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11,500 | MICHIGAN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL Hosts Segregated Muslim Sharia Prom | THE ARTICLE BELOW makes the Princess Prom seem harmless it s not. Sharia is creeping into our American way of life every day. The town of Hamtramck, Michigan is a perfect example of Islam quietly taking over towns across America. It s really a silent invasion and Americans are just rolling over and letting it happen.A recent article we reported on regarding Sharia in America: MINNEAPOLIS MUSLIM Tries To Enforce Sharia In Neighborhood: People who don t know me would say I m a terrorist And another: TOUGH TEXAS MAYOR Who Fought Back Against Implementation Of Sharia Law In Her City Will Join Trump Team [VIDEO]And another: TEXAS MUSLIMS PRAYING IN METHODIST CHURCH CLAIM: Sharia is just like the Constitution [Video]See our point? This is creeping into our towns and has already taken over in Hamtramck:In case you haven t heard, this Michigan town just recently became the first town in America to have an all Muslim City Council. This town went from being a diverse blend of many cultures to being majority Muslim. Michigan is heading in the direction of being majority Muslim with the next Democrat candidate for governor being Muslim This is why what s happening at this high school is so disturbing We bend over backwards to accommodate Muslims for fear of being called Islamophobic . All the while, SHARIA is becoming more and more accepted. Islamic prayer rooms in public schools? Lessons on Islam in public school? Hijab Day so the girls can see what it s like to wear a hijab? Yes, these things and more have been happening in YOUR public schools across America.What may seem like a harmless girls-only prom, is the beginning of the end for some who are aware The Princess Prom is a special prom organized for Hamtramck s high school girls. Started in 2012, the Princess Prom began as a way for the students be able to attend prom, which many could not due to cultural and religious reasons. The special prom allows the students to to dress and dance freely among other women. on May 06, 2017 at 8:00 AM, updated May 08, 2017 at 10:48 AM A Detroit-area high school is holding an all-girls prom to create a comfortable and safe environment for girls who cannot attend the traditional co-ed prom for cultural reasons.That s right. Boys are not allowed.Five Muslim girls from Hamtramck High School started Princess Prom in 2012 to give girls the opportunity to dress up as they please and dance the night away.Last year, 230 girls showed up to the dance at the PNA Banquet Hall in Hamtramck. This year, the team expects about 250 in attendance.The event is intended to create a safe space for Muslim girls who normally cover up in hijab to let their hair down in an environment with no boys and no cellphones.Phones are banned to prevent problems with photos being posted to social media. We re on our phones 24-7 and if you don t have it for a few hours, it s so calming and everybody is having a fun time, said Aisha Khanum, an 18-year-old student at Hamtramck High School who has been on Princess Prom planning committee for three years.The dance offers a separate zone for anyone who needs to use their phone.Like any other prom, the girls show up in extravagant gowns, shiny stilettos and flashy makeup and hair styles, and they are surrounded with food and lively music.This one adds an extra cultural element with henna tattoos, a popular form of body art in parts of the Middle Eastern, North African and South Asia. The girls work through the year to do fundraising, said Caitlin Drinkard, a school counselor who helps organize the annual event. They sold walking tacos, T-shirts, flowers on Valentine s Day. She said the process empowers the girls and allows them to celebrate sisterhood.Read more: mlive | 0 |
11,501 | REPORT: Trump Tried To Pull His Own Saturday Night Massacre, WH Aides Said Hell No | Donald Trump has to be the most corrupt president America has ever seen. After his infamous firing of FBI Director James Comey over the investigation into his campaign s ties to Russia, Trump was reportedly infuriated that his racist elf of an Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from all things related to Russia. Then, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saw fit to appoint former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a Special Counsel to get to the bottom of the Russia matter. Now, it seems that Mueller, who enjoys broad bipartisan support and has an impeccable reputation in Washington, is now in Trump s crosshairs. In fact, it is now being reported that Trump wanted to fire Mueller, and was only stopped by his own White House staff, because any thinking person knows that this would be a political and potentially legal- disaster.The rumors of Trump s intention to fire Mueller were first fueled by an interview that Newsmax CEO and close Trump confidante Christopher Ruddy gave to PBS Newshour. In that interview, Ruddy said of what he knew of Trump s paranoid thinking on the matter: I think he s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. I think he s weighing that option. Well, Trump had better get that option out of his head; after all, even the GOP sycophants in Congress are saying that this is a bridge too far, and that Trump needs to leave Special Counsel Mueller alone and let him do his investigation. Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is the Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee has already told Trump that going after Mueller would be a waste of time, because Congress would intervene.If President fired Bob Mueller, Congress would immediately re-establish independent counsel and appoint Bob Mueller. Don't waste our time. Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 12, 2017Trump is acting like Richard Nixon did toward the end of Watergate. If he starts trying to treat Robert Mueller like Richard Nixon treated Archibald Cox, it will not end well for him.Let s see you fire Robert Mueller, you orange buffoon. You ll die in jail if the people who actually care about this nation have anything to say about it.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 0 |
11,502 | MSNBC REPORTER SHOCKED After Leftists Call For His Firing For Pointing Out Trump’s Genuine Compassion For TX Flood Victims: “Grandpa who the public never sees” | Here s an excerpt from the Advocate, a Louisiana paper on Barack Obama s disappearing act following the Louisiana floods:Sometimes, presidential visits can get in the way of emergency response, doing more harm than good. But we don t see that as a factor now that flood waters are subsiding, even if at an agonizing pace. It s past time for the president to pay a personal visit, showing his solidarity with suffering Americans.And if the president can interrupt his vacation for a swanky fundraiser for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, as he did on Monday, then surely he can make time to show up for a catastrophe that s displaced thousands.Obama playing golf at Martha's Vineyard with Larry David today Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 18, 2016These pictures of @realDonaldTrump with children at a Houston shelter are fascinating. This is Trump the Grandpa, who public never sees. Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) September 2, 2017It wasn t long before members of his own team turned on him. Some of them even called for him to be fired. Haake had to know that whenever a reporter dares to say something positive about our President, they will pay a heavy price with either their peers and/or their readers.Here are some of the vile responses Haake got in response to his tweet:Of course, you can t be a real leftist unless you find a way to compare President Donald Trump to Hitler:You know who *else* was great with grand-kids? pic.twitter.com/zA2VC0Cw2x James Doyle (@priusjames) September 2, 2017To which we responded:When you only have 201 followers, but suddenly become popular with leftists for posting pictures of Hitler. 100% FED UP! (@100PercFEDUP) September 3, 2017Who exactly, do these leftists think are telling or forcing Donald Trump to act a certain way? So predictable. He's being forced to act human, and the media eats it up. SAD! cathy vogt (@pgdayton) September 2, 2017Sorry to be cynical but this is Trump doing what he *had* to do bc the joke of his first visit. Trump is doing what he's being told to do. Jackie Tallarido (@JackieTallarido) September 2, 2017Haake responded to his critics, by trying to explain why he dared to compliment our President :Literally everything any president does in any disaster area is a photo op. I was only noting how different this one was vs. daily Trump. Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) September 3, 2017God forbid the media normalize President Trump . If we didn t know better, we d almost believe there was a serious effort to de-normalize President Trump by the Left.Puh-please. Stop this normalizing. Peter Chan (@peterchanNYC) September 2, 2017This follower is convinced, President trump and the thousands of people who showed up to see him are only people who are part of his base. Maybe they haven t seen the results of the election, but Houston voters went for Hillary over President Trump. Sorry LOLS@Trumpsters, but those are likely Hillary voters who are happy to see a president who cares enough about them to make 2 trips to Texas since the floods turned their lives upside down.The only people he fools with this photo op are his base. The rest of us know he's doesn't like people or children. LOLS@Trumpsters (@SusanSaysHi) September 2, 2017Ani Sangye s response was classic liberal, Trump would sexually assault those girls when they grow up. She must ve been living in another country when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying to a grand jury about having sex in the Oval Office with a 19-yr old intern: Trump would sexually assault those girls when they grow up. Ani Sangye (@SangyeH) September 2, 2017LOL! And then there s the leftist who threatens to unfollow anyone who doesn t tow the liberal line:Unfollowing you for the stupidity of this retweet. There's no evidence he was a good father or husband AND he's ONLY there for rescue PR LarsManwaring (@LManwaring) September 2, 2017What kind of attack on someone with whom a liberal disagrees, would be complete without mentioning FOX News? Ouch!we re all perfectly aware of Trump the Grandpa: Senile & watches way too much Fox News. Jason Braatz (@jasonbraatz) September 2, 2017It appears that through it all, Haake maintained a good sense of humor, as he ended his commentary with this tweet:This tweet has elicited responses comparing Trump to Hitler, Stalin and Satan, and several calling for me to be fired. Thanks everyone. Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) September 2, 2017 | 0 |
11,503 | U.S.'s Tillerson concerned over Saudi purge, monitoring Hariri situation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman s recent political purge raises concerns and remains unclear but does not appear to amount to mass arrests, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Friday. Separately, Tillerson said there was no indication that Lebanon s former prime minister, Saad al-Hariri, was being held in Saudi Arabia against his will but that the United States was monitoring the situation, according to a press pool report of his remarks. Tillerson, who is traveling with President Donald Trump on an Asia trip, made the comments following talks with his Saudi counterpart this week. Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia s future king, has tightened his grip on power through an anti-corruption purge by arresting royals, ministers and investors including billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal who is one of the kingdom s most prominent businessmen. He was among 11 princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers who were detained. Asked about the Saudi purge, Tillerson said he had spoken with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir about the situation on Wednesday and that the recent crackdown did not yet amount to formal arrests. Based on that conversation, it s well intended. How disruptive it s going to be remains to be seen, Tillerson said, adding that the situation was still a bit unclear. It s my understanding that they re characterizing these as not really arrests at this point but they re presenting people with evidence of what they think the wrongdoing is to see if there s a willingness to want to make things right. It raises a few concerns until we see more clearly how these particular individuals are dealt with, Tillerson added. His view contrasted with that of Trump, who has praised the Saudi purge and expressed confidence in the king and crown prince. Tillerson also said that Jubeir had assured him that Hariri s decision to resign was taken on his own. The United States was watching the situation very carefully, supporting the legitimate government of Lebanon and asking other outside parties to stay out of it, he added. If he s going to step down, as I understand it, he needs to go back to Lebanon to make that official. I m hopeful that if that is still his intent to leave that he ll do that so that the government of Lebanon can function properly, Tillerson said. (This version of the story was refiled to fix name of Saudi royal in second reference in 4th paragraph) | 1 |
11,504 | New York mayor to back $2.5 billion light rail in key speech | NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will back a $2.5 billion plan to create a light rail service linking the city’s outer boroughs when he gives his annual keynote speech on Thursday The 16-mile track would run from Astoria in Queens, tracing a line along the East River and New York’s upper harbor to link up with Sunset Park in Brooklyn. It would pass through popular neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Brooklyn Heights. The plan is not new but the mayor’s emphasis reflects the growing importance of the outer boroughs. It also makes good on his pledge to address the gap between wealthy Manhattan and the rest of the city, a longstanding gripe with many New Yorkers. “This is about equity and innovation. We are mapping brand new transit that will knit neighborhoods together,” de Blasio said in a statement. The introduction of a light rail service would be a new development for the city. It would mirror the increasing use of such services in New Jersey, especially connecting the growing commuter towns along the Hudson River, an area real estate developers have dubbed the “Gold Coast.” The mayor’s office said the city will offset costs with tax revenues from increased property values along the proposed line. Major upgrades are being planned to aging transport infrastructure throughout the state. Governor Andrew Cuomo has embraced around $100 billion of projects including a $20 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River. De Blasio, who comes from the liberal wing of the Democratic party, has emphasized social issues since taking office in 2014 such as free schooling for four year olds and reforming the city’s police. He will likely use Thursday’s state of the city address to hone in on some of those issues. Homelessness will likely be a focus after the mayor faced accusations he was not doing enough to address the problem. De Blasio is also likely to revisit public safety. He and his police commissioner, Bill Bratton, cited new statistics on Wednesday showing this January was the safest ever. De Blasio shifted Thursday’s speech to 7 p.m. from its usual daytime spot in the hope of reaching more New Yorkers. It will be held at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts, a concert venue in the Bronx. (This version of the story corrects day of speech in paragraphs 1, 9 and 11) | 1 |
11,505 | Trump Sends Crazy-Time Tweet To The Wrong Account After Losing His Sh*t Over World Leader’s Remarks | Donald Trump retweeted fake news videos in the early hours of the morning and for that, he was widely condemned. The White House responded to say that it doesn t matter if the former reality show star posted fake videos about Muslims because the threat is real! Scary, huh? A backlash ensued after Trump retweeted three times from a woman who was convicted of a hate crime in the U.K.The current occupant of the White House is upset because British Prime Minister Theresa May responded to Trump s widely condemned retweets this morning, saying, It is wrong for the president to have done this. In a statement, Downing street further said, Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. Members of British Parliament also condemned Trump s retweets.So naturally, Trump lashed out on Twitter at our ally s leader. The problem is that he tweeted to the wrong Theresa May, a person who only has 6 followers, causing that Twitter user to receive nearly 9,000 notifications.We took a screen capture because we knew (and he did) the Dotard would delete it. Here s Trump s full tweet to the totally wrong person. Finally, Trump tweeted the correct Theresa May, writing the same message: Don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! .@Theresa_May, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017Wrong! We are not doing fine when the so-called leader of the free world tweets to the wrong world leader, even though he is addicted to Twitter and still cannot tweet correctly. And now that he has corrected his tweet, he sounds just as idiotic as he did this morning when he started tweeting out fake videos in order to promote his ban on Muslim countries.What a fuckin moron.Photo by David Becker/Getty Images | 0 |
11,506 | Event 'consistent with an explosion' detected near missing Argentine sub-navy | BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An abnormal sound detected in the South Atlantic ocean around the time that an Argentine navy submarine sent its last signal last week was consistent with an explosion, a navy spokesman said on Thursday. Spokesman Enrique Balbi described the blast in the morning of Nov. 15 as abnormal, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear. A huge sea and air hunt is being conducted for the ARA San Juan, which went missing with 44 crew on board. | 1 |
11,507 | 'Vanishing village' looks to Japan's LDP for survival | NANMOKU, Japan (Reuters) - Chikara Imai, 73, is quick to dismiss the new parties in Sunday s national election in Japan, saying old ties with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s Liberal Democratic Party is what the country s most elderly village needs for survival. Nanmoku, 107 km (67 miles) northwest of Tokyo, is at the forefront of Japan s battle against an aging and shrinking population. Its population has halved over the past 20 years to 1,963, and with a median age of 70.6, Nanmoku is now Japan s oldest municipality. Nanmoku and places like it across Japan are a key support base for the LDP, which has been in power for most of the past six decades. Rural Japan is no Tokyo. Those people may say something ideal in Tokyo, something like Let s change Japan . But here, it won t strike home, Imai said. Sunday s lower house election pits Abe s LDP-led coalition against two brand new parties: the Party of Hope headed by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike; and the center-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which emerged from a breakup of the traditional opposition Democratic Party. But Koike s reformist, conservative challenge doesn t resonate much in Nanmoku. Most municipalities are shrinking in Japan, so far the only important developed country with a declining population. They look to Tokyo for a lifeline. For back country dwellers, strong ties with the central government come in handy when we need to ask for help in such times as a natural disaster. This village has no option but to support them, the 73-year-old Imai said. Gunma prefecture, where Nanmoku is located, has long been an LDP stronghold and has produced four prime ministers, including Keizo Obuchi, premier from 1998-2000. On Sunday, the Nanmoku municipality will provide transportation to elderly villagers who would otherwise have difficulty getting to the polls. Mountains account for 90 percent of Nanmoku s total land area, leaving little space for farming and housing. Some of the houses, built along a river running through the village, look abandoned. Few customers come by the several general shops that remain open. The village s sole remaining elementary school has just 24 students this year, down from a high of 1,632 in 1959, when Nanmoku operated three grade schools. Farms that used to grow devil s tongue, a starchy potato-like plant, have yielded to large-scale operations in other municipalities blessed with ample farm land. Until this day, we have not found a substitute (industry), Nanmoku Mayor Saijo Hasegawa told Reuters. With independent revenue sources covering less than 20 percent of the village s budget, Hasegawa sees a continuity in government support for Nanmoku as essential, and is wary of a change in government. There s no such thing as one-year plan to fight population decline. It takes 20, 30 years for any measures to take effect, Hasegawa said. In a change of government, politicians tend to deny everything about the former government, which is scary. Japan s demographic challenge is one of the biggest facing the new government after Sunday s elections. People aged 65 or older account for 27.2 percent of the total population, the highest on record, while the population is forecast to fall by nearly a third by 2065 when almost 40 percent will be 65 or older. Japan s government has earmarked a record 32.5 trillion yen ($289.76 billion) this fiscal year to pay for social security services, the bulk of which is spent on the elderly. Social security outlays account for roughly a third of this year s national budget. RECRUITING CITY-DWELLERS As part of a drive to tackle Japan s demographic time-bomb, the government in 2009 started a program to financially help local municipalities recruit urbanites to work in agriculture and other sectors for eventual settlement. Yohka Tanaka, who grew up in Tokyo and went to college in the United States, moved to Nanmoku two years ago through the program. He is now working on natural farming, which uses no pesticides or fertilisers. Tanaka, 26, aims to prove the viability of such farming so environmentally-conscious young people will follow in his foot steps. This place is perfect for natural farming ... As long as I stick around, the village won t disappear. For Shigeyuki Kaneta, a comparatively young resident at 46 who owns a confectionary shop, escalating tensions over North Korea does raise that distinct possibility. North Korea has launched two ballistic missiles that flew over Japan in recent months. It s a dangerous world, said Kaneta, who believes the LDP is better equipped to handle security matters. Strange objects are flying around. If they fell (on Japanese soil), we wouldn t (just) be discussing population decline. | 1 |
11,508 | WATCH: Trump Gets GRILLED Over This Weird Claim He Keeps Making (VIDEO) | During an interview on CNN Sunday morning, Jake Tapper pressed Donald Trump hard asking for some shred of evidence that the presumptive Republican frontrunner s claims regarding the Iraq War are true.Trump attempted to position himself against Hillary Clinton s vote in favor of the Iraq War: I have a very strong temperament, but I have a temperament that s totally under control. And [Hillary Clinton] mentions that I ll bring us into war. She s the one that wanted to go into Iraq. She raised her hand. She didn t know what the hell she was doing. She raised her hand. I said, I don t want to go into Iraq. Iraq is going to destabilize the Middle East, and I was 100 percent right, Trump told Tapper.Now, this might actually be a legitimate talking point if this were a normal election and Trump wasn t Trump. However, that is not at all the case. That s why Tapper decided to call out Trump s statement that he was against the Iraq War before it started.Here is a transcript of the exchange:JAKE TAPPER: Can I just say one point on that, I have looked so long and hard for any evidence TRUMP: I ll give it to you. 2004, they had newspaper articles.TAPPER: Right, but the war started in 2003.TRUMP: It did, but you know what, you look at I did an interview with Howard [Stern], and that interview was the first time I was ever asked the question. Don t forget I was an entrepreneur. I m a real estate person.TAPPER: But didn t you say to Howard that you thought it was a good idea?TRUMP: This was before the war started, long before the war started and it was a very, like, I don t know. First, nobody ever asked me the question, when you re do what I did nobody was talking about a lot of the questions that you ask me today, and I was I sort of like, well, I don t know, maybe, I don t know. By the time that started, I was totally against it, and from 2004 on, there s a lot of proof of that, because, as you know, there was articles in magazines, there was a lot of articles.TAPPER: Yeah. A year after the war started.TRUMP: No, no, but I was against it from before it started. And if you go back and look at that interview, and I ll get it for you if you want, but that interview was substantially before the war started. It was the first time I was ever asked the question. And even that, it wasn t like, oh yeah, we should go in. It was a very, like yeah, maybe.TAPPER: The only thing I would say, and then we don t have to belabor this point, is if there is evidence of you being against the war strongly before the war actually started, I would love to see that.TRUMP: OK, but I think there is evidence.TAPPER: I just haven t seen it.TRUMP: I think there is evidence. I haven t been asked that question before. Nobody said that to me before. I think there is evidence, I ll see if I can get it. But I will say, from the beginning of 2004, I mean I ve had articles, and I mean there are magazines TAPPER: 2004 no question.TRUMP: I was against the war a long time ago and it destabilized the Middle East, and that s exactly what I said was going to happen.While the political theater of watching Trump try to back up one of his claims without there being any actual evidence to back his claims is always entertaining, Trump accidently exposed a huge weakness of his in the interview. No one cares what Trump has had to say about anything before this election cycle. His greatest achievement in the political realm until now was his fanning of the flames that was the birther conspiracy theory.No one cared in 2013 what Trump had to say about the Iraq War then. Trump has alleged that the reason that there isn t any evidence of his disapproval of the Iraq War was because no one asked him about it. Who would ask the Trump of 2003 his opinion on any matter of seriousness? He was reality television star. He didn t matter.That being said, if Trump did actually have such strong feelings against the Iraq War, why didn t he bring it up. Trump had the money and social capital to launch a campaign against the Iraq invasion that could have possibly have had an actual impact.Yet he didn t. That s because Trump is a selfish opportunist and taking a stand at the right time in history is not in his nature.You can watch the interview below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5dC2l8j6UUFeatured image from video screenshot | 0 |
11,509 | Senate leader opposes 'lecturing' Myanmar leader Suu Kyi | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday he would not support a resolution targeting Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi over the treatment of the country s Rohingya Muslims, and said Washington should not be lecturing her. I don t favor a resolution going after her, McConnell, who has been engaged with issues related to Myanmar, also known as Burma, for years. I think she s the greatest hope that we have to move Burma from where it has been, a military dictatorship, to where I hope it s going. Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Richard Durbin, a Democrat, introduced a resolution last week condemning the violence and urging Suu Kyi to act. But McConnell said he did not support the resolution. My personal view is America kind of singling her out, and lecturing her when she s in a very challenging position is not helpful. So ... I don t intend to be a part of that, he said at a weekly news conference by the Senate s Republican leaders. McConnell did not respond to a question about whether there was any consideration of reconsidering Democratic former President Barack Obama s lifting of sanctions on Myanmar. International pressure has been mounting on Myanmar to end violence that has sent about 370,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh. The Trump administration has called for protection of civilians, and Bangladesh has urged safe zones so refugees can return home. While Washington has been a staunch supporter of Myanmar s transition from decades of harsh military rule being led by Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate has been criticized as doing too little to stop the violence. In addition to co-sponsoring the resolution, McCain, the influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday he would seek to remove U.S. military cooperation with Myanmar from a sweeping defense policy bill now making its way through Congress. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, had called for expanded military cooperation. While I had hoped the NDAA could contribute to positive reform in Burma, I can no longer support expanding military-to-military cooperation given the worsening humanitarian crisis and human rights crackdown against the Rohingya people, McCain said in a statement. | 1 |
