the smallest rooms are an impressive 420 square feet. The price of admission befits a luxury hotel. The cheapest available room on a July weekend at Trump International Hotel Tower New York was $563 a night, according to a recent online search. At Trump International Hotel Tower Chicago, it was $420 a night. That said, rooms are not always out of reach. For instance, one search turned up rooms at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas for $165 a night. Restaurant prices are what one expects at hotels. At BLT Prime at Trump National Doral Miami, ahi tuna was $37 a New York strip steak was $51. The hotels also tend to have cafes and shops with affordable sandwiches and snacks. If, however, you get a yen for, say, the bag of gold Trump chocolate bullions in your room at Trump SoHo, it will set you back $35. Sitting at a table in the Trump Bar at Trump Tower New York, the skyscraper used as Wayne Enterprises in the film “The Dark Knight Rises,” Ivanka Trump said the Trump Hotels customer can’t be pigeonholed. “We have millennials,” she said one spring evening during a reception in conjunction with the N. Y. U. International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, “people from the entertainment business, entrepreneurs, titans of industry and those at the beginning of their careers. ” During recent visits to Trump Hotels, I met men and women on vacation or traveling on business, some with families. Guests spoke English, French, Chinese, Hebrew and more. The Trump Hotels website is available in several languages, including Chinese and Arabic, even as Mr. Trump proposes to squeeze China and bar Muslims from entering the United States. Asked to describe their guests, staffers at Trump SoHo said they are chief executives, athletes and actors. The Kardashians have been frequent visitors, though that doesn’t necessarily reflect their politics. “I know you like the Trump hotel, but honestly how do you feel about Trump running for president? ,” Khloé Kardashian’s friend, Malika Haqq, asked her in November on their vlog, Ebony Ivory. Ms. Kardashian replied: “Wha — how does that have to do with the Trump hotel?” “Well, no,” she continued, “I don’t think he should be president. ” Other celebrity guests have chimed in, too. After Mr. Trump said that he would bar Muslims from entering the United States, Lucy Lawless, who played the title role in the television series “Xena: Warrior Princess,” tweeted: “I used to stay in Trump hotels. Can never again,” and urged her more than 140, 000 Twitter followers to boycott the brand. Recently, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” created a fake commercial for Trump Hotels with the tagline “We’re not to blame!” and apologies to groups Mr. Trump may have offended. Indeed, some companies think Mr. Trump’s campaign has hurt his hotel business. Hipmunk, the travel comparison site, said in May that “while overall Hipmunk hotel bookings have been on the rise that has not been the case with bookings of Trump Hotels. ” The share of Trump bookings on Hipmunk as a percent of total bookings was down 59 percent year over year. In New York City and Las Vegas, Trump Hotels’ share as a percentage of each city’s total hotel bookings tumbled more than 70 percent. But Trump Hotels executives say the brand has never been stronger. Four of its hotels were among the 0. 4 percent of hotels that made AAA’s Five Diamond list this year. Asked at Trump Tower if Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign has helped or hurt the hotels, Ivanka Trump said “it’s been an upward trajectory,” adding that it may have been the case without the campaign. Behind the sheets, there has been controversy, from the bankruptcy of Mr. Trump’s hotels and casinos in Atlantic City, N. J. to a lawsuit involving Trump SoHo from buyers who alleged they had been defrauded. More recently, Mr. Trump is suing the chefs José Andrés and Geoffrey Zakarian, both of whom canceled plans to open restaurants in the Trump International Hotel, Washington, D. C. because of Mr. Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants. Still, the family business rolls on. In the fall the company plans to share details about its new lifestyle hotel brand, as yet unnamed. One name it won’t have is Trump. Is that because the name isn’t good for business? Ivanka Trump said it’s because some properties simply aren’t right for the Trump brand. It’s common, in fact, for hotel companies to spawn brands that don’t use their name. Marriott, for instance, has nearly 20 brands, including the . So, are Trump Hotels as splashy as the man for whom they’re named? Only on the surface. Beyond the facades and lobbies there’s a feeling of calm and comfort. No smoking. No gaudy colors. Even the service is what one employee called “ghost service” — omnipresent but silent. Mr. Trump, too, is omnipresent. Just not silent. In guest rooms he appears in videos about Trump Hotels on a television channel in a seemingly loop. “The thing I do best is build,” says Mr. Trump during one featuring the forthcoming Trump hotel in the nation’s capital, set to open weeks before the United States presidential election. “Better than ‘The Apprentice,’ ” he says. “Better than politics. ” | 0fake |
PHILIPPINES: 2016 Washington’s Fury as Philippine’s Elections Threaten US Anti-China Policy | Duterte takes clear lead in Philippine elections. (Photo: IBT)Andrew Korybko The DuranMay 2016: As Filipinos choose their next President on Monday, prospect of election of anti-establishment candidate threatens the geopolitical viability of the US s Pivot to Asia.The Philippines votes for its next President on Monday. Whilst the rest of the world pays little attention, strategists in Washington are worried.The electoral frontrunner is Rodrigo Duterte, an eccentric, no-nonsense former mayor from the southern island of Mindanao who commands a Trump-like popularity and an equally loyal following. He has shaken Philippine politics to its core over the past couple of months, defying establishment pundits who just as they did with Trump wrongly predicted that his campaign would fizzle out over the course of each passing week.Having totally underestimated just how dissatisfied most Filipinos are with the status quo, Duterte s rivals missed the chance to outshine him by his anti-system rhetoric. With the race in its final days that is now too late. Instead also paralleling what happened with Trump there are desperate calls for coalitions and deals to stop him.Should these fail and should Duterte win on Monday, he promises a geopolitical revolution unlike anything the Philippines has ever seen in its history. Pivoting To Asia Through The PhilippinesThe US s Pivot to Asia was announced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the fall of 2011 with the unstated but obvious goal of containing China. Key to this strategy is the rebalancing as the Pentagon calls it of an estimated 60% of its overseas forces to the Asia-Pacific theatre. Such a major deployment requires many more bases than the US currently has in the region. The US has therefore sought the help of the loyal leader of its former Philippines colony, Benigno Aquino III, to find a way to re-open its bases in the Philippines which under popular pressure were closed in the 1990s.Using the China threat as the plausibly justifiable reason for doing so, but aware that the Philippines people still resent their former coloniser and are proud of having forced the US to close its Philippines bases at the end of the Cold War, the US has devised what it calls an Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that allows for the rotational presence of American troops in at least five separate bases, one of which is located on the strategic island of Palawan that abuts the South China Sea.Although not legally permanent or officially controlled by the US, this wink-and-a-nod arrangement would in reality allow the US to redeploy its forces to the Philippines, returning the Philippines archipelago to the role of the US s second unsinkable aircraft carrier (alongside Japan) which it had during the Cold War.The China Containment Coalition The Pentagon plans to use the Philippines as the maritime lynch of its China Containment Coalition (CCC), gathering all of its allies navies together and deploying them within provocative striking range of China s claimed islands.The other three members of the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue Japan, India, and Australia would find their own way to rotate their military units throughout the Philippines islands as well, thereby forming the core of the CCC.To add a regional element to this mix, the plan is for the Philippines and Vietnam, both of which contest some of China s maritime claims, to intensify their strategic cooperation to the point of a mutual defence treaty. This would draw Vietnam into the network of the anti-China coalition being built up by Washington by using the defence ties between Vietnam and the Philippines to making the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue de facto allies of Vietnam.Altogether, the Pentagon plan is to produce a critical mass of hostile states near China s southern maritime border which backed by the US could quickly counter any moves by Beijing thereby containing it to the East Asian mainland.Duterte s RevolutionEverything was proceeding according to plan until Duterte began to question the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement . While his running mate has said Duterte would honour the agreement, he added that he would do so from a position of strength .Back in October 2014, Duterte went on record to say the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement should be scrapped if it allowed US servicemen in the Philippines to avoid justice for any crimes they committed.This pinpoints an issue very sensitive for Filipinos who have vivid memories of how US troops were able to escape punishment for acts of gross misbehaviour whilst the US military occupied its bases in the Philippines. Public anger over this issue was one of the key factors in mobilising local opposition to the bases and explains why many Filipinos oppose their return.Since it is impossible to imagine such an incident not arising at some point, it is all but inevitable that a situation will occur which will fulfil Duterte s criterion for scrapping the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement Taken together with Duterte s assertion that he intends to deal with the US from a position of strength it is easy to see how this might trigger the process of revoking the agreement.No Filipino politician has previously spoken about the US in this way. Moreover other things he has said also suggest an intention to send a strongly independent line.Not surprisingly the Pentagon-affiliated publication Starts and Stripes , which writes for US servicemen servicemen and their families, published a scathing critique of Duterte just last week. Here are some excerpts: With Filipinos set to choose among five candidates on May 9, Duterte, the incumbent mayor of Davao City who has said the U.S. should not meddle in our affairs, holds a strong lead, according to the most recent poll released Sunday.Duterte is very popular now because people are sick and tired of the same old, same old, said Virginia Bacay Watson, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. He s kind of a fresh face, fresh perspective, compared to the other elites who are running. Duterte has presented himself to voters as a straight-talker who is not part of the Manila elite someone who can get things done even if he needs to bend the rules to do so. That includes the country s foreign affairs. He feels that American influence is too strong, that we re too dependent on U.S. intervention in anything we do, said Babe Romualdez, an opinion columnist for The Philippine Star newspaper who has interviewed the candidates one-on-one about their platforms on the U.S. military and relations with China. He was an activist when he was a student and young lawyer, Romualdez said. I get a sense that he s saying the same things that most of the militants say. In Romualdez s interview with the front-runner, the candidate said we really don t need the Americans to deal with the Chinese because the Chinese want to talk to us alone. If I become president I m going to reach out to the Chinese and talk to them alone without American intervention, he said.Duterte publically opposed the Visiting Forces Agreement with the U.S. of which the EDCA was an amendment and claimed in 2013 that he had rejected a request by the U.S. to establish Davao as a base of operations for drones.Earlier this year, he was quoted saying that although the country was now bound by the EDCA, he had reservations about the presence of foreign troops. He added, We will not allow the building of structures. Clearly, Duterte is not the sort of leader the Pentagon envisaged for the Philippines. If he becomes Philippine President there will inevitably be concern in Washington that its elaborate plans for an anti-Chinese coalition in the region could be scuttled.The New Silk Road Pays A Pit Stop To The PhilippinesWorse still for the US Duterte is saying the Philippines and China could have peaceful and pragmatic relations with each other, engaging in bilateral dialogue over their disputes without the meddling interference of the US.What that would mean for the US is that the Philippines might become a tacit Chinese ally, which would completely upend the regional strategic balance.That is not what Duterte is actually calling for, but he did say is that he not only would be open to talking to Beijing, but would even further and engage in joint exploration in the South China Sea. Further, in seeking to develop the decades-neglected infrastructure of one of the most promising economies of Asia, Duterte has suggested that he would be open to inviting China to build a railroad and other types of connective projects that Beijing has become globally renowned for. This would of course mean replacing US contractors traditionally heavily entrenched in the Philippines with cheaper and possibly more efficient Chinese ones potentially causing US companies to lose out from billions of dollars of construction deals.Joint maritime exploration and infrastructure cooperation between the Philippines and China has the potential to turn the entire Philippines archipelago into the latest pit stop for China s New Silk Road, presenting the US with its biggest geopolitical setback since the reunification of Crimea with Russia.Concluding ThoughtsThe entire future of the US s Pivot to Asia hangs in the balance as Filipinos go to the polls in what is shaping up to be the most pivotal election in their country s history.While the US and its allied politicians are preaching a campaign of anti-Chinese fear mongering and war, Rodrigo Duterte is bucking the system and preaching the benefits the Philippines could reap from more pragmatic policies.By questioning the need for the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement and subtly threatening to subvert it, Duterte has made himself the US s enemy number one amongst politicians from the Asia-Pacific. No other individual is speaking out in this way and unlike others who have come before him, he seems to command a high level of genuine people support.If Duterte succeeds in winning the Presidency, it could represent a paradigm shift in Philippine history and the region s geopolitics, resulting in the US losing its second unsinkable aircraft carrier and having its Pivot to Asia ie. its plan to contain China fail before it has even properly got underway.***READ MORE PHILIPPINES NEWS AT 21ST CENTURY WIRE S: PHILIPPINES FILESSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1real |
Montana Dems Hilariously Troll Reporter-Slamming GOPer; Suggest He Should Go To Jail Instead Of Congress | We all remember how on the eve of Montana s special election, then-Republican candidate Greg Gianforte made headlines when The Guardian s Ben Jacobs asked him a simple question about the Congressional Budget Office s score on the disastrous GOP healthcare bill. Instead of answering like any normal person, or even just saying he didn t have a comment at that time, Gianforte suddenly became enraged without cause, and body slammed Jacobs, breaking his glasses and injuring his arm. Gianforte was later charged with misdemeanor assault. Despite this disturbing set of events, he still won his race.Now, Gianforte has just been sworn into Congress. The Montana Democrats had a surprise waiting for him on his first day a bit of trolling if you will. They sent Gianforte an orange jumpsuit clearly suggesting that he should be in jail for what he did to Ben Jacobs, and not heading to Washington to fill a seat in Congress. This was the official Montana Democratic Party, too not just some liberal activists with a sense of humor. They posted to their official website: Everyone knows you need plenty of suits to work on Capitol Hill. While millionaire Gianforte can certainly afford his own, we know he has a lot of legal fees to pay. So, we thought we d help him out and get him started by mailing a new suit to his office in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington. An orange jumpsuit, that is. Roy Loewenstein, the spokesman for the Montana Democrats, went on to say of Gianforte: Greg Gianforte was previously most well-known for losing the governor s race in a wave year. Now he s most well-known for pleading guilty to the Big Sky body slam. As a convicted criminal, he will be hidden by his Leadership and not given any position of influence in Washington. So, we got Mr. Gianforte a welcome gift to help his new colleagues identify him. Of course, the GOP was not happy with the bit of fun the Montana Democrats had at Gianforte s expense. the National Republican Congressional Committee was livid at the way the Democrats humiliated Gianforte, saying through their mouthpiece Jack Pandol: The swearing-in ceremony held today is about all Montanans regaining their voice in the House of Representatives, not partisan politics. Instead, Montana Democrats are crying over spilled milk simply because they lost an election. This isn t about losing an election. This is about the fact that we have a clearly violent man who is convicted of assault sitting in the United States House of Representatives, and the Republican Party has absolutely no problem with that. Then again, they ve always opened their arms to violent criminals, so nobody who has watched their non-responses to right-wing violence and the horrific scenes at Trump rallies is at all surprised. Gianforte will be right at home in Paul Ryan s GOP House Conference.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 1real |
Ben Carson Returns To Endorse Donald Trump – After A Vision From God (VIDEO) | Failed former presidential candidate Ben Carson is back and crazier than ever. The retired neurosurgeon who was once leading the Republican party before a severe case of dishonesty and ridiculous nonsense-spewing habit ruined his campaign is once again making headlines, for an even more awful reason than before.On Friday, Carson announced his endorsement of Republican front-runner Donald Trump at a press conference, saying that the two men had buried the hatchet and that Trump was the voice of the people to be heard. Almost as ridiculous as that endorsement is Carson s inspiration for such a horrible decision he says he was encouraged to support the disgraced candidate after a so-called vision from God.During the press conference, a reporter made the mistake of asking Carson just how much God played a part in his choice to stand behind Trump. The reporter asked, You said throughout your life God has led you to your most important decisions. This truly is an important decision. Did God lead you to Donald Trump? Carson said that God had given him several signs once of which included a vision from an unnamed friend. I prayed about it a lot, and I got a lot of indications, people calling me that I haven t talked to for a long time saying, I had this dream about you and Donald Trump I mean, just amazing things As if Carson couldn t make himself seem any crazier, he dialed things up when he started speaking about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, stating that she is of the devil. Hillary Clinton was a great friend of Saul Alinsky. On a first-name basis with him as a student. He wrote the book Rules for Radicals and if you haven t read it, I recommend that you read it, and see the kinds of things that are recommended to change, fundamentally change, this nation from the great success we have to a socialist country. And the dedication page of that book says, dedicated to Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom. I don t want anything to do with anything like that. You can watch this outrageous part of the conference unfold below:Carson also said that he was afraid Hillary Clinton would destroy America a hilarious statement considering that most of the GOP is currently freaking out because Trump is leading the party and threatening to do just that. This endorsement from Carson is even more puzzling because just two weeks ago, Carson said that Super Tuesday voters were not quite that dense to help Trump become the nominee. The former candidate also said that voting for Trump was a very very bad mistake. Divine intervention is apparently a powerful thing and we now have Carson s visions to thank for the 700,000-person donor list that Trump just inherited with this endorsement.Featured image via Ben Carson Facebook page | 1real |
Jake Tapper STUNNED By Trump’s Stupidity, SHREDS His Denial Of Global Warming (VIDEO) | If there s one thing Donald Trump has an extremely hard time accepting, it s evidence and facts. It doesn t matter how much proven, scientifically backed data you put in front of the undeserving POTUS his first impulse is to whine about how biased and dishonest the information is, even when it comes to something as serious and common sense as climate change.On Friday, CNN s Jake Tapper tore Trump a new one by making fun of his denial of what is happening to our environment. In a segment on Australia s Great Barrier Reef, Tapper mocked Trump for previously calling global warming a hoax invented by the Chinese. As Tapper spoke about coral bleaching and the effects that the rising temperatures have had on the Great Barrier Reef, Tapper stated that coral bleaching was proof that climate change, at least partially man made, is destroying the planet, noting that once-colorful coral reefs off the coast of Australia are now being bleached white. Then Tapper made sure that no one forgot that the current President of the United States is an absolute moron. Perfectly explaining why Trump s climate change denial is devastating, Tapper said: This news comes at a time at a time President Trump has proposed cutting billions of dollars from programs to study and help combat the effects of climate change which in the past he s called a Chinese hoax. It is, of course, not a Chinese hoax. It s seriously depressing to know that the man in the White House has called climate change a hoax. At a time when we cannot trust our President to make decent decisions on behalf of our country (let alone the planet), we re lucky to have reporters like Tapper reminding us that denying facts has serious consequences. You can watch Tapper take Trump to the woodshed below:Featured image is a screenshot | 1real |
Meditation: The Chicago Cubs Winning Edge? | Meditation: The Chicago Cubs Winning Edge? Nov 7, 2016 0 0
It is no secret to sports fan around the United States that the Chicago Cubs baseball team just recently won the World Series, which was done for the first time in 108 years. Last year, the Cubs made it to the playoffs, but fell short of the world series. Still though, for an organization who has been used to losing for over a century, the past two years have been a delight in the fans’ eyes. Is it simply a coincidence that for these past two seasons, the Cubs have implemented meditation and yoga into their training regimen, or is there something more to it?