11,510 | White House holds roundtable on Puerto Rico crisis, calls for Congress to act | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials held a roundtable discussion at the White House on Tuesday about the “worsening” fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico, as the Obama administration continues to press Congress to act on the issue. The meeting with Puerto Rican labor leaders and business executives featured briefings from Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, according to a White House blog post issued late on Tuesday. Lew told meeting participants that Puerto Rico has already had to take extreme emergency measures like borrowing from its pensions to stay afloat and the island will face additional strain in May and June, when more than $2 billion in debt payments come due. “We simply cannot provide Puerto Rico with the tools it desperately needs to confront this crisis without congressional action,” the White House said. The White House has said that Puerto Rico needs federal legislation to allow it to restructure its debts and give it independent fiscal oversight. | 1 |
11,511 | Scalia Admits He’s Never Read The Constitution, Says Government Can Endorse Religion | It s clear as day in the First Amendment, but Justice Antonin Scalia apparently has never read it or he is blatantly ignoring it. Either way, such idiocy does not belong on the Supreme Court.The Establishment Clause of the Constitution states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof This means that the government cannot support one religion over another , and nor can government promote religion over non-religion.But conservative Justice Scalia declared otherwise during a speech at a Catholic high school in Louisiana.According to the Associated Press, Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country s constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him. To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition, Scalia claimed. Where did that come from? he asked. To be sure, you can t favor one denomination over another but can t favor religion over non-religion? Scalia went on to claim that America has been successful because of God and argued that the government should honor the Christian deity, telling the students to not let anyone tell them otherwise. God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways. There is nothing wrong with that and do not let anybody tell you that there is anything wrong with that. The Hill reports that Scalia also had words for Americans who support secularism. Don t cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it. This is a man who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States, yet he has a profound ignorance of one of the most important parts of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers added the Establishment Clause precisely because they did not want the government supporting religion in any way.Apparently, Scalia thinks he knows more about the Constitution than Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both of whom wrote that the Establishment Clause erected a wall of separation between church and state. I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. ~Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802 Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the wall of separation between church and state, therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. We have solved the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries. ~Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: in a speech to the Virginia Baptists, 1808 The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State. ~Founding Father James Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, Essays In Addition to America s Real Religion Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance. ~Founding Father James Madison, letter, 1822Scalia is an embarrassment who should resign from the bench in disgrace. For someone who calls himself an originalist on the Court when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, it sure sounds like he has no idea what the Establishment Clause means even though it s pretty clearly worded and has been clearly explained by two Founding Fathers. If Scalia had his way, the United States would be declared a Christian state and Christianity would be forced down our throats every day despite the fact that such a thing is forbidden by the Constitution.Featured Image: Flickr | 0 |
11,512 | Germany's surging far-right promises to disrupt cozy parliament | MUNICH/POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) - More than 8,000 people including hecklers blowing whistles showed up in Munich for one of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s final speeches before Sunday s national election that is expected to sweep her into a fourth term. Merkel, whose conservatives have a solid double-digit lead over the Social Democrats, largely ignored jeers from hundreds of left- and right-wing demonstrators to deliver a stump speech focused on stability, security and a promise to avoid tax increases. Get lost, Merkel must go, shouted some demonstrators as curious foreign tourists, in Munich for its famous Oktoberfest, snapped photographs of the German leader first elected in 2005. Merkel, who has faced down similar heckling at many other rallies, especially in the former Communist east, admonished the peaceful but boisterous crowd: Whistling and yelling certainly won t ensure the future of our country. Merkel defended her 2015 decision to allow in about one million migrants as a humanitarian necessity but said she would prevent a repeat of the migrant crisis by doing more to fund programs in at-risk countries to keep people from fleeing. What happened in 2015 cannot and will not be repeated, Merkel said, saying she would protect Europe s borders. At Berlin s Gendarmenmarkt, Merkel s main rival, SPD leader Martin Schulz urged supporters to make their voices heard, saying that high voter turnout could help offset growing support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Schulz, flanked by hundreds of red balloons, decried the AfD as gravediggers of democracy, and said his party, which also opposed the rise of Nazis in the 1930s, would do all it could to fight the anti-immigrant group. You are our enemies and we will defend democracy in Germany, he said. The more people vote, the smaller will be the share of the far-right. Schulz told Bild newspaper he had not given up hope of victory and 37 percent of voters were still undecided. Support for the AfD, which was founded in 2013 during the euro zone crisis but has won support since 2015 with its anti-immigrant rhetoric, is running around 11 percent. That means it will become the first far-right party in more than half a century to clear the 5 percent hurdle and enter parliament. The AfD, which has already won seats in 13 of 16 state legislatures, promised to reenergize debate there after four years of grand coalition rule by the two major parties. It must get into the Bundestag lower house so that debates happen again, the AfD s top candidate Alexander Gauland told Reuters in Brandenburg s regional parliament. This parliament...has become totally boring. Gauland said the AfD would bring in completely different political suggestions after four years of agreement between the parties of Merkel and Schulz on issues ranging from sanctions against Russia, the NSA spying scandal or on the refugee issue. Schulz described Gauland as shameless . Gauland provoked outrage by saying at a recent rally that Germans should no longer be reproached with the Nazi past and should take pride in their World War Two soldiers. The language that he speaks is the language of the Harzburger Front, Schulz said, referring to a radical right-wing alliance in Weimar Germany. The gravediggers of the Weimar democracy, they spoke like Mr Gauland. The mainstream parties have ruled out working with the AfD, which may emerge as the third largest party; but Gauland said it would ultimately work toward being able to govern in the medium or long-term. Electoral arithmetic might yet push Merkel into another grand coalition with the SPD, or she may enter a three-way alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmental Greens. The Forsa poll showed support for Merkel s conservatives holding steady on 36 percent, while the SPD ceded 1 percentage point to 22 percent. An Emnid poll put Merkel s CDU and its Bavarian sister party at 35 percent, while the SPD was at 22 percent. | 1 |
11,513 | Trump to meet with Senate Republican leader McConnell Thursday: Politico | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will meet with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday, Politico reported on Monday, citing aides on Capitol Hill. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is scheduled to visit Washington on Thursday to meet with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan. | 1 |
11,514 | Ohio governor lacks power to suspend open carry law: spokeswoman | CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Ohio Governor John Kasich lacks the power to suspend a state law allowing citizens to openly carry guns, his office said on Sunday, after a police union official called for a suspension ahead of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested. The bonds between our communities and police must be reset and rebuilt - as we’re doing in Ohio - so our communities and officers can both be safe. Everyone has an important role to play in that renewal,” Kasich spokeswoman Emmalee Kalmbach said. | 1 |
11,515 | U.S. Air Force asks industry for proposals to replace nuclear missiles | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force asked industry on Friday for proposals to replace the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and the nuclear cruise missile as the military moves ahead with a costly modernization of its aging atomic weapons systems. The Air Force said in a statement it expected to award up to two contracts for a new ICBM weapons system, or ground-based strategic deterrent, sometime next summer or fall. It also expected to award up to two contracts in the same time frame for a new nuclear cruise missile, or long-range standoff weapon. Modernization of the U.S. nuclear force is expected to cost more than $350 billion over the next decade as the United States works to replace its aging systems, including bombs, nuclear bombers, missiles and submarines. Some analysts estimate the cost of modernization at $1 trillion over 30 years. The new ICBM system would be a follow-on to the Minuteman missile, whose launch systems and physical infrastructure first became operational in the mid-1960s. The system has been upgraded over the years, but much of the infrastructure is original, the Air Force said. The most recent versions of the Minuteman III date from the late 1990s and early 2000s and had an intended 20-year life span, the Air Force said. The missile will “face increased operational and sustainment challenges until it can be replaced,” it said. “This request for proposals is the next step to ensuring the nation’s ICBM leg of the nuclear triad remains safe, secure and effective,” said Major General Scott Jansson, who leads the Air Force program office for strategic systems. Opponents of replacing the nuclear cruise missile have argued that its missions could be handled by other legs of the triad. Others say it is an unnecessary expense at a time of shrinking budgets and smaller deployed nuclear arsenals. The military insists the new cruise missile is needed to enable older bombers to deliver nuclear weapons to targets whose air space is heavily defended and difficult to reach with gravity bombs. The missile is “needed to replace the aging air launched cruise missile, which has far exceeded its originally planned service life ... and is required to support our B-52 bomber fleet,” Admiral Cecil Haney, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, told lawmakers earlier this year. | 1 |
11,516 | LAWMAKER REVEALED: Settled $84K Sexual Harassment Case Using YOUR Tax Dollars | Another politician using your money to pay off a sexual harassment settlement Can you believe it? Blake Feingold is on the right in the onesie jammies. What was he thinking?Here s a photo of him with clothes on:Rep. Blake Farenthold used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by his former spokesman the only known sitting member of Congress to have used a little-known congressional account to pay an accuser.Lauren Greene, the Texas Republican s former communications director, sued her boss in December 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.When she complained about comments Farenthold and a male staffer made to her, Greene said the congressman improperly fired her. She filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, but the case was later dropped after both parties reached a private settlement.Read more: Politico | 0 |
11,517 | Tillerson calls China cooperation on North Korea 'uneven' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled on Wednesday that he would like more help from China in pressing North Korea over issues including its nuclear program. “Their cooperation I would say has been notable, but it has been uneven,” Tillerson told a congressional hearing. Washington is discussing North Korea with all of its allies, and it would top the agenda at high-level talks next week between U.S. and Chinese officials. | 1 |
11,518 | SICKENING: Donald Trump Actually Hit On A 10-Year-Old Girl (VIDEO) | Donald Trump is a sexual predator, and more and more evidence of that fact keeps surfacing. It seems that the hot mic tape of the lewd conversation between Trump and then-Access Hollywood host Billy Bush was just the tip of the iceberg. There have also been women who have come forward to say that Trump groped them inappropriately, and now there is video footage of Trump literally making sexually suggestive remarks about a 10-year-old girl. This occurred at a Christmas event in Trump Tower years ago, in 1992, when Trump was 46 years old. During the event, aired on Entertainment Tonight, Trump inquired of the little girl if she was going up the escalator. He then said, unabashedly and live on air: I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it? This is just beyond creepy. Donald Trump needs to be investigated. We have a sexual predator as a major party presidential nominee, and nothing is being done about his behavior by the authorities. Granted, we do have statues of limitations and all of that, but this is just insane. This more than locker room talk, as Trump put it at the second presidential debate. No, this is predatory behavior, and it is becoming more and more apparent that Trump regularly engages in inappropriate behavior even with pre-pubescent children. If the GOP doesn t disavow Trump after this, the entire nation will know that they tolerate literal pedophilia in their ranks. Watch the disturbing comments below:Here's Trump, then 46 yrs old, saying in 1992 that "I'm going to be dating her in 10 years" while referring to a young girl. Via CBS News pic.twitter.com/w2zCH6SdR1 Jim Dalrymple II (@JimDalrympleII) October 12, 2016Featured image via Ethan Miller/Getty Images | 0 |
11,519 | Japan hails progress in TPP trade talks, but discord raises doubts | DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Discord emerged between Japan and Canada over progress on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal on Thursday, as Japan said countries agree in principle on a way forward, but Canada said there was no such agreement. The spat highlighted the continuing challenge to reviving a pact whose survival was thrown into doubt when President Donald Trump ditched it, in one of his first acts in office, in favor of bilateral dealmaking. Japan had lobbied hard to proceed with a pact that could also help to contain China s growing regional dominance, ahead of talks in the Vietnamese resort of Danang this week alongside Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings. Some other members have not shown a readiness to move so fast. Asked by reporters about the results of a meeting of TPP ministers, Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said (they) agree in principle , adding that the ministers had finalised a list of suspensions - clauses that would be suspended to avoid renegotiating the whole agreement. But Candian Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne later said on Twitter: Despite reports, there is no agreement in principle on TPP. The TPP aims to eliminate tariffs on industrial and farm products across a bloc whose trade totalled $356 billion last year. It also has provisions for protecting everything from labor rights to the environment to intellectual property - one of the main sticking points. Canada, whose economy is the second biggest among the TPP-11 after Japan, said on Wednesday it would not be rushed into a revived TPP deal. Like Mexico, its position is further complicated by renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the Trump administration. Mexico s trade minister said on Thursday the TPP countries had reached agreement in talks, but he gave no details and said there would be an announcement on Friday. The leaders of TPP countries are tentatively scheduled to meet on Friday to discuss the proposals of ministers. One Canadian official who declined to be named said ministers from different countries may have had different interpretations of Thursday s discussions. Options discussed by the TPP countries have included suspending some provisions of the original agreement to avoid having to renegotiate it and potentially to entice the United States back in the long term. Trump and other APEC leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Russian President Vladimir Putin, will meet on Friday in Danang. APEC trade and foreign ministers separately ended a meeting on Thursday with a very good outcome , despite differing views on trade and protectionism, Vietnamese Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh said. Ministerial talks on a communique for the APEC leaders were extended into a second day on Thursday in the face of U.S. demands for changes to the language used concerning issues such as free trade and protectionism, officials at the talks said. | 1 |
11,520 | Vietnam calls on Cambodia to protect immigrants | HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam called on Cambodia on Tuesday to guarantee the legal rights of Vietnamese migrants living there after the Cambodian government said it would revoke the invalid documents of 70,000 immigrants, most of them ethnic Vietnamese. Anti-Vietnamese sentiment is widespread in Cambodia and has often been used as a tool by opponents of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who came to power during Vietnam s occupation of Cambodia after it drove out the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. Vietnam s Foreign Ministry hopes Cambodia will take appropriate measures to guarantee the legal and legitimate rights of ethnic Vietnamese in the country, ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said in a statement. We hope that while people are waiting for their legal documents to be completed, they will be able to maintain a stable life and continue contributing to Cambodia s socio-economic development, she added. Last week Cambodian immigration authorities said they would seize documents issued improperly to 70,000 people, most of them ethnic Vietnamese, but they have not threatened their forcible removal. Responding to Vietnam, Cambodia vowed to ensure respect for legal and human rights in its enforcement of immigration laws. We won t enforce it like the one done by the Pol Pot regime, said Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak, referring to the leader of the Khmer Rouge movement responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.8 million Cambodians in the 1970s, and which targeted Vietnamese, among other groups. Ethnic Vietnamese have settled in what is now Cambodia for hundreds of years, particularly during the 19th and 20th century period when both were part of French possessions overseas. More arrived when Vietnam occupied Cambodia after ousting the Khmer Rouge and before the 1990 withdrawal of its forces. Political tension has been rising in Cambodia ahead of a general election next year in which Prime Minister Hun Sen aims to extend his 32-year rule. The arrest of his main rival and a threat to ban the main opposition party have provoked Western condemnation. | 1 |
11,521 | Greek president tells Turkey's Erdogan no treaty revision | ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Thursday ruled out a revision of an international treaty defining the borders of Greece and Turkey. The Treaty of Lausanne defines the territory and the sovereignty of Greece and of the European Union and this treaty is for us non-negotiable. It has no flaws, it does not need to be reviewed, or to be updated, Pavlopoulos said during a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, on a two day official visit to the neighbouring country. Erdogan was quoted earlier in a Greek newspaper interview suggesting a revision to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders of modern-day Turkey. In comments to Pavlopoulos, Erdogan said there were some details in the Lausanne Treaty which are not clear. | 1 |
11,522 | Trump's debate sniffs take off on social media | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican White House candidate Donald Trump stole the social media spotlight during Monday night’s U.S. presidential debate on at least one count - what Twitter users branded his #Trumpsniffle. The wealthy businessman sniffed repeatedly as he faced off against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in their first debate, giving rise to the hashtag and a surge of interest on social media what might be causing his nose to run. Parody accounts, Donald’s Sinuses (@TrumpsSinuses) and Trump sniff (@TrumpSniff), gained a large following. Trump, 70, told Fox News on Tuesday morning he did not have a cold. “No, no sniffles, no,” he said. “No cold.” He complained he had a faulty microphone and joked that maybe it was picking up breathing. Several tweeters seized on the sniffling to hit back at Trump over his repeated digs at the health and stamina of Clinton, 68, who had pneumonia earlier this month. Overall, Twitter said the debate, the first in a series ahead of the Nov. 8 election, was the most tweeted-about political event in the social media company’s history. Trump was the focus of 62 percent of the conversation on the social media platform, Twitter said. On Facebook, conversations about Trump made up 79 percent of debate chat, while Clinton’s share of the conversation was 21 percent. However, sentiment appeared to go Clinton’s way. Social media analytics firm Zoomph said tweets mentioning Clinton ended at a ratio of about 1.5 to 1, which meant that for every negative mention, there were 1.5 positive mentions, Zoomph said. Sentiment toward Trump fluctuated, but ended nearly flat at a ratio of one positive mention to every negative one. The most tweeted-about topics were the economy, foreign affairs, energy and the environment, terrorism and guns. | 1 |
11,523 | Transgender advocates fear reversal of civil rights under Trump | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Transgender advocates vowed on Wednesday to resist any effort to reverse or slow down an expansion of transgender rights made under President Barack Obama, fearing a rollback of his directives once Donald Trump succeeds him in the White House. During his eight years in the Oval Office, Obama championed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, and Democrat Hillary Clinton had promised to keep fighting for them if she was elected. Same-sex marriage became legal in 2015, shifting the LGBT discussion to the still-unfinished agenda of transgender rights. Obama has issued regulations prohibiting health insurers from denying coverage based on gender identity and directed public schools to allow transgender students to use the public bathrooms of their choice, among other measures. “We expect that those will disappear,” said Rachel B. Tiven, chief executive of Lambda Legal, a leading gay rights group. “Lambda Legal will hold the line when our rights are under attack. We know how to fight the government in the courts.” Trump sent mixed messages on transgender rights during the campaign. But he promised to nominate a conservative justice to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court and could name an attorney general who may enforce hard-line positions Trump outlined during the campaign. “We’re going to fight them on anything they try to undo,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “I’m really worried today for trans Muslims and trans immigrants and trans people with disabilities who have been threatened and denigrated by Mr. Trump. Hopefully, that was all part of some sick performance.” With the U.S. Supreme Court split between four liberals and four conservatives, Trump could appoint a conservative to tip the balance, possibly in time to decide a case involving a transgender boy who has sued to use the male restroom at his public school in Virginia. Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called Trump’s victory “a huge wake-up call” that placed an onus on transgender people to “explain who we are” to Trump voters who may be intolerant of or ignorant about transgender people. “In a very real sense, our lives, our ability to work, to attend school, to obtain health care, are at the mercy of a new administration,” Minter said. Trump’s Justice Department and appointees to the federal bench could also have an impact on two provisions of federal law banning discrimination on the basis of sex - Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which covers employment, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The Obama administration has taken a firm stance that the reference to “sex” protects transgender people. The courts have generally agreed, and Jill Gaulding, co-founder and legal director of Gender Justice, said that trend was likely to continue regardless of who is president. “We can never take any rights for granted but I also think it’s important to remember how much progress we have made in recent years and decades,” she said. “It’s not easy to repeal that kind of progress.” | 1 |
11,524 | Baghdad piles pressure on Iraqi Kurds to reverse overwhelming independence vote | BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Baghdad heaped pressure on Iraq s Kurds on Wednesday, demanding they cancel their overwhelming vote for independence while parliament urged the Iraqi central government to send troops to take control of vital oil fields held by Kurdish forces. Stepping up efforts to isolate autonomous Kurdish-held northern Iraq, whose people endorsed secession in a referendum on Monday that angered neighboring countries, Baghdad demanded that foreign governments close their diplomatic missions in the Kurdish capital Erbil. Final results released on Wednesday showed nearly 93 percent in favor of independence, and 7.3 percent against. More than 3.3 million people, or 72 percent of eligible voters, took part in Monday s ballot, according to the electoral commission. The referendum has stirred fears of a new regional conflict. An Iraqi armed forces delegation headed to neighboring Iran to coordinate military efforts, apparently as part of retaliatory measures taken by the government in Baghdad following the vote. Iran and Turkey also oppose any move toward Kurdish secession and their armies have started joint exercises near their borders with Iraqi Kurdistan in recent days. Iraq and Turkey have also held joint military drills. Foreign airlines began suspending flights to Kurdish airports after the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority said on Wednesday that international flights to Erbil and Sulaimaniya would be suspended from 1500 GMT. Kurdish authorities rejected Baghdad s demands that they should annul the referendum as a condition for dialogue and hand over control of their international airports. On Wednesday evening, Kurdish Rudaw TV reported that the Kurdistan Regional Government had offered to hold talks with Baghdad about hosting Iraqi observers at Erbil and Sulaimaniya airports to help defuse the crisis. Turkey, which has threatened to impose sanctions on the Kurds, said its border with northern Iraq remained open, although it may not remain so. The number of trucks passing through had however decreased. Home to the region s largest Kurdish population, Turkey has been battling a three-decade insurgency in its largely Kurdish southeast and fears the referendum will inflame separatist tension at home. For their part, Kurdish leaders in neighboring Syria said the KRG referendum could bolster their cause for autonomy in negotiations with the Damascus government. Two meetings so far on the matter had gone nowhere, they told Reuters. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who have stressed the need for Iraq s borders to remain unchanged, will meet in Ankara on Thursday. Russia s interest in the region is growing. Oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM) is increasing investment in Kurdistan and the Kurds have been developing strong ties with Moscow. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned Iraq and the Kurds against taking any steps that might destabilize the Middle East after the referendum. The Kurds consider Monday s referendum to be an historic step in a generations-old quest for a state of their own. Iraq considers the vote unconstitutional, especially as it was held not only within official KRG territory itself but also on disputed territory held by Kurds elsewhere in northern Iraq. The United States, major European countries and nearby Turkey and Iran strongly opposed the referendum, which they described as destabilizing at a time when all sides are still fighting against Islamic State (IS) militants. Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani announced on Tuesday evening that the yes vote had won. The outcome has caused anger in Baghdad, where parliament, in a session boycotted by Kurdish lawmakers, asked Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send troops to the Kurdish-held region of Kirkuk to take control of its oilfields. Kurdish Peshmerga forces took Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic region, in 2014 when the Iraqi army fled in the face of IS which overran about a third of Iraq. The Kurds prevented Kirkuk s huge oil resources from falling into the militants hands. The government has to bring back the oilfields of Kirkuk under the control of the oil ministry, the resolution backed by parliament in Baghdad said. The area, long claimed by the Kurds, is also home to Turkmen and Arab communities, who opposed the independence vote, although the KRG included the area in the referendum. Barzani, who is KRG president, has said the vote is not binding, but meant to provide a mandate for negotiations with Baghdad and neighboring countries over the peaceful secession of the region from Iraq. Baghdad has rejected talks. Abadi, a moderate from Iraq s Shi ite Arab majority, is under pressure to take punitive measures against the Kurds. Hardline Iranian-backed Shi ite groups have already threatened to march on Kirkuk. The Kurds were left without a state of their own when the Ottoman Empire crumbled a century ago. Around 30 million are scattered through northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria and Iran. The autonomous region they control in Iraq is the closest the Kurds have come in modern times to a state. It has flourished, largely remaining at peace while the rest of Iraq has been in a continuous state of civil war for 14 years. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, they have had to carefully balance their ambitions for full independence with the threat of a backlash from their neighbors and the reluctance of Washington to redraw borders. In the past four years they achieved a measure of economic independence by opening a route to sell oil through pipelines to a port in Turkey. But that still leaves them at the mercy of Ankara, which draws a firm line at formal independence. The Kurds say the referendum acknowledges their contribution in confronting Islamic State after it overwhelmed the Iraqi army. Iraq s Kurds have been close allies of the United States since Washington secured their protection from Saddam in 1991. But the United States has long encouraged the Kurds to avoid unilateral steps so as not to jeopardize the stability of Iraq or antagonize Turkey. The U.S. State Department said it was deeply disappointed by the decision to conduct the referendum, while the European Union regretted that the Kurds had failed to heed its call not to hold the vote. | 1 |