For major league outfielder Darnell McDonald has been the coordinator for the Cubs new mental skills program for the past couple years and has helped to sharpen the mental edge of the players he works with. The Cubs president Theo Epstein helped push for the creation of the program as he knows the importance of having a mental edge in the game.
“If you approached a player to talk to them about working on his mental game [20 years ago], his response would be, ‘You think I’m nuts?’ You still see that now and then, but that’s the exception, not the rule.”
Darnell McDonald explains that gaining a mental edge over opponents in major league baseball is important because of the incredibly high physical skills that all players have at that level.
“You learn when you get to professional baseball, that everyone is good…they’re really good. And so the separator is the 7th game of the world series; the teams that are able to execute under pressure. It’s when we take off the auto-pilot button and when we’re present and alive and aware.” Darnell McDonald, the Cubs Mental Skills Program Coordinator
The Cubs’ manager, Joe Maddon, has been a big proponent of the program as he meditates himself and understands the importance it can have on the player’s attitudes and their performance. He often says to his team, “I don’t ask you to be perfect, I just want you to be present.”
Jake Arrieta, a starting pitcher for the Cubs and last years Cy Young award winner (best pitcher), loves the program and has benefited tremendously from both yoga and meditation.
“I’m much better at it now. For me, it’s about trying to evolve and be better, not only as a player but as a person, too.”
Meditation has been scientifically proven to help people be more focused, helps to regulate pain receptors in the body, helps reduce physical and emotional stress, strengthens the immune system and helps people to get better sleep, which equates to a better recovery for an athlete’s body and mind. Meditation is spreading quickly in the sports world.
The professional football team of the Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll introduced mindfulness meditation to his team in 2011. Since the 2012 season, the Seahawks have made it to the playoffs the each of the last 4 years, while winning the Superbowl in 2013 and making it back to the Superbowl in 2014. The results of including meditation into training regimens speak for themselves.
Long time NBA coach Phil Jackson is an avid meditator and has discussed why he used mindfulness with his teams like the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers and says that it helped his teams communicate better and be able to handle frustrating or stressful events throughout any given game.
Do you know of other sports teams that use meditation in training or before games? How has it benefited you in games or practice?
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and practices health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, a family member or a friend as well as view other inspiring articles. | 1real |
When Does a Child Need a Sick Day? - The New York Times | The hardest thing about the decision may be when parents have to make the call: It’s usually during the family’s tightly orchestrated morning routine. “It’s kind of hard to make that judgment in the morning,” said Dr. Timothy Shope, an associate professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, who is the of the American Academy of Pediatrics book “Managing Infectious Diseases in Child Care and Schools: A Quick Reference Guide. ” “Sometimes very parents have only a short window to make a judgment before they have to activate their day, get the child on the bus,” he said. And those parents may be feeling pressure to get to their own jobs. In a poll of parents conducted by C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan and released last month, parents were asked about how they make that decision. Concern about the illness getting worse if the child went to school was very important to 60 percent of the parents, followed by concern that the child’s classmates might get sick (47 percent). This was especially true for parents of younger children, 6 to 9 years old. Parents of older children, not surprisingly, tended to worry more about children falling behind or missing a test. Parents also worried about logistics 11 percent cited not wanting to miss work as very important in the decision, and parents worried about finding someone to stay home with a sick child, especially those with younger children. “The most important thing to parents in the decision was the health of their child and the health of other children,” said Dr. Gary L. Freed, the of the poll. “That took precedence over the proportion of parents who were concerned about missing work. ” In terms of specific symptoms, parents said they would keep kids home for diarrhea (80 percent) or vomiting (58 percent would keep a child home for having thrown up once, even if there were no other symptoms) or for having a slight fever, even if acting normal (49 percent). But worrying too much about what may evolve over the course of the day, or even about other children getting sick, should not get in the way of assessing how your own child is looking right now, in the morning. “I think there are more overprotective parents than there are parents who send their kids to school too easily,” Dr. Shope said. “The primary concern I have as a pediatrician is that the parent make a decision about whether the child can effectively participate in the school day. ” That would rule out a child who is vomiting, of course, or a child who is miserable and feverish, and many school districts do have specific illness policies about symptoms like these. As far as spreading infection, the bad news is that many infectious illnesses are infectious well before symptoms appear, and continue to be transmitted after the child has recovered, while some children don’t get sick at all, but do continue to carry — and spread — viruses and bacteria that can make other children sick. Children should get their flu shots every fall that can prevent a great deal of misery and school absence. But there are a lot of other viruses out there, and infections can be spread by children who aren’t sick, or aren’t yet sick, or aren’t still sick. So we have to prevent transmission by emphasizing habits that improve hygiene and interrupt possible transmission, or, as we would say in the medical setting, infection control. And the good news is that as children get older, they can learn these techniques, which make even a symptomatic child much less dangerous to others. It is not, as we say, rocket science. Respiratory etiquette means coughing or sneezing into a sleeve or an elbow. And after immunizations, the single most important way to prevent transmission of infections in schools is the same as it is in hospitals (where you don’t have the option of excluding the sick people) good hand hygiene: when possible, hand sanitizer as a backup. “Encourage families to understand the importance of in both keeping their children healthier and also the children their children encounter,” Dr. Freed said. One suggestion is to teach children to lather for long enough to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Happy Birthday” twice. Hand hygiene is important for respiratory illnesses, which are most likely to be transmitted by viruses that get (mysteriously) from the mouth and nose onto the hands, and from there to other objects, from doorknobs to papers to pencils. But it’s also very important to prevent the spread of stomach problems a child who has diarrhea but practices good hand hygiene is much less likely to cause problems for anyone else, while an asymptomatic child could be incubating and spreading a GI infection. So we have to focus on what happens at the sink. The other good news, I suppose, though it can be hard for parents to appreciate this when they’re in the throes of negotiating who stays home and skips work, is that the infections that children get do build up their immune system capacity and make it less likely that they will get sick later on. It’s also important for parents to remember that if you make the decision to send a child to school, and then get that dreaded call from the school nurse, you haven’t made a terrible mistake or shown yourself to be a bad or uncaring parent. “You can’t beat yourself up for not knowing the course a condition is going to take,” Dr. Freed said. As a pediatrician, I am very familiar with the sinking feeling that comes when you hear that a child you thought was doing fine has in fact gotten sicker. As a parent, you have to make the best assessment you can in the window you have. Dr. Shope said: “It’s not really a doctor decision, it’s a parent decision. ” | 0fake |
U.S. decision on Jerusalem is destabilizing Middle East: Russia's Putin | ANKARA (Reuters) - Russia and Turkey agree that a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is destabilizing the situation in the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. Speaking in Ankara alongside Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Putin also said Russia hoped to sign credit agreements for the defense industry with Turkey in the near future. | 0fake |
COP21: 'Never have the stakes been so high' | Be part of CNN's COP21 coverage: We'd like to hear from you on how climate change could affect your local community. Upload your video here or tag #2degrees on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
(CNN) World leaders opened pivotal climate talks Monday in Paris saying the stakes are too high to end the conference without achieving a binding agreement to help slow the pace of global climate change.
"A political moment like this may not come again," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told leaders gathered for the conference. "We have never faced such a test. But neither have we encountered such great opportunity."
The talks began with a moment of silence for victims of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, and the tragedy served as a touchstone for world leaders urging unity and action.
"What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it," President Barack Obama said in his speech.
French President Francois Hollande noted that "never have the stakes been so high because this is about the future of the planet, the future of life."
"And yet two weeks ago, here in Paris itself, a group of fanatics was sowing the seeds of death in the streets," he said.
Speaking aboard the papal plane on his way back to Rome, Pope Francis said that the time to do something was now or never.
"We are on the brink. We are on the brink of a suicide, to use a strong word, and I am sure that most of those at the COP have this conscience, and want to do something," he said.
Obama told the conference that the United States recognizes its role in creating climate change and its role in solving the issue.
But he said the agreement should be global in nature, assertive and flexible.
"Here in Paris, let's secure an agreement that builds in ambition, where progress paves the way for regularly updated targets," he said.
He also addressed economic issues associated with climate change, saying recent economic growth in the United States has come despite a lack of growth in carbon emissions, proving that climate advancements need not come at the expense of the economy or individual livelihoods.
"That's what we seek in these next two weeks -- not simply an agreement to roll back the pollution we put into the skies, but an agreement that helps us lift people from poverty without condemning the next generation to a planet that is beyond its capacity to repair," he said.
He also said developed countries must help island nations and others that have contributed little to climate change but are the first to be feeling its effects.
"Countries should be allowed to seek their own solutions, according to their national interest," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called climate change "one of the greatest threats humanity is facing."
"Russia not only prevented the increase of greenhouse emissions, it has reduced them," he said, promising a 70% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2030.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a "comprehensive, equitable and durable agreement that leads us to restore balance between humanity and nature."
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminded the leaders of the "billions of people pinning their hopes on what we do in Paris."
"Let us do everything we can not to dash those hopes," she said.
Nevertheless, disappointed demonstrators turned out Sunday, and brief clashes erupted with police at the Place de la Republique, where peaceful protesters had placed rows of shoes and name tags to represent the crowds not allowed to show up.
Paris police Chief Michel Cadot said taking the candles and using them against police showed "an extreme lack of respect to those events."
Hollande called the clashes "scandalous." The French President said authorities knew "troubling elements" would arrive in Paris for the talks, and that is why "these sorts of assemblies were banned and some were ordered to stay home."
In many countries, people gathered to protest against human-made climate change Sunday. There is a broad consensus among scientists that global warming is driven by human activity, foremost the burning of fossil fuels.
A look at previous global climate change negotiations illustrates the challenge in achieving this year's goals, especially when it comes to the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.