11,525 | DAY AFTER DALLAS COPS’ MEMORIAL, Obama Invites BLM Activists To WH, Including Leader Of Group That Chanted: “Pigs In A Blanket…Fry Pigs Like Bacon” | When America elected a Community Agitator, they had no idea what that would mean for our nation. Does everyone get it now? You can take the community agitator out of the community, but you can t take the agitator out of him Obama s guest list includes the recently arrested Black Lives Matter terror group leader, DeRay McKesson. McKesson was arrested on July 9th in Baton Rouge, LA for obstruction of a roadway during Black Lives Matter agitator event:Black Lives Matter activist Deray Mckesson records own arrest in Baton Rouge https://t.co/EQn2GHop2O pic.twitter.com/2uweGiw7ge Action News on 6abc (@6abc) July 10, 2016We are at the @WhiteHouse right now for a 3-hour convening w/ President Obama re: the recent events in #BatonRouge & across the country. deray mckesson (@deray) July 13, 2016In addition to Deray, who advocated looting for political purposes, Obama also is meeting with Mica Grimm, who is a leader from the Minnesota group who has been responsible for shuting down highways.Perhaps you may recall there famous chant on the highway last August? https://youtu.be/9xNxoeqf0Wsh/t Weasel ZippersHere s a look at the race obsessed Mica Grimm:Here is a guest list provided by CBS News White House Correspondent: Mark Knoller:Individuals invited to Pres Obama's meeting today about police/community relations. pic.twitter.com/pE9tWsIjjk Mark Knoller (@markknoller) July 13, 2016 | 0 |
11,526 | South African prosecutors say Pistorius sentence 'shockingly lenient', seek appeal | BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa (Reuters) - South Africa s state prosecutors told the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Friday the six-year sentence for murder handed to Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius was shockingly lenient and asked for the right to launch an appeal. Pistorius was imprisoned in July last year after being found guilty on appeal of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine s Day 2013. The case has attracted worldwide interest. He was not in court for Friday s hearing. Women s rights groups in a country beset by high levels of violent crime against women say Pistorius has received preferential treatment compared to non-whites and those without his wealth or international celebrity status. The athlete was originally convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in jail. That conviction was increased to murder by the SCA in December 2015 and his sentence increased to six years by trial Judge Thokozile Masipa. State prosecutors, led by advocate Andrea Johnson, said the sentence by Masipa was too lenient as the jail term was less than half the minimum 15-year sentence prescribed for murder in South Africa. Johnson said the High Court did not list the substantial and compelling factors for deviating from the 15-year sentence and that Pistorius had not shown remorse for the murder. There is no true, gut-wrenching remorse, Johnson said. It is shockingly lenient and has accordingly resulted in an injustice, she said, referring to the sentence. Lawyers for the gold medalist, known as the Blade Runner for his carbon-fiber prosthetics, say he did not deliberately kill model and law graduate Steenkamp. Barry Roux, lead defense lawyer for Pistorius, said the athlete was suffering from severe and worsening post-traumatic stress disorder over the case. Roux said Masipa had addressed the misperception that Pistorius deliberately killed Steenkamp. Leave to appeal should really not be granted, he said. The court did not set a date for when it would rule on whether the appeal can be heard or not. | 1 |
11,527 | MEET LEFTIST ANALYSTS At Research Firm Who Created ABC/Washington Post Poll Showing Hillary With 12 Point Lead [VIDEO] | Many Americans were shocked by the latest ABC/Washington Post goal seeking report (aka poll ) that shows Hillary opening up a 12-point lead with likely voters after the latest debate last Wednesday. Ironically, this latest polling farce was embargoed for release after 9 a.m. EST which certainly made it a dominant topic of conversation on all the morning talk shows.Of course, like many of the recent polls from the likes of Reuters, ABC and The Washington Post, something curious emerges when you look just beneath the surface of the headline 12-point lead.As Zero Hedge pointed out numerous times in the past, in response to Reuters efforts to tweak their polls, per the The Pew Research Center, at least since 1992, democrats have never enjoyed a 9-point registration gap despite the folks at ABC and The Washington Post somehow convincing themselves it was a reasonable margin. METHODOLOGY This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats Republicans Independents. Meanwhile, with huge variances in preference across demographics one can easily see how simple it is to rig a poll by over indexing to one group vs. another. While the pollsters release the the split of the sample pool by political affiliation, they do not share the split by any of the following demographics which are just as important to determining the outcome of the poll.Julie E. Phelan, Lead Analyst. The Langer Research website mentions several awards Phelan has won for articles she wrote or co-authored. The article listed appear to all be related to women s rights, more specifically about women in leadership roles. Hmmm seems Julie has a passion for wanting to see more women in leadership roles in politics.In Dec. 2015, Phelan was cited for her contribution to a paper that was an initiative for NDI, whose Chairman happens to be one of Hillary s biggest cheerleaders, Madeline Albright. In that paper, titled Tackling Violence Against Women Phelan and co-author Rudman wrote:Phelan also co-authored Prejudice Toward Female Leaders with Rudman.As a reminder, Madeline Albright told women at a Hillary rally in February, 2016, There s a special place in hell for women who don t vote for Hillary Chad P. Kiewiet de Jonge is a Senior Research Analyst for Langer Research. He graduated from Notre Dame with a PHD in 2013. His dissertation was on Political Learning and Democratic Commitment in New Democracies. Donald Trump s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border marks the extent to which negative views on immigration fuel his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination and the limits they may impose.About half of potential GOP voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll oppose a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants, and Trump wins support from 34 percent in this group, a remarkable tally in a 16-candidate race. Among those who favor providing legal status for undocumented immigrants, by contrast, Trump s support drops sharply, to 13 percent.Geoff Feinberg is a Senior Research Analyst for Langer Research Assoc. From 2012-2016, Feinberg was the research director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication at Yale University, where he oversaw numerous public opinion polls and experiments and lectured on survey methods.Clinton and Sanders supporters are more likely to understand the scientific consensus on global warming.A recent review study by Cook and colleagues found that all peer-reviewed studies about the extent of the scientific consensus about global warming have reached similar conclusions: between 90% and 100% of climate experts are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening. The most rigorous of these studies have found that 97% of climate scientists are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening.Fewer than half of any candidate s supporters are aware that such a consensus exists. However, supporters of the Democratic candidates are the most likely to think at least 90% of climate scientists are convinced: | 0 |
11,528 | FOUR Former Kansas Governors Declare War On Current GOP Governor Sam Brownback | Sam Brownback and the current GOP-led Kansas legislature have all but destroyed Kansas. It s so bad that a coalition of former Kansas governors, along with current political leaders, is working to raise money to oppose Brownback s disastrous policies before they wipe Kansas off the map entirely. They re called the Save Kansas Coalition, and they re not all Democrats. Not by far.The main problem is that the state cut taxes to try and turn Kansas into the bastion of business and tourism that Texas and Florida supposedly are, but that failed miserably and now the state is worse than broke. To fight to get Kansas back on track, former Democratic governors Kathleen Sebelius and John Carlin are joined by former Republican governors Mike Hayden and Bill Graves, and all four are working to educate Kansas public about what s actually happening versus what Brownback wants people to think is happening.They can t even fund their schools halfway properly because their budget is such a mess.The Save Kansas Coalition wants balanced taxes, high-quality public education, and access to healthcare, along with judicial impartiality, safer highways, and job growth. Brownback s policies are not conducive to any of this. He s a hardcore, balanced-budget, cutting-taxes-will-stimulate-the-economy-so-we-can-balance-the-budget Republican who doesn t get it.In fact, his policies have driven some business out of the state. One such business owner, Jeff Blackwood, is working to relocate his business onto the Missouri side of Kansas City, saying: I can t, in good conscience, continue to give our tax money to a government that actively works against needs of its citizens We take care of people here and that is exactly the opposite of what is occurring. The funding problems have led to the closure of a mental health hospital and a state rehab office for the disabled, not to mention what s happening with the school system there. Brownback s spokesperson said that his policies have led to five straight years of business growth, and yet, the state is floundering horrifically.Brownback and the Republicans in the state legislature don t seem to realize that cutting taxes means taxes get cut, which causes budget shortfalls, which snowballs into a bankrupt state if it s not quickly addressed. Back in November, Kansas was looking at having a whopping $5.6 million in cash reserves. In other words, peanuts, because the projected tax revenue just wasn t there.The Save Kansas Coalition wants people to be aware of how serious their votes are. Brownback and company didn t get into office by accident the people of Kansas voted for these policies. If they vote to re-elect these ignorant pusnoodles, they ll be voting for more of the same problems since Brownback can t admit that he screwed everything up, and as such, will continue to beat this particular dead horse no matter what.Featured image by Win McNamee/Getty Images | 0 |
11,529 | The Ladies Of ‘The View’ Call Trump EXACTLY What He Is, And He’ll HATE It (VIDEO) | Tuesday morning on The View, the panel discussed Donald Trump s latest Twitter rant which included saying that people who burn the American flag should face consequences, including either a loss of citizenship or time in jail.Here s the tweet:Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag if they do, there must be consequences perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016The big problem with that is the fact that, albeit burning the flag can be seen as incredibly disrespectful, citizens are free to do so. In fact, it is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It is a form of free speech and dissent, in fact, patriotic.The ladies of The View brought up this very point, and resident lawyer Sunny Hostin brought up the fact that these comments made by Trump reek of a dictatorship.Trump needs to realize that you don t have to agree with everything a person does or says, if it is within compliance of the law, it is not illegal and thus a punishment cannot be given. The moment you start giving out punishments based on personal opinion and not the law you are getting into the very scary realm of a dictatorship.The United States was founded on freedom, and part of that freedom is the freedom to protest. Trump needs to get that into his head.Watch the panel discuss Trump here:.@Sunny says Trump s tweet about repercussions for burning the American flag reeks of a dictatorship. What s your take? pic.twitter.com/jpLQi3ijxi The View (@TheView) November 29, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
11,530 | U.N. rights expert assails Trump administration on press treatment | UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A United Nations rights expert voiced concern on Wednesday that Trump administration actions would be harmful to a free press in the United States. “There’s a long-term detrimental impact on respect for ... First Amendment values, which are also human rights,” said David Kaye, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. U.S. President Donald Trump has called the press the enemy of the American people. He uses the term “fake news” to cast doubt on news reports critical of his administration, often without providing evidence to support his case. Speaking to journalists at the United Nations, Kaye accused the administration of limiting access to information about the environment and climate change. Trump has called global warming a hoax. Kaye called for greater media access to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and voiced concern about the pressure on journalists he said had emerged from “the very clear agenda” of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the Justice or State departments. Sessions said in August the Trump administration was weighing requiring journalists to reveal their sources amid Trump’s push to stop leaks to the press from people in government. | 1 |
11,531 | BUSTED! STATE OFFICIALS Bust Voter Fraudsters In Cases Across America…Exposes Illegal Moves By Workers | A 74-year-old woman tasked with opening envelopes sent by Miami-Dade County voters with their completed mail ballots was arrested Friday after co-workers caught her illegally marking ballots, resulting in an unknown but small number of fraudulent votes being cast for mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado.Investigators linked Gladys Coego, a temporary worker for the county elections department, to two fraudulent votes, but they suspect from witness testimony that she submitted several more.Coego, of Westchester, turned herself in to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Friday morning. She was charged with two felony counts of marking another person s ballot. Coego was released after posting a $10,000 bond.In a separate election-fraud case, authorities also arrested a second woman Friday on charges of unlawfully filling out voter-registration forms on behalf of United for Care, the campaign to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.The Miami-Dade state attorney s office accused Tomika Curgil, 33, of filling out forms for five people without their consent. She also submitted at least 15 forms for people who apparently don t exist and several forms for people who are dead.Police officers arrested Curgil at her Liberty City home Friday morning and charged her with five felony counts of submitting false voter-registration information. Her bond was set at $125,000. Read more: Miami HeraldHERE S ANOTHER CASE FROM TEXAS:A TEXAS WOMAN VOTED 5 TIMES:A Texas woman, who is not a citizen of the United States, was arrested Friday for having illegally voted in Dallas County five times. Rosa Maria Ortega, 35, is presently a resident of the Tarrant County Jail, where she is being held on a $10,000 bond, according to the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate Channel 5 News, which reported:Ortega is married to an American and is living legally in this country, but is not a citizen and therefore, not qualified to vote, said Harry White, who supervises public integrity and white collar crime investigations for the Tarrant County District Attorney.Ortega applied to vote in Tarrant County and acknowledged on the application form that she was not a citizen, White said. The county rejected her application and notified her she was not qualified to vote.Having learned her lesson that only American citizens may vote in Texas, she re-applied five months later, this time claiming to be a U.S. citizen. Although Ortega never voted in Tarrant country, records indicate that she did so five times in neighboring Dallas county the earliest in a 2004 Republican primary, the latest in the 2014 Republican primary.Her charges illegal voting is a second degree felony, punishable by a two to 20 year prison sentence. | 0 |
11,532 | Ivory Coast to retire 1,000 soldiers to slim down military | ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast will cut its armed forces by about 1,000 troops by the end of the year, the government spokesman said on Wednesday, in a bid to rationalize a costly and sometimes unruly military. Government spokesman Bruno Kone told reporters after a cabinet meeting that the 997 soldiers had accepted voluntary retirement this year as part of an initiative to conform to accepted standards , partly by reducing the ratio of non-commissioned officers to lower ranks. Ivory Coast does not give details on the size of its military, but security sources estimate there are more than 25,000 troops in a country with a population of about 24 million. Francophone West Africa s biggest economy suffered two army mutinies this year that damaged its reputation among investors and forced the government to agree to costly pay rises. The distribution of Ivory Coast s army is out of step with the standards accepted in modern armies, Kone said. The former French colony, once known as one of the most stable states in West Africa, is still recovering from a brief civil war fought after President Alassane Ouattara won a disputed election in 2010 but incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down. Ouattara has struggled to assert his authority over the army, which was cobbled together in an uneasy merger of the northern New Forces rebels who supported him and the professional troops who had fought against him. The soldiers being taken out of action included three senior officers, 634 non-commissioned officers and 354 regular foot soldiers, Kone said. | 1 |
11,533 | CNN CALLS IT: A Democrat Will Represent Alabama In The Senate For The First Time In 25 Years | Alabama is a notoriously deep red state. It s a place where Democrats always think that we have zero chances of winning especially in statewide federal elections. However, that is just what happened on Tuesday night in the Special Election to replace Senator Jeff Sessions. Doug Jones, the Democratic Senate candidate who is known in the state for prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a church during the Civil Rights Movement and killed four little African American girls, will be the next Senator from Alabama. CNN has just called the race, as there seems no more GOP-leaning counties out there.To contrast, Roy Moore had been twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court as Chief Justice for violating the law, and was also credibly accused of being a sexual predator toward teen girls. Despite all of that, though, the race was a nail biter, because Moore has a long history and a deep base in Alabama. Of course, decent people including Republicans were horrified at the idea of a man like Roy Moore going to the Senate. Despite the allegations of sexual predation, Moore also had said many incendiary things, such as putting forth the idea that Muslims shouldn t be allowed in Congress, that homosexuality should be illegal, and that America was great when slavery was legal. And that s just for starters, too.Thank you Alabama, for letting sanity prevail in this race. Oh, and a message to Democrats this is proof we can compete everywhere. Get a fifty state strategy going so we can blow the GOP outta the water in 2018.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | 0 |
11,534 | Senate panel postpones hearing with Trump lawyer Cohen in Russia probe | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Intelligence Committee investigating U.S. allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election said on Friday it had postponed a public hearing with Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, and it would be rescheduled. On Sept. 19, the committee abruptly canceled an interview with Cohen as part of its investigation into Moscow’s suspected hacking and propaganda campaign and possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. The panel said then that Cohen had been asked to appear at an open hearing on Oct. 25. The September hearing was canceled after Cohen released a statement to the media, which committee leaders said violated the panel’s policy. Senators Richard Burr, the Intelligence committee’s Republican chairman, and Mark Warner, its Democratic vice chairman, did not offer an explanation on Friday for the postponement of the public hearing. They issued a brief joint statement: “The Committee’s public hearing with Michael Cohen has been postponed, and will be rescheduled at a later date. The Committee appreciates Mr. Cohen’s cooperation as its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections continues to make progress.” The intelligence panel, other congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating whether Russia intervened to tilt the 2016 election in favor of Republican Trump against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that it meddled in the election and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign, calling the investigations a “witch hunt.” | 1 |
11,535 | White Supremacist Stabbed Interracial Couple, Wanted To Go To Trump Rally | An interracial couple in Olympia, Washington, was stabbed by a man sporting white supremacist tattoos and markings. The attacker appeared to have racist feelings and spoke out against Black Lives Matter, according to an account of his questioning by police.The accused, 32-year-old Daniel Rowe, had tattoos on his body reading skinhead, white power, and in the shape of the Confederate flag. The man in the couple he went after sustained non-life threatening injuries while the woman was grazed by his knife in the attack.Upon his arrest, Rowe allegedly told police that he had gone downtown after hearing about anti-police graffiti that had been put up Sunday night, according to court documents. He reportedly told police that if he were let go, he would head to a Donald Trump rally and stomp out more of the Black Lives Matter group. This has all the hallmarks of a hate crime, said Deputy Prosecutor Joseph Wheeler. This black-and-white couple was simply expressing their love for one another, he added.Black Lives Matter has been demonized both by conservative politicians and right-wing media like Fox News Channel, where host Bill O Reilly has compared the movement to the Ku Klux Klan.This is not the first apparent hate crime to be connected to Trump s campaign. In addition to various non-criminal incidents around the country, a Latino man in Massachusetts was beaten up by Trump fans as they cited the candidate and discussed deporting him.Trump himself has directed his rally attendees to be violent towards protesters, including those there on behalf of Black Lives Matter. Trump publicly offered to pay the legal bills for one man who punched a protester, and cheered on the idea of punching people who disrupt his events.By comparison, Hillary Clinton has said black lives matter, and has featured mothers who have lost a child as a result of police brutality as part of her campaign as the Mothers of the Movement. They spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this summer.Featured image via screen capture | 0 |
11,536 | At least 15 dead in flash floods on Greek coast | MANDRA, Greece (Reuters) - Flash floods killed at least 15 people, made scores homeless and destroyed infrastructure in Greece on Wednesday after a raging torrent inundated two coastal towns west of Athens following a night of heavy rain. In devastation locals said was unprecedented in scale, an overnight deluge triggered flash floods in the industrial towns of Nea Peramos and Mandra in the foothills of a mountain just west of Athens. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared a period of national mourning. These are very difficult moments for Greece. We are living a great disaster, he said in a state address. Immediately and without delay support measures will be adopted for households and businesses affected, he said, without going into details. Residents said they were woken on Wednesday morning by rainwater and mud coming through their homes. As the scale of destruction became clearer during the day, large areas were covered in water and mud. In some areas floodwaters rose to the first story of small buildings. There was just an incredible amount of water which caused raging torrents, said Yiannis Kapakis, the head of Greece s civil protection service. Torrential rain of this type is uncommon in Greece, where poor infrastructure can leave citizens vulnerable to flooding. It has been raining steadily for about a week, and the country s met office issued a new severe weather warning for Thursday. Some residents were forced onto rooftops and balconies while cars were thrust onto porches of homes, rammed like dodgem vehicles into tree trunks or tipped onto their side. This is a biblical disaster, Mandra Mayor Yianna Krikouki told state broadcaster ERT. Everything is gone. The Attica prefecture, the administrative district for both towns, said it would seek assistance from the EU Solidarity Fund, set up to respond to natural disasters. A state of emergency was declared in the region. The walls collapsed, the cars were carried away and they broke everything here. There is nothing left, resident Marina Kolia said. Water is everywhere in the house. Mandra and Nea Peramos have a combined population of about 20,000. Many Greek housing settlements are built without taking into account town planning regulations. An Athens prosecutor ordered an urgent preliminary investigation into the deaths and destruction caused and was also investigating possible urban planning offences. On Tuesday, Greece declared a state of emergency on the eastern island of Symi, just off the coast of Turkey, after a storm swept cars into the sea, damaged homes and cut off electricity and water supplies. | 1 |