The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol and dropped out of it completely in 2001. Canada dumped it, too, and China, India and other developing countries were exempt from it. | 0fake |
UNHINGED Trump Supporters Visit DC For Inauguration, Celebrate By SPITTING On Migrant Kids (TWEET) | President-elect Donald Trump set the stage for a truly hateful social and political climate when he began his presidential campaign by calling immigrants rapists and drug dealers and continuing to make moves to exclude them from the country in the following months.Trump s rabid supporters have latched onto that message and now that we are just a day away from Trump s inauguration, their vile behavior is only amplified now. Rep. Filemon Vela has just become the fourth Texas Democrat to boycott Trump s inauguration, and for good reason.Vela had originally planned to attend Trump s inauguration to provide a moment of healing and outreach but Trump s supporters have caused him to change his mind. In a statement posted to social media, Vela told of a disgusting interaction he d witnessed between migrant students and Trump supporters in Washington, DC for Trump s inauguration. He said: While visiting Washington, DC, 40 migrant students from my district were subjected to comments of beaners, burritos, and wetbacks from Inauguration attendees. One student was even spit on. And that wasn t all that made Vela change his mind. He was also appalled at Trump s final cabinet selection, which conveniently left out any Hispanics. Vela continued: Then, Donald Trump made his final cabinet selection ensuring that there would be no Hispanic representation in the cabinet for the first time in 36 years. Trump and his supporters are certainly sending a message to Hispanics and Vela noticed it a long time ago. In June, Vela condemned Trump in an open letter, which said: Mr. Trump, you re a racist and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass. Vela is now joining the dozens of Democrats that are boycotting the inauguration. In his statement, Vela slammed Trump for his repeated acts of disrespect for the 33 million Americans of Hispanic descent and widespread promotion of bigotry. In a statement that embodies how the majority of Americans are feeling right now, Vela said: The hope that his actions as President would not match his political rhetoric is becoming more and more of a distant dream. You can read Vela s full statement below:Filemon Vela statement: pic.twitter.com/gkaPt41sKA Abby Livingston (@TexasTribAbby) January 19, 2017Featured image via Ty Wright / Getty Images | 1real |
Charges dropped against woman who laughed at Trump nominee Sessions | (Reuters) - A peace activist who laughed at then U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing to become U.S. attorney general will no longer be prosecuted on charges of disrupting a session of Congress and demonstrating at the Capitol. The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia filed court papers on Monday, notifying a judge her office was dropping its case against Desiree Fairooz, a children’s librarian. Fairooz had faced up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if she were convicted on both charges at trial. She belonged to Code Pink, an anti-war group that often stages protests against politicians. The group accused federal prosecutors of overreaching and wasting money on the case. “We hope they will scale back this massive overreach and that the success we just saw in Desiree’s case will encourage more people to protest in the halls of Congress and on the streets,” Code Pink said in a statement on Tuesday. Fairooz laughed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January, after a lawmaker’s asserted Sessions treated all Americans equally. It was at the confirmation hearing for Sessions, who was then a Republican senator from Alabama and was later confirmed to become U.S. attorney general. Fairooz shouted, “This man is evil, pure evil” as police led her away. A jury found Fairooz guilty in May of disrupting a session of Congress and demonstrating on Capitol grounds. But a judge for the District of Columbia Superior Court overturned the guilty verdict in July and ordered a new trial. Chief Judge Robert Morin found it was unclear whether Fairooz was convicted for laughter or for speaking out as she was removed, Fairooz’s attorney, Samuel Bogash, said at the time. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia said in an email on Tuesday that his office had no comment on the decision to dismiss the case. A second trial for Fairooz had been scheduled for Nov. 13, but Morin canceled it after prosecutors dropped the case. | 0fake |
Anderson Cooper Rips Florida’s Attorney General For Her Anti-LGBT Hypocrisy – To Her Face (VIDEO) | As Republicans cry phony, crocodile tears over the 49 slain LGBT citizens in Orlando, Anderson Cooper had just about enough, and Pam Bondi, Florida s Attorney General, felt the wrath.While interviewing Bondi, Cooper quickly turned the tables on the Trump supporter when she expressed her support for the LGBT community following the terrorist attack on Pulse.Cooper, who is openly gay, let her have it right away in his opening question: I saw you the other day saying that anyone who attacks the LGBT community, our LGBT community, you said will be gone after with the fullest extent of the law. I talked to a lot of gay and lesbian people here yesterday who are not fans of yours and who said that they thought you were being a hypocrite, that you for years have fought against basically you have gone after gay people and have said in court that gay people, simply by fighting for marriage equality, were trying to do harm to the people of Florida, to induce public harm I believe is the term you used in court. Do you really think you re the champion of the gay community? Bondi, who was almost rendered speechless, quickly pivoted to defending her bigotry, stating that she had an obligation under the Florida Constitution to defend marriage as being between one man and one woman. Bondi then chastised Cooper for making her look like she hates gay people.But Anderson Cooper wouldn t let her off the hook. he reminded her that her use of the term public harm was in of itself harmful to the LGBT community, and when Bondi tried to backtrack, and Cooper again called her out for it, she did what any conservative would do she blamed it on her lawyer.Moving on, Cooper then blasted her over the sick irony that Bondi set up a help center for the married LGBT couples who lost a spouse in the attack when her defense of banning same-sex marriage would not have allowed them such access. As usual, she pivoted, saying her position is not a champion of the LGBT movement, but to human beings who have lost their lives. This might be the best interview Anderson Cooper has ever done because it exposes the hypocrisy, the phony, ill natured opportunism of the Republican Party.Watch the interview here:Featured image via Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images | 1real |
At North Korea's doorstep, Trump warns of U.S. power while also striking conciliatory note | SEOUL (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned North Korea he was prepared to use the full range of U.S. military power to stop any attack, but in a more conciliatory appeal than ever before he urged Pyongyang to make a deal to end the nuclear standoff. Speaking on North Korea s doorstep during a visit to Seoul, Trump said that while we hope to God not to have to resort to the use of full U.S. military might, he was ready to do whatever was necessary to prevent the North Korean dictator from threatening millions of lives. We cannot allow North Korea to threaten all that we have built, Trump said after talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has supported diplomatic outreach to Pyongyang. But at times taking a more measured, less confrontational tone, Trump also urged North Korea to do the right thing and added that: I do see some movement, though he declined to elaborate. It really makes sense for North Korea to come to the table and make a deal, Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with Moon. Despite Trump s renewed threats against North Korea, it was a far cry from the more strident approach he has pursued in recent months, including his previous dismissal of any diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang as a waste of time. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made clear, however, that he has little interest in negotiations, at least until he has developed a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. Landing earlier at Osan Air Base outside Seoul, the president and First Lady Melania Trump stepped down from Air Force One onto a red carpet as he began a 24-hour visit that could aggravate tension with North Korea. He then flew by helicopter to Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. military base in the country, and met U.S. and South Korean troops, along with Moon. The White House billed Trump s trip as intended to demonstrate U.S. resolve over a hardline approach to the North Korean nuclear and missile threats. But many in the region had expressed fear that any further bellicose rhetoric by Trump toward Pyongyang could increase the potential for a devastating military conflict. Trump praised Moon for great cooperation despite differences in the past over how to confront North Korea and over a trade pact between the United States and South Korea. At the news conference, the leaders said they had agreed to renegotiate the trade agreement in a timely fashion. In formal talks after an elaborate welcoming ceremony outside the presidential Blue House in Seoul, Moon told Trump he hoped his visit would relieve some of South Koreans anxiety over North Korea. Pyongyang s recent nuclear and missile tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions and an exchange of insults between Trump and Kim have raised the stakes in the most critical international challenge of Trump s presidency. At the news conference, Trump said Pyongyang must understand the unparalleled strength that Washington had at its disposal. He cited three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups that are converging on the Western Pacific for exercises as well as a nuclear submarine he said was also in position. Trump has rattled some U.S. allies with his vow to totally destroy North Korea if it threatens the United States and by deriding Kim as a Rocket Man on a suicide mission. Kim responded by calling Trump a mentally deranged U.S. dotard. Trump s senior aides privately have since urged him to avoid personalizing the conflict any further, U.S. officials say. On the second leg of his five-nation trip, Trump toured the sprawling Camp Humphreys garrison, which lies about 100 km (60 miles) from the border with reclusive North Korea, and met commanders and troops. The base visit gave him a first-hand view of the massive military assets the United States has in place in South Korea, but it also could serve as a reminder of the cost in U.S. military lives as well as the potential massive South Korean civilian losses if the current crisis spirals into war. Trump wrapped up his first day with a dinner hosted at the Blue House, dining on grilled sole, beef ribs and chocolate cake while being serenaded by a K-pop singer with an orchestra in the background. Mr President, may your dreams come true, Trump said to Moon, raising his glass in a toast. North Korea has not conducted a missile test for 53 days, the longest such lull in testing this year. North Korean state media has not commented on Trump s arrival in the South. South Korea s spy agency said last week that North Korea may be preparing another missile test, raising speculation that such a launch could be timed for Trump s trip to the region. U.S. officials have said privately that intercepting a test missile is among options under consideration, though there is disagreement within the administration about the risks. Trump had previously criticized Moon over his support for diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang something the U.S. president once called appeasement but both leaders used Tuesday s news conference to stress common ground. Moon urged maximum pressure from sanctions against North Korea to force it to negotiate abandonment of its nuclear program, something Pyongyang says it will never give up. Several hundred supporters and protesters lined the streets of downtown Seoul as Trump s motorcade passed by en route to the Blue House, waving flags and posters, with some saying, No Trump, No War, Yes Peace, while others cheered, Trump! Trump! Trump will deliver a speech on Wednesday to South Korea s National Assembly expected to focus heavily on his North Korea policy, which has stressed sanctions and military pressure instead of diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. The North accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies. Washington denies any such intention. (This version of the story was refiled to add dropped Trump in third-from-last paragraph) | 0fake |
Searching for Trump card, Democrats watch Virginia governor's race | RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) - Speaking as a folksy physician running for Virginia governor, Democrat Ralph Northam vowed in a recent campaign ad to fight Donald Trump on cuts to education funding, environmental protections and health care access. But Northam said he will work with the Republican president when it is in the state’s interest. The balancing act puts Northam, a moderate lieutenant governor with a low-key campaign style, on the front lines of his party’s search for a strategy to exploit Trump’s unpopularity in politically divided states such as Virginia. He is running against Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Nov. 7 general election in the competitive southern state is seen as a bellwether for next year’s midterm elections, when voters will decide whether Republicans should continue to control the U.S. Congress and a majority of state governments. After denouncing Trump as a “narcissistic maniac” during the primary campaign, Northam has since dialed back the vitriol. His emphasis on workforce education and policy matters heeds criticism that Democrats lost the White House because voters did not hear what the party stood for. “The Northam strategy is talk Trump, but don’t just talk Trump,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington, noting that Northam seeks to broaden his appeal to uncommitted voters. Most polls show Northam narrowly ahead in a contest Democrats consider a must-win. Virginia is one of only 15 governors’ mansions still held by the party, and its current governor cannot run for re-election due to term limits. Former Democratic President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail this week for the first time since leaving office to stump for candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, the two states with gubernatorial elections this year. Without naming Trump, he called on voters to send a message by backing candidates like Northam. A recent poll showed nearly one in three likely Virginia voters were factoring Trump into their decision in the governor’s race, according to a survey from the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. Northam’s supporters overwhelmingly disapproved of Trump. Distain for the Republican president is why Niel Manson, a 72-year-old retired engineer living near the capital city of Richmond, became a Democrat nine months ago. Yet the former independent called Northam wise to make his campaign about more than merely reacting to Trump. “There is no benefit in getting in a discussion with Trump, because he changes his mind every 24 hours,” Manson said. The Northam campaign said it has intentionally focused on policies when talking about Trump, seeking to draw parallels to Gillespie. Northam starts another recent ad highlighting differences between the gubernatorial candidates on climate change. “Now Ed’s going right along with Donald Trump as he tries to roll back our clean air and water protections,” the Democrat says from a picnic table at a waterfront park. The strategy works to connect the president to a Republican candidate who is not always in lock step with him, said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes gubernatorial races for the non-partisan Cook Political Report. She said campaigns gearing up for next year’s midterms will learn from Virginia whether such messaging sways independents, or motivates Democrats to turn out in greater numbers than typical for non-presidential years. “This is our first real election to see how these arguments about Trump really do impact Republican candidates,” Duffy said. Gillespie’s campaign declined to comment about Trump’s impact on the race. The president endorsed Gillespie but has not campaigned with him. Vice President Mike Pence headlined a recent rally for the candidate in southwest Virginia’s heavily Republican coal country. Democratic voter Erin Siraguse, 34, said she based her support for Northam on issues such as his efforts to address affordable housing for teachers around her home in Fairfax County in northern Virginia. She admires how Northam has handled the president’s shadow over this year’s most competitive state race. “Lieutenant Governor Northam has done a wonderful job of talking about Trump without mentioning Trump,” she said. | 0fake |
Iraqi soldiers join Turkish exercises near shared border: witness | HABUR, Turkey (Reuters) - Iraqi soldiers joined Turkish troops for military exercises in southeast Turkey near the border with Iraq on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said, as the two countries coordinate steps in response to the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum. A small group of soldiers holding aloft an Iraqi and a Turkish flag walked across the dusty plain where the exercises, launched last week, were being held some 4 km (2.5 miles) from the Habur border gate, the witness said. The flags were then held aloft from the top of an armored personnel carrier. National and international media observed the exercises from the main highway leading to the border gate. Kurds voted in large numbers in an independence referendum in northern Iraq on Monday, ignoring pressure from Baghdad, threats from Turkey and Iran, and international warnings that the vote may ignite yet more regional conflict. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to cut off the pipeline that carries oil from northern Iraq to the outside world, intensifying pressure on the Kurdish autonomous region over the referendum. | 0fake |
Re: Communism, fascism, nazism, Marxism ALL created by the Vatican not Jews | Area: Total of 0.44 sq. km. (109 acres).Population (July 2006 est.): 932.Ethnic groups: Italian, Swiss, other.Religion: Roman Catholic.Languages: Italian, Latin, French, various others.Literacy: 100%. Work force: 3,000 lay workers (reside outside the Vatican).GovernmentType: Papacy; ecclesiastical governmental and administrative capital of the Roman Catholic Church.Independence: Sovereign entity since medieval times (Lateran Pacts confirming independence and sovereignty of The Holy See signed with Italy on February 11, 1929).Suffrage: Limited to Cardinals less than 80 years old. EconomyBudget: Revenues (2005) $247 million; expenditures (2005) $243 million.Industries: Printing; production of coins, medals, postage stamps, a small amount of mosaics, and staff uniforms; worldwide banking and financial activities. This unique, noncommercial economy is also supported financially by contributions (known as Peter's Pence) from Roman Catholics throughout the world, the sale of postage stamps and tourist mementos, fees from admissions to museums, and the sale of publications. The incomes and living standards of lay workers are comparable to, or somewhat better than, those of counterparts who work in the city of Rome.PEOPLE AND HISTORY Almost all of Vatican City's citizens live inside the Vatican's walls. The Vatican includes high-ranking dignitaries, priests, nuns, and guards as well as about 3,000 lay workers who comprise the majority of the work force. The Holy See's diplomatic history began in the fourth century, but the boundaries of the papacy's temporal power have shifted over the centuries. From the 8th century through the middle of the 19th century, the Popes held sway over the Papal States, which included a broad band of territory across central Italy. In 1860, after prolonged civil and regional unrest, Victor Emmanuel's army seized the Papal States, leaving only Rome and surrounding coastal regions under papal control. In 1870, Victor Emmanuel captured Rome itself and declared it the new capital of Italy, ending papal claims to temporal power. Pope Pius IX and his successors disputed the legitimacy of these acts and proclaimed themselves to be "prisoners" in the Vatican. Finally, in 1929, the Italian Government and the Holy See signed three agreements resolving the dispute: A treaty recognizing the independence and sovereignty of the Holy See and creating the State of the Vatican City; A concordat defining the relations between the government and the church within Italy; and A financial convention providing the Holy See with compensation for its losses in 1870. A revised concordat, altering the terms of church-state relations, was signed in 1984. | 1real |