11,537 | Israeli leader in Argentina, lauds effort to solve 1994 Jewish center bombing | BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday used the first Latin America visit of a sitting Israeli prime minister to praise President Mauricio Macri s effort to solve the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center in 1994 that killed 85 people. Argentine courts have blamed the attack on Iran. But no one has been brought to trial in either that case or the deadly 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. Iran denies playing a role in either attack. We know without a doubt that Iran and Hezbollah initiated and backed up the attacks, Netanyahu told reporters. Hezbollah is an Islamist militant group based in Lebanon. He praised fellow conservative Macri for jump-starting efforts to solve the crimes. Critics accuse previous Argentine leader Cristina Fernandez of trying to improve ties with Iran rather than focusing on bringing the bombers to justice. He strengthened Argentina s position compared with what it was before. I honor his commitment and the integrity of his effort to determine what happened, Netanyahu said. Under Fernandez, the prosecutor probing the attack on the AMIA Jewish community center was found dead in January 2015, just hours before he was to appear in Congress to outline his accusation that Fernandez had tried to clear the way for a grains for oil deal with Iran by whitewashing Iran s role in the truck bombing. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was discovered on the floor of his Buenos Aires apartment with a pistol by his side and a bullet in his head. The death was classified as a suicide, but Nisman s family and friends dismissed that idea as absurd. Opinion polls show most Argentines believe his death was a homicide. Macri won the presidency and succeeded Fernandez in late 2015. He has since boosted ties with the United States and Israel while trying to attract the foreign investment he says is needed to stimulate an economy damaged by the inflationary policies and heavy currency controls of the Fernandez years. Macri has met with Nisman s family and says he has made a high priority of solving his death and the AMIA bombing. Netanyahu and Macri are also in ideological harmony on issues like free trade, development and security, Israel s ambassador to Argentina Ilan Sztulman told local radio. Netanyahu is traveling with executives of 30 Israeli companies looking to increase trade with Latin America. They include cyber security, irrigation and other agricultural technology firms that could help Argentina reinforce its position as the world s top exporter of soymeal livestock feed and a major supplier of corn and raw soybeans. After Argentina, Netanyahu will visit Colombia and Mexico before addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 19. The diplomatic flurry might take domestic attention off two corruption investigations centering on Netanyahu in Israel. He was accompanied on the trip by his wife Sara Netanyahu. On Friday, Israel s attorney general said he was considering indicting her on suspicion of using state funds for personal dining and catering services amounting to some $100,000. | 1 |
11,538 | Trump and Netanyahu share a kiss on West Bank wall mural | BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Another Donald Trump mural believed to be the work of Australian graffiti artist Lushsux has popped up on Israel s barrier in the occupied West Bank, this time depicting the U.S. president sharing a kiss with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His face hidden by a headdress, a man who identified himself as Lushsux said against the backdrop of a cement section of the Israeli wall in Bethlehem that he hoped his painting would draw attention to Palestinians stuck in an indoor prison . The Bethlehem wall has become a showcase of protest art voicing Palestinians fears that Israel s West Bank fence-and-concrete barrier is a land grab that may deny them a state. Israelis deem the project a bulwark against Palestinian attack. The wall is a message in itself, the man, who said he painted the mural overnight, told Reuters. I don t need to write Free Palestine or something like that, something really direct ... that people will ignore. I just paint what I usually paint and maybe people will start looking at the background and looking at the razor wire and looking at people stuck in here, and maybe that ll work better, he said in Australian-accented English. Murals on the barrier believed to be the work of Lushsux include one showing Trump kissing an Israeli watchtower and another depicting him placing his hand on the barrier and thinking about building a similar wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. | 1 |
11,539 | Georgia senators will consider Clinton high court nominees: report | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Georgia’s two Republican senators broke with members of their party, saying they would consider Supreme Court nominees put forward by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton if she wins the presidency, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Sunday. The comments from U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, who is up for re-election on Tuesday, and U.S. Senator David Perdue came after Republican Senators John McCain and Ted Cruz suggested they might block any of Clinton’s potential nominees. “You don’t shirk your responsibility when you’re an elected official. You sanctify your responsibility, and that’s what I’ll do. I’ll consider who she nominates at the time she does and make a decision that’s right for the people of Georgia,” Isakson told the Atlanta newspaper. A spokeswoman for Perdue, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the AJC: “He wants to ensure we have a Supreme Court justice who will uphold the Constitution, and he will examine each nominee independently based on their merits.” The death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February has left the nine-member high court short one justice and evenly split between liberals and conservatives. In March, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a federal appeals court judge, to replace Scalia, but the Republican-led Senate has refused to consider the nomination, saying the next president should make the pick. The Senate’s inaction on Garland, a centrist, has made the Supreme Court a potent issue in the election. After many years of leaning conservative, the court could tilt to the left for the first time in decades if Clinton wins the election. Isakson said he expects the Senate will confirm Garland before January in the event of a Clinton victory. Some Republicans fear Clinton would nominate a more liberal justice, swinging the ideological balance of the court even further to the left. | 1 |
11,540 | Assange: ‘Trump in Conflict with CIA Over Syria Policy’ | This interview with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange might explain John McCain s recent angry outburst over the Trump Administration s announcement that Assad can stay as leader in Syria. Syrianna Analysis: On the German DW-TV channel, Julian Assange said there is a serious conflict between President Donald Trump and the CIA over Syria. The CIA and other security apparatuses don t want him to change the foreign policy of Washington towards Syria. Listen: SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 0 |
11,541 | German SPD to put any gov't role up for vote: Schulz | BERLIN (Reuters) - Members of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) will get to vote on any decision by the leadership of the center-left party to join a future coalition government, leader Martin Schulz said on Friday. There is nothing automatic about the direction we are moving in, Schulz said. If a discussion results in us deciding to participate in any form whatsoever in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members. Schulz made the remarks said during a brief news conference, shortly after the German president announced he would host a meeting next week with Schulz and Chancellor Angela Merkel to find a way out of a political impasse. | 1 |
11,542 | Trump Says Republican ‘Make America Sick Again’ Bill Is ‘Wonderful,’ Stands By Utter Failure | Donald Trump thinks the healthcare bill Republicans passed to repeal the Affordable Care Act is wonderful and promised even more such bills to come. We are sooo screwed.After years of trying to repeal the landmark healthcare law, House Republicans passed a bill on Monday that they dubiously named the American Healthcare Act. Except that there is nothing American about it, nor does it provide healthcare to anyone who needs it.The monstrous bill pretty much leaves 30 million Americans out in the cold without insurance. Republicans stripped subsidies away from low-income Americans and will give them to families who can actually afford to pay for healthcare without government aid. The bill also wipes out the Medicaid expansion that allowed millions more to obtain coverage. Furthermore, the bill kills the insurance mandate, which guaranteed that enough Americans would have health insurance that the insurance pool would be able to cover people with pre-existing conditions. The bill also makes senior citizens pay more for healthcare and defunds Planned Parenthood, which would strip low-income women of the health services they need, including cancer screenings.Overall, the bill a big fuck you from Republicans to the American people. So, of course, Trump loves it.Trump crowed about the Republican bill and then attacked the Affordable Care Act by claiming that it is imploding.However, it s only imploding because Trump and Republicans are sabotaging it so it doesn t work the way it should.Our wonderful new Healthcare Bill is now out for review and negotiation. ObamaCare is a complete and total disaster is imploding fast! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017Trump then tweeted that this bill is only the first phase of his plan to destroy healthcare in this country. And he actually thinks that getting rid of state lines will bring the cost of healthcare down.Don t worry, getting rid of state lines, which will promote competition, will be in phase 2 & 3 of healthcare rollout. @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017And apparently, drug prices is one of his targets.I am working on a new system where there will be competition in the Drug Industry. Pricing for the American people will come way down! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017Knowing Trump, that means Americans who rely on affordable and accessible pharmaceuticals are about to get hammered.This is a really bad bill for the American people. So bad, in fact, that four Republican senators are prepared to oppose it, which means it will be dead on arrival in the Senate. A majority of Americans support the Affordable Care Act and the protections and benefits it provides. The uninsured rate is at an all-time low and more people have access to healthcare than ever before. Trump s plan will only hurt tens of millions of Americans while setting healthcare in this country back by decades.Featured image via Jim Lo Scalzo Pool/Getty Images | 0 |
11,543 | Tillerson warns region against using Lebanon as proxy for conflict | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday warned other countries and groups against using Lebanon as vehicle for a larger proxy fight in the Middle East, saying the United States strongly backed Lebanon s independence. Tillerson said he recognized Saad al-Hariri as Lebanon s prime minister and called him a strong partner of the United States. Hariri unexpectedly resigned his post at the weekend from the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh and accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world. His resignation thrust Lebanon into the front line of a regional competition between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran that has also buffeted Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Tillerson s backing of Hariri and the Lebanese government contrasted sharply with the approach taken by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia which has lumped Lebanon with Hezbollah as parties hostile to it. There is no legitimate place or role in Lebanon for any foreign forces, militias or armed elements other than the legitimate security forces of the Lebanese state, Tillerson said in a statement. Lebanese authorities have said Hariri is being held against his will in Saudi Arabia, a charge that Riyadh has denied. Tillerson earlier said there was no indication Hariri was being held in Saudi Arabia against his will but that Washington was monitoring the situation. Tillerson s statement said there was no legitimate role in Lebanon for any foreign forces, militias or armed elements - an apparent reference to Hezbollah and its regional backer, Iran. But Tillerson also cautioned against any party, within or outside Lebanon, using Lebanon as a venue for proxy conflicts or in any manner contributing to instability in that country. | 1 |
11,544 | Trump son-in-law met executives of sanctioned Russian bank, will testify | MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian bank under Western economic sanctions over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine disclosed on Monday that its executives had met Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, in December. A U.S. Senate committee investigating suspected Russian interference in the election wants to interview Trump associates, including Kushner, 36, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and has agreed to testify. Kushner previously acknowledged meeting the Russian ambassador to Washington last December and only on Monday did it emerge that executives of Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) had talks with Kushner during a bank roadshow last year. The bank said in an emailed statement that as part of its preparing a new strategy, its executives met representatives of financial institutes in Europe, Asia and America. It said roadshow meetings took place “with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies.” VEB declined to say where the meetings took place or the dates. There was no immediate comment from Kushner. Allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian actors were behind hacking of senior Democratic Party operatives and spreading disinformation linger over Trump’s young presidency. Democrats charge the Russians wanted to tilt the election toward the Republican, a claim dismissed by Trump. Russia denies the allegations. MORE FROM REUTERS * Breakingviews TV: Kushner's business * Poll shows Macron win in French election * U.S. shale enlists genetics to boost output But there has been no doubt that the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, developed contacts among the Trump team. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign on Feb. 13 after revelations that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Kislyak and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. U.S. officials said that after meeting with Russian Kislyak at Trump Tower last December, a meeting also attended by Flynn, Kushner met later in December with Sergei Gorkov, chairman of Vnesheconombank. White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the meetings, saying nothing of consequence was discussed. Gorkov was appointed head of VEB in early 2016 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He graduated from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, Russia’s internal security agency. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Merit for Services to the Fatherland, according to the bank’s website. According to two congressional staffers, some Senate investigators want to question Kushner and Flynn about whether they discussed with Gorkov or other Russian officials or financial executives the possibility of investing in 666 Fifth Avenue in New York or other Kushner Co or Trump properties if the new administration lifted the sanctions. VEB, aside from being under sanctions, has been grappling with bad debt after financing politically expedient projects such as construction for the Sochi Winter Olympics. It received 150 billion rubles ($2.6 billion) in support from the Russian budget in 2016, when its senior management was sacked and replaced by a team of executives from Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank. In an article posted on Dec. 18, Forbes estimated that Jared Kushner, his brother Josh and his parents, Charles and Seryl, have a fortune of at least $1.8 billion, more than half of which Forbes estimates is held in real estate. Forbes did not provide a specific estimate for Jared Kushner’s net worth on his own. On Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters that Kushner is willing to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by U.S. Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican. “Throughout the campaign and the transition, Jared served as the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials ... and so, given this role, he volunteered to speak with Chairman Burr’s committee,” Spicer told reporters at his daily briefing. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate panel also said Kushner had agreed to be interviewed but no date had yet been scheduled. Simply meeting with representatives of a U.S.-sanctioned entity is not a violation of sanctions or against the law. Evgeny Buryakov, 41, a Russian citizen who worked at Vnesheconombank and whom U.S. authorities accused of posing as a banker while participating in a New York spy ring, pleaded guilty to a criminal conspiracy charge in March 2016. Buryakov admitted in federal court in Manhattan to acting as an agent for the Russian government without notifying U.S. authorities. He was prosecuted by the office of the U.S. attorney in Manhattan under Preet Bharara, who was among several chief prosecutors fired or asked to resign earlier this month by the new administration. Also on Monday, a mystery rooted in Trump’s claim that he was wiretapped by then President Barack Obama during the election campaign deepened with the disclosure that a top congressional Republican reviewed classified information on the White House grounds about potential surveillance of some Trump campaign associates. U.S. Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, visited the White House the night before he announced on Wednesday that he had information that indicated some Trump associates may have been subjected to some level of intelligence activity before Trump took office on Jan. 20. Democrats have said Nunes, who was a member of Trump’s transition team, can no longer run a credible investigation of Russian hacking, the U.S. election and any potential involvement by Trump associates. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have urged Nunes to recuse himself from the Russia probe. Nunes told CNN on Monday that he went to the White House grounds because the intelligence information was not available to Congress. He said he did not meet with Trump or his aides at that time and did not coordinate the release of information with the Trump administration. Nunes spokesman Jack Langer said in a statement that Nunes “met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source.” White House spokesman Spicer did not shed any light on who at the White House helped Nunes gain access to a secure location. It was the latest twist in a saga that began on March 4 when Trump said on Twitter without providing evidence that he “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.” FBI Director James Comey told Congress last Monday he had seen no evidence to support the claim. (This version of the story corrects paragraph 1 to show that meeting was in December, not during 2016 presidential campaign. Paragraph 22 has also been corrected to show Buryakov pleaded guilty in March 2016, not Friday.) | 1 |
11,545 | [Video] OBAMA TAKES ADVANTAGE Of Opportunity To Speak In Front Of Communists in Panama About Racist America: ‘There Are Dark Chapters in Our Own History’ | We have not observed the principles and ideals upon which this country was founded. Obama makes sure to let everyone know Americans never makes a claim about being perfect, we do make a claim about being open to change.' We re pretty sure every communist and socialist in the room would approve of Obama s version of change. h/t red flag news | 0 |
11,546 | Caitlyn Jenner joins celebs mulling run for U.S. political office | LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Caitlyn Jenner has joined the list of celebrities who are considering running for political office in the United States following the election of former reality television star Donald Trump as president. Jenner, who as former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner in 2015 became the highest-profile American to transition to a woman, said she would decide in the next six months or so whether to run for the U.S. Senate in California. Jenner told John Catsimatidis on his “CATS Roundtable” New York radio show on Sunday, that she is working with activist groups to improve the Republican Party’s stance on lesbian, gay and transgender issues. “Over the next six months or so I gotta find out where I can do a better job. Can I do a better job from the outside working the perimeter of the political scene, being open to talking to anybody, or are you better off from the inside? “We are in the process of determining that. But yeah, I would look for a senatorial run,” she said. Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein is up for re-election in California in 2018. Jenner, 67, is a Republican but in February she criticized the Trump administration for reversing a federal directive that allowed transgender students to use public school bathrooms of their choice. “From one Republican to another, this is a disaster,” she said in a video message to Trump at the time. The success of Trump, a businessman who found fame through TV reality show “The Apprentice,” has encouraged others with no political experience to consider running for office. Last week country-rock singer Kid Rock, a supporter of Trump, hinted he intends to run for the Senate in 2018 but he has yet to make any official announcement. He has not mentioned where he would run. Actor and former wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has said he might run for the White House someday but has not mentioned a political affiliation. Previous celebrities who made the transition to politics include action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served two terms as California governor, and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, who was elected Minnesota governor. | 1 |
11,547 | Cameroon court sentences opposition leader to 25 years in prison | DOUALA, Cameroon (Reuters) - A military court in Cameroon sentenced an opposition leader on Monday to 25 years in prison, his lawyer and Amnesty International said and denounced the trial as politically motivated. The court convicted Aboubakar Siddiki, the president of northern Cameroon s main opposition party, of hostility against the homeland as well as revolution and contempt of the president over accusations he plotted to destabilise the country. We are going to appeal this decision, which does not seem to us to be at all just, Siddiki s lawyer, Emmanuel Simh, told Reuters. In a statement, Amnesty said the prosecution was part of a government campaign to stifle its critics. The government denies the charges are political. Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds arrested in a crackdown in recent months on protests in Cameroon s English-speaking regions. Residents there say they suffer social and economic marginalisation in the predominantly Francophone country. The protests have become a lightning rod for opposition to President Paul Biya s 35-year rule. Besides Siddiki, the court sentenced Abdoulaye Harissou, a well-known notary, to three years in prison for failure to denounce a crime. The court also dropped charges against three journalists arrested in connection with the same case. | 1 |
11,548 | WATCH: Keith Olbermann Perfectly Explains Why We Absolutely CANNOT Give Trump A Chance | For nigh on two years now, wise people have been warning against the normalization of Donald Trump. However, the media insisted on giving him and his outrageous travesty of a campaign billions of dollars in free advertising, and refused to convey one simple fact to the American people: Donald Trump is in no way fit to president and Commander-in-Chief. In fact, he is dangerously unfit. Trump is clearly a narcissist, unbelievably vengeful and vicious, and in many ways seems to be VERY mentally unstable and unable to control his impulses. Despite these obvious traits that would make anyone unsuited to be president, America has elected him, and now we re in grave danger. The worst part of it? The media is rushing to normalize him once again, and with that normalization comes more danger than ever. Therefore no matter how much the media tells us to do so, no matter how many politicians tell us to do so, we must resist the normalization of this absolutely abnormal presidency. There s one person who is doing an amazing job of telling us just what we need to hear and understand: Keith Olbermann.On GQ s The Closer, Keith Olbermann has been busily railing Donald Trump in ways the mainstream media refuses to do. Now that Trump is the president-elect, he has come out with a brilliant video called The Resistance in which he explains the grave danger we are in, and why Trump must be resisted every step of the way. First, Olbermann says that he himself will help lead those of us who understand how dangerous Trump is: Since no Democratic or liberal politician has yet stepped forward out of the morass of Politics, Inc. to take on the responsibility of The Resistance, I, with complete awareness of the presumptuousness and arrogance of this statement, volunteer myself, and I will gladly turn over all these burdens to any more legitimate and informed lawmaker or political or cultural leader who has the guts to take these burdens. Then, Olbermann goes on to lay into Trump in spectacular fashion, laying out all of the reasons he cannot be accepted, and how we might go about making sure we never accept him as president: The first step is to complete the de-legitimizing of his presidency and his election. De-legitimizing that he himself began. Sixty-eight days until his inauguration, still bitching about his paranoid fantasies about the media, still lying about what he said during the campaign, still referring to himself in the third person, still obsessing over one newspaper as if he were fifteen and it had refused to go with him to the junior prom. Give him a chance? What, in the hope that he will someday grow up enough to be able to see over the top of the Oval Office desk? Most importantly, Olbermann then reminds us all just what the people insisting we should give Trump a chance are really saying: All we are saying is, give fascism a chance. Who knows, it might not be as bad as we think. It might not be a bottomless pit. After that, the bombastic host lays out his best zinger yet, though he is completely serious: We do not have time for the White House edition of Celebrity Apprentice starring President-elect P*ssy-grabber. Olbermann does warn against any crazy and/or illegal tactics, though, saying: I do not want violence, I m not proposing the overthrow of the government by any means other than legal and political. I think protests should be limited to Washington, Trump Tower and the Trump hotels. I have no pie-in-the-sky plan to have the Electoral College alter the outcome somehow, I will even acquiesce to a President Pence just get this man out of here. Keith Olbermann is right. We need the truth here, and the truth is that this is how fascim takes over. We cannot allow Trump to become normalized, and we cannot, not for a second, treat him as any sort of legitimate president. To do so is to see the end of democracy as we know it.Mr. Olbermann, I salute you, and I proudly join your resistance to Donald Trump.Here is the must watch video, and I urge you to subscribe to the GQ YouTube channel, where The Resistance will be a regular series to help us all navigate the Donald Trump fascist rule.[ad3media campaign= 1356 ]Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
11,549 | House Speaker backs probe of cyber threats on U.S. election process | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said he supported effort by the House Intelligence Committee to examine cyber threats posed to the American democratic process by foreign governments, but that such efforts should not cast doubt on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. “Any foreign intervention in our elections is entirely unacceptable. And any intervention by Russia is especially problematic,” Ryan said in a statement on Monday. | 1 |