Russia says Islamic State operates near U.S base in Syria unhindered | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia accused the United States on Wednesday of allowing Islamic State to operate under its nose in Syria, saying Washington was letting the militant group move about freely in an area abutting a U.S. military base. The allegations, made by Russia s Defense Ministry, center on a U.S. military base at Tanf, a strategic Syrian highway border crossing with Iraq in the south of the country. Russia says the U.S. base is illegal and that it and the area around it have become a black hole where militants operate unhindered. The United States says the Tanf facility is a temporary base used to train partner forces to fight against Islamic State. Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning on Tuesday said Washington remained committed to killing off Islamic State and denying it safe havens and the ability to carry out strikes. But Major-General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said Moscow wanted to know how around 300 Islamic State militants in pickup trucks had passed through the U.S.-controlled area and tried to block the highway between Damascus and Deir al-Zor used to supply Syrian forces. He said the U.S. had not yet given an explanation. We suggest the American side also explain about another incidence of their selective blindness towards militants operating under their nose, Konashenkov said in a statement. He said about 600 militants based in a refugee camp in the U.S. controlled area had driven en masse to a former customs post called Tafas on the Syrian-Jordanian border earlier this month and seized food and medical supplies meant for locals. You don t need to be an expert to now forecast an attempt to rupture the peace agreement in the southern de-escalation zone, said Konashenkov. We issue a warning. All responsibility for sabotaging the peace process will lay exclusively with the American side. | 0fake |
U.S. ‘Probably Had a Role’ in Mosul Deaths, Commander Says - The New York Times | WASHINGTON — The senior United States commander in Iraq said on Tuesday that an American airstrike most likely led to the collapse of a building in Mosul that killed scores of civilians this month. But the commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, indicated that an investigation would also examine whether the attack might have set off a larger blast from explosives set by militants inside the building or nearby. It was the fullest acceptance of responsibility by an American commander since the March 17 airstrike. “My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties,” said General Townsend, who commands the task force that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But he asserted that “the munition that we used should not have collapsed an entire building. ” “That is something we have got to figure out,” he added. With an increase in reports of civilian casualties from the American bombing of Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, some human rights groups have questioned whether the rules of engagement have been loosened since President Trump took office. Pentagon officials said this week that the rules had not changed. But General Townsend said on Tuesday that he had won approval for “minor adjustments” to rules for the use of combat power, although he insisted they were not a factor in the Mosul attack. General Townsend acknowledged, however, that steps had been taken to speed up the process of providing air power to support Iraqi troops and their American Special Operations advisers at the leading edge of the offensive to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State. The goal, he said, was to “decentralize” . General Townsend did not describe the changes in detail, but he cast them as a return to the military’s standard offensive doctrine, in contrast to the “very centralized” approach he said was initially put in place after President Barack Obama sent American forces back to Iraq to combat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Maj. Gen. Maan an Iraqi special forces commander, has said that his men called in a coalition airstrike to take out snipers on the roofs of three houses in a Mosul neighborhood called Mosul Jidideh. The Iraqi forces, General Saadi said, were unaware that at least some of the houses were filled with civilians. General Townsend said he did not have information on the Iraqi commander’s specific role, but explained that the United States had been training Iraqi military officers how to call in airstrikes that are carried out by Iraqi aircraft. Any American airstrike requested by the Iraqis, General Townsend said, would need to be approved by American officers. “If he said his guy was calling for fire, he could have been,” he said. “Now how that works is that they don’t call directly to a U. S. fighter overhead and suddenly a U. S. fighter is rolling in on their grid coordinates. ” Iraqi forces have been eager for the help of American air power as they take on the toughest phase of the more than battle to retake Mosul. American officials have said that 500 Iraqi troops were killed and about 3, 000 wounded in taking the eastern half of the city. General Townsend said the battle for the western half of the city was even more difficult because of what he called its “claustrophobically close terrain” of narrow streets and buildings. He repeated several times that the fighting was the most intense urban combat since World War II. Adding to the challenge is a factor he did not mention: the decision by Iraq’s governments to urge Mosul’s residents to shelter in place instead of trying to flee. When American troops retook Falluja in 2004, the fierce urban fighting took place in a city that had already been abandoned by most civilians. Though the Iraqis are doing the main fighting on the ground in Mosul, American and coalition forces have been playing an essential role. United States Army Paladin howitzers have been firing rounds into Mosul from their positions outside the city. Task Force Thor, which is based at Qayyarah West Airfield 40 miles south of Mosul, has been firing Himars rockets into the city. American Apache attack helicopters have added to the firepower. This year, the United States increased the number of soldiers who have been advising Iraqi troops as they have pushed into the city. While the mission of the advisers is not to directly engage in combat, many are in harm’s way as they advise Iraqi units carrying out the fight. On Monday, American military officials said that two infantry companies from the 82nd Airborne Division were being sent to help protect those United States advisers and that a “route clearance” platoon was also being deployed to clear away roadside bombs. Together, the deployment adds about 240 troops to the mission. The troop cap that the Obama administration established for the operation in Iraq — what the Pentagon calls the “force manning level” — is 5, 260. But that formal limit, which the Trump administration is likely to eliminate, does not count temporary deployments. The actual number of troops in Iraq is certainly higher. With more American forces in Iraq, and more United States advisers near the front lines, the need for timely airstrikes is much greater. Brig. Gen. Matthew C. Isler, an Air Force officer who serves as deputy to General Townsend, is in charge of the investigation into the Mosul airstrike. A team of American experts has visited the site to collect evidence to determine what caused the significant loss of civilian life. American officials said they were investigating a number of possibilities, including whether the militants herded the civilians into the building to use as human shields whether the building was rigged with explosives or whether a nearby car bomb exploded. “My initial impression is the enemy had a hand in this, and there’s also a fair chance that our strike had some role in it,” General Townsend said in a briefing broadcast to the Pentagon from Iraq. “I think it’s probably going to play out to be some sort of combination. But you know what, I can’t really say for sure, and we’ve just got to let the investigation play out. ” General Townsend said the results of the investigation would be reported publicly, “unlike our enemy. ” While General Townsend acknowledged an American role in the Mosul strike, he said the allegations that the United States had bombed a school full of refugees in Syria were not credible. That airstrike, which has garnered considerable attention, occurred during an operation in which Syrian fighters were trying to seal off the western approaches to Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital. But General Townsend said that the evidence he had seen indicated that it was about 30 Islamic State fighters who were killed in that attack. “I think that was a clean strike,” he said. He also dismissed reports, publicized by the Islamic State, that an American airstrike had endangered the Tabqa Dam west of Raqqa, saying that the structure was not in imminent danger. “If something happens to the Tabqa Dam, it will be at the hands of ISIS, not the coalition,” he said. Still, the reports of desperate civilians in Mosul prompted Zeid Ra’ad the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, to urge on Tuesday that the coalition reconsider its tactics. The United Nations has said that at least 61 people were killed in the March 17 strike in Mosul. Amnesty International said as many as 150 might have died. “The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to remain at home, instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a significant number of civilian casualties,” Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said in a statement. | 0fake |
GEORGE SOROS ADMITS He’s Behind Invasion Of Europe and Open Borders: “National Borders Are the Obstacle” [VIDEO] | Soros isn t just a danger to America he s a danger to the entire world. Billionaire investor George Soros has confirmed he wants to bring down Europe s borders, following the accusation made last week by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.Last week, Mr Orban accused Mr Soros who was born in Hungary of deliberately encouraging the migrant crisis. This invasion is driven, on the one hand, by people smugglers, and on the other by those (human rights) activists who support everything that weakens the nation-state, Mr Orban said. This Western mindset and this activist network is perhaps best represented by George Soros. Mr Soros has now issued an email statement to Bloomberg Business, claiming his foundations help uphold European values , while Mr Oban s actions in strengthening the Hungarian border and stopping a huge migrant influx undermine those values. His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle, Mr Soros added. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle. Via: Breitbart | 1real |
U.S. charges former Turkish minister with Iran sanctions evasion | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors have charged a former Turkish economy minister and the ex-head of a state-owned bank with conspiring to violate Iran sanctions by illegally moving hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on Tehran s behalf. The indictment marks the first time an ex-government member with close ties to President Tayyip Erdogan has been charged in an investigation that has strained ties between Washington and Ankara. Ex-minister Zafer Caglayan was also charged with taking bribes in cash and jewelry worth tens of millions of dollars. The charges stem from the case against Reza Zarrab, a wealthy Turkish-Iranian gold trader who was arrested in the United States over sanctions evasion last year. Erdogan has said U.S. authorities had ulterior motives in charging Zarrab, who has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors have now charged Caglayan and former Halkbank general manager Suleyman Aslan and two others, according to the U.S. Attorney s Office for the Southern District of New York. They were charged with conspiring to use the U.S. financial system to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions on behalf of the government of Iran and other Iranian entities, which were barred by United States sanctions, U.S. prosecutors said in a statement dated Wednesday. They were also accused of lying to U.S. government officials about the transactions, laundering funds and defrauding several financial institutions by concealing the true nature of the transactions, prosecutors said. Reuters was not immediately able to reach Caglayan or Aslan for comment. Halkbank said all of its transactions have always fully complied with national and international regulations, adding that news regarding the U.S. case misleads the public and investors. Relations between Washington and NATO ally Turkey, an important partner in tackling the Syrian conflict, were strained after a failed coup against Erdogan in July last year and the president s subsequent crackdown on opposition. Ankara is seeking, so far without success, extradition of a U.S.-based Muslim cleric it accuses of backing the coup attempt. The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, denies the allegation. Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci defended his predecessor and said U.S. prosecutors had yet to prove their accusations. Caglayan did not do anything against Turkey s interests, Zeybekci told reporters. It is no concern to Turkey if Caglayan acted against interests of other countries. Both Caglayan and Aslan are also accused of taking bribes, according to the indictment. Caglayan, who was serving as Minister of the Economy... received tens of millions of dollars worth of bribes in cash and jewelry from the proceeds of the scheme to provide services to the government of Iran and conceal those services from U.S. government officials, prosecutors said. U.S. prosecutors have said that between 2010 and 2015 Zarrab and others worked to conceal his ability to supply currency and gold to Iran through the Turkish bank, avoiding U.S. sanctions. As part of that scheme, Zarrab and others used front companies and fake invoices to trick U.S. banks into processing transactions disguised to appear as though they involved food, and thus were exempt from the sanctions, prosecutors have said. The U.S. indictment echoes charges in a leaked 2014 Turkish police document, reported by Reuters, which detailed allegations that a crime organization had helped Iran exploit a loophole in Western sanctions that allowed it to purchase gold with oil and gas revenues. When the West prohibited the gold trade in 2013 as a sanctions violation, the police report alleged the network concocted records of shipments of food at preposterous volumes and prices to continue giving Iran access to foreign currency. Iran emerged from years of economic isolation in January 2016, when world powers lifted the crippling sanctions in return for Tehran complying with a deal to curb its nuclear ambitions. The sanctions had cut off the country of 80 million people from the global financial system, slashed its exports and imposed severe economic hardship on Iranians. Caglayan, Aslan and others indicted in the case on Wednesday remain at large, prosecutors said. Zarrab and a Halkbank deputy general manager, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, were arrested while in the United States. Zarrab was detained in March 2016 and Atilla a year later. Both are scheduled to appear for trial in October. Zarrab has hired former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to defend him against the charges. Giuliani has said that both U.S. and Turkish officials remained receptive to a diplomatic solution due to the nature of the charges against Zarrab and the importance of Turkey as an ally. A decree issued two weeks ago gave Erdogan authority to approve the exchange of foreigners detained or convicted in Turkey with people held in other countries in situations required by national security or national interests . Shares of Halkbank were down 3.4 percent at 13.81 lira as of 1337 GMT, underperforming the benchmark BIST 100 index, which was flat. | 0fake |
Life: Touching: After Her Brother Passed Away, This Woman Took Over His Facebook Page To Continue Sharing Islamophobic Rhetoric | Email
For friends and family who loved him dearly, the death of Robert Harkin in early August was sudden and unexpected. But despite their sadness, they can take comfort in knowing that his legacy will live on. His sister Karen has taken over his Facebook page and honors her brother by continuing to share Islamophobic rhetoric in his memory.
Absolutely beautiful.
They rarely chose to talk about politics while he was alive, but Karen has been able to reconnect with her brother since his death by discovering his fear and hatred of Islam. It’s been a steep learning curve, but in time she’s been able to understand so much about what he cared about most, and she now feels closer to him than ever. The threat Syrian refugees pose to our freedom, the politicians who willingly turn a blind eye to the rising threat of Islamic terrorism—all of the bigoted beliefs that made Robert who he was.
Since picking up the mantle of his Facebook account, Karen has committed to maintaining the xenophobia that exemplified her brother’s life. When Time magazine ran a story about a Muslim woman who felt unsafe in America, Karen understood right away that Robert would want to share the article with the comment “Maybe she’d feel more safe if she moved to Saudia Arabia where she can practice Sharia Law with the rest of them.” Sometimes a sister just knows.
For those who were close to Robert, seeing a backwards, misinformed post decrying the spread of radical Islam is like being with him again. His page is a place where those who knew him can come share a memory and talk about the spread of Sharia law—exactly what Robert would have wanted. Whenever she posts about the inherent violence in the Muslim faith, Karen takes comfort in knowing that with every like and share, her brother remains a vibrant part of peoples’ lives.
“In the wake of Robert’s death, I think everyone was just looking for a place to see hateful rhetoric,” says Karen, who remembers her brother by spending two to three hours per day scouring the internet for signs of a larger Islamic conspiracy. “I miss him every day. But as long as I continue to invite his Facebook friends to like a group whose mission is to block the construction of mosques in America, it’s like he’s still here.”
Wow, if only everyone had such a devoted sister! Wherever he is, Robert must be resting easy knowing his sister is there to share his hateful, paranoid beliefs with the world. | 1real |
US lifts Vietnam arms embargo in move to counter China | President Obama lifted the decades-long U.S. arms embargo against Vietnam on Monday in an apparent effort to shore up the communist country's defenses against an increasingly aggressive China – though he faced criticism that the move takes away U.S. leverage to press for human rights freedoms.
Obama announced the full removal of the embargo at a news conference in Hanoi alongside Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang. The president said the move was intended as a step toward normalizing relations with the former enemy and to eliminate a "lingering vestige of the Cold War."
The embargo was imposed in 1984. The United States partially lifted the ban in 2014, but Vietnam pushed for full access as it tries to deal with China's land reclamation and military construction in nearby seas.
Obama, in announcing the agreement Monday, said every U.S. arms sale would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis going forward. Vietnam has not bought anything, but removing the remaining restrictions shows relations are fully normalized and opens the way to deeper security cooperation.
"At this stage both sides have developed a level of trust and cooperation, including between our militaries, that is reflective of common interests and mutual respect," Obama said.
U.S. lawmakers and activists, though, had urged Obama to press for greater human rights freedoms in the one-party state before lifting the embargo. Vietnam holds about 100 political prisoners and there have been more detentions this year.
"In one fell swoop, President Obama has jettisoned what remained of U.S. leverage to improve human rights in Vietnam -- and (has) basically gotten nothing for it," Phil Robertson, with Human Rights Watch, said.
In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry outwardly praised the move, with a spokeswoman saying China hoped "normal and friendly" relations between the U.S. and Vietnam would be conducive to regional stability. China itself remains under a weapons embargo imposed by the U.S. and European Union following 1989's bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Obama said the United States and Vietnam had mutual concerns about maritime issues and the importance of maintaining freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. He said that although Washington doesn't take sides on the territorial disputes, it does support a diplomatic resolution based on "international norms" and "not based on who's the bigger party and can throw around their weight a little bit more," a reference to China.
Lifting the arms embargo will be a psychological boost for Vietnam's leaders as they look to counter an increasingly aggressive China, but there may not be a big jump in sales.
Obama was greeted Monday by Quang at the Presidential Palace, where Obama congratulated Vietnam for making "extraordinary progress." Quang praised the expansion in security and trade ties between "former enemies turned friends" and called for more U.S. investment in Vietnam.
Obama also made the case for stronger commercial and economic ties, including approval of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that is stalled in Congress and facing strong opposition from the 2016 presidential candidates. The deal, which includes Vietnam, would tear down trade barriers and encourage investment between the countries that signed it.
Critics worry it would cost jobs by exposing American workers to low-wage competition from countries such as Vietnam.
Obama and Quang earlier attended a signing ceremony touting a series of new commercial deals between U.S. and Vietnamese companies valued at more than $16 billion. The deals included U.S. engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney's plans to sell 135 advanced engines to Vietnamese air carrier Vietjet, and Boeing's plans to sell 100 aircraft to the airline.
Obama is the third sitting president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Four decades after the fall of Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and two decades after President Bill Clinton restored relations with the nation, Obama is eager to upgrade relations with an emerging power whose rapidly expanding middle class beckons as a promising market for U.S. goods and an offset to China's growing strength.
The United States is eager to boost trade with a fast-growing middle class in Vietnam that is expected to double by 2020. That would mean knocking down auto, food and machine tariffs to get more U.S. products into Vietnam.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | 0fake |
Trump to nominate Elaine Duke as Homeland Security deputy secretary | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump intends to nominate Elaine Duke as deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the White House said on Monday. Duke served in senior roles in the department in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, most recently as under secretary for management from 2008 to 2010. | 0fake |
Police to Strengthen Force in New York’s Most Violent Borough - The New York Times | The New York Police Department on Wednesday announced plans to send 75 new investigators to the Bronx to address a steep and longstanding shortage of detectives in the department’s most violent and underserved borough. The chief of detectives, Robert K. Boyce, told city lawmakers at a hearing that the influx was aimed at easing enormous caseloads, which retired police leaders say have hindered investigative work in the Bronx for decades. Homicides in New York City have been falling, but the department’s plans for the Bronx reflect a growing recognition by police chiefs in cities experiencing upticks in murder that heavy caseloads let crimes go unsolved and feed a cycle of street violence. The plan for the infusion of resources comes five weeks after The New York Times published an analysis of confidential deployment data showing that precinct detectives in the Bronx last year carried more than twice as many violent felony cases on average as detectives in Manhattan or on Staten Island, and over 50 percent more than those in Brooklyn or Queens. The new deployment is a significant investment in investigative work for parts of the Bronx that have not experienced the same improvements in overall crime rates in recent decades as wealthier parts of the city, especially at a time when detective resources are increasingly pulled toward counterterrorism operations. Department leaders, who for years have kept deployment information under wraps even amid major budgetary decisions, acknowledged in frank terms on Wednesday that parts of the city remained in need. “We saw that some of the detective squads up there are more than just a little bit challenged,” Chief Boyce said of the Bronx. “They’re flooded with more cases than they were last year. ” Police supervisors in the Bronx embraced the news of the reinforcements, known as investigators, a class of officers who are training to become detectives. Working under experienced detectives, the investigators often shoulder the more tasks, like canvassing buildings for witnesses and searching for video. After 18 months, they become eligible to be promoted to detectives. “It’s great, this new wave of young, inspired police officers who want to be detectives,” said a commander in the Bronx who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about departmental deployment decisions. “Not only are you building the present, but you are building the future,” the commander added. “And it is good for the Bronx. ” The Times’s deployment analysis grew out of a series of articles about murder in the 40th Precinct, a section of the South Bronx where three detectives last year carried more than 400 cases and many others had loads in the high 300s, markedly more than the 150 cases per year the department recommends for precincts with high rates of violent crime. Chief Boyce said Wednesday that about 40 of the city’s 77 precincts needed additional help to meet caseload goals. In the Bronx, he said, the 40th and the 47th, covering Wakefield and Williamsbridge, were especially burdened, some of that owing to increases in crime there last year. The department has already identified and interviewed the 75 new investigators and will send them to squads by the end of the month, Chief Boyce said. Six of them will be sent to the 40th Precinct, in addition to three detectives and one investigator added in giving the squad a total of 33 detectives and investigators. The Times analysis last year focused on detectives and deliberately excluded investigators because they are in training and primarily act in support roles. Police officials and elected leaders said that adding investigators, although not as quick a fix as transferring detectives from one precinct to another, was more politically palatable and would have a lasting impact. The investigators, once promoted, typically stay in the same precinct squads where they were trained. The district attorney in the Bronx, Darcel D. Clark, said she was “very pleased” with the plan. “The people of the Bronx have been underserved too long,” Ms. Clark said. After the publication of the Times article in December, she said, she asked her office’s bureau chiefs to submit ideas for addressing the paucity in investigative resources and pressed Chief Boyce to add detectives. Ms. Clark worried that the understaffing scared off witnesses — who did not believe the police could protect them — from testifying. Michael J. Palladino, the head of the union representing New York City’s 5, 500 detectives, said that even 75 new investigators was only a first step. “Chief Boyce would like nothing more than to have a few hundred extra white shields for assignment to Bronx detective squads, but budget constraints prevent that,” Mr. Palladino said. “Getting its complement of the allotment will help the 40th Detective Squad, but historically speaking, that precinct seems resistant to crime strategies. ” Chief Boyce characterized the influx to the Bronx as a specific response to high crime and caseloads there, not as a way to fill a gap because of attrition or routine transfers. Other cities, like Boston, have improved their arrest rates by adding detectives and augmenting them with more civilian crime analysts. New York City’s Independent Budget Office has pointed out recently that the department has left empty jobs that were authorized for civilians and kept officers in other jobs that were fit for civilians, effectively tying up officers who could otherwise do or investigative work. Elected leaders and watchdogs have struggled to gain a clear understanding of the Police Department’s staffing and the decision making behind deployment practices. Many said Wednesday’s hearing was the first time they got specific answers, and they vowed to pursue legislation to require the department to regularly report staffing and arrest rates. “Clearly this is a backhanded acknowledgment that a problem existed,” said the city’s public advocate, Letitia James. She said the department needed to focus more on “open cases in our underserved communities,” especially in the Brownsville and East New York neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the South Bronx. “It should not have taken investigations done by others to reveal inequities in police resources,” Ms. James said. Vanessa Gibson, a City Council member from the Bronx who presided over Wednesday’s hearing, said that Bronx cases were especially difficult to solve because of drug and gang ties and that, as a result, “sometimes it’s hard to attract detectives in the Bronx. ” Jumaane Williams, a council member from Brooklyn, said that for several years he had been seeking data on the size of boroughwide homicide squads, which often work with precinct squads on homicides, and that he had not gotten direct answers until Wednesday. Chief Boyce said the Bronx had fewer homicide detectives than Manhattan or Queens despite having more than twice as many murders as either borough, although he said Manhattan detectives also worked on nonfatal shootings. | 0fake |
Russia says Iraqi Kurds must act in concert with Baghdad | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia respects the desire of Iraqi Kurdistan to assert its identity but this must be done in dialogue with the Iraqi government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday at talks with his Iraqi government counterpart. Relations between Iraqi Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad have been in crisis since the region held an independence referendum last month. The Iraqi military took back the oil-rich Kirkuk area from Kurdish forces last week. We understand the hopes of the Kurdish people as it concerns their striving to strengthen their identity, their self-awareness, Lavrov said at a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. However, we believe it is correct to realize those desires, those hopes exclusively via the Iraqi government and taking fully into account the significance the Kurdish question has on a regional scale, and taking into account the need to avoid additional sources of instability in the region. Lavrov was meeting Jaafari days after Russian state oil major Rosneft agreed to take control of Iraqi Kurdistan s main oil pipeline. Iraqi oil minister Jabar al-Luaibi said on Saturday he had sought clarification from Rosneft. Lavrov said Russia would continue its economic ties with Iraqi Kurdistan, as it does with other constituent parts of Iraq. He said Russia was not closing its consulate in Erbil, the main city in Iraqi Kurdistan, but said the mission was subordinate to the Russian embassy in Baghdad. (This version of the story corrects paragraph four to show Lavrov said instability , not stability ) | 0fake |
TOP 5 MIND BLOWING ISSUES VOTING AMERICANS REALIZED THIS ELECTION | We Are Change
In this video Luke Rudkowski goes over the TOP 5 important issues that voting americans realized this election. Whether its Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton the american people have been exposed to some serious truths this election. To support our work and expand our efforts go to https://www.patreon.com/WeAreChange
Support WeAreChange by Subscribing to our channel HERE http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c…
Visit our main site for more breaking news http://wearechange.org/
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/WeAreChange?a…
SnapChat: LukeWeAreChange
Facebook: https://facebook.com/LukeWeAreChange
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange
Instagram: http://instagram.com/lukewearechange
Rep WeAreChange Merch Proudly: http://wearechange.org/store
OH YEAH since we are not corporate or government WHORES help us out http://wearechange.org/donate
We take BITCOIN too
12HdLgeeuA87t2JU8m4tbRo247Yj5u2TVP
The post TOP 5 MIND BLOWING ISSUES VOTING AMERICANS REALIZED THIS ELECTION appeared first on We Are Change .
| 1real |
Why ‘Useless’ Surgery Is Still Popular - The New York Times | Before a drug can be marketed, it has to go through rigorous testing to show it is safe and effective. Surgery, though, is different. The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate surgical procedures. So what happens when an operation is subjected to and fails the ultimate test — a clinical trial in which patients are randomly assigned to have it or not? The expectation is that medical practice will change if an operation turns out not to help. If only. It looks as if the onus is on patients to ask what evidence, if any, shows that surgery is better than other options. Take what happened with spinal fusion, an operation that welds together adjacent vertebrae to relieve back pain from discs. Unlike most operations, it actually was tested in four clinical trials. The conclusion: Surgery was no better than alternative nonsurgical treatments, like supervised exercise and therapy to help patients deal with their fear of back pain. In both groups, the pain usually diminished or went away. The studies were completed by the early 2000s and should have been enough to greatly limit or stop the surgery, says Dr. Richard Deyo, professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. But that did not happen, according to a recent report. Instead, spinal fusion rates increased — the clinical trials had little effect. Spinal fusion rates continued to soar in the United States until 2012, shortly after Blue Cross of North Carolina said it would no longer pay and some other insurers followed suit. “It may be that financial disincentives accomplished something that scientific evidence alone didn’t,” Dr. Deyo said. Other operations continue to be reimbursed, despite clinical trials that cast doubt on their effectiveness. In 2009, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published results of separate clinical trials on a popular back operation, vertebroplasty, comparing it to a sham procedure. They found that there was no benefit — pain relief was the same in both groups. Yet it and a similar operation, Kyphoplasty, in which doctors inject a sort of cement into the spine to shore it up, continue to be performed. Dr. David Kallmes of the Mayo Clinic, an author of the vertebroplasty paper, said he thought doctors continued to do the operations because insurers pay and because doctors remember their own patients who seemed better afterward. “When you read a study, you reflect on whether it is representative of your patient population,” Dr. Kallmes said. “It is easy to conclude that the answer is ‘no.’ The mean age in the study is different or ‘I do it differently. ’” “I think there is a placebo effect not only on patients but on doctors,” Dr. Kallmes adds. “The successful patient is burned into their memories and the patient is not. Doctors can have a selective memory that leads them to conclude that, ‘Darn it, it works pretty well. ’” The latest controversy — and the operation that arguably has been studied the most in randomized clinical trials — is surgery for a torn meniscus, a sliver of cartilage that acts as a shock absorber in the knee. It’s a condition that often afflicts and older people, simply as a consequence of degeneration that can occur with age and often accompanying osteoarthritis. The result can be a painful, swollen knee. Sometimes the knee can feel as if it catches or locks. So why not do an operation to trim or repair the torn tissue? About 400, 000 and older Americans a year have meniscus surgery. And here is where it gets interesting. Orthopedists wondered if the operation made sense because they realized there was not even a clear relationship between knee pain and meniscus tears. When they did M. R. I. scans on knees of people, they often saw meniscus tears in people who had no pain. And those who said their knee hurt tended to have osteoarthritis, which could be the real reason for their pain. Added to that complication, said Dr. Jeffrey N. Katz, a professor of medicine and orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School, is the fact that not everyone improves after the surgery. “It is not regarded as a ” he said. As a result, he said, many doctors have been genuinely uncertain about which is better — exercise and physical therapy or surgery. That, in fact, was what led Dr. Katz and his colleagues to conduct a clinical trial comparing surgery with physical therapy in people with a torn meniscus and knee pain. The result: The surgery offered little to most who had it. Other studies came to the same conclusion, and so did a published last year of nine clinical trials testing the surgery. Patients tended to report less pain — but patients reported less pain no matter what the treatment, even fake surgery. Then came yet another study, published on July 20 in The British Medical Journal. It compared the operation to exercise in patients who did not have osteoarthritis but had knee pain and meniscus tears. Once again, the surgery offered no additional benefit. An accompanying editorial came to a scathing conclusion: The surgery is “a highly questionable practice without supporting evidence of even moderate quality,” adding, “Good evidence has been widely ignored. ” So what should patients be told? Should they even be offered the surgery? Patients should be told that physical therapy is a good therapy for pain relief, Dr. Katz said, but that surgery also relieves pain. Pain relief can take longer with physical therapy, he says. With surgery, he said, patients have to recover from the operation but are likely to be back at work within two weeks. “At the end of the day,” he said, “patients ought to choose. ” Of course, how they choose might depend on how the choice is presented. Here’s how Dr. Gordon H. Guyatt, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who wrote the editorial in The British Medical Journal, would deal with the clinical trial data: “I personally think the operation should not be mentioned,” he says, adding that in his opinion the studies indicate the pain relief after surgery is a placebo effect. But if a doctor says anything, Dr. Guyatt suggests saying this: “We have randomized clinical trials that produce the highest quality of evidence. They strongly suggest that the procedure is next to useless. If there is any benefit, it is very small and there are downsides, expense and potential complications. ” Hearing that, he says, “I cannot imagine that anybody would say, ‘Go ahead. I will go for it. ’” | 0fake |
U.S. Senate advances nomination of Tillerson as Secretary of State | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate advanced the nomination of former Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) Chief Executive Rex Tillerson on Monday to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, moving closer to filling a key seat on the Republican’s national security team despite partisan rancor over Trump’s immigration order. The vote was 56 to 43 to move toward a final confirmation vote after up to 30 hours’ debate, putting a final vote very early on Wednesday, if senators do not agree to change the time. The vote broke largely along party lines. Every Republican favored advancing the nomination and all but four members of the Democratic caucus voted against it. The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, and several other members of the party tried, but failed, to delay considering Tillerson because of Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries and temporarily halting the entry of refugees. They said they wanted to question Tillerson more closely on his views on Muslim immigration. During his confirmation hearing, the former oil executive said he did not support a “blanket-type rejection” of any group of people. Democrats said that statement seemed to contradict Trump’s order. Trump and his supporters, including many Republicans, said his order is necessary to keep Americans safe and is not intended to ban Muslims, despite addressing only Muslim-majority nations whose citizens have not been involved in attacks on the United States. They said it was important to fill important slots on Trump’s national security team quickly. “As we proceed in ensuring the new administration has the leaders it needs to implement our nation’s foreign policy going forward, I have great confidence Rex Tillerson will serve the United States well,” Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. | 0fake |
Election 2016: Open Thread | Orangutan.
Rigged. Worth trying but its not a fair game. Smartmatic style Diebold type machines and software will count the votes and the corporate controlled media will announce the results. No mention of Election Fraud or the problems of the past. Long live Mike Connell, Clint Curtis, Bev Harris, Brad Friedman, RFK Jr. and other whistleblowers who have tried to fight for our democracy. Will only get worse from here it seems. Always hopeful though. David S
Government will win as always. Freedom will lose as always. The ruling elite control most elected officials and hundreds of thousands of government bureaucrats legislate unconstitutionally from their offices. We sit upon $20 Trillion in real debt and another $250+Trillion in unfunded liabilities. Trump wishes to increase military spending and Hillary never met a war she didn’t support (on behalf of her puppetmasters of course). Our medical system is nearly completely destroyed by over a century of government micromanagement and collusion with the AMA. We have more people incarcerated than nearly every other country on earth – mostly for non-violent drug offenses – and neither candidate looks to have the courage or the desire to truly allow freedom in this area (though Trump shows the greatest hope). Our government/CIA/other black ops groups, etc. are working tirelessly to undermine governments around the world, incite violence, and provoke armed conflict – maybe even nuclear – all for the benefit of the arms cartel and banksters who profit from every war. The people of America clearly have NO interest in restoring freedom, liberty, private property rights, business rights, sound money, etc. anymore. This “rebellion” that has gotten behind Trump still needs to bear fruit with regards to demanding REAL change at the federal and state levels. What will come of the following months is to be seen, but I suspect, as with so many previous “rebellions,” these folks will go back to their televisions, iPads, and Playstations and will forget about the fundamental corruption and crony capitalism that is destroying this country so long as they get a few bones thrown their way to pacify them. Let us hope something far more profound comes of it all. Time for a drink. kimyo
fwiw: a screencap of ‘final’ results displayed on 11/2 (apparently by accident) by nbc station wrcb-tv shows: popular vote: clinton 41,765,317 / trump 40,124,438, electoral college: clinton 343 / trump 195.
although the early reporting showing trump with a commanding lead matches my take on american sentiment, my cynical side suspects that it is the msm’s way of getting out the later-voting clinton supporters
if anonymous were a real thing, today’s show would be have been completely different. real hackers don’t waste their precious time defacing websites.
ps: if trump does win, i picture zuesse as the dog, who, after years of chasing, has finally caught that darn UPS truck. growling, jowls full of brown bumper, but with a dawning comprehension on his brow, realizing ‘well, exactly what do i do now?’ Orangutan.
Continuity of Gov’t plans have been implemented and in place. Dept of Homeland Security is now running our elections. The results will not be publicly available for review anymore according to Bev Harris. Similar to the results in California where the primary was announced for Hillary but Bernie may have actually ended up winning there. Welcome to the 1984 style Continuity of Government plan and Department of Homeland Security run elections thanks to the public’s refusal to emotionally or intellectually acknowledge the truth about 9/11 or the false flag anthrax attacks that followed. TruthTime
Especially agree with the comment about the Anthrax attack. The criminals are still at large for that blatantly, obvious state-sponsored crime. I laughed when Obama’s Administration decided to shut down any investigation into it.
America is a Nation of subjects who are continually subjected to the lies and falsehoods of their elected leaders. We have state crimes going far back to the era of JFK. People that still think Corruption isn’t really that bad in Washington, that it’s all a “conspiracy theory.” Carl_Herman
Thank you for asking, GW. It’s not an “election” when it fails to meet that definition due to multiple methods for election fraud. It’s not for a “US president” therefore, but an appointed “leader.” And, it’s not reported by media, but the appointers’ propaganda minions.
Of course, if we continue this argument with ~100 other points centered in lie-started Wars of Aggression, bankster-looting, and lying about near everything important, we can’t even call it the US as defined by our Constitution.
So, where do we go from here?
Start with truth. Then see what develops. Charlie Primero
Carl, this vote shows that all the people you have been trying to “wake up” to the corruption and graft are waking up.
This is just the beginning. Be happy. MyWikiDisQus
It does not matter what we think or do or say anymore. The republic has been overthrown by the plutocrats who remain in power as long as the citizenry believe in the concocted and fraudulent electoral system they fabricated that selects the candidate who serves them, not the people. Participation of the masses is necessary to grant them the mandate to ensure the continuity of their reign that has continually impoverished the majority of the nation.
In the beginning representative government in America was a wonderful experiment that has since devolved, brick by brick, decade by decade into a shell of its former creation to become a bastion of despotism. The poor are still slaves, indentured to the government by onerous debt as Negros were to their 19 century plantations masters; only the title of ownership has changed. The middle class, once a foundation of prosperity has now become an economic ghost, relegated to the status of freemen of the peasant class.
The wealthy are richer in material possession, millionaires become billionaires and the government siphons off from the upper class to enrich itself by political favor, by statute and regulation, by ignoring the rule of equal justice under the law.
How long will the people tolerate this abomination of corrupt authority? What will be the future event that triggers the entire country to say, “Enough!”? Will it be a complete economic breakdown of society or the devastation of nuclear war on our soil?