11,550 | Top Trump lieutenant Scaramucci lashes colleagues in obscene rant | (Note: Strong language in paragraph 3) By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Open warfare erupted inside President Donald Trump’s inner circle as his new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, attacked senior White House colleagues in obscene comments published on Thursday. Scaramucci blasted White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, in an article in The New Yorker based on a telephone conversation on Wednesday night between one of the magazine’s correspondents and Scaramucci. Amid a stream of vulgar language, the former Wall Street financier named to the communications post last Friday called Priebus a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and accused Bannon of trying to build his own brand “off the fucking strength of the president.” In a Twitter message after the article appeared online, Scaramucci said: “I sometimes use colorful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @realDonaldTrump’s agenda.” Asked about the article, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the administration was focused on healthcare and other items. “He used some colorful language that I don’t anticipate he’ll do again,” she told reporters. Any apology “needs to happen personally between them,” she said. Priebus and Bannon had no comment. Trump himself made no public comment on his aide’s outburst. Some of Trump’s advisers have questioned Priebus’ competence and his position appeared weak. Republicans close to the White House said Trump’s family had also been critical of his chief of staff. The drama was the latest sign of disarray within the Trump White House even as it tries to advance healthcare and tax reform legislation. The president himself is preoccupied with an investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election and has been fiercely critical in recent days of his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The scathing remarks by Scaramucci came as he and other Trump loyalists ratcheted up pressure on Priebus, a former Republican National Committee chairman, who does not have years-long ties with Trump. There has been speculation that Priebus, who steered the party apparatus behind Trump’s unorthodox candidacy in last year’s election, is on his way out because Trump has no major legislative achievements in his first six months in office. Earlier in the day, Sanders would not say whether Trump had confidence in Priebus. “We all serve at the pleasure of the president and if it gets to a place where that isn’t the place, he’ll let you know,” Sanders told reporters. She added that Trump “hires the very best people” who are not always going to agree and that he supports “healthy competition, and with that competition you usually get the best results.” Priebus had sought to block Scaramucci from a White House job, according to officials. Priebus’ allies said Trump’s hiring of Scaramucci, which prompted press secretary Sean Spicer to resign, was a bad omen for Priebus. In The New Yorker article, Scaramucci demanded to know how the reporter found out about a White House dinner Scaramucci had with Trump on Wednesday. In the conversation, Scaramucci made clear he suspected that Priebus had leaked the information to the reporter, calling Priebus “a paranoiac,” according to the magazine. Scaramucci also told The New Yorker that unlike Bannon, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon,” he said, adding: “I’m here to serve the country.” On Wednesday, Scaramucci appeared to suggest in a Twitter message, later deleted, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation should investigate Priebus over a leak of Scaramucci’s financial records. “If Reince wants to explain he’s not a leaker, let him do that,” Scaramucci said on CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan defended Priebus on Thursday. The two men, both from Wisconsin, are close. “Reince is doing a fantastic job at the White House and I believe he has the president’s confidence. If those two gentlemen have differences, my advice would be to sit down and settle your differences,” Ryan told a news conference. Trump allies saw the drama playing out as a sign that the group of original Trump supporters was growing weary of Priebus and the RNC faction he brought with him. “There is a widespread feeling among Trump supporters that he’s never been a real supporter of Donald Trump and that he isn’t playing to win on the president’s behalf,” said an outside Trump adviser. “After six months of this, time is up.” | 1 |
11,551 | WATCH: Trump Declares Himself One Of The Best Presidents In History With Historic Low Approval Rating | Seriously, this actually just happened.Prior to a round table ass-kissing contest, Donald Trump told a room full of reporters and his Cabinet members that he has passed more legislation than any other president except Franklin D. Roosevelt. I will say that never has there been a president with few exceptions, in the case of FDR he had a major Depression to handle who s passed more legislation, who s done more things than what we ve done, Trump bragged. We ve achieved tremendous success. I think we ve been about as active as you can possibly be at a just about record-setting pace. Here s the video via POLITICO:Unfortunately for Trump, most of what he has signed is insignificant stuff that Republicans have been easily able to get passed to make it seem like Trump is getting things done. In reality, he s not.As POLITICO points out,Many of the bills Trump has signed, such as designating buildings and appointing board members to the Smithsonian, do not have a major, direct impact on Americans, and Trump s ambitious legislative agenda on tax reform and infrastructure is largely stalled.NBC News further points out that one bill Trump signed was a war memorial, and another encouraged Americans to display the flag on a certain day.None of these pieces of legislation actually do anything to help Americans or improve our country. In short, it s not worth bragging about. The only reason Trump is bragging about it is because he has nothing else to brag about and he wants to convince Americans that he is succeeding. Of course, Trump won t mention that all of bills he has signed are insignificant.Trump s major legislative agenda has been a complete failure while past presidents have major legislative accomplishments on their records through the first 100 days.Trump also whined about Democrats and accused them of being obstructionists. Here s the video via NBC:The problem with this charge is that it s hypocritical and pathetic.Republicans control both the Senate and the House. So blaming Democrats for his own party s inability to get things passed in Congress is nothing more than an excuse, and a bad one at that.It s also hypocritical because Republicans obstructed President Obama for eight years. To expect Democrats to all of a sudden play ball, especially when such a destructive and incompetent person is in charge of the White House, is ridiculous.Trump claimed that Democrats would not even vote for the greatest healthcare bill in the world. He should put his money where his mouth is. Just introduce a universal healthcare bill in Congress and watch how fast Democrats vote in favor of it. The problem is that Trump s current healthcare bill is nowhere near the greatest. It strips healthcare from millions of people while giving massive tax breaks to wealthy people such as himself. It also raises the cost of healthcare and gives insurance companies the power to drop customers for a variety of reasons, including if a woman was raped.This Cabinet meeting was nothing more than blatant propaganda designed to stroke Trump s ego and fool the American people into thinking he s great. It s disgraceful and the American people should be outraged.Featured Image: Screenshot | 0 |
11,552 | Republican senators wobble on House Obamacare plan | (Reuters) - If the Republicans’ plan to dismantle most of Obamacare is approved later this month by the U.S. House of Representatives, where it cleared initial hurdles last week, it would go next to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. At least nine Republican senators have expressed concerns about the plan, which is moving forward in the House without a clear assessment of its impact on the federal budget or how it would impact the level of health insurance among Americans. The plan would roll back much of former Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act, retain some parts of it and substitute other new parts. Democrats say it goes too far. Some Republican conservatives say it doesn’t go far enough. Republicans dominate the House, but have only 52 seats in the 100-seat Senate. Supporters of the Republican plan would need only a simple majority to pass it, under current plans. Here are some Republican senators who have raised questions about the House plan, or outright opposed it: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky: He has called the plan “Obamacare Lite,” saying it stops short of full repeal. He has reintroduced a bill to repeal Obamacare that was approved by Republicans a little over a year ago, but was vetoed by Obama. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas: Cruz reportedly said on March 8 that he had “significant concerns” about the plan and that it could pass the Senate in its current form. But he added he would work hard to improve it. That night, he and his family dined at the White House with Republican President Donald Trump, who has expressed support for the House plan. Senator Mike Lee of Utah: He said on March 7 the plan was a “step in the wrong direction” and expressed concern that it was not known how much it would cost and whether it would make health care more affordable. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas: On March 9 he urged the House to pull back, saying the plan could not pass the Senate without changes. Senator Susan Collins of Maine: She has concerns about the House bill. She voted against repealing Obamacare a little over a year ago because it would have taken federal funds from women’s healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, which also provides abortion services. The current House bill would strip funds from Planned Parenthood. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio: He and three other senators raised concerns in a letter last week about a Feb. 10 draft of the House plan, saying they wanted to be sure it will protect people enrolled in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado: He signed the letter of concern about the plan. In a March 9 telephone town hall, Gardner reportedly did not say whether the current House bill met his standards on Medicaid. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: She also signed the letter of concern about the plan’s effect on Medicaid. Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia: She, too, signed the letter of concern about the Medicaid impact. | 1 |
11,553 | Ex-U.S. Attorney Bharara, fired by Trump, joins NYU law school | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whom President Donald Trump fired earlier this month, will join New York University’s law school on April 1 as a distinguished scholar in residence, the school announced on Tuesday. Bharara said in a statement provided by the school that he was honored to join NYU, and welcomed the opportunity “to continue addressing the issues I so deeply care about - criminal and social justice, honest government, national security, civil rights, and corporate accountability, to name a few.” Bharara will be expected to collaborate with the school’s research centers including those focused on cyber security and criminal law, and to participate in panel discussions and other events, school spokesman Michael Orey said. The position is considered full-time but will not preclude Bharara from taking on other engagements, Orey said. He declined to disclose Bharara’s compensation. Bharara was fired by Trump on March 11 after refusing to step down. He had been among 46 U.S. attorneys who were told a day earlier to submit their resignations. The firing was a surprise because Bharara had told reporters in November that Trump had asked him to remain in the job. As the chief federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan, Bharara oversaw several notable corruption and white-collar criminal cases, as well as other high profile cases involving national security or individuals suspected of links to designated foreign terrorist organizations. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, Bharara has been a frequent visitor to NYU, the law school said in the statement. Other people who hold the distinguished scholar in residence position at NYU’s law school include Anne Milgram, former attorney general of New Jersey, and Robert Bauer, a past White House counsel under former President Barack Obama. | 1 |
11,554 | Ted Nugent Appears At Trump Rally, Gropes Himself While Spewing Profanity (VIDEO) | How this didn t happen sooner, I do not know. But on Sunday, Ted Nugent appeared at a campaign rally with Donald Trump and it went just about how you d expect. Nugent played a little guitar, spewed some profanity and groped himself on the stage.Taking the stage at a Trump rally in Michigan, Nugent struggled with his amp before pumping out the national Anthem in the style of Jimi Hendricks. Who decided to give the man a microphone, I don t know, but the controversial rockstar took the opportunity to rant about shit kickers and ass kickers. I ve got your blue state right here, baby, Nugent yelled at one point while grabbing his crotch and giving it a squeeze. Black and blue! Trump came out to give his speech after Nugent s antics but didn t mention them at all. He did, however, brag that he doesn t need guitars at his rallies. Apparently, it escaped his attention that Ted effing Nugent had just spent the past half hour playing guitar at his rally. There s no guitar to draw a crowd for his rallies, Trump says, minutes after Ted Nugent played his guitar for a half hour or so. Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry) November 7, 2016Nugent is a Michigan native, born in Detroit, but it isn t likely that his support will help Trump win the state. Besides the fact that Nugent is a washed up rockstar turned raving right-wing lunatic who sh*t his own pants because he was too scared to serve in the military, polling shows that Trump is way behind Hillary Clinton in Michigan.It is pretty ironic, though, that Trump has been trying to point attention to literally anything besides crotch grabbing and Nugent just felt himself up onstage at his rally. But hey, should we really have expected that Trump would finish up the final days of his campaign any other way?You can watch Ted Nugent grope himself while stumping for Trump, here:Nugent: I ve got your blue state right here, baby. #Trump rallies are just as crude & disgusting as you might expect at this point. pic.twitter.com/lTRl9Wiv26 Correct The Record (@CorrectRecord) November 6, 2016Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
11,555 | Syria rejects report blaming it for April sarin attack: state media | BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government rejected a report sent to the U.N. Security Council that blamed it for a chemical attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in April in which dozens of people were killed, state media said on Friday. Syria rejects in form and substance what was included in the report of the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) that was announced yesterday, state news agency SANA reported, citing an official in Syria s foreign ministry. The official said the report had been compiled under instructions from the United States and other Western countries to place more political pressure on Syria, SANA reported. The JIM report found Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 this year. The attack prompted a U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base which Washington said was used to launch the strike. (Damascus) condemns the reliance of the Joint Investigative Mechanism on the word of criminals who committed this immoral act in Khan Sheikhoun and those of suspect witnesses, as well as so-called open sources, a statement by the foreign ministry official said. The official also said Syria renewed its commitment to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and said it had no chemical materials restricted by the agreement. Syria considered the use of chemical weapons an immoral act, condemned everywhere, at any time, under any circumstance, SANA reported. | 1 |
11,556 | Trump calls for boycott of television network CNN: tweet | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump urged a boycott of CNN on Wednesday, ramping up his fight against the television network as his administration fights AT&T Inc’s deal to buy CNN’s owner Time Warner Inc. Trump has criticized the proposed deal, which the Justice Department has sued to stop. Legal experts have said the president’s attacks on CNN could hobble his administration’s case. The president, who regularly assails mainstream media, has long criticized CNN, calling the network “fake news” and saying he no longer watches it, while lauding rival Fox News. His call for a boycott appeared to be a step up in his attacks. “Great, and we should boycott Fake News CNN. Dealing with them is a total waste of time!,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post. Trump was responding to a post by his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, who in her own post on Tuesday night praised reports that CNN would not attend an annual holiday party held at the White House for news media. It was not immediately clear if Trump in his post was calling for a wider boycott against CNN or one by White House staff. Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for CNN also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s tweet on Wednesday. A CNN spokesperson told Politico that it would not attend the party “in light of the President’s continued attacks on freedom of the press and CNN” but would send a reporting crew to cover the event, Politico reported on Tuesday. The network and its journalists have repeatedly defended CNN’s work against previous presidential attacks. The Department of Justice’s challenge is unusual move given that pay TV and wireless company AT&T does not directly compete with TV show maker Time Warner. The department has said the lawsuit is a law enforcement decision, not a political one. | 1 |
11,557 | Police say keeping an open mind as to whether London museum incident is terrorism-related | LONDON (Reuters) - London police said they were keeping an open mind after a car collided with pedestrians outside the city s Natural History Museum, contradicting an earlier comment that they were not treating the incident as terrorism-related. A spokeswoman for the London force said counter-terrorism officers were assessing the incident but had not yet reached a conclusion as to the circumstances. Earlier a spokesman told Reuters it was not being treated as a terrorism-related incident at this stage. | 1 |
11,558 | Russia to close down Syria communications line with Pentagon: Interfax | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Defence Ministry notified the Pentagon it would close down at 2100 GMT the communications line used to avoid accidental clashes in Syria, Interfax new agency said, citing the ministry spokesman. | 1 |
11,559 | LONDON’S MAYOR HAS HARSH WORDS For Our Community Organizer In Chief: “Butt Out, Mr. Obama” | Our country is spinning out of control. Obama s orchestrated efforts with race baiters like Al Sharpton and leaders of Black Lives Matter terrorists have created a divide between races like my generation has never known. Obama skips Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia s funeral and the funeral of iconic First Lady, Nancy Reagan, but finds time to take a few pot shots at GOP presidential front-runner, Donald Trump while attending a hipster festival with Michelle. Barack s proven over and over he doesn t have the time or desire to behave like a leader, and now, he s going to tell the Europeans what they need to do as it relates to the EU? When I heard from the Baron today that our current president is planning to go to Britain to make a case to the public for staying in the European Union, I was momentarily stunned. What happened to leading from behind and letting other countries handle their own affairs?By now we re all jaded by this president. He does nothing for free, nothing in which there is not some eventual pay-off to him. So sticking his nose into Britain s affairs should come as no surprise, given his track record of the last interminable years of his time in office.Or maybe he doesn t know how deeply disliked he is by anyone who didn t sign onto his pathetic Peace Prize back in the beginning of his reign? Maybe he believes what the sycophantic press tells him? Or or wait! Is he using a kind of reverse psychology on the British i.e., knowing how much he is held in contempt, anything he suggests, they would oppose? Nah he s far too removed from reality to grasp that concept.So here we have London Mayor Boris Johnson s take on the subject. He s far more interesting to follow on this than any national government figures would be. Via: Gates Of ViennaThese excerpts are from The Telegraph. The only thing Mr J got wrong is the extent to which Obama has undermined America s sovereignty, particularly at our southern border and on the subject of changing our culture and monolingual character. One could say that Mr. Obama s decision to drop in and lecture the Brits on this particular subject is not contradictory at all; it is congruent with his own behavior and sentiments regarding America s sovereignty.Obviously, Mr. Johnson hasn t been paying attention to the American presidential campaign. But they why would he? Had he done so, though, he d have seen an unprecedented populist following for Donald Trump, based on that theme: sovereignty.We want ours back in one piece.I love America. I believe in the American dream. Indeed, I hold that the story of the past 100 years has been very largely about how America rose to global greatness and how America has helped to preserve and expand democracy around the world. In two global conflicts, and throughout the Cold War, the United States has fought for the founding ideals of the republic: that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.So it is on the face of it a bit peculiar that U.S. government officials should believe that Britain must remain within the EU a system in which democracy is increasingly undermined.Some time in the next couple of months we are told that President Obama himself is going to arrive in this country, like some deus ex machina, to pronounce on the matter. Air Force One will touch down; a lectern with the presidential seal will be erected. The British people will be told to be good to themselves, to do the right thing. We will be informed by our most important ally that it is in our interests to stay in the EU, no matter how flawed we may feel that organisation to be. Never mind the loss of sovereignty; never mind the expense and the bureaucracy and the uncontrolled immigration.The American view is very clear. Whether in code or en clair, the President will tell us all that UK membership of the EU is right for Britain, right for Europe, and right for America. And why? Because that or so we will be told is the only way we can have influence in the counsels of the nations.It is an important argument, and deserves to be taken seriously. I also think it is wholly fallacious and coming from Uncle Sam, it is a piece of outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy.There is no country in the world that defends its own sovereignty with such hysterical vigilance as the United States of America. This is a nation born from its glorious refusal to accept overseas control. Almost two and a half centuries ago the American colonists rose up and violently asserted the principle that they and they alone should determine the government of America, and not George III or his ministers. To this day the Americans refuse to kneel to almost any kind of international jurisdiction. Alone of Western nations, the US declines to accept that its citizens can be subject to the rulings of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. They have not even signed up to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Can you imagine the Americans submitting their democracy to the kind of regime that we have in the EU?So why is it essential for Britain to comply with a system that the Americans would themselves reject out of hand? Is it not a blatant case of Do as I say, but not as I do ?For entire letter, go to: The Telegraph | 0 |
11,560 | WATCH: ‘The View’ Rips Trump For Not Having The Balls To Apologize For His Sexism | Donald Trump is in deep sh*t because he refuses to apologize for sexist remarks he made about a Miss Universe contestant.During the presidential debate on Monday night, the Republican nominee took serious flack for fat-shaming Miss Universe contestant Alicia Machado just because she didn t conform to Trump s beauty standards for women.Hillary Clinton took Trump to task, informing him that Machado has a name and is going to vote in this election as are millions of other women across the country who also don t appreciate how he has treated women.On Tuesday, after Trump continued to insult Machado on Fox & Friends, the ladies of The View discussed his remarks and refusal to apologize, and even conservative panelist Jedediah Bila was disgusted by his behavior. Now this guy doesn t know how to apologize it seems, because this happened a long time ago and everybody has a past and all of us have said things that maybe we sit and say I regret it, the Fox host began. It s seems though he doesn t regret it, because the comment here, the only acceptable remark is, You know what? That was a long time ago when I was a different man and I m sorry. I m deeply sorry that I said those things. But Trump didn t apologize just like he has never apologized for any of the offensive remarks he has made over the years. He couldn t even apologize for his birtherism. That shows character, there s a character flaw here, Bila declared before slamming Trump s supporters for blaming everyone around Trump instead of holding Trump responsible for his own personal words and actions. And everybody wants to blame his handlers and say, Why isn t he being told, and I say, you know what, you re a grown man running for president, you re responsible for what you said, and you re responsible for owning up. And I don t care who your handlers are grow up and say, I m sorry. Joy Behar also summed up Trump s message. The message is don t vote for me, she said.Here s the video via ABC.Donald Trump is not presidential material. He has no courage and zero moral fiber. He thinks he can say whatever he wants without consequence and while that may be the case on a reality show this is the political arena he is in now. Women represent more than half of the electorate, which makes pissing them off a very bad idea if the GOP hopes to stave off extinction. But his big mouth could have even more serious repercussions.If Trump pops off at the wrong time to the wrong people he could seriously affect our relations with other nations, especially nations with which we have serious tensions to work out. Trump s big mouth could easily sabotage crucial diplomatic negotiations or piss someone off enough to break ties with us. We need international cooperation now more than ever, especially if we hope to defeat ISIS. Insulting countries we need will not help us.And since he can t even treat most people in this country with respect, how can we really expect him to actually respect other nations?Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 0 |
11,561 | Trump’s Superstar Attorney For Trump U. Case Is A HUGE Hillary Clinton Backer | Donald Trump is stuck in a court battle over his failed Trump University scheme, and because he will do anything to win, he has, of course, gone out and gotten the best attorney money can buy for this. To that end, he hired Daniel Petrocelli, who has represented everyone from Enron s Jeffrey Skilling, to major companies like Warner Bros. and Disney. Petrocelli is also the lawyer who represented the Goldman family in their successful wrongful death suit against O.J. Simpson.So Trump has a skilled, powerful attorney, and in other news, fire is hot. However, Petrocelli is both a strange and notable pick for The Donald. Why? His political donation history shows that he s not anything like a Trump supporter, or even Republican. In fact, he s a registered Democrat, and he s already maxed out the amount he can personally donate to none other than Hillary Clinton.While Trump rails against the law firm representing the plaintiffs in this case he claims they ve given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary s campaign he s ignoring the fact that his own lead attorney has those kinds of ties to Hillary, too. If the plaintiffs attorneys are out to get him because they re Hillary supporters, then it follows that he should worry that his own lead attorney can t be trusted to represent him skillfully and fairly for that very same reason.For instance, Petrocelli has been very quiet while Trump rails about everyone being biased against him, especially in this court case. He also directly contradicted Trump s racist whining that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the Trump U. case, can t be fair to Trump because of his Mexican heritage. The judge is doing his job, said Daniel Petrocelli, shaking his head, when asked if planned to seek Curiel s recusal. We re not seeking to recuse the judge.' This doesn t worry King Donald? How many brain cells does he have rattling around in his head?Of course, Trump himself has come under fire from Republicans for his past support of Democrats. However, Petrocelli s support isn t exactly in the past. Records show that his most recent donations to Hillary were in January of this year.He also has a long history of giving financial support to other Democrats, too, such as Dianne Feinstein and even Al Gore. He might be able to separate his political leanings from his work, but this is a very high profile case involving a presidential candidate, and the fact that he s a major supporter of his client s opponent won t help Trump s falling poll numbers, or his terrible image among conservatives.This actually speaks more to Trump s intelligence and foresight or lack thereof than it does anything about Petrocelli himself. He s completely undermined his own everyone is against me argument, and proven that he s nothing but a dimwitted, walking contradiction who looks for sparkle and jazz. Yes, he hired Petrocelli for his skill in the courtroom, but he s so paranoid and distrustful that this makes no sense. Chances are, a lot of his other picks for a lot of other positions will make no sense either.Featured image by Dave Einsel/Getty Images | 0 |