“We the People” have the power, we have always possessed it. The time of reconciliation is upon us, we must balance the ledger of liberty back in our favor. The only way to peacefully do it is reject the system that oppresses us. Do not engage with them, do not obey them, tell them their lies carry no truth, we see through the veil of falsity and reject it and demand a new path to opportunity and happiness for all who are willing to work towards it. TruthTime
The U.S. is fucked.
But it needs to collapse now or within 100 years for people to totally realize they were duped. It is the only way to start anew. kimyo
according to zh, trump has ohio, florida and north carolina.
my top 3 questions: 1) will there be a thorough investigation of the clinton foundation? 2) what will he do if the next 9/11 happens on his watch? 3) will he kill cop21 and defund global warming research? diogenes
One thing is utterly clear: if Trump wins, the wholly Wall Street owned Democratic Party gave it to him by rigging primaries to put the Clinton criminal gang on the ballot.
Because Bernie would have won — won with the votes not only of millions of nominally “Democratic” voters who rightly can’t stomach Clinton and didn’t vote for her (whether we voted Green, or Libertarian or Trump or stayed home) — but also with the votes of millions who are voting Trump because he appears to at least not be part of the Wall Street criminal gang of hereditary oligarchs. Tim Chambers
Looks like Trump will be President and free to do as he pleases. The Repug’s bet on Scalia’s seat has been made good. The Democrats will now have to rethink identity politics and third way neoliberalism. I wonder if Obama will try to ram through the trade agreements and a few other monstrosities now during the lame duck session.
Bye, Bye, Hillary, bye bye. It’s the one silver lining to the overhanging clouds. What a disaster of a candidate! Such arrogant over-confidence. And what a comeuppance for the party and its big money backers! It is going to cost them a lot of money to into Trumps good graces.
All we need now is for Trump to sell out his working class supporters for the Democrats to return to a sincere class-based politics that brings back the independent voters. They should have given Bernie his rightful chance.
Unfortunately, what we are likely to see is another attempt by the Clintons 4 years from now against Warren. Two losses isn’t likely to dissuade that bitch in the least.
I told you back in April and again 2 weeks ago that Trump would win!! http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/10/donald-j-trump-will-win.html Tim Chambers
fuggetaboutit Evil Genius
Who knows the Clintons and Waltons better than Arkansas? My favorite part was Arkansas voted 2-1 against Clinton. Ha ha ha!
(BTW GW: There’s an error in Robert Parry’s bio…the word “broke” is missing (i.e., “broke stories”).) kimyo
imagine if tomorrow trump says ‘yes, absolutely, we’re going to build that wall, but while we’re waiting for the check from mexico why don’t we find 500 out-of-work engineers and architects and 5,000 out-of-work construction folk and send them to flint to fix the water system. (costs him nothing, delivers grand justice)
cnn had a bad day today, but they’d be totally f’d tomorrow.
trump should hire some guy (me!) whose only job is to make cnn miserable, each day worse than the last.
ps: arpaio gone is nice. cali cannabis is nice. why is this thread so inactive? Jack
It’s time to collapse this mess and start new. Charlie Primero | 1real |
Trump and all the other far right leaders are Zionist stooges | Naming Trump, Nigel Farage in Britain and Marine Le Pen in France, the UN accused them of employing “fear” tactics similar to those of the Islamic State group. Note: U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has really hit the nail on the head here. Not only has he correctly pointed out that Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine LePen, Geert Wilders and the rest of the far-right leaders employ the tactics of fear and bigotry but he also correctly identifies their agenda as being the promotion of hatred with the eventual result that ‘colossal violence’ will ensue.
However, he does not go far enough in exposing these scumbags, most likely because he knows he would be placing himself in the crosshairs of the Zionists who stand behind these puppets.
What went unsaid is that all of these people are stooges for the Zionists and Israel, they are tasked with creating horrible divisions in our societies, turning white against brown and black, Christian against Muslim, indigenous against migrant.
This is the Zionist agenda to weaken and enslave via the strategy of divide and conquer, as laid out in the Protocols of Zion. They want to destroy our nations by promoting inter-racial hatred and violence; they want to see the nation states of the west burn down in a wave of racially motivated violence; that is why Trump spouts such hateful and disgusting rhetoric against Mexicans, blacks and Muslims, it is to promote a race war that would devastate America. — Ian Greenhalgh, Veterans Today
Trump and Europe’s Far-Right Fanning Flames of Hate: UN The United Nations human rights chief on Monday accused U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of spreading “humiliating racial and religious prejudice” and warned of a rise of populist politics that could turn violent.
In comments at a security and justice conference, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he was addressing Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders and other “populists, demagogues and political fantasists.”
Naming Trump, Nigel Farage in Britain and Marine Le Pen in France, among others, he accused them of using “fear” tactics similar to those of the Islamic State group, also known by its Arabic acronym, Daesh.
“Make no mistake, I certainly do not equate the actions of nationalist demagogues with those of Daesh,” he said. “But in its mode of communication, its use of half-truths and oversimplification, the propaganda of Daesh uses tactics similar to those of the populists.”
In a tweet, Wilders called Zeid “an idiot.”
Zeid labelled Wilders’ March 2017 election platform, which calls for no Muslim immigrants, the closing of mosques and the banning of the Quran, as “grotesque.”
“The U.N. is grotesque,” Wilders responded. “Let’s get rid of these bureaucrats.”
But Zeid said Wilders’ rhetoric could have terrible consequences.
“History has perhaps taught Mr. Wilders and his ilk how effectively xenophobia and bigotry can be weaponized,” he said.
“The atmosphere will become thick with hate; at this point it can descend rapidly into colossal violence,” he warned.
Source: Telesur
Via: Veterans Today
More from Political Insider… Just 11 Days Before the Election, Israel Sends Incredible Message to Donald Trump! WHOA
America is supporting Donald Trump, and his message to clean up the corrupt federal government is winning over millions of voters.
It’s a refreshing message, and Trump’s conservative vision is why he earned more votes than any Republican primary candidate in history!
In fact, Trump is so popular, his support is world-wide.
Here’s what’s going on in Jerusalem now. There is a clear message here that Hillary Clinton can’t be happy about.
As Yahoo News reports :
On a rooftop overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, around 200 American-Israeli fans of Donald Trump gathered to proclaim their support for the Republican candidate, convinced he will be Israel’s best friend if elected.
Wearing “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, the small crowd, ranging from Holocaust survivors in their 80s to grinning teenagers in Trump t-shirts, said they didn’t care about the sexual assault allegations against the candidate or the online anti-Semitism of some of his supporters.
“Trump will let Israel be itself and make its own decisions, that’s what I like,” David Weissman, a 35-year-old from Queens, New York, who moved to Israel three years ago, said at the event late on Wednesday.
“He’s not a saint, but look at his achievements. He’s not afraid to identify the enemy as radical Islam, and he’s not going to support the two-state solution,” he said, referring to long-standing efforts to forge peace with the Palestinians.
Clearly, the people of Israel have seen the mess caused in the Middle East by 8 years of weakness from President Barack Obama’s White House.
After Obama’s devastating and illegal pay-off to the Iranian regime, the Israeli people have a lot riding on the 2016 presidential election. They can’t continue to protect their citizens from harm if liberals in America keep funding their enemies.
This is why Trump is popular in Israel:
On day 1, Trump will have a better relationship with Israel than Obama ever had. Israel is our ally, and they deserve our support.
Source: Political Insider
| 1real |
FBI head confirms Russia election probe, says Moscow backed Trump | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed for the first time that the bureau is investigating possible ties between Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia as Moscow sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election. Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, made clear that their investigation of Moscow and November’s U.S. elections could last for months. Appearing before a congressional panel, Comey also publicly challenged Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his 2016 campaign headquarters in Manhattan’s Trump Tower. The two officials spent 5-1/2 hours before the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee in testimony marked by starkly partisan divides between the panel’s majority Republicans and Democrats. Comey refused to back away from his claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not simply want Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to lose the election; he wanted Donald Trump to win. Trump created a controversy in early March when he tweeted without giving evidence that Obama had wiretapped his campaign while the businessman competed against Clinton. “With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets,” Comey said. Leon Panetta, a former U.S. defense secretary and CIA director during the Obama administration, said in an interview that Trump should “acknowledge that he made a mistake, apologize to President Obama.” The committee is one of several in the U.S. Congress investigating whether Russia tried to influence the election, mostly by hacking Democratic operatives’ emails and releasing embarrassing information. Russia denies the allegations. Comey confirmed the FBI has been investigating since July possible Russian efforts to interfere in the election, including any cooperation between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. He said that while the Russian government wanted to hurt Clinton’s campaign and help Trump’s, intelligence agencies made no judgment on whether the efforts influenced the outcome. Comey gave no details of the classified investigation and said the fact that it exists does not mean charges would be filed. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia tried to help Trump by hacking leading Democrats. “I think that was a fairly easy judgment for the (intelligence) community,” he said. “Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.” Asked about Comey, White House spokesman Sean Spicer read a series of quotes from officials - some from the Obama administration - who have said they have seen no signs of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. In a tweet before the hearing, Trump wrote: “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign.” Spicer said he was unaware of any White House official being under investigation by the FBI. Trump has frequently urged better relations with Russia, which has been at odds with the United States over Ukraine and the Syrian civil war. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, detailed activities by Trump associates with ties to Russia, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, who was forced out as Trump’s national security adviser after talking to the Russian ambassador and then misrepresenting the conversation to Vice President Mike Pence. “Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said. “But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated.” Trump’s March 4 tweet about wiretapping pulled attention away from the claims of Russian election interference. He issued his tweet two days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who met with Russia’s U.S. ambassador at least twice last year, said he would recuse himself from any investigation of the matter. The White House has contended in recent days that Trump’s claim of wiretapping referred to general surveillance of the campaign. The White House has not provided evidence of surveillance of any kind. “Let me be clear: We know there was not a physical wiretap on Trump Tower. However, it’s still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President Trump and his associates,” said Representative Devin Nunes, the committee’s Republican chairman. Last week, Trump’s spokesman cited a media report that British intelligence was behind the surveillance, prompting ridicule in London. Rogers said the allegation had strained relations with London. “I think it clearly frustrates a key ally of ours,” Rogers said. Comey warned that Russia would attempt to influence the next U.S. presidential election in 2020 and perhaps congressional elections next year. “They’ll be back in 2020. They may be back in 2018. And one of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful because they introduced chaos and division and discord and sowed doubt about the nature of this amazing country of ours and our democratic process,” he said. Clinton’s fellow Democrats feel Comey played an inappropriate role in the 2016 presidential contest by issuing a statement shortly before Election Day reviving an investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server. Then, just two days before the election, Comey announced the FBI was sticking by a decision made months earlier that no criminal charges were warranted. | 0fake |
No Charisma, No Glamour: Michael Gove Makes His Case to Lead Britain - The New York Times | LONDON — Michael Gove made his case on Friday to become the next British prime minister, arguing that the new leader should be someone who had backed an exit from the European Union, while vowing to spend less than a third of what his “Leave” campaign had promised on the National Health Service. Mr. Gove spoke a day after he shocked Britain by announcing his candidacy in the Conservative Party competition, having promised to serve as campaign manager for Boris Johnson, the former London mayor seen as the for the post. Mr. Johnson, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign with Mr. Gove, has withdrawn his candidacy, making the home secretary, Theresa May, 59, the favorite. But Ms. May had quietly backed staying in the European Union, and Mr. Gove, the justice secretary, argued on Friday that he best represented the mood of the party and the country. Mr. Gove, 48, laid out his program in a long and slightly wandering speech in London, acknowledging that he possesses no glamour or charisma and that he “did almost everything not to be a candidate for the leadership of this party. ” He said he was “so very reluctant because I know my limitations. ” He added, “Whatever charisma is I don’t have it, whatever glamour may be I don’t think anyone could ever associate me with it. ” But Mr. Gove, having betrayed Mr. Johnson, had to justify his decision. He listened to his heart, he said, and decided that running was “the right thing to do. ” He portrayed himself as a politician of conviction who broke with Prime Minister David Cameron, a friend, over a longstanding belief that Britain could not be truly sovereign inside the European Union, and with Mr. Johnson because “I came to realize this week that, for all Boris’s formidable talents, he was not the right person for the task. ” Like Ms. May, who spoke in a polished opening of her candidacy on Thursday, Mr. Gove said that he would not begin the formal process of leaving the European Union until next year and would not hold an early election. He also said that controlling immigration to Britain was a goal, which would almost surely prevent Britain from retaining access to the single market of the bloc. He promised to “end free movement, introduce an system for immigration, and bring numbers down. ” Money saved from leaving the European Union would be spent principally on the National Health Service, he said, pledging to spend 100 million pounds more a week, or about $133 million, by 2020. Before the referendum, the Leave campaign bus had been emblazoned with a promise to spend £350 million a week on the N. H. S. — a pledge that it said was equivalent to the amount Britain sent to the European Union and one that it refused to abandon even when it was shown that the figure was bogus. Mr. Gove argued that he was “the candidate for change,” pointing to his experience as justice secretary and especially as education secretary, even though he became so unpopular in that post that Mr. Cameron moved him out of the job. That move was the source of great resentment from Mr. Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine, a journalist. Mr. Gove spoke of being an adopted child lucky to find loving parents in Aberdeen, Scotland, who instilled in him “a belief in human potential. ” And Mr. Gove, through intelligence and hard work, rose to graduate from Oxford and join the nation’s political elite. Only five Conservative members of Parliament were in the audience, and Mr. Gove will need more support than that to emerge as a plausible prime minister and a real competitor to Ms. May. She is considered a safe continuity candidate who is to the right of Mr. Cameron but slightly to the left of Mr. Gove. Ms. May is not a natural politician or a but she has concentrated on doing her work. She has been generally praised for her six years as home secretary, one of the country’s most difficult jobs, in particular for standing up to the police unions and for pushing through antiterrorism legislation. Mr. Gove had little to say on Friday about the budget or the economy, which has taken a big hit from the vote for the British exit, known as Brexit, as the Treasury warned. During the campaign, he dismissed all such warnings as “Project Fear” and said that “people in this country have had enough of experts. ” George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer and a friend of Mr. Gove’s, said in a speech of his own in Manchester on Friday that he would abandon his pledge to balance the budget by 2020, the end of this Parliament, because of the effect that the referendum would have on growth and the uncertainty surrounding it. “We will continue to be tough on the deficit, but we must be realistic about achieving a surplus by the end of this decade,” Mr. Osborne said. Few economists believed that Mr. Osborne would deliver a budget surplus so soon in any case, given the size of the deficit and the impolitic scale of the spending cuts or tax increases that would be required to achieve one. On Thursday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, warned that Britain was suffering “economic stress” from the referendum and that a downturn and possibly a recession were on the way. Mr. Carney said that he expected to order “some monetary easing” in the next few months to promote growth — in other words, a cut in interest rates. But the bank can only do so much. “Monetary policy cannot immediately or fully offset the economic implications of a large, negative shock,” he said. Had Mr. Cameron and the “Remain” campaign won the referendum, Mr. Osborne would have been seen as a potential successor for prime minister. Those hopes have evaporated, and there is speculation that he may support Mr. Gove. There are three other candidates: Stephen Crabb, a young lawmaker who is the work and pensions secretary Liam Fox, a former defense secretary and Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister, a Leave campaigner who is fast picking up support. Conservatives will start winnowing the five candidates down to two in rolling votes, and then the 150, 000 or so party members will choose between the final two, expected now to be Ms. May and Mr. Gove. A decision is likely to be announced on Sept. 9. | 0fake |
A Congressman Wrote A Book Anonymously That Is Guaranteed To P*ss You Off | 84 pages of how the United States House of Representatives really works is set to be released by a small Minnesota publisher on May 24th. The tell-all, written by a sitting US congressman rumored to be a Democrat, confirms the storied we ve heard and adds a few new twists to how life as a public servant actually works opposed to the facade of friendly people in nice clothes who shake your hand and care deeply for your needs, whatever they may be.First let s start off by saying that like anything, there are exceptions to the rule. There s gonna be a district of good people somewhere who have elected a man or a woman who genuinely cares about their municipalities and their lives and improving them no matter what. There are far more, however, nefarious career con artists who have seen first hand through their families or learned coming up the ladder that congressional politics is, for the most part, all or nothing scumbaggery. They know the system and are bred for it. Confessions of a Congressman set to be released May 24 AmazonThis particular congressman has decided that through anonymity he (says he s a he but could be a she?) will only honestly and openly describe the life of a US Representative at the expense of letting the people know exactly how he and most of his colleagues view the American public. DailyMail.com reports having seen the book, using these bullet points to describe the contents:As disturbing as that sounds, it isn t really all that far off from how many Americans already view congress. Their approval rating barely hits double digits. They do nothing. Partisan politics and campaigning have replaced governing in America. There are good people coming up with great ideas being squashed by people like this guy who buy their way through life one election at a time, hoping to someday get the call to the upper chamber where all that fundraising can be replaced with a few years of vacation in between. Maybe someday someone will find out you have the right look for a presidential run.It would be impossible to eliminate politics from government. Limiting the amount of time a particular politician can remain in office, however, would go far towards removing people like the selfish bastard who wrote this book and everyone else who has turned Capitol Hill into 535 ongoing campaigns.Featured image via Wikipedia/thirstynyc.com | 1real |
Early Voting Data Shows African American Turnout Dropping | Early Voting Data Shows African American Turnout Dropping Neil Munro, Breitbart, October 31, 2016
A blizzard of early reports show that early voting by pro-Democratic African-Americans has dropped significantly compared to 2012, giving a boost to Donald Trump’s prospects in critical swing-states, such as North Carolina and Ohio.
In North Carolina, early voting by African-Americans is sharply down, so “you will see a very heavy push in this state for the African-American vote by Hilary Clinton to try to make up some of deficit,” said Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, in Salisbury, N.C.
{snip}
Nationally, “African-American enthusiasm has dipped compared with that in 2012,” according to the New York Times . That’s “a surprising and disquieting development for Democrats who believed Trump’s racial appeals and flirtations with the birther movement would generate more urgency,” the Times reported . For example, in the two Virginia districts with the largest percentage of African American adults, early voting has dropped by more than 50 percent, the Times said.
In Ohio, the decline of early voting in heavily Democratic African-American districts is causing worry for Democrats–and a shift of resources into the low-turnout areas. {snip}
In Florida, “the bad news for Clinton/good news for Trump is that African-Americans and millenials are voting considerably lighter–so far–than four years ago,” the Tampa Bay Times reported Oct. 31.
Daniel Smith, a political science professor in Florida noted the rising level of early voting among whites and Hispanics, compared to to African-Americans.
In North Carolina, “white voters are currently 72 percent of all absentee ballots cast, with black voters being 22 percent and all other races 6 percent. This represents a steady continuation of the trends that we have seen, with white voters over-performing their 2012 numbers and black voters under-performing their 2012 numbers,” Blitzer said at his blog, Old North State Politics .
{snip} | 1real |
Trump's trust in Flynn had been eroding: White House spokesman | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump asked for the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after his level of trust in Flynn eroded to the point that he felt he needed to make a change, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday. A day after Flynn’s resignation, Spicer said Trump had been concerned that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence over his contacts with Russian officials before Trump took office on Jan. 20. Trump had been reviewing Flynn’s situation for a few weeks, he said. Amid congressional calls for an investigation into the extent to which Flynn discussed the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to Washington, Spicer said the White House legal counsel had reviewed the situation and believed Flynn’s case was viewed “not as a legal issue but a trust issue.” Spicer said Trump was informed of Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak and asked counsel to review the case. “The erosion of that trust, frankly, was the issue,” Spicer said. He said Trump had not told Flynn to discuss U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian diplomat. | 0fake |
Democrats hand Obama a stinging defeat on trade deal | Could this be the populist moment?
A seemingly unstoppable coalition of the powerful assembled to advance the Trans Pacific Partnership trade bill: A Democratic president aligned with the Republican majority in both chambers of Congress and the full lobbying might of Corporate America.
But on Tuesday afternoon, the Senate Democratic minority delivered a surprise defeat to President Obama and a severe setback to one of the last few items on his presidential agenda. They blocked consideration of “fast track” trade authority – a crucial vehicle to get the Pacific trade pact through Congress.
The victors: the ascendant populist wing of the Democratic Party, and its spiritual leader, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “Over and over, America’s workers have taken the brunt of bad trade deals,” the former Harvard professor and scourge of big business told a gathering of the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank, hours before Tuesday’s vote.
“We can’t keep pushing through trade deals that benefit multinational companies at the expense of workers,” she added, with theatrical urgency. “Government cannot continue to be the captive of the rich and powerful. Working people cannot be forced to give up more and more as they get squeezed harder and harder.”
Warren masterfully undermined the trade bill, by highlighting the administration’s obsessive secrecy (the details of the proposed agreement are classified) and the role of corporate interests in drafting the deal (500 non-government advisors participated, she said, 85 percent of them industry executives or lobbyists).
“And now this trade deal is getting the full court lobbying press from those same giant multinational corporations,” she said. “The middle class is on the ropes and now is the time to fight back.”
Under intense pressure from the Warren wing, 44 of the 45 Democrats present Tuesday afternoon defied Obama. Even Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chief Democratic advocate for the fast-track bill, buckled. Proponents fell eight votes short of the 60 they needed to take up the fast-track bill.
Senate free-traders will likely find a way to revive the bill, but Tuesday’s defeat will embolden opponents in the House, where the free-trade package already faced trouble. However the trade debate is resolved, Tuesday’s defeat in the Senate is likely to be a turning point, because it shows that the populists are now firmly in control of the Democratic Party. Anger over growing inequality has reached critical mass, and a backlash has begun against a political system that has, over the last three decades, allowed 100 percent of all income growth to go to the wealthiest 10 percent.
The trade deal has for now become the victim of that anger – less because of the details of the TPP than because it hasn’t been accompanied by more protections and assistance for American workers.
“I believe in this,” Obama said of the trade deal, “the same way… that I believe in a higher minimum wage. The same way that I believe in stronger protections for workers who are trying to get a voice in their company. The same way I believe in equal pay. The same way I believe in paid sick leave.”
But Obama’s actions haven’t matched his words, and he didn’t require Republicans to accept any of those priorities before he joined them in pushing for free-trade legislation. Senate Republicans drove more Democrats into opposition when they declined requests to bring up other trade-related bills other than legislation offering a meager (and reduced) amount of training funds for workers who lose their jobs.
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest called Tuesday’s vote a “procedural snafu.” But Obama was undone by more than procedure. His would-be successor, Hillary Clinton, was not courageous enough to take a position on the trade legislation, but her silence gave Democrats more freedom to oppose it. And Democrats in Congress bristled at Obama’s disparagement of opponents of the trade bill as emotional, illogical and dishonest.
“The president is making some fairly nasty remarks about people on the other side, that they don’t understand we’re in the 21st century,” Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, said at the Roosevelt Institute gathering, at the National Press Club. “Actually we do. I don’t think he understands.”
Warren, at the same event, took a shot at those Democrats who have “floated along with the idea that economic growth is in direct opposition to strengthening the wellbeing of America’s working families… That claim is flatly wrong.”
Tuesday’s 44-to-1 vote against Obama’s position confirms that Warren’s populists now dominate the Democratic Party – and if Obama wants to retain a semblance of relevance, he’ll join them.
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. | 0fake |
YOU GO GIRL! Jayda Fransen of Britain First raises hell at a halal butcher shop | YOU GO GIRL! Jayda Fransen of Britain First raises hell at a halal butcher shop She screams at the butchers for barbarically slaughtering fully conscious animals by cutting their throats so they bleed out dying in agony and tells the customers they are supporting Islamic terrorism by paying a special halal tax on everything they buy there. Even worse, a lot of the people working in the halal slaughter house don’t appear to be Muslims. | 1real |
Hispanic Crowd Boos Marco Rubio off Stage | Hispanic Crowd Boos Marco Rubio off Stage Rafael Bernal, The Hill, October 25, 2016
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took the stage in Orlando at Calle Orange, a Puerto Rican-themed festival, on Sunday when some in the crowd started booing, NPR reported .
The jeering got louder as the Cuban-American senator, seeking reelection after dropping his presidential bid earlier this year, was introduced.
And when the emcee asked for applause as Rubio took the same, boos drowned out any supporters in the crowd, NPR added.
“Thank you for having me today,” Rubio said in Spanish. “I want you to enjoy this day. We’re not going to talk about politics today. Thank God for this beautiful day, and for our freedom, our democracy, our vote, and our country. God bless you all, thank you very much.”
He left the stage to more boos from the crowd, according to the report.
{snip}
Rubio is running against Rep. Patrick Murphy (D), and the latest average of polls in the race shows Rubio ahead by about 3 points.
Murphy’s campaign seized on the Sunday incident and blasted out video it says shows the booing. It also noted that Murphy attended the festival “with a leader for Puerto Rican communities, Rep. Nydia Velazquez,” while “Marco Rubio was booed off the stage.”
Rubio’s campaign shared a video with The Hill Monday that it says counters what the Murphy campaign sent out and shows him being greeted enthusiastically as he moves through the crowd.
{snip}
Festival attendants said they disapproved of Rubio’s endorsement of Trump, who is deeply unpopular among Hispanics.
“When we have someone like Trump, who hits our Mexican brothers, our Latino brothers, then you jump on that bandwagon after all that stuff he says not only about you personally . . . as a Latino, you’re a freaking sellout. I would not vote for him if they paid me,” Calle Orange attendant Angel Marin told NPR about Rubio.
{snip} | 1real |
Donald Trump’s New York Times Interview in 12 Tweets - The New York Times | Donald J. Trump met on Tuesday with journalists from the newsroom and opinion staff at The New York Times. Several reporters, news editors and opinion writers used Twitter to report live on the interview with Mr. Trump. Here are highlights of the significant answers Mr. Trump gave in the interview. Many were tweeted by Maggie Haberman, a political reporter who covered Mr. Trump’s campaign, and Michael M. Grynbaum, a media reporter for The Times. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Mr. Trump said. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways. ” He also said that it could be argued that the Clinton Foundation had done “good work. ” As The Times reported shortly after the election, “Mr. Trump told Mrs. Clinton at the second presidential debate that if elected, he would instruct his attorney general ‘to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.’ ” His reversal has already provoked a backlash among some of his supporters, something he said Tuesday he did not expect to happen. Mr. Trump was referring to James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who headed United States Central Command, who is under consideration to head the Department of Defense. The Times most recently covered General Mattis on Monday, noting that he “oversaw military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia from 2010 to 2013,” but “had his tour cut short by the Obama administration, which believed he was too hawkish on Iran. ” Here are two Times articles about the conference, which took place on Saturday in Washington. “It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why,” Mr. Trump said in the interview on Tuesday. Mr. Trump’s appointment of Stephen K. Bannon, a nationalist media mogul who is the former head of Breitbart News, to a top White House position, had elicited fierce criticism. The Times profiled Mr. Bannon when he was named to be Mr. Trump’s campaign chief in August. Asked by the columnist Thomas L. Friedman about whether he thought human activity was linked to climate change, Mr. Trump said: “I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much. ” But while acknowledging the connection, he said in response to questions about the warming climate that he was thinking about “how much it will cost our companies. ” Mr. Trump’s statements were a turn away from assertions that climate change was a “hoax,” something that he later claimed never to have said. Mr. Trump was acknowledging a recent meeting with the British politician Nigel Farage, in which, The Times reported, he “encouraged Mr. Farage and his entourage to oppose the kind of offshore wind farms that Mr. Trump believes will mar the pristine view from one of his two Scottish golf courses. ” He was referring to Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican who was unseated by New Hampshire’s governor, Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. Ms. Ayotte had turned against Mr. Trump late in the campaign, saying that she misspoke when she called him a role model. The “Heck” he’s referring to is Representative Joe Heck, a Republican who was defeated in Nevada by Catherine Cortez Masto, his Democratic challenger. Pressed about his business interests, Mr. Trump also said, “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. ” As The Times reported over the weekend, recent meetings that Mr. Trump has held have suggested that he may keep up his business ties. “The law’s totally on my side,” Mr. Trump said. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest. ” “He said very nice things after the meeting and I said very nice things about him,” Mr. Trump said of President Obama, adding that “I think he’s looking to do absolutely the right thing for the country in terms of transition. ” Here’s our article on the cordial meeting in the Oval Office. Ms. Haberman was referring to Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s who has been one of the ’s closest advisers. (PEOTUS is an abbreviation for of the United States.) The Times reported Saturday that Mr. Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, “has emerged as the closest thing to a steadying influence” in Mr. Trump’s circle. Mr. Kushner has arranged important meetings for Mr. Trump, including one with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and has sought out the advice of foreign policy experts including Henry Kissinger. “I would love to be the one who made peace with Israel and the Palestinians, that would be such a great achievement,” Mr. Trump said. The final tweet is . | 0fake |
The Coming Storm — ‘Trump only won because the Elites want him there’ | The elite Shadowmasters need a scapegoat for the world catastrophe they have been planning for a long time . . . and Trump will be the man to blame when the house of cards comes crashing down. THE COMING STORM Economic Armageddon is on its way ! While many of us in the alternative media and especially those researchers of Clinton crimes are breathing a big fat sigh of relief that anybody but Hillary is headed to the White House in 2017, Brandon Smith of Alt Market is warning us all not to get too comfortable… and with history on his side here, we should listen to him.
Despite what looked like a rigged, fraudulent Hillary win orchestrated from the top down with the entire establishment machine behind her, Trump won the election. In an election year that would have otherwise seen record low voter turnout, the specter of Hillary that led to Trump’s victory has now given the people a reason to believe their vote actually matters again, an extra boon to further relegitimize the corrupt system running things in this country.
But Brandon Smith reminds us that if Trump is walking into the Oval Office in January, it is only because the elites decided to put him there in advance — and for a reason.
First it should be noted that Smith accurately predicted that Brexit would pass , even when the majority of the alt media was reporting that there was no way it possibly could. Was it another victory for the people?
No, it was predetermined well in advance: “The mainstream media has been consistently comparing Trump supporters to Brexit supporters, and Trump himself has hitched his political wagon to the Brexit. This fits perfectly with the globalist narrative that populists and conservatives are killing the global economy and placing everyone at risk. “
Then he accurately predicted a Trump win … but not because voting actually matters: “U.S. elections are indeed controlled, and have been for decades, primarily through the false left/right paradigm. However, as I have been pointing out since I correctly predicted the success of the Brexit referendum, I don’t think that Clinton is the choice of the elites.” “To be clear, my position is that Trump is slated to take the White House and that this is by design. This has been my position since before Trump won the Republican Primaries, it was my position when the election cycle began, it has never changed, nor have my views on the reasons for this outcome ever changed…”
Smith says regardless of whether or not Trump is a legitimate anti-establishment candidate, his win means the global economic collapse the system has been holding off on will finally come to pass — as planned — under Trump’s watch: “…Even if Trump is a legitimate anti-establishment conservative, his entry into the Oval Office will seal the deal on the economic collapse, and will serve the globalists well. The international banks need only pull the plug on any remaining life support to the existing market system and allow it to fully implode, all while blaming Trump and his conservative supporters…”
He will be the perfect scapegoat for something the alternative media have known is coming for a long, long time.
Now Smith is spelling it out : The bottom line is, Trump is on the way to the White House because the elites WANT HIM THERE. Now, many liberty proponents, currently in a state of elation, will either ignore or dismiss the primary reason why I was able to predict the Brexit and a Trump win. These will probably be some of the same people that were arguing with me only weeks ago that the elites would NEVER allow Trump in office. So, to clarify: Trump may or may not be aware that he and his conservative followers have been positioned into a a trap. We will have to wait and see how he behaves in office (and he WILL be in office, despite the claims of some that the elites will try to “stop him” before January). My primary point is THAT IT DOES NOT MATTER, at least not at this stage. The elites will initiate a final collapse of the global economy under Trump’s watch (this will probably escalate over the course of the next six months), and they WILL blame him and conservatives in general. This IS going to happen. The elites play the long game, and so must we.
And there you have it.
It’s not much of a secret that the economy is being artificially propped up. The Fed’s QE stimulus programs are no longer working. We know it can’t remain this way forever.