11,562 | U.S. Senate panel receives ethics filings for Labor nominee Puzder | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate panel tasked with vetting labor secretary nominee and fast-food executive Andrew Puzder will hold his confirmation hearing on Feb.16, now that his ethics paperwork has been submitted to Congress, a committee spokesman said Wednesday. Puzder’s certification from the Office of Government Ethics arrived at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions exactly two months after Puzder was nominated to the job by President Donald Trump. A spokesman for Puzder, George Thompson, said he expects that Puzder will turn in a separate questionnaire to the committee by Thursday morning. Puzder is the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants Inc, which owns primarily franchised restaurants including Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Tentative plans for Puzder’s hearing have been repeatedly postponed amid delays with a review by the Office of Government Ethics. Those stem from the complexities surrounding how Puzder will divest himself from CKE Restaurants, which is owned by private equity firm Roark Capital Group. Other companies in Roark Capital’s portfolio include Corner Bakery, Cinnabon, Arby’s, Carvel and Auntie Anne’s. Senate Democrats have been highly critical of Puzder, a staunch critic of an overtime rule championed by the former Obama administration. His nomination has sparked protests around the country by some CKE fast-food workers and the union-backed “Fight for $15” movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Workers from a number of CKE’s franchised locations have also complained of wage and hour concerns and other labor conditions in recent weeks. In a letter to Puzder sent on Wednesday before the ethics paperwork was sent to the Senate, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Patty Murray, said she wanted to receive a “detailed account” of his plans for recusals, divestments and resignations in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest stemming from his business relationship with Roark Capital Group. “The franchise model’s pervasive presence in the fast food industry, the frequency of serious labor violations connected with franchising and your past or present financial interest in Roark raise questions regarding your ability to faithfully carry out the Department of Labor’s mandate,” Murray wrote. | 1 |
11,563 | Phoenix Mayor Calls On Justice Department To Investigate AZ ‘Election Fiasco’ (VIDEO) | Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton is calling on the United States Justice Department to investigate Arizona s fiasco election.As Arizona voters attempted to cast their votes during Tuesday s Presidential Preference election, thousands were forced to wait in line, sometimes for up to five hours. Those who were unable to wait, including thousands of voters with work, school and family commitments, as well as those with disabilities and other health problems, were forced to leave without casting a ballot.As Stanton points out in his letter to the Justice Department, Maricopa County officials drastically reduced the number of available polling sites, ahead of the 2016 election. Between 2008 and 2016, officials eliminated 85 percent of polling locations, leaving just 60 sites open, to serve a community of more than four million people.On Wednesday, community leaders and angry citizens took to the streets in protest of obvious voter suppression used in Maricopa County. // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]>Election protest in downtown PhoenixPosted by Marc Liverman on Wednesday, March 23, 2016Their complaints have not fallen on deaf ears.In his letter to the Justice Department, Stanton points out that the reduction in polling places primarily impacted Black and Latino communities. A prime example, in Phoenix, a community in which the majority of voters are Black and Latino, there was just one polling place for every 108,000 voters on Tuesday.On the other hand, primarily white communities like Cave Creek/Carefree, there was one polling site per 8,500 voters. The same holds true in other majority-white communities, including Paradise Valley, which had one polling location per 13,000 voters and Fountain Hills, where there was one polling site for every 22,500 voters.But that s just the beginning of the story. On Wednesday, Sondra Carr, a Phoenix resident posted an account of what she saw on election day in Maricopa County. After standing in line for hours, Carr and her son finally entered the polling station.Here s what she says happened next.When my son and I voted, there were SEVEN voting booths these were cardboard dividers for privacy. There were seven. Think about that there are seven of the very things that are needed to vote and look to cost about a dollar fifty, so I m sorry but I don t buy the idea I ve since heard that this was a money-saving decision. Why were there not more? But that didn t even matter because when my son and I entered, there were no other voters inside. When I walked up to the booths, there were no other voters in them and while I was voting, only my own son came to stand next to me. They were purposefully trickling people in, leaving two-thirds of the booths empty while 2000 people waited outside for hours.Thousands of others, who waited for hours to cast their vote, discovered that their party affiliation had somehow been changed on the voter registration rolls. These voters were either turned away altogether or forced to cast a provisional ballot.As Mayor Stanton also states, Arizona has long, documented history of throwing out provisional ballots. According to Stanton s letter, since 2006, Arizona officials have rejected more than 121,000 provisional ballots. That number does not include the thousands of voters who were improperly forced to vote by provisional ballot during the March 22 Presidential Preference Election.While election officials have attempted to cast blame on Independent voters, who they claim came out to vote in Tuesday s election even though they legally were barred from participating, there are two things wrong with this narrative.First, many people who have been registered democrats for years discovered that their party affiliation had been changed without their knowledge or permission.Second, the media, Arizona election officials and others also bear a large amount of blame for confusion on the part of independent voters, if they did indeed show up in record numbers at the polls. (There s no actual evidence that this even happened.)Arizona s Presidential Preference Election, which was held on March 22, is not the state s primary election.The state holds its primary election on August 30. The actual primary does not include presidential candidates. Anyone can vote in that election, including independent voters.The Presidential Preference Election is a closed election. Only registered members of a political party can participate in that election.So yes, independent voters can indeed vote in the state s primary. And no, Tuesday s Presidential Preference Election was not the state s primary. Independent voters were not allowed to participate in that election, which was consistently referred to as the Arizona primary, when it actually wasn t.Blaming voters for trying to vote is a disgusting tactic, especially given the confusing system and the horrifying lack of clarity from the media and election officials.Mayor Stanton spoke with KPNX on Wednesday. Watch the video below. The Phoenix mayor is not the only politician to criticize Tuesday s election fiasco. On Wednesday, Gov. Doug Ducey called the long lines and voter registration issues unacceptable, while also calling for changes to the state s closed Presidential Preference Election.Image credit: video screen capture via Marc Liverman on Facebook | 0 |
11,564 | Factbox: Trump meets with AT&T CEO, others | (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump held meetings in New York on Thursday as he prepared to take over the White House from President Barack Obama on Jan. 20. The following is a list of confirmed meetings from Thursday,according to Trump’s transition team: * Chairman and CEO of AT&T Inc (T.N), which is planning to merge with Time Warner Inc (TWX.N) * Former U.S. ambassador to Uruguay * Under consideration for U.S. Agency for International Development post * Former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania * Under consideration for U.S. Agency for International Development post * Chief executive officer of 21.co and a partner in Andreessen Horowitz * Under consideration for U.S. Food and Drug Administration post * Managing director at Mithril Capital Management * Under consideration for U.S. Food and Drug Administration post * President of Portugal | 1 |
11,565 | Moldova PM confident of securing EU funding in 2018 | CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldova s Prime Minister Pavel Filip said on Monday he was confident of meeting all the conditions to get funding next year under a 100-million-euro ($117-million) agreement with the European Union. A reduction in red tape and better fiscal governance had already improved public finances, allowing it to get by without the EU cash this year, he told Reuters. The European Union agreed in June to provide 60 million euros in loans and 40 million euros of grants in 2017-18 to help the former Soviet republic to stabilize its economy and promote reform. One condition for receiving it was respect for democratic process and the rule of law, the EU added. Moldova this year introduced a new electoral law that the Venice Commission, a pan-European rights body, said could make the system more susceptible to undue influence by vested interests. Last week Filip said Moldova would receive no tranches this year, but he was more upbeat on 2018 in emailed comments to Reuters on Monday. The EU has a serious partner in Chisinau and we are eager for EU financing in 2018 - we are confident all conditions will be met, he said. What is important for us and our citizens is predictability, including on the EU flank. It s important not to see the MFA (macro-financial assistance) captive to political bickering at home or abroad. Moldova s economy grew 4.1 percent last year, recovering from a contraction of 0.4 percent in 2015 that was due in part to a Russian economic crisis that hit exports and remittances from Moldovans working there. Moldova is hopeful that funding will be available next year, while in the meantime, we signaled the obvious: that Moldova is in better shape and can settle its accounts for this year, Filip said. Europe s poorest country was rocked by a scandal in which the equivalent of an eighth of its gross domestic product was stolen from three of its largest banks between 2012 and 2014. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have forecast Moldova will grow 4-4.5 percent this year. | 1 |
11,566 | WATCH: MEGYN KELLY HUMILIATES HERSELF (AGAIN)…Tries To Cozy Up To Traitor Jane Fonda…Gets Major SMACKDOWN On Live TV | One day after actress Debra Messing revealed that she regretted going on Megyn Kelly s new NBC morning show, the embattled host managed to draw the ire of an even bigger Hollywood star.Megyn sat down with Oscar-winning screen icon Jane Fonda on Wednesday, and in an ill-advised and poorly conceived move, decided to ask the 79-year-old actress to detail the plastic surgery she has had done over the years.The nasty exchange on day 2 of Megyn Kelly s new job at NBC couldn t have taken place between two more self-serving and arrogant women.Watch: You, you ve been an example to everyone, on how to age beautifully and with strength. And unapologetically, began Megyn, nervously drawing out her question. You admit you had work done. I think it s to your credit. You look amazing. Have you why did you say .. I read you felt you re not proud to admit you had work done, why not? At that moment a steely Fonda stared Megyn straight in the eyes and very firmly asked: We really want to talk about that now? Via: Daily Mail | 0 |
11,567 | Trump Made The Most DELUSIONAL Statement About Obamacare, America’s Response Is PERFECT (TWEETS) | Apparently, Donald Trump has yet to learn his lesson about attacking former President Barack Obama.Last weekend, the disgraceful Tweeter in Chief decided to accuse his beloved predecessor of wiretapping his phones in the Trump Tower before the U.S. election. He immediately regretted this, because his reckless lies ignited not only tons of backlash against him, but also prompted further investigations into the Russia scandal.America has not even recovered from the shock that a current POTUS would accuse a former leader of the free world of doing such a thing. Regardless, Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to attack Obama again. At around 9:30 am, Trump exercised at least some self-control and only tweeted one anti-Obama message, this time insulting Obamacare while hyping up the GOP s replacement bill (which by the way, is an absolute disaster and pretty much hated by everyone). Trump tweeted:Trump s claim that Obamacare is imploding is just as hilarious as it is ridiculous. Of course, there are some things about Obamacare that could use amending. But Americans, for the most part, are very happy with Obamacare and are pissed off that the Republican Party is going to repeal it, stripping millions of people of their health care. Not to mention, the sloppy replacement plan that the GOP is putting in place has already been highly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike and is sure to be a death sentence for many Americans.Fortunately, America isn t about to let Trump forget that his ideas suck. Once Trump tweeted his attack on Obamacare, Twitter users rushed in to take Trump right off his high horse and bring him back to reality. Here are some of the best responses: Trump is absolutely delusional if he thinks the GOP s plan is going to put Obamacare to shame and Americans will make sure he realizes it.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images | 0 |
11,568 | Ben Carson Really Just Compared GOP’s Nominating Rules To ‘Jim Crow Era’ Laws (VIDEO) | Ben Carson, who was once one of the more promising Republican presidential candidates before his insanity and outlandish remarks ruined his campaign, is sounding more and more like front-runner Donald Trump as the days go by.In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, the former candidate and loyal Trump supporter complained about the Republican National Committee (RNC) convention rules a predictable move considering how much Trump himself has been whining about them ever since he lost every single Colorado delegate to his rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz.Mitchell appropriately brought up the discussion, reminding the retired neurosurgeon that the RNC had been rather transparent about their nominating process, and that those rules had been in place for quite a while. Mitchell pressed Carson: The rules surrounding the delegate selection have been clearly laid out in every state and territory and while each state is different, each process is easy to understand for those willing to learn it. Take note, Donald Trump is the PS, unspoken. Let s keep in mind that Trump has no one to blame but himself for not being prepared, and he made it easy for Cruz to win the state. Yet, Trump s team and his supporters are still crying foul, and Carson has been jumping on every bandwagon ever since Trump bribed him with a job in return for his endorsement and unwavering loyalty. In trying to criticize the guidelines, Carson made a startling comparison between the GOP s nominating rules and Jim Crow laws. Implying that the delegate process really was crooked and rigged against Trump, Carson said: During the Jim Crow era, those were the rules too. They were written everybody knew about them. Didn t make them right. And I m not saying this is the same. But, you know, I think you get the point. just because rules are there, just because they re written by somebody doesn t mean that they re right. It doesn t mean you can t review the system. There s some things we need to look at from a historical perspective. Why do we need the electoral college anymore? Stop and ask yourself, why was that put in place and do some same circumstances apply? Actually, they do not. We need to look at a lot of different things. You can watch Carson make this idiotic comment below:For Carson to compare Trump s completely fair Colorado loss to what African-Americans were forced to endure under Jim Crow is absolutely despicable. And yet, it might as well be expected of Trump and anyone who supports him Carson isn t the only one to make this Jim Crow comparison. Another one of Trump s die-hard fans, Alex Jones, also attacked the delegate -selection process in a similar manner. Jones said that Colorado s selection process makes Jim Crow look like a blessing. Featured image via Alex Wong / Getty Images | 0 |
11,569 | Trump condemns anti-Semitism on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said anti-Semitism should be defeated and called the Holocaust the “darkest chapter of human history” in a video address on Sunday, following two missteps by his administration regarding statements about genocide during World War Two. “The mind cannot fathom the pain, the horror and the loss. Six million Jews, two-thirds of the Jews in Europe, murdered by the Nazi genocide. They were murdered by an evil that words cannot describe, and that the human heart cannot bear,” Trump said in a speech to the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in New York on Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. “On Yom HaShoah, we look back at the darkest chapter of human history,” Trump added. “We mourn, we remember, we pray, and we pledge: ‘Never again.’” In January, on international Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Trump administration statement failed to mention Jews, the overwhelming majority of those who were killed in concentration camps under Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Earlier this month, White House spokesman Sean Spicer triggered an uproar when he said Hitler did not sink to the level of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by using chemical weapons. [nL1N1HJ1YK] Spicer later apologized after his comments aroused criticism on social media and elsewhere for overlooking the fact that millions of Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers. Trump’s four-minute message included somber references to Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, a commitment to support Israel and a rebuke of prejudice and anti-Semitism. “We must stamp out prejudice and anti-Semitism everywhere it is found. We must defeat terrorism, and we must not ignore the threats of a regime that talks openly of Israel’s destruction,” Trump said in an apparent reference to Iran. | 1 |
11,570 | AN ARROGANT Obama Admits He’s Learned Nothing As President | A legacy of hate and division from an unapologetic and arrogant President who promised to transform the United States of America. And so it goes, America s first black President has successfully divided our nation, pitting American against American, while elevating those who break the law over those who risk their lives to protect our neighborhoods and communities. He has offered cover for those who illegally entered our country, while ignoring the danger he poses to our national security by allowing unvetted immigrants into our country from nations who hate us. Yet unbelievably, while America burns, the Left is arguing we need to elect our first female President to carry out his dangerous and destructive legacy. Sorry, but we ll pass News flash: President Obama didn t learn anything in eight years in the White House. And he s proud of it.Sadly, this is the only promise Obama kept to the American voters:As Obama admitted in an interview with New York magazine: If you go back and you read speeches I made when I was running for the US Senate in 2003, or if you go back further and you look at statements I made when I was on the Harvard Law Review, my worldview is pretty consistent. The comment was a point of pride, which makes it doubly tragic. Once the smartest man in the room, always the smartest man in the room.Never mind that the world is on fire, that America is polarized, angry and scared. Or that ObamaCare is a sick patient, that the economy is growing at a snail s pace and that many cities are racial war zones.It s not Obama s fault. None of it. He would do it all again.With voters fixated on his successor, Obama is fixated on his legacy. A large part of his effort on the way out the door is explaining what he did, and insisting that what he did was right. Always.There s no news there, but there is some valuable insight from the ways he defends the indefensible. Let it be a warning to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about the pitfalls of the power they are seeking.If nothing else, the winner should take the oath of office next January armed with the knowledge that hubris is the common thread in Obama s many failures.For example, the president says his secret sauce was that he trusted my judgment but didn t trust the noise out there, meaning Republicans, talk radio, cable TV and pretty much everybody else who didn t agree with him.At some point, he said, he concluded his critics were not even trying to be fair-minded in their assessments or recommendations, and he found that liberating because he could ignore them.Whether it was enforcing his red line in Syria, which he didn t, or substituting executive orders for congressional action, he expressed no regret. He was right and everybody else was wrong.It s a remarkable notion, yet plainly a trend when government is the largest special interest, one that uses and abuses its power to look out for itself. Especially under liberals, it only admits failure to demand more power.This is no small feat. Consider that way back in the reign of George W. Bush, it was universally accepted that a president ought to be held accountable for national problems. A war that didn t work out as planned, a natural disaster or an economic one all fell on the head of the occupant of the Oval Office.But Obama and his apologists cleverly reversed the dynamic. Now the American public is to blame when things go wrong.It s because people are deplorables or some other ignorant form of life that leads them to resist wise choices government makes for them. If only the people were smart enough and honest enough to understand how lucky they are, the country would be better off.Throughout this interview and others, it is clear that Obama is leaving office with both his worldview and his prejudices firmly intact. Recall that during the 2008 campaign, talking to donors in San Francisco, he said that white working-class people in Pennsylvania and places like it were falling behind economically and they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren t like them. That s the most quoted part of his remarks, but the rest of it was equally snobbish: Those same people, he said, also cling to anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. Imagine if Obama had listened to those people, instead of shutting them out as noise. Imagine if he had seen their problems as legitimate, instead of seeing them as backwoods bigots.But he didn t, and so he leaves the country more bitterly divided than when he began. And, as I have said before, Trump s rise through his focus on immigration and trade are a big part of Obama s legacy. Via: NYP | 0 |
11,571 | Israeli PM Rejects Obama’s $40 Billion Aid Offer, Demands More While America’s Children Go Hungry | The state of Israel currently receives a staggering $3 billion a year in so-called aid, much of it for its military, which is then used to brutalize the Palestinian people in the form of a military occupation and a settlement apparatus of land theft that is illegal under international law. With the current agreement set to expire in 2017, Israel wants a raise. They are now asking for an estimated $5 billion a year over the next ten years, for a total of more than $50 billion.Despite the fact that we can use this money at home to help America s 16 million children who live below the poverty level, Israel s prime minister not only is asking for more money, but he had the nerve to reject President Obama s offer of $40 billion over the next ten years. Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis are using their pull in Washington to get the POTUS to play by their rules. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobby group in Washington that works on behalf of a foreign country (Israel) often through the coercion and arm twisting of American officials, just got 83 U.S. senators to sign a letter demanding that the president send money to Israel. The letter states: In light of Israel s dramatically rising defense challenges, we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge. Not surprisingly, Senator Bernie Sanders was not one of the signatories to the letter. The senator has recognized not only that Israel uses disproportionate force on Palestinian civilians through weapons the U.S. gives to Israel, but he also knows the alarming poverty rate that exists in our own backyard with a staggering number of children living in food insecure homes: Another element to this insane demand for money from a country supposedly in need is that Israelis enjoy free universal healthcare and education. American households incur billions in debt just so their children can be able to go to school. Moreover, many Americans continue to have no access to healthcare and Republicans are trying to kill Obamacare.It s time for America to take care of its children, its sick, and its hungry. It s time for America s politicians to worry about America first instead of an ungrateful country that doesn t require aid but rather needs to be stopped and sanctioned for its brutality against the Palestinian people.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons | 0 |
11,572 | Newt Gingrich Just SLAMMED Romney, Dubya And His Daddy For Being Hypocrites And Babies (VIDEO) | The actors and actresses of Fox News have received their marching orders and the run to November will officially be the propaganda machine for Donald Trump. That s how it seems, at least, as hosts align themselves with people like Newt Gingrich, and other hard-core party liners who will vote for whomever has an (R) next to their name. Gingrich vowed his support for Donald Trump as well as his contempt for some party heavy hitters.After a shot at Mitt Romney for trusting the party voters to deliver the candidate they want, he turned his attention to the two former presidents, George W. and George H.W. Bush. Both of those historical failures have decided that they refuse to support Donald Trump, and nor will they attend the convention to initiate the Fourth Reich. Little brother Jeb has also chimed in that he ll be on the sidelines as well, as though he had a choice. Jeb was Trump s first real target. When it worked and Jeb dropped out, pundits everywhere were shocked. Then one by one they fell. All of the party elite; all of the establishment favorites.The money from the Koch brothers never appeared, because as evil as they are, they aren t stupid. Donald Trump ran the most effective underdog campaign in history by loaning himself money and going out and getting free press. Trump used the Republican Party and the agenda of fear and hate they ve fostered for far too long against them like a champ. The uneducated bigots crawled out of the woodwork to demand the country be great again and (insert required amount of rhetoric and lies).As the stupidity gained steam and made its way towards a downhill run to Cleveland, the party began to fracture. The pledge they made Trump sign now makes them look like massive hypocrites. What they re left with are fights of the magnitude of Gingrich versus Bush:Gingrich: "When [HW, W & Romney] were the nominees they expected all of us to support them." https://t.co/0dzSQiMZjfhttps://t.co/7cYf30HPLf Fox News (@FoxNews) May 7, 2016Congratulations, GOP. You made your bed, now lie in it.Featured image via screen capture | 0 |