And even though everyone just feels so much relief that we’ve all been spared the nightmare of Hillary Clinton climbing into yet another seat of even more power, we can’t just assume we’re all going to skip off into happy magical fairy sprinkle land unscathed.
Sure, the people have spoken, but it’s only the illusion of power that we’re seeing play out now. The Powers That Shouldn’t Be running this insanity circus always have a plan… how else have they gotten away with controlling the globe for at least the past century?
While millions of Americans are celebrating Trump’s win today, I will remain even more vigilant. The party is just getting started, folks. Don’t get too comfortable. Sadly, we can’t ignore decades of New World Order history here just because we’re relieved a psychopath like Hillary lost the election.
2017 is going to be a bumpy ride . DISCLAIMER. All articles published on this website reflect the views of their original authors; publication here in no way implies automatic agreement or approval of its contents. “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.” — Shakespeare, Julius Caesar | 1real |
Fiery Republican race heads to S.C., known for dirty tricks and brawls | One of the first signs that the presidential campaign had arrived in the wild and woolly political state of South Carolina came Wednesday morning in this coastal retiree haven when Sen. Lindsey O. Graham introduced his favored candidate, Jeb Bush, and issued a warning.
“If you’re not ready to play,” he said, “don’t come to South Carolina.”
A state known for its nasty political brawls is about to host an epic one, pitting a foul-mouthed celebrity billionaire against a band of senators and governors scrapping to challenge him. The Republican presidential candidates arrived here Wednesday ready for 10 days of combat that could bring clarity to what so far has been a muddy nomination contest.
Since Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary failed to deliver much certainty, the Palmetto State’s GOP primary on Feb. 20 could prove determinative for a trio of candidates vying to become the GOP establishment’s consensus alternative to front-runner Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The attacks began early on Wednesday. Aboard a chartered jet en route to Spartanburg, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) bashed Bush, his one-time mentor, for lacking foreign-policy experience and Trump for not sharing policy specifics. Later in the day, he talked up his opposition to Common Core education standards, an implicit dig at Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who are proponents.
Meanwhile, Bush and his aides hit Kasich for expanding Medicaid under President Obama’s health-care law and for supporting military defense cuts. “He led the charge to expand Medicaid and is quite proud of that,” said Bush, a former Florida governor. “I wouldn’t be proud of that, to be honest with you.”
Bush also hit Trump, calling him a “phenomenal entertainer” who lacks the temperament to be president.
Katon Dawson, a former state GOP chairman who has not endorsed anyone, explained what makes the South Carolina primary unique.
“People in Iowa expect the candidate to trudge through the snow, do small meetings in diners,” he said. “In New Hampshire, they expect a candidate to come to their living room, sit on the sofa, have some coffee. In South Carolina, 700,000 people want to see how you take a punch.”
[Rubio leaves New Hampshire with his campaign badly damaged]
Trump sits in the pole position here, where the billionaire mogul’s anti-immigration, outsider crusade has found deep support. Top South Carolina Republicans see Trump as the one to beat, noting that the electorate historically votes based on values and emotion.
Trump rallied a few thousand supporters in a livestock arena at Clemson University in Pendleton, where he went after only one opponent: Bush. Trump called him “low energy” and a “stiff” who is controlled by his donors. “The last thing we need is another Bush,” Trump said as the crowd cheered.
Trump has about a dozen campaign staffers and four offices in the state, along with three RVs that function as mobile offices in rural areas. But it is unclear whether they can persuade the thousands of people who pack his rallies to cast ballots for him in a primary expected to draw exponentially more voters than the Iowa or New Hampshire contests.
The most consequential moment may be Saturday night’s debate on CBS, where Trump could come under intense fire from Cruz and Bush and where Rubio will seek redemption from a disastrous debate that wounded him in New Hampshire. In 2012, Newt Gingrich’s electric performances in two debates the week before the primary lifted him from a hobbling third place in the polls to a decisive victory over Mitt Romney.
Rubio, coming off a humbling fifth-place finish in New Hampshire, seemed to be in search of catharsis. The candidate accused of being too scripted opened up to reporters aboard his plane for a rare 45-minute news conference.
He drew on his time as a college football cornerback to frame his outlook. “You’re gonna get beat,” Rubio said, adding: “You gotta put that play behind you, because the next play is just as important.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy, one of Rubio’s biggest backers in South Carolina, said the key is to “let people meet Marco.”
“When you meet him, you love him,” Gowdy said. He recalled a recent swing through a Spartanburg restaurant: “By the end of Marco walking around the tables in the restaurant, he was far more popular than anyone he was with. To know him is to love him.”
Two candidates did not make the trip to South Carolina. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former technology executive Carly Fiorina announced Wednesday that they were suspending their campaigns after disappointing finishes in New Hampshire. This leaves six major candidates, including retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, still in the race.
Trump’s dominance here puts him in the crosshairs of Cruz, who defeated the businessman in the Iowa caucuses after a caustic advertising blitz and attacks on the stump. Cruz plans to replicate that strategy in South Carolina.
“The only way to beat Donald Trump is to highlight the simple truth of his record — it is not conservative,” Cruz said Wednesday in Myrtle Beach.
Cruz was more specific on Mike Gallagher’s talk radio show, highlighting Trump’s past support for abortion rights and bank bailouts.
Cruz is getting backup on the airwaves from his allied super PAC, Keep the Promise I, which has committed more than $2.5 million in the state. Strategist Kellyanne Conway, who runs the group, said the ads would repeat similar attacks leveled against Trump in Iowa.
“There’s some nagging concern he’s gone through the political witness-protection program to emerge a spanking new conservative,” Conway said. “Eminent domain is a big problem for him. If Trump’s entire narrative of ‘I’m for the little guy’ hits a speed bump, it’s because South Carolina becomes more familiar with the victims of Trump’s success.”
Bush is taking a three-pronged approach in South Carolina: Keep up attacks on Trump’s temperament and lack of serious policy ideas; raise doubts about Rubio’s maturity and governing experience; and remind voters in the military-heavy state that Kasich once advocated deep Pentagon spending cuts.
He will be helped by his super PAC, Right to Rise USA, which Wednesday pumped in another $1.7 million in ad dollars on top of roughly $10 million already budgeted. The group is airing one TV ad attacking Rubio’s lack of legislative accomplishments and another featuring an endorsement from former president George W. Bush.
During a Wednesday campaign stop in Bluffton, Bush focused mostly on Trump. When a man asked what he thought of Trump’s vow to run the country like a business, Bush replied, “The problem with Trump is he went bankrupt four times.”
Bush has 20 paid staffers working out of four offices across the state, and his advisers are counting on goodwill for his family name as well as the enthusiastic endorsement of Graham.
Since dropping out of the presidential race, Graham, the state’s senior senator, has quickly become one of Bush’s top strategists. The two have bonded during long car rides and debate prep sessions.
“I’m going to make this a referendum on commander-in-chief,” Graham said. “The centerpiece of my campaign was defending this country, winning a war we couldn’t afford to lose, and the reason I picked Jeb is I think he’s most qualified to do the job.”
Bush plans to make his South Carolina campaign a family affair. He turns 63 on Thursday and is scheduled to make appearances with his wife, three grown children and four grandchildren. He also is expected to campaign with his brother.
“Jeb Bush is bringing in the firepower of 43,” said Dawson, an ally of the former president’s. “If Trump wants to tangle with George W. Bush, that ain’t like tangling with the former governor of Florida. That’s tangling with a Texan, and if the George W. Bush we all know shows up, the one who’s a competitor — well, I relish seeing that fight.”
[With second-place finish, Kasich is thrust into relevance]
Potentially standing in Bush’s way is Kasich, who was buoyant following his surprisingly strong second-place finish in New Hampshire. But Kasich is getting a late start in South Carolina, where he has just three full-time staffers. His super PAC, New Day for America, has a robust presence in the state and plans to air ads.
Kasich is targeting moderate voters in specific areas of the state where he can pick up delegates based on South Carolina’s proportional allocation rules, such as Charleston, populated with many business-friendly Republicans, as well as diverse counties in and around Columbia.
Kasich told reporters flying with him to Charleston on Wednesday that he hopes to keep his message optimistic, while acknowledging that the South Carolina dynamic could be dramatically different.
“I know we can’t just go through this, you know, like falling off the turnip truck and saying that everything is just going to be positive, because I’m going to have to respond to some of this stuff,” Kasich said. “But I’m starting to really think we’re on to something.”
Sullivan reported from Spartanburg, S.C., and Rucker reported from Washington. Robert Costa in Manchester, N.H., Jose A. DelReal in Charleston, S.C., Jenna Johnson in Pendleton, S.C., David Weigel in Concord, N.H., and Katie Zezima in Washington contributed to this report. | 0fake |
CAUGHT ON VIDEO! Violent Anti-Trump Thugs Pelt Eggs At Trump Supporters | When will the media report on this nice group of illegal aliens and racist American thugs | 1real |
LOL! ARROGANT OBAMA BEGS Congress To Save Embarrassing Legacy…Do NOT Repeal Obamacare [VIDEO] | Barack Obama implored members of Congress to have the courage not to repeal the Affordable Care Act Sunday night.The former president made his first public remarks about the proposed health care legislation just days after House Republicans voted to pass the measure 217 to 213. If it passes the Senate, it would repeal and replace major parts of Obamacare.During his speech, Obama also lauded the Democratic members of Congress who voted in favor of the Affordable Cart Act in 2010 and then lost their seats because of it. These men and women did the right thing, the hard thing, and theirs was a profile in courage, and because of that vote, 20 million people got health insurance that didn t have it before. Daily Caller | 1real |
E.T. Williams: ‘Anti Trump Protesters, Your Revolution is Fake’ | 21st Century Wire says As anti-Trump protests continue at college campuses across America, many are still trying to make sense of what exactly the students are protesting for, beyond venting their frustration about the results of another democratic election in America. Doctor of Common Sense E.T. Williams disagrees, The anti-Trump protesters are no damn revolutionaries, they are lawless idiots. Watch: | 1real |
GOP Rep. Steve King Just Went FULL White Supremacist – David Duke Is Cheering (TWEETS) | While it should surprise absolutely no one that Iowa Rep. Steve King is a blatant, flaming, disgusting pig of a racist, what he just did on Twitter puts him into the same category as the KKK and the Neo-Nazis here in the U.S. He met with two white supremacist demagogues Geert Wilders from the Netherlands and Frauke Petry from Germany in 2016 and expressed strong support for their ahem anti-immigrant policies. But today, he not only doubled down on that, he was so obviously white supremacist he earned accolades for it from one David Duke.King tweeted a cartoon from Voice of Europe, a publication that could easily be a Make America Great Again publication for Trump if it was American. It says:Hundreds of Islamists shouting Allahu Akbar in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Wilders is right for over 10 years. #turkijerel pic.twitter.com/dV2SjXg23r Voice of Europe (@V_of_Europe) March 12, 2017King, not to be outdone on the white supremacy front, then tweeted: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, 2017In other words, King just said that culture is rooted in demographics, which implies that he believes the only way to preserve true American and Western European culture is to preserve white superiority. That s what known white nationalist groups also say about brown people polluting the white gene pool.Now, read what David Duke s reply was to that:Just in case you were thinking about moving -> sanity reigns supreme in Iowa s 4th congressional district.#MakeAmericaGreatAgain https://t.co/RRjTzAzlKw David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) March 12, 2017 Reigns supreme. No double entendre there at all. You know you ve arrived as a white supremacist when David Duke applauds you. Steve King needs to be ousted from Congress. He s the antithesis of America.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images | 1real |
Obama ISIS war authorization: Request sent to Congress | Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama on Wednesday made the case for Congress to formally authorize the use of military force in the war against ISIS, declaring that congressional passage of the measure makes the U.S. "strongest" in the fight, and that "ISIL is going to lose."
"Now, make no mistake, this is a difficult mission and it will remain difficult for some time," he said during an afternoon press conference. But, he added, "Our coalition is on the offensive, ISIL is on the defensive and ISIL is going to lose."
Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, outlined the parameters of the request he delivered to Congress earlier that day. He said the bill reflects "our core objective to destroy ISIL," and includes authority for a "systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes," support and training for forces on the ground and humanitarian assistance.
He made clear, however, that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, does not call for the deployment of ground troops in Iraq or Syria.
"I am convinced that the U.S. should not get back into another ground war in the Middle East -- it's not in our national security interest and not necessary for us to defeat ISIL," he said.
The joint resolution would limit the President's authority to wage a military campaign against ISIS to three years and does not authorize "enduring offensive ground combat operations," according to text of the resolution.
The resolution would also sunset the 2002 AUMF that spawned the Iraq War. Obama withdrew American troops from Iraq in 2011, but the military authorization remains in effect.
The resolution drafted by the White House does not repeal the 2001 military force authorization that has served as the legal justification for the military campaign against ISIS and other U.S. military efforts to combat terrorism around the world.
The document also specifically notes that ISIS poses a "grave threat" to U.S. national security interests and regional stability.
And Obama detailed the ISIS threat in a letter to Congress accompanying the draft legislation.
"The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) poses a threat to the people and stability of Iraq, Syria, and the broader Middle East, and to U.S. national security," Obama writes. "It threatens American personnel and facilities located in the region and is responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens"
As in the draft resolution, Obama goes on to name the Americans killed in ISIS captivity, "including James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller."
There is broad support in Congress for a formal AUMF, though lawmakers disagree on the scope of the military powers that should be handed to the President.
House Republican leaders were quick to dismiss the White House draft authorization as too limited, insisting that the President should have fewer limitations.
"If we are going to defeat this enemy, we need a comprehensive military strategy and a robust authorization, not one that limits our options," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement Tuesday. "Any authorization for the use of military force must give our military commanders the flexibility and authorities they need to succeed and protect our people...I have concerns that the president's request does not meet this standard."
Boehner's No. 2, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, echoed Boehner's support for an AUMF as well as his criticism of the limits the White House's draft would impose.
"I am prepared to support an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that provides new legal authorities to go after ISIL and other terrorist groups. However, I will not support efforts that impose undue restrictions on the U.S. military and make it harder to win," McCarthy said in a statement.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi took the opposite path during a press conference Wednesday.
"We hope to have bipartisan support for something that would limit the power of the President, but nonetheless protect the American people in a very strong way," Pelosi said.
Pelosi added that she hoped the three-year authorization would be longer than needed to defeat ISIS.
Pelosi also offered her support for repealing the 2002 authorization, another provision included in Obama's draft resolution.
"I don't see any reason -- in fact I actively support -- repealing the 2002 authorization. It was based on a false premise," Pelosi said. "Nonetheless, it should go, and it should go now."
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is staffing up for a potential 2016 presidential bid, took the opportunity to slam likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
"I do really blame Hillary Clinton's war in Libya," Paul said Wednesday on Fox News referring to the NATO campaign to oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi authorized by Obama while Clinton was secretary of state.
Libya has erupted into civil war and has become a breeding ground for radical Islamic fighters, many of whom have left to join ISIS's ranks.
Paul also said the U.S. needs to supply more weapons to Kurdish fighters fighting ISIS in Iraq, but said the U.S. should refrain from getting involved in the war in Syria -- fearing weapons supplied to moderate fighters could get into ISIS's hands.
Paul has been at odds with his Republican colleagues on many aspects of foreign policy, especially in urging for a more restrained, and not limitless, authority to fight ISIS.
Obama urged Congress during his State of the Union address to formally authorize the military campaign to "show the world that we are united in this mission" and Secretary of State John Kerry urged Congress to swiftly pass the resolution.
"We are strongest as a nation when the Administration and Congress work together on issues as significant as the use of military force," Kerry said. "This is a moment where Congress can make it clear all over the world that no matter differences on certain issues, at home we're absolutely united and determined in defeating ISIL."
Obama again noted in his letter to Congress Wednesday that he already has the authority to fight ISIS, "I have repeatedly expressed my commitment to working with the Congress to pass a bipartisan authorization for the use of military force" against ISIS.
Obama also stressed that the White House's draft resolution would constrain the U.S. military effort and would not authorize "long-term, large-scale ground combat operations" like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While Obama did not repeal the 2001 military authorization, he explained in his letter that he remains "committed to working with Congress and the American people to refine, and ultimately repeal, the 2001 AUMF." | 0fake |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.