11,573 | Republican healthcare bill imperiled with 22 million seen losing insurance | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty-two million Americans would lose insurance over the next decade under the U.S. Senate Republican healthcare bill, a nonpartisan congressional office said on Monday, complicating the path forward for the already-fraught legislation. After the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score, Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she could not support moving forward on the bill as written. Collins’ opposition highlights the delicate balance that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must strike as he tries to deliver a legislative win to President Donald Trump by reconciling the Republican Party’s moderate and conservative wings. Moderate senators are concerned about millions of people losing insurance. Key conservative senators have said the Senate bill does not do enough to repeal Obamacare. The CBO assessment that an additional 15 million people would be uninsured in 2018 under the bill and its prediction that insurance premiums would skyrocket over the first two years prompted concern from both sides. McConnell’s goal was to have a vote on the bill before the July 4 recess that starts at the end of this week. But several Republicans, including Collins, have said they would not approve a procedural motion that would clear the way for a vote. McConnell can afford to lose just two Republican senators from their 52-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, which would allow passage of the bill with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote. “If you are on the fence ... this CBO score didn’t help you, so I think it’s going to be harder to get to 50, not easier,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said of the bill’s prospects. The CBO score is also likely to amplify criticism from industry groups such as the American Medical Association, which said earlier on Monday that the Senate’s bill violated the doctors’ precept of “first, do no harm.” The CBO is only able to assess the impact of legislation within a 10-year window, but it said that insurance losses are expected to grow beyond 22 million due to deep cuts to the Medicaid insurance program for the poor and disabled that are not scheduled to go into effect until 2025. Trump and Republicans in Congress made repealing and replacing Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation, a central campaign promise. The pressure is on for them to deliver now that they control the White House, House of Representatives and Senate. Republicans view Obamacare as costly government intrusion and say that individual insurance markets are collapsing. Obamacare expanded health coverage to some 20 million Americans by expanding Medicaid and mandating that individuals obtain health insurance. The CBO score was released just hours after Republicans revised the bill, adding a measure that would penalize people who let their insurance coverage lapse for an extended period. The move followed criticism that the original bill would result in a sicker - and more expensive - insurance pool. At least four conservative Republicans - Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and Mike Lee - have expressed opposition to the Senate legislation. Moderate Republicans have warned against replacing Obamacare with legislation that is too similar to the version passed by the House, saying it would cause too many people, especially those with low incomes, to lose health coverage. The CBO estimated that the House bill would cause 23 million people to lose insurance. Trump had called the House bill “mean” and asked Senate Republicans to come up with “more generous” legislation. Democrats uniformly oppose both the House and Senate versions of the bill. “CBO’s report today makes clear that this bill is every bit as ‘mean as the House bill,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, told reporters. The White House in a statement on Monday criticized the CBO for issuing a “flawed report” and said its assessments should not be “trusted blindly.” Trump and McConnell have been working to shore up support. The president called key conservative senators over the weekend, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said. Both Cruz and Johnson said they were concerned about CBO estimates that insurance premiums would initially rise as much as 30 percent over the first two years before declining. “Doesn’t help the people whose premiums skyrocket next year,” Cruz told reporters. “Kind of a problem, isn’t it?” Johnson said of the short-term premium increase. Johnson and Paul have said they will oppose the procedural motion that would allow the Senate to move forward to a vote. Cruz is drafting suggested fixes. Paul remains opposed to the bill. The first moderate Republican to oppose the bill, Senator Dean Heller, is already facing political fallout. America First Policies, a political group run by former Trump campaign staffers, said it would air healthcare-related attack ads against Heller, who faces a competitive re-election race in Nevada next year. Senator Rob Portman, of Ohio, who has not said whether he supports the bill, was “dressed down” by McConnell during a Monday leadership meeting, a senior Republican aide told Reuters. Ohio participates in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and Republican Governor John Kasich has criticized the Senate bill. Portman’s office did not respond to a request to comment. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said his governor, fellow Republican Rick Scott, would be on Capitol Hill this week to discuss the bill’s impact on the state. Constituent and industry groups have been critical of the Senate bill’s proposal to reduce the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and point to the CBO analysis that it would disproportionately affect older adults. Under Senate rules, the bill must replicate savings projected in the House version that passed last month. It cleared that critical hurdle, with the CBO estimating it would decrease the budget deficit by $321 billion over 2017-2026. A revision to the bill that imposes a penalty for prolonged lapses in insurance coverage addresses the original bill’s provision to drop the Obamacare penalty on those who do not have insurance. Experts had warned that canceling the fine could lead to a sicker insurance pool because young and healthy people would not face consequences for failing to purchase insurance. The bill would impose a six-month waiting period for anyone who lets their health insurance lapse for over 63 days and then wants to re-enroll in a plan in the individual market. The 15 million people the CBO estimates would be uninsured in 2018 is largely due to the repeal of the penalty associated with being uninsured. The CBO did not evaluate the revised version that included the new waiting period. Insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield said it was encouraged by the inclusion of incentives for continuous coverage. Molina Healthcare said it preferred the Obamacare mandate, said that and the Senate bill, even after revised, would simply delay care. If the Senate passes a bill, it will either have to be approved by the House, the two chambers would have to reconcile their differences in a conference committee, or the House could pass a new version and bounce it back to the Senate. | 1 |
11,574 | Undocumented Immigrant Dares Trump To Release His Taxes After Proving She Pays Hers | Donald Trump s head is going to explode when he sees this.Back in September as the 2016 campaign raged on, Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars and complained that only 5 percent to 10 percent of them pay taxes. Illegal immigration, each year, costs us between $200 billion and $300 billion, Trump told CNN host Erin Burnett. I don t know if anybody gives you those numbers. Probably not. There s very little, percentage-wise, Trump said on the number of immigrants who pay taxes. There s very little, probably 5 percent, 10 percent. Wrong.As it turns out, Trump claimed in August that the figure was around $113 billion. But Politifact rated his claim false after doing some research. Trump s information comes from an unreliable conservative think tank that fiercely opposes immigration. Reports from other organizations, even conservative ones, put the figure drastically lower.It also turns out that around more than half of the undocumented immigrants in this country pay more taxes than Donald Trump does. After all, just a single year of Trump s tax returns showed that he probably didn t pay a dime in federal income taxes for over a decade. Undocumented immigrants on the other hand, have contributed $12 billion to Social Security alone as well as other federal, local and state taxes, while not being able to receive any federal, state, or local benefits.That may be a huge reason why Trump refuses to release his tax returns. Because he knows that they would expose him as the hypocrite, liar, and tax cheat that he is.Now one undocumented immigrant is bravely daring Trump to release his taxes after she proved his claims wrong with a single photograph.Belen Sisa is a resident of Arizona who was brought to America by her undocumented immigrant parents when she was six years old. Sisa decided to send a message to Donald Trump and all of those anti-immigrant conservatives who believe the myths about undocumented immigrants that right-wing groups constantly spew.So she posted a picture of herself proudly holding up her tax returns on Facebook and included the following message:I, an undocumented immigrant, just filed my taxes and PAID $300 to the state of Arizona. I cannot receive financial aid from the state or federal government for school, I cannot benefit from unemployment, a reduced healthcare plan, or a retirement fund. I think I m a pretty good citizen. Oh and there are MILLIONS just like me who pay into a system they will never receive anything from. Wanna tell me again how I should be deported, contribute nothing and only leech off this country while the 1% wealthiest people in this country steal from you everyday? How about you show me yours Donald J. Trump? #HereToStay Your move, Donald.Featured Image: Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images | 0 |
11,575 | ANGRY DAD CONFRONTS SCHOOL BOARD After Finding Out Children Being Taught Islam In School [Video] | We can t say enough great things about this dad! He confronted his child s school board to speak against the school teaching Islam. We ned more dads like this one to speak up against the very active push to teach Islam in schools.This is disturbing for all parents. CAIR has taken it upon themselves to claim that they need to fight Islamophobia . They see this as a problem but we see this as a shady way to have Islam taught in schools . We see what they re doing but the bleeding heart liberals in San Diego are just passively accepting this propaganda:Janet Levy of American Thinker: If allowed to stand, the SDUSD anti-bullying program geared specifically to the CAIR-identified needs of Muslim students could mark a dangerous departure from treasured constitutional principles and First Amendment protections. This case warrants serious attention, as it has grave implications for the direction of education and the supremacy of Islam in the nation. There s a huge problem on so many levels with this. The most obvious one is that a Christian would be hammered for even remotely trying to push Christianity on the kids. So why should we accept teaching Islam to our kids? The answer is WE SHOULDN T! Dad Christopher Wyrick,Finds Out School Is FORCING #Islam #ReligionBeliefs Down His Son s Throat!His #PATRIOTIC Reply Goes VIRAL!#BanSharia pic.twitter.com/8yKcFvOiRk TRUMP ANOMALY (@ANOMALY1) May 4, 2017WATCH FOR THIS IN YOUR SCHOOL!American Thinker reported: With a decade-long history of yielding to Islamic demands and recent, more alarming submissions, San Diego city schools appear to be ground zero for Islamic indoctrination within American public schools. The current capitulation includes an Islam-centric curriculum with input and resources from a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organization, which raises First Amendment issues as well as serious concerns of favoritism toward Muslims students over students of other faiths.This past week, SDUSD, in collaboration with the Council on American Islam Relations (CAIR), instituted an anti-bullying campaign aimed specifically at protecting Muslims students. In launching the initiative, SDUSD cited an unsubstantiated study by CAIR claiming that 55% of American Muslim students surveyed in California said they were bullied because of their religion. The new program will include adding lessons on Islam to the social studies curriculum that emphasize prominent Muslims in history, creating Muslim-only safe spaces, adding Muslim holidays to the school calendar, and providing support and resources for Muslim students during Ramadan.According to Stan Anjan, SDUSD s executive director of family and community engagement, the new program will focus on promoting a positive image of Islam. Special disciplinary measures will also be created for the so-called bullying of Muslims cited by CAIR. Instead of detention, the school plans a restorative justice program in which students dialogue with each other about perceived bullying words or actions. Educational materials on Islam and resource listings will be provided to parents and school personnel as well.CAIR, a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas, according to terrorism expert Steve Emerson, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding case brought by the Justice Department in 2007. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce terrorist groups Hamas and Hezb allah, and several CAIR executives have been successfully prosecuted and incarcerated for terrorist activities. CAIR was designated as a terrorist group by the UAE in 2014.In 2015, Kevin Beiser and Michael McQuary, two members of the SDUSD Board of Education, issued a formal proclamation in support and recognition of CAIR San Diego, citing ten years of constructive civic engagement in San Diego and Imperial Counties. They praised the organization s work to promote not only religious and cultural tolerance and understanding but also justice and equality for all who live in the United States. CAIR director Hanif Mohebi was specifically complimented for his commitment to promoting equitable educational opportunity for all students and preparing them to succeed in a culturally diverse society. The trustees recognized a community partnership with CAIR in mediating school situations involving discrimination and other behavioral issue[s] and announced CAIR s upcoming tenth anniversary banquet, centered on the theme Strengthening Our Voices, Advancing Together. CAIR, billing itself as a benign Muslim civil rights organization, has long been at the forefront in pressuring schools and businesses to accommodate the special needs of Muslims. In 2009, CAIR complained of favoritism when Christian students in Roseville, a Detroit suburb, were given permission slips to attend off-site Bible study classes. Yet CAIR pushed in 2012 for Dearborn public schools to accommodate Muslim prayer on school grounds and early Friday dismissals for Jumu ah prayers. The organization has pressured schools to have a say on textbook selection and to feature its own lecturers for school assemblies. When a public school teacher in Concrete, Washington referenced the Taliban and Hamas while citing examples of the use of violence to bully people, CAIR cried racism and called for a federal investigation, saying the teacher had veered off topic to make anti-Muslim statements. The school district responded that the teacher s comments were taken out of context.Mohebi, the head of CAIR San Diego, has been pushing the anti-Islamophobia program. He recently tried to prevent the San Diego Police Department from attending a training session on Islamic terrorism featuring Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, a nonprofit dedicated to exposing the dangers of Islamic extremism. Mohebi said officers would be learning conspiracy theories from Mauro. Further, Mohebi importuned that no taxpayer dollars should pay for the training and that the SDPD should not confer continuing education credits for attendance. In a further attempt to control police training on Islam, Mohebi requested the ability to monitor police training to vouch for its accuracy and to provide clarifications throughout the session.CAIR s recent activity and its incursion into the San Diego schools curriculum has been criticized by Charles LiMandri, president and chief counsel of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF). LiMandri said the San Diego program represents a wholesale realignment of school curricula and the students learning environment to the recommendations of a religious organization whose stated mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam and empower American Muslims. The FCDF maintains that the First Amendment prohibits a government agency from attempting to effect a secular goal by the propagation of religious concepts. LiMandri points out the litigious pitfalls of a curriculum which could easily be construed as a governmental endorsement of a religion. He also cautions that CAIR s interpretation of the term bullying could extend to the stifling of criticism of Islam, further impinging on First Amendment protections.Citizens for Quality Education San Diego, a non-partisan group of citizens concerned about public education, voiced their opposition to the new Islamic-friendly curriculum and characterized it as an attempt to implement at local schools anti-American sharia law, incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. The group criticized the blatant singling out of the Muslim religion for special accommodations and demanded that the policy be rescinded. Despite widespread community outcry, the district seems to be moving ahead.Disturbing! | 0 |
11,576 | People Investigating Ivanka Trump’s Chinese Factory Have Been Arrested Or Gone Missing | The men investigating the working conditions at the factory that makes, among other products, Ivanka Trump s shoe line, have either been arrested or have gone missing.One of the three men has been arrested while the other two have gone missing. While there is currently no evidence to point the finger at Donald Trump, or even his buddy Vladimir Putin, this does bode badly for BLOTUS in other ways.First, the facts of the story, from CBS News:Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn t need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family s breadwinner.China Labor Watch Executive Director Li Qiang said he lost contact with Hua Haifeng and the other two men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, over the weekend. By Tuesday, after dozens of unanswered calls, he had concluded: They must be held either by the factory or the police to be unreachable. Officials at the Public Security Bureau in Ganzhou would not confirm to CBS News if Hua was detained, but his wife was made aware of the charge Tuesday afternoon.China Labor Watch is an American human rights organization that tracks workplace abuses in China. They were planning on publishing a report about the factory s low wages, excessive overtime and alleged misuse of interns, next month. They have been investigating Chinese factories for 17 years, and they say that it s never been more of a political hotbed than it is now. This is the first time that their investigators have gone missing or have been detained.While this does sound like some Putinesque tactics, it s pretty much indicative of any strong arm dictator. The Chinese ruling Communist Party is feeling especially vulnerable right now and they re cracking down on all sorts of threats to the party.We may never know whether these men were targeted because it s the factory that makes Ivanka Trump s shoes, but we do know that Trump has an affinity for dictators and has even expressed that he had great chemistry with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It also raises a lot of questions as to why this particular factory, one that manufactures shoes for the daughter of the American President, was targeted.We also know that thanks to China, Trump is about to get a lot richer. In February, the Chinese government approved 38 trademarks that Trump had been seeking for almost a year. They had been held up thanks to Once he became president, the process seemed to move rather quickly. Trump has also softened his stance toward China from what it was on the campaign trail. While still a candidate, Trump accused China of manipulating currency.There are four possibilities here: The Chinese are solely behind it, the Russians are behind it, or Trump is behind it, which is pretty much the same as the Russians being behind it, or it was a collaboration. When you follow the money, there are two clear losers when the violations are reported. While no one is accusing Trump of orchestrating this (is he smart enough, anyway?), he, along with the Chinese government both benefit from this report not being released. For both Trumps, it might just be a happy coincidence.Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images. | 0 |
11,577 | Putin to meet South Korean President to discuss North Korea on Sept. 6: Kremlin | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in on Wednesday to discuss the crisis around North Korea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. The two leaders will meet on the sidelines of an economic forum in the Russian far eastern city of Vladivostok as international concerns grow over Pyongyang s recent nuclear tests that shook the Korean Peninsula. | 1 |
11,578 | Russia to amend law to classify U.S. media 'foreign agents' | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s parliament warned on Friday some U.S. and other foreign media could be declared foreign agents and obliged to regularly declare full details of their funding, finances and staffing. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, said parliament could back legislation as early as next week in response to what lawmakers view as U.S. pressure on Russian media. Possible restrictions will be the same as those taken by the United States, Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. He said some U.S. media in Russia were trying to turn U.S. public opinion against Moscow. We understand that it s essential to protect the interests of our citizens and the country and we will do this in the same way as the country which lays claim to be the gold standard and mentor and which is constantly talking about freedom. Russian lawmakers said the move was retaliation for a demand by the U.S. Department of Justice that Kremlin-backed TV station RT register in the United States as a foreign agent , something Moscow has said it regards as an unfriendly act. The U.S. action against RT was taken after U.S. intelligence agencies accused Russia of trying to interfere in last year s U.S. presidential election to help President Donald Trump win the White House, something Moscow has denied. Russia faces a presidential election next March. Vladimir Putin is widely expected to stand again and to win. He remains broadly popular though critics accuse him of suppressing dissent, not least by tight control of domestic media. Lawmakers will conduct a first reading of the new restrictions on Nov. 15 and try to complete approval in two further readings by the end of next week. U.S. and any other foreign media that fall under the new restrictions could have to regularly disclose to Russian authorities full details of their funding, finances and staffing and might be obliged to say on their social media profiles and internet sites visible in Russia that they are foreign agents . The Duma earlier this year launched an investigation into whether CNN, Voice of America, Radio Liberty and other American media were complying with Russian law. U.S. government-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said last month Moscow had threatened to brand their Russian language service projects foreign agents in retaliation for U.S. pressure on RT. On Friday, Joanna Levison, RFE s director of media and public affairs, declined to speculate about how the latest move might affect the broadcaster, but said RFE had every intention of continuing its journalistic work in Russia. ... While RT is able to work and distribute its content freely in the U.S., RFE/RL has lost all of its broadcast affiliates in Russia due to administrative pressure, it has no access to cable TV, and its reporters are beaten and harassed, Levison said in an emailed comment. Russia said last month it had dropped accusations against CNN International of violating Russian media law and that the U.S. channel could continue broadcasting in Russia. San Francisco-based social network Twitter has also angered Russian authorities when it accused RT and the Sputnik news outlet of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network. | 1 |
11,579 | Trump tussle gives unpopular Mexican leader much-needed shot in arm | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s combative style has buffeted Mexico’s president for months, but deeply unpopular Enrique Pena Nieto may end up thanking the new U.S. president for prompting offended Mexicans to rally behind their leader. From billionaire business magnate Carlos Slim to political opponents, there has been a groundswell of support for Pena Nieto, who has cut a lonely figure in months of bruising encounters with Trump. Often referred to by his initials EPN, Pena Nieto is laboring under the worst approval ratings of any Mexican president in decades due to discontent over corruption, gang violence, sluggish growth and a jump in fuel prices. Trump’s threats to scrap the NAFTA trade deal with Mexico and build a border wall have caused anger and left Mexicans feeling fearful for the future. His challenge to Pena Nieto on Thursday - saying he should skip a planned summit between the two leaders if Mexico wasn’t willing to pay for the wall - was the final straw. Pena Nieto replied a couple of hours later that he had canceled his meeting with Trump, one of the president’s biggest ever hits on Twitter, getting more “likes” than when he personally broke news of the capture of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in January of last year. “Bravo EPN!,” cheered former President Vicente Fox, who had initially condemned Pena Nieto for inviting Trump to Mexico for talks last August, and who has waged a colorful and expletive-ridden campaign against the Republican on Twitter. Pena Nieto and Trump talked for about an hour by phone on Friday, pledging to work out their differences and agreeing not to speak about the wall in public for now. Meanwhile, calls for unity grew in Mexico, led by Slim, a normally media-shy 76-year-old who gave a 90-minute news conference in support of the government on Friday. “This is the most surprising example of national unity I’ve seen in my life,” said Slim, who spent several years in the past decade as the world’s richest man. “We have to back the president of Mexico so he can defend our national interests.” Senior opposition leaders also urged a common front. “It’s time to show unity and our commitment to Mexico,” Alejandra Barrales, head of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), said on Twitter. Pena Nieto’s credibility has been battered by a widespread public perception that he has failed to battle corruption and indeed even encouraged it since a conflict-of-interest row embroiled him, his wife and a top minister in late 2014. Some opposition critics fear the government will try to use Trump as a screen to distract from its failings. However, two senior officials told Reuters they hoped Pena Nieto would seize the moment to act quickly and decisively to improve his image. Expressions of dismay at Trump’s behavior towards Mexico have almost become a national pastime, and talk of boycotts against U.S. companies is gathering steam on social media. Slim, when asked about boycotting at his news conference, said it wasn’t a good idea to turn on U.S. companies, which are creating jobs in Mexico. Some foreign companies voiced support for Mexico too. “I feel Mexico is being subjected to terror at the moment,” said Andreas Schindler, co-owner of German fruit wholesaler Don Limon’s parent Pilz Schindler, by phone from Hamburg. “We’re right behind Mexico.” | 1 |
11,580 | Iran warns of retaliation if U.S. breaches nuclear deal | BEIRUT (Reuters) - Extending U.S. sanctions on Iran for 10 years would breach the Iranian nuclear agreement, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said on Wednesday, warning that Tehran would retaliate if the sanctions are approved. The U.S. House of Representatives re-authorized last week the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, for 10 years. The law was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran’s energy industry and deter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. The House bill must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama to become law. Iran and world powers concluded the nuclear agreement, also known as JCPOA, last year. It imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in return for easing sanctions that have badly hurt its economy. “The current U.S. government has breached the nuclear deal in many occasions,” Khamenei said, addressing a gathering of members of the Revolutionary Guards, according to his website. “The latest is extension of sanctions for 10 years, that if it happens, would surely be against JCPOA, and the Islamic Republic would definitely react to it.” The U.S. lawmakers passed the bill one week after Republican Donald Trump was elected U.S. president. Republicans in Congress unanimously opposed the agreement, along with about two dozen Democrats, and Trump has also criticized it. Lawmakers from both parties said they hoped bipartisan support for a tough line against Iran would continue under the new president. President-elect Trump once said during his campaign that he would “rip up” the agreement, drawing a harsh reaction from Khamenei, who said if that happens, Iran would “set fire” to the deal. The House of Representatives also passed a bill last week that would block the sale of commercial aircraft by Boeing (BA.N) and Airbus (AIR.PA) to Iran. The White House believes that the legislation would be a violation of the nuclear pact and has said Obama would veto the measure even if it did pass the Senate. | 1 |
11,581 | Top Democrat says he hopes U.S. Senate at turning point on healthcare repeal | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday he hoped Congress had reached a turning point on efforts to repeal Obamacare and it was time for the parties to work together to stabilize the insurance markets and fix the system’s weaknesses. Schumer, speaking at a news conference, praised the three Republican senators who decided join Democrats in voting against a Senate effort to pass a slimmed-down version of the Republican healthcare bill. “I hope this is a turning point,” Schumer told reporters. “On healthcare, I hope we can work together to make the system better in a bipartisan way.” | 1 |
11,582 | SWISS ARMY CHIEF WARNS CITIZENS About Explosive Refugee Situation: Tells Them To Arm Themselves | Wouldn t it be great if we had someone in government who would take the import of thousands of Muslims from countries who hate us seriously?Swiss army chief Andr Blattmann warned, in a Swiss newspaper article on Sunday, the risks of social unrest in Europe are soaring. Recalling the experience of 1939/1945, Blattman fears the increasing aggression in public discourse is an explosively hazardous situation, and advises the Swiss people to arm themselves and warns that the basis for Swiss prosperity is being called into question. Even though Switzerland has not been involved in an armed conflict since a standoff between Catholics and Protestants in 1847, the Swiss are very serious not only about their right to own weapons but also to carry them around in public. Because of this general acceptance and even pride in gun ownership, nobody bats an eye at the sight of a civilian riding a bus, bike or motorcycle to the shooting range, with a rifle slung across the shoulder.As Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports, speaking on the record for the first time since the November Paris terror attacks, Blattmann told the paper that despite a rise in security incidents over the past two years Switzerland s means of defence were being reduced.The situation is growing increasingly risky, Blattman begins. The threat of terror is rising, hybrid wars are being fought around the globe; the economic outlook is gloomy and the resulting migration flows of displaced persons and refugees have assumed unforeseen dimensions. Social unrest can not be ruled out , the vocabulary in public discourse will dangerously aggressive. The mixture is increasingly unappetizing Blattmann sees the basis of Swiss prosperity, has long been once again called into question. He recalls the situation around the two world wars in the last century and advises Switzerland, to arm themselves.Via: Zero Hedge | 0 |
11,583 | Justice Scalia received last rites from Catholic priest at Texas ranch | (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia received last rites from a Catholic priest at the Texas ranch where he died, Elizabeth O’Hara, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of El Paso, said on Saturday. Rev. Mike Alcuino, who serves at a parish in Presidio County, Texas, administered last rites to the justice, O’Hara said. | 1 |
11,584 | OBAMA INVITES David Letterman, Will Ferrell And Other Leftist Celebrities To Extravagant Nordic State Dinner For Purpose Of Sending “Strong Message” To Putin | In typical Obama fashion, the extravagant tax-payer funded Nordic state dinner looked more like an after-party for the Academy Awards than a state function. How is anyone supposed to take this ass-clown seriously when he has turned our White House into a playground for the who s who in the Hollywood Communist party? But then again, nothing Obama does is for the good of our country, it always has been, and will continue to be, all about him until he and his sorry excuse for a family exit the White House. I m sure the sight of pop singer Demi Lovato and comedian Aziz Ansar with Nordic leaders at the White House left Putin shaking in his boots President Obama and the First Lady have welcomed five Nordic leaders to the White House for a lavish state dinner after earlier putting on a show of unity against Vladimir Putin s recent military aggression in the Baltics.The Obamas first welcomed Icelandic Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson who has only been in charge of his country for a month and his wife Ingibjorg Elsa Ingjaldsdottir as they arrived at the North Portico of the White House.They were swiftly followed by the prime ministers of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, who were also invited to the unusual if a little crowded meeting.The dinner will send a strong statement to Russia, who the five heads of state earlier slammed for its military buildup including the buzzing of a U.S. warship near Kaliningrad as they called for economic sanctions against Moscow to be maintained.Here s a peak into the Academy Awards after party Nordic State dinner. True to our divisive President s nature, there wasn t a single Republican invited to the affair.More than 300 guests including actor Will Ferrell, David Letterman and former NBA star Alonzo Mourning were invited to the dinner.Ferrell, who attended the dinner with his Swedish wife, Vivica Paulin, said it was his first time at the White House. I hope we don t do anything wrong, he joked.Also expected are Girls actress Allison Williams, Scandal star Bellamy Young, singer Janelle Monae and former Victoria s Secret model Miranda Kerr, as well as a smattering of Nordic celebrities. Several Democratic lawmakers were on the guest list, but no Republicans a possible sign that Obama s efforts to win over his political rivals are waning as the end of his presidency nears.Via: Daily Mail | 0 |
11,585 | Wild elephants trample two Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: police | COX S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Wild elephants trampled to death two Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh on Monday when they rampaged through a settlement where the refugees were taking shelter after fleeing a military offensive in neighboring Myanmar. More than 410,000 refugees from Myanmar have poured into Bangladesh since Aug. 25 when attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts triggered a Myanmar army operation that the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing. There are elephants in the forest, close to the place where many Rohingya refugees are clearing forest to make huts, police official Chailau Murma told Reuters. An elderly person and a toddler were killed when the elephants rampaged through the area, he said. Three other people were taken to hospital to be treated for injuries, a refugee camp leader said. Police said the elephants later disappeared back into the forest. The refugees are facing dire conditions with insufficient food, water, medical care and shelter, and regular drenchings from monsoon rains that have turned roads into quagmires. Bangladeshi authorities say they aim to move everyone out of so-called spontaneous sites, usually beside roads where people try to make shelters wherever they are, into one big camp where aid supplies can be properly distributed. | 1 |
11,586 | Democratic Candidates SLAM Trump After Bloody Rallies (VIDEO) | Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is in the news again for violence during one of his rallies in St. Louis and his Chicago rally was shut down amid security concerns. The Democratic candidates had harsh words for the billionaire on Friday evening after news broke of the clashes.The violence in St. Louis left protesters bruised and bloody after rabid Trump fanboys decided that putting their hands on people who do not agree with them was appropriate. This came just one day after a man was sucker-punched by a Trump supporter at a rally in North Carolina.After the St. Loius rally, Trump was supposed to travel to Chicago and speak to a crowd there, but cancelled after thousands of protesters showed up to shut him down. The protesters did not want the bombastic real estate mogul sullying their town with his angry and divisive rhetoric. It was really a sight to behold, Chicago made us proud.After the cancelling the rally, Trump made his rounds on cable news networks and pretended he had no idea why the people were fighting at his rallies. He s such a positive guy! He only wants to unite white people Americans.The Democratic presidential candidates, however, placed the blame squarely at Trump s feet where it belonged.Bernie Sanders spoke out during his own rally in Summit, Illinois and called for unity: What this campaign is about is bringing our people together. Not letting Donald Trump or anybody else divide us up. No, we are not going to hate Mexicans. We re not gonna hate Muslims. We re not gonna insult women. We re not gonna insult veterans. We re not gonna insult African-Americans. We are gonna bring our people together Hillary Clinton released a statement on Twitter, saying, Violence has no place in our politics. We should use our words and deeds to bring Americans together. Violence has no place in our politics. We should use our words and deeds to bring Americans together. pic.twitter.com/FofjognpIA Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 12, 2016This is how real candidates behave. A Republican pundit on CNN, Friday night, asked why these things never happen at Democratic rallies and implied that it was a conspiracy against Republicans. My mouth fell open. Violence doesn t erupt at our rallies because we didn t choose a jacka$$ reality star who has campaigned on a platform of hate. Someone who encourages his supporters to punch protesters in the face. That s why.Watch Bernie s statement: Featured image via video screenshot | 0 |
11,587 | WOW! BRAVE VETERAN CONFRONTS FERGUSON THUGS STOMPING ON U.S. FLAG: “My Brothers Died For That Flag!” [VIDEO] | My brothers DIED for that flag! | 0 |
11,588 | WATCH HILLARY CLINTON Go Full On Socialist…Your Hard Earned Money Isn’t Yours! [Video] | The Death Tax is the hard earned money you have to pass on to the government when you die. Wouldn t you rather your children receive that money instead of the feds? Donald Trump thinks so but Hillary goes full on socialist describing what she would do with Trump s money when he dies. It s really disgusting! | 0 |
11,589 | Ex-CIA boss Petraeus indicates would serve Trump if asked | LONDON (Reuters) - Retired U.S. general David Petraeus indicated on Wednesday that he would serve in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration if he was offered a job, according to an interview on Britain’s BBC radio. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Petraeus, who resigned as CIA chief in 2012 after an extra-marital affair was revealed, was under consideration for the post of defense secretary. Asked if he would agree to serve in the Trump administration, Petraeus said: “I’ve been in a position before where a president has turned to me in the Oval Office in a difficult moment and .... said ‘I’m asking you as your president and commander-in-chief to take command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan’. “The only response can be ‘yes, Mr President’.” Petraeus was a four-star general in the U.S. Army and oversaw international forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He was later appointed as CIA director by President Barack Obama. Asked during his BBC interview if he thought Trump had the right temperament to be president, Petraeus said: “We’re going to have to see. “I’m not someone who’s had contact with him in the past. I don’t know how he operates. It’s interesting that those who have been talking to him have said he’s a very personable, very hospitable, very gracious guy, full of questions and dialogue. “This is a guy who’s done pretty well in life.” Pressed further on the pressures of the office of U.S. president and whether he had confidence that Trump was capable of doing the job, Petraeus said: “I think so, yes. It’s up to Americans not only to hope that that is the case, but if they can, endeavor to help him.” | 1 |
11,590 | Reeling Republican establishment running out of time to stop Trump | MIAMI (Reuters) - When Senator Ted Cruz took the stage on Tuesday after winning the Republican nominating contest in his home state of Texas, he issued a call for the party to rally behind his presidential candidacy. That seems a long shot. Republican Party leaders came away from Super Tuesday - the 2016 presidential campaign’s biggest day of state-by-state nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election - without any clearer consensus about how to slow front-runner Donald Trump’s march to the nomination. They fear Trump’s divisive rhetoric - which includes calls to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country - will tarnish the party’s image and ensure Democrats hold on to the White House and possibly retake the Senate. The billionaire businessman won the largest number of Super Tuesday contests, taking seven states, but fell short of the 10 states some polls had predicted. Cruz won two, and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida notched his first win, in Minnesota. That made Cruz and Rubio unlikely to withdraw from the race before the next big nominating contest in two weeks. The same goes for Ohio Governor John Kasich, who has said he will continue his candidacy through his state’s primary on March 15. “So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation,” Cruz said. Trump’s failure to win a clean sweep of the primary contests on Tuesday buys the establishment wing of the party time to intensify its counterattacks against the New York real estate mogul and political outsider. While they have yet to coalesce around a single strategy, anti-Trump Republicans have begun taking action. Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group, claimed credit for slowing Trump in some primary states by running attack ads. “Donald Trump can be stopped,” said the group’s president, David McIntosh, in a statement. “And he must be, before he costs conservatives the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.” The New York Times reported that several financial backers of the Republican Party organized a phone call on Tuesday to get funding for an anti-Trump effort. Helping lead the call were the hedge-fund manager Paul Singer, Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts, and Meg Whitman, the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise chief executive. The newspaper said it was unclear what kind of political offensive might emerge from those discussions. A recently launched political action committee dedicated to blasting Trump, Our Principles PAC, said it was ramping up fundraising and planned daily attacks against Trump before upcoming primaries in March. It said the campaign would focus on Trump’s business record and include a video where he declined in an interview to disavow former Ku Klux Klan official David Duke. Trump, who later rejected Duke’s support, said he had not clearly heard the interviewer’s question. On Capitol Hill, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who will preside over the party’s nominating convention in July, made clear he disapproved of Trump’s rhetoric in comments that suggested he was not ready to welcome Trump into the establishment fold. “If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there must be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry,” Ryan, the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, told reporters. Trump ratcheted up the tension during a news conference in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night, warning Ryan he would pay “a big price” if he stood in Trump’s way. Despite the establishment’s distaste for Trump, there appears to be no consensus on the best way to stop him. “As long as both Cruz, Rubio and Kasich remain in the race, then Trump will continue to prevail in upcoming primary states and he will vacuum up the delegates while the vote splits among the remaining candidates,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican operative in Washington. Rubio and Kasich have set their sights on delegate-rich contests in the heavily populated states of Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Illinois later this month. More than 1,200 delegates are required by the party to secure its nomination. The goal for the remaining campaigns will be to keep Trump from amassing those delegates for as long as possible, with the hope that an increasing tide of criticism from the candidates, party leaders and political action committees will drain his support. But Bonjean said the party would have to find a way to thwart Trump before he walked away with the nomination. “The odds of stopping Trump are getting much lower with every state put away into his corner,” he said. (Editing by Peter Cooney) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 1 |
11,591 | EPISODE #4 – ON THE QT: ‘Julian vs Hillary’ (Part 1) @21WIRE.TV | Listen to the first 30 min segment of this new fortnightly podcast, ON THE QT , hosted by Patrick Henningsen. This new show brings together a number of news stories not covered on the SUNDAY WIRE, as well as additional deep state and geopolitical analysis covering key international events as we read between the headlines.THIS WEEK: Julian Assange is about to drop another Wiki-bomb on the Clinton family s drive to power. What s behind it, the motivations, and will it derail the Clinton political machine? We ll also look at how rigid politically correct regimes transforming university campus life Listen to Episode 4 Part 1 (25 min 30 sec) for FREE on the audio player below. Enjoy the show TO HEAR PART ONE OF EPISODE #4 CLICK HEREIf you like it and would like to hear the FULL episode, as well as enjoy all our premium content for members, subscribe and become a member @21WIRE.TV | 0 |
11,592 | Alabama Democrat turns up attacks on Roy Moore in Senate race's final stretch | BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Reuters) - Name-calling is not unusual in U.S. politics. But “child abuser” is not usually one of the names. In the final stretch of a bruising U.S. Senate race in Alabama, Democrat Doug Jones has cranked up his attacks on Republican Roy Moore over allegations of sexual misconduct and made those charges central to his argument that Moore is an unsuitable choice. Jones, who avoided directly addressing the sexual allegations when they surfaced in early November, has begun to cite them to attack Moore’s character. On Tuesday, one week before the Dec. 12 special election and a day after Republican President Donald Trump endorsed Moore, Jones said women who allege that Moore assaulted or pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s deserved to be believed. “I believe these women and so should you. This is about rising above political party to do what’s right for Alabama, and for the country,” Jones told voters during a speech in Birmingham. Moore, a 70-year-old Christian conservative, has denied the misconduct allegations and said they were a result of “dirty politics.” He said last week he had never met any of the women involved. Reuters has not independently verified any of the accusations. Moore, who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, was a “source of embarrassment” for the people of Alabama, Jones said. The raw tone has become typical of a race transformed by the Moore allegations, opening the door for a possible Democratic upset in the conservative Southern state that would deal a blow to Trump’s agenda and dramatically improve Democratic chances of regaining Senate control in next year’s congressional elections. Jones has cranked up his attacks as the initial wave of voter outrage over the allegations has shown signs of fading, enabling Moore to regain a slight lead in several recent opinion polls in a state that went for Trump by 28 percentage points last year. Alabama has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992. Jones, who holds a fundraising advantage on Moore and has accumulated four times as much cash on hand for the stretch drive, has launched an advertising blitz focusing on the misconduct allegations. “They were girls when Roy Moore immorally pursued them. Now they are women,” the narrator says in one ad as pictures of the accusers flash by. “Will we make their abuser a U.S. senator?” On the campaign trail, Jones, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan members convicted of a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham that killed four young girls, has cited his own background to draw a contrast with Moore. “I damn sure believe and have done my part to ensure that men who hurt little girls should go to jail - not the U.S. Senate,” Jones said in Birmingham. Moore’s rebound in the polls highlights the challenge for Jones as he tries to boost turnout among the state’s African-American voters while peeling away support from moderate Republicans alienated by Moore in a state where many voters are resistant to the Democratic label. “He is the Republican candidate and I am a Republican. I stand in support of what he supports,” Jenny Mann, 35, said of Moore. Mann, a self-described stay-at-home mom in Ider, Alabama, said the allegations against Moore “would concern anybody, but I also believe you are innocent until proven guilty.” Jones, making his first run for public office, has cast himself as a problem solver who would work across the aisle to help Alabamans on “kitchen-table” issues like healthcare and jobs, while Moore has portrayed him as a liberal Democrat straight out of Washington. Jones supports abortion rights and opposes repealing former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, unpopular stances in Alabama. But he said he never considered moderating his views to improve his chances. “The key to any campaign and any public official is being true to what you believe, and that’s what we’re putting out there,” Jones said in an interview last month. Trump’s endorsement freed the Republican National Committee to open its wallet for Moore, who had been cut off by the national party when the misconduct allegations became public. Not every Republican is falling in line. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has frequently tangled with Trump, tweeted a photo of his $100 donation to Jones. “Country over Party,” Flake captioned it. Some of Alabama’s black leaders worry about the risk of lackluster turnout among African-Americans, who make up about a quarter of the state electorate and vote strongly Democratic. “There is not a high level of energy in the black community about this race,” said Democratic state Senator Hank Sanders. Sanders might have been talking about Freddy Haley, 55, a black retired military veteran from Fayette who said he was a Democrat but had not kept up with politics. “With the holidays and everything, I haven’t had time to check it out,” Haley said while Christmas shopping in a Birmingham suburb with his family. “When is the election?” | 1 |
11,593 | video women on the street explain why they hate hillary daily wire | donna brazile the corrupt head of the democratic national committee assured everyone that she has a clear conscience about her unethical behavior at cnn | 1 |
11,594 | NIKE DROPS CONSERVATIVE BOXER Manny Pacquiao After Condemning Gay Relationships Based On His Religious Beliefs [VIDEO] | God forbid an athlete bases their opinions on the Bible You ll be hit with the full force of the leftist machine Nike announced it has dropped Manny Pacquiao in the wake of the boxer s controversial remarks where he said those in gay relationships are worse than animals. We find Manny Pacquiao s comments abhorrent, Nike said Wednesday in a statement. Nike strongly opposes discrimination of any kind and has a long history of supporting and standing up for the rights of the LGBT community. Pacquiao, 37, made the incendiary comments in a television interview that ran Monday in his native Philippines. He s currently a member of the House of Representatives and is running for the country s senate.Pacquiao didn t immediately back down hours after the interview aired. Pacquiao said on his Facebook page he was just telling the truth of what the Bible says. But as the furor grew, Pacquiao posted an apology of sorts on Facebook on Tuesday. I m sorry for hurting people by comparing homosexuals to animals, Pacquiao wrote. Please forgive me for those I ve hurt. I still stand on my belief that I m against same sex marriage because of what the Bible says, but I m not condemning LGBT. I love you all with the love of the Lord. God Bless you all and I m praying for you. Pacquiao also served as a pitchman for Wonderful Pistachios and Nestle, although representatives for both companies said they don t have him under contract currently. Wonderful Pistachios is not currently affiliated with Manny Pacquiao nor do his views align with ours, Wonderful Pistachios spokesperson Jennifer George told USA TODAY Sports. Wonderful Pistachios stands firmly for diversity and equality and we proudly support marriage equality and inclusion around the world. | 0 |
11,595 | This Amazing Photo Shows The POWER Women Have When They Vote | This photo shows the gravesite of Susan B. Anthony, the pioneering activist who tirelessly pushed for women s equality specifically suffrage, the right to an equal vote on the day of the 2016 presidential primary in New York.The photo shows a group of I voted stickers affixed to Anthony s tombstone, which is in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Rochester, NY.Greta Selin-Love, who posted the photo, said she got a little weepy looking at the picture as was thinking back to all the work that Susan B. did for us. It is definitely worth noting that the photo comes on the same day that a woman who is very likely to be the first female president, Hillary Clinton, won the New York primary with over a million votes.Susan B. Anthony was born in 1820. She formed the Women s Loyal National League with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and quickly launched the largest petition drive up that point in American history, with 400,000 signatures demanding the abolition of slavery.Anthony followed that up with an organization demanding equal rights for women and blacks.Her activism in service of women s suffrage was launched after she was arrested in Rochester in 1872 for the crime of voting as a woman, and went to trial because she refused to pay the fine. That led to the creation of an amendment giving women the right to vote, which Anthony traveled around the country giving speeches pushing for.She died in 1906, unfortunately not seeing her dream realized. But in 1920, the Ninteenth Amendment became the law of the land, denying the right to deny anyone the right to vote based on their gender. It is only a few words, but they are powerful:The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.Anthony was later honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp, and her face also appeared on $1 coins. But most importantly her legacy is felt every time a woman casts a ballot in America, ratifying over and over true equality.Featured image via Facebook | 0 |
11,596 | Zimbabwe's Mugabe appears in public for first time since coup | HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe arrived at a university graduation ceremony in the capital on Friday, his first public appearance since a military seizure of power that political sources say is aimed at ending his 37 years in office. Wearing a blue and yellow academic gown and mortar board hat, the 93-year-old sat in large wooden chair at the front the hall. He was greeted by ululations from the crowd as he declared the ceremony open. | 1 |
11,597 | FRIGHTENING POWER OF THE PRESS: You Won’t Believe What 41% Of Americans Are Calling Orlando Terror Attack | Remember when the press used to actually report the news? Today they are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Obama administration and Democrat party. There isn t a radical agenda this President and his regime want pushed that s off limits for today s mainstream media. So you have an Islamic terrorist who even in 2001 as a teenager was cheering the 9/11 attack. He cased different targets, including Disney World (happy, but not a gay target) and prepared for the attack apparently for quite some time. He listened to Anwar al Awlaki videos, and has connection to radicals like American suicide Moner Abu Salha. He makes comments to coworkers about his connections to terrorists that spark them to call the FBI. During the attack, he calls media, says he s doing it because of ISIS, tells the victims that s why he s doing it, tells the police that s why he s doing it. He also tells victims he s doing it because the US bombing of my country'[Afghanistan, he was born in NY but apparently self-identified as Afghan]. ISIS claims the attack and calls him a soldier of the caliphate .The police never say it s Islamic terrorism, and they immediately said the morning after, there are leanings in that direction . They have reported the connections to radicals and are still looking at all the connections now.But it s domestic gun violence to these people?Check out the poll below:Why? Because of the media narrative and politicians like Obama and Clinton pushing it.At least 48% (translate Republicans and people with sense) get it.Via: Weasel Zippers | 0 |
11,598 | Sean Spicer BLOWS Press Briefing, Contradicts Trump Administration With INSANE Statement On Russia (VIDEO) | Donald Trump may have been cozying up to Russia during his presidential campaign and the beginning of his presidency, but it looks like the relationship is turning sour thanks to his reckless decision to attack Syria, one of Russia s allies.Russia openly condemned the attack, and even threatened to retaliate against the United States thanks to Trump. However, White House Press Secretary must have not gotten the memo, because he called Russia one of America s allies in reference to Syria during his press briefing on Monday.Not only is that statement false (especially after this Syria fiasco) but Spicer greatly contradicted many people in the Trump administration, and even Trump himself. It s obvious that Russia is a hostile power not an ally but Spicer still said that America would work with allies, including Russia, in committing to ensuring that there are places that are free from violence You can watch Spicer make a fool of himself below:To be fair, Trump s administration does seem to be awfully confused about how it feels about Russia. One one hand, Trump has showed Russian leader Vladimir Putin with praise, yet at times insists that he doesn t know Putin at all. Nikki Haley, our United Nations ambassador, has said Russia cannot be trusted. After the attack in Syria, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson insulted Russia and said the country was complicit or incompetent. New National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster considers Russia an adversary.If only the Trump administration could actually send a unified, coherent message but in an administration this incompetent, chaotic, and corrupt, we shouldn t expect too much. Spicer s reference to Russia as allies is embarrassing to the Trump administration, as its own Press Secretary seems clueless about how things are actually unfolding after Trump s disastrous attack on Syria, and the true definition of an ally.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images | 0 |
11,599 | Obama says will come back to Germany for Oktoberfest | BERLIN (Reuters) - Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama says he plans to come back to Germany at least one more time — to visit Munich’s annual beer-swigging Oktoberfest. “It’s wonderful to be back in Berlin. This is my sixth visit to Germany, it will not be my last,” Obama told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I have somehow continued to miss Oktoberfest so that’s probably something that is better for me to do as a former president rather than as president. I’ll have more fun,” he said. Around 7.5 million litres of beer are consumed each year at the Oktoberfest by locals and tourists alike, many decked out in traditional lederhosen and dirndls. | 1 |
